Liz Jensen - The Rapture

He points the tip of the pocket-knife at me. ‘I have seen with my own eyes the dramatic seriousness with which you take this interesting child. One cannot be unimpressed. I only hope that the experiment has paid off.’

‘But if Bethany comes up with something definitive…’

‘I came here on the understanding that she already had.’

‘It doesn’t change my question. How will you respond?’

‘I will consider crossing the bridge when I have seen what kind of bridge it is. And have judged whether it is crossable.’ from somewhere else in the house, we can hear Ned loudly cajoling Bethany. She tells him to leave her the fuck alone. A doubt is hatching. Why is Modak really here? Ned hinted that even if convinced, it might prove hard to persuade him to do anything. He mentioned his curiosity. Could it be that alone which has brought him here? If so, how far will it take him? If he proves stubborn, what leverage is there?

‘What was Meera like?’ I ask. His response is a defensive, troubled glance. ‘You were married a long time. You must miss her.’

‘May I ask you something, as a psychologist?’ His tone is still playful but I sense a shift. I nod. ‘She wanted her ashes to be thrown in the Ganges but I kept some aside because when the urn arrived back from the crematorium, I had the strangest urge to eat them.’ Ah. The mud has finally stirred. I wait for more. ‘Is the ingestion of one’s other half a known syndrome?’

‘I’ve read some of the literature on it. It’s a surprisingly common urge.’

‘Do you regard it as a form of cannibalism?’

‘Do you?’

‘My internal jury is still out on that one.’

‘It’s not a crime to want her with you. I imagine it’s a comfort. A way of being one flesh, even after death. So. You followed the urge.’

He smiles, revealing teeth the colour of old piano keys. ‘Dr Melville told me you were good.’ I flush. He reaches into the leather briefcase and pulls out a small jamjar of granular ash which he holds up with reverence. Then he grins. ‘Essence of Meera.’

I have a sudden, avid urge to discover whether he sprinkles her on his food condiment-style or swallows her like medicine, but diplomacy is called for.

‘I imagine she was a formidable woman.’

‘Like me, she believed that our only afterlife is an organic one. I’m not afraid of death myself. Of the change of matter, animal to mineral. You are not at my age.’

‘So you have achieved all you wanted to?’

‘I came to certain conclusions about our species and its fate. Conclusions to which most people chose not to listen.’

‘You spawned a whole movement. With self-sufficient settlements all over the world. I get the impression a lot of people listened.’

‘Not hard enough.’ His old mouth forms a rigid line, like a turtle’s.

‘You and Meera didn’t have children. I imagine that was a private response.’

‘Why create hostages to a future whose shape one could so clearly see? The decision was to avoid grief. For oneself but also for others.’ From habit, I note the telling use of ‘one’ instead of ‘I’ or ‘we’, and store the observation. ‘The world is too full. But the childless are always punished. It’s a great irony that one is called selfish for making what is essentially an altruistic choice.’

Since my father’s brain dissolved, I have missed the company of elderly men. But Professor Modak’s presence is causing unsettling questions, rather than a daughterly affinity, to germinate. If, with his blithe nihilism and his jar of edible marital ashes, he truly believes the world will be a better place without humans, and sees time in terms of epochs rather than days and hours, then yes: why should he bother to save a few random millions?

Why on earth?

At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Harish Modak replaces the jar in his briefcase and turns his head to the door. Bethany enters first, barefoot, followed by the physicist.

‘Hi, Wheels.’

I look Bethany up and down. Our absent host, the expert in chemi-luminescence, is a man of impressive physical proportions, to judge by the size of the towelling bathrobe she is wrapped in. Drowned in its red tartan folds, she settles in a corner of the sofa opposite mine, with her bare feet tucked underneath her. Frazer Melville greets us sombrely, and comments to Harish Modak on the impressive display of food. I can feel him looking at me searchingly, but I have now fully mastered the knack of avoiding his eye. Bethany has been cleaned up and somebody — I guess Ned — has rebandaged her arms and hands. Her face is ashen and her bitten tongue lolls on her lower lip, its tip a chunk of hacked meat.

‘I told her to do it,’ she says, nodding at me but addressing Harish Modak. She emits the words with care, working them past her ruined tongue. ‘I made her give me thirty seconds.’ She sounds proud. Ned and Kristin come in quietly and settle in chairs. All six of us now form a circle around the coffee table opposite the fireplace.

Harish Modak nods. ‘And was it effective, Miss Krall?’

Silence stiffens the air around us. Enjoying the attention of five pairs of adult eyes, Bethany grins, then winces with the pain and sucks in a breath.

‘I was right in the middle of it. It was like being struck by lightning. It was so cool. I got this huge charge.’

Harish’s stillness has an intense, reptilian quality. ‘Take your time. Describe everything.’ Ned is positioning his laptop on a corner of the coffee table to project the rigs on to the whiteboard.

‘It’s like a giant cover being lifted off a bed. Bubbles and stuff are just, like, pouring out from the edges.’ Frazer Melville and Kristin Jons dottir exchange a private glance that rams my guts like a thug’s fist. ‘These stinking bubbles. And it breaks up and there are these huge white sheets just tearing off and shooting up. It goes on and on. As far as you can see. Then there’s fire on the water, the sea’s just, like, glowing in the dark. Yellow and orange. Blue in some places. Just flickering on top of the water.’ She tells it with the lull of a fairytale. ‘Then this giant wave swells up. It’s like a wall in the sky. Higher than the clouds.’

The old man does not move, but I’m aware of embers beginning to glow.

‘We have to know where this happens,’ says Kristin Jons dottir. ‘We have to identify the rig.’

I roll closer to Bethany. ‘The drawing you did. You were underwater and you imagined travelling up the pipe and you saw the platform and the yellow crane. Did you see it again?’ Bethany nods, squints and dabs at the tip of her tongue. When she removes her hand, there’s fresh blood on the bandage that wraps her finger. She spits on the floor, then closes her eyes and lolls her head back. ‘Can you remember the crane? Could you see inside it?’

She sighs and screws up her eyes. A moment passes. ‘There was something. Ouch. It hurts to talk. Something pink. It looked like a

…’ Although her eyes are still closed, it’s clear she’s trying to focus. ‘God. It was a cunt,’ says Bethany. She bursts out laughing. ‘A woman’s cunt! Shaved!’ Her eyes flip open and meet Kristin Jons dottir’s and she smiles lopsidedly, uncertain of what she’s remembered. Then she laughs again, delighted. ‘It was a naked muff! You could see her arsehole too. Ew, gross!’

‘Bethany,’ I say sharply. ‘This is serious. I nearly killed you earlier. There isn’t time for games.’

‘It’s not a game!’ she laughs. ‘I tell you, I saw a vag!’

‘Er, if I know anything about rigs,’ Ned Rappaport intervenes, ‘she may well have done, and there’s actually no mystery.’

Harish Modak looks fleetingly amused. ‘They allow prostitutes? Most enlightened!’