The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

‘Praiสีe Jeสีuสี,’ Jesus Lover Fifteen replied, sounding, as he spoke, like a foot pulled out of sucking mud. .

  ‘Praise Jesus,’ agreed Peter, a little sadly. It was a pity, in a way, that Jesus had been christened ‘Jesus’. It was a fine name, a lovely name, but ‘Daniel’ or ‘David’ or even ‘Nehemiah’ would have been easier here. As for ‘C-2’, or ‘Oasis’, or the little girl from Oskaloosa who’d named it, they were best not even mentioned.

  ‘What do you call this place?’ he’d asked several people several times.

  ‘Here,’ they said.

  ‘This whole world,’ he specified. ‘Not just your homes, but all the land around your homes, as far as you can see, and the places even further that you can’t see, beyond the horizon where the sun goes down.’

  ‘Life,’ they said.

  ‘God,’ they said.

  ‘What about in your own language?’ he’d insisted.

  ‘You could noรี่ สีpeak the word,’ Jesus Lover One said.

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘You could noรี่ สีpeak the word.’ It was impossible to tell if this repetition signalled testiness, obstinacy, an immovable force, or if Lover One was calmly making the same assessment twice in a row.

  ‘Could Kurtzberg speak the word?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Kurtzberg . . . When he was with you, did Kurtzberg learn any words of your language?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you speak any words of our language, when you first met Kurtzberg?’

  ‘Few.’

  ‘That must have made things very difficult.’

  ‘God help uสี.’

  Peter couldn’t tell whether this was a rueful, good-humoured exclamation – a sort of upwards roll of the eyes, if there had been eyes to roll – or whether the Oasan was literally stating that God had helped.

  ‘You speak my language so well,’ he complimented them. ‘Who taught you? Kurtzberg? Tartaglione?’

  ‘Frank.’

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Frank.’ Presumably this was Tartaglione’s Christian name. Speaking of which . . .

  ‘Was Frank a Christian? A Jesus Lover?’

  ‘No. Frank a . . . language lover.’

  ‘Did Kurtzberg teach you too?’

  ‘Language, no. He รี่eaฐ only the word of God. He read from the Book of สีรี่range New Thingสี. In the beginning, we under-สีรี่and nothing. Then, with help of Frank, and with help of God, word upon word we underสีรี่and.’

  ‘And Tart . . . Frank. Where is he now?’

  ‘Noรี่ with uสี,’ said a voice from inside the hood of an olive-green robe.

  ‘He go away,’ said the voice from inside the hood of the canary-yellow robe. ‘Leave uสี in lack of him.’

  Peter tried to imagine what questions Bea might ask if she were here – what bigger picture she would see. She had a knack for noticing not just what was present, but what was absent. Peter cast his eyes over the congregation, dozens of small people clothed in pastel colours, weird-faced inside their hoods, slightly soiled on the soles of their booties. They gazed at him as if he were an exotic obelisk, transmitting messages from afar. Behind them, blurred in the humid mist, the blockish structures of their city glowed amber. There was room in there for many more than were seated here before him.

  ‘Did Frank teach only Jesus Lovers?’ he asked. ‘Or did he teach anybody who wanted to learn?’

  ‘Thoสีe who have no love for Jeสีuสี alสีo have no wiสีh for learning. They สีay, “Why สีhould we สีpeak a language made for other bodieสี?”’

  ‘Are they . . . The ones who don’t wish to learn English, are they angry that USIC came here?’

  But it was no use asking the Oasans about feelings. Especially the feelings of others.

  ‘Is it difficult,’ he asked, trying a different tack, ‘to produce the food that you give to USIC?’

  ‘We provide.’

  ‘But the quantity . . . Is it . . . Are you struggling to come up with that much food? Is it too much?’

  ‘We provide.’

  ‘But is it . . . If USIC wasn’t here, would your lives be easier?’

  ‘UสีIC bring you to uสี. We are graรี่eful.’

  ‘But . . . uh . . . ’ He was determined to winkle out some insight into how those Oasans who weren’t Jesus Lovers regarded USIC’s presence. ‘Every one of you works to produce the food, is that right? The Jesus Lovers, and the . . . uh . . . others. You all work together.’

  ‘Many hand make brief work.’

