The Leto Bundle Read online

  ‘I like mongrels. I like mongrelisation. Newcomers, the stranger who walks into town, the creatures who inhabit other worlds – these are all fascinating to us, they drive history and stories and films and . . . curiosity. They put a lift in our step, they stir up energy, they inspire new defences of old ways, and new ways to kick free of the traces of the past we don’t want. But today people are scared – of what? Some people are driven here, but this isn’t the situation in every case: some choose freely to come because they are attracted to what this mongrel country means, historically and culturally.’

  He was holding the panel’s attention, Gramercy sensed, in spite of Sanjit’s show of amusement, and besides, even the professor’s barbed condescension was probably a gesture of self-defence against Kim McQuy’s passion. For the group’s listening was filled with wishfulness: Kim McQuy was kindling a hope that something, that someone, might change the way things were. ‘The alternative history of this country’s spirit. Facing forwards, with the future in our faces, not looking backwards, at some exhausted notion of heritage. No forced folk identities, no ethnic songs and costumes and rites to whip up into enmities.

  ‘This is what my vision is about. A new national myth rooted in an old reality that has been forgotten . . . Where is the giant Albion now? Where for that matter is that armed virago brandishing her trident? Where is the pinkness of the map? the Union flag? These symbols and figures have decayed one by one.

  ‘Aeneas plunged into burning Troy to rescue – what? First, his father. Some of us don’t have fathers. But aside from that, he also took the cult statue of the city. A figure of the goddess he served. But this was more than a sculpture, the way we think of art now. This was a living, potent, magical vehicle of identity, and losing it stole all the remaining energy from the sacked city. Aeneas came out carrying both of them and went on to found Rome, arguably the last great mongrel hub of a chutnificated culture, a mixed spice civilisation, living then in the most fertile phase of natural generation in the great life process of absorption and composting which is necessary for all new growth.

  ‘What we need is something similar. Ever since the identity of this new energy was revealed to me in a dream, she’s been adopted by hundreds, by thousands of people who would never have found a sense of belonging through any of our superannuated national symbols.

  ‘She’s everyone who’s ever been driven from home, who’s been stolen away or beaten out . . . she’s Persephone and dozens and dozens of young women who’ve been raped – not least Europa, you know that story. That victim gave her name to where we live now. She’s Hagar and Mary and . . . well, she’s Leto.’

  He took out a handkerchief – it had been ironed, Gramercy noticed as he shook out the folds, and wiped his forehead and his eyes carefully, before he folded it up again and put it in his pocket.

  ‘Thank you, Kim,’ said the Baroness, gently. ‘Do take a seat. Your observations are appreciated. Any questions, now?’

  There was a silence.

  Then the rabbi asked, ‘Mr McQuy, were you brought up in a faith yourself?’

  Kim was sitting up stiffly now, his bird-like quickness of movements tense in response. ‘I’m adopted. I went to Catechism class and my mother – my adoptive mother, that is – took me to Mass when I was little. She was grateful to the nuns who’d helped set up the adoption in the first place, and she’d given her word to them that she’d bring me up in the faith. But my mum and dad were old-fashioned, socialist radicals: bird-feeders and sandals – with socks – you get the picture? As for my biological mother, in that part of the world, she could have been anything: Orthodox, Moslem, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Reformed, you name it. I’m circumcised, so that makes some identities more likely than others. But who knows which?’ He laughed.

  ‘I was one of the Tirzahner orphans – that moment, if you remember (when there’ve been so many like it since). I’ve no personal allegiance to any particular creed or church. I’m a jumble. Which is another word for mongrel, but a whole lot less nasty.’

  He stopped himself and looked serious again. ‘You see there’s definitely a humanist and rationalist slant in me and my visions: it’s simple, what I desire. I want the world to become a better place.’ He looked down across the table at Gramercy. ‘And I know I’m not the only one.’

  She felt herself flushing, as if caught out in an act of intimacy with him, but she faced him and nodded. He drew in his breath, visibly pleased that he’d made an impact on her.

