‘Just a routine check-up; no need to worry,’ she explained straight-faced.
I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. My sister was very good at lying, especially when it came to her own fears. But I also knew that I couldn’t push her too much. So I looked for clues, to see whether there really was any reason to worry. There was a second comic strip on the table that she’d drawn today.
This comic was much more cheerful than the first, so she wasn’t feeling like the world was going to end. So there probably wasn’t any need to worry.
If I hadn’t been so confused and shaken by the whole ‘Joshua walking on the lake’ business, I might have noticed that it was quite strange for Kata to be drawing comics for Christmas at the end of the summer. And I would have noticed that Kata had drawn a comic in which she questioned the existence of friendly old men with white beards. At least that was one of the possible ways of reading the Santa comic. The other was that Kata had a deep-seated desire to be absolved of all her sins by a friendly old man with a beard.
Chapter Eighteen
Meanwhile…
Gabriel woke up in the kitchen of the vicarage and waited for Jesus to return. His beloved had a meeting in Hamburg, which is why she couldn’t spend the night with him. God! He missed Silvia so much, even though he’d only been apart from her for a few hours. In difficult situations like these, Gabriel was firmly convinced that this love business had more cons than pros, and that God was going through a bad patch when he created love, as imperfect as it was.
Of course, the Almighty never had bad patches. As a former angel, Gabriel knew this, but his love-induced yearning could simply not be explained in any other way. What was the point of it?
It was rather like heartburn. He could not quite understand the divine purpose of this either.
Jesus was now finally back at the vicarage. He seemed very deep in thought.
‘What is on your mind, my Lord?’ Gabriel asked.
‘What do you know about Marie?’ Jesus asked.
Oh no, Gabriel thought. Is the Messiah really still thinking about this woman?
‘Forgive me, Lord,’ he answered. ‘But Marie really is what we would somewhat profanely consider to be rather “ordinary” here on earth.’
‘She does not seem ordinary to me at all. Quite the contrary, I see something special in her.’
‘Special?’ Gabriel’s voice squeaked a little. ‘Are we talking about the same Marie?’
‘She made me laugh,’ Jesus interrupted.
‘Did she fall over?’ Gabriel asked. As soon as he had spoken he was shocked at himself. He felt anger bubbling up inside him. Why couldn’t she just leave the Messiah alone?
‘No, she didn’t walk into a wall. What makes you say that?’ Jesus asked, and Gabriel was suddenly relieved to learn that irony was a foreign concept to Jesus.
‘Is she somewhat lacking in faith?’ Jesus wanted to know.
‘Somewhat?’ Gabriel sighed, thinking that she was lacking faith ‘somewhat’, in the sense that Goliath’s manhood was ‘somewhat’ large.
Jesus looked thoughtful.
‘You don’t want to convert her do you?’ Gabriel asked hesitantly. ‘You don’t have time for that. Think about your task.’
‘I just want to find out more about her,’ Jesus replied and then disappeared into his room.
Gabriel stared at the closed door and wondered whether Jesus actually had feelings for Marie. He laughed at himself for thinking such an absurd thing. While Jesus was clearly capable of such feelings, Marie was certainly not in the same league as Mary Magdalene. Nor Salome. She was possibly on a par with Lot’s wife. Maybe Jesus just wanted to convert a sheep that had lost its way.
Chapter Nineteen
After everything that I’d been through, I didn’t think I’d be able to get any sleep at all. On the other hand, I’d almost drowned and had run through half of Malente trying to get away from Sven. My spirit was shaken up, but my body just wanted to fall into a coma. I fell asleep at record speed and had a wild dream. I was standing in front of the altar and Gabriel asked me the ‘Will you?’ question, except it wasn’t Psycho-Sven standing next to me, but Joshua. The cross on the wall behind him was bare. It seemed as though he’d jumped down and slipped into a very stylish wedding suit.
I answered Gabriel, from the bottom of my heart. ‘Yes, I will.’
