Peter raised the beaker to his face again. He was struggling to remain awake. ‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘I think it’s based on a misreading of Scripture . . . ’
‘Well, this project here,’ declared Tartaglione, imperious in contempt, ‘is sorta like the Rapture by committee. Rapture Incorporated. The Department of Rapture. Worried about the state of the world? Your hometown’s just been flattened by a hurricane? Your kids’ school is full of gangsters and pushers? Your mama just died in her own merda while the nurses were busy divvying up the morphine? No gas for your car and the shops are looking kinda zen? Lights have gone off and the toilet doesn’t flush anymore? Future’s looking distinctly caca? Hey, non dispera! There is a way out. Come to beautiful Oasis. No crime, no madness, no bad stuff of any kind, a brand new home, home on the range, no deer or antelope but hey, accentuate the positive, there never is heard a discouraging word, nobody rapes you or tries to reminisce about Paris in the springtime, no sense sniffing that old vomit, right? Cut the strings, blank the slate, let go of Auschwitz and the Alamo and the . . . the fucking Egyptians for God’s sake, who needs it, who cares, focus on tomorrow. Onward and upward. Come to beautiful Oasis. Everything’s sustainable, everything works. Everything’s laid out and ready. All it lacks is you.’
‘But . . . who is it for? Who’s going to come?’
‘Aha!’ Tartaglione was in an ecstasy of derision by now. ‘That’s the five-billion-ruble question, isn’t it? Who’s gonna come . . . Who’s gonna come. Muy interesante! Can’t have vipers in the nest, can we? Can’t have crazies and parasites and saboteurs. Only nice, well-adjusted folks need apply. Except – get this – you’ll need to pay your fare. I mean, there’s a time for planting and a time for reaping, right? USIC can’t invest for ever; time to cash in. So who’s gonna come? The poor schlub who works in the 7-Eleven? I don’t think so. USIC’s gonna have to take the filthy-rich folks – but not the assholes and the prima donnas, no no no, the nice ones with the salt-of-the-earth values. Multi-millionaires who give up their seat on the bus. Tycoons who are happy to hand-wash their T-shirts ’cause, you know, they wouldn’t want to waste electricity. Yeah, I can see it now. Step right up, book early for fucking Raptureland.’
Peter’s brain was closing down, but as he began to drift towards oblivion he recalled the clean corridors of the USIC medical centre, the surgical equipment still shrouded in plastic wrapping, the yellow-painted room littered with boxes marked NEO-NATAL.
‘But when . . . when is this supposed to happen?’
‘Any day now! Never! Who fucking knows?’ yelled Tartaglione. ‘Soon as they build a baseball stadium? Soon as they’ve figured out how to make pistachio ice-cream out of toenail clippings? Soon as they grow a daffodil? Soon as Los Angeles slides into the Pacific? Search me. Would you want to live here?’
Peter imagined himself sitting cross-legged near his church, with the Jesus Lovers gathered around him, all of them holding their woven Bible booklets open at a parable. The afternoon was going on and on indefinitely, everyone was lambent with sunlight, and Lover Five was bringing a food offering to the newest arrival in their community – Bea, wife of Father Pe???er, seated at his side. ‘I . . . it would depend . . . ’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful place.’
The room fell silent. After a while, Tartaglione’s breathing grew louder and more rhythmic, until Peter realised he was saying ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh,’ over and over. Then, in a voice thick with disdain, he added, ‘Beautiful. I see.’
Peter was too tired to argue. He knew there were no rainforests here, no mountains, no waterfalls, no exquisitely sculpted gardens, no breathtaking cityscapes, Gothic cathedrals, medieval castles, flocks of geese, giraffes, snow leopards, whatever, all those animals whose names he couldn’t recall, all those tourist destinations he’d seen other people so hungry to visit, all the attractions of the earthly life that he had, quite frankly, never lived. The glory of Prague to him was nothing more than a dim memory of a photograph; flamingos were just film footage; he’d been nowhere; he’d seen nothing; Oasis was the first place he’d ever allowed himself to bond with. The first place he’d ever loved.
‘Yes, beautiful,’ he sighed.
‘You are out of your mind, padre,’ said Tartaglione. ‘Deee-ranged. Loco-loco-loco. This place is beautiful like the grave, beautiful like maggots. The air is full of voices, have you noticed that? Worms in your ears, they burrow right in, they pretend to be just oxygen and moisture but they’re more than that, they’re more than that. Switch off the car engine, switch off your conversation, switch off Bing fucking Crosby, and what do you hear, instead of silence? The voices, man. They never let up, they’re a liquid, a liquid language, going whisper-whisper-whisper, in your ear canals, down your throat, up your ass. Hey! Are you falling asleep? Don’t die on me, amigo, it’s a long night and I could use the company.’
The pungent odour of Tartaglione’s loneliness dispelled some of the fog in Peter’s brain. He thought of a question he should have asked before, a question that would no doubt have occurred to Bea immediately. ‘Is Kurtzberg here?’
‘What?’ The linguist was jolted off course, yanked from the slipstream of his ranting.
‘Kurtzberg. Is he living here too? With you?’
There was a full minute of silence. ‘We had a falling out,’ said the linguist at last. ‘You might say it was . . . a philosophical disagreement.’
Peter couldn’t speak anymore, but uttered a noise of incomprehension.
‘It was about the ?????,’ Tartaglione explained. ‘Those creepy, insipid, dickless, ass-licking little pastel-coloured vermin.’ A slurp of the beaker, a glug of the gullet. ‘He loved them.’
More time passed. The air whispered softly, making its endless reconnaissance of the boundaries and emptinesses in the room, testing the ceiling, prodding the joins of the walls, brushing the floor, measuring bodies, combing hair, licking skin. Two men breathed, one of them strenuously, one of them barely at all. It seemed that the linguist had said all he was going to say, and was now lost in his own stoic despair.
‘Plus,’ he added, in the final moments before Peter lost consciousness, ‘I cannot stand a guy who won’t have a drink with you.’