Liz Jensen - The Rapture

But it can’t last. I can’t let it.

I say, ‘We have to do something.’

He sighs, shifts, perches his head on his elbow, looks at me hard, and takes a deep breath before he speaks.

‘I agree.’

‘So if it hits tomorrow—’

‘I contact scientist colleagues with the other predictions Bethany’s made.’

I am more relieved than I care to admit that he has been giving the idea consideration.

‘Without mentioning her,’ I specify. ‘She can’t be named.’

‘Of course. In any case it would be scientific suicide.’

‘How will you go about it?’

He shrugs. ‘I tell a selected cross-section of scientists who I know to be open-minded, that some predictions have been made by a certain source. That they’ve proved accurate. That the earthquake’s the latest example of this. That there are further predictions which will need testing. That I believe there’s a scientific explanation which demands investigation. But more importantly, the regions concerned would benefit from being warned because lives are at stake.’

It sounds simple. Too simple. But at least we have a plan.

We lie in bed until midday and then go and see a genial, forgettable movie. He is not used to being so close to the screen, and I am not used to being kissed in my wheelchair during a film, and attracting whistles from the people in the rows behind us. So it’s a new experience for both of us. If either of us has an apprehension that this might be the last day that our world is happily balanced, we hide it well.

Sex is many things, but that night, for us, it is an urgent and elaborate distraction from the subject we are both determined to avoid, now that we’ve agreed on a strategy. Frazer Melville undresses me and makes me close my eyes. I must promise not to move a centimetre ‘or it will all go wrong’. Intrigued I wait, rigid, smiling. I feel him take his clothes off. Then I feel him come close to me. I smell chocolate. Then he touches my left nipple, but not with his tongue. With something cool and heavy. He works slowly on whatever he is doing. I feel his concentration. Half-guessing what he is up to, an electric pulse spreads outward from my breasts across my shoulders and spine, along my arms, into the tips of my fingers, across the back of my neck.

‘Now this one.’ He caresses my right nipple, the same cool pressure, and I feel the flesh swell.

‘Open your eyes.’

He has painted my nipples with chocolate paste. Where did the paste, and indeed the idea, come from? They are huge and nearly black. They glisten. I laugh. ‘Well, I knew you were fond of chocolate.’

‘Two of my favourite things both at once,’ he murmurs. His voice is thick. Frazer Melville’s erect penis is sticking out of his fly. I take it in my hand, feel its heft. ‘I can’t wait any more,’ he says. ‘I’m starving.’ And then he’s sucking my breasts and we are both getting smeared with melting chocolate. He has discovered a way of propping me up using pillows and cushions. Me naked except for the bandage on my leg, he fully clothed. I feel like a greedy queen being worshipped and serviced.

Looking into my eyes, Frazer Melville takes me and takes me and takes me. I can’t feel a thing. But as he moves back and forth inside me he says my name over and over again. I gasp, utterly confounded. And I think: perhaps I am still a woman after all. No, not perhaps. Yes, yes, I am. A woman who can make love, and drive a man—

He comes with the raucous, unashamed cry of a caveman.

I’m woken at one by rain slamming against the windows. Outside the trees sigh and creak. I settle my head on Frazer Melville’s solid, smooth-skinned shoulder and think about what last night did to my soul. Cuando te tengo a ti vida, cuanto te quiera . But then I remember the date and the rapture quietly deflates. I reach out and switch on the radio, turning the sound down low. I get the BBC World Service, stalwart friend of the hardened insomniac. There’s a documentary about dwarfism. I learn the word achondroplasia. The average height of an adult dwarf is one hundred and thirty-two centimetres for men, one hundred and twenty-three for women. Voices and more voices. The night ticks on, and Frazer Melville breathes gently beside me. Thunder and wind outside. I fall asleep briefly and reawaken to catch the end of an arts programme. Everyone’s speaking in the same reasonable tone. There’s a discussion about new trends in Bollywood, with clips from classic and contemporary Indian movies. There is nothing on the three o’clock news: relieved, I am just drifting back to sleep with a sports quiz on in the background, when there’s a news flash.

I hoist myself up in bed. I try to do it gently, but my movement disturbs Frazer Melville, who sits up, his yawn as wide as a silent shout. And then listens. I turn up the volume and we take in the news like two parallel shock-absorbers. All through the five-minute broadcast, I feel oddly calm and in control. Something inside me refuses to shift. Perhaps I am in denial. I can still smell the chocolate on my skin.

When the news ends, Frazer Melville says, eloquently, ‘Oh no. Oh Christ. Oh fuck.’ Like him, I want to start up a litany of swearing, an anti-prayer. Or fall asleep again, pretend it’s a dream, start life again in the morning, properly, normally, and for real. But when you fall asleep a sceptic and wake to news that makes you a believer, the experience is as fundamental as having your whole skeleton replaced. You can’t ignore it. I feed a match to the lamp by the bed, a Moroccan cage of metal that sends angular shafts of candlelight flickering around the room. Outside, the storm has died away and the rain has become sporadic, undecided whether to stay or go.

‘Whoever we told, they’d never have believed us,’ I murmur. We have been lying here for some time. It is the only thought to cling to, under the circumstances. If I am being the rational one, what is Frazer Melville up to? His breathing is over-controlled. Perhaps he is fighting something. Tears? A heart attack? Men do that. They die in women’s beds from sex or shock. Or both.

‘Remember — we had this discussion yesterday,’ I say, raising myself clumsily on one elbow to make eye contact with him and assess his mood. ‘We had it several times. It was light-hearted, maybe. But we had it. We agreed that if we rang the Turkish embassy and told them they needed to evacuate a city of fifteen million people by the twenty-second of this month because a kid in a maximum security hospital had a vision—’

I can’t continue. My sudden burst of conviction, if that’s what it was, has evaporated as quickly as it arrived. I sink back down on the pillow. Frazer Melville doesn’t speak.

At half past three there’s an update. Reports about the extent of the damage are confused, but the quake, whose epicentre is in the Sea of Marmara, just outside the city, measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. It struck at fourteen minutes to one local time, and triggered a mini tsunami that swept south of the conurbation. First estimates say that about forty per cent of the city is affected. At least ten thousand buildings have been destroyed, among them the famous Blue Mosque. Skyscrapers and homes and office blocks and schools have collapsed. I imagine toy building blocks, and a pall of cement dust. It’s not yet dawn, so there’s almost zero visibility, and a high risk of aftershocks. First estimates say tens of thousands will be dead or injured and trapped. How many doctors, over the next few days, will be asking those saved from the wreckage whether they’re aware of any sensation below the waist? Or the neck?

I feel nothing. Then, just as I am beginning to wonder why I am not reacting, the top half of my body starts to sweat, and then shake. Tonight it is a nightmare. But soon it will officially be day. And real.