‘I… I… don’t understand,’ Joshua replied.
‘Look,’ I tried to argue, without mentioning God, because I didn’t want to turn his wrath on him, ‘even if you cancel the Day of Judgement, and travel around the world trying to convert people, we would both be living together platonically, like you did with Mary Magdalene, and to be honest, that’s not really for me.’
I decided that it was better to keep it to myself that Kata had always called Plato ‘a complete idiot’.
‘It will be different from how it was with Mary Magdalene,’ Joshua countered.
‘Yes?’ I was completely flabbergasted now.
‘I finally want to experience love.’
It took a while before I could even begin to process this sentence. Joshua was serious about this. That… was… unbelievable… I felt hot. I felt cold. I felt hot again. Now I’d started getting the hot flushes of a menopausal woman as well.
‘I think,’ Joshua explained, ‘that I deserve to experience human intimacy, like other people do.’
My kiss had unleashed a whole load of suppressed desires that had been pent up through all his deprivation. All the protective barriers that he had built up during his role as the Messiah were now down, and his feelings were revealed. He was now entirely human.
And if anyone deserved love, then it was him, after all that he’d been through.
All right, perhaps not necessarily with me…
‘I am not worthy of your love…’ I said.
‘Every person…’
‘Now please don’t go and compare me with the Pope,’ I interrupted.
‘Every person, who bears within them a love like you do, is special.’
After he’d uttered this sentence my hot flushes became even more intense.
His hand was now touching my cheek, and that feeling was almost as heavenly as our kiss.
‘I have a desire that I also felt with Mary Magdalene…’
‘And what desire is that?’ I asked, a little cooler. Some time I would really have to teach him to stop constantly talking about his ex.
‘It’s my desire to…’ he hesitated, ‘I’d wanted to confess to Mary Magdalene, but then she said those words that stopped me from doing so…’
Then he remained silent. The memory was painful.
But I was far too eager to find out what Mary Magdalene had said to him. But what was even more interesting was: ‘What is your desire?’
‘One day…’ It was really taking a great deal of will to express this desire, and his fear of being rejected by me as well was very evident.
‘One day?’ I asked encouragingly, trying not to show my excitement. I felt that this must be something extraordinary.
‘…to start a family.’
My heart skipped a beat. That was something extraordinarily extraordinary. A family… Perhaps with two little daughters… Like I’d always dreamed of.
For a nanosecond I envisioned us in our amazing converted tour bus, like you normally only see in American road trip movies, travelling around the world from Australia to the Grand Canyon. Joshua was preaching the word of God, I taught our two daughters Mareike and Maja – and repeatedly forbid them, in case they took after their father, to turn water into Coke.
During this nanosecond, I was happier than I’d ever been before in real life. But of course I could never realise this fantasy. My eyes filled with tears.
‘Marie? Did I say something wrong?’ Joshua asked, in a sad, almost despondent voice.
‘No… no… you didn’t say anything wrong…’
Quite the contrary.
He breathed a sigh of relief. I, on the other hand, was about to start bawling my eyes out. He wanted to give me a hug to comfort me. But I couldn’t allow this to happen. Because then I would definitely stay with him. Forever. Regardless of what God wanted.
So I pushed Joshua away.
‘Marie?’ He couldn’t understand anything anymore. I was hurting him, but he didn’t want to let go of me. He reached for my hand again, so I had to tell him something that would push him away from me for good, something – and then the words came to me that might be able to do it, and were actually truthful as well: ‘Joshua… I… I don’t believe in God enough.’
Joshua was in shock. The woman with whom he wanted to start a family was not a suitable candidate.
I could not shoulder his pain, especially as my own was so great. So I just whispered quietly: ‘We can still be friends.’
Then I ran off in despair. Over my shoulder I could still see him looking at me, confused and sad. But he was no longer running after me. He no longer wanted to follow a woman who did not believe in God enough.
I quickly rushed home without stopping, because I knew that I would start bawling my eyes out. I had done the right thing, that was true, but why did it have to feel so rotten doing the right thing?
No sooner had I opened the door than Dad greeted me in the hallway and smiled at me for the first time in days. ‘I’m so happy that you are trying to find a way to be friends with Svetlana.’
At first I thought: ‘It didn’t do anything for me,’ but then I realised that that wasn’t true. Thanks to the Golden Rule I had, or at least it seemed as though I had, regained my father. He tried to give me a hug, as awkwardly as only fathers trying to hug their adult daughters can do, and I let him. Once he’d let go, he said: ‘Your sister left in mad rush.’
‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Did… did she say where she was going?’
‘She mumbled something about Jerusalem.’
I immediately grabbed my mobile and called Kata, to find out what was going on. But it went straight to voicemail.
She wasn’t allowed to leave! Jesus still had to cure her tumour, and he would do so, even though I’d dumped him. He wasn’t your typical miffed ex-boyfriend. He was Jesus for Christ’s sake!’
‘She… she left something for you in your room,’ Dad explained.
‘A parting gift…’ I feared.
He nodded and I ran up into my room. There I found another one of her comic strips:
Once I’d read that I did end up bawling my eyes out.
