“Halo (Part 2)” is the second of a two-part short story for Persona non grata, a bilingual column by Jason Barker exclusively for Communis. Read Part 1 here.
That night I dreamt of Bono. He turned up at my apartment on a unicycle with a suitcase full of Reader’s Digests.
“Can I get you a coffee, tea?” I offered.
“No,” he said, handing me the unicycle. “You can put some air in that tire, though.” He spoke in a weird accent; not Irish, more like Portuguese.
Casually I flung the unicycle out the window. Bono didn’t react, busied himself with his suitcase. He selected one of the Reader’s Digest volumes and opened it on a map of Portugal. “Now that’s where I want to retire to,” he said.
“Beautiful,” I replied, before realising I was only looking at a map. I became agitated and seized the book. “I think you’d better leave,” I told my guest.
“Well,” said Bono, “since that’s how you treat an old friend, I think I better had.” At which point he flew out the window. I felt consoled by the fact that I got to keep the Reader’s Digests.
***
The official unveiling of the Netanyahu statue had been set for 14 July. Bastille Day. Quite what they were going to unveil I shuddered to think. On 5 May 2018 the people of Trier had awoken to discover that a 20-foot bronze statue of Karl Marx had landed on their town, courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party: a bad taste erection that couldn’t have looked more kitsch pointing through the roof of an Ibizan massage parlour. A Trier resident could at least grasp the rationale, and hardly begrudge the local gift shop a run on little red books and cuddly toys. But what trade was Netanyahu’s statue dealing in? Stolen land? Stolen organs? Ashtrays carved from children’s skulls? Jewelry made from unborn foetuses?
It struck me that I was responsible for all this. I’d set this ghost train in motion. I’d always had myself down as a creative thinker; but in this case creativity had gone off the rails. No one—as far as I knew—had been pulling my strings, sending me secret instructions or poisoning my tap water. I was still thinking freely. But someone in power sure knew how to seize an opportunity.
By 12 July all the dignitaries had been confirmed: a special delegation from Israel, naturally, with the German Chancellor in tow; the UK PM; Italy’s Il Presidente; Arab royalty; and not forgetting America’s own Prince Regent, Barron Trump, standing in for his mentally incapacitated father. Rumours that the Leader of the Free World® would “appear” at the ceremony in the form of an AI-avatar ultimately would come to naught.
Then, the night before, the phone rang. “Did you get my messages?” said Eve in her Dublin accent. “This is going to be huge.”
“Eve? Is that you?” She sounded vaguely normal, explained she was trying to give up smoking and that the last time we’d met she’d been coming down off nicotine patches. Hence her weird behaviour.
“You and three hundred thousand other people,” I said. “It’s all good. Just tell me one thing: why is this gig being held at night?”
“It’s for TV,” she explained. “The Eiffel Tower always looks way better at night. You wouldn’t get the sparkle in the daytime.”
“I get that,” I said. “But what are we? Druids? Aren’t we supposed to be an enlightened culture? Why this obsession with darkness?”
Eve had two tickets for the VIP section of the pop-up auditorium. “We’ll be sitting next to Ma and Pa,” she told me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Pa Bono no doubt would be dressed in his black leathers and wearing Ray-Bans. Sure. Right. Was she out of her fucking mind? Me, the guy responsible for bumping off the Israeli Prime Minister. And Bono. And Nigel Farage. And the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, an expert in human dismemberment. And enough fascists to fill an Arkansas S&M club.
“Great!” I said.
Since her softening toward the pro-genocide convention, I had to tread carefully with Eve. It was a delicate combination of bringing my book deal to fruition and staying out of prison long enough to finish it. I had to keep the Bonos on side. Let’s face it, there was no one in the known universe who that smarmy little so-and-so couldn’t charm. He had every authoritarian dictator in the world on speed dial. As an up-and-coming creative artist, you’d be insane to give Bono Vox the brush off, even if you wanted to. Otherwise, you’d just as likely end up with a horse’s head on your pillow. I’d been made an offer I couldn’t refuse, and refusing it would only draw unwanted attention to myself. My motto: avoid suspicion by entering the lion’s den—of guilt. What a scintillating chapter that was going to make.
But was I being set up?
It was getting late and judging by the improved air quality the CRS had been given the night off. I gazed through my skylight up at the stars. Something was in the air, and it wasn’t the lack of tear gas.
