The Book of Strange New Things(155)
With nothing to show for his ordeal but a small ball of cotton wool taped to his wrist, he walked to his quarters, unsteady on his feet but stubbornly alive. Various USIC employees passed him in the corridors, looking askance at his pitiful appearance. Only a few metres shy of his room, he met Werner.
‘Hi,’ said Werner, holding two chubby fingers aloft as he passed by. It was a gesture that could have signified any number of things: a wave that was too lazy to employ the whole hand, a casual approximation of the peace symbol, an unwitting echo of a Christian benediction. More likely, it signified nothing except Werner’s determination to get on with his engineering or hydraulics or whatever, without having to concern himself with desperate-looking weirdos.
‘Well, bless you, too, pal,’ Peter felt like calling out to the disappearing Chinese. But that would be sarcasm. He must avoid that, it was a sin to have even considered it, a lapse, a disgrace. He must cling to his sincerity. It was all he had left. There must be no bile in his soul, no barb in his speech. To love without discrimination, to mean all creatures well, even a rabid dog like Tartaglione, even a waste of space like Werner: that was his sacred duty as a Christian, and his only salvation as a person. As he opened the door of his quarters, he counselled himself to expunge all dislike of Werner from his heart. Werner was a poor lamb, precious in the eyes of the Lord, a charmless creep who couldn’t help being a charmless creep, a geeky orphan who’d grown into a specialised form of survivor. We are all specialised forms of survivor, Peter reminded himself. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses. No one – especially not a pastor – should lose sight of that truth. Whatever he did, however low he sank, he must never stop believing all men were his brothers.
And all women.
And all ?????.
Dear Bea, he wrote,
There is nothing I can say that would make what happened to Joshua feel like anything other than obscenely unfair. He was a wonderful, delightful creature and it hurts me so much to think of him dead and how he died. It’s awful to be reminded in such a brutal way that Christians have no magic immunity to the evil actions of malicious people. Faith in Christ leads to amazing blessings and strokes of good fortune, as we’ve observed together many times, but the world remains a dangerous place and we remain – merely by being human – vulnerable to the horrors that humans can cause.
I’m angry too. Not at God, but at the sick bastards who tortured Joshua. I should love them, but I want to kill them, even though killing them wouldn’t bring Joshua back. I need time to work through my gut feelings and I’m sure you do too. I’m not going to tell you to forgive these boys because I can’t forgive them myself yet. Only Jesus was capable of that level of grace. All I will say is that I have caused great grief to others and I have been forgiven. I once robbed a house that had boxes of cancer drugs in the bedroom, piles of them. I know they were cancer drugs because I rummaged through them in case there was anything I could use. I stole a box of analgesics and left the rest scattered on the floor. In the years since, I’ve often thought about what effect that must have had on those people when they got home from the hospital or wherever they’d gone that day. I don’t mean the analgesics – they could have replaced those pretty quickly, I expect. I mean the fact that they got robbed on top of everything else they were going through, that there was no mercy, no allowance made for their already impossible circumstances. The boys who tortured Joshua did that to us. What else can I say? I’m not Jesus.
But I am still your man. We’ve been through so much together. Not just as a Christian husband-and-wife team, but as two animals who trust each other. Whenever I think of the gulf that’s come between us, I’m sick with sorrow. Please accept my love. In sermons sometimes, I’ve told people that what I was enchanted by, in that hospital ward when we first met, was the light of Christ that shone out of you. I believed that when I said it, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I devalued you in order to score an evangelistic point. There is a light in you that’s intrinsic to who you are, a marvellous spirit that would dwell in you even if you weren’t a Christian, a spirit that will continue to make you special even if your rejection of God proves to be permanent. I love you and want you regardless of your religious faith. I miss you. Don’t let go.
I’m sorry if I’ve given you the impression that I’m not interested in what’s going on in the world – our world, that is. Please tell me more. Everything you can think of, anything that strikes you. There is no news here whatsoever – no newspapers, not even outdated ones, no access to any information about current affairs, no history books or indeed books of any sort, just puzzle books and glossy magazines about hobbies and professional pursuits. And even those are censored. Yes, there’s an industrious little USIC censor vetting all the magazines and tearing out any pages they don’t approve of!
I finally met Tartaglione, the linguist who went missing. He’s a very addled individual, but he told me the truth about USIC’s agenda. Contrary to our suspicions, they aren’t here for imperialist or commercial reasons. They think the world is ending and they want to make a new start on Oasis. They’re getting the place ready. For who, I don’t know. Not for the likes of you, evidently.
He paused in his typing, re-read what he’d written, considered deleting everything after Don’t let go. In the end he erased Not for the likes of you, evidently, added Love, Peter and pressed the button to transmit.