Apocalypse Next Tuesday

by Safier, David; Parnfors, Hilary;

  Jesus remained silent.

  ‘Erm… did you hear what I said?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I heard your words.’

  ‘And… why do I get the feeling that there’s a “but” coming?’

  ‘Because I can’t do anything to help your sister.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Erm… I’m sorry,’ I stammered, ‘But… all I hear is “I can’t do that”.’

  ‘That’s because it’s what I said,’ Jesus explained softly.

  ‘That explains it,’ I replied, feeling utterly confused.

  Why couldn’t he do it? He was Jesus, for Christ’s sake, who commanded the wind, healed the sick and walked over water. He could do anything he wanted!

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ I asked.

  ‘I am on a mission from God.’

  ‘God?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe it. ‘God is keeping you from saving my sister?’

  ‘It’s not that simple…’ Jesus added.

  ‘I prayed to God, asking for my sister to get well again,’ I interrupted. ‘But he wasn’t interested!’

  ‘Did you pray often?’

  His question threw me off course a little. Often? What was often? Whenever I feared for her life!

  Jesus spoke: ‘If you go to a friend at midnight and ask him for three loaves…’

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Why are we talking about bread?’

  Jesus carried on speaking, unmoved by my interruption. ‘If he is your friend, he will rise because of your importunity and give you as many as you need.’

  Jesus looked at me, as though I should somehow have understood some of this. But in all honesty, all I understood was bread.

  ‘That was a parable,’ he explained.

  No kidding, I thought. Then I asked myself whether the people in Palestine also had trouble understanding what he was on about.

  ‘You have to persevere with God, in order to make sure that you are heard,’ Jesus explained.

  Should I have prayed more?

  ‘So God is a diva?’ I snapped.

  Jesus was surprised at my outburst. I clearly hadn’t understood the parable as he’d wanted me to. But before he could reply anything in return, we heard the horn of the Bethlehem Four. The ship would set sail any moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, I must board the ship now,’ Jesus said.

  I’d come here in vain. Kata would not be healed. I was in total despair and was trying to find the right words. Then Michi came charging out of the brothel. He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘I saw things in there that no man should see,’ he exclaimed, aghast.

  A perturbed Michi disappeared off in the direction of his Beetle. The horn sounded again. ‘Farewell, Marie,’ said Jesus.

  And off he went.

  My desperation turned to anger. If you had to go knocking at his door more often to get that bread, then that’s what I was going to do now.

  ‘Jesus, wait!’

  He didn’t turn around.

  ‘Jesus!’

  He still didn’t turn around.

  ‘Eli, Eli, llama, sabathi,’ I finally shouted, filled with grief.

  He stopped and turned around to face me: ‘That means “My God, my God, my llama is infertile”.’

  ‘Eli, Eli, lladara sabathi,’ I tried again.

  ‘And that means, “My God, my God, my hat is infertile.”

  ‘You know, what I mean!’ I yelled.

  I wanted to run up to him and pummel his chest in sheer desperation.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he replied.

  And then he quietly spoke, adding his own pain: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.’

  ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ I translated. Accusingly. Angrily. Unhappily.

  Jesus thought long and hard. Then he declared: ‘I will travel on another ship.’

  I could hardly believe my luck. Overjoyed, I ran up to him and hugged him.

  And he let me. He even enjoyed it. I pulled him close to me. And he enjoyed that too. Because in this instant, he was Joshua again.

  Have I mentioned that I have a talent to destroy even the most special moment?

  Exuberantly, I kissed Joshua on the cheek. For a brief moment, he enjoyed that too. I could feel it! And then, shocked by his own behaviour, he let go and declared: ‘We need to hurry to your sister.’

  I wondered whether I should be ashamed of myself. But I didn’t feel any shame. After all, that kiss was born out of a deep gratitude. And love. It surely couldn’t be wrong to love Jesus.

  Love Jesus?

  Oh dear! I knew that he was Jesus, and I loved him anyway?

