The Blasphemer

by Nigel Farndale

  Daniel smiled. ‘Give my love to Jesus.’

  ‘I will.’

  Hearing the landing door close, Daniel scratched and yawned. Without Nancy around to tease him, he suddenly felt flat and lonely. He sat up and saw the book she was reading lying open, face down on the bedside table. He tilted his head to see the cover. It was in Spanish, a novel. He picked up his own book and flopped back on the bed, his brow mantled with sweat. The heat was making him feel lethargic. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his ankle, a night-time attack, and turned the ceiling fan on. As he was listening to it pulsing, he plumped up the pillow and, underneath it, felt the T-shirt Nancy had slept in. He held it to his nose, closed his eyes and felt the spin of sleep. When he woke, Nancy was standing over him at the side of the bed. He felt for the book he had been reading – a guilty reaction.

  ‘How was it?’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘It had the biggest altarpiece you’ve ever seen, all gilt-covered columns, saints with crowns, cherubs with halos. It went right up to the ceiling, thirty feet tall and twenty feet wide.’

  ‘Tasteful.’

  ‘I never said it was tasteful, I said it was big.’

  She lay on the bed beside him. ‘You would have liked it. All that Catholic kitsch. It would have given you much to scoff at.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I liked the incense and the candles and the prayers in Spanish. The bit where you are supposed to shake hands with your neighbour, they kiss. The saints’ faces were black. I’m going to try Martha again. Can I use your mobile? Mine doesn’t seem to …’

  ‘It’s in my jacket.’ Daniel gestured limply towards the back of the door.

  Nancy patted the jacket pockets and raised an eyebrow.’ What are these?’ She was holding up the letters that Philip had given him. ‘Are they from your mistress?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re from my mistress.’

  Nancy untied the string and opened the top one. It was brittle to the touch. ‘She must be quite old.’

  ‘Dad was wondering if you could translate them. They were written by my great-grandfather, just before he was killed in the trenches.’

  ‘Did your great-grandfather have a name?’

  ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Kennedy?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad’s side.’

  Nancy was frowning. ‘They’re almost illegible,’ she said, reaching in her shoulder bag for her reading glasses. Once found, she held the glasses unfolded to the bridge of her nose and tilted her head back. ‘The pencil has …’ She rubbed her index finger and thumb together. ‘These must be precious for Phil. Should you have brought them with you?’

  ‘I meant to leave them in the car at Heathrow.’

  Nancy read quietly for a couple of minutes, her lips moving occasionally, then she lowered her glasses and said: ‘Well, Andrew’s French is bloody awful. His syntax is all over the place. Sort of awkward and childish. Was your great-grandmother French?’

  ‘No, she was from Shropshire, I think. They married after he joined up. When he heard he was going to be sent to the Front. Lot of them did that.’

  ‘So when was your grandfather born?’

  ‘My grandfather? You mean my great-grandfather?’

  ‘No, I mean your grandfather. Phil’s father.’

  ‘I’d have to check. I don’t think my great-grandfather ever saw him. Why?’

  ‘Well, whoever these letters were to …’ Nancy turned back to the first page to read the name again. ‘Whoever “Ma petite Adilah” was … seems to have been expecting Andrew’s baby.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure my great-grandmother’s name was Dorothy.’

  ‘Well, naughty Andrew Kennedy then,’ Nancy said, raising her glasses again. She continued reading. ‘That’s odd …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He seems to have known he was going to die. Listen: “Je mort avec votre visage sur mon esprit.” I death, I think he means I will die, I will die with your face on my mind. He goes on, I won’t be afraid if I can do that.’

  Nancy fell silent as she read on.

  ‘What else?’ Daniel prompted.

  ‘ “Pendant … dernière année …” For the past year my wish when I saw the sun rising was to see it set, setting, again, that was the, the measure, yardstick of my life ... You are my one pensÉ, thought, my darling, and I would not have swapped one moment, minute, I spent with you, not even if it would have meant escaping what is to come.’

  She looked up. ‘Quite the poet.’ Her eyes returned to the letter.

