The Pier began to blink with light; to ping and ding and tinkle; to emit the hot smell of scorched ozone, which mingled on the night breeze with the heavier reek of fried onion and grease-encrusted hot-dog van. Under the Pier, hidden in the gloomy forest of ironmongery, roosting starlings emitted a collective mutter. I walked up the Prom in search of Raspiwtin and found him playing crazy golf. Of all the rituals of the seaside holiday it must be the emptiest. It isn’t crazy; not really. Despite the discordant primary colours painted on the concrete, it isn’t zany or madcap or subversive or anarchic; it doesn’t encroach upon the line separating genius and madness. It is simply dull. The grass is made of cement, which gives no purchase to the ball, and therefore it is impossible to aim with any precision. The ritual survives for one reason only: in our hearts we notice a subtle resonance with our own fates. We too careen around a concrete rink for a while, ping from side to side across a garishly painted world the colours of which betoken fake joys, driven by insane forces, subject to incomprehensible laws and rules in which merit plays no part; eventually, once chance and Brownian motion have exhausted all other possibilities, we drop into a hole and have to hand our putter back to a bearded loon in a kiosk. He ticks a cheap pink scorecard. There is no bar afterwards.
Raspiwtin bent over his putter and lined up his shot with needless precision.
‘Who do you work for?’ I asked.
‘No one any more.’
‘Who did you used to work for?’
‘An organisation.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘In many capacities.’
‘How about naming one?’
‘I have been many things in my time: healer, mystic, prophet, mendicant, heretic, counsellor.’ He stood up and walked towards the hole. ‘If we cannot help one another on our journey through this dark night they call life, what good are we?’ He prepared to putt again.
I grabbed the club and wrenched it out of his surprised hands. I threw it across the concrete floor. ‘Look here, you infuriating mystic in flannel. Since you walked into my life I’ve lost a desk and a door and been thrown violently against a wall by a group of people claiming to be the Aviary. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Naturally, I have heard of the Aviary.’
‘Who are they?’
‘They are part of the Welsh Office.’
‘That tells me nothing.’
Without the golf club to hold, his hands twittered with uncertainty; he reached into his pocket and brought out a pack of Parma Violets. ‘I’m not sure if information regarding the Aviary is relevant to your inquiry.’
‘You don’t get to decide what is and what isn’t. When someone throws me against the wall and threatens much worse, it’s my decision. Either that or there is no inquiry.’
‘If you cancel our arrangement now, you won’t get the ?200 back.’
‘And that’s another thing – you haven’t paid me yet.’
‘I haven’t?’
‘You know damn well you haven’t.’
Raspiwtin smiled.
‘Just start talking. What are you doing in Aberystwyth?’
‘I told you, looking for Iestyn Probert.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘I have grounds to believe he is still alive, having been resurrected by aliens, and that he will return to this area for a rendezvous with them.’
‘So far you have produced no grounds whatsoever apart from a load of gossip and rumour.’
‘I have more substantial grounds –’
‘Where are they?’
‘In my pocket.’
I blinked. ‘In your pocket? Perhaps you might like to take them out.’
‘I do not think the grounds –’
I slapped the pack of Parma Violets out of his hands. He looked taken aback by the sudden violence.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Either you start co-operating a bit or I play crazy golf with your head.’
He stared at me in fear or wonder and reached into his jacket pocket. He brought out an envelope and handed it to me. ‘Be very careful with this. It is a top secret interdepartmental memo from the Aviary dated 1966 detailing the conclusions of their investigations into the Iestyn Probert case. Do not ask how I came to have it in my possession.’
I waved the envelope. ‘But this, you say, is about Iestyn Probert. Back there at Sospan’s you said something different.’
‘I did?’
‘You know damn well you did. Some cock-and-bull story about resurrecting the universe every morning –’
‘Hardly cock-and-bull –’
‘You have two stories, one cock, one bull. They can’t both be true.’
‘Of course they can. It all has to do with what we call proximate and ultimate causes. If I tell you I am hungry and you ask why, I could give two different but not contradictory explanations. I could say, “Because I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” Or I could say, “I am prey to a bodily discomfort resulting from fluctuating levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin,” and I might add that, in truth, my hunger was the result of an evolutionary survival strategy developed to ensure that this particular agglomeration of self-replicating molecules called a human being acquired sufficient fuel to continue the chain of replication. That would be the ultimate as opposed to the proximate cause of my hunger.’
‘Why stop there? Why not go back to the Big Bang?’
‘Because I don’t want to try your patience. I merely wanted to explain that, yes, I am here because I seek Iestyn Probert, but above and beyond that desire lies the landscape of my spiritual desolation, which plays a major role in this particular desire. What I referred to back there at Sospan’s was my
‘Start with the first.’
‘The first . . . the first . . .’ his words trailed off, it seemed that a thought that caused him pain had slid into his consciousness. ‘I guess you could say I am here because of a girl, a love affair that ended tragically, as do they all, I am told.’
‘Finally you make sense.’
‘It may please you to think so, but in truth the fate of this girl was an early chapter in that book whose summation was that nothing makes sense. She was Burmese. I was working among the Karen refugees on the Thai border. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, working as a maid in a household where we can be sure maids from Burma were not treated very well. I used to see her occasionally around the village. There was no one lower on the social ladder than this girl, and yet she smiled often and seemed to me to embody in its purest form the simple piety and meekness that we were told characterised that carpenter’s son from Nazareth. She was not a special girl, there were thousands like her living similar lives of sheer hopelessness, and yet for me at that time she became special. I confess I developed a passion for her that went beyond mere wonder at her simple piety. In truth, she ravished my soul. I flattered myself she found my attentions not unwelcome, and, though not a word had ever passed between us, I fancied that a secret accord had arisen between us, a bond of love silent, unvoiced, but burning in each breast. I arranged for a message to be passed to her, assuring her of my earnest in this matter and sounding her out. She did not reply in kind, for to do so would have been too indiscreet, but the day after she gave me an even more beautiful smile than any she had given before and I knew then my cause was not hopeless. The next day she left town and it was communicated to me that she had gone to visit her parents in Hpasawng to ask their permission in this matter. It was a day’s trek to the border, which was nothing unusual, and she set off at first light carrying with her the money she had earned through six months’ toil. To us it would have been a miserable pittance, perhaps as much as ?50, maybe a bit more. Possibly even less. By evening she had arrived at the border
