Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  Anger? Oh yes. And fear, and bewilderment. But mostly I felt a piercing sense of awakening, of belated revelation. What a fool I had been to waste my second life. What a fool I had been to give up my quest to understand the mysteries of the earth. And as proof of that foolishness, the earth was killing me again.

  The thought came to the orphan—this void from which his voice seemed to originate, was this where people went when they died?

  Forty-three mine workers were killed along with me, and over four hundred of the local people. It must have been terrible for the first person who stumbled upon the disaster—so many bodies lying about peacefully, as if asleep, as if slain by the darkest of magic. Indeed, it would take scientists months to figure out what had really occurred. In the meantime, there were all those corpses to dispose of. And that was where I awoke again—it was days later, I don’t know how many—in an uncovered burial pit.

  So he hadn’t died after all?

  You don’t understand.

  The void was suddenly gone, and the darkness became a close, fetid thing, unbearably hot. The orphan felt a weight upon her, fleshy and liquid. It was made up of people. Arms. Legs. Torsos. Decomposing. Heaped about her.

  I had most certainly died. Just as I had also, almost certainly, died that day under the landslide, even if at the time I did not recognise it.

  She felt her body stir, but her own limbs were rotten. Muscles had turned to mush, sinews were peeling away from bones. To move was agony, all jerking and clumsy. But to stay buried was unendurable, and so she fought against the weight, and great chunks of decayed flesh sloughed off her, reeking horribly.

  It was not that I couldn’t be killed, as I had once thought. I could die sure enough. I was subject to all the agonies of death.

  But the pit was too deep, the bodies too liquefied, she was sinking now, and she could not close her mouth to the vile fluid; her lips had peeled away to naked teeth.

  It was just that, afterwards, I was forced to come back.

  The orphan was trying to scream, but her throat was clogged with filth and only a strangled moan emerged. But no, the sound wasn’t her. It wasn’t the foreigner either. And then the pit and the darkness were gone. The orphan opened her eyes and she was back in the furnace room, kneeling at the foreigner’s bedside.

  But the moaning went on. It was the duke. He was thrashing in the chair, his eyes still closed, but there was no peace in him anymore. He seemed to be struggling with a nightmare, groaning in fear, and the orphan knew instantly that he was the one now buried in the pit, drowning in all the bodies.

  She grabbed his shoulders and shook him awake. But when the old man’s eyes opened, he only stared at her wildly and bucked against her restraining arms. His terror flooded into the orphan’s mind, and for a moment she occupied his nightmare as if it was her own. He didn’t know where he was. His safe world of delusion was gone. His lovely house and its gardens had vanished. Instead, he was trapped in a squalid little room.

  And there were monsters there. A sweating fat girl with brutal hands and wide, idiot eyes was holding him down. And nearby was a dead man in a bed—all mangled and hideously burnt, but somehow alive. And they were both inside his mind, tearing it, eating it, they would kill him…

  The orphan pulled back, lifting her hands.

  Ignore him. He’s hallucinating, that’s all.

  But this was their fault! Their trip into the foreigner’s memory had overflowed somehow into the old man’s head.

  It won’t do him any real harm. He’ll forget it before long.

  No, that wasn’t good enough. The duke didn’t deserve it. The foreigner had to put him to sleep again, like he had before.

  If you insist. But then there was a pause. And yet…well, why not? Why should it be me? Why don’t you help him?

  The orphan stared. She couldn’t help. She had no idea how. The foreigner was the one who could alter people’s minds, not her.

  You won’t know if you don’t try.

  She heard his urgency. This was something important he was asking, some measurement of her he wished to make. She turned to the duke and tried to project calmness towards him, and peace, and safety. And a force did indeed seem to emanate from her, like faint hands, to curl around the old man’s head, stroking and soothing. But he only trembled all the more and slobbered in his terror.

  That won’t work. It’s not a matter of comfort—he’s too far gone for that. It’s a matter of knocking him out, stopping him cold.

