The Book of Strange New Things (26 page)

Less so now. Loath to earn a reputation as a glutton, he’d grown accustomed, over the last three hundred and sixty-odd hours, to a sharply reduced calorie intake, and re-learned something that he’d known well during his wasted years: that a man could survive, and even keep active, on very little fuel. If he was forced to. Or too drunk to care. Or – as was currently the case – happily preoccupied.

When he rejoined Jesus Lover Five, she was seated on the floor, her back propped against a wall. Her posture rucked up her robe so that her thin thighs and the space between them were carelessly exposed. Glimpsing Lover Five’s nakedness, Peter thought he could detect an anus, but nothing that resembled genitals.

‘รี่ell me more from the Book of สีรี่range New Thingสี,’ she said.

Male and female created he them
, was the phrase that came to his mind.

‘Do you know the story of Adam and Eve?’ he asked.

‘God bleสี all สีรี่ories from the Book. They are all of them good.’

‘Yes, but do you know it? Have you heard it before?’

‘Long before,’ she conceded. ‘Now again.’

‘Did you hear it from Kurtzberg?’

‘Yeสี.’

‘Why isn’t Kurtzberg here to tell you the story again himself?’ Peter had posed this same question in half a dozen different ways since arriving at the settlement. He hadn’t got a satisfactory answer yet.

‘Father Kurรี่สีberg go away. Leave uสี in lack of him. Like you will leave.’ Her clefted face, usually a healthy pink, was whitish pale in its complicated contours.

‘I’m only going for a little while. I’ll be back soon.’

‘Yeสี, keep your propheสีy, pleaสีe.’ She said it neither playfully nor imploringly, as far as he could tell. She was matter-of-fact and, although she spoke no louder than other Oasans, emphatic. Or maybe he was just imagining that. Maybe he was imagining everything, perceiving differences that weren’t there, in his keenness to get a grip on these people. He and Bea had read an article once, in some magazine or other, which explained that cats were not really individuals, despite what their owners liked to think. All the distinctive noises and eccentric behaviours that your cat exhibited were merely standard-issue genetic features built into that particular sub-breed. A horrible article, written by a smug little journalist with a receding hairline. Bea had been thoroughly shaken by it. And it took a lot to shake Bea.

‘Tell me, Jesus Lover Five,’ said Peter. ‘The person you love who makes you sad, the one who doesn’t believe in Jesus. Is he your son?’

‘My . . . brother.’

‘And have you other brothers and sisters?’

‘One alive. One in the earth.’

‘And your mother and father?’

‘In the earth.’

‘Do you have children of your own?’

‘God pleaสีe no.’

Peter nodded, as if he understood. He knew he was not much the wiser, and that he still had no proof of Lover Five’s gender.

‘Please forgive my stupidity, Jesus Lover Five, but are you male or female?’

She didn’t reply, only cocked her head to one side. Her facial cleft did not contort, he’d noticed, when she was confused: not like Jesus Lover One’s. He wondered if this meant that she was smarter, or just more guarded.

‘You just referred . . . You just told me of your brother. You called him your brother, not your sister. What makes him your brother and not your sister?’

She considered this for a few seconds. ‘God.’

He tried again. ‘Are you your brother’s brother or your brother’s sister?’

Again she pondered. ‘For you, I will name me with the word brother,’ she said. ‘Becauสีe the word สีiสีรี่er iสี very hard รี่o สีpeak.’

‘But if you could say “sister” more easily, is that what you would say?’

She shifted her posture, so that the robe again covered her groin. ‘I would สีay nothing.’

‘In the story of Adam and Eve,’ he pressed on, ‘God created man and woman. Male and female. Two different kinds of people. Are there two different kinds here too?’

‘We are all differenรี่,’ she said.

Peter smiled and looked away. He knew when he was beaten. Through a hole in the wall, which in the very near future would be a beautiful stained-glass window, he spied, in the distance, a procession of Oasans carrying nets full of bricks.

A thought occurred to him, and, along with that thought, the realisation that he hadn’t asked anyone at USIC to show him the Oasans’ old settlement, the one they’d mysteriously abandoned. It was one of those oversights which Bea, if she’d been here, would never have been guilty of. The mere mention of a place called C-2 would have made her curious about C-1. Honestly, what was wrong with him? Beatrice, on the rare occasions she became exasperated with these sorts of lapses, would accuse him of having one of his ‘Korsakoff moments’. That was a joke, of course. They both knew that alcohol had nothing to do with it.

