The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  “Nothing, thanks, Prez. I just came to talk.”

  “Talk how?” The interior echoed. Baronial wasn’t the word. It would have done for a duke, a prince. It was brand new, the ceilings vaulted, the stained-glass windows soaring, sweeping staircases curving upwards to a high domed ceiling. It was splendour so garish I almost couldn’t speak.

  “A money offer, actually.”

  We passed through the hall and out into a closed courtyard. Three youngsters faded at our approach. A girl emerged, served a tray of drinks, retired. I wondered why they were all so scruffy.

  The gospeller caught me looking after her and smiled.

  “Not my devotees, you understand. The Lord’s servants. They’re wonderfully motivated in our service.”

  “Who’s our?”

  “The Lord’s. And mine. Instruments of the Lord’s intentions here upon earth. Six months only.”

  That old one. “What happens if they stay longer?”

  He raised his eyebrows. Every hair on his head seemed mathematically inclined, devoted to giving proper service. Steel-grey hair, bright of eye, gold watch clinking on his wrist.

  “They don’t. Many try, Lovejoy.”

  “No second helpings, then?”

  “None. Much better for them to live here a while, restore their flagging energies, the better to leap again into battle.”

  He explained how each crusade into the major cities was organized, the thousand proselytizers who preceded him. “We organize bands, marches, spectacular events.”

  “Showbiz?”

  “Got to be, Lovejoy. The Lord can’t be made to hide.”

  We chuckled, such friends. “Which brings in revenue to build the Own Decree Crystal Dome?”

  “Praise God, yes it does, Lovejoy. I’m pleased you’ve heard of our little enterprise.”

  “Cathedral, isn’t it?”

  “They’re already calling it that?” He was delighted.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t seen your television show, Prez. I haven’t been in the US very long.”

  He snapped his fingers. A serf darted out, to be sent for a timetable of his broadcasts. For somebody not quite God, he was an impressive simulation.

  “Your money offer, Lovejoy,” he reminded.

  His lady—I’d seen photographs—joined us, bulbous and with the face of a doll. Disconcertingly, her voice was a shrill monotone. Her cosmetics were thickly trowelled on, lips protuberant with lipstick, her eyes deep in cream, liner, receder, heightener, lowerer, brighteners. I thought she was lovely.

  “Annalou, Lovejoy,” God’s sub belled melodiously. “Come to see our Deus Deistic Theme Park, perhaps worship a little, and make an offer.”

  “I’ll be right glad to show you round, Lovejoy,” Annalou said. “You be here for our broadcast?”

  “Afraid not, Annalou. I’ve to be back in Manhattan within the day.” I stuffed the programme details in my pocket and we boarded a small electric car thing, driven by a long-haired kulak called Glad Tidings.

  Annalou explained while Prez dispensed papal blessings to bystanders. “Our devotees abandon all their trappings of the World Without while they sojourn here. Including their names.”

  And property, the articles said.

  We drove slowly down a gravelled drive through rose gardens, out into lawns and fountain courts where hymns played on chimes. Recordings of unseen orchestras piously serenaded us. People began to appear, wandering and smiling. It was like a film set, the people affluent, blissful, contentedly calling “Praise the Lord” as we passed. I’m not used to holiness on this—indeed any—scale. I felt unnerved. Annalou fondly took my hand.

  “The place gets to you, Lovejoy, don’t it? Peace divine.

  “There’s the theme centre, Lovejoy.”

  Prez’s voice was husky with pride. Turrets and towers formed a surround, for all the world resembling a child’s wooden fort rimming an enormous glass dome.

  We drove up among the thickening crowds of visitors. Prez was telling me it would be finished in two years’ time, if investments kept coming.

  “Contributions are investments in holiness, Lovejoy. Joy repays joy!”

  To my alarm they began singing a hymn. People all around joined in. I went red, feeling a duckegg, not knowing the words and feeling too stupid to join in even if I did.

  We stopped at the main entrance. “Praise all goodness, friends!” Prez said, shaking hands with anybody he could reach. People slapped backs, cried heavenly slogans. I nodded, tried to smile.

  “Good be praised!” Annalou cried in her dreadful monotone, using her heavenly shape to wheedle a way through the crowd. I followed.