Chapter Forty
Meanwhile…
Satan, still in the form of Alicia Keys, approached a Learjet on the runway of a nearby military airport with his three Horsemen of the Apocalypse in tow. It was supposed to take them to Jerusalem and belonged to an Austrian bodybuilder who had a great deal to thank Satan for.
As they climbed the gangway with their light baggage, Kata desperately fought for her soul by drawing Satan’s attention to the futility of the whole apocalyptic horseshow: ‘But we’re definitely going to lose the final battle. God is stronger than you, isn’t he?’
‘We will not lose,’ Satan countered.
‘But it says in the Bible that we will lose against Jesus and that our live bodies will be cast into the lake of fire,’ the gym-body vicar added anxiously, causing Sven to start chewing his fingernails.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ Satan explained sternly, keen to go up the last steps of the gangway.
‘But perhaps you are one of God’s tools, just like we horsemen are?’ Kata was not letting loose. Satan’s feminine forehead started creasing. This woman who fascinated him so had hit a nerve. He had been harbouring this doubt for quite a while himself, or rather, since his time as a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Even then, during that whole apple business, Satan had not been able to rid himself of the feeling that he was just being used by the Lord up there in heaven.
‘You’re just playing into God’s hands with everything that you’re doing,’ Kata said.
Satan stood still. This beautiful artist was right. He was preparing everything as planned, and if he carried on like that, he would also lose, as planned.
‘That’s probably true,’ he conceded after pondering the matter for a while.
Kata could hardly believe it. She had actually sown seeds of doubt in Satan’s mind.
‘We’re not going to Jerusalem,’ he announced.
Kata’s hopes were rising. Could it really be so simple?
‘And we’re not going to commence the final battle next Tuesday.’
Kata was inwardly jubilant. It was this simple! She had put a stop to Satan’s plans. But in the midst of her jubilation, he announced: ‘We are going to commence the battle against Good today! In Malente!’
And Kata thought: things are not going quite as hoped.
‘You’ll get your horses right away!’ Satan declared.
‘Horses?’ Kata asked. She’d already hated horses when her classmates still papered their walls with pony magazine cuttings.
‘You’re not called the Pedestrians of the Apocalypse,’ Satan joked. Pretty poorly in Kata’s opinion. ‘I made you the second most powerful horseman,’ he explained to her.
That was something that made the gym-body vicar mightily jealous.
‘Only the second most powerful? Am I not your favourite?’ Kata snarled.
‘Yes, you are. But the place of the most powerful horseman has already been assigned. I don’t have any choice about that. It’s someone who’s been roaming the earth since the beginning of time,’ he explained in a voice that made Kata shudder.
‘I want to introduce you to this being,’ he said and pointed at Marie, who, to Kata’s great surprise, stepped out of the Learjet onto the gangway.
‘This is my horseman called Death,’ Satan declared.
‘That’s my sister,’ Kata replied, completely stunned.
Satan just grinned. ‘Death likes to take on the form of the person whom he intends to take next.’
Chapter Forty-One
I lay there on my bed for ages, bawling my eyes out – somewhere between half and three quarters of an eternity. If I wasn’t crying because of Joshua; it was because of Kata, and when it wasn’t about Kata, it was about Joshua. It was a bawling carousel from hell. As far as I was concerned, this silly old world may as well go under immediately. And I’d stopped caring whether I would end up in heaven or would spend the rest of my days burning in the lake of fire. The main thing was for this to come to an end.
‘Marie?’ a deep voice said.
The Reverend Gabriel was standing in the doorway. I needed him like the Titanic needed a second iceberg.
‘Your father let me in,’ he explained. Then he asked: ‘Are you crying?’
‘No, I’m watering the plants,’ I replied.
I realised that Gabriel’s presence did entail something good. I didn’t want to cry in front of him and thus found the strength to stop.
‘Is it because of Jesus?’ Gabriel asked, sitting down on my bed, even though I hadn’t asked him to. ‘He told me that you ended things with him.’
Had Joshua told him to come and see me? Maybe he refused to accept me breaking up with him and he wanted to fight for me again? They say there are men who regard women who play hard to get as a challenge.
‘He’s going to set off for Jerusalem this afternoon,’ Gabriel said, dashing my hopes.
So as not to start wailing again, I asked him what he wanted.
‘To apologise to you,’ Gabriel replied. ‘You are not of Satan. Otherwise you would not have let Jesus move on. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. I was far too jaded to be angry with him.
‘And I also wronged your mother.’ Gabriel was very remorseful now. ‘Do you think you might be able to put in a good word for me with her?’
‘I think that might require a barrage of words actually.’
Gabriel nodded in agreement. Then he hummed and hawed a bit, before finally saying: ‘There’s something else you both should know.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I’m an angel.’
‘That’s not very modest of you.’
‘I mean, I am a real angel,’ he clarified. ‘The Archangel Gabriel, who is become flesh.’
Just a few days ago, I might have responded to this by saying something like ‘zip-a-dee-doo-dah’. But now nothing could shock me. And thinking about it, it certainly did explain quite a few things – Gabriel’s scars on his back, why Jesus slept over at his place and why he claimed to have announced his birth to Mary.
