Free What Lot's Wife Saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

that we summon all the Star Bearers, plus Siccouane. He shouted at Bianca to hurry since every moment of delay would further incriminate us. I was forced to agree with him, although the thought of filling the room with Purple Stars nauseated me.
    It was obvious that I had been delaying to somehow put off my punishment, to try and conceive of any way to reduce its severity, but, in truth, I couldn’t escape it. The Seventy-Five were sure to order me to leave the Colony. The Governor’s widow doesn’t retire gracefully with a pension, she gets fired. Bera had explained that to me so that I wouldn’t dream of his death. I would have to surrender all the keys of the Palace, all my clothes, my jewellery, my stockings, my combs, all the multitude of things that defined my existence. Everything had been bought with the Consortium’s money and belonged to it, because it never gave, it only lent. My only possession was my body, and quite naked at that, and I used to make it available to Montenegro at nights to give myself the illusion of ownership. Along with me, the other Purple Stars bearers would also lose their privileges, and that, at least, brought me some satisfaction. I wasn’t alone in this nightmare.
    Siccouane had been the first arrival and had tiptoed into the room as if he was walking in a minefield. Siccouane knew he was expendable because even though he had no Star, the fate of the Personal Secretary was irrevocably linked with that of the Governor. He didn’t ask us anything, perhaps because he wouldn’t believe anything we said anyway. He removed his hat and began muttering to himself that at ten to ten the previous night, as he had been leaving the Palace, he had seen the Governor sitting on his veranda in his pyjamas, idly fingering the key at his neck. At ten to ten the Governor had been alive and getting ready for bed. In front of us the ceremonial uniform was buttoned to perfection, there was no crease in his trousers, his patent leather boots shone and the peacock-feathered cap adorned his head. These gave his death an incongruous formality and raised questions that no one had yet dared voice.
    Since Siccouane had seen him on the veranda at night, I’d not been the last one to see Bera alive, and that came as no surprise. Our bedrooms were distant from each other, we met at his invitation only; sometimes weeks would go by without me seeing him, especially since we used separate staircases and different passageways of the Palace and generally spent a good deal of time in our rooms. We’d shared a roof but not a life. He’d been distant, inscrutable, unpredictable, both as a ruler and as a husband. In the twenty years of our marriage, I’d never understood his moods, known what he had been thinking or could guess what his next move or utterance would be. Every cell of his body had been dedicated to the Seventy-Five. Nothing of his had ever belonged to me, there’d been nothing that he’d done on my account, no bit of himself had ever been offered to me. I couldn’t guess why he’d married me, just as I couldn’t now guess why he’d died. Had he been ill? I hadn’t noticed any sign of it.
    Next to join us was Judge Bateau, gown covered in dust, eyes glazed from alcohol and hands that shook. Captain Drake was with him as the two had met on the way here. Bateau stared at the corpse and clenched his fists. “That’s all we needed! That’s all we needed!” he repeated, as if scolding the deceased for surprising us like that. He pointed at the ceremonial uniform and asked who’d dressed him up. I explained that that was just as I’d found him at dawn. The suit had just been tailored for him to wear at the anniversary reception in two weeks. Perhaps he’d removed it from its cellophane wrapping to try it on. The wardrobe doors were shut, however, and the whole room was in impeccable order: there were no clothes flung about or shoes on the floor. His pyjamas were folded away in the drawer, his