  Annoyed, she tried to infuse the duke’s mind with weariness. Exhaustion. To make the old man go to sleep. But the inside of his head was squirming, and no matter how much she tried to allay his panic, the squirming only got worse.

  Pity is no use here. Force him!

  And in her frustration she squeezed his mind as hard as she could between her imaginary hands, not caring if it hurt him, only willing him to stop his moaning and quivering, and go to sleep! And it worked. Abruptly, the old man stiffened, reared up, and then slumped back into the chair, unconscious.

  The orphan wiped sweat from her face.

  What had she done? What had she been made to do?

  How very interesting, was all the foreigner said.

  14

  Late next morning, as the orphan was sweeping out the covered walkway, the old doctor came looking for her.

  She had not yet slept, even though the foreigner had long since withdrawn, leaving her head empty of any voice. She had lain down for a short time before dawn, but sleep had refused to come. Her mind was too full of the night, and her body had seemingly forgotten how to rest.

  Now, her eyes red with fatigue, the orphan saw that the old doctor was carrying his black bag, and holding it up for her to see, grinning. Which could mean only one thing—that a whole year had gone by since the last time, and today was the day he was due to go into town to give the schoolchildren their injections.

  She felt a dull dismay. Oh, any day but today…

  The old doctor always took her along on these visits. As his assistant. His nurse. It was his special treat for her. Their private game, one she had always delighted in. And his expression now was so expectant of pleasing her—how could she possibly explain that this year she wasn’t in the mood for it at all?

  She couldn’t. It would hurt his feelings. There was nothing for her to do but smile back brightly, nod, and then go and change her clothes.

  She made her way to her room. Earlier, when she’d returned there in the pre-dawn darkness, she’d found it in chaos—the mattress flung from the bed, her clothes scattered across the floor. The night nurse’s revenge, no doubt, for her catching him with his hand down his pants. But he’d done no real damage, and all was neat and tidy now. She opened the cupboard and took out a white dress, crisp and clean, straight from the laundry where it had gone after she’d last worn it a year ago.

  It was a nurse’s uniform. The old doctor had given it to her to wear on these very occasions. It was second-hand, but its previous owner must have been short and round and big-breasted, because it fit the orphan perfectly, in a way none of her other clothes ever did. Usually, just putting it on was a thrill. It made her feel so adult. But now, when she yanked off her elastic-waisted pants and shapeless top and wriggled into the dress, studying herself in the mirror, she wasn’t so sure.

  She noticed for the first time how drab her sandals looked in comparison. Really, she needed a pair of good shoes to go with the dress. And properly grown-up women, when they went out, wore jewellery, and make-up. She didn’t have any of that. She looked only half an adult, she decided. And half a silly child.

  Then she was frowning at the mirror. Last night, she had beheld herself through the duke’s eyes. And he had not seen a child, or a woman, or indeed anything that was properly human. He had seen a squat, malignant figure. A monster. Her.

  But that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t a monster! She was nice, she’d never harmed another person in her life. It was the foreigner who…well
, what had he done exactly? Certainly the old man had not been physically injured. And afterwards the orphan had taken him back to his bed and left him there, tucked in and sleeping peacefully. He would recover, his experience no worse, surely, than a bad dream.

  Besides, it was all for the good, it was all for…

  She faltered. It was for the good, wasn’t it? That she was learning about the workings of the world? That the foreigner was telling her the story of his long life? Of his lives? Of course, yes, it had to be. He couldn’t be doing anything wrong, not the foreigner. Not someone so wise, and strong, and beautiful.

  The duke was insane anyway. What did it matter if he saw her as a monster? He had seen the foreigner as repulsive and dead, and that was ridiculous.

  She shook her head at the mirror, smoothed a few wrinkles over her hips, then hurried out to the front of the hospital. The old doctor was waiting for her, and together they set off on foot down the dusty track towards town. Behind them, the peak of the volcano was lost in haze, and around them the jungle steamed as a thousand insects buzzed and droned. There would be a storm by nightfall, the orphan could tell, but for now it was very hot. She was sweating and itching before they were even halfway there, and stains under her arms were ruining her dress.

