Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  The crowd fell back nervously before him, and the orphan finally saw why—the old man had a pitchfork. He must have stolen it from the hospital compost heaps. Its metal prongs were worn to gleaming points, and he wielded it like a weapon, shouting as he jabbed at the air. Unthinking, the orphan stepped out onto the road. But any thought she had of stopping him, or calming him somehow, came to nothing. In a hot instant their eyes met, and the full anguish of his mind overwhelmed her.

  He was still trapped in his nightmare, she saw. She had put him to sleep, but it hadn’t saved him. He had woken again and found that the horrible dream only went on. He was locked in a dark prison full of grinning faces and mad voices. Someone had ravaged his house and his gardens, and intruders had swarmed over his land. So he’d armed himself and run away from the prison, drawn by something to the town, but at every turn there was ruination and vandalism and mocking crowds.

  Now he was in his last extremity of fear, surrounded by a mob intent—he was sure—upon his death. And the tourists in particular, the orphan saw, had attracted his manic eye. If they had appeared ugly to her, they appeared hideous to the duke. Swollen, white-pink beasts of men. The worst invaders of all.

  He advanced, sobbing, and for a heartbeat the orphan was at one with the old man. Her whole frustrating day—the heat, the school, the laughing women and these horrible men (her father could not have been one of them)—rose up in her, and she too wanted to take the pitchfork and stab it in the men’s faces, to blind their greedy eyes and silence their awful voices. But then she remembered herself. She pulled with her thoughts, until, abruptly, she was free of the duke’s mind.

  Too late. People were screaming and cursing, and the duke was flat in the dust, pinned down by a dozen arms. The pitchfork had been thrown clear to land at the orphan’s feet. The prongs glistened wetly with dark liquid, and the same liquid had spattered across the front of her dress. She looked up. In front of the bar the women were gone and only the three tourists remained. One of them rolled in agony upon the ground, his two companions hovering above, ineffectual. The man’s hands were clutching his head, but for a moment he withdrew them, and the orphan could see the screaming gape of his mouth, and the two bloody sockets of his ruined eyes.

  15

  It was late afternoon by the time the old doctor and the orphan headed for home. The evening’s storm was building behind them. They’d spent several hours at the police station, the orphan sitting in a corner while the doctor argued with the police captain and later with the mayor, who came bustling in, outraged.

  The issue—the orphan grasped even without the ability to comprehend speech—was what to do about the duke. The doctor seemed set on taking the old man back to the hospital, but the police captain and the mayor only shook their heads. The orphan could well understand why. The duke as a harmless old madman was one thing. But this maiming…it would scare people. It would scare tourists especially. And tourists meant money, even the orphan knew that. So it was no surprise that the old doctor was overruled.

  The worst thing was that the duke could be heard weeping in the station’s cell all the while. The orphan had to block the sound from her ears, or else be sucked again into the misery that was his mind. The poor man still didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him. Perhaps he never would again…

  It was a long, hot walk up the hill, back to the hospital. Thunder rumbled distantly. The orphan felt ragged, her dress all wrinkled and bloodstained, her breasts itching. The old doctor was talking as they laboured along, but whether it was to her or to himself the orphan couldn’t tell. He seemed tired and in pain, his bag hanging from his arm like an iron weight.

  They reached the hospital porch, and he paused a moment to say some last thing to her—a word of comfort perhaps—but his gaze wandered, distracted. It was a relief when he turned and limped away to his office. The orphan herself hurried on to the back wards. She wanted to wash, and change her clothes, but even before that she wanted to visit the crematorium. No, the truth was she needed to visit the crematorium.

  But when she opened the door to the foreigner’s room, her heart jumped unpleasantly, for the bed was empty, the sheets thrown back.

  Where was he?! Who had taken him?!

  I’m outside. Quickly now. You’re late.

