Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

But it was not until the middle of the evening that he actually found his way to the local Ark of the Brotherhood. Phil’s directions, just the mention of Redondo and Centinela, had not been too clear, for the building was certainly not at the corner where the two roads met. It was somewhere between them, and it took some finding, for it turned out to be at the end of a narrow side-turning. It looked like any other chapel, and might have once belonged, Jimmy thought, to some other sect. There was nothing suspicious and secret about the outside of the building. Apparently he was just in time for some sort of service, for a few people were going in. An illuminated sign told him that everybody was welcome. He went in, but told himself he was a fool to let himself in for some dreary hymn-singing service.

A rusty little man, with thick spectacles, stopped him just inside the entrance. “Good evening, brother,” he said, in a melancholy voice. “Are you a member of our Brotherhood?”

“No,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Just looked in. All right, isn’t

it?”

“Most certainly,” said the little man. “All are welcome to our public services. But kindly seat yourself at the side there-anywhere at that side-because the other seats are reserved for our members.”

So Jimmy went down an aisle, between rows of yellow little wooden chairs, and as he had come to see as much as he could, he went as far down as possible. It was a longish narrow building, with a great deal of yellow wood about it, not too brightly lit. Here at this end was a carpeted platform, with a small organ behind it, and in the middle of the platform there was a reading-stand covered with black velvet. The only decoration was an immense dark banner, hanging down above the organ, and on it had been painted, very vividly and imposingly, an immense single eye, which appeared to look down on the scattered congregation with no enthusiasm. Jimmy was not intimidated by that eye. “You’re phoney, my lad,” he told it. At his side of the platform, just behind the three or four steps that led down from it, there was a door in the back wall, before which two middle-aged and rather large brethren were standing, as if on sentry duty.

He now looked across at the members, of whom there might have been about a hundred. There were both men and women, but not far more women than men, as he had expected to find; and he soon noticed that there were hardly any young people there. They were nearly all middle-aged or elderly, and a hard-faced lot, many of them with a strong weather-beaten look, not like city folks. But it was not easy to see most of their faces in that light. The ones he could see he did not much care for, for they had a beaky, bony, tight-mouthed look about them. The dozen or so people who were sharing the seats at the side with him were a nondescript collection, except the one person who was sitting on the same short row that he was in, actually only two chairs away. She looked all wrong in there, and, after a few glances, he had an idea that she felt all wrong too. She had a nice impudent little hat on, and was herself a nice but not impudent little woman, perhaps about forty, with a rather flushed soft face, very bright eyes, and, he thought, pretty greyish curls; altogether as nice, bright, perky, chirpy a little woman as he had seen for months. “You’re all right, you are,” he told her silently, after the third or fourth glance, “and I’ll bet any money this is both your first and last time here. Like me. Good luck to you!”

She had been looking about her dubiously and had stolen one or two quick glances at Jimmy, who at last, after they had waited there for about ten minutes, ventured to give her a friendly grin. She did not look offended, so he leaned her way and whispered: “When do they start?”

“I don’t know.” She had a nice clear little voice too, and the merriest inch of nose you could wish to see. A merry little tinker of a woman, no doubt about that, and worth a thousand of these long-faced psalm-singers in here. “I’ve never been before.”

“Nor me either.”

She seemed glad to be able to talk to somebody, and went on: “I overheard two women talking about it-so I thought I’d see what it was like.”

“Doesn’t look much to me, so far,” said Jimmy, as if he was a great taster of sects and services.

“No.” She drew that out as if she were dubious. “But-”

“But what?”

“Haven’t you noticed some of these folks, especially the ones in front?” Here she lowered her voice. “I may be fancying things-I don’t like it in here, anyhow-but they all look crazy to me, I mean, really crazy, mad people. Honestly, I mean it. You notice their faces. They have just that look. I wouldn’t be left alone with some of ’em, not for anything. Batty! Honestly! And not just nicely batty, like some people, but miserable, cruel batty. Oh!-they must be starting.” And she leaned back, and looked straight in front of her, like a good little girl.

At first, only the organ growled and rumbled at them, as if it had had quite enough of this sort of thing. Then an elderly man with a long upper-lip and a grey chin-beard mounted the platform, and asked them to sing with him. Jimmy had the pleasure of sharing a book with the little woman, who sang a bit in a shy soprano; but Jimmy only grunted vaguely, and did not care for the hymn, which was all about blood, as if it had been composed in a slaughter-house. Then the elderly man, in an angry nasal voice, read a long piece from the Bible, all about angels standing at the four corners of the earth, and another angel telling them not to hurt the servants of God, who were sealed on their foreheads, and then a lot of stuff about tribes, of no great interest unless you were in the know, and then some pretty grim talk about washing people white in the blood of the Lamb.

“‘They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more,’” the elderly man concluded, not sounding angry now but very loud and shrill, “‘neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat . . .’”

And now from the rows of people in front there came surprising cries and groans and triumphant shouts, in fact all kinds of quite savage noises; and some of them raised their hands and shook them hard; and one woman made a gurgling sound and fell back, as if in a faint; and one man, a big chap with the voice of a bull, yelled Halleluyah !

“You see!” Jimmy heard the little woman whisper urgently and with a slight quaver. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Anybody can have it for me,” said Jimmy.

Now they were all praying, led by a passionate skeleton of a man in a black coat much too large for him. He was, however, a most fluent and powerful leader of prayer. He asked Jehovah to look down on them, sealed in his service, and to abate his wrath a little while, until all who could be sealed were safe in the fold, and then to let go his wrath for all it was worth, fulfilling the most terrible prophecies, it seemed, with hail and fire and blood and darkness and wormwood for everybody except the faithful few. Punctuated as it was by groans and loud Amens , his long prayer, delivered with a terrible sincerity, with an outward force expressing an inward fury of impassioned conviction, began to have its effect even on Jimmy’s sceptical mind. Something stirred uneasily in the depths of his being. And he knew that the little woman, now rather closer than she had been, distinctly trembled once or twice.

“It’s all right, y’know,” he told her, when it was all over, and they were about to sing again.

“I know it is. I know it can’t happen,” she whispered confidingly. “But I just hate the way he wants it to happen. It’s the people that frighten me, not what they say. And I’ll be glad when it’s over, won’t you?”