Will Self - The Book of Dave

An apple-cheeked Mormon youth came over to where Dave and Gladys stood and offered them each a plate of white bread chunks and a tiny beaker of water. If this was the Saints' sacrament, their Saviour's body was bland, his blood tasteless. When the double doors to the church eventually swung open and the latecomers were admitted, they found seats among frumpy Mormon families. The men's suits were a shade too antiquated, the women's dresses three inches too long. The children were very well scrubbed.

From a blond wood lectern, under the exposed engine of organ pipes, a big-framed man with a blond crewcut and the solid, leisurely hands of an engineer was preaching a sermon on marriage and family values. 'As a man and a woman's spirit are ee-tur-naal,' he nasalled, 'so may the family's spirit become ee-tur-naal through obedience to the laws and principles.' Tall windows sliced with vertical louvres illumined the gently smiling Elders. The preacher continued: 'One of the most beautiful of the principles is marriage "for time and eternity", through this sacred covenant and principle wo-orthy couples may be joined together not just 'til death but for-evah.' Strange things were happening in the back alleys of Dave Rudman's consciousness. He stared around at the detoxified Mormons and gulped down his own tarry cud. No booze, no fags, no coffee or tea … They look good on it … He noted that the children were neither sinisterly attentive nor disrespectfully unruly. They're listening … He glanced sideways at Gladys: she was wholly absorbed in the service, her eyes clear, her expression bright — among the Saints her dowdiness was not out of place. She has found something, she's not kidding. .

The preacher held up a D of metal. 'This is a caa-raa-bin-eer,' he drawled. 'One of ma hobbies is mountaineering and I use these little things all the time to attach ma-self to a rope. Through the power of the priesthood, families can be linked and then sealed. The only people who can unlock them are you and me. If we don't honour our co-mitt-ments, we unlock them; if we don't take our troubles to our bishop, we unlock them; if we don't tithe or attend church meetings, we unlock them.' He cast the metal metaphor to one side, and it fell on a desk with a 'clack'. 'Observe family prayer,' said the devout mountaineer, 'observe a family home evening and family scripture study and our links will remain sealed.'

They sang a hymn without organ accompaniment, and the women kept time by raising their forearms up and down … yanking slot machines. Dave thought back to the one or two church services he'd attended with his father. Paul Rudman had dragged his three children along to suburban churches with sparse congregations out of a perverse need to acquaint them with a faith that he lacked but had been born into. Blokes in white dresses sortuv singing … and wandering about. . Stifling boredom, fidgeting so intense that, aged nine, Dave had thought his entire hand would disappear up his nose. On the rare occasions Benny had taken him to shul it had been different yet the same. A beardie-weirdo in black robes banging on in Hebrew, while the Jewish men discussed the price of fish. He wasn't as bored — but the religion was a pointless drone, faith muzak.

The preacher introduced the missionaries, neatly pressed young men and women who smiled and bobbed. 'These are but a few of the 60,000 of our brothers and sisters who are carrying the good news of Joseph Smith's revelation. .' Joseph Smith, that's the geezer who found the book. Except it wasn't a book, was it. . Dave clawed in his memory. No, it was golden tablets and he dug 'em up. Great stack of metal fucking tablets that he copied out before this angel took 'em back. 'Coz it stands to reason that no one but Smithy ever clapped eyes on the things. What a load of cobblers — still, you gotta give this lot credit for being getters …

They wouldn't get Dave Rudman, though. After the service and the announcements the congregation split into groups for scriptural study. Dave had had enough. He arranged to pick Gladys up in an hour and drove down to South Kensington. He left the cab on a rank and went into Dino's. Here he ate a pizza and drank a Coke. Religion … any fucking religion whatever … it ain't for me. .

Heaving up from the fierce grip of the frothy surge, streaming freezing curry water, the motos suckered on to slick stone with their flanges, and their fingers and toes scrabbled for purchase. In that moment, poised between elements, they looked more at home in the heavy swell. Then they were wading in the shallows, mounting the jumble of shattered crete and twisted irony which was Nimar.

The first two beasts were slung about their thick necks with changingbags, moto oil tanks and evian skins. As they shook the water from their bristly coats, these banged and batted their jonckheeres. The second pair of motos were yet more encumbered, for clinging to their folds with white hands were drenched scraps of humanity, the fugitives, the flyers. Antonë Böm and his pupil Carl Dévúsh. They slithered off and dropped to the ground. The northeast wind honed its knife edge on their exposed flesh. The thick coat of moto oil they'd both slathered on before setting off from Ham had preserved them from the worst of the cold — without it they would have been dead. The northern sound was far colder than the placid waters of the lagoon, and half a tariff in the heaving, open water had frozen them to the marrow. Man and lad were too stunned by their passage to speak, and it was the motos who, gathering round, licked them with their leathery tongues and so roused them to self-preservation. G-g-get yer kit orf, Carl urged Antonë, get í orf!

Peeled, one was a whittled sapling, the other a warty puffball — their genitals were as small as motos'. Bloke and boy slapped at one another with open hands, bringing blood to the surface of their skin in pinkish blooms. Then they lay down on a flat crete slab and were bracketed by Sweetë and Hunnë. The floppy dugs and sagging tanks of the motos enfolded the two humans and the heat surged from them.

When they were dry Carl and Böm draped themselves in cloakyfings pulled from their bundles and thankfully still dry. Antonë got out his lighter, and with kindling gathered from the underbrush beyond the outcropping Carl started a fire between the rocks. They spread out their jeans and carcoats to steam in its heat. Arncha wurryd baht vat Ió seein ve smoke? Carl asked. No, his mentor replied, you know as well as I that it will take the dads a long time before they decide on any course of action, and with the Driver injured they will not have his direction to rely on.

While pursuit exercised Carl, the Beastlyman bothered him still more. Antonë had a bottle of jack and some fags — Carl was amazed to see such luxuries, yet even while swigging and puffing, he cast fearful eyes towards the teetering piles of brick and twisted limbs of irony, expecting the Beastlyman's head to pop up, his mouth gaping, his stump of tongue waggling, uttering his dreadful gargling cries. But there was no sound save for the plash of the waves and no movement except the gulls skimming by and surveying the intruders with their yellow eyes.

The motos were quite unmoved by their transition beyond Ham. Comfy in their cosy child-worlds, they had little recollection of the traumatic past and no thought for the hazardous future. When Carl was convinced that the Beastlyman was absent, he told them they might forage what they pleased. They picked their way between the rocks into the undergrowth, where they browsed spiky chrissy-leaf and waxy rhodies. Nerved up by fags, warmed by the booze, Carl told Antonë of his anxieties. How might they go on from here? Where would they go — and, more importantly, who would they be? Ignorant that he was, even Carl knew that no gafferless dad might travel at liberty in Ing.