  ‘OK. Sure. But is there anyone among you who says, “Why should we do this? Let the USIC people grow their own food”?’

  ‘All know the need for mediสีine.’

  Peter chewed on this for a moment. ‘Does that mean you’re all . . . uh . . . Are all of you taking medicine?’

  ‘No. Only few. Few of few. All Jeสีuสี Lover here รี่oday need no mediสีine, praiสีe Jeสีuสี.’

  ‘And what about the ones who don’t love Jesus? Are they more likely to be sick?’

  This provoked some disagreement – a rare thing among Oasans. Some voices seemed to be saying yes, the non-Lovers were more susceptible to illness. Others seemed to be saying no, it was the same regardless of belief. The last word was given to Jesus Lover One, whose take was that everyone was missing the main point.

  ‘They will die,’ he said. ‘With mediสีine or with no mediสีine, they will die for ever.’

  And then, all too soon, his time was over. Grainger arrived pretty much when she’d promised she would: three hundred and sixty-eight hours from when they’d last spoken. At least, he assumed it was Grainger.

  She’d warned him that she would be driving a bigger vehicle next time, a proper supply truck rather than the jeep. Sure enough, a truck was what came into view, approaching C-2 from the shimmering obscurity of the horizon, camouflaged by the morning glare. Peter supposed that the settlement must strike Grainger as a ghost town, because, as usual, there was no outward sign of the sociable life that hummed within. To the Oasan mind, streets were nothing more than conduits from one house to another, not public spaces to be frequented.

  The truck came to a halt outside the building with the star on it. Truck? It was more what you’d call a van, a vehicle of the kind that might scoot around a British town delivering milk or bread. The USIC logo on its side was small and discreet, a tattoo rather than a vainglorious trademark. USIC the florists. USIC the fishmongers. Hardly a display of megacorporate might.

  Peter was working on the church grounds, stirring the mortar, when the vehicle came. He observed its arrival from a distance of several hundred metres. The Oasans, whose concentration on appointed tasks was unswervingly intense, whose vision was shortsighted, and whose hearing was difficult to gauge, failed to notice it. He wondered what would happen if he pretended he hadn’t noticed either, and simply carried on here with his congregation. Would Grainger eventually get out of the truck and walk over to meet them? Or drive the truck to the church grounds? Or lose patience and drive away?

  He knew it was ungracious, even childish, of him to keep her waiting, but he wished she would come out of her metal shell and make proper contact with these people whom she refused to call ‘people’, these people who gave her ‘the creeps’. There was really nothing scary or distasteful about them at all. If you stared into their faces long enough, their physiognomy ceased to appear grisly, and the eyeless cleft was no different from a human nose or brow. He wished Grainger could understand that.

  Just as he was about to announce to his co-workers that he must take his leave of them for a little while, he spotted a flash of movement in the doorway of the building marked with the star. An Oasan had emerged. It was no one he had met, as far as he knew. The Oasan’s robe was mouse-grey. The door of Grainger’s vehicle swung open and she stepped out, a vision in white.

&n
bsp; Peter turned to make his announcement. But there was no need: his co-workers had noticed the arrival, and stopped working. Everyone put down whatever he or she was holding, carefully and quietly. Jesus Lover Fifty-Two – a female, in Peter’s arbitrary estimation – was halfway up the staircase, a brick in her hands. She paused, looked down at the brick, and up at the wall where the syrupy mortar would soon dry out. The choice between continuing and not continuing was plainly a difficult one for her, but after hesitating a few seconds more, she began to descend the staircase. It was as though she’d decided the gluing of the brick was too important a task to be attempted when there were such sensational distractions.

  The other Oasans were talking amongst themselves, in their own language. The only word Peter could understand – the only word that evidently did not exist in their vocabulary – was ‘mediสีine’. Jesus Lover One approached Peter hesitantly.

  ‘Pleaสีe, Peรี่er,’ he said. ‘If God will be noรี่ diสีappoinรี่ful . . . If Jeสีuสี and Holy สีpiriรี่ will be noรี่ diสีappoinรี่ful . . . I will leave now the building of our ฐurฐ, and help delivery of mediสีine.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Peter. ‘Let’s go together.’

