Modern Gods

by Nick Laird

  He laughed and skipped off but she wasn’t playing anymore. She sat down where he’d sat—a clutch of seedlings sprouted from the trunk and she brushed their heads with her hand. He looked back and slowed, then stood at a distance, watching her with curiosity. His stare seemed to bear down on her, to plead with her, but no, she would not move.

  She opened her bag and took out the notepad and began to write in block capitals: “NAMOR IS AN ASSHOLE.”

  She tore the page out and held it up to him. He looked and looked and came closer to see it properly. As he neared she put it down on her lap and began to fold it into a paper plane. He watched and watched and she finally lifted it up, adjusted its wing tips, and launched it down the path ahead of them. He ran after it and snatched it up. He came back and handed it to her. She pulled the fifty-pence piece from the pocket of her jeans and showed it to him. He held his hand out for it and she pretended to give it to him, but changed her mind at the last minute. He laughed and she did it again, then flicked it in the air and he caught it.

  They walked together. She said, “Slinga?”

  And he answered, “Belef, Belef.”

  They came to a shallow river dotted with stepping-stones and crossed it easily. A long winding path upwards led them to a roughly worked gate. It would have been easy to walk around it, but Namor whistled and a short man Liz hadn’t seen before appeared from behind a tree. He held a stick like a gun, across his chest, and looked them up and down, eyeing Liz with barely hidden fear. Namor said what sounded like, “Spin-Jo-Spin-Jaw.” The man nodded and with maximum ceremony opened the gate.

  On they walked for a few minutes in silence and then the forest ended. They stood in a clearing.

  CHAPTER 28

  A rough formation of men—forty, fifty—marched at the far end. They carried sticks like the man at the gate, propped against their shoulders like guns. A few wore parodies of military uniforms, matching khaki cargo shorts, and long tennis socks, but most were dressed unalike. Swim shorts, flipflops, some were in jeans. But every one was bare-chested, and across their torsos, from hip to shoulder, each wore a red woven sash. They stopped and stood in five loose rows. Something about their self-conscious pomposity reminded her of the Orangemen back home. A man facing them shouted, “Attention.” They all shuffled slightly taller. Liz fingered the string on her wrist. The sergeant major, she realized, was Leftie. How had he gotten here? Hadn’t she just walked away from him in Slinga? She waved at him and looked around the encampment.

  The “runway” was neither level nor large. The trees had been chopped down, but many stumps remained, though there’d been an effort to burn a few of them out. The surface was churned soil, though here and there little patches of green stubble had started to show through. You could see where they’d tried to stamp the ground flat, the prints of bare feet and flipflops. Leftie shouted, “Fall out!” and the men began to disperse. Most moved off to the shade of the tree line. Two lifted an iron railing and inserted it under a root, then bounced and jiggled it, trying to lever the root loose.

  None of them joined the women and girls picking stones and rocks from the soil, carrying them in wicker baskets to the edge of the forest to be emptied. Some reddish, scrawny chickens scratched and pecked around the churned-up soil and beyond them several older women sat singing at a fire—squeezing liquid through muslin sheets twisted into balls, and collecting it in plastic buckets. The song they sang was in Koriam but the tune was “Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light.” A solitary hound, black with dirt, lay on his side at the edge of their circle, and Liz watched his ribs appear and disappear as he breathed.

  A squat hut sat by the side of the runway and a bamboo aerial had been lashed to its side, reaching twenty feet into the air. Namor touched her arm and pointed at another hut, larger, at the head of the runway, partly ensconced in the trees.

  “Belef,” he said.

  —

  The structure was the usual wooden beams and pitpit topped with a thick circumflex of branches, but higher and wider than the huts in Slinga, stately by comparison. The door of the hut was closed, and above it, at the top of the pointed gable, a carved wooden aeroplane had been tied in place. It was a church. Liz took her phone out to take a photograph and found her phone was dead. Not that the battery was dead, but that the phone was dead. She had charged it the previous night and when she was lost in the forest, taking the selfies, it had still been fully charged, but now there was nothing. She pressed the black mirror of the screen and sent a little ripple of color over the surface.

