Joshua is helping me type, as usual: lying between the keyboard and the monitor, his back legs and tail obscuring the top row of keys. People think I’m being pedantic when I write numbers out as words, or type ‘pounds’ instead of ‘￡’, but the fact is that I have to lift up a comatose cat every time I want to use those symbol keys. I did it just now and Joshua made that ‘njurp’ sound that he makes. Last night, he slept right through, didn’t utter a peep (purred a bit). Maybe he’s adjusting to your absence at last. I wish I could! But don’t worry, I’m getting on with things.
The Maldives tragedy has dropped out of the media. There are still small articles on the inner pages of some newspapers, and a few ads placed by charities for donations, but the front pages and the prime-time coverage (as far as I can tell from the clips on my phone) have moved on to other things. An American congressman has just been arrested for shooting his wife. Point-blank range, with a shotgun, in the head, while she was swimming in their private pool with her lover. The newspaper journalists must be so relieved – with the Maldives thing they had to evoke gruesomeness without appearing prurient, whereas with this they can be as gross as they like. The woman’s head was blown off from the jaw up, and her brains (juicy detail!) were floating around in the water. The lover was shot too, in the abdomen (‘possibly aiming for the groin’). Lots of supplementary articles about the congressman, his life history, achievements, college graduation photo, etc. The wife looked (when she still had a head) exactly as you’d expect: glamorous, not quite real.
Mirah and her husband are getting along much better. I met her at the bus stop and she was giggly, almost flirtatious. She didn’t raise the issue of converting to Christianity again, just talked about the weather (it’s been bucketing down again). She only got serious when she talked about the Maldives. Most of the islanders were Sunni Muslims; Mirah’s theory is that they must have displeased Allah by ‘doing bad things with tourists’. A very confused young lady, but I’m glad she’s no longer in crisis and I’ll continue to pray for her. (I’ll pray for your Coretta too.)
Speaking of Muslims, I know they consider it a terrible sin to throw away old or damaged copies of the Qur’an. Well, I’m about to commit a similar sin. You know the big cardboard box of New Testaments we had sitting in the front room? It looks like they’ll have to be dumped. I can imagine this might upset you to hear, given your news about the Oasans being so hungry for the Gospel. But we’ve had some flooding. The rain was ridiculous, it didn’t let up for five hours, full pelt. There were torrents flowing along the footpaths; the drains just aren’t designed to take that kind of volume. It’s all right now, in fact the weather is lovely, but half the houses in our street have suffered damage. In our case, it’s just some patches of sopping-wet carpet, but unfortunately the books were right on one of those patches and it was a while before I realised they’d been soaking up the water. I tried drying them out in front of the heater. Big mistake! Yesterday they were New Testaments, today they’re blocks of wood pulp.
Anyway, not your problem. Hope this reaches you before you set off!
Bea
Peter drew a deep breath, past the lump in his throat. ‘Do I have time to write her a reply?’ he asked.
Grainger smiled. ‘Maybe I should’ve brought a book.’
‘I’ll be quick,’ he promised.
Dear Bea, he wrote, then got stuck. His heart was beating hard, Grainger was waiting, the engine was running. It was impossible.
No time for a proper ‘epistle’ – think of this as a postcard. I’m on my way!
Love,
Peter
‘OK, that’s it,’ he said, after he pressed the button. His words hung on the screen more briefly than usual; the transmission was almost instant. Maybe the open air was conducive to the Shoot’s function, or maybe it had something to do with the small amount of text.
‘Really?’ said Grainger. ‘You’re done?’
‘Yes, I’m done.’
She leaned across him and replaced the Shoot in its slot. He could smell the fresh sweat inside her clothing.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s hit the road.’
They spoke little on the remainder of the drive. They’d discussed the essentials – or agreed not to discuss them further – and neither of them wanted to part on bad terms.
