The Book of Strange New Things(93)

He still had no clear idea of the size of the settlement’s population, but was inclined to think that it might be a few thousand, and that the Jesus Lovers represented only a tiny minority of the souls living in this great hive of dwellings. Birth and death must surely be going on as normal inside those amber walls, the same as in any other big town, but he had no access to it – until, one day, Jesus Lover One came and told him that his mother had died.

‘My mother,’ he announced. ‘Dead.’

‘Oh! I’m so sorry!’ said Peter, instinctively putting his arms around Lover One. He could tell at once that it was the wrong thing to do, like embracing a woman who absolutely doesn’t want to be touched by anyone other than her husband. Lover One’s shoulders cringed, his body stiffened, his arms trembled, his face turned away lest it brush against Peter’s chest. Peter released him and stepped back in embarrassment.

‘Your mother,’ he blurted. ‘What an awful loss.’

Lover One gave this notion some deliberation before responding.

‘Mother made me,’ he said at last. ‘If mother never be, I never be al??o. Mother therefore very impor???an??? man.’

‘Woman.’

‘Woman, ye??.’

A few more seconds passed. ‘When did she die?’ asked Peter.

Again there was a pause. Oasans had difficulty choosing the linguistic boxes into which they felt obliged, by others, to put their conceptions of time. ‘Before you came.’

‘Before I came to . . . Oasis?’

‘Before you came with Word-in-Hand.’

Last few days, then. Maybe even yesterday. ‘Is she . . . Has there been a funeral?’

‘Few . . .?’

‘Have you put her in the ground?’

‘??oon,’ said Jesus Lover One, with a pacifying motion of the glove, as if giving his solemn promise that the procedure would be attended to as soon as it was feasible. ‘Af???er the harve?????.’

‘After the . . .?’

Lover One searched his vocabulary for a pronounceable alternative. ‘The reaping.’

Peter nodded, although he didn’t really understand. He guessed that this reaping must be the harvest of one of the Oasans’ food crops, a job so time-sensitive and labour-intensive that the community simply couldn’t fit a funeral into their schedule. The old lady would have to wait. He imagined a wizened, slightly smaller version of Lover One nestled motionless in her bed, one of those cots that already so closely resembled a coffin. He imagined the fluffy wisps of bedding being wrapped around her like a cocoon, in preparation for her burial.

As it turned out, there was no need to guess or imagine. Lover One, speaking in the same tone he might have used to invite a guest to see a notable monument or tree (if this place had had such things as monuments and trees), invited him to come and see the body of his mother.

Peter tried and failed to think of a suitable reply. ‘Good idea’, ‘Thank you’, and ‘I’d like that’ all felt wrong somehow. Instead, in silence, he put on his yellow boots. It was a brilliant morning, and the shade inside his church ill-prepared him for the dazzling sunshine.

He accompanied Jesus Lover One across the scrubland to the compound, taking two steps for every three or four of the Oasan’s. He was learning many things on this visit, and how to amble was one of them. There was an art to walking slower than your instinct told you to, keeping pace with a much smaller person, yet not appearing exasperated or clumsy. The trick was to pretend you were wading through waist-deep water, watched by a judge who would award you points for poise.

Side by side, they reached Jesus Lover One’s house. It looked identical to all the others, and had not been adorned with any flags, accoutrements or painted messages proclaiming an inhabitant’s death. A few people were walking around nearby, no more than normal, and they were getting on with business as usual, as far as Peter could tell. Lover One led him around the back of the building, to the patch of ground where clothing was washed and hung, and where children often played with ?????, the Oasan equivalent of boules, soft dark balls made of compacted moss.

Today, there were no children or ?????, and the washing line strung between two houses was bare. The yard was given over to Jesus Lover One’s mother.

Peter gazed at the small body lying uncushioned and uncovered on the ground. It had been stripped of its robe. This alone would have made Peter unable to tell whether he’d known this person or not, as he was still dependent, to a shameful degree, on fabric colour. But even if he’d managed to remember some distinctive aspect of this creature’s physiognomy – some variation in skin texture or the shape of facial bulges – it wouldn’t have helped now, as the body was obscured under a shimmering, shivering layer of insects.

He looked aside at Jesus Lover One, to gauge how alarmed he should be at this nightmarish spectacle. Maybe when Lover One had set off earlier this morning, the corpse had been free of parasites and they’d all seized their opportunity in his absence. If so, Lover One didn’t seem perturbed by the swarm. He contemplated the insects as calmly as if they were flowers on a shrub. Admittedly, these bugs were every bit as beautiful as flowers: they had iridescent wings, glossy carapaces of lavender and yellow. Their buzz was musical. They covered almost every inch of flesh, giving the corpse the appearance of a twitching, breathing effigy.