  ‘ “Ne pluie pas pour moi.” Don’t rain – no, don’t weep for me. Be happy, be happy pour moi ... I know God is with me ... You know what I saw. “Vous seul …” You alone understand … Look after our child.” Then he ends.” Tell him, I know it will be a boy, tell him that his father faced his death like a soldier, gallantly like a soldier.” ’

  Nancy lowered her glasses once more and looked across at Daniel. Her eyes were glistening. ‘That’s.. .’ She swallowed. ‘That’s so .. .’

  ‘Can I see?’ Daniel felt the texture of the letter, rubbing it thoughtfully. He held it up to the light and nodded. Like a primate, he sniffed its mustiness. It weighed heavily in his hand, with a gravitational pull of its own. ‘Does this room have a safe?’

  ‘Haven’t found one.’

  ‘Reception will have a safe. These letters should be … Come on, let’s go and explore the town.’

  Daniel handed the letters over at reception and, as an afterthought, slipped the poppy out of his buttonhole and tucked it behind the string. ‘Can you keep these in your safe?’

  ‘Of course, señor.’

  ‘Are there any markets nearby?’

  ‘Not far away, in a cobbled square called the Puerta del Angel. It is the highest point of the city.’

  The walk cleared Daniel’s head a little, but the sight of stalls laden with glassy-eyed rabbits, and geese with their heads still attached, made him feel nauseous again. The air smelled of spices, tobacco and incense mixed with burning hair and open sewers. The sticky afternoon heat did not help. ‘It smells like my lab,’ he complained, covering his nose.

  Green and red bunting criss-crossed the square, evidence of a recent fiesta. In one corner three teenage girls were standing around an open-doored jeep, grinding their hips in time to a samba thumping from its speakers. Nancy copied them briefly, swaying her hips as she did a triple step backwards and forwards, her arms turning rhythmically outwards for balance.

  Daniel grinned and shook his head in awe. ‘Didn’t know you could samba.’

  ‘I’m an enigma. That’s why you love me.’ With this, Nancy turned and gave a little wave over her shoulder as she strolled across to a fruit stand. Daniel looked for a shady doorway to sit down in, away from the press of bodies. Unable to find one, he leaned against the crumbling plaster of a wall and watched Nancy testing the firmness of a mango, rolling it between her hands. When a dog appeared and began barking at him excitedly he moved a few yards on, to an area of wall sprayed with graffiti. He was feeling breathless. His eyelids were heavy. Distracted by a small, rust-coloured dust devil whirling across the street, he did not at first notice the young man in the white cotton thoub staring at him. With his fine features, long hair and bulging, wide-set eyes, the youth looked out of context to Daniel, more like a Moroccan beach boy than an Ecuadorian street trader. Though half in silhouette, he looked familiar, too. Daniel narrowed his eyes. When the young man invited him over to his stall with a wave of his hand and a broad, golden smile, Daniel stayed where he was. Feeling unnerved, he walked over to Nancy to ask if she recognized him.

  ‘Recognize who?’ she said, distractedly plucking a leaf from a bush, rubbing it and smelling her fingers. ‘Is this a bay leaf ? Smell it.’

  Daniel walked the length of the stalls looking for the young man, all the while being jostled and accosted by traders with outstretched hands, but he was gone.

  ‘You OK?’ Nancy asked w
hen he returned.

  ‘I feel peculiar.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I feel …’ His voice trailed away, his eyes closed and his knees buckled. When he slumped to the ground in a detonation of red dust, Nancy ran to him. She lifted up his head and, using water from a bottle she was carrying, splashed his face. He had cut his lip and the water made the injury look worse than it was, swelling the trickle of blood down his chin. Daniel came round to the sound of a stallholder hailing a taxi for them. Nancy supported his arm as he climbed unsteadily into it.

