The Book of Strange New Things (67 page)

‘She’s going to die,’ said Peter.

‘Let’s not go there yet.’

Peter clenched one hand inside the other, and found that his strenuous attempts to pray had bruised the tender flesh between his knuckles. ‘These people don’t heal, you understand that?’ he said. ‘They
can’t
heal. Our bodies . . . your body, my body . . . we’re living inside a miracle. Forget religion, we’re a miracle of nature. We can hit our thumb with a hammer, we can tear a hole in our skin, we can get burnt, broken, swollen up with pus, and a little while later, it’s all fixed! Good as new! Unbelievable! Impossible! But true. That’s the gift we’re given. But the สีฐฉั – the Oasans – they never received this amazing gift. They get one chance . . . just one chance . . . the body they’re born with. They do their best to take care of it, but when it gets damaged, that’s . . . that’s it.’

Dr Adkins nodded. He was a kindly man, and not unintelligent. He laid a palm on Peter’s shoulder.

‘Let’s take it day by day with this . . . lady. She’ll lose her hand. That’s obvious. Beyond that . . . We’ll try our best to figure something out.’

Peter’s eyes stung with tears. He wanted so much to believe.

‘Listen,’ said Adkins, ‘remember when I was patching you up, I told you that medicine is just carpentry, plumbing and sewing. Which doesn’t apply in this lady’s case, I appreciate that. But I forgot to mention: there’s chemistry too. These people take pain-killers, they take cortisone, they take lots of other medicines from us. They wouldn’t take them, year after year, if nothing had any effect.’

Peter nodded, or tried to; it was more of a facial tremor, a shiver of the chin. The cynicism he’d thought he’d banished for ever was coursing through his system.
Placebo, all is placebo
. Swallow the pills and feel invigorated while the cells die inside you. Hallelujah, I can walk on these septic feet, the pain is gone, barely there, quite bearable, praise the Lord.

Adkins looked down at the palm that he’d laid on Peter’s shoulder a minute ago, briefly appraised that palm as if there was a vial of magic serum nestling in it. ‘This . . . Lover Five of yours: she’s our way in. We never had one of these people to study before. We’ll learn a lot and we’ll learn fast. Who knows, we may be able to save her. Or if we can’t save
her
, we may be able to save her children.’ He paused. ‘They do have children, don’t they?’

Peter’s mind re-played the vision of the calf-like newborn, the cheering crowd, the dressing ceremony, the eerie beauty of little สคฉ้รี่, clumsily dancing on his inaugural day of life, waving his tiny gloved hands.

‘Yes, they do,’ he said.

‘Well, there you go,’ said Adkins.

Lover Five, confined to bed in her brightly lit chamber of care, looked just as small and alone as before. If only there could have been a USIC worker laid up with a broken leg in one of the other beds, or a few healthy สีฐฉั sitting nearby, conversing with her in their native tongue, it would have been less awful. Awful for who, though? Peter knew it was for his own sake as well as for hers that he yearned for the pathos to be less sharp. In his career as a minister, he’d visited many hospital wards, but never, until now, to confront a person whose impending death he felt responsible for.

‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er,’ she said as he walked in. Since he’d last seen her, she’d gotten hold of a USIC bathtowel and deftly folded it around her head as an improvised hood. It lent her a more feminine appearance, like a hijab or a wig. She’d tucked the loose ends under the neckline of her hospital gown, and pulled the blankets up to her armpits. Her left hand was still naked; her right was snugly bound in its cotton sheath.

‘Lover Five, I’m so, so sorry,’ he said, his voice already cracking.

‘สีorry noรี่ neสีeสีary,’ she reassured him. The absolution cost her an absurd amount of effort to pronounce. Insult to injury.

‘The painting that fell on your hand . . . ’ he said, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed near the meagre hump of her knees. ‘If I hadn’t asked for . . . ’

With her free hand she did a surprising thing, a thing he’d never have imagined anyone of her kind doing: she silenced him by laying her fingers against his lips. It was the first time he had been touched by the naked flesh of an สีฐฉั, unmediated by the soft fabric of gloves. Her fingertips were smooth and warm and smelled like fruit.

‘Nothing fall if God have no plan for the falling.’

Gently he enclosed her hand in his. ‘I shouldn’t say this,’ he said, ‘but out of all your people . . . you’re the one I care about the most.’

‘I know,’ she said, with barely a heartbeat’s hesitation. ‘Buรี่ God have no favouriสีรี่. God care for all alike.’

