‘Think of it as part of the trick,’ I said. ‘Moholy wants us to have the bones of Jesus.’
‘You therefore have to act with total confidence,’ Rifka said over her shoulder, before skimming another effortless stone, ‘with God on your side.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Helena said, pointedly ignoring Rifka and lowering her voice. ‘I’m supposed just to walk in.’
‘Ring the bell. Moholy opens the door, and invites you inside. He’s dying to know about Jesus. Somehow, as you go in, the door gets left slightly open, or on the latch.’
‘Very scientific.’
‘I’m not being scientific. And you’ll have Rifka with you, as back-up.’
‘Go through it one more time.’
Jesus had no fear. Rifka was right about that. Helena would therefore tell Moholy that I’d escaped the tram-lines by the grace of God. After collecting the bones from their hiding-place, a secret I’d kept to myself, I’d been delayed by the demonstration. I couldn’t help it: I’d become personally involved, just as Jesus would have done. However, when the main events and rallies of the day were over, I’d deliver Jesus to Moholy as promised. I was a man of my word, who couldn’t lie. I was surely on my way over, even as Helena spoke, any moment now I’d be at the villa with Jesus.
‘And then I arrive,’ I said, ‘hopefully with the bones.’
‘I won’t ever actually say they’re the bones of Jesus,’ Helena said. ‘Just the bones we found in Calvin’s grave.’
‘Good thinking. Because when he tests them to the 1500s, then all of the above also applies to Calvin.’
‘And what about Rifka?’
‘I don’t think we have a choice. If she’d wanted, she could already have ruined everything, several times over. I don’t know why, but she hasn’t. Let’s hope for the best. Perhaps she genuinely wants to help.’
About half an hour later, in the full dark of night, all three of us were crouching behind a bush in Moholy’s garden, looking through foliage at the windows of his huge downstairs salon, its indoor light radiating yellow over the crushed white gravel of the drive. From the kit-bag, I offered Helena a fragment of Burton, as an aid to feeling urbane and socially at ease.
‘Thanks, Jay, but no. I prefer to stay as myself.’
She stood up, rubbed her hands down her jeans, then was crunching over the gravel towards the door of the house, as determined and fearless as Jesus. Rifka followed just behind, like a disciple. It was nicely done. Helena reached the step. She rang the bell. Moholy came to the door. He invited them inside. The door closed firmly behind them.
They were supposed to leave the door open. That was vital to the plan.
Remembering my graveyard training, I crept back to the gates over the quiet grass, and crossed over where the gravel gave way to tarmac. I was now on the house side of the drive, where a line of white-painted rocks marked the border between lawn and gravel. I weighed a rock in my hand, and crept silently to the corner of the house. The silver Mercedes was parked beyond the doorway. I took careful aim, threw the rock at it, and missed.
Nobody came from the house to investigate.
I threw a bigger rock, which clanged noisily off the bonnet. No one came out. I picked up the biggest rock I could find, marched noisily over the gravel, lifted it in both hands above my head, and smashed it down into the windscreen, which blanched and crumpled.
Rifka came out as I was composing myself, brushing dust and grass from my shoulders. She looked at the car windscreen, and frowned.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, calling the news back into the house. ‘Kids, probably.’
When she went back in, she left the double door slightly open. Right second time.
After a decent pause, I ducked inside the warmth of the house, and sidled past the open doorway of the salon, where some distance away Moholy was making drinks. With the kit-bag over my shoulder, I launched myself up the stairs three at a time, reached the first stone landing, veered left, jumped for the second flight, missed my footing, fell flat on my front, and bumped several steps back down again.
Damn that Charlie Chaplin.
I scrambled back up to the second landing, but someone was already on the lower flight of stairs, and coming up behind me.
‘What noise?’ I heard Helena say. She must have followed the others out into the hall. ‘I didn’t hear a thing.’
‘There was definitely something. Rifka, go and look.’
