La Femme Read online

  Lucas also wore work clothes: charcoal grey trousers and jacket, white shirt tied not buttoned, white socks, black shoes. The clothes were made of a fabric to which scent molecules could not stick, designed by UNHCR scientists in the years following the Lebanese Bomb; the same scientists who created the biochemical format. Lucas disliked these clothes because they spoke of conformity, but he liked them because they suggested influence, even power.

  He was the soul of the planet, after all – he and all his comrades in this intense city. He was a pheromone-haunted executor of humanity. Let the others play with their silly electronic toys. Knowledge… that went deeper. The others had information, but here in London Central there was knowledge, and, perhaps, wisdom.

  “The source of much ja…” He halted, realising that without thinking he had almost used Ghinwa’s security. He shuddered. Randa would have been offended, worsening the Schism between the churches. “A molecule of lemon scent is identical to a molecule of orange scent, but formed in mirror image.”

  Randa nodded. Though she was the visitor, the stranger in this restaurant of mezedes and retsina, she was a woman, deferential to the man. Lucas saw contempt of his masculinity in her expression.

  An opening gambit, he told himself. She doesn’t mean it. She’s a tool of Palestinian Christianity. She probably likes me. She’s not as pretty as Ghinwa though –

  He pulled himself back into the real world. Leading her to the table assigned for the negotiation he first pulled back one of the two chairs, inviting her to sit, then sat opposite her. Behind him stood a wall (he had the right to this because he was on home territory) but behind Randa lay the entire ground floor of the restaurant – twenty one tables, algae tube lamps, pictures of faux-waterfalls like they had in Indian restaurants, and the bar, the well-stocked bar, full of retsina, ouzo, Mythos beer, tsipouro, tentura and metaxa. And of course a frappé machine. Already customers were arriving; the night promised to be busy.

  Randa had put her briefcase on the floor before sitting, but now she lifted it up and placed it to her right. Lucas followed suit, taking the briefcase earlier prepared and placing it to his left. He tapped the algae lamp between them. It responded to his touch, and the circulating filaments of blue-green brightened, lending a marine cast to the table.

  “Welcome to the Status Quo, scented tree,” he said.

  Randa nodded, but did not meet his gaze.

  “Are you ready to order?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice was deep for a woman, and husky, as if she smoked argeelah. “Yes, let’s begin without delay.”

  Lucas clicked his fingers at the knot of waiters beside the bar and made play of studying the menu. He had long before decided on his strategy and knew exactly what to order, though it would of course depend on what she ordered, this being an affair of thrust and counter-thrust. Randa did not bother to look at him. She knew he was acting out the formal requirements of the negotiation. Her manner, typical of the Palestinians, was world weary. She pushed locks of hair behind her ears, the better to frame her face.

  “I’ll have the piperies,” she told the waiter.

  Lucas nodded. This piperies orektiko was a standard starter, a choice neutral through its variety, indicating willingness to proceed. “Me too,” he said. “We could share one.” He glanced at Randa then added, “What are you drinking?”

  “Ouzo.”

  Lucas blinked. Interesting. “Make one half of our platter ouzomezédhes,” he told the waiter.

  “And to drink, sir?”

  Lucas knew this waiter, the lad Silver; he suppressed a grin on hearing the appellation ‘sir’. “Ouzo for me too,” he replied.

  Lucas sat back, feigning relaxation. By ordering ouzo he had sent a signal to Randa that the scent and taste jousting to come would be on neutral territory – they would both stink of anise.

  “A couple who eat garlic don’t smell it on each other’s breath,” Randa observed.

  “Indeed,” Lucas replied.

  They ate sparingly of the ouzomezédhes when the food arrived. These were indeed only appetizers, the negotiation yet to begin.

  Twenty minutes later Silver approached the table. “Are you ready to order, sir, madam?”

  Randa nodded, the neoprene menu held between two fingers, like a cigarette. “I’ll have the briam,” she said, “but go light on the onions.”

