La Cage de Londres
Jean-Pierre Guillet
(Chapter 2, p. 17-27)
Oxford's Second Circle
BRRROOOOOM! A rumbling invades in George's head. His whole body is shaking.
Startled, George opens his eyes. He wants to stand up but his limbs won't obey him. Someone is leaning over him, a blurry image. The Master? Is he finished with the sampling?
BRRroooom... The rumbling is getting less loud. George blinks several times before recognizing at last the familiar, green-eyed face.
"Don't be afraid, Geo, those are souls going to the heavens, the woman says, with her beautiful, vibrant voice. Your blood is good, my love."
It's Ann, his mother.
George stares at her, bemused, not yet wholly returned to reality. Through the red straw on which he is lying, he can still feel the dull vibration of the concrete slab, transmitted into his body. Souls... in heaven. That is how they explain those occasional rumblings and vibrations that you can feel in the walls and floors. But heaven is not for him... not this time at least. The Masters be praised!
"Heaven can wait, long live today!" Ann adds cheerfully.
It is a popular saying around here. Humanity's past doesn't matter, it's over and done. There's no longer anything to be expected from the future. Only the present is important. To live for today, one day at a time...
George stares at the ceiling lights, at the circular walls. Around him, other young initiates are lying on pallets, more or less awake. Closer to him, Rex turns his thumb up, a sign of success, but his unusual pallor clearly testifies that the drawn blood is a heavy tribute, as it is for them all. Sue's mother is still at her bedside, her daughter still unconscious. Acolytes come and go, carrying other new initiates.
George takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, reassured. He is back among his people in his native circle, Oxford2, one of the many boroughs of London.
At last, he feels strong enough to raise one arm, which seems as heavy as lead. He stares at the little reddish scar marking his forearm, he feels his head: shorn. Then his torso, his sex... no more hair. His skin carries the smell of the sacred unction. His lips stretch in a thin smile. Ann speaks, expressing his thought:
"Now you're a man, my son!" she declares emphatically.
George stiffens when Ann takes his shaved head in her hands for a noisy kiss. He is sometimes annoyed by his mother's effusive manners.
"So, how did it go, love? Tell me!"
Ann asks this question because she's interested in her son, of course. But also because it's her role to gather and transmit information. Ann is a storyteller. She's taken note of all the details of the ceremony. Which boys and girls were paired. Who's come back and who went to heaven. Keeping a chronicle of the events happening in various quarters, that's the storyteller's job.
Ann knows how to keep an audience on the edge of their seats with her expressive storytelling. It is a much appreciated talent in an environment where the main challenge is to occupy one's leisure. Ann also teaches some pupils, girls who have the gift of gab and are good with people, the ones she sees as potential future storytellers. Some of those are orphans of whom she personally took care when their parents went to heaven.
George tries to put some order in his ideas. His voice is hoarse, his mouth furry as he tells his mother, by fits and starts: the chapel... the sacred mark on his arm... much more painful than what the pref' said!... there was that baby... it opened its eyes and it whistled a bit... gently, yes, it looked gentle, that baby, it waved a tentacle as if to greet me... I tried to answer... my respects, Little Lord...
Ann is listening, eyes sparkling. This growing baby has already been reported once or twice during the previous samplings, in Oxford or in neighbouring boroughs. This time, the little Master was communicating with her son! What a nice story!
"I'm going to see if others also have anecdotes," she says. "But before that... I have to tell you..."
Hearing the hesitation in her voice, George can guess at once. Around him, among the other initiates, he realizes that he didn't see...
"Peg?" he asks simply.
Ann lowers her eyes, shaking her head. No need to add anything more. That is the life, in London. She softly pats his arm.
"You're gonna be all right, yes? An acolyte will come."
He nods and she gets up to keep on collecting information. George lets his head fall back on the pallet, lost in disjointed thoughts. So, Peggy went to heaven. George is ashamed to feel relieved, thinking of the girl's haughty manners, her ugly appearance, the unpleasant comparisons she might have made with his father Ben's attributes and performances... Some say it's a bad omen, when a pair is broken during initiation. But others claim that it is a sign of the surviving member's strength. Anyhow, there will be other lonely girls tonight...
An acolyte comes up to George, with some water in his cupped hands. The young man drinks thirstily. Another acolyte hands out a pinkish paste, the usual staple in London. George chews it for a little while, but he feels nauseated.
He still finds enough strength to sit cross-legged among his comrades.
