The Book of Rapture

by Nikki Gemmell

  ‘We all have to do this.’ Soli, iron in her voice. The one who doesn’t get weakness or maybe she does, too much. She spins Mouse around and propels him out.

  ‘You were adopted. I think you should know, in case I don’t come back.’

  Soli’s hands drop. ‘I am not.’ But a voice that believes it.

  ‘Dad said so. I found the birth certificate in his drawer and I wasn’t allowed to tell you.’

  A new, electric quiet. Soli’s paleness. Her mouth she forgot to shut. Mouse steps back. Pebbled now by the enormity of what he’s unleashed. The taste of his meanness sour in his mouth.

  ‘Get out,’ Soli says finally.

  ‘No, you weren’t, I made it up.’ Mouse laughs too loud. Trying to spool back the situation.

  ‘Get out. We don’t want you here. We don’t need you. You’re never any help.’

  He frowns and rolls in his lips. Rooted, panicky, to the spot.

  ‘And walk like you belong,’ Soli says with a furious shove. ‘Not that you belong anywhere.’

  He had that coming. But there’s the huge, glittery sting of it nonetheless. It’s in his face.

  Change, impermanence, is a characteristic of life.

  75

  The corridor. The door behind him. Just about to be firmly shut. Leaving Mouse stranded in the vast unknown. The boxer’s back. His legs aren’t working properly. It’s like walking through thigh-high mud. ‘Mummy,’ he mouths, wildly looking around, ‘Mummy?’ You need to be with him, need this, he’s so small, so young for this. You thump the wall in frustration.

  And so it is. Thank God for that, thank God.

  The corridor’s empty. A hum like an engine room is somewhere close. Mouse’s breathing ratchets up, his eyes are wide as he tries to work it out; perhaps there’s a furnace or a lab for strange experiments or a child-sized oven warming up, and stopping at head height are rectangular, filthy cream tiles and above them are scrapes as if enormous crates have been pushed, protesting, into the building’s dark heart. He gazes at the ceiling. Spaghetti lines of black piping run into the distance, ticking and gurgling and transporting goodness knows what. Water? Waste? Blood? He tries to spine his walk, to tall himself up, progressing slowly, so slowly down the corridor. Fire stairs, ahead. Can he do it? Can he climb them? He rubs his arms, feeling his sister’s intent, still wears her finger marks. Up, up the steps, whimpering, barely managing this. To a heavy black door on the next level and he grabs a door handle and can’t quite bring himself to turn it, to dare to see what’s beyond, but, but…

  He bends. Peers. A tiny, ripped-off piece of checked shirt, tied to the doorknob. So small it’s hardly there. But it is.

  His brother. A secret signal.

  So. It must be all right. Someone’s guiding him here.

  Mouse smiles and turns the handle strong.

  I am the door.

  76

  You gasp in shock. Well, well.

  So this is B’s world that he never talks about. Of course not. It would never fit the image of the renegade guerrilla hero in his biker boots, the principled fighter who sleeps on potato crates. ‘Oh, my God,’ Mouse whispers as he gazes through the door. ‘Oh, my God.’

  A cavernous hall of loveliness, too much loveliness in a country so smashed. Marble, gleaming mirrors, shine. A colour scheme of black and silver and cream. Light streaming through a glass dome in enormous bands like highways for angels, highways to up and out. Your boy grips the door handle, the last bit of reality from his other, room-boxed life. He shuts the door and leans against the tiles. Can’t step out into this, can’t believe it’s real, can’t ever walk normally into such an audacious place. How on earth did they manage such a secret? Party so ebulliently while ranting against everything this room represents.

  Again Mouse opens the door, can’t help it. The handle on the other side is a golden dolphin and looped on its jaunty tail is another of Tidge’s strips. He smiles. Of course his brother drank this up. He glances at orchids cascading in pale waterfalls from vases as tall as toddlers, at chairs with carved eagles’ heads on velvet arms, at chandeliers an umbrella span across, at a pianist’s sad back among fat silver teapots and women with hard faces in high heels and red lipstick. The new regime was never meant to be this. It shrilled that it was fighting the voraciousness of the previous political caste, people that it spat had perfected the art of denying themselves nothing, who were obscenely immoral, excessive, corrupt. They were going to create a nobler, fairer, corrected way of life. Which was never this.

