The Fire Gospel Page 12

  ‘I hope I’m not out of line,’ she said, ‘but haven’t I seen you someplace?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m not from New York.’

  ‘Maybe on TV?’

  He hesitated, dredging his mind for a convincing alternative explanation. But he was too tired, too weak to play games.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I . . . I’m an author.’

  ‘Really?’ Her respect was unfeigned, requiring minimal extra encouragement to cross the threshold into outright adulation. ‘May I ask what books you’ve written?’

  ‘Just one,’ he sighed. ‘It’s called The Fifth Gospel.’

  Her eyes narrowed; small creases appeared between her brows as she tried to place the title.

  ‘I don’t think . . . I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve come across it.’

  His relief was so profound that he broke into a smile. There must be a God. ‘That’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘My husband and I have a young family,’ she explained. ‘We don’t get as much time to read as we used to.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘Is your book successful? I mean, has it achieved . . . what you were hoping it would achieve?’

  Again he smiled. She was smart, this lady. A deft communicator. By not putting a figure on success, by not even mentioning sales, she was doing her bit to preserve his dignity. The way she’d phrased it, even a lousy few hundred copies might qualify as a success, if his hopes for the book had been appropriately modest. Such tact, such grace, from a stranger at a bus stop.

  ‘It’s done very well, I guess, considering,’ he said. ‘I can’t complain.’

  She nodded, already searching for the safest way to keep the conversation going. ‘Who’s your publisher?’

  ‘Elysium.’

  ‘Elysium!’ Again her respect was unmistakably genuine. ‘Wait till I tell Joe! Elysium is the publisher of the most wonderful book, a book that’s very precious to us. It’s changed our lives!’

  He couldn’t stop smiling. If he grinned any wider his head was liable to fall off. ‘It’s good when that happens,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, but the story gets even better!’ she enthused. ‘We ordered our copy second-hand from Amazon. And when we took it out of the wrapper and opened up the first page, it was autographed! Imagine that! Handwritten in ink by Jonas Liffring, right there!’

  ‘Amazing,’ he said. He wished the New York City Transit Authority provided pillows in their shelters. He was so incredibly tired.

  ‘We must have read that book a hundred times,’ she said.

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Sing Times Seven,’ she said. ‘It teaches children, little children, math. Our kids are two and a half and four. And they know their multiplication tables already! It’s like a miracle.’

  ‘Wow,’ he said.

  The number 12 bus pulled up at last, and the woman got to her feet. Theo did too. He was still smiling as he took his first step towards the brightly lit door. Then he fell. Damn it, he fell.

  He was out like a light. Try as he might, he couldn’t rouse himself, couldn’t unwrap the shroud of darkness that had enveloped him, pulling him down into a place where time ceased to matter and centuries could elapse as easily as seconds. For an eternity he lay trapped there, resigned to an eternity more, and another eternity after that. From time to time, dead people came to visit him, speaking not a word, but staring. To each he said, I’m sorry. To Marty Salati. To the man burned by gasoline in Santa Fe. To Mr Muhibb in the Mosul museum. To the nameless girl from Kansas. Apparently satisfied, they drifted off again, leaving him in the dark.

  But then, suddenly, although he could not yet see, he could feel. Invisible hands were carrying him. Bodiless voices were murmuring concern. He was being rescued. A warm hand was stroking his face, patting it gently.

  ‘Stay with us, stay with us,’ a female voice spoke in his ear. She was holding his hand, and he squeezed it.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You hold on.’ And, as the vehicle thrummed all around them, she began to sing:

  ‘One times one is one . . .’

  Epilogue: Amen

  All this, and more, I saw and heard at the foot of our Saviour’s cross. The things I have written down for you are the least of what I understood then; the most glorious understandings elude my ability to write of them. For the hand that holds the pen is attached to the body that aches and growls.

  And that is our misfortune, brothers and sisters: we speak of things that cannot be spoken. We seek to store understandings in our gross flesh that gross flesh cannot contain, like a madman who would snatch a moonbeam and put it in his purse. We try our best to tell a story, so that others might be led towards Jesus, but Jesus is not a story. He is the end of all stories.