Dead Europe

by Christos Tsiolkas

  —Abraham was before Moses. He was after Noah. Isaac, your namesake, was his son whom God demanded he sacrifice. Abraham was prepared to do God’s will. His other son was Ishmael, the bastard son he had with his slave, Hagar. The Jews come from the line of Isaac. The Arabs claim they are descended from Ishmael.

  —Fucking perfect. Slavery and blood feuds. And that’s religion? You can fucking keep it.

  —That’s history, mate, that’s politics. Blood and servitude.

  —So you’re arguing that if you are going to believe in God, you have to believe fundamentally? You believe in Noah and the flood, Sodom and fucking Gomorrah? The Resurrection? That Mohammed received the word of God? That’s your argument?

  —Yes.

  —And Adam and Eve?

  —Yes. Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. And Lilith.

  —Who?

  —Adam’s first wife.

  —What? That’s not in the Bible.

  —It’s apocrypha. I like Lilith. She gave God the finger.

  —Who the fuck was Lilith?

  —First there was the Word. And the Word was Wisdom. Then there was God, Yahweh, and he created the heavens and earth and all that walks and lives and is on the earth. He created Adam after his own image and placed him in Eden. Then when Adam came of age he wanted a partner. So God passed all the female animals past him and Adam slept with them all but none of them satisfied him.

  —You’re making this up.

  —I’m not. It’s one version of her story, anyway. You want me to continue?

  —Go.

  —So God created Lilith from the earth, as he had done with Adam, and he created her in Wisdom’s image. Sophia. You should know that word. It’s Greek.

  —Hang on. And is Sophia another god?

  —Yes.

  —But isn’t there only one God?

  —Moses told the Jews they could only worship the one God. But they had many gods before that.

  —So Lilith and Adam get together?

  —Yes. And they had children, which are now the demons that roam the earth. But Lilith wasn’t satisfied with Adam and she left him. She wanted to be equal to him. She flew to the Red Sea and there gave birth to more demons.

  —Fuck. What happened to her?

  —She’s still on earth. She departed Eden long before the Fall and, as she hasn’t eaten off the Tree of Good and Evil, she’s immortal. She will live to the end of time and God allows her to eat the blood of uncircumcised children. That’s our first mother. Blood, you can’t escape it. All religions know this.

  —But they’re fairytales.

  —Or they’re truth. It all depends on faith.

  —But you must agree that they are of their place and time. You can have faith in God or Christ without having to accept all that superstitious shit from millennia ago.

  —You can argue and disagree about the meaning of the words, but no, I don’t believe you can pick and choose from religious moral codes as if faith is some kind of supermarket of beliefs. I’m with the fundamentalists. You make your choice. You make your fucking choice. You are either a believer or not. God makes his meaning and his character clear in the Torah, in the Bible and in the Qu’ran. He is not a God of love, he is a God of justice.

  —So for me to believe in God, I have to believe that loving you, making love to you, being with you, is a sin and I am damned to Hell forever?

  —Yes. You can ask God’s forgiveness, but if you remain with me, you are damned.

  —So do you believe in this God?

  —I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, my love, if there is the one God, I still choose you. I choose you above God. I’ve made that choice and I’ll live with that choice. I choose Lilith and the demons, I choose Lucifer, who too knew love. I promise you, Isaac, if God is the righteous prick from the Bible, I choose Hell over Him. Fuck him. I choose to be with you. I choose Hell.