  She went, confused and lumbering and desperate. She found him behind the laundry, on the cement slab, in his wheelchair. He was all alone, head slumped to one side, blank eyes staring at the sky. The orphan rushed to him and cradled his head in her hands, straightening it, stroking it, and almost, in her eagerness, kissing his lips…but not doing so, because there was no welcome in him, no joy at her appearance. His eyes were unfocused, his face as slack and expressionless as ever.

  She sat back on her haunches, shielding her disappointment. What had she expected? One day he would be better, he would be able to move and smile and touch her in return. One wonderful day, maybe. But not now.

  Anyway, what was he doing out here?

  Waiting for you. I had a nurse push me out. A storm is coming.

  The orphan glanced at the sky. A hazy wall of blue cloud loomed. But who cared? Storms came every second afternoon at this time of year. What did they matter compared to the awful events in town with the duke?

  Yes, terrible. He should not have been allowed to roam loose.

  But the old man had never done anything like that before, so how could anyone have known? In any case, why had he done it?

  He’s mad. Isn’t that enough?

  But he’d never hurt anyone until today. And today was…

  Today was what?

  Today was the day after they had entered the duke’s mind and aroused his nightmares. The day after they had made him squirm helpless in a chair, seeing monsters all around him.

  The foreigner’s empty gaze had somehow become scornful. You think that’s why he did it? That we drove him to it?

  The orphan looked away. Her secret fear was not so much that they had driven the duke to attack, it was that she alone had driven him to it. She had been there inside his head as he approached the tourists. She had hated those men with all her being, wanting them to suffer. And obediently the duke had aimed for their eyes…

  You weren’t holding the pitchfork. You can’t blame yourself for the way others choose to react to what you say or do. Human behaviour is like the weather. A puff of air from your mouth might result in a hurricane on the other side of the world that destroys an entire city. But that’s no reason for you to stop breathing.

  Ah, but her loathing for the men had been so strong—it was no puff of air. Who could tell what it had done to the duke’s mind? And the orphan didn’t even know why she had felt that way. She’d never cared before who her father was. But something about the sight of those men, with their lazy smiles and wandering hands, had revolted her. She couldn’t bear to think she came from such alien ugliness.

  Except—!

  An astonishing possibility struck her.

  Perhaps her father really had been an outsider. Only not some beery tourist, but a different sort of outsider altogether. Yes, why hadn’t she thought of it before? It would explain so many things. Her strangeness, her special abilities. And the link they shared, the remarkable sweetness of understanding. Could it be? Could he have been here on the island some twenty-one years previous, in one of his other lives?

  The idea was like a sunburst through clouds, illuminating the orphan’s whole life in a new way. Why, his very presence here now might not merely be some accident. It might be a deliberate choice to return and find her. To claim her, to raise her as his own. She dared a glance at the foreigner. Could he hear? Would he answer? She waited, not breathing, afraid of a reply, afraid of knowing for sure either way. But he said nothing. In fact, his head had slipped to the side again, and his eyes were once more gazing away from her, up to the clouds.

  She sagged, actually relieved. She needed time to think…

  Thunder rumbled, louder t
han before. The orphan looked up and saw that the rain wouldn’t be long now. They would have to go inside.

  Not yet. The storm is why I came out here. I want to show it to you.

  But she knew all about storms! She was the one who could predict them, after all. She had known this one was coming since the morning.

  You know a little perhaps. But not enough, if I’m to relate the next stage of my life to you. And explain my next death.

  Now? He was going to continue his story now, with the rain about to fall, and with the blood of the duke’s violence still on her dress?

  Impatience flared. Forget the duke. He’s no longer relevant. Time is what matters. We have so little of it…

  Contrition. She was sorry. Of course she was ready, at any moment that he wanted her. She was his to instruct.

  Forgive me. I know you’ve had a long day. You haven’t slept. And it will only get worse for you from here on in. But—

  What did he mean, worse?

  Never mind. We must continue while we can. All three of us.

