‘What you need to do,’ he then explained, ‘is not precisely detailed in Revelations. But I guess that if you’ve lived your life according to the many commandments in the Bible, you shouldn’t have any problems getting in.’
‘Many? I thought there were only ten.’
‘There are many more. Lots more. Probably more than seven hundred,’ Michi explained. He giggled nervously, as there were pearls of sweat forming on my brow. I didn’t even know the Ten Commandments, except the obvious ones: ‘Thou shalt not kill’; ‘Thou shalt not steal’; ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’…
Oh, dear. Honour thy father and thy mother. There was the first problem. And what about the commandments I didn’t even know I’d broken?
I asked Michi to show me the others.
‘But there are lots in there that don’t even concern you.’
‘Like what?’
‘In Deuteronomy it says that men should not wear women’s garments.’
‘Not great for David Beckham then,’ I said.
Michi showed me another commandment in the Bible: ‘Leviticus 19:19: “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind.”’
‘I’ll let the guinea pigs and the dogs know then,’ I declared. It seemed that we weren’t really getting anywhere with these rules.
Michi carried on leafing through the Bible. ‘Deuteronomy 25: 11–12: When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand.’
‘A case taken straight from real life,’ I said impatiently. I was scared shitless and was listening to these pointless rules.
Michi was about read me the commandments on bathing and ejaculation from Leviticus, but I took the Bible from him. ‘I really don’t want to hear that now.’
He nodded understandingly and said: ‘I really think it’s enough if you stick to the Ten Commandments.’
As I wasn’t readily acquainted with these either, I got Michi to show me where to find them. And that’s the first time in my life that I’d read the Bible with full concentration. Talk about the powers of self-preservation…
The first three commandments would probably not present too much of a problem. God is the Lord, I shalt have no other gods and no graven images or likenesses. That was all OK. Except maybe that image I had in my head of God lying down on a psychiatrist’s couch talking about being a control freak…
The fourth commandment was fine as well. I should rest on the seventh day. I’d actually heeded that advice my whole life. I’d never been workaholic slaving away all weekend. It amused me to think that the champions of the meritocracy would end up not getting into heaven. Nor had I murdered anyone or committed adultery (I was never married and married men have never been interested in me). I’d also never stolen (except things that I’d borrowed and not given back) and had coveted neither my neighbour’s house nor wife (there was nothing about coveting husbands in the ninth commandment).
Michi felt that my fear for the lake of fire was causing me to take a rather one-sided perspective. He was right of course. I had often coveted the husbands of other women. Far too often. But I hadn’t got them as often as I might have liked.
I’d also violated the tenth commandment by almost constantly coveting other people’s things: Marc’s convertible, my colleague’s shoe collection, Jennifer Aniston’s figure…
But what was giving me the biggest headache was commandment number five, the one about parents. I wondered whether I’d get that sorted by the time the world ended.
A short time later, I nervously entered my father’s urology clinic. I asked his receptionist Magda, who’d been there for decades, whether I could see him. She immediately led me into his room and offered to make me a hot chocolate, completely ignoring the fact that I was now thirty-five years old.
My father was wearing his white coat and was busy sorting out-of-date medicine samples in his cupboard to give to charity. He was surprised to see me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to tell you that I respect your decision about Svetlana.’ The Bible had said nothing about lying while honouring your father and mother.
‘Oh…’ my father said, looking puzzled. ‘I’m… I’m pleased to hear it.’
I remained silent and played with a paperweight that was lying on his desk.
‘So you don’t mind if she moves in with me?’ he asked.
‘If that’s what you want, it’s OK by me,’ I lied, tightly clutching the paperweight.
‘I’m toying with the idea of marrying her,’ Dad confessed.
He was clearly afraid that I would react badly, but now that I was coming in peace, he dared to say it out loud.
‘If that’s what you want…’ This honouring your father and mother thing was not easy.
My father was happy about my response. And he wanted seize the opportunity. ‘We’re also planning to have a baby.’
‘No fucking way!’ I screamed.
My father was shocked. I slammed the paperweight on the desk and stormed out of the clinic. I didn’t dignify Magda’s hot chocolate with a second look.
Outside the door of the clinic, I leaned on the wall. ‘Damn, why the hell can’t I do this?’
An elderly man, who was just about to go into the clinic, asked me: ‘Oh, do you have problems urinating too?’
I gave him a dirty look, and he nervously scurried into the clinic. Then Magda came out with the hot chocolate.
‘I don’t want the bloody hot chocolate,’ I snapped.
‘You will,’ she said sympathetically.
‘I won’t.’
‘Your father asked me to tell you that he never wants to see you again. You are to pack your belongings and get out of his house,’ she whispered meekly, passing me the cup. I dejectedly slurped on my hot chocolate.
Once I’d finished it, I remembered that I had another parent whom I could honour. Even if I did find it extremely difficult.
My mother and I arranged to meet at a café in town. We ordered our cappuccinos and I began honouring her. Just as sincerely as I had honoured my Dad earlier. ‘I’m… I’m sorry, that I’ve been so aggressive towards you these last few years.’
