back to index or onwards, ever onwards
I sat down in the Gozitan bar, playing with my drink, tracing
wet trails over
the patterns in the faded formica of the table. The dusty green
plaster on
the walls had flaked off in places, showing the yellow limestone
beneath,
sometimes, if it had come from the right quarry, with fossil
crinoids frozen
inside.
At first, I found this ubiquitous decay unsettling but on a hot,
clear spring
morning like this, it seemed more as if the buildings were
shedding a shell,
reasserting themselves over decades, discarding their skins,
growing as sea
creatures grow.
Ros was talking to the wife of the owner, who remembered her from
years ago.
I'd never been here before, but it was familiar enough; narrower
than our
living room and only slightly longer, one end open to the street
through a
curtain of plastic beads, one end a counter with a few groceries
for sale, a
small alcove with candles and a madonna, a couple of optics with
whisky. Along
the walls, some shelves, mostly empty, and the occasional
religious picture.
The owner himself was out at the back, pouring our order of wine
into the
mineral water bottles we'd brought. We lived on the dark, strong,
delicious
red farmhouse wine, supplementing the diet with small round
sheeps milk
cheeses, crusty bread, and figs from the tree in the courtyard of
the old
farmhouse we'd borrowed. If you could survive the salty tapwater,
the nightly
power cuts, the lack of plumbing and the flies, you could make a
paradise of
it. At least until you'd read everything.
Ros came back and sat down beside me; we'd have to wait for five
minutes while
the owner got the cheeses from his neighbour.
"What's that?" she said, pointing to a shelf opposite.
On it was a large
ceramic frog, golden-brown with a huge white Buddha belly. It sat
on a green,
thick-veined lily pad, the stem of which had a twisted electrical
cord leading
to a cracked wall socket near the floor. "I mean, look at
its eyes. They're
weird".
Although all of the frog was glazed and glass-shiny, the eyes
were glittering,
different somehow. I recognised it for what it was, although I'd
never seen
one for real before.
"Watch it for a bit, see if you can guess." I said, as
fascinated as she was,
hoping it would work soon. It seemed likely, in this place.
It didn't take long. A fat blimp of a bluebottle rose sleepily
from a table
nearby, and headed directly for the frog. The frog blinked, and
the eyes
moved to follow the fly. There was a whirr, a snap, and the
bluebottle was
gone.
"Oh, that's clever!" Ros said, delightedly. "Must
be better than those
chemical strips that stick the flies to death. A computerised fly
catcher!
Have you seen any in London? Perhaps we could import some?"
"No, you can't import them into Europe", I said,
wondering if another fly
would be so willing to placate my curiosity, "They're
banned, and in America
too."
"That's silly - they can't be worse than the sprays you can
get. What's wrong
with them - they're just computers, right?"
"Sort of. Look..." I got up, and walked over to the
shelf with the golden
frog. I waved a finger about, and saw the eyes following it,
gravely. It
didn't attempt to catch it. "It's bio-electronic. There's a
modified African
frog's brain, and other bits like the tongue and digestive
system, all linked
to a rather basic computer that keeps it warm, oxygenated and
alive. It is
clever. Lasts for years, with almost no maintenance. It's just
that there
are laws against that sort of thing, though not in Taiwan, where
they make it,
or here." I wondered about the logic of banning integrative
monsters in the
only places with the technology to control their production
properly.
"That's terrible... the poor creature. It can't
move..."
"They say they don't grow those parts of the brain. It's
quite a skill,
mutating the creature to grow into the artificial support
machinery and
atrophying the unessential parts. The designers claim that these
include
the consciousness nets, so it can't be cruel, but you know what
the
sanctity of life brigade are like."
The owner had come back, and saw us looking at his golden frog.
He smiled,
pleased, and said something in Maltese. I still hadn't got the
hang of the
local accent, so looked quizzically at Ros.
"He says it's kept the flies down better than anything he's
tried, and we
should get one. He has a friend who sells them. I still think
it's horrible."
"No thanks..." I didn't know why, but I felt something
of Ros' distaste for
the idea. It was just a technology, like any other, and I could
hardly
claim to be against the exploitation of animals. I'm no
vegetarian.
We took the cheese and wine, paid the owner, and after five
minutes of
pleasantries made it out to the heat of mid-morning.
We drove away, leaving the dusty clump of farmhouses behind. The
wife was
feeding the goats, and the owner ambled back to the neighbour's
house.
Inside the bar, the frog watched motes of dust drift, caught in
the little
sunlight that made it through the wooden shutters over the window
in the wall.
It had been left in that position for months, and the scene in
front of it only
betrayed itself when something moved across the field of view.
At the back of the shop, in the alcove, between the candlesticks,
the madonna
blinked.
(c) rg