fabriques
——
It was a small green place, a little self-contained bubble of a world inside, and yet away from, the city proper. On a bench in the grass an elderly man sat, slowly eating a sandwich. The man seemed entirely occupied with the laborious process of eating. He brought the baguette to his mouth and took a bite from it, nibbling the sides so that they were equal, then brought the baguette down again to the off-white napkin spread on his knees, and chewed. He chewed with great concentration, all teeth involved in the process, while his hands held the partially-eaten baguette over his knees and his eyes stared into space, grey bushy eyebrows moving up and down with the rhythm of his eating. At last the man swallowed, waited, allowed the food to travel before lifting the sandwich again and repeating the process.
Joe continued to follow the boy, but more with his eyes. The boy had been there before. He knew his way through the quiet. Joe wished it were the same for him. There were curious structures dotted around the park. There was a Chinese fort. There was a Dutch windmill. There were Corinthian pillars. And the word came to Joe as he followed the boy’s progress towards – yes – the miniature, brick-made Egyptian pyramid that sat nestled under the trees.
The word was fabriques. Those things, those structures erected in Moceau in miniature, were things made to resemble the real, but not real in themselves. They were architectural fabrications, an invented scenographic landscape: they were lies, constructed for the purpose of art – but they were not real, Joe thought. They were not real. The park was a fictional space in the midst of the city. Outside it buildings were erected by the forces of commerce, by the human need for habitation – by the dual forces of greed and need. And the buildings were there for a reason, and people lived inside them, worked inside them, slept and ate and fucked and died inside them, and made the city, the space where people lived, real and substantial, just as the park was not. He stopped and stared out across the grass at the mottled grey and white pyramid, and he saw that as the boy went around it and came out the other side, his brown shoulder bag was gone, and he almost smiled. He followed the boy’s progress, standing still on the grass, and listened to the quiet. A couple was walking, hand in hand, and the girl wore a summer dress, though it was not yet summer, and when she turned her head, for a just a moment, he thought about his client, the woman who had hired him, and he felt something he couldn’t put into words, but which hurt, and he turned away from the couple.
Statues littered the small park. The figures of still and silent men, frozen in pose, staring out to the distance, men who once moved and loved and laughed: Chopin, his fingers still, his music dead, and Maupassant, whose frozen fingers could no longer write but, of course, they were not real either: they were the replica of the men who composed music and words, but not real: they too were fabriques.
The English word for fabrique was folly, and Joe wondered what it meant, that difference in languages. Was it really folly, to exist in a world that was a fabrication, that was not real, but only made to seem it? Or did existence itself count for something, the statues, though not real, nevertheless existing as a reminder of what had been before, markers of memory in the terrain of shadows and half-truths that was the past? As he circled the park he was checking the lanes, the people passing, watching for watchers, for anyone who may have followed him, for shadows that shouldn’t have been there – and then he didn’t have far to look because they came directly at him, three of them, and they were smiling, which was never, Joe reflected, a good sign.
There were three of them and they wore black suits that must have been new once, and black ties that made them look like undertakers or – to take a word from the pulps – the mob, but they were neither, and another word from the pulp novels came into Joe’s head, and it was G-men.
They smelled like government. They came up to him and stood around him in a loose semi-circle and they were grinning as at a long-lost friend. The one in the middle had greying hair and was the oldest of the three. The ones on either side of him were younger, black hair slicked back: the one on the left had a small discreet scar running down his right eye like a tear. ‘Joe, Joe, Joe,’ the one in the middle said. ‘What are you getting up to?’
‘Do I know you?’ He was less tense than perhaps they thought he should be. But he had expected them, expected someone to be there, sooner or later, and their coming had almost been a relief. They could have been the ones from Vientiane, but somehow he didn’t think so. They were watchers, yes, but he thought they didn’t like to watch: they liked to control.
‘Does he know us?’ Grey Hair said, turning to the other two, who Joe had decided were merely the muscle. It was the one in the middle he had to listen to – and the others to watch out for. ‘I don’t think he does,’ the one on the left said.
‘Maybe we should talk louder,’ the one on the right said.
‘Or maybe he should listen harder,’ the man with the grey hair said.
‘Should I?’ Joe said, ignoring them.
‘Should you what?’ the man with the grey hair said, as if oblivious.
‘Should I know you?’
Grey Hair shook his head. ‘No reason why you should,’ he said. Then: ‘It will go better for you if you merely listen.’
‘I’m listening,’ Joe said. He wondered if he could take all three of them – or if he could outrun them. He glanced at the muscle on the right and saw the bulge of a gun under the once-new jacket.
‘He’s listening,’ Grey Hair said, and nodded, and said, ‘Did you hear that, boys? He’s being very gracious to us.’
‘Fuck you,’ Joe said. Grey Hair nodded.
The punch came from his left and sank into his kidneys and the pain was unbearable and then he was hit in the small of the back and his legs were kicked out from under him and he fell, the two muscle boys holding him, lowering him almost gently to the ground. Grey Hair kneeled beside him. ‘We’ll be dealing with all of you, sooner or later,’ he said. Joe moaned. Grey Hair slapped him. ‘Pay attention!’ he said. Joe tried to focus. The man was a grey blur above him. ‘Go back, Joe, go back to your little hidey-hole and your make-believe play-pen and stay out of trouble. Only kids want to play detective. And kids should know when to do what they’re told.’
‘Who are you?’ Joe said. The words bubbled out of his mouth. His lips felt covered in saliva, thick and stringy, and he couldn’t wipe it off.
‘The name would mean nothing to you,’ the man said. Joe realised that he had an American accent, as did his two assistants. ‘You stink of government,’ he said. Grey Hair nodded again, and the pain that shot through Joe’s right side made him arch his back and moan again. ‘It’s nothing personal, Joe,’ Grey Hair said. His voice was soft, surprisingly gentle. He reached down and touched Joe’s hair, smoothing it. His touch made Joe flinch. ‘We are only concerned with the greater good. I won’t tell you again, after this. Stay away.’
Grey Hair stood up. The two men either side of him rose too. From Joe’s perspective on the ground they looked like shadows, hovering above him, the black of their clothes contrasting with the whiteness of their skin until they seemed to him, for just a moment, like ghosts.
He wasn’t fast enough. He saw the shadow on the left move, but it moved too fast, and its foot connected with the side of Joe’s body and he thought he heard a bone crack through the pain. Then they left him.