A Conspiracy of Faith (28 page)

A nut loosening from the wing of an airplane. A drop of water short-circuiting the relay of a respirator.

He saw the pigeon settle in the tree above his wife and son as they were about to cross the road, and he noted its excrement splattering into ghostly fingers on the pavement. He saw his son point to it and his wife look down. And at the very moment they stepped out into the road, a car turned the corner and seemed almost to target them.

He could have shouted out. He could have yelled or whistled to warn them. But he did nothing. It wasn’t the moment. Emotion didn’t kick in.

The brakes of the car squealed, the driver behind the windscreen yanked at the steering wheel, and the world stood still.

He saw the frightened faces of his child and his wife turn in slow motion. The vehicle skidded and careered to the side, leaving tire marks on the road behind it like charcoal on drawing paper. And then it straightened out, the rear end found purchase again, and it was over.

His wife remained transfixed in the gutter as the car hurtled past, and he himself stood as though paralyzed, arms hanging limply at his side. Feelings of tenderness struggled against an odd rush of excitement inside him. He recognized it from the first time he had killed a person. It was a feeling he did not welcome.

He allowed the air compressed inside his lungs to escape and felt a warmth spread through his body. And he remained standing there just a moment too long, because Benjamin caught sight of him as he turned his head and clutched at his mother. He had clearly been given a fright by her reaction. But the sight of his father put him at ease again: he waved his arms and chuckled.

And then she turned around and saw him, and the look of terror from seconds before became fixed.

Five minutes later, she was sitting in front of him in the living room, her head turned away. “You’re coming home now without a fight,” he had said. “Because if you don’t, you’ll never see our son again.”

And now her eyes were full of hatred and recalcitrance.

If he wanted to know where she had been going, he would have to force it out of her.

These were rare and joyful moments he and his sister spent together.

If he started in the right place in the bedroom, he could walk ten short paces before reaching the mirror. His feet splayed out, his head rocking from side to side, the cane twirling in his hand. Ten paces, and he was someone else in the world of the mirror. No longer the boy without a friend. No longer the son of the man the people of that small community held in such esteem. No longer the chosen one of the flock who was to
carry the weight of the word of God and turn it like a thunderbolt upon the people. He was the little tramp who made everyone laugh, not least himself.

“I’m Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin,” he said, and wriggled his lip beneath the imaginary mustache, and Eva almost fell off their parents’ bed laughing. She had reacted in exactly the same way the other times he had put on his act, but this time would be the last.

After that, she never laughed again.

A second later, he felt the prod on his shoulder. The touch of an index finger was all it took for his breathing to cease and his mouth to turn dry. As he turned, his father’s fist was already on its way toward his abdomen. His eyes were wild with anger beneath bushy eyebrows. There was no sound but the sound of the blow and the ones that followed.

He felt a burning sensation in his colon as gastric acid welled in his throat. He staggered backward, then stood still and looked his father defiantly in the eye.

“So the name’s Chaplin, is it?” his father spat, glaring at him with the same look he employed on Good Friday when recounting the weary path of the Lord Jesus on his way to Calvary. All the grief and suffering of the world lay upon his willing shoulders. Of that there was no doubt, not even for a child.

And then he struck again. This time a lunging haymaker of a punch, for otherwise he would not have been able to reach, and no defiant child would ever have the pleasure of forcing him to step forward so that he might deliver his punishment.

“Who put such ungodliness into your head?”

He looked down at his father’s feet. From now on, he would answer questions only when it suited him. His father could beat him as often as he wished, but he would not answer.

“Answer me, or I shall be forced to punish you!”

He was dragged by the ear back into his own room and hurled onto the bed. “You stay here until we come for you, do you understand?”

This question, too, he ignored. His father stood for a moment with a look of puzzlement in his eyes, his lips parted as though this child’s defiance marked Judgment Day itself and the coming of the all-consuming Flood. And then he composed himself.

“Gather your things together and put them outside,” he commanded.

At first he didn’t grasp what his father meant, though his intention would soon become plain.

“Leave your clothes, your shoes, and your bedding. Put everything else outside.”

He removed the child from his wife’s gaze and left her sitting alone with the slats of pale light the Venetian blinds laid across her face.

Without the child, she would be going nowhere. He knew that.

