Requiem (12 page)

Sharon
got up to leave, and the two kissed lightly. The scroll-cloth remained on the
table. Tom took his cue from Sharon to leave it there. Ahmed shook his hand and
expressed the hope he might see him again.

Sharon led
the way down the steps, with Ahmed between her and Tom. When they reached the
bottom Ahmed opened the door and Sharon stepped out into the light. But the
Arab blocked Tom's progress for a moment. He leaned his head towards him, and
for one ridiculous moment Tom thought the Arab was going to try to kiss him.
But he whispered urgently, 'You are carrying a
djinn
.'

'What?'

'The
djinn
.
I see the
djinn
you carry. She is trying to speak to you, but you have closed your ears to
her.'

'I don't understand you.'

'Don't be
alarmed. I also carry a
djinn
.
Many
djinn
.
Listen to her. She wants to talk to
you.'

Sharon
called to them, and in the next moment Tom was steered through the door already
closing behind him. All thoughts of the scroll-cloth had been swept from his
mind. He stood in the street feeling bewildered.

'He'll
do it,' said Sharon. 'He'll find out if there's anything of interest. Tom, you
look
pale.''I've
known him for about ten years. He's
always saying this or that person is carrying
djinn
.
You should ignore it.'

After
visiting Ahmed, Sharon cooked dinner. Fastidious in her preparation of the
food and yet careless in its presentation, she served up chunks of roast lamb
wrapped in
pitta
bread with exotic
salad. They wolfed it.

'But my
hallucinations, the woman! I think he saw them. Somehow.'

Sharon
stopped eating. She wiped her mouth with a napkin. 'Look. He may very well have
his
djinn
,
and you may very well have
yours. But you can't see each other's.'

'Why not?'

'Because
yours exist only in your head, and his exist only in his — that's why not.'

'What are his
djinn
?'

'Can't
tell you. Professional etiquette. I first got to know him when he came to me
for psychotherapy. He was in a bad way, guilt-ridden and deeply depressed.
Tormented by all sorts of demons of his own making. He has a brilliant mind,
that Ahmed, and it had turned itself to plaguing him.'

'Did you help him?'

'I
flatter myself that maybe I did. And he helped me. He refused to accept the
normal doctor-patient roles and insisted that I reveal personal things to him
as much as he confided in me. I went along with it. And he destroyed a lot of
my own illusions about things — this is why he calls me the mad Jewess by the
way. I was as ill as he was. It stopped me believing in the doctor-patient
routine myself. He made me realize all this role-acting was complicating the
healing process rather than helping it.'

'But
he recovered?

''He's
functioning effectively; that's the important thing. I couldn't get him to
change his mind about the
djinn
,
however,
which are still a source of torment to him. Tom, something has changed about
you.'

'Oh?'

'It's
in your eyes. You look at me with deep critical judgement. Almost mistrust. Has
Katie's death done this to you?'

Tom ignored
the question. 'So how do you explain his
djinn
?*

'Or your
djinn
’

'Yes. Or mine.'

'It's sexual.'

'Ah-ha! Easy as that.'

'Like most
people,' said Sharon, 'you don't like being told what you are.'

'But it's
banal to say that everything comes down to sex.'

'
Djinn
.
Demons.
Hauntings
. Hallucinations. In fact, pretty much everything
occult or religious is a displacement of sexual energy,'

'I don't see it that way.'

'That's
because you're deliberately shying away from any kind of sexual interpretation
of what's obviously simmering below the surface of things. You're desperate to
deny it, just as you're desperate to deny your own-'

'My own what?' The mood suddenly tilted.

'What do you do for a cuddle now Katie is
gone?'

'And I thought we were talking about
djinn
.'

'And I
told you what I thought about
djinn
.
It's
you I'm interested in. I care about you, Tom.' Her head was resting on the back
of the couch, her cinnamon eyes opaque with pity. He couldn't take her
intensity. She'd assumed too early the old intimacy. Now she'd decided to
counsel him
,
like one of her woman
alcoholics. Tom felt a sudden flash of hatred for her.

'What happened to
Katie?' said Sharon. 'And what happened at the school?
^’

21

Gethsemane was a garden
of cool respite from the heat of midday Jerusalem. Botanists claimed to have
dated some of the ancient olive trees to the time of Jesus. None of the trees,
however, could have belonged to the original garden, since it had been cleared
in
ad
70, but Tom was beginning
to weary of his own scepticism. He stepped up to the oldest-looking tree in the
garden and leaned his back against it.

The
sun in the blue heavens was like a lion's eye. He'd bought a straw hat in the
Arab
souk
to protect himself from its
unblinking stare, making his way up to the garden alone after discouraging
Sharon's offer of company. He was still hiding from her questions. The sun
powered through the shimmering green leaves of the olive tree. He closed his
eyes and wondered what he was running from most.

If it's
the mere matter,
the Head had
suggested,
the mere matter
. . .

He'd pushed
open the door that day to find the children unusually quiet. The smell of rain,
of damp steaming from black blazers. They shuffled uncomfortably, strangely
subdued, wouldn't meet his eyes. Slowly becoming aware of something chalked on
the board behind him, he turned to look at it. It was busy with angry,
three-foot-high letters. The class became silent, watching him take it in.

Thou
shalt
not fuck another man's wife
was written there.

Thou
shalt
not commit adultery. Mister Webster fucks
schoolgirls.

Cunt
,
shit
and
bastard
and
cocksucker
and
bollocks
and
fuck

fuck
fuck
.

