by Michel Faber
The hermetic seal of air conditioning that Grainger tried so diligently to maintain was not Tuska’s style. He kept the front windows open as he drove, allowing the air free access to the vehicle’s interior. The languid agitations of the atmosphere were joined by an artificial breeze from the speed of the vehicle.
‘Where’s Grainger?’ asked Peter.
‘Taking it easy,’ said Tuska, only his shoulder and driving arm visible to Peter.
‘Drunk and incapable,’ said Flores, wholly hidden.
‘She’s been a pretty good pharmacist all these years,’ said Tuska.
‘There are other pharmacists,’ Flores remarked.
‘Well, let’s see what Santa Claus brings, shall we?’ said Tuska, and Flores shut up.
The brilliant arch in the sky had drawn no nearer, so Peter looked out the passenger window instead. The landscape, which he’d grown to love, was still austerely beautiful, but today he saw its simplicity through different eyes, and it disturbed him. He could imagine a farm girl like Grainger scanning the terrain’s serene emptiness, searching in vain for wildlife, plant-life, or any kind of life, to remind her of her childhood habitat.
‘Grainger needs to go home,’ he said, the words springing out of his mouth before he even knew he’d formed them.
‘Yeah,’ said Tuska, ‘I think she does.’
‘Soon,’ said Peter, and recalled, for the first time in years, that Soon was the name of a Scripture pamphlet he and Bea had produced ages ago for the Jesus lovers of Arunachal Pradesh. In a flash, in his mind’s eye, he saw his hands and Bea’s moving near each other on the kitchen table: his hands folding the pamphlet in three, with the Soon letterhead facing out; Bea’s hands slipping the paper into an envelope, sealing it, addressing it to some mountain-dwelling Adivasi with an unpronounceable name. Cardboard boxes full of Soon pamphlets had been sent overseas at six-monthly intervals, an absurd expense in the electronic age, but not everybody in the world had a computer and, besides, there was something special about holding Bible verses in your hand.
How long ago it was. His hand holding a pamphlet called Soon, reaching across the table to Bea’s hand.
‘I forwarded her request too,’ Tuska was saying. ‘My guess is you’ll both go together.’ He yawned. ‘Two simultaneous bailouts from our little paradise! Do you guys know something I don’t? On second thoughts, don’t tell me.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with this place,’ said Peter, staring out the window again. ‘I’m sorry to let everybody down.’
‘Some people can take it, some can’t,’ said Tuska lightly. ‘Can’t re-use an EPFCG.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Explosively pumped flux compression generator.’
Those words, which to Peter were as weird and incomprehensible as any arcane Scripture would be to his hosts, were the last spoken for a long while. The illusion that they were about to pass under a vast, twinkling archway faded gradually, as the two columns of water drifted apart and morphed into different, unsymmetrical shapes. Rain splattered against the windscreen and roof, its rhythm strange as ever, determined by physics beyond human understanding. Then the shower passed and the windscreen wipers squeaked annoyingly against clear glass before Tuska switched them off. The caramel façades of Freaktown were only a few hundred metres away now, and Peter could already make out a tiny figure standing in the appointed spot.
‘When we arrive,’ he piped up from the back, ‘I just need a minute, two minutes alone with that person.’
‘OK,’ said Tuska, changing gear for the final stretch. ‘But no tongues.’
Jesus Lover One was waiting in front of the building with the white star painted on it. When he caught sight of Peter, his body jerked in surprise, but he managed to compose himself in the few seconds that elapsed between the revelation and Peter’s deposition from the jeep.
‘You are alive,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ Peter said, and regretted it at once: the สีฐฉั didn’t do flippancy, and the quip only made it harder for Lover One to adjust to Peter’s miraculous recovery from his mortal wounds.
‘All the otherสี believe you are dead,’ said Lover One. ‘I believe you are alive. I alone have faith.’
Peter struggled to think of the appropriate response to that. An affectionate embrace was out. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Behind the bead curtains in the doorways of the buildings, shadowy figures had gathered. ‘สีฐฐ ฐณ,’ called a voice. Peter knew enough of the language to know that this meant ‘The task is still asleep.’ Or, to paraphrase: Get on with it.
