The Last Four Things

29

Great the magnified cumulus of incense, pure the sopranos, sonorous the bass notes in the cathedral in the heart of Chartres where the new Pope, Bosco XVI, was crowned on the old rock on which the One True Faith was built. And the celebratory vestments of gold and green, orange and yellow and blue. Truncated rainbows of holiness. Except, of course, for the twenty nuns who were allowed to participate dressed all in black and just a little white around the face. But what faces! As they looked up at their Holy Father, hands tied behind backs to prevent them reaching out for the disgusting touch, smiles of ecstasy and so intense it seemed another holy expiration might take place to add to that of the Blessed Imelda Lambertini who died of ecstasy at her holy communion at the spiritually precious age of eleven.

But great the excitement of the prelates, bishops and cardinals, nuncio, mandrates, and gonfaloniers. Many were newly enobled, their predecessors gone to the fires, or the oubliettes and ditches out in the desert, fodder for foxes. This was their Pope, their chance, their time to be personally responsible for bringing about the end time and the great renewal.

The new Pope Bosco ascended the calumnion step by step, obliged to stop for obeisance and holy grovelling at each so that it took half an hour of renunciation for Bosco to make it to the top and to the great cantilevered lectern that jutted out over the vast space of the Sistine Chapel and which made it look as he was about to leap into the upturned congregation waiting to hear of a new life and a new purpose. They knew well enough what was coming; they had been primed for years on the new beliefs. They knew that God had lost his patience yet again and that where once they had been sacrificed to rain and water now there would now be fire and a sword delivered by the hand of a boy who was not a boy but the manifestation of God’s exasperation. And there would be no ark offering a reprieve this time. First the Antagonists, then everyone else and then the Redeemer faith itself would wither away. All this was delivered to an audience that could barely contain its joyful anticipation of God’s momentum concerning the ruin of his most blighted creation.

‘The wind of change is blowing through our world,’ said the new Pope. ‘Nothing can stop a blessed idea whose time has come. So we must come to the woman question.’

There was a certain heart murmur of surprise among the priests and monks. What woman question? And the same if understandably even more more trepidatious question amongst the nuns. What woman question?

There was always something slightly oily about the tone of voice of a Redeemer when he spoke well of women, not by any means so rare an occurrence as the casual follower of the faith might imagine. The nervous nuns were about to get a full dose of unction. When you flatter, lay it on with a trowel.

‘Blessed is the woman whose words can cheer but not influence. How can we not respect their strength in obedience, admire the doggedness of their submissiveness that God – and his likeness man – commands from the femininity? Redeemers are distinguished by unusual respect for the female sex that supplements and aids the labour of men and priests by her unwearied collaboration. But the great Abbess Kuhne is now more correct than ever when she says that virginity is the true emancipation and proper state of women. In anticipation of the life to come no more will the Redeemer faithful give or take in marriage. Both men and women from this day will be virgins. I have set aside days on which the marriage debt, which most resembles the union of the beast in us, may not be paid between man and wife.

‘All Thursdays in memory of the arrest of the Hanged Redeemer (fifty-two days a year).

‘All Fridays in memory of the death of the Hanged Redeemer (another fifty-two days).

‘All Saturdays in honour of the Hanged Redeemer’s Virgin Mother (another fifty-two days).

‘All Sundays in honour of the resurrection (fifty-two more days).

‘And all Mondays to remember the departed souls (fifty-two days).’

In addition to banning marital intercourse on two hundred and sixty of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, Bosco went on to forbid physical contact of any kind for varying periods before and after half a dozen particularly sacred holydays.

It took Gil, no mean calculator, several minutes to work out that in the first year it would be possible for married couples to dench on only five days.

‘Do you think it’s too many?’ said a concerned Bosco. ‘By the third year all that will be behind us.’

‘More than enough,’ said Gil. ‘But where are our soldiers to come from?’

