Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

It was a lovely party , Peter might have said, if he’d been asked to describe it for someone who wasn’t there. The only problem was, he felt surplus to requirements. Jesus Lover One had ushered him in, but kept meeting up with friends who drew him into conversations which, to Peter’s ears, were just gargles and wheezes. Asking for translations seemed rude and, in any case, there was no reason to suppose that a stranger would understand much of what was being discussed.

For a while he felt oafishly out of place, towering over everyone here, literally casting a shadow over them, and yet… irrelevant. But then he relaxed and began to enjoy himself. This gathering wasn’t about him : that was actually the beauty of it. He was privileged to observe, but he wasn’t on duty, nothing was expected of him; he was, for the first time since coming to Oasis, a tourist. So, he sat on his haunches in a corner of the room, allowed the blueish fog of incense to go to his head, and watched the expectant mother being garlanded with affection.

After what felt like hours of meeting and greeting, ฐสีคน abruptly signalled that she’d had enough. Exhaustion had apparently overcome her, and she sat on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of her gown’s white cloth. Her friends backed away as she pulled the hood off her head, revealing livid flesh sheened with sweat. She bent her head between her knees, as though she was about to faint or vomit.

Then the fontanelle in her head yawned open, and a large pink mass bulged out, glistening with frothy white lather. Peter jerked back in shock, convinced he was witnessing a violent death. One more convulsion and it was over. The baby was disgorged in a slithery spasm, sliding into the mother’s waiting arms. ฐสีคน raised her head high, her fontanelle puckering shut, the fleshy kernels of her face still livid. The whole room erupted in a whuffle of applause and a mass of voices joined forces to make an eerie cooing sound, as loud as a chord pumped out of a cathedral organ.

The baby was alive and well, already squirming to be released from its mother’s grasp. It had no umbilical cord and looked amazingly unlike a foetus: instead, it was a perfect miniature person, its arms, legs and head all in adult proportion. And, like a newborn horse or calf, it immediately tried to stand on its legs, figuring out the knack of balance even while its feet were still slippery with placental goo. The crowd applauded and cheered some more. ฐสีคน ceremoniously acknowledged the ovation, then set about cleaning the gunge off her child’s flesh with a damp cloth.

‘สคฉ้รี่,’ she announced. Another great cheer went up.

‘What did she say?’ Peter asked Lover One.

‘สคฉ้รี่,’ said Lover One.

‘Is that the baby’s name?’

‘Name, yeสี,’ said Lover One.

‘Does that name have a meaning, or is it just a name?’

‘Name have a meaning,’ Lover One replied. Then, after a few seconds: ‘Hope.’

The child now stood firmly balanced on the floor, its arms stretched out like unfledged wings. ฐสีคน sponged the last of the muck off its skin, whereupon someone emerged from the crowd with an armful of soft offerings. A robe, booties, gloves, all in dusky mauve, all tailored exactly to size. Together, ฐสีคน and the gift-bearer, who might have been a grandmother or aunt, began to dress the infant, who tottered and swayed but did not resist. When the job was done, the child was exquisitely smart and adorable, serenely content to be on display. A male, Peter decided. Unbelievable, the craftsmanship that had gone into those minuscule gloves, each finger snug and velvety! Extraordinary, how the child accepted this second skin!

By this time, Peter was no longer squatting; his legs had begun to ache and he’d stood up to stretch them. The baby, wondrously alert, took the measure of all the creatures in the room, an array of virtual replicas of himself. There was only one creature that didn’t fit the picture, only one creature that made no sense in his freshly configured view of the universe. Head tilting back, the child stood arrested, mesmerised by the alien.

ฐสีคน, noticing her son’s quandary, likewise turned her attention to Peter. ‘ฐสฐรี่ ฉ้สีฉ้ฉ้รี่,’ she called across the room.

‘What did she say?’ Peter asked Lover One.

‘Word,’ said Lover One. ‘Word from you.’

‘You mean… a speech?’

Lover One inclined his head diplomatically. ‘Few word, many word, any word. Any word you can.’

‘But she’s not… she’s not a Jesus Lover, is she?’

‘No,’ conceded Lover One, while ฐสีคน made an urgent gesture to speed up Peter’s compliance. ‘On thiสี day, all word are good.’ And he touched Peter’s elbow, which, by Lover One’s standards, was tantamount to a shove.

So there it was: he was an accessory. A bonus performance to enhance the mother’s Big Day. OK, nothing wrong with that. Christianity was used for such purposes all the time. And who knows? — maybe it wasn’t even his status as a pastor that this woman wanted to exploit, but his status as a visitor. He stepped forward. Phrases and themes tumbled around in his brain, but one thing was clear: he wanted this speech to be for the benefit of Lover One, so dignified in his bereavement, as much as for the mother and child. Often in his past ministries, he’d had a sudden insight into a staunch member of his congregation, a member who was constantly declaring the joy of knowing Christ, the bountiful blessings of faith, but who was — Peter would realise in a flash — achingly, inconsolably sad. Jesus Lover One might well be one of those souls.

‘I’ve been asked to speak,’ he said. ‘To a few of you, what I say will have meaning. To most of you, maybe not. One day, I hope to speak your language. But wait — did you hear it? — I just spoke that wonderful word: hope . The name of a feeling, and also the name of this child who has come to live with us today.’

The baby lifted first one boot, then the other, and toppled backwards. His mother caught him smoothly and eased him to the floor, where he sat in apparent thought.

‘Hope is a fragile thing,’ Peter continued, ‘as fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can’t believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot, as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed . But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilisations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible.’

The congregation — if he could be so bold as to call it that — was hushed, as if considering the import of each word, although they must surely be quite lost. He knew he should regard his speech as a kind of music, a brief burst of melody from a foreign guest invited to demonstrate an exotic instrument.

‘The most cherished of hopes, as we all know,’ he said, ‘is a new child. The Bible — the book that some of you love as much as I do — contains many fine stories about the birth of children, including the birth of Jesus, our Lord. But this is not the time and place for me to tell Bible stories. All I will say is that the ancient words of Ecclesiastes have helped me make sense of what I’ve seen in the last few days. Ecclesiastes says: To everything there is a season. There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to plant seeds, and a time to reap. An old person — the mother of Jesus Lover One — has died. That was a very sad thing. A new person — สคฉ้รี่ — has been born today. That is a very happy thing. Let us honour the equal importance of each: in celebrating a new life we remember losing those who’ve left us, and then in the midst of sadness our spirits are lifted as we welcome new life. So, to little สคฉ้รี่, most beautiful and precious gift to our community, I say: welcome!’