Requiem (35 page)

'Am I alone in that?'

Tom looked
defeated. He got up and prowled the room. Seeing the scroll pinned out on the
table, he peered into the spiral of unknowable words.

'I advise
you not to go too near that thing. It's vibrating with
djinn
.
^’

'I lied about
the girl,' said Tom. 'Remember when we traded stories? I lied. I didn't lay a
finger on her.'

'I suspected it.'

Tom
sat down again. The reefer was smoked out. He hung his head in dismay. Nothing
further was said. He shifted, letting his head fall back on the plump cushions
behind him. The two sat in silence, twilight thickening into dark outside the
window, occasional sounds of strollers drifting up from the cobbled street
outside.

He is falling asleep,
thought Ahmed. He's exhausted. I must give him something. He moved across the
floor on all fours. Taking the Canaanite talisman from around his throat, he
gently hung it around Tom's neck. Squatting back on his heels, he began
whispering to him. 'The
djinn
inhabit
an infinite number of personalities, each a different facet of you. You must
search through your, dreams for the good
djinn
,
and ask the good
djinn
to make
intercession for you. Offer a gift, and then pray. This is all I know.'

Tom had
drifted away. Ahmed left the Englishman to sleep.

*

Tom drew up
outside the church. The passenger seat beside him was empty. The gale squealed
like a hellcat, almost tearing the door from its hinges as he climbed out of
the car. Rain lashed at his face. The lych-gate creaked. The church tower
leaned precariously into the wind. Once again it seemed like a ship, imperilled
by a cruel ocean, a ship of lost souls. Gravestones like jetsam awash on a dark
sea in the wake of the storm-lashed ship. A giant yew tree moaning and
splintering like a broken mast. A single bell tolling in the darkness.

Where was
Katie? He made his way through the swinging lych-gate. She should be here. She
should be with him. Branches torn from the trees were bulleting around the
churchyard. A crow trying to alight on the church tower was flung up into the
black sky. He stared up at the tower. The wind dragged scratch marks through
its soft sandstone.

An aluminium ladder
formed a triangle against the perpendicular of the tower. A claw hammer was
hooked over a lower rung, Tom looked up, and there was a motion in the trefoil
niche below the tower's
castellations
. The Magdalene
statue had gone. Katie was there, her hair torn by the wind, her white robe
drawn like fine silk across the curves of her body. Clouds like black smoke
rolled across the sky. Her toes gripped the niche in the crumbling stone. She
was looking down at him.

The
storm became more ferocious with each passing second. He knew he should
shelter, but he was afraid to progress beyond the porch. Suddenly the church
door was torn open, ancient oak and iron cracking angrily against stone.

'Come down,
Katie! I can't go in! Not without you, Katie! I can't go inside!'

But
the wind picked up the ladder like a straw, flinging it into the blackness of
the graveyard. Katie had no way down, and now the wind was digging out the
mortar between the stones of the tower. Dust was sucked from around the stones
immediately below Katie's feet and then from individual bricks. The tower was
toppling. Katie spread her arms wide like a bird and flung herself towards him.
He saw her fall. His eyes were fixed on hers like magnets as she plunged
through the air, her dive bringing her directly above him. Eyeball touched
eyeball.

There
was no impact. At the moment of contact, the scene dissolved and he was inside
the church. Katie was gone.

Slogans
were scrawled on the wall in ugly spirals. LIAR. The congregation at the altar
was shuffling, one behind the other, down a spiral descent under the floor,
steps engraved and painted with black Hebrew letters. David Feldberg was among
them, smiling at him. Katie was nowhere around. The vicar was Michael Anthony,
the absconded priest, beckoning him to follow.

‘I can't come! I have to watch for the
morning!'

Michael Anthony
seemed to become annoyed. The rest of the congregation stopped shuffling and
looked around, irritated at whatever was holding up their progress.

Instantly
Tom recognized that something about the church had changed. In every
representation of Jesus Christ, in every painting or carving or stained-glass
portrait, the image of Jesus had been supplanted by that of a woman, naked,
sexual, bloodied and suffering on the Cross. Mary Magdalene had taken his place
as the one crucified. Her sacred colours were scarlet and purple, grey and
gold.

'Intercede
for me,' he said. 'Tell her I know what happened. Tell her I know everything.'

Michael
Anthony looked anxious, as though he didn't understand what Tom was trying to
say.

'You must
intercede for me,' Tom persisted. 'Pray for me. Ask her to leave me alone. Tell
her I'll make known the contents of the scroll. Tell her I'll do it for her.
And give her this.'

Tom
opened his mouth and forced his fingers into the back of his own throat. With
an easy spasm he vomited into his own hands a fat, live, buzzing bee. The bee
rolled in his cupped hands as it was offered to the priest.

Michael
Anthony accepted the insect, nodding now as if he understood. He began stroking
the bee with his forefinger, backing towards the congregation who had resumed
its shuffling descent into the spiral well.

The
bee buzzed intermittently in the priest's hands. Tom thanked the Magdalene with
a brief prayer before backing out into the storm raging outside the church.

The buzzing sound of the
telephone woke him. He sat upright. Ahmed was in the bedroom and was talking,
to Sharon it seemed, on the telephone.

'Yes, he's
here now.' The Arab spoke in an undertone. 'No, he's asleep. I think he's
exhausted. No, no, he's not going anywhere.'

Tom hauled himself up
from the cushions. He smudged his face with his hands, trying to collect his
thoughts. A silk shirt rested over the back of a chair. He slipped it on. In
the hallway he found a pair of Ahmed's running shoes. He quietly let himself out
of the apartment while Ahmed was still reassuring Sharon that he wouldn't let
Tom out of his sight.