"Well, it wasn't that bad," he brags to Rex, who has got back some of his color."
The young people trade impressions, evoking their disappeared comrades. Most of them came back, fortunately, and the initiates are proud to have passed the test.
When George mentions the baby Master, though, they look at him in surprise. Very few of them dared raise their eyes, and few of those noticed the baby. But George is a storyteller's son, after all, and storytellers are known for embellishing their tales. George sees his friend Rex's crooked smile: Rex doesn't believe him.
"The Master take you!" he says angrily.
Even though storytellers are popular, they are sometimes lacking in credibility and this extends to George, often frustrating him. In fact, he is thinking of becoming an acolyte, then, eventually, a prefessor, in order to get a better status in London. The other way you can gain some respect , of course, is through brute force. But George is not cut out for that.
Irritated, he chooses to get up to go and have something to drink, eat some more and urinate. He must get his strength back for the coming night. He declines the help of an acolyte and, although he is a little wobbly, he proudly crosses Oxford2.
People greet him with familiarity. Pallet neighbours, cousins and some of Ann's pupils quickly gather to congratulate the new initiate. Some hairy prepubescent boys watch him with an envious eye.
Oxford's second circle is a wide circular enclosure where about a hundred and fifty people are gathered -- children, teens and adults in the prime of life. In the wall, three arches open on neighbouring sections. In the south, Oxford's first circle, in the north Cambridge, in the east ChealseaBis. Those vast concrete halls are also named "boroughs"; all told, thirty-two such boroughs form the vast agglomeration of London.
Each circular enclosure has a diameter of forty-seven standard paces. Is this number deeply significant, as the Cambridge scholars pretend (a prime number equal to five times ten fingers, less a Trinity)? One thing is sure, the measurement standard had very big feet! The standard pace corresponds to three times the footprint left by a dominant male once living in the Westminster "district," at the other end of London. As many others, George went with his mother to compare his footprint to that of the ancestor, carefully preserved and reproduced for generations. The erect member of that mythical male had the same dimensions, proudly tells the Westminster storyteller (but Ann has her doubts concerning that claim).
All London boroughs have been laid out in the same manner, although the enclosures are sometimes oriented differently. In the south-east quadrant of Oxford2 stands the sampling chapel; in the south-west the water and paste distributors; in the north-east the privies, in the north-west, the straw bin.
George pulls a lever on one of the metal cylinders embedded in the wall, to pump out some nutritive paste. Then he licks the thin tube beside the cylinder to get some water.
You must cross the hall to go to the privies, on the opposite side. You squat on a grating, in full view of everyone. Just beside it, an endless trickle of water falls from the pipes hanging from the ceiling. George and the other initiates will not wash themselves today, in order to keep the sacred unction on their body until nightfall.
There are endless supplies of water and food, but pallets are a limited resource. They are made with some rather crumbly straw that ends up flaking away in bits and pieces. In principle, there should be about enough for everyone, but the Masters are sometimes late bringing fresh straw. "It is to test your faith," Prefessor Herbert explains, exhorting his faithful congregation to prayer. In practice, the powerful take more straw and the more humble must be content with a thin pallet, or even sleep on the bare floor.
The used straw flakes provide a red powder that can be rubbed on the walls to draw pictures. The main mural, here, represents a wide-shouldered man with a prominent phallus, striking down a rival: it's Big Ben, the dominant Male in Oxford's two circles. You can also see portraits of Masters, as well as figures of mythical creatures, lions, dogs, dragons, depicting, they say, the fauna of London before the Holy Invasion. Or more or less esoteric symbols, radiating circles, crescents, crosses, letters or numbers whose meaning only the prefessors claim to know.
A clean and unusually thick pallet has been reserved for the new initiates. George goes back to it and lies down with satisfaction, exhausted by his short trip.
Ann is there, getting the young ones to talk. She's announcing, as a scoop, an amazing piece of news:
"There will be a very special show for your initiation night. A performance by Margie, the famous Exempted of NorthGreenwich!
The story of that Margie is circulating throughout London. Ann already spoke abundantly of her. She's recently begun to tour the city, demonstrating her talents. But the most unbelievable thing is that she hasn't been initiated. More accurately, she was exempted from it. That is to say that when the moment came, she participated in the ritual ceremony in her own NorthGreenwich borough, she went into the chapel, but she came out fully conscious, with no scar, and not shaved!