  Then I did feel ashamed.

  I didn’t say a word in the car on the way back to Malente. Jesus sat on the back seat and prayed in Hebrew. I wondered whether he might be asking God for forgiveness for reacting to my kiss like that. In any case, he managed to create a distance between us. As I awkwardly stared out of the window, Michi was hardly able to focus on steering. The presence of Jesus was making him nervous. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that he had the Son of God sitting in the back seat of his shabby VW Beetle, but Jesus’s charming manner, to which he was being exposed for the first time, was slowly dispersing any doubts he had.

  ‘How am I to believe you that you are the Messiah and not just some nutter?’ Michi asked.

  ‘By just believing it,’ Jesus answered coolly.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘That’s what many people in Judea felt, particularly in the temples,’ Jesus replied.

  This really ate away at Michi. As a believer, he had until now never identified with the haughty rabbis in the temple.

  While Michi was grappling with his faith, I noticed that the last time I’d gone to the toilet was at the salsa club. We drove into a car park, and I bravely headed into one of those typical motorway toilets, the kind that would drive any environmental health officer to an early grave. As I emerged, rather relieved, Michi approached me and said: ‘You’re sure that that man is Jesus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you swear?’

  ‘On my sister’s life.’

  Michi pondered and pondered and finally said: ‘Then I’m going to ask him to forgive me my sins.’

  I was pretty taken aback and followed my friend back to the Beetle. Then Michi started recounting his sins to Jesus, in chronological order. He began with a story featuring a Bunsen burner, a can of deodorant and the frizzled beard of a chemistry teacher. Then he moved on to latter day sins and he told him about his Beetle, which he loved dearly, even though it produced more CO2 than most African states. He confessed that he was a meat eater despite the fact that he knew how livestock were tortured, and that he even had a T-shirt that said, ‘Vegetarians are eating my food’s food’. He confessed that he enjoyed drinking coffee, even though he knew that farmers in developing countries were being exploited, just like the girls that appeared in adult movies like I Saw it Cumming, which he had in his store.

  Then Michi asked me to move out of earshot.

  ‘Why?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m now going to talk about sins that belong to the “Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s wife” category.’ He hung his head in shame, and I began to feel queasy, fearing that the neighbour’s wife might be me. So I decided to move away.

  From a distance, I watched my friend, who turned bright red, confessing all manner of sins to Jesus. Then I wondered whether it might be a good idea to tell Jesus about all my sins as well. Telling him about Sven had certainly helped. The prostitute also looked very relieved after she’d poured her heart out to him, and it was clearly doing Michi good. Even if the Messiah furrowed his brow once or twice while listening to him.

  He really did look great when he furrowed his brow like that.

  Good God, I really was in love with Jesus.

  It probably wasn’t a great move to confess all your sins to a man for whom you have feelings of that kind.

  When Michi had finish
ed, Jesus put his hand on his shoulder, and shortly afterwards my buddy looked much happier than I’d ever seen him look before, except maybe when the iPhone was launched the market and he became one of the first one hundred owners in Germany. I was also pleased that Michi finally believed me. Now all we needed to do was to convince Kata to allow Jesus to heal her. Then everything would be fixed. Well yes, except for the thing about the final battle and all that hullabaloo.

  Kata looked pretty taken aback when we turned up in her room. I quickly explained why the carpenter was there and that he wanted to heal her. ‘Wow,’ Kata replied after I’d finished my little speech. ‘Tom Cruise seems completely stable in comparison to you.’

  Jesus confirmed my story, and that he really was the Son of God.

  To which Kata replied: ‘And compared to you Lindsay Lohan seems stable.’

  ‘Who’s Lindsay Lohan?’ asked Jesus.

  Michi started telling him. He used words like ‘rehab’ and ‘rap sheet’. He carried on speaking until I gave him a signal that made him realise that all this wasn’t really that important right now.

  ‘What have you got to lose?’ I asked Kata.