Lover One roused himself from his trance and accepted his official role. He turned towards the vehicle in anticipation of greeting the USIC envoy, the scarf-wearing woman Grainger who abhorred him and all his kind.
Nurse Flores stepped out of the vehicle. As she approached the Oasan, it was evident that there was not much difference between them in size. By chance, their garments – her uniform, his robes – were almost the same colour.
Lover One was visibly thrown by these unexpected parities. He appraised Flores quite a few seconds longer than politeness allowed, but she stared right back.
‘You and I,’ said the Lover One. ‘Never before now.’ And he reached forward and touched her gently on the wrist with his gloved fingertips.
‘He means, Hi, I haven’t met you before,’ explained Peter.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Flores. While that may have been an overstatement, she seemed quite free of Grainger’s unease.
‘You bring mediสีine?’ said Lover One.
‘Of course,’ said Flores, and went to the rear of the vehicle to fetch it. Several other Oasans ventured out from hiding, then several more. That was unusual: two or three had been the maximum in Peter’s experience.
Flores carried the box in her sinewy arms. It looked bigger and fuller than last time, perhaps because she was smaller than Grainger. Still, she wielded it without effort and handed it to one of the Oasans with smooth confidence.
‘To whom shall I address the explanations?’ she said.
‘I underสีรี่and more,’ said Jesus Lover One.
‘To you, then,’ said Flores, in a friendly but businesslike manner.
The box, as always, was crammed with a mixture of branded and unbranded medicines. Flores extracted each little plastic bottle, cardboard packet and tube, held it aloft like an auction hammer while describing its function, and slotted it back into place.
‘I’m not a pharmacist,’ she said. ‘But it’s all written on the labels and the leaflets anyway. The main thing is for you to tell us what’s working and not working. Pardon me saying so, but there’s been too much mystery here. Let’s take the mystery out of it, try more of a scientific approach. Think you can do that?’
Lover One was silent for a few seconds, just focusing on the creature standing head-to-head with him. ‘We are graรี่eful for mediสีine,’ he said at last.
‘That’s nice,’ said Flores flatly. ‘But listen: this here is a packet of Sumycin. It’s an antibiotic. If you get an infection in your water-works or your guts, it could fix you. But if you’ve taken a lot of Sumycin in the past, it might not work so well. You might be better taking this one here, Amoxicillin. These two packets of Amoxicillin are generics . . . ’
‘Name from where all other name come,’ said Jesus Lover One.
‘That’s right. Now, Amoxicillin is fine if you’ve never had it before, but if your body has become resistant to it, you’re better with this purple one here, Augmentin, which has some extra stuff in it to overcome that resistance.’ Flores put the Augmentin back in the box and scratched her nose with a simian finger. ‘Listen, we could stand here all day talking about the pros and cons of each and every antibiotic in this box. But what we really need is to match up specific drugs with specific problems. For example, take you. Are you sick?’
‘Thank God no,’ said Lover One.
‘Well, bring out so
meone who is sick and let’s talk.’
There was a pause. ‘We are graรี่eful for mediสีine,’ said Lover One. ‘We have food for you.’ The tone was neutral, and yet there was stubbornness, even threat in it.
‘Great, thanks, we’ll get around to that in a minute,’ said Flores, unswayed. ‘But first, can I meet someone who thinks they need antibiotics? As I said, I’m not a pharmacist. I’m not a doctor. I would just prefer to get a little better acquainted with you folks.’
As the two of them stood their ground, more Oasans ventured out from shelter. Peter realised that they must always have been there, in the past, whenever these handovers were done, but had lacked the courage to emerge into view. What was it about Flores? Her smell, perhaps? Peter turned to Tuska. Tuska winked.
‘Obey the mighty Flores,’ he said wryly. ‘Or else.’
Once it had become clear that the handover was going to take some time, Peter excused himself and began to walk across the tundra to his church. It was quite a windy day, and his dishdasha flapped around his ankles, but the breeze was useful in reducing the humidity, promoting the illusion of fresher oxygen. Inside his sandals his feet were already slippery with sweat. He looked down at them as he walked, and recalled the sensation of stepping into crisp snow with thick-soled boots on a raw January morning in Richmond Park with his newly divorced father smoking a cigarette nearby. No sooner had he glimpsed the image than it was gone.
