CHAPTER TWENTY
As he walked blindly through the winding corridors, feeling sicker with every step, he anchored his drifting attention on one of the hundreds of large televisions that draped the walls and above the passage of doorways, their screens all flickering with the same image; an overweight woman, maybe in her fifties, taking the whole of the screen as the camera zoomed in on her bulging eyes and her trembling lips, with every dimple on her face looking like a cavernous and aged, earthly fracture and every mole like a mountainous rock, purging from her converging, molten core.
Joao stood still in wonder and watched the screen just above an entry to a set of toilets. The woman on the screen was reaching for a microphone with her short stubby fingers which were twitching away, the white of her eyes widening as her crazed and hungered stare feasted upon the hands on a man in a brown suit; still off camera, reaching forwards over a crowd of rubber necking preachers who twisted and turned their heads and their bodies to follow the line of the camera’s sight.
The woman; now nattering her teeth and salivating from the corners of her stretching mouth, wrenched the microphone from the man’s hands and pulled it towards her mouth as if she were a hungry bear, snatching a salmon in its flight upstream. It looked like she was about to swallow it whole as she opened up wide and thrust the microphone towards her rapacious looking expression.
“Praise Jesus,” she said.
A roar ripped up through the auditorium, thousands of people, tens of thousands, scores of thousands, all chanting and cheering into the air with their hands shaking on imaginary tambourines; rattling the attention of the gods or shaking off the dusted shrill of the devil.
“Praise Jesus, thanks be to god” they shouted and sang to the air.
Joao mouthed the words himself, silent, but involved in the effect of the woman’s initial plea. He stood still and dumbed, but his lips spelt out every word as the crowd ascended their glory and spirit in the name of their saviour, eschewing their fears and impelling themselves; by the grace of god, from the pit of their depressions as their voices echoed through the heavens.
“Glory and thanks be to god indeed, for all of us, for this church, for our health, for this life; saddled with challenge but so worth the turning of every grain of sand, for every desert we turn,” he said shouting, “to find that single speck of gold. And it is in god that we trust but it is in Jesus that we bear our arms and we carry in our hands, belief as our weapon, that we can dig until our hands are blue and our fingers fall off, that we can dig well after we have been cursed to stop, that we never stop digging, we never stop turning the sands, because the gold that we search for, the light of this world, is not buried by the sands of time, by the desert of desperation and spiritual desiccation, it is in all of us, in our hearts, in our souls. It is our wounds that we wear as a symbol of our diligence, of our devotion. It is the cross that each and every one of us are willing to bear for the sake for our lord, just as his was borne for everyone in this room, everyone watching at home now around the world; hello by the way to our new viewers in Myanmar,” The Apostle said, lowering his zest and speaking in a more welcomed breeze before building again to a cyclonic, biblical howl. “Everyone who takes Jesus Christ as their one and only true saviour, for every other religion, is an outright lie and an infernal sin, for only Jesus Christ walks with love, without violence, without vengeance, without abysmal fear, without archaic tradition, without child molestation, without robes, without mystic, without darkness enshrouding his step, without shadow, with only light, for Jesus Christ is one and only and every man, woman and child who carries Jesus in their heart and who carries no scorn for the cuts on their hands, the sores on their feet, the disparity in their life or for the troubles that they see, no man with Jesus in his heart shall ever suffer alone; for Christ will suffer for you, for each and every one of you. The love of Christ can prove all and cure all. If you have Jesus in your heart; if you truly believe, Jesus will heal you. He will cure your cancer, he will make you walk again…. He will even bring you back from death. Jesus is that powerful. He is not a wizard. He is the son of god” yelled The Apostle, to the rousing reception of the scores of thousands of sweaty and pressed upon people in the auditorium, crammed together like thoughts in a madman’s head.
Joao was immured in stagger, his mouth busy catching flies while his eyes threatened to fall out and roll along the floor. He felt hardened and inspired, hardly the feeling he had after just giving himself to what felt like a wrong bidding and leaving the suited men and women, to their drunken, carnal orgy; oiled on what dismay and debauchery he had conjured for them.
