Chapter II.10

'It is all—how you say?—authentique: the uniforms, the weapons, toutes,' said Dentressangle, taking off his helmet and caressing the scratched green metal with loving fingers, 'Marine Corps, late soixantes—standard 'Nam issue.'

They stood side by side, surveying the smouldering ruin of the lavatory: a few jagged waist-high sections of wall and some smashed pipe-work stumps bubbling brown slime into the concrete rubble, all draped in tattered festoons of toilet paper like the rotting remnants of some ancient shroud. For twenty yards around, the floor of the wood was carpeted with fragments of brick and shards of shattered porcelain, some still twitching feebly.

The only sounds now were the rustle of the breeze in the high canopy and the gentle echoing melodies of birdsong, an impossible contrast with the violence of minutes before. The two of them were alone now, the other soldiers having melted away into the undergrowth, presumably in search of other errant Communist public facilities. Dentressangle was choking on an untipped Camel from a soft pack tucked into his helmet webbing, with the battle-worn machine-gun hanging jauntily by his side.

'Jesus, Norbert,' said Loofah, in little more than a whisper, 'I thought I'd had it in there.'

'The enemies of freedom are everywhere. It is heureux for you we are having a patrol in this sector—otherwise I think you are in the sewage.'

'Yes—you've pulled my fat out of the fire for the second time. I don't know what to say.'

'My duty—no more than this.' With a wince of disgust, the Frenchman flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the rubble. 'Although I think perhaps if you had stayed avec my pretty protégée…'

'Um—yes—' stuttered Loofah, stung by the reprimand, 'It was the garden, you see, her interest in botany…'

'No matter. Waters over the aqueduct. But now I think we must go; the jungle belongs to Charlie Farley—it is not good if he is finding us here.'

Dentressangle smoothed his perfectly groomed hair and put the helmet back on, adjusting it to ensure that the unbuckled chin strap dangled next to his designer-stubbled cheek with maximum chic. Cradling the machine gun in his arms, he fingered the trigger lovingly.

'And also,' he continued, 'I think you now are in a hurry to find someone—yes?'

The path was a wide ribbon of trodden soil winding languorously through a sapphire sea of bluebells. The dark vaulting of the canopy arched above, supported on smooth plastic-coated pillars: mighty beech trunks that thrust upwards through the liquid air, each the size of a small skyscraper.

Gentle blue waves flowed through the swaying flowers, breaking over the path, swirling around the bases of the trees. The plastic surface of the trunks swam with delicate tracery, the craftsmanship of oriental stone carvers, every instant reworked afresh. The air itself was alive, fresh with the perfume of the flowers, alight with the sparkle of broken sunlight and birdsong. With its dazzling colour, its ornamental pillars and its trilling air-light music, the wood was a medieval Syrian mosque, the echoing space under the vaulting a palpable entity, sacred and solid.

Loofah was carried forward by the gentle flow of the path, washed by the lapping waves of colour, cleansed by the perfumed air, by the light and the melody of birdsong. Dentressangle for his part walked ahead, crouched like a stalking leopard, turning alternately from left to right, scanning the open woodlands with mirrored eyes and the death-hungry barrel of his weapon.

Loofah was comforted by the other's presence, his own bodyguard, a shield against the deadly dangers that lurked in the seemingly innocent woods. As long as he was with Dentressangle he knew that Charlie Farley could not touch him—and that there was no danger of his falling down one of the land-mine shafts with which, according to the Frenchman, the wood was dotted.

There was, however, the perennial fly in the ointment of his new-found sense of security.

'Norbert,' he began, after a long period of silence, 'I'm sorry to trouble you when you're on patrol, but there is something we need to talk—.'

'Shh!' hissed the Frenchman, spinning round, 'You must speak with quietness—les arbres are having the ears.'

'Oh—sorry,' whispered Loofah, 'I forgot.'

Loofah glanced nervously down at the machine-gun barrel, which was now no more than a foot from his belly, pointing straight at his liver.