  ‘When I got ill the first time I didn’t turn to quacks, miracle workers or witches, and I’m not going to do so now!’ she protested.

  ‘Ha! You just said something about a first illness. That means you must have a second one,’ Michi concluded, looking very pleased with himself.

  Kata looked at him, visibly annoyed. Then Michi realised that looking pleased was seriously inappropriate at a time like this.

  ‘Why should I start with this hocus-pocus now?’ Kata asked me.

  ‘Because I’m asking you to,’ I explained, sounding almost desperate.

  ‘You’re the second person who’s tried to cure me today.’

  ‘The second?’ I asked.

  ‘Forget about it,’ Kata said.

  She hesitated for a while and then turned to Jesus: ‘All right then. At least Marie will realise what a nutter you are. But I hope that you’re certain of one thing. If you really are Jesus, we really need to have a chat about why God has such a poor job performance.’

  In that instance, I saw a little crack in Kata’s tough exterior. A tiny part of her really did hope that this guy standing in front of her wasn’t on day release from a mental asylum. If someone as hard-boiled as Kata could hope for a miraculous salvation, then no wonder so many sick people gave their money to faith healers.

  Jesus approached Kata. He would soon be laying his hands on her, she would be cured, I would start crying tears of joy, and start hugging him and snogging him until he could no longer resist snogging me back!

  Jesus put his hand on Kata and then quickly pulled it away again.

  Had he cured her already? That was pretty speedy.

  But why was he looking at me like that?

  ‘This woman is not ill,’ he announced.

  We all looked at him in astonishment.

  Then he looked at me reproachfully. ‘You kept me from my task for nothing.’

  His eyes were blazing angrily, and for a moment I feared that he was going to show me exactly what this ‘withering away’ was like in practice.

  He was trembling with rage, but did not say a word and left the room silently.

  So much for snogging.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A couple of hours earlier…

  The people of Malente had once again reminded Satan how much people cursed God. A man ditched at the altar. A fourteen year-old girl who was still a virgin. And a bank employee,…

  In fact, people in Malente cursed God three times a day in their thoughts. That’s more than Satan did himself. But no more than in other places around the world. Malente was actually in the lower middle ranks in this regard.

  But that didn’t matter. Almost every person had the potential to become a horseman of the Apocalypse – that was now very clear to Satan. So it made no difference if his warriors came from this dump. And as he was so fascinated by the artist; she would become Pestilence.

  While Kata did her best to fight against her pain at the drawing board, trying to get something down on paper, the doorbell rang. Satan had been waiting to catch her while she was alone in the house. People were always at their most vulnerable when they were alone. Or in a crowd.

  Kata went downstairs. She just hoped that it wasn’t her sister at the door again. Of course she was going to have to talk to Marie about the disease some time, but she wasn’t ready yet. Kata just knew one thing – this time she would just give up honourably. She couldn’t cope with another fight against the tumour. Not the chemo and particularly not the baby-faced doctors, most of whom were still wondering why they hadn’t gone into investment banking.

  Kata opened the door, and there, to her amazement, stood George Clooney’s doppelgänger.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘To make you an offer.’

  ‘Didn’t Avon sales reps die out long ago?’ she quipped.

  ‘I can cure you of your tumour,’ Clooney-Satan smiled charmingly.

  Kata was speechless for a moment. How did this guy know about her disease?

  ‘You just need to give me a little something in return,’ Satan explained.

  He so loved these ‘Deal or No Deal’ conversations. People were so quick to sell their souls to get what they wanted – be that success or the promotion of their favourite football team, or even just a takeaway coffee after a spot of shopping in town. And not to be forgotten – the eternal bestseller – sex.

  ‘I… don’t have a tumour,’ Kata replied.

  ‘Of course not,’ Satan grinned. ‘But if you did, and I cured it, would you give me a little something in return?’

