Abaddon - Chapter 3

Penny Simpson’s notes, May 12, 2010

Slept in till twelve. Spent the rest of the day in the company of the Information Minister, Yaebing Dudayev. This man is Ivan’s diametric opposite, a man who, I am reliably informed, changed his name from Yuri after the Russians moved out. Before being Information Minister, he was a fishmonger. He is a greasy little man with huge windowpanes of glasses and eyes like sushi behind them. He spends an afternoon droning about the highly specialized nature of Vzeng Na’s import/export trades from behind a moustache you could mop floors with. He has many graphs to show me. I suspect that he is showing them to me only in order to proudly demonstrate the fact that he has learned to use his new Western-designed spreadsheet program.

I ask him about Vzeng Na’s illegal export trades. This throws him. He shrugs his shoulders and admits that, yes, incredible as it may seem, people do break the law in Vzeng Na. Under Communism, of course, if was almost obligatory to use illegal channels in order to trade at all. He shifts about nervously in his chair as he says this, and spends a great deal of time inspecting his fingers. I am left under no illusion that Mr. Dudayev is anything other than a born-again black marketeer.

Then, just for fun, I ask him about Oracle Smoke. His eyes swell like poaching eggs. He asks me why I’m interested in such things. I tell him that if Oracle Smoke is an export, it surely falls under his remit, legal or illegal. He says Oracle Smoke is not exported. I say I don’t believe him. He says it cannot be exported. “It is not that sort of product”, he says. He reminds me that if I were a decent human being and a serious journalist I would not be interested in such things. He draws my attention back to his graph of projected bat guano exports against electronics imports, 2011-12.

Yes, you heard me right. Bat guano. They still run two or three big mechanical scoops down into the dark at what he describes as ‘decent and sustainable intervals’, which I take to mean infrequently enough for the bats to cover the abyss walls with crap in the intervening period. In the old days, it seems, people only used to harvest the bird guano from higher up in the Abyss, but the old lodes are now exhausted, and the advent of modern technology now means that the deeper, more mammalian deposits can be worked. It is, says the Minister, illegal to harm a bat in Na, through centuries-old legislation. Ever the investigative journo, I ask if this means the population of Na are at significantly higher risk of catching rabies. He denies this vehemently. Rabies is caught, he insists, by either (a) being bitten by bats, which the people of Na are less likely to have happen to them as they are, as previously discussed, prohibited from bat-molestation, or (b) inhalation of bat faeces. He pounds the table with his tiny fist. “And do I look like I breathe bat shit to you? Well do I? Do I?”

Took my leave of the Information Minister and made my way back to the hotel. Whilst walking back across the square, a street urchin taps me up for money. Specifically, American dollars.

“But I’m not American”, I say. “I’m British.”

“British dollars”, he says, grinning. His face is very thin. He has probably not eaten for some time. But his clothes are bright and new, Nike and Adidas and Le Coq Sportif. He seems able to afford clothes, if not food.

Then I turn around and find the other kid who is attempting, while the first kid distracts me, to rob my purse from my handbag. I grab him by the nose with thumb and forefinger. He makes an amusing noise like an elephant trying to vomit through a gasmask. When I let him go, he runs.

I turn back to the first boy. He grins again, as if it is unthinkable he might have done wrong.

“You’re the boy I saw the day before yesterday”, I realize out loud. “Outside Starbucks.”

He stops suddenly at the word ‘Starbucks’, as if he realizes who he is talking to - and, unquestionably, what I am to him now is ‘the lady who was sitting next to the police chief’.

He frowns, bends, and actually tugs his forelock, and apologizes furiously in Russian. And scuttles away, across the big bright square, like a spider caught in the middle of a room when the lights go on.

Back at the hotel I spent half an hour trying to explain to the desk clerk what I meant by ‘fax machine’ and ‘internet’. Eventually located an internet café, Ezhu Happy Netsurfing-Ngaëar, and managed to plug my laptop into the wall and upload several days’ worth of story.