It was then that I received the knock at the door. Instinctively I flew to the window, before calmly bowing to the inevitable.
“Eamonn,” said Bono, grasping my hand with both of his and gliding inside. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “Great. Nice to see you.”
He was alone, just him apparently, wearing none of the fancy apparel you’d associate with rock star royalty. His heels were flat, the jacket workmanlike, the shades lightly tinted. He was small and inconspicuous, exactly like the travelling salesman in my dream. But no unicycle.
“So! Eamonn—”
“Can I get you a coffee, tea?” I cut in, recalling the line from my dream. He glared at me, like I’d blasphemed. Perhaps I’d said something foolish without realising. This was promising to be a real Freudian encounter.
“I’m sorry but I don’t have long,” he said and sat down on a chair I didn’t recognise. “I’ve been meaning for us to have a wee chinwag, Eamonn.”
My name wasn’t Eamonn. But it was fine. Just go with the flow, I nodded. Don’t give in to the mind games. He hesitated, no doubt anticipating a full confession. I’d been in lockdown for weeks, seeing no one, not speaking. Except with Eve.
“You’re friends with Memphis,” he said, nudging the tassels of my Afghan rug with his right plimsole. “Eve Sunnyday Iris Hewson. Lucky for her we’d already played Albuquerque on that tour.”
I smiled, wondering if this was going to be a conversation woven exclusively from tabloid yarns. That was surely his default mode, the modus operandi for all his business dealings. Why give away any personal information when you can trade successfully in freely available gossip?
“The thing is,” said Bono, crossing and uncrossing his legs, “tomorrow’s the big night. Le grand spectacle.” He leaned toward me. “And you’re our guest. Eve’s—more importantly.”
A car backfired, rattling the windows. The explosion was so loud and unexpected that Bono, who up until that point had been as cool as his airbrushed image, sprang up and let out an involuntary “shit”.
“Probably just the police,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah,” he said, still quivering. At least now I could rule out a sting operation; either that or Bono was a far better actor than he made out. In any case I hadn’t done anything wrong. If I had then why would this fully paid-up member of the Establishment do me the honour of a home visit? That was the problem. He wouldn’t.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said, pivoting dexterously around on his chair.
“I had wondered, yes,” I said, thinking this might go on indefinitely.
“Had you now?” said Bono with a clownish smirk. He reminded me of MacPhisto, his alter-ego from U2’s Zoo TV Tour.
“Shall we just cut the crap and cut to the chase?” I should have interjected, but remained composed. I could bide my time, string it out until the cows came home. I could certainly drive a hard bargain. Up there, through my skylight, was nothing. The starry heavens above me were a moral void within me; as they were between us, me and MacPhisto.
“Eamonn,” said MacPhisto, making direct eye contact for the first time, “would you describe yourself as pro-Palestine?”
Another explosion went off, not as close by this time; but I could feel the night drawing in and the room being slowly submerged in darkness. In truth I couldn’t rightly say what Eamonn thought. But it was difficult to imagine him or anyone who wasn’t a brain in a vat not being pro.
“I’m pro-peace,” I decided.
The interrogator sat motionless in the dark, didn’t even blink, although all I could make out now was the faint reflection of my own face in his sunglasses.
“Basically,” I resumed, struggling to make so much as a chink in my opponent’s armour, “I’m pro-life. Except—” I hesitated, probing for a way in. “When it’s a matter of life and death—” I paused again. “What I mean is: when I’m obliged to take matters in hand. In the interests of my own person. If you catch my drift.”
As a creative artist who was striving to grasp their subject it was only natural to sound vague. I mean—Jesus Christ—if I’d actually known how to express myself clearly at this stage then the book would already be written, and we could have signed on the dotted line right there and then.
Bono exhaled like a headmaster mulling over what to do with a troublesome pupil. It was the situation that was troublesome, not the pupil; a question of what action might be conceivable without tearing up the rule book.
“I see,” he said. “I see.”
I took it metaphorically, since the room was now fully immersed, without the slightest glimmer of light, the slightest contour, escaping. As for the stars above, they were faint pinpricks in dark fabric; black holes collapsing under their own weight, and receding from view at light speed.
“I think we’re on the same page, Eamonn,” said Bono, whose voice emanated from somewhere else, no longer in front of me, rebounding from the far corner of the room.
