Requiem (23 page)

'Oh, him. How is he? Do you see him?'

'He's much the same.'

'All
the trouble he caused us. It was after him I made this place only for women.
Still, you did a good job on him.'

'I wonder.’

'What are you going to do about Tom? Can't
you get him to talk?'

'God, have I
tried! I know there's something there, but trying to fetch it out . . . It's
like trying to pull a big dog through a gold ring.'

'Yes.'
Tobie
beamed. 'Through his wedding ring,
darlink
!’

Sometimes Sharon wanted to kill
Tobie
.

That evening Sharon recounted
to Tom what had happened. She was building up carefully to the revelation
about Katie's voice. She wanted to use it to get him, finally, to talk to her.

'Christina
told me some kind of story. It was all to do with Jesus Christ on the Cross.’

'It was a set-up,' Tom blurted out.

'What? What did you say?'

Tom looked
confused. 'I don't know why I said that. It just came out.'

'What did you mean by a
"set-up"?'

Tom averted his eyes.

'Talk to me Tom. Talk to me or else.'

'I can't explain.'

'Just bloody well try.'

'The
voice in my head. I told you, it started when I came to Jerusalem. It just kept
sounding in my head, like a tape left running. The woman's voice. Then the
identity of the woman seemed to change. It would come on at me like a daydream,
or in those moments just before falling asleep. I am the tongue, it said. But
now it's gone. It stopped a few days ago, immediately after we'd made love for
the first time. It was trying to tell me a story, a different version of the
Crucifixion. It was a setup. They knew the Scriptures. They arranged for Jesus
to fulfil all the prophecies to convince the people he was the Messiah. It was
all rigged. But they didn't mean for him to die at all. I don't know. What do
you want me to say?'

'It's OK, Tom. Just tell me everything.'

'Anyway
it stopped. Suddenly. After we made love, the voice stopped, and I thought it
had gone. But the phantom came back. Remember that night you came back from work
and found me screaming? I thought I'd been with you. But it was someone -
something
—
else.'

'Did
the story involve the breaking of Jesus' legs while he was on the Cross?'

'No. Why do you ask that?'

'Because
a client at the centre said something about it. Even though she was pretty
incoherent, she kept telling me that they broke his legs, and that it killed
him.'

'Without the
support of your legs, your own weight on your lungs would asphyxiate you. I
heard someone talking about it. They did it to shorten the suffering.'

'Or to kill someone who wasn't supposed to
die?'

'Yes, I
suppose that would follow, too. But it specifically says in the Bible that
they didn't break his legs. What has all of this got to do with me, Sharon? Why
is all this stuff coming to
me?'

It
was time to tell him. 'Tom, I think there's another voice behind the one you
were hearing.'

'So what are you saying?'

'Tom
-' But Sharon didn't get the opportunity to say what she had in mind. The telephone
rang. For a moment she wanted to ignore it, but she got up to answer.

'Yes?
Oh? Yes. Right. Uh-huh. Yes. Is it? Uh-huh.' She replaced the receiver with a
soft click. 'That was Ahmed. He  sounded  quite excited.  Seems
he's been doing some work on that scroll of yours. He wants us to go over to
his place.'

'Right now?'

'Yes.' She sighed. 'Right now.'

38

'You should know I
worked all through the night on your dreadful scroll. I'll be honest with you;
I didn't want to touch it. But I was being plagued by the
djinn
,
and I thought several hours of scholarship might keep them away.'

Ahmed, it
was true, looked like a man who hadn't slept for the last twenty-four hours.
His living quarters were unusually untidy. His desk was piled high with
reference books and scholarly tomes. The scroll lay on the table in a ring of
light under an Angle poise lamp.

But while
his features were exhausted, his mouth was animated. He smoothed his silky
black moustache as he spoke. 'Then what do I find? This blasted scroll of yours
is infested with the
djinn
.
Infested!
They crawl all over the thing, sucking at it, feeding on it. And every time I
translate something the
djinn
change
it. I blink, look at it again, and it's something different.'

'Ahmed, stop bull-shitting. Tell us what
it says!'

'Bull-shit?'
The Arab wagged an elegant brown finger at Tom but spoke angrily to Sharon.
'Ask him! Ask your English lover! He knows! He knows it's not bull-shit!' Then
he turned to Tom and very sweetly, formally, offered mint tea.

'Give him a
beer,' Sharon roared. 'He'd much rather have a beer than your bloody awful
tea.'

'She knows I am Muslim. I don't drink
beer.'

Sharon leapt
from her cushion and went to a fridge draped with another Palestinian chequered
scarf. She held open the door, exhibiting a rack of
Maccabee
beers.She
took out, and uncapped, three bottles.
'He's a mean bastard.'

'I love
you,' Ahmed told her, accepting one of his own beers. 'Come and live with me.
Be my love.'

'I
was talking about you to
Tobie
. She sends her
greetings.'

'That
awful woman,' Ahmed told Tom. 'She nearly killed me with all her questions.'

'She saved his life,' put in Sharon.

'I'd rather
spend a night tormented by a thousand
djinn
than have to face that woman again. Please say her greetings are not
returned.'

'Tell us about the scroll, Ahmed!'

'The
scroll, yes. Did I tell you I worked all night on the thing? I hope you
appreciate it. First, Tom, tell me about the man who gave it to you. Do you think
he appreciated the fact that he had something very important?'

'Undoubtedly.
He was very paranoid. Thought all sorts of people were trying to take it away
from him. But since it passed to me I've had this notion I'm being followed
around.'

'You
may be correct. At first sight the scroll looks like it was written by Jesus
Christ himself.'

'What?' Tom and Sharon said together.

