The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 8} GODFELLAS

“Good evening, dear friends, and welcome to our program. I am very happy to tell you that tonight we have a dear guest with us, and this is the reason we are speaking in English tonight. This is Father Friendly, visiting from our friends at CBN in America. He is a good friend of Pat Robertson, that you have seen here on Amen and the Sermon Channel. He has a very popular TV show in America. And he is one of the best known preachers in many states. A true Christian brother in the faith of the living God, Reverend David Friendly from Richmond, Virginia. Father Friendly, welcome.”

“Thank you, Brother Goodmoondoor. It’s a pleasure to be with you here.”

“I have to tell you that Father Friendly has a Yugoslavia… What do you call it?”

“Accent.”

“Yes. He has a Yugoslavia accent because he was teaching the word of Jesus over there in the time when they were Communist. Hallelujah!”

He almost hits me in the head as he throws his hands in the air, but I manage to step aside. We are standing behind a white lectern, with a blue curtain behind us and a messy TV studio in front of us. I count five people in the room. One man is standing behind a camera, a smiling Sickreader stands in a doorway, and an audience of three pious people is waiting for me to save their souls.

“Communists don’t believe in God, Father Friendly?”

“No. You’re absolutely right about that, brother Goodmoondoor. And this is the reason why they don’t exist anymore.”

“Well. You can find some of them even today,” my preacher friend says with the funniest smile. It’s the smile of someone not too clever showing off his cleverness. It’s quite hilarious. I need all my strength not to laugh as I carry on:

“Indeed. But they are in hiding! They are hiding in the darkness of their godless existence!” I try to speak with the preacher-man’s blind faith. “For they do not dare to come out into the light! The light of God. The light of Godness. The light of Goodness! The good of the light! We are here in Iceland, in the island of light, where God lets it shine long into the night. He lights up the night. He makes the night bright. I have to say: You are very fortunate, you are fortunate people. You live in God’s land. The land of the living God. Hallelujah!”

What in the hell am I saying?

“Yes, Father Friendly. Maybe you can tell us about your work in Yugoslavia. Was it before the war?”

“It was before the war, when Comrade Tito was president of all Yugoslavia, of all the countries that we now know as Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina and others.”

What the fuck am I saying? Friendly must have been all of fifteen when Tito died.

“This was the time of oppression and imprisonments. My father… My father the Lord guided me through the dark streets of dictatorship, to seek out the souls willing to open their hearts for the light of God. We had to be very careful with our conviction and sometimes we had to betray with our tongue the faith we kept sacred in our hearts, just in order to survive. In that sense we were almost like secret agents, like James Bond or… Ray Liotta in the movie Goodfellas…”

I’m falling out of character here.

“Or like the first followers of Jesus Christ,” the host helps me out.

“Yes! Exactly. Thank you, Brother Goodmoondoor. We were just like the apostles. We had to hide. We had to be careful. But we were never doubtful. God was showing us the way. He was… He was the searchlight that we needed, so that we were able to walk the dark street of dictatorship.”

“And then you were a young American boy?”

“Yes. Yes, exactly. I was young David. David Friendly, a… young boy from Vienna, Virginia. What the hell was I doing over there, in old Europe? I was sent there as a missionary. I… I had been… Back home, I was what they call a… a teenage dirtbag, a bad boy. A very bad boy. Instead of doing my homework I was out stealing and fucking girls.”

I can feel the smile freeze on Goodmoondoor’s face. Better watch my language.

“But I always did it in the missionary position.”

Fuck it. I’m still drunk. I even allow myself to smile a bit. The old lady in the front row closes her eyes for two seconds.

“Sorry. But here is the story. I was once robbing a local church with two friends of mine. We were running away with some candlesticks, chalices, and stuff, and I was the last one out, because I was then, just like I am now, a little bit on the chubby side.”

I can see that Sickreader laughs in her sweet and discrete way.

“So, my friends were already outside when all of a sudden the light came on and I heard this great voice. ‘You can carry away all the silver you want, Brother Judas, but it will never save your soul!’ I didn’t even dare to look back. I just stopped for a second before I ran to the door and threw myself out in the dark. I did escape, but I could not escape those words. They came back to me again and again. Maybe because I didn’t know who it was who spoke them. The voice was very deep, a very deep man’s voice, and in my mind it was the voice of God himself. ‘But it will never save your soul!’ For days my soul was totally tortured by those words. Finally, I went back to the church with all the stuff I had stolen. I put it on a bench inside the church and I was about to run outside when I heard the voice again. It was the rector. We had a long talk. And half a year later, I found myself on the streets of Sarajevo spreading the word of God. With a searchlight.”

I smile. This one is right on target. Father Friendly would be proud of this performance.

“Hallelujah! Holy brother. Hallelujah,” my Icelandic colleague calls out. “You are like Paul the Postuli, Paul the Apostle, St. Paul. You had same experience like him. Did you also be blind?”

“What?”

“Did you also be blind when the light came?”

“In the church, you mean? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I was totally blinded by the light. That’s why I had to stop.”

Goodmoondoor has that reindeer expression again. He looks at me as if I just parted the Atlantic Ocean all the way down to the Canary Islands for his people to go on vacation. He puts his hand on the top of my head as if he was baptizing me, and suddenly his English improves:

“Blessed be your soul, holy brother. Hallelujah! Amen. The force of the living God is with us. Hallelujah! Blessed be your soul, Father Friendly. For you are anointed. Your soul is saved.” He then removes his hand from my bald skull and faces the camera. “For let it be heard: The Story of the Postuli, Chapter Nine, that is Acts Nine in the English Bible… It tells the story of Saul, of Levitan Saul, this ordinary man from Tarsus, this simple man working as an executioner for the Roman government. And they sent him to Damascus, so that he could carry the Christians in robes…”

“In ropes,” I quickly correct him, suddenly sounding like a Bible expert.

“…So he could put them in ropes and carry them to Jerusalem. But on his way, before he came to Damascus, he saw a great light and a voice spoke to him: ‘Saul, Saul, why you persecute me?’ And Saul said, ‘Who are you?’ And the voice said, ‘I am the Lord.’ And the Lord told him to stop working against the Christians, and Saul was blind for many days, until the Lord sent Ananias to him. And Ananias came to him and told him to see again. And Saul became Paul. The executioner became number two in God’s Church on earth. Jesus was number one, and Paul was number two. Hallelujah! And he wrote a big part of this book!”

Goodmoondoor holds the black Bible in the air.

“He wrote a big part of the holy book, the book of books, the Word of God. His soul was saved. He became a holy man. A holy man. Hallelujah!”

“Hallelujah!” I repeat after him. I really do. Must be the beer.