  We were on a forecourt laid out with biblical scenes in mosaic, with tableaux showing prophetic events in grottoes lining the route. Close to, the glass Deus Whatnot grew to huge dimensions.

  “So far, the only entrance we use is the small southern one, cloistered against evil of course by our famous Exhibition of Eternity.”

  “It’s in connection with that, Prez, that my financial —”

  “A second’s prayerful thought first, Lovejoy!” Prez intoned, hauling me towards the entrance. I understood: no money chat among devotees.

  We paused before a waxwork tableau while he said a lengthy prayer. I paused respectfully, trapped by Annalou’s pressing figure and Prez’s athletic bulk. Visitors all about paused with us, praying along.

  The entrance was done up like a church porch. “See that it’s Jerusalem, Lovejoy? Isn’t the symbolism just cute?”

  “Great, Annalou.” I wished she wouldn’t crush my arm against herself so enthusiastically. Not in a church, even one like this. I was getting hot under the collar.

  “Our Exhibition of Eternity reveals the splendour of God’s own times, Lovejoy,” Prez said in a blast of halleluiahs as the crowd unglued and we started in.

  “The antiques?”

  “Evidence of former times when Good walked the earth.”

  “I’m so moved,” I said to Annalou. And I really was. I could have eaten her with a spoon. No wonder the contributions—well, investments—came rolling in with a bird like this fluttering her eyelashes on your television set.

  “I can tell, Lovejoy,” she whispered. If only it hadn’t been in a monotone.

  Somebody bumped against me, tripping me. I stumbled and would have fallen if Annalou hadn’t been so close. Magda’s angry face swam into my ken and vanished in a sea of devotees.

  We had entered a kind of gloamy grotto. A waterfall cascaded before lights. Antiques were close. I felt a strong boom in my chest, and turned to see Zole ostentatiously swaggering out.

  “Wait, Annalou!”

  “Yes?” she breathed.

  “You’re sure all the antiques are in here?”

  “Why, yes, Lovejoy!”

  “There’s one being carried out. By that little lad—”

  She caught Glad Tidings, he pressed an alarm. Everybody froze. The hymns stopped. Lights bashed on. Devotees crowded in and marshalled us all along walls, whistles sounding outside. Annalou and Prez dragged me through the crowd out onto the forecourt.

  “That way. I felt something really overpowering.”

  “Felt?” Prez pondered that, prayerfully I’m sure. I saw Zole with Magda heading for a public long-distance coach, walking with composure.

  “I’ll tell you who has it.” I closed my eyes, swaying, overdoing things rather, but trying to keep in with the spirit of the place. Pretence is contagious.

  “Freeze, everybody!”

  Everybody stilled. Glad Tidings muttered that he should shake everybody down, where’s the problem. I said to wait.

  I stalked towards where Zole stood with Magda, opened my eyes, gave a quick wink at Zole. Magda was furious for some reason, but that’s only a woman doing her thing.

  “Hand it over, sonny, please.”

  I held out my hand to Zole, quickly adding as he drew breath for a spurt of insolence, “My name’s Lovejoy. No harm will come
to you, we promise.”

  “You sure?” he asked suspiciously, little sod.

  “We promise in the name of Good, don’t we, friends?” I chanted. “Forgiveness is all. Suffer little children to, er…” What the hell was it? “And we shall be, er, blessed,” I ended a bit lamely.

  “Here. It was just lying about.”

  Zole gave me a statuette. I almost dropped it in shock as the red-hot glow spread into me and the bells thundered in my soul. I’d never, ever seen anything like it. God, but it was lovely, lying there in my hand where it belonged.

  It didn’t look much, just a small hard-porcelain figure of Moses with his tablets inscribed in Hebrew. But it was Chinese, old as the hills, typical feeling and colours. They’re not even imitated (yet, yet!) by porcelain fakers on the antiques marts (yet!) so you’re almost certainly in possession of a wonderful find if you’ve got one at home. They’re supposed to come in a set of six, various Old Testament characters—Joshua, Noah, that lot.

  Weakly I passed it to Annalou, and pulled out a roll of money.

  This was props gelt, high-denomination notes drawn through Tye, to be returned in the plane. People gasped at the size of the roll. Ostentatiously I peeled one off, and gave it to Zole with a flourish.

