Gospel (107 page)

“Back in Korea,” he began, “we were ten miles south of the Punchbowl. Mean anything to you, the Punchbowl?”

“'Fraid not.”

“General MacArthur, Harry Truman—heard of them?”

Lucy played dumb: “They made some
On the Road
movies in the early '50s?”

“Heh-heh, close enough. Anyway, the British were there, lots of British casualties. I like the British because I've seen them in wartime and they rise to the moment. Their army and officers are well educated too, the scholar and soldier and all that. At least it used to be that way.”

“Korea. You were saying.”

“As usual they had made a fine troop out of former colonials. Indians, Pakistanis, Burmese, Australians, the whole extended family. God, the Gurkhas were the most-feared warriors after the Turks. American soldiers would stumble upon a Chinese base where the Turks had been and find everyone beheaded…”

Lucy smiled at the rambling professor. He had seen a lot of life, she thought enviously. But as of this summer, so had she.

“… and there was this Persian man from the Transjordan who guarded the fire each night. Everyone was trying to sleep, but no matter how late, he stayed up and watched it. Night after night, I'd be coming back from the hospital and there he was and I began to suspect some kind of racist thing, where the poor Middle Eastern guy had to tend the fire for the white man. But he was Zoroastrian, it turned out.”

Lucy scooted closer and leaned against the crate he was sitting upon, hypnotized by the embers.

“And Zoroastrians,” continued the professor, “think a fire is a sacred thing, a sacrament. It
is
mysterious, isn't it?”

Lucy nodded.

“The world within is fire, as the Persians knew, the stars above are fire, God is light, our souls are a fire within us. No, the Zoroastrians never could put a fire out—that was heresy, an interruption of the communion with God's blessing upon us, the gift of flame. A fire had to die down on its own, in God's own sweet time.”

“And so this soldier…”

“This soldier stayed up later than the others every night to make sure no one put it out. There in Korea, Janists and Buddhists, born-agains and atheists for company, he guarded the eternal flame. I saw him almost kill a fellow Jordanian who, drunkenly, attempted to piss on the fire to put it out.”

“Not a mistake I'm likely to make,” she said. Lucy held out and examined her hands, her fingernails dirty, her hands in the firelight looking like an old woman's hands. “I don't know anything about Zoroastrianism, Dr. O'Hanrahan. I didn't even know any were left.”

“Quite a few. They have another custom I like. The Jews once had it to a degree, but the Zoroastrians took it most seriously: when you die, you're not really dead for three days.”

“Yeah?”

“The body is gone, but the soul dwells among the family and friends for three days. If you have anything you want to clear up with the departed, you have three days to talk it out, apologize, tell whoever how much you loved him or her. And then, at the end of three days you have a ceremony and officially say good-bye.”

Lucy felt chilled and wrapped herself a bit more tightly in the coat, then said, “I like that too. Think of all the Catholic mamas lighting candles and wailing that they didn't get to say how they really felt about their long-lost family members. But,” she sighed, “even after three days you still have to say good-bye.”

Dr. O'Hanrahan looked into the fire and thought of when Beatrice and Rudolph died. How did he commemorate those three days? In a barroom, day one. Being sick, day two, and going out and buying more booze. Day three, getting drunk again and wrecking the living room, smashing photographs, those stuffy kitschy heirlooms in that precious glass-doored chest of antiques and objets d'art … A proud scene. O'Hanrahan asked himself without mercy: do you suppose in all that time, just in case, on that outside Zoroastrian chance they might have heard you, did you tell them how much you loved them?

“Dr. O'Hanrahan?”

He swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. “Hm?”

“I wondered if you were asleep sitting up. You just stopped talking.”

“No,” he said, creaking to his feet, “but sleep isn't a bad idea. Let's go drop you off at the
lokanda.
Nighty night; don't let the bedbugs bite. Because around here they'll be scorpions.”

“Aw, scorpions, great,” she muttered, standing, and to her surprise, finding O'Hanrahan taking her arm and leading the way. “I'm going to dream about
jinns,
thanks to today.”