'What were you thinking to say?' asked Dentressangle. The finger curled tightly over the trigger had a distinct pressure whiteness around the nail. Two ill at ease characters, bespectacled and with thinning dark hair, peered out at Loofah from his companion's eye sockets.

'It's the woman,' said Loofah, 'the double woman.'

'What about her?'

'I don't know what to do about her, that's what.'

'But that is so simple,' said Dentressangle with a quick laugh, 'You are The Seeker, you will find her. It is what the official—.'

'Yes, I know what the memoranda say. And I also know that everybody seems to think it is my solemn duty to obey these mysterious documents, but…'

'Mais what?'

'But I don't understand why,' said Loofah, exasperation in his tone, 'I don't understand why everybody is so desperate for me to find her.'

'So you can go back to where you came from, of course, so you can get away from all the terrible dangerousness.' Dentressangle had now raised his voice and was jabbing the deadly tube at Loofah's navel. 'Only she can take you home—but this I think you are knowing, oui?'

'Yes, this I indeed am knowing.'

'Well then—is this not reason enough?'

Loofah reached out and gently pushed the gun barrel aside with his forefinger.

'Norbert, there's something going on here that I don't get. I know I'm a stranger here and I know everybody wants me to go back where I belong—.'

'Only for your sake, my friend,' protested Dentressangle, 'You know I wish you could be staying, but it is ici so dangerous for you.'

'Yes, yes. But I just cannot believe this whole operation—you, the Secretariat, everything—is simply because you all want me to go home. I appreciate that you might have a tight policy on immigration in these parts, but this amount of effort over one little person—it just doesn't make sense.'

Dentressangle sighed and, to Loofah's enormous relief, lowered the machine-gun.

'I care about you, my friend, really I do,' he said, 'But there is also the other one.'

'The one—' Loofah shuddered '—the one who looks like me?'

The Frenchman nodded. 'Oui, the wicked one. You see, it too can be finding her. And that is not all, my friend, because this one, it is not alone, it is working for—for—.'

As he tried to finish the sentence, Dentressangle's face shimmered with same deathly loathing that Loofah had witnessed on the previous occasion the Frenchman had mentioned the allies of the other one, just after his escape from the termite mother.

'For—enemies?'

Dentressangle nodded again, this time with a cold shudder. 'Enemies, yes,' he said quietly, in a far off voice, 'Enemies of the good, forces of the noir-ness.'

'So if he finds her for these—er—enemies,' said Loofah, 'this will help them in some way?'

They were walking side by side now, two Israelites flying to freedom thorough a cloven ocean of bluebells. Dentressangle seemed to have forgotten about the lethal dangers of the wood; somewhere along the way he had swapped the machine-gun for a twelve-bore which he now carried slung over his back by a thick leather strap, and he walked casually, as if strolling through an April woodland glade rather than creeping through gook-infested jungle.

'She is the only way of getting from ici to there. If the enemies have her then this is giving them the powerfulness, the grande powerfulness, to do here the things of big terribleness.'

'And I suppose the other—the other one will go home—.'

'Where it will also do the things of great terribleness.'

'And I will be stuck here forever.'

Dentressangle smiled sadly, and shook his head slowly. 'Stuck here, yes—but not, malheureusement, forever. For one day I may not be around to save you from the dangers—and then, my friend, forever is ending.'

The termite mother, the carnivorous lavatory—Loofah shivered and blinked violently to erase the images. They walked in silence for a while. Eventually Loofah spoke.

'You said that it was them that brought him here, these bad people, to find the woman for them. But what I don't understand is this: how did I get here?'

A fallen log rose out of the azure sea like the twisting neck of a surfacing plesiosaur. Dentressangle sat astride it and was now weaving bluebells into the webbing of his helmet. In place of his combat boots he was now wearing green wellingtons, and seemed to have changed his uniform for a tweed jacket, buckled around the waist. Loofah stood a few feet away, leaning against a tree, the blue waves lapping over his shoes.