  Inside the hut people talked in Koriam. One voice—quavery, intense, querulous—pleaded and stopped. The other—placid, mournful, tolerant—began to respond.

  “Belef? It’s Liz.”

  The church grew silent.

  “Belef? Are you in there? I thought I was going back to Slinga, but Namor brought me here.”

  “Please enter,” said a third voice, Belef’s, low and even, and Liz pushed the stiff door aside with a scrape and edged her way in. It was dark inside and Liz put her hand out in front of herself. The room took shape. Long and empty, ribs and struts exposed, the boards on the floor covered with woven sacking, and at the far end sat Belef, alone. Cross-legged. A darker pyramid of cloth and limbs against the matting of the wall. Pungent incense burned somewhere, a sweet sickliness.

  “Oh I thought you were with some people.”

  “My children were here but they had to go.”

  Belef made no movement.

  “Were you arguing?”

  “All my boys were here. Michael Ross and Johnson and Bullet. They didn’t want their sister to come in, so they locked her up underground. They tied her to a tree and I was telling them to let her go. To let her come up to me.”

  Madness comes abruptly. Liz felt a curious admixture of embarrassment and thrill, and it occurred to her that Belef was extremely high functioning for a schizophrenic. If that was what she was. Did she believe what she said? Was she possessed? Was she a fraud? Both? Authentic power—and Belef had that—could be founded on anything, although nothing, no inheritance, no beauty, could guarantee it.

  Liz turned her head away, the better to disguise her response, because she had none. She placed her hand against the wall for balance and started untying the lace of her left boot. Her blister was bothering her and her limbs were like stone. She sat down.

  “I thank Amulmul that Namor found you.”

  “I saw some boys playing with a tree kangaroo . . .” began Liz, but this was from the prosaic world and Belef did not live there.

  Silence. A dog barked distantly outside. All of a sudden Belef slapped the floor of the church with her palm.

  “We have much law to work. Michael Ross said, ‘Mother, what you must do is make this, and he gave me a pikcha of a flagpole.’”

  “A picture?”

  “Yes, a pikcha, a pikcha. The flagpole is found underground and we are to make it up here to open the road. We do the correct working of the pikcha, and around it is marching, singing, and we raise the flag.”

  Liz nodded.

  “Did you see the army of Amulmul, Liz? My army?”

  “Listen, you must send word to Margo and Paolo to tell them where I am.”

  She tried to sound angry. She was angry, and yet Belef’s aura, her personal force, drove every other emotion out of the hut. Something was centered in Belef, some energy was held in her. She added, almost as an afterthought, “And where am I? Where is this?”

  “Kirlassa. My village. Before the mission came, there were many families here. They grew scared of the darkness and moved to Slinga. They were all afraid of Hell, this new place they heard of. And all the villagers who went got shoes given ’em. All the others were getting on and they were not.”

  “Where did your children go, just now? I heard their voices.”

  “Back underground they go.
Bullet didn’t want to leave.”

  There were shadows in the church. It was possible there were people in the shadows. Was it? False floors and trapdoors. It felt like they were not alone. Belef stood up slowly and walked down the length of the hut. Each step she took Liz felt through the boards. It certified the woman’s dominance, her physical, ramifying presence in the universe, and when she sat down beside her and leaned back so that they were sitting side by side, Liz had to steel herself not to pull away. Something in her cowered. She felt she lacked agency, had entered a room—had entered a country—that she did not belong in, and did not understand, and whatever table she had thought she was sitting down to dine at, had been unveiled as an altar.

  Why did she feel so tired? Belef reached across and took Liz’s hand in her leathery fingers. She spoke in no more than a whisper.

