Honk If You Are Jesus

by Peter Goldsworthy

  I could detect no order, no system. For a time I fossicked through the clutter randomly, without success. And then stopped, switched on the wall screens and found, flickering, that the films had been stuck there all the time.

  Hidden in full view.

  I tugged the films free, returned to the Cell Lab, dropped them into the sink, shook a bottle of spirits in after them, and tossed in a match.

  I locked the Cell Lab carefully, having closed the broken fridge as best I could, and slipped quietly down the fire stairs to my fifth floor sanctuary. I packed a few personal things from my desk in a carton; then, on impulse, crossed the corridor and unlocked the Embryology Lab.

  My own eggs — the eggs I had harvested months before — were frozen in a row of labelled phials. I loaded a small Aorta thermos with liquid nitrogen, slipped the phials inside, and carried the flask back to the carton in my office.

  For a time I sat there, waiting, still restless, but knowing the wait would be short. Twenty-two hours had passed since I had supplied Mary-Beth with those three phials of vitamins; the spiked dose had been carefully calculated. The sun set, the distant lights of Surfers Paradise glittered into life, my bleeper chirped on cue. I didn’t bother phoning the switchboard for the caller’s number. I reached for the phone and dialled the White House.

  Mary-Beth was in tears; I felt my first twinge of pity. Not guilt, but pity: that it had to be her. One of the innocent of the world.

  ‘Mara — thank God! I’ve started losing. And the most terrible cramps. What am I going to do?’

  ‘Is Hollis with you?’

  ‘Hollis is in Brisbane. Due back tonight. I can’t reach him.’

  Another bonus, of incalculable value. Scanlon trapped in the mountains; Hollis Schultz out of town. Was someone Up There on my side?

  ‘Go to bed. I’ll be right over.’

  I hung up, then lifted the receiver and dialled again: booking the operating suite for an hour’s time.

  ‘The patient’s name, Professor Fox?’

  I remembered the alias on Hollis Schultz’s pathology forms: ‘Brown’.

  ‘The procedure?’

  ‘Dilatation and curettage.’

  ‘And the anaesthetist?’

  ‘I’ll arrange that.’

  I lied; to call in an anaesthetist was impossible. The patient was too important, my plans too controversial. I could permit no questions from colleagues.

  A trolley in the examination room yielded a few house-call necessities — gloves, antiseptic cream, painkillers, needles — which I dropped into my shoulder bag. My car was still downstairs, in an empty parking lot; I drove at speed along the shore of the lake, and up through the residential estate to the White House. The front door was open, Isabella waiting; she led me at a fast trot upstairs. Mary-Beth was lying in bed, chalk faced, her eyes reddened and bloated. Her knees were drawn up to her chest; she seemed in some pain.

  ‘It’s a miscarriage, isn’t it, Mara?’

  She grasped my hand; I was a little out of breath, my answer came between wheezes: ‘A threatened miscarriage — but at this stage only threatened. Try to stay calm. Mostly these settle down and go on to normal deliveries.’

  Another lie; I was becoming adept.

  ‘I’ll know more after I examine you.’

  I eased two gloved fingers inside her vagina. Ulcer treatment is not the only property of Peptiprost. The drug had done its work: the cervix was gaping, the embryonic sac bulged against the tip of my finger.

  I was touching, I realised, Him. Goose-bumps climbed my spine, I slipped out my fingers.

  ‘What have you been losing, Mary-Beth? Clots?’

  ‘A few small ones.’

  ‘May I see?’

  She nodded towards the door where Isabella was standing, worried. The maid led me to an adjacent bathroom, and retrieved a bundle of bed linen from the laundry basket. She unfolded the soiled bedsheet; I gazed down on a fresh crimson stain, with the darker, black-red of clotted blood in the centre.

  I stepped to the basin, and began rubbing the surfaces of the sheet together beneath the hot tap, flushing the clots away. Mary-Beth’s blood, almost certainly, but I couldn’t take chances. Embryonic cells might be found among it — still recoverable. Isabella watched, suspiciously; I decided there was no need for explanations. I handed back the sodden sheet and returned to the bedroom.

