The Book of Strange New Things (20 page)

And now you’re there, my darling, and you can plant more. Many more!

Peter noted that she wasn’t mentioning Kurtzberg. Evidently, when she wrote this, she hadn’t yet received his most recent message. Maybe she was reading it right now, at exactly the same moment as he was reading hers. Unlikely, but the thought of such synchronous intimacy was too seductive to resist.

Don’t agonise about the fact that I’m not there with you. If God had meant us to go on this mission together, He would have fixed it so we did. I have my own little ‘missions’ here, not as ground-breaking or exotic as yours, but worthwhile all the same. Wherever we are, life throws lost souls into our path. Angry, frightened souls who ignore the light of Christ while cursing the darkness.

Mind you, Christians are capable of ignoring the light of Christ, too. There’s been a ridiculous fuss in our church since you went away – a storm in a teacup but it has caused me some grief. A few of our congregation – the older members, mostly – have been grumbling that we’ve got ‘no business’ preaching the word of God to ‘aliens’. The argument goes that Jesus died for humans only. In fact if you pressed Mrs Shankland on the issue, she’d probably tell you that Jesus died for white middle-class English people from the Home Counties! Geoff has been doing a reasonable job as pastor overall but he’s acutely conscious of being a ‘stand-in’ and he wants to be popular. His sermons are sincere but safe, he never lays anything on the line like you do. So . . . the grumblings go on. ‘Why not China? There’s millions needing it there, dear.’ Thanks, Mrs Shanks, for those words of wisdom.

Well, my darling, I really must go now and have a shower (assuming the plumbing hasn’t gone bung again) and rustle up something to eat. Supplies of my favourite comfort foods continue to be conspicuously absent from the supermarket shelves (even the horrid but serviceable ‘lo-fat’ rollettes have been out of stock for days!) so I’ve been forced into the arms of another dessert, a sort of chocolate and raisin éclair made by the local baker. Probably just as well: I should be supporting local businesses anyway.

On which edifying note, much love from your excited and admiring wife!

Bea

Peter tried to picture Mrs Shankland. He had obviously met and talked to her; he’d met and talked to everyone in the congregation. His mind was a blank, though. Maybe he knew her as something other than Mrs Shankland. Edith, Millicent, Doris. She sounded like a Doris.

Dear Bea, he wrote,

Let’s groom Mrs Shankland for a mission to China. She could convert a thousand people per hour with a few well-aimed words.

Seriously, things have begun moving quickly now, and I may not have another opportunity to write to you for some time. A couple of weeks, even. (A couple of weeks for you – a few days for me, if you know what I mean.) It’s a scary prospect but I feel I’m in the Lord’s hands – ironically at the same time as I’ve got the feeling that I’m being used by USIC for some purpose that has yet to be revealed.

Sorry to sound so mysterious. It’s USIC’s secrecy about Kurtzberg and their caginess about the indigenous people in general that’s made me feel this way.

To my great relief, I’m finally over my jetlag or whatever it should be called in the circumstances. I’m sure I would benefit from some more sleep and I’m not sure how I’m going to manage that with 72 hours of sunshine coming up, but at least the sense of disorientation is gone. My urine is still bright orange but I don’t think it’s dehydration, I think it’s something to do with the water. I feel quite well. Rested, if a bit restless. Actually, I’m buzzing with energy. The first thing I’m going to do (once I finish this letter to you) is pack a bag and get myself driven back to the settlement (officially called C-2, although some of the men call it ‘Freaktown’ – charming, eh?) and just be left there. Dumped, if you like. It’s no good being ferried about in some sort of protective bubble, venturing out for a quick meet & greet while a USIC chauffeur is parked nearby with the motor running. And if I have my own vehicle, that still seems to say, I’m paying a visit, and I’ll leave when I’ve had enough. Bad message! If God has a plan for me here, among these people, then I must deliver myself into their hands.

OK, that might not have been the wisest course of action for Paul among the Corinthians and Ephesians, but I can hardly claim to be in hostile territory, can I? The most hostility I’ve had to endure so far is Severin being in a bit of a snit with me on the way over. (Haven’t seen him since, by the way.)

