The Fire Gospel Read online

  ‘Forget the woods. It was a nice idea. Nice ideas get left behind sometimes. We got to adjust to reality.’

  Another pause.

  ‘So,’ said Nuri. ‘You gonna shoot the guy? Is that what you’re gonna do?’

  ‘Relax, pal. We just let nature take its course.’

  ‘Nature? What you mean nature?’

  ‘I mean, don’t give him any more fuckin’ Pepsi,’ snapped the white guy. ‘Don’t give him any more nothing.’

  ‘Don’t curse, man. We don’t curse, remember? We honour God with our mouth, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah . . . whatever.’

  ‘I’m not gonna take this,’ said Nuri.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said the white guy, sounding sullen and exhausted and rather petulant. ‘You are gonna sit down here next to me and we are gonna watch the TV until the news comes on.’

  ‘I am not gonna sit here for two weeks or whatever while a guy dies of thirsting and starving in our armchair. Have you gone crazy?’

  The white guy leapt up, yelling: ‘You want a quick solution, pal? You wanna go straight to the end?’

  A scuffle erupted: grunting and stumbling and cries of exertion. Theo imagined the two men locked in titanic combat; he had a hopeful vision of them in a wrestling clinch over the shotgun and it firing accidentally and the white guy sprawling on the floor, dead. Instead, a moment later, the white guy and his shotgun jumped right in front of him, the barrel aimed straight at Theo’s face.

  How disappointing, was all he had time to think before the big bang.

  The bullet had blown him through space, way past the sky, way past the moon. He was adrift in the solar system, a million miles above the earth. He was still tied to the armchair, and he and it spun slowly in the airless blackness, tempting him with the illusion that the stars and planets were revolving around him. He knew this was not so. He was a small puppet of meat from Canada, with a hole blasted in it, twirling in the void like any other particle of debris.

  ‘We are dust,’ Malchus had said, in the conclusion of his Gospel. ‘But we are dust with a mission. We carry within us the seeds of our Saviour, which will blossom in those who come after us.’

  Damn, thought Theo. I should have had children.

  ‘I’m sorry, man,’ said Nuri. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Theo’s universe stopped revolving, and coalesced into a young Arab who was kneeling at his feet.

  Theo squirmed in the chair, gasping for breath, dizzy with the adrenalin of having been dropped back into his body from a height of a million miles. Nuri grunted with effort as he untied the bonds around Theo’s ankles.

  ‘You better go to a hospital,’ the Arab said.

  Theo’s newly freed hands raced over the surface of his body, stroking his face, his neck, his chest, his stomach, in search of holes. His clothing was covered in charred fragments of polyurethane foam. His palm came to rest on his right side, just under his ribcage, where he felt bubbling wetness and raw pain.

  ‘Don’t mess with it, man,’ advised Nuri.

  ‘Oh my God,’ moaned Theo. ‘I’m going to die.’

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ said Nuri. ‘It’s not deep. It’s . . . uh . . .’ He flapped his plump fingers delicately, to indicate a lightness of touch.

  ‘Superficial?’

  ‘That’s the word,’ said Nuri. And he indicated a large hole in the chair, where the bullet had wrought most of its harm.

  The apartment was eerily quiet. The TV had stopped chattering. The window blinds, which had been constantly closed since Theo’s arrival, had been raised, revealing a cloudy late-afternoon sky.

  ‘What happened?’ said Theo. ‘Where’s . . . uh . . . your friend?’

  ‘He tried to shoot you. But I turned away the gun.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No, he’s . . . sleeping.’ Nuri glanced over to the other side of the room, then down at his own soft hands.

  ‘You knocked him out?’

  Nuri seemed a little embarrassed at this allusion to his physical prowess. ‘He’s not very strong. He’s . . . he’s sick, man. His bones, his whole system, the news is not good. He takes maybe ten, fifteen pills a day.’

  Theo couldn’t think how to respond to this.

  ‘You saved my life,’ he said at last. ‘Thank you.’