  ‘I know that there are thousands like me, who want to find a language of co-existence, of fellowship, of peace and justice. Did you know that in nature resemblances lie far far deeper than mere appearances?’ He paused. ‘The botanists just discovered that the closest cousin to the lotus flower, that sacred symbol of the east, that gorgeous and exotic oriental blossom is—’ he paused. Gramercy wondered if anyone would, under his teacherly presence, put up a hand to give the answer.

  ‘You don’t know? Well, it isn’t the water lily, as you’d expect. It’s the plane tree, common Enochite street furniture. Bearing no visible feature in common, it’s through and through lotus-like. Yes!’

  The rabbi expostulated, ‘But how can you claim that your kind of thinking is “rational”? It’s a contradiction in terms.’ He then went on, less vehemently. ‘What is difficult for us to understand, in what you have been saying – and I can’t believe I’m alone in this – is what status does the idea of “a vision” have for you? How can a statue – a tomb – this example of one of simply thousands of classical antiquities – come to life and speak to you in a vision? By what power? If not God’s?’

  ‘By the power of imagination,’ said Kim, quietly. ‘It’s not a statue, by the way. It’s an unknown, dead woman, who’s nobody, and who isn’t even there. And it’s not going to happen by the power of God, but through yours, and yours, and yours. And theirs.’ He looked out of the window as if at a crowd of impassioned demonstrators. ‘Religious conflicts have riven the world, drenched populations in blood – here, in this country, as well as in the larger communality we inhabit. But human beings need religious sentiment. The crucial question is, not to make any particular religion, faith or creed the basis of the identity of the nation. That’s why we need a new secular faith, a church so broad that everyone can belong!’

  ‘Impossible.’ Rob shook his head.

  ‘You say here,’ the television presenter tapped Kim’s paper, ‘that “Today we live in new realms of reality: the physics of telecommunications have enveloped us in images made act, just as word was made flesh in the past. Once Hamlet lived in the mind more intensely than a historical personage; now when a character in a soap opera dies, thousands send flowers to the funeral.” I have to say, that given my postbag, there’s some truth in this, but should it be encouraged?’

  ‘Not encouraged. Recognised. It’s a faculty of mind: the poets’ power. To make realities.’

  A climate of disagreement thickened in the room but did not take articulate shape.

  ‘Surely it’s a nine-day wonder . . .’ Sanjit began, after the pause, ‘the excitement around this “Lady” of yours?’

  Kim looked startled, but gave a slight shake of his head.

  ‘It reminds me of Princess Diana,’ said Rob. ‘That huge outpouring of passion – dried up almost as quickly as it had happened. Just guilt – guilt at collective prurience.’

  August Farrell added, pensively, looking at Kim, ‘Isn’t there a danger that you’re pandering to the credulity of people who have no other means to express themselves? It makes me very uneasy. I think we’ve seen these methods of national cohesion through symbolism before: they’re dictators’ natural territory. Mumbo-jumbo about solar myths and astral heroes . . .’ He shuddered, and his dreadlocks shook with him.

  ‘Our symbols are different: they’re not heroic, they’re humble, they’re not exclusive and warlike, they’re inclusive and peaceable.’ Kim was nettled, his voice mounting higher, his skin brightening. Gr
amercy, watching him, felt a different interest spark; she smoothed her bare shoulder absent-mindedly: mentioning his prick, was that a first for a committee room of this kind? One or two gays in the room, too. Can’t have passed them by. Yet he wasn’t aware, it seemed, of the arousal quotient of exposing himself verbally like that. She wondered, looking at his oddly combed hair, was he a virgin? That ironed hanky – did he still live with his mother?

  ‘We’re not irredentists, we’re not even nationalists in any of the old uses of the word. We don’t want the Leto repatriated – there’s nowhere for her to go back to. That’s precisely the point. She belongs to us and there’s nowhere for so many of us now. We’re not into ethnic nostalgia.

