The Jesus Germ

by Brett Williams

  The plane landed at Leonardo da Vinci airport. Hyde and Blake were met at the Lear by a black car and driven from the airport to Castel Gandolfo, the small town in Lazio, southeast of Rome where the Papal summer residence nestled in the hillside overlooking Lake Albano. Pope Luke waited there, sitting on a shaded terrace, gazing across the azure water.

  Blake accompanied Hyde through the palace gates, then farewelled him. Hyde was further escorted up a sweeping staircase into an unfurnished crimson room where French doors opened to the terrace. The Swiss Guard withdrew and stood to attention.

  Hyde saw a man reclining in a chair, peering over a low wall where he rested his feet, taking in the magnificent view of the lake.

  ‘Welcome, Robert.’

  Hyde had made no sound to betray his presence.

  ‘Your Holiness.’ Hyde kept his head bowed.

  ‘Michael, if you will.’

  Pope Luke slipped his feet off the wall and got off the chair, smiling broadly, holding a glass of red wine.

  ‘Please share a drink with me.’

  All the while he eyed the shoebox under Hyde’s arm.

  ‘Thank you, Michael.’

  Pope Luke, keen to see the tarantula, came at a subtle angle.

  ‘Were you on Darwin Island when it exploded into the sea, Robert?’

  ‘Yes, and most fortunate to be rescued by a dive charter fleeing the eruption.’

  ‘Good fortune or the intercession of God, Robert?’

  ‘I don’t believe in God or miracles, Michael. The odds merely fell in my favour.’

  ‘You managed to save your little friend as well?’

  ‘He is all I salvaged from Darwin.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Jimmy is a male tarantula, unique in every sense of the word.’

  Pope Luke salivated at the thought.

  ‘Will you show him to me, Robert?’

  ‘Is it the only reason you brought me here?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Robert. I don’t want to keep the tarantula.’

  ‘Why do you wish to see it?’

  ‘What do you seek in exchange?’

  ‘An uninhabited Costa Rican island.’

  ‘Perhaps you will allow me one further indulgence.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘A sample of its venom.’

  ‘I will show him to you.’ Hyde was unquestioning, keen to have his island, happy to oblige any request, however unusual.

  ‘I would dearly like that, Robert. Please take a seat while I pour some wine.’

  Hyde sat in a chair by a small table. He put the shoe box down, slid the rubber bands off each end and removed the lid. Pope Luke sat opposite him, sipping his glass of red as Hyde reached into the box, bringing Jimmy out in the palm of his hand, its eight legs tightly retracted. Hyde sensed Pope Luke’s unease.

  ‘You have nothing to fear, Michael. Jimmy is as docile as a kitten unless provoked.’

  Pope Luke wasn’t scared, just taking in the moment, in awe of the rare creature, its brilliant purple hue and fabulous size.

  Jimmy slowly stretched out his legs and walked up Hyde’s arm.

  ‘He is as much a pet as any wild creature can be.’

  Pope Luke watched it crawl onto Hyde’s shoulder, across his bearded face, and perch on top of his unruly silver hair.

  ‘Will you hold him, Michael?’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Hyde reached up and Jimmy obliged by crawling onto the back of his hand.

  ‘Hold out your palm, Michael.’

  Jimmy stepped off Hyde’s hand onto the Pope’s extended fingers, settling its cool furry body against his wrist. Pope Luke expected it to be heavier, the light touch of its legs made him edgy. The thought of its fangs sinking into his forearm, sent a shiver down his spine. Jimmy crawled up Pope Luke’s arm across the front of his open-necked shirt, stopping on his throat under his freshly shaved chin. For a moment, the Pope wanted to flick the creature away. A bead of sweat ran off his right temple. He swallowed nervously, the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple massaging the tarantula’s belly. When it became almost too much for the Pope to bear, Jimmy moved on. The sensation of it walking over his mouth and eyes was horrible and when it sat on his head he exhaled with relief. There it sunk into his hair, resting.

  Hyde watched in veiled amusement, the Pope’s white zucchetto now replaced by a bright purple tarantula.

  ‘Shall I remove him, Michael?’

  ‘Please, Robert.’