  And B is embedded within it.

  And where is Motl in all this? He said he knew his friend so well, like a son. Did he have any idea of this place? Any idea where his children might end up?

  Mouse can’t walk out into it, he’s not brave enough. But there’ll be his sister’s knowing nod if he returns empty-handed; you all know she’s expecting failure. He lifts his chin, takes a deep, firming breath, and steps out. You smile in disbelief.

  When thou hast enough, remember the time of hunger.

  77

  A white marble staircase curves like a seashell up to the floors above, up to a secretive quiet. Tidge went there, of course. It’s where his food came from, people leave uneaten food in hotel corridors, yes, but how did he get up?

  A lift. Dead ahead. An old iron cage for a door that opens as if reading his thoughts. A uniformed lift-operator bows her head, all enquiring eyebrows and chuff. Your son nods in return with a wan grin not quite there on his face. The woman twinkles a smile and sweeps her hand across the showroom of her tiny space. And a lift-operator, good grief, it’s like seeing a video player or a cassette. Motl would love it so much. He’d settle on her velvet bench and travel up and down, up and down, all cackly with delight. Your son holds high his hand firmly in farewell. Shuts his door. So not good at this. He climbs the stairs and skips the first floor and opens the fire door with a 2 on it.

  ‘Lost?’ The lift lady chuckles, dead ahead.

  ‘No,’ Mouse grumps. Annoyed that he’s been second-guessed.

  A stand-off. She’s not leaving. Her face has so much memory in it. And it’s been such a long time since Mouse has seen anyone elderly and he steps forward without realising, as if suddenly transfixed by the idea of her house, all those early childhood smells from visits to Granny, stillness and airless rooms and smothery, powdery cuddles and flannellette sheets.

  ‘Why are you wandering about all alone, young man? Are you lost? Can I help?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ he deflects.

  ‘Jude Pickering the Third,’ she announces with a smile. ‘And don’t you forget.’

  He smiles and it’s like sun breaking through cloud. The woman closes the lift door with fingers as yellow and as worn as old newspapers and whispers that there’s an old service lift if he’d prefer, pointing with a blue-roped hand to a door down the corridor covered in wallpaper.

  ‘Hardly anyone uses it because it’s so slow. But you might just enjoy it, I think.’

  Then she’s gone. Her knowing twinkle the last thing left.

  And you are not afraid. She’s one of you, you’re sure of it. Perhaps, just perhaps, B is on track. And there are people looking out for them, and they’ll be all right.

  Miss not the discourse of the elders.

  78

  And now your little boy. Standing in that hotel corridor with an enormous warmth filling him up. Because he did it — he walked out of that terrifying door of his room into the vast unknown. By himself. And it worked. He found kindness and his father’s always going on about that. It’s attached to Motl’s favourite word, empathy; he says that kindness requires empathy which requires imagination and many people in this world have it, many unexpected people, you just have to give them the chance and this lift lady has demonstrated it; she put herself into your son’s shoes and imagined what it must be like. And tried to help. And your boy can’t stop grinning with the stun of it. He’s standing here, all changed, one huge streak of
grin, and then he’s off.

  And for no reason I start skipping like a child.

  79

  Now a tray. Any food he can get. Time’s running out. The corridor feels like a house where everyone has to speak in whispers, where someone’s died and all the children must be quiet. Behind a door Mouse can hear a TV’s chattery daytime hum and he scuttles away and turns a corner and there’s a lone tray at the end. Quick. Nothing on it but some half-eaten pasta and a cold pot of tea and a dreg of milk that’s drained in a gulp. The bowl of pasta’s grabbed, it’ll have to do. He runs back to the wallpapered door and plunges through it.