  Nuri appeared not to have heard. He had other things he was chewing through, things that were more urgently in need of articulation. ‘You shouldn’t judge him, man,’ he said, with the utmost sincerity. ‘He wasn’t always like this. He used to be . . .’ Nuri’s luxurious brown eyes misted over, as he gazed back into the history of his relationship with the white guy. ‘More or less exactly like a Muslim,’ he concluded.

  Theo sat upright. His side throbbed, and he was aware that his bowels had opened.

  ‘What happens next?’ he asked Nuri.

  Nuri shrugged, as if there was no point consulting him. ‘I don’t know. You’re free to go, I guess. I never wanted any of this trouble. I just wanted to put a stop to your book and that’s what I did. Mission accomplished. You can call the police, I don’t care. I’m not afraid of jail. I’m not afraid of anything.’

  Theo tried to stand, fell back into the armchair. More fragments of stuffing puffed out of the gunshot hole. Nuri took hold of Theo’s wrist and hauled him upright.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone, I promise,’ said Theo. Blood pattered onto the carpet at his feet. He would have to get hold of a bandage of some sort, if that wasn’t pushing his luck.

  Nuri was unimpressed with Theo’s promise. ‘I know you’ll tell everybody who’ll listen that your confession was a fake,’ he said. ‘But it won’t matter. The story is out there. Once a story is out there, you can never take it back. That’s the way it is.’

  ‘I meant, I won’t tell anyone about you. I’ll say I couldn’t see who kidnapped me; they wore masks the whole time. And . . . and I’ll say they drove me to the woods.’

  Nuri smiled shyly.

  Theo got ready as fast as he could, given the handicaps of a grisly, freely bleeding gunshot wound, dehydration and shit-filled pants. His fear was that while he was in the bathroom, squeezing brown soup out of a sponge, the white guy would wake up and shoot him again. Six weeks later, the cops would break into the place and find the skeletal corpse of Theo Grippin with its head blown clean off, all because Theo had spent too long fastidiously sponging his testicles. But the white guy didn’t wake up. He remained unconscious on the couch, tucked up in a blanket. His mouth hung slack and his breath was laboured, obstructed by his lolling tongue. He looked about seventy years old.

  Nuri gave Theo a clean white tea towel to use as a bandage and a tight zip-up leather jacket to hold it in place against his waist.

  ‘I can’t accept this,’ protested Theo. ‘It’s your jacket.’

  ‘It’s not my jacket,’ said Nuri sadly. ‘It’s his jacket. And he doesn’t wear it anymore.’

  Theo zipped the garment on. The ensemble of loud patterned shirt, much-too-small leather jacket, and sodden trousers was not exactly Barbara Kuhn Show potential. At least he still had his wallet. He’d intended to transfer it to his suit jacket when he was about to face the crowd at Pages, for the sake of comfort while seated on the hard plastic chair, but had forgotten, and now his suit jacket was no doubt incinerated along with half the books in the store.

  ‘Is your name really Griepenkerl?’ asked Nuri as he opened the front door.

  ‘Yes,’ said Theo. Fresh air blew into the apartment, rustling old food wrappers and other bits of garbage. A childlike whimper came from behind the couch.

  ‘That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?’ said Nuri.

  Theo shook his head. ‘German.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Nuri, and, truth be told, he really did look relieved. ‘The bus you want is a number 12.’

  ‘Number 12,’ said Theo, staggering out into the stairway.

  ‘Make sure you get on that bus,’ Nuri called after him.
‘This neighbourhood is bad news. People get hurt.’

  The People

  Theo Griepenkerl walked uncertainly down a street he’d never seen before. The sun was setting and all around him loomed urban grimness of the most aggressive kind. Large rectangles of vacant ground, stripped back to naked gravel after the demolition of whatever had stood there before, were cordoned off with steel mesh and barbed wire. A necklace of multicoloured trash lined the sidewalks. Mysterious metal oblongs, deposited in amongst the cheap rusty cars by construction firms, had been repeatedly defaced with slapdash graffiti, the graceless hieroglyphics of hip-hop. The squat apartment block where Nuri and the white guy lived seemed to be the only functional residential building in the vicinity, and even that was in doubt: almost all its windows were unlit. Framed against the glowering sky, it resembled a giant tombstone.

  ‘Blowjob, mister?’