  SHE HAD AWOKEN from her dream and was prepared for the telephone when it rang. In the cold of the August night, the room’s temperature had dropped and she threw a blanket across her shoulders, and rocked back and forth in the winter silence awaiting the call. She had dreamt that she was a young woman again. The dream had been astonishing in its vividness. She was a young woman and she was approaching the graphite boulders that lay on the hill above her grandmother’s house. She had not dreamt of home for decades. As a young girl she had loved to climb the boulders, for on the other side of them the ancient wind had carved shelves into the rocks which she would use as steps to skip down to where the mountain creek flowed south to the village. From the top of the rocks she could not only see her house and her village, but look back down the valley and see the village of Simshi, and, in the distance, Ta-Loukània. She could see the women working in the deep valley and she could see the monastery, perched so high on the mountain’s summit that sometimes she believed it floated there beyond the clouds. She had climbed the same rocks again in this dream. She had been excited, anxious: would she see the silver-flecked waters of the creek rushing across the ashen rocks? But when she had reached the summit and peered down through the crevice of the boulders to the creek, on both its banks, on every rock jutting out from the rushing brook, there sat a coiled snake. Their scaly skins were the black of coal and they glistened in the aberrant sun. It was not a Balkan sun, this light in her dream. It was an Australian sun. She had been terrified, unable to move, for there was also a coiled snake at her feet. There were dozens of them. They were still and silent but it was as if every single one of them was alert, tense to her presence. Up on the hill, their backs to her, a man and a child were sitting. The boy was naked and his grey pale skin was the colour of death. The man’s hair was as shiny and as black as the reptiles’ cold skin. She knew at once that the young man was Vassili, her husband. She had called out his nickname. Lucky. But neither he nor the boy turned around. She could not go forward, could not go back. She was chained to the boulders. The boy had stood and pointed into the grotesque luminous sun. It was larger than the lowest full moon. She had shaken her head violently. No, she pleaded with them, she could not come to them. With his face still turned from her, her husband too had stood and pointed at the sun. She again refused, unable to defy the poisonous gaze of the serpents stretched before her. She had looked down again at the earth, at the snakepit, and then her heart had frozen. In the icy brook her son’s naked body lay in the water, his eyes shut. She feared him dead. A giant snake sat on his chest, its head raised, looking straight into her. She had fallen to her knees. The boy was still pointing to the sun but now he had begun to turn his face towards her. She did not want to see his face, she did not dare look at his face. She feared him more than the snakes, the abnormal sun. She feared that boy more than the death of her own child.

  She awoke, gasping for breath. She clutched a blanket tight around her frail body, bringing the soft wool to her chin. The hard electric light from the streetlamp outside the house brought the objects in the room to uncanny mysterious life. She glanced up at the icon of the Madonna above her bed and forced her hands out from under the blanket, forced herself to pray. She could not pray without a shameful sense of her ignominy and her sin. But she was aware that her dream had signified an ill omen and she knew she must pray. Further, she knew the boy in her dream, knew the face that would turn to her. Rebecca, believing firmly in the righteousness of justice and faith, knew that her sins were great. Her life, increasingly, had become a quest to make amends for these sins. Her small house was filled now with images of God, His Son and the Son’s Mother. Her home was full of saints: Byzantine and stern, Catholic and soft. Her husband had mocked faith all his life and had often been furious when she tried to introduce religious icons into the house. He had allowed one small icon of the infant Jesus in the children’s bedroom, and he had allowed her an icon of Agia Eleni in the kitchen. But he had forbidden anything else and insisted that there should be nothing of God in the rooms in which he dwelt. Nothing of God in the lounge room, in th
eir bedroom. Instead, a painting of a severe Lenin admonished them from above the television, and her white bedroom walls—still smoky and burnished to ash from years of her husband’s cigarette smoking—were bare except for their wedding photographs and a photograph Isaac had taken of Lucky just before his death. When her husband had died, she had filled the walls with God and the saints. She had left Lenin in his place, in memory of her husband.

  —Please, Holy Mother, she prayed, take me, do what you will with me, please ensure that Isaac and Sophie are safe, that my grandchildren are safe.

  The telephone rang in cruel blasts of sound. She threw the blankets to the floor and ran to the hall. Answering it, she recognised Colin’s deep slow drawl at once. As always, his manner was direct and unemotional. Tonight she appreciated his strength. He told her the news quickly. He had received a call from England. Isaac was sick. No, he did not know exactly the cause of his illness, except that their friend in England thought it was some kind of emotional collapse. Colin explained that he would organise a flight to London immediately. Did she want to come with him?

