Art Pact 129


A mundane thing - I check the internet for any mention of Carteil, but the name alone yields nothing useful. Do you mean Cartel? Google asks me. It has pre-empted my reply, searching for Cartel anyway, and the list of links are all drug-crime related. I examine the card on which I have written the word. The large open loop of the "C", a dropping away to "ar", then again, more height at the spike of the "t". The "il" at the end looks like a double letter, I have written it so badly, and the dot over the "i" is a slanted accent. The handwriting does not seem like mine, although it was only half an hour ago that I wrote it. It seems crazed that that short time is now nothing but memory, no more privileged by its recency than some half-remembered incident from my childhood. I push the card away from me, sliding it over the polished walnut surface of the desk. It spin it around, flip it over and back again, trying to see it from some different angle that might explain what it is that I have written and why.

I am performing this strange exercise when the phone rings, causing me almost to jump out of my seat. It is an old-fashioned ring, mechanical and loud, and when I find the phone nestled between two stacks of paper I see why - it is a black bakelite phone, a wartime phone made strident to be heard over the sounds of planes taking off, sirens wailing, machine guns firing. I hesitate for a moment, then pick it up.

"Hello?"

"Who is this?" asks the voice on the other end. I am about to offer my name when a sudden paranoia grips me.

"You first."

"I wish to speak to Adrien Hoffer," says the voice, ignoring me.

"He isn't here."

"I think he is."

"I'm sorry," I tell them. "I don't know what to say." The voice is male, a smooth baritone but oddly subdued as if its owner has it on a leash. I hear it breath out, and I think of the whooshing hiss of a sea wave sucking at a pebble beach as it draws away, ready to crash in again in the form of the next wave. "You could leave a message," I suggest.

"Tell him that his family arrive tomorrow," says the voice.

"His famil-" but I am cut off. The dialling tone is just as antiquated as the phone - a mechanical purring generated somewhere at the exchange. I wonder that such machinery can still be in use. I suppose that there are still places where these things have survived. I put the handset down.

I take the top paper off the stack to the left of the phone:


Dear Adrien. We are concerned that the project is being held back by the lack of suitable metals. Foundries 8, 13, 22 all report zinc shortages, and all other foundries have indicated that their supplies of zinc, while steady at the moment, are unlikely to keep pace with the required output rate. We understand that the logistics of metal ore are not within your current remit, but the urgency of the situation has forced our hand. You are to be reassigned effective the fourth of March (4/3/16) to the mining and refinery group in your sector, where you will be directly responsible for increasing the flow of zinc. We do not have to remind you of the urgency of improvement - it is of the utmost importance that the project be completed on time.

It is typed - flimsy paper, too, so thin that when I hold it up to the light I can read the words through it from the other side. The date is puzzling. 16? That would have been ninety-five years ago, far too early for the rest of the room - it could have been an archive, of course, just because it was at the top of the pile doesn't mean that it was contemporary with the other notes on the desk, or with the phone. But it seems strange nonetheless. The paper is too well preserved.

I look again at the card. I have brought it back with me, this word, from the mysteries of the dream and crystallised it into the mysteries of the real world. Now it is simply one of them: number one, the word Carteill; number two, the date on Adrien's note; number three, this office, connected to the outside world apparently by the technology of the middle of last century, but in which I can still get the Internet on my phone. I wonder if perhaps I have not somehow wandered into a museum display. A curator, perhaps, will be with me at any moment, politely but firmly reminding me that visitors are not allowed to enter the exhibits.

The phone rings again. Again, I answer it, but this time I take the initiative:

"Who is this?"

A pause at the other end, then:

"You'd better leave." A different voice. Male again, but reedy. "You'd better leave quickly."

"Who is this?"

"Carteil," says the voice.

"You're Carteil?"

He does not reply, but I can somehow tell that at the other end of the line he is shaking his head.

"Listen to me," he says eventually. "You are in Adrien Hoffer's office, on the third floor. You got there from street level. Do not go out that way. Go to the stairs. Go down four floors. Turn right at the bottom. Take the second door on the right."

The list of instructions is reeled off mechanically, as though he is reading it from a computer.

"What's through the door?" I ask. Again, the silence and the sense of a shaking head: no. "Why should I leave?"

"They'll be there soon," he says.

"Who'll be here? Are they on the street?" I get up, lifting up the phone receiver so that I can go to the window. The road outside is empty. "Which direction are they coming from?"

"You can't see it," he says. "Now. Go."

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