She paused, breathing in slow and long. A small cry of pain escaped. Tristan said nothing; they had an understanding now. He remembered again the broken mothers and Grace’s delicate frame gliding forward to hold them. His eyes filled with the tears of her rage.
‘If you could have held those women,’ Grace said, ‘you would have understood.’
‘I do understand,’ he said, more in hope than certainty.
‘Shall I ask the question now?’
‘If you must,’ Tristan said, preparing himself.
‘I’ve learnt not to ruin the mood.’
He laught nervously, which she took for permission.
‘You said you loved me. When you first saw me—that’s how you say you felt. So why did I never see you again?’
The question he must answer, and hope that in doing so his own heart wouldn’t break.
‘I wanted to see you,’ he told her. ‘There wasn’t a day I didn’t think about you.’
And, saying it, something detonated inside him, a feeling broad enough to cover the pain. A feeling of lightness, of falling.
Falling in love. Again.
PART 2
The Temptation
It was a scream not of pain but of fear. The hysterical caving-in of the walls every mind recognises as its fate: bewilderment at the accumulation of the past, the impermanence of the body, the bloody-minded insistence of death. Tristan waited. Wherever it was Grace had travelled to, she had gone there alone. Eventually the screaming choked itself to submission. There was a gulping for breath, accelerating to a kind of whimper.
Tristan’s hand found her shoulder.
‘What is it?’ he whispered, worried his voice might be enough to set off the next avalanche.
‘I’m frightened.’
Nothing more than that. Simple and unanswerable.
‘It’s a good sign. It’s the place beyond fear we need to worry about,’ Tristan bluffed.
‘I didn’t think there was anything beyond fear,’ Grace bluffed back. He heard it in the steadying inhalation, then the rush of her voice, forcing the sentence out in a single breath.
‘Exactly. After the fear, there is nothing.’
‘Thank you.’
Her body turned rigid as another wave of pain flowed over her. He said nothing, waited for it to pass, thought how quickly the grotesque becomes unremarkable.
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘Talking.’
Tristan could hear the fight in her voice. They were stubborn, the two of them, stubbornly alive. There was a new pain, something like a stitch only it would not remain confined to his stomach. It stabbed upward, into places he’d never been sure about. His heart was there, in behind his lungs; what else, he couldn’t say. Whatever it was, the nerves joined the chorus with sadistic fervour.
‘What is it?’ Grace asked.
‘Nothing,’ he lied, feeling light-headed as hopeful chemicals flooded his veins, seeking to defend the breach.
‘Give me your hand.’
‘Leave it,’ Tristan told her. ‘When light comes there will be doctors. Until then it is best we try not to move too much.’
‘No, look, I think I can get free from this. I think I can cut the belt.’
He marvelled at how hope rallied. Grace took hold at the place where his thumb met his hand and guided it gently through the darkness, over the smooth surface of the dress that on the street had shone so brightly. He felt his broken fingers trailing over her warm body, the involuntary twitching of a muscle ticklish to his touch, or something darker; he did not want to think of it. The geography was unfamiliar to him. He thought he detected the cavity of her navel and the gentle rise beyond. He felt something sharp and metallic. She guided his crushed fingers to the ragged edge where the structure beneath them had ruptured.
‘Hold this,’ she whispered. ‘Keep it from slipping back. If you stop it moving, I can use it as a blade—’
An elbow caught Tristan in the eye. If she noticed she felt no need to apologise. He felt the metal edge moving beneath the force of the rasping belt and he tightened his grip. His body tensed to accommodate hers. She worked quickly as he struggled to hold the makeshift blade in place.
Victory was marked with a small grunt.
‘Free!’ she whispered. Tristan painted a picture of her gleaming eyes.
‘Okay, see if you can move…Ow.’
‘Sorry.’
The wriggling intensified and Tristan closed his eyes as each movement found another wound.
‘What’s…’
‘If I can just…’
‘Can I help?’
‘It’s just the…No. No no no!’
Banging, loud and insistent. Bone against metal. In her rage Grace was butting against the metal that had them pinned. Tristan found her head and held it with his broken hand but she bucked away, rocking in frustration.
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’
‘It isn’t.’
She pulled away from his arm and when he tried to calm her she brought her free leg violently forward, catching his hip with her knee. Instinctively Tristan moved to her, attempting to smother her anger. Beneath them the cab began to rock.
‘Don’t. You’re going to—’
The car lurched. There was a terrifying moment of suspension before it rocked back. Tristan felt the roof changing shape beneath his head. And then the slipping, as loose rocks shifted and the earth let go. They were moving, sliding headfirst into the dark future. Tristan braced for the final impact. They bounced down the slope in hard jagged collisions. It lasted no more than a few seconds, although, in the stretched-out world of panic, he experienced it in hundreds of slices. They rocked, once, twice, then settled. The wind howled and the car shuddered its reply. Tristan imagined them balanced over a precipice. He had seen the sharp walls of the rock-toothed valley. They were a single slip away from death. He didn’t dare move.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘What were you doing?’