  “I dreamed and knew one day that when the sick-moon came up on me, I would work it good. I took a mat and put it under my bed so the blood that fell from me made a pool on the mat. And for all those days the pool grew there. And when the sick-moon finished I took the mat and tied it tightly. I buried it in my garden. The first white child to come was Michael Ross, and he was tall and good and he helps my garden make food. He pushed up the taro. Then Johnson came and he is strong and warm. He makes the loads lighter and the nights less cold. The last to come was Bullet. He is quick and fearless and laughs all the time. He carries me great distances and tells me not to be afraid.”

  “They’re white?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is your daughter white?”

  “Not yet. Her eyes are red when she comes back. Her stomach is hot.”

  “Kaykay?”

  “That was what the mission children called her. Her name was Kasingen. She lies in the ground by my house. The dead must be kept close to talk to.”

  Belef tightened Liz’s hand in hers.

  “I’m so sorry that she died.”

  “Five months ago, December, he killed her.”

  “Someone killed her?”

  “It is because of Mista Josh that she is dead. But she wants to cut all of our necks.”

  Belef stretched and yawned and stood up. She went out and Liz, after a moment, trailed her like a little child staying close to its mother. Outside, Belef stood with her feet planted far apart and placed her hands to form a cone round her mouth to call across the runway to Namor. The laboriousness of the gesture was inauthentic, and Liz knew she’d seen a waitskin do it. Josh himself had done it when he called to his kids when they were playing below the balcony.

  Namor’s eyes were sullen as he received his instructions from Belef—Liz could pick out the word “BBC.” He ran to the tree line, and Liz saw his pig was tied up there. He patted it and whispered something into its ear and then broke off into his effortless run towards the path.

  Belef led Liz around the camp, pointing out this or that, and was only ready to move on after Liz gave the appropriate nod or smile. The structure by the runway, as far as she could tell, was meant to be an air traffic controller’s hut, and the controller flashed his gums in a helpless smile when they entered. He wore a woman’s red cloche hat and fingered his long gray matted beard. His toothlessness meant his mouth leaned inward, giving him a vaguely tortoiselike gormlessness—but the eyes twinkled sharply. He jumped up to await instructions, and nodded intently at Belef’s explanations to Liz, though it seemed he couldn’t understand them.

  The large square block of wood on the floor was a radio. Its dials were made from strips of fabric and twisted bark. Rounded river stones and translucent fragments of shell served as buttons and switches. Beside it, on the floor, lay a pair of coconut halves, held together by several inches of string. Belef saw Liz notice them, and she pointed at them. The man pushed the red cloche hat off his head and let it fall on the floor. Gingerly he lifted the coconut halves and fitted them over his ears; he looked terrified, as if someone might speak his name out of them.

  “Buggle,” Belef said, as they left the hut. “He is Buggle.”

  Perhaps if Margo or Paolo had been there it would have been a cause for some joke or smirk. It was true, of course, that no plane would be greeted and guided in by this wooden block adorned with mother-of-pearl shards for buttons—but that didn’t seem of much importance somehow. Not all actions result in success. Most don’t. Another definition of the real is that which can be reproduced, and Liz found there was something persuasive in the gravity of the enterprise. The man in the red hat had not appeared embarrassed or humiliated or empty or sad. He was doing his job with as much purpose and dignity as it deserved—no more, no less, like all jobs. He was waiting, and who wasn’t?

  Belef led them to the campfire and Liz found a spot at the edge and tried to be inconspicuous. She got her notebook out and jotted down, “What constitutes action and what ceremony?” She wrote, “Semblance of the real?” She wrote, “As far as the world allows, you choose reality.”

  People kept arriving. Ten, fifteen, thirty. Belef walked among them, shaking hands, a serious dignitary, exchanging concerns, nodding with warmth. Leftie came over and squatted down beside her.

  “Welcome to Kirlassa.”

  “I just saw you in Slinga and now you’re here. This is your army?”

  The man smiled.

  “You think I am my twin. No, he is him.”

  “Ah. Let me guess. You’re Rightie?”