‘Should you not be fighting with the heavenly host in Jerusalem side by side with Jesus?’ I asked.
‘Well yes. Although I’m a human being now, it would be my duty.’
‘But…?’
‘I defied it. I want to be with Silvia and speak on her behalf when she steps before God.’
To my surprise, he explained to me that he had asked God to make him a human for my mother’s sake, and that he had then spent all those years hoping for a sign of love from her. I was touched to hear this. It was so romantic of him, so amazing – yet also completely foolish. But then most romantic actions are.
I caught myself feeling envious of my mother, for the fact that Gabriel had turned his once winged back on God for love.
I spoke to my mum on the phone and convinced her to meet up with Gabriel. I asked him to keep the story about his origins to himself until the end of the world. She would probably not believe him until then and would think that he was winding her up.
Gabriel agreed and apologised to my mother for his behaviour, without telling her about his secret. Afterwards the two of them sat side by side on my old bed for a while without saying a word, like a couple of nervous teenagers. Far too long, I thought after a while. In times like these you didn’t have any more time to waste. So I blurted out: ‘Go on, kiss!’
Both of them laughed nervously. Then my mother plucked up the courage to give Gabriel a kiss. He was a bit flustered at first – after all, I was still standing in the room – but my mother pressed her lips so tightly onto his that he couldn’t do anything but kiss her back. For a long time. Far too long, I thought after a while, especially as they seemed to have forgotten about me and started fondling each other. It occurred to me that this was a good moment to escape, so I turned to the door to leave, but there was Dad. Watching his wife caressing another man.
‘Silvia?’ he asked in surprise.
The two of them stopped kissing and looked at him guiltily. There are moments in which I really wished I was Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.
I was expecting my Dad to go on a major rampage. After all, he’d been pining for my mother for the last twenty years. But he did nothing of the sort. Instead he smiled and said: ‘It seems as though we have both found happiness.’
Mum smiled back. ‘Yes, it would seem so.’
Strange. Until two days ago, I had still secretly hoped that my parents would get back together. But now I was overjoyed that they no longer argued and were happy for one another. Yes, it seemed as though I might be growing up. Just in time for the end of the world.
My father invited us round to his place for a hearty meal of cabbage, potatoes and sausages, and even bought us ice creams in town for dessert. Mum and Gabriel looked at each other lovingly. So did Svetlana and Dad. But I wasn’t looking at my potatoes particularly lovingly.
I was sitting alone between two happy couples – basically a singleton’s nightmare – and I missed Joshua so much. There were still a few days to go until next Tuesday, and I would spend them feeling lovesick. Great.
Svetlana’s little girl came running into the kitchen because Dad was getting the chips that he had specially made for her out of the oven. She had a new friend in tow called Lulu, one of those seven-year-olds who likes to wear lipgloss. They both sat down at the table and successfully fought off any of Svetlana’s attempts to put even a tiny amount of vegetables on their plates. I saw these two little girls and immediately thought about Maja and Mareike, the two daughters I had always longed for, and I finally realised what a wonderful, extraordinary man Joshua really was. Not because of his miracle healing, and not because of his special kind of aqua jogging. No, he was the first man who had wanted to start a family with me and with w
hom I could actually imagine doing so. When I was with Marc it was always me who longed for a family, whilst he was about as interested in children as he was in monogamy. And when I was with Sven, he was the one who was always secretly hoping for a family, whilst I always made sure to take my pill. But now it turned out that the wrongest of all men whom I could have fallen in love with was in fact the right one – the one.
But I had pushed this extraordinary, wonderful man away, because God had commanded me to do so. Well, not commanded as such, rather more advised me to do so. He had left the decision up to my own free will. And with it I’d decided against my actual will.
Lilliana and her lipgloss friend burst out laughing as my Dad squeezed ketchup all over himself trying to put some on their plate. Their laughter was only moderately sweet – to be honest, it sounded like baby hyenas finding an antelope with a broken leg. But I thought about Maja and Mareike’s laughter – that would probably have been much more charming.
Why hadn’t I fought for our love?
Just because it was unrealistic?
And God had something against it?
What kind of silly arguments were those if you were really in love?
Gabriel hadn’t cared about the divine order had he? I watched him as he enjoyed my mother putting her hand on his lap in a way that wasn’t really suitable in company. If Gabriel could be this happy having not followed his destiny, then maybe Joshua could too? If he really had feelings for me – I had no doubt about that, he was incapable of lying – he would be able to cope with the conflict with God as well. And he’d have to! You couldn’t spend your life being a little daddy’s boy (mummy’s boy, whatever) could you?
I looked at the clock. Joshua would be making his way down to Hamburg any moment now to take the ship to Jerusalem. Maybe he was already there, singing psalms with the punters and prostitutes?
I certainly wouldn’t ever know if I carried on staring at my potatoes.
And I certainly wouldn’t ever start a family.
Of course I knew that the chances of that were about 1 in 234 bajillion. But I had to try. If God had something against it, then he simply shouldn’t have given me a free will! Or not have invented this damn thing called love.
Apocalypse Next Tuesday Page 19