  At the hotel, the receptionist eyed them suspiciously as they stumbled up the stairs. ‘Good news, señor,’ she called after Daniel. ‘The electricity is back.’ A pause. ‘And your flight is cleared to leave in the morning.’ When they reached their room they found the door ajar. A maid was vacuuming the floor with a machine that was so loud they couldn’t hear, at first, that their phone was ringing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TOWARDS THE END OF THE FLIGHT, WITH HIS FOREHEAD PRESSED against the Plexiglas window, Daniel counted to three and opened his eyes. They were flying over a cluster of miniature islands – little more than sandbanks with gently scalloped bays – and between them he could see the white sail of a yacht and the dark outline of what he guessed was a shoal of dolphins. The Galápagos archipelago was not yet in sight but Daniel could sense its naked proximity. He closed his eyes again. After another count of three he opened them and saw the seaplane’s undulating shadow, their shadow, below them. ‘“The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”,’ he said under his breath. As a practising atheist he was not normally given to quoting from the Old Testament, ironically or otherwise. He had surprised himself; an unfamiliar feeling.

  He lowered the blind and checked his watch with a double tap of its face. It was 8.46am. Next he gave his armrest two taps with his knuckles, a ritual that helped him cope with his fear of flying – like touching wood, except that he was not superstitious or, rather, he had not allowed himself to be infected by what he called ‘that virus of the mind’.

  Nancy was sitting next to him, flicking with a licked finger through his copy of National Geographic. ‘How long before we land?’ she said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘How long before we land? … Hello?’ She tapped his head. Her mood was frivolous. It had been that way since before take-off when the flight attendant, a thin-lipped Latino, had read safety instructions from a laminated card. He had included the line: ‘In the unlikely event of a landing on water …’ This had given Nancy the giggles; they were, after all, sitting in a sixteen-seater, twinengine amphibian. Daniel managed a grim, nervous smile.

  ‘How you feeling?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Daniel said. ‘I think it was altitude sickness. When I fainted, I mean …’ He touched his swollen lip and frowned, losing his train of thought. ‘Was I out for long?’

  ‘A minute, maybe two. You remember getting back to the hotel?’

  ‘Not really … I remember the phone was ringing.’

  Nancy was polishing her sunglasses with a paper napkin. ‘Didn’t get to it in time.’ She held the glasses up to the window and turned them to catch the light.

  Daniel frowned. ‘This bloody music.’

  Incongruously, throughout the 600-mile flight, the pilot had been playing a Hall and Oates greatest hits CD over the speaker system – fairly quietly, but loud enough to annoy Daniel. He signalled the flight attendant over and asked if it could be turned down. Nancy began to sing along to it tonelessly, getting the lyrics slightly wrong: ‘Because my kiss, my kiss is on your lips …’ She was on her second half-can of Venezuelan beer.

  Sitting in front of them was the youth with the bleached dreadlocks they had seen in the restaurant. As he joined in with odd lyrics from the chorus he rose from his seat and began stretching. He was wearing boot-cut jeans so low half his Calvin Klein briefs were visible. His T-shirt carried the message I AM NOT A TERRORIST (I’M JUST BEARDED). He did not have a beard, nor did he look as if he needed to shave. Daniel felt a pang of envy. The young man was languid, carefree, clean-limbed.

  ‘Cramp?’ Nancy asked, flicking back a strand of hair. She had a very un-English habit of starting conversations with strangers; but this, to Daniel, looked more like flirtation.

  ‘Yeah, right here in my calves,’ the young man said with a grimace and what Daniel recognized instantly as the springy accent of the Massachusetts north shore.

  Nancy ground the palm of one hand against the other – a demonstration. ‘Try massaging the balls of your feet.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the young man said, removing a flip-flop and hopping on one foot while rubbing the other. When he had finished, he gave a wide smile that exposed expensive American teeth. ‘Greg,’ he said with a pat of his chest. ‘Greg Coulter.’

  ‘Hello, Greg Greg Coulter. I’m Nancy. We saw you at the restaurant in Quito.’

  ‘Yeah? You guys on holiday?’

  Nancy nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘Honeymoon.’ He pointed at the seat behind them. ‘We got married three days ago.’

  Nancy patted Daniel’s knee, bare below Bermuda shorts. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Kennedy? They’ve just got married.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Daniel said, turning to smile at Greg’s younglooking wife who was sitting behind them, her pale, goosepimpled legs tucked under her.