  A black woman with a nylon blond wig and waxy red lipstick was addressing him from behind a telephone booth whose telephone had been ripped out. Theo paused, befuddled. In recent weeks, hundreds of women had approached him, wanting signatures or consolation or simply to be noticed by The Author. For a moment he thought the blowjob in question was something this woman wanted him to bestow on her.

  ‘Fifteen dollars,’ she proposed.

  Theo looked her up and down. Her toes and the muscles of her feet were bunched and tortured from the strain of keeping a purchase on her ridiculously high-heeled shoes; her legs trembled slightly with the effort. Even her matronly cleavage trembled, the soft dusky flesh quivering like Jell-O. Tattooed on the curve of one breast was a long-tailed bird, caught in flight towards her throat.

  Theo fumbled his wallet out of his wet trouser pocket, extracted a twenty dollar bill.

  ‘Keep the change,’ he said, and hurried away.

  He couldn’t actually hurry very fast; it was more an accelerated stumble. If anyone decided to follow him – the prostitute, for example, or a gang of muggers – he would have no chance. Each step sent a jab of pain through his side. He tried limping, in case it helped. It didn’t.

  Several hundred steps later, he reached the main street. It was a main street like any other, a gallery of consumerist façades obscuring the vestiges of much older architecture. Cars cruised back and forth under a web of electricity wires and traffic gadgetry. The specialist shops had closed for the day, but the convenience stores, takeaway joints and video shops were still open, and people were wandering in and out of them, or just generally hanging around. There was laughter, and negotiation, and spirited dispute about a range of subjects other than The Fifth Gospel. Life was going on.

  Theo went into a convenience store and bought a bottle of water. He considered buying a pack of cigarettes as well, but his throat still felt scorched from the explosion in the bookshop. Maybe he had discovered the secret of quitting.

  Before allowing him to walk away with the water bottle, the checkout guy scrutinised Theo’s five dollar bill for what seemed like a full minute. Theo wondered if he’d given the cashier a fifty by mistake. But eventually the bill got stashed in the cash register and Theo was handed his change.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Theo.

  ‘Have a good night,’ drawled the cashier.

  Theo stood on the street outside the store and guzzled water from the bottle. He spilled some on his clothes and looked down to wipe it off. A hunk of the white tea towel was drooping out of the bottom of his leather jacket, revealing a pinkish blush of blood. He tucked it back in, and leaned into the store’s doorway.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called to the operator, over the heads of the people queuing up with their purchases. ‘How far is the nearest hospital?’

  The operator ignored him but an old lady in the queue pointed a gnarled finger due west and said, ‘Number 12 bus.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Theo.

  He walked further down the street, sucking on the bottle. He wished he was in a warm, clean bed, his skin dry and fragrant, dusted to a silky finish with talcum powder. Maybe he should forget the hospital and check into a hotel instead. Then he could bleed to death in comfort rather than spending half the night waiting in an A&E ward jammed shoulder to shoulder with lowlifes and bums.

  He swerved to avoid colliding with a fast-moving couple, and blundered into a trash can. The ground felt uneven underfoot, and the hems of his trouser legs started flapping. He was standing over a ventilation grille that was blowing warm air up from the subway. Bliss. He positioned himself so that the maximum amount of hot breeze penetrated his clothing. If he stood here for a full half hour, his pants would dry out and there would no longer be sodden fabric scratching his hips and thighs as he walked. That would be very nice. Absence of suffering was definitely a noble aim.

  He stood above the vent for about eight minutes, enjoying the anticipation of feeling better, until he realised that he was about to black out, and that, if he fell forehead first onto this metal grille, his noble aim of avoiding suffering would be spoiled. So he walked on.

  Or tried to. His progress down the street was impeded by a tall black guy wearing a green, yellow and red striped T-shirt with a majestic lion’s head printed on it. A Rastafarian, maybe, although he didn’t have the Medusa head of dreadlocks. His hair was clipped close to his skull. He was, in fact, the spitting image of John Coltrane. Put him in a natty tailored suit and he’d be Coltrane.

  ‘You look lost, brother,’ said the Rasta. He didn’t sound Jamaican at all, more Bronx. ‘Have you heard about Jesus?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Theo. ‘I’ve heard about Jesus.’

