Original Prin

by Randy Boyagoda

  “Please, just come with me,” the guide said.

  “Blessings to you and to you,” Prin said.

  The Africans stopped smiling when Prin stepped out of line and passed them and the rest of their group, the guide leading the way in a righteous and barking manner as if he were trying to get Princess Diana past all the photographers to her car. But when they emerged near the front of the line, he didn’t take Prin directly into the church. Instead, he took him to the furthest giant stone door from the small, dark entrance. He did a thing with his neck, cleared his throat, and began.

  “Welcome to the Church of the Holy Seat, which is one of the most important historical sites in all of the world and a source of greatest national pride in Dragomans, regardless of your race, religion, or sexual orient nations, except North Korea. As to why this church is of greatest significance, there are several reasons, many dating back centuries and even millennium falcon. Sorry, Star Wars joke. I made it with Harrison Ford and he loved it. Now, to begin our exploration, I would like to read the following statement by our President regarding the importance of preserving our innovative heritage. He declares—”

  “Sorry, but I have to catch a flight. Is there a pamphlet or something I can look at? And can we go in?” Prin said.

  The guide nodded. Why wouldn’t anyone let him give this speech? His wife and mother thought it was excellent. At least, his mother did.

  “Of course we can still go in. But please understand, with a wife and children to support, and also a mother, if I can’t practice my English on you, there’s need for a small fee for me to arrange everything,” said the guide.

  “What if I don’t pay?” asked Prin.

  “No problem, boss. Nice to meet you, enjoy your visit to the church and the rest of your time here in beautiful Dragomans. Like us on the Facebook, and please tell all your friends in English to visit Dragomans. Now, sir, please be pleased to return to the line. And I am required to call the brother over there if you do not respect the rules,” said the guide.

  He shrugged and grandly bowed and extended his arm to show Prin the way back. Prin looked at the beefy monk with his crossed arms and didn’t want him called over. He looked at the line. The Africans hadn’t moved yet, and another tour group had arrived. They were sullen white people, glowering men in denim and fanny packs and pouty women with shotgun makeup faces and black rocker booties and matching purses with lots of gold crosses and dingles dandling from them.

  They were either Russian or Polish.

  He looked down. He saw a rock move. It was a baby lizard, round and coloured like a rock. He moved his toe towards it and it was gone.

  “How much?” Prin asked.

  “Please, I can’t say. That is not our way here. Whatever you can offer, I will gladly accept, and then I will arrange everything,” the guide said.

  Prin took out his wallet.

  “My wife just had a new baby … jaundice!” the tour guide said.

  Prin gave him a twenty-dollar bill and didn’t wince, not particularly, when the tour guide looked shocked. He beamed to himself, then at Prin before running off to the gift stalls and returning with two poorly photocopied pamphlets. They were histories of the church, exact copies of each other, with certain words underlined or crossed out in one, and the opposite set underlined and crossed out in the other.

  “And now, distinguished, honoured guest, welcome to the Church of the Holy Seat,” the guide said.

  Perhaps he’d been mishearing the entire time. If this was the Church of the Holy See, then did it have some special papal significance dating to St. Peter? Or perhaps it was a Holy Sea —somewhere else Christ had walked on water, in one of the apocryphal Gospels?

  Holding the pamphlets, Prin followed the guide inside. He felt a little like a running back moving behind a blocker as the guide pushed through the people colliding everywhere in the back of the church. Eventually, they were organized into two sort-of line-ups to approach the holy site located behind the main altar.

