Modern Gods

by Nick Laird

  She looked fat in the photograph. There was no denying it. She knew it was irrelevant. But she looked fat in it, on the cover of a newspaper.

  He looked at it in silence. Undressing the wound. His eyes fell on a random paragraph.

  I knew Angela Downey and Eugene Boyne, who were out on a date on that fateful night, and I’ve always wondered if they would have married. But there will never be any ceremony for them, no doves of peace or top hat and tails. Instead McLean left a wee girl to grow up without her mother.

  He looked up and she was standing there crying. She allowed him to hug her and after a few minutes, she sat down in the chair at the desk and looked at him, imploring him to make it not true, not real. He sat back on the edge of the bed and wrapped the coverlet over his shoulders. He felt the insufficiency of the actual facts. There was nothing adequate, nothing useful.

  “I mean you have to remember,” he began, “where we were, what had happened. They were killing us for being Protestant, just for existing. We had to strike back. We had to. We had to let them know that if they were going to kill us in shops and bars and going about our business, we were going to do the same. It was war.”

  “I’m so stupid. I imagined . . .” She spoke very quietly. “I thought—you’d helped people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at his Adam’s apple, then his shoulder, moving her eyes off him, away, away. “Like you had a friend who’d done something and he came to you for help and you hid him or hid his gun or something. I just thought you’d have done something that was a mistake. That you were being too good to someone.”

  “I wasn’t myself.”

  She turned to him suddenly. “Who were you?”

  “Someone else. It was twenty years ago.”

  She sat down in the chair by the desk. He wanted to take his wife’s soft, sturdy body in his arms and tell her everything would be all right, but how could he?

  An invisible shutter had been lowered into place between them. He couldn’t get round it to her. Her forceful and settled way of seeing everything had always been refreshing to him. Alison, in a judgmental mood, enthralled him. She gave the impression that she hated everyone except him, that only he was all right, that only he was bearable. But now he felt himself pushed from the circle of her light.

  He let himself look at her. She’d a few stone on him, but there was just more of her, he always said, to love. And he loved the excess of her body, the soft wide waist, the large low breasts. Her hair had been done new for the wedding. There was an openness to the face that Stephen had always liked; you thought she had no side, no edge, at least until she started talking. It wasn’t that she loved life, but she had a way of expecting it, anticipating certain patterns, that moved Stephen. She possessed no capacity for surprise or wonder or ambiguity of any kind. The universe was clockwork and windup and behaved as she anticipated. Actions and reactions—she expected Isobel to be overtired after swimming on a Thursday; she expected Michael to fall asleep in his car seat on the way back from nursery. She had her grasp on things and it worked, it held. She understood that there were no rules, fine, but certain principles could be discerned, and followed onto death, beyond if we were lucky. The little regulations with which she ran their lives constituted a kind of handrail round the abyss. But now he had upended all those laws and statutes. She was a good person, a good person—not like some saint or whatever—just an average, normal, good person. And she conferred a kind of average, normal personhood upon him. He had felt compelled to be the person she expected, to conform to her idea of him. But now. He stood up and walked past her into the bathroom. The extractor fan labored into life and he realized the other noise that had started up with it was her sobbing. He slid the bolt on the door across and flicked the tap on to drown the sound out.

  CHAPTER 18

  Belef gestured for them to follow her. She had a slight limp, was not tall, but there was a physical power about her. Broad shoulders, thick forearms, unsmiling in the long flower-patterned meri dress and plastic flip-flops and ratty cardigan—plus, the yachting cap, its gold braid and stiff brim and nonsense insignia. Nothing more had been spoken, and Liz felt they’d all been bound with a spell into silence. Even Margo made no attempt to tell her who they were or what they wanted; she simply followed like the rest. Liz looked back behind her. She couldn’t figure out which way they’d come into the village now; a mountain stood behind them, covered with moss forest, and they must have come round it somehow. Or—and the thought took hold for a second—they must have come through it, through the mountain. They must have come through it like the children led by the Pied Piper, and this was the world that lay beyond their world. She walked alongside Margo and found herself taking the producer’s hand in hers. Margo accepted it without a word and gave it a little reassuring squeeze.

  The village was a scatter of buildings along a sloping grassy highway. Most were small huts, fronted by enclosed gardens. The roofs were thatched and the walls timbered. The windows were square holes in the wall, shutters propped open above them. And here was Belef, the prophet, the fraud. Was this what she expected? Did she resemble a deity, this stout middle-aged Melanesian woman in a sailor’s hat?

  “I’ve met God,” Margo whispered to Liz. “I’ve met God and she’s black.”

  Liz wished very much she would shut the fuck up. Belef marched at the head of their little retinue, straight-backed and with her hands held behind her as if inspecting the village, a suggestion that intensified when she began to weave back and forth across the grass highway between the huts, stopping to crouch down and look closely at the scraggy patches of land enclosed in front of them by means of stakes and twisted vine, muttering to herself, or bending her head back and adjusting her cap to better see the roofs. It was apparent that this was a performance for them—and that they in turn were being paraded around the village, to demonstrate Belef’s importance. Liz realized suddenly who Belef was reminding her of: the Duke of Edinburgh, with her hands tucked behind her back, examining proceedings, occasionally stopping and passing a remark. Quite a crowd of children—a dozen or so—had gathered in their wake or ran alongside them, though none were the boy with white in his hair who’d met them on the path.

