‘Not when it contains a scan of Fra Domenico’s brain,’ said Lagerfeld, ‘handed to him by a servant of the Church.’
‘But—’
‘Need I remind you that not only am I a Cardinal and you are an Abbot,’ said Lagerfeld, ‘but that you are a Franciscan and I am a Jesuit? It is therefore not only impertinent to argue with me, it is futile.’
And with that, the conversation ended, leaving Father Guido exhausted but too shaken to go back to sleep. He lay in bed feeling challenged from every direction. In addition to a thoroughly irreligious loathing for the Cardinal, he was also experiencing, in direct conflict with his vows, a voluptuous entanglement with his surroundings. His bed, for instance, felt as if it belonged in a Baroque painting of angel-laden clouds. It made his simple pallet in the monastery seem like a bed of nails on which an ostentatious yogi might show off his indifference to circumstance. And yet there was more to it than that: the house was beautiful; not the trophy of a vulgar plutocrat, but quite simply marvellous. La Signorina Jade had explained to him that the whole property was decorated with works by artists who had lived at one time or other within a hundred kilometres of Antibes.
‘We’re art locavores,’ she had said, an opaque expression that Father Guido had countered with a polite smile.
They had been standing in front of a paper cut-out by Monsieur Henri Matisse that managed to celebrate, with three simple colours, the joy of sun and sea and leaf. A delicately calibrated Calder mobile in the garden, of equally primitive colouring, responded to a light breeze, which, after the torpid afternoon, nudged it into a gentle rotation in the early evening, so that the shifting relationships between its elements made it seem alive. A large painting of a white bird by Monsieur Georges Braque, like an intersected C, flew across a blue-grey sky in the hall; and his own bedroom was a little museum of oil paintings by Paul Signac, an artist whom La Signorina Jade told him had spent his summers in the famous port of St-Tropez in the early part of the last century. All around him, bright blue, orange, pink and pale green water, trees, boats and bays glistened on the walls. He was reminded that his own faith was far more directly rooted in a love of nature than in the encrypted allegories, disturbing martyrdoms and favourite stories that crowded the monumental if somewhat monotonous art collection accumulated by the Church over the centuries.
When he finally recovered sufficiently from the Cardinal’s dawn raid to get out of bed and prepare himself for the day, Guido drew open his curtains and saw La Signorina Nadia from the Plein Soleil Wellness Team, who had kindly, if somewhat outrageously, offered to book him in for a massage soon after his arrival, leading a yoga class beneath his window. Half a dozen guests were on all fours on the lawn arching their backs in the air and, the next moment, hollowing their backs in a posture from which part of him naturally wanted to avert his gaze, but then found himself looking at fondly, overcome by a sense of sadness that he had been taught to mortify his body rather than enjoy it, to fix his mind on the next life rather than this one. Perhaps he was in error, but it seemed to him that there was something basically healthy about these young people, who were not rushing to be crucified, like the Cardinal’s young protégé, or to have a breast sliced off or have themselves lashed to a burning wheel or strapped to a post and shot full of arrows.
At lunch, Father Guido, instead of placing a restraining hand over the top of his glass, as he usually did, allowed it to be filled with a swirl of deep red wine. He found himself seated next to a charming Frenchman who turned out to be an expert on ceramics.
‘My family was originally from Xi’an,’ Monsieur Marcel explained, ‘where the great Terracotta Army was discovered. I think that ancestral connection is what inspired me, ultimately, to develop my ceramic armour. You are in the business of protecting souls, mon père, and I am in the business of protecting bodies.’
He raised his glass and clicked it lightly against Father Guido’s.
‘To the protection of the vulnerable,’ said Marcel.
‘Yes,’ said Father Guido, ‘an excellent toast. And an excellent wine,’ he added, after taking a mouthful.
‘It is Unico,’ said Marcel, ‘the greatest wine to come out of Spain. The pottery is also by a Spaniard, Pablo Picasso.’
