Крис Бекетт - The Holy Machine

‘Perhaps we could plant the tomatoes over here?’ I’d say, ‘They’ll get more shelter and catch more rain when it falls.’

He would slowly consider. He knew only one way of doing anything and that was the way his father had done it and his father before that, even if that meant walking round three sides of a field instead of taking the direct line. So new ideas, derived from a fresh analysis of the problem, seemed almost magical to him.

Slowly he would smile.

‘Well, and why not? That’s not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all.’

And he’d beam at me, nodding slowly many, many times.

‘They say old Zhavkov is a fool,’ he’d chuckle, ‘but who else has a real Scientist from the City to help him? You tell me that!’

Leta too was pleased by me. Everything about me intrigued her, and what began with good-natured teasing, soon became knowing looks, accidental touchings, small treats set aside in the kitchen for when I came in.

This wasn’t discouraged by Zhavkov. He would nudge me knowingly when we were out in the fields together.

‘You seem to have made a good impression on my Leta,’ he would say, ‘not such a bad-looking girl is she? She’s turned away more than one young lover in her time I can tell you.’

It was true. She was pretty in a plump, cheerful way. And she was sweet-natured, though slow and unsophisticated like her father. I enjoyed her interest in me at first and didn’t discourage her flirtations.

One day, when we were alone in the house, she engineered a playfight with me over a sweet cake, which ended up with her in my arms. We kissed. We became aroused. Laughter became breathless.

Then Leta took my hand and led me up to her tiny room. She unbuttoned her dress. Out tumbled her big soft breasts. And then she smiled kindly, seeing me hesitate, and gently took my hands and placed them over her thick, dark nipples.

Quite suddenly, and with horrible vividness, the image came into my mind of Lucy tearing away her breasts and revealing the dead plastic shell beneath, with plastic tubes oozing yellowish liquids…

I pulled back abruptly from Leta. Her smile turned to dismay. Mumbling apologies I collected my few things from the loft…

Some weeks later, I climbed off a dilapidated bus in a mountainside village in Montenegro, reputed to be another island of peace. The bus came this way only once a week and was soon surrounded by villagers, unloading purchases, greeting returning travellers, climbing on board for the return journey. I was hot and weary and seeing a concrete water tank in the middle of an apple orchard, I made my way down to it, kicked off my broken old shoes, and climbed into the cool green water.

After the initial cold shock, the coolness was enchanting, and I lay back and let it spread through me. I could still hear the villagers talking and shouting on the road by the bus, but the peaceful dreamy sound of a single skylark twittering straight above me seemed more significant than all the talking and shouting in the world.

‘Well, look at me!’ I said to myself, as I finally pulled myself out of the tank and settled myself down in the shady grass under a tree. ‘I’ve found my vocation. I’ve become a hobo.’

I chuckled softly, a grubby, unshaven, smelly figure dressed in ragged clothes. I closed my eyes. Images drifted into my mind from Epiros and Corfu, Albania and Macedonia, Illyria and the Peloponnese, melting and merging together as I began to dream.

But then, splash , an apple fell into the water tank.

I started slightly, then rolled onto my side and prepared to settle down again.

Splash ! A second apple hit the water. I sat up, realizing that there wasn’t a tree overhanging the water tank, so someone was throwing the apples in.

A young dark-haired village woman was standing watching me a few metres off, holding another apple ready in her hand. I gaped stupidly at her. She smiled.

‘George Simling!’ she said in perfect Illyrian English, with just a trace of an Antipodean twang. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

It was Marija.

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry George, you haven’t seen a ghost. I live here now, with my Uncle Tomo. Well, he’s my mother’s cousin, but I call him my uncle. I got into some things back in IC which were hard to get out of…’

‘The AHS by any chance? Me too.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. It was me that got you into that, wasn’t it?’

I shrugged: ‘It’s not your fault that I wanted to impress you.’

‘ Did you?’ she seemed quite genuinely surprised. ‘I always thought you rather looked down on me. You never seemed to want to stay in my company.’

I covered my face with my hands. I felt that dull ache pressing behind my eyes. This had been the shameful beginning of Lucy’s betrayal. Marija had offered me her friendship. I chose instead – I deliberately chose – a confused, barely awake robot to play the part of my girlfriend. What would Marija think of me if she knew that?

‘Are you alright ?’ Marija asked.

I took my hands away from my face.

‘Yes, just… tired.’

‘Come up to my uncle’s place. You can have a wash and something to eat, a sleep if you want. You look as if you could do with some sleep.’

‘I could.’

‘Come on then, it’s this way. Where were you heading George? Where have you come from?’

I made a gesture of pushing the question away. I had laid down that burden when I climbed into the water tank. I didn’t want to pick it up again so soon.

She laughed. ‘Okay. Tell me later. Now listen, I’d better warn you Uncle Tomo is a priest. Don’t worry, he’s no fanatic. He’s a pragmatist. That’s the way things tend to be in Montenegro. Okay it’s an Orthodox theocracy like Russia or Serbia or the Greek states, but our bishop is no zealot. We keep ourselves out of trouble and get on with life as best we can. I quite like that. I used to be much too keen to change everything, I think, as if I thought no one else had ever tried before.’

I had always felt daunted by the Orthodox priests with their long beards and robes, but I liked Marija’s uncle at once. He was a small, sharp, wiry, humorous man with a narrow face and piercing blue eyes that gave him a slightly Irish appearance. His wife Nada (they had no children) was also immediately likeable, almost a female version of her husband, thin and wiry with a sly, ironic smile. Both of them had lived all their adult lives in this small Montenegrin village, but they were open to the wider world and seemed genuinely pleased by my arrival. A bath was run for me, spare clothing was found for me, a bed was prepared for me to take a siesta. While I sat in the cool bath, good wine was being fetched from the cellar by Aunt Nada and a lamb was taken from its mother’s side in my honour and slaughtered by Uncle Tomo himself. I had the pleasant illusion that I had come home.

But it was harder when we were all sitting at table and Marija and her aunt and uncle were all pressing me for the story of my travels.

‘It must be two years now,’ said Marija, who couldn’t conceive of being anything other than purposeful. ‘Where have you been all this time? What have you been doing?’

‘Well,’ I began. ‘First of all I went down into Greece and then…’

It was very hard to make a convincing narrative without Lucy in it, but I didn’t think I would retain this warm welcome if I was honest with them and admitted to them that I had run away from Illyria with an animated sex toy and then engineered its destruction.

‘…I got a job with a farmer named Zhavkhov,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed working there, but unfortunately his daughter started getting a bit too fond of me. She was nice enough but… well, her attentions were getting rather insistent, and…’