The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  ‘Is someone cooking onions?’ asked Cale.

  ‘No.’

  The door opened and a servant came in and lit several candles. Then he pulled the curtains shut but with some effort because they were so thick and tall, more like those for a stage than a house. Shortly after, the door opened and Kitty the Hare passed into the room. No other word would do. The hood he wore was deep enough to cover his face in that poor light and the gown like a small boy’s too large dressing gown. There was, however, nothing of the priest about him. His smell was different too. The Redeemers had the body odour of too little washing and something indefinably sour; Kitty the Hare smelt of something not unpleasant exactly and not just odd but oddly odd. Cadbury held a chair for him all the while carefully watching Cale to see how he reacted to this unsettling creature. No one said anything and no one moved. There was only the different rhythm of Kitty’s breathing, something like a dog panting only not.

  ‘You wanted ...’ began Cale.

  ‘Move into the light so I can see you well,’ interrupted Kitty. The non-look of him, the great performance of his arrival in the almost dark made Cale expect a voice fit for all this portent – doom-filled dark and menacing. But it was the cooing and the lisping, the almost but not at all feminine liquid tone that raised the hair on his arms, damp as they were from sweat. ‘Please do as I ask,’ said Kitty.

  Shaken and poorly Cale shuffled forward, not by much. He was cautious now because he felt so weak but it also left him feeling a certain freedom. He was in no state for any swashbuckling – he could barely walk to the door let alone dash for it. In his present state he would have had trouble wrestling a kitten to its knees.

  ‘So. This is what the wrath of God looks like,’ said Kitty. ‘Original. Don’t you think so, Cadbury?’

  ‘Yes, Kitty.’

  ‘But it makes sense, the more you think about it, to have a child represent the anger of the almighty – given what so many of his innocents must endure. You are not well, I think.’

  ‘Just a cold.’

  ‘Well, don’t give it to us, eh, Cadbury?’

  It may have been jovial – it was impossible for Cale to tell.

  ‘I have heard a great deal about you, mister. Is half of it true?’

  ‘More.’

  ‘He’s vain, Cadbury, how I like that in a god.’

  ‘What do you want?’ The strange sweet smell that at first had not bothered Cale was becoming more and more unpleasant and was beginning to make him feel even worse.

  ‘You have information?’

  ‘About?’

  ‘A great many things no doubt but I won’t insult you by trying to buy news about your friends – curious though I am to know where Vipond and his brother are sticking their snouts, I want information that is valuable to me and which I think you will quite happily share.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘The Redeemers. Bosco. Now that he is Pope ...’

  Had he been feeling less dreadful Cale might have hidden his surprise better.

  ‘You didn’t know.’ Kitty was clearly amused.

  ‘I left in a hurry while I had the chance. So you see I’m not worth what you thought.’

  ‘Not at all. News I can always get easily enough. Intelligence – that’s something else. You were more than close to Bosco, you can tell me about his plans for you and for his faith now that he is the rock on which it is built. These things are valuable to me. There will be war but a new kind, I think. If so, I need to know what it is.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘You will be well paid but just as useful is that you will have influence through me in a world that doesn’t as yet have very much time for you. Influence more precious than rubies. As for your Purgators – find an excuse for their presence pretty soon.’ He stood up as Cadbury quickly moved to pull away his chair. ‘In a couple of days when you’re feeling better we’ll talk at greater length. Cadbury will give you tea. Mint might give you a lift.’ With that he was moving to the door, which was opened from the outside by someone who must have been remarkable of hearing, and then Kitty the Hare was gone. The same servant as before came in, opened the curtains and to Cale’s intense relief, because he thought the smell would make him sick, also opened the window to clear the air. Cadbury ordered tea and Cale went to the casement, drawing in the sweet air as if he had been at the bottom of a dirty pond for the last ten minutes.

  ‘What you expected?’ said Cadbury.