A crudely chalked erect
penis ejaculated into an equally crude mouth. The silence of the class pressed
behind him like a flat wave. It foamed at his back, threatening to swamp him, a
tidal force approaching and retreating from the blackboard obscenities. He
read the words again. Then he picked up the eraser and quietly rubbed out the
words and in their stead he wrote, with a trembling hand, the words
Today's
RE. What Do We Mean by the 'Old Testament'?

'Take out
your study books.' he said, struggling to disguise the fracture in his voice.
'Turn to chapter 12.'

In
the Garden of Gethsemane a bead of sweat trickled inside his trouser leg. He
saw a Franciscan monk enter the cave of sand-coloured rock. Tom stroked the
trunk of the olive tree before deciding to follow the monk inside.

The
cave was cool, spacious and airy. The calm interior was half-lit by lamps placed
in alcoves, reflecting an amber glow from the walls. The monk, in brown
Franciscan robe and leather sandals, was sitting on a stool at a desk. He was
writing. There was something reassuringly authentic in the spectacle of his
writing. At least Tom didn't feel he was in a theme park. The monk looked up
and smiled. He was a large-framed man with thinning, dark hair and velvet eyes.

'Excuse me.'

The
monk wasn't writing at all; rather, he was using a ruler to draw lines on a
blank sheet of paper. He ruled a new line before laying down an
expensive-looking ballpoint pen. 'Sorry,' he whispered, looking up. 'My
English . . . not good.'

Tom
had in his hand a piece of paper, and now he wasn't sure whether to show it.
'It's just this. I mean, it's Latin. I wondered if you recognized it.'

The monk took the paper.

^‘
De
profundis
clamavi
,’
Tom said
impatiently. 'Up from the depths.'

^‘
De
profundis
clamavi
,'
the monk
cooed encouragingly. He put down the scrap of paper and got down off his stool.
He let an index finger float heavenward as he struggled to remember some
English words.
^‘
De
profundis
,
eet
ees
Psalm, yes, Psalm one-
hoondred
and
tirty
.' His eyes
were bright with the little task he'd been set, his voice a soft and reassuring
whisper. Tom thought he was perhaps Spanish. 'Up from
ze
depths have I cried unto zee, O Lord. My soul wait for
ze
Lord more
zan
zey
zat
watch for
ze
morning.
Eet
ees
psalm of mercy. Forgiveness.
Redemption, yes.'

Tom
turned to squint out of the cave entrance into the bright light beyond. When he
looked back at the monk, his eyes were moist. The monk saw it, smiled and put a
hand on his shoulder.

This
poor man thinks I'm moved by the beauty of the psalm, thought Tom. He felt ridiculous,
childish. How was the monk to know his eyes were filling up because of his own
personal tragedies? Because of his own betrayals? Because, above all, he
couldn't remember which he'd lost first, his wife or his faith?

He
thanked the man and turned away. He sensed the monk watch him walk from the
mouth of the cave. As he stepped from the cool, the heat of the sun rolled over
him like a lion's breath. He felt unsteady, dizzy. He approached an ancient
olive, taking off his hat and leaning against the tree. Heat ripples distorted
his vision of the garden. White light bleached the foliage. A stab of migraine
made him close his eyes.

If
it's the mere matter of a few words being chalked on a blackboard,
Stokes had said,
well, that’s happened to most
teachers. Anyone offended by it is as sad as those
who take
pleasure in chalking it.
But Stokes was wrong. It wasn't
the mere matter of the words.

The
problem didn't go away. The writing came back several times. He'd had his
suspicions but no proof. He even began to suspect some of the pupils of
shielding him, of wiping the board clean before he reached the classroom. Then
the culprit was finally revealed, not through any detective work on his part.
Two boy pupils spoke to him after class one day and gave him the name of a
third, whom Tom had suspected.

The
boy was a reasonable student, a slightly surly but bright fourteen-year-old who
had mysteriously hardened his attitude towards Tom some time ago. Tom detained
the boy and confronted him. Initially the boy denied everything, but eventually
he broke down and admitted some responsibility, though he remained oddly
defiant that he'd chalked the vile messages on only one occasion, even though
Tom had himself wiped the board six or seven times. It was only when Tom promised
not to take the matter to his parents that the boy was prepared to offer any
kind of explanation. He had a violent attachment to Kelly McGovern, one of
Tom's fourth-form English groups, and Kelly in turn, Tom was surprised to
learn, had a passionate crush on Tom. The youth was pathologically jealous of
Kelly's feelings for her teacher.

Tom had done
the kind thing and had let the youth go away with a warning, under sanction for
what would happen if there was any repetition of the events. He'd also reassured
the boy that crushes for teachers were not uncommon and, even if they weren't,
he was a happily married man with no interest in schoolgirls.

No,
it was not the matter of 'mere words' which had caused Tom to abandon teaching.

When
he opened his eyes to the garden, he saw the veiled woman.

She
stood under another olive tree, shaded from the dazzling light. She was poised
only a few feet away, the same Arab woman who'd dogged his movements through
Jerusalem. But she was transfigured. Her rough brown robes had gone. In their
place was a robe of bleached white. She wore a new veil, of fine grey material,
semi-opaque. The sun striking from her white robe almost blinded him. The
familiar spiced scent trailed like a ribbon in the still air. Tom blinked. She waited
under the tree, not a phantom but flesh and blood, and beckoned to Tom to
follow her.