by Adam Roberts
~ * ~
The brothers took their different paths through life. Strong- went to college and studied two years of basic engineering, and two years of coastline speciality. He graduated in the top thirty per cent of his class. He was found a wife, and he had two children of his own; one girl, one boy, their names shifting in to of after the tradition of the Northern European congregation to which he belonged: Beauty-of-the-Lord and Wisdom-of-the-Lord. He was promoted. He worked for several years on the two great tapering lines that were reshaping South America, working the machines and, afterwards, supervising the workers on the machines, as rubble was channelled and shovelled from inland to block out the underwater reefs that would later be built up and up. He did his work so well that he was transferred back to Europe, and his family could leave the sweltering heat of the tropics for the decent chill of Scandinavia. Promoted again. Here he worked for many years on the more difficult job of filling in fjords. The ground was hard, mostly unyielding granite, and the fjords were deep; it was several years’ work to fill in one of the smaller inlets. But the work was day-to-day. Fruition was many centuries away. He was part of a larger whole.
It was in Scandinavia he became friendly with The-Unerring-Word. Another devout man, church on Sundays and Wednesdays, with a family of two himself. But a more old-fashioned man than Strong-. He beat his children on Tuesday nights, whether they had committed specific infractions or not, for the discipline of it. On fast-days he starved himself not from dawn to dusk as was common, but from midnight to midnight; it made him grumpy and unpredictable at work, but he insisted upon the observance, and mocked others for not being so exact. In fact, fasting or not, his temper was usually short with the people working under him.
Then there was the question of clothing. At work both Unerring- and Strong- wore the company tunic, the plain blue button-less shift, the blue strides and black engineering boots; matching blue faceveil and gloves. But away from work, Strong- liked to dress up a little. After he got home after work he would wash the necessary three times, and then put on a pale green shift with a single silver cross printed onto the chest. He had a favourite faceveil too, with gold thread worked into an olive-green ground. And he wore red silk gloves with black fingertips.
Unerring- did not conceal his disdain for these fripperies. In work or out of it, his clothes were always plain. ‘It’s vanity,’ he might say, as Strong- and he sat in a bar, each sipping a glass of red-wine-and-cranberry. ‘It’s nothing else but vanity. You know what I reckon about it. Hey.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Strong- would concede. ‘I guess it is.’
‘But, hey,’ said Unerring-. ‘Forgive, that’s part of God’s plan too. Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ Unerring- would say, contemplating the concept. ‘Forgive.’
And they would finish their drinks, wipe their straws with sanctissues and throw them away. Walking back through Utoholm in the early morning, taking the main street towards the engineering camp, they would often laugh together, slap one another on the shoulder. The citizens of Utoholm, on their way to day-work, briefcases like paving slabs in their arms and hats pulled down over their heads tight as a drum skin - the ordinary people of the town - would give these two burly men a wide berth.
‘Hey,’ Unerring- might yell at one of them. ‘Mouse! You take care! God’s wrath, you know! We’re making the world a purer place, you know!’ It was funny. The mouse would duck, almost doubling over his suitcase, his coat flapping around his body as he scurried and hurried away from these huge men, these shouting, laughing men. Because, you see, they were doing something more important than sitting in an office, sitting in a school or a hospital, counting beans or pushing paper. They were physically remaking the world - with their actual hands, with their own muscles, with their will-to-goodness. Making the world more like the heavens; making it purer and more godly. And that thought made them feel good. Strong- enjoyed the sense of altitude he experienced, coming home after a shift, a glass of half-wine-half-juice in his belly, his comrade-in-work beside him, laughing and joking.
‘You know what we should do?’ Unerring- said, linking his beefy arm with Strong-’s as they strode together towards the Engineering compound.
‘What should we do?’
‘We should all go on holiday together! Yeah! You and me, your family and my family! We should go on holiday - somewhere in South America, say. You can show me the work you did on that coastline. They’ve got resorts down there, haven’t they? One on a mountain, with a good view of the reformed coast.’
‘You want to be cooped up for a fortnight with my kids?’ Strong- asked, laughing. ‘You want my teenage son chewing your ear off for a fortnight,’ slipping his voice into comical-nasal, ‘“But Dad, why?” And “Why this?” And “Why that?” ‘
‘Sure!’ bellowed Unerring-, who guffawed. ‘He’d learn soon enough not to bother me with that nonsense!’
And this, for some reason, struck Strong- as simply hilarious. He laughed and laughed.
‘Hey!’ Unerring- shouted at somebody on the far side of the street, some old woman, or old man, it was difficult to tell. ‘What you looking at? Mind your own! You want the Lord’s wrath, in the shape of my fist, come visit you?’ And the woman ducked down and scurried away.
They laughed and laughed, and strode through the gates to the compound arm in arm, as the morning sun dissolved the last of the stars in its lemon-coloured dawn light.
~ * ~
2
Strong-in-the-Lord discussed the holiday plans with his wife, and found himself coming round to the idea. Maybe it would be fun! Unerring- could be a little stiff-backed about religious observance, a little over-strict, but he was a good guy, salt of the earth.