  A big grin. ‘You don’t look it, brother.’

  ‘I’m not feeling too hot,’ said Theo. ‘Gunshot wound.’

  ‘Hey, I got one of those, too,’ said the Rasta, and immediately lifted his shirt. Theo leaned closer to appraise the nasty scar displayed on the left pectoral, near the armpit. The man’s physique was otherwise superb.

  ‘Iraq, brother,’ he said.

  ‘Iraq?’ echoed Theo.

  ‘I’m a marine. Ex-marine.’

  ‘A Rastafarian Christian ex-marine?’

  The image of Coltrane allowed his shirt to fall back over his wound. ‘I’m movin’ away from the Rasta thing,’ he said. ‘Haile Selassie was a great man, a great, great man, but he ain’t the Messiah. There can only be one Messiah.’

  ‘A lot of people feel that way,’ agreed Theo. Tiny lights had begun to swim back and forth along his vision, like miniature fish.

  ‘The Rasta thing was, like, a phase after I got back from Iraq,’ the Coltrane commando explained. ‘I couldn’t just come home and fit in with regular folks.’

  ‘I can appreciate that.’

  ‘We doin’ some eeevil shit over there, you know that?’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘They told us we’re goin’ there to save their ass. Don’t believe it, man! We don’t save nobody’s ass. We just bust the place up. And Iraq is the cradle of civilisation, did you know that?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I’ve read something to that effect.’

  ‘The Garden of Eden was located there. In Basra.’ The Coltrane guy whacked his brow with his palm, to indicate a blinding realisation. ‘I was patrolling the Garden of Eden, man, with a grenade hangin’ on my belt, ready to shoot any mo-fo that moved! That ain’t right.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Theo was shifting his balance from foot to foot. The wound in his side was burning, broiling, as though a germ barbeque was being prepared in there. ‘Look, I’d better get going. Can I give you some money?’

  ‘How much you need, brother?’

  ‘No, can I give you some money?’

  The Coltrane commando smiled broadly. ‘You think I’m some kinda panhandler, brother? I don’t want your money. I want to spread the word of Jesus.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’ Theo was thinking of something less lame to add when he experienced a brief interruption of consciousness. A moment or two, no more. Just long enough to find himself in the arms of
the marine, being held vaguely upright by rock-hard muscles. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You better go to a hospital, dude,’ said Coltrane. Each syllable was spoken with exaggerated distinctness, as though he doubted Theo’s capacity to absorb good advice. ‘You promise me that?’

  ‘I promise,’ said Theo, staggering onto his own feet again.

  ‘Get your body fixed up, then fill it with Jesus,’ said Coltrane. ‘Worked for me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Theo. He was already walking away when he felt something papery being pressed into his hand. He hoped it wasn’t Coltrane’s hard-earned welfare money.

  ‘Read that, brother,’ the voice rang out after him. ‘It’s the most important document you will ever read. It will change your life. I guarantee it, brother.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you very much.’

  Theo tottered onwards. His progress towards the hospital would have to be more straightforward from now on, or he would never get there. He would have to ignore anyone who called out to him. One foot in front of the other, march march march.

  A sixth sense warned him to stop in his tracks. He’d almost collided with a metal pole, planted well into the kerb. The pole was crucifix shaped, with an icon of a bus at the top and a crossbar inscribed with the names of streets and the number 12.

  Theo swung into the shelter and sat down on the seat provided. He unzipped his leather jacket slightly, slipped Coltrane’s pamphlet inside, and zipped it up again. He got the impression that, inside his jacket, things were wetter and soggier than they ought to have been if his wound was as superficial as Nuri had estimated.

  Sitting down did him good. It was an excellent idea; his legs approved. He had walked too long. There was no reason for it anymore. The white guy with the shotgun was not going to catch up with him now, nor would the prostitute seize him by the arm and demand her blowjob. He could relax.

  ‘Excuse me.’ A female voice near his ear.

  He turned. There was a woman sitting next to him on the bench, a fortyish woman with kindly eyes, a big nose and long dark hair. She was the only other person waiting for the bus.