  According to two millennia of pious tradition, the church was founded on the site where a young man, who had been a follower of Jesus, came after escaping the Garden of Gethsemane during Christ’s arrest. As the Gospel of Mark recounted, the young man left the Garden so fast he dropped his loincloth, which was all he was wearing. According to pious tradition, naked the young man ran and ran and ran, out of Jerusalem and across Egypt, across the desert of Lehabim, and finally into Dragomans. Naked and terrified, he finally reached a cleft in a great mountain, where he found a rock ledge, sat down, and wept. He wept knowing he had abandoned his Lord in His time of trial, and knowing what had happened to Christ while he ran away, knowing what God had allowed to happen to His Only Son for the sake of all weeping fleeing terrified humanity. And according to pious tradition, this nameless and naked young man wept so much the rock ledge beneath him softened from all of his tears and took on the shape of his seated body (buttocks), which remained there until his death. Four centuries later, all that remained of this young man was a mound of grey dust resting upon the ledge in the cleft of the mountain.

  Now one day, two men who were part of a new order of desert monks happened to be travelling through these mountains seeking a spot for the monastery they planned to found together. They came to this cleft and one of them (as to which one, the pamphlets emphatically differed) swept this grey dust off the ledge before sitting down to rest and see whether from this ledge he could observe the greatness of God and contemplate it for the rest of his days. Upon sweeping away the dust and sitting down, the monk discovered this holy seat, imprinted with the mark of the naked young man of Mark’s Gospel (buttocks) who had fled from his Lord’s side and wept unto his own death, having abandoned his God and feeling terrified that his God would abandon him. But God did not. Instead, God led this pious monk (again, as to which one, the pamphlets emphatically differed) to the place where the naked young man had stopped running and sat down. And because both monks claimed for the rest of their lives to have been the first to have swept away the dust and discovered the imprint of the holy seat and sat there, and because each likewise claimed to have recovered all the young man’s ashes and kept them in a sacred urn, two rival orders of monks were founded that day. And for sixteen centuries since, these orders had shared custody of the church built around the Holy Seat.

  35

  It was a small, dark place, and the air was close with many bodies and drying, dying flowers and guttering candles. What natural light there was came in through a series of bar-shaped openings cut into the main façade of the church. These threw just enough light down onto the floor to reveal a blue-white spread of mosaic tiles that occupied the centre of the church’s floor, at the beginning of the nave. Many tiles were missing, all were faded, but Prin could still make out the image of a naked young man artfully concealed, his head down, one hand resting upon his brow as he sat on stone and sobbed.

  Very few people were actually praying before the altar on the two or three little benches set up there. Instead, everyone was lined up along the aisles, waiting for their chance to venerate the Holy Seat and in the meantime leaving flowers and lighting candles at all the little apse shrines available to them along the way.

  But now that he was in a church and could at last kneel down, Prin didn’t know what to pray for.

  No, that wasn’t it.

  He knew all and only what he wanted to pray for—for Molly, and also for a time machine, to take him back just a day. Because he was certain that, given the chance, he would have just deleted that picture Wende had sent him while he was sitting at that table in the French embassy cafeteria and then gone to his room and called home.

  He thought again of those little metal houses he’d seen on his way to the chapel. Where were those people? Were they hiding? Were they running away? There were so many such people now, then, always, including Prin, including the naked young
man of the Gospel. But some didn’t hide or run away. A little Spanish girl singing the Magnificat before the conquering Moors. As a boy, Prin had read about her in a comic book saint’s life. Did she really keep singing after they chopped her head off? Until her voice was muffled by the great beating of the pure white doves escaping from her open neck?

  There were so many such saints’ lives—crazy holy men and women, boiled and split and scalped, left to broil in the belly of a giant metal pagan pig god and hammered against this spiked wall, daggered upon the floor of that lion-filled chamber, and in and through it all the saints are still singing, never denying, always praising God. Some had been seen by hundreds looking beatific, their brown eyes turned Virgin blue in Midland, Ontario, or while kneeling before floating golden chalices bearing the bloody heart of Christ in Hackeborn, in Helfta, in Haifa. And when, whether right away or at long last, these saints died and went to the greater reward, people came to these places, cross-covered dovecotes in Andalusia and bum-shaped stone ledges in Dragomans, and prayed there, waited there with candles and flowers until those in charge caught up and built a church.