  —Of course I will come. Then she started to howl. Colin, she screamed down the phone, I do not have a passport.

  He had allowed her to cry, to lament, and then told her not to worry at all, that he would help her organise the passport, that she was not to concern herself with any such details. He would do everything.

  The thought crossed her mind, even in her grief—and not for the first time—that if her daughter had married such a man she would have been a proud and vain mother-in-law. Oh, how she would have lorded it over the Greek peasant sows! Do you want me to come over, she heard him ask. Yes, yes, she cried into the phone. She could not bear to be alone.

  She turned on the lights in the living room, fired up the gas heater. She rocked back and forth in front of the violet flames until she heard Colin’s car pull up outside the house. She threw herself on him. That night they did not sleep. They drank coffee, worked out what they must do, spoke endlessly of Isaac. Near dawn, Colin had driven off and bought cigarettes. They both smoked their first cigarette in years. It was a drug, thought Rebecca, and like all drugs it brought relief. Allowed for patience. There would be interminable waiting ahead for them. Organising the flights, the flight itself, the vigil at the hospital, organising Isaac’s return. She knew that she would be smoking through all that time.

  Colin did indeed arrange everything. She had offered to pay but he had refused. I’m not going to take any money from a bloody pensioner. Sophie, too, had been marvellous. She had come down immediately from Canberra. The news from England was not good. Isaac was sick. The nature of his illness was never specified but every time Colin had got off the phone his face had been pale and stretched. She had been shocked when she received her passport in the mail. She was an old woman. She had only ever had two passports in her life. The first had been red, the now tatty and stained booklet she had as a little girl departing Greece. This blue Australian passport now confirmed her age, her feebleness. It was an old crone’s face that stared out at her. Holy Mother, do not allow me to bury a son, do not let me bury a son.

  Sophie drove them to the airport. Rebecca had become furious at the thoroughness and cold authority of the security staff. Since the birth of her first grandchild, knitting had become one of her keenest pleasures. She wished that she had discovered the hobby years ago. It kept her busy, kept her calm and at peace. While knitting, she could forget all that she had lost. Lucky, heroin, a country and a family. She had packed her knitting needles, but they confiscated them and coldly refused to answer her demands that they give them back to her. Like a broken record, the obese customs official at Melbourne Airport kept repeating, It’s all down in black and white, lady. Nothing sharp on board.

  Do I look like a bloody terrorist? she screamed at them. Sophie pulled her aside. Don’t make a scene, she cautioned, and looking up at Colin’s grim pale face, the old woman had felt ashamed and she immediately apologised.

  —I don’t mind. I was just worried that they were going to strip-search us.

  Rebecca snorted.

  —One finger anywhere near me and I’ll show them real terror.

  Without her knitting to occupy her, it was an interminable flight to London. She recalled, for the first time in many years, her journey from Europe on the ship. She remembered how that journey too had seemed to last forever.

  It was a long, agonising wait to clear customs at Heathrow. She had wanted to insult the stiff-backed young Englishman who carefully scrutinised her passport. The English would never trust her, she knew this from her long years in Australia. But Colin was always standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder, making jokes, attempting to make her laugh—if she had not been here with Colin she knew she would have gone mad; he enabled her to survive the wait. At least, she marvelled, you could smoke in the English airports. She had thought that this country would be exactly like Australia. Only older. But it wasn’t. She had known it as soon as the jet had landed. Waiting to dismount, she had looked out the plane’s window to the blue-uniformed black men below tossing luggage onto a metal crate. When finally they were out in the Heathrow morning light—the airport was a city itself—they found a taxi, gave instructions to the driver, and made their way to the hospital.

  As soon as she saw her son, she knew he was dying. Colin had been the one to break down, and to see this big man cry, to see the depth and ferocity of his grief, had made her determined that she would save her son. Isaac’s face had aged and his pallor was that of cigarette ash. His cheekbones stretched the grey skin and his lips were nearly black. It was only his sunken eyes, their almond shape now grotesquely big for his thin face, only his eyes that reminded her of her child.

