Apocalypse Next Tuesday

by Safier, David; Parnfors, Hilary;

  ‘OK,’ I said eventually. ‘You wanted to know how I live. So ask me. Anything. Whatever you like.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Jesus. ‘Are you still a virgin?’

  I almost choked on a piece of banana. ‘What… what makes you ask that?’ I spluttered.

  ‘Well, you don’t have any children.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And you’re old.’

  Well, thank you very much.

  ‘Very, very old.’

  He clearly also needed some lessons in charm too

  ‘In Judea women of your age would already have been grandmothers. Unless they had succumbed to leprosy.’

  I pushed my banana split aside. How was I going to explain to him that I didn’t have any children? Should I tell him about Marc, whom I’d wanted to run over after finding out he was cheating on me? Or about Sven, whom I’d ditched at the altar? Or about the fertility computer that I used, which had a reliability of ninety-four per cent when used as a contraceptive, which was at least six percent too little in my eyes?

  No. That would all be too embarrassing and awkward. He would probably judge me and tell me that I’d burn in hell. The only good thing is that it would almost certainly bring an end to our date.

  But before I could even answer, I saw a group of Sven’s footie mates approaching. After the episode in the church, I was probably not in their good books. And more importantly, Jesus would find out what I’d done to poor Sven. I wanted to avoid that at any cost.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Jesus.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let’s just go.’

  ‘But I haven’t eaten all my banana split.’

  It was bizarre to hear Jesus say ‘banana split’.

  ‘You don’t need to eat it all,’ I replied impatiently.

  ‘But it’s really delicious.’

  ‘Forget the bloody ice cream,’ I shouted.

  Jesus looked at me in astonishment. It was too late anyway – Sven’s teammates were already standing over us. They were four typical footballers in their mid-thirties. They reeked of alcohol. You could probably have sterilised surgical instruments with their breath.

  The striker, a small guy with a sharp tongue, immediately had a go at me. ‘You broke Sven’s heart…’

  ‘Get lost,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Are we interrupting your date?’ the midfielder asked. His Don Johnson mullet was not very becoming.

  ‘You’re a slut,’ said the gigantic defender, a vulgar man who was simply known in the club as ‘Not man, Not beast’.

  ‘Hmmm!’ the goalie grunted affirmatively. It seemed that this guy had taken a few too many shots to the head.

  I looked at Jesus and wondered whether he was now going to judge me. The guilt about Sven I’d felt when I’d almost drowned in the lake was overwhelming me again.

  But Jesus just got up. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,’ he declared.

  ‘He wants us to throw stones?’ the gigantic defender snapped.

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ the forward said maliciously.

  ‘Hmmm,’ the goalie grunted affirmatively.

  Yes, my dear Jesus, the times have changed. The footballers were so drunk they would happily have stoned me to death. With all that alcohol, a couple of stones would probably have missed the target, but I still felt pretty uneasy.

  ‘We really should go now,’ I whispered to Jesus.

  ‘We will eat our banana splits in peace,’ he insisted, as the goalie picked up a small stone.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I think that we’re not going to get very far with your “turn the other cheek” attitude,’ I warned.

  ‘I’m not going to show them my cheek,’ Jesus explained as he stood up again.

  Oh my goodness. He wasn’t going to wither them, was he?

  But Jesus did no such thing. Instead he wrote something in the sand without saying a word. I couldn’t figure it out. To me, it looked like illegible hieroglyphs. But the footballers stared at the sand for a long time. Then they hurried off. Jesus blew on the sand and the inscription disappeared.

  ‘What… what did you write?’ I asked.

  ‘Everyone could read their own worst sin in the sand,’ Jesus smiled.

  It seemed that he’d read their minds.

  Oh God. Had he also seen what I’d done to Sven?

  Jesus looked at my guilt-ridden face. ‘Don’t worry Marie. I did not read your memory to see your sins, only the men’s. That’s why you couldn’t read what I wrote.’

  Phew.

  ‘What exactly is S&M?’ Jesus asked.

  I wondered which footballer’s mind he’d read to see that word. And how on earth was I going to answer the question without blushing.

  ‘What does “tax evasion” mean? And what is it to abandon your mother in a damp nursing home?’

  I didn’t know which question to answer first, or whether I even could. Instead I opted to tell Jesus what had happened with Sven. How sorry I was, but that I just had to leave him at the altar, because I didn’t love him enough, and that I’d broken his heart. And how guilty I felt. I probably would not be able to forgive myself as long as I lived.

  ‘Are you judging me now?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘And do you know what that means?’

  ‘That I shouldn’t judge myself either?’ I asked hopefully, so as to be able to rid myself of my bad conscience.

  ‘Erm,’ he cleared his throat and looked for the right words.

  ‘You meant something else, right?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘I actually wanted to say that you shouldn’t do something like that again.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said disappointedly. ‘Well I wasn’t planning on ditching someone at the altar again…’ I added.

  ‘Rightly so,’ Jesus stated.

  And after thinking for a while he explained: ‘But it would be a good idea to forgive yourself.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I was surprised.