‘Picasso,’ said Father Guido, looking around at the owl-jugs bulging on the table, and at the bullfight taking place within the arena of his own plate and, as the food was served, the dancing figures and the heavy-uddered goats and serene women’s faces and the men’s profiles, like the heads on ancient Greek coins, that gradually emerged from beneath the platters of green beans, pomegranate, feta, rare beef and grilled fish. Was he falling into Epicureanism? Was it sinful to feel such delight, surrounded by these exuberant ceramics, in this magnificent garden, with the sea glittering through the drifting Calder and the best wine he had ever tasted flowing into his glass, as if he were a guest at the Wedding Feast at Cana? Although he was not at Mass, he suddenly felt that all wine was sacred; in fact, that if anything was sacred, everything must be. Was he falling into the Error of Pantheism? He didn’t care! If he was, he had been driven to it by Lagerfeld, a Cardinal who had ordered a special Cruciform MRI machine to be made so that he could watch pictures of poor Ignatio’s brain lighting up as nails were driven into his hands and feet; a bully who had ordered him to steal another man’s property.
Marcel explained that Picasso’s Communist leanings had inspired him to mass produce pottery at Vallauris, a nearby town, in order to make ownership of his work more accessible to ordinary people.
‘Communism is practical Christianity,’ said Marcel.
‘I suppose it is,’ said Father Guido, who was by now on board for more or less any heresy. ‘To Communism!’ He clicked glasses with Marcel again and drank another gulp of the splendid Spanish wine.
Marcel showed him photographs of his ceramic armour and told him that the design had been inspired by snake scales.
Father Guido found himself wondering why the poor serpent had been selected to carry the burden of emblematic evil. Were snakes not also God’s creatures?
‘To serpents!’ he said. And that was the last toast he could remember making.
When he woke, Father Guido was thoroughly confused. He had so seldom left the monastery it was fundamentally bewildering for him to imagine himself anywhere else. It was already night, and yet a pulsing green light suffused the air outside his windows and an eerie, amplified voice was counting slowly in German: ‘Fünf … Sechs … Sieben … Acht.’
For a moment, he imagined that Cardinal Lagerfeld was speaking to him in a dream, counting the seconds before a detonation, or some other terrible punishment that would be unleashed on him and his fellow guests. And then he remembered: he was in the South of France, staying with Signor Sterling. With that recognition came a wince of shame. He had obscure but intermittently piercing memories of the afternoon, like blades gleaming in the fog. Had the lovely Signorina Nadia really persuaded him, after his crushingly delicious lunch, that it was his turn to come to the spa area for a massage? He could feel his heart tightening at the uncertain recollection of a candlelit ceremony; the knots of tension that she had kneaded with her powerful hands, and the warm tears spilling from his eyes, down his nose and dropping through the hole in the massage table on to the petals of a lotus that floated in the pewter bowl below. After he was fully dressed again, she had given him advice on his posture, easing back his burdened shoulders and delicately touching his lower spine and the crown of his head, making him feel taller and taller, although in truth he was not a tall man. Somehow, in that moment, he had felt his deepest aspirations turn into sensations, as if his body was part of a cord that ran from the core of the Earth into infinite space, lifting his mind effortlessly towards heaven.
The rest was blank. He must have passed out after returning to his bedroom. Now he was still fully clothed and was clearly missing some important scientific lecture organised by his host. Where were his manners? He must join the ot
hers with all possible haste. He hurried out of his bedroom and down the broad, curving staircase that led to the hall. He felt guilty and dehydrated, but luckily there were two waiters standing at the foot of the stairs, one with a tray of champagne, which Father Guido had no intention of drinking, and one with glasses of icy lemonade. He smiled at the waiter and took a tumbler of the cold yellow liquid, drinking it eagerly.
‘I’m sorry, I was so thirsty,’ he said, placing the empty glass back on the tray.
‘Would you like another?’ asked the waiter.
