The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix Read online

  About the Book

  ‘My name is Raphael Ignatius Phoenix and I am a hundred years old – or will be in ten days’ time, in the early hours of 1st January, 2000, when I kill myself . . .’

  Raphael Ignatius Phoenix has had enough. Born at the beginning of the 20th century, he is determined to take his own life as the old millennium ends and the new one begins. He has The Pill to help him end it all, but before he does he wants to get his affairs in order and put the record straight, and that includes making sense of his own long life – a life that spanned the century.

  And so he decides to write it all down and, eschewing the more usual method of pen and paper, begins to record his story on the walls of the isolated castle that will be his final home.

  Beginning with a fateful first adventure with Emily, the childhood friend who would become his constant companion, Raphael remembers the multitude of experiences, the myriad encounters and, of course, the ten murders he committed along the way . . .

  Here then is one man’s wholly unorthodox account of the twentieth century – or certainly his own, often outrageous, somewhat unreliable and undoubtedly highly individual version of it.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Afterwards

  More Afterwards

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Paul Sussman

  Copyright

  The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix

  Paul Sussman

  For Ezra, Jude and Layla

  FOREWORD

  When Paul’s agent suggested that we revisit an early manuscript that he had written prior to his published novels, my initial reaction was one of guilt: I was Paul’s wife – and I should know more about this book.

  Paul was writing The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix when we first met. It was the mid-Nineties, he had just turned 30, and after a faltering career as an actor was starting to make a name for himself as a journalist and columnist. His writing was being published in magazines, broadsheets and on the radio, and lauded both for its intelligence and witty irreverence.

  Like so many other up-and-coming writers, Paul also harboured ambitions of becoming a published novelist. Evenings and weekends would be spent writing, locked away in the tiny cupboard that he had converted into an office in his flat in Balham. He didn’t talk much about the details of the book, and for the most part I didn’t ask. I was too busy falling in love. And, besides, I had so much faith in this funny, clever man that I simply assumed I would read the finished book on publication.

  But the much yearned for publication never happened – despite Paul’s ambition, talent and enthusiasm for life, he was plagued by self-doubt. Privately, he worried that his writing wasn’t good enough, and an early knock-back from a potential agent prompted the following entry in his journal: ‘Everything I had dreamed of and hoped for has failed. I am a failure. It feels so horrible to say that. But it’s true.’

  Despite finding a new agent who did believe in the book, Paul continued to doubt his ability. I was offered the completed manuscript to read only once – hundreds of loose-leaf A4 sheets stacked in an enormous pile – but a week later Paul decided that I was reading it too slowly and took it away again before I could finish it.

  The prospect of sending the book to publishing houses was almost too much for him to bear: ‘It’s on my mind all the time – that desperate, futile hope that someone will buy it. Not even buy it, just like it. It was better when I’d stuck it in the cupboard and forgotten about it – when I’d given up on it.’

  In the end, that’s what he did. He took the manuscript back from his agent and hid it away. But he didn’t stop writing – he had another idea – an archaeological thriller set in the Egyptian desert, with a Muslim detective – Inspector Khalifa of the Luxor Police – as its central character. Gathering dust in a cupboard, The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix became the book that he talked about coming back to once he had finished with Khalifa. Of course, he never finished with Khalifa – instead he enjoyed phenomenal success with a whole series of thrillers – selling across the globe in over 30 languages, and upwards of 3 million copies.

  It wasn’t until 15 years later that I finally read the unpublished manuscript in its entirety. But this time, there was no Paul to offer my thoughts to. Six months previously, he had suffered a totally unexpected and fatal brain haemorrhage. My world had fallen apart and, still reeling from the shock of losing him, my emotions were jumbled and raw. First, the guilt at not having read the manuscript before, and then the bitter-sweet agony of becoming immersed in his world again – but not being able to reach out and talk to him about it.

  But in The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix I found a very different world from the highly charged, fast pace of his thrillers. As the story of the book’s maverick narrator unfolded, so too did an altogether more humorous, magical, sometimes dark and slightly surreal world. And, in it, Paul’s voice was unmistakable: loud and clear, singing out to me – his offbeat humour, his eye for the most eccentric of details and his wonderfully vivid descriptions. Perhaps more than any of his other books, this is just so recognizably him.

  When Paul’s publishers, Transworld, agreed to publish, I was over the moon – just like Paul, this book was unique and funny yet also beautifully moving. Here was a chance for others to glimpse this side of him and enjoy a very different Paul Sussman novel.

  The challenge of editing the manuscript – along with Simon Taylor, Paul’s editor at Transworld, and his agent, Laura Susijn – was to stay true to Paul’s voice. The process gave my grieving brain some respite. I was able to lose myself in his words – understand how he wove together his complex plots into a story that flowed effortlessly, and appreciate the depth of his characters. All the qualities so admired in his subsequent novels are very much in evidence here.

