Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  Then she spied the duke, working in the vegetable garden. And at the sight of the old man, a larger fragment of her memory returned. Yes, of course, she had been with him when the volcano erupted. The duke, and the other three patients from the crematorium—they had been sitting in the sun. Then the tremors had started and the mountain had gone up, and the duke had run away. And the others?

  Well, she wasn’t quite sure about the others…

  She watched the duke. The garden beds were buried under ash, and he was trying to clear the ash away, but she had to smile because he was using a broom, and what he really needed was a shovel. Poor old madman. The garden was his special pride. It was actually maintained by the kitchen staff, but they didn’t mind him helping, even if he sometimes pulled out the vegetables instead of the weeds.

  Then she saw that it was her broom, and her smile died. He must have stolen it from her cleaning cupboard. And he was ruining it. The ash was still muddy, and it was clogging up the bristles. That wasn’t funny at all. She strode up behind him. He was too engrossed to notice her, but when she laid a preventative hand on his shoulder, he whirled about suddenly, apparently enraged, the broom raised as if to strike.

  The orphan took an involuntary step back. His eyes! Something blazed in them, and for a confounding moment the orphan felt that she was confronting a different man altogether. Emotions flooded out from him. An immense frustration. Humiliation too, at long-endured indignities. And a fury, normally cloaked deep beneath a mildness so regimented that nothing could break it, and yet burning so brightly now at the old man’s core that he wanted to take the broom and—

  The orphan blinked, and it was just the duke again, as frail as ever, gentle, his eyes filled with tears. Her hand was out, demanding the broom, and he passed it over. Then, his head bowed in shame, he was hurrying away.

  The orphan took a breath. What was that about?

  She studied the vegetables and plants. His rage was partly to do with the garden, she had sensed that much from him. He thought that it had been befouled and ruined by the volcano. But in fact no serious damage had been done. The ash was not so thick as to choke out growth, nor was it poisonous. Indeed, it was like new soil, fallen from the sky. In time, the garden would be all the richer for it. Couldn’t the duke see that? Had his madness blinded him? Fertility still throbbed in the earth. This was no dead landscape, no frozen valley, no…

  She caught herself, the duke forgotten.

  What was it that she was remembering? What place?

  It slipped away again.

  She looked at the broom in her hand. Work! That’s what she should be doing! The hallways of the wards would be full of ash. She had been off duty for a whole day and night. There must be all sorts of chaos inside.

  She set off towards the back wards, but halfway across the compound she slowed. She gazed about at the grey world. Was she missing something? A nurse passed by and smiled at her. The orphan stared at the woman in confusion. It was the same nurse who had told her to take the patients out into the sun.

  Face blank, the orphan turned and made her away around to the rear of the laundry, to the spot where they had all been sitting when the eruption began. The concrete slab with the benches and chairs. Something had happened to her there—not only the eruption, but something else, something important.

  All she found now was ash. It was heaped on the benches, and had buried the cement square. And yet—there were patterns in the ash. Lines and squiggles and smudges. They meant something, she was sure. Something disturbing.

  Laughter startled her. She looked around, but at first could see no one nearby. And then—there, in the bushes by the fence, a huddled, dirty, ash-smeared figure was grinning out at her. It was the witch. Discovered, the old woman grinned wider and laughed again, then came scrabbling out into the open.

  Memory stirred once more in the orphan. Yes—that was right, the ash and rain had been falling, and she had turned away from the volcano, and the witch had been there. Of all the patients, she was the only one who hadn’t been scared. The duke and the archangel had run away, and the virgin had been facedown in the mud, terrified. But not the old woman. She had been…excited?

  Now the witch scurried over and knelt at the centre of the square. Several objects were cradled in her hands. She dropped them in the ash, then grinned over her shoulder and gestured for the orphan to come and see.

  It was a heap of small dead animals.