The Oasan settlement was visible a long time before they reached it. In full daylight, it glowed amber in the light of the sun. Not exactly magnificent, but not without beauty either. A church spire would make all the difference.
‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ said Grainger, when they had a mile or so to go.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘You might get sick.’
‘Yes, I might. But I’d be surprised if I died.’
‘What if you really need to come back?’
‘Then the Lord will make it possible for me to come back somehow.’
She chewed on that for a few seconds, as if it were a dry mouthful of bread.
‘The next official USIC visit – our regular trading exchange – is in five days,’ she said, in an efficient, professionally neutral voice. ‘That’s five real days, not days according to your watch. Five cycles of sunrise and sunset. Three hundred . . . ’ (she consulted the clock on the dashboard) ‘ . . . three hundred and sixty-odd hours from now.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. It seemed impolite not to make a note of it, if only on his palm, but he knew perfectly well that he was unable to calculate three hundred and sixty hours into the future, when he’d be sleeping and waking up at various points along the way. He would have to take everything as it came.
At the final approach, C-2 appeared deserted. Their vehicle pulled up at the outermost of the settlement’s buildings, the same place as before, marked with the white star. Except that the building was now marked with something else as well: a large message, freshly painted in white letters three feet tall.
WEL COME
‘Wow,’ said Grainger. ‘Didn’t know they had it in them.’
She stopped the car and flipped open the hatch. Peter got out and fetched his rucksack from the boot, strapping it onto his shoulders so that his arms were free. He wondered what the correct way of taking his leave of Grainger might be: a handshake, a courteous nod, a casual wave, or what.
The crystalline curtain that veiled the nearest doorway sparkled as its trails of beads were brushed aside to allow someone through – a hooded figure, small and solemn. Peter couldn’t tell if it was the same person he’d met before. He remembered the Oasan’s robe as being blue, whereas this one’s was pastel yellow. No sooner had the person stepped out into the light than another person followed him, parting the beads with his delicate gloves. This one’s robe was pale green.
One by one, the Oasans emerged from the building. They were all hooded and gloved, all daintily built, all wearing the same soft leather boots. Their robes were all the same design, but there was scarcely a colour repeated. Pink, mauve, orange, yellow, chestnut, faun, lilac, terracotta, salmon, watermelon, olive, copper, moss, lavender, peach, powder blue . . .
On and on they came, making room for each new arrival, but standing as close together as a family. Within a few minutes, a crowd of seventy or eighty souls had gathered, including smaller creatures who were evidently children. Their faces were mostly obscured, but here and there a whitish-pink swell of flesh peeped out.
Peter gaped back at them, light-headed with exhilaration.
The frontmost of the Oasans turned to face his people, raised his arms high and gave a signal.
‘Amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . . ’ they sang, sweet and high and pure. The vowel floated for five, ten seconds without pause, a grand communal exhalation, sustained so long that Peter interpreted it as an abstract sound, unrelated to language or melody. But then it incorporated a consonant – albeit an unidentifiable one – and shifted in pitch: ‘ . . .??iiiiiiing graaaaaaaa??e! How??weeeeeee??? a ??ouuuuuund tha??? ??aaaaaaaaaaaaved a wreeee? liiiiike meeeeeeeeeee!’
In synchronised obedience to an energetic hand-gesture from the frontmost Oasan, they all stopped at once. There was a huge intake of breath, a seventy-strong sigh. Peter fell to his knees, having only just recognised the hymn: the anthem of fuddy-duddy evangelism, the archetype of Salvation Army naffness, the epitome of everything he had despised when he’d been a young punk snorting lines of speed off piss-stained toilet lids, of everything he dismissed as stupid when he was liable to wake in a pool of congealed vomit, of everything he considered contemptible when he was stealing money from prostitutes’ handbags, of everything he laughed off as worthless when he himself was a toxic waste of space. I once was lost, and now I’m found.
The conductor gestured again. The choir resumed.