‘We have enough to wipe the world clean with a sponge as we are. You and I must be here to see the Redeemers wither away so that God can begin again with a creature more deserving of his gifts.’

The other question, the Cale question, had been dealt with by the invocation of a great secret prophecy concerning his return. The prophecy was now locked away in the vaults of the Holy City of Chartres having been given credence by a group of nuns he had talked to when they visited the Golan Heights. He had then mysteriously disappeared from amongst them although no one had actually seen him disappear. In this way the useful belief arose that he would return to fulfil his eschatological duties but only if the Redeemers faced great peril in their attempt to wipe evil man and his dreadful nature from the face of the earth.

‘What if they find out the truth?’

‘We don’t know the truth.’

‘He betrayed us, the ungrateful shit-bag.’

‘You keep talking about him as if he is a person. He is not. When he realizes and when others realize he’ll return, because if he is not part of the coming deluge there’s no point to him. At the right time a twitch on the thread will do it.’

Gil had wondered if Cale’s disappearance would damage the cause. What was the point of an absent saviour? God had revealed his hand when it was needed but then withdrawn it with a clear demand that the Redeemers themselves must act. Otherwise what was the point of them? However much destruction must be delivered to the world, including their own, God did not need them to achieve this. By sending Cale to intervene so miraculously he had made this obvious. By withdrawing Cale, God had shown them that he had not deserted the Redeemers and that if they followed his will by destroying all apostates and unbelievers he would not forget them when the time came to destroy themselves. Their annihilation would surely be a door to the next world. It was in mulling over his mistake that Gil, still a profound believer in the end of mankind, began to see that, whatever Bosco might think, Cale had now outlived his usefulness. A permanently absent Cale would do no harm at all. Quite the contrary. A live one, on the other hand, could and probably would become a serious threat. Something must be done.

To bring his great speech to a climax Bosco warned against a dangerous new kind of woman he knew was emerging, not the naughty beauties of the Materazzi with the stretched-forth necks and mincing walk and big hair that the Lord would smite with scabs at a point of his own choosing, nor the wantons of Spanish Leeds who made a tinkling with their feet because soon instead of a girdle about their womb there would be a rent. But there was a new threat from women who wanted to be the spiritual equals of men, to show off their strictness and persecute anyone insufficiently pious and even burn other women as a warning by showing that they too could be as generously harsh in the ways of orthodoxy and righteousness. The congregation nodded but did not understand that his wrath was aimed at his predecessor and his fear that there might be more like her. Perhaps many more. Perhaps they were everywhere. There were rumours out there, though, digging in like slugs for the winter, emerging in gossip and drunken talks among friends late in the night, but nothing at all like the truth that a woman, no better or worse than her male predecessors, had ruled the Redeemers for twenty years.

‘Consider the last four things as you go back to your diocese,’ finished Bosco. ‘And prepare for the extremity to come.’

After he had left the celebration that followed Bosco’s inaugural speech Gil went back to his enormous apartments, where his new secretary, Monsignor Chadwick, who had not been invited, was desperately hoping that Gil would be in the mood to let fall some news of who had been there and what had happened and how the new Holy Father was. There was only disappointment to be had.

‘Find me the Two Trevors,’ said an ill-tempered Gil. Hope on Chadwick’s face was replaced by instant dismay.

‘Ah,’ said Chadwick followed by a long pause. ‘Would you know by any chance where they might be at all?’

‘No,’ replied Gil. ‘Now get on with it.’ As Chadwick shut the door as mournfully as a door can be shut Gil knew perfectly well how very unreasonable he was being. The Two Trevors were not a pair it was at all easy, or even possible, to find no matter who you were.

‘More light?’ asked Cale.

‘I can see well enough,’ said the seamstress from the vegetable market. ‘The question is: what’m I lookin’ at?’

‘Old lady who spidered a fly,’ sang Vague Henri.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He’s singing a song – he’s well off his track. Don’t worry about it. I want you to stitch his face. He won’t feel anything – or much anyway.’