  The orphan saw birds, their wings crooked out stiffly. And mice, their tiny eyes shut. Even a lizard, shrivelled around its own tail. But all of them had been eviscerated, feathers and skin torn away to reveal their bones. And the witch was crooning happily as she prodded at them, her fingers bloody.

  The orphan straightened in revulsion. Why had the old woman caught and killed so many creatures? Normally she was content with bones from the kitchen. Ah…but perhaps she hadn’t killed them herself. Perhaps she had just found them that way. The orphan looked up at the volcano. Perhaps that was the answer. The eruption had been harmless enough for people, but for smaller animals the rain of ash and mud might have been lethal.

  The witch had followed the orphan’s gaze, and now the old woman rose to her feet, clinging to the orphan’s arm with one withered hand and pointing at the mountain with the other. She was speaking in her low, cracked, spell-casting voice—garbled words, but serious, and terribly eager. Was it some curse she was trying to cast? Some charm? The orphan could grasp no sense in any of it.

  She tried to pull away, but the witch clung on. And then abruptly, as had happened with the duke, the orphan was somehow seeing into the old woman—indeed, for an instant it was like she occupied the witch’s skin. All her own perspectives changed and the world warped subtly into something new. The little pile of dead creatures on the ground—what precious things they suddenly seemed, laden with significance, as if to pick one up and pry at its insides would reveal countless secrets. What a gift they were. What a generous thing the mountain had done, to present them so.

  And that was the strangest aspect of all. The orphan gazed at the volcano, and it was transformed now. She knew herself that it was only a thing of rock, lifeless, with no intent, and without thought. And yet through the witch’s eyes she saw something else: she saw a being. A slow, inhuman, mighty giant of a thing, exhausted after its fiery labours, and resting now, propped on great arms of stone. A giver of life. A bringer of destruction. A titan to be worshipped and feared and thanked.

  Madness. It was just a mountain.

  She broke free of the witch’s grip, and the old woman reared back, offended. They stared at each other. Then the witch tossed her head in dismissal. She gathered up her collection of dead things—already, in the heat, they gave off a whiff of decay—and hobbled away, hunched over her prizes, and scanning the ground for more.

  The orphan was breathing hard.

  What was wrong with everyone today? What was wrong with her? These glimpses, these emanations she was receiving, from the duke, the witch—they couldn’t be real. They had to be something else, a dislocation in her own head.

  She was looking at the ground. She could see the patterns again in the ash. Some resembled scuffed footprints. And there were two strange, straight lines. Then she had it—the lines were made by a wheelchair! Of course. The foreigner—he had been there too. Before the eruption. She had wheeled him out there herself. Why had she forgotten that?

  And what had happened to him, afterwards? Someone must have come and wheeled him away to safety. She didn’t know who. But studying the ash now, she saw that in front of the point where the lines stopped, there was an impression in the ash that was dimly human in shape. As if someone had lain there for a time, in front of the chair, while the muddy rain fell. And was that another memory? Had she turned away from the mountain, to see him sitting there, unmoving…

  Why did the thought frighten her?

  She glanced at her hands. She was still holding the broom.

 
; Cleaning. Cleaning would make her feel better. She would settle into her chores. She would sweep out the halls and change sheets and carry meals. And she would not—although she couldn’t have explained why—go near the crematorium, or the little oven of a room in which the foreigner slept.

  7

  And yet still the day would not come right.

  The whole hospital was busy cleaning up from the eruption, and the orphan joined in, but sweeping, it turned out, didn’t help clear her mind at all. Ash was everywhere through the back wards, and no matter how she toiled to shift it, the grains continued to rasp irritatingly underfoot. Dust itched in her nose, and sweat gathered in her armpits. It was so hot. The electricity was still off and the back wards, never brightly lit in the first place, had sunk into an airless gloom.