‘I was angry.’
‘We have to be still now. We have to be careful.’
To be still, to choose slow death over the quick end they perched above. Let me get out of this, God, Tristan thought, and I promise…but he could think of nothing. A god who would strike such a deal was too hard to believe in. He could feel the pounding of Grace’s heart at his shoulder. He loved her. He whispered the words secretly to himself, thrilling in her proximity. She, whose broken body he supported with his own. He loved her. She was right to question his long absence, but he had always loved her.
‘Tell me the rest of your story,’ Grace said.
‘You might not like hearing it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t like living it.’
‘I already know the ending.’
‘It isn’t finished yet,’ he pointed out.
‘We’ll be all right,’ she said.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Time is passing,’ Grace replied. ‘And we are not. It’s the best we can hope for.’
Tristan’s Story
Tristan took Brother Kevin’s advice and returned before the first light fingered its way across the sky. He emerged slowly from the tunnel, blinking at the brightness. There was a moment before he fully registered where he was, conscious only that he swayed in a bubble outside time, that his past had ended but his future was yet to begin.
The rector stood waiting, a torch in his hand, satisfaction dancing on his face. Minutes earlier Tristan had stepped lightly through the streets; now nausea compressed his stomach and his stance turned fuzzy.
‘Welcome back,’ the rector smiled. ‘I hope the experience was worth it.’
Tristan looked at his feet, embarrassment turning to fear.
‘Did you think,’ the rector purred, ‘that you would be left to defy the church? Do you really imagine we take such little interest in your progress? Some would be insulted by the assumption, but I re
member well the deficiencies of youth. Don’t worry, Tristan, you will survive your punishment. Your defiance has presented me with an opportunity and now I mean to use it. Follow me.’
Tristan was a child again, a boy without bearings, the ground beneath his feet no longer solid. The rector turned, but Tristan remained frozen.
‘Come, boy, I am giving you a second chance. Don’t let me down. There is work to be done. I do you this favour and you have nothing to say?’
‘Thank you,’ Tristan muttered.
‘Well then, let us move.’
Tristan did as he was told; without fuss or conflict the angry rebel was brought meekly back into the fold. Such was the rector’s genius.
St Augustine’s was divided into two sections. The first formed the public face of the institution, encompassing the church, halls, kitchens, dormitories, studies, courtyards and gardens—those places where the boys and visitors were free to roam. The other was the exclusive preserve of those who had taken their holy vows. At the end of the corridor leading to the grotto, the rector turned, not left but right, into the heart of the forbidden zone. Tristan stopped, sure he was not meant to follow. After only a moment the rector reappeared and beckoned to him. Tristan swallowed deeply and with an uncertain step left the world of the college behind forever.
Tristan had never seen a room like it. There were no windows. The ceiling, floor and walls were painted perfect white, causing the intersecting planes to merge. Tristan felt as if he was floating. The rector stood in the centre of the room, his dark form a stain on the pristine space, demanding attention. Tristan tried to look away but he could not.
Next to the rector was a ramp the height of his chest and on it sat a polished black sphere the size of a man’s head.
‘Welcome, Tristan,’ the rector smiled. ‘You possess a mind of rare quality. It is raw; there is a long way yet for it to travel. In an ideal world perhaps you would be two years older. But then, if the world was ideal, none of this would be necessary.’
Tristan nodded as if he understood. He felt the desire to please rising up in him. He reminded himself that he hated this man and all he stood for. Tristan imagined the young woman from the church was standing next to him, witnessing his bravery, and the thought of her straightened his tired spine.
The rector took a step to his left, to reveal the only other object in the room. Regarding the wall with its stern eyes was a bust of the Saint. Automatically Tristan dipped his knee in genuflection.
‘Ah yes, Saint Augustine.’ The rector turned to the bust and bowed in acknowledgment, although Tristan couldn’t tell if the gesture was genuine.
‘Tell me, Tristan, what do you imagine will happen if I release the ball?’
It was only then that Tristan made the connection. The ramp was aimed squarely at Saint Augustine.
‘Come now,’ the rector insisted, ‘the question is hardly difficult. Can you not imagine?’
Tristan hesitated, his tired brain furiously looking for the trick. For surely the rector did not mean to…
The rector nudged the ball. It rolled to the beginning of the slope and then, with Galilean predictability, accelerated down the incline towards the helpless icon.
The bust disintegrated in a white cloud of plaster. The ball, its momentum now shared with the shattered pieces, rumbled slowly to the wall.
‘It is a sin, is it not,’ the rector asked, delight spread across his face, ‘to deface an image of the Saint in this way?’
‘In any way,’ Tristan corrected, barely believing what he had seen.
‘Indeed. And so my question is this. How should we punish the ball that perpetrated this crime? What would be the appropriate sentence?’
Tristan did not reply. He had sat through enough interrogations to sense a trap but he couldn’t make out its detail. The rector continued, untroubled by his pupil’s silence.