  Cale did not reply. Cadbury handed Cale a small jar whose label announced in grand lettering: MRS NOLTE’S CHRISM. ‘It’ll help if you stick it up your nose next time you come. Just don’t leave a trace round your nostrils. Kitty takes offence.’

  When Cale got back to his room feeling stronger for his black, not mint, tea and two cream slices he fell asleep, making fourteen hours over the last twenty-four – this for someone who usually got by on six or seven. When he woke up he noticed a large envelope had been pushed under the door. It was an invitation to a dinner in the Great Hall of Spanish Leeds Castle. He had barely finished reading it for the third time when there was a knock on the door.

  ‘IdrisPukke.’

  Cale opened it, invitation in his other hand. It was so pompously ornate and grand it could not be overlooked and IdrisPukke was not, in any case, an overlooking sort of person. ‘May I?’ he said, pulling the invitation out of Cale’s hand.

  ‘Help yourself.’ Cale was curious to know what this great dinner was about and why he was invited but before he had a chance to pump IdrisPukke for information he was offered some unequivocal advice.

  ‘You can’t go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a trap.’

  ‘It’s a dinner.’

  ‘For everyone else. For you it’s a trap.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘The invitation is from Bose Ikard.’

  ‘It says the Lord Mayor.’

  ‘He wants there to be trouble so that he can persuade the King that it’s dangerous to have the remnants of an embittered empire filling his second-largest city and hoping for a war to get their broken fortunes back.’

  ‘He has a point.’

  ‘Indeed he has.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘Your reputation goes before you.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That wherever you go disaster follows you like a spaniel.’ Cale was not easily lost for the last word but even he was startled by this. ‘He wants to see a quarrel with you and the Materazzi and he has a pretty good idea how to start one. You’ll find yourself sitting opposite Arbell and her husband.’

  This brought about a silence of an altogether different kind. ‘Does Vipond know about this?’

  ‘Vipond sent me.’

  ‘So he expects me to do as I’m told.’

  ‘Do you ever do as you’re told? These days we all know you’re a god and not a bad-tempered hooligan with a big fist.’

  ‘I’m the anger of God not a god. I explained that.’

  ‘Vipond is warning you not to do what someone who wishes you harm wants you to do. Show some sense.’ He paused. ‘Please.’

  Cale had been excited by the idea of a grand dinner but he could see IdrisPukke was right. But he could no more stay away than he could have prevented himself from falling to earth after he had launched himself from the tallest tower in Spanish Leeds.

  29

  Great the magnified cumulus of incense, pure the sopranos, sonorous the bass notes in the cathedral in the heart of Chartres where the new Pope, Bosco XVI, was crowned on the old rock on which the One True Faith was built. And the celebratory vestments of gold and green, orange and yellow and blue. Truncated rainbows of holiness. Except, of course, for the twenty nuns who were allowed to participate dressed all in black and just a little white around the face. But what faces! As they looked up at their Holy Father, hands tied behind backs to prevent them reaching out for the disgusting touch, smiles of ecstasy and so intense it seemed another holy expira
tion might take place to add to that of the Blessed Imelda Lambertini who died of ecstasy at her holy communion at the spiritually precious age of eleven.

  But great the excitement of the prelates, bishops and cardinals, nuncio, mandrates, and gonfaloniers. Many were newly enobled, their predecessors gone to the fires, or the oubliettes and ditches out in the desert, fodder for foxes. This was their Pope, their chance, their time to be personally responsible for bringing about the end time and the great renewal.

  The new Pope Bosco ascended the calumnion step by step, obliged to stop for obeisance and holy grovelling at each so that it took half an hour of renunciation for Bosco to make it to the top and to the great cantilevered lectern that jutted out over the vast space of the Sistine Chapel and which made it look as he was about to leap into the upturned congregation waiting to hear of a new life and a new purpose. They knew well enough what was coming; they had been primed for years on the new beliefs. They knew that God had lost his patience yet again and that where once they had been sacrificed to rain and water now there would now be fire and a sword delivered by the hand of a boy who was not a boy but the manifestation of God’s exasperation. And there would be no ark offering a reprieve this time. First the Antagonists, then everyone else and then the Redeemer faith itself would wither away. All this was delivered to an audience that could barely contain its joyful anticipation of God’s momentum concerning the ruin of his most blighted creation.