  But worse was the thickness in her head. Faces loomed up at her—nurses and other staff, hurrying by—and the orphan knew them, or at least she knew that she was supposed to know them, but recognition took so much effort. They could have been strangers. And when one of the nurses spoke to her, the orphan could only stare back helplessly. The woman’s speech was incomprehensible. The same thing happened when one of the laundry staff accosted her, seemingly to make some urgent request. The words were nonsense. Not just hard to understand, but impossible.

  She retreated at last to the kitchen block, and sat in a corner to eat. Normally it was one of her favourite places. Busy. Full of interesting noises and tempting aromas. But in truth, despite not having eaten in a whole day, the orphan was barely hungry. And the kitchen felt all wrong. The smells were bad, the clash of pots and pans too loud, and the yelling of the cooks might as well have been the hooting of animals.

  One of the inmates, a young man, was standing in the doorway. The orphan followed his eyes, watching as a cook added salt to a vat of soup. Only suddenly it didn’t look like salt, or anything else she could identify. The substance was black and loathsome, and something moved in it, alive. It was a secret poison they added to all the food. It was a drug. It was what made everyone mad.

  Then the inmate was gone from the doorway, and the cook was putting the salt away, and it was only salt.

  The orphan fled the kitchen.

  Where was she to go? Back to her room, back to bed? She knew she would never be able to sleep. Energy ached in her limbs. Yet everywhere else seemed too crowded with patients and staff. It wasn’t that they were doing anything objectionable. It was just that she could feel them. That is, she imagined she could—their emotions, pressing like heat upon her skin. It made it hard to breathe.

  She returned to the main building and found refuge for a while in the catatonic ward. Here at least there was blessed quiet—no minds pushing against her own. There were only the vacant bodies in their beds. It was soothing, at first. She could sweep the floors unbothered as the figures around her stared at nothing. But with time the silence grew deeper. In fact, it wasn’t a silence at all. It was an absence. It came to the orphan that the catatonics were holes into which life and light and noise vanished. They were emptiness. And such emptiness might be even worse than the crowd. She went back out into the hallways.

  And, at length, came across the archangel.

  It was the glow of him that caught her attention. He was standing at the far end of a long passage. All around him was shadow, but the archangel himself was positioned beneath a window through which daylight shafted, and for some reason, in the light, his clothes and his face were almost shining.

  Reluctant, but unable to resist, the orphan edged down the hall towards him. He was reading aloud from his book, the pages held up to the window, his hollow voice resonating. He was still covered in ash from the eruption, she realised, and that was why he shone—the grey powder flared white in the sunlight. His clothes and skin and hair. He might have been carved from cement.

  Madness beat against the orphan’s forehead like the wings of birds. The archangel’s eyes were closed in some transport of inner ecstasy, but still he read on. His voice rolled over her with a hypnotic authority. Had it always been so deep? He was hardly more than a boy, but with his hair grey and his face mud-streaked he looked much older. So stern, so grave, so perfect. It occurred to her then that, although she knew he had once attempted suicide with a knife, she had never seen a single disfiguring scar anywhere on his skin.

  But coming close now she saw that the perfection was an illusion. A muddy sweat had beaded on his brow, and his body was not merely motionless, it was locked rigid. Pain transported him, not ecstasy. Horrified, she realised that the window he stood beneath was shattered, and that broken glass littered the floor. The youth’s feet were bare, and as he prayed, he ground his soles against the shards.

  And then it happened again. Without volition, she was drawn out of her body and into his. But the experience was more complete this time. She was the archangel. She felt the sun upon his face and the book in his hands. She felt his long straight limbs and his broad shoulders. She even felt the fire in his feet.

  But she was also in his mind. And in his mind, he wasn’t tall and strong at all. He was hideous to himself, a misshapen bag of skin and bones. His head was corrupt with forbidden thoughts, his belly ached with evil hungers, and in his loins there coiled a damp, snakelike thing, insidious. Indeed, his body was his enemy, and he had put it away from him. The orphan had a strange impression of height, and of a lonely room, where he was held safe by the power of his book and his prayers.