‘Perhaps you do not hold the ball to blame. Perhaps you do not think the ball should be punished at all.’
‘I do not,’ Tristan conceded.
‘And why not?’
It was like being back in the hall, only here there was no chance the rector would turn his attention to another boy. It was just the two of them, a battle pure. The rector leaned forward, as if scanning Tristan’s face for some subtle clue.
‘Balls do not make choices,’ Tristan said, embarrassed at being reduced to the obvious statement. ‘They are not capable of it. To be held responsible for our actions, first we must be granted the capacity for choice.’
‘Very good,’ the rector said. ‘And how, if we may continue down this predictable trajectory, can we be sure the ball, when released at the top of the ramp, does not choose to roll down it? How do we know it does not hesitate for just a moment and consider the other possibilities? To not roll at all perhaps, or to veer left at the last moment, or right, or to veer early, or simply screech to a halt before the point of impact? It would seem, at first glance, that any number of choices are open to it. You look doubtful, Tristan. Tell me why.’
‘You know why,’ Tristan replied, feebly attempting to return fire.
‘Ah, but there you are wrong.’
The rector turned from him and paced the room in what appeared to be mad delight, steepled fingers touching the tip of his nose. He halted amid the saintly debris and swivelled, grinding plaster underfoot. ‘All my adult life I have struggled with the problem of the ball, Tristan. You assume I have done this for show, a clumsy metaphor upon which to hang my homily, but the truth is I am as perplexed now as I ever was. The ball has so many paths open to it. It takes one and only one. It chooses. And yet we do not call it a choice. We do not hold it responsible. Am I missing something?’
Tristan hesitated. What he was missing would be plain to even the youngest child, but surely that couldn’t be right.
‘Yes, I think you are.’ Tristan’s voice was small with caution.
‘And what would that be?’
‘You are missing that the ball is subject to the laws of physics,’ Tristan said. ‘When you release it, the forces are unbalanced and so it rolls forward. It is gravity, nothing more. It rolls because it must roll. It has no choice.’
‘And we are not subject to these same laws?’ the rector asked.
‘Of course.’
‘And yet we make choices.’
‘We do.’
‘How do you know?’
A worthy question perhaps, for one who’d never encountered it. But Tristan was a St Augustine’s student and his education had consisted of little but this question. The familiarity relaxed him and he felt a sharpening of his thoughts.
‘When I decide something I am aware of the options. Options that no physics precludes. Sometimes, when faced with a choice, I move left. Other times, I move right. Physics allows either. Physics therefore does not determine the outcome. The ball however…’
Tristan stepped forward and took it in his hands in a wildly theatrical gesture that the strange room seemed to encourage. He lifted it back onto the ramp and held it there, on the verge of another fall. ‘The ball has no choice. It is never left or right. It is always the direct path.’
Tristan released the ball and it did what it must, returning to the scene of its crime. Its collision with the debris sent up a small cloud of dust. The rector, feigning surprise, left it until the last moment before stepping out of the way.
‘And you knew it would do that?’ he said.
‘Everybody knows it.’
The rector straightened, as he always did at the point of ambush. ‘There is the difference between you and me, Tristan. I take nothing for granted. Perhaps, up until this point, the ball has always rolled true, but why dismiss the possibility that all this reflects is a hitherto remarkably consistent personality? How are we to disregard the possibility that at the next trial, having bided its time, the impish thing chooses to surprise us? How can I be so confident that the behaviour of the ball reflects its true nature? What is there in the world tha
t can convince me I am not the subject of an elaborate, spherical conspiracy?’
‘What you propose has never been seen,’ Tristan said. ‘You are right to say that this in itself is not enough to make it impossible. But we live in a world hewn from the past; you taught me as much. That which is true is that which has matched with fidelity our expectations. There is no better definition of truth available to us. I expect the ball to roll, and every time it has. So I say it must roll, and this is all I mean by “must”: that it always has, that I can predict with confidence that it will again, and that my prediction has until now never been disappointed.
‘This doesn’t make it a universal truth,’ Tristan continued. ‘The exception is always possible. There is no path from observation to universal truth. But neither is there a path to knowledge that does not pass through observation. So we are better to say universal truth is unknowable and content ourselves with this lesser form of knowing. When we speak of truth, this is all we ever mean: established reliability. That is why I do not hold the ball responsible for the crime we witnessed. That is all I mean when I say the ball is essentially different from you and me. I mean that until now, in every time and place it has been observed, the difference has held.’
During interrogations at St Augustine’s the boys tried to keep their answers as short as possible. It was a discipline demanded of them and any digression was quickly cauterised. Today, though, the rector waited, as if wishing to hear more. And Tristan took hold of the rope and, with great confidence, fashioned his noose.
‘We strive to succeed and mostly we fail, yet we cannot know in advance the manner of our failure; if we did there would be nothing to strive for. The tension between knowledge and intention defines us—it makes us free. It is how I know we make choices, and know we are to be held accountable for these choices. It is why I blame you for lifting the ball, not the ball for destroying the statue.’
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