  When Jimmy walked onto Hyde’s hand, a back leg caught in Pope Luke’s dyed brown hair, disturbing the Pontiff’s perfect coiffure.

  ‘An unparalleled experience, Robert, I’m sure no other Pope has enjoyed.’ Pope Luke knew he would never endure such a thing again.

  ‘I can milk Jimmy’s venom if you wish. Have we a deal?’

  Pope Luke extended his hand and Hyde shook it firmly.

  ‘The price of your island, Robert?’

  ‘Two million American dollars.’

  The Pope did not flinch. ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘Thank you, Michael. I require a clear glass container and a clean teaspoon.’

  Pope Luke rang a small handheld bell and the Swiss Guard appeared on the terrace, anxiously eyeing the giant spider on Hyde’s hand. He listened to Pope Luke’s instructions and left, eyeing the motionless spider all the way to the door, returning with a crystal decanter and a shiny silver teaspoon.

  Hyde put Jimmy back into the shoe box and tapped the silver spoon in his face. Jimmy batted it with his front legs, striking with his fangs so venom squirted out. Hyde caught most of the golden fluid in the cusp of the teaspoon, about two millilitres in all, and tipped it into the decanter. He lidded the shoe box and let Jimmy calm down.

  ‘Jimmy’s venom glands have been emptied. It will take a day for them to replenish. Is there enough for your purposes, Michael?’

  ‘Exceedingly, Robert.’

  ‘A million dollars per millilitre, Michael.’

  ‘And good value at that, Robert.’ Pope Luke did not elaborate.

  ‘Be careful. The venom is not usually lethal to humans but the amount in the decanter is substantial enough.’

  ‘It is in safe hands, rest assured, Robert. A toast if you would.’

  Pope Luke topped up their glasses and they raised them to the sky.

  ‘Robert, you will understand I have business to attend this afternoon. Thank you for coming.’

  Hyde handed him a note with his bank account details.

  ‘Ah yes, Robert, by sunset you will be a wealthy man. My secretary has booked a room for you at the Excelsior.’

  ‘Most gracious, Michael. Tomorrow evening, I will return to the Galapagos to sort my affairs before travelling on to Costa Rica.’

  ‘My staff will arrange everything for you, Robert, it is the least I can do. Your new passport will be ready in twenty-four hours. The world...’ Pope Luke corrected himself in mid-sentence. ‘…I am forever in your debt, Robert.’

  The Pope stretched his right hand over Hyde’s head.

  ‘Almighty Father, bless Professor Robert Hyde and the gifts he has brought here. Give him good favour and may the guiding light of Christ touch his soul, immersing him in the grandeur of your eternal love.’

  Hyde acknowledged the blessing, while internally dismissing any concept of divinity.

  ‘Be sure to contact me, Robert, if you are ever in need.’

  Pope Luke turned and faced Lake Albano, a sign the meeting was over. Hyde fixed the rubber bands over the ends of the shoe box, tucked it under his arm and walked off the terrace into the crimson room. The Swiss Guard escorted him down the staircase, and intuitively the palace staff proceeded to address all of Hyde’s needs.

  As Pope Luke watched Hyde leave the palace in a chauffeured car he took a deep breath and felt his invincibility rise. In his private quarters, he set the decanter on a jarrah altar and draped a stole around his shoulders. T
o the venom, he added a litre of altar wine.

  Pope Luke celebrated Mass, turning the ciborium of hosts and the wine-venom mixture into the most sacred Body and Blood of Christ. Now he alone had the power to save mankind. In possession of the most potent entity in history, he would demand a heavy price for the salvation of souls.

  But his immortality was threatened. To redeem his own body and spirit meant fooling God about his current state of heart.

  Sitting in a chair in a fourth-floor suite of the Excelsior Hotel, Hyde gazed out a window over the busy metropolis and soon nodded off to sleep. He dreamt of his Costa Rican island while Jimmy dined on a goldfish scooped from a bowl on the coffee table.

  Rome dawned under a violet sky as the hum of traffic coursed up from the street. Hyde was stiff from sleeping in the chair. Inside the shoe box, the goldfish had lost its bright orange shimmer, lying shrivelled and brown in a corner, dry as a potato crisp. Hyde picked it out by the tail and flushed it down the toilet.