‘Well, you are so kind. It is very refreshing. Thank you,’ said Father Guido, taking another glass and wandering towards the double staircase that led into the garden from a terrace on the far side of the hall. As he approached the branching steps, the music grew louder and a screen gradually appeared, perhaps a hundred metres from the house, seething and twisting with lurid green numbers. Four figures silhouetted against the giant screen, in black costumes ribbed with strips of light, stood behind sharply delineated consoles on which they made delicate adjustments to invisible instruments. Father Guido walked down the steps in a trance, unable to work out whether he was attending a concert or some sort of science presentation about the robot future that Signor Sterling and his associates were planning to unleash on to the public. Suddenly, COMPUTERWORLD appeared on the screen. That must be the name of the product. Next, a series of huge words appeared, while at the same time being spoken by a portentous, half-human, half-synthesised voice: INTERPOL/ DEUTSCHE BANK/ FBI /SCOTLAND YARD/ CIA/ KGB/ CONTROL DATA/ MEMORY/ COMMUNICATION/ TIME/ MEDICINE/ ENTERTAINMENT. It was clearly a product with a list of powerful clients and a wide range of applications, but what really moved Father Guido were the vibrant irregular patterns of colour that started to dance around the screen, sometimes in sync with the underlying beat of the music, and sometimes with the long breaths and plangent echoes that shimmered and stretched over the frenetic bass. Father Guido drained his second glass of lemonade and looked on with amazement. He was reminded of the ever-changing combinations of tumbling stained-glass fragments in the rotating kaleidoscope his mother had given him for his sixth birthday.
‘Infernal racket,’ shouted a familiar voice in Father Guido’s ear. It was Sir William Moorhead. ‘I suppose we can at least agree on that!’
‘It reminds me of stained glass,’ said the enchanted Abbot, ‘but modernised, of course, for young people.’
‘These Krauts have been pretending to be robots for at least half a century. It’s retro-futurism rather than modernity,’ said Moorhead witheringly. ‘I think you’ll find Soviet poster art, medical monitors and musical visualisation have had a rather larger influence on their work than the rose window in Amiens Cathedral.’
Father Guido could not really understand what Moorhead was complaining about, but he recognised the tone of a man who was used to proving that he was right about everything. Although His Eminence wanted to anathematise Moorhead, Father Guido couldn’t help feeling that these two dogmatic, ill-tempered men were really spiritual twins. The truth was that, at this moment, he didn’t care what either of them thought; he simply felt too well, too delighted to be part of this jubilant occasion. He only ever watched television at Easter for the Pope’s blessing – and also, caving into pressure from the younger friars, when Italy played in the World Cup Final of 2006. Now he could not help gazing in wonder at the film of a white spaceship approaching the snowy ground outside a large institutional building. When it landed, the music also came to an end, with some applause, whistles and whoops from the audience. The stage went dark but soon, out of the pregnant darkness, a new melody emerged. There was a roar of recognition from the guests as the stage lit up again.
Suddenly, La Signorina Jade appeared before the two old men in a short red dress, her black hair stacked up and pierced with a beautiful ivory chopstick, chased with red and black pictograms. ‘Come on, guys! This is a classic, we’ve got to dance.’ She joined the musicians in singing the opening words of the song.
She’s a model and she’s looking good
I’d like to take her home – that’s understood
‘No possible definition of dancing…’ Moorhead began, but Father Guido did not hear the rest of the paragraph, since Jade had clasped his hand and was dragging him towards the stage. When they reached the outer edge of the crowd, Jade let go of Guido’s hand and threw herself into a frenzied dance, thrashing her body from side to side, undulating her arms, and then, still swaying, more slowly now, she bowed towards Father Guido and, as her head drew closer, unpinned the grenade of her hair and lashed it from side to side only millimetres from his somewhat prominent waist. Just when the poor Abbot thought he might faint, she arched backwards, making the same writhing motion, but this time with her own waist thrust forward until the longest strands of her hair were touching the grass behind her.
Madonna, thought Father Guido, moving his elbows nervously back and forth and trying to make his old knees move at the same time. Then, in an abrupt change of style, Jade jumped neatly beside him and started to do a perfect impersonation of an old-fashioned cyborg, as if to make Father Guido’s rather awkward and rigid dancing style seem like the perfect complement to the music.
‘Go Guido!’ shouted Jade. ‘The mensch-maschine merger! Yay!’ She mirrored the old Abbot, walking on the spot with exaggerated jerkiness; shadowing his movements, while gradually encouraging him to increase their complexity. When the song stopped, she leant over and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thanks, Father, I loved that. You’re quite the dancer,’ she said, bumping her hip against his and then swaying down among the pines and palms and people, artfully reassembling and skewering her hair as she disappeared from view.