  A chord pulled and began trilling in an arc that ran from his heart to his mind. He strained his ears in vain for a matching voice. But then he knew he didn’t need it, here.

  In the very place where Prin now was, as he saw just before he passed behind the altar to the site of the Holy Seat itself, there hung a simple bronze chain that came down and down and down from the centre-point of the cracked, vaulted ceiling. The chain held an iron mesh basket in which sat a small red amber globe, in which sat a thick round candle. And yes, it was flickering, the candle was always flickering, whether in the suburban church of his childhood or the New Year’s Day church of his dark zoo midlife or right here and now in Dragomans, because this red amber globe, every such globe, hung before small stone vaults set into altars inlaid with old, flaking gold.

  And in all of these vaults, in this vault before him, there was a simple golden chalice, within which rested the thin, encircled body of Christ.

  Rests.

  But then the trilling chord went slack. He could have felt such fullness down the street from his house. With his wife and children beside him. Why did it have to be here, like this, after that?

  Prin wanted to throw himself against the vault. He had betrayed Molly and their girls and another. You. You brought me here. For this? To this? To betray them? To betray what You want of me, for me? What kind of God? No God would. No God.

  No.

  No?

  No.

  There was still no denying. The stars above were smudged, but they remained. Prin still wanted to be shattered, warmed, found, kept, filled, spared, caught and released, explicated, expiated, saved, and sent home.

  He wanted to go home.

  He dropped down upon the cracked mosaic floor, closing his eyes to say something, anything, to ask for something, anything, to hear something, anything. Did he? Was it? Was it yes, that he felt God pulling him here and not for him, not for him not only for him, but for all of these other people, for Molly and the girls, even, yes for W— but then the guide, who was hopeful of getting a second twenty-dollar bill on the way out, grabbed him under the armpits and heaved him forward so they could hurry up and get to the front of the line.

  He was, in fact, second in line on the black robe side. On the other side was a matching line controlled by the jute monks. The area itself, which was located in a large apse behind the main altar, was very tight. The ceiling sloped down dramatically, and the air was thick and shared by all the people crammed in there along the ambulatory, waiting their turn to venerate the Holy Seat.

  The arrangement, going back centuries, was for the two orders to alternate visitors approaching the Holy Seat itself, one at a time. In the meantime, those closest to the front of each line could contemplate flanking smaller shrines, each of which held, behind thick, cloudy glass, a bejewelled urn said to contain the true ashes of the absconded and unnamed young disciple of Jesus. The shrines themselves were drenched in generations of candle wax and dry flowers and memorial cards for the beloved dead.

  “Front of the line, here you go!” the tour guide said.

  He was shushed by the jute monk managing the line on the far side of the Holy Seat. The black monk standing near Prin shushed back his counterpart, who squared up and glared. The monks gestured back and forth, at their chests and crosses and lineups, and then the jute monk pointed violently at the young man in front of Prin, who was thin and troubled-looking. His hands held forth in supplication, he was approaching the Holy Seat on his knees, very slowly.

  The jute monk crossed to the black monk’s side and pushed the young man’s shoulder to get him to hurry up so the next pilgrim, the jute monk’s pilgrim, could have his turn. The black monk didn’t like this at all.

  “Laqad han dawruna!”

  “Lo! Laqad han dawruna!”

  “Kadhaab!”

  “Alyahudi!”

  They bumped back and forth, chest to chest, umpire and manager, crosses clinking like nails being hammered while they accused each other of lies and deceits that went back hours and days and days and centuries. The whole time the young man kept inching along on his knees. Prin saw the person next in line on the jute side whisper to his buddy. He was a long young man in white patterned shorts and a LeBron James jersey. Prin saw him take a long steel cylinder out from behind him.

  Oh God! A rifle!

  Oh no! A selfie stick!