  Lucas nodded again. Briam consisted of summer vegetables – sliced potatoes and zucchini in olive oil, also eggplant, tomatoes, onions, and many aromatic herbs. And it was a vegetarian dish. Along with almost everyone in London, Randa was vegetarian, eschewing meat-eating because of the economic conditions caused by the decline of the Western world.

  “I’ll have the domatokeftedes,” he said. A Status Quo speciality: tomato fritters with mint, fried in olive oil and served with fava paste.

  They waited in silence for their meals to arrive. The strains of saz music wafted out of concealed speakers, Turkish imported nonsense that his mother insisted on since consorting with her Istanbul-born lover. Lucas rapped his fingernails together and noticed that his heart was beating faster.

  So the negotiation began. From her briefcase Randa took tiny glass bottles of Palestinian artificial spice, which she used to season her food before eating it. These spices augmented the pre-programmed scents of her breath, carrying secret knowledge to Lucas through the machinery of the biochemical format; engineered molecules holding thoughts, arguments, positions, the shared language of patchwork London, that miasma of the planet, where every culture, every race, every locality was represented. This was indeed a London estranged forever from the electronic world, which in its antiseptic e-mundanity was no place for human communication.

  Palestinian life had always revolved around food; a time to spend with the family, or socialising, just being human. No wonder Jerusalem had been the first city to come to London after the Lebanese Bomb.

  And Lucas learned much from Randa’s breath.

  The primary responsibility for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lay with the Greek Orthodox Church, which, under the status quo, could not alter any aspect of commonly held territories in and around that building – at least, not without agreement from all the other communities of Jerusalem with an interest in the place. But now the Palestinian Christians were agitating. They wanted control of the building entrance.

  Lucas quailed. In 1192CE no less a man than Saladin gave responsibility for that entrance to a Muslim family, the Joudeh Al-Goudia. This family was entrusted with the keys, remaining custodians to the present day. They held the keys right now, high up in their Tottenham Court Road eyrie.

  At once Lucas realised he had to order dessert. Silver appeared. “I’ll have the loukoumades please,” he told the waiter. Fried balls of dough drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon.

  Randa responded immediately. “For me… galaktoboureko.” Custard baked between layers of phyllo pastry and soaked with lemon-scented honey syrup.

  Lucas prepared his artificial spices. Once again the immense, complex scent-machinery of the biochemical format rose from steaming bowls into the air, infusing knowledge into Randa’s brain. And she was a bitch: she smelled it all. She would take it all back to her side, the format ensuring that everything remained confidential, a secrecy orders of magnitude more secure than mere electronic encryption. This meal could have no eavesdroppers.

  They drank ouzo as the night wore on. Further negotiation was minimal – few glass bottles emerging from their briefcases. Lucas remained shocked by the brazen Palestinian move. Why had they done this?

  Randa remained ice cool, as a negotiator should. The intellectual game faded and Lucas felt his emotions roiling inside him as she prepared to depart. He always felt like this after the diplomatic joust. He loathed it. He loathed this stupid, artificial life. But what could he do? He was his father’s son.

  *

  For a second time Zeid and Lucas studied the packet of sweets in the upstairs room of the Sta
tus Quo.

  “Why, Father?”

  “Listen,” Zeid replied, “there is something weird at the root of this Schism. You know about the ladder at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?”

  “What ladder?”

  Zeid brought up a black-and-white holo from the room’s computer tube. “On a window ledge above the church’s entrance somebody put a wooden ladder – some time before 1852, it’s thought. At that time the status quo defined the doors and the window ledge as common ground, so the ladder remains in position, unmoved to this day, because of the impossibility of coming to an agreement about it. Look, you can see it in this pre-computer photograph. Old engravings, too.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. Arguing over a ladder.”

  “Don’t you see? No, you don’t, do you.” Zeid shrugged. “You’re still young. The Palestinian Christians have deliberately chosen an intractable problem as the basis for their Schism. They know this one can’t be solved. They’ve come to us with the Schism because we’re the leaders, the majority. We are the Greek Orthodox.”