Went to bed early and watched what passes for local TV, an appalling Vaemna-language sitcom about three old men all trying to sexually harass the same young dolly bird living in their apartment block. Tonight, it seems, Bimaen the Butcher - distinguished from the other two male characters by the fact that he always, always, always wears a butcher’s apron, even in the bath - was able to cop a feel of her left tit, but got his penis caught in a revolving door for his trouble. Expect to see it on Sky One soon.

Went to sleep with the window open, perhaps a perilous thing to do this close to Transylvania. There were flowers in my room from Ivan when I got back, of course, and an invitation to dinner the next night. No intimations that I should wear something sexy, or prepare for a big night with Captain Sexy Trousers, and that only seems to make it worse.

Dreamed I was falling into a deep, deep pit.

Above me, the moon stares down the pit, illuminating the walls, which are too far away for me to touch. I have no idea how quickly I’m falling.

I hit the bed and wake up with a jolt.

Almost as if it’s with the voice of another person, I hear myself scream. The wind is blowing in through the open window, making the curtains dance about like creepy scooby doo ghosts. Outside, the town is a huddle of silent roofs, a jumble of schist and slate.

And I can still hear it, out there. Not my voice, but another human one. Screaming.

Probably a domestic or a schizophrenic or an alcoholic, I imagine to myself. But I get to my feet and go to the window anyway. I could drag a few lines of copy out of it, after all. Crappy Eastern European republic fails to care for its loonies shock.

But the voice is not shouting “You bastard what time do you call this”, or “I’ll fight the fuggin lot o’yer”, or even “I am Napoleon, do you hear me? First Emperor of France!”

No, what it’s shouting - in, I presume, Russian and Vaemna, though I can’t understand the Vaemna - is “Help me, for the love of God.” It is, I realize, as I lean out of the window, shouting very loud, loud enough to wake me, and I can sleep my way through a transatlantic flight in Economy class. And yet no lights are going on, no police sirens are sounding, no-one is coming to the poor bastard’s aid. If I squint down into the dark against the streetlights, I can see a trio of figures dragging one, smaller figure across a constellation of cobbles. He is yelling and shouting and his captors are not even trying to silence him. But nobody is doing anything, though all the world must hear.

They are dragging him down the Aeveny Gabyzaï, which is a dead end street, connecting only with the Museum and the expanse of empty wall at the east end of Victory Square, which connects only with...

No. They wouldn’t.

It transpires they would. As they walk, I notice one of the three is not helping with the manhandling and the dragging, but is instead trundling along a sort of little handcart, almost like a wheelbarrow with a solid platform on top of it. This on its own is making a noise like a steamroller on the cobblestones. Its wheels must be solid wood. I wonder what purpose this little geegaw might serve, and then they come to a stop in the square, and I realize.

I think of shouting out, but this man - this boy, I realize, from the high pitch of his yelling - has been shouting out there for the last ten minutes, and no-one has so much as twitched a net curtain. The only thing quick enough to stop what is going to happen would be a rifle bullet, and I have no such thing.

The three silent figures push their barrow to a halt right next to the wall. They are all wearing hats, for some peculiar reason, and some sort of smart jacket - almost as if they dress for this sort of occasion. Their captive continues to scream. They drag him onto the top of the barrow, yelling at him in Russian and Vaemna. The Russian is too fast and guttural for me to understand.

Two of them have to jump up onto the barrow in order to get him to stand upright, whilst the third holds it firmly by the handles, stopping all three of them from getting dumped down into the street. There is a little bit more struggling, and then a final bout of screaming high pitched enough to surely test even prepubescent vocal cords, and as they hoist him over the capstones so his head is hanging over absolutely nothing, the moon catches his face like a searchlight and I realize why his screams are so familiar.

It’s the boy from outside Starbuck’s. The boy from Victory Square.

Then they grunt and give one final heave, and the moonlight shows him fluttering down into the dark like a ghost.

Their task finished, the three figures dust themselves down, straighten their clothing, crack their knuckles (audibly, even at this distance), and trundle their cart away unconcernedly across the square, brilliantly picked out in bright moonshine.

I close the curtain and sit back on the bed. I still don’t shut the window. After that, vampires are nothing.