They came to the
lokanda
doorway beneath a large fluorescent hissing light surrounded by mosquitoes and gnats and flies. “Home sweet home,” he said. “Spray yourself again, get under the net. Now that I'm on my feet, I'm not going to turn in quite yet.”

Lucy stood there feeling like she should say something.

Apparently, O'Hanrahan also felt the need. “Here you are in the goddam Sudan. Sleeping on a flea-bitten mattress. Risking typhus, cholera. Sandstorms. If it all goes wrong, forgive me.”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan—”

“No, I feel responsible. What if we never get to the bottom of this scroll? What if it's all a waste of time…” In the blue-white fluorescent light O'Hanrahan looked deathly, his expression like some oriental mask of tragedy.

“Dr. O'Hanrahan,” she began, “I wouldn't miss market day in Dongola tomorrow morning for anything. I don't get to the capital of Nubia very often. I may die of something out here. But I'd rather be here than anywhere in the world.” No, that wasn't all that she had meant. “With you,” she added. “And don't laugh. But I think God is with us.”

That gave him pause.

“I think,” she went on, “Allah, or whatever His name is in these parts, is with us and wants you to decipher that scroll.”

He was touched. But he prevented the sensation from penetrating deeper. “Well. I've no doubt that He must be looking out for you,” he said, stepping back, “because I don't think He's very fond of me.”

(We are looking out for you, Patrick. We sent you Lucy, didn't we?)

A
UGUST
18
TH
–19
TH

After the sweltering, colorful market of Dongola, it was back in the truck along a route rougher and bumpier than the day before. Lucy, sitting between Mohammed and O'Hanrahan, tried to make up for a miserable mosquito-taunted night by drifting in and out of a sweaty, dusty road-sleep. After the ordeal of the mosquitoes she then dreamed scorpions were crawling all over her, and the merest movement of a hair on her arm startled her awake, flailing pointlessly.

Nine o'clock resembled noon, which resembled three, more desert, more bumps. And what was merely sore and tender from yesterday's bumpy ride became deeply aching and excruciating today. But nothing could be done about it.

And then, to cap the day off, right in the midst of the heat, the right tire went flat, and Mohammed parked the truck on a level place near the Nile, overlooking a few
feluccas
of fishermen. One of the boys from the boats jumped into the Nile, swam over, and ran up the path to be friendly and in the way. Meanwhile, Lucy and O'Hanrahan adjourned to the shade side of the vehicle, leaning against a dusty tire, listening to the squawking chickens within the truck.

“I thought you said in Aswan there'd be no mosquitoes out here in the desert,” she complained, scratching her wounds of last night.

“Of course there are mosquitoes. You were working yourself up into a snit about malaria so I told you that so you could sleep. Today I'm less charitable. Those malaria pills you're taking only cover certain strains of malaria, and if you get chloraquine-resistant malaria you get to take the Fansidar in my bag, which has the possible side effect of stopping your heart.”

“Death is some kinda side effect.”

“But I wouldn't waste time worrying about that here where there's cholera, bubonic plague, yellow fever, typhus, polio, rabies to consider between famines, droughts, earthquakes, floods, and one of the longest running civil wars on the planet.”

The boy from the river was finally shooed away by Mohammed, so he came to take a look at Lucy and O'Hanrahan. He smiled at them and they smiled back and he asked for something but it was clear he wasn't exactly begging.

“He wants a pen,” said O'Hanrahan. “Always mean to pick up a box of crayolas and some cheap Bics when I get down to this part of the world. It's apparently a real commodity.”

Lucy dug into her handbag, which was becoming as dirty as a vacuum cleaner bag, and pulled out some of her perfume. “Come here,” she motioned.

The boy held out his arm, thrilled to be touched by someone with unusually white skin. Lucy rubbed some perfume into his wrists and then held his hands toward his nose so he could smell. A wide smile broke out across his face, a simple, unmodern happiness. Here where there is nothing, the currency of human affairs is gesture, a small gift, a gentle competition for well-wishing between fellow travelers, the purchase of a glass of tea, a shared cigarette, all traded about with smiles and elaborate blessings that long ago passed from the West. How humankind used to be.

The boy then scampered back to the boat where his father and his friends were patiently waiting—the utter absence of work ethic, thought Lucy. And then he returned with a gourd.

