Honk If You Are Jesus

by Peter Goldsworthy

  ‘Practically a virgin. A total ingénue. The more you think about it, the more you’ve got to hand it to Billy Scanlon. But oh, my — is the excreta ever going to hit the fan when news of this gets out!’

  ‘You think it’s all Scanlon’s idea?’

  ‘And the good Dr Schultz. Thick as thieves.’

  ‘And Mary-Beth? You don’t think she knows? They haven’t told her what she’s carrying inside?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone knows. They’ve been using us — all of us. You, me, Mary-Beth. Even Grossman — Walking Death. His role was to fetch home the bones, the genetic material.’ He laughed out loud. ‘You really pick them, chérie. Your toy boy is a genius.’

  ‘Can we drop the subject of Scanlon?’

  I couldn’t share his exhilaration. I walked home through that warm, viscid night feeling as confused as I had ever felt: half disbelieving, half fascinated, but wholly angry. I had permitted Scanlon to share my bed, I had stood before him, exposed in many more ways than one, yet he had hidden crucial things from me: had hidden his central purpose, had hidden, it now seemed, himself from me.

  I was also angry with myself: Having had imperfect understanding from the start …

  Any plodding Watson could have made the deduction months before. How simple it was, in retrospect: hidden in full view.

  The night closed in about me as I left the Medical Centre: the moon was hidden, the stars invisible, the air black and impenetrable, as if silted up. I walked slowly, feeling my way along the shore-path, having trouble breathing, also, for the first time in months.

  At home I couldn’t sleep. By 5 a.m. there was still no sign of Tad. I extracted myself from the tangle of bedding, threw a suitcase on to the bed and began to pack. Then abandoned the attempt and took the Bible down from my shelves.

  She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But, as he considered this, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.’

  What was I seeking in these texts? Contradictions? There were more than enough of those. Historical inaccuracies? Proof that He never existed at all — not as the son of God, certainly, but not even as a man, as an actual historical figure?

  ‘You mustn’t take the good book too literally, dear,’ my mother liked to tell me as a child. ‘Much of it is poetry. You musn’t take these things too far.’

  Reading the Bible, except on Sundays, in church, its proper time and place, had been regarded as a bad sign: a warning sign of the dangers of Overdoing Things, of Going Too Far, of Not Knowing When to Stop — familiar cautions, all of them.

  What would I have told her now: ‘Mum, did I mention that I’ve cloned the Lord from some genetic fragments. He will be Born Again next year.’

  And the angel said to her: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy.’

  Deeper inside than any gospel passage could reach was that other festering issue: Scanlon. Where was he hiding? Everyone had seen him in recent weeks — except me. Had he been using me, as Tad claimed? Using everyone, the money of his patron and collaborator, Hollis Schultz, included. Certainly Scanlon had no belief in God, or in the divinity of Christ. His mind was too quick and frisky for beliefs of any kind, too easily bored for any lasting belief. Except perhaps in himself; in the self-evident powers of his own mind. And possibly, stretching things, in the powers of a handful of other minds: mine, I had hoped, among them.

  The dodo had occupied his short attention span for a time, but he had resurrected the Tasmanian Tiger with one mental hand behind his back. This much was now clear: the cuckoo foetus growing inside Mary-Beth Schultz had been his real project. The sensation of the century. And perhaps of all centuries: electricity, moon landings, artificial intelligence, the Genome Project, the Resurrection of Christ — I knew in which order I would rank the Miracles.

  The sky began to lighten at six, minimally: the world outside remained dark and overcast. Rumbles of thunder carried to me. Just after dawn rain began to fall, a dense tropical downpour; simultaneously the doorbell chimed, almost inaudible in the noisy rain.

  The phone was off the hook; I had tried to isolate myself. I lay in bed, wrapped in quilt armour, allowing the chimes to sound again, resolved to ignore them. But finally rising, recognising Tad’s muffled shouts.

  He fell inwards as I opened the door, too drunk to fit his key into the lock. His speech, also, no longer seemed to fit the dimensions of his mouth.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ he slurred, and clasped me in some sort of fond-husband parody embrace: ‘Where’re my pipe and slippers?’

  ‘I thought he needed help getting home,’ said a familiar voice somewhere behind him.

  Scanlon was standing in the rain, smiling goofily. He was wearing a denim jacket — the first time I had seen him in anything except a shirt. The jacket was rain soaked, his hair and beard bedraggled. Beyond him, on the far side of the road, a taxi was parked, waiting, its exhaust smoking in the cold. I realised instantly that he knew that I knew; that Tad had been unable to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Don’t I get a kiss?’ he said.

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘A coffee then?’

  ‘I think you owe me an explanation. Several explanations.’

  Our words sound absurd now, especially my words: murderous feelings seeking to douse themselves in banalities.

  He stepped uninvited through the door; together we steered Tad in the direction of his bedroom, and shoved him through, backwards. His momentum carried him back on to the bed; he lay there, temporarily trapped by his own weight, waving his turtle paws.

  ‘Sleep it off,’ I said, and closed the door.