  He stole ahead and sat down in the Holy Seat. He struck a manspreading pose that revealed the pattern on his shorts was actually a blonde woman in a bikini who stretched across his hips. He held the selfie stick in front of him, grinned, and snapped away.

  The monks stopped fighting and together chased the young man off the Holy Seat and out of the church. The young man’s friend followed after them, laughing and recording it all with his phone. With the monk gone, the tour guide took Prin by the arm, stepped over the kneeling man still making his way forward, and pushed him towards the Holy Seat, where Prin got down on his knees.

  Not knowing what else to do, and really not liking the theological implications of kissing this particular piece of sacred space, he placed a hand on the smooth, slight indenture in the stone and nearly demanded to know why God had told him to come here and then gone silent. Instead, he prayed that he be given the courage and grace never to run away from God. Again.

  36

  Prin saw the sacrilegious manspreader again a few hours later, in the Duty-Free Shop at the Dragomans airport. The young man and his friend were deliberating between towering bottles of rum. Prin took a step towards them. Something needed to be said.

  The Nephew seemed to think so, too.

  He was also in the Duty-Free Shop, wearing a velour tracksuit,fur-lined leather slippers, and a neck pillow with built-in headphones, and was making his way over to the young men ahead of Prin. Rae was pushing a full shopping cart behind him. Prin tried to catch her eye but she was busy making faces with a little kid strapped into a stroller while his mother sampled skin creams. The kid was stamping his feet against the stroller’s bottom strap, which activated the red lights in the heels of his shoes. He was extremely proud and was rewarding himself with scoops of goldfish crackers after each stomp. Rae’s bright face told him she wanted to see more and more and more.

  Meanwhile, The Nephew was lecturing the impressed young men. What kind of vulgar morons bought rum? He took them over to a coolly lit display of Japanese single-malt whisky. Tall, thin young women in elegant taupe hijabs were positioned everywhere, smiling and faintly nodding with an air that suggested they were happy to help without touching anything or being touched.

  Prin left. He went next door to a gift shop. He wanted to pick something up for Molly and the girls. He had planned to find them gifts in the famous markets of the old city. The leather sh
ops of Dragomans turned out such beautiful purses, the world’s most splendid women, from Josephine Bonaparte to Angelina Jolie, had owned one. But no one from the government complex had been willing to take him there before he left. They assured him it was safe to go, totally safe, that there were no problems at all, safe totally; but still, even if it were that safe, which it was, this was true, why take a chance? Totally safe.

  In the back of the airport gift shop, amid T-shirts and fuzzy stuffed camels and dates, he found a small selection of soft, deep burgundy leather purses, each tagged with a picture of the saffron tented market where they had been made, for centuries, according to secret, family-held traditions. Prin read the fine print at the bottom of the tag. Made in China. He could cut off the tags before giving them to the girls. He picked up four, then made it five, then went back to four.

  On a shelf full of snow-globe mosques that you could shake into sandstorms, Prin found two bookends modelled after the chapel in the mountain. He picked one up. It was heavy, far too heavy to take home in his luggage. He’d have to carry it himself, the whole way. He’d keep it on his lap in the plane. Right where her sleeping leg would never lie again. Nothing would be enough to merit her mercy, her forgiveness. But this was something he could do, and if she took it from him and threw it in the trash, or dropped it on his toe, or told him to keep holding it until it was time for him to be buried with it, he would accept this. He would accept anything, just so long as she responded.

  He called her again.

  Straight to voicemail. Again.

  He brought the purses and bookend to the counter and left them there to go look for a book. Then he went back and picked up the bookend. The whole point was to carry it the entire time, from now until he saw Molly.

  And he neither wanted nor deserved any Simon’s help.

  Prin walked past breath mints and magazines and a device-charging station where a large man checked his phone while standing at a painful-looking angle for a large man. A clerk stood beside him, stooped in smiling replica.