Requiem (34 page)

'You
see how quickly they run from our love? From you and me both?'

'I'm sorry.'

'If he says sorry to you, you'll know if
he means it.'

Ahmed hadn't got up to
see her out. She'd hurried away through the Arab quarter and had sat in her car
for half an hour before returning home.

The
answer phone light was still blinking at her. She put down her beer, got up out
of her chair and touched the play button.

'Hi,
Sharon, it's
Tobie
here. Be a sweetheart and come
over here as soon as you can. Your Tom has gone White Cloud.'

52

The Hammering on the
door receded. The voices calling to him quietened. After dragging the cupboard
against the door, he'd stacked chairs and Formica tables in support of it, and
those outside were unable to push their way in. He sat against the wall as the
sound of their battering became distant, almost two thousand years distant.

She sat
quietly against the wall next to him. He hadn't seen her come in. One of her
thin legs was drawn under her, and Tom could see she was wearing nothing under
her white cotton dress. She was perspiring. The white cotton stuck to the buds
of her nipples and clung to the curve of her thigh. Her immature
cunt
was exposed to him, a scented cloud of pink flesh and
fluffy, copper-coloured hair. It was Kelly McGovern. Kelly from his school
class.

Her lips
were parted slightly in an expression of disappointment. 'Why didn't you?'

'Kelly. How did you come to be here?'

'Why didn't you let it happen?'

'Kelly, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

'There's
nothing to be sorry for. It didn't happen, did it? It never happened. It was
all in your head. A schoolteacher's fantasy. I wanted it, but you never let it
happen. That day in the stockroom. Everything in our human nature had brought
us to that moment. But you kissed my hand and sent me away.'

Strange
light enveloped her, grey and gold. 'Sometimes,' said Tom, 'sometimes I think
that was the more serious sin. Sending you away. Was that where it all started
to go wrong?’

'Those
meetings with me. Sunday mornings in the park. You never laid a finger on me.
Do you know what you were doing? Crucifying yourself on your own lust. You
impaled yourself on your fantasies. You even came to believe it yourself. You
had to punish yourself for something you never did.'

'She knew I
wanted you. It killed her. The knowledge killed her.'

'No. You're wrong. It was all in your
head.'

She
placed a hand on his arm. Her touch of cold fire, the smell of her
perspiration, the perfume of her underage sex terrified him. 'I've been trying
to tell you what happened,' she said. 'You've been running away from me. All
this time, I've been trying to tell you. I need you to know.'

He
tried to speak, to beg her to leave him alone, but his tongue dried in his
mouth. The words wouldn't come. She leaned across him, revealing her tiny breasts
where the damp cotton dress fell from her shoulders. Her left breast bore the
tattoo of the bleeding-heart rose. He reached out to trace the tattoo on her
skin, but when he put his hand to her breast he found a living rose in his
hand. His finger pricked on a hidden thorn. Three tiny beads of blood bubbled
on his finger.

Instinctively
he put the speckles of blood to his mouth. She kissed him; put her tongue in
his mouth. He closed his eyes. He knew that what she was saying was true.
Nothing had happened that day. He'd sent her away, even though he'd wanted her
more than life itself. It was all true. He surrendered to the kiss.

When he
opened his eyes she had changed. Kelly was gone, and he was kissing Katie. He
tried to resist, but the tiny flecks of blood on his mouth had bonded hard. His
tongue was glued to hers. The flesh of his lips tore as he tried to pull away.
The ethereal light had shaded into gold and violet. Katie hugged herself closer
to him. 'Love me, Tom,' she murmured through their locked kiss. 'Love me, love
me!' The rose in his hand had blown. Withered petals dropped through his
fingers. Her mouth tasted of ash.

Then it was
Sharon, and not Katie at all, who was trying to calm him. 'Hush, hush.' The
kiss unlocked. 'Be calm,' she said.

'Sharon? Is it you? I'm falling apart.'

'Hush, hush. It's all right.'

But the
light around her brightened, and Sharon was a huge white bird, a giant dove in
his arms. A dribble of crimson blood from his mouth stained the white feathers
of the bird's breast. Its eyes and its beak were terrifying chips of polished
black stone. And in a moment the bird had been transformed again into another
woman, dark, strong and beautiful.

The smell of
balsam was on her. Her hair, falling in a shimmering, black cascade, was thrown
across one shoulder, streaming perfume. Her oiled skin was the colour of
cinnamon. Her toenails were painted pink, and she wore anklets decorated with
tiny bells. Her bare forearms were tattooed, each with an unnameable mythological
beast. He knew she was the Magdalene. Not the woman who had dogged him through
the dusty alleyways of Jerusalem but the resplendent young Mary Magdalene.

'Listen,'
she was saying, 'you must listen.' She held his head in her hands, forcing him
to meet her eyes.

'I'm afraid. I've been afraid of you.'

'I've
been trying to tell you what happened.' She spoke in a rapid, soft whisper.
'Katie asked me to help you. I put my scroll in your hands. The crucifixion.
The
cruicifiction
.
I was only a woman
against many; because I was his wife there were some who followed me, but what
chance did I have? I was written out, exiled to Qumran. Do you know what it's
like to be written out?

'It was while I was
toiling in the balsam factory of Qumran that I wrote my scroll. I could see
which way it was going to go. I told how we knew the prophecies by heart. We
made them happen. We even knew how to survive the Cross, with snake poison, and
aloes, and myrrh. But it was the enemy, the Pharisee, the hater of women, who
broke us. He hated our love. He suspected our plot. He ordered my love's legs
to be shattered on the Cross to hasten his end, to spoil the prophecy. Our
persecutor, Saul, adapted and discarded Jesus' teachings, replacing them with
his own misogynist frenzies. This is Saint Paul, Apostle of the Lie.