  He ordered breakfast to his suite; an unfamiliar offering of fruit, toast and cereal. On Darwin Island, tinned food, fresh fish, the sea air and a robust set of genes had sustained him in good health for twenty-five years.

  He used the suite’s telephone to check his bank account but the island money had not been deposited. He decided to tour the city’s famous landmarks and the natural history museum.

  He carried the shoe box with him into the hotel’s elevator.

  Out on the street, Blake followed Hyde at a safe distance.

  Hyde joined the tourist queue outside the Colosseum and on purchasing a ticket, wandered the site alone, marvelling at the ancient architecture.

  As the day warmed, Hyde sought refuge from the sun. He bought a salad sandwich and coffee from a roadside cart and sat in the shade of an umbrella at a table on the sidewalk.

  Afterwards, he entered the air-conditioned halls of the Barracco Museum to explore the Egyptian wing. Next to an obsidian statue of the hawk-god Horus was a glass-topped cabinet housing a dozen Horus miniatures, recovered from the tomb of a fourteenth-dynasty scribe, each carved from alabaster and finely polished.

  Blake stood at the handrail two stories above Hyde, with a view through the central void over the Horus exhibit. He took a steel marble from his pocket and aimed over the glass cabinet where Hyde was reading.

  The ball plummeted silently. It flashed past Hyde’s nose, exploding through the glass pane, shattering shards over the polished concrete floor. The walls reverberated with a deafening alarm and Hyde realised he was alone in the room with the marble resting innocuously amongst the Horus miniatures.

  Hyde tried to sneak into a side corridor.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ called a guard.

  Ignoring the inquiry, he quickened his pace, suspicious by the shoe box under his arm. Blake started down the spiral of stairs. Hyde bumped into a woman as he made for the tall glass doors of the entrance, breaking into a run when two dark-clothed figures came at him from the foyer wings. He wrenched open a door and crossed the pavement onto the road.

  A skidding lorry struck Hyde, grinding him into the bitumen. Blood immediately poured from his nose, mouth and ears.

  Blake saw the accident from the foyer. Three museum guards stood helplessly while the lorry driver ran to Hyde who was pulseless and not breathing. Others came to help amidst blaring car horns.

  Blake walked past Hyde. An ambulance would take some time getting through the jam of cars. Hyde was already dead, obvious from the unnatural angle of his head.

  Blake scoured the road, spotting the shoe box on its side in the gutter with the lid to one side. He spoke into a hidden collar microphone.

  ‘Judas Iscariot, this is Blake.’

  ‘Do you have the box?’ said the electronically modified voice.

  ‘Yes, but it’s empty.’

  ‘Where is Hyde?’

  ‘Dead on the road, hit by a lorry.’

  ‘Find the spider.’

  ‘There are people everywhere.’

  ‘I need it dead or alive. It’s bright purple, big as a plate. Are you afraid of spiders, Harold?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Good, because you must bring it to me.’

  A white plastic bag flapped in the breeze, somehow stuck to the pavement. Clouds blew in quickly, and large drops of rain spat onto the hot street. When Blake bent to pick up the bag, Jimmy scuttled from underneath it, settling on the edge of a drain grate, large and furry as a show-bag toy. Blake knelt, pretending to tie his shoelace, the tarantula within reach. A child holding his mother’s hand spotted the spider in the gutter.

  ‘Mum, there’s a crab.’

  His mother ignored him, tugging his arm to keep him moving.

  Blake needed to act quickly. Fighting panic, he moved his right hand toward the tarantula. When he touched its bristling abdomen, Jimmy spun on the spot, rearing up, baring his fangs. Blake sprung to his feet, heart in overdrive as the tarantula backed through the grate, disappearing into the stormwater drain.

  As the sun poked through the clouds, Blake saw his own reflection in the water beneath the grate. Legs spreadeagled, Jimmy suddenly dropped into view with a light splash then floated into a side pipe.

  An ambulance arrived, siren blazing, lights flashing. After Hyde was stretchered inside, the heavens opened, dispersing the crowd of onlookers and the blood congealing on the road.

  ‘Judas Iscariot.’

  ‘Do you have it?’

