Lambs of God

by Marele Day

  He came back to Margarita of the pumpkin face. She smelled. They all smelled but she had the odours of a fat woman, sweats and secretions fermenting in the folds of flesh. To Margarita he was an unwanted guest. He had to show her that he understood, that it pained him to interrupt their life. It hadn’t helped her resentment of him, he supposed, that his thwarted attempt at escape had taken place on her watch. He wondered if he hadn’t deliberately chosen the night of her watch, the way a wolf singles out the weak member of the herd.

  Damn, his legs were itchy. He’d have to make up some story about why he was delayed, why he hadn’t phoned but there’d be plenty of time for that while he was driving back to the mainland. He had to escape, report his recommendations regarding the property. They were going to be relocated, whether they liked it or not.

  Ignatius had a particular degree of dedication to this project. It was he who had come across details of the forgotten monastery in amongst the files and papers. It was he who had suggested selling, subject to inspection and suitability. It was too remote to be turned into a school or hospital. It was Ignatius who hit upon the idea of an exclusive resort, who saw remoteness as its biggest drawcard. A few companies were already offering such places. Refurbished castles in areas away from the public gaze, staffed with the best chefs. Pheasant and woodcock on the menu, the freshest seafood. Seaweed-fed lamb.

  He could see it now. A runway on the mainland for private jets, a permanent causeway that didn’t depend on the tide. Away from it all, the location its own security. Ideal for sensitive meetings, political and commercial. Preliminary talks concerning the reunification of East and West Germany had been held in such a place. The Bishop loved the idea when Ignatius told him. ‘Negotiations over a couple of bottles of Courvoisier, walking up grouse to clench the deal, a round of golf. It has potential, Ignatius.’

  How could his legs be so itchy? Perhaps he was getting sores, cankers. He knew that once sold he would have no official role to play in the development of the site but he liked to think about it. God knows, he had plenty of time to think now. Perhaps they would take some of his suggestions on board.

  He could see himself brokering, negotiating with prospective buyers. Connoisseur Resorts, that was his first choice. The sale of this monastery was his project and he would see it through to the end. Perhaps he could convince them to keep him on as some sort of advisor. First, he had to get this plaster off and his hands untied.

  Someone was in the room, he could feel it.

  ‘Problems?’ The Mother Superior.

  Ignatius stopped his thoughts right there. He was prickling all over. Even though the hairs were still short he felt them standing on end, his follicles reacting, putting his body on alert. Was she a mind-reader? He could make out the shape of her now. The dull light etched her features like a wood-carving, hollowing out the eye sockets.

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘Thumping.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, realising. What big ears you have Grandmama. ‘My legs are very itchy.’ Then he had a better idea. ‘I may have an infection under there.’ She looked at him, her eyes like owls. ‘Perhaps a doctor should take a look,’ he suggested innocently. She remained silent, as if listening for something, then left as quietly as she had come.

  Now his legs were really itchy, he imagined sweat caught down there, fermenting. It would drive him mad if he kept thinking about it. The third nun. Carla. She turned and whirled in his imagination, temptress, idiot, wild thing, child in a middle-aged body. A voice so sweet that if he closed his eyes he saw visions of angels. Yet she would forever be associated with his night of ultimate debasement.

  But that was finished with. He was indoors now and lying on a bed. How quickly a roof and a bed changes the beast into a man again. A man who, instead of lying helpless with the weight of his despair upon him, was now riding on top of it, plotting and planning. It was a dream all that, he told himself, a nightmare brought on by hunger and despair. His beastly nature had risen and used his eloquent tongue to speak its piece. He always imagined the Devil as having an eloquent tongue. No horns or tail, the Devil went about as an urbane man with well-shaped eyebrows and a flash gold tooth.

  Or perhaps when it suited, the Devil slipped into the body of a teasing, tempting woman. In his mind he saw her, looking out at him from between her fingers. She was certainly the shapeliest of the three. He imagined the outlines beneath all that wool. Then another detail. He flicked it out of his mind but it swam back in again. The feet. Horny and hoofy they were, like the others, but between Carla’s toes grew curious little webs.

