Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

He gave her another half a minute, but it was as though she was mesmerised by the carpet. Her bosom rose and fell. She was wearing a white cotton top with sleeves not quite long enough to cover the scars on her forearms. Each time she breathed in, her breasts swelled against the thin fabric of her top.

‘You’ve been crying,’ he said.

‘I haven’t.’

‘You’ve been crying.’

She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. ‘OK,’ she said.

‘What’s causing you this pain?’

She managed a smirk. ‘You tell me , doctor.’

He knelt at her feet and got himself comfortable. ‘Grainger, I’m no good at this cat and mouse stuff. You came here to talk to me. I’m ready. Your heart is grieving. Please tell me why.’

‘I guess it’s what you’d call… family problems.’ She fiddled with her fingertips. He realised she’d once been a smoker and was hankering for the comfort of a cigarette — which made him realise, furthermore, how strange it was that none of the other USIC personnel exhibited those mannerisms, despite the high likelihood that some of them had been heavy smokers in their earlier lives.

‘People keep telling me that nobody here has any family to speak of,’ he said. ‘La Légion Étrangère, as Tuska puts it. But yes, I haven’t forgotten. I pray for Charlie Grainger every day. How is he?’

Grainger snorted and, because she’d just been crying, sprayed some snot onto her lips. With a grunt of irritation, she wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘God doesn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Tell you if the people you’re praying for are OK.’

‘God isn’t… my employee,’ said Peter. ‘He’s not obliged to send me progress reports. Also, He’s well aware that I don’t actually know your dad. Let’s be honest: Charlie Grainger is just a name to me, until you tell me more.’

‘Are you saying God needs more data before he can…?’

‘No, no, I mean that God doesn’t need me to tell Him who Charlie Grainger is. God knows and understands your father, right down to… to the molecules in his eyelashes. The purpose of my prayer is not to bring your dad to His attention. It’s to express… ’ Peter groped for the right word, even though he’d had this same conversation, more or less, with many people in the past. Each time felt unique. ‘It’s to convey to God my love for another person. It’s my opportunity to solemnly voice my concern for the people I care about.’

‘But you just said my dad is just a name to you.’

‘I meant you . I care about you .’

Grainger sat rigid, jaw clenched and eyes unblinking. Tears welled up, glimmered, and fell. For a few seconds it looked as if she might start sobbing outright, then she pulled herself together — and got annoyed. Annoyance, Peter realised, was her defence mechanism, a prickliness that protected her soft underbelly like porcupine spines.

‘If prayer is just a way of voicing concern ,’ she said, ‘what’s the point of it? It’s like politicians expressing their “ concern ” about wars and human rights abuses and all that other bad stuff they’re gonna sit back and let happen anyway. It’s just empty words, it doesn’t change a damn thing.’

Peter shook his head. It felt like years since he’d been challenged like this. In his ministry back home, it was an almost daily encounter.

‘I understand how you feel,’ he said. ‘But God isn’t a politician. Or a policeman. He’s the creator of the universe. He’s an unimaginably huge force, a trillion times bigger than the solar system. And of course, when things go wrong in our lives, it’s natural to be angry, and to want to hold someone responsible. Someone who isn’t us. But blaming God… It’s like blaming the laws of physics for allowing suffering, or blaming the principle of gravity for a war.’

‘I never used the word “blame”,’ she said. ‘And you’re distorting the issue. I wouldn’t get down on my knees and pray to the laws of physics, ’cause the laws of physics can’t hear me. God is supposed to be on the case.’

‘You make Him sound — ‘

‘I just wish,’ she said, ‘that this magnificent, stupendous God of yours could give a fuck .’ And, with a strangled gasp of pain, she broke down and started weeping aloud. Peter leaned forward, still kneeling, and put his arm round her back as she convulsed. They were awkwardly matched, but she leaned forward in the chair and pressed her small head into his shoulder. Her hair tickled his cheek, arousing and confusing him with its intimate softness and alien smell. He missed Bea with a rush of distress.

‘I didn’t say He didn’t care,’ he murmured. ‘He cares about us very much. So much that He became one of us. He took human form. Can you imagine that? The creator of everything, the shaper of galaxies, got Himself born as a human baby, and grew up in a lower-class family in a small village in the Middle East.’

Still sobbing, she laughed into his pullover, possibly snotting it. ‘You don’t really believe that.’

‘Believe me, I do.’

She laughed again. ‘You are such a nutcase.’

‘No more than anyone else here, surely.’

They kept still for a minute, not speaking. Grainger had relaxed now that her anger was purged. Peter drew comfort from her warm body — more comfort than he’d expected when he reached out to her. No one, since BG and Severin had hauled him out of his crib on the flight, had made contact with his flesh other than to shake his hand in greeting. The Oasans were not touchy-feely people, not even with each other. They occasionally stroked each other on the shoulder with gloved hands, but that was about it, and they possessed no lips to kiss with. It had been a long time — too long — since he’d had this contact with a fellow creature.

But his back was getting sore from the unfamiliar position; muscles he seldom used were under strain. If he didn’t break the embrace soon, he would lose his balance. The arm which was now laid supportively around her midriff would suddenly bear down on her with his body’s weight.

‘Tell me a bit about your dad,’ he said.

She shifted back in the chair, allowing him to move away without appearing to have done so deliberately, just as he’d hoped. A glance confirmed that the weeping hadn’t done her any good — her face was blotched, puffy and unfeminine, and she knew it. He looked gallantly askance while she dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve, pecked at her hair with her fingers, and generally tried to compose herself.

‘I don’t know much about my dad,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him since my mom died. That was twenty-five years ago. I was fifteen.’

Peter did the maths. It wasn’t the right time for a compliment, but Grainger looked much younger than forty. Even after a bout of crying.

‘But you know he’s sick?’ he prompted. ‘You told me he was going to die soon.’

‘I guess. He’s an old man now. I shouldn’t care. He’s had his time.’ She fidgeted with a phantom pack of cigarettes again. ‘But he’s my dad.’

‘If you haven’t had contact for so long, isn’t it possible he’s passed away already? Or maybe he’s living in retirement somewhere, enjoying a healthy, happy old age.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ She shot him a mistrustful look, then softened, as though willing to give him another chance. ‘Do you ever get intuitions?’

‘Intuitions?’

‘When you get a feeling about something, something you’re sure is happening right at that instant, and there’s no way you can technically know it, but you just know it. And then a little while later, you find out… you get absolute proof, from somebody else maybe, some eyewitness, that what you thought was happening really did happen, exactly when you thought of it, in exactly the way you pictured it. Like it was being beamed straight into your brain.’