  I moved back along the hall towards my bedroom. Scanlon followed: a squelch of wet walking boots.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘When? After the birth?’

  ‘I was waiting for the right moment.’

  ‘William, if some of the moments we shared together weren’t right, then I don’t know what is.’

  I had only used his surname in the past; his given name jarred, oddly, and perhaps told him how angry I was. He turned; we almost collided.

  ‘I wasn’t sure how you’d react,’ he said. ‘I needed to know you better before I told you.’

  ‘You mean you were sizing me up?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘It was some kind of assessment programme? How did I score, William?’

  I pulled a towel from the linen press and tossed it to him. He rubbed his head and neck and tossed it back: stained with grime. He took his jacket off and dropped it across the back of a chair — the room filled with a wet-dog rankness. He looked at me — frankly, openly — and I realised why he had come. Not to beg for love, or forgiveness, as some residual schoolgirl part of me, the part that wore satin jackets and different hair, still seemed to hope.

  ‘I need you,’ he said, but without feeling, permitting me to understand that the word ‘need’ was restricted severely in meaning. ‘We need you.’

  I sat on the bed, and pulled up my quilt: light armour. He sat on a chair opposite. My half-packed suitcase was between us on the floor.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ I said. ‘You don’t need me at all. My part’s over. The graft has taken. A midwife could do the job from here.’

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ he said.

  We sat for a time in silence. Steam was rising faintly from his wet shirt; I could smell him from across the room. He could have made small talk; he gave the impression that he didn’t care to waste energy. At length he rose again from the sofa: ‘Maybe it’s best if I leave you to think about it. There’s no point trying to persuade
you — you know all the arguments anyway. You’re hearing them from yourself.’

  I averted my face; he knew me too well. Which was, after all, a kind of self-recognition: we were alike, in many ways. Ninety-nine per cent twins.

  ‘Maybe I have assessed you,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with that? My assessment is that you’ll stay. You love it as much as me. It’s the only thing you really love.’

  This may have been true, as recently as a few weeks before, but wasn’t true now, not completely. My throat tightened; there were still differences between us: a few small percentage points, perhaps, but crucial percentage points. I fought back the tears, successfully; and turned a cold, professional face towards him.

  ‘If I do stay — I’m not promising anything — it would be on one condition.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Mary-Beth has to be told.’

  ‘Mary-Beth has been told.’

  I didn’t believe him: ‘When?’

  ‘I’ve just come from there. You guys forced our hands. We had to tell her first. Try to make her understand.’

  ‘Understand what? Sorry, there’s been a mix up at the Cell Lab? We gave you the Son of God by mistake? You fucking arsehole!’

  ‘Mara, you surprise me. Where did you learn such language?’

  ‘You’ll hear a lot more yet.’

  ‘Stay cool. She’s carrying a clone of someone dead for two thousand years. Jesus Christ? Maybe, but who was he? The bastard son of some Roman legionary.’

  ‘You haven’t told Mary-Beth that?’

  ‘Of course not. She believes.’

  ‘William, she thought it was her child. Her daughter.’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  I sat there, thinking of Miss Tennessee, trying to imagine those doll-like features distorted by puzzlement, even by terror.

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Mary-Beth’s fine, Mara. We all had a long talk. It wasn’t easy. But she’s coming round. She sees that it’s … special. That she’s lucky, that she’s been specially chosen. In a roundabout way. Okay, it might have been nice to have been told earlier. But she realises that a million women would trade places with her.’

  ‘Then she’s crazy. It’s some compensating mechanism. She just can’t wrap her mind around it. It’ll all come unstuck. She’ll soon realise she’s being used.’

  ‘We’re all being used.’

  I snorted, interrupting him, but only momentarily.

  ‘The idea is using all of us. Its time had come, Mara, you know that. If the idea hadn’t used me — and you — it would have used someone else.’

  I managed to hide the anger I felt. ‘So what happens now? What are Schultz’s plans? Another publicity launch? Shepherds and their flocks down by the lake? Wise men and frankincense and myrrh?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s planning, and I don’t care. I only care that we have done something … astonishing. You and me. Together. Something beyond our wildest dreams. So stay please. You’re needed.’

  ‘The idea needs me?’

  ‘Don’t be bitter. I need you. Mary-Beth needs you.’

  He rose, and moved away out into the narrow hall towards the front door.

  ‘Scanlon,’ I called after him.

  He turned, half smiling, reassured at the sound of his surname, a sign that I was softening: ‘Mmm?’

  ‘What if it is God?’

  He laughed, and moved on again: ‘We’re the gods,’ he called back over his shoulder.

  I had no belief in God, or gods, yet there seemed an enormous tastelessness in this. His quickness, his restless mind had drawn me to him months before, and now suddenly freed me from him. That quickness was merely a kind of decadence, that restless mind was too easily exhausted, searching always for new ideas, new sensations, new intellectual thrills.

  I saw this clearly because I saw my own mind mirrored in his: an intellectual ratchet, winding in one direction only, ever more tightly.

  I rose and followed him to the door.

