The Towers of Babylon

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The Towers of Babylon Page 19

by Michelle Kaeser


  “What? Come on, don’t look at me like that,” Runkle says, flustered into speech. “My bedroom floor is still damp, Ben. And the basement problems—any problems—aren’t going to be repaired now.”

  “Listen,” says Kata. “Esther already pretty much lives with her boyfriend. And Marko is talking about heading out west. And I … or we … we just don’t think we’ll end up with anything more than this offer. It’s completely fucked! But it’s how it is.”

  “Ah-ha. Surrender. And everyone is agreed? Geoffrey?”

  But Geoffrey is staring at his brightly-striped socks. “I think there’s mould in my bedroom. My own coughing has been waking me up and my throat—” He strokes at his neck, contorting his features in imagined pain. “It’s sore all the time.”

  Ben snarls at this display, appalled by the delicacy of today’s youth. “You’ll be able to buy a handsome new bed indeed, Geoffrey, with your thirty pieces of silver.”

  “Don’t take it too hard, Ben,” says Kata, putting a hand on his back. “We had a good run, didn’t we?”

  Ben allows a long, lingering look around the beloved kitchen, at the warped wood of the cupboards, the buzzing fridge, the quirky oven, hearth of this tranquil home. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’ll be needing a minute now,” he says and steps out into the backyard for a moment of anguished solitude in his garden.

  WITH AN UNEXPECTEDLY empty afternoon in front of him, and in immediate need of spiritual discipline, Ben does the only thing he can do: he brews. A deep, dark stout for the cold days ahead. The roommates seem to have vacated the house, or at least retreated to their rooms, leaving him to go about the process quietly, meditatively, a moving prayer. Whatever hovel he lands in next may not have the logistical capacity for his brewery, so he approaches the process with particular devotion. Between each step—the milling of the grain, the mixing of the mash—he helps himself to a fresh bottle of beer, as he imagines medieval monks might have done, fusing harmoniously process and result.

  As the wort kettle nears a boil on the stoop, Ben nears a state of drunkenness that supports mournful indulgence. He takes a deep breath, then bellows out a dirge for his lost home. It is at this moment, chanting over his cauldron, that Joly materializes before him.

  “Oh. Hello, doll.” He squints at her wobbly form standing in the frame of the kitchen door. “Where did you come from?”

  “You forgot these,” she says, setting his stew pot and beer bottles onto the table. “I’m meeting Karen’s friend today, about that product description job. Her office is around the corner, so I thought … well I thought you’d be at work.”

  “Nope.” Ben enters the house, kissing her on the top of the head on his way to the sink. “I’ve been sacked.”

  “What? For what? Why?”

  “For agitating. For making union noise.” The warm, yeasty smell of the brew has filled the house.

  “But they can’t fire you for that.”

  “No, not technically. So they fired me for trumped-up violations of store policy. But don’t worry, my lady love. It will never stand. I’m sure I’ll be able to get on the dole.” Frank will cough up the wages. And if not, Ben will start sending letters to the company head, then to the labour board. He will sink himself chin-deep into the bureaucracy of Ontario labour law if need be. “The larger problem is the Sanctum. We’re losing it. Renoviction. Out by the end of the month.”

  Joly eyes him as he pours himself a glass of water. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Oh yes, rather heavily.”

  He drains his glass, then one more, and returns outside to monitor the kettle.

  “So … what are we brewing?” she asks, following him out.

  “An imperial stout.” He swirls a giant spoon around the kettle and glowers into the black brew. “I think I’ll call it the Dark Night of the Soul.”

  “I’m sorry, Benny. This sucks.”

  “Ebbs and flows, my dear. Ebbs and flows.” He wraps an arm around her and surveys his yard: the collection of found lawn furniture, the fire pit he and Marko built years ago, the small vegetable patch he only just started last spring. “Rises and falls, all things must meet their end.”

