The Book of Strange New Things (22 page)

The answer came, as it so often did, in the form of a sensation of well-being, as if a benign substance in his bloodstream was suddenly taking effect.

‘Have you fallen asleep?’ asked Grainger.

‘No, no, I was just . . . thinking,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

He returned to Bea’s message, and Grainger returned to her study of the empty scrubland.

Joshua is helping me type, as usual: lying between the keyboard and the monitor, his back legs and tail obscuring the top row of keys. People think I’m being pedantic when I write numbers out as words, or type ‘pounds’ instead of ‘£’, but the fact is that I have to lift up a comatose cat every time I want to use those symbol keys. I did it just now and Joshua made that ‘njurp’ sound that he makes. Last night, he slept right through, didn’t utter a peep (purred a bit). Maybe he’s adjusting to your absence at last. I wish I could! But don’t worry, I’m getting on with things.

The Maldives tragedy has dropped out of the media. There are still small articles on the inner pages of some newspapers, and a few ads placed by charities for donations, but the front pages and the prime-time coverage (as far as I can tell from the clips on my phone) have moved on to other things. An American congressman has just been arrested for shooting his wife. Point-blank range, with a shotgun, in the head, while she was swimming in their private pool with her lover. The newspaper journalists must be so relieved – with the Maldives thing they had to evoke gruesomeness without appearing prurient, whereas with this they can be as gross as they like. The woman’s head was blown off from the jaw up, and her brains (juicy detail!) were floating around in the water. The lover was shot too, in the abdomen (‘possibly aiming for the groin’). Lots of supplementary articles about the congressman, his life history, achievements, college graduation photo, etc. The wife looked (when she still had a head) exactly as you’d expect: glamorous, not quite real.

Mirah and her husband are getting along much better. I met her at the bus stop and she was giggly, almost flirtatious. She didn’t raise the issue of converting to Christianity again, just talked about the weather (it’s been bucketing down again). She only got serious when she talked about the Maldives. Most of the islanders were Sunni Muslims; Mirah’s theory is that they must have displeased Allah by ‘doing bad things with tourists’. A very confused young lady, but I’m glad she’s no longer in crisis and I’ll continue to pray for her. (I’ll pray for your Coretta too.)

Speaking of Muslims, I know they consider it a terrible sin to throw away old or damaged copies of the Qur’an. Well, I’m about to commit a similar sin. You know the big cardboard box of New Testaments we had sitting in the front room? It looks like they’ll have to be dumped. I can imagine this might upset you to hear, given your news about the Oasans being so hungry for the Gospel. But we’ve had some flooding. The rain was ridiculous, it didn’t let up for five hours, full pelt. There were torrents flowing along the footpaths; the drains just aren’t designed to take that kind of volume. It’s all right now, in fact the weather is lovely, but half the houses in our street have suffered damage. In our case, it’s just some patches of sopping-wet carpet, but unfortunately the books were right on one of those patches and it was a while before I realised they’d been soaking up the water. I tried drying them out in front of the heater. Big mistake! Yesterday they were New Testaments, today they’re blocks of wood pulp.

Anyway, not your problem. Hope this reaches you before you set off!

Bea

Peter drew a deep breath, past the lump in his throat. ‘Do I have time to write her a reply?’ he asked.

Grainger smiled. ‘Maybe I should’ve brought a book.’

‘I’ll be quick,’ he promised.

Dear Bea, he wrote, then got stuck. His heart was beating hard, Grainger was waiting, the engine was running. It was impossible.

No time for a proper ‘epistle’ – think of this as a postcard. I’m on my way!

Love,

Peter

‘OK, that’s it,’ he said, after he pressed the button. His words hung on the screen more briefly than usual; the transmission was almost instant. Maybe the open air was conducive to the Shoot’s function, or maybe it had something to do with the small amount of text.

‘Really?’ said Grainger. ‘You’re done?’

‘Yes, I’m done.’

She leaned across him and replaced the Shoot in its slot. He could smell the fresh sweat inside her clothing.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s hit the road.’

They spoke little on the remainder of the drive. They’d discussed the essentials – or agreed not to discuss them further – and neither of them wanted to part on bad terms.