  The girls hung back and giggled, covering their mouths, whereas the boys ventured right up and shouted, “Hello! Hello, mister!” Liz tried to smile. She found them intimidating, the way they’d challenge each other to come close enough to touch her and then tear away shrieking.

  Belef stopped outside a hut where a young plump woman with no front teeth was sitting, holding a piglet like a baby. Belef said something to her. It sounded like “Bless the day” or “Blessed day.”

  “Oh look,” Liz exclaimed in a whisper. “She’s breastfeeding the pig. I read about that.”

  “Get it on film,” Margo hissed at Paolo, but the cameraman was already zooming in on it, framing the piglet working his little pig jaw, pulling out on the woman smiling broadly at Belef, throwing a slightly uncertain glance directly at the lens.

  They walked past a hand-painted New Truth Mission sign that stated: CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS: WASH YOUR HANDS. They walked past another: LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU: BEATING WOMEN IS WRONG. Another, in a jaunty yellow, with a border of hearts and flowers, stated: THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH BUT THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE.

  In the distance were a cluster of larger structures, made of the same thatch and wood and wattle—the Spirit house, the haus tambaran, the men’s house, perhaps the village rest house—but also, set up on a rise, a small compound of three white buildings. Glass glinted off real windows and galvanized roofs. A little shining city on a hill. The mission.

  Belef had stopped at a house; like all the others, it had a roof thatched with sago palms and woven matting for walls, though the garden was overgrown and untidy—except for one corner cleared of all greenery,
where for several feet the soil was inlaid with rocks and stones and pieces of bone or shell in concentric circles and geometric lines. Paolo swept the camera lens slowly over everything.

  She gestured for them to sit on the logs by the entrance. She herself sat down on the highest log, smiling slightly tensely, and faced them. She tilted the yachting cap backwards on her head so a wave of thick tight curls rode up, and her metaphysical confidence returned. She was a god! With a face perfectly round, eyes hard and bright as onyx.

  Liz crouched in front of her—Paolo stood filming a few feet away—and delivered her rehearsed line: “Nem bilong mi Elizabeth. Mi kam lukim yu.”

  Belef nodded.

  “Welcome to here,” Belef said carefully in return, and gestured to suggest the entire solar system was happy to host them. The voice was low-pitched, accustomed to being heard, and came out of a mouth of piecemeal teeth stained red by betel nut.

  “We’re from the BBC,” Margo said, and handed over her clipboard, containing, presumably, a release form. Belef made no motion to take it.

  “I am Belef.”

  “Well, at least we’ve got that right,” Margo said, forcing a chuckle.

  “Belef, as we discussed, we’re here to make a program about the Story,” Stan started.

  “We’re here,” Margo took over again, “to talk to you about your organization”—this seemed a neutral word—“and if you’re happy to let us, we’d like to film you, follow you around for a couple of days and talk. Visit some of the important sites.”

  Belef gave no indication she understood a word, but instead stared directly at Liz and smiled broadly and said, “I knew you would come.”

  Liz looked at Margo. Was Belef claiming to have had a premonition of their visit?

  “You mean you got Stan’s messages?” Margo said.

  “I knew you would come,” she repeated. “Elisssa-bet, elisa-bet . . . we will have tea.”

  —

  Malour, the porter with the Blue Jays baseball cap and bandiest legs, the carriers’ foreman and spokesman, took his men off to prepare the dinner and the village rest house. Paolo set up the camera on his tripod outside Belef’s house. Posingen—the bodyguard—kept his usual distance, sprawled under a tree in the distance, his AK-47 across his lap. Margo kept repeating that they really should get something on film today. Belef sat on the log bench, her elbows on her knees, her long purple skirt hanging down between her legs. She chewed betel nut and spat and stared at the four white people with friendly defiance.

  Liz worried that Margo was going to remember the present for Belef. In Heathrow’s Terminal 2, outside the Pret a Manger, they’d stood and debated what gift might be suitable, and in a final panic ended up buying a teddy bear dressed as a Beefeater, some Harrods tea bags in a Big Ben tin, and a striped dressing gown—on sale—from the Paul Smith store. Sitting looking at her house and her life, and the endless rainforest stretching every direction, each of these gifts—now sitting by Liz’s feet in a green plastic bag, waiting to be handed over—seemed equally implausible. She glanced down at her list of questions.

  “I’m going to ask you about the organization you’ve started, and then we’ll talk a bit more about you. Go into depth about your childhood, defining moments, that kind of thing. Sound OK?”

  Liz beamed and Belef gave back a brief tense grimace. Now she sat up, now she rearranged her hands, now she held onto her knees, now she set her hands in her lap.

  “Can you describe how it started? The movement? Just talk through—”

  “Is that angle working?” Margo interjected. “Would it not be better to get her from here, with the light coming in—”

  “Hold on.” Liz held her hand up to Belef to tell her not to answer yet. Belef’s response was to hold her own hand up to Liz’s and push gently against it. Her hand felt very rough and dry.