Because of this, it was a particular discomfort to him that it was Unerring- who first saw the naked man. Seeing a naked man, running around the workplace, was bad enough - but for that naked man to turn out to be his own brother, to be none other than Courageous-in-the-Lord, was almost unbearable. ‘Hey!’ Unerring- shouted. ‘Hey, who is that guy? He’s naked, for crying-out-loud!’
‘You’re right!’ Strong- said, horrified.
They were at a shaft-head, midnight. The shafts were being run into the steep wall of the fjord, and would eventually be primed with explosives and blown free, so that the rubble would avalanche down into the deep black water below. The two of them had been at the cutting face, inside the mine, inspecting the work. They had just backed a truck along the mineshaft, and had emptied its load of rubble down the scree-face into the water. Now they were standing beside the truck’s cabin, debating whether to take their break now or later.
The road, cut alongside the line of the water and lit with fierce arc-lights at twenty-metre intervals, led back to the main camp. But here was a naked man, hurrying up the road, bold as you like. As he came closer Strong- said, ‘Hey, he looks like . . .’ and then, ‘Oh, I don’t believe it.’
‘What?’ Unerring- asked. ‘What?’
‘It’s my brother. Believe that? Oh, would you look at that?’
‘Oh man,’ said Unerring-. ‘That’s disgusting! Look at that!’
The naked man approached. He was wearing odd, raggedy green trousers. On closer inspection the flaps and fringes revealed themselves to be pockets, but a messier, more disreputable-looking pair of trousers it was hard to imagine. There was a dark sweater of some kind, but his hands and his face were completely naked.
‘Cor?’ Strong- yelled. ‘Courageous-in-the-Lord?’
By the time he arrived, the newcomer was panting. ‘Brother,’ he said, nodding his head in greeting.
‘In the name of God!’ said Strong-. ‘Cover yourself up, man!’
For a long moment Cor said nothing, but looked calmly into Strong-’s face. ‘I’ve got to talk with you, brother. I’ve got to talk with you now.’
‘You’re naked!’ shouted Unerring-. ‘For the love of. . . !’
Cor ignored him. ‘Can we talk now? Is there somewhere we can go?’
‘You heard what I said, man?’ yelled Unerring-.
‘I don’t want to talk with you,’ said Cor to Unerring-, without looking at him. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you. You should get on your way.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Unerring-, fiercely. ‘No naked man is going to run around my site. You got permission to be here? No way. You got permission to be anywhere naked like that? Oh no. I’m taking you in - you’re coming back down the road with me until the police can deal with you.’
He brought his huge hands up in front of him and took a step towards Cor.
‘Stop,’ said Cor.
And Unerring- froze. Cor was holding a gun, a bulky handgun of struts and sharp double-backs, like an anglepoise-lamp. Clearly a gun. Military issue.
When Unerring- spoke again, his voice was much softer. ‘Where you get that, man?’
‘Go,’ said Cor. ‘Just head off. Go back to the camp. I’ve got to talk to my brother.’ He lifted the gun.
‘That’s military, isn’t it?’ Unerring- said. Then, abruptly, he had turned face-about and was trotting down the road. His figure swiftly dwindled to a smudge of dark, trotting from one patch of lit ground to the next. Above him the stars, ranked in awful sublimity, gave the illusion of hundreds of receding dark roads, each one lit by lamps all along its length, shrinking towards the horizon that was also Unerring-’s destination.
Cor watched him go.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Strong-in-the-Lord. ‘Are you insane? You’ll go to prison - is that what you want?’
‘What I want,’ said Courageous-in-the-Lord, folding his gun away and pushing it back into one of the pockets in his ridiculous trousers, ‘is somewhere warmer in which we can talk. Warmer than this freezing night. How about the cabin of this truck?’
~ * ~
They clambered inside, pulled the doors shut. Cor turned on the heating. For a while he simply sat until he had warmed up a little. Strong- sat in silence during this time; he offered up an unspoken prayer, tried to calm himself. Eventually he turned to face his brother
‘So,’ he said. ‘So. I haven’t heard from you in five years, and now you turn up like this. Five years!’
‘You’re doing the same thing now as you were then.’
‘Then,’ said Strong-, ‘I was in South America.’
‘It’s all the same thing,’ said Courageous-.
There was a pause.
‘You will,’ said Strong-, trying to sound compassionate, ‘go to prison for this. You do know that, don’t you?’
Courageous- laughed. ‘I’ve been dodging prison for most of those five years, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s been one long chase for me.’
Strong- could not help himself from staring at his brother’s naked face. He just couldn’t help himself. He ought, perhaps, to have looked away, for the sake of decency, of propriety, but he found himself staring. The myriad tiny strands of black hair, curling a few millimetres out of the chin and cheeks, like pubic hair - revolting. The snickering, serpentine curling and uncurling of those pink lips, moistened from time to time by his tongue. His tongue! Glimpses of that pink muscle, that lewd contorting thing; its penile probing and movement, soft-hard, stippled with hundreds of miniature nipples along its upper surface. Strong-couldn’t stop staring at it. As his brother spoke, he found himself hypnotised by the movement of lips, the flashes of tongue, the lurid gaping of the nostrils with their own hideous stuffing of pubic hair. He could hear that his brother was saying something, but he could not make sense of the words. It was all blotted out by the spectacular, obscene image of the naked face.
