Demons (12 page)

We were both carrying small daypacks. We’d
stopped for a pizza and Chris had stuffed the pizza box into his
pack.

‘
Good idea,’ he
said.

Our picnic spot was sheltered from the hot
north-westerly wind by a hedge of broom. We could see the steep
track up which we’d walked, its compacted, rocky surface and grassy
fringes winding down to the outer suburbs of the city, a million
miles away. The pizza, when we opened the box, had slopped around
and we had to scoop up the various toppings with our fingers, which
we licked clean.

‘
Now we’re sitting ducks
for food poisoning,’ I said. ‘Food first cooling and then reheating
in a back pack.’

‘
I’m sure we’ll come
through,’ said Chris. ‘It was vegetarian after all.’

We sipped from our water bottles, assessing
each other all over again. I couldn’t know what Chris was thinking
but I was pondering the mystery of how we had ended up here
together, two people who had met such a short time ago yet who
seemed so suited to one another.

Life was strange, passing strange, as a
character in a play by Shakespeare once said.

As if programmed I leaned over and Chris
leaned

over and we kissed each other, pizza mouth
to pizza mouth, while the hills and the sky and the earth paused in
their perpetual motion as they waited for us to catch them up.

An extract from Chris’s notebook

I remember those first
warm, passionate kisses on the hillside with a thrill that makes me
wish we had been able to take it further, right there and then. But
that would have been too much of a presumptuous risk. It would have
been too soon. Andrea’s not that sort of girl. I’m not that sort of
guy. Instead we read
The
Bacchae
. If she was surprised that I
brought it with me, she didn’t let on. We snuggled up on the grass
and read the play, the whole thing, together. It took us about an
hour and a half and then we carried on walking.

Great play. We both enjoyed it. I guess you
can interpret it many ways but the way I see it, it’s all about the
absurd excesses of religious belief. It was Euripides’ last play
and I think he wrote it to get back at those Greeks who let their
lives be ruled by obedience to their gods. Be rational, he’s
telling them, or you’ll end up being destroyed like the characters
in the play, chopped to pieces the way Pentheus was by the women of
Thebes.

It was a tough but necessary lesson. After
all, if the Greeks had listened to the astronomer Aristarchus, many
years before Euripides, then we wouldn’t have needed Galileo to
tell us that the earth went round the sun and not the other way
round. But no, poor old

Aristarchus got up the noses of the
non-existent gods

and his revolutionary theory went to earth
with him. Tragic really.

Andrea didn’t say what she thought of the
play

but I could see she was impressed by it.

How far is too far?

We could have carried on but after a while I
pulled back. It was a public track so anyone might suddenly

have appeared. Then Chris reached into his
pack and took out a copy of the play Ms Shapiro had suggested we
begin reading. I was surprised but tried not to show it, in case he
got the impression that I thought bringing it with him was a little
over the top even for a self-confessed classics geek.

Turned out to be a good idea. It meant we
got a major bit of reading out of the way in more pleasant than
usual circumstances while Chris was able to explain who was who and
what was where and what he thought it all meant. Classic geeks have
their uses.

Reading the play brought us to the topic of
religion, a bit of a dangerous one in the sense that I felt edgy
about discussing it with Chris, in fact with anybody these days,
but it was as good a time as any to open up to each other where we
were coming from.

I was a bit thrown by what I read,
though.

The references to the
priests of Dionysus. They were
women
.

‘So, that’s what I think the play’s all
about,’ said Chris. ‘The death of religion.’

‘
Is it only that?’ I
said.

‘
No,’ Chris acknowledged.
‘But that’s its main point.’

I pondered. ‘Euripides is saying that the
new

religion Dionysus wants to introduce is
fanatical but at the same time the old religion is rigid and
unaccommodating.’

‘
Exactly.’

‘
But isn’t that going too
far, being too black and white about it?’ I said, remembering Mum’s
comment some years ago when I tried arguing that I could be a
murderer in good conscience.

‘
How far is too far?’ Chris
asked. ‘Religion’s

about black and white. There are no shades
of grey when it comes to religious beliefs. It’s all one thing or
another. That’s why there’ve been so many wars fought in the name
of religion. That’s why people are still being blown up, shot at,
persecuted today.’

‘
That’s true, sometimes,’ I
said, thinking Dad’s Northern Ireland was a classic
example.

‘
So that’s why I asked . .
.’ Chris hesitated. ‘That’s why I asked the other day if you were a
Catholic,’ he said.

‘
Because you were sacred I
was a religious fanatic and might try to blow you up, shoot you and
persecute you?’ I said. I couldn’t help being sarcastic. ‘Get real
man.’

‘
That wasn’t the reason,’
he said. ‘It’s because if you were, I needed to think if it would
be a good thing to, you know, get involved.’

‘
That was pretty
calculating,’ I said, after a few moments’ silence. ‘You told me it
wouldn’t have mattered.’

‘
No it wouldn’t have. At
least, I don’t think it would.’

‘
For all I knew you might
have been a serial rapist,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should have asked if
you were.’

‘
Fair enough,’ said Chris.
‘It does sound calculating.’

‘
It is.’

‘
I guess I just didn’t want
to take a risk and have it all come unstuck afterwards.’

‘
Why would it?’

‘
Well, you know, Catholics
have to toe the party line. They’re not supposed to go out with
anyone unless it’s another Catholic . . .

‘
What a load of bullshit,’
I said. ‘One or two

things have changed since the Middle Ages,
you know.’

‘
So you do know something
about it?’ Chris asked.

‘
Ah, that was a sneaky way
of finding out.’