  The eye of God is in the grass, round and perfect, smooth as the surface of jelly. It is a dark-brown eye, with a black centre. A black circular aperture which allows light to enter. Like glass. ‘The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’

  When Carla looks up at the sky this hole gets very, very tiny. But still the light floods in. So hungry is her eye for equilibrium, for some darkness in that white shining that it compensates by producing blinks of black suns.

  Right now Carla is laying belly down, head on her outstretched arm, and her God eye is close to the ground, the line of vision crisscrossed with spokes of grass. She focuses on a single blade, the ridges of fibre along its length, its tip a slightly paler shade of green. And hanging deliciously, pregnantly, pendulously from it a drop of water. Soft jelly egg. It is striated with curves of green, the one blade having become many. Beneath her body thousands of blades are flattening themselves into the earth, the minuscule creatures that dwell in the grass emitting fear-smelling panic.

  She reaches her finger out to the sac of water, feels the slight coolness as it makes contact, then slowly, ever slowly, draws her finger away, the water adhering to it, changing shape, making a bridge between blade and finger. Just a fraction more. Then it happens. Plop. She never sees the exact instant when it divides and becomes two, it always happens in a blink. Now there is one drop on her finger and one on the blade. She flicks the water away and mates the tip of her finger with the tip of the blade. Feels its little tickle. Sweet young grass, the sort the sheep love best. There is other grass whose blade can quickly cut you.

  ‘Blade?’ repeated Carla when she first heard the word describe grass. ‘Like knives?’

  ‘Yes, my child,’ replied Sister Cook, her forearms dusted with flour, a little dab on her cheek.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just is,’ sighed Sister Cook. ‘Run along and play.’

  Carla ran along and played. Into the grass where the big clumps were. She pulled off a piece of grass and tried to cut her hair with it but it didn’t work. ‘Cut,’ she said crossly, reminding it of its function. She tried it on a beetle, she tried on a worm. ‘Cut, blade, cut.’ But it wouldn’t. ‘Naughty, blade, naughty,’ she said, hitting it. Then the miraculous happened. Her fingers somehow caught the blades of grass and in the upsweep from her hitting she found they had sliced very sharply, very neatly. Lines of blood welled out and slowly trickled down. So bright, so red! It had not hurt at all. She brought her fingers up and poked her tongue out to lick at the blood, its full meaty taste.

  She ran back to the kitchen. ‘Blade, Sister Cook, blade.’ Holding up her hand in triumph, eyes shining brightly.

  Sister Cook had just put the last batch of bread in the oven and was drinking water from a mug. She looked with alarm at the little girl offering up her dripping fingers. Then she relaxed. A couple of minor cuts. The child hardly seemed distressed by it. ‘You should be more careful,’ she said, hands crossed in front of her, looking a long way down her nose at Carla. Then softening, ‘Why don’t you come back after Sext, there’ll be some rolls to take out of the oven, all hot and crusty.’

  ‘But if thine eye is evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.’ The Bible is also flattening the blades of grass down to the earth. Carla likes the way when the Bible is open, a tunnel appears between the spine and where all t
he pages are stitched together. When she puts her finger into this space it feels cosy and snug, fits just like the finger of a glove. She also likes the smell of the print and the way when you hold one page up to the light you can see the words on the other side. Words backwards.

  Sometimes Carla likes to read like this, through the page with the light shining on the words on the back. She only does this when she is alone with God, she thinks her sisters would frown if they knew. It might be the way the Devil reads the Bible. ‘Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils and they will scourge you in their synagogues.’

  He smiled at her today, while they were eating their silent breakfast, when he brought his tethered hands up to drink his tea. His teeth were very white in his face, his cheeks sucked in. They turned into crinkles when he smiled.