  ‘That’s why she embodies us, stands for us, can be our figurehead. We’re the people who have no homeland – apart from the one we find ourselves in, by chance, by luck, by fate. We’re the ones whose footsteps tread out new paths that lead to the door we can call home. All we ask is for this lost woman to be given proper respect. We want a new Cenotaph, to be filled with her spirit and the spirit of people like her. We are the New Ishmaelites. And she is Our Lady.’

  After he’d left the room, the assembled panellists breathed out, almost unanimously.

  Baroness Ghopil hushed the hubbub, then asked for considered responses; they came, musingly.

  ‘He’s a crackpot, a nutcase, completely barking,’ said the TV presenter, taking off his glasses and wiping them as if to assure the company and himself that he was clear-sighted.

  ‘No, no,’ said the rabbi. ‘Ambitious. Opportunistic. A young man hungry for power – by whatever means.’

  ‘I’m sorry to lower the tone, but what’s in it for him? We have to remember,’ and the columnist gave a dry little laugh, that almost came out as a snort, ‘that refugees are becoming big business – and not just for triads and Mafia. We should step very, very carefully, I reckon.’

  Gramercy breathed in sharply, but before she could speak, the chair intervened: ‘I would like us to be less personal. To consider the possibility of renewing national symbols in the way the crowds whom this “Lady” is drawing suggests. There’s Marianne, remember, at the other end of the rail tracks. What Kim McQuy was saying amounts to not much more than the message on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, after all, in a different era, disinfected of all those problems you so trenchantly recalled earlier . . .’ She smiled.

  August Farrell let this go, and instead faced the columnist across the table. ‘You know as well as I do, that the whole point of letting people in lawfully is to prevent Mafia and triad operations. This chap’s hardly clandestine.’ The columnist boggled at him, spread his hands, and indicated they should listen to the ongoing discussion.

  ‘But it’s hard to separate the message from the man, Shareen!’ Rob protested. ‘He’s got something slightly mesmerising, kind of mongoose-like, don’t you think? In another time, he’d have been a Puritan preacher. What he’s saying is a whole heap of rubbish. You’re not going to get the shires rallying round some Near Eastern mummy, are you? Come on!’ He paused. ‘But it’s odd that when you hear him, you get caught up in it. It’s a bit like that nineteenth-century dream that Albion was the lost tribe of Israel, God’s chosen remnant. Barmy, but a lot of sensible people believed it and worked hard to make it stick.’

  Sanjit said softly, ‘One can never argue with visionaries. The only thing to do is to walk away from them. They’re irrefutable. It’s that dread passionate intensity, you know.’

  August Farrell added, ‘We simply haven’t reached the point when we can forget I’m black, that you’re black, that he’s . . . if we’re not to use labels of colour, we have to have descriptions of origins to stand in for them, we depend on religious affiliations, if not beliefs, to place people. A Tirzahner means not-white, not from here, and it can’t be otherwise – the Tirzahners’ problem is getting themselves valued for what they are. This McQuy’s flying in the face of the whole trend. He wants us to stop drawing up the census with scrupulous distinctions between someone coming from here and someone from there. He can’t turn any of us invisible, like a stage magician.’

  ‘Like St Paul, he wants neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free—’ said Rob, quietly. ‘It’s rather sweet. But in Albion, now!’ He shook his head. ‘Mad.’

  Farrell went on, ‘He’s eager, he’s brave. He’s got a kind of shiny guilelessness about him. He’ll never survive a moment in that piranha fishpond that’s politics. Yes, he’s a holy fool, a naïf – he may stir up more than he can handle. We’ll see. I shudder to think of his hate mail.’ He shook his head. ‘I must say I fear for him.’

  The columnist commented, ‘Rubbish, if you don’t mind my saying so, old boy. It’s us who should be alarmed: self-styled saints end up torching the ungodly. Just consider the mullahs. That tolerance for each and everyone – it wears thin very quickly.’