Chris didn’t deny it but I couldn’t be
bothered telling him off anymore.

‘
OK,’ I said. I hesitated
briefly and then went on. ‘If you really need to know so badly then
yes, I was a Catholic but now I’m not. I finished with the Church
when I was fifteen. Happy?’

I sounded so sure, so definite. I believed
it myself.

Chris nodded. ‘I’ve never been religious,’
he said. ‘I think it’s good if people can agree on things as basic
and as critical as that, especially if they’re going to be close
friends.’

‘
Is that what you think we
could be?’ I asked him.

‘
Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d like
us to be.’

‘
Me too,’ I said. ‘Just
don’t called me a lapsed Catholic, or anything else. I don’t like
being pigeonholed.’

‘
People always pigeonhole,’
agreed Chris. ‘Like, I didn’t play much sport so I got labelled as
gay.’

‘
You know what’s it’s like
to be different,’ I agreed.

‘
We’re the same,’ said
Chris.

‘
The same,’ I said. ‘But
different.’

Belonging

By that stage it was already mid afternoon
and we hadn’t gone terribly far along the track. We packed up the
remains of our lunch, had another drink and a few more warm kisses
before continuing upwards. On the

way we passed a plantation of pine trees
growing thickly down one side of the hill.

‘
Yuck,’ I said. ‘Why
couldn’t they have planted natives?’

Chris said, ‘We’re not natives either.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
Well, you’re part Irish,’
he said.

‘
And a tiny little bit
Scots and Polish,’ I added.

‘
And I’m part ancient
Greek,’ he said.

‘
And completely mad,’ I
said, as kindly as I could.

‘
It all
depends on what you
feel
you are,’ he said.

‘
To tell
the truth, I’ve never really thought about it that way,’ I said. ‘I
mean, I know I’ve got connections in Ireland, not that Dad talks -
or my Gran ever talked - much about them, but I was
born
here so . .
.’

‘
So, do
you feel at
home
here?’ he asked.

‘
Don’t you?’ I
countered.

‘
No,’ he said. ‘For years
I’ve always thought that when I was old enough I was going to leave
New Zealand.’

‘
And go where?’

‘
Europe,’ he said. ‘Greece.
Italy. England.’

‘
Everyone does that,’ I
said. ‘The Overseas

Experience. The big OE.’

‘
Yes, that’s true, but I
had something more permanent in mind. Those places are where the
history is and where I want to be.’

‘
There’s history here too,’
I pointed out. ‘These

hills have been here for millions of years.
The Maori

gave them names before the Europeans ever
did.’

‘
It’s not my history,’ said
Chris. ‘Not yours either.’

If you thought about it long enough it
almost

sounded like a roundabout invitation. One
that made my heart beat faster without having to slog uphill. Even
though I didn’t necessarily agree with him about whose history was
whose, Chris had suddenly made me think about the future. Instead
of treading water as I’d been doing lately I wondered if I might
have started swimming for some distant shoreline.

‘
But
since we were born here,’ I persisted, contrary as ever, ‘then
this
has
to be
part of our history. Part of
us
.’

‘
A small part,’ Chris
conceded.

‘
As big a
part as you let it be,’ I argued, but maybe he was right. Maybe
I
didn’t
belong
here. Maybe the differences I’d always felt were the reasons why
not. Maybe I could never belong here. Go to Ireland when you get
the chance and discover your past, Gran had suggested to me. Go to
Rome. See
The Creation of Adam
for yourself.

‘
Look,’ I
said, pointing to a board we’d come to. I read the notice:
‘
These pine trees are the first stage in a
hundred year project to re-establish native bush
. See,’ I said, ‘the pines will all be gone one
day.’

‘
We won’t be around to see
the results,’ Chris said. ‘Unless you plan to live to be a hundred
and . . . how old are you now Andrea?’

‘
Seventeen, next week,’ I
said.

‘
I’m eighteen in
September,’ said Chris. ‘No-one gets to be one hundred and
seventeen, or eighteen.’

And for some perverse reason I said, ‘But
I’m planning to live forever.

Extracts from Chris’s notebook

On the drive home Andrea invited me for her
birthday

next week. She told me what day it was on.
March 17. St Patrick’s Day. I should have guessed!

There was going to be a St
Pat’s party at the home of a family friend, somewhere out in the
countryside. Andrea jokingly referred to it as her birthday party,
one they have every year in her honour.

Dear Andrea,

I was a bit pissed off with dad tonight. I
mentioned that you had invited me to your ‘birthday party’. He said
he’d been thinking about us. He described you as ‘that girl you’re
going out with.’ I reminded him you had a name. And that we’d only
been out the once!

Anyway, what it boils down to is that he’s
just a bit worried. You know what parents are like. And in my case
he’s the only parent and I’m the only progeny so he worries more
than most. ‘This is a big year for you,’ he said. ‘Don’t be
distracted. You’ve got plenty of time. Lots more fish in the sea.’
All the usual stuff parents say I suppose.

He’s always had big ambitions for me, that’s
true, but I’ve had them for myself as well. He’s always said I
should keep my options open. But I can’t see how spending time with
you will change any of that. That’s what I told him.

I don’t think he believed me but so what?
I’m not going to let his opinions bother me.

Part Three: The Glorious Mysteries

STRANGE MEETING

‘I never really disliked him you know. Not
until . . .’

‘
Best not to talk about
it,’ says Chris.

‘
But because of him . . . ’
I say.

‘
I know.’

‘
It can’t be swept under
the carpet. That day you told me, I felt like I could have chopped
you up into little pieces and carried your head home.’

‘
Like
what happened to poor old Pentheus in
The
Bacchae
?’