He stares at me with a much more distant expression, as if puzzled that I should ask.
‘Dead animals on the road. Opossums, hedgehogs. Dead flies’—and he holds up his hand, spread out flat in midair—‘stuck in cobwebs.’
For security against any outside threat we have locked and barred all exits and entrances. We occupy a suite of rooms on the eighth floor. The corridor door can be locked, and there is a press-button locking mechanism on the connecting door between our two bedrooms. I realise that we would both like to close and lock this door, but for either of us to do so would be such a significant action that it can’t be done. I try to stay awake. The silence tightens. Then slackens. Sleep is as treacherous as ever.
She turns suddenly and looks at me as I hold the door of the black car open after the slow walk down the gravel path from the edge of the oblong pit. The earth has battered down on the wooden lid. To earth. She knows beyond my face. Everything. Ashes. The look warns against touching her. She is driven away. Cases are packed, boxes filled, papers signed, it will all go. An empty house. Dust.
In dreams different times in the same place melt into each other.
The stones by the church, in the churchyard, are upright in waves of grass, the wind rushing over the grass, and I can see their ages and names, and think how the names planned to get here. Enormous journeys, faces set hard; strange expectations at the end. The stones have grown yellow and grey with tissues of lichen like dry brains covering their letters. Everlasting Peace. Dearly beloved. Arms of the Lord. A glorious awakening.
I am dissecting tissues and cellular structures, finding the motives and impulses inside the smallest items of life, pulling apart the micro-secrets. Billions of these build into illusions of free will. Coded protein chains transmit memories and instincts. Nerve chemicals form commands inside muscles, enough to make a hand move back, a head turn, an arm go still. I shall discover the source of all this, expose it for what it is. Faces whitened by fluorescent lights inside rooms with no windows or way out will stare with the recognition of my discovery.
We may be on the verge of a breakthrough. He pushes his steel-rimmed spectacles back with the forefinger, smiling, the dentures glistening more than the real teeth. Well, he says, the last thing people want to know is that everything is decided for them by influences they can’t control. Or know damn all about. Can’t hope to understand. They don’t want that. We find out the truth because we don’t have any choice. Nothing else works, empirically. I sometimes wonder what we could do if we gave them what they really want out there. Illusion. Very powerful. The alchemists had the right idea. They dealt in both.
That was because they never knew the difference, I say; and the lips unwrap the shining teeth again.
He is walking away along the white corridor and I have not said what I have to say. The words choke back. There are questions. Terrible, overwhelming problems. My resources had proved inadequate. Why didn’t I make it clear? I had reached the most adverse conclusion. He goes away as if he half-knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘Is it?’ I count the days. ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
He leans against the doorjamb, his arms folded, holding a black book. We are about to go upstairs and make breakfast. No eggs, no bread, no milk. I am tying my shoelaces.
‘They put these in all the rooms.’ He waves the Gideon Bible. ‘I was thinking about, er…you know.’
‘About what?’
‘Aw… I thought I might go to, you know, to a church.’
I stop and look up at him.
‘Oh.’
‘Couldn’t do any harm, eh?’
‘Or good.’ My head is down again.
‘What?’ A pause. ‘You never know.’
‘What will you do?’ I ask.
‘Well… sort of… pray, I s’pose. Dunno really. I just thought…’ He sighs, looks at the cover of the Bible, embarrassed. ‘We were always bein’ packed off to church when we were kids. It gets to you after a while. ‘Course, it’s years since I went.’
I stand up.
‘What did you do last Sunday?’
‘There’s a church at Waiouru. I went in for a while.’
‘You don’t have to go to a church to pray, do you?’
‘No. S’pose not. Seems right, though.’
‘I don’t have any religious beliefs.’ I say this rather formally, uncertain about the areas we are moving into.
There is a pause; then he says, ‘We were Methodists.’
‘Well… if you want to, then…’ and I shrug.
We go out of the room into the corridor, and begin to climb the stairs to the dining room. He brings his Sten gun, holding it pointing down. He climbs in silence.
‘What will you pray for?’ I ask, momentarily reckless, as we enter the dining room and see the early morning sun streaming in on the littered plates and empty bottles from the evening meal; ‘that everyone will come back?’
He glances at me with a slightly puzzled expression.
‘That nothing bad’s going to happen. That it’ll all work out. And… we’ll be… you know, okay. We’ll be saved.’
I stare out at the bright day, the silence rampant like a dead animal on heat, the harbour water flaring into an incendiary light pinching my eyelids almost shut. He speaks casually as he clears the table, stuffing bottles and remnants into a metal waste bin. The word ‘saved’ has no special inflection. Should it have? What does it mean? When he says it, what image in his mind does it connect to?
It had not occurred to me that we might be ‘saved’. I thought we already had been.
Having agreed that we should stay fairly close together, I have to accompany him in his search for a church. The idea that Sunday is a special day does exert a curious pressure, powerfully reinforced by the deserted streets and closed shops. It seems hard to avoid talking in whispers.
But the expedition becomes farcical. The first church is Roman Catholic, and Apirana tells me to drive on. We are in my car with the windows rolled down. The sun is hot. He is wearing dark trousers, black shoes and a white shirt. I presume this is part of his civilian clothing. His sleeves are rolled up to reveal a tattoo on his left forearm. He props his left arm out of the car window and keeps tapping the outside of the roof or door with his fingers, betraying irritation, probably wishing he’d never suggested this expedition, wanting to find a church and get the ludicrous business over and done with. I hide behind dark glasses and an indifferent expression, as neutral as possible, easy for me to maintain. But he misinterprets this. It adds to his irritation.
We locate an Anglican church and he decides it will do. I wait in the car. He gets out and goes up the steps. Of course the doors are locked. It is still really 6.12 am on a Saturday. He comes back, sweating, gets in the car, slams the door.
‘Could break in, but it wouldn’t be right,’ he says.
‘If you like,’ I suggest tonelessly, ‘I’ll break in. It’s all the same to me.’
He goes tight-lipped. I try to think of some way I can safely disarm any vague religious notions he might have about what has happened. They can only be dangerous. He is already very tense. I suppose Bibles have a bad effect on weak-minded people. And churches act like echo chambers on psychotics.