Every now and then as he crossed the plain to the temple that he and his flock had built, he looked over his shoulder, in case Lover One was following. But Lover One was not following, and Peter’s view of the tiny figures near the USIC vehicle grew indistinct through the blur of interlapping air currents.
When he reached his church, he extended his palms and swung open the doors, expecting to find the place empty. But no. There were fifty or sixty brightly coloured souls gathered inside, already seated in the pews, as if by firm pre-arrangement. Not the full congregation, but a healthy turnout – especially considering they’d gathered to worship on their own, with no pastor. Quite a few of them had been working in the whiteflower fields on the day of his downfall, and had witnessed the piercing of his flesh, had watched the vermin’s teeth mutilate him so badly that there could be no hope of survival, even with the Technique of Jesus. Maybe this gathering was a memorial service for Father Peรี่er, and here he was, gatecrashing it.
A murmur of wonder passed through the crowd. Then a swell of communal elation charged the air, taking up palpable space, pushing against the walls, threatening to lift the ceiling. If he’d wanted to, he could have done anything with them at this moment, taken them anywhere. They were his.
‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er,’ they exclaimed, first one-by-one, then as a chorus. Each voice aggravated the grief in his chest a little more. Their faith had been buoyed up to the heavens, and he had come to let them down.
The doors thudded shut behind him, their well-oiled motion aided by the wind. Plentiful light beamed through the windows, illuminating the hooded heads of the Jesus Lovers so that they glowed like candle-flames in a votive rack. As he walked between the pews, the surreal montage of paintings on the ceiling hung heavy over him. Lover Twelve’s bright pink Jesus walking hand in hand with a glistening grey Lazarus, Lover Fourteen’s blue and yellow Nativity, Lover Twenty’s Mary Magdalene spewing forth ectoplasmic devils, Lover Sixty-Three’s Thomas the Doubter . . . and, of course, Lover Five’s painting of the risen Christ and his women, secure in its place, fastened with extra care after the accident that had maimed her. The scarecrow in the loincloth, so different from the kindly mensch of Christian tradition, had suddenly become terrifying. The blaze of light where His head should be and the eye-shaped holes in His starfish hands, which Peter had once taken as evidence that God could not be confined to the iconography of one race, now struck him as proof of an unbreachable gulf.
He took his stand behind the pulpit. He noted that the สีฐฉั had tidied his bed, washed and dried and folded the linen, cleaned the boots that Lover Five had sewn for him, and placed a mislaid pencil on the pillow where it could be admired as a sacred relic by future generations. Now, blessed with his miraculous return, they sat in rapt attention, Bible booklets at their side, awaiting the call to sing the first hymn, which might, according to custom, be ‘In The Garden’ or ‘For God Be The Glory’. He cleared his throat. He trusted, against hope, that inspiration would come from somewhere, as it always had before.
‘สีคฐڇ๙ฉ้,’ he said. ‘คssฐڇ. สีคฐ ฉ้น สีฐฉ้รี่t ฐurฐ ฉ้นรี่ณs ณฉ้ssนรี่ณฐ.’
Some of the congregation made the shoulder-trembling motions he’d always interpreted as laughter. He hoped it was laughter, elicited by his clumsy pronunciation, but maybe he’d never really known what those motions meant after all.
‘สีคssฐڇ รี่tฐ สีssคฉ้ สีค Jesus คฐڇ๙ฉ้s,’ he continued. He could sense their bemusement at his strained and childish speech, so unnecessary when they were only too willing to listen to the holy language of James the King. But he wanted to address them, just once, in a way that they could fully understand. He owed them that much: their dignity at the expense of his own. ‘๙ฉ้ss Jesus สีรี่t สีฐฉั สีค สีค คฐ.’
He finished his exact tally of the worshippers, begun as a habitual reflex: fifty-two. He would never know how many more souls were concealed in the settlement, never know how far away he’d been from bringing the entire community to Christ. He only knew that he recognised each and every person here, and not just by the colours of their robes.