'My love had
one great teaching: that the source of all human trouble is the heart. But
Katie asked me to tell you this, Tom: the miracle
did
happen. After his
death he became pure spirit, haunting his own Church. He waits, like the
djinn
,
haunting all of the liars who judge
and preach and hate in his name, like a dim memory in the mind of the Christian
who has forgotten he is a Christian.'

With the
ball of her thumb the Magdalene stroked a tear from his eye. Then she stepped
out of her cotton robe and knelt before him. More tattoos adorned her upper
thighs; fabulous creatures decorated her breasts, writhing over her navel,
representing the seven spirits cast out of her. The carnal priestess. Temple
prostitute. The unnatural light about her shimmered red and violet, gold and
grey. She undressed him diligently, and when that was done she leaned across
him and slipped his erect penis into her mouth. Then she straddled him, sliding
herself down his shaft, burying his head in her long hair until he almost
swooned away. He surrendered. He lost sense of himself.

Her body
stretched and shimmered like a single coil of tensile steel. She devoted
sinuous, expert attention to him until suddenly her body cracked like a whip,
again and again. Her breath came shorter and shorter, and then she stiffened,
tightening her grip around him and squeezing his balls until he ejaculated
inside her, her painted fingernails tearing the skin of his back as he bucked
and shivered.

He
fainted. He felt his consciousness fold down, like a star withdrawing its rays,
and then opening again. When he came to, she was still clinging to him. Her
hair, damp with sweat, stuck to his face. He was still inside her, his orgasm
spent, and as he withdrew he noticed the smear of menstrual blood on his
flaccid cock. Her perfume had changed. He disentangled himself from her. It was
not Mary Magdalene.

'You,' he gasped.

'I knew you
wanted me. I knew. Did it. Did it.' Christina smiled at him.

'But how did you get in?'

She indicated an open
window at the back of the room. Meanwhile the chairs and tables barricading the
door tumbled to the floor. There was the sound of scraping from behind the
door. A cupboard was heaved aside.

'Not this,'
murmured Tom. 'Not this.' He pulled his trousers on. There was no time to find
shirt or shoes before the people at the door broke in. He swung a leg through
the open window.

Sharon
was at the front of the group of women bursting into the room. 'Tom, come
back!' she cried.

'Christina!'
shouted
Tobie
, gazing down at the flushed, naked
woman giggling on the floor.

'Did it. Did it.
Diddit
.'

'Come back, Tom! Come back!'

53

With the evening
adhan
sounding from the mosque and the light
outside his window fading from turquoise to lemon-grey, Ahmed crafted yet
another in a long procession of hashish cigarettes, an unbroken chain going
back to Sharon's departure two hours earlier. As he lit up, puffing with
dispirited satisfaction, there came a hammering at the door. The knock was
delivered three times. Knowing this to be the call of the
djinn
,
he declined to answer, instead drawing luxuriously on his giant reefer.
With the sweet sounds of the
shahada
,
the
declaration of faith, tumbling through the skies from the mosque, this was
anyway an unusual — or audacious — time for the
djinn
to be calling. In any event, he never went out after nightfall, such was
the risk of physical confrontation with any number
of
djinn
in a city as insane as Jerusalem.

But
then a fourth knock came, hesitant at first, then decisive. Ahmed stirred,
blinked, rubbed his eyes. Hauling himself to his feet, he teetered to the
window and looked down.

Either
he was hallucinating, or the Englishman stood at the threshold, bare-chested
and without shoes. Ahmed had to refocus. 'Are you man or
djinn
?'

'Throw me the keys.'

Ahmed
wasn't sure he wanted to. He withdrew from the window to consider, then
relented and tossed down the bunch of keys. The keys glimmered in the
half-light, cutting an arc through the air. In a matter of seconds the
Englishman had unlocked the door and had bounded up the stairs.

Ahmed
accepted the proffered keys and stepped back

.Tom
was wearing only a pair of trousers. His feet were blackened, sooty, filthy.
Sweat and dust caked his chest. His hair was wild and stuck out at odd angles,
and his eyes darted from object to object around the apartment, refusing to
settle.

'Allah,'
said Ahmed. 'You look more like the
djinn
than
the
djinn
.''

'Talk. I want to talk.'

'Tea? Oh, to
hell with the tea. Have a beer. Here, hold this.'

Ahmed handed
Tom the smoking reefer while he rummaged in the fridge. Tom looked at the thing
before taking a lungful, biting back the smoke and holding it in his lungs. When
Ahmed returned with a beer, he offered to give it back.

'Keep it,'
said Ahmed. 'I'm sick of the stuff. I'm giving it up. Sit.'

Tom sat
cross-legged on a cushion. Ahmed winced at the dirty feet on the spotless
fabric. He'd joked about the Englishman looking like a
djinn
,
but it was true; he actually looked like someone on his way to becoming a
demon. Ahmed speculated on the possibility of someone making that
transformation within a normal lifespan. He had not heard of it but suspected
it was possible.

'What are you looking at?' said Tom.

'Pardon
me. Was I staring? I have been distracted of late. You want to talk about the
scroll?'

'To hell
with the scroll. I don't want it. It's yours. I'll make a gift of it to you if
you tell me what I need to know.'

Ahmed knew
when to tread carefully. 'Tell me what you need to know.'

Tom
sucked greedily on the reefer, holding back the smoke before exhaling. 'I want
to know how to get rid of a
djinn
.'

Ahmed
surveyed him steadily. 'No one knows how to get rid of a
djinn
.''

'But you
must have some ideas. You must have tried things yourself.'

'Please.
Be calm. I never tried to get rid of my
djinn
.
She is my penalty. My penance.'

'What? Are you in love with your own
suffering?'