  But Joly jerks free from his grip, spurred on by an abrupt surge of energy; she flits around the porch. “Maybe this is an opportunity!” she cries, her features pulsating with thought. “For a fresh start.” He blinks twice and suddenly she’s right in front of him, hopping in place. Her hands fly up to his shoulders. “Yannick’s right, you know. There’s no reason you couldn’t turn the brewing into a legit business.”

  “There is a reason, a very good reason.” Ben lifts both of her hands off his shoulders and brings them together at his lips. “It is unseemly to profiteer off of people’s vices.”

  “But this could be something,” she says, pacing the stoop. “For both of us. I could help … I could … do something helpful. We could figure out the business stuff. We’re smart people. Mom and Pop! A family business! We just need to get some investors, raise some capital … and decide to do it!”

  What is all this? Yesterday she’s pushing him into the priesthood; today into beer. “Investors don’t drop out of the sky, my little turtle dove.”

  “No, but … we could get Yannick to help out.”

  Ben takes a long patient sip of his ale. “You want me to take blood money from your brother?”

  “Blood money?” She’s on the steps, kicking at them petulantly. “Oh god, Benny, why do you have to be so dramatic all the time? It’s not blood money. It’s regular, ordinary money.”

  “Bah! Nobody earning that much money is doing it on the up and up.”

  She throws herself down onto the middle step and plops her cheeks into her hands. “I don’t understand why you hate him so much.”

  “I don’t hate him. I just think that he, and the people who do his kind of work, are depraved. And I want no part of their ill-gotten spoils.” He taps at her slight, curved back with his boot. “Hey, did you even notice what your brother looked like this morning? The sagging eyes. The sallow face.”

  “He looked tired.”

  “He looked hungover, Joly.”

  “They’d been at a party the night before.”

  “I could still smell the liquor on him.”

  “Ben!” she cries, jumping back to her feet and throwing her arms above her head. Her loud gestures are hard to follow. “Who’s drunk right now? In the middle of the day? A weekday! You are, Ben!”

  “Ah yes, but I …” he taps his chest with his beer bottle, “I have just been canned. And I am losing my Sanctum. I would be inhuman if I weren’t hammered just now.” He stares back into the kettle, inhaling notes of vanilla. “It is for precisely such times that God has given us beer.”

  “Yannick is coming to your church on Sunday, did you know that? To hear your sermon. To support you.”

  “So you forced his hand, did you?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. He wanted to. He’s interested.”

  “He is not interested,” Ben says, stirring the cauldron in hypnotic circles. “I heard you telling him about it. I heard him express a clear disinterest. It was right after he called me a deadbeat, I believe.”

  “Aw Ben,” she says in a much quieter tone. She nuzzles her chin against his bicep. “Don’t be mad about that. That’s just how he talks. He thinks anyone making less than six figures is a deadbeat.”

  “Pah!”

  “But he wants to help us. So why not at least consider this beer idea? It’d be a chance to make money doing something you actually like.”

  Ben shakes her off and lets his voice explode: “The brewing is not a capitalist enterprise, okay? It is a spiritual pursuit!”

  “God. You’re stubborn!” Joly marches down into the yard, where she stomps around in erratic elliptical shapes. It makes him dizzy to watch her, so he returns his gaze to the beer.

  “Choosing to be broke is not righteous, Ben,” she calls up to him. “Not when you have a par
tner who is trying to build a life with you. You don’t want to accept any responsibility in your life.” She’s trudging back his way now, waving furiously with both arms. “None! That’s your problem. At least Yannick, depraved Yannick, doesn’t cower from responsibility.”

  “Oh-ho, that is rich! Rich creamery butter, right there!” He barrels down the steps in one big lunge. “Your brother? The pillar of familial responsibility?”

  “Yes, actually,” she says. “He is.”

  “And does part of that legendary responsibility involve trampling over his wedding vows?”

  “What is that supposed to mean? He does everything for Karen, everything she asks.”

  “Does she ask him to screw around with your best friend?” Joly’s mouth makes several false starts at forming words; she blinks, her lips slightly ajar. “That is ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Then why did I find him with her when you had me drop off that birthday beer? Your brother, your hero, paragon of the wholesome nuclear family, practically in flagrante delicto.”

