The Book of Strange New Things(87)

Ah, the power of silence. He’d first experienced it as a small boy, parked next to his mother at her Quaker meetings. A room full of people who were content to be quiet, who didn’t need to defend the boundaries of their egos. There was so much positive energy in that room that he would not have been surprised if the chairs had started to lift off the floor, levitating the whole circle of worshippers to the ceiling. That was how it felt with the Oasans, too.

Maybe he should have been a Quaker. But they had no ministers, and no God – not in any real, fatherly sense. Sure, it was peaceful to sit in a community of companions, watching the play of sunlight on the pullover worn by the old man opposite, allowing yourself to be mesmerised by glowing wool-fibres as the sunlight moved slowly from one person to another. A similar state of peacefulness could sometimes be granted when you were homeless: a time in the afternoon when you’d found a comfortable spot, and you’d managed to get warm at last, and there was nothing to do but watch the sunlight’s incremental shift from one paving-stone to the next. Meditation, some might call it. But in the end, he preferred something less passive.

He took up his position at the pulpit, and rested his fingertips on the burnished toffee-coloured surface where he might spread out his notes. The pulpit was slightly too low, as though the Oasans had made it for as tall a creature as they could imagine but, in his absence, had still underestimated his height. Its design was modelled on the spectacular carved pulpits of ancient European cathedrals, where a massive leatherbound Bible might lie on the spread wing-span of an oaken eagle.

As a matter of fact, the Oasans had a photograph of just such a pulpit, given them by Kurtzberg, torn from an old magazine article. They’d shown it to Peter with pride. He’d tried to reassure them that worship was an intimate communication between the individual and God, nothing grandiose about it, and that any props should reflect the local culture of the worshippers, but this was not an easy concept to get across when you had a crowd of foetus-like heads jostling around you, murmuring their admiration for a fragment of a Sunday supplement as though it was a holy relic.

In any event, his pulpit did not much resemble the intricately feathered eagle in the photo. Its streamlined surface, inscribed with randomly chosen letters from the alphabet, might just as easily be an aeroplane’s wings.

‘I?? i??? good?’ A soft voice, which he recognised at once. Jesus Lover Five. He’d left the door of the church open and she’d walked in, dressed in her canary-yellow robe as usual.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘A lovely welcome.’

‘God ble?? our reunion, Father Pe???er.’

He looked past her small form, through the doorway behind her. Several dozen Oasans were making their way across the scrubland, but they were far away still; Lover Five had hurried ahead. Hurrying was unusual among her people. She appeared none the worse for it.

‘I’m happy to see you,’ said Peter. ‘As soon as I left, I wanted to come back.’

‘God ble?? our reunion, Father Pe???er.’ Slung on her shoulder was a net haversack, with a furry, yellow lump stashed in it – the same intense hue as her robe. He thought it might be a shawl, but she pulled it out and held it up for him to examine. It was a pair of boots.

‘For you,’ she said.

Smiling shyly, he plucked them from her gloved hands. Unlike the petite booties he’d been given on his first visit, these looked as though they might actually be his size. He removed his sandals – whose inner soles were misshapen and almost black from constant wear – and slipped the boots onto his feet instead. They fitted perfectly.

He laughed. Bright yellow boots and an Islamic gown that resembled a dress: if he’d had any ambition to be a macho man, this combo would have spelled the end of it. He lifted one foot and then the other, displaying to Lover Five how excellent her handiwork was. Having witnessed the Oasans making clothes on a previous visit, he knew how much labour this project must have cost her – and how much obsessive concentration. Oasans handled sewing-needles with the same care and respect that humans might handle chainsaws or blowtorches. Each stitch was such a ponderous ritual that he couldn’t bear to watch.

‘They’re excellent,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘For you,’ she said again.

They stood together by the open door, watching the rest of the Jesus Lovers make progress towards them.

‘How’s your brother, Jesus Lover Five?’ asked Peter.

‘In the ground.’

‘I mean the other one,’ said Peter. ‘The one who’s causing you sorrow because he doesn’t love Jesus.’

‘In the ground,’ she repeated. Then, helpfully, she added: ‘Al??o.’

‘He died? In the last week?’

‘The la????? week,’ she said. ‘Ye??.’

Peter stared into the shadowed cleft of her hooded head, wishing he could guess what emotion lay behind her impeded speech. His experience so far had made him suspect that Oasans’ emotions were expressed in the rustlings and burbles and squimphs they uttered when not straining to imitate an alien language.

‘What did he die of? What happened?’

Lover Five stroked herself perfunctorily over her arms, chest and midriff, to indicate the entire body. ‘In??ide him, many thing?? gone the wrong way. Clean thing?? became foul. ?????rong thing?? became weak. Full thing?? became emp???y. Clo??ed thing?? became open. Open thing?? became clo??ed. Dry thing??became filled with wa ???er. Many other thing?? al??o. I have no word?? for all the thing??.’