Modern Gods

by Nick Laird

  “Your children’s?”

  “Yes. My spirit children.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Three boys and a girl.”

  Belef stepped back onto Tractor Rock and sat heavily down. She inserted the tip of her walking stick into a crevice in the rock and worked it like a gearstick. Liz sat down beside her, sidesaddle. From the bank Margo gave the thumbs-up and Paolo kept rolling.

  “Where are we going?” Liz asked but Belef ignored her. She had been struck by some new thought and she pulled her stick from the crevice, dipped the end of it in the water, opening a new grain in the river’s surface, a flurrying. Liz patted the rock like it was a docile beast and felt the heat of a whole day’s sun in the black basalt. Belef whispered urgently, “Elisabet, I know you are in grief but you are here for purposes.”

  It seemed to Liz like the rock beneath her shifted. How could she know? What did she mean?

  “What? I am?”

  “My children bring me secrets. They tell me you are powerful and sad. So sad. You will learn the why you have come here.” Before Liz could respond further—she felt wounded suddenly, suddenly breathless—Belef had raised her head to the riverbank, to the camera lens and Margo, and shouted, “This is my promised land! This waterfall is Jordan. All this is our worlds.”

  —

  A few minutes later, when the camera was off, Paolo offered Liz his water bottle and asked, “What was she saying to you out there?”

  Liz shook her head, meaning it didn’t matter, and said, “Have I a bite?”

  She pulled her hair back and showed Paolo her neck. It felt like a gesture of vulnerability, like how Atlantic might expose her belly for a tickle, and Paolo touched the skin.

  “There?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a little red. Itching?”

  His fingertip lingered on her neck. She felt the contact shiver through her. It was just an offhand, natural thing, she told herself.

  “What was she saying to you out there—”

  “You guys notice there’s no birds here?” said Stan, kneeling a few feet away, touching a patch of bare earth with his biro. No doubt some insect, bravely confused, now trekked up the shaft. No one responded. “I’ve always noticed you don’t get birds where there’re waterfalls. I think it’s the sound. It means they can’t hear predators approaching.”

  Liz said, “Oh yeah,” but Margo—head in her clipboard—and Paolo continued to ignore him. Ignoring Stan, she realized, was going to be a useful bonding exercise for the team. Margo dropped her clipboard on her daypack and clapped her hands.

  “Right, terrific. Let’s do a couple of pickup shots—Belef, if you could walk with Liz down the path . . . Where is she?”

  “She must have gone to the toilet,” Stan offered.

  “We’ll fill the rest in on commentary. Liz, just say for now this is the Tractor Rock where devotees come and pray, that right behind you is the waterfall they call Jordan. Maybe mention a lot of the iconography is based on Christianity, but reflects the local landscape. Or something. Are they baptized here? Stan? Do we know if they’re baptized here?”

  After the shot was done, Liz decided to confront the inevitable and slipped off her left boot to take a look at what was happening in there. Nothing good was the answer. The red welt had already bloomed into a loose pasty globule. She dipped her heel in the cool water. Margo had blister plasters—“Of course I have blister plasters, I have everything”—and these blister plasters were, Margo explained, revolutionary. “If it weren’t for these I wouldn’t be able to wear heels on dates with awful men.” Liz stuck the false skin to her own and put her boot back on, without rising to Margo’s conversational bait about awful men. She watched Margo walk a few meters into the forest, shouting “Belef,” occasioning a screechy, flappy evacuation in the canopy above. Margo stepped quickly backwards and fell over a root, landing on her bottom. She sat there looking suddenly small and defeated. Liz helped her up, and granted that this place was a fucking deathtrap.

  —

  “What the hell were you doing, Stan? You’re meant to be watching her. And where’s the bodyguard? Isn’t he meant to come with us everywhere?”

  “You told him not to come,” Liz said softly.

  “Was I meant to know we were going to be abandoned in the middle of the jungle?” Margo sniffed.

  “I think I know where she might have gone,” Stan said a little sadly, and stepped off into the thicket of greenness. Paolo sat on the ground, puffing his vaporizer, then set about unpacking his lenses and cleaning them.

  They sat—the three of them—and waited. Liz kept her head down, studying the next PTC. Margo made various grunts and sighs of discontent.

  “And now we’ve lost Stan,” she said.

  “Do we know how to get back?”

  “There was basically a path, wasn’t there?”

  A scuffle in the undergrowth and they all turned to look at—nothing. Stan was right. There was no birdsong here, just the steady singing of the river passing through. A feeling began to close in on them and it was not pleasant. Liz stood up.

  “Should I call for him?”

  “Why would he just walk off like that?”

  “Maybe because you were rude to him?” Paolo offered, not looking up.

  “Stan, Stan!” Liz shouted.

  They waited and waited. They did a few pickup shots. Liz peering into the hole of a tree. Liz coming down a path, spangled with sunlight. A lemon-colored butterfly the size of a paperback flapped into the clearing and alighted on the Tractor Rock. Slowly it parted and shut and parted its wings, semaphoring something. Paolo filmed its secret message, then it left. Only motion and event could hold the sense off that they were lost in a forest. They checked the footage again. Liz kept asking questions about it—did that work? did this come over?—trying to prod a compliment from Margo that was not forthcoming.