They even say that she made love with her master, a vicious and crippled Lord. "It might be only idle gossip," Ann admits with an expression on her face that says otherwise. "But the fact is he sometimes comes in person and watches her train in NorthGreenwich or elsewhere."
The storyteller enjoys the effect she has on her audience: her news unleashes an explosion of questions and comments among the youngsters. She adds that she's heard Prefessor Herbert had reservations about the show. "A wrinkle in the tradition, of course." But acolytes from NorthGreenwich came as emissaries in Oxford today. It seems that the NorthGreenwich prefessoress had a mystical vision: the fact that young Margie has been exempted from the blood sacrifice is a sign from the Masters, and she must be made benevolently welcome. Herbert finally allowed himself to be persuaded.
The youngsters are excited at the prospect of that exceptional evening. Sources of entertainment are few in Oxford2. But first a religious ceremony must take place, for the parents. The young initiates, still too weak, are excused from it. They'll use the opportunity to get their strength back.
There are perpetual comings and goings in the hall, never any real intimacy. No matter, George is used to it. He lies down and slips almost at once into an agitated half-sleep, intermittently aware of the celebration, not far from his pallet. "Halelluuuuu... iah!" Prefessor Herbert intones in his falsetto voice. "Halleluuuu... iah!" the adults respond, gathered before him in the centre of the hall.
Mr. Herbert gives the sermon. George hears him, or half-dreams it. Anyhow, he knows the traditional phrases by heart. The blood sacrifice by which our Lords make us born again to a new life. The intimate communion with vital forces, which purifies us and makes us worthy of their graces. The Lords watch over us since the Holy Invasion, we shall never want...
George has been fascinated by the story of the origins since he was a very young child. In fact, there are several stories, which don't always agree. The legends told by Ann and the other storytellers in the evening, before the sleeping period. Stories that they transmit to one another, from mother to daughter, down through the generations. And the official History, taught by the prefessors.
Those doors opened on the past are all the more captivating because you live one day after the other, day-to-day, in London. Except for the samplings, each day is much the same. Whereas the past is full of strange, mysterious notions, often incomprehensible! Extraordinary images tumble in George's mind as he dozes .
In olden times, they say Humanity lived through a long purgatory. A terrible period. Londoners knew suffering, they fell prey to painful illnesses, had to find their food on their own, wear clothing (hard to imagine), build shelters to protect themselves from the elements (even stranger... differences in temperature, water falling from the sky, lightning and thunder... what an unimaginable world!)
Then a prophet came, Wells, a visionary, who first announced the Holy Invasion. Saviours came to Earth (there is some confusion about the meaning of this word, "Earth"; it is generally supposed to be another name for London, although there are other more far-fetched explanations for it).
The Lords came down from the sky (wherever that may be!) in their flaming fireballs. More precisely, they came from a part of the sky named "Mars." They crisscrossed the Earth in great tripod ships signifying the divine trinity.
Londoners who were not willing to be saved perished in infernal fires. The surviving Chosen were brought into a paradise where their descendants are still flourishing today. The only condition is the regular offering of one's blood to the new masters.*** "Vampires!"
A shout startles George out of his reverie.
"Our masters are vampires!" someone is screaming.
A woman is moving restlessly in the congregation, in the centre of the hall. She's sobbing, she's shouting, she holds her head in her hands. George doesn't see clearly who she is, he's too far away.
"They drink our blood! The blood of our children!" the woman screams even louder.
This time, George recognizes her voice: it's Emma, Peggy's mother. People around her anxiously glance at the ceiling. As usual, the master's shadow is moving in his translucent cell protected by a grating. Mr. Herbert, interrupted in his preaching, signals two acolytes who hurry towards the hysterical woman, silence her and pull her aside.
"Let us pray to the Masters, so that in their wisdom they forgive our poor sister's lack of faith, Mr. Herbert intones. Pray with me. Halleluuuu... iah!"
But the congregation, shaken by the incident, lacks fervour, despite the valiant efforts of the acolytes who are trying to vocally support their master. The ceremony is curtailed.
The young initiates are not very keen on commenting on the incident. Such scenes sometimes happen. They feel somewhat superior because they've come back safe and sound from the chapel.
"It's a pity for Peg," George says, "but her blood wasn't good."
"Yeah," Rex concurs, "Old Emma will just have to get used to it. That's life!"
At this moment, a new commotion interrupts them. An imposing figure is making a much noticed entrance into Oxford2...
© 2003 Éditions Alire & Jean-Pierre Guillet
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