As he stood there in awe, watching the taped service, a line of people came walking through the corridors, some heading into the two toilets below the television and others standing beside Joao, with the same headlighted trance, opening their mouths as if to better their soul’s antenna and consuming the emotion and passion from the service as if it were crack cocaine, their eyes glazed and their want for more, increasing with their exhilaration and spiritual infirmity.
“Jesus saved my son’s life, my boy, Jesus saved him. Stand up, come here son” said the woman, ushering to a large man with a shaven head, tattoos running from the corner of his eyes, across the side of his head and running down his back somewhere under the obscenely large shirt that he wore with the word ‘Gangsta’ embroidered on the front and the words ‘Jesus Christ, The Original’ embroidered on the back.
The man stood up and took the hand of his mother, pulling it slowly towards his own brutish and emotionally anorexic face.
“Jesus touched you?” asked The 13th Apostle.
“Yes sir, Jesus touched me,” said the man.
“Where did he touch you?” asked The 13th Apostle.
“In the prison sir, Jesus touched me in the prison”
“And what did you do, when he touched you, what did you do?”
“I cried sir.”
“He cried. By the grace of god, he cried. You tell everyone here, you look into that camera and you tell the world, you tell us how Jesus touched you in that prison. Don’t be afraid now. We’re no strangers to Jesus’ touch here. We’ve all been touched, isn’t that right?” said The 13th Apostle in frank cant, nodding his head in self concurrence.
The man bowed his head, foundering by an exigent shame that he was carrying with in his soul and he lowered himself so that he could garnish the strength to dig his hands deeply below that promethean rock of sufferance of which bound his soul and cast it out, into the erasure of the amnesty of the lord.
“What were you in prison for?” asked The 13th Apostle.
The man shook his head as if the truth were screwed into his soul and he was unwinding it, up and out into the light.
“It was drugs sir and on account my wife is missing and I beat my boy, there was also that,” the man said.
The 13th Apostle pressed his hand over his face and spread his fingers slightly, so his weary eyes could just be seen through the ravine on his mountainous appendage. He held the microphone close to his shaking head so the sound of disbelief expelling from his heavy heart would settle like a black cloud on their heavenly horizon and as he did, the scores of thousands standing; sweaty body to sweaty body, all puffed their faces in emotional stout and readied for a coming storm.
“Keep going, my son. What happened next?” said The 13th Apostle.
The man’s mother pressed her open stubby hand against her son’s back, stretching up high so she could reach; like an ant trying to lift up a cloud, holding her other hands over her flooding eyes, weeping loud and supporting as her son arrested the maniac of his normal defense and spoke instead, in the voice of the frightened child that had been willowing away somewhere beneath that bank of anger.
“You took drugs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you hit your son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You beat our son.”
“Yes, sir I did. I beat him good. I’m not pro
ud of it either.”
“So you took drugs and you beat your son and you didn’t have Jesus?”
“No sir, I did not”
“And prison? What were you arrested for?”
“Homicide. The police arrested me. They said I killed my wife”
“It wasn’t true” shouted the mother, “the police lied. They pick on my boy because of his past, they just lie” yelled the mother.
“Because of your past”
“Yes sir,” said the man.
“Because you beat your boy?”
“Yes, sir. I beat him good. And I mean good like bad, not like good”
“And because you beat your boy, they think you killed your wife?”
“Yes, sir. They arrested me without cause. I’m not a violent man. I never done no-one a lick of violence”
“Except your boy”
“Yes, sir.”
“You beat your boy.”
“Beat him, good sir.”
“But not violent?”
“No sir, discipline sir”
“And the police just locked you up? Did they have any evidence?”
“No sir. Just my neighbours sir, but they’re not good people”
“They’re Catholics!” screamed the man’s mother.
The scores of thousands of people standing sweaty back to sweaty back understood; lazy religious zealots, heaven’s part time subscribers.
“When I was in prison, I was real angry. Cause I didn’t kill my wife and I fought some guys and I didn’t want to see anyone.”
“Not even his mother” cried his mother.
“Not even your mother?” asked The Apostle.