“Uh-oh,” said O'Hanrahan chuckling. “He's gonna give us some water. These people eat bilharzia and tapeworms for breakfast.”

The boy arrived and joyously held out the gourd to Lucy.

“Fake it,” O'Hanrahan said through a pantomime of grateful smiles.

Lucy spilled some down her front as she pretend-drank, taking a long, satisfied sigh afterward, then handing it to the professor.

“Thanks so much, sweetness.”

“Not at all, my husband.”

He emptied some into his hand and patted himself on the face, then faked a sip. “Not the kind of drink I want,” he mumbled. Soon the boy was gone, leaving his untroubled smile lingering in the memory of the day.

Back on the road.

More of the same, more sand, more tepid breeze, more roasting through the windshield of the truck in the setting sun. And at last, as the desert glowed orange at 5:30
P.M.
, Abu Dom came into view. Lucy had assumed each one of the last five villages was the one that meant the end of the misery.

Since there was fresh water in town, they could waste the lukewarm water in their purchased bottles. Lucy stepped into the shade of the truck and poured the superfluous water over herself, washing off successive sedimentary layers of fine Sudanese dust.

Lucy: “I want a Seven-Eleven. You know the Big Gulp specials they have? You know these big, 48-ounce cups and you put the ice in and then all that Coke, a vat of Coke—”

“No baby, you know what I'd like.”

“Yes, I know what you'd like,” she said, her eyes possessed as she circled him. “Gettin' a little thirsty, Doc? A nice
cold beer
hit the spot about now? A nice cold Harp lager. Extra Strength, the condensation running down the side of the glass—no, a specially prepared frosted mug.”

O'Hanrahan, propped against the side of the truck, closed his eyes, crossed himself. “Get away from me, Great Satan, away!”

“Or maybe a shot of Jamesons? How about that Black Bush triple-distilled?” she continued, remembering the factory tour with David back in County Antrim. “Maybe you'd break your rules and put an ice cube or two in the glass. I can hear it tinkling in the glass, the sound of whiskey and ice mingling, tinkling, tinkling…”

“God,” he muttered, “you know you're in trouble when someone can torture you by describing the
sound
of booze.” Then he laughed the next minute. “It all awaits, Sister Lucy, at the Khartoum Hilton. A western oasis of hamburgers and, yes, pizzas—”

“Jesus,” she said, a knife plunged into her entrails. “Pizza—you bastard, you had to say
pizza.
”

“A juicy American hamburger, lettuce, tomato, a disk of onion…”

“Oh and a room with a shower.”

“Air-conditioning. Blissfully subarctic hotel air-conditioning.”

At the gas station in Abu Dom, Mohammed brought them the news that the regular boat was running several days late, which meant it had arrived the day before. Why didn't it merely wait a day, O'Hanrahan asked, and get back on schedule? No, he is a week behind, explained Mohammed, and the captain must rush to get back on the timetable … However. A trucker friend of his would take them to Khartoum, driving through the night. They'd be in Khartoum tomorrow afternoon, since the drivers preferred doing this hellish desert stretch, some hundred miles inland from the Nile, at night.

Lucy and O'Hanrahan looked at each other, at the lack of accommodations, and at a nearby charcoal spit with green chicken pieces surrounded by flies neighboring a beheaded chicken hung upside down, draining out the blood. Black children with once beautiful faces now ravaged by rashes, unhealthy teeth, and a life of uncleanliness reached out their hands and Lucy withdrew within herself.

“Let's go,” she said.

*   *   *

One hundred miles from Khartoum:

“To be clean again!” Lucy suggested.

“A bottle, an entire bottle of, oh, what? What should it be? Bourbon, Wild Turkey, fifteen years old? Which single malt shall I begin with—Balvenie, no Clynellish. Or should I go to the Islands malts…”

Lucy focused dead-ahead on the road, which had nice new pavement as of the last military checkpoint. Nothing else mattered but Khartoum appearing front-and-center before the truck's hood ornament. “Khartoum has all that fancy whiskey?”

“This former bastion of English colonial empire? There are 19th-Century gentlemen's clubs in Khartoum, dear—not that they'd let you in.”