‘รี่ คฐڇ๙ฉ้ss สีฐฉ้ค ฐurฐ สีฐ,’ he said, ‘ฐڇ๙ฉ้ss สีฐณฐฉ้ค the Book of Strange New Things.’ He extracted the King James Bible from his bag, and, instead of thumbing the gilt-edged pages to a selected passage for reading aloud, he stepped out from behind the pulpit and carried the book to the Jesus Lovers in the front pew. With fastidious gentleness – not because of reverence for the book, but because of concern for the fragile flesh before him – he handed it to Lover Seventeen, who cradled it in her lap.
He returned to the pulpit. ‘สีฐ สีรี่ รี่ สีฐ,’ he said, ‘ฉ้ค คssฐ สีssสีรี่ God. สีฐ God คฉ้ สีค คฐฉ้ss ฉ้นรี่ ๙ฉ้ss ณนรี่ณ.’
A thrill of consternation was passing through his flock. Heads tilted, hands agitated. Lover Fifteen uttered a cry.
‘คฐสีฐ ڇสีคss ๙ฉ้ss ฉ้ God ฉ้น คฐڇ รี่ณฐ ๙ฉ้ss,’ he pressed on. ‘ฉ้ค tสีฐ รี่ รี่ฉ้ค สีฐ รี่ฉ้สี ฐ สีฐฉ้ค คssฐڇ๙ฉ้ss Jesus Lover Five . . . ’ His voice broke, and he had to grip the wings of his pulpit to keep himself from trembling. ‘Jesus Lover Five สีฐฉั สีฐ ๙ฉ้l รี่iฐ สีฐฉัค สีรี่t รี่ณฐ. คฉ้ สีฉ้ สีฐรี่ ณนรี่ณ USIC.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. สีฐรี่t๙สีรี่ สีรี่ڇ ครี่ฐڇ๙ฉ้ รี่ สีฐรี่t ฐurฐ. คฐ คڇ รี่ณฐ ๙สีรี่ฐڇ สีค Bea. รี่tฐ สีค ฉ้ss . . . ’
And that was it: he could go no further: the word he needed, the most crucial word, was one he didn’t know in the สีฐฉั language. He bowed his head, and took refuge, at the last, in his own foreign tongue.
‘ . . . forgive.’
He left the pulpit, picked up the canary-yellow boots, one in each hand, and walked stiffly down the aisle, towards the exit. For the first few seconds, which felt like minutes, he walked in silence, alone. Then the Jesus Lovers rose from their seats and gathered all around him, touching him tenderly on the shoulders, the back, the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs, anywhere they could reach, while saying, in clear, unhampered voices, ‘Forgi
ve.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive,’ each in their turn, until he blundered through the doors into the harsh sunlight.
On the way back to the settlement, as his flaccid, empty bag flapped against his waist, he looked around several times at his church silhouetted against the brilliant sky. No one had emerged from it but him. Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must. The สีฐฉั had been keen to follow him to the kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t keen to follow him into the valley of doubt. He knew that one day – maybe very soon – they would have another pastor. They’d taken from him what they needed, and their search for salvation would go on when he was long gone. After all, their souls dreamt so ardently of a longer stay in the flesh, a longer spell of consciousness. It was natural: they were only human.
Back at the USIC jeep, things had moved on. Lover One was nowhere to be seen, the medicines had all been distributed, and the food was being loaded into the vehicle. More สีฐฉั than usual were involved, quite a crowd of them. Both Tuska and Flores were available to take hold of the tubs, sacks and tins brought out to them, but Peter noticed, even from a distance, that the สีฐฉั approached Flores first, and detoured to Tuska only when Flores already had her hands full. He figured it out at last: they liked her. Who would’ve thought it? They liked her.
‘Let me carry that,’ said Tuska, as Flores took charge of a particularly heavy bag of whiteflower dough.
‘I’m OK,’ said Flores. Her hair was plastered with sweat, emphasising the smallness of her skull, and blue veins stood out on her temples. Her whole torso was sodden. She was having a grand time.
A little while later, when the three of them were seated in the vehicle and Tuska was driving away from C-2, she said: