Requiem (30 page)

Awake,
0 north wind; and come thou south; blow upon my
garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come
into
his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

Instead he
wet his finger before inserting it inside her again, and she flinched with
pleasure. Her eyes blazed in awed fascination with what he might do with her. Her
lips were slightly parted. She took short gasps of air as he probed and
stroked.

My
beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for
him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and
my
hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling
myrrh, upon
the handles of the lock.

Then her
fingers tightened around the head of his cock, and she impelled him towards
her. He parted her thighs wider, sliding a hand under her buttock before he
penetrated her. She bucked and squealed and he had to put his hand over her
mouth, and she bit into his fingers.

'Don't,' he said. 'Don't make a noise.'

'It's all right. I won't again.'

He made love
to her gently and aggressively in turns; above all he wanted it to be a good
experience for her. He meant to withdraw from her before ejaculating, but she
was tight and burning hot inside, and he couldn't bear not to stay in her.

When
he did withdraw, he dressed hurriedly and guiltily. She did the same. Then he
unlocked the door, checking that no one was around.

'Look,'
he said after she'd stepped out from the stockroom, 'look -'

'It's all
right,' she said. 'I won't say anything to anyone. Now I know, I won't tell
anyone.'

She picked up
her rucksack from his desk and hoisted it on to her back. This time her skirt
didn't ride up and though she was smiling, she didn't look back over her
shoulder at him. He watched her walk down the corridor and out along the
playground, like any schoolgirl going home after a day's lessons.

How could he
tell
Tobie
or Sharon about that? What could they
possibly know about it? Women's needs were a complex mystery to men; yet they
always presumed to measure and circumscribe the equal and opposite mystery. How
could they ever know? They had never stood in the same howling wind. They had
never put their hand in the identical flame. How could they ever guess how men
live with Nature's cool hand cupping the genitals and flexing an elegant,
jewelled finger one hundred times a day to tickle the ready
glans
? What did they know about any of it? They could never
understand that male sexuality was so far out of control.

For a moment he felt the
deep, tidal roar of the rage of the Old Testament patriarchs against women for
their inordinate power to confer and withhold sex; to tease and to deny; to
manipulate; to humiliate; to shame and to condemn.

46

'I'm not going to see
Tobie
anymore,' Tom announced when he arrived back at
Sharon's apartment. 'I'm not having any more to do with her.'

'He's angry,' said Sharon.

'He
used to say hello,' said Ahmed, reclining in Tom's favourite chair, swigging a
Maccabee
.   ,

'I
thought you didn't drink beer.' Tom opened the fridge and helped himself to a
beer before slumping on the sofa next to Sharon.

'What has she done to you?'

'Nothing.
That's just it. It's a waste of time. All you do is talk, endlessly, in
circles. There's this idea that it helps. It does nothing. That place is full
of addicts, right? Well, some of them are just addicted to talk.'

'You are
right,' said Ahmed, waving his bottle. 'And that old woman, she is the worst.
She will try to peel your head like an orange.'

Tom winced. 'Anyway, I'm not going again.'

'So you keep telling us.'

'Be like me,'
said Ahmed. 'Stay away. That place is like a waiting room for
djinn
.
Sharon and
Tobie
lift them off this and that person who comes to the place, and then the
djinn
just wait around for someone like you
and me, Tom, so they can get on our backs. Believe me, it's not a healthy
place.'

'You're crazy,' said Sharon.

'You laugh
at me? Didn't you see enough today? Didn't you? Hey, Tom, this one, she thinks
working up there has made her immune. But now she's changed her mind.'

'What's he
talking about?'

'Nothing.'

'Nice haircut, Ahmed,' said Tom.

'Is he
laughing at me? Yes? I make a prediction. One day you too will have this
haircut.' The Arab glared.

Sharon
sensed a serious mood swing. She changed the subject. 'Ahmed has made a further
study of the scroll. He's got some more things to tell you. I'll get you
another beer.'

'It's
difficult work.' Ahmed's voice had become uncharacteristically muted. 'As the
spiral of words approaches the centre, it becomes smaller and more difficult to
decipher, and the information becomes denser. But I think it's important.

'Last time I told you
how there was faction in the movement after the death of Jesus on the Cross.
The Magdalene was marginalized as Jesus' brother James tried to lead the new
movement. They tried to get Mary to recognize James as the resurrected Jesus
outside the tomb. At first she wouldn't go along with it. But a third force
came along, described by Mary as the running-dog of
Caiaphas
.
This man was a Pharisee, one of the religious police. Mary describes him as a
woman-hater, an opportunist and a liar who had converted to Christianity and
built a following by
scapegoating
the
Sicarri
- Judas Iscariot — for his part in the plot which
went wrong. Together James and this man went to Damascus. On the road this man
- the Liar - was plagued by demons or
djinn
pretending to be the ghost of Jesus. From then on the Liar claimed to be
speaking with- the authority of Jesus.

'Though
she does not name him, other than call him the Liar or Hater of Women and so
on, I believe this man was Saul, originally one of Jesus' persecutors, who
became Saint Paul. Mary describes a second conflict inside the movement. The
Liar, because he hated women, tried to discard any of Jesus' teaching which he
didn't like. James and the Magdalene established a temporary truce to drive the
Liar out of Jerusalem. They succeeded, and he went west. In Ephesus they beat
him, and in Crete they drove him back into the sea, knowing him for what he
was. Then he went to Corinth and to Rome, looking for converts among the
gentiles.'

'If the Liar was Paul . . .' said Tom.

'Then the
Liar succeeded. He became the great Apostle. The presiding genius of the
Christian Church. To this day.'