Her constant allusions to God poked a spear into his soul. He had big confessions to make, confessions about his faith, confessions about what he intended to do next. ‘Lover Five . . . ’ he began. ‘I . . . I don’t want to lie to you. I . . . ’

She nodded, slowly and emphatically, to signal that he need not complete the thought. ‘You feel . . . in lack of God. You feel you can be no Father any more.’ She turned aside, looked at the doorway through which he had come, the doorway that led to the outside world. Somewhere in that direction was the settlement where she’d first accepted Jesus into her heart, the settlement that now lay empty and abandoned. ‘Father Kurรี่สีberg alสีo came รี่o thiสี feeling,’ she said. ‘Father Kurรี่สีberg became angry, สีpoke in a loud voiสีe, สีaid, I am no Father now. Find another Father.’

Peter swallowed hard. The Bible booklet he’d sewn lay curled up on the blanket near his useless arse. Back in his quarters, there were so many balls of brightly coloured wool still waiting to be used.

‘You are . . . ’ said Lover Five, and paused to find the right word. ‘ . . . man. Only man. God iสี more big than you. You carry the word of God for a while, then the word become รี่oo heavy, heavy รี่o carry, and you muสีรี่ reสีรี่.’ She laid her hand on his thigh. ‘I underสีรี่and.’

‘My wife . . . ’ he began.

‘I underสีรี่and,’ she repeated. ‘God join you and your wife รี่ogether. Now you are unjoined.’

In a flash Peter recalled his wedding day, the light through the church windows, the cake, the knife, Bea’s dress. Sentimental daydreams, as irreclaimably lost as a bug-eaten Scout uniform tossed in a bin and taken away by garbagemen. He forced himself to think instead of his own house as it was now, surrounded by filth and debris, the interior plunged into darkness, and, half-hidden in those haunted shadows, the shape of a woman he couldn’t recognise. ‘It’s not just that we’re apart,’ he said. ‘Bea’s in trouble. She needs help.’

Lover Five nodded. Her bandaged hand screamed louder than any words of recrimination that there could be no trouble more serious than the trouble she was in. ‘สีo,’ she confirmed, ‘you will fulfil the word of Jeสีuสี. Luke: you will leave the nineรี่y-nine in the wilderneสี, and look for the one who iสี loสีรี่.’

He felt his face redden as the parable found its mark. She must have learned it from Kurtzberg.

‘I’ve talked to the doctors,’ he said wretchedly. ‘They’re going to try their best, for you and for . . . the others. They won’t be able to save your hand, but they might be able to save your life.’

‘I am happy,’ she said. ‘If สีaved.’

He shifted uncomfortably on his perch at the edge of her bed. His left buttock was going numb and his back was getting sore. In a few minutes from now, he would be out of this room and his body would revert to normal, restoring normal blood circulation, pacifying disturbed neurological activity, soothing over-extended muscles, while she was left here to contemplate the rotting of her flesh.

‘Is there anything I can do for you right now?’ he said.

She thought for a few seconds. ‘สีing,’ she said. ‘สีing only with me.’

‘Sing what?’

‘Our สีong of welcome for Father Peรี่er,’ she said. ‘You will go away, I know. Then I hope you will come back, in the สีweeรี่ by and by. And when you come back, we will สีing again the สีame สีong.’ Without further prelude, she began. ‘
Amaaa
สี
iiing graaa
สี
e
. . . ’

He joined in at once. His voice, hoarse and muted in speech, found strength when called upon to sing. The acoustics in the intensive care unit were actually better than in his church, where the humid atmosphere and the throng of bodies always dampened the sound; here, in this chilly concrete cavity, with only empty beds, dormant machinery and metal IV stands for company, ‘Amazing Grace’ reverberated rich and clear.

‘
Waaaas bliiiind
,’ he chanted, ‘
but nooooow I seeeee
. . . ’

The length of her breaths, even though she shortened them for his sake, made the song last a very long time. He was exhausted by the end.

‘Thank you,’ said Lover Five. ‘You will go now. I will remain alwayสี . . . your brother.’

There was no message from Bea.

She was finished with him. She’d given up.

Or maybe . . . maybe she had committed suicide. The state of the world, the loss of Joshua, the loss of her faith, the rift in their marriage . . . these were terrible griefs to bear, and maybe she just hadn’t been able to bear them. As a teenager, she’d been suicidal. He’d almost lost her then, without even knowing she was there to lose.

