28

The evangelist has been doing his rounds again. I heard him early in the morning, in the corridor outside my room, his voice competing with the sound of the rain that has been falling all day. He was preaching forgiveness to the staff, quoting all manner of biblical texts in support of his benediction. They humour him, allow him his fantasies and do not interfere with his proselytising so long as he does not alarm or disturb any of our more fragile fellow inmates.

This afternoon, as I was lying on my bed, my mind lost in a smoky dream of vague places I have not seen and indistinct people with whom I have not conversed for decades, there came a knock at my door followed by a twisting of the handle. I did not turn my head, assuming it to be Sister Cynthia or the doctor, looking in on me.

Gradually, into view over my feet materialised the preacher. He was wearing a tweed jacket with his shirt on back to front beneath it, giving him the appearance of wearing a somewhat ragged clerical collar. His face glowed with the joy of finding a would-be convert.

Raising my hand, I made as if to shoo him away, but he saw this as my reaching for salvation and swiftly moved to my side, taking hold of my hand between both his.

‘What shall we say, then?’ he asked, beaming down at me with the stare of the lunatic lingering somewhere behind his beatific smile. ‘Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?’

I made no effort to respond to his rhetoric, nor did I make any attempt to remove my hand. He took this as a good sign that I was riding with him along the high road to the Lord.

‘“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”’ he announced. ‘Romans 3:23. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Romans 6:23.’

At this juncture, he fell silent, waiting for me to respond or, at least, start to admit to my many sins. He wanted a sinner so badly, not only to forgive but to save. To encourage me, perhaps, he knelt by my bedside, his face level with mine on the pillow.

Yet he was to be disappointed. I have no true sins to confess. A man who has lived for decades in total silence, in one institution or another, can hardly have had the opportunity to commit any wrong against any god unless it be in his mind. Even in there, I have not filled my hours with desires for the many nurses who have tended me or the many do-good ladies of the parish who have from time to time visited me, departing saddened by my state or frustrated by my refusal to communicate with even so much as the squeeze of a hand or blink of an eye. There has been nothing I have wanted to covet, no wrong I would have wished upon another—even the pseudo-pope kneeling by my side—and no name I would have thought to take in vain. Save, possibly, my own.

There is, nevertheless, one wrong I have committed. It is not so much a cardinal sin as a cardinal omission. It lies in my silence, for I possess a fragment of knowledge of which the world should know. I should have passed it on; however, I have not. I have kept it to myself and it is too late now. I am old, the sun has shone, the moon has risen and set and the world has spun a thousand times upon its giddy axis.

The evangelist, taking my silence for a fear of the almighty and assuming that I harboured some sort of angst or hatred, started mumbling a prayer. I could not make out a single word. Perhaps he was praying in tongues. Perhaps he was praying in the vernacular of God, in Hebrew, in that paradisiacal idiom known only to angels and beautiful children on remote islands.

For a moment, I left him at the bedside, his knees getting stiff on the boards, his palms beginning to sweat against my hand and the rain pattering on the window, and I returned to that place where, usually only in the darkest and calmest hours of the night, I go.

It was not raining as I arrived there. The sun was warm upon the heather, the breeze balmy and the mountains stark against the blue sky of summer. Someone was calling me. I could hear it quite distinctly. Although it did not utter my name, I knew it was me the voice was addressing. I looked up. An eagle was riding a thermal high over my head, its thin piping whistle enunciating my name in the shrill language of raptors.

‘If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.’

In an instant, I was back in the room with Padre Paranoiac.

‘Matthew 6:14–15,’ he said.

Poor bastard! If only he could know. I have long since forgiven all those who have sinned against me and, if there is a god, I daresay I have been exonerated.

Slowly, I turned my head towards him. He had his eyes closed, the better to concentrate upon his celestial intercourse. After a few moments, he opened them to find himself in my gaze. He started, let go of my hand as if a current were running through it, leapt to his feet and, standing in the middle of my room, screamed. It was a high-pitched noise, like that of a rabbit caught in the noose of a snare.

Immediately there came the staccato rattle of running feet in the corridor. My door slammed back as Sister Cynthia and an orderly burst in.

‘His eyes!’ the evangelist stuttered. ‘His eyes! I’ve seen Sheol. I’ve seen Diabolus.’

Another orderly entered and, with the first, restrained the evangelist and led him out. Sister Cynthia leaned over and touched my brow.

‘Nothing to get fret up about, Alec,’ she half-whispered.

No, Sister Cynthia, I thought, you do not understand. There is something terribly wrong about the world. I saw it long ago and the Very Reverend Father Loon saw it just a minute since in my eyes. And the only thing that could address it, put it to rights, died before the world learnt its lesson.