Will Self - The Butt

It was only then that Tom noticed the judicial robe, with its hanks of multicoloured ribbons, hanging on a coat stand and realized that he was being addressed by the judge.

‘Um, yuh, sure, thanks, your honour,’ he floundered.

‘Brodzinski.’ Swai-Phillips gripped his upper arm. ‘This is Chief Justice Hogg.’

‘S — Sir.’ Tom half bowed to the old man, uncertain whether he should offer his hand. Justice Hogg seemed not in the least put out. He skipped away, and began shooting out remarks as he made tea for the new arrivals.

‘Excuse my informality. Bloody robes so uncomfortable — never got used to them, yeah. My colleague, Justice Antollopollollou, skedaddled. You appreciate — restitutional arrangements, interim stuff. . of no concern to him. Sugar? Milk? Lemon, perhaps?’

Throughout this the Intwennyfortee mob and the makkata judge stolidly chomped cookies. However, once the defence party were seated in their own easy-chairs, and Justice Hogg had perched on the corner of his large knee-hole desk, the makkata loosed off a volley of tooth clacks and palate clicks. Swai-Phillips returned fire, then the two went on, peppering each other with plosives.

Tom looked over at Atalaya. She sat like a teenager, with her legs over the arm of her chair, and smirked at her cookie. Tom took a sip of his tea. Sweet and milky, it dissolved the whisky crud in his anxious mouth.

Leaning forward to Tom, Justice Hogg explained: ‘This’ll go on for a while, right.’

‘What’re they talking about?’ Tom asked.

‘Well, I suppose your people would call it horse trading, but here such bargaining has a ritual function as well, right. They’re negotiating the terms of your restitutional payment to the Intwennyfortee mob.’

‘And my lawyer — he’s trying to get it, uh, reduced?’

‘Not exactly,’ Hogg smiled. ‘Since you’ve been deemed astande, it’s incumbent on you to offer more than they can rightly accept, yeah. You are the righter of wrongs. The makkata and Mrs Lincoln’s spiritual manager will gradually reduce their claims on you to a point at which they are acceptable.’

Acceptable to whom? Tom wanted to ask, but Swai-Phillips, breaking off the negotiations, turned to him, saying, ‘We’re nearly there, Brodzinski. I don’t know why, exactly, but the plaintiff is being most accommodating.’ Then he resumed yakking.

Tom couldn’t see that Atalaya was being anything much at all. While the other native women hung on to the rapid-fire exchanges, she went on munching, while staring distractedly through the sole window in the room, a tiny glass oblong hung with chintz curtains.

Some kind of conclusion was being reached, for, on a piece of copier paper he’d obtained from the judge, the makkata was laboriously inscribing a list with a felt-tip pen. When he’d finished, he held this up so that everyone present could read it:

TWO GOOD HUNTING RIFFLES

ONE COMPLEAT SET COKING POTS

$10,000.

‘That’s it?’ Tom queried. ‘What about medicines? Prentice has to get hold of medicines.’

‘Different, ah, strokes for different folks,’ Adams said fatuously. ‘The mob Prentice has to deal with are mostly in the Tontine Townships; yours are way over there.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Out beyond Eyre’s Pit in the Tayswengo tribal heartland. These are desert people, Brodzinski, these are the things they most need.’

The Intwennyfortee contingent were getting ready to leave. The makkata stood, stretched languorously and withdrew an engwegge quid from his breechclout. The Tayswengo women, and the frightening apparition that was her neutered spiritual manager, were clucking over the vacant Atalaya. Tom was torn: would it be acceptable for him to ask after the old man — or would he be breaking another taboo? The natives forestalled him by heaving Atalaya upright and quitting the room, without any farewells.

‘So,’ Tom asked Swai-Phillips, who was standing beside Justice Hogg while the latter pulled some short pants on over his boxers, ‘what happens now? Do I simply give them the money, the pots and the rifles, and that’s that?’

The big man laughed. ‘Ho-ho! Oh, no, Brodzinski, nothing here’s ever that simple. All restitution has to be made in person. You’ll have to rent a car and head out over there — you’ve gotta lot of driving to to do. There’s some good news, though.’

The lawyer and the judge exchanged knowing glances. Nettled, Tom snapped: ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Why,’ Swai-Phillips said, grinning, ‘Prentice has to head for the Tontines, so the two of you can share costs, and you’ll have a road buddy — at least for the first few thousand klicks.’

Have you rented from us before, sir?’

The clerk regarded Tom Brodzinski with professional detachment. Tom inferred from her routine eyes that, while the tourist season may have been over, one Anglo was still much the same to her as another. He took in the purple patches beneath those incurious eyes. Her nappy hair had been severely cut to conform to Western expectations, while her ample, café au lait flesh was scooped into the red A-line skirt and white blouse with red epaulettes that was the company uniform the world over.

Adams had told Tom that many of the hill people resident in Vance had diabetes. They lacked the enzymes necessary to break down the sugar and the other additives in the processed foods they consumed, either out of indolence or economic necessity, or both.

‘I–I have.’ Tom was flustered. Not only had he rented from the company before, he’d dealt with this very clerk when hiring the MPV the Brodzinski family had taken on their tour of the Highlands.

Tom had spoken with her — on both pick-up and drop-off — for at least twenty minutes. They’d chatted while they checked over the vehicle together. There had also been a couple of phone calls with her concerning the location of the spare tyre, and a dink in the fender. Tom knew her name — which was on her badge, anyway — yet she had forgotten he even existed.

‘My name’s Brodzinski ,’ he stressed. ‘It’s gotta be in your system.’

She riffled her keyboard, eyes flicking from screen to paperwork. She made terse remarks without looking at him. ‘Collision-damage waiver? Unlimited mileage? Fuel-surcharge waiver? Personal indemnity? Tontine policy?’

Tom grunted affirmatively to all of these save the last. ‘I’m sorry,’ he asked. ‘Tontine policy, what’s that?’

‘Your personal indemnity won’t cover you in the Tontine Townships, sir. So we offer our own tontine policy, right.’

‘What does that mean, exactly?’

The clerk sighed deeply. ‘If either driver or passenger is rendered non-life-viable in the townships, the basic premium provides between $10,000 and $200,000 to the other party, depending on proximate cause. This is guaranteed by the Company in association with Premium Eagle Assurance. Full details of all tontines are set out in subsection A19 of the rental agreement, right.’

The clerk rattled all this off so fast that, although the oddity of the idea struck Tom, all he said was. ‘Is that why they’re called that? I mean, the Tontine Townships?’

She looked directly at him for the first time — and it was as if he were stupid. ‘Tontine policy?’ she pressed him.

Tom glanced behind him, to where Prentice sat on a low chair, his pretentious hat on one of his bony knees, his bald patch sheltered by the waxy leaf of an undistinguished shrub. Prentice nodded.

‘Uh, OK, I guess,’ Tom said to the clerk.

‘In that case’ — her chubby fingers flopped on to the keys and a printer chattered into life. She swivelled, ripped off the printout, swivelled back, slapped it down on the counter. ‘Sign here, here and here. Initial here, here, here, here, here and here. Mr Prentice will need to sign here for the tontine.’