He opened a fresh page on the Shoot. He must trust that she was still alive, still able to receive his messages. The blank screen loomed so large: so much blankness to envelop whatever meaning he might attempt to put there. He thought of quoting or paraphrasing the bit in
2 Corinthians 5
about the house ‘not made with hands’ that awaits us if our earthly home is destroyed. Sure, it was a Bible quote, but maybe it was relevant in a non-religious context, like BG tapping his own chest to indicate that home wasn’t bricks and mortar, home could be anywhere.

A voice came to him and said,
Don’t be stupid
.

I’m coming home, he wrote, and that was all.

Having promised that he would return, he was aware that he had no idea how to make it happen. He clicked on the green scarab icon, and the Shoot revealed the three paltry options on his menu:
Maintenance (repairs)
,
Admin
and
Graigner
. None of them seemed quite right. He clicked on
Admin
and wrote:

I’m sorry, but I need to go home. As soon as possible. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back sometime in the future. If so, it would need to be with my wife. I’m not trying to blackmail you, I’m just saying that’s the only way I could do it. Please respond and confirm when I can go. Sincerely, Peter Leigh (Pastor).

He re-read what he had written, deleted everything from I don’t know to the only way I could do it. Too many words, too much explanation. The essential message, the one which demanded action, was simpler than that.

He stood up, stretched. A sharp sting on his leg reminded him of the injury there. The wound was healing well, but the flesh was tight along the suture line. He would always have a scar, and it would occasionally hurt. There were limits to what the miraculous human organism could repair.

His dishdasha, hanging on the washing line, was dry now. The blurry marks of the ink crucifix had been almost obliterated, faded to the palest lilac. The hems were so badly frayed they looked as if they’d been deliberately manufactured that way, as a fluffy frill. ‘You don’t think it’s too girly, do you?’ he recalled Bea saying, when they first took the garment out of its shrinkwrap. Not only did he recall the words, but also the sound of Bea’s voice, the expression in her eyes, the light on the side of her nose: everything. And she’d said: ‘You can be naked underneath. If you want.’ She was his wife. He loved her. Surely somewhere in the universe, allowing for the laws of time and space and relativity, there must be a place where that could still be possible.

‘Imagine you’re in a tiny inflatable dinghy, lost at sea,’ Ella Reinman had suggested to him, during those endless interviews on the tenth floor of the swanky hotel. ‘Far in the distance, there’s a ship; you can’t tell whether it’s moving toward you or away. You know that if you try to stand up and wave, the dinghy will capsize. But if you sit still, nobody will see you and you won’t get rescued. What do you do?’

‘Sit tight.’

‘Are you sure? What if the ship is definitely moving away?’

‘I’d have to live with that.’

‘You’d just sit and watch it go?’

‘I’d pray to God.’

‘What if there was no answer?’

‘There’s always an answer.’

His calmness had impressed them. His refusal to embrace wild, impulsive gestures had helped him make the grade. It was the calmness of the homeless, the calmness of the สีฐฉั. Without knowing it, he’d always been an honorary alien.

Now, he was pacing his quarters in a frenzy, an animal trapped in a cage. He needed to be home. Get going, get going, get going. The needle in the vein, the woman saying
This will sting some
, then blackness. Yes! Come on! Every minute of delay was a torment. Pacing around, he almost tripped on a discarded shoe, seized hold of it, hurled it across the room. Maybe Grainger, in her quarters, was doing the same. Maybe they should go berserk together, share the bourbon. He really wanted a drink.

He checked the Shoot. Nothing. Who was supposed to read his message anyway? Some off-duty engineer or kitchenhand? What kind of a fucking system was this, where there was no one in charge, no one with an office you could barge into, no one you could grab by the shirt? He paced his quarters some more, breathing too heavily. The floor, the ceiling, the window, the furniture, the bed: it was all wrong, wrong, wrong. He thought of Tuska, delivering his Légion Étrangère spiel, all that stuff about the weaklings who’d gone crazy, climbing the walls, begging to ‘go
ho-ome
’. He could still taste Tuska’s sarcasm. Smug bastard!

Eighteen minutes later, on his Shoot, there was an answer from Admin.

Howdy. Forwarded your request to USIC hq. Typical response timelag is 24 hrs (even big shots got to sleep sometimes) but I predict they will say yes. Diplomacywise it might have been good to make some noises about coming back to finish your mission but hey its not my business to tell you how to win friends & influence people. I wasnt scheduled to do my next flight for another month but what the heck Ill make the best of it, maybe get some new tennis shoes, buy an ice cream, visit a steakhouse. Or a whorehouse! Just kidding. Im a fine upstanding pilgrim, you know me. Stand by and Ill give you the word when its time to go. Au reviore, Tuska