The door to the first long room, Moholy’s store-room, was locked. The only light on the landing came from a standard lamp in an alcove, and I turned it off, stepped into the alcove, and hid myself behind it. There must have been another switch downstairs. Someone turned the light back on again. I turned it off, on, with me underneath it, off again, on again. I reached under the shade, my shirtsleeve over my fingers, and unscrewed the bulb. It was hot, and my sleeve slipped, and I tried to juggle the bulb but it scorched my fingers and I flipped it over the banisters. It smashed somewhere far below. Peeking down, out from the darkness, I saw Moholy in the gawp of light from the salon’s open doorway.
By now Rifka had felt her way up to the second landing, level with where I was hiding.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, looking sharply at me and making a murderous face. ‘Just a blown bulb.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Moholy said. Rifka had her finger over her pursed lips, and was holding up a key. She unlocked the door into the store-room, and pushed me through before closing it again behind me. I just had time to hear Moholy start up the stairs, and it sounded like Helena was coming with him.
The store-room was dark, and my heart was scudding. I couldn’t risk the lights, so I blundered half-sighted past tea-chests and alien imported gods, groping towards oblongs of grey which I hoped were the uncurtained windows. I touched a pot-bellied black boy, and then another one, and so on, until I reached the end of the room. I found the door. I turned the handle, and it opened.
As I clicked it shut behind me, the lights came on in the room I’d just left. I needed a place to hide. Skirting the central podium, I started opening the cupboards beneath the display cabinets, but most of them were filled with bubble-wrap and boxes and resealable plastic bags. In one, there was a massy mortar and pestle. Apart from a few files, the cupboard in the furthest corner was empty. I pulled out the shelf and climbed inside, praying I was small enough to fit. Remarkably I was, but only just, my arms squeezed tight and my cheek crushed hard against the pentangular wickerwork of the door.
On came the light, low-level to protect the relics, almost romantic.
‘You’re overreacting,’ Helena protested. ‘Light bulbs often explode on their own.’
‘No they don’t.’
‘Rifka said it was nothing.’
‘Rifka’s gone strange on me. She’s not the same Rifka she used to be.’
And also she must have stayed out on the landing, because I saw only two pairs of feet circle the pedestal in a clockwise direction. Slow, then stopping, like a couple of pensioners testing the air.
‘Someone’s in here,’ Moholy said, his feet moving slightly apart. ‘I can feel it. There’s someone in here.’
‘It’s the relics,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Like when you showed them to Jay. There are loads of people in here, and they really do have presence, just as you always said.’
‘No. I can really feel there’s someone in here.’
‘That’s what I mean. Everyone feels it in the end. It’s Van Gogh. And Byron. You know you can feel them. You can. I can. Everyone can.’
I heard him sniffing again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you may be right.’
Helena was leading him out of the room, her feet beside his, slightly behind, as if guiding him gently by the elbow. He stopped once more, then turned off the light and closed the door behind him. I counted to ten, then spilled out from my cupboard. I reset my jaw with both hands, and rubbed at the side of my face, imprinted now with pentagons.
Then I went through the display cabinets, whispering softly to the dead, cupping my hand to my ear. The dead weren’t answering. I had to turn on the light, and read them each by their labels.
The way I did it was to assemble a body on the floor, bone by bone, in the shape of Jesus standing, or perhaps delivering a parable, getting the feet and legs right, and then the pelvis and trunk and the arms. From my detailed rebuilding of the bones in the apartment, I could now make a reasonable attempt at a human being. It didn’t matter if a few odd bones were missing: Jesus was ancient and uncertain, but the basics had to be right, and the dates. I quickly hit trouble with the dates.
Moholy simply didn’t have enough bones from the early sixteenth century, which when tested could conceivably pass for Calvin. After Suleiman’s jaw and da Vinci’s arm, the dates became ever more approximate, depending on what type of bone I needed next. Body-building was still a tricky business, and there weren’t nearly enough ribs, and no patellas at all. One foot in particular was very stubborn.