‘I don’t believe a word,’ my mother replied.
‘Wh… why not?’
She explained that I had been looking away when I spoke, which suggested I was lying. And that I was grasping my spoon, a sign of suppressed anger.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Oh, forget it,’ I replied, preparing to leave. This whole thing was just ridiculous. When Moses had come down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments no one could have known anything about mothers with degrees in psychology.
‘There’s something on your mind.’ She grabbed my arm and gently pushed me back down into my seat. She seemed to be happy that I’d taken a step towards her for the first time in years, so she didn’t want me to disappear again.
‘Is it something to do with my relationship with Gabriel?’ She’d got it all wrong.
But since I didn’t reply – I could hardly tell her that the world was about to end and I wanted to save my big arse from the lake of fire – she assumed that it really was about Gabriel. The man who I had to assume knew that the man he was harbouring was Jesus. So I thought about why Jesus had mentioned that Gabriel had announced his birth to Mary, but I simply couldn’t think of any reasonable explanation – he didn’t seem to be the kind of person who invented time machines.
‘I’m lonely. That’s why I’m with him,’ she explained. ‘Very lonely.’
I looked at her in surprise. This was not her typical psychological mumbo-jumbo. It was honest. And that scared me.
‘Do you regret it?’ I asked carefully.
‘Leaving your father?’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t say anything for quite some time. That mad
e me impatient. ‘Are you going to answer this month?’
‘I only regret it because it meant that I ended up losing you,’ she replied sadly.
It was the first time that I understood she hadn’t wanted to leave me – just my father. But back then you couldn’t do one thing without doing the other. This realisation immediately helped me let go of so much of the pain that had been weighing on me for the past twenty years.
‘It would be silly if we hugged now, wouldn’t it?’ I said in a croaky voice.
‘And cheesy,’ she replied.
‘Totally.’
‘But absolutely fine as well,’ she said. That’s when the psychologist in her was speaking again. And for the first time in my life it didn’t make me angry. Hesitantly I got up. She did too. And we hugged.
Perhaps this ‘honour your father and mother’ thing wasn’t so stupid after all.
On my way home I was relieved, and not just because things were looking up with respect to my admission into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then, suddenly, I thought I saw Sven on the other side of the road… talking to George Clooney?
I only saw the two of them very briefly, before they went around the corner and disappeared from view. I rubbed my eyes. I could have sworn that it was George Clooney.
Malente was getting weirder and weirder.
Back home again I ignored Svetlana and her daughter – nowhere in the Ten Commandments did it say that you had to honour sham brides or their children. I went to Kata’s room to tell her that Dad had thrown me out. She wasn’t there. But she’d said she was going to stay in Malente to look after me…
I looked at her latest drawing. And I noticed that Kata’s current criticism of God was just a tiny bit less subtle than the last one.
Kata’s holy wrath now knew no bounds – it was harsh and crude. That scared me. I leafed through her sketchbook and saw another comic strip. She was yelling at the Almighty about having a tumour.
Had the tumour returned?
Oh no!
God hadn’t answered my prayers.
I was even angrier now that I knew he existed.
What was God’s problem? Why didn’t he help Kata? Sure, he’d heard a lot of prayers. But he wasn’t a call centre, he couldn’t get overloaded. Was he? ‘Welcome to God’s service centre. If you have a prayer for a loved one, please press one. If you wish to confess a sin, please press two. If you are a victim of an Act of God, please press three… We’re sorry, all the lines are currently busy. Please call back later.’ Beep-beep-beep…
‘Why are you making beep-beep noises?’ Kata asked as she came in carrying croissants. I was so shocked, I’d actually been making beeping noises? My mind was becoming increasingly fragile.
‘The tumour has come back,’ I confronted her.
‘No, it hasn’t,’ she said emphatically.
‘But the drawings…’
‘I’m just processing old memories,’ she countered. She sat down and groaned – she obviously had a terrible pain in her head.
I rushed over to try to help her, but then she exploded. ‘Just get out of my room!’
She’d only be this aggressive towards me once before, when I’d cried at the hospital as she told me about the terrible pain she in. My tears had made her furious, and she’d screamed at me loudly then as well, telling me to get lost.
Kata’s eyes were blazing just as they had in the hospital. It was this mixture of anger and physical pain. Now it was definite.
I felt sick. My whole body was shaking. Partly because I was angry at God, but mostly because I feared for my sister. I didn’t want to see her suffer again. Never again!
And if God wasn’t going to save her then perhaps it was a job for that son of his.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I ran to the vicarage as fast as I could and rang the doorbell. Gabriel opened the door, looked at me and… slammed the door shut in my face. I rang the bell again, and when Gabriel opened up I put my foot in the door. He slammed the door shut again and I screamed with pain, jumped about on one leg swearing, then rang the bell a third time, waiting in vain for the door to be answered. I bent down and shouted through the letter box: ‘He told me that he’s Jesus!’ One millisecond later, Gabriel opened the door again.