‘You’re crazy. I just stitch clothes. You’re crazy. I don’t know anything about stuff like that.’

‘But I do. I’ve stitched people a hundred times.’

‘Then you do it. I’ll get into trouble.’

‘You won’t get into trouble. I’m a very important person.’

‘You don’t look like anyone important.’

‘How would you know? You just stitch clothes for a living.’

‘You want me to do somethin’ like this an’ you insult me? I’m goin’.’ She made for the door.

‘Fifty dollars!’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘He’s my friend. Help him.’

‘Let me see it – the money.’

Because of Kitty the Hare’s generosity, a wallet with three hundred dollars had been delivered the day after their meeting; he was able to count it out on the table there and then. The girl thought for a moment. ‘A hun’red dollars.’

‘He’s not that much of a friend.’

They settled on sixty-five.

As she went back to examining the mess of Vague Henri’s face he started singing about goats. ‘He won’t feel a thing while you work and I’ll take you through it. I know what needs to be done but it’ll take a fine touch if his face is to be saved. Think of it like you were sewing a collar to a jacket. Just make the neatest job you can.’ He remembered to flatter her. ‘Without you he’ll look like a horse’s arse. I saw how good you were. You have talent – anyone with brains can see that. Forget it’s someone’s face and think of him as a suit or something.’ Softened up by the compliments and understandably tempted by such a large amount of money she began looking at Vague Henri as a professional problem.

‘He’ll need a fillit.’

‘What’s a fillit?’

‘I thought you knew all about stitching.’

‘If that was true I wouldn’t be needing you. What’s a fillit?’

‘There’s a finger-sized hole in his face. I can’t just stitch over a hole even in cloth let alone skin. I’ll need to fill it with something.’

‘What?’

‘How would I know? In a suit or something we’d use felt.’

‘We can’t do that. I’ve seen what happens to wounds with even a bit of cloth left in them.’

‘If we’re reparing an old suit we use a bit of material from somewhere you can’t see. That way it’s the same an’ don’t pull away when it gets wet.’

‘Are you saying we should cut a bit off him from somewhere else and stuff it in the hole in his face?’

She had just been thinking aloud but now she caught fright.

‘No, I wasn’t saying that, I was just thinking that’s all. Like with like is what we say. I was just thinking.’

‘Why not? It makes sense.’

‘You could make things worse.’

‘You can always make things worse.’

‘If he’s your friend – praps you could cut a finger piece from yourself.’

‘Don’t,’ said Cale gently, ‘be bloody stupid.’

‘Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friend.’

‘What idiot told you that?’

She was greatly put out by this disrespect but by now she had her heart set on the money and, also, the challenge. She was no shirker when it came to getting on in the world.

And so the ingenious operation born of luck, wit, skill and ignorance began and proved a wonderful success. Cale, reassuring the seamstress that he knew what he was doing when it came to knives, cut an exquisite round sliver of flesh from Vague Henri’s buttocks where he felt he would miss it least and the seamstress duly filled the deep hole in his face. With a skill that made Cale’s heart warm to witness she carefully cut and stitched, Tailor of Gloucester perfect, Vague Henri’s sorely battered face. Throughout, Vague Henri accompanied her with more songs concerning spiders, old ladies, cats and goats. When she had finished they stood back to admire what she had done and it was worth admiration. Red-raw as it was, anyone could see the skill with which a ragged hole had been transformed into something that simply looked right. Cale knew that it might become infected or the sliver of flesh he had taken might die and then God knows what. But for now it looked right.

And indeed it was. For two days it looked worryingly angry for all the neatness and then on the third morning it began to pinkify and grow calm and was obviously on the mend. Vague Henri had only one complaint: ‘Why is my arse so sore?’

As for their great co-operation and the good fortune in happening upon this ingenious process it was rarely thought of by either Cale or the seamstress and was utterly lost to mankind.