He sat at the top of the long table in the trothaus boardroom with his back towards the grey gritty Saarlim sky. He placed a yellow legal pad in front of him and removed the cap from his pen.
‘So what is this about?’ he said to Peggy Kram, who had positioned herself right next to his elbow.
‘You tell him, Bruder, hunning,’ she said to me.
I looked up the long table from my seat. ‘The idea …’ I began.
‘Wait,’ Clive Baarder said. To Peggy Kram he said, ‘Is this his idea?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘So why is he presenting it? Why is this … personage … sitting in our boardroom?’
‘In the past,’ Peggy said, resting her hand upon Baarder’s rigid forearm and patting it, ‘this would not have been unusual.’
Clive Baarder let her hand rest a moment. Then he withdrew his arm and made a neat black line across his legal pad.
‘What past do you mean?’
‘In the Great Historical Past,’ she said. ‘When Bruder Mouse walked amongst the Settlers Free.’
Clive Baarder looked down at his legal pad for a considerable length of time.
I had earlier imagined Baarder to be a kind of private secretary, but now I saw what all of Saarlim knows: he was a powerful man.
‘A mouse is a little thing,’ he said at last. He fitted his pen back in its cap and held it up between thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead field mouse he was pinching by the tail. ‘You know that, Peggy, in real life.’
Mrs Kram swivelled through 180 degrees and back again.
‘Clive-ling,’ she said soothingly, even flirtatiously. ‘Dear Clive, you know yourself the great benefit of conducting business in one’s home is that one’s clever friends, like Bruder Mouse, feel free to contribute to our meetings.’
‘Peggy, you conduct business from home because you are agoraphobic.’
My mentor said nothing, although her colour rose.
‘Peggy …’
‘I’d rather have Bruder Mouse than a man,’ she said, and shook her hair.
‘Oh Peggy, please, don’t be embarrassing!’
‘You’re the last one to talk,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. I wouldn’t even begin to talk.’
‘Just the same: this is not a mouse, Peg.’ Now he turned and took her hand. ‘We know that, don’t we? A real mouse is not like this little gjent.’
‘Let him outline the concept before you race to judgement.’
‘Peggy.’ Clive Baarder opened his pen again. ‘What is this meeting for?’
‘If you listen, you’ll find out.’
‘I only say this because I have another meeting starting in the Tentdorp in thirty minutes and I can see how tired you are.’
‘I’m always tired, Clive. You know I never sleep. And don’t think your cynicism is attractive.’
Clive Baarder smiled implacably.
‘You think you can reduce everything to DNA, but you can’t. I tell you, this is what the Great Historical Past was like. It doesn’t really behove you to doubt me. History is my business. It was my business when you were an out-of-work Verteiler buying drugs from scum in Kakdorp. Who else but me preserves the Great Historical Past? No one would know what happened yesterday if it wasn’t for the Ghostdorps.’
‘Peg, my dear, you are exceptionally tired.’
‘And don’t patronize me, Clive. I am not tired, and you have always had a rather smug attitude towards the Ghostdorps which I find offensive.’
‘My attitude towards the Ghostdorps is totally to do with profit …’
‘A Ghostdorp is a safer environment for women and children.’
‘Peggy, please, not today. Let’s fight when it’s just us.’
‘When the Saints walked Voorstand, that is how it was, just like it is in the Ghostdorps. We were decent people then. The Sirkus was not just an entertainment. Bruder Mouse was not a clown. We knew him when we saw him. We did not argue about which was wild flesh and which was Bruder’s flesh. We did not have all these codicils and revisions to the old laws. We ate beans and rice and raagbol pudding. We did not rape and murder. We did not thieve. We were better then.’
‘You know that I don’t disagree.’
‘Bruder Mouse, the Saints, they walked amongst us.’
‘Oh Peggy …’
‘Fuck you,’ screamed Peggy Kram. ‘Don’t argue with me. Here he is. Solid as a miller’s wheel. He is looking at you and politely waiting to outline an idea that will have you planting bulbs and making toasts.’
‘This is not a mouse.’ Clive Baarder was shouting now, not at me, at Peggy Kram. He was standing up, gripping the long table like he wished to tip it over. ‘A mouse is four inches long.’
‘One mo nothing,’ Mrs Kram shouted back, ‘next mo there he was, in all his furry finery.’ She sat down. ‘Look out there,’ she said, nodding her head towards the grey and humid sky. ‘You are looking out on a corrupt and decaying city and you have lost the ability to believe in a future.’
‘This is not Bruder Mouse, Peg,’ Clive Baarder said between his teeth. ‘And you damn well know it isn’t. You don’t want to admit that it’s a man, but it is some kind of man, a dwarf.’
Neither of them was looking at me now.
‘So what if you’re right,’ she said. ‘What does that do for you?’
‘For me?’ He shrugged.
‘It makes you right, that’s all,’ she said. ‘You see the stitching on his suit. Hooray. I see it too. Is that the point? We see the gold paint on the Saint’s crown. So what? The point is not the paint. The point is, we’ve lost our values. We’re eating Bruder’s flesh, we’re putting animals in Sirkuses. That Efican sitting in my garden, what’s his name, Millefleur — riding on horses, frightening lions. That would never have been permitted thirty years ago. He would have gone to jail for even suggesting it.’
‘Last week he was hearth folk. You said you liked him.’
‘I do like him. That’s why he’s sitting in my garden. I’ve been discussing his future with the Bruder and it will be my great pleasure to employ him in something decent for a change.’
‘All right, Meneer Mouse,’ Clive Baarder said sarcastically. ‘Please tell me what the pair of you have been cooking up.’
‘It all began,’ I said, ‘when Mrs Kram observed that the Mayor had sold many of the roads and parks to foreign corporations.’
‘Entities,’ he said. ‘We call them entities in Voorstand.’ He turned to Mrs Kram. ‘Are you paying attention to this, Peg? Only an Ootlander could call an “entity” a “corporation”.’
‘His idea,’ said Peggy Kram, ‘is that we buy them back.’
‘Oh Peggy, what is this?’
‘Shut up, Clive. I know exactly what I’m doing.’
‘Peggy, not even you can buy Saarlim, if that’s what you have in mind.’
‘Yes I can. God damn, I am sick of being afraid,’ she said. ‘I am sick that something bad will happen after dark. I’m tired of being afraid of sicko men with knives and poisons.’
‘Peggy, you never go out.’
‘But I want to.’
‘You cannot run a city of ten million like a Ghostdorp. We cannot even run the Ghostdorps that we have. We cannot buy Saarlim.’
‘Oh I can. I can buy the roads and parks back from the foreigners. The city’s creditors will be happy. Everyone will be happy. It’s a very patriotic thing to do.’
‘Is this the Wishes of The People? Is this government by Each Family Before God?’
‘I’m going to give the citizens of Saarlim exactly what they need. Clean streets. Well-dressed people.’
‘Stop it, Peg. You’re frightening me. You can’t ask the bhurgers to be like actors in your Ghostdorp. No one will let you. I won’t let you.’