‘Where’s Jesus?’ I demanded. Now that the carpenter was going to have to heal my sister, he was no longer Joshua but Jesus, the Son of God.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Gabriel replied abruptly.
‘You bet it’s my business.’
‘It’s not.’
‘It is.’
‘It’s not.’
‘It is!’
‘This conversation is going around in circles.’ Gabriel said smugly.
‘In a minute I’m going to hit you so hard that you’ll be going around in circles,’ I replied. I had neither the time nor the nerves for diplomacy.
‘Your association with Jesus has not rubbed off on you it seems,’ Gabriel noted disparagingly. He was just about to close the door again when I threatened: ‘If you don’t help me, then I’ll tell my mother that you… that you…’
‘That I what?’ asked Gabriel.
I didn’t have a clue what. I just knew that there had to be something fishy about Gabriel, but my time machine theory wasn’t plausible. So I bluffed. ‘That you are carrying a strange secret within you.’
Gabriel gulped. I had hit a nerve. Now he thought that Jesus had told me his secret, whatever that might be.
‘He’s on his way to Hamburg,’ he explained.
I was confused. ‘What’s he going to do there?’
‘Get onto a freighter to Israel.’
Israel! Of course! According to Michi, the final battle was going to take place in Jerusalem. Was it getting close? Or would Jesus spend a few months or even years preparing for his task? Whatever. Kata was in pain again, terrible pain, and she had to be spared this agony. Immediately!
Michi was pretty flabbergasted when I told him that I wanted to borrow his car, a rickety old VW Beetle, to try to stop Jesus from getting on a ship. Until now Michi had thought that I was just a bit confused. Now he firmly believed that I was either a) completely nuts, b) being hypnotised by the carpenter, c) on drugs or d) all of the above.
In my state of irate determination, or madness as Michi saw it, there was no way that he was going to leave me alone, particularly not at the wheel of his beloved vehicle. He closed the video store and we headed off towards Hamburg in his VW. On the motorway I kept complaining at him that he took silly things like speed limits and no overtaking on the inside lane too literally, particularly when he disregarded my suggestion of avoiding slow-moving traffic by driving on the hard shoulder.
So I made him stop at a car park, dragged him out of the driving seat and took the helm myself. We were soon hurtling towards Hamburg at breakneck speed.
It was very loud in the Beetle. Michi frequently closed his eyes, especially during my overtaking manoeuvres. When I turned off the motorway without removing my foot from the accelerator, Michi actually started reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I was far too angry with Our Father, but I didn’t share my thoughts with my friend. I started hurtling towards the harbour, where I hoped to find the ship that was going to take Jesus to Israel, along with a massive shipment of gummy bears, Twixes and Kinder Eggs.
I safely parked the car without ending up in the water, despite what Michi had predicted just moments before on account of the speed at which we were travelling. A sailor was standing at the railing of the ship. He had a dragon tattoo on his left arm. It seemed that the man didn’t know that most people nowadays associated images of dragons with youth literature rather than exotic aggression. I asked him about the carpenter, and he replied that the ship would be setting sail half an hour later than planned and that Joshua had wanted to stretch his legs a bit. After asking him where exactly he was stretching his legs, the sailor answered: ‘He’s at the Moulin Rouge.’
‘Moulin Rouge?’ T
hat didn’t sound good. A joint like that was hardly likely to be home to avant-garde theatre, particularly not in a harbour.
The sailor gave us directions and warned that the women who worked there tended not to be overjoyed if other women entered the establishment.
‘I expect Jesus wants to use the time to convert fallen women,’ I explained to Michi.
‘Yeah, sure. And I expect he only reads Playboy for the articles.’ He still didn’t believe that this was the Messiah we were talking about.
The Moulin Rouge was located in a bungalow. Only some of the neon signs were working. A plump woman opened the door. Her best years – and those of her lingerie – were long gone.
‘We don’t do women,’ she snarled.
Hard to imagine that she generated much of an income with her looks and unpleasant manner.
‘Well, is he allowed in?’ I asked, pointing at Michi, who went bright red.
‘Sure!’ The woman laughed, flashing her decaying teeth, and pulled my completely dumbfounded friend inside before he could protest.
‘Send Jesus to me,’ I shouted at him as he grudgingly went in. Then I waited a while until the door reopened and Jesus stepped outside. A young woman in red lingerie followed him. She seemed quite distraught, but he calmed her down: ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.’
Relieved, the woman slid away. Jesus was visibly happy to see me, but also surprised. I was pleased to be near him again. I wished I could get myself a berth on the freighter too. Now I understood why Mary Magdalene had left her home back then to follow Jesus. But how on earth she managed to keep her hands of him the whole time was a complete mystery to me.
‘Why did you come here?’ Jesus asked me, and I concentrated on my request again. This was about Kata after all! Words spilling out of me, I told him about her disease and her terrible pain.
‘I am very sorry for your sister,’ he said empathetically.
‘But you can heal her,’ I smiled optimistically. ‘Like Svetlana’s daughter.’
Apocalypse Next Tuesday Page 13