Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s a Shoot in this vehicle. We’re still in range of USIC reception. Another five, ten minutes of driving, and we’ll lose it.’

He could feel himself blushing, with a big daft smile so broad it made his cheeks ache. He felt like hugging her.

‘Yes, please!’

Grainger stopped the vehicle but did not switch off the motor. She flipped open a hatch in the dashboard and pulled out a slim contraption of plastic and steel, which unfolded to reveal a monitor and miniature keyboard. He made the inarticulate noise of surprise and admiration that was called for in the circumstances. There was momentary confusion as to which of them would take responsibility for switching the thing on, and their fingers met on the back of the console.

‘Take your time,’ said Grainger, settling back in her seat and turning her face towards the window, in a display of respect for his privacy.

For nearly a minute — sixty agonising seconds — nothing manifested on the Shoot except a computerised promise that a search was under way. Then the screen filled up from top to bottom with unfamiliar words: Bea’s words. God bless her, she’d responded.

Dear Peter, she wrote.

I’m upstairs in our study. It’s six o’clock in the evening, still full daylight, indeed nicer than it’s been all day. The sun is at a low angle now, mild and buttery yellow, streaming through the window straight onto the wall-hanging/collage that Rachel & Billy & Keiko made for me. Those kids must be teenagers by now, but their wonderful depiction of the ark and its animals is still as cute and eccentric as when it was first done. The way Rachel used bits of orange wool for the lion’s mane never ceases to charm me, especially when it’s lit up by the evening sun as it is now. One of the giraffes’ necks is dangling down, though; I’ll have to stick it back into place.

I only just arrived home from work — bliss to be sitting down at last. Too tired to have a shower yet. Your message was waiting for me when I rushed upstairs to check.

I can understand that you would be eager to go and live with the Oasans ASAP. Of course God is with you and you shouldn’t delay unnecessarily. Try not to sacrifice common sense, though! Remember when that crazy Swedish guy at our Bible study dedicated himself to Jesus? He said his faith in the Lord was so strong that he could just ignore the council’s eviction notice, and God would organise a miraculous last-minute reprieve! Two days later he’s on our doorstep with his bin-bag of possessions… I’m not implying you’re a nutcase like him, just reminding you that practicalities are not your strong suit and that bad things can happen to ill-prepared Christians just as they can happen to anyone else. We need to strike a balance between trusting in our Lord to provide, and showing due respect for the gift of life and this body we’ve been lent.

Which means: when you do go to live with your new flock, please make sure you’ve got (1) some way of calling for help if you’re in trouble, (2) an emergency supply of food and water, (3) DIARRHOEA MEDICATION, (4) the compass co-ordinates of the USIC base and the Oasan settlement, (5) a compass, obviously.

Peter glanced up at Grainger, just in case she was reading over his shoulder. But she was still gazing out the window, feigning deep interest in the landscape. Her hands were loosely clasped in the lap of her gown. Small hands, well formed, with pale, stubby-nailed fingers.

He was embarrassed that, apart from a bottle of green water filled from the tap, he’d taken none of the precautions Bea was urging him to. Not even the diarrhoea pills she’d bought for him specially. They would hardly have weighed down his rucksack, those pills, and yet he’d removed them. Why had he removed them? Was he being as foolish as the crazy Swede? Maybe he was indulging a stubborn pride in his minimal baggage, his statement of single-minded intent: two Bibles (King James and New Living Translation, 4th edition), half a dozen indelible marker pens, notebook, towel, scissors, roll of adhesive tape, comb, flashlight, plastic wallet of photographs, T-shirt, underpants. He closed his eyes and prayed: Am I drunk on my own mission?

The answer came, as it so often did, in the form of a sensation of well-being, as if a benign substance in his bloodstream was suddenly taking effect.

‘Have you fallen asleep?’ asked Grainger.

‘No, no, I was just… thinking,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

He returned to Bea’s message, and Grainger returned to her study of the empty scrubland.

Joshua is helping me type, as usual: lying between the keyboard and the monitor, his back legs and tail obscuring the top row of keys. People think I’m being pedantic when I write numbers out as words, or type ‘pounds’ instead of ‘£’, but the fact is that I have to lift up a comatose cat every time I want to use those symbol keys. I did it just now and Joshua made that ‘njurp’ sound that he makes. Last night, he slept right through, didn’t utter a peep (purred a bit). Maybe he’s adjusting to your absence at last. I wish I could! But don’t worry, I’m getting on with things.

The Maldives tragedy has dropped out of the media. There are still small articles on the inner pages of some newspapers, and a few ads placed by charities for donations, but the front pages and the prime-time coverage (as far as I can tell from the clips on my phone) have moved on to other things. An American congressman has just been arrested for shooting his wife. Point-blank range, with a shotgun, in the head, while she was swimming in their private pool with her lover. The newspaper journalists must be so relieved — with the Maldives thing they had to evoke gruesomeness without appearing prurient, whereas with this they can be as gross as they like. The woman’s head was blown off from the jaw up, and her brains (juicy detail!) were floating around in the water. The lover was shot too, in the abdomen (‘possibly aiming for the groin’). Lots of supplementary articles about the congressman, his life history, achievements, college graduation photo, etc. The wife looked (when she still had a head) exactly as you’d expect: glamorous, not quite real.

Mirah and her husband are getting along much better. I met her at the bus stop and she was giggly, almost flirtatious. She didn’t raise the issue of converting to Christianity again, just talked about the weather (it’s been bucketing down again). She only got serious when she talked about the Maldives. Most of the islanders were Sunni Muslims; Mirah’s theory is that they must have displeased Allah by ‘doing bad things with tourists’. A very confused young lady, but I’m glad she’s no longer in crisis and I’ll continue to pray for her. (I’ll pray for your Coretta too.)

Speaking of Muslims, I know they consider it a terrible sin to throw away old or damaged copies of the Qur’an. Well, I’m about to commit a similar sin. You know the big cardboard box of New Testaments we had sitting in the front room? It looks like they’ll have to be dumped. I can imagine this might upset you to hear, given your news about the Oasans being so hungry for the Gospel. But we’ve had some flooding. The rain was ridiculous, it didn’t let up for five hours, full pelt. There were torrents flowing along the footpaths; the drains just aren’t designed to take that kind of volume. It’s all right now, in fact the weather is lovely, but half the houses in our street have suffered damage. In our case, it’s just some patches of sopping-wet carpet, but unfortunately the books were right on one of those patches and it was a while before I realised they’d been soaking up the water. I tried drying them out in front of the heater. Big mistake! Yesterday they were New Testaments, today they’re blocks of wood pulp.