  He had scourged her in the holding pen where she had gone full of longing and empty of sleep. He couldn’t sleep either. He was alone and cold. She had started to hold him and tell him a little story to send him off to sleep, a story about his picture people, but wrath had rained out of his mouth and words as burning as dragon breath.

  In the dew-moist grass with the twittering birds and God’s light shining all around, she no longer feels the fire in her face. It is something that happened a long time ago, on the other side of sleep.

  Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight. He was a black-and-white one. His lovely white merman tail was getting dirty and his body was sprouting black. As Carla had drunk her breakfast tea she looked at each and every one of those hairs.

  Once, some time ago, they had found a little hedgehog on the kitchen step. The sisters wanted to call it Carla because it had been put on the step by God. ‘Just like you,’ they said. But Carla’s little brow had furrowed in consternation. She liked the creature well enough but she did not want to share her name with it. She thought she might have to share her soul with it as well, that it would take it and bury it in the ground. She would never get it back from such a prickly thing. But the hedgehog had disappeared before she could tame it and it never did get a proper name.

  Carla felt guilty, it was mean not letting it have her name. The hedgehog was unbaptised and could never go to Heaven. Instead, the poor little thing floated around in Limbo with the curled up dead babies.

  Carla thought about when she put her hands around his for the knitting. He’d done a secret to Margarita to make her scurry away but he hadn’t done it to Carla. He’d let Carla show him. He would let her tame him too. She would start with the hairs. She moved a little way towards him. Just a tiny tiny way, you wouldn’t even notice. Then a bit more. She put her hand out and touched them. Oh, prickly little quills just like the hedgehog. He didn’t flinch or anything. He smiled. She wanted to touch more but she put her hand back in her lap. You have to do taming slowly.

  Carla’s outstretched hand plucked at a piece of grass and pulled it up by the roots. White roots sliding out of the sweet black soil. She dragged herself along and peered down into the chute left behind. The eye of God sees everything. She had uprooted a giant tree, it squeaked and sighed on releasing its hold on the earth. It would be like an earthquake down there, every living thing on the alert. Soil mites, armoured hippopotamuses, gigantic ants with gigantic heads, long-haired antennae scanning for danger.

  Carla had her eye over the hole, looking right down into the dark soil world. An ant crawled out. Carla could easily imagine the world of an ant. The forests of grass loaded with water bombs ready to drop. She banged her hand on the ground. Ants loved it when she did this. All the little soil mites getting disoriented and moving towards the surface. A big breakfast for ants. If a single ant comes across such a feast, she doesn’t chomp away and eat all of it herself. Like Carla, the ant is part of a community. The ant has a good mouthful then lowers her hindquarters and makes a smell trail to bring the other ants to the breakfast table.

  Carla watched the ant approaching the immense mountain range of her outstretched hand. The other hand was pressing the seashell to her ear. Listening to its faraway sound, she recognised a pattern in it, notes held and repeated like prayer or lamb song. Perhaps it was the murmuring of souls in the Sea of Forgetfulness. She let the music wheel through her without holding onto any of it.

  She pulled out another blade of grass and this time an earthworm sprung to life. She felt its slippery jelly body as it wriggled and twisted into impossible contorts. Carla had tried to do this herself but she couldn’t loop her body the way the naked wet earthworm could. The earthworm burrowed down into the moist rich earth, avoiding the drying sun that would bake its body to the consistency of leather.

  The little white worm in his rich dark home reminded Carla of Baby Moses in the bulrushes. Unlike the worm that wriggles and loops in her hand, trying to jump back into the earth, Baby Moses worm grew strong and thick as if it had a bone inside it. Carla would like to see that again. Miraculous. She would have to do more taming first. She tingled with the pleasure of it, of seeing something change before her very eyes. Carla was a bit disappointed to find that when she dug into the earth, it was much the same as it appeared on the surface. Dense with itself. She would like to scratch the surface and find a cavern. She would like the earth to be an egg, a smooth dry surface with a wet slippery surprise inside.