  “Here, sonny,” I said loudly. “Your need is greater than mine, as the Lord sayeth.” Or somebody. “Now, lady. Go and sin no more!”

  “Praise the Lord!” somebody said mercifully.

  “Amen!” I chirped. I was so moved I honestly felt tears.

  Magda and Zole were ushered away, but I walked after them and beckoned a taxi forward from the car park line. I didn’t want vengeful devotees inflicting an impromptu penance on them. I gave them what I hoped looked like a genuine blessing as they pulled out. Show over.

  I turned, bumped into Annalou. Prez was talking in low tones to Glad Tidings and three other serfs. I dried my eyes.

  “Lovejoy!” Annalou said, dropping her voice three notches and taking my arm. “You’re so sweet!”

  It’s true. I am. I was thinking what could have happened to me if that Zole hadn’t done his stuff.

  “God is in each of us, Annalou,” I intoned. “Though I am the worst of His flock. Can I admit something to you, Annalou? It’s this. I’m sore afflicted by lust—yes, even now, even as we were about to enter the temple of the, er, Deus.” I’d forgotten the bloody name. God, it was a mess. “For you, love. I’ve never felt this way before, not even since I found the sacred Mildenhall Treasure, or that missing Rembrandt from Dulwich Art Gallery.”

  “Not since…?” She took my arm. Her breast pressed against my quivering form. “For little me, Lovejoy? You fell carnal sinful desire…?”

  “I have to admit it, Annalou. The instant I saw you, I fell. I’m sure Satan sent me—”

  “Shhh, Lovejoy.” Prez was approaching. The three devotees were looking hard at me. She whispered, “Say nothing yet, Lovejoy. Until you and I’ve had a chance of a prayer together.”

  I composed myself and together we went into the Exhibition of Eternity. I paid the admission fee with a large denomination, and managed to look offended when the devotee offered me change.

  Two hours later I was breathless and stunned.

  Take any—for that read every—art form, cram it into a partly finished glass building arranged as caves, crystal porticos and arches, alleys and terraces, all under one great luminescent ceiling. Add dancing fountains, glass chapels and glowing altars rising musically from the ground. Add moving glass walls with portraits of bad, bad art (“Unfolding in eternal sequence!” gushed Annalou). Add automaton choirs, electrically powered with glutinous hymns pouring out from crannies everywhere, on stages which rose and sank. Add Eternal Damnation with a fire shooting from a bottomless pit where automated gremlins stoked furnaces and electronic groans put the fear of God in you. Searchlights reamed away in dark corners—“Let there be lights!” Prez crowed ahead of us.

  “The greatest scene of all, Lovejoy!” Annalou told me, more friendly than ever. “Real Genuine People choirs are still the greatest pull!”

  The RGP choristers sang, swaying delirious with joy. People clapped in time and rocked to and fro.

  They were all dressed in cottas and cassocks, reds and whites and blacks. Microphones, that least sanctified instrument, dangled

  “A small choir, only a few folks come, see?”

  “A big choir means a bigger crowd, more revenue?”

  “You better believe it.”

  The Sanctum Antiquorum charged a special admission fee. You got a plenary indulgence on a Parchment of Prayer, for an extra fee. It looked like real parchment to me, which raised the unpleasant thought that some sheep somewhere had given one hundred per cent.

  “This is a genuine scale copy of the Vatican Museum’s forum, Lovejoy!” Annalou claimed. “We’re hoping to buy a church from your Wiltshire, complete with gravestones, and install it as an added attraction in a Cornice of Contemplation.”

  The antiques were a mixture of fake, fraud, and the genuine. Paintings, mainly Italian School, mid-eighteenth century, a couple of frescoes, walls from genuine old monasteries, arches and pillars from Germany, a couple of French cloisters. It was a marvellous show, but an impossible mishmash. Yet what’s wrong with that?

  Silver chalices, gold monstrances, rings claiming kinship with ancient bishops and saints, a chunk of everything vaguely religious was included. There was a hand-shaped left-handed tea-caddy spoon I particularly fell for—once used in Catholic services for shovelling incense into the thurible at High Mass. (Tip: any collector will give his eye teeth for a left-handed one of those, being so much rarer than the right-handed sort.) Madonnas abounded, statues bled and wept with artificial abandon. Crutches dangled from arches, testifying to spontaneous recovery from afflictions.