  “Do we need to get Stan to translate the questions?” Margo asked no one in particular.

  “Liz, can you start talking?”

  “Hi Belef, it’s an honor to meet you.”

  Belef’s nod confirmed that the honor was indeed Liz’s.

  “Can you tell us about the leaf? The leaf that started it all?”

  “Ask a more general question: What started the Story?”

  “Can you tell us about what started the Story? The beginning?”

  Belef paused and looked from face to face, then raised her hand and touched her shoulder.

  “Leaf,” she said, and then, with the proper solemnity, “it landed here.”

  Margo set the boom down.

  “Can we get one of the porters to take this? They could manage that surely. I have a twinge in my shoulder.”

  Stan took the boom himself. The team sat in suspended silence, with Belef fidgeting until Stan had the sound bag round his neck. Margo continued to wear the headphones, and now she waved them on.

  “Belef, can you tell me what started all of this?”

  “I am inside my house and I am thinking about this leaf when it landed.” She touched her shoulder again. “On me. It was Sunday, after time of church. And I am lying down on the mat now. Inside my house.”

  Liz nodded, and Belef rose to the encouragement, clapping her hands lightly and smiling.

  “You must all believe in this something. Where do you believe this came from? The door was all closed up. I was asleep when it came onto my body. This something is just like when people write and send it. The letter. But it had come from Papa and to me.”

  “Papa?”

  Belef looked surprised.

  “The Big Boss. You say God.”

  “And I hold the leaf like this”—Belef had her hands raised in prayer before her—“and Leftie brings the paper and he draws in it: balbal leaf. He draws all the marks found on it. And all of the village must copy all the writing of this something something, and must follow it. And this would be the Story. For the house was totally closed shut, so how could this something come inside? It was sent by my daughter.”

  Liz turned to Margo. “Who’s Leftie? Is this going to work? Shouldn’t we get the story straight first and then film it?”

  “Keep going,” Margo overruled her.

  “Have you got the leaf? Could we see it?”

  Belef stood up and walked stiffly into her house, undergoing a trial of some importance. She reemerged bearing a large label-less can, such as might have held chopped tomatoes or peaches in syrup. Across the top of the can was a piece of gauze, kept in place by an elastic band and she carefully removed it, storing the band on her wrist, before drawing out the leaf. It didn’t even look particularly old. Though dry, it was still green.

  “This came and slept on me, and now I hold it.”

  Belef sighed like she was remembering love and for a moment nobody spoke.

  Finally Margo said, “You know, her English is really pretty good.”

  “Why did Papa send you the leaf?”

  Belef sighed again, this time for sadness, and fixed Liz with a look that said she should not have to explain. “To tell me my daughter is angry and wants me to fix it. Come.”

  She stepped around the side of the house and pointed at the space in Belef’s garden where the grass had been pulled out and the shells made swirling patterns and little wooden crosses were arranged.

  “This is where Kasingen sleeps.”

  “Is this where she’s buried? Kasingen?”

  “This is where she sleeps.” Belef said again simply, and leaned down and touched the tip of a cross with a finger.

  “It’s a very beautiful grave.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you make the crosses?”

  “They are not crosses.”

  Liz bent closer. What she’d thought were crucifixes were aeroplanes: some rough approximations, but others elegantly carved with cockpits and pi
lot’s heads, twin propellors, tail fins—but each landing badly, planted nose first in the soil.

  Abruptly Belef got up and went into the house. They listened to a hurried conversation inside and Belef reappeared with a walking stick, the head carved like a snake’s head.

  “I will bring you to my spirit children’s place.”

  —

  She walked briskly, even with her limp, and the path came alongside a wide stretch of a slow river pocked with stepping-stones and larger rocks. Farther back a small waterfall dropped a few feet into a pool, where several russet leaves spun aimlessly as if they’d been spinning there forever. Trees dipped their fringes in the water. Everything was ease and sunlight and enclosure. A bluely iridescent dragonfly careened above the shallows to a stop, hovered, motored loudly off.

  Margo had become all business, and that made things easier, clearer between them all. She replaced her tortoise-shell sunglasses with her tortoise-shell reading glasses; the black clipboard she held across her chest and referred to as if she herself were also following instructions. Now the sky was visible again; against the uniform blue a few white clouds tumbled in slow motion out of themselves. Paolo set up his tripod. Margo held them off with one raised palm, and then, when he started filming, Liz followed Belef onto a large rock down at the water’s edge.

  “This”—Belef gestured with her snake walking stick—“is the Tractor Rock. When the land is all flat my children will farm it with this.”

  The rock did look vaguely like a tractor, at least from this side. Margo gestured at Liz to sit on it, and Liz pretended not to see her. She was concentrating on ignoring her sore heel and not rubbing the spider bite on her neck. Stan had been put to use again with the boom mic, and was doing his best to please Margo by staying as still as possible. Belef took a farther step out into the river onto a stepping-stone, a smooth spherical rock.

  “And this is their football.”