Hopefully we were, I thought. Although he’d have to stop calling me Eamonn. I was good at reading poker faces, but obviously had nothing to go on here. The only image that shone through in the featureless confines of my grubby little flat was that castle in the Scottish Highlands, the one with my name on it.
“I’m influenced by Roddy Doyle,” I said, addressing the voice in the dark to ends unknown. “And Seamus Heaney.”
There was a slight pause before, “I’m hearing you, Eamonn. I hear you. The Lord moves in mysterious ways. You’ve a great story to tell. We have all the time in the world.” The disembodied voice then broke effortlessly into song. The voice—the Bono Vox—sounded more familiar now, like an old friend: the reassuring crackle of my adolescence on record.
“I’m not a militant,” I said, aware that my invisible interlocutor had vanished. I stumbled to my feet and fumbled for a light switch. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and, realising he was behind me, turned to face The Voice. He imparted something, almost whispered it, but there was nothing more to be said. He’d given all the assurances I needed, whilst barely saying a word. It was all down to me now.
***
In the cold light of day things looked a lot different. I’d exposed a problem which no amount of dark innuendo could disguise: Eve. Did The Voice have any idea what she’d been going through? Had he even spoken with her lately? Not to her, as if to one of his publicists: with her. It made me question precisely what last night’s cryptic conversation had been all about. No wonder she resented him.
What The Voice should have acknowledged is exactly how Eve and I characterised our own relationship: “You and Eve, you’re like two peas in a pod. It’s hard to separate you out. You’re safe inside. But there’s just no prizing you apart.” Indeed. We were inseparable. We were Bonnie and Clyde. Which meant this was a joint venture. Not just the book, the screenplay, the merchandising. The “story” was our lives, however we chose to live it. Irrespective of the fuck ups we’d made. The sole guilt lay in placing our trust in people whose interests were purely selfish and insincere.
But if this was a life story—one not so much bigger than me, Eve and the comeuppance of a bad guy, but longer-lasting, more durable—then how was I meant to write it? Clearly the story hadn’t ended yet. For all I knew we hadn’t even reached the end of the first chapter. Perhaps that’s what His Master’s Voice had meant with his Louis Armstrong impression. We have all the time in the world. Was it a trilogy he wanted?
I had this deal in the bag. But I desperately needed to get something down on paper, and fast: bash out a proper opening chapter, never mind the flimsy dross I’d been tinkering with. There was that “How to Write a Mystery” book lying around somewhere, with essays by Naomi Hirahara and a bunch of others. I retrieved it from underneath the fridge and had just started reading the section titled “Naming the Sleuth and Likability” when the phone rang.
I screeched so hard that it made my tonsils hurt: “Allô!”
“Jesus! Are you OK?” said Eve.
“Fine,” I replied, “just a bit hoarse.”
“Dad came round to see you last night, didn’t he?”
I sidestepped the question. “What do you think of this as the title for the opening chapter of our book?—”
“It’s our book now, is it?” said Eve, seemingly unfazed by the prospect of joint authorship. She was a natural storyteller, so if I had to make do with just the one castle then so be it. She contrived to change the subject: “Anyway, don’t you know what time it is?”
“Eve,” I said, muddling my way through the mystery handbook, “we have all the time in the world.”
“No, we don’t,” she shot back. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”
***
“You look sick in that outfit,” said Eve, twiddling with her smartphone.
“Thanks. You might have got me something a bit more colourful, though. What’s with those Ray-Bans?” I asked. “A bit retro for you, aren’t they?”
On reaching the junction of Boulevard de Sébastopol and Quai de la Mégisserie the paratroopers waved us through the VIP lane and onto the Pont de Notre-Dame. I may have looked “sick” in my jet black Dior uniform, but as we rumbled over the cobblestone streets of the Île de la Cité I very nearly was, and only managed to avoid decorating our limo’s plush interior with langoustine and crème brûlée by unbuttoning my trousers and blowing off with gay abandon.
“Ray-Bans suck,” Eve said, diplomatically ignoring the smell. “It’s my ‘one night only’ look. I won’t tell you what they’re paying me.”
“Exactly,” I said, opening my notebook and scrawling FLEURS DU MAL in giant spidery handwriting in the margin. “Not long now and the boot’ll be well and truly on the other foot. We’ll be turning the sponsors away.”
Eve continued her doom scrolling.
