St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  He reluctantly left the bible on his desk, then closed the door and headed for town.

  It was against his principles to look at his phone when he was walking – he resented having to give way to people who shuffled around like zombies, their eyes glued to their screens – but he opened the Biblehub.com website to look up what the scripture was about.

  The connection was slow. When images of hell had come up in one of his lectures, on a whim, he’d asked his students about their own ideas of hell. Without missing a beat, one young man answered: ‘Hell is a place where the internet is really, really slow.’

  Peter hoped he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. The page loaded sluggishly as he walked through the Doelensteeg and along the Rapenburg to the Gerecht square. He clicked on ‘Romans’ and, at last, on ‘13’. He’d reached the Pieterskerk church by the time the text finally appeared on his screen.

  It was almost two o’clock now. It wouldn’t do to be late. He impatiently closed the cover on his phone. He knew that the scripture would still be there when he opened it again.

  He continued his route at a brisk pace, walking through the narrow alleys that led to the Breestraat, past the town hall and then he went left. As he crossed the river via the colonnades of the Pilarenbrug, the library came into view.

  The council’s decision to move the city’s waste containers underground had been brought about by a plague of seagulls. As the crow flew, the college town of Leiden was a mere ten kilometres from the coast. Nests full of gulls’ eggs were easy prey for the foxes that had been reintroduced to the dunes, and hordes of the birds had fled to the city. They pecked open the bags of rubbish left out for collection, scavenged in bins and grew increasingly aggressive. Various measures had been taken to deter them: replacing the seagulls’ eggs with plastic dummies, birds of prey, pigeon spikes on roofs, all without success. The hope was that the city would be less attractive to the birds if the city’s rubbish was moved underground.

  Peter stopped to catch his breath on the corner of the street. He studied himself in a shop window. A little on the portly side, it was true, a day or two’s worth of stubble, and a full head of hair that was just a bit too long. The image in the window was, in fact, a bit flattering; the reflection didn’t show the deep lines he knew he had on his forehead or the dark circles under his eyes.

  ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly …’ he said to himself quietly.

  He tucked his shirt neatly into his trousers, and felt the student’s forgotten mobile phone in his jacket pocket. He made a mental note to call one of the numbers on its contacts list when he got a chance. Whoever it was would surely be able to tell him who the phone belonged to.

  A large crowd had gathered around the excavation site. The Leiden press of course, local residents, all sorts of dignitaries, and workmen, recognisable from their yellow helmets and orange vests. Part of the area around the excavated pit was fenced off with barriers and red and white tape.

  ‘Hullo! Peter!’ he heard Arnold van Tiegem shouting. Peter could tell from the exaggerated joviality of Arnold’s waving that he had already made a head start on the drinks reception that would be held later.

  Twenty years ago, Peter’s old tutor, Pieter Hoogers, had retired and vanished off into the sunset directly after his farewell address. Everyone had expected that Peter would take his place as full professor, but after a couple of months of typical academic machinations, the university had produced a surprise candidate seemingly out of nowhere: Arnold van Tiegem, a senior official at the Ministry of Housing, Planning and the Environment who had found himself sidelined. He had studied Soil Science at the University of Wageningen in the distant past and that had been deemed sufficient qualification to lead the faculty. The fact that he would also bring with him a one-off grant of five million guilders ultimately convinced the board of his suitability for the post.

  After he was appointed, it turned out that Arnold was in the habit of going missing now and then, often for days at a time. At first, his disappearances were reported to the police, but because he always reappeared a few days later, people accepted the fact that he sometimes simply checked out for a while. He liked to compare these episodes with John Lennon’s ‘lost weekends’ and saw them as part of a grand and exciting life.

  Peter made his way to the tall bar tables where his suspicions were confirmed by a number of empty beer bottles and two half-empty bottles of wine.

  Daniël Veerman was standing at one of the tables. He surreptitiously rolled his eyes as he moved his gaze from Arnold to Peter. Daniël was in his early thirties and the quintessential archaeologist: he had long, dark hair that undulated down to his neck, tiny round spectacles perched on his nose with intelligent eyes behind them, a trendy beard that looked casual but was well-groomed. He had once told Peter that he had done nothing but dig for treasure when he was a child. While other children played nicely in the sandpit, heaping the sand into mountains or building sandcastles with buckets and spades, he was usually found outside it, digging holes in the dirt.

  Peter shook Daniël’s hand and then greeted Janna Frederiks, who was leading the project for the Cultural Heritage Department together with Daniël. Peter was less familiar with Janna, a serious, remarkably tall woman – almost two metres in height – whose head was permanently bowed at a slight angle, as though she was scouring the ground in the hope of finding something interesting.

  Arnold opened another bottle of beer, and poured it down his throat in a couple of gulps. Then he smoothed his long, grey hair back with a small comb, a nervous tic that he performed countless times each day. He probably thought the little flick of a mullet that this made at the back of his neck was terribly bohemian. Combined with his enormous paunch and spindly legs, he reminded Peter of a circus ringmaster. Put a top hat on his bloated head and he’d look just the part.

