Requiem (28 page)

'No one. It's not important.'

Tobie
looked at her watch. 'We're going to have to call it a
day at that, Tom. Rinse out these cups, won't you? And maybe tomorrow you'll be
ready to tell me who you went to meet the morning your wife died.'

Tom found the kitchen
empty.   He was relieved Christina was gone. He carefully rinsed and
dried the cups, and — because
Tobie
had scolded him for
only completing half the chore on the last occasion - put them away. As he left
the building he found Christina sitting on the steps in the sunshine.

'Hey,
you,' she called. He hovered on the steps above her. She looked up at him,
shielding her eyes from the sun and said, 'Katie says hi.'

44

The black water lapped
at Sharon's thighs in some parts of the tunnel. She was wading in shorts and
plastic sandals. The pencil beam of her torch was refracted by the stream,
creating an illusion of smokiness on the surface of the water. She flashed the
light on the walls and at the roof just above her head, all of it hewn out of
the living rock. Jagged brown stone gleamed dully.

There was a
splash behind her. Ahmed, missing his footing, swayed against the wall. Nothing
was said, and they waded on for another two hundred yards in silence.

'How
is it you never came here before?' Ahmed wanted to know.

'Not my idea of fun.'

Hezekiah's
tunnel was built to bring water from a hidden spring into the city at the time
of siege. It was the only place where Ahmed would agree to talk to Sharon about
the
djinn
.

When
Sharon had left work that evening, kissing Tom before he went into one of his
dark sessions with
Tobie
, she had on impulse visited
Ahmed rather than returning home directly. As usual, he hadn't answered his
door until her fourth knock. He'd shaved his head. She made no comment about
this. It was something he did from time to time, claiming that the
djinn
tended to hang on to a person's locks
and that this was why monks and nuns and other holy persons cut off their hair
when taking sacred orders. She did remark, however, that he was looking a
little tense.

'I've
smoked no hashish for a week. No alcohol, nothing. Not even tobacco.'

'It'll
do you good. And keep the
djinn
away.'

His bitter
laughter had brought on a fit of coughing. 'You know nothing. Without all this
the
djinn
multiply by the second. You
know nothing.'

'I think I've had an attack of the
djinn
,
Ahmed.'

'I
know,' he said seriously. 'I've been expecting you to tell me.'

Ahmed
had two ways of talking about the
djinn
.
Mostly
it was in the form of lively banter, as if continuous reference to demons and
spirits was a terrific long-running joke between him and everyone else, as if
he too knew it was nonsense but was nonetheless playing the game of never
letting on. Then at other times his voice would soften and become lower, and
others began to wonder if the joke was on them. 'I've seen it.'

'Something's
happening. I don't understand it. I know it's tied up with my feelings for
Tom.'

'You're
still fucking that bastard Englishman when you could have me!' he had shouted
angrily. 'Look at you. It's disgusting! You're in love with him!'

'Maybe.'

'Watch out for love. That's the worst of
all the
djinn
.'

'Be serious, Ahmed. I want to talk with
you.'

'I am being
serious. But I don't like to talk of the
djinn
.
It's the surest way to make them appear.'

'Ahmed, what have you
been telling him? What have you been filling his head with? Whatever it is,
it's spilling over to me.'

'So, now you begin to
believe in the
djinn
.
You had it
coming. You want me to help your friend, huh? All right, maybe I will, but we
don't talk about it here. I don't want this place swarming with them tonight.
Come on, we're going for a walk.'

'Can we walk the wall? I
love walking the wall.' She always felt unsafe unaccompanied.

'Are you mad? The wall
is crawling with
djinn
.
It's their
favourite place in all the city. Some of them are even disguised as Israeli
soldiers. No, there's only one place in this city where we can talk about them
safely.'

'But where?'

Ahmed
had pressed a hand on her arm. His tones had become hushed again. With his
shaved head and smouldering eyes he looked crazed, psychotic. 'I'm going to
show you how to make the
djinn
appear.
You won't ever see this again. Believe me, you won't want to.'

Exasperated
but disinclined to argue, Sharon had followed Ahmed out of the apartment. First
they'd driven back to her place to grab some suitable clothing, then to the
tunnel, where Ahmed was well known. The supervisor had greeted Ahmed and
assured him that the last tourists had gone through some time ago. He was about
to close, he said, so no one would come up behind them. Sharon wondered how
much time Ahmed spent down here.

The tunnel, Ahmed had
told her, took about half an hour to pass through before emerging at the Pool
of
Shiloah
. They sloshed on, the water level rising
and falling, the sides narrowing and widening, the ceiling occasionally making
them stoop. Light from their torches shivered on the damp walls. Sharon stopped
when she saw a light up ahead.

'What is it?' Ahmed breathed.

She
pointed and the tiny light ahead moved and went out. Ahmed passed her in the
tunnel, and she followed behind. Then she saw the light again, and froze.
'There's someone up there,' she hissed.

Ahmed
turned patiently. 'Don't be an ass-hole. It's your own light, reflected.'

When
they reached the half-way marker, Ahmed pointed to the spot where the ancient
engineers had struck pick against pick, digging from opposite ends. 'This is
the safest place in the city. Here we can make the
djinn
appear in relative safety. I say "relative". Here, give me your
torch.'

He
turned out both lights, and they were plunged into primeval darkness. It was
cool in the tunnel. But for the occasional trickle of water from the walls, it
was silent as a tomb.

Ahmed
spoke out of the darkness. She heard his feet wading through the unseen water. He
was circling her slowly. 'This is the oldest part of the city. Old as the
Canaanites. Older. There was a settlement here long, long before David came and
gave the city his name. It was built -'

'Why are you circling me? You're being
creepy —'

'SHUT UP, YOU
BITCH! SHUT UP! Say nothing! Now I have to start again!'