  All three?!

  Laughter. I wasn’t alone out here. I had a companion, at least I did until you came along and scared her away.

  Puzzled, the orphan stared around the yard.

  Come out, come out, sang the foreigner, and the orphan, disturbed, realised that he was singing to someone else, not her.

  From beneath the bushes by the fence—her favourite hiding hole, it seemed—the witch rose. She was grinning with secret delight, and her eyes were fixed adoringly upon the foreigner. A stab of jealousy went through the orphan. All afternoon, while she had needed him so badly, the foreigner obviously had not given her a thought. Instead he had been lolling out here, communing with this madwoman.

  Foolish girl, there’s no need to worry. This old woman is an interesting specimen—she and her bones—but she is nothing compared to you.

  The orphan stared doubtfully. The witch had scrambled out from the bush, her hair full of sticks. Surely the foreigner didn’t believe in her magic spells?

  Her spells—no. But there’s more to her than that.

  The old woman was ignoring them now. She pulled out a bone from some pocket—a chicken bone—and scratched at the ground with it. Then she took up a handful of dirt, sniffed it, and finally threw the dust into the air.

  Do you know what she’s doing?

  Crazy things. Pointless things.

  She’s listening to the earth. In her own limited way, she’s as attuned to this planet and its moods as I am. Or maybe even as you are.

  The orphan shook her head. The witch was mad.

  Yes, but when the volcano erupted she was the only one apart from you and me who wasn’t afraid.

  The orphan could not deny this. And she also remembered that, the next day, she had found the witch staring up at the mountain with a strange gratitude. As if the volcano had not merely erupted by chance, but had chosen to do so.

  Aha. There you have it. To this old woman’s mind, the world is indeed conscious in just such a way. Volcanoes, if they want, can choose to erupt. And storms—ah, yes, even as we speak—storms can choose to blow.

  The first cool gust of air finally sighed through the yard, rustling the trees and skittering dead leaves across the concrete. The dark belly of the storm, which only a moment before had seemed to hang unmoving, miles away, now appeared to hurry forward, dragging curtains of rain.

  And yet—why? Why does the volcano choose to erupt? Why does the rain choose to fall? What reason lies behind the choices? That’s what the witch wants to know.

  The old woman was crooning madly, her dusty hands raised to the black and grey clouds reared above, the chicken bone pointed high. Thunder cracked, close and very loud, rumbling in echoes up against the mountain.

  You see? There’s her answer.

  And what, supposedly, had the storm said?

  It says that it blows for us. It says that rain falls and volcanoes erupt to give us life. That’s what the witch hears in the thunder.

  But that was nonsense.

  It’s a more valid vision than some. Take the duke, for instance—all he saw when the volcano went up was the mess it made of his precious garden. Not the witch—she saw the gift the mountain had given. Fertile ash, dead animals that would rot. She saw the growth that would come from the destruction. And she was thankful.

  The wind gusted again, and the witch was rolling in the dirt now, laughing with pleasure, arms open to the sky.

  Oh, she knows the earth is not obliging to each of us as individuals. She knows the planet can kill as easily as it creates. But she trusts that the earth only destroys in a way that provides for life in the longer term. Volcanoes erupt, but they invigorate the soil. Storms blow, but they distribute life-giving water. And so on. Look inside her for yourself, if you want.

  Reluctantly, the orphan extended her senses to see, just for a moment, through the old woman’s eyes. The storm tumbled towards them, mountains of cloud collapsing upon themselves. The same storm, and yet not the same storm. In the witch’s vision it crackled with energy, a vibrant thing, a wild thing, even a dangerous thing—and yet essentially good. A positive force, scattering careless fertility in its wake.

  Indeed, she sees a planet that is mother to us all, and which convulses itself in a constant labour of birth to keep us in existence.

  The orphan blinked and was back in her own head. The wind surged again, and a few large drops slapped against the concrete. The storm no longer looked benign to her. It looked cold and wet. They should get inside.