The Oasan settlement was visible a long time before they reached it. In full daylight, it glowed amber in the light of the sun. Not exactly magnificent, but not without beauty either. A church spire would make all the difference.

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ said Grainger, when they had a mile or so to go.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘You might get sick.’

‘Yes, I might. But I’d be surprised if I died.’

‘What if you really need to come back?’

‘Then the Lord will make it possible for me to come back somehow.’

She chewed on that for a few seconds, as if it were a dry mouthful of bread.

‘The next official USIC visit – our regular trading exchange – is in five days,’ she said, in an efficient, professionally neutral voice. ‘That’s five
real
days, not days according to your watch. Five cycles of sunrise and sunset. Three hundred . . . ’ (she consulted the clock on the dashboard) ‘ . . . three hundred and sixty-odd hours from now.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. It seemed impolite not to make a note of it, if only on his palm, but he knew perfectly well that he was unable to calculate three hundred and sixty hours into the future, when he’d be sleeping and waking up at various points along the way. He would have to take everything as it came.

At the final approach, C-2 appeared deserted. Their vehicle pulled up at the outermost of the settlement’s buildings, the same place as before, marked with the white star. Except that the building was now marked with something else as well: a large message, freshly painted in white letters three feet tall.

WEL COME

‘Wow,’ said Grainger. ‘Didn’t know they had it in them.’

She stopped the car and flipped open the hatch. Peter got out and fetched his rucksack from the boot, strapping it onto his shoulders so that his arms were free. He wondered what the correct way of taking his leave of Grainger might be: a handshake, a courteous nod, a casual wave, or what.

The crystalline curtain that veiled the nearest doorway sparkled as its trails of beads were brushed aside to allow someone through – a hooded figure, small and solemn. Peter couldn’t tell if it was the same person he’d met before. He remembered the Oasan’s robe as being blue, whereas this one’s was pastel yellow. No sooner had the person stepped out into the light than another person followed him, parting the beads with his delicate gloves. This one’s robe was pale green.

One by one, the Oasans emerged from the building. They were all hooded and gloved, all daintily built, all wearing the same soft leather boots. Their robes were all the same design, but there was scarcely a colour repeated. Pink, mauve, orange, yellow, chestnut, faun, lilac, terracotta, salmon, watermelon, olive, copper, moss, lavender, peach, powder blue . . .

On and on they came, making room for each new arrival, but standing as close together as a family. Within a few minutes, a crowd of seventy or eighty souls had gathered, including smaller creatures who were evidently children. Their faces were mostly obscured, but here and there a whitish-pink swell of flesh peeped out.

Peter gaped back at them, light-headed with exhilaration.

The frontmost of the Oasans turned to face his people, raised his arms high and gave a signal.

‘
Amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
. . . ’ they sang, sweet and high and pure. The vowel floated for five, ten seconds without pause, a grand communal exhalation, sustained so long that Peter interpreted it as an abstract sound, unrelated to language or melody. But then it incorporated a consonant – albeit an unidentifiable one – and shifted in pitch: ‘ . . .สี
iiiiiiing graaaaaaaa
สี
e! How
สี
weeeeeee
รี่
a
สี
ouuuuuund tha
รี่ สี
aaaaaaaaaaaaved a wreeee
ฐ
liiiiike meeeeeeeeeee!
’

In synchronised obedience to an energetic hand-gesture from the frontmost Oasan, they all stopped at once. There was a huge intake of breath, a seventy-strong sigh. Peter fell to his knees, having only just recognised the hymn: the anthem of fuddy-duddy evangelism, the archetype of Salvation Army naffness, the epitome of everything he had despised when he’d been a young punk snorting lines of speed off piss-stained toilet lids, of everything he dismissed as stupid when he was liable to wake in a pool of congealed vomit, of everything he considered contemptible when he was stealing money from prostitutes’ handbags, of everything he laughed off as worthless when he himself was a toxic waste of space.
I once was lost, and now I’m found
.

The conductor gestured again. The choir resumed.

II

ON EARTH

10

The happiest day of my life

Peter hung suspended between ground and sky, in a net, his body covered with dark blue insects. They weren’t feeding on him, they were just using him as a place to be. Every time he stretched or coughed, the bugs would hover up from his skin or hop elsewhere, then settle back. He didn’t mind. Their legs didn’t tickle. They were quiet.