  Ultimately, we changed very little. A loose end needed tying up, and there was some cutting back where Paul’s fevered imagination had got carried away. As much as possible, I gleaned information from the journals that Paul kept throughout his adult life. They are a fascinating insight into his creative process and, of course – this being Paul – the self-doubt is there from the outset: ‘I am terrified I shall become a man of first chapters – a writer who never gets beyond the opening ideas and paragraphs of a work.’ But like the book he was writing – and so typical of him – there are life-affirming, even laugh-out-loud moments too: ‘Today, at about 10 a.m., I finally finished my first draft . . . I’m pretty happy with the last chapter – it ends on the sort of upbeat I had always envisaged for the book. I didn’t feel euphoric about my achievement . . . but I was contented and quite excited, and went into the bedroom to have a bit of a dance in front of the mirror.’

  I will always be heartbroken that my funny, clever, kind man has gone, but I hope that, by publishing thi
s book, another small part of him can be celebrated and enjoyed by others. In life, Paul had a wonderful way of lifting a room and leaving everybody around him feeling better about themselves. I hope that this book does the same.

  Alicky Sussman, London, October 2013

  CHAPTER ONE

  THIS IS GOING to be the longest suicide note in history. A titanic epitaph. A monstrous obituary. A real rolling spouting blue-whale bloody whopper of a confession. And since it’s going to end with The Pill, I might as well start that way too.

  Small and white and round, like a powdery tear, with no obvious defining features save a slight nick in its otherwise perfect circumference, The Pill was made by Emily’s father, a pharmacist in turn-of-the-century London. It is not, admittedly, on the face of it, an object to particularly capture the imagination. Certainly not one to start as extraordinary a story as I shall forthwith be recounting. As with so many things in my long and convoluted life, however, there is more to The Pill than meets the eye. It is, you see, despite its bland and unassuming exterior, absolutely deadly, its constituent parts – one and a half grains of strychnine, one and half grains of arsenic, half a grain of salt of hydrocyanic acid and half of a grain of crushed ipecacuanha root – guaranteeing a swift, painless and permanent demise to any who might happen to swallow them. Which is exactly what I shall be doing in ten days’ time, washed down with a glass of fine, blood-red claret (a Latour ’66 perhaps? Or maybe a ’70).

  I have, to this day, no certain knowledge as to precisely when The Pill was made, nor for what specific purpose. What I can tell you is that it was there the first time I ever visited Emily’s home, resplendent on a small glass dish in the poisons cabinet in her father’s pharmacy. And it was still there four years later, on 1st January 1910, the afternoon of my tenth birthday, when, aided, abetted and encouraged by Emily, I stole it. (Oh there are far worse crimes to follow!)

  The day we purloined The Pill was, if memory serves me right, a Sunday. A fine, windy Sunday, with a smell of woodsmoke and roast-chestnuts in the air, and the clatter of hansom cabs on the London cobbles. It being my birthday I had been invited to Emily’s home for the afternoon, where we had eaten a large celebratory tea of cream cakes and crumpets and then – on my instigation – set off around the house for an energetic game of hide-and-seek. Emily had had a nasty fever over Christmas, and was still feeling a little weak, so soon tired of traipsing up and down the stairs as I snuck between hiding places.

  ‘Let’s go downstairs to Father’s shop,’ she said, leaning on the bannister as she caught her breath. ‘We’re bound to find something interesting there.’

  Her father’s pharmacy occupied the ground floor of their house, and was closed for the day, it being New Year. Normally the shop was strictly off limits, but since its proprietor was out for the afternoon, and Emily’s governess, Miss Wasply, had retired to her room to write letters to her eight sisters, there was no one to stop us having a nose around.

  ‘If anyone finds us we’ll say we heard a noise and came to investigate,’ advised Emily. ‘Just let me do the talking.’

  We had, of course, been in the shop before, but always in the company of an adult. Alone, it took on an altogether more thrilling aspect; an Aladdin’s cave of brightly coloured jars and bottles stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling, each with the name of its contents emblazoned on the front in tall gold lettering (Bermuda Arrowroot; Violet Powder; Chlorate of Potash; Extract of Henblane, etc.). Glass cabinets displayed the brand-name medicines of the day – Eno’s Fruit Salts, Page Woodcock’s Wind Pills, Jacob Townsend’s American Sarsaparilla – whilst tall, swan-necked carboys glowed luminously and alluringly at either end of the long mahogany counter. A pair of mirrors on opposite walls reflected the shop between them into infinity.

  ‘Don’t break anything,’ said Emily sternly. ‘And don’t put anything in your mouth, especially from the bottles with the ridged glass. They’re dangerous.’

  We pulled down a couple of jars from the more accessible shelves and sniffed their contents, and opened a tin of scented Russian bear’s grease pomade, some of which I smeared on my hair. Then we crept into the workroom at the back of the shop and had a poke around amongst the mortars and scales and tincture presses and root cutters. Emily spent some time fiddling with a teat pipette. I found a large Büchner Funnel, through which I blew as though it were a bugle.

  ‘Ssssh!’ hissed my companion. ‘Miss Wasply will hear us and we’ll be in all sorts of trouble. Put it down and come back in the shop.’