  “Alan. My name is Alan.”

  “What are you—marching for?”

  Alan wrinkled up his face and laughed.

  “Everything!”

  She sat with a large rock at her back, making rambling notes, and felt herself also to be a rock that the others flowed around. They never stopped, the women—fetching water, firewood, shelling beans. One woman pounded sago so loudly that Liz thought the beating was a drum announcing the beginning of festivities. Napasio brought her black tea in a tin cup and she gulped it down.

  The Story—in fact any story—acts as an excursion to the hyper real. The dailiness we inhabit is replaced by a copy of the world, one where we find closure. Belef fictionalizes the world after the fact to justify where she finds herself, where her people find themselves. Life is moving from space to space, from person to person, from moment to moment; it is a story, a litany of anecdotes and mythologies. Belef uses them, she lets them all in. It’s a plural vision.

  She wrote “ADD TO FINAL SUM-UP BUT SIMPLIFY” in the margin and made four small five-pointed stars beside it. She paused. The tip of the ballpoint hovered over the page of the ocean, and dived.

  We are time traveling into the future at the blistering rate of sixty minutes an hour!

  Amazing fact!

  All the illusions we maintain are a form of ritual. Without them, what would we have? A man called Buggle sitting in a hut twisting an unconnected dial on a solid slab of wood seems as good a way as any to address the situation.

  CHAPTER 29

  Napasio had just brought Liz a slushy pile of steaming white manioc on a peeled sheet of fresh bark when a large group of men arrived, maybe twenty, and at the rear of the procession walked Leftie and Margo and Paolo. Behind them came Posingen carrying the shock of his real gun, as well as one of the camera bags and the tripod and Margo’s pink daypack.

  Namor pointed at Liz but they’d already seen her, were now cutting across the runway, Margo with her hands out. “We were worried about you.” Liz scrambled to her feet and hurried over to Paolo and threw her arms round him. He grunted something and took a step backwards but then returned the embrace. His arms around her felt as hard as timber. When she let go, Margo kissed her on the cheek and patted her on the back and said, “You really should have said you were going for a walk. Are you OK? You don’t look OK.”

  “Namor led me here. I’d no idea it was—anyway, I’m sorry.”

  Margo needed more contrition.

&
nbsp; “We were incredibly concerned.”

  Paolo nodded, not appearing worried in the least.

  “I told Belef to send Namor to tell you. I didn’t realize he was going to bring you back.”

  “We insisted. Imagine the headlines. ‘TV Presenter Lost in Jungle.’”

  “Isn’t that already a show?” Paolo said.

  Margo tutted and gave her a long demonstrative hug—though what was being demonstrated wasn’t quite affection.

  “Well, did you get anything good at least?”

  “I got the grand tour.”

  Posingen stood a few feet away, his forehead creased with disapproval.

  “This is not a place to go walkabout alone,” he said, pointing the nose of his rifle at the ground. “Women here are not treated like they are in London, England.”

  “They’re not treated all that well in London, England.”

  “Here they get raped. All the time raped.”

  “Lovely,” said Margo, as she unlooped the pink rucksack from Posingen’s shoulders.

  —

  Paolo steered her by the elbow across to the fire. He, too, wanted to impart something.

  “I was actually worried.”

  “Were you?”

  “Semi-concerned.”

  “Oh?”

  He sighed dramatically.

  “I’ve grown to like your face.”

  “What about now?”

  She crossed her eyes and gurned.

  “Especially now.”

  She smiled but he turned and looked across the clearing. Was he embarrassed? By the tree line Namor was rubbing his pig’s broad head with his knuckles. The pig gave a two-note grunt of satisfaction and turned back into the boy, wanting more.

  “On the way here”—Paolo pointed at Namor—“that one tugged on my T-shirt and said, ‘Hey Beeby Say, more paper? More paper?’ and he made like this”—Paolo clicked his tongue—“popping little bubbles of bubble wrap. Cheeky fuck.”