  Gramercy broke in, indignant, intervening in this discussion for the first time, ‘That can’t be right. He’s an idealist, and anyway, it’s not really up to him, is it?’ she said. ‘He’s not going it alone. You’re exaggerating his part in it – and his power. He’s picking up on something that’s happening out there – and it won’t stop just because we decree he’s bonkers. I’m not sure that he’s bonkers anyway. He’s just lost, doesn’t know who he is, feels out of place, with no land of his birth to leave and sing about, no home behind him and no forwarding address either.’

  6

  Hortense to Kim; Kim to Hortense

  Subject: G: Skipwith 673.1841

  Date: Tues, 02 June 199– 14:35:47 +0100

  From: Hortense Fernly

  To: kim.mcquy

  Attachment: Skipwith 673.1841: checklist

  Thanks for yours. I’ve been away, hence delay. With regard to the Mss., didn’t the librarian show you the checklist of the boxes’ contents? I’m attaching it fyi. Under the heading ‘Fragments’, there’s a resume of texts that were transcribed from the mummy bands. These are in the main, as I indicated, magical charms and spells though I haven’t been through the material closely, and there may be more stuff. There are many papyri and later, vellum and parchment documents deposited with the marbles by Skipwith – a vast miscellaneous collection nobody has looked at very much. There was to be an edition, but Meeks began and for some reason never finished, lost heart, ran out of steam, whatever. A pity, as it’s a pretty large cache of papers, and, as I say, of an unusual character. But the task demands multiple palaeographic and linguistic skills, and in the days of outreach and bottom line profits museum curators no longer have the time, let alone all the other skills and time required.

  Good luck – if you decide to have another go.

  Yours,

  Hortense Fernly

  PS The Director of the museum wants us to put out some kind of booklet about the Leto Bundle – in time for the re-installation of the tomb and its contents. For our series of Pocket Guides. He wants it by the end of the summer. That is when the cartonnage will be displayed again in a much better setting – and with the right set of mummy wrappings, and more objects from the tomb and associated materials. You – and HSWU – should be pleased, I trust.

  Subject: Re: Leto Bundle

  Date: Tues, 02 June 199 – 18:32:47 +0100

  From: Hortense Fernly

  To: Kim.mcquy

  I’ve had a look at your website now. Much of its contents far beyond my expertise. But it’s enjoyable. [She looked at this sentence and deleted it.] You might consider revising some of the references to the Leto Bundle when you’ve had a chance of look at some more material. Your interpretation is of course your own, but you might add some more up-to-date historical (and more accurate!) background details in the light of the material you’re looking at in the Archives?

  Let me know how you get on. Yours, Hortense

  Subject: Re: Bundle

&n
bsp; Date: Tues, 02 June 199 – 22:48:21 +0100

  From: Kim.mcquy

  To: Hortense Fernly

  Hello Hortense if I may – yes I did find the checklist thanks anyway – Id like to save it to disc so do send list again but in the body of the message – attachments are dangerous as they say – natmus is probably pure as pure but I don’t want to risk a virus – and new ones keep evolving – schoolkids not much older than the ones I teach have a fun time introducing them best kim

  Subject: Re: Bundle

  Date: Wed, 03 June 199- 09:36:47 +0100

  From: Hortense Fernly

  To: kim.mcquy

  Attachment: Misc. Mss. G. Fr. 32–35.rtf

  Kim, I’m attaching some of the early Hellenistic stuff as well, because I feel sure it’ll be of interest to you – given your concerns. (Our virus control is very tight, so don’t worry about downloading.) What follows comes from Meeks’ holograph translation of the wrappings. Till now it’s been a mystery that no matching manuscript had been found in the Skipwith collection, but it’s now possible that when Meeks abandoned the task, he reassembled the linen strips around the mummy and left no record of his procedure.

  [I’m getting far too technical for him, she thought to herself. And began to delete, then thought better of it. Let him break his head on this stuff instead of all that glib nonsense he’s putting out.]

  Let me know how you get on – as I say we’re excited here at natmus by the rediscovery of these fragments and we’ll be featuring them in the new display. We have you to thank for it, as you sent me back to the files.