The Holy Machine

by Chris Beckett

  ‘Is not our raki the finest spirit ever made?’

  ‘Is it true that your women can marry who they please?’

  ‘Do you not even celebrate Easter?’

  ‘What do your soldiers think of our brave Greek Army?’

  ‘You may have many machines and cars, but do you admit that our men are more virile?’

  After a while they challenged me to a game of cards, darting each other little triumphant glances as they raked in my drachmas.

  ‘Accuse us of cheating if you dare!’ said their cruel mocking smiles, but out loud they teased me for my lack of skill:

  ‘So you City men are not so clever at cards then, eh? For all your wonderful machines!’

  I knew they were cheating, but I was too drunk to work out how – or even to fully grasp the rules of the poker-like game which they had taught me. And anyway, I knew better than to challenge them. Both shepherds wore knives at their belts which I sensed they’d be very happy to use, if they could only lure me into a quarrel which would allow them to fight with honour, and without violating their rigid code of hospitality. I pushed away the cards, trying to make a joke about not being quick enough for them.

  Spiro, the storekeeper’s son, poured more raki, put a plate of sliced pomegranates in front of us and dropped another log into the crude stove in the centre of the room. It was cold at nights up here.

  The two shepherds pulled at the glistening red seeds with gnarled fingers.

  ‘Your wife is very beautiful,’ remarked the younger shepherd, Andreas, with an odd sideways look.

  The boy Spiro paused with the raki bottle in his hand, listening. He had a wide pale face, with a flat nose and eyes that stared outwards in opposite directions, so that it was hard to tell what he was really seeing.

  ‘She certainly is,’ said Petros, and he slapped me heartily on the knee. ‘I just hope you know how to appreciate her, my City friend. I hope you are man enough with those soft white hands of yours. Or does she need a real Greek man to show her what love is all about?’

  He roared with laughter at this, slapping my thigh repeatedly and watching my face with hard, yellow, raki-soaked eyes to ensure that I did not stint myself with the laughing. He had me either way: if I laughed at an insult, that would be amusing confirmation of my lack of manhood. But if I failed to laugh at the jokes my hosts so hospitably made, that would be a slight to their honour.

  So I laughed

  Andreas and Spiro both grinned.

  From the wall glared down the angry eyes of Archbishop Christophilos.

  ‘I have heard,’ said Andreas, ‘that in your City, the women are shared in common between the men. Is that not so?’

  Again Petros burst out laughing, again he slapped my thigh and leaned into my face breathing garlic and meat and raki.

  ‘Well then, share her with Andreas and I, my friend. She’ll be satisfied, I guarantee. And if she wants more, well, I’m sure that young Spiro here would be glad to oblige. He is ugly, I grant you, but all of his family are hung like horses.’

  Spiro grinned.

  Clumsily attempting levity, I thanked them for their solicitude to my wife, but said that the stories they had heard were untrue and that Illyrian men were every bit as jealous as Greeks.

  ‘Ah,’ said Petros with a chuckle, ‘but can you fight for your women like us Greek men? Can you fight with your fists? Can you use a knife or a gun? Or have your cars and machines made you soft?’

  He pulled out his long sheath knife. Its blade shone, jagged and indented by much honing.

  ‘Do you know how many throats I have slit with this blade?’ said Petros with a laugh, reaching out and pointing the tip of the blade at my own neck.

  I tried not to flinch.

  ‘Hundreds!’ he said with a wink at his nephew, ‘though I admit that a few of them were the throats of sheep.’

  He used the knife to cut open another pomegranate.

  ‘More raki, Spiro, for our Illyrian friend! We’ll make a Greek of him yet.’

  His nephew, Andreas, took out a tin of tobacco, and when I’d declined it, the two shepherds rolled themselves fat cigarettes with their brown horny fingers. Then Petros glanced up at me.

  ‘Don’t sip your raki! Are you a man or a girl? Down it in one!’

  Shuddering I poured the burning liquid down my throat. The shepherds laughed, their faces red and swimming.