“Not even my mother,” said The Tattooed Man.
“What changed?”
“I read the bible. There was one in my cell and I opened the first page and I started to read and I must have read sixteen pages before Jesus, he spoke to me.”
“Jesus spoke to you? Oh the grace of god. And what did Jesus say? Did he answer your prayers?”
“Yes, sir he did. Jesus, he told me to keep strong and have faith. He spoke to me every night in my cell. He said if I just have faith, everything will be ok. And I didn’t believe him at first. I was real scared. But then he touched me.”
“And you felt different.”
“I felt different sir. I believed. I prayed every day. I prayed for Jesus to show the police and everyone the truth, that I didn’t hurt my wife, I loved her, I did no wrong” he said.
“And what happened?”
The man wept while his mother bawled, her head flush in her left hand while her right stapled against her son’s back.
“The prosecution dropped their case. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me, that and they didn’t find my wife’s body so you know, no body, no crime and they had to let me go” he said smiling, looking like a doting father towards the heavens.
“They had no evidence, not a thing?”
“Nothing. Nothing to link me to killing my wife.”
“Oh the grace of god. And you’re a free man now?”
“Yes sir, a free man”
“Because of Jesus?”
“Because of Jesus.”
“Oh the grace of god. Praise Jesus. You see, all you need is faith in Jesus Christ. And who is that beside you?”
“This is my boy,” he said, patting his hands on the boy’s shoulder causing him to flinch and squirm from the pain that writhed from the black and purple bruises that ran from the skin just under his collar to all the way down his back and along his lower legs.
“A Family reunited by Jesus. Jesus Christ is lord, praise Jesus” The 13th Apostle shouted. “Now let’s have some music,” he said cheering as at the bottom of the screen, deposit details streamed for bank accounts in thousands of cities around the world and showing the ease in making their monthly payments to The World Church.
When the song started, Joao was broken from his spell and he looked around at the people beside him, all locked in absolute, stupid wonder, like an infant unto its own reflection or a dog upon a stern request.
Joao ran.
He ran down the hallways in circles.
He ran in circles for minutes and then groups of minutes and then halves of hours until finally he found an exit and he slipped out the door and onto the street.
When he left the building, a woman handed him an easy pay booklet with twelve printed payment receipts that he could pay for at any news agency or bank and make his obligation to the church. He had never had one of these before and regardless of how he felt towards The 13th Apostle, still; receiving this payment booklet, he felt older, responsible, like an adult.
He gently pressed the booklet in half and pushed it into the pocket of his jeans, patting lightly against the bulge before walking off down the road with his reason derailed, thinking of the wrong he had done for a collector of souls.
“Am I like a devil?” he thought, stepping onto the bus.
TWENTY ONE
As the bus sped along the streets; clipping car mirrors and sending zealous bike riders wobbling off onto sidewalks, Joao stared idly out of the window, hardly participating with his eyes at all.
His window passed a thousand sights of which; in the common trait of normality, would have swelled him to swaggering delight, ignoring in absolute monastery, the idea or consensus of keeping one’s business and the perch of one’s stare to themselves or ne’er near strangers.
There was a young man sitting by the foot of a women’s boutique with his greasy hand outstretched begging for loose change and the open wound on his right leg pulsed as if it were a thing itself with its own heart beat and emotional complications.
There was a sign leaning against his infected foot that was smeared with the filth from his hands and under his fingernails and it was impossible to read the extent of his plight so instead the young man, who; under a thick scruffy beard and a scabbed and blistered complexion, looked every bit an old man, drew attention to the horrible looking untreated wound on his leg that might have started out as a mosquito bite a year ago but; with enough careful inconsideration in the past however many necessary days, months and years, had become an eyesore that infected the decent passing of wandering attention, having hands reach briskly for jingling and coined empathy in disgusted appreciation for the will of god should one stray from their benevolent path or; for the new age non-believers and systematically clustered non-conformists, the rallied test of their wreckful verdure guised as that ever lingering moralizing bitch called Karma, she whose name is spoken of only vehemently and because of whom, good will is only attended to out of boding fear of her just retribution for moral dissent; she, as present, giving and apparent in good tidings as is genuine sensitivity and gentle consideration in a father’s ascetic advice.