Guido was stunned. His heart was pounding and his face trickling with sweat. He felt that perhaps he was in love. What a confusing weekend it was proving to be.
‘Another margarita, sir?’ asked a waiter.
‘Oh, yes, thank you, I am quite hot from dancing,’ Father Guido confessed, picking up another glass of the excellent lemonade.
‘Un-fucking-believable, hey?’ said Signor John MacDonald, the young Scotsman he had shared a ride with from the airport. ‘Kraftwerk! Un-fucking-believable. I am properly impressed, properly fucking impressed. What’s also totally blowing my mind, at a totally different level, is that some of their visuals look amazingly similar to the simulations I’m getting with my Inorganic Life Modelling Program.’
‘Perhaps it is a sign pointing to a deeper pattern,’ said Father Guido, trying to sound supportive, without having the least idea of what the young Scotsman was talking about.
‘That’s right! That’s what I’ve ended up thinking,’ said John. ‘If I were even more paranoid than I am – which would make me really fucking paranoid, I can tell you – I might think that Kraftwerk had been hacking my Computer World – do you know what I mean? But, as it is, I’ve taken so much E, I’m much more into the “great-minds-think-alike-slash-two-aspects-of-a-higher-unity” type of space – basically, what you were saying. Would you like some, by the way?’ he asked, holding up a rhomboid orange pill. ‘It’s a religious experience.’
‘Believe me,’ said Father Guido, ‘I have them all the time.’
‘Really?’ said John. ‘That’s great to hear. I didn’t know you were allowed to. I’m a bit hazy on the vows.’ He gave Father Guido an unexpected hug. ‘I know you’ve got your own supplies, but this is really good stuff,’ he said, dropping the orange pill into Guido’s lemonade and giving him a wink.
‘But I do not have a headache,’ said Father Guido.
John seemed to find this remark inexplicably funny and only recovered from his fit of laughter when the music changed again.
‘Fuck!’ he shouted, clutching his head in disbelief. ‘It’s “Radioactivity”. I love this song.’ He squeezed Father Guido on the shoulder, gave him another embrace and set off into the crowd with his arms outstretched.
A slow
synthesised basso profundo exhalation of the word Radioactivity throbbed through the air. On the screen, a finger tapped out a Morse code, establishing a feverish pulse beneath the deep and resonant syllables. Soon, huge individual words flashed on to the screen, simultaneously pronounced by the robotic voice: CHERNOBYL. HARRISBURG. SELLAFIELD. HIROSHIMA. A red and yellow radioactivity hazard sign receded down a red and yellow tunnel. STOP RADIOACTIVITY.
Father Guido drifted further down the gentle slope towards the stage, sipping his drink appreciatively. Everyone was so friendly. He was in love with La Signorina Jade, and also, if the truth be told, far from indifferent to the lovely Signorina Nadia, with her special healing gifts. The young Scotsman had been unusually affectionate and although the aspirin he had insisted on giving him was completely unnecessary, it was a generous gesture that Guido couldn’t help admiring. As he drew closer to the stage, Guido was arrested by the sight of two young women dancing together. One, he recognised as Signor Sterling’s lovely blonde girlfriend; the other he had not been introduced to yet, but the two of them were clearly close friends, singing along to the lyrics, while interpreting them with dance.
Stop Radioactivity
Is in the air for you and me.
They both looked up and around with stylised alarm, pointed at each other and then reached out for mutual protection.
Discovered by Madame Curie.
They sang these words while holding each other’s shoulders. The line seemed to give them both special pleasure, but they soon suppressed their smiles, separated, widened their eyes and clasped their cheeks as they continued:
Chain reaction
Mutation
Contaminated population.
‘Hi, Father G,’ said Saul Prokosh, approaching Guido from behind and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. ‘Don’t you love them?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Guido, ‘truly I love all of them.’
‘Is this the best party you’ve ever been to?’
Double Blind Page 15