Sharon
was shaken by this sudden outburst. She began to doubt the wisdom of coming
here. She always exhibited a breezy over-confidence with Ahmed, where other
people were scared by him. Until this moment she'd always believed he would
never do anything to hurt her; but now she sensed he might be experiencing some
new kind of crisis. The indications were there: the shaved head, the sudden
withdrawal from his drugs, this new volatility.

'This is the oldest part
of the city,' he said again, moving around her, wading gently through the water
as he repeated the words, identical in order. She could hear his soft breathing
between each sentence and the swish of his shins drawing through the water. 'It
was built around this spring, the
Gihon
spring,
because the people from that time recognized this place. It was, and still is,
the navel of the earth. It is a place of seed power. Just as a seed is wedded
to the memory of the plant which created it, so is this place wedded to the
memory of its origin. The Hindu calls this place a
chakra.
The
Aboriginal calls it a
jiva
.
I call it
the cradle of the
djinn
.
The city of
Jerusalem is built over this place. My people tell how the rock under the
Golden Dome is a giant plug to stop the energies of this place pouring out on
to the earth.'

Ahmed
had drawn closer as he circled. She could feel his breath on her neck. She
wanted to tell him he was frightening her, but she was afraid to speak.

'But
it leaks. Vapours stream from this place. The city is like a vast mind
constructed over the abyss, intoxicated by vapours of its own dreaming.' Ahmed
began to back slowly away into the darkness. His voice retreated, diminishing,
becoming no more than a soft whisper. 'Drugged and dreaming. And this is the
place where the
djinn
are breathed into
life. Here they are dreamed into existence. Here they come into being.'

He was gone.

There was
nothing but blackness. She strained for the sound of his breathing but heard
nothing. She listened hard for the sloshing betrayal of his movements further
on up the tunnel, but there was nothing. All she could hear now was her own
breathing and her own heart beating.

'Ahmed,' she
tried, lowly. Then, louder, 'Ahmed!' Her voice volleyed through the cavern,
startling the rock.

'You
bastard, you'd better not have left me -' her voice writhed and withered in the
crannies of the rock. He'd taken both torches. She waded on a few yards and,
for a moment, became disoriented. Which way had they come in? Was he telling
her the truth when he'd told her they'd reached the half-way point? She waded
again and screamed as she crashed into the wet rock. Groping with her fingers,
she located the plane of the wall. She found herself gripping it with her fingernails,
as if gravity had shifted and she was in danger of falling.

Then
she became aware of another presence in the tunnel.

She
heard a low breathing, and her skin seemed to pull itself inside-out, like a
glove. She tried to speak. It came out as a paralysed croak. 'Ahmed?'

There
was no answer. But something stood in the water just a few feet away from her.
Something solid and imposing, a cold, hard presence. Another shocking wave
passed across her skin, a rinse of acid. Bile rose in her mouth. She sensed the
thing fattening, approaching. Her hands were gripping the wall.

Her
nostrils flared at a familiar odour as two pencil beams of light were flashed
on, cross-directed at the water. Taking shape out of the black stream, and
rising to meet her, was a life-sized stone statue. It was a medieval
representation of a woman with flowing hair, carrying a vase of ointment,
carved from eroded grey stone. Sharon reached out to touch it. The stone seemed
unspeakably cold. Condensation, like congealed breath, gathered on the cold
stone cheeks of the grey visage.

As
Sharon's fingers touched the damp stone cheek, warmth leapt from her fingertips
and the thing transformed. No longer stone, it was living flesh. Now it was an
old woman, black veil thrown back. It was the tattooed Magdalene, dripping
water, arm outstretched, holding forth not a vase of ointment but a dead white
bird in the palm of her brown hand.

Sharon
stumbled back against the wall, a strangled cry escaping between her teeth. But
as the image of the Magdalene swelled before her and rose steadily out of the
water, a ripple in the stream seemed to break it, and the vision re-formed a
second time. 'Christina!' Sharon breathed, confronted by her client from the
rehabilitation centre. Christina was standing in the water, in jeans and
T-shirt, smiling at her beatifically, almost maniacally. Christina failed to
answer Sharon's cry. She was already changing again. She was becoming Katie.

Katie's
hands were cupped either side of her mouth. Her face was contorted with rage,
and she seemed to be calling, trying to make herself heard across time, but no
sound was coming out. Sharon put a hand to her own choked throat. 'What? What
is it, Katie?' she whispered. But Katie, tortured in her own silence, continued
to call silently across the abyss.

A
ripple passed across the phantom, and there came in Katie's place another stone
idol, this time like a Canaanite goddess carved in yellow stone. Sharon had
only a moment to witness it before, with kaleidoscopic reinvention; it was
transformed yet again, this time into a vile, inhuman form, upright and
reaching towards her, something half-reptile and half-insect like some primal
seabed creature, shining like a beetle, fibrillating limbs groping at her. When
it metamorphosed for a final time its face was Sharon's own open mouth
contorted in a silent wail.

Sharon
was paralysed, unable even to give voice to her own scream. Then Ahmed was
holding her, soothing her, trying to calm her. She could not make sense of any
of his words. As he ushered her away from the spot, she was still looking
wildly around for signs of the ugly spirit that had reached out at her from the
liquid darkness.

When
they reached the Pool of
Shiloah
at the end of the
tunnel she sat down, exhausted beyond tears. Her own reflection in the pool had
returned to normal. Ahmed sat by her, occasionally stroking her shoulder.