  There was a palpable relief of tension, passing through the assembled Oasans like a communal shiver. Peter wondered if Kurtzberg had instilled fear of God’s displeasure into them, or if they were merely over-eager to please their new pastor. He made a mental note to speak to them at the earliest opportunity about God’s compassion and indulgence: My yoke is easy and my burden is light and all that sort of thing. Except he might have to find an alternative to the animal husbandry metaphor.

  Peter and Jesus Lover One set off across the scrubland. The other Oasans stayed on site, as though not to alarm the USIC representative with their massed advance, or perhaps in deference to Jesus Lover One as their official go-between.

  The grey-robed Oasan who’d come out of the settlement to meet Grainger hadn’t moved from his position near the vehicle. A white cardboard box had been handed over to him, and he held it with all the solemnity of a priest holding a sacrament, even though the box resembled a jumbo pizza carton. He seemed in no hurry to carry it away. If he and Grainger had exchanged any words, the conversation was dormant now, as he stared at Jesus Lover One and Peter traversing the distance between the construction site and the settlement.

  Grainger watched too. She was dressed, as before, in her white smock and cotton slacks, with a headscarf loosely draped around her hair and neck. Boyishly proportioned though she was, she appeared bulky next to the Oasan.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Peter said to Lover One as they drew near.

  ‘สีคฉ้นรี่ณ,’ replied Lover One.

  ‘Not a Jesus Lover?’

  ‘No.’

  Peter wondered if there was any hope for him to learn the Oasan language. Without any English to bind it together, it sounded like a field of brittle reeds and rain-sodden lettuces being cleared by a machete.

  ‘Have you missed your chance to get a share of the medicine?’

  ‘Mediสีine for all,’ said Lover One. Peter couldn’t tell if the tone of voice was serenely confident, plaintively indignant or grimly resolute.

  The four of them rendezvoused in the shade of the building with the star. The WEL COME had blurred into illegibility now. It could have been the remains of a paint bomb against the wall.

  Jesus Lover One bowed to Grainger. ‘I am regreรี่ful for your lingering long here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll try to leave pronto,’ she responded. Despite the wisecrack, she was obviously tense. The engine of her vehicle was still running, in defiance of a USIC sticker on the side window that said CONSERVE GAS, IT’S A LONG WAY TO VENEZUELA.

  ‘Hello, Grainger,’ said Peter.

  ‘Hi, how ya doin’?’

  Her voice sounded more American than he remembered, like a caricature of Yankeeness. All at once, he missed Bea with an ache that was like a shove in the stomach. It was as though, having endured all this time without her company, he’d promised himself that she would be there to meet him afterwards. The USIC truck should have been a plum-coloured Vauxhall, with Bea standing next to it, waving to him in that unguarded childlike way she had, greeting him in her lovely Yorkshire-inflected voice.

  ‘Been sleeping under the sky?’ said Grainger.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  Her eyes narrowed as she gave him the once-over. ‘Some people tan. Some people just burn.’

  ‘I don’t feel burnt.’

  ‘Looked in a mirror lately?’

  ‘Forgot to bring one.’

  She nodded, as if to say That figures. ‘We’ll get some cream onto you in a minute. A bit late for first aid, I guess, but hey . . . ’ She glanced at Jesus Lover One and the other Oasan. ‘Speaking of which, I’ve still gotta do this medicine handover. Uh . . . who am I dealing with here? Which of you do I give the run-down to?’

  ‘I underสีรี่and more than the other one here,’ said Jesus Lover One. ‘Eสีplain me the mediสีine of รี่oday.’ Then, to his compatriot: ‘สีคฉ้นรี่ณ, ฉ้คน รี่รนฉ้ร.’

  The other Oasan stepped closer, lifted the lid of the box and angled it so that Grainger and Jesus Lover One had access to the contents. Peter kept his distance, but glimpsed lots of plastic bottles and little cardboard packets, a few of them colourfully commercial, the majority identified with machine-printed pharmacy labels.

  ‘OK,’ said Grainger, pointing to each of the items in turn. ‘We have aspirin and acetaminophen, as usual. These ones here are generics.’