  I’m not knocking all this, incidentally. Whatever your salvation depends on, go to it and good luck. Just don’t ask me to subscribe to the magazine.

  I spent too long gazing at the small sextet of ancient figures from China, one of which I’d rescued from Zole. Seeing them all together, I honestly wished I’d not bubbled the kid, but sent him back for the other five and waited in the getaway helicopter or something.

  “Honey.” Annalou squeezed my hand, having detected but misunderstood my sincerest form of emotion. “We can maybe work something out, okay? You and me?”

  “It’s Jove, you see,” I explained thickly, gazing at the wonderful small porcelains. The Jesuits had these done in seventeenth-century Peking. I reached and touched them one by one, feeling the glow.

  “I’ll always remember them, Annalou,” I told her truthfully. “They’re what brought us together.”

  “Shhhh!”

  A few more hymns and we made our melodious way out into the air. I was bog-eyed, and had to sit down beside an Inspiration for Invalids arbour. It faced a Garden of Eden, with a politely clad robot Adam taking perennial bites from a plastic apple while a demure Eve looked on in automated horror at a snake winding its way round and round a tree. I had to look away.

  “I can see you’re overcome, Lovejoy.” Prez was with us. He’d had a space cleared for us by devotees, the invalids’ wheelchairs and stretchers being moved on temporarily while we spoke.

  “I hoped it wouldn’t show, Prez.”

  They exchanged significant glances while I pretended to be superawed by the crystal building. It didn’t take much effort.

  “Lovejoy. Your financial offer…?” He sat beside me, clapping his hand on my shoulder while Annalou pressed close. They were quite a team. “It’s to do with your special gift, right? That was the most fascinating display of perception I’ve ever witnessed. Why, a gift like that, recognizing antiques by sense, why, that’s a gift which must be used for Good. I feel we have a rightful claim on your services, Lovejoy.”

  I came to, smiled. “That’s right, Prez. I came here to offer my gift in your service.”

  “How wonderful!” Annalou pressed my han
d. “That means you’ll be able to stay a while, rejoicing in prayer!”

  “Afraid not, love. But I will provide a list of items which are fakes. In your exhibits, as they stand.”

  Silence. I admired the ghastly Deus building. “You deserve help, Prez. I was guided here by a higher power.”

  “Well, I feel that too.” He was uncertain.

  “Those saintly relics from Trier, the pottery on display by the Saints of Europe scenarios. They’re fakes, Prez.”

  “They’re…?” He looked hard at Annalou. From the corner of my eye I caught her worried shrug.

  “We’ll get confirmation from Queen Mary College, London. They do it with physics somehow. Some mumbo-jumbo called inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry. That’ll show it, I’m sure. And that Roman glass from the Holy Land’s all rubbish. They use spectrophotometry. I think, but we can give them a call —”

  “Fakes?” Prez said faintly. He checked we weren’t being overheard. “Lovejoy. You can’t be right. Our Foundation bought those items from the most reputable sources.”

  “You have my sympathy, Prez. And so has your lovely wife here.” I dragged my eyes from his lovely wife and gave him my best soulful smile. “I feel your anguish. Here you are, having built up this great… er, thing. And now to realize you’ve spent a fortune of your income on worthless junk. It’s a setback, Prez. I weep for you.”

  “Are you sure, Lovejoy, honey? About the fakes?”

  “Shut up!” Prez snapped at her in an undertone. I tried to look startled. He smiled at me, abruptly back to holiness. “Lovejoy. The strain of this revelation’s afflicted my soul. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. That specimen of Egyptian grain from Joseph of the multicoloured coat fame is duff—er, false, Prez. Like the bowl it’s in. I think these science people use something called electron spin resonance for that —”

  “Lovejoy, we got to talk.”

  He signalled Glad Tidings and the custom golf truck. We drove to his private palace through crowds of adoring devotees, who cried their blessings down upon us. I felt a right prat, and a fraud, but that’s par for my course. He gave few blessings on that return journey.