Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

When we drew level with the shack, the door swung open, just as I had feared, and an armed guard motioned us inside. We climbed into a large rectangular room that had a floor of mustard-coloured lino. Fluorescent tubes fizzed on the ceiling. A row of cubicles had been built against one wall. This was where the body searches would be conducted. At the far end of the room hung a detailed map of the entire region, the border marked by a wide green-and-yellow stripe criss-crossed with black. A grey metal desk stood near by, cluttered with computers, faxes and phones. It was hot in the room. The air smelled of sweat and damp cloth.

The guard who had let us in remained by the door. Three more guards stood in a tight cluster with their backs to us. They broke apart and turned towards us, muttering and cursing. They had been checking the lottery results, it seemed, and none of them had won. The guard holding the newspaper rolled it into a cylinder and swatted the palm of his hand with it.

We stood in the centre of the room while they fanned out in front of us, each guard approaching from a slightly different direction, as though they were each preoccupied by a slightly different aspect of our appearance. Their behaviour struck me as both patronising and sardonic. They were playing on the fact that interest was something we weren’t used to and didn’t deserve, and in doing so they were establishing their own superior status as a species. They wore crisp, pressed uniforms, the dark-green fabric trimmed with bright-yellow epaulettes, which crouched on their shoulders like tropical spiders. Guns lolled in polished leather holsters, truncheons swung seductively at hip-level. Although I had only been with the White People for a short time, I was overwhelmed by how perfect, how immaculate, the guards looked. I don’t think I could have spoken, even if I’d wanted to.

The one with the rolled-up newspaper seemed in artificially high spirits, so much so that I wondered whether he was on amphetamines. He darted towards the man with the sore mouth and made as if to strike. The man ducked, hands up about his ears, and then let out a moan. One of the other guards mimicked him — the ducking, then the moan. His colleague with the paper laughed out loud and wheeled away, his eyes glancing off the rest of us.

Hanging my head, I saw that water from my cloak had collected in a dark pool around my feet. As I watched, it found a gradient in the floor and crept away from me in one thin stream.

‘Hello. Somebody’s pissed himself.’

The rolled-up newspaper cannoned into the side of my head. I hadn’t even seen it coming. My right ear buzzed. The man standing next to me, the bearded man, was told to get down on all fours and drink. I watched as he knelt in front of me and tried to lick the water off the floor.

‘One of them’s a woman.’

Silence fell so emphatically that I could hear the rain falling on the roof, a beautiful and inappropriate sound, like a herd of wild horses galloping across open country. All three guards had gathered round the woman. She was staring into the middle distance. Maybe she thought she could hear horses too. Until that moment I had somehow assumed she was in her late-thirties or early-forties, but now, in the glare of the guardhouse, I saw she was probably no more than twenty-five.

The guards began to squeeze the woman’s breasts, which made her writhe and squeal, and only encouraged them to go further. Two of them held her by the arms while a third started rubbing between her legs. The man with the sore mouth had wandered over to the window, and he was staring through it at a section of the wall. I looked down at the bearded man, still kneeling at my feet. Though he returned my gaze, his veiled eyes showed nothing.

As the woman squirmed, something fell from beneath her cloak and rolled across the floor. It was a large carrot. The guard with the newspaper picked it up. ‘Fuck me. She’s got her own vibrator.’ He tossed the carrot to one of his colleagues. ‘You know what to do.’ The guards dragged the woman over to the desk. Shoving the phones and faxes to one side, they pushed her on to her back and held her down. They lifted the cloak over her head, then forced her legs wide open and ripped her sodden underclothes apart. Her thighs were red and chapped. As I turned away, the woman let out the most peculiar noise, a kind of long, shuddering sigh.

‘Think she’s enjoying it?’

‘Of course she is. Just look at her.’

I hadn’t wanted to watch, but once or twice I glanced in that direction, and I realised that I was smiling. It could only be nervousness, I thought, or fear.

The guard with the paper noticed and moved towards me. ‘Like it, do we?’ He brought his face so close to mine that I could smell the coffee, black and bitter, on his breath.

I grinned like the idiot I was supposed to be.

He reached up with one hand and pushed his fingers into my mouth. ‘Nice teeth.’ His tongue slipped out, blind and fat and glistening. He licked my lips and, sighing languorously, turned his eyes up to the ceiling. Then he danced backwards, burst out laughing. ‘Where’s that carrot?’

A shrill ringing cut into the silence.

One of the guards let go of the woman and picked up a phone. ‘Yes?’ He listened for a second or two, then shouted across the room. ‘Lieutenant, it’s for you.’

The guard leaned close to me again. ‘It’s for me.’ He lifted both his eyebrows twice, quickly, and swung away. Shaking now, I watched him take the call. After a while, he wrapped his free hand over the receiver and spoke to his two colleagues in a brisk, clipped voice I hadn’t heard until that moment. ‘Get rid of them.’

We were pushed out of the guardhouse and down the steps, the door slamming behind us. Seconds later, it opened again, and something flew in a brief bright arc over our heads. I watched the woman retrieve the carrot, wipe it clean and return it to a hidden pocket beneath her clothes. She saw me looking and nodded, as if to let me know that what she was doing was only right and proper. Still trembling, I stared at the ground. The rain had eased just when I wanted it to come down harder than ever. I wanted to feel the water crashing against my skull. I wanted to be able to lift my face up to the sky and have the rain wash off every trace of that guard’s tongue.

I remembered Frank Bland talking about the borders that had been built on negative ley lines — black streams, he had called them — and how the trees and plants in those areas sometimes displayed warped or stunted growth. If people crossed such a border, he had claimed, their health could be adversely affected. If people worked there, though, day in, day out, then surely the effects would be that much more pronounced. Did Frank’s theory explain the scene I’d witnessed in the guard-house? Or was it our freedom that incensed them so? Yes, we were outcasts and rejects, but at the same time we could go wherever we pleased; moreover, in being cut loose from society, we had been liberated from the pressures and responsibilities of daily life. Perhaps, at some deep level, people were envious of that. Hence all the persecution … As I stood there wondering, I felt a surge of malignant energy in the air around me and I glanced at my companions to see if they had noticed, but their faces looked the way they always looked — complacent, unaware.

The bearded man had already moved beyond the barrier into the Yellow Quarter, and the other two were following behind. I set off after them. They didn’t appear especially troubled by their ordeal. Even the woman seemed quite unconcerned. Was that because they had become accustomed to abuse? Had they, in some obscure sense, prepared themselves, conscious that it was the Yellow Quarter they would be dealing with? Or were they simply incapable of feeling? And, if so, had they been incapable of feeling all along? Was that part of what made them who they were? Or had they gradually been rendered numb by the endless horrors to which they had been subjected? I looked at the man walking ahead of me, his teeth and gums so ravaged that it often hurt him to eat or drink. On those days, the woman would chew up food for him and spit the pulp into his mouth, like a bird feeding her young. I shuddered to think how he might have come by such injuries. The hardest part of all, however, was not having a voice. I couldn’t ask them questions. I could express no sympathy. What did they think — if anything? I would never know.