a diary
"In Starfire," announced Mr Monkfish, "the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning. That is how the War began, and that is how the War ended. The Last War. The Great War. The War of Powers. Ten times Ten Thousand years ago. In incandescent dust and a World burned to ashes. That is how the War ended, and how it begins again."
We were on the beach, that ridiculous little beach in Paris with the sand shovelled onto the road and the palm trees. The stars were dim, but the moon was shining over Notre Dame and Mr Sole was lurking the shadows somewhere, no doubt frightening away any of the locals who might come in search of some late-evening romance.
Monkfish played tricks with his tarot cards, fanning the deck, and encouraging me to take a card. I turned it over. It was the Lovers. He played his part and grinned lasciviously, and winked to indicate that it was magic.
A holiday, he had said. A little trip to see how this and that work out. And maybe a little business on the side.
"What prompted this?" I asked.
"The City of Love? Would you believe I have received a letter? A private correspondence of a personal nature. An invitation, you might say. Or an intimation."
"May I see it?"
"You will. In time." He waved further inquiry away. "Come, there are things we must prepare. And we should find Mr Sole."
It had been, for once, an exceptionally good day. We had eaten well, of course. Monkfish had shown me some of the galleries of the Louvre. Absolutely no one had tried to kill us.
Later, we'd strolled on the Left Bank, whiling away the afternoon in the sweltering August heat. All of Paris was on holiday, but the place teemed with tourists. Monkfish had snatched up some chalks from a street artist. He'd been showing off, he did so as naturally as breathing, but still, he showed some remarkable skill at sketching.
After supper, he had proposed a walk, a moonlit promenade as he put it, down to the beach below the Hotel du Ville.
The day's exertions had left him melancholic, or perhaps it was the heat. He seemed mutedly desperate to explain himself, for me to understand his point of view, his application to his decadence.
"Order overthrows chaos," he declared, "at least, that's how history is written by the victors."
"In a war before the dawn of history, you say."
"In the Book of Revelation, we are told a tale of the war in heaven, and more details are to be found in the pseudepigrapha. How proud Lucifer led his angels in revolt. How the almighty father flung the dragon into the pit. And then benevolently sent the Flood to scour the Earth of the demon seed.
"Or in the myths of ancient Greece, the gigantomachy, the war of gods and titans, of the children of Gaia and the grandchildren of Gaia, when Zeus and his Olympians overthrew their father, dread Kronos, and his cohort, in fulfilment of curse and prophesy.
"Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades, Sky and Sea and Stone, make allies with the giants and the cyclopes, who forge them weapons, thunderbolt and trident and helm, and together they o'erwhelm the Titans and bury them in Tartarus.
"Or in Egypt, where the gods still dwell, asleep under the sand, Horus contended with Sutekh. They raced in boats. They debated before Maat. And in the night, Sutekh seduced Horus, because sex and death are deeply intwined in the minds of Men. And because Egyptian deities, like the Greek gods, were as pansexual as they were incestuous.
"The winner of the contest was declared to be Sutekh, who was awarded nine tenths of the land. But cunning Horus tricked him, by picking first the riverland of the Nile. And so Sutekh was banished to the dessert, the god of nothing but dust.
"The fruit of Horus seed was Thoth, born from Sutekh's brow – yes, just like Athena from Zeus. But Sutekh's seed was poison, and Horus would have died, and did lose one eye, but he was saved by Thoth, who is wisdom, and now the keeper of the mysteries of life and sex and death."
He turned over another card. Inevitably, it was Death.
"My maker has it in him to destroy me," he announced, simply.
"Your maker? I thought you an atheist?"
"He is no god, but a man. And his work is the story of my life. And yet I feel it in the fibre of my being that he means to make an end of me."
"Augustus," I tried, "you're just being morbid."
"Everything dies, dearest one. Even the Trinomans. Even Monkfish. There are no forevers." Though then he grinned like a rogue and added: "And nobody has ever called me 'Augustus'."
So I asked him to explain again. About the Argai, about the Trinomans, about the Fallen. Instead, he talked about, well...
"Mr Sole, prepare the equipment!"
"With, uh-huh uh-huh, with pleasure, Messer Monkfish," said Sole, busying himself with cables and flexes and a very old, very large cabinet television set.
Monkfish had hurried us back to what he called his "Paris apartment" – a couple of dusty, attic bedrooms which appeared to have been used to store any and every piece of cheap lumber and leavings, debris and dross that he had collected since probably about Nineteen Seventy-One. He had, however, shoved aside a bookshelf and what I hope was a copy of a Matisse to reveal to my surprise a quite formidable wall safe.
Monkfish made a great show of going to the safe and using his bulk to obscure the combination from me. Removing something, he ostentatiously slammed the door closed again and spun the dial before pressing a chunky plastic box into my hands.
"I have no idea what this is?"
"A video cassette."
"I am no wiser."
"A recording."
"Like a phonograph?"
"With pictures. A television series. Science fiction, ah, that is a scientific romance. From the Nineteen Nineties. Something of what the cognoscenti call a 'cult classic'."
"'Against the Rules'," I read the title from the sleeve. The words were embossed over a poorly composed montage of photographs, people in slightly unbelievable costumes and vaguely heroic poses, arranged in front of a garish space rocket, the word "Adventure" unsubtly emblazoned on its prow.
"Forgive us. An American edition," admitted Monkfish.
"And you are expecting me to believe the secrets of the Universe are recorded in some... magic lantern show? For children?"
Monkfish continued to disarrange the furniture and stacked papers until the safe once more vanished from view. He spoke as he worked.
"My dear one, let us not be snobbish. 'Tis hardly much less credible than that they might be recorded in an anthology of Jewish adventure stories, is it? Or between the more lurid pages of Oriental pornography? Though you will have to forgive some of the less subtle cultivation of names from mythology."
Moistly, Sole padded my arm. "Permit me," he said, his other hand out to receive the cassette. Utterly baffled and confounded, I could only dumbly pass it to him, and he moved to place it in the machine.
From somewhere, Mr Monkfish had produced a cake tray of choux pastries and fondants, and he ushered us to a sofa, tipping off a box of vinyl records and a large stuffed toy in the form of a sabre-toothed cat to make room.
On the flickering screen, a warning against copyright theft appeared.
"And so," murmured Mr Monkfish, "it begins..."