  As soon as she had entered the room she had also seen the other there. His boy’s body was curled up beside her son, his thin fingers were stroking Isaac’s skin. He would not look at her. She even called out the childhood name she had for him—Angelo, she whispered—but he did not see her, did not hear her. Isaac, however, heard, and the desperate eyes he turned to her were full of pleading. She took her son’s hand. Colin was kissing Isaac’s face, his mouth, his sweating forehead. She did not cry a tear.

  The doctors had nothing reassuring to say. We are sorry, we have done all the necessary blood tests but we don’t know what it is that is causing his immune system to malfunction. We are sorry, he is dying. Colin continued to ask endless questions but she did not listen, did not care. Before arriving in England, she had not been able to think straight in her grief: all she could do was cry and lament. But here, in this foreign city, it was as if she and Colin had exchanged roles. It was he who would alternate between haranguing the doctors, falling into tears, pacing, smoking, crying. Isaac’s friend Sam had come to London. She recognised Isaac’s teacher immediately; like her, he had aged. He had been young and conceited when he taught Isaac, and dismissive of her concerns about her son’s scholastic performance. She had felt undermined by him. He had thought her illiterate, and though his manner to her and Lucky had always been cordial and kind, it had also been aloof and patronising. She had felt a perverse pleasure when she had heard about his disgrace. But all this was past now. She hugged him warmly and thanked him for helping her son. He looked confused and frightened. Don’t blame yourself, urged Colin, but then with the next breath he would berate Sam with questions. What happened? Who was with him? When did it happen? How the fuck did it happen?

  She only half-listened to the man’s responses. Her son had been drinking at a hotel in the city Sam lived in. She could not catch its name; it was unfamiliar to her. He had been drinking alone and then had gone off to London. No, Sam did not know who he had gone to London with. It was assumed he had been hitchhiking. The police had found him ranting and screaming in the city. What was he doing? asked Colin. Nothing, nothing, said Sam, all he was doing was screaming. The police had first thought he was drunk. It was then that they had called Sam—fortunately, Isaac
still had his phone number in his pocket. By the time Sam had arrived in London, Isaac’s health had worsened. He had immediately called Colin. But something else must have happened, urged Colin. Sam had shaken his head. But Colin would not, could not, stop asking questions. Sam tirelessly repeated the story. Rebecca excused herself and went back into her son’s room.

  Isaac had fallen asleep. His breaths were hoarse and exhausted. The ghoul had his thin arms and long gaunt legs wrapped around her sleeping son. He was kissing him. Rebecca crossed herself but she made no prayer. She knew that it was useless to offer false promises and she knew that more was to be asked of her than prayers and supplication. She walked over to her son. The nurse had not yet come around to collect the food trays. Isaac’s lay on the dresser, the meal untouched. The doctors had said he was now unable to feed himself and from the morning they would be feeding him on a drip. Rebecca had made up her mind. She quickly glanced around the room. Two of the other patients were also asleep; a third was watching a television monitor above his bed. She picked up the white plastic knife from the tray and dragged it across her wrist. The serrated edge was blunt but she hacked at her skin until a foam of scarlet blood appeared. She placed her wrist on her son’s lips. It was then that the ghoul looked at her. His face was contorted in anger. He had not recognised her. She knew she was just something that came between the demon and her son. The ghoul had always been this way. It was possessive and suspicious and cruel. Now it wanted her son. All that existed for it was her son. She willed her blood to pour, to feed into Isaac. It hurt her, as it had hurt when he first began to suckle from her breasts, a pain that had forced her hour by hour to tears and fury; but she had forced him onto her raw bruised cracked nipples, and she forced him to drink from her now. Isaac coughed and opened his eyes. She rubbed her wound and kissed him on the mouth. The demon had left them. But not for long. Not for long. She kissed her son again. There was much to do.