  “It’s been thirty minutes,” Paolo said. “Should we try to head for the village?”

  “I think we should wait here,” Liz said, and Margo nodded.

  They sat for a few minutes in silence. Around them insect life continued, sun played on the surface of the water, the leaves above breathed.

  “I just meant he should keep an eye on her,” Margo said. “It wasn’t the worst thing anyone’s ever said.”

  Neither of them responded. The more Liz looked at the cloud forest the more it appeared to be a single sentient creature. They were in its fur, on its skin, enveloped in its grasp. The lianas and creepers began to seem tentacular, prehensile. She got the impression that the jungle could snap shut around them. There were forever little movements happening on the edge of her vision, of her comprehension. She took a few steps down to the riverbank, by the Tractor Rock, and lay back on the grass and looked up through her sunglasses. Their yellowy tint made everything nostalgic, televisual, cheerful. Far overhead a plane dragged its dissolving plume through the blue.

  “Shall we do the checklist piece? About religion?”

  “I haven’t sorted that out yet,” Liz said.

  “It’s going to be cut with shots commenting on the list, though, so piecemeal is—did you hear that?”

  “Anyone want a banana?” Paolo said. “Stan found them, growing on a tree.”

  “Are they definitely bananas?”

  “They look like bananas.”

  “Shush!” Margo said again, sharply.

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  A beating sound. Far away something wooden being hit by something wooden. Distant shouts. Chanting. It seemed to grow louder as they listened. Perhaps the wind changed. Were the shouts in anger? Silence again. She looked across at Margo. Before the producer noticed her watching, Liz saw the fear in her face, then she turned to Liz and gave a little professional unpersuasive smile. />
  The shouting started again. Margo gave a little “Huh” and stood up, began to walk towards the forest.

  “Hello?” she called. “Stan?”

  Paolo got to his feet.

  “Hey, you shouldn’t go too,” he said, and stood in front of her: Margo suddenly hugged him. Paolo raised his face to Liz. He was making an expression that said, Help me.

  Just then Belef stepped into the clearing, beaming at them, bearing a parcel made from a large wrapped leaf, tied up with a fiber of some kind. Stan appeared behind her, blinking at them apologetically. Margo immediately released Paolo and launched into a speech.

  “Belef, hi, good to see you again. Listen, this isn’t going to work if you head off and leave us behind. We’re trying very hard to keep to a schedule and it relies—”

  “I had to go to Sydney.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did you see the plane?”

  “We didn’t see any plane.”

  “I saw a plane,” said Liz.

  “That was my plane,” nodded Belef.

  “Your plane?”

  “I had to go to Sydney for business.”

  “OK.”

  “I saw Kasingen and she sent back this for you.”

  Belef unwrapped the leaf parcel and presented Liz with some sticky-looking yellow sap.

  “Thank you. What is it?”

  With both hands, Liz took the leaf from her. Behind Belef, Margo motioned to Paolo to film the proceedings.

  “This is cream from Sydney. For the bite.”

  “My bite?”

  “On your neck.”

  “Oh.”

  Liz’s hand rode up to the swelling on the nape on her neck.

  “It is the tears of a tree in Sydney. It is for just this.”

  Belef pinched some of the sap from the leaf and dabbed it on Liz’s neck in a tender gesture. Liz felt infantilized, and had a sudden urge to hug this woman in front of her. She was so sturdy, so stable, so sure of everything.

  “Michael Ross was flying the plane. I wanted to stay here but he pulled me and he was strong.”

  “OK.” Liz nodded.

  “And this will help you.” Belef had a length of red string in her hand—it matched her own bracelet—and she tied it round Liz’s wrist without asking whether she could, then she turned her broad back and was off across the clearing.

  “Where did you find her?”

  “Actually she found me, by the telephone tree.”

  “Did you hear the shouting?”

  “There was shouting?”

  —

  It was enough for the day—they had arranged to trail Belef for the whole of tomorrow. They climbed a hillside, crossing scrubby kunai grass. Belef trekked some way in front with Stan. A freshening breeze came down over the mountain. The sun was out. Anything was possible. Margo asked Liz, “Did you really see a plane go by?”

  “Yeah, and she must have too.”

  “Did that stuff help your bite?”

  “Not really. Just made it sticky.”

  Just then, coming over the crest of the hill, was the boy with white blossoms or feathers in his hair, leading a huge pig all badged with sores on a piece of vine. When he saw them he stopped, and then turned and led the animal calmly the other way.

  “Hey, hello! Hello!”

  “Leave him. He doesn’t want to come near us.”

  On its delicate feet, the pig started to trot away from them, its massive buttocks slipping past each other and the boy broke into a jog to keep up. He didn’t look back.

  “What’s wrong with us?” asked Margo.

  “Oh,” Stan replied. “The white skin, I expect. Probably thinks we’re ghosts.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “We all have secrets.”

  “I suppose it’s a question of magnitude, Alison.”

