Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery (12 page)

'When I was growing up in South Africa,' continued the Reverend Roberts inside the church, 'back in Duduza, it was
really
possible at night to be in the dark, completely, for there to be no lights, none at all for as far as the eye could see, no light except for the light of the moon itself. And on a moonlit night my brothers and I would play outside with our friends, lit by the stars and by the constellations and the planets, more than any human eye can count, illuminated by the glories of the universe.
But
on a night when the clouds covered the moon, in that deep darkness we would stay together indoors, staying together for warmth, and also for comfort, to keep us from the dark and the threat of the dark. For the darkness of the night, that darkness is a profound darkness, a darkness that many of us know in our hearts. We know that darkness as the darkness of doubt, perhaps, or as the darkness of depression, of unforgiveness, of shame, and of grief.'

Israel shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was thinking about
Heart of Darkness
. He'd done a post-colonial theory module in the last year of his degree and had never quite got to grips with it. It had let him down in his final mark; it had taken him most of the term just to read
Culture and Imperialism
.

'There are, I'm sure, many among us who will have had that exact same experience of Mary's,' continued the Reverend Roberts, 'of visiting the grave of a loved one, in desolation and in despair. We know–do we not?–we know what it is like to grieve. We know what it is like to have that heaviness in our hearts, to wish to be close to those whom we have loved, and who have loved us.'

Israel coughed and pushed his glasses up high onto his forehead. He had the beginnings of a headache. He wasn't accustomed to Christian services–the language, the clothes were completely alien to him. He'd been to a few Christian weddings, of course, but they'd all been sedate Church of England affairs, attended mostly by other people of his own age who didn't seem to have a clue what was going on either–including, sometimes, the bride and groom. At his friend John's wedding a few years back he'd been best man, but his only actual responsibility in the church had been to look smart and keep out of the way. So this was really a first for him, to be in the thick of it, in among the Protestant natives. The Reverend Roberts had invited him because it was ecumenical, he said, though Israel was unsure exactly how far Tumdrum's ecumenism extended: there were no Sikhs, for example, in the church, as far as he could tell, and no Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Baha'i, or Zoroastrians either, if it's possible to tell a Zoroastrian from a distance, which it may not be; Israel's grasp of comparative religions was almost as shaky as his grasp on his own. Tumdrum's ecumenism seemed merely to extend to all elderly men, no matter which shade of brown, grey or black machine-washable suit they chose to wear, and to all elderly women, regardless of their style or colour of hat.

It was certainly quite a service: Israel had never experienced anything quite like it; it was difficult to tell whether it was a show, or a stand-up comedy routine, or a guided meditation; it seemed to be all of them at once, which was good value, if nothing else; and the ecumenical aspect meant that you got four vicars for the price of one. The service had begun with notices read out by one man in a dog collar–a nice old man with yellow teeth and a neatly trimmed beard–and then they'd sung a hymn, 'Amazing Grace', introduced by another man in a dog collar, though without a beard, and Israel was surprised to find that he knew both the tune and the words of the hymn: 'Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come'. Then some teenagers had done a little sketch about a man and a camel getting through the eye of a needle, which Israel couldn't follow at all; it was like something you'd expect from a troupe of French surrealists. And then there was another hymn, some soupy kind of a thing that he'd never heard of, followed by what was billed as a time of praise and worship, led by yet another man in a dog collar, a little fat man with a shiny face, during which segment of the show the congregation simply repeated the words 'Alleluia', 'How I love Him', 'Blessed Jesus', 'My Redeemer' and 'Jesus is Lord' dozens and dozens of times. At which point Israel had begun to speculate whether the Reverend Roberts was involved in some sort of weird cult.