“What about backstory?” I mused. “Do you think I should delve into my past? You could always delve into yours,” I said, thinking I was bound to get a rise from my brooding companion before long. But Eve remained distant as the stars and silent as the grave. We pulled up within range of the Eiffel Tower where she exited the limo and slammed the door without saying a word, a heartless gesture which confirmed that not only did I have no desire to be here, but that I was going to gain nothing from this night’s encounter.
The atmosphere was thick with asphyxiating perfume and foreign accents, a testosterone blend of German and Hebrew, with Arabian notes wafting in and out of almost every conversation. It sounded like the aphasic hubbub of an international arms fair. And yet there was nothing to see, save the jagged silhouette of the pop-up auditorium on the east side of the promenade, set before the grandiose absence of the Eiffel Tower, looking resplendent in total darkness.
“What about the statue?” I asked Eve, who I took for the woman standing next to me. “Weren’t they installing it on the other side?” But Eve had already found her place in the auditorium, and was furiously imploring me to hurry up. As I sat down next to her, blindly shaking hands with a woman who must have been Mrs Bono, a shaft of light descended on me. I froze, petrified that my past had finally caught up with me. The crowd bristled with excitement, and I squirmed awkwardly, their grinning faces all laughing in mine. It wasn’t me the light had fallen on, but the empty seat to my right.
A giant video screen exploded in a blaze of audiovisual confusion. I understood now why Eve had chosen Ray-Bans. From this raucous assault on the senses not much was obtained. This evening’s programme was being proudly partnered by El Al Airlines. The montage of supermodels gyrating on superyachts with an unidentified “riviera” as backdrop probably counted as genocidal intent. I closed my eyes and ears to this offensive racket, and trusted in forces unknown to get me through the next hour of soft porn and historical revisionism without either passing out or throwing up on the Arab royalty in the next row.
A James Bond soundtrack clunked into gear and the video screen switched to live broadcast mode. A helicopter zoomed overhead and a few hundred metres away the world’s top secret agent began pursuing a fiendish supervillain along the River Seine on water skis. The audience let out a squeal of delight on seeing the supervillain up close. It was Bono in his MacPhisto guise: gold lamé suit, Ray-Bans, white make-up and red horns. Of course, it wasn’t really him. When you’re Bono you don’t need to “act”; you simply lease out whatever slice of your image rights the occasion demands. The sky’s the limit. Or rather: hell’s the limit. There was nothing separating high and low anymore, whether on the cultural or moral plane, a fact which brought home what I’d been trying desperately to ignore from the start.
How pitifully naive I’d been to believe that Bono of all people would be interested in my “book”—that any crumb of this “sick” world revolved around me. I had absolutely nothing to show for my great service to humanity, for ridding the world of just another vile scumbag, not even the dubious “moral” consolation of having “learned something” from the experience.
I felt a small hand clasp mine, as if my partner in crime were trying to tell me something. But I couldn’t penetrate the Ray-Bans or work out what she wanted to say. Meanwhile, to the mad delight of the masses, James Bond had been vanquished by MacPhisto, who was now heading this way. His final trick on water skis was an implausible jump and pirouette over the Pont d’Iéna, which he accomplished to incredulous gasps and shrieks. On gaining dry land he bounded up a makeshift runway that led to the esplanade and, once there, produced a remote-control device which could only mean one thing: Armageddon.
Holding the device aloft, the fiendish MacPhisto brought his claw slowly toward the detonator. However, before the vile act could be executed, humanity’s nemesis was no more: finished off in a melodramatic explosion. To be replaced by the man for whom standing in for Satan had become as easy as falling off a log. Or the Eiffel Tower.
It was Benjamin Netanyahu. Bolder than brass and back from the grave, there he stood, dressed all in white. His illumination to our shade; his sun to our dark matter. A perturbed hum went through the audience, most of whom—myself included—felt unsure whether we were seeing properly or whether this was still part of the act. But it didn’t take long for the shock to wear off and for people to accept that it couldn’t possibly be fake, whatever that meant. This was the end of the drama, the final curtain call. Perhaps even the End of Drama itself.
I couldn’t feel Eve’s hand anymore, even though it hadn’t moved. “Did you know about this?” I demanded, ripping off her Ray-Bans. “You did, didn’t you? You knew.”
“I only found out yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you. He wouldn’t let me.”
That might have been true, but it didn’t seem to count for much, or touch anything essential. Then, to wild applause, He arrived. As Bono gladhanded and backslapped his way to the vacant seat beside me—pausing en route to accept a cigar from Nigel Farage—I began to piece things together.
