Beautiful World, Where Are You(31)

change in his personhood, precisely the fact that he went on being fully and recognisably the same man as always, that was so mystifying to me.

After the readings, the priest started blessing the bread and wine, and then he asked the congregation to lift up their hearts. All at the same time, in a soft collective whisper, everyone in the church replied: ‘We lift them up to the Lord.’ Is it really possible I witnessed such a scene, right in the middle of Dublin, only a few hours ago? Is it possible such things literally go on, in the real world you and I both live in? The priest said ‘Lift up your hearts’, and everyone, including Simon, replied without any hesitation or irony: ‘We lift them up to the Lord.’ Did they believe they were telling the truth, and that their hearts in that moment really were lifted up to the Lord, whatever that even means? If I’d asked myself that question yesterday, I would have said, of course not. Mass is just a social ritual, religious people don’t actually spend time thinking about God, and they certainly never try to lift their hearts up toward him or to conceptualise what it would mean to do such a thing. But today I feel differently. I feel that at least some of the people in that church sincerely believed that they were lifting their hearts up to the Lord. And I think Simon believed it. I think he knew what he was saying, and had thought about it, and believed it was true. After that, the priest asked us to give each other the sign of peace, and Simon shook hands with all the silvery little elderly women, and then he shook my hand and said ‘Peace be with you’, and by then I wanted him to mean it. I didn’t feel anymore that I wanted him to be joking, and in fact I felt that I wanted him to be as serious as he seemed, and more serious, and to mean every word.

Can it be that during the service I actually came to admire the sincerity of Simon’s faith? But how is it possible for me to admire someone for believing something I don’t believe, and don’t want to believe, and which I think is manifestly incorrect and absurd?

If Simon started to worship a turtle as the son of God, for example, would I admire his sincerity? From a strictly rationalist perspective, it makes as much sense to worship a turtle as it does to worship a first-century Judaean preacher. Considering that God doesn’t exist, the whole thing is random anyway, and it may as well be Jesus, or a plastic bucket, or William Shakespeare, it doesn’t matter. And yet I feel I couldn’t admire Simon’s sincerity if he went down the road of turtle worship. Am I just admiring the ritual, then? Admiring his ability to blandly and uncritically accept received wisdom? Or do I secretly believe there is something special about Jesus, and that to worship him as God, while not quite reasonable, is somehow permissible? I don’t know.

Maybe it was just the calm, gentle way that Simon conducted himself in the church, the way he recited the prayers so quietly and sedately, just the same as the little old ladies did, and not trying to be any different from them, not trying to show that he believed any more or less ardently than they did, or any more critically or intellectually than they did, but just the same. And he didn’t even seem embarrassed that I was there watching him – I mean he wasn’t embarrassed for me, at how out of place I was, but he also wasn’t embarrassed for himself, to be caught in the act of worshipping a supreme being I didn’t believe in.

Afterwards on the street, he thanked me for coming with him. For a second then I was afraid he would make a joke of it after all, just out of awkwardness or nerves, and the idea horrified me. But he didn’t. I should have known he wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t have been like him. He just thanked me and we went our separate ways. If I say the

Mass was strangely romantic I hope you’ll know what I mean. Maybe it made me feel there was something deep and serious in Simon, which I hadn’t seen for a long time, or maybe it was his gentleness when we were shaking hands. Or, as I’m sure an evolutionary psychologist would suggest, maybe I’m just a frail little female, and after sleeping in a man’s bed I come over all weak and tender about him. I make no great claims for myself, it could well be true. And writing this email I do feel a little weak and tender about Simon, and even a little protective, who knows why. If I had gone straight home this morning instead of going with him to the church, I’m not sure I would feel the same way now – but at the same time, if we had just gone to Mass this morning and we hadn’t slept together last night, I don’t think I’d feel like this now either. It was the seemingly ill-suited combination of sleeping together and then going to Mass afterwards that I think has given me this feeling – the feeling of entering into his life, even just briefly, and seeing something about him that I had never seen before, and knowing him differently as a result.

Speaking of friendship and romance: how is Rome? How is Felix? How are you? The parts of your email about sexuality were very funny. Do you think you’re the only person who has ever felt sexual desire?? In case the answer is yes, I am attaching a PDF

of Audre Lorde’s essay ‘Uses of the Erotic’, which I know for a fact you will greatly enjoy. Finally – yes of course you should invite Simon to stay! I know he wants to see you, and I can’t think of anything better in the world than having the two of you to myself for a week by the seaside. Love always, E.





13


That same Sunday morning in Rome, Alice couldn’t get the shower in the bathroom to switch off. Once she had dried herself and put on a dressing gown, she asked Felix to look at it. He came in and turned the shower head into the wall and examined the unit, clicking the power button on and off to no avail, as she stood behind him with her hair dripping onto her shoulders. Removing the exterior plastic casing of the shower, he squinted at a label inside. With his left hand he took his phone from his pocket and held it out behind him for Alice to accept. Once she had taken it, he read aloud the make and model number and asked her to put it into Google, while he pressed the power button again and watched the interior mechanism move. She tapped the browser icon on the screen of his phone, and it opened on a popular porn website. The page displayed a list of search results for the query ‘rough anal’. In the top thumbnail a woman was shown kneeling on a chair, with a man behind her holding her by the throat. Underneath that, another thumbnail showed a woman crying, with smeared lipstick, and mascara running in exaggerated trails from her eyes. Without touching the screen or interacting with the page in any way, Alice handed the phone back to Felix and said: You might want to close out of that. He took the phone back, glanced at it, and instantly flushed all over his face and throat. The plastic covering of the shower unit fell forward again and he had to catch and rebalance it with his other hand. Uh, he said. Sorry. Jesus, that’s awkward, sorry about that. She nodded, put her hands in her dressing gown pockets, removed them again, and then went to her room.