In my excitement about what’s to come, I must try to remember what I have & haven’t described to you so far. How I wish you were here with me, seeing it with your own eyes. Not because it would save me the trouble of trying to describe it (although I must admit my lack of skill in that department is becoming ever more obvious!) but because I miss you. I miss living through the visible moments of life with you. Without you at my side, I feel as though my eyes are just a camera, like a closed-circuit camera without film in it, registering what’s out there, second by second, letting it all vanish instantly to be replaced by more images, none of them properly appreciated.

If only I could send you a photo or a movie! How quickly we adjust to what’s provided for us and want MORE . . . The technology that allows me to send these words to you, across unimaginable distances, is truly miraculous (– a blasphemous assertion??) yet as soon as I’ve used it a few times, I think: Why can’t I send pictures as well?

Peter stared at the screen. It was pearlescent grey, and his text hung suspended in the plasma, but if he adjusted his focus he could see his ghostly visage: his unruly blond hair, his big bright eyes, his strong cheekbones. His face, strange and familiar.

He seldom looked in mirrors. In his daily routine at home, he acted on the assumption that after he’d showered, shaved and pulled a comb through his hair (straight back across the scalp, no styling), there was no way a mirror could help improve his appearance further. During the years when he was permanently wasted on booze and drugs, he’d begun many mornings examining his reflection, assessing the damage from the night before: cuts, bruises, bloodshot eyeballs, jaundice, purple lips. Since he’d straightened out, there was no need; he could trust that nothing drastic had happened to him since he’d last checked. He would notice the length of his hair only when it started to fall in his eyes, whereupon he would ask Bea to cut it for him; he was only reminded of the deep scar between his eyebrows when she’d stroke it tenderly with her fingers after lovemaking, frowning in concern as though she’d noticed for the first time that he was injured. The shape of his chin only became real to him when he was nestling it in the soft hollow of her shoulder. His neck materialised inside her palm.

He missed her. God, how he missed her.

The weather is dry just now, he typed. I’m told it will be dry for the next ten hours, then it will rain for several hours, then be dry again for ten hours, then rain, etc. All very reliable. The sun is very warm, but not scorching. There are some insects but they don’t bite. I’ve just had a proper meal. Lentil stew and pitta bread. Very filling, if a bit on the stodgy side. The pitta bread was made from local flowers. The lentils were imported, I think. Then I had a chocolate pudding that wasn’t really chocolate. I wonder if it would have passed muster with you, given your highly developed tastes in that area! It tasted fine to me. Maybe the chocolate was real but the pudding was made of something else – yes, that’s it.

He stood up from the table and walked over to the window, allowing the warm light to blaze on his skin. He was aware that the tinted-glass rectangle, big as it was, showed only a tiny fraction of the sky out there, yet even this circumscribed portion was too big to take in at once and suffused with an indescribable variety of subtle colours. Bea, receiving his missives, would be gazing at a glassy rectangle too. She would see nothing of what he saw, not even his ghostly reflection. Only his words. With each inadequate message, her view of him got fainter and foggier. She had no choice but to imagine him in a void, with odd details floating around him like space debris: a plastic ice-cube tray, a glass of green water, a bowl of lentil stew.

My dear Bea, I want you. I wish you were standing here with me, with the light and warmth of the sun on your naked skin, and my arm around your waist, my fingers cradling your ribcage. I’m ready for you. I wish you could verify how ready! If I close my eyes, I can almost feel my chest settling against your breastbone, your legs wrapping themselves around me, welcoming me home.

There is so little said in the New Testament about sexual love, and most of it consists of Paul heaving a deep sigh and tolerating it like a weakness. But I feel certain Jesus didn’t see it that way. It was He who talked of two lovers becoming one flesh. It was He who showed compassion to prostitutes and adulterers. If He could feel that way towards people who misused sexual desire, why would He be disappointed if they were happily married instead? It’s significant that the only miracle He ever performed for ‘non-emergency’ reasons, but just because He wanted to cheer people up, was at a wedding. We even know He had no problem with being caressed by a female, or He wouldn’t have allowed the woman in Luke 7 to kiss His feet and wipe them with her hair. (That’s as sexy as anything in Song of Solomon!) How did His face look, I wonder, while she was doing it? An old-fashioned religious painting would no doubt depict Him staring stonily ahead, ignoring her as if nothing was going on. But Jesus didn’t ignore people. He was tender and solicitous towards them. He wouldn’t have made her feel like a fool.

