Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

It will be your morning by the time you read this. I hope you slept well.

Love,

Peter

Having sent this message, Peter was clammy with sweat. And ravenous. He showered and dressed in clean trousers and T-shirt. Then he went to the mess hall and ordered himself the sausages and mash.

When he returned, he resumed work on the Bible booklets. Several of the Jesus Lovers had asked him about the parable of the Good Shepherd, the Hireling and the Sheep. He’d gently urged them to tackle a different episode, because this one involved sheep and wolves, two creatures they’d never seen, and besides, it was full of sibilant letters. But they insisted, as if worried that their natural limitations might prevent them from comprehending something utterly crucial. So, he was tinkering with it. For sheep, he could substitute whiteflower. God could be the Good Farmer, making sure that the crops were tended properly and picked at the correct times; the Hireling could be… what could the Hireling be? The Oasans knew nothing about money and recognised no difference between vocation and employment. And what about the conclusion of the story, where the Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep? A farmer couldn’t lay down his life for his crops. The whole parable was untranslatable. Yet the Jesus Lovers would not be fobbed off. He would have to teach them about sheep, wolves, shepherds, hirelings. It was an absurd challenge, although it might be worthwhile if it allowed the Oasans access to the concept of the Lamb of God.

On a sheet of paper, he experimented with drawing a sheep. Art was not one of his strong points. The animal he scrawled had a credibly sheep-like body but its head looked more like a cat’s. He struggled to recall ever having seen a sheep in the flesh, or even in photographs. Beyond a vague impression of woolly rotundity, he couldn’t summon forth any details about ears, snout, eyes and so on. Was the lower jaw visible? Perhaps there would be something in the USIC library. Granted, many of the books had pages torn out, but he imagined that if there were any pictures of sheep, they’d be intact.

Absent-mindedly, out of habit, he checked for new messages on the Shoot. Immediately, one from Bea loaded in. She hadn’t gone to bed after all.

Peter, PLEASE PLEASE STOP HARPING ON ABOUT THIS COUNTRYSIDE FANTASY, it’s just making me feel worse. You just don’t seem to appreciate how fast and how frighteningly and how MUCH things have changed. The housing market has COLLAPSED. Like just about everything eslse in this country IT IS KAPUT. Couldn’t you guess that? Wouldn’t that be obvious from all the things I’ve been telling you? Do you really think some nice young coiuple is goimng to be isnepcting our house with a chequebook in their hands? All those nice young couples all over the UK are frozen with TERROR. Everyonbe is just sitting tight, hoping agaimst hope that things will improve. I am sitting tighjt myself, hoping that at last some big truck will finally come and pick up the stinking piles of garbage in front of our home.

As for using the word godforsaken, I’m sure God can forgive me but the question is, can you?

The vehemence of the blow took him by surprise. In the minutes that followed, his brain swirled with hurt, indignation, shame and fear. She was wrong, he was misunderstood, she was wrong, he was misunderstood, she was in trouble, he couldn’t help, she was in trouble, he couldn’t help, she was deaf to his assurances of love and support, she spoke in a tone he couldn’t recognise. Was this what pregnancy had done to her mind? Or had she been harbouring these resentments and frustrations for years? Half-formed sentences suggested themselves, drafts of defences and analyses, ways to demonstrate to her that she was not helping anyone by behaving like this, ways to allude to the deranging effects of hormones and pregnancy without making her angrier still.

As he thought more, however, his urge to argue dwindled and all that was left was love. It didn’t matter, for the moment, that she misjudged him. She was overwhelmed, she was in distress, she needed help. Rightness or wrongness was not the point. Giving her strength was the point. He must let go of his grief at how alienated she was from him. The greater problem was that she seemed alienated from God. A barrage of suffering borne in unaccustomed loneliness had weakened her faith. Her mind and heart were closed like the fist of a child in pain. Rhetoric and arguments were useless and, in the circumstances, cruel. He must remember that when he’d been at his own lowest ebb, a single Bible verse had pulled him back from the abyss. God didn’t waste words.

Bea, I love you. Please pray. What is happening all around you is terrifying, I know. But please pray and God will help. Psalm 91: I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.

There, it was sent. He clasped his hands and prayed she would pray. Everything would be all right if she only could.

‘Sคฉ้นtฉ้ณ,’ he said.

‘สีคฉ้นรี่ฉ้ณ,’ she corrected him.

‘Sคฉ้นtฉ้ณ,’ he tried again.

‘สีคฉ้นรี่ฉ้ณ,’ she corrected him again.

‘สีคฉ้นรี่ฉ้ณ,’ he said.

All round him rose a noise like a flock of birds flapping their wings. It was not birds. It was the sound of applause from dozens of gloved hands. The Oasans — no longer Oasans to him but สีฐฉั — were letting him know he was making excellent progress in their language.

It was a perfect afternoon, just perfect. The air was less clammy than ever before, or perhaps he’d grown accustomed to the humidity at last. His body felt free and unencumbered, almost a part of the atmosphere, with no division between his skin and the surrounding sky. (Funny how he’d always been encouraged to conceive of the sky as something that started at some point far above him, whereas the สีฐฉั word for it — สี — recognised that it extended right down to the ground.)

He and the สีฐฉั were sitting outside the church, as was their custom when they were engaged in matters not strictly related to faith. The church was for singing, for sermons (although Peter didn’t refer to his Bible talks as such) and for contemplating the pictures his friends had dedicated to the glory of God. Outside, they could speak of other things. Outside, they could be his teachers.

Today, they numbered thirty. Not because the Jesus Lovers had dwindled in total, but because only certain members of the congregation felt confident to give their pastor instruction. Some of the people he was fondest of weren’t here, and he was forging a new intimacy with others who’d been a closed book to him before. For example, Jesus Lover Sixty-Three — so shy and awkward in most contexts — displayed a flair for linguistic problem-solving, keeping silent for long periods and then, when everyone was stuck, uttering the word they were searching for. By contrast, Lover One — the original convert to Christ and thus a person of some eminence among the believers — had declined Peter’s invitation to take part in the lessons. Declined? ‘Dismissed’ or ‘rejected’ was closer to the mark; Lover One was opposed to Peter attempting anything that might dilute the strangeness of the Book of Strange New Things.

‘Forget the Book for a moment… ’ Peter had said, but Lover One was so wound up that, for the first time, he interrupted.

‘Never forgeรี่ the Book. Never, never. The Book our rock, our hope, our redeemer.’

The words were Peter’s own, specially selected to be easy for these people to say, but the more often he heard the สีฐฉั uttering words like ‘redeemer’, the more he wondered what they really thought they meant.