The French had initially had no idea. The Bibi clone had been covertly planted in Paris by Mossad—and who knows how many other “sleepers” in world capitals—with the express aim of provoking an “anti-semitic” attack. Once achieved, the Israelis could then use their leverage, at various choke points, to demand compensation: economic and diplomatic concessions, and a grand symbolic gesture to correct the travesty and indignity of their prime minister’s murder on foreign soil.
Bono had acted as the Zionists’ chief cultural attaché, their record plugger, cheerleader and behind the scenes fixer. But why had he questioned my “pro-Palestine” sympathies? After all, all talk of antisemitism, along with the nationwide manhunt for the suspect, had dried up within days. If that peculiar line of inquiry had been pursued, then people in high places would have ended up with more than just egg on their faces, once Netanyahu’s murder had been exposed as Zionist fabrication. In the event, Bibi would settle for the statue, sidestepping any unwanted questions, thus cementing Israel’s relationship with the French Republic in stone.
Bono sat down and gave me a little nudge and a wink. I thought about nudging him back, or regaling him with a sarcastic comment about his water skiing. But I couldn’t raise myself above contempt; more importantly, I still had his cryptic cliche turning over in my mind. We have all the time in the world.
The roars quietened and the man in the white suit—this unimpeachable statesman, this legend, peacemaker, redeemer of lost peoples, builder of new worlds and brighter tomorrows—began his speech: a mixture of Zionist platitudes and the new diplomacy, tarted up to sound as inoffensive as the Teddy Bears’ Picnic. The Lord certainly moves in mysterious ways. Sitting there, feeling as numb as a tramp on smack who’d just been run over by an Israeli tank, I failed to suppress an involuntary laugh. Immediately Bono followed suit, then Eve, her mother, and the Arabs in the next row. Before long the entire auditorium had caught the bug. Having no choice but to join in, Bibi abandoned his speech.
In the rapidly changing circumstances, I could have probably warmed to the Cult of the Supreme Being. If that’s what it took then I could have swallowed my pride, eaten shit, and let them rub my face in the dirt. There was no muck without brass. Perhaps there was an angle to this uncanny valley that Bono hadn’t thought up yet. Perhaps Eve and I, aka Bonnie and Clyde, had more tricks up our sleeves than Albus Dumbledore.
The laughter abruptly ceased. Somebody resembling Lurch from the Addams Family lumbered over to the podium—an oversized creature who must have been Trump’s offspring—and the unveiling ceremony began.
There’d been a sort of unspoken rule among Parisians not to speculate about what exactly was going on behind that all-concealing black tarpaulin. The anxiety was tangible: on the metro, the boulevards, anywhere within the tower’s zone of interest, from Montparnasse to the Bois de Boulogne. The atmosphere was leaden, the spectacle repulsive. Like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Don’t look at it. At what? There was nothing to see. Eiffel’s masterpiece had gone missing, albeit like an object in Poe’s fiction: missing in plain sight.
Following the murder, it was no doubt the nation’s collective trauma that willed people to keep soldiering on, turn a blind eye to the fact that their prized monument had been cloaked in mystery, and trust in time, the healer of all wounds. The iconic tower had been no stranger down the years to nefarious designs. But the Nazis had left no lasting impression, Hitler’s home movies were trifling, and the V for Victory sign emblazoned on the edifice—a two-fingered salute aimed at Winston Churchill—would merely spur the Resistance on. History proved that we had all the time in the world. The Eiffel Tower would reappear as the city’s panoptic overseer.
But on this occasion Time was already off stage, waiting in the wings, with far more ambitious and far-reaching plans. What Parisians didn’t know was that the French authorities had themselves contrived to ignore the furious goings on and clandestine construction work, and certainly had no idea what, if anything, was being prepared behind the black tarpaulin. Or at least that’s what everyone from the local mayor to the President of the Republic would later try to claim.
And now the mystery was about to be solved, or consigned to history’s dustbin, courtesy of those Furies of the Underworld. In a coordinated countdown, Lurch flicked the switch, restoring light to Paris and the city to its skyline; at which point the black tarpaulin descended on what was now the world’s largest statue, like a cobra shaking off the remains of its former self.
Jason Barker is peace and reconciliation
Featured image: Bono as MacPhisto during U2’s Zoo TV Tour 1992-93. Courtesy of RollingStone.