  ‘Mary-Beth, I don’t know how to say this …’

  I grasped her hand again, and this, at least, was genuine. I felt for her; she was caught up in events beyond her control. Was it possible: to grieve with her, genuinely, for something that I had caused, to comfort her through a pain that was due to me? I still felt surprisingly guiltless as I lied to her; but I felt genuine sorrow.

  ‘It is a miscarriage. It can’t survive.’

  She turned her tear-smudged face to me: ‘He, Mara.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He can’t survive. I need to remove the rest of the … material.’

  ‘Hollis must be told.’

  ‘Of course. We’ll keep trying to contact him. But if you are to have children in the future, we must act as soon as possible. There is a risk of infection.’

  This was less a lie than an exaggeration, but I had to move quickly. Scanlon was safely marooned, but the broken lock on the Cell Lab fridge might be discovered at any time.

  ‘Isabella will ring for an ambulance. We must act immediately.’

  ‘I’d prefer to wait for Hollis …’

  My sympathy vanished. The old tough belief came back: her body, her decision. No one else.

  ‘There is no time. Trust me: Hollis will approve. If not, I take full responsibility.’

  I nodded to Isabella, she left the room to phone the Medical Centre. Panic seemed to worsen Mary-Beth’s cramps, she groaned and clasped her knees higher against her chest.

  I snapped the tip of a drug phial, muscle relaxant, sucked the thick syrup into a syringe, and slid the needle into her thigh.

  ‘Something for the pain,’ I murmured, but she wasn’t hearing.

  I recapped the needle; already an ambulance could be heard approaching, siren wailing. And then another, further off, slightly higher pitched. Within minutes, two young women in shapeless paramedic uniforms hustled a collapsible barouche up the stairs and into the bedroom. The younger unfolded and locked its mantis limbs, the older approached the bed with a Who-Was-In-Charge-Before-I-Got-Here? manner.

  ‘I’m Professor Fox,’ I told her, firmly. ‘Mrs Schultz’s condition is not life threatening, but I’d like her across the lake as soon as possible.’

  A second team of paramedics — men — arrived as the women were preparing to lift Mary-Beth from bed to barouche. For a moment a confrontation seemed likely: a fight for the privilege of ferrying Mrs Hollis Schultz to hospital. At the last moment co-operation prevailed; all four lifted Mary-Beth on to the barouche, and carried her down.

  ‘What will I need?’ she was saying. ‘What about my hair? Isabella, where’s a brush?’

  The relaxant had acted quickly; the cramps easing, her legs unclasping. Her mind was seeking refuge again in the realm of trivia.

  I rode with her in the crowded ambulance: three medics in the back, the fourth driving. A few minutes later, as she was being wheeled into the Medical Centre, she was even more relaxed; her speech slurred, co-ordination gone.

  ‘I knew I could trust you, Mara,’ she babbled. ‘I knew you would never let me down.’

  At the doors of the theatre suite I dismissed my assistants: ‘I’ll take her from here.’

  The duty sister was at the end of a long shift, the importance of her next patient, Mrs ‘Brown’, was beyond her tired brain. She peeled off Mary-Beth’s pants, lifted her legs, half paralysed, into the stirrups; I scrubbed briefly and swabbed the vulva.

  Through the chemical fog Mary-Beth somehow noticed that something was missing: ‘Aren’t I having an anaesthetic?’

  ‘It’s only a small procedure. I’ve given you a shot
.’

  The sister didn’t blink. The airlock to the outside world had been sealed, the submarine launched on its brief voyage. She was trained to do exactly as she was told, to obey orders without question.

  I drained the bladder, inserted the speculum, sounded the depth of the uterus. I hadn’t performed the procedure for some time, but the routines were deeply embedded. Autopilot routines.

  ‘Fenton’s, sister.’

  Mary-Beth gave a slight, muffled yelp as the thick metal slipped through the cervical canal. I paused, guilty, squirming a little, to some extent sharing the pain with her, but then pressed on. The old habits helped; I knew I could complete the procedure in a matter of seconds. Speed was the essence, as it had been in the days before anaesthesia. Speed in those times was the sole measure of the greatness of surgeons, not their competence. Thirty-second leg amputations, two-minute Caesarian sections: these were the standards.