‘Lover Five?’ he said.

She didn’t respond. Oasans didn’t waste words. You could take it for granted that they were listening, waiting for you to get around to the part of your question they could answer.

‘When Kurtzberg was with you,’ he continued, ‘in the previous . . . in the settlement where you lived before, the one near the USIC base, did you build a church there?’

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Why not?’

She thought about it for a minute. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Where did you worship?’

‘Father Kurรี่สีberg came รี่o uสี in our houสีe,’ she said. ‘The whole day, he go from one houสีe รี่o another houสีe รี่o another houสีe. We waiรี่ for him. We waiรี่ a long รี่ime. Then he come, read from the Book, we pray, then he go.’

‘That’s one way of doing it,’ said Peter diplomatically. ‘A very good way. Jesus himself said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”’

‘We สีaw never Jeสีuสี,’ said Jesus Lover Five. ‘ฐurฐ iสี beรี่er.’

Peter smiled, unable to suppress a surge of pride. He sincerely hoped that a physical church would, indeed, be better.

‘But where did Kurtzberg live?’ he pushed on. ‘I mean, where did he sleep, while he was here with you?’ He imagined Kurtzberg swaddled in a bathtub-shaped cocoon, sweating all night into fancy pyjamas. As a short man, the pastor would at least have been the right size to fit into an Oasan bed.

‘Father Kurรี่สีberg have car,’ said Jesus Lover Five.

‘Car?’

‘Big car.’ With her hands, she sketched a shape in the air: a crude rectangle that did not suggest any particular kind of vehicle.

‘You mean he would just drive off to spend the night . . . uh . . . to sleep at the USIC base?’

‘No. Car have bed. Car have food. Car have everything.’

Peter nodded.
Of course
. It was the obvious way to tackle the challenge. And no doubt such a vehicle – maybe even the same vehicle Kurtzberg had used – would have been made available for him, too, if he’d requested it. But he’d deliberately decided not to go down that route, and he didn’t regret it. There was, he sensed, a distance between Kurtzberg and his flock, a barrier which no amount of mutual respect and fellowship had been able to remove. The Oasans regarded their first pastor as an alien, and not just in the literal sense. Camping out in his car, Kurtzberg signalled that he was perpetually ready to switch on the ignition, press the accelerator and drive away.

‘Where do you think Kurtzberg is now?’

Lover Five was silent for a while. The other Jesus Lovers were very near now, the tread of their soft boots making only a slight noise on the soil. The bricks were no doubt heavy but the Oasans bore them without grunting or flinching.

‘Here,’ said Lover Five at last, waving her hand in front of her. She seemed to be indicating the world in general.

‘You think he’s alive?’

‘I believe. God willing.’

‘When he . . . uh . . . ’ Peter paused to compose a question that was specific enough for her to answer. ‘Did he say goodbye? I mean, when you saw him last. When he was leaving, did he say, “I’m going away and not coming back”, or did he say “I’ll see you next week” or . . . what did he say?’

Again she was silent. Then: ‘No goodbye.’

‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er,’ a voice called to him.

And so the Oasans came to build their church, or, as they put it, their ฐurฐ. Peter hoped one day to wean them off that word in favour of another. Here these folk were, constructing a church brick by brick, and yet they couldn’t pronounce the name of what they were labouring so devotedly to make. There was something unfair about that.

Lately, as often as possible without overselling the idea, Peter used the phrase ‘our haven’ instead of ‘church’. ‘We build our haven,’ he’d say (no sibilants at all!), or he would link the two words together in the same sentence. And, mindful to nip any misunderstandings in the bud, he took care to explain that ‘haven’ was different from ‘Heaven’. Both places offered a safe, welcoming home for those who’d accepted Jesus into their heart, but one was a physical locale and the other was a state of eternal spiritual union with God.

A few of the Oasans had started using the word; not many. Most preferred to say ‘ฐurฐ’ even though it convulsed their bodies. And the ones who did say ‘haven’ pronounced it no differently from ‘Heaven’, despite reassuring him that they understood the difference.

‘Heaven there,’ Jesus Lover Fifteen said, pointing up into the sky. Then, pointing at the half-built church: ‘Heaven here.’