Marco Polo’s heel found its way in there, and of course Jung’s knee-cap, which I’d brought along in the kit-bag. I recruited Sir Humphry Davy’s foot-bone, and Thomas à Becket’s toe. And each time I took a bone from Moholy’s collection, I replaced it with its equivalent from the kit-bag, and the bones of Richard Burton. As I worked out the combinations, I sometimes scratched my head with Michelangelo’s finger. Until finally, looking down at the skeleton, the finger-bone to my chin, I found myself tolerably satisfied with my construction of a compound body. It wasn’t perfect, but it was acceptable. If Moholy only took one bone for testing, as he did last time, there was a decent enough chance, given providence and the existence of God (and perhaps a strong hint from Rifka), that he’d select a bone sufficiently close to Calvin’s era.
I broke up the body, and fed the bones into the kit-bag, which of course was now empty. After double-checking I’d made all the replacements, I hefted the bag on to my shoulder, and turned off the light. I crossed the store-room, treading infallibly between the tea-chests, and the door at the other end was open. I went down the first section of stairs, turned on the landing, and swiftly descended the rest. I touched the front door, opened it, stepped outside, closed the door as quietly as I could, turned round, and then rang the bell.
The door opened again, and as I placed the kit-bag at Moholy’s feet, I felt entirely and unnaturally fearless.
‘Look,’ Helena said. ‘Just like I was telling you. It’s Jay. And he’s brought the promised bones.’
Moholy himself lifted the bag into the salon. Everything was turning out well. I wasn’t a sad little fellow, a universal victim. That wasn’t the proper Charlie, untouchable behind a protective film, a mover and shaker welcome among millionaires and royalty, winner of the Handel Medallion, the Stockholm Peace Prize, and an Order of Public Instruction. In all due modesty he accepted every honour, including a knighthood of the British Empire. The tomming and foolery was simply a screen. It was a way to get what he wanted.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ Moholy asked, his face suddenly close to mine, looking concerned.
‘Yes, I would,’ I said, realising I did feel somewhat faint. ‘Very much. That is most kind of you.’
I went from a chair to the floor to a chaise-longue, testing them for comfort. I lay along a settee, my feet raised on cushions. I was sure that Moholy and the ladies would understand. It had been a very wearying day.
Jesus Christ’s Neck
‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.’
Galatians 2:20
ONLY AN HOUR or so into daylight on Sunday, the Lord’s special day, and Joseph Moholy thought he was Jesus because we were all in a very small and fragile boat, on a very large and dangerous lake, but with no visible sign of a storm.
It was misty and achingly cold, even though Helena and I had brought the duvets from the house. The two of us were facing forward in the middle of the boat with our knees together and arms tightly crossed, and both of us were shivering. Rifka in the back seemed more comfortable, but she had the steering to keep her busy, and maybe even some heat from the busily puttering outboard.
‘Where are we actually going?’ Helena asked, her teeth chattering.
‘To find hungry and sick people,’ Moholy said, not looking round from the prow. This morning’s transfigured Joseph Moholy was nothing like my previous vision of Jesus, as a Mr Smith of mortal flesh on bone, ragged and forgotten amid the splendour of ancient Rome. I was now seeing a different Jesus, with infinite ambition, a driven force for good.
I’d woken up lying on my side, facing the glossy back of a settee in Moholy’s vast living-room. A duvet, someone had found me a duvet. I closed my eyes, and turned over on to my other side. I wriggled and shifted but couldn’t get comfortable. I opened my eyes. Moholy’s face was inches from my own.
‘Jesus fuck!’
I clutched my heart and lay on my back, and the ceiling seemed abysmally high. I glanced across, and Moholy was still there, cross-legged on the floor and wrapped in a blanket, his chin cupped gnomically in his hands. Then he was up, flinging off the blanket, already dressed in a collarless shirt outside baggy Indian-style trousers, and all-action sandals with Velcro straps. He hadn’t shaved, and his stubble was thick enough to look like the shadow of a beard, making his face seem longer.
‘Where’s Helena?’