  “But why have they come to us?”

  “That’s the crucial question. After centuries of squabbling, why make a culture-shattering Schism over a problem that can never be solved? None of the communities of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would ever agree to the Moslem family giving up custody of the keys to the entrance. Who would hold the keys after the Joudeh Al-Goudia family? It would start a war. Another war.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” said Lucas.

  “Nor do I. But the Palestinian ploy is related to those sweets, and to this newborn child, whoever that is.”

  Lucas stared at the packet. The brightly coloured wrapper spiralled red, blue and green up the tube, beneath it silver foil. “Perhaps Randa is pregnant.”

  Zeid shrugged. Pregnancy was exceptionally rare in London these days.

  Lucas pondered. “What about Ghinwa’s brother Amin?”

  Zeid nodded. “He’s their weakness. He held the sweets, he told us they were being passed over the diplomatic divide. He knows something Randa doesn’t. We need to work on him.”

  “I could work on him, maybe?”

  Zeid shook his head. “No. You’ll be going to the Jameed restaurant tomorrow evening for supper, taking our response with you. Like tonight, you probably won’t need to negotiate in full. But it will give you a chance to work on Ghinwa.”

  “Ghinwa…?”

  “Yes. I have a feeling she is in on this ploy.” He paused, sucked his teeth. “We’re both diplomatic families, aren’t we?”

  *

  The Jameed, six o’clock. The sun soft through biochemical street haze burnished orange; the noise of computer chatter, of boots on plastic pavements.

  Lucas walked into the restaurant. It was a notional opposite to that of his own family, light where his was dim, narrow and long where his was circular, low ceilinged where his was high ceilinged. Randa met him at the entrance; Amin lurking behind the bar to one side, sipping from a Czech goblet full of creamy arak. There was no sign of Ghinwa, but as he smiled at Randa and walked into a glass-screened alcove he detected a few molecules of her skin’s perfume, as if scenting a topographical fossil. She had stood beside the alcove less than five minutes ago, he knew.

  The alcove commanded a view up the alley, which broadened like an urban delta to give a view of Baker Street. A slice of Jerusalem lay before him, including one wall of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, further away a golden segment of the Dome on the Rock, its bulk concealed by blackwashed apartments.

  He smiled again as Randa sat opposite him. In the Jameed he was the visitor, so: “A molecule of lemon…” He left the rest unsaid, on a whim.

  She smiled. Lucas sighed. If only negotiation itself could be so pleasant. What was it about religion that made the smallest, most ridiculous thing a point of contest? Was it the five thousand year shadow of patriarchy, casting gloom over the human condition? Men generally? The burden of the intellect?

  She replied, “A molecule of orange…”

  She had offered him the seat with the view, leaving herself the seat with its back to the window. Quite a compliment. A ruse, though? Part of the Palestinian strategy? He could not mention the sweets because he knew nothing about Randa’s connection with the family running this restaurant; unlike himself, she was unrelated to the owners. Not unusual, no, but perhaps significant.

  “Are you ready to order?” she asked, as he placed his briefcase to his left.

  “Yes thank you,” he replied, taking the tubiform menu from the upright skewer on the table. He glanced at it, seeing his choice at once; sensing moments later a waitress at his side. “Taboulleh,” he said. Pieces of parsley leaf, bulgur, diced tomatoes, cucumbers, all sautéed with lemon juice and vinegar.

  “Fattoush,” Randa said. Toasted bread pieces and parsley with chopped cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes and scallions, flavoured with sumac. Neutral choices: these were standard Levant salads.

  They ate in silence as the music of an Afghan rebec floated through the air. The alcove was clean and tidy, with almost no scent of its own, though the soft cushions of the seats, being old, held the faintest fossils of persons who had sat on them before.

  And then Lucas’ nose caught a hint of Ghinwa. He turned around, peering into the restaurant but seeing only Amin and some customers. Yet she was close, she was here, as if part of the negotiation…

  They devoured their starters, Randa talking about the rich seam of Afghan music she had discovered in a Covent Garden dive. Lucas smelled no stress on her breath – this was casual talk.

  Twenty minutes later they ordered their main meals.

  Lucas had prepared himself, but he glanced down at the menu just in case the Palestinians had made alterations at the last minute. But they had not. This meal being an early ‘Asha he ordered a light mahashi: stuffed eggplants, baby pumpkins, potatoes, carrots and marrows alongside a variety of grape leaves, cabbage leaves and chard.

  “I’ll have the same,” said Randa.

  Lucas raised his eyebrows. An unusual gambit, suggesting that the information she had for him was subtle in the extreme – no variation in the carrier molecules, as there had been at the Status Quo. What was this game the Palestinians were playing?

  When the meals arrived he took the Greek Orthodox glass vials from his briefcase and shook them over his food, eating with gusto. Biochemical information emerged from his mouth and his nostrils, skewed by the artificial spices, floating across the table into Randa’s sensorium, where they were picked up by her nose, and by her other nose, the fabricated Jacobson’s organ in the roof of her mouth designed to collect the heavier organic molecules.

  Again: Ghinwa! For a moment his entire sensorium twinged, a split-second dizziness, and his heart raced a few beats; almost a carnal sensation, a warmth in his limbs, in his groin. He coughed delicately to conceal this emotional reaction.

  Randa’s breath carried nothing unusual, no hint of stress. Was it possible that she was unable to recognise Ghinwa’s skin: olfactory blindness? Lucas had heard of such a thing, but it was thought impossible to bring about, so complex were the new noses, so intricate the human brain. Was Amin’s family testing perhaps a new olfactory shield?

  He shuddered. He needed to keep his emotions under control. He was a negotiator.

  A multi-level game was being played here. Very well. He had a few tricks of his own. “I don’t want a dessert,” he said. “I’m full already.”

  It was the height of cheek. A bluff, yes, which Randa could ignore. What would she do?

  She stared at him. Her face blanched. She was shocked.

  Lucas clicked his fingers at the waitress. “Gahwah sadah,” he said.

  Randa nodded once at the waitress. A minute later the girl returned carrying a silver tray on which lay two small white cups and a brass bodum. Pouring this bitter coffee was ceremonial; Randa, in company, would move clockwise among her guests, judging them by age and status, pour
ing coffee from the bodum. In Palestinian circles it was considered polite for guests to accept only three cups of coffee, ending their last cup by saying daymen, always, which actually meant may you always have the means to serve coffee.

  Lucas saw none of this because Randa told the waitress to serve.

  It was a blocking move to match his blocking move. At once Lucas realised that Randa was unaware of Ghinwa’s input in the alcove. He had refused to accept Randa’s half of the negotiation. If she could smell Ghinwa here in this most private of spaces, she would know there was a problem and would move accordingly. That she had not, that she had countered with an insult, showed she was but a tool of the Jameed’s owners.

  Lucas sipped his gahwah sadah. And his vision blurred. The mucous membranes in his nose filled with blood and his heart rate increased; and for a moment, a moment so brief it was like a single frame in a video file, he saw himself from another’s point of view: a handsome young man at a table; a sensation of desire; an emotion.

  Randa was thinking, her mind distracted, looking elsewhere. Lucas took a couple of deep breaths, turning his head aside to breathe out for the sake of politeness.

  Ghinwa, possibly Amin and Ghinwa, possibly the whole family at this restaurant, were orchestrating events. He knew. But why?

  What had he just experienced?

  Human consciousness was private – impossible to directly access another’s thoughts, their mental visions, impossible to hear what their mind’s ear heard when their inner monologue was spoken. Similarly, the biochemical immensity that was the smell and taste of the London air was private, reserved only for dogs and bitches, the inhabitants of the city, who could not directly communicate what they experienced in any way – this the beauty, the elegance of the biochemical format, whose complexity and utility compared with mere electronics was as a Leonardo painting to a child’s sketch. And, just as important, whose security was impossible to crack for any entity not human. Organic chemistry versus maths: chemistry won every time.