  ‘I should have thought of that myself,’ he explained. ‘I’ve learned something.’

  And for that he smiled at me gratefully. That was nice. His smiled warmed my heart. As did the fact that I could now forgive myself.

  ‘You stopped a stoning once didn’t you?’ I asked Jesus, who was now focused on his ice cream again. For the first time that evening, I was able to breathe easily again.

  ‘Yes. A whore’s,’ he explained.

  ‘Mary Magdalene?’ I asked.

  ‘Mary Magdalene was not a whore!’ Jesus replied angrily.

  Jeeeeeez, someone still had strong feelings for the ex. If she even was an ex.

  ‘Mary Magdalene was just an ordinary woman,’ explained Jesus, more calmly.

  ‘So how did you meet her?’ I asked.

  ‘She and her sister Martha invited me into their home. She anointed my feet.’ Did Mary Magdalene do pedicures? Surely not. They probably didn’t even exist back then.

  ‘And then she dried my feet with her hair.’

  Whatever floats your boat.

  ‘From that day on, Mary Magdalene was one of my followers,’ Jesus smiled. This smile made me feel jealous. A particularly silly feeling when it’s because of Jesus, and with the dancing Mary Magdalene from Jesus Christ Superstar still in my mind.

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop feeling jealous. It seemed that my feelings were not quite as dead and buried as I would have liked. I just needed to know whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had shared a bed. How was I going to ask this subtly?

  ‘So, you and your followers… er… did you spend the night in small caves… where you had to… huddle together to keep warm?’

  Not very subtly then.

  Jesus shook his head. ‘Mary Magdalene and I never lay side by side.’

  What was it my sister always used to say? Plato was a complete idiot.

  ‘Mary had said to me…’ Jesus carried on talking, but then stopped.

  ‘What had she said?’

  He didn�
�t want to answer.

  His eyes were now really sad again. He had not just forsaken his family for his mission, but his love as well. Too much forsaking, if you ask me.

  Jesus had now finished up his ice cream, and one of his hands was resting on the table. Again, I wanted to touch his hand to comfort him. And this time I didn’t hold back. I didn’t care that he was the Son of God. Right now he was just a sad man, who I happened to like very much. Maybe even too much. My hand approached his, but he saw and took his hand off the table in a controlled movement. He didn’t want to be comforted. Not by me.

  But he wasn’t able to comfort himself right now either – he was still making a melancholy face. I tried to think how I could get him to stop thinking about his memories. He wanted to see how people lived today, so maybe I should take him to the place there was most life in Malente right now.

  ‘I know what I’m going to show you next,’ I smiled.

  ‘What?’ Jesus asked eagerly.

  ‘Salsa!’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At about eleven o’clock we entered the only place that was still open at this time in our little town – the salsa club. Its name was typically unoriginal for Malente. Club Tropical was located in a cellar, and the smoking ban was a foreign concept here. But the atmosphere was tremendous – there were lots of young people dancing to fantastic South American rhythms. Jesus and I raised the average age considerably, and not just because he was over 2,000 years old. All this was clearly alien to him – the wild dancing, the skimpy clothing and the men’s shirts that revealed unpleasant amounts of chest hair.

  ‘Is dancing forbidden in any way?’ I asked. I was suddenly afraid that I was making a mistake by bringing him here.

  ‘No. King David danced virtually unclad to honour God.’

  Virtually unclad? Good Lord.

  We squeezed our way through the crowd. Some of the women were clearly a little too unclad for Jesus’ taste, judging from his disapproving glances.

  ‘Do you want to leave?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, I’m used to being among sinners,’ he replied.

  ‘But… you’re not going to write their sins on the ground, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I will convert the people.’

  He made to approach a woman whose top was clearly communicating to men that she wanted to take it off.

  But I followed Jesus, overtook him and stood in front of him. ‘No one is going to be converted here,’ I warned. I suspected that most people in the club weren’t real sinners anyway, at least not according to my definition.

  ‘But…’ Jesus tried to protest.

  ‘Otherwise this evening will be ruined!’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You want me to show you how people live today. But I just can’t do that if you are the Son of God.’

  ‘Well, I am the Son of God,’ Jesus replied. This was the first time that I’d seen him look confused.

  It suited him. He looked so gentle and vulnerable.

  ‘But you’re a person as well,’ I explained. I’d felt it when he spoke about his parents and Mary Magdalene.

  Now he raised his other eyebrow as well.

  ‘Just be Joshua this evening.’

  He thought for a while. ‘Agreed,’ he said at last.

  I immediately set up some ‘be a normal person’ rules for the salsa evening:

  No singing of psalms.

  No breaking of bread.

  No confrontations with sinners.

  No unclad dancing.

  The last rule made Jesus laugh out loud. He seemed to like laughing at my jokes. ‘You needn’t worry about that,’ he said.