‘She slept upstairs. I’ve already woken her. She’s with Rifka in the kitchen.’
‘What happened?’
‘You fell asleep. You must have been exhausted.’
‘On the settee?’
‘You had us all worried. I slept beside you, on the floor, just in case.’
‘That was kind of you. Thanks.’
‘And I wanted to apologise. For the pills, and the tram-lines. Sorry about that. It wasn’t very nice of me.’
‘Well, no, it wasn’t.’
‘You’re sure you’re alright?’
I pushed myself up into a sitting position, then checked my upper lip for the toothbrush moustache which wasn’t there, and which had never been there. I was still in my clothes. Very tentatively, I swung one foot to the floor, then two, and stood up with my arms out, testing my balance on one leg and then the other. I didn’t trip, slip or stumble.
‘It seems to have worn off,’ I said, discreetly moving my lobeless ear against the top of my shoulder. It was still sore, but less so. It was also a reassuring reminder of the real me, and I guessed always would be, now and for ever. ‘No permanent damage.’
‘Excellent,’ Moholy said. ‘Because we’ve been waiting for you for ages.’
In the big modern kitchen, Rifka was doing something at the stainless-steel range. Helena was leaning back against a metal counter, with her arms crossed. She looked wary, but surprisingly rested. I met her eye, and a twitch from her eyebrow instantly reminded me of the many events of yesterday.
Ah. Yes. I remembered we ought to be leaving. As soon as humanly possible. I therefore coughed into my hand and thanked Moholy for letting us stay the night. Helena didn’t move.
‘It looks like we’re staying,’ she said.
‘Does it?’
‘For the testing of the bones.’
Moholy would be sending a bone to his man at the lab, but we already knew that. I still had to ask Rifka to persuade him to pick out the jaw-bone, once of Suleiman the Magnificent, or perhaps the finger or an arm-bone. The resulting date close to the 1540s would persuade Moholy that the skeleton had to be Calvin. He could work out the rest for himself. However, I didn’t see why Helena and I should have to wait for the results. We’d done as much as we could.
‘You don’t understand,’ Helena said. ‘It’s a Sunday.’
‘So?’
‘Everything’s closed. The University, the lab, everything.’
‘Not to worry, though,’ Moholy said, full of cheerful vigour, and all the joys of existence. ‘There’s more than one way to test a relic.’
>
‘I’m sure there is,’ I said. ‘But we still have to be going.’
‘You’ll be staying,’ Moholy said. ‘And we’ll be testing it together. In the true Christian spirit, I’ve decided we should all share in the one body.’
From his pocket, he took out a small bundle wrapped in Becket’s purple circle of silk. Balancing it on the palm of his hand, he flicked away the edges to reveal three almost equal sections of neck-bone, presumably from the body I’d delivered last night as Jesus.
‘I’ve deliberately selected small pieces,’ Moholy said. ‘We need to be mobile. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.’
He held out the bones in the handkerchief. ‘Go on, take one. Give the relic a chance to prove itself, in its own unique way.’
Moholy was wearing something odd and angular under the looseness of his shirt. As he stretched forward to offer us the bones, I saw it was a leather tool-belt, with various bones slotted into the hoops intended for hammers and chisels and bradawls. This wasn’t a fair test: Moholy was way ahead of us.
‘Thanks anyway,’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘I think I’ll pass.’
‘No, really,’ Helena said, surprising me, picking out her own section of neck-bone, like a chocolate from a box. She frowned hard at me, like a kick under the table. ‘I really think you should.’
‘Of course, if the test fails,’ Moholy said, his morning brightness suddenly fading in lustre, ‘and if I am unable to act well, I shall hold the two of you personally responsible. For my humiliation.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said, ‘I think I see.’
Helena’s eyes flicked up to heaven, as if reminding God that one day, whenever He had the time, it would be interesting to discover just how far a person had to travel to reach the limits of my stupidity.
‘And if the bones work?’
‘Well, all will be forgiven, obviously.’
I selected my sample of neck from the cloth.
Dry Bones Page 28