  A scuffed landing. Lit by a light bulb as weak as sickness. A tiny room full of towels. Shampoos. Soaps. He fills his pockets with as many toiletries as he can get then presses the lift button, praying that no one else is in it, and watches the numbers rise steadily up, up, from B, basement, and his throat tightens, ready to run if he must. The door opens.

  Empty. Thank goodness.

  Empty all the shuddery way down.

  Mouse slams back against the lift wall with relief.

  That Miss Jude Pickering the Third was right. He so much prefers it like this. It’s as if she’s been briefed.

  HEY, it’s like this invisible network of watching around us. Good people, out there. Everywhere. Keeping us safe. Thanks.

  Your skin prickles up.

  He who formerly was thoughtless and afterwards cultivates awareness brightens up the world like the moon when free of clouds.

  80

  Some people are really like, still there, when they die. I mean their presence. The bigness of their life force. It’s like the air is stamped with them. You can feel it. Their, I dunno, lingering. You’d think the logical place for them would be asleep underground but no way, they’re anywhere but that. It’s like they’re hanging on for a bit. Then they’re gone. Just like that. They suddenly move on.

  Hence the command. ‘Listen in silence.’ and be silent: since you have not become the tongue of God, be ears.

  81

  The back end of the night. A glary glee in each of them. Soli draws the curtains. They need the pitch dark, as dark as they can get. Tiny pinpricks of wily light shine through the moth-holes but it’s fine, black enough. For the fireworks!

  And so here they all are, your three shining children, peeling off their piled-on clothes which crackle and flare in the dry air and they’re all shrieking at each fresh spark-shower that stands their freshly washed hair on stilty end, your daughter’s the most, and they’re doing it over and over until the sparks grow less and stop. Their little world in this room is shining right up now and they’re drunk with the joy of it. Tidge, especially, has come over all silly tonight, anything’s setting him off. His sister singing into the champagne bottle, her ravenous belly button that swallows fingers to the second knuckle, everyone’s horizontal hair, the way it smells different on each one of them even though they’re all using the same shampoo. ‘Wicked,’ he announces as he buries his nose into any head he can get and his siblings keep pushing him off but back he comes and back, puppy-persistent, collapsing them into giggles until their sides ache and they can hardly stand, hardly talk. Exuberance is beauty, oh yes, and there’s such a cram of beauty in this room tonight, a halo of joy. Binding them, soothing them, mending them.

  It is love. It is relief.

  Their space is sanctified by it, and you are at peace.

  And in the time of their visitation they shall shine and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble.

  82

  Now the tired is leaking into each of them and one by one they wind down and grow quiet and stop. Your daughter’s hand is resting lightly on Tidge’s jutting hip and it’s not shrugged off. Her forehead’s smooth, something within her has passed. Tidge sleeps with his arms spread wide and Mouse, the last awake, takes out his notebook, chuckling in wonder at his brother’s trust, still; that magnificent and persistent belief that everything will be all right. Mouse wants it so much. The buoyancy of it, the release.

  ‘I’ve grown into religion,’ Motl declared towards the end. ‘And you know, Mrs, I’m not sure now that humans can ever, as a species, completely move beyond it. Maybe we’re programmed always to create a spiritual world around us.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr, but I happen to think precisely the opposite. Humanity’s growing out of it, my lovely addled love. It’s evolution. Religious people say they’re inspired by faith and certainty — but that puts them in direct conflict with science. And science is winning.’

  ‘Certainty is dangerous in both science and religion, my lovely addled love. Each one, ultimately, is about uncertainty. In mystery lies the sublime. There are things that can be told and things that will never be told, you have to accept that.’

  ‘Yeah yeah, yada yada.’

  ‘Can goodness evolve, do you think?’

  ‘No. I despair of the world. Well, men‘ You glared and poked him playfully in the ribs. ‘Predation, not parity, is nature’s organising principle. We prey on others. We always have, always will. We thieve land and lives because that’s nature. We’re animals, human animals, the ugliest of the lot. And now I’m knackered. Nigh-night.’