  ‘He just lives for these moments, doesn’t he?’ Peter whispered to Daniël.

  ‘He’ll post the photo of himself with the mayor on Facebook as soon as it’s over,’ Daniël added, laughing. He gave Peter a sideways look. ‘It was good of you to come, Peter. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m happy to be here. I wanted to come and wish you luck. I’m here for you and Janna, not for myself, like Van Tiegem.’

  ‘He’s a great networker though, you have to give him that. And your department needs one of those, right?’

  Peter was about to say something cutting in reply, but a round of applause interrupted him. Mayor Freylink had arrived in full regalia with the chain of office around his neck.

  ‘What’s the plan, exactly?’ Peter asked.

  Daniël carried on looking straight ahead and clapping for the mayor who was walking past close to where they were standing. ‘I’ve dumped a bit of sand in the hole,’ he answered. ‘He’s going to take it out with the digger. And that will be the project’s symbolic launch.’

  ‘Not very elegant, is it?’

  ‘Well we could have sent him down there with a bucket, but I thought this would be more refined. Freylink was enthusiastic about it anyway. And he used to be a historian, as you know, so he’s glad to be closely involved. He’s even been to a building site to practise.’

  The applause died out.

  A small excavator came towards them. Little black clouds of smoke escaped from the long, thin exhaust pipe on its roof.

  ‘I’d better get over there,’ said Daniël. Janna followed him. He turned around to look at Peter. ‘We’re going for dinner at El Gaucho tonight with the team. You’re very welcome to join us if you’d like to come along.’

  Peter gave him a thumbs-up. Maybe I could ask Judith to go with me, he thought.

  He took the opportunity to take a quick look at his phone. He skimmed through chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and recognised the contents straight away. It was about allegiance to the authorities who had been placed above you. A text which had often been misused throughout the course of history,
and for which Paul had been heavily criticised. Pay your taxes, do as you are told, don’t be rebellious, ‘for there is no authority that does not come from God’. Whoever opposes authority opposes one of God’s agencies, and thereby opposes God.

  Little wonder, then, that the people of Leiden suddenly found themselves drawn to Calvin when the Spaniards were at the city’s gates. He said that you could rebel against your rulers. People were often inclined to choose the convictions that best suited their own interests …

  Suddenly, the student’s phone began to vibrate. Peter was surprised that it hadn’t happened before now; youngsters spent more time in conversation with people they couldn’t see than with the people who were right next them. But first, he wanted to read the specific verse that had been written on the note. ‘Let no debt remain outstanding,’ he read, ‘except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law …’ Here it was, verse 11:

  And do this, understanding the present time: the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

  The hour has already come …

  ‘Hora est,’ Peter repeated, absent-mindedly making quiet, smacking sounds, as though trying to taste the words on his tongue.

  He read the rest of the scripture aloud to himself in a staccato mumble, as though this would help him to decipher a message hidden in the words.

  The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.

  Someone slapped him, a bit overenthus‌iastically, on the shoulder. Van Tiegem.

  ‘Come on, put that phone down,’ he said, and made a playful attempt to snatch the phone from Peter’s hand.

  Peter irritably fended him off. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, putting the phone away.

  ‘Don’t you want a beer?’

  ‘Thanks Arnold, but I’m officially still working.’

  ‘Oh you’re good,’ Arnold said, without much conviction, ‘very good. I should follow your example.’

  The mayor was standing next to the digger now. Someone had put a yellow safety helmet on his head, apparently more for show than anything else. He patiently posed in it while photographs were taken.

  ‘Shouldn’t you go and stand with him?’ Peter suggested.

  ‘That’s actually a very good idea,’ Arnold said, sounding genuinely pleased. On his way over to the mayor, he waggishly stole a helmet from a construction worker and set it at a jaunty angle on his own head. He stood next to Freylink and held two thumbs aloft as the cameras clicked.

  Peter took the other phone from his pocket. It had received a message, not via WhatsApp, but another app he’d not heard of before, Wickr. He opened the message. There were just three words:

  iuxta est salus

  Another message arrived as soon as he’d read it.

  salvation is at hand

  Only then did he see the sender’s name. Paul.

  This was …

  Peter started to type in a reply, but then he saw that the messages had already disappeared. They seemed to be available for only a few seconds, just long enough to be able to read them.

  He opened the phone’s address book. He had to check twice to make sure that he wasn’t mistaken.

  It was completely empty.

  3

  Friday 20 March, 2:15pm

  Peter looked up from the phone and scanned his surroundings, first round to the left, and then all the way back round to the right, like a security camera watching a street. But there was nothing to see. No one shiftily ducking out of sight, no man in a fedora looking at him from behind a newspaper with two peepholes cut into it.