'"She saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance,"' continued the reverend, who'd been awarded the honour of the actual address; Israel wondered if all the vicars had drawn lots. The reverend was now roaming with the microphone at the front of the church, wandering up and down, holding the Bible lightly in his huge hands, like you might hold half of a limp sandwich, and he gestured dramatically behind him, to the front of the church, where there was a vast…thing. It was scenery: like something from an amateur dramatic production of
The Flintstones.
Someone had obviously spent a lot of time with a lot of cardboard, struts and supports and a lot of grey paint. The reverend was pointing to a vast cardboard/papier-mâché stone kind of a thing that was propped against a vast cardboard/papier-mâché tomb kind of a thing, which was at least ten foot wide by ten foot tall; just getting it into the church was nothing short of a miracle.

'"She saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance, and ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved." Note that,' said the reverend, '"The one whom Jesus loved". What was Jesus's meaning? What was His message? That was it. What did He show us? Love. Why did He go through this for us? For love.'

Israel was doing his best to concentrate on the reverend's story-telling and drama but he kept drifting off. He was thinking about Gloria. Did he love her? He did. He definitely did. They'd met in their last year at college; Gloria was an English student, just like him, and she was funny and smart, she drank pints and didn't mind just a bag of chips for dinner, and she'd read every book by Margaret Atwood, and so had he. They'd gone out together for years and eventually it had just seemed simpler and easier to move in together, so they did, and it was only then that their lives had started to go in different directions: Gloria's towards Sebastian Faulks, and a law conversion course and weekends in Paris and fancy restaurants, and Israel's towards the Discount Book Shop in the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock in Essex. They'd changed. But they'd learned to compromise. Gloria's favourite film, for example–by far–was
Four Weddings and a Funeral
; his was Fellini's
La Strada
. So they'd learned to compromise on American mid-market drama and adventure at the cinema, and eventually Israel had found himself enjoying this junk, becoming addicted to it almost, savouring every last morsel of sugar-puffed dialogue and absurd plot twist and special effect. You can't always eat caviar; you couldn't watch Fellini every day.

'"They have taken the Lord out of his tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,'" recited the Reverend Roberts. 'This is Mary, still lost in ignorance. Mary, who does not yet know God's secret wisdom, which is hidden from mankind, but which He had already chosen for our glory even before the world was made.'

Israel was now thinking about Pesach: they'd never really bothered with a seder meal at home; his mother had made half-hearted attempts to keep it going over the years, but none of them was really interested, and so they'd lost it, the four questions and the roasted egg dipped in salt water; all the rituals had been abandoned, and along with them about four thousand years of Jewish history; they exchanged Easter eggs instead. He remembered having an argument with his mother when he was in his early teens, a blazing row, and saying that he was happy to participate in her stupid meal as long as they didn't have to mention God, the Jewish people, or Israel, because he couldn't care less about any of them. His mother had gone as red as a beet borscht and sworn at him and raised her fists at him and called him a self-hating Jew. At the time he had no idea what that was; he'd had to ask his father, who was an atheist Catholic Irishman but an honorary Jew, just by virtue of having married Israel's mother, and his father had said that, as far as he understood it, the entire Bible was the unfolding story of self-hating Jews, and so Israel should take it as a compliment: 'Moses, St Paul, Sigmund Freud, Woody Allen,' said his dad. 'Relax! You're in good company!'

'"So Peter and the other set out and made their way to the tomb,"' continued the reverend. '"They were running side by side, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first." They are racing to seek the truth about the Lord whom they love,' he glossed. 'They cannot wait. You will know, perhaps, the film
Chariots of Fire
, the story of the great athletes Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams and their desire to run after the prize. "He peered in"'–and at this point the Reverend Roberts himself peered in behind the cardboard tomb–'"and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but did not enter."' The reverend lifted up what looked like bath towels from the floor.

'"Then Simon Peter came up, following him, and he went into the tomb." It doesn't tell us, brothers and sisters, but I believe that Simon Peter would have
rushed
into the tomb! I don't think he would have walked in! He would have run!'

The Reverend Roberts had one arm raised aloft.

Israel could sense the excitement among the congregation; the story seemed to be reaching its conclusion.

