Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

Some of the congregation made the shoulder-trembling motions he’d always interpreted as laughter. He hoped it was laughter, elicited by his clumsy pronunciation, but maybe he’d never really known what those motions meant after all.

‘สีคssฐڇ รี่tฐ สีssคฉ้ สีค Jesus คฐڇ๙ฉ้s,’ he continued. He could sense their bemusement at his strained and childish speech, so unnecessary when they were only too willing to listen to the holy language of James the King. But he wanted to address them, just once, in a way that they could fully understand. He owed them that much: their dignity at the expense of his own. ‘๙ฉ้ss Jesus สีรี่t สีฐฉั สีค สีค คฐ.’

He finished his exact tally of the worshippers, begun as a habitual reflex: fifty-two. He would never know how many more souls were concealed in the settlement, never know how far away he’d been from bringing the entire community to Christ. He only knew that he recognised each and every person here, and not just by the colours of their robes.

‘รี่ คฐڇ๙ฉ้ss สีฐฉ้ค ฐurฐ สีฐ,’ he said, ‘ฐڇ๙ฉ้ss สีฐณฐฉ้ค the Book of Strange New Things.’ He extracted the King James Bible from his bag, and, instead of thumbing the gilt-edged pages to a selected passage for reading aloud, he stepped out from behind the pulpit and carried the book to the Jesus Lovers in the front pew. With fastidious gentleness — not because of reverence for the book, but because of concern for the fragile flesh before him — he handed it to Lover Seventeen, who cradled it in her lap.

He returned to the pulpit. ‘สีฐ สีรี่ รี่ สีฐ,’ he said, ‘ฉ้ค คssฐ สีssสีรี่ God. สีฐ God คฉ้ สีค คฐฉ้ss ฉ้นรี่ ๙ฉ้ss ณนรี่ณ.’

A thrill of consternation was passing through his flock. Heads tilted, hands agitated. Lover Fifteen uttered a cry.

‘คฐสีฐ ڇสีคss ๙ฉ้ss ฉ้ God ฉ้น คฐڇ รี่ณฐ ๙ฉ้ss,’ he pressed on. ‘ฉ้ค tสีฐ รี่ รี่ฉ้ค สีฐ รี่ฉ้สี ฐ สีฐฉ้ค คssฐڇ๙ฉ้ss Jesus Lover Five… ’ His voice broke, and he had to grip the wings of his pulpit to keep himself from trembling. ‘Jesus Lover Five สีฐฉั สีฐ ๙ฉ้l รี่iฐ สีฐฉัค สีรี่t รี่ณฐ. คฉ้ สีฉ้ สีฐรี่ ณนรี่ณ USIC.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. สีฐรี่t๙สีรี่ สีรี่ڇ ครี่ฐڇ๙ฉ้ รี่ สีฐรี่t ฐurฐ. คฐ คڇ รี่ณฐ ๙สีรี่ฐڇ สีค Bea. รี่tฐ สีค ฉ้ss… ’

And that was it: he could go no further: the word he needed, the most crucial word, was one he didn’t know in the สีฐฉั language. He bowed his head, and took refuge, at the last, in his own foreign tongue.

‘… forgive.’

He left the pulpit, picked up the canary-yellow boots, one in each hand, and walked stiffly down the aisle, towards the exit. For the first few seconds, which felt like minutes, he walked in silence, alone. Then the Jesus Lovers rose from their seats and gathered all around him, touching him tenderly on the shoulders, the back, the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs, anywhere they could reach, while saying, in clear, unhampered voices, ‘Forgive.’

‘Forgive.’

‘Forgive.’

‘Forgive.’

‘Forgive.’

‘Forgive,’ each in their turn, until he blundered through the doors into the harsh sunlight.

On the way back to the settlement, as his flaccid, empty bag flapped against his waist, he looked around several times at his church silhouetted against the brilliant sky. No one had emerged from it but him. Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must. The สีฐฉั had been keen to follow him to the kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t keen to follow him into the valley of doubt. He knew that one day — maybe very soon — they would have another pastor. They’d taken from him what they needed, and their search for salvation would go on when he was long gone. After all, their souls dreamt so ardently of a longer stay in the flesh, a longer spell of consciousness. It was natural: they were only human.

Back at the USIC jeep, things had moved on. Lover One was nowhere to be seen, the medicines had all been distributed, and the food was being loaded into the vehicle. More สีฐฉั than usual were involved, quite a crowd of them. Both Tuska and Flores were available to take hold of the tubs, sacks and tins brought out to them, but Peter noticed, even from a distance, that the สีฐฉั approached Flores first, and detoured to Tuska only when Flores already had her hands full. He figured it out at last: they liked her. Who would’ve thought it? They liked her.

‘Let me carry that,’ said Tuska, as Flores took charge of a particularly heavy bag of whiteflower dough.

‘I’m OK,’ said Flores. Her hair was plastered with sweat, emphasising the smallness of her skull, and blue veins stood out on her temples. Her whole torso was sodden. She was having a grand time.

A little while later, when the three of them were seated in the vehicle and Tuska was driving away from C-2, she said:

‘We’re going to crack them, Joe.’

‘Crack them?’ echoed Tuska.

‘Find out what makes them tick,’ she explained.

‘Yeah?’ said Tuska, clearly not much interested in the prospect.

‘Yes. And then, God willing, we’ll fix them.’

Peter was surprised to hear such words uttered by a USIC employee. But then Flores’s face appeared in the gap between the front seats, like a gargoyle head jutting out from a Gothic wall, seeking out the minister stashed in the back.

‘Just a figure of speech, you understand,’ she said. ‘I really meant, with luck.’ Her face vanished again, but she wasn’t done talking. ‘I guess you don’t believe there’s such a thing as luck, huh?’

Peter turned his face to stare out the window. At the speed Tuska was driving, the dark earth could be mistaken for tarmac, and the occasional outcrop of pale wildflower swept past in a blur like the painted white lines of a motorway. If he imagined hard enough, he might even see M25 road signs estimating the distance to London.

‘I hope there is,’ he answered Flores, a little too late. He was pretty sure the word ‘luck’ appeared nowhere in the Bible, but that didn’t mean there was no such thing. Grainger had called him a lucky guy. And, with Bea at his side, for the best part of his life, he truly had been.

When he got back to his quarters, there was, finally, a message from Bea.

It said,

Peter, I love you. But please, don’t come home. I beg you. Stay where you are.

‘What I like about this place,’ said Moro, making brisk progress on her treadmill, ‘is that every day there’s something a little bit different, but also it’s the same.’

She, BG and Peter were exercising in the gazebo. It was just another day on Oasis, another scheduled break in the task at hand, a few hours of R&R before work resumed on the great project. The canopy was shading them from the sun, but the light was so intense at this stage of the afternoon that it penetrated the canvas, casting a yellow tinge over their flesh.

Moro had worked up a big sweat already; the fabric of her shalwar was sculpted to her thighs as she paced, and her bare midriff glistened. She had announced three hundred steps as her goal and must be about halfway through by now, never letting the rhythm slacken. She swivelled her wrists on the treadmill’s handle-bars, as if revving the throttle grip of a motorcycle.