‘Ugh!’ he called out. He looked away. ‘You could at least cover up.’
‘You weren’t listening to me,’ said Courageous-. He sighed. ‘It’s the same. You’re the same as you were. I’d hoped you were different, I hoped - Jesus, I don’t know what I hoped.’
‘Oh,’ said Strong-, still looking carefully at the darkened windscreen. ‘So, it’s swearing as well, now, is it?’
‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ said Courageous-, in a more subdued voice. ‘I guess that’s it.’
There was silence.
‘What happened to you, brother?’ Strong- asked the darkened windscreen. He could see his brother’s naked face reflected, smokily, in the glass, but seeing a reflection wasn’t, somehow, as bad as seeing the actual thing. ‘How did you get like this? You were a devout kid. Devout enough, anyhow.’
‘Listen to me, brother,’ said Courageous-. ‘I’ve seen the truth, yeah? Once you’ve seen the truth, and understood the truth, things can never be the same.’
Strong- took a deep breath. He exhaled, carefully. ‘The-Unerring-Word,’ he said. ‘That’s my co-worker, the man you terrorised with the gun. He’ll inform the police as soon as he gets to the compound. They’ll come up here. They’ll come up armed, probably. You should go give yourself up, right now.’
Courageous- sighed again. ‘You know what I wanted to be when I was a kid, brother?’
‘Of course,’ said Strong-.
‘Remember?’
‘You wanted to be an astronomer.’
At this memory, Courageous- laughed quietly; and at the sound of his laughter Strong- laughed a little too. Suddenly the whole encounter took on a comical, unreal edge.
‘It was crazy of me,’ admitted Cor.
‘Man, it was, though? Wasn’t it?’
‘I told the teachers at school, and I got caned, got whacked - you remember that? They thought I was being disrespectful even by asking after it!’
The two of them laughed together.
‘You were full of crazy thoughts in those days,’ said Strong-, kindly.
‘When you came here,’ Cor said, ‘you used to write to me. Come stay with the family; come see Scandinavia!’
‘That’s right!’ said Strong-. ‘I did that. Of course,’ he said, the laughter still burbling along between the words, ‘I didn’t think you’d come see me naked. Or, or,’ and here, for some reason the laughter dribbled away, ‘or carrying a gun. Or carrying a gun.’
There was a pause. They weren’t laughing any more.
‘I did become an astronomer, in the end,’ said Cor, leaning forward in the cab. He pressed the blade of his hand against the glass and peered through the shadow at the world outside. ‘In a manner of speaking. Do you ever think it’s odd that the stars are arranged in the sky in so orderly a pattern?’
‘Odd?’
‘The constellations - you know what that word means?’
‘Something to do with stars?’
‘Constellations are the patterns made by the stars. But there’s only one pattern of course. This grid.’
‘Do I think it’s odd?’ said Strong- loudly, as if waking from a snooze. ‘No, I don’t. Why should I? God declares His majesty and order in the heavens.’
‘And if,’ said his brother, in a low voice, ‘there is no order in the heavens? If the stars were arranged in a chaotic spread?’
‘That’s a nonsense question,’ said Strong-. ‘A nonsense, and a hypothetical question.’
‘OK,’ said Courageous-. He yawned, egregiously, his mouth opening wider and wider. Strong- could see every detail reflected in the glass; the teeth, arrayed like stars, the pulsing mass of pink flesh that was the tongue, the open funnel of throat, tonsils dangling at the very back like glistening, miniature testicles. Strong- had to lift his hand to his eyes to block out the image. He could not tear his eyes away. He had actually to lift his hand to block the image out.
‘Sorry,’ said Courageous-. ‘Sorry about that. I’m just really tired. I haven’t slept in ages.’
‘If you’d been wearing a veil,’ said Strong- faintly, ‘it would not have been so bad.’
‘Yeah, veil, yeah,’ said Courageous-. ‘Except that once you discover the truth of things it
seems pretty hypocritical to wear the veil.’
‘The truth of things?’ snapped Strong-, trying to achieve the same tone of withering sternness that their father had managed so effortlessly. ‘I thought that’s where all this was leading – to irreligion and atheism and terrible things. Don’t! Don’t, that’s all I say. Truth? Do you say truth? Truth - there’s a word that means two things, isn’t it? It means not in error, but it also means properly placed- we talk of a line in a drawing being true, don’t we? When we say God is truth we mean not only that He cannot lie, we mean that everything about Him is properly placed, orderly, harmonious. That’s the point of the stars - that’s what they show us. The rank on rank of them.’
‘I think I just ran out of steam,’ said Courageous-, wearily, as if to himself.