I know John says, ‘Love not the world, nor the things of the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.’ But that’s a different point, a point about ALL the mundane stuff we concern ourselves with, all the baggage of being physical beings. And I think John is being too harsh on people. He assumed the Second Coming would happen in his own lifetime – it might come any day, maybe tomorrow afternoon, certainly not centuries in the future. All the early Christians thought that, and it made them intolerant of any activity that wasn’t urgently focused on Heaven. But Jesus understood – God understands – that people have a whole life to live before they die. They have friends and family and jobs, and children to give birth to and raise, and lovers to cherish.

My dear, sexy, wonderful wife, I know you are with me in spirit, but I’m feeling sad that your body is so far away. I hope that when you read this, it will be after a long, refreshing night’s sleep full of good dreams (and undisturbed by Joshua!). In a few hours or days from now, my desire to hold you will still be unfulfilled, but I hope to be the bearer of some glad tidings on another front.

Love,

Peter

Grainger emerged from her vehicle blinking, ready for their rendezvous. She hadn’t changed her clothes – still the same cotton top and slacks, a bit crumpled by now. Her headscarf was inelegantly slung around her neck, speckled with water-drops from her hair, which stuck up from her scalp like the fur of a rain-drenched cat. He wondered if an alarm clock had jolted her from a deep sleep and she’d only had time to splash a few handfuls of water on her face. Maybe it was insensitive to oblige her to drive him again so soon. But when they’d parted, she’d emphasised that she was at his disposal.

‘I’m sorry if this is inconvenient,’ he said. He was standing in the shade of USIC’s accommodation wing, just outside the exit door nearest his own quarters. His rucksack hung on his back, already slippery with sweat.

‘It’s not inconvenient,’ she said. Her damp hair, exposed to the attentive air, began to emit faint, spidery plumes of steam. ‘And I’m sorry I was grouchy on the way back this morning. The sight of religious passion always freaks me out.’

‘I’ll try not to be too passionate this time.’

‘I meant the alien,’ she said, pronouncing the word without any sign of having taken Peter’s little lecture to heart.

‘He didn’t mean to unnerve you, obviously.’

She shrugged. ‘They give me the creeps. Always. Even when they keep real quiet and don’t get too close.’

He ventured out of the shade and she stepped aside, away from the vehicle, allowing him access to the trunk, which she’d swung open for him. The engine was purring in readiness.

‘You think they mean you harm?’ he said.

‘No, it’s just the sight of them,’ she said, turning her head towards the horizon. ‘You try and look at their face and it’s like staring into a pile of entrails.’

‘I thought of foetuses myself.’

She shuddered. ‘Puh-
lease
.’

‘Well,’ he said cheerily, stepping up to the vehicle, ‘that’s us off on the wrong foot again.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he observed Grainger sizing up his rucksack as he unhitched it from his shoulders. She did a slight double-take as she registered that it was his only luggage.

‘You look as if you’re going hill-walking. Your little knapsack on your back.’

He grinned as he tossed the bag into the trunk.

‘
Val-de-reee!
’ he sang in a mock-operatic baritone. ‘
Val-de-raa! Val-de-reee! Val-de-ra-ha-ha-ha-ha
. . . ’

‘Now you’re making fun of one of my idols,’ she said, placing her fists on her hips.

‘Sorry?’

‘Bing Crosby.’

Peter looked at her in bemusement. The sun was still quite near the horizon, and Grainger was silhouetted in front of it, the crooks of her arms framing triangles of rosy light. ‘Uh . . . ’ he said. ‘Did Bing Crosby sing “The Happy Wanderer” too?’

‘I thought it was his song,’ she said.

‘It’s an ancient German folk tune,’ he said.

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a Bing number. It was all over the airwaves last year.’

He scratched the back of his head, taking pleasure in the bizarreness of everything today: the endless sky with its outsize sun, the playground under the gazebo, his strange new parishioners waiting for another taste of the Gospel, and this dispute over the authorship of ‘The Happy Wanderer’. The air took advantage of his raised arm to find different entry points into his clothing. Tendrils of atmosphere licked him between his sweaty shoulderblades, twirled around his nipples, counted his ribs.