  ‘Name from where all other name come,’ said Jesus Lover One.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Grainger. ‘Then there’s ten packets of branded acetaminophen: Tylenol. You’ve had it before. And these blue and yellow packets, Soothers, they’re like candies, but they’ve got some dextromethorphan and phenylephrine – a cough suppressant and nasal decongestant. I mean, I don’t know if you . . . uh . . . ’ She coughed. It was unclear whether she was imitating a cough for the Oasan’s benefit, or whether she genuinely had something stuck in her throat. ‘And this one here is diclofenac. It’s an analgesic too, and an anti-inflammatory, good for arthritis – pain in the muscles and joints.’ She wiggled her elbow and gyrated one of her shoulders, to mime the discomfort of arthritis. ‘Also good for migraines and . . . uh . . . menstrual cramps.’ Grainger’s voice was tainted with despondency. Clearly, she had little faith that her words made any sense to the recipients. She spoke faster and less distinctly as she went on, almost gabbling. Peter had witnessed that sort of behaviour before, in inexperienced or ineffectual evangelists who were trying to win over a hostile audience and sensed they were losing the battle. Mumbled invitations to come along to church sometime, spoken as if to satisfy a watchful God that the invitations had been made, rather than with any real hope that anyone would come.

  ‘Also, cortisone creams, the ones you like, in the blue and white tubes,’ Grainger went on. ‘And a bunch of antibiotics. Gentamicin. Neomycin. Flucloxacillin. A broad range of uses, as I’ve explained to you before. Depends on the individual. If you ever . . . uh . . . if you’re ever ready to give me some feedback on your experience with a particular antibiotic, I may be able to advise you better.’

  ‘Anรี่ibioรี่ic welcome,’ said Jesus Lover One. ‘But painkiller welcome more. You have other aสีpirin and paraสีeรี่amol, in other colour and name?’

  ‘No, what I’ve told you is what there is. But remember there’s the diclofenac also. It’s highly effective, and well tolerated too, in most . . . uh . . . people. Maybe some gastro-intestinal side-effects, same as with other analgesics.’ She rubbed her abdomen perfunctorily. Peter could tell she was in distress, and not from gastrointestinal causes.

  ‘Also,’ she continued, ‘we’ve got something totally different this time, nothing to do with pain. You w
on’t have seen this one before. I don’t know if it’s any use to you. I mean, not you personally, but . . . uh . . . anyone here.’

  ‘The name?’

  ‘The name on the packet is GlucoRapid. That’s the brand name. Insulin is what it is. It’s for diabetes. Is diabetes something you know about? When the body can’t regulate its glucose levels properly?’

  The Oasans did not speak nor make any gesture of response, but kept their faces attentively pointed at Grainger’s.

  ‘Glucose is like, uh, sugar,’ she said, voice faltering. She pressed her fingers hard against her perspiring brow, as if she could use a couple of painkillers herself. ‘I’m sorry, this is probably making no sense whatsoever. But the insulin is spare, so . . . ’

  ‘We are graรี่eful,’ said Jesus Lover One. ‘We are graรี่eful.’ And he put Grainger out of her misery by signalling for his compatriot to close the box.

  Things moved swiftly after that. The grey-robed Oasan and Jesus Lover One conveyed the medicine box into the building with the star. Minutes later, they returned, each of them carrying a bulbous sack, cradled against their chests like a baby. They stashed the sacks in the back of the van, then went to fetch more. After a few such trips, other Oasans, none of them familiar to Peter, joined in to help. As well as the sacks – containing whiteflower in various dried or powdered forms – there were large plastic tubs for the cleverly processed concoctions whose destiny, when USIC’s chefs added water, was to become soups and spreads and desserts and goodness knows what else. Smaller tubs and bags contained condiments and spices. Every sack and bag and tub was labelled in crude block-letters with marker pen. Whether by USIC personnel or by some small gloved Oasan hand, impossible to tell.

  Peter and Grainger sat inside the vehicle, at Grainger’s request. She complained that the humidity was getting to her, but Peter could tell from her face that she didn’t expect him to believe her and that the handover of the medicines had wiped her out, psychologically and physically. The air-conditioned cabin – sealed off from the back section where the food was being stockpiled – was a haven where she could recover. She kept her eyes averted from the robed figures filing past the windows. Every few minutes, the chassis was subtly jogged by the deposit of another sack or tub in its rear. Evidently, long-term experience had confirmed that the Oasans could be trusted one hundred per cent to fulfil their part of the exchange. Or maybe Grainger was supposed to check, but couldn’t bring herself to do so.