54

Wide-eyed, Tom studied himself
in the mirror, his locks tumbling to the barbershop floor. The Arab barber's
scissors whispered at his ears, clipping miraculously close to the skull. The
barber snipped with ostentatious style, keeping the scissors in constant
clipping motion as they hovered across Tom's head or wafted through the air.
The scissors flashed in the mirror, swooping like a strange bird trying, but
failing, to settle.

When he'd
finished cropping, the barber set in with his electric shaving tool, guiding it
across the crown in neat tramlines.

Katie
stood at Tom's side, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder, watching the shaving
in the mirror. Her hair was plaited. Her eyes were sea-grey. 'I'm sorry,' she
said, 'I'm sorry I did that to you. I had to find a way through to you again. I
had to come through the others. How else could I find you? You lock me out.
Both you and Sharon lock me out.'

'What do you want?' said Tom.

'The
prices are on the wall,' said the barber, not deviating from the careful line
of his electric shaver.

'I want your love,' said Katie.

'Why?'

'So
that no one is cheated,' said the barber. He switched off his electric tool and
began stropping a cutthroat razor to complete the job.

'Because I love you. I will always love
you.'

'Can I trust you?'

'If you
can't trust your
barber,’he
said flashing his razor,’
who can you, trust?'

'You can
trust me,’ said Katie.

 'How
does it look?' 'It looks well,' said the barber.

 'It
looks well,' said Katie.

Tobie
walked by the barber's shop in the Arab quarter and
saw a man with a shaved head paying the barber. The man looked familiar, but
she pressed on, anxious to find Tom. She didn't feel entirely comfortable in
the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem at night, but she'd arranged to follow Sharon
to Ahmed's apartment.

After
Tom had barricaded himself in the room at the rehabilitation centre,
Tobie
had awaited Sharon's arrival before forcing her way
in. Finally, heaving their way inside, they'd found Christina naked on the
floor and the rear window wide open to the night. After that Sharon had
returned to her own apartment, hoping to find Tom there. When he failed to
appear she'd telephoned Ahmed. After instructing Ahmed to detain him, Sharon
had contacted
Tobie
and asked her to rendezvous at
Ahmed's place.

Tobie
was furious with herself that she'd failed to predict
Tom's reaction. In all cases she made a careful judgement about how much
pressure to bring to bear and about how much truth an individual could face.
Perhaps it was a difference between men and women, she reasoned. The last time
something like this had happened was in Ahmed's case, when he had run amok,
after which she had sworn never to admit men into the centre.

If
Tom had been a woman, she would at that point have broken down, cried and
looked for sisterly comfort from the women around her. Tom had instead opted
for flight.
Tobie
detected some volatile element in a
man's sexual chemistry which, when threatened, would always foil her most
carefully constructed therapy. The capacity for self-deception was, despite all
myths to the contrary, more tenaciously protected in men than in women. In any
event, she could never have predicted Christina's role in the crisis.

As she made
her way along the narrow street, she stopped abruptly in her tracks. Retracing
her steps, she drew up at the barber's shop. The man with the shaved head was
at that very moment quitting the open front of the shop.

'Tom,' said
Tobie
evenly. 'We've been worried about you.'

Tom froze.
He looked away to his left and seemed to listen a moment, as if awaiting
inspiration. When he looked back at
Tobie
, his eyes
were blazing black holes, all pupil. 'Hi,
Tobie
. No
need to worry.'

Tobie
hesitated. 'Look, Tom,
will you walk with me? I'm a little nervous of being in the quarter at night.
Maybe you'll accompany me?'

'Where are you going?'

'I
thought I'd look in on Ahmed. Why don't you come with me?'

Tom
paused again before answering. 'No can do,
Tobie
. I
have to be somewhere else.'

'Where? Where do you have to be?'

This
time there was a long silence. Tom allowed himself masses of space before
speaking. To
Tobie
it was a common symptom but always
disturbing. 'The
Me'a
She'arim
.'

'
Me'a
She'arim
? Why do you want to
go there, Tom? You don't want to go to the
Me'a
She'arim
.'

Pause.
'Yes, yes. I've got a score to settle. There's someone I must see there. ‘A
score?

 What's
going on, Tom?'

'There
was a man there in the
Me'a
She'arim
.
He threw a stone at Sharon. We can't have that,
Tobie
.
We can't have that sort of behaviour.'

'Hey,
come with me, sweetheart. Let's go find Sharon and Ahmed. Let's go where it's
cosy. Come on, take my arm and walk with me.'

Tom
was already backing away, breaking into a run. 'Can't do it,
Tobie
. Got a score to settle. Catch you later.'

He was gone,
vanished into the shadows of the narrow alleyways.
Tobie
knew it was useless to try to follow him, so she let him go, quickening her
steps towards Ahmed's apartment, where Sharon was waiting.

'He's gone to the
Me'a
She'arim
. Hello, Ahmed; it's
been a long time since we saw each other,' said
Tobie
.

'The
Me'a
She'arim
? Don't stare at
her, Ahmed. Where's your hospitality?'

Ahmed
couldn't take his eyes off
Tobie
. 'I apologize, you
terrible old woman. Sit. Sit. You must excuse me; it's not every day the worst
woman in the whole world visits my house. Can I offer you something?'

'We
don't have time for that. I just ran into Tom down the street; he looks pretty
frightening. He's shaved his head, and I think the sooner we persuade him to
come home with us, the better.'

'You're
right,' said Ahmed. 'He was here earlier. He stole my shirt and my shoes. All
the time he was here he was listening to his
djinn
.
Don't you look at me like that. I tell you, his
djinn
was talking in his ear all of the time. He is now well under the influence
of his
djinn
.'