Joshua moved closer to kiss me. His hands gently touched my face. It was amazing to be touched my him. My heart was pounding. His lips came closer and closer. I was shaking with excitement. His beard was already touching my face, electrifying me. He wanted to kiss me… I was longing for him to do so… Our lips touched… And then I woke myself up screaming.
When I’d finally stopped, I realised that my subconscious self wanted to marry Joshua.
Why couldn’t my stupid subconscious just stay out of my life?
I looked at the clock. It was 8.56 a.m. That late already? In four minutes, Joshua would be standing in front of my door. He always arrived at nine to work on the attic. I didn’t want to see him. I was afraid of him! It was partly rational fear – that same fear that women in horror films probably experience when the guy with the manic chainsaw fetish is approaching. And partly it was the fear of my own feelings.
I grabbed my clothes, skipped unnecessary things like showering, hair brushing, tooth brushing and shoe tying, rushed out of the house and fell flat on my face. Damn shoelaces!
Svetlana’s daughter was drawing on the road with some chalk. She saw me fall and burst out laughing. I pulled myself together, tied my shoelaces and listened as this little girl told me, ‘Your hair looks stupid.’
Her mother had taught her German. I was not a fan of this kind of cultural diplomacy.
‘My mother has much nicer hair than you,’ the girl said in her Belarusian accent with a ‘Na-nana-naa-nah’ voice.
‘How old are you?’ I asked the girl.
‘Eight.’
‘If you carry on like this, you won’t make it to nine.’
She was shocked and almost dropped her piece of chalk. Then I saw Joshua turning down into our road. I ran away like Forrest Gump on steroids. I prayed the whole time that Joshua had not seen me escape. That was until it dawned on me that I should probably not pray to God when it came to matters concerning Joshua.
Eventually I reached the lake, completely out of breath, and sat down on a pier. When I felt that I could start breathing again, I watched the sun sparkling on the water. Some tourists were already out on pedalos. There was a light breeze. Everything that had happened yesterday seemed so unreal. Like a dream. I’d probably just imagined that Jesus saved me – that was the logical explanation. And a calming one, even if the consequence was that I would now have to hear sentences like: ‘Marie, those two hefty men are here to take you to your electroshock therapy.’
In that case Joshua and I would both have been nutters. He because he claimed to be Jesus, and me because I believed him. So we were ideally suited. We could make some super-cute crazy babies…
Hang on. I didn’t just want to marry him – I wanted to have his babies too?
Like with Marc. All that was missing was giving them names. I was much more in love than I thought.
Than I’d ever been before.
Shit!
No sooner had I realised this than I heard his wonderful voice behind me. ‘Marie?’
Joshua was standing on the pier. He had followed me after all.
‘I’m happy to see you.’ He smiled sweetly.
‘Grdll,’ I replied.
‘You’re afraid of me,’ he stated calmly.
‘Brdll.’
‘And that’s why you ran away from me.’
‘Frzzl.’
‘Fear thou not.’
He said these words so incredibly gently that all the fear in my body vanished in an instant.
‘I have a question for you,’ said Joshua.
‘Just ask me,’ I said. Without this stupid
fear, I was once again able to speak properly.
‘Would you like to eat with me again this evening?’
I could hardly believe it. He wanted to go out with me again!
‘It would mean a great deal to me,’ he added.
He really meant it. I could feel it. It really meant something to him.
That meant that I really meant something to him!
Yippee!
I was grinning like a Cheshire cat on dope as Joshua sat down next to me. Very close to me. My knees became weak at the sight of him, and my stomach turned wonderfully queasy. Our feet were now dangling next to each other over the water. It could have been an amazing moment between two nutters. But unfortunately, Joshua said something that dashed any hopes I had of us not needing to be put in a loony bin: ‘The sea is much calmer than yesterday.’
‘So you were by the lake yesterday as well?’ I asked aghast.
‘I carried you over the lake. Don’t you remember?’