  As soon as you hold the view that this is ‘true friction arises; because the opposite view must then be termed ‘false’.

  83

  Deep in this long dark all Mouse’s worry is crowding back. He’s tried falling into sleep on his rocky ledge of fret but tosses and turns.

  Okay. Slip into Tidge’s thinking. Try. Come ON. That we’re being looked after. That we don’t have to worry because someone else is doing it for us. Shed the fear. Let it go.

  His eyes are closing. He’s floating, smiling. He wakes.

  WOW Dreaming just then of Salt Cottage. Snow was coating it. Protecting it under a white sheet of forgetting. Hiding it away so that it’s waiting there patiently just for us, silent and enchanted. Our paradise lost! Dad’s final secret was to kick our football into afar corner of the garden so it’ll always be there for us, untouched, except by the wind. That football is STILL THERE. I’m SURE. Waiting silently for the five of us to get back. Yippeee!!

  You smile. Kick-about was the only sport you ever managed as a family. You’d all scramble out on one of those insanely fresh, wind-whipped days and whoop with laughter when you’d score a miraculous goal and topple onto your back under the beautiful tall sky with your arms spread wide, giggling madly, unable to stop. At the mummy side of you dissolving, at becoming someone else. The woman you once were, you guess. And you’re smiling now as little knotted Mouse drifts off into contented sleep, beside his brother, and you press close to his dreaming blood and climb on a black wing higher and higher over the city with the world below you shrinking to a web of lights, shrinking to darkness, going, going, gone. You shut your eyes, you are safe, you are safe, and you all fall into a deep sleep with the gift of that.

  Do not surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you.

  84

  Tidge wakes late in the morning within a net of drowsiness. His brother’s ankle is heavy over his. He feels scrubbed by the events of yesterday. There’s promise in the new day’s cleanness. He sits up and listens. Bells outside are trying to pull the world to their god. The sound is like the bleat of a lamb in a frosted field, bleakly alone. It shuts off abruptly as if silenced by force.

  They will not cease to war against you until they turn you from your religion.

  85

  What you crave: a place with melodramatic skies again. Where the silence hums, where your eye rests. A God-charged landscape. The grace of that. What you want to tell Motl: that you have come to something of an understanding of a spirituality beyond religion; a stirring within, a stillness, a strength; and you suspect that men have harnessed the shock of that over the centuries for their own, belligerent, use. To control. Divide. Belittle. Subjugate women. Grasp. All their roaring words, in all their roaring books. Y
ou have found it in the land and you have found it in the aftermath of giving birth but you have not found it in his volumes that he left you, all his volumes, written by all those men, and so there is no place for you in any of those religions. Everyone creates it for themselves, oh yes. Perhaps he also came to that conclusion but you never allowed him the concession of an honest discussion, you just ridiculed his beliefs as unthinking and embarrassing and duped. He, in turn, thought you were beyond reach, stranded behind your impenetrable wall of judgement, husked.

  Churches destroy the mystery of God.

  86

  Tidge. Oh Tidge. Not again. Late from another expedition. ‘Me first, can I?’ he’d begged his siblings.

  Soli had ruffled his hair and laughed — ‘Go on, off you go’ — shooing out his jogging dance of impatience complete with forehead glued to the door, and snatching the key back.

  But now. He knew the timekeeping rule. You all trusted him to keep to it. You’re furious with him. Soli’s bitten down every one of her nails. Two are bleeding. Mouse says he’s got a funny feeling. His eyes are afraid. Soli draws in a trembling breath. Pulls her ponytail tight. Says she’s going out and hauling her brother back, by the earlobe if she must. She’ll have to go over the entire building — the lobby, basement, roof — because you all know Tidge is a lookaholic and his curiosity is careless and vast; she crouches in front of Mouse and tells him to lock the door and not to mention Mum and Dad to a soul, no matter what.