  Then the scrub gave way to naked red soil and garbage piles and huts, and suddenly they were in the town, and people were everywhere. Motorbikes whined. Vans beeped their horns. Static blared from radios, and animals screeched from cages. As always, the orphan fought against a momentary panic, taken back in memory to her childhood, when she had lived here with her mother. Home then had been a bare room above a laundry, with the din of arguing neighbours cutting through the thin walls and an angry landlord always hammering on the door. And out in the streets the orphan had been forever in the way, constantly tripped over and trampled underfoot.

  But the unease passed. She was with the old doctor now and everyone made way for him respectfully, allowing her to trail safely in his wake. They proceeded through the market square and came to the school. It was enclosed by a concrete wall, and a gate led through to the yard, a square of hard clay, worn shiny smooth by thousands of small feet. The orphan remembered this too, especially the long moments of standing alone under the hot sun as the rest of the children pointed and laughed.

  But today the children were waiting politely, lined up in rows. The old doctor consulted with the teachers, and then set himself up on a bench beneath the playground’s one shady tree. The orphan stood at his side, ready with the box of syringes, and that to these children at least she was no target for laughter. To them she was a real nurse, an object of some awe. Which had always been part of the fun, in the past. And normally, too, she enjoyed watching the children’s faces as they stepped forth to be injected, some of them scared, some not, and some—approaching with tears in their eyes yet offering up their arms anyway—adorably brave.

  Today however…Maybe it was just that she couldn’t understand anyone’s speech anymore—not the doctor’s, not the teachers’, not the children’s. But whatever the reason, the orphan felt detached from the event. Even the admiring looks from the children were colourless somehow. She wasn’t really a nurse, so it was all counterfeit. She wasn’t even needed here. The old doctor could have done it alone.

  She watched the back of his head as he worked, her feelings about him suddenly confused. He had looked after her faithfully for years, ruling over the clutch of nurses who had been her dozen surrogate mothers. She had no father, she knew, but the old doctor was the closest thing to it. She was very fond of him, and saddened too these last years as she had seen him become thin and unwell.

  But what drew him to her? Kindness and pity, that’s what it was. Even these trips to the school—yes, it was lovely of him to let her come and pretend to be important. But it was pity that lay at the base of his actions, and only pity. She would never be genuinely talented or clever or useful in his eyes.

  Not like she was with the foreigner.

  Ha. Yes. No wonder she was so bored with playing at being a nurse. With him, there was no need to play at being anything. He had shown her how worthwhile she was, how important her talents were, and how they were real talents, not merely borrowed along with someone else’s handed-down clothes.

  Ah, but he was asleep now, absent from her, and she was stuck there in the schoolyard. She sighed. The injections seemed to be taking forever. The children were fidgeting and squirming and getting mixed up in their lines, the teachers weren’t controlling them, the old doctor was fumbling with the needles, and her dress was too stiff and too hot. She bit her lip, fanned her armpits, and remembered what it was like to fly.

  Finally it was all over for another year. The children filed back into class and the old doctor packed up and said goodbye to the teachers. But to the orphan’s despair they didn’t then go home to the hospital. Instead the old doctor led her to the marketplace. And smiling at her once again—another special treat—he brought out his wallet and gave her some money of her own to spend. They were going shopping.

  It should have made her happy. The orphan enjoyed shopping, even if she only ever bought small things. A sweet snack, perhaps some chocolate, if she was hungry. Or the occasional necessity, like some new underwear or a bra, if she was shopping with one of the nurses. Or a few decorations for her room, the most expensive being her bedspread, with its pattern of shiny beads sewn into it. And once she had bought a straw hat with yellow flowers in the band, which she had since lost.