Joao didn’t notice him.
He was looking at a woman with a piece of flowered cloth wrapping up her hair who stood at the front of a small hair salon where she worked or refused to leave, holding a long green hose in one hand and a partly dampened cigarette in the other, staring listlessly at Joao through the yellow smeared glass of the pausing bus, with he and his eyes, conversing with the same unmoving concern, watching the smoking woman hosing the sidewalk and the feet of passers-by who hopped and skipped like gaming children to avoid the pith of her absence, looking back over their shoulders with a ‘say-nothing-do-nothing’ type of facial scorn.
The bus started up again, racing through the streets with the conductor hanging out the window, his arm flapping like a one-winged pelican trying to shoo off the cars and motorbikes zipping past so that it could skip lanes and make one of many an impromptu stop.
Joao continued staring out the window as more and more people piled onto the bus until the last finite space was sated with bodies pushing against piles of other bodies, their open palms pressed against the backs of butting heads, keeping sweaty strands and clumps of hair from entering breathing mouths with a desperate sem
blance building into a climate of refreshing panic as the climate abounding fell stinking and warm from unwashed bodies rubbing against one another and unbrushed mouths recycling the musky, humid air; breathing short, fast and terrifically acute.
“Did you get your ticket?” one man said to another.
The other man nodded his head with the tip of his tongue trapped between his yellow teeth. He may have been suggesting something lurid and his friend acknowledged him with a laugh that had the woman beside him clench and shiver as if a fever of decency were trying to shrill of some acrid advance as the man’s sticky breath molested her ears.
The bus was loud and provoking with people shouting from one end to another about football scores and bad decisions and corrupt politicians and police who don’t do their job and football and violent criminals and drugs and car thieves and football and kidnappings and flooding rain and shitty traffic and football and that movie they said was good and that band that did that song and football and more football and even more football and he should have done this and he shouldn’t have done that and I would have done this and I know more than you, cause I know all the names and the plane crash and the car crash and the market crash and that celebrity who threw his three year old daughter out of the fifteenth floor window.
“Twenty million” shouted one person.
“What would you do with that?” shouted another.
Joao didn’t imagine what it would be like to have all of that money. He didn’t need to. If he had all of that money, it would only get spent or at best; saved, with the worry of being spent.
The bus sped along the road and stopped for a moment outside the café. Joao was resting his head on his hands and staring blindly out of the window, seeing everything before him with not enough care or consideration to name a single one.
Caught in his lingering stare; standing at the front of a crowded café, was Fatts, a familiar imposing figure, standing with his arms folded across his massive belly. Behind him, a crowd pushed about inside the café, all stamping their feet and fists and chanting out into the air.
Fatts didn’t flinch or flicker at the commotion behind him which was building into a sure incident. He simply looked quietly and without affection towards Joao, who was looking back; straight through him.
The bus pulled off down the street and after several stops, Joao calmly pressed the red button and squeezed out of the doors, feeling a shudder in his heart as his feet gave way slightly with the ground beneath him crumbling and he slipped into a small puddle of murky water.
The Nice Old Lady across the road, smoking in front of her store, laughed as Joao stumbled forwards and was saturated by a splash of water as the bus pulled away quickly. She didn’t try to hide her smirk or lessen her choir. She roared as if she were sharing the funniest joke she had ever seen and as she laughed, the growing cancer in her lungs laughed with her, casting sticky and coarse phlegm into her throat so her carnivorous laugh went from that of a wretched witch’s cackle to a horse’s bellow to a spluttering engine, submersed at the bottom of a boggy marsh.
With a cigarette still in her hand, she pointed her convicting finger at Joao as her laughter turned to choking tears, holding her other fist against her mouth so as to catch her lungs, should they escape in the midst of this fit.
As Joao brushed the water off of his face and his pants, he turned to see scores of people; directing by the coughing old lady’s pointing finger, all taking time out of their struggle, out of their pith, out of their rush, out of their disconnection, to turn and to laugh at him.