  “That … is impossible. You must have seen something else.”

  “You are naivety itself sometimes, Joly.” With an elaborate sigh, Ben drops down on the bottom-most step. “A sheltered and naïve woman.”

  “And you are a drunken idiot right now! I’m sorry I interrupted your moping.”

  “And I’m sorry I can’t give you the lavish life to which you are accustomed!”

  They’ve spiralled upward through decibels, approaching full-blown screams. He can hear how the alcohol is cranking up his volume—he’s much louder than he’d like to be. “With me, there will be no radiant floors! No coffee pod machines! No semi-annual vacations and home ownership!”

  “Did I say I wanted those things?”

  “It is implied all over this conversation.”

  “I don’t want any of that. I don’t need that.”

  “Then what is it you want from me?”

  She erupts into wild sobs. And instantly Ben regrets it all, this entire conversation. As though a switch has been flipped, he snaps from angry to contrite. From his position on the bottom step, he reaches for her and pulls her toward him. He wraps a single arm all the way around her trembling body.

  “I just want …” she warbles.

  “What?”

  “… to be able to keep a baby.”

  He presses his head to her belly. “I’m sorry, Joly. You know how sorry I am.”

  “I know,” she says, her voice very small. “But … but …” Her voice gets smaller and smaller as she carries on, so small by the end that he almost can’t hear her when she says they should break up.

  14

  SUNDAY MORNING: BEN is ready to preside at the pulpit. In a single burst of divinely-inspired creativity yesterday, the sermon flowed from his pen onto the page. No job, no house, no woman, but an epiphany: God wants him to be angry.

  From the pulpit, he scans the rows of parishioners, one by one, hoping to spot Joly somewhere in the pews. But she’s not here. It’s just the boomers, the same handful of divinity students, and the pair of decrepit classics professors who have managed to cling to life for another week. And whoa now—who is that? In a back pew, sitting all alone—well, son of a bitch—it’s Yannick. His eyes are whizzing around, trying to find a way to make a break for it unnoticed. Ben breathes out a tight, angry tension, to steady his shaky hands and calm the pounding pulse in his neck. He makes a slow, solemn invocation to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And he begins.

  “Today’s Gospel reading from Luke is about signs of the time.” He can hear his voice rattle, but only slightly. “So let us start by taking a closer look at our own time, what defines it, and what signs we are ignoring.”

  The boomers are with him so far; gentle nodding all around.

  “Ours is a time of Empire,” he says. “And our empire, like all those that have come before for it, has reached the brink of collapse.

  “The Reverend Roberta, in her sermons, likes to talk about climate change, and it is hard not to call her words to mind when we get savage storms like we had this past week.”

  A softball opening to warm up the congregation; the boomers understand talk of the weather. His voice deepens and steadies.

  “Within a few short hours of that storm hitting, we had flooded roads and highways. We had overflowing storm drains. Fallen power lines. Blackouts. We had these troubles because our infrastructure is old and weak and insufficient. Our systems are starting to fail.

  “We should be paying attention to these signs of destruction and decay. But we are no better at observing the signs of our time than Jesus’s disciples were. We must take responsibility for this failing. But we must also recognize that we have been encouraged, even directed not to heed these signs by our corrupt corporate state. The corporate state does not want us to notice what is going on. It has been crafting illusion after illusion to keep us from seeing what should be obvious: that things are falling apart.”

  Ben notices a ripple of shifting in the pews. A grey-head coughs.

  “Empire, at its end, always relies on illusions to hold itself up. Our corporate state presents us with the illusion that our consumption patterns are sustainable, our living standards endlessly improvable, our lives exceptional. Meanwhile it obscures what is going on at its outer reaches: the exploitation and war propping up our lifestyles. And we are happy not to see. Why? Because the truth makes us uncomfortable. What are we if not a civilization fixated on personal comfort? We are coddled babies, asleep in the womb of the empire, unable to withstand the slightest offense, unequipped to encounter anything that threatens our false security and our fragile happiness. We live in an illusion. But Jesus warns us about illusions in today’s reading. He teaches us to recognize the truth about our time whether it is comfortable or not.