They
broke his legs. They broke his legs.
'But
if that's the same man,' said Tom.
They broke his legs.
I mean if that's
the same man —'

'What?' said Sharon, waving a beer under
his nose.

'Nothing,'
he said declining the beer. 'Nothing. Look, I'm tired. I'm going to turn in, if
you folks don't mind. I'm not feeling too good.'

He
left Ahmed and Sharon talking in the lounge and undressed in the bedroom. He
was shivering violently, and suddenly he felt very cold, as if he had a fever.
He pulled the thin sheets over his shoulders and curled up. With the sound of
Ahmed's voice murmuring from the lounge, he fell asleep.

47

When he woke up, Tom
felt cold. The wind howled outside the window and shrieked in the branches of
the ash tree across the road. He sat up, casting wildly around the room. The
body next to him shifted. Katie blinked up out of her sleep. He was at home. He
was in England. Katie was in bed next to him, snuggling after his warmth.

'What
is it?' Katie murmured. Sleep pasted her eyes half shut. She exuded comforting,
human smells of slumber and sleeper's breath.

'Katie. Katie.'

'What's wrong?'

He
got out of bed and crossed to the window, tearing open the curtain. The verdant
treetops outside were taking a buffeting. The street was wet. Grey slate tiles on
the houses opposite glistened with slick rain. Raindrops stippled the window
pane.

Katie
struggled upright in bed, her face engraved with concern.

'Katie, I had this
dream. You wouldn't believe the dream I had. Come here, let me hold you. You
were dead. You were killed by a falling tree. And I was in Jerusalem with
Sharon. And you were haunting me. And Mary Magdalene was haunting me. Oh,
Katie!'

'It's all right. I'm
here. I'm here.'

 'I can't tell you
the half of it.'

'Were you upset? Upset because I was
dead?'

'I was falling apart. In Jerusalem. It was
all so vivid.'

'I'm
going to make some coffee.' She pulled a dressing gown on. 'Perhaps it was a
sign.'

'A
sign?'

'Jerusalem.
Mary Magdalene. Maybe you should come to church with me for a change.'

'Church?
What? Yes, maybe I will. Maybe I will. I feel so strange.'

Her eyes lit
up. 'Really? You will? Hey, something must have got into you.'

He
heard her padding downstairs, the sound of the kettle filling, crockery lifted
from a wall cupboard: familiar, domestic sounds.

He
looked out of the window again. He could taste the moisture in the atmosphere
contrasted with the aridity of his dream. Traffic hissing along the wet road
was light. The
unpeopled
streets spelled out Sunday.
Wind whistled round the house.

Along the
street came the boy delivering-newspapers. He was reading a comic as he walked,
following his route automatically, dipping a careless hand in his paper bag. It
was all wonderfully banal and reassuring. Tom heard the newspaper inserted
through the letterbox, dropping on the mat. He flexed his toes in the deep pile
of the bedroom carpet before pulling on a bathrobe and shuffling downstairs.

He flipped
open the Sunday newspapers. There was something wrong with the front page. The
masthead was unreadable. The banner headline was written in a foreign script,
something like the Hebrew lettering from his dream. Then Katie came up behind
him, snatching the paper from his hand. She opened the door and summoned back
the paper boy.

'Try to look
at what you're giving us,' she said with a stiff smile, handing the journal
back to him.

The
boy coloured. 'Sorry,' he tried. He fished in his bag and brought out their
usual Sunday paper wedged with supplements.

Tom checked
the date. It was 30 October: in the dream, the date his wife had died.

He nudged
open the door of the lounge. The curtains were still closed. An unfinished
bottle of red wine stood on the coffee table; wine dregs solidified in the two
crystal glasses. Slumping into a chair, he held his head in his hands. He felt
like he'd been dreaming for months; his mind was still awash. He felt slightly
feverish. Fragments of the dream began to swim back to him. An Arab. A Jewish
woman. Something about a scroll in a spiral shape.

'Are you all
right, Tom?' Katie was standing over him with coffee, wisps of steam coiling
from the mugs.

'Yes. Yes, I'm -'

'Did you
mean what you said about coming to church with me?'

He
shook his head. 'I can't. I've arranged to see someone. I can't get out of it.'
The words tumbled out before any thought, almost as if scripted. It was what he
said to her most Sunday mornings. It had become a reflex. The disappointment in
her face was unbearable.

'For a
moment I thought you meant it,' she said, getting up to draw the curtains.

Tom had a momentary
horror of what he might see when she flicked back the curtains. It was with
some relief that their tiny rose garden and patio looked unchanged and that
the redbrick wall at the rear stood unchallenged. 'Wait. I've changed my mind.
I will come.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really.'

It was the weight of the
dream, in which she had died. He'd dreamed that she'd died on her way back from
church that very day, the 30th of October. A storm had caused a tree to topple
on to her car. Even though it was only a dream, he couldn't stand to let her go
out alone. He would go with her and divert the return journey. It was true that
he had an appointment; but he would have to deal with that later.

In
the dream he'd been responsible for Katie's death. He'd inflicted a thousand
tiny wounds on her. She'd felt his love for her begin to dwindle, and from that
moment on her own death was imminent. It was a double-death. When love died,
she died. Katie had willed it. 'I'd die without your love,' she used to say.
She'd meant every word of it.

In
the dream he had had a tattoo on his leg, Katie's name on a backdrop of vivid
colour. He inspected his ankle. There was no tattoo.

The gale was
gathering strength as they drove out of the city towards the Church of Mary
Magdalene in the country. Trees were bent at acute angles, like survivors of
some catastrophe still trying to shield themselves from the wind. Snapped
branches and leafy twigs littered the road. Few other cars seemed to have
ventured out.