'"He saw the linen wrappings lying, and the napkin which had been over his head, not lying with the wrappings but rolled together in a place by itself." He knows that something's not right here. Something has gone wrong,' said the reverend, speaking quietly now.

'"Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first went in too"–he has plucked up the courage now, he is prepared–and he saw, "and believed" is what the Scriptures tell us, brothers and sisters. He
believed
,
instantly
that he had seen. "Until then they had not understood the scriptures, which showed that he must rise from the dead."'

'Now
this
is the message of Easter,' said the reverend, his voice rising. 'The empty tomb, my friends! This is the day that death died. This is the heart of the matter for us as believers, as Christians. If it is true–and we believe it is true–then we can be sure that God exists. With this, doubt vanishes! Through the resurrection Jesus demonstrates that He was who He proclaimed himself to be: the Way, the Truth, the Life. This is the very heart of what we believe.'

There was a quiet murmuring of assent from all around.

Israel was beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable.

The reverend had been standing in the mouth of the huge cardboard tomb as he spoke, and he then stepped back and pulled the papier-mâché boulder across the entrance.

There was silence for a moment in the church. Then, suddenly, the boulder rolled forward from the tomb's entrance, down a few steps and down the central aisle of the church, and the cardboard tomb started to topple forward and people in the congregation began to stand up in shock.

The man in the crackling polyester suit moved forward, but too late: the cardboard tomb fell down flat, making a noise like a stable door shutting.

'Holy fuck!' cried one shocked and unholy congregant, who was loudly and violently shushed, but who clearly expressed what everyone else was thinking.

For there at the front of the church was revealed: nothing.

The Reverend Roberts had disappeared.

Israel was stunned. He'd never seen anything like it in his life.

The organist kicked in with 'Now Let the Vault of Heaven Resound', and then there were final prayers, and the service came to an abrupt end, followed by an undignified rush towards tea, coffee and biscuits in the church hall out the back, where the Reverend Roberts had now miraculously reappeared and stood surrounded by old ladies in hats and men in grey suits, and he was booming and laughing away like he was the risen Lord Jesus Himself.

Opinions seemed to be sharply divided about Reverend Roberts' vanishing trick.

One man was jabbing his finger at him.

'God is angry with the wicket!' he was saying. 'Angry with the wicket.'

'Unless a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God,' added another man.

'I agree,' said the Reverend Roberts.

'Acts 18!' he was saying loudly at the Reverend Roberts. 'The Christians renounced magic and the demonic arts.'

'It's not magic,' boomed the reverend. 'I—'

'Beware the serpentine foe of compromise with the world,' interrupted the man.

'Abstain from every form of evil,' said the other.

'I shall,' said the Reverend Roberts, who was taking it all in good part.

'1 Thessalonians,' said the man.

'Chapter 5,' said the other.

'Yes,' said the Reverend Roberts. 'Verse 22.'

The two men looked unimpressed.

'How did Jacob deceive Isaac?' one of the men continued.

'"He dressed in Esau's clothes,"' said the other.

'"Cloths",' corrected the Reverend Roberts.

'"Cloths",' continued the man, '"and wore kid skins and brought him savoury meat from two kid goats in order to deceive Isaac."'

'Indeed,' agreed the Reverend Roberts. 'But I was not intending to deceive. It was a demonstration, merely of—'

But the two men had tired of the reverend's justifications and shook their heads and moved away, only to be replaced by other men and women wishing to congratulate and debate with him.

Israel stood quietly eating biscuits–good quality biscuits, actually, maybe bought specially for Easter–and eventually the crowds dispersed and the reverend spied Israel.

'Israel!' he called.

'Yes,' said Israel, going over, not quite sure how you were supposed to greet a minister after a sermon. 'Well done! That was very…entertaining.'

'Ho, ho, ho!' boomed the reverend.

'So, how the hell did you do it?'

'My disappearance?' said the reverend. 'I couldn't possibly tell you. Or I could tell, but then I would have to kill you! Ho, ho, ho! No, seriously though. I'll give you a clue: it can only work here in a Baptist church.'