Each and every one of them all pointed their fingers just like The Nice Old Lady, inviting anyone who hadn’t seen yet to turn their attention to the soaking boy and laugh as they were laughing and ache as they ached and a great deal of humour shook inside of their bellies.
Joao couldn’t hear the things the people were saying as he turned and made his way up the hill towards his home. He wiped away more of the dirty water that streamed from his hair across his face and focused on every step as he walked up the hill, looking only at the lines where the slabs of concrete came together and pacing his every step so that his feet would fall either just before or just after the line, but never touching.
There was the usual trade of debauch all about him and some hookers whistled out in joyful appeal while others snarled and hurled empty cans and bottles in his direction. It was still the afternoon and they were drinking and cursing and acting like the sun had long been gone.
But Joao didn’t notice. He ignored the hookers, the junkies and the dealers and just kept staring at each step and his only thought was of Charity and how he would like to sit quietly with her watching some television; ‘The Carriage of My Heart’, and maybe hold her hand as well.
The thought of Charity beside him quenched the turmoil that was building in his mind. It lifted him from his depression.
When he arrived home, the church was in disrepair. The table he had bought was broken into pieces and papers were scattered all over the floor. There were animal or maybe human feces in the middle of the room and the walls looked charred and blackened like someone had tried to take fire to them. It was so different to the place he had tidied in the morning and yet, it looked like he was glimpsing inside of himself.
The phone rang.
At first it sounded like an ambulance’s siren. It caused him the same alarm so he shook of his somber and picked it up.
“Hello,” he said.
“Joao, it’s your mother,” Mother said.
Joao wanted to cry, but he couldn’t.
“Hello Mother,” he said.
“Where is your father? Put him on the phone” she said.
Joao looked around. He couldn’t see him anywhere, only the trace of him having been here.
“He… went to get bread” he said.
“When will he be back?” asked Mother.
“Soon,” said Joao lying.
The silence was uncomfortable.
Joao was not very good at lying.
“And how is the church?” she asked.
“It’s great,” said Joao.
“So there are a lot of people then?” she asked.
“Oh lots,” said Joao, staring at a vile empty room.
“Is he back yet?” asked Mother, uncomfortably.
“The Bishop? No. Do you want me to get him to call you when he gets in?” said Joao, picking up on Mother’s reason.
“No. I’ll call back in one hour. Are you behaving Joao?” she asked.
“Yes mam,” he said.
If she had called a week before, he might have told her about his job and the good he was doing and how good that made him feel. He would have told her about all of the interesting people he met and about the interesting things he had learned from his friends and how he had friends and had found a way to be useful; like he always wanted like she said he would be. If only she had called a week before; but not today.
“And your father?” she said in obvious dubiosity.
Joao was silent for a second, but that second spelled out an eternity. He thought of so many things he had not seen; hints of things that could have been and that shouldn’t have been.
“He’s good too mam. He’s very busy with the church and helping a lot of people around the city. He’s really important here, just like we said he would be” said Joao.
Mother hummed loud and unapproving over the phone.
“One hour Joao. I want to speak to The Bishop” she said before hanging up.
Joao hung up the phone and plucked his fingers nervously against the corners of his eyes, wondering if he could just tear them out and stick his ears with stinging barbs. He thought of Charity again, standing before him with her hair tied back and her hands inviting him to her concern and the sound of her voice almost brought him to tear.
“Hey, you,” she said.
Joao turned and saw her standing by the doorway, looking so pretty. Charity smiled and Joao smiled back. His heart
beat tremendously. He was so nervous. He was always so nervous around her though he couldn’t tell her that, though; not like he needed to anyway.
“Whatchya doin?” she asked.
“I have to find The Bishop?” said Joao.
“Can I help?” asked Eve.
Joao smiled.
He looked stupid when he smiled, like a lost tourist.
“Yay,” he said, realizing immediately how that must have sounded and hating himself just a little more.
“I don’t know where to start,” said Joao.
“I do,” said Charity. “Let’s go,” she said, taking Joao by the hand and leading him out of the church and into a whore house called Misty’s.