  ‘That’s better!’ said Petros. ‘Now, some more!’

  I said I’d had enough.

  ‘Oh no, my friend, you mustn’t refuse our hospitality.’

  I drained another glass. The room swayed around me. The glowing stove and the paraffin lamp were lurching blotches of light. The head of the moon-faced boy behind the counter drifted upwards, as if it really was a moon.

  ‘You must become a man, my City friend,’ said Petros. ‘You must become a real man like us Greeks.’

  At this point, a fat policeman came into the shop. Petros and Andreas called out greetings.

  ‘This is the foreigner with the beautiful wife,’ said Petros.

  ‘I have heard,’ said the policeman in a deep voice, ‘I’ve heard that no one has seen the like of her.’

  ‘What you’ve heard is true,’ said Petros, laughing. ‘You can’t look at her without wanting to undress her.’

  ‘You can’t look at her without getting horny as a ram at rutting time!’ said his nephew.

  ‘Bring her down!’ exclaimed Petros. ‘Bring her down so we can all admire her!’

  ‘She’s resting,’ I muttered. ‘She doesn’t want to come down tonight.’

  ‘Doesn’t she do what you tell her then? Does she not accept your authority?’

  ‘You should beat her more often,’ growled the policeman.

  And they started to talk again about Lucy’s charms: her blonde hair, her long legs, her beautiful eyes…

  ‘But what is she really like, our City man?’ asked Petros, turning back to me. ‘What is it like to get up in between those pretty legs?’

  Andreas and the policeman laughed.

  ‘I bet she goes like a bitch in heat,’ said the policeman. ‘I can remember the foreigners when they used to lie naked on the beaches. Their breasts bare, even their legs spread open for all to see! Whores, all of them.’

  ‘It’s because their men don’t know how to control them,’ said Petros, ‘isn’t that so, our little City ram?’

  They all laughed.

  ‘Go on,’ said the younger shepherd, leaning forward to touch me on the knee. ‘We are all men of the world here. Tell us what she is like in bed!’

  ‘Yes,’ said the policeman. ‘Tell us, or Andreas here may be tempted to try and find out!’

  The room swayed. Sweat poured down my face. Nausea coiled in my belly. I was sick of their endless mockery.

  ‘You don’t know what you are talking about,’ I suddenly heard myself mumbling. ‘You don’t know the half of what we City people get up to. You don’t know the half. She only looks like a woman on the outside. Really she’s a robot, a machine dressed up in human flesh…’

  53

  A terrrible silence fell.

  Looming in front of me, the grinning faces froze.

  Both shepherds stood up.

  ‘Take us to her,’ Petros told the cross-eyed boy, his voice icy and clipped. Spiro picked up the lamp.

  Frantically I struggled to my feet.

  ‘Oh come on, fellows, I was only joking. Lucy and I had a row that’s all and I was angry with her. She’s not a robot. It was only a joke!’

  ‘That we can decide for ourselves,’ said Petros coldly.

  I tottered and tried to grab him, but the big policeman came forward at once, took me by the collar and flung me aside. I fell against the stove, scalding myself and cutting my temple.

  Laboriously I dragged myself up again.

  ‘Really, you must leave her alone. She’s sleeping! She’s not well!’

  Spiro and the two shepherds ignored me. Th
ey were already heading up the rickety little stairs at the back of the shop. The policeman meanwhile had gone to the door and was shouting out into the street.

  ‘We have a demon! Come quickly! The atheist has brought a demon down from the north!’

  I groped at the air. The room spun round me. It was hard even to make out the bottom of the stairs. I lurched forward.

  And then from above came a dreadful inhuman roar.

  ‘Lucy!’ I shouted out, dragging myself up the stairs.

  ‘Mother of God!’ muttered the policeman in horror, crossing himself and running to get his gun.

  ‘Demon! We have a demon!’ he shouted out again.

  Those roars, those ragged blasts of white noise, came again and again from upstairs.

  In the church, the chanting had gone silent. Doors were opening in the dark street.