  He even seemed amused by my other rules and accepted them gladly. But it wasn’t only Joshua who had to blank out that he was Son of God – I had to do so as well. But when it came to men, it seemed I was more than capable of blanking things out… Marc’s continuous flirting with other women, Sven’s unpleasant habit of cutting his toenails in the living room… I’d blanked out all of these things, typical of a woman desperate to stay with a guy. This female aptitude for self-deception was something I was going to take advantage of tonight.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you want to have some wine with me again?’

  ‘I was thinking of mojitos.’

  I ordered two drinks at the bar and wondered whether this might be construed as an attempt to seduce the Messiah. Surely a mojito wasn’t going to do too much harm to a man with a divine metabolism? Once he’d found out how to sip past the little umbrellas, he smiled with genuine pleasure. ‘That really is a tasty alternative to wine.’

  Joshua – yes, it worked, I could call him Joshua again – was smiling from ear to ear. His mood got better by the minute. I looked at the crowd that was dancing to the hot rhythms. Should I ask Joshua to dance? Why not? He was just a person now!

  I gathered up all my courage and, with a pounding heart, I asked, ‘Shall we dance?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘I… I’ve never danced before in my life.’

  ‘Well, then King David really has one up on you,’ I smiled, trying to challenge him a bit.

  ‘But these are not the Lord’s songs,’ he pointed out.

  ‘They’re not the devil’s either.’

  Joshua weighed up this argument, but as he was still weighing I just dragged him onto the dance floor.

  He was completely overwhelmed. It suited him to be overwhelmed. I grasped his waist, and he let me do so, now firmly determined to engage with all of this. Then I started to push him over the dance floor. Admittedly he was a little stiff at first. We stumbled and bumped into another couple, who complained loudly. ‘Can’t you watch where you’re going?’ shouted the man, who was dressed like Antonia Banderas, but looked like Andrew Marr.

  ‘Watch your mouth – or he will wither you,’ I grinned and pushed Joshua onwards.

  ‘I would never do that…’ he protested.

  But I interrupted him. ‘Some time I’ll teach you what irony is.’

  Then I pulled him towards me. He stepped on my foot.

  ‘Ouch!’ I cried.

  ‘Forgive me.’ He was really embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I replied and really meant it. I actually thought it was a good thing. It finally made me forget that I was not dealing with an ordinary person.

  Slowly but surely we found our rhythm. Joshua stopped stepping on my feet quite as much, and at last we were moving as one – as one who wasn’t dancing very well. But as one nevertheless.

  I’d never before shimmied across a dance floor quite so harmoniously with a man. To me he was Joshua again, the carpenter with the wonderful voice, the amazing eyes and the… yes, I even let myself think it again… great arse.

  We danced salsa. And merengue. And even a tango. Even though we didn’t quite know all the right steps, and garnered one or two disapproving looks from the people around us, seeming to wonder ‘What are those klutzes doing jumping about here?’ I had fun. Loads of fun. And so did Joshua. Tons!

  Between two dances he beamed at me and said: ‘I never knew that physical exertion not tied to work could be so fun.’ Then, much more earnestly, he added: ‘And that it could be this much fun just to be Joshua.’

  After the salsa club had closed we headed towards the lake to watch the sunrise. It had been such a great evening, and I wanted the works! In fact, it had been the best evening I’d had in years.

  We sat down on the pier. Yes, it seemed like we were almost regulars here. A romantic place, the ideal spot to watch the sun go up… and for a first kiss… a nice, gentle kiss… My God! I couldn’t think about things like that now! Or ever, really. I punitively hit myself on the head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Joshua asked, clearly confused by my mortification.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It was just a mosquito…’ I answered untruthfully.

>   Joshua took off his shoes to cool his feet in the lake. I saw his scars.

  I gulped. That’s where the nails had been hammered in.

  ‘That must have been horrendously painful,’ I blurted out.

  Joshua glanced at me sternly. I quickly looked down. Had I just crossed a line?

  ‘I was supposed just to be Joshua,’ he reminded me.

  ‘The… the evening is as good as over,’ I replied. I couldn’t get the images from the Mel Gibson film out of my head, which were – to make matters worse – accompanied by the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar.

  I could no longer pretend that this man sitting next to me was not Jesus. That made me very sad. I would so have liked to carry on pretending.

  Joshua stared into the break of dawn and nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose the evening has come to an end.’

  It sounded as though there was a note of melancholy in his voice.

  He let his feet dangle in the water.

  ‘How… how did you cope with the pain?’ I asked. It really was bothering me too much to be able to keep quiet.

  Joshua just kept looking at the sky. He simply didn’t want to talk about it. I was such a stupid cow. It seemed that I really had crossed the line with my questions. I was just about to hit myself on the head again when Joshua answered: ‘My faith in God helped me to bear it.’

  His answer sounded a little too dramatic and valiant to be the whole truth.

  ‘You believed in God the whole time, despite the pain?’ I added.

  He didn’t say anything. He was clearly thinking. Finally he replied in a melancholy voice: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’

  ‘Excuse me, what?’

  ‘A psalm of David,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh…’ I stammered. I didn’t understand a word of course. But this psalm probably didn’t have anything to do with his naked dancing.