The Gospel Of Judas (38 page)

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ I told her as she worked.

‘What?’

‘Wait.’ There was the trunk against one wall of the living room, the battered old trunk that had followed me round my life before finally fetching up here like flotsam cast on
some distant and unexpected beach. I opened the lid and took out an envelope. It was richly decorated with foreign stamps and postmarks. ‘This.’

She watched, head on one side, mouth twisted so that she could bite the inside of her lip. I slid the page out and held it for her to see. Fragments of the thing came out with it. Bits, crumbs, dust.

‘What is this?’

The dry and arid sheet, like rice paper, like rice paper grown discoloured with age. The lettering crawled and writhed across its surface, an exotic, esoteric script. I saw MOΔIN: Modin.

Magda stepped forward and peered to see. ‘What is this? This is old?’

‘Very old.’

She put out a finger to touch it.

‘You can use it,’ I said. ‘Here, take it. You can use it if you like.’

‘It is precious?’

‘It is very precious, but you can use it. It is yours.’

She smiled with delight at the idea of being given something precious. She took the sheet and held it on the palm of one hand and smiled down at it. ‘With my Madonna picture,’ she decided.

‘You’re holding it upside down,’ I told her.

I watched her work. I watched the quick, deft strokes, the way in which paint became object, the sure balance of abstract lines, the strange colours, the curious fragments pasted into the picture, the faded letters of
Koine
, that language that was the language of commerce and social interchange and scripture. The language that has had greater impact on the world than any other, painted now into the world of the weeping Madonna. Fragments
of newspaper and scripture arranged in delicate harmony around the lady with the drops of acrylic crimson that fall like jewels down her cheeks.

Madonna che fa miracoli
one of the newspaper fragments says. The Madonna who performs miracles. TOΣΩMATOHPMENONETΣΦHΛAΘPA says another piece. Then there is a bit of a holy picture painted into the composition, and some thistles, and in the background flames, tongues of fire.

Mrs Margaret Newman, English, enigmatic, a foreigner in this city of foreigners, walks down the narrow streets of the old town towards the waterfront. Behind her, tucked beneath the eaves of an old and narrow house on the rue des Granges, lies the apartment. Ahead of her, visible between the narrow houses, Le Jardin Anglais and Lac Léman and the great plume of water that dashes sudden rainbows against the sky. Around her the insouciant bustle of a city that is not at war.

This will do, she thinks.

She is wearing a floral frock with a cardigan thrown over her shoulders against the cool breeze, and when she walks men turn and watch. One gentleman even approaches her and raises his hat and addresses her in French as
madame
and wishes her good morning. ‘
Voulez-vous venir avec moi?
’

She rebuffs him with that way she has of making the shape of a smile without any of the underpinnings of
welcome. The man moves on. There are other more welcoming smiles, Frenchwomen who managed to cross over the border and are living as refugees, living in the only way there is to live in a country that is overflowing with the dispossessed and the displaced.

Mrs Newman has just come from hearing mass. Mass in this city of Protestantism gives her a small stir of delight. She has already found a church and a priest to whom she can offer her delicate confessions.

She finds a bench in the English Gardens. She sits, crossing her legs and arranging her skirt modestly over her knees, and tries not to think too much. No newspapers, no wireless, no news from over the border. She takes a book from her bag and opens it at the mark and begins to read – Jane Austen, of course. Of course Jane Austen. It is possible to ignore a war. The characters in Jane Austen’s books seem to spend much of their time ignoring their own particular war, the incessant war against Napoleon. She reads her book and feels the stirring inside her. She will find herself a doctor. She will have the tests done – they will inject her urine into toads – but she doesn’t really need the tests. She knows. She knows everything: it will be a boy. It will be Leo; a kind of resurrection. Her atonement will be complete.

It is maybe twenty minutes later that another man approaches – young, slightly awkward, slightly effeminate with his soft collar and foppish hair. ‘Madame Newman?’ he asks. He makes an awkward half-bow, as though he is uncertain whether the gesture has quite gone out of fashion yet.

She marks her page carefully and closes her book. ‘
Oui. Je suis la Madame Newman
.’

The young man looks relieved. ‘I think perhaps we should go somewhere less conspicuous,’ he suggests. It
is a curious sentence, beginning in poorly accented French and ending in perfect German. ‘I am Paul Weatherby of the … ah … British Foreign Office. I understand that you wish to talk to someone about your … how shall I put it? … difficulties.’

She likes the aristocratic hesitations, the hesitant manner. They are unmistakable. She also likes the fact that there is a car in the background, conspicuously manned by other, less effete men. ‘I think that is an excellent idea,’ she says. She gets up from the bench, puts her book into her bag, settles her cardigan over her shoulders. ‘You see, I wish to return home.’