  I slid the curette through the dilated os, pressed the suction pedal, and began to work my way around the uterus, deftly, quickly, eyes screwed shut, operating by touch alone. Mary-Beth was silent: had she fainted; or were the drugs taking stronger hold? The soft hoovering noises of the curette — suckings, small blockages, suckings again — filled the theatre.

  I stayed inside her womb a little longer than necessary; I wanted to make sure that nothing could be salvaged. At length I removed the curette, withdrew the speculum, and taped a pad between her thighs.

  ‘I’ll leave you in Sister’s hands, Mary-Beth. I’ll take this for analysis.’

  She muttered some kind of drugged, extended thankyou; I unscrewed the suction jar, and escaped with it as quickly as possible.

  I had broken most of the Medical Commandments. I had poisoned a patient, I had deceived her, I had tortured her.

  And as I emptied the suction jar into the sink, and set the hot water roaring after it, the realisation came that I had also killed God. Not my God, perhaps, but the God of many.

  Close on the heels of this revelation came another, almost as surprising: performing this abortion was, finally, some sort of act of faith.

  My first for many years.

  I peeled off my cap and gloves, and flushed them down the loo in the surgeon’s change room. The gown — unstained — I pushed into the nearest laundry chute. It could hide among its fellows in a basket in the basement.

  Dressed again, wanting only to be safely out of there, out of reach, I hesitated. And turned back to the Recovery Room, tugged by some strange, unfamiliar gravity back to Mary-Beth’s bed. We shall all be changed.

  Mrs Brown, read the name card on the head of her bed. The nursing staff had still not identified her. Certainly her pale, tear-swollen face helped: Miss Tennessee was well hidden. She had woken, and was crying, softly, her face averted — but there was a different quality to the tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  She turned towards my voice. I took her hand again; her thick, drugged tongue pushed out the words with difficulty: ‘Mara, I’m only crying because I’m guilty.’

  She attempted a smile through the tears: ‘I’m guilty because I’m so glad.’

  She was drunk on drugs; but it was that half-drunk state — an innocent state — in which we finally speak the truth, utter the things in which we most believe. She suddenly laughed, a hoarse bleat: ‘I feel so relieved.’

  She cried again, but there was relief in those tears. She had confessed; the burden had been lifted from her. She reached up a hand to grasp the back of my neck, and tugged me closer.

  ‘I know what you did,’ she whispered. ‘I think I knew all along. I knew it when I took those pills.’

  I kissed her on the forehead: ‘Goodbye, Mary-Beth.’

  ‘I’ll pray for you, Mara. Will you pray for me?’

  ‘If I pray for anyone,’ I said, ‘I’ll pray for you.’

  In fact as I walked out of the Centre, I was thinking only of myself. The cathedral, floodlit on the far side of the lake, shone, rose pink, a beacon in the night. The idea of prayer tugged at me for the first time in years, but was finally suppressed.

  Unless the need to pray is a kind of prayer itself: a scream.

  6

  Should I have flushed that third phial away with the others? Something difficult to define had stayed my hand. God? God was dead, or at least prevented. But I had also tried to kill science — or a year’s scientific work, at least — and that attempted murder seemed the greater blasphemy. Old habits, old mindsets, die hard. I had contravened the only belief I held: in freedom of inquiry, freedom of experiment.

  And yet the taboo was finally too strong. I could not bring myself to destroy the possibility of that work continuing elsewhere. In other, safer hands.

  As I sat in the departure lounge at Coolangatta I felt no qualms about Scanlon. His restless mind would soon move on, perhaps settling on Nefertiti, or King Tut. Perhaps he could arrange for Grossman to borrow the Sacred Tooth of the Buddha in Kandy. I remembered a conversation — half argument, half tease — between us in the mountains. We had been basking naked on the same rock he now shared with Heather Sims, trading names: names of the famous dead, the famous prematurely dead. To my Mozart he had opposed John Lennon. To my Evariste Galois — a mathematician I knew something of — ‘Swisher’ Brown.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ I said.

  ‘One of the all-time greats. Died early, like a lot of basketballers.’