  Lucy stood by the window in the yellowish paraffin light, facing the two frightened shepherds. Her head and limbs were human, her body a mechanical plastic box. Her face was devoid of expression but from between her slightly parted lips came again and again that awful electric roar.

  With the boy Spiro cowering behind them with the lamp, the two shepherds advanced slowly, knives in hand. Their knowledge of robots was limited to myths and rumours. They had heard that some could kill or maim with a magical light, that others were stronger than oxen. They had heard that the creatures were animated by devils from hell…

  ‘Leave her! Please leave her!’ I begged them.

  ‘You go for the throat, Andreas,’ murmured Petros, ‘and I’ll go for the chest. Now!’

  The two of them rushed forward but Lucy, with another blast of noise, plunged headfirst through the window, splintering glass and wood.

  Cursing, the two shepherds used their knives to poke away the jagged shards sticking out from the frame, then leapt down after her. I followed them, twisting my ankle painfully as I dropped heavily into the road.

  There were many villagers out there, some holding lamps, others carrying knives, spades, pitchforks, guns…

  ‘Demon! Demon!’ they were shouting excitedly, but like the shepherds they became more subdued when they were faced with Lucy herself.

  Lucy clambered awkwardly back to her feet. To the right and the left of her, hostile, hate-filled faces loomed in the lamplight. But there was still one direction that no one was yet blocking. Straight ahead of her, a donkey track between two houses headed up the mountainside. She rushed forward.

  But Lucy couldn’t run. It was not part of her repertoire. She could only manage a sort of speeded-up walk, stumbling again and again on the stones of the track. This strange gait thrilled and appalled the villagers.

  ‘Demon! Demon!’ they chanted. And then everyone was calling out to one another as they began to follow her.

  ‘She’s heading for the quarry!’

  ‘We’ll get her there.’

  ‘She won’t be able to get out.’

  There was elation, almost a carnival feeling in the air.

  ‘Yes! She’s had it! We’ve got her cornered now!’ shouted gleeful voices.

  And the crowd surged excitedly after the solitary figure that was stumbling off into the darkness.

  Unnoticed by everyone, I brought up the rear, hobbling on my twisted ankle, pleading uselessly for mercy, struggling to keep up.

  The track led straight up into the small quarry, now unused, which for centuries had provided building stone for the village. It was a dead-end.

  Lucy looked around. Crumbling rock faces rose ahead of her and on either side. The space between was bare except for a dilapidated wooden shed. The only way out was the way she came in, and from there the braver of the villagers were already pouring into the quarry, clutching their lights and their weapons.

  They grinned and cackled at her as she turned to face them. Brandishing knives and pitchforks and burning branches, they edged slowly forward.

  ‘Demon! Demon! Demon!’ they hissed.

  Someone let loose with a shotgun. Pellets rattled against Lucy’s hard torso. A red flap of flesh fell away from her cheek. The crowd cheered.

  ‘Demon! Demon! Demon!’

  Lucy backed away. She had known hostility and violence in the ASPU house, but this was different. This was the hatred of people who knew she was alive. Her lips parted and from her mouth came out again that inhuman roar of noise. This gave the villagers a delicious frisson of horror:

  ‘Demon! Demon! Demon!’

  Lucy tripped on a stone and stumbled backwards. Seeing her fall, the crowd rushed forward shouting. But before they reached her, she managed to get back on her feet. With her strange speeded-up walk she raced to the shed, flung open the door and pulled it closed behind her.

  Everyone hooted and laughed as they heard her piling things up inside to block the door.

  ‘Well, that shouldn’t be hard to force!’ said the shepherd Petros, stepping forward with Andreas and some other village men.

  But the priest had his own ideas.

  ‘Wait!’ said this venerable old man, ‘No need to break down the door. We should burn the devil out!’

  The villagers approved.

  ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’ they chanted.

  Three young boys were sent running back to the village to get paraffin. Others threw stones mockingly at the shed.

  ‘Watch out whore-demon, you’re going to burn, burn, burn! Let’s see what happens then to your pretty face.’

  I made a forlorn attempt to intervene.