  ‘Not afraid of commitment, you see,’ Nancy added, not looking at Daniel.

  ‘I didn’t realize you two were together,’ Daniel said to the child bride. ‘You’ve been so quiet back there. Why don’t we swap seats so you guys can sit with each other?’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Greg said. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  There was a lull in which the droning of the engines could be heard.

  ‘Actually,’ Nancy said, ‘I’m on holiday but my “biological pairbond” here …’ she patted Daniel’s knee again, ‘is working. He looks at things through microscopes. Spores, moulds, bacteria.’

  ‘I only look at those things for fun. I specialize in worms.’

  ‘He’s an international authority on nonsegmented roundworms,’ Nancy continued, enjoying herself. ‘They’re microscopic.’

  ‘The first living organism to have its entire genetic blueprint decoded,’ the child bride said, joining in with an uncertain smile, leaning over the back of Nancy’s seat. A silver cross was swinging forward on a chain around her neck. She was wearing a microskirt and a clinging T-shirt with a peace sign drawn in diamante sequins. It was cut to show her midriff. It also showed she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  Daniel clasped his hands like an indulgent vicar. ‘Very good!’

  ‘They have a nervous system, can digest food and have sex, like humans,’ the child bride continued with a chewy American accent.

  ‘That’s why they’re so significant.’

  ‘Now you’re scaring me,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I thought I recognized you,’ the child bride said. She turned to her husband. ‘Told you I recognized him.’ She faced Daniel again. ‘You did that programme on the Natural World Channel, didn’t you?’

  Daniel helped her out: ‘The Selfish Planet.’

  The child bride lowered her eyes and gave a shy smile. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I thought it was real interesting. You always been into biology and stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose I have,’ Daniel said. ‘My name’s Dan, by the way.’ He raised his eyebrows and paused for her to offer her name.

  She nodded and smiled a second time. He tried again. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Susie.’ She leaned forward. ‘Must be great being on television, giving people pleasure.’

  ‘Thought you said you’d seen his programme,’ Nancy said. A look of confusion played across Susie’s face.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Daniel said. ‘You’re from Boston, aren’t you?’

  Susie’s lashless eyes expanded. She was blushing. ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘Recognized the intonation. Lovely place, Bean
Town. Lived there myself until quite recently.’

  Nancy punched his leg playfully. ‘As a student.’ She turned to Susie. ‘Before you were born, I imagine.’

  ‘I was a postgrad, darling,’ Daniel said. ‘So it wasn’t that long ago.’

  ‘Harvard?’ Susie asked.

  The seaplane shuddered. Greg steadied himself by grabbing a curtain that was screening off the galley. Daniel began breathing slowly and deeply. He felt his belly contracting. Tap-tap of fingertip on watch face: 8.54am.

  ‘Fear of flying,’ Nancy mouthed to Susie, directing a thumb at Daniel.

  ‘No, not Harvard,’ Daniel said as he recovered his composure. ‘I was at MIT. And it’s not fear of flying. Flying I’m fine with, …’

  Nancy finished the sentence with him: ‘… it’s crashing I don’t like.’

  Daniel gave her a patient look. The annoying truth, as far as he was concerned, was that it wasn’t only the crashing he was afraid of. Planes made him feel claustrophobic. They gave him vertigo. More to the point, he hated ceding control of his life to someone else. Flying was an act of faith in the people who build, inspect and fly planes: as a scientist, Daniel knew he of all people should appreciate that. But he was not a great believer in faith.

  ‘I keep telling him it’s irrational,’ Nancy said. ‘He hates that. Thinks he’s the most rational man on the planet.’

  ‘The urge not to defy gravity is far from irrational,’ Daniel said. Realizing this sounded pompous, he added: ‘Besides, I haven’t met everyone on the planet so how would I know whether I’m the most rational man on it.’ He smiled to show he was joking.

  Nancy smiled back. ‘Statistically you are more likely to be kicked to death by a cow than you are to die in a plane crash, isn’t that right, Mr Kennedy?’

  Daniel sighed. ‘Donkey. And plenty of people are kicked to death by donkeys. Several hundred a year.’