He’d been awake for hours, resting his cheek on his upflung arm so that his eyes were in line with the horizon. The sun was rising. It was the end of the long night, his fifth night spent among the Oasans.

Not that he was among the Oasans now, strictly speaking. He was alone on his improvised hammock, strung aloft between two pillars of his church. His church-in-progress. Four walls, four internal pillars, no roof. No contents except for a few tools and coils of rope and vats of mortar and braziers of oil. The braziers of oil were cold now, glimmering in the dawn light. Far from serving any religious purpose¸ they had a purely practical function – throughout the long dark spell, for the duration of each working ‘day’, they were ignited to throw light on the proceedings, and extinguished again when the last of the Oasans had gone home and ‘Father Peรี่er’ was ready to retire.

His congregation were labouring as fast as they could to build this place, but they weren’t here with him today; not yet. They were still asleep, he supposed, in their own houses. Oasans slept a lot; they got tired easily. They’d work for an hour or two, and then, whether the task had been arduous or not, they would go home and rest in bed for a while.

Peter stretched in his hammock, recalling what those beds looked like, glad he wasn’t in one now. They resembled old-fashioned bathtubs, sculpted out of a sort of tough, dense moss, as lightweight as balsa wood. The tubs were lined with many layers of a cotton-like material, swaddling the sleeper in a loose, fluffy cocoon.

Three hundred hours ago, when he first succumbed to tiredness after the great exhilarations of his first day, Peter had been offered such a bed. He’d accepted it, in deference to his hosts’ hospitality, and there had been much ceremonial well-wishing for a good long rest. But he hadn’t been able to sleep.

For one thing, it was daytime, and the Oasans felt no need to darken their bedchambers, positioning their cots right under the brightest sunbeams. He’d climbed in anyway, squinting against the glare, hoping he might lose consciousness through sheer exhaustion. Unfortunately, the bed itself was an obstacle to sleep; the bed, in fact, was insufferable. The fluffy blankets were soon drenched with sweat and vapour, they exuded a sickly coconutty smell, and the tub was slightly too small, even though it was larger than the standard model. He suspected it had been carved specially for him, which made him all the more determined to adjust to it if he could.

But it was no good. As well as the absurd bed and the excessive light, there was also a noise problem. On that first day, there were four Oasans sleeping near him – the four who called themselves Jeสีuสี Lover One, Jeสีuสี Lover Fifรี่y-Four, Jeสีuสี Lover สีevenรี่y-Eighรี่ and Jeสีuสี Lover สีevenรี่y-Nine – and all four of them breathed very loudly, creating an obnoxious symphony of sucking and gurgling. Their cots were in another room, but Oasan houses had no closeable doors, and he could hear the sleepers’ every breath, every snuffle, every glutinous swallow. In his bed back home, he was used to the barely audible breathing of Bea and an occasional sigh from Joshua the cat, not this kind of racket. Lying in the house of the Oasans, he reconnected with a long-forgotten episode from his past life: the memory of being lured off the street by a charity worker and put in a hostel for rough sleepers, most of them alcoholics and addicts like himself. The memory, too, of sneaking out of there in the middle of the night, back onto the bitter streets, to look for his own quiet space to doss down in.

So: here he was in a hammock, suspended in his half-built church, in the open air, in the absolute desert stillness of the Oasan dawn.

He had slept well and deeply. He’d always been able to sleep outdoors: a legacy of his homeless years, perhaps, when he’d lain comatose in public parks and doorways, lain so still that people would mistake him for a dead body. Without alcohol, it was a bit more difficult to drift off, but not much. The intrusiveness of the vaporous Oasan atmosphere was easier to deal with, he felt, if he surrendered himself to it. Being indoors and yet not truly enclosed was the worst of both worlds. The Oasans’ houses weren’t sealed and air-conditioned like the USIC base; they were ventilated by open windows through which the insidious atmosphere swirled freely. There was something disconcerting about lying tucked up in a bed, and imagining every minute that the surrounding air was lifting the blankets with invisible fingers and slipping in beside you. Much better to lie exposed, wearing nothing but a single cotton garment. After a while, if you were sleepy enough, you felt as though you were reclining in a shallow stream, with the water flowing gently over you.