  But now he was ashamed, for when the earth had shaken and the sky had rained fire, he had forgotten his book and his prayers. Instead, he had surrendered to his bodily fear and run away to hide. The archangel was mortified by the memory. He was supposed to be beyond fear. And so now, through the pain in his feet, borne willingly, and through his prayer, he was seeking redemption. But only blood would be sufficient. He ground his heels down, and the glass bit more cruelly.

  The orphan recoiled. The link between them snapped, and she was back in her own head. The archangel faltered. He licked his lips a moment, then drew a ragged gasp, turned a page of his book, and plunged on. Horrible. It was horrible in there. She wanted to flee from him, get as far from his suffering as she could. But she hesitated, torn between pity and disgust. She couldn’t just leave him. He would injure himself. He’d done little damage so far, but if he went much further…

  Blood trickled from beneath his toes.

  She drew a deep breath, and lightly took his elbow. This time there was no black gulf opening. The youth shivered, but something in her touch seemed to reach him, because he lowered his book and fell silent. The tension did not leave his body, but he did at least allow himself to be led away from the window.

  Slowly, they made their way towards the crematorium. Patients and nurses passed them by, but the orphan avoided their eyes. She could not cope with anyone else. The archangel and his bloody footsteps were bad enough. She would deliver him to his room and be done. Yet with every step, an aversion grew in her. She realised that she was in dread of their destination. Not the entire crematorium, perhaps, but the little furnace room was waiting there, and within it, sleeping…

  Ripples ran like heatwaves across her vision, but they were waves of cold, not heat, and she was walking, not through the hospital, but down a deep valley of stone, somewhere where it was night, and freezing. And there was a voice, a voice like no other, a voice she could understand inherently…

  The orphan halted, staring about. No one was visible except the archangel, stiff at her side. She pushed forward, down the last passageway. At its end, all seemed black and quiet. There was something unusual about that, the orphan knew. Then they came to the dayroom, and she realised. Of course. There was still no power. The lights were off. And for once, the television was dark and silent.

  Nevertheless, in the dimness, the virgin sat before the screen.

  The orphan felt her tenuous grip on reality slipping again. She led the archangel to one of the armchairs, and forced him down. His shoulde
rs were taut under her hands, and immediately he bent himself over his book, his fingers moving across the lines, although surely it was too dark for him to read.

  The orphan turned back to the virgin. What was the girl doing?

  She looked unharmed. Someone had cleaned her up since the eruption, and changed her clothes. And she was merely sitting as she always sat, legs folded, arms resting on her knees, her head tilted towards the television. Yet there was a distress in her so palpable it vibrated through the room like a thrumming wire.

  The orphan was helpless to shut it out. She felt her identity melt away, and the virgin’s blindness come seeping into her eyes. Darkness closed in, and panic. Except, no, it wasn’t quite blindness. It was not a loss of vision, but a dulling of it, until everything was pale and distant. The virgin, in her dementia, seemed to be adrift in a world of the utmost dreariness, in which there was no colour or dimension. A flat world. A false world.

  But a real world did exist, a place of brightness and life, and the orphan knew this because the virgin could see it sometimes, through a special window. A magic window. That world was wonderful, with every shape the most vivid, vibrant hue. Heavenly people moved there, radiant and beautiful and fascinating. That was where the virgin belonged. That was where she went, whenever the window was opened for her.

  But something terrible had happened. She had been taken away from the window, and the false world had roared and thrown her to the ground, drenched by hot rain. Then brutal hands had assaulted her, prying and stripping and scrubbing. Finally she had escaped them to return to her window—but to her dismay it was shut, and no matter how she stared with her blind eyes, she could not open it again. There was no colour anywhere, no light, no reality. She was trapped in the false world, and now a frantic terror was rising in her that she could not stop.