  I told you: not yet.

  She glanced at the foreigner. His head was back, and his throat worked, as if he was choking, or laughing, or trying to speak.

  Can’t you feel it?

  And then she could. Her skin crawled, her hair stood on end, and the witch was climbing to her knees. It felt like the air was about to—

  Now! the foreigner cried.

  A jagged bolt of blue fire seared a line between earth and sky, so close by that the entire world seemed to burn white. For an instant there was only silence, and the orphan waited, eyes shut against the glare, for the thunder to crack and boom directly in her face. But nothing came. She opened her eyes in wonder.

  Time had stopped. The rain, the wind, the very lightning—they were all frozen. Beside her the witch was a kneeling stone, her eyes aglow as she gazed up in ecstasy at the lightning bolt. It towered like a split in the sky, its base rooted in the fiery ruin of a tree just beyond the hospital grounds. Outlined starkly against the flames was the foreigner in his chair, his right hand splayed out lazily from the armrest. And by a trick of perspective, the bolt seemed to spring directly from his fingers.

  Could he—?

  No, I can’t call lightning. But it takes no great skill to foresee when it will strike. I know much more about storms than the witch here.

  But how had he frozen the world?

  It isn’t frozen. This is a moment in our thoughts, that’s all. And compared to thought, even lightning can seem to creep.

  But why had he done it?

  We’re not quite ready for the storm yet. First—

  His head had slipped once more, so that he was staring not at the lightning, but at the old woman at his feet.

  This pathetic creature here—can you believe that she was just a girl once? Hard to imagine, I know. But I’ve studied her memories.

  The orphan was baffled. What did the witch’s childhood matter now?

  It matters greatly. It defines her delusion. Perhaps it’s true to say that she was born with madness already in her, only waiting its time to emerge, but still, it was events in her youth that decided the intriguing path her insanity would follow.

  Take heed of her story, my orphan.

  She was raised only a mile from here, in a shack in the jungle. This was long ago, in the years after the duke’s property was broken up and given to the poor people from the big town. Like many others, the witch’s parents had claime
d a plot of scrubland up here to build themselves a house and a new life. Alas, the father was a drunkard and never built more than a hut. What little money he earned, he gambled or drank away. The mother found work wherever she could, but the father stole her savings and drank them away as well. Then, in between his gambling and drinking, he relieved his guilt by beating his wife. And when his daughter was older, he beat her too.

  Now, the girl and her mother could bear the beatings, they never lasted long, but the poverty was eternal. Most days it was a struggle just to feed themselves. Their one hope was their garden. Their shack might be falling down, but behind it they had cut out a clearing where they tried to grow vegetables. They worked in that garden day and night, just the two women. And yet nothing ever seemed to grow as well as it should. They subsisted, barely, but for some reason the land refused to give them abundance.

  But then one day, when the girl had reached early adulthood and her incipient schizophrenia was just beginning to worm its way into her mind, something quite remarkable happened.

  The mother murdered the father.

  The incident took place in the garden. The father staggered home from a drinking session late one evening and, inanely, began pulling up whole rows of unripe cabbages. The mother emerged to find him there, and it was too much to endure—that he should ruin the one thing keeping them from starvation. She snapped, as quiet, longsuffering women often will, and attacked him with a trowel. The girl was witness. She saw the blade gash deep into her father’s neck, and watched his blood flow into the soil.

  Failure that he was, the father did not even have the grace to die quickly. He fought back, and for a long, desperate, sweating, cursing and pleading half-hour, husband and wife were locked together. The girl was paralysed by the horror of it, and could do nothing to help or hinder either of them. But the father was drunk, and the mother had scored the first hit, robbing him of vital fluids, and so in the end it was he who died, slashed in a dozen places, the garden a charnel ground around him. And it was the mother who rose, bloodstained and unrecognisable, to comfort her daughter.