  ‘No, the spider was washed down a drain.’

  Blake waited for a reply.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  The silence turned to a disconnected static.

  Pope Luke smiled to himself. Hyde and his pet were gone. God had again intervened on his behalf, a sure sign the Spirit was guiding him in a right and holy direction.

  The kerb gutters ran like flash-floods, the drain where Jimmy went unable to empty fast enough so water bubbled up out of the grate, spreading across the road. Passing cars fanned water over the sidewalk, and humidity blanketed the city.

  Jimmy was beset by gushing water. What started as a tranquil ride through the Rome underworld, quickly became a fierce rapid. He endured the tumultuous ride with ease, bobbing on top of the rough torrent then out a thick cement pipe into the sunshine. His purple bristles glistened against the blue Tyrrhenian Sea and he was at the mercy of the wind and tide. The breeze that brought the storm into the city now dried the clothes strung on lines along the beach.

  An hour past dusk, Jimmy washed onto the sand and crawled up the gentle incline.

  A summer party was in full swing in the middle of the beach. A large bonfire sparked high into the night, illuminating the young crowd of revellers.

  Drawn by the light, Jimmy continued toward the bonfire until his path was blocked by a backpack lying on the sand. He slipped under a flap on its side and tucked his legs beneath his body.

  A girl slipped the watch off her wrist, put it in her pocket with her cell phone and stripped down to her bikini. As she shoved her belongings into her backpack, something clung to her arm. By the glow of the fire she saw a hairy shape and at first her scream was thwarted by the sudden dryness of her throat. When it came, the long shrill note of fear stopped the party. She swung her arm about in horror until Jimmy relinquished his grip, cart-wheeling toward the fire and into the flames.

  The girl sunk to the sand, sobbing.

  Jimmy landed on a post of red embers, momentarily holding fast until his legs melted and his body fell into the bottom of the fire. He tried to flee on his shrivelled stumps, only to ignite in a bright puff of light, the remnant cinder blown into the starry sky.

  91

  Pope Luke poured the Holy Blood and Venom into a Kwarx bottle and screwed down the lid.

  To amuse himself during midday Mass in the Sistine Chapel, he would dispense the vaccine at Communion. The communicants knew the repercussions of receiving Christ in a state of mortal sin. The assembly of men and women should be th
e purest collection of souls in all of Rome; the pious priests, nuns and brothers of the Holy Catholic Church. All had taken a vow of chastity, and when restored in fertility would bear the weight of a moral conundrum at Pope Luke’s revelation. To save man they must renounce their chaste commitment to Christ and give their souls to the Devil.

  Pope Luke didn’t care if the human race lived or died, only that the decision was his.

  The Mass was an officious and grand celebration to present Pope Luke to the clergy of the Holy City. The chapel was filled with faithful servants of God attired in their finest religious couture, singing hymns of unrequited adoration that soared up to the painted ceilings on streams of incense.

  Pope Luke proclaimed that he alone would distribute Communion as a symbol of humble service to his people. As devout followers of the cross they would gladly suffer the lengthy process, immersed in prayer. In his youth, the nuns constantly reminded him that the true Christ was found in one’s daily crown of thorns.

  Pope Luke held the ciborium of hosts, attended by a cardinal holding the chalice filled with the Holy Blood and Venom.

  Father Stephen left a pew near the back of the chapel, joining the long queue.

  Pope Luke dipped a wafer into the sacred liquid, raising it up in front of his face.

  ‘The Body and Blood of Christ.’

  ‘Amen.’

  As Father Stephen put out his tongue, Pope Luke let the host slip from his fingers and fall to the carpet. Father Stephen knelt, picked it up, took it reverently into his mouth, crossed himself in supplication and returned to his seat.

  Pope Luke delighted in the subtle action that dropped Father Stephen on bended knee at his feet.

  Distribution of communion took forty minutes, the seeds of life now planted, awaiting the fouled waters of sin in which to germinate.

  At the altar, Pope Luke emptied the residual liquid from the chalice back into the Kwarx bottle and slipped it inside his vestments.

  After quiet reflection, he stood, gave a final blessing and led a procession of cardinals down the nave amidst a triumphant fanfare of song.