  She stirred her finger around in the loose soil where the worm went. Once in her excavations she did find something. It was dark and folded. At first it looked like a thickening of the earth. But she was able to pull it up and open it out. It made a dull tearing sound. It was a grey blanket. In parts it was so frail that it crumbled into the soil at her touch. She found it near the bushes and it was very odd to be there. When she opened it up there was less soil and more blanket, the inside of it protected by folds. It was stained and discoloured a darker rusty tone. Blood.

  She rolled over, bored with the earth, and lay with her eyes closed listening to the shell. It had become her favourite thing and she carried it everywhere. Not only did it make sound but Carla could use it as a cutter, like the one Sister Cook had to make pastry shapes. One Easter, Sister Cook made little men out of the dough. Carla put raisins for their eyes and three down their front for buttons. They baked the little men in the oven and on Easter Sunday the nuns all ate them.

  She pressed the shell into her arm to make intersecting curves, put it back to her ear and watched the marks fade away.

  Cla … cla … cla … cla … cla … A different sound in her ear now. Louder and louder it gets till she can hear it even in the ear without the shell. Something creeps over the sun. She opens her eyes and stares straight at it.

  He heard it coming long before he saw it. He was sitting in the courtyard, tail propped up, hands tethered. His offer to help with the chores had gone unheeded.

  The three nuns had spent the morning picking up sheep droppings in the courtyard then Carla went off to gather them from farther afield. Margarita and Iphigenia were now in the chapel. He had grown used to the smell of the droppings, it was not like dog or human faeces, there was something fresh and earthy about it. He idly wondered whether the faeces of vegetarians smelled fresh like this. It must have rained lightly during the night because the grass was wet and the sheep poo soft and slippery.

  If it had been him, he would have waited for a dry day when it was easier to handle. But they said it was better for the garden this way. Seep into the soil better wet. They would lay it on, let it settle before planting. They had seed potatoes from last year. The man had offered to help with the digging. ‘Digging on Digging Day,’ they said.

  Ignatius presumed that the faeces he deposited in the pot eventually ended up being mixed in with the sheep faeces. Not that he had contributed a great deal during his stay so far. His body had reacted to its extreme stress with constipation, in an attempt to hold everything in and not disintegrate. He looked at the
mounting pile in the holding pen. He felt much more at ease dwelling on sheep droppings than his own.

  Every so often they would come out of the chapel, empty their front pockets onto the pile and go back in again. He sat with his eyes closed, absorbing the sun, straining to overhear any conversation emanating from the chapel, especially conversation that pertained to him and his predicament. They remained taciturn as ever. He heard the occasional echoing bleat, the scraping against stone, an occasional grunt from the nuns as they bent over or straightened themselves up.

  The noise began as a faint mechanical ripple in his field of hearing then it solidified. Cla … cla … cla … cla … cla … His heart leapt in his chest, his eyes sprung open and there it was. A small black speck in the sky wheeling closer and closer. They were coming for him. Oh yes, this was it. The island wasn’t under a regular flight path, he’d seen nothing but birds in the sky all the time he’d been here. They had to be coming for him. He wanted to shout, wave a big coloured flag, send up a flare. I’m here, I’m here. He could hardly contain himself.

  But of course he wasn’t the only one who had heard the approaching rumble. The poo-gatherers were in the courtyard now and looking into the sky. Margarita gave the man a long swipe with her eyes as if he were personally responsible for the disturbance. And of course he was, oh joy, he was.

  Although his heart was leaping skyward, although his mind was already up there with the chopper, airlifted to safety, arms and legs free and all his troubles down here minuscule and toylike, nothing on the ground had changed. He was in the same position in which the nuns had left him. He could not pick up anything and wave it, he could not move. And what was the point of calling out? They’d never hear him.

  The chopper was still far away but circling closer. Iphigenia had her hand up, shading her eyes from the sun, straining to see. Her nose was twitching like a rabbit’s. Margarita was trying to calm the sheep who were baaing nervously.