  ‘Have pity on her, please!’ What a thin, reedy little thing my voice sounded. ‘She’s done no harm. She can’t help what she is!’

  I tried to push forward, but two young men grabbed hold of my arms and held me tightly, chuckling.

  ‘Eh, the demon has bewitched this City boy!’ called out a hard-faced young woman, in a voice as dry and abrasive as sandpaper. ‘She has bewitched him good and proper with her plastic tits and her pretty plastic eyes.’

  The crowd laughed. More stones hurtled through the air.

  Then the little boys came back up the path carrying a jerrycan between them, and the shepherds emptied it over the door of the shed. Someone else came forward with a burning torch. The dry wood burst into flames and the priest lifted his arms to the sky and pleaded with Father, Son and Holy Ghost to deliver them all from evil. The whole village joined in with a hymn.

  Great orange tongues of oily flame reached up ten metres into the evening sky and illuminated the bare little quarry with apocalyptic light.

  ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’ chanted the crowd when the hymn had finished, and the boys flung stones into the flames.

  Eager to get a closer look, my excited captors released my arms and ran forward.

  * * *

  And then all that was left was a pile of smouldering ash with some scorched bits of metal farm machinery half-buried in it and, lying right in the middle, a vaguely human shape. Some of the young men made attempts to fish out the remains of the robot with pitchforks. There was a good deal of daredevilry and cheering and laughing, while the village girls played their part by giving terrified squeals and begging the boys to take care.

  But the burnt robot was too far into the embers, and the heat too intense, for anyone to reach it.

  ‘We’ll get it in the morning,’ shouted the loudest of the boys, ‘We’ll nail it up high somewhere like they do in the north, so everyone will know that we kill our demons too.’

  ‘Let’s shove a pole up her and stick her outside the church,’ said another.

  ‘Ugh! That’s disgusting!’ said one of the girls.

  ‘Yes, Paulos, you are disgusting,’ said another boy.

  ‘You can’t talk. What about that donkey?’

  ‘What donkey, you lying swine?’

  They were walking past me. I had expected them to turn on me now as the demon’s lover. I had expected to be knifed or hung or perhaps flung into the remains of the fire. But it didn’t happen. The villagers ignored me completely. Th
ey walked right past me as though I had become invisible. In small groups and large ones, the whole village made its way back down the donkey track, talking and laughing like revellers returning from a party.

  I was left there on my own. Still unsteady from so much raki, I tottered to the edge of the glowing ash. Lucy’s body lay face down, its hands stretched outwards, devoid of any remnant of human flesh.

  * * *

  I remembered her room back at the ASPU house, the books that been placed there simply as props for the young college-girl image, yet each one of them slowly and painfully read by her in her efforts to understand the world in which she lived…

  54

  After some time, I made my way down the dark donkey track to the village. Although it was now the early hours of the morning, it seemed that the whole village, from aged crones to tiny children, was gathered either inside or outside of the single store. Bottles of wine and raki were being passed around. The policeman was drinking with the priest. A CD player was blasting out bouzouki music. Arm in arm the shepherds Petros and Andreas were dancing with the young men who’d tried to pull the shell of Lucy from out of the fire. There were many cheers and shouts of laughter.

  ‘Did you see when I shot her?’

  ‘If Markos wasn’t afraid of a little heat, he’d have held onto me and I’d have been able to fish the demon’s body out.’

  ‘We’d have knifed her there and then if she hadn’t dived out of the window.’

  ‘But did you hear that noise?’

  ‘I tell you I hit her fair and square with that shot. That body of hers must have strong armour.’

  No one paid the slightest attention to me. Except for a few children, no one so much as glanced in my direction.

  I went over to my car. The bags that Lucy and I had left in the upstairs room had all been piled up neatly against the front wheel, and someone had scratched a symbol onto the paintwork on the door: a Greek cross, the emblem of the Greek Christian Army.

  I climbed in and started up the engine, with an empty seat beside me. Then I drove very slowly away.

  No one even looked round as I headed off into the darkness.