  ‘One other thing,’ I said. ‘I’ve always wanted to ask.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell me about your mother.’

  He seemed surprised: ‘I don’t remember her. She died when I was three. Why?’

  ‘Just curious.’

  I pulled open the door. Rain was still falling outside, a curtain of water, but thinner. The taxi was still waiting in the road, exhaust smoking, wipers slowly scraping. I couldn’t make out the face behind the wheel.

  ‘I wasn’t sure of my welcome,’ Scanlon said.

  He turned, our faces were suddenly close; he was looking up at me.

  ‘Shall I send the cab away?’

  I stepped back: ‘No. Please go. I need more time to think.’

  ‘Maya,’ he said, ‘relax — it’s a clone of Christ — not Christ. A twin.’

  ‘An identical twin?’

  ‘Even identical twins are different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘One bigger, one smaller — unequal share of the nutrition. You know this stuff. Even their fingerprints are different: random migration of embryonic cells. Not everything is controlled by the DNA. And what about consciousness? That’s mostly environment, surely.’

  ‘Tell that to the television audience. They’ll know exactly who He is.’

  2

  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

  Corinthians 1, 15:51, 52

  The rain cleared towards the end of the morning. I closed the Bible, rose from my bed, pulled my hair into approximate shape. Tad was still snoring in his room; I slipped quietly from the house, and walked rapidly uphill to the White House. Mary-Beth answered the door herself; I sensed she had been waiting.

  She smiled uncertainly: ‘Friends?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Her smile widened, relieved; she took my arm and walked me inside. We sat on a cast-iron bench in a small side conservatory, amid orchids and ferns. No coffee was offered; she had too much on her mind.

  ‘I’ve been trying to ring you,’ she said. ‘I wanted to talk to you before anyone else does. And clear the air. I want you to know that I’m very happy.’

  Bullshit, I thought. But said instead: ‘You don’t blame me?’

  ‘I don’t blame anyone. Especially you.’

  Heaven hath no forgiveness like women, deceived.

  ‘You must have been angry. If not with me, with the men.’

  ‘I didn’t feel anything for a time. It’s hard to explain, Mara. They woke me in the middle of the night. It was like a dream. I felt I wasn’t me, I felt I was outside me. A step behind me, watching myself. Everything was so … unreal. I thought I was going crazy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you.’

  She laughed, but uncertainly again.

  ‘It’s a great privilege, of course,’ she said. ‘I guess.’

  She looked up into my eyes, and asked the question I had been dreading, the question I knew she would ask her Best Friend: ‘What do you think, Mara?’

  ‘I think they should have asked you. I think it should have been discussed. I think that is unforgivable.’

  ‘I know. They used me, I suppose. I should be angry. But I can’t seem to be.’

  ‘They used all of us.’

  Her speech was a little too loud, too rapid: ‘Hollis says there was no other way. He wants to talk to you, Mara. To explain. Could you come to dinner tonight? Please? I need you to be friends. It was too important to take any risks, he says. It had to be a total secret. Poor honey, he’s so excited. I can’t bring myself to be angry at him. Does that make sense?’

  I kept my mouth shut; she wasn’t, I sensed, seeking my opinion, only confirmation of hers.

  ‘It’s all too strange and amazing and confusing. There doesn’t seem to be any room for anger. I don�
��t seem to have any time to feel anger. I’m not sure what to feel.’

  She reached her hand across the table, and clutched mine. She was smiling, but it was not the grip of a smiling woman. It was the grip of someone drowning, someone clutching desperately for help — and not even realising it.

  Her face had a wistful softness to it.

  ‘Pregnancy suits you,’ I said, struggling for things to say. ‘You look wonderful.’

  ‘You’ll come tonight?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I need you, Mara. Please don’t leave.’

  3

  Tad was awake and moving slowly about the kitchen at home, bundled in his silken smoking jacket. Sunglasses protected his eyes; his speech was slow.

  ‘Top of the morning to you,’ I said.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘No jokes.’

  The drug cupboard above the kitchen sink was open; he unscrewed various phials and set their contents in a row along the window ledge: vitamins, headache pills.

  ‘We’ve put the cat among the pigeons, chérie. Talk about feathers flying. Have you heard from Scanlon?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘Things are a little hazy.’

  He filled a glass with water, and began to wash down the pills, methodically, almost sacramentally, one at a time.

  ‘Scanlon arrived on the doorstep at dawn this morning,’ I told him.

  This news item seemed to perk him up: ‘Bearing gifts? Vowing true love?’

  ‘I don’t recall hearing the word love. And the only thing he was carrying was you.’

  ‘Was I that bad?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he pressed. ‘What did the two of you talk about?’

  ‘You’d better ask Scanlon.’

  He laughed; his hangover seemed forgotten. He was all ears: ‘But you decided to stop sulking?’

  ‘I wasn’t sulking. I just needed a little breathing space. A little time to think.’

  ‘With what result?’

  I wasn’t about to share with Tad — a frictionless conduit, a superconductor among gossips — the plans that were forming in my mind. His inability to take the events of last night seriously irked me; there was something far too frivolous about it.