  We had a rummage through the labelled rosewood drawers lining the wall behind the counter, and spent some time playing with the till, standing on tiptoe and depressing its keys as though they were the notes of some large musical instrument. Then we sniffed a bottle of sal volatile, which made our eyes water, and sent us both into a fit of coughing.

  ‘What did you get for your birthday?’ inquired Emily when we had recovered from our sputterings.

  ‘Some chocolate from Mrs Eggs,’ I replied, ‘and a special bible from Father.’

  ‘What’s special about it?’

  ‘Well, you can pull out the New Testament and wear it as a sun hat. He invented it himself. Thinks it’s going to make a lot of money. But then that’s what he always thinks about his inventions.’

  (More about my father later.)

  We opened a cupboard behind the counter and pulled out a curious-looking, pump-like contraption, labelled ‘Dr Eugisier’s No. 2 Mechanical Reservoir Enema’.

  ‘What do you think this is for?’ I asked.

  ‘Putting out fires, I think,’ said Emily. ‘Better put it back or you might break it.’

  I did as she ordered, and wandered to the far end of the counter to examine a set of graduated glass dispensing measures.

  ‘If you could have anything in the world for your birthday,’ asked my companion suddenly, ‘what would it be?’

  There were, of course, many things in the world I would have liked at that particular moment, such as a pistol, or a sailing yacht, or a machine that would do all my schoolwork for me. A Rudge-Whitworth bicycle, of the type currently advertised in all the papers, would have been nice, as would a wireless, or a set of Siege of Mafeking toy soldiers. One thing, however, stood out head and shoulders above the rest – had, indeed, stood out head and shoulders since the day I’d first seen it four years previously – and I named it now.

  ‘The Pill,’ I replied, crossing to the poisons cabinet and pressing my nose against its thick glass front. ‘That’s what I’d have. That’s definitely what I’d have. I wish I could have it.’

  Emily looked at me in surprise and then, turning to the rosewood drawers behind her, opened one labelled ‘Rhubarb Powder’ and inserted her hand therein, removing it a moment later with a small brass key clutched between her fingers. This she wriggled into the lock of the poisons cabinet, turning it two full revolutions before easing open the door and removing the small glass dish on which The Pill sat. ‘Do you want to touch it?’ she asked, smiling, holding the dish towards me.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘If you want. Be careful, though. Very careful.’

  I held out my hand, and she tipped The Pill into my palm, where it sat like a dull white stigmata. I closed my hand about it, making a cage of my fingers as though to hold in a dragonfly, or a moth.

  ‘I never thought I’d get to touch it,’ I said, awed. ‘I thought I’d only ever be able to look.’

  ‘Don’t put it near your mouth,’ urged Emily. ‘It’s very poisonous.’

  ‘I do so wish I could have it,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so much in my life. It’s so . . .’

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘Not really that, more . . .’

  ‘Magical?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Magical. It’s like a magic thing. The start of great adventures. I do so wish I could have it.’

  Emily stared at me, her head tilted to one side, a quizzical smile pulling at t
he edges of her mouth.

  ‘Is that really what you’d choose? Of all the things you could have in the whole world you’d really have that pill?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Definitely. I’ve always liked it, ever since the day I first came here. It makes me feel powerful just to hold it. Like I can do anything I want. Silly, I know.’

  Emily raised her eyebrows – she had very fair eyebrows, and very thin ones, like snippets of golden string – and tugged at a golden forelock, apparently deep in thought. For a moment she was silent. Then, suddenly, she leant her head close to mine and whispered, in tones of utmost confidentiality:

  ‘I have a plan.’

  Even now, so many long and wicked years later, an old bent man tightrope-walking around the very cusp of life, I can still feel the excitement that rippled down my spine when Emily uttered those words.

  ‘A plan?’

  ‘Yes, a plan. To get you The Pill without Father knowing. Are you game?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ I whispered. ‘I’m game for anything! What are we going to do?’

  ‘Follow me,’ said Emily. ‘And do exactly as I say.’

  She held out her hand for The Pill, which, once I had passed it over, she replaced on its dish, sliding the latter back on to its shelf in the cabinet. She then led me upstairs to her bedroom, where, falling to her knees, she thrust her hands beneath her bed and pulled out a large tin of Farley’s Mints.

  ‘Are mints in the plan?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘Mints are the plan,’ she replied. ‘Look.’

  She shook the tin twice, its contents rattling within, and then removed the lid. Inside were some two dozen sweets, small and white and round. I guessed her intentions immediately.

  ‘They’re just like The Pill!’ I cried.

  ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘We’re going to switch them. There’s work to be done yet though.’

  We took one of the mints and scampered downstairs again, hearts thudding at the audacity of our scheme. First we went into the kitchen, where we used a filleting knife to cut a small nick on the edge of the mint, like that on the side of The Pill itself. (What, I have often wondered, was the cause of this small chink in the casing of my death?) We then returned to the pharmacy, where, hands trembling with excitement, we swapped the real pill with the fake one, returning the latter to its shelf in the poisons cabinet and closing and locking the door behind it. Even up close it was impossible to tell the difference between the two.