  Ken sat at one end of the kitchen table, Judith stood by the sink. Alison sat awkwardly on the arm of the sofa. She’d kept her coat on. They were heading to the airport, and at first she’d been glad she stopped in. Both of her parents had given her long meaningful hugs at the doorstep, though the meanings of these hugs were only now becoming clear.

  “I didn’t know all of it. I mean I knew that he’d—been involved. But I didn’t know—”

  “It’s about as bad as it could get,” her father said. “And this man is meant to be a stepfather to my grandchildren, a husband to my daughter—a murderer.” Her father tipped his head back, and asked the ceiling, “Is he coming in?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to see him.”

  Ken looked at Judith.

  “I suppose we don’t, really. But.”

  “I think he’s ashamed. I’m ashamed too. I don’t know—”

  She coughed out two startled sobs and sat down suddenly.

  “You don’t need to be ashamed,” her mother said.

  Alison twisted her wedding ring round on her finger and looked at her.

  Judith went to hug her again. She felt insubstantial to Alison, unexpectedly hollow and light.

  She saw her father had a teaspoon that he kept twisting in his fingers, like he was reeling something in.

  “And what about the school? Did you see the headmaster’s comments?”

  “I did.”

  “He’s incoming president of Rotary this year . . . It’s just—how could you not tell us? How could Stephen—or Andrew or whoever the hell he is—not tell you? I can hardly credit it.” Kenneth sat back, set the spoon on the raffia placemat. He liked the line so much he repeated it, “I can hardly credit it.”

  “How could I talk to you? I didn’t know exactly what—I didn’t know.”

  Judith could see the change coming. In an argument when Alison felt cornered it was never long before she’d turn to the attack.

  “I think you should stop making excuses,” her father said. “You know damn well you should have told us, or he should have told us, and for you to get yourself mixed up in—”

  “It’s not like you’re easy to talk to. It’s not like Spencer or Liz or I can bring our problems to you—”

  “Oh don’t make this about other people, Alison.”

  “Do you think Spencer can come to you and tell you—”

  “Spencer and I talk all the time, every day—”

  “You have no idea who Spencer is, no idea—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Alison stood up.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, tell us, what are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t you wonder why Spencer has never had a girlfriend? I mean, like, never. Why he’s in the gym every day? Have you seen his hair? All the attention he pays to his clothes?”

  Kenneth blinked and looked at Judith.

  “I’m sorry, are you saying Spencer is—”

  “Well, I don’t know!” shrieked Alison, her volume rising relative to the unstable ground she knew herself to be on. “Maybe! But don’t you think it’s odd? You say you know us. But sure you never ask us anything or if you do you don’t bother listening to the answers. I have to sit and listen to you talk me through each game of golf hole by hole, shot by shot, but if I try to talk to you about anything—anything at all—you just switch off. And it’s the same with Spencer and Liz. You should ask them. Ask them for once in your life.”

  Her father made a huge exhalation and shook his head slowly; he closed his eyes. Unfair, untrue, and he would not continue to look on a universe where such lies were bandied about. There was a large gentle core to Kenneth, the hedgehog’s tender underbelly, and it was only his children who could reach it. When someone attacked his sense of himself, undermining the received history of the family, belying the sacred texts of his clan, something of a religious wounding occurr
ed, and Judith thought for a second that he might cry. Instead he picked the spoon back up, returned to twisting it in his fingers.

  Judith glared at her daughter. It wasn’t conscious on Alison’s part. Of her three children it was for some reason Alison—the middle one, the teacher, the mother, the committed Christian—who practiced most fervently and effortlessly the policy of slash-and-burn.

  Judith said, softly, “You need to get going if you’re going to make your flight.”

  Alison nodded.

  “Good that you’re getting away for a bit. Are you going to ask about your children?”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the lounge. They’re watching Mary Poppins.”

  Alison gave her mother a hug.

  Kenneth put his head in his hands.

  “There are twelve thousand people living in this town and you choose him. I tell you it’s going to be terrible for business.”

  “Oh shut up, Kenneth,” Judith snapped. The kettle had boiled and she went to attend it.

  —

  As Alison went through to the lounge to see the kids, Judith said, very quietly, to Kenneth, “I suppose everyone deserves a second chance.”

  “Oh really? And if he was IRA? If he was the one who shot Davy Smith? Or blew up Geoffrey Irwin? They were murdered,” he added emphatically, as if she’d contradicted him.

  Judith said nothing. There was a bit of hardened porridge from Isobel’s breakfast on the tabletop, and she picked at it with her nail.

  “It’s so hard to believe,” she said softly. “Little Stephen. Seems so harmless. When he came here and piled the logs for us that first day, I just thought now here’s one is shy and kind. Opposite of Bill.”

  She was looking in the big cupboard for the Tupperware with shortbread in it.

  “I never trusted him,” Kenneth said, with the same sour finality Judith had heard so many times when a rent check failed to arrive or a buyer pulled out.

  She knew Kenneth thought belief in the goodness of people—of life!—to be essentially a mug’s game. And it had always been her role, in the marriage, to “look on the bright side.”

  “It’s so hard to believe,” she said again now, with a different intonation, and let herself for once hold her stomach where it hurt and sat down.