  ‘The wind of change is blowing through our world,’ said the new Pope. ‘Nothing can stop a blessed idea whose time has come. So we must come to the woman question.’

  There was a certain heart murmur of surprise among the priests and monks. What woman question? And the same if understandably even more more trepidatious question amongst the nuns. What woman question?

  There was always something slightly oily about the tone of voice of a Redeemer when he spoke well of women, not by any means so rare an occurrence as the casual follower of the faith might imagine. The nervous nuns were about to get a full dose of unction. When you flatter, lay it on with a trowel.

  ‘Blessed is the woman whose words can cheer but not influence. How can we not respect their strength in obedience, admire the doggedness of their submissiveness that God – and his likeness man – commands from the femininity? Redeemers are distinguished by unusual respect for the female sex that supplements and aids the labour of men and priests by her unwearied collaboration. But the great Abbess Kuhne is now more correct than ever when she says that virginity is the true emancipation and proper state of women. In anticipation of the life to come no more will the Redeemer faithful give or take in marriage. Both men and women from this day will be virgins. I have set aside days on which the marriage debt, which most resembles the union of the beast in us, may not be paid between man and wife.

  ‘All Thursdays in memory of the arrest of the Hanged Redeemer (fifty-two days a year).

  ‘All Fridays in memory of the death of the Hanged Redeemer (another fifty-two days).

  ‘All Saturdays in honour of the Hanged Redeemer’s Virgin Mother (another fifty-two days).

  ‘All Sundays in honour of the resurrection (fifty-two more days).

  ‘And all Mondays to remember the departed souls (fifty-two days).’

  In addition to banning marital intercourse on two hundred and sixty of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, Bosco went on to forbid physical contact of any kind for varying periods before and after half a dozen particularly sacred holydays.

  It took Gil, no mean calculator, several minutes to work out that in the first year it would be possible for married couples to dench on only five days.

  ‘Do you think it’s too many?’ said a concerned Bosco. ‘By the third year all that will be behind us.’

  ‘More than enough,’ said Gil. ‘But where are our soldiers to come from?’

  ‘We have enough to wipe the world clean with a sponge as we are. You and I must be here to see the Redeemers wither away so that God can begin again with a creature more deserving of his gifts.’

  The other question, the Cale question, had been dealt with by the invocation of a great secret prophecy concerning his return. The prophecy was now locked away in the vaults of the Holy City of Chartres having been given credence by a group of nuns he had talked to when they visited the Golan Heights. He had then mysteriously disappeared from amongst them although no one had actually seen him disappear. In this way the useful belief arose that he would return to fulfil his eschatological duties but only if the Redeemers faced great peril in their attempt to wipe evil man and his dreadful nature from the face of the earth.

  ‘What if they find out the truth?’

  ‘We don’t know the truth.’

  ‘He betrayed us, the ungrateful shit-bag.’

  ‘You keep talking about him as if he is a person. He is not. When he realizes and when others realize he’ll return, because if he is not part of the coming deluge there’s no point to him. At the right time a twitch on the thread will do it.’

  Gil had wondered if Cale’s disappearance would damage the cause. What was the point of an absent saviour? God had revealed his hand when it was needed but then withdrawn it with a clear demand that the Redeemers themselves must act. Otherwise what was the point of them? However much destruction must be delivered to the world, including their own, God did not need them to achieve this. By sending Cale to intervene so miraculously he had made this obvious. By withdrawing Cale, God had shown them that he had not deserted the Redeemers and that if they followed his will by destroying all apostates and unbelievers he would not forget them when the time came to destroy themselves. Their annihilation would surely be a door to the next world. It was in mulling over his mistake that Gil, still a profound believer in the end of mankind, began to see that, whatever Bosco might think, Cale had now outlived his usefulness. A permanently absent Cale would do no harm at all. Quite the contrary. A live one, on the other hand, could and probably would become a serious threat. Something must be done.