“He’s asleep now,” he said when he returned from upstairs. “Now tell me, what’s going on?”

“You want to know what’s going on?” She turned her head deliberately. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that question?” she replied with darkness in her eyes. “What do you do for a living, exactly? Where do you get all that money from? Is it crime? Do you blackmail people?”

“Blackmail? What makes you think that?”

She turned away from him again. “It makes no difference. I want you to let me and Benjamin go. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

He frowned. She was asking questions. She was making demands. Was there something he had overlooked in all this?

“I’m asking you, what makes you think that?”

She gave a shrug. “What doesn’t? You’re always away. You never tell me anything. You’ve got boxes piled up in a room like a shrine. You lie about your family. You…”

It wasn’t because he interrupted her. She stopped of her own accord. Stared down at the floor, unable to retrieve the words that should never have passed her lips. Scuppered by her own overweening confidence.

“So you’ve been through my boxes?” he asked calmly, though the realization seared his flesh as though he were on fire.

She knew things about him, things she wasn’t supposed to know.

If he didn’t get rid of her now, he would be done for.

His father looked on as he gathered his belongings in a pile outside his room. Old toys, books by Ingvald Lieberkind with animal pictures in them, odds and ends he had collected. A good stick to scratch his back with, a jar full of crab’s claws, fossilized sea urchins and belemnites. He put everything into the pile. And when he had finished, his father pulled his bed away from the wall and tipped it onto its side. And there lay all his secrets beneath the moth-eaten mounted weasel. The weeklies, the comic books, and all his hours of carefree pleasure.

His father surveyed them briefly. Then he gathered them together in a stack and began to count, wetting his finger occasionally to facilitate the process. Each magazine was a voice of dissent, each voice one lash of the belt.

“Twenty-four. I won’t ask where you got them from, Chaplin, because I don’t care. Now you will turn your back to me and I shall lash you twenty-four times. And when we’re done, I wish never to see such filth in my house ever again, do you understand?”

He did not reply. He simply stared at the pile in front of him and bade farewell to each and every one of his magazines.

“Failure to reply. That doubles the punishment. Perhaps it might teach you a lesson.”

It never did. Despite the weals all down his back and the bloom of bruises at his neck, he uttered not a word before his father again fastened his belt. Not a whimper.

The hardest part was not to burst into tears ten minutes later when he was ordered to set fire to his possessions in the yard outside the house.

That was what really hurt.

She cowered in front of the packing cases. Her husband had spoken as he dragged her up the stairs, an incessant flow of words, but she was saying nothing. Nothing at all.

“We need to get two things straight,” he said. “Give me your phone.”

She took it out of her pocket, safe in the knowledge that it would provide him with no answers. Kenneth had shown her how to delete calls.

He pressed some keys and studied the display, only to find nothing incriminating. She was glad that she had outwitted him. What would he do now with all his suspicions?

“You’ve learned to delete your calls, haven’t you?”

She did not reply, but twisted the phone from his hand and returned it to her back pocket.

And then he gestured toward the small room in which his packing cases were stacked. “Very neatly done, I must say.”

She breathed rather more easily now. He would find nothing here to give her away. Eventually, he would have to let her go.

“But not quite good enough, I’m afraid.”

She blinked twice as she scanned the room. Weren’t the coats put back in place? Was the dent in that one case really noticeable?

“Look at the marks here.” He bent down and pointed. On the front edge of one of the cases a small notch had been made. And one exactly the same on another. Almost aligned, but not quite.

“When you remove boxes like these and then restack them, they’ll settle in a different way.” And then he indicated two more notches that weren’t aligned. “You took the boxes out and put them back again. I can see that you did. And now you’re going to tell me what you found inside them, do you understand?”

She shook her head. “You’re insane. They’re just cardboard boxes, why should they interest me? They’ve been there ever since we moved in. They’ve just settled some more, that’s all.”

It was a clever move, she thought to herself. A neat explanation.

But he shook his head. Not neat enough.

“OK, so let’s check, shall we?” he said, pushing her back against the wall. Stay there or else, his frigid eyes told her.

She glanced about the landing as he began to remove the first of the boxes. There wasn’t much for her to make use of in the narrow space: a stool by the door of their bedroom, a vase on the windowsill, the floor polisher against the sloping wall.