'It won't work, you know,' he said, 'trying to keep me in the dark like this.'

The Frenchman plucked another flower, but did not reply.

'Norbert, please.'

Dentressangle pushed the green stalk into the khaki netting, paused, and then looked up.

'My friend,' he said, seriously, 'there are quelque choses which I think it is better that you are not knowing.'

Loofah said nothing, but stared straight into the curved mirrors of Dentressangle's eyes. Eventually the Frenchman sighed.

'Very well,' he said, 'If you insist, then I tell: you came avec the other one.'

Loofah started. 'You mean they brought me too? The enemies? But why?'

'They had pas de choix.'

'No choice? I don't think I understand.'

Dentressangle appeared to ponder before continuing. 'When the one comes through from there to here,' he eventually said, 'they come always as the two. If the one is leaving là, the two are arriving ici. It happens always, it is—how you say?—inévitable.'

A fibrillating mass of protoplasm swam into Loofah's mind, where it hovered, quivering excitedly. Then, as if torn by internal dissent, it pulled itself apart, like chewing gum torn by invisible hands. And there were two, each daughter a perfect replica of the original.

'When you mean two,' said Loofah, hesitantly, 'you mean two identical people? Like me and—and him?'

The Frenchman stopped suddenly and spun round to face Loofah, fury blazing from his mirrored eye sockets.

'No, not identical!' he snapped 'Les deux may indeed be looking the same, but the one is a person, a human of the being, un homme authentique with a right to the existence. Mais l'autre—l'autre—.'

'But the other?' ventured Loofah, after Dentressangle had spluttered into silence.

'A fake, a forgery, a counterfeit person. Un homme faux, a mockery d'humanité, a pathetic insult to we who are vrai, not fit to be sharing our terre.' Dentressangle's whole face was now burning with the unearthly loathing, his words spilling out in a raging torrent. 'And though they are looking harmless enough, these mock-gobélins, their coeurs are filled with the poison and the hatings. For they cannot bear that they are not authentique, they cannot bear that they are these—méchants jokes in the form of the human.'

Dentressangle paused, the breath rattling between his tightly clenched teeth. 'And more than any,' he continued, in a deadly hiss, 'They have the hatings for the one they are resembling, for the one which of they are the faux facsimile. It is the hatings of envie, my friend, envie for the réalité that they do not have, envie for the la vie authentique that can never be theirs.'

At last the Frenchman stopped, wiping flecks of saliva from his chin with the back of a shaking hand.

'So—I am the real one?' asked Loofah quietly.

'And l'autre is the foul impostor, your sworn enemy.'

'I am good and—.'

'It is evil,' spat the Frenchman, 'Remember the poor little bunny rabbits and the napalmed children.'

Dentressangle was still breathing heavily, his face pale and taut under the burnished bronze of his tan. From each of his eye sockets a figure watched Loofah—two identical people: the same hair and spectacles, the same clothes, the same puzzled look on the same face. As alike as two peas in a pod—or two little Westies on a girl's lap—but one was real, one was false, one was good and one was… Loofah's train of thought paused briefly at the word 'evil'—for he knew that that the axed puppies and the chain-sawed children were no more than the perverted inventions of the delightful Under Manager.

'So you see, my friend,' the Frenchman went on, 'when they brought the other here to find la femme double, they were knowing that you would come as well.'

'Like a sort of by-product?'

'Oui, but a très toxique bye-bye product—from their point de vue.'

'Because I might find her before he does?'

'Exactement.'

Loofah paused for a moment, thinking. 'But if they knew I would come at the same time,' he asked, 'then why didn't they do something? Like try to catch me as soon as I arrived?'

'They did. One of their créatures was sent to be taking the good carings of you until l'autre one had done its work. But you have—how you say?—been giving him the slide.'

An image squirmed into Loofah's mind, of an oleaginous toad in a bowler hat. Then, as the toad slithered away, another figure, equally unwelcome, muscled its way to the fore.

'What about Miss Leggett? And Mr Stobart? Where do they fit in?'

'Them?—pah!' spat Dentressangle with contempt, 'Those merde-lumps from the mongrel dog's derriere, they are too your enemies. They try to get the ridding of you and the wicked one together—you remember?—so no-one is finding la femme. You die—but that is nothing to them.'

'But why? Why was Miss Leggett so against anyone—him or me—finding the double woman?'

'That is a question of big easiness—they are greedy, that is why, they are wanting the all for themselves alone. You see, my friend, Monsieur Stobart does not live here any more; he lives—.'

'Where I come from?'

Dentressangle nodded. 'He lives there in the splendid isolatedness, a puffed-up petit roi in his own little kingdom that no-one can challenge—because no-one from ici can ever be reaching him.'

'Unless someone finds—?'

'Exactement,' sneered Dentressangle, 'And then the strutting little turkey cock might be off his dung heap pushed!'

Loofah slumped back against the tree, staring blankly as the aquamarine waves rolled slowly across the woodland floor towards him. As he struggled in vain to make sense of all he had heard, a shadow fell across the sun-dappled sea at his feet and he felt a hand on his shoulder. The Frenchman was standing over him, the bluebell-bedecked battle helmet and mirrored shades incongruous atop his tweeds and green wellies.

'My friend, you are lucky indeed to be away from the clutches of those who are wishing you great illnesses,' he said, with sincerity dripping from his voice like liquid honey, 'And then to have met with your chèr ami Norbert Dentressangle—who has saved you so many fois from the terrible dangers—this is also great fortune.'

Dentressangle smiled with saccharine sweetness at the two puzzled faces that peered out the twin mirrors of his eyes.

'And so now you can be discovering L'Une Qui Est Deux for yourself,' he went on, 'Not only so that you back can go—to your home and to sécurité—but also so that together, toi et moi, we can be foiling the enemies of goodness.'

'Norbert, I don't think you understand—the little animal did not tell me where she is. As a matter of fact it didn't seem to know. What it told me was that I should find my heart of darkness and then—.'

'And she will be there, of course she will, at this chesty place. Come, let us be going there right now, we have no time to throw away. Quel direction, my friend?'

Dentressangle was standing in the middle of the path, gripping Loofah's arm with excitement. He had dispensed with the sunglasses and in place of the helmet now wore a deerstalker, a few bluebells pushed into the band along with the obligatory fishing flies. The barrel of his shotgun jutted out from behind his shoulder like an artillery piece and a dead pheasant had somehow found its way into the pocket of his Barbour. There were now in a different part of the wood, among spindle-trunked silver birch with dry, spidery branches, the buds not yet burst, with a handful of early snowdrops scattered like pearls over the dark leaf mould.

Loofah sighed and shook his head. 'I'm not altogether sure that she will. And in any case, I don't know where to find the heart of darkness.'

'But your petit animal, I think he told you, yes?'

Again Loofah shook his head. 'All it said was that I should "look within".'

'"Look within"? But this means nothing. He must have said something else. Come, my friend, you can be telling me—do not forget that I am an official, a keyhole member of the Secretariat.'

'Norbert, that's all that the little animal said. I promise.'

Dentressangle frowned sceptically. 'Très well then,' he said, 'What think you that this means?'

'To be frank, I'm a bit foxed. At first I thought it meant look within me, you know, inside myself.'

The Frenchman seemed to puzzle for a moment and then his eyes lit up.

'Of course! Inside you, inside The Seeker! There we will find the centre of blackness, there we will find L'Une Qui Est Deux!'

Dentressangle reached into the pocket of his oilskin and pulled out a bone handled penknife. Loofah opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn't come.

'Come, mon ami,' said the Frenchman, opening the blade, 'we must be doing what your little friend has told you—then we will find her.'

He smiled and stepped forward clutching the knife, a strange glint in his eye.

'Norbert!' cried Loofah, stumbling on a tree root as he backed away, 'What on earth are you doing?'

Dentressangle caught Loofah's sleeve and the blade advanced inexorably towards his navel.

'Do not be afraid. It will not hurt a bit. And we must find la femme double, must we not?'

'Stop!' screamed Loofah, 'It doesn't mean inside me! That's what the other one said—the drink—it doesn't mean inside me!'

The blade paused two inches from his belly. Dentressangle's smile faded.

'The drink?' he asked, with some scepticism, 'It said not inside you?'

'Yes, definitely—not inside me. It said the animal meant "look within" something else.'

The Frenchman thought for a moment and then smiled again, this time with saccharine sweetness.

'Perhaps it is best if we have a look anyway,' he said, jabbing the blade against Loofah's abdomen, 'Just a quick peeping, to be making the sure, yes?'

Space itself cracked open, Loofah's head imploded and his heart stopped. On a branch ten feet away, a blackbird abruptly ceased its song and burst into a cloud of red spray and feathers.

The report ricocheted around Loofah's skull while his heart leapt back into action, pumping frantically to make up for lost time. Dentressangle lowered the gun—with curls of white mist coiling sinuously around the lethal hole of its left barrel—and smiled. They both watched—Loofah panting and trembling, the Frenchman grinning gleefully—as the two wings of the bird flapped away in separate directions, each dangling a yellow claw by a strip of blood stained skin.

'Ah!' sighed Dentressangle, blissfully, 'How I love the Anglais nature-side!'

Loofah gritted his still trembling teeth and forced a wan smile. He was not happy now. For, apart from being periodically blown to oblivion as his companion atomised one item of innocent wildlife after another, he was cold and wet. The trees here were bare, their branches black and twisted like ravens' claws against the slate grey sky, the air was icy, damp with a fine and penetrating drizzle, and the path was a river of cold mud. Only the few bluebells stuck jauntily in the band of Dentressangle's deerstalker remained from the glorious spring they now seemed to have left far behind.

The Frenchman, of course, was prepared for the abrupt change of season, in his Wellingtons, his oilskin and body-warmer, his hat and gloves. Loofah, though, was wearing nothing under his jacket but a tee-shirt, and his thin shoes were getting more and more sodden as he sloshed along the quagmire of the path. He clutched the wet-stiff leather to his goose-pimpled flesh and shivered.

Dentressangle stopped suddenly and spun to the side, the gun barrel going up. Again the world exploded as twenty yards away a rabbit with bright blue fur leapt into the air, scattering its intestines over the forest floor.

In the cold, miserable mud a little worm of worry wiggled: had it been wise to tell about the little animal's advice? Although he had managed to save himself from disembowelment, Dentressangle was now being every bit as difficult about the heart of darkness as he ever had been about the double woman. Apart from refusing to believe that Loofah knew next to nothing, the Frenchman was now insisting on looking within everything that was look within-able—if they had poked about in one deserted fox hole, they had poked about in twenty.

The wounded rabbit lay in a pool of its own gore, loops of intestine winding around its kicking back feet. Loofah looked to his companion, hoping for a finishing-off shot, but the Frenchman was already prowling away along the muddy path, deerstalker pulled down over perfectly coiffured hair, shotgun arcing from side to side like a radar scanner as he searched the bare undergrowth for his next victim.

Two more rabbits now scuttled out of a hidden dip, one pink, the other yellow, each wearing a white British army helmet painted with a large red cross. They ran on their hind legs, crouching low to the ground for maximum cover, and between them carried a canvas stretcher. Loofah glanced quickly at Dentressangle—and saw to his relief that the Frenchman was peering into a woodpecker's hole in a path-side trunk; the lagomorph paramedics were unhindered as they bundled their wounded colleague onto the stretcher and scuttled away to safety.

A sharp thorn of guilt stabbed up through the mud. Surely he was judging his two-times saviour too harshly, surely even a Frenchman wouldn't open fire on stretcher-bearers? Worry, guilt, and now a mire of confusion. He shivered miserably and trudged off after the departing oilskin-clad back, the cold mud squidging over the tops of his slip-ons.

When Loofah finally caught up, Dentressangle was waiting, rubbing gloved hands together and stamping his feet to keep warm, with his gun propped against a stile. Vapour-breath gathered around the Frenchman's head as if he were a mountain, its peak sheathed in clouds.

'Which way now, my friend?' he asked. For here the path divided, one way heading over the stile and across a dank, dead field that shivered unhappily under the slate-grey sky, the other turning sharply to the left, no less miserable than the field route, but remaining within the woods. 'Come, we have no time to be the wasting of!'

Loofah sighed. 'Norbert, you know I don't know. I've got no more idea than you have.'

'Straight ahead or be turning to the left. One way to the lungs of noir-ness, one way not. Tell me, please, I am getting froid.'

You're getting cold! thought Loofah, angrily surveying the other's winter garb.

'Look, how many times have I got to tell you—.'

'My friend, do not be playing with the games of pretend ignorance,' interrupted Dentressangle irritably, 'Just say which way we go.'

Being bullied along a Passchendaele trench-road of freezing mud was one thing, being called a liar was another.

'Norbert, for the last time,' Loofah said, a new heat powering his voice, 'I—do—not—know—which—way.'

His words—fired like pistol shots—seemed to penetrate the Frenchman's obduracy and for several seconds Dentressangle stared expressionlessly at Loofah without replying. When he did speak, his voice was quiet and measured.

'So,' he said, 'You choose not to tell.'

'No, I do not choose—.'

'This is of course your prerogative and this I must be respecting.'

'Look, this is ridiculous.' Loofah's voice trailed away as Dentressangle turned away, apparently lost in thought.

'Très bien,' said the Frenchman, after a long pause, 'I have un autre plan.'

'Goodbye then, my friend,' said Dentressangle, taking Loofah's numb hand in his own thickly gloved grip, 'I will be seeing of you shortly.'

Loofah was still reeling from the abruptness of the change—the aggressive bully had vanished into the greyness and his companion was once again all sweetness and light.

'You have sureness that you will be alright?' said Dentressangle, in a tone of genuine concern.

Loofah smiled uncertainly, the chilly nodules of his resentment melting in the warm sunlight of the Frenchman's rediscovered charm.

'I'll be fine, Norbert, don't worry,' he said, 'You go and sort out this bit of business of yours, and I'll see you at the road.'

Of course, Loofah was using the word 'fine' somewhat loosely. For by now he was seriously frozen; his teeth chattered among themselves like a gathering of over-excited schoolgirls, his whole body shuddered in epileptic spasms, and his feet were two lumps of cold dead flesh which he pulled in and out of the mud in a futile ritual of blood circulation maintenance. Without a scintilla of enthusiasm he turned up the muddy stream through the woods, the path he had been told to follow.

No sooner than he had taken his first miserable step, however, than the icy air was suddenly rent by a scream, a banshee howl of pure terror. He spun round to see Dentressangle staring wide-eyed and ashen-faced at the stile, his shotgun lying in a muddy pool at his feet.

'It's OK, Norbert,' said Loofah, rushing over to his companion, 'They often wobble a bit when you're going over, but you'll be fine, just hold on tight and—.'

'No—no,' stuttered Dentressangle, 'Not the wobble—voici!'

He raised a quaking gloved finger to point at the cross-piece of the stile. And there, slithering across the wet lichen-coated wood, was a slug, a black jewel glistening in the grey light.

Something triggered deep in Loofah's mind and for a long moment he stood as paralysed as the Frenchman. It was indeed a big slug—though a mere dwarf compared with the molluscan behemoths that crawled, diaphanous and half-existent, through the echoing chambers of his memory. He reached to pull them closer, to see them better, but as the hand of his mind groped towards the great creatures, they slipped away and were gone. Then gloved fingers dug viciously into his upper arm, ripping away the strange veil, and the Frenchman's face loomed across his vision, its handsome features disfigured by terror.

'Get the rid of it! Get the rid of the horrible little monstre!'