Peter had smiled. In his own belief, Heaven was not located up in the sky; it had no astronomical coordinates; it co-existed with all things everywhere. But perhaps it was too soon to engage the Oasans in such metaphysics. They could distinguish between the place they were building and the God they wanted to be part of: that was good.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Praiสีe Jeสีuสี,’ Jesus Lover Fifteen replied, sounding, as he spoke, like a foot pulled out of sucking mud. .

‘Praise Jesus,’ agreed Peter, a little sadly. It was a pity, in a way, that Jesus had been christened ‘Jesus’. It was a fine name, a lovely name, but ‘Daniel’ or ‘David’ or even ‘Nehemiah’ would have been easier here. As for ‘C-2’, or ‘Oasis’, or the little girl from Oskaloosa who’d named it, they were best not even mentioned.

‘What do
you
call this place?’ he’d asked several people several times.

‘Here,’ they said.

‘This whole world,’ he specified. ‘Not just your homes, but all the land around your homes, as far as you can see, and the places even further that you can’t see, beyond the horizon where the sun goes down.’

‘Life,’ they said.

‘God,’ they said.

‘What about in your own language?’ he’d insisted.

‘You could noรี่ สีpeak the word,’ Jesus Lover One said.

‘I could try.’

‘You could noรี่ สีpeak the word.’ It was impossible to tell if this repetition signalled testiness, obstinacy, an immovable force, or if Lover One was calmly making the same assessment twice in a row.

‘Could Kurtzberg speak the word?’

‘No.’

‘Did Kurtzberg . . . When he was with you, did Kurtzberg learn any words of your language?’

‘No.’

‘Did
you
speak any words of
our
language, when you first met Kurtzberg?’

‘Few.’

‘That must have made things very difficult.’

‘God help uสี.’

Peter couldn’t tell whether this was a rueful, good-humoured exclamation – a sort of upwards roll of the eyes, if there had been eyes to roll – or whether the Oasan was literally stating that God had helped.

‘You speak my language so well,’ he complimented them. ‘Who taught you? Kurtzberg? Tartaglione?’

‘Frank.’

‘Frank?’

‘Frank.’ Presumably this was Tartaglione’s Christian name. Speaking of which . . .

‘Was Frank a Christian? A Jesus Lover?’

‘No. Frank a . . . language lover.’

‘Did Kurtzberg teach you too?’

‘Language, no. He รี่eaฐ only the word of God. He read from the Book of สีรี่range New Thingสี. In the beginning, we under-สีรี่and nothing. Then, with help of Frank, and with help of God, word upon word we underสีรี่and.’

‘And Tart . . . Frank. Where is he now?’

‘Noรี่ with uสี,’ said a voice from inside the hood of an olive-green robe.

‘He go away,’ said the voice from inside the hood of the canary-yellow robe. ‘Leave uสี in lack of him.’

Peter tried to imagine what questions Bea might ask if she were here – what bigger picture she would see. She had a knack for noticing not just what was present, but what was absent. Peter cast his eyes over the congregation, dozens of small people clothed in pastel colours, weird-faced inside their hoods, slightly soiled on the soles of their booties. They gazed at him as if he were an exotic obelisk, transmitting messages from afar. Behind them, blurred in the humid mist, the blockish structures of their city glowed amber. There was room in there for many more than were seated here before him.

‘Did Frank teach only Jesus Lovers?’ he asked. ‘Or did he teach anybody who wanted to learn?’

‘Thoสีe who have no love for Jeสีuสี alสีo have no wiสีh for learning. They สีay, “Why สีhould we สีpeak a language made for other bodieสี?”’

‘Are they . . . The ones who don’t wish to learn English, are they angry that USIC came here?’

But it was no use asking the Oasans about feelings. Especially the feelings of others.

‘Is it difficult,’ he asked, trying a different tack, ‘to produce the food that you give to USIC?’

‘We provide.’

‘But the quantity . . . Is it . . . Are you struggling to come up with that much food? Is it too much?’

‘We provide.’

‘But is it . . . If USIC wasn’t here, would your lives be easier?’

‘UสีIC bring you to uสี. We are graรี่eful.’

‘But . . . uh . . . ’ He was determined to winkle out some insight into how those Oasans who weren’t Jesus Lovers regarded USIC’s presence. ‘Every one of you works to produce the food, is that right? The Jesus Lovers, and the . . . uh . . . others. You all work together.’

‘Many hand make brief work.’

‘OK. Sure. But is there anyone among you who says, “Why should we do this? Let the USIC people grow their own food”?’