The Book of Strange New Things(89)

And, from the first page, he read Psalm 23. ‘The Lord be He who care for me. I will need no more . . . ’ and so on, until he reached ‘I will dwell in the home of the Lord for ever.’

Then he read it again.

And again.

Each time he read it, more of the Oasans read it aloud with him. Were they reading or reciting? It didn’t matter. Their communal voice was swelling, and it sounded melodious and clear, almost entirely free of vocal impairments. ‘He bid me lie in green land down. He lead me by river where no one can drown. He make my ??oul like new again. He lead me in the path of Good. He do all thi??, for He be God.’

By the fifth repetition, his own voice was lost in the mighty unison.





15


Hero of the moment, king of the day


A wise man once asked Peter: ‘Do you know what you are?’

‘What I am?’

‘Yes.’

It was a question that could mean so many things, depending on who was posing it. It had, for example, been uttered to him on several occasions by angry thugs who’d supplied the answer themselves – ‘A stupid cunt’, or some similar insult – and then beat him up. It had been asked of him by officials and bureaucrats who regarded him, for one reason or other, as a thorn in their side. It had been said affectionately and admiringly too, by people who went on to tell him he was ‘a total sweetie’, ‘a treasure’, or even ‘my rock’. Big things to live up to.

‘I try not to think about myself too much. I hope I’m just a man who loves God.’

‘You’re a people person,’ the wise man said, nodding decisively. ‘That will take you a very long way.’ The wise man was the pastor of a church that Peter would soon inherit. He was an elderly soul, and had that special mixture of benign tolerance and stoic disappointment typical of a minister who’d been in the job too long. He was intricately familiar with all the ways his parishioners were resistant to change, all the ways they could be a pain in the arse – though he would never use such language, of course.

‘You like people. That’s actually quite rare,’ the old pastor went on.

‘Isn’t it basic human nature to be sociable?’

‘I’m not talking about that,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t think you’re necessarily that sociable. A bit of a loner, even. What I mean is, you’re not disgusted or irritated by the human animal. You just take them as they come. Some people never get fed up with dogs; they’re dog people. Doesn’t matter what sort of dog it is, big or small, placid or yappy, well-behaved or naughty – they’re all lovable in their own way, because they’re dogs and dogs are a good thing. A pastor should feel that way about human beings. But you know what? – not many do. Not many at all. You’ll go far, Peter.’

It had felt odd to be told this, with such certitude, by a sage old-timer who wasn’t easily fooled. Peter’s co-existence with his fellow humans had not always been a happy one, after all. Could someone who’d behaved as badly as he did when he was in his teens and twenties – lying and breaking promises and stealing from any altruistic fool who gave him the benefit of the doubt – truly be said to love people? And yet the old pastor was well aware of his history. There were no secrets between shepherds.

Now, Peter was sitting cross-legged, dazzled by the light, half-delirious. Right in front of him, also cross-legged, sat a small boy – himself when eight or nine years old. He was a Cub Scout. He was proud and happy to be a Cub Scout, possessor of a green shirt and sewn-on badges and arcane knowledge about knots and tent pitching and the proper way to light a fire. He was looking forward to becoming a fully-fledged Scout soon, not just a Cub, so that he could learn archery and go hiking in the mountains and save the lives of strangers who had been buried under avalanches or bitten by snakes. As it turned out, he would never get to be a Scout – his family circumstances would soon become too awkward, and the Cubs membership would be cancelled and his uniform would sit neatly folded in the cupboard until finally the silverfish ruined it – but at eight he didn’t know that yet, and he was sitting cross-legged in his shorts and neckerchief, almost levitating with pleasure to be here amongst his wolf pack.

Sweat trickled from his brow into his eyes. He blinked and the blurry world sharpened into view. The child sitting before him was not himself at the age of eight. It was not even a child. It was Jesus Lover Seventeen, a creature unlike him in almost every imaginable way, except that she, or he, or it could sit cross-legged and clasp hands in prayer. Her robe was spinach-green, and so were her soft boots, albeit speckled with brown dirt. The sun, almost directly overhead, cast a shadow under her hood, swallowing her face in blackness.

‘What are you thinking, Jesus Lover Seventeen?’ he asked.

There was, as always, a pause. The Oasans were unaccustomed to thinking about thinking, or maybe they just found it difficult to translate their thoughts into English.

‘Before you came,’ said Jesus Lover Seventeen, ‘we were all alone and weak. Now, ???ogether, we are ?????rong.’

There was something poignant about the fact that her tongue, or vocal cords, or whatever it was she spoke with, could manage the words ‘alone’ and ‘weak’ without much trouble, but that the words ‘together’ and ‘strong’ were almost impossible for her to utter. Her petite form made her look all the more vulnerable, but then everyone sitting round about her was petite and vulnerable-looking, too, with their thin arms and narrow shoulders and grubby mittens and booties. He might be ministering to a tribe of children and shrunken old people, a tribe that had lost all its full-sized men and women.