The Church of England disowned us, but we’d expected that. The Anglican liturgy and creed, its word and sacrament, its conformity and sets of regulations, had none of them eased our human quest to recover Jesus. We therefore revenged ourselves on Anglicans everywhere by always remembering to pray for them.
And then I would preach, warnings mostly, against the defeatism of ever thinking the moment had come when you knew pretty much who you were, and all you were going to know. As if neither more living nor more reading would greatly alter the self. I was an advocate of the example of others. I gave thanks and praise for our identity with our fellow man, and commended change, and flickering with being. Be born again, I said, not just once, but again and again and again.
Don’t, I said, just don’t, don’t ever just be yourself.
During the week, on those evenings we weren’t necessarily best as ourselves, Helena and I would sometimes borrow relics from the exhibition. It was like paper-scissors-stone, depending on who each of us chose. There were red-hot connections (Byron and Greta Garbo) and icy stand-offs (St Francis and Evita). There were also some unexpected successes (Florence Nightingale and David Niven).
‘I still don’t understand it,’ Helena said. We were lying in bed, at the end of another afternoon at the exhibition. We hadn’t brought anyone back, but Borges’s skull was still in the kitchen. I was reluctant to send it until certain the story had reached its end. It was getting dark outside, and Helena straightened a bare arm at the grey ceiling, closing one eye and sighting the dull lampshade in the V between her thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s not Jesus.’
‘I know that.’
‘We know it’s not Jesus.’
At that moment, watching the spread of Helena’s fingers between me and the ceiling, I was choosing to believe that we both went back before the creation, that in some form we’d always existed, part and particle of God, specks, sparks of God, connected to everything and everyone. I turned on to my side, and put my hand on her growing belly, and wondered if our baby would find me out.
‘Moholy’s Jesus is a mix and match,’ Helena said. ‘Just a muddle of bones cobbled together from his own collection. So what’s going on? Why is he pretending to be Jesus?’
I flopped on to my back. Since the last time we’d talked about this, I’d thought of another solution. ‘It could still be the bones,’ I said. ‘No, listen. Even if they never belonged to Jesus, Moholy could still be under the influence of the bones. Only the influence isn’t Jesus.’
‘But they’re a mixture.’
‘Right. They’re a jumble of different people. But maybe the co-operative of bones, all working together, is more powerful than the sum of its parts. They’re acting as Moholy’s own personal communion of saints, and they make things possible for him just like mine did for me. You have yours, too, probably.’
‘My what?’
‘Your heroes. The people you’d like to emulate, even if you don’t always admit to it. That’s your communion of saints. Along with your family, who you can’t escape, and your own fragment of uniqueness, that’s what makes you what you are.’
‘Not convinced,’ Helena said. She picked up my hand and put it back on her belly, covering it with both of her own. ‘Try the other option, which is much more likely. Relics, holy or secular, singular or mixed up, have no power whatsoever to influence behaviour. They’re inanimate. They’re just things, old bones.’
‘Visible, though. Touchable. They can act as reminders, meaning we don’t have to learn everything in person.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘They offer something to aim at, and then the big decision becomes simply who to choose. That’s what Jesus is for, in case you were wondering.’
Helena reached up both her arms, hands flat facing the ceiling. I copied her. Between us, in our uncertain future, we had an outside chance of catching the ceiling when it fell. I hoped Helena was happy. In her view of the world, love, by definition, worked out. It was re-righting. If it was love, it couldn’t be too much what she didn’t want it to be. Otherwise it wouldn’t be love.
In a joint decision, made by Helena, we’d decided to stay in Geneva. I’d wanted to postpone anything definite until I was sure of myself, but she said she wasn’t going through that again. Since then, I’d been waiting to be tempted by the urgent appeal of a clean and sudden break. It hadn’t happened, or at least, not very often. As for my worldly ambition, I could accept that the happiness I was suffering at Helena’s hands might set me back by several years.
Helena rolled over towards me, her hands flat beneath her cheek.
‘How often d’you think about Rifka?’
‘All the time.’
‘Did you see her postcard?’
She was in the Sinai. She’d gone back to visit her parents, and to clear her head by camping in the hills. It wasn’t a vacation, she said, and she couldn’t say how long she’d be gone. She did, though, intend to come back. And that was a promise.
‘Do you ever think what I sometimes think?’
‘About what?’
‘You know. Rifka.’
‘I try not to.’
‘What if Rifka was first to the prize?’ Helena asked. ‘Moholy was right all along, and Jesus was buried in Calvin’s grave. Only Rifka worked it out for herself, before Moholy did, and she got there first. She was the one who found Jesus. Do you ever think that?’
‘Rifka was fairly strange. I don’t think Jesus would have smashed up Calvin with a digger.’
‘I think he might well have done.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’
I rolled off the bed and went back to the kitchen to parcel up Borges. I sat down at the table, but still I felt hesitant, delaying the packing of the skull by popping rows of bubble-wrap. Then I put down the plastic, and picked up the head-bone. I held Jorge Luis Borges firmly in both hands, and pressed his forehead hard against mine. I closed my eyes and stood up, his head against my head. The skull was cold. I moved it slowly side to side, and gradually it grew warmer. Write it down. Rolling the head-bone side to side, up and around, maintaining head to head contact at all times. And in my head, I think deep inside my head, writing. Keep writing it down. So that perhaps one day, yes one day, if you carry on regardless, you shall hear the word of the lord.
Acknowledgements
The K Blundell Trust, for welcome financial assistance while writing this book, and the Hawthornden Foundation for a productive retreat.
Tim Beard, Tom Guest, and James Russell, all of whom I should have thanked earlier and more often.
Stuart Williams and Zoe Waldie, for knowing what’s what.
And Laurence, yet again, for her patience.
@vintagebooks
penguin.co.uk/vintage
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781448130009
Version 1.0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
VINTAGE
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Richard Beard 2004
Richard Beard has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The skeleton image is taken from De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius and is used by permission of the British Library (C.18.e.4)
First published in Great Britain in
2004 by Secker & Warburg
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Dry Bones Page 32