So it had not been a hallucination. I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened. How could Joshua have known about it if it hadn’t happened just like that?
‘So… you really are Jesus?’ I asked in a muffled voice.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Oh!’ I groaned. I couldn’t think of anything else. No ‘I’m standing in front of the Son of God!’ No ‘He walks the earth again.’ No ‘It’s a miracle.’ Just a pathetic ‘Oh’. My whole self was a single exhausted, paralysed and overwhelmed ‘Oh’.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ Jesus asked compassionately.
‘Oh.’
‘Marie, is everything all right?’ He was sounding quite worried now.
I wasn’t feeling well at all. Someone like me really should not have been in the presence of Jesus.
‘Why on earth do you want to go out and eat dinner with me?’ I asked flatly.
‘Because you’re just an ordinary person.’
‘An ordinary person?’
‘Exactly.’
There are better compliments. Thousands. But who was I to want compliments from Jesus? That was absurd in itself. Ridiculous. Pathetic.
I looked out over the lake, and it was getting calmer by the second. No waves, no storm, no lightning. Although that would have been pretty apt. I was sitting next to Jesus after all.
‘You’re very quiet.’
How observant, I thought to myself.
‘What’s up?’
‘I… I don’t think it’s right for you to be associating with me.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not worthy of that. You should be sitting with the Pope, or someone like that.’
Or give the Dalai Lama a fright, I added in my head.
‘You’re worth just as much as the Pope,’ Jesus replied.
‘You have to say that. You’re Jesus. You have to regard all human beings as equal. But trust me, I’m not worthy of being with you.’
‘You are.’
That just proved that he didn’t know what a loser I was. To know that you hadn’t accomplished anything particularly worthwhile in your life was one thing; to do so in the presence of the Son of God was quite another.
‘I want to ask you something,’ Jesus said, looking deep into my eyes.
‘And what would that be?’
‘Spend the evening with me, like you’d spend it with any other person.’
‘But you’re not just any other person.’
‘Yes I am. Everyone can be like me if they want to.’
Sure, I thought to myself. I’ll just go and have a stroll across the lake then, shall I? ‘Why do you want to do that?’ I asked.
‘Because… because…’ This was the first time that I’d seen him hesitate. Did he have feelings for me? Is that why he wanted to meet up?
No, to even think such a thing was blasphemous! The Son of God was obviously not able to fall in love with an earthly being. Especially not me.
Jesus cleared his throat. ‘Because I’m eager to know how people live these days,’ he answered in a determined voice.
So that was it. He needed a tour guide. I nodded affirmatively. And he seemed to be genuinely pleased about it.
Joshua went back to our house to finish the attic while I stared blankly out over the lake. I had agreed to go on a date with Jesus. Yes. My life was pretty crazy.
But if the Son of God wants you to show him the world, what are you supposed to say? Not tonight, I’m washing my hair?
I carried on sitting for a while and tried to process all of this. The thought that a ridiculous person like me could fall in love with Jesus was high up on the ‘things to process list’. Yet it was quite easy. The realisation of having had anything to do with Jesus sent me into a state of shock. I no longer felt anything for him. Thank God.
Instead I just started thinking about how we were going to spend the evening. What would someone like Jesus want to experience? I realised that I didn’t have a clue. And then I also realised that I hardly knew anything about him, either.
I proceeded to Malente’s beautiful bookshop and asked the assistant for a copy of the Bible.
‘Which version?’ she asked.
I didn’t have a clue what she meant. Were there different Bibles? If so, why? Was there a director’s cut?
‘Standard,’ I replied, acting like I was in the know.
She sold me a Bible.
I went to a café, drank a latte, leafed through the Bible and realised that it bored me just as much as it did during confirmation class. Even now when I had a qualified interest in the subject. So I decided to switch formats. I went to Michi’s video store and rang the bell. He opened the door looking dopey and unshaven. He was wearing a T-shirt adorned with a quote from Yoda, which was not entirely unfitting for my current situation: ‘You must unlearn what you have learned.’
