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.

cheap suits and 

American voices

——

He was interested not in the mail but in who came to collect it, but more than that, he resented being worked over before lunch. When the men left Joe remained on the ground for a long time, staring up at a blue-grey sky where clouds wrapped themselves into the shapes of pyramids and windmills, a backdrop as false as the one below. His ribs hurt, and his mouth had the warm salt taste of seawater or blood.

No one approached him. There were few people in the park and none had come over. At last he rolled over, groaning, and rose to his knees, and then he was sick all over the grass.

When he felt well enough to stand he did so, and the world spun. It was a curious sensation. He would fix his eyes on a point in space and they would move of their own accord, swinging away from it. Again, he would focus, anchor his vision in a concrete spot, only for his eyes to betray him and swim away again. He steadied himself against the trunk of a tree and took deep breaths, and at last the world began to settle again. Cheap suits and American voices, he thought, and something else too – what were they afraid of?

He went with unsteady steps and sat down in view of the pyramid. It felt good to sit down. The pyramid had a small opening at the bottom, an empty doorway jutting out from the main structure. The bricks were mottled browns and greens descending to a grey-white closer to the ground. There were two decorated stone urns outside it. He thought the boy had deposited his bag inside the opening of the pyramid, but he was in no hurry to go and check. He fished out his packet of cigarettes and was dismayed to see it was crumpled. Nevertheless he shook one out and straightened it as best he could and lit it, and drew the smoke into his lungs with a shuddering breath, and held it still for a long moment before exhaling. The pyramid was a dead letter box. He watched it and listened to the sounds of traffic in the distance, and breathed in smoke and the smell of the trees. There were more clouds overhead now and he could feel the rain coming, and when it did the drops were soothing on his skin and he raised his head and opened his mouth to trap the drops; his tongue felt swollen. He turned his head as a ray of light shone down through the clouds, touching the ground on the far side of the pyramid, and for just a moment he thought he saw her again, the girl who had come to him, wavering there between the sun and the raindrops, looking at him, and then she was gone and took the sun with her. His head hurt and he knew he should leave and go back to his hotel but he persisted and then he saw Papa D’s other courier and felt little surprise, more like a suspicion confirmed: it was the girl from the bar, and she was wavering a little unsteadily across the bare-ground path to the pyramid, and when she arrived she reached inside and her hand came back with the small brown bag. She slung it over her shoulder and then paused and pulled out a small flask from a coat pocket and unscrewed the top and took a deep pull before screwing the top back shut and secreting it away in her coat. She wore a long black coat that reached almost to her feet and a wool hat over her hair and she didn’t look around her as she began to walk away.