  For a short moment, Kata was filled with hope, however absurd it was. And nothing made a moribund woman more nervous than the fear of having her hopes dashed. That’s why she wanted to get rid of this unpleasant guy as soon as possible. ‘Yeah, yeah… sure… anything as long as you get out of here,’ she replied.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what that little something is?’ Satan asked.

  ‘No,’ Kata declared, slamming the door shut.

  Wow, Satan smiled. These human beings did have a free will, but they were very negligent when it came to their souls.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Nothing made sense any more. What had happened? Had I made a mistake? Was Kata not ill after all? She seemed pretty disconcerted by Jesus’s performance herself. ‘Those people at the psychiatric ward really should check the locks,’ she said, trying slightly too hard to sound cool.

  I was confused. And what made matters worse was that I had offended Jesus. He would have forgiven me the kiss on the cheek, but now he thought that I’d conned him. He most probably thought that it had all just been a trick to get him to stay with me.

  I looked at Kata’s sketchpad despondently. What I saw distracted me from both her tumour and from Jesus’s withering glare:

  Kata just snapped: ‘You’ll never get back those parts of your life that you have spent being afraid.’

  I couldn’t stand it when Kata made ‘seize the day’ comments. But this time it turned out to be pretty prudent since it made me remember something that I had been successfully suppressing due to her alleged illness. That question was, how many days did I actually have left to seize? Or to put it another way, when would the Day of Judgement be upon us?

  Once Kata had thrown us out of her room and we were back at Michi’s video store, I articulated this question for the first time: ‘Well, it does make a difference whether you only have a couple of months or years to live.’

  ‘Especially, if you’re still a virgin,’ Michi let slip.

  I stared at him.

  ‘Erm, what I mean is… an old friend… who… who’s a virgin,’ he stammered.

  ‘What friend is that then?’ I wanted to know.

  Michi was so nervous that he was about to start hyperventila
ting. He caught a glimpse of the Bourne Identity shelf and quickly said, ‘Julian Styles’.

  ‘Julian Styles?’ I replied suspiciously.

  Michi turned red.

  I was very surprised. I knew that Michi’s sex life was currently pretty non-existent, but I had thought that he’d had a sex life at some point. He’d had girlfriends. Well, one, to be precise. Her name was Lena. And, come to think of it, she was Catholic too.

  Gosh. Religion could be so rotten.

  ‘Is this Julian a repressed homosexual?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, no, what makes you think that?’ Michi stammered. ‘Julian is very straight.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He has just been in love with the wrong woman for decades,’ he admittedly wistfully.

  I felt even queasier than I had before. My illusion, that mine and Michi’s friendship was entirely platonic, could now officially be laid to rest. Michi was preparing to declare his love to me. I didn’t want to hear it. So I looked away. My gaze fell on a shelf of DVDs and I implored Michi, ‘Please tell me that she’s called Brenda Pitt.’

  Michi was surprised.

  ‘Then I won’t be losing a friend,’ I explained.

  Michi thought about what I’d said and then replied with a sad forced smile: ‘Her name is Brenda Pitt.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We didn’t speak for a while. Then Michi asked me a question that had been weighing heavily on his mind for some time. ‘Do you love Jesus? I mean, in the same way that normal Christians don’t? And probably shouldn’t?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ I admitted contritely.

  This admission really hit him hard. Michi had been honouring Jesus his whole life. And now he was the only person in the world who was jealous of the Son of God.

  Bravely he tried to brush this feeling aside, and he said something that really upset me: ‘The world deserves to end.’

  I was stunned. He explained himself: ‘There are so many awful things on this globe – civil wars, environmental destruction, human trafficking…’

  I also thought of things that were reason enough to put humanity in the dock: Morris dancing, tramp stamps, Russell Brand, toilet paper adverts, Filet-O-Fish burgers, ‘Gangsta’ rappers, parents who call their children Chantelle… So was Michi right? Would it actually be a good thing for there to be a heaven on earth? Should I even be asking that question? Or was it a fast track to a dip in the lake of fire? Was that my destiny? Was there still time to change it?