  But today she merely followed the old doctor from store to store and held the money scrunched up in her hand. The usual trinkets did not interest her. They all seemed to be made of plastic. Flimsy. Pointless. Stupid. And she kept noticing shops into which she had never been before. In some of them women were having their hair cut, and in others attendants were fussing over women’s fingernails. In others again silky dresses hung in rows, or cabinets displayed sparkling jewellery.

  But the old doctor didn’t take her into any of those stores. Why was that? the orphan puzzled. And why had it never occurred to her that if she had no jewellery, and no shoes to go with her dress, that she could buy some? For that matter, why only have a secondhand dress? Why not a dress that was new?

  The afternoon crawled on. The old doctor was purchasing dreary things for his office—pens, papers, string—and seemed to have forgotten about her. When he disappeared into another store she lingered outside on her own, very bored now. She was sick of the town. She wanted to be home with the foreigner in his dark, private room. She wanted him to wake up and take her away somewhere, she wanted to tear her hot dress off and—oh, she didn’t know what she wanted.

  Some women were standing across the street, in front of a bar, and the orphan realised that she was staring at them. They were each of them slim and pretty, and they all wore short skirts and tight, brightly coloured tops. They were laughing and flicking their hair and calling out to passers-by, or to people in the shadows of the bar.

  The orphan shuffled her sandals, feeling uglier and stupider than ever. What would it be like, she wondered, to wear bright clothes? To have long hair and put on lipstick? To be thin and lithe and quick? To be pretty?

  She would never know. She had never even cared about it before. Ah, but did the foreigner care? He had told her that she was special, and a wonder, and unique, yes…but would he ever say she was beautiful? Not her mind, not her abilities, but her body? The way she thought his body was beautiful?

  She sighed once more. No. The idea was nonsense.

  What was keeping the old doctor? The afternoon just got hotter and hotter. Her gaze strayed along the street. Three men were heading in her direction, moving at a purposeless amble, staring around at the shops as they came.

  They were tourists, she saw. Everything about them was foreign—their clothes, their skin, the idle pace they set. Most likely they had come to the island in one of the big white boats that docked in the harbour. Normally such visitors sta
yed down in the big town, but occasionally they ventured inland, sometimes whole busloads of them. But these men were alone. Pink-faced. Sweating. Two of them quite fat.

  The orphan watched on, curious. Once, she hadn’t thought to wonder where tourists like these originated, but now she knew better. She had seen with her own eyes that there were other lands in the world. Why, perhaps these strangers even came from the same country as the foreigner himself, wherever that country was. But then, no, she couldn’t believe it. They looked nothing like him. In fact, they were ugly.

  But the women outside the bar didn’t seem to care about that. They called and waved until the men sauntered over. Within moments the two groups were intermingled, talking and laughing, and drinks had appeared in everyone’s hands, although the women hadn’t been drinking before. One of the men was even kissing one of the women, right on the lips. And then the orphan understood. She knew what these women must be. She had overheard stories in the past. These were women who sold themselves. Who let men touch them for money.

  There was a word for that, but the orphan couldn’t remember it. Then confusion filled her. Because whatever the word was, the way people talked about such women was the same way that people talked about her mother.

  She felt her cheeks burning, not wanting to look anymore. It was so repellent. The men with their sunburnt faces and overloud voices and flat laughs. And the women echoing the laughs, humourless, their eyes watchful amid the layers of make-up. The thought came, hard and horrible, that maybe her mother had been exactly like these women, and that—far worse—maybe her father had been exactly like these men.

  Oh no, that couldn’t be right. The men were so coarse and clumsy, they didn’t belong there; they were ungainly, misshapen outsiders.

  But then what was the orphan herself?

  Suddenly there was yelling, and a disturbed murmur among the shoppers. The crowd parted and an incredible figure lurched into view. The orphan stared in amazement. It was none other than the duke. What was he doing? The old man had never, in all the years she had known him, left the hospital grounds. But here he was, barefoot, still in his pyjamas, shambling towards her up the main street of the town.