  To bring his great speech to a climax Bosco warned against a dangerous new kind of woman he knew was emerging, not the naughty beauties of the Materazzi with the stretched-forth necks and mincing walk and big hair that the Lord would smite with scabs at a point of his own choosing, nor the wantons of Spanish Leeds who made a tinkling with their feet because soon instead of a girdle about their womb there would be a rent. But there was a new threat from women who wanted to be the spiritual equals of men, to show off their strictness and persecute anyone insufficiently pious and even burn other women as a warning by showing that they too could be as generously harsh in the ways of orthodoxy and righteousness. The congregation nodded but did not understand that his wrath was aimed at his predecessor and his fear that there might be more like her. Perhaps many more. Perhaps they were everywhere. There were rumours out there, though, digging in like slugs for the winter, emerging in gossip and drunken talks among friends late in the night, but nothing at all like the truth that a woman, no better or worse than her male predecessors, had ruled the Redeemers for twenty years.

  ‘Consider the last four things as you go back to your diocese,’ finished Bosco. ‘And prepare for the extremity to come.’

  After he had left the celebration that followed Bosco’s inaugural speech Gil went back to his enormous apartments, where his new secretary, Monsignor Chadwick, who had not been invited, was desperately hoping that Gil would be in the mood to let fall some news of who had been there and what had happened and how the new Holy Father was. There was only disappointment to be had.

  ‘Find me the Two Trevors,’ said an ill-tempered Gil. Hope on Chadwick’s face was replaced by instant dismay.

  ‘Ah,’ said Chadwick followed by a long pause. ‘Would you know by any chance where they might be at all?’

  ‘No,’ replied Gil. ‘Now get on with it.’ As Chadwick shut the door as mournfully as a door can be shut Gil knew perfectly well how very unreasonable he was be
ing. The Two Trevors were not a pair it was at all easy, or even possible, to find no matter who you were.

  ‘More light?’ asked Cale.

  ‘I can see well enough,’ said the seamstress from the vegetable market. ‘The question is: what’m I lookin’ at?’

  ‘Old lady who spidered a fly,’ sang Vague Henri.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He’s singing a song – he’s well off his track. Don’t worry about it. I want you to stitch his face. He won’t feel anything – or much anyway.’

  ‘You’re crazy. I just stitch clothes. You’re crazy. I don’t know anything about stuff like that.’

  ‘But I do. I’ve stitched people a hundred times.’

  ‘Then you do it. I’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘You won’t get into trouble. I’m a very important person.’

  ‘You don’t look like anyone important.’

  ‘How would you know? You just stitch clothes for a living.’

  ‘You want me to do somethin’ like this an’ you insult me? I’m goin’.’ She made for the door.

  ‘Fifty dollars!’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘He’s my friend. Help him.’

  ‘Let me see it – the money.’

  Because of Kitty the Hare’s generosity, a wallet with three hundred dollars had been delivered the day after their meeting; he was able to count it out on the table there and then. The girl thought for a moment. ‘A hun’red dollars.’

  ‘He’s not that much of a friend.’

  They settled on sixty-five.

  As she went back to examining the mess of Vague Henri’s face he started singing about goats. ‘He won’t feel a thing while you work and I’ll take you through it. I know what needs to be done but it’ll take a fine touch if his face is to be saved. Think of it like you were sewing a collar to a jacket. Just make the neatest job you can.’ He remembered to flatter her. ‘Without you he’ll look like a horse’s arse. I saw how good you were. You have talent – anyone with brains can see that. Forget it’s someone’s face and think of him as a suit or something.’ Softened up by the compliments and understandably tempted by such a large amount of money she began looking at Vague Henri as a professional problem.