‘What do you want?’ he yawned, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
‘I… I… just wanted to see you,’ I replied.
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s eleven o’clock.’
‘Exactly. The middle of the night.’
‘I’d like to watch a couple of films.’
‘What kind of films?’ Michi asked.
‘Ones about Jesus…’ I said meekly.
‘This Joshua is really confusing you,’ Michi said. He sounded concerned and – if I’d heard correctly – there was a surprising note of jealousy.
‘No, no,’ I tried to deny it. But of course my voice sounded completely unconvincing after all I’d experienced in the last few days.
‘I can assure you of one thing,’ I explained to Michi. ‘I no longer have any feelings for him.’ At least that was true.
Michi clearly liked the sound of that. We crept into the video store and he put the coffee machine on.
Michi showed me a little Jesus compilation on the flat screen TV in the video store. First we watched The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s film about the crucifixion.
‘What are they babbling about?’ I asked. I couldn’t understand a word of what the actors were saying.
‘Gibson filmed this movie in Aramaic and Latin,’ Michi explained, and I thought that Gibson may as well have let the characters communicate in signal flags.
The Passion of the Christ was a pretty gruesome account. A horror film for Bible fans. The Jews certainly didn’t come out of it terribly well. When Jesus was finally brutally crucified, it was so graphic that I was very happy that I had an empty stomach. I couldn’t imagine that this man, who’d been sitting with me on the pier this morning, had gone through all of this.
In contrast, Michi then showed me the seventies musical film Jesus Christ Superstar. After just a few minutes, I was already longing for a second helping of The Passion. Jesus singing musical hits was far more horrific!
The actor was grimacing as though he was in a Louis de Funès film and he seemed similarly balanced. He was only outperformed by the black actor who played Judas dancing around in
a white disco outfit.
After fifteen minutes we turned it off and watched Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. I much preferred this film to the other two. Jesus was a real person. A neurotic person, but a person nevertheless. And who would not have been neurotic with such a dominant father figure?
That he’d had the opportunity to marry Mary Magdalene, whilst hanging on the cross, to become a mortal was pretty stirring. You just wanted to shout, ‘Do it!’ at him.
It was obvious that this Maria, whom Jesus had talked about during our date, must have been Mary Magdalene. So I got Michi, who was au fait with the Bible, to explain who she was. Whore? Wife? Lover? Groovy boogie dancer?
Michi explained that there was no evidence at all that she was a converted whore or Jesus Christ’s ex-wife. And there were certainly no indications as to her funky dancing abilities. Having said that, there was some evidence that they’d kissed. It was not actually written in the Bible, but there was another old text from the second century BC, the so-called Gospel of Mary. If what was written in this text was true, it occurred to me that Jesus was indeed a person who could love an earthly woman.
Perhaps he was still capable of that today…
I didn’t want to allow my thoughts to develop any further. Such a train of thought that was far too dangerous for someone in my position.
Chapter Twenty
Meanwhile…
‘So you’ve arranged to meet up with Marie again?’ Gabriel couldn’t believe what Jesus was telling him. The Messiah was sitting at the kitchen table in the vicarage drinking coffee, one of the things he liked most about the modern age. Like pizza.
‘You heard correctly. I’m going to be spending this evening with Marie,’ Jesus replied calmly, as he poured himself another cup.
‘But why?’ Gabriel asked aghast.
‘Because I believe that I can learn a lot about humanity through Marie. How people live, what they feel and believe these days.’
‘There are plenty of other people who could help you with that,’ Gabriel interjected. A couple of churchgoers immediately sprang to mind, people who would have been far more suitable for the Messiah to spend the evening with than Marie. He could even think of atheists who were more suitable than this woman, whom he was beginning to dislike more and more, even if she was the daughter of his beloved Silvia.
Apocalypse Next Tuesday Page 9