  What he really wanted right now was to go back to his office. Maybe he’d be able to uncover the joker’s identity by looking through the list of students on his course? But he also knew that he needed to be seen here. In his world, success ultimately came down to who you knew, short lines of communication, cronyism, a good network. In these times of austerity, it would do him no harm to know the right people, Daniël was right about that. You could say what you liked about Van Tiegem, but the man was a born networker who had always been very successful in raising funds for the faculty.

  Peter was suddenly very thirsty. He took a bottle of beer from the table and prised off the cap. He rinsed his mouth out with the first swig before he swallowed it. The beer was warm.

  Freylink was sitting in the cab of the excavator now and had closed the door. The engine purred smoothly as the mayor nervously drove it towards the hole outside the library. A group of men slowly walked alongside him on either side of the digger, like coffin bearers at a funeral. They even took a dignified step backwards when they reached the edge of the pit.

  Daniël stuck both of his thumbs in the air at Freylink, who pulled a lever to move the grapple. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. It was calm and controlled, which suggested that Freylink had indeed been rehearsing for this moment.

  Janna came back over to where Peter was standing.

  ‘I was ready at half nine this morning already,’ she said out of nowhere.

  ‘Ready for what?’ Peter asked, but he knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question. ‘Ah, the eclipse.’

  ‘Exactly, but there wasn’t much to see, really,’ Janna said, sounding disappointed. ‘There was far too much cloud cover, I’m afraid. It went on until quarter to twelve, but I missed most of it.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  By now, the excavator’s arm had almost entirely disappeared into the hole. The next task was to use the large bucket to collect some sand and carefully bring it up to the surface. The task demanded great precision as there wasn’t much room for manoeuvre. After a flying start, the mayor seemed to be hesitating. The thrum of the machine’s motor grew a little louder and the exhaust belched out more puffs of smoke. The bucket appeared to be stuck. The machine listed forwards slightly. Someone in the crowd let out a little scream. A couple of spectators laughed nervously.

  A construction worker knocked on the cab window to ask if everything was all right. Freylink smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, but then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  The hydraulic arm started to move again. Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting noise. Breaking rocks mixed with the revving sound of an overworked motor. The little puffs of smoke had now become huge, jet-black clouds; the smell of diesel filled the air, and the machine keeled over. Two men attempted to pull it back into its original position by hanging from it, but without success.

  Peter could see that the mayor’s usually placid face was contorted in terror. Freylink tried to push the door open, but the machine was already toppling forwards into the pit.

  As the machine became jammed, half in and half out of the earth, the spectators shrieked and jumped back, revealing the perilous position the mayor was now in. Total chaos erupted. A few people tugged at the digger’s tracks, but soon gave up. The door was jammed against the wall of the pit and there was no way to open it.

  Instinctively, Peter raced over to see if he could help. He crouched down next to Daniël who was banging on the window. Freylink looked back at them with a painful grimace as blood from trickled from his eyebrow and nose and spread over his face. Nevertheless, he managed to smile.

  ‘We’ll get you out of there as soon as we can!’ Daniël shouted. His face was red, perhaps from exertion, or because of his embarrassment at the mayor’s predicament.

  Peter looked up and saw that a group of people had gathered in a semi-circle around the hole in the ground. Many of them were taking photographs and recording videos with their phones.

  ‘Stop that!’ he yelled as he leapt to his feet.

  Most of them sheepishly put their phones away again.

  Peter was briefly dazed after jumping up so quickly and had to hold onto Daniël to stop himself from stumbling.

  Just then, Janna Frederiks ca
me running over. ‘We’ve got another digger down the street,’ she said to Daniël. ‘They’re going to get it now and see if they can pull him out with a cable.’

  ‘But we can’t just leave him in that cramped little box while they’re gone.’

  ‘Well what do you want to do?’ she asked. ‘Smash the window in?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do. It’s made of plastic, not glass, so there won’t be any sharp pieces. If he takes his jacket off and puts it over his head, he can protect himself from any splinters that might come loose. Look at how uncomfortable the man is. That’s the mayor in there!’

  Janna thought about it for a second or two and then agreed. Winching him out would take at least half an hour, even if it all went without a hitch.

  Daniël knelt down on the ground again and tapped on the window. Freylink had managed to move himself around to sit on the control panel. Although it looked like he had calmed down, his bloodied face made him look terrible.

  ‘Take your jacket off!’ Daniël shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. Then he took off his own jacket to demonstrate what he wanted Freylink to do. ‘We’re going to break the window!’ he yelled, over-articulating each word and miming the actions exaggeratedly, ‘so you can crawl out. They’re going to winch the machine out shortly, but we don’t want to leave you in there that long. Put your jacket over your head.’

  Freylink understood. He took off his jacket and draped it over his head and shoulders.

  Janna came back with large hammer, a chisel and a pair of work gloves and handed them to Daniël.

  After a few well-aimed strikes of the hammer, the hard plastic began to crack. Daniël knocked the window out, leaving only a few splinters. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you out in no time. I’m almost done. How are you doing?’

  ‘More in shock than anything,’ came Freylink’s muted voice. ‘I don’t think I’m hurt.’