  ‘Marfan’s Syndrome,’ I guessed.

  ‘What’s Marfan’s Syndrome?’

  ‘A disease of the connective tissue. The victims grow too tall, too quickly.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mara: God strikes them down? Some kind of punishment, or nemesis for growing too tall, getting too big for their boots?’

  I laughed: ‘The boots grow too. I remember a pair of size 17s in post-mortem. They kept the feet pickled in a jar.’

  ‘Wasted resources,’ he murmured. ‘All that wasted genius.’

  Had he been trying to broach, carefully, his secret project? Feeling me out, testing the water? If so, I hadn’t understood. I had stretched myself at his side, naked, half hypnotised, enjoying the rhythmic murmur of his voice, the rough warmth of the rock against my skin — hearing the surface of his words but not listening beneath. Now I understood. If it could be done once, it could be done again — and if it could be done, it would be done. Not with the same genetic material, perhaps — I had seen to that, ruthlessly. But other names began to crowd my mind. Beethoven. Newton. Freud. Einstein. Of course the list was endless. How many mausolea were scattered across the face of the earth; how many tombs, how many shrines? Grave robbers might strip their riches, but shreds of genetic material would always remain. The true wealth: scraps of leathery, mummified skin. Bone fragments. Clothes stained with liquor mortis, the fluid residues of death and decomposition.

  The final departure call for Adelaide sounded; I boarded without incident, watching over my shoulder, clutching my bags. Within minutes I was high above the Cold Coast, breathing more easily. I pressed my nose to the perspex, and examined the rind of buildings that encrusts the shores of Paradise for the last time. Those miles of high-rise tombstones reminded me of my visit to Paris, newly graduated, years ago: of the day I spent marching up and down the aisles of the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. The Parisian dead are buried beneath small granite phone boxes, each grave topped by its own thin, vertical chapel. All morning I stalked back and forth among the rows with my map of the famous dead, not so much paying homage as Doing Another Tourist Sight. Some of the names meant much to me, great names: Pasteur, Fournier, Philippe Pinel. Others, less well known, belonged in a general penumbra of fame for reasons I didn’t specifically know: Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Eloise and Abelard.

  Around noon the noise of rock music drew me in among a thicket of stone phone boxes; I stumbled upon a group of hippie types, smoking lumpen, misshapen cigarettes and swigging from a shared bottle of wine. A cassette player blared rock music from a nearby
headstone. The lyrics were in English; the voices of the hippies also were in English: Americans, Canadians, fellow Australians.

  The name on the rock at their feet was unfamiliar:

  Jim Morrison.

  ‘Jim lives,’ one of the women told me, simply, and handed up the bottle of wine. Those worshippers were my age, but I passed the bottle down again, and walked quickly away.

  It seems a human instinct, a human need: to worship the dead, yes, but to worship them as resurrected, as not dead. I’m thinking now of odd headlines that sometimes catch the eye: The Body Didn’t Look Like Elvis, The Death Certificate Was Forged …

  Someone saw him, Risen, in Galilee. Is there any difference? I had stopped one resurrection, perhaps the most dangerous, but I saw now that there would be others. Not so much to reclaim lost resources — the priceless brain of a Mozart or an Einstein — as for purposes of worship. To praise the dead, more than to use them. There was a need to believe, not so much in the immortality of certain individuals, as in the promise that the immortality of some held for all. If Elvis can live forever, so surely can I.

  Scanlon had more than enough work.

  The plane banked; Lake Galilee was clearly visible in its shallow valley, its Lego set of buildings clustered about it. I thought again of Mary-Beth; she had forgiven me already; this was a comfort. Less intelligent than her husband, she was also far too good for him. I doubted their marriage could survive, and allowed myself an increment of pleasure in contemplating the seeds of mutiny that I had sown. And Tad? Tad was happy. The events of the last few months would keep him in gossip for the rest of his life.

  The wing tilted up, the Gold Coast was lost to view. My own eggs — unfertilised — were packed in a thermos flask of liquid nitrogen in my overnight bag in the luggage locker above.

  The phial of DNA — fettucine strands xeroxed from the Holy Nail of Monza — was in my shoulder bag, clutched to my side.

  7