'I said "at first
sight". The author of the scroll introduces a family lineage which is
unmistakably that of Jesus. His father was Joseph the
Essene
,
his grandfather was Jacob-
Heli
and so on back through
the line to King David. (Excuse me: I assume we're mature enough to discount
notions of a virgin birth.) So at first I thought I was dealing with a
manuscript written by your Messiah. Can you imagine my excitement? Remember, in
Islam we count him among the prophets: I had to leave off smoking for an hour
to clear my head.'

'But it turned out not
to have been written by Jesus?' asked Sharon.

'No.
It became apparent that this lineage was declared through marriage. Don't be
surprised. It's quite likely that Jesus was married. The Christian Church has
always expunged it from the Bible, but the evidence is in the Apocrypha; and
since Jesus was a rabbi, it would have been very strange if he were not
married.'

'The Magdalene,' whispered Tom.

'Mary
Magdalene,' said Ahmed. 'I believe so. But though the author of the scroll is a
woman, she doesn't name herself.'

'Go on.'

'Do you recall that Jesus also had a
brother?'

'James,'
said Tom. 'The Bible mentions that he had a brother called James.'

'Quite. But
whoever wrote this document appears at first to be an enemy of James. She
doesn't refer to him by name, and neither does she speak respectfully of him.
She refers to this unnamed brother as the "Difficulty" and the
"Ambiguity". Now I must be careful in my interpretation of the text
because everything is written in a kind of code. It seems that the author made
a fragile alliance with this "Difficulty", i.e. James, against an
enemy to whom she continually refers to as "Liar" or "Teacher of
Lies". They were involved in a power struggle over a religious cult.

'All this talk of
"Liars" and the "Enemy" and the "Righteous One"
can drive you crazy because you don't know who they're talking about, and it
keeps changing depending on whether they're talking about the past or the
future. Plus in ancient Hebrew you don’t know if you're reading "the
Teacher killed him" or "he killed the Teacher". You have to
interpret. Let me read you something I translated, smoothed over for clarity.'

Moving to his desk Ahmed
found a piece of paper on which there were numerous scored lines and
overwriting. He read:
When the glory of the fig-Truth within the Lie had
failed, the Righteous Teacher's brother joined with the Lying Tongue and the
factions of East and West were united against all. The Liar and his brother
came to me outside the tomb. But I did not recognize him. Because he had joined
with the Lying
Tongue, who had given the
order to break his limbs. All the fig-
prophecies had been watered. Each
plant root. 'But not the fulfilment.

Tom
shivered. 'Mary Magdalene. The scene in the garden, outside the tomb, where she
fails to recognize the resurrected Christ.'

'The
fig,' said Ahmed 'is a tree that has to be planted generations before it will
bear fruit. Only later generations can benefit. This refers to the maturing of
certain prophecies. The author of the scroll was party to an attempt by a
religious sect to make the prophecies happen. She was married to the central
figure.'

'What figure?' said Sharon. 'Which
prophecies?'

'It's all in
the Old Testament Scriptures. The Suffering Servant. The Prince of the
Congregation. The Healer. The Messiah, mounted on an ass. Listen to this:
'The
Skarri
, who helped along the Magus plan, killed
himself in grief. The Council of Twelve dissolved in faction. I refused
consort with the Pharisee who had executed the
Righteous Teacher.
My husband. My Teacher. My life.

'It's
not clear,' said Ahmed, 'but some great plan to fulfil the prophecies went
horribly wrong. The scheme was thwarted, bungled even, and the Teacher of Righteousness
was put to death. Then the man who I think is James, plus this other man the
"Enemy", the "Liar of Jerusalem", joined forces and tried,
but failed, to recruit the author of this scroll into a new movement.'

'Yes,'
said Tom, getting up and going to the table. He picked up the scroll. 'They
broke his legs while he was on the Cross. He wasn't going to die at all. He
would have survived and then returned as if from the dead.'

'You're
running ahead of me,' said Ahmed, 'but that's what is suggested in this scroll
of yours. Remember Lazarus? That was the dry run. He took some drug, some snake
poison, which simulated death. All they had to do was keep him alive until they
could purge the poison. There is a reference in the scroll to aloes and myrrh.
Juice of aloes is a strong purgative. Myrrh softens and relaxes the passage.'

Tom
waved the scroll under Sharon's nose. 'Now tell me it's all in my head. Now
tell me I'm hallucinating. Now tell me it's only guilt and if I talk about it,
it'll all go away. Here it is, written here! It's all written here! How could I
have known that? How could I have known?'

'You don't know anything,' said Sharon.

'I know
this: he wasn't meant to die at all. They had to make sure his legs weren't
broken as a Roman act of mercy. They failed. They made a bid for power, and
they bungled it. It went wrong. That's all it was, and it went wrong!' '

'Calm
yourself,' Ahmed protested. 'You're getting too excited. You are frightening
poor old Ahmed. Sit. Have a beer. Smoke something. Only be calm.' Tom put the
scroll back on the table and returned to his cushion, where he sat with his
head in his hands. 'That's better,' Ahmed said. 'Now tell me how you know all
these things.'

Tom
looked into Ahmed's velvet eyes. 'The
djinn
told me.'

39

'How come,' said Sharon, 'you
and Katie never had children?' They were drinking
Maccabees
at the Cafe
Akrai
, pretending to watch passing
pedestrians.

Tom took a slug of beer. 'How come you
didn't?'

She placed a
hand on his forearm. 'No. That's not how it works. I ask you a question, and
you answer open and honestly, with no trace of defensiveness. Almost as if I was
a friend.'

He
looked from the hand on his arm to her upturned face. Her lips were clamped
together, and her eyes were glistening with what might have been a growing
anger. If she was angry, he didn't blame her. She was implicated. His mind
flashed back to the moments before they'd left Ahmed's apartment.