  “And the truth about our time is grim. We are facing a degree of wealth inequality that is already destabilizing society. And it is only getting worse. Our labour movement is decimated. The corporate machine has trampled over the hard-fought labour victories of the twentieth century. Where is job security? Gone. Where are the once-strong unions? Weakened into irrelevance. Where is the living wage? Laughed out of conversations. Are we paying attention to these signs? To the spreading misery of our society’s workers? No, we are not. We prefer to live inside the illusion.

  “It takes strength to resist the illusion. Because the illusion is seductive. It encourages us to revel in our basest desires. Our vanity, jealousy, covetousness, avarice—this is what keeps the corporate machine running. In an effort to soothe our every frantic craving, we consume more and more, fuelling the machine with our vices. So the machine praises our vices, encourages them, dresses them up in the mask of civic virtue, and suddenly we have leaders telling us it is our civic duty not to sacrifice, but to go shopping.

  “But beneath the reckless consumption, in the underbelly of the empire, despair has begun to bleed through the citizenry. Increasingly alienated and atomized, with dwindling hopes for their own futures, the empire’s forgotten citizens are crying out. Is it any wonder that their cries have been answered by demagogues? Populism is sweeping through the empire. Here in our own city, we have seen a drunken, belligerent mayor appeal to a simmering contempt for the political class. To the south, in the very heart of the empire, the ranking demagogue is busy tapping into our worst fears and prejudices. These figures are popping up all around us. Our political leaders are now the vilest of the species, stoking our rage for their own gain. But they care nothing about us.

  “We caught a glimpse of the rage seething among the masses during our blackout last week, looting rampant in our streets. Storefronts smashed. Shops robbed. Of course they were! What else could we expect? When the illusion starts to break down—when the pacifying distractions of television and the internet and conspicuous consumption are taken away—the citizenry awakens fully to its own rage. It recognizes the truth: that it has been abandoned by the state. And it
responds in turn with a violent contempt for social order.

  “So what do all these signs portend? These crashing power lines and overflowing storm drains, these rants from rising demagogues and these smashed shop windows? These are the screams of a civilization in its last throes. This is what it sounds like when Empire breaks down.”

  Ben pauses to gauge the congregation. Their expressions have shifted, the empty nodding replaced with a surprising array of frowns. Are these the frowns of stimulated thought? Have they, for once, been moved by words from this pulpit? He ploughs on with heightening fervour.

  “The capitalist experiment has failed,” Ben booms. “If we do not see that, then we do not know how to interpret our time. Like every empire that has come before, ours has passed its zenith. It has reached the point where, too bloated and corrupt, it is unable to respond to the problems it faces. Nothing will save it now.

  “We, as a species, are about to endure a traumatic experience. Environmental catastrophe is on the horizon. Storms and wildfires, floods and droughts will give rise to geopolitical calamities that will overwhelm the crumbling remains of this empire. The pipeline of cheap energy and cheap consumer products will dry up. The future is going to look very much like the past. But we have forgotten how to look after ourselves.

  “The Fall is coming, my brethren. We must prepare ourselves for the descent. Mentally, physically, and spiritually. There is a goodness in humanity, a spark of the divine that even the machine, despite its absolute best efforts, has not been able to eradicate. If we can preserve that goodness, and foster it, we can yet limit the chaos and war ahead.

  “I am calling on each of us to develop true and strong bonds with each other. To practise a compassion that can withstand the harsh reality of the coming age. We need to learn how to be kind without the decadent comforts of Empire propping up our moods. We need to relearn simple skills. Remember how to make and mend things. We must forge communities, as Jesus teaches us to, instead of yielding to the fierce individualism that is cannibalizing our society.

  “The Church has a great responsibility in all this. It must shepherd us into this new world. There are no other organizations with the strength and memory to bring about the mass reorientation of hearts and minds that we will need to survive.”

 

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