“Can I help you, little father?” The voice is very calm. The cathedral shadows long and cool.
“Um.” Len eases the bottle back into his pocket. “It’s quiet in here.”
“There is a peace which passes all understanding.”
Len can’t understand a peace like that, but the stillness around him grows. A rose of crimson silence.
“Um. I never seen this place before, you see.” He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth in his old pisshead gesture. One of the legions of the lip-lickers. There is space and gloom in here, quiescent patches of light. He can make out rows of seats and somebody standing right near.
“You shall not be turned away from here.” A shadowy figure distils. A tall person dressed in long, black fabric. The voice is cool and silvery. “I am Brother Love. Do you know why you have come here?”
To have a quiet fucken drink of course, but he can’t say that. Besides, there’s something wrong about Brother Love’s voice. Suddenly a piece of memory explodes into place. He and Rumi are standing outside the Road to Ruin. Aimless scraps of paper are slapping against their feet and Rumi is quoting verses. He bends over and picks up two of the scraps. They are advertising pamphlets. On them is written, ‘Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation show.’
“Here’s your winnings,” he declares as he hands one of the pamphlets to Rumi. The other one of course is in his own pocket!
Len fumbles among his clothes. “I’ll show ya.” He digs into his coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper holds it up to the cloaked figure.
“What’s this little father? A raffle ticket?” The face comes clear and Len steps back. Brother Love is a woman. A beautiful tall woman with a clear, fair face.
“The Dumbo Delight,” Brother Love reads. Her voice is like the moon on a very clear night. She shows Len the symbol of the elephant stamped on the ticket. Beneath the elephant, a line of numbers.
Another piece of memory opens up like a flower. Len and Rumi are sitting at the bar, which has become a great shining river upon which two enormous bottles of whisky sit. Rumi is reading out numbers in a liturgical voice. The magic numbers! The secret name of God!
Even an old drunk must see it; even a blind man. He collapses onto the whispering floor, his knees giving up the unequal struggle, his legs folding. Light explodes behind his eyes and showers his body with luminous fragments. His body is flung out like a scattering of iron filings in a magnetic field. A great being in dazzling raiment seizes him by the throat.
“A hundred and fifty thousand zings,” Len croaks. Second fucken prize but he isn’t proud. All mysteries fulfilled. He won it. He won it! Fuck! He’d Dumbowed.
“Ah.” Brother Love takes the ticket out of his numb fingers and tucks it in the folds of her cassock. “You have been guided here by an angel of light.”
Len wants to talk but can’t shape any words. There’s an ache in his throat where an angel has gripped him, an ache beyond which words cannot pass. An unholy terror. Through the musty spaces of the church he can see the altar with its pristine, gleaming cloth.
“Everywhere, on hand, there are emissaries of light whose task it is to guide us through the bleak places.” Her voice is a gentle balm.
Len begins to blubber like some maudlin old drunk. All the empty rooms in his head fill up with tears. Brother Love helps him to his feet. “No malignancy can reach you in the house of prayer.” Her fingers close around the bottle. “But what’s this?” Len pushes it away. He can hear the whisky slosh about in the bottle and the sound makes him sick.
“Would you drink from the cup of love, if it were offered?”
“Uh?”
“Drink your fill and you will find your cup brimming over.” Her voice becomes rich and full of timbre. “They have drunk from the cup of staggering, but who among them, even the least of them, is not one of the children of Love?”
Brother Love takes his arm and Len recovers the power of motion. She leads him to an annex at the back of the church where there are two chairs, a table and a bunk. They sit at the table and Brother Loves places the whisky and the raffle ticket before him.
“These are yours.” Her voice is warm and strong. “The ticket is valid for three months. You have sanctuary here in the House of Love for that time. You can sleep on this bunk and pray at this table. You may take your things and walk out any time you want.” So saying, she ceremoniously places them on a shelf above the table. Light from the annex window catches the bottle and the whisky glows amber, shooting out jagged rays. The Jumbo Delight ticket, leaning up against the bottle, casts the golden shadows of a doorway into the depths.
Rumi appears before him, standing on top of the bar, which has become a great shining ocean. In a booming voice he declaims,
“And when seas turn merciful
Even stones
Drink the water of life.”
He raises a spirit glass to Rumi, wanders back into the church, which he finds is some old dilapidated hall wreathed in banners, and chooses a pew at the back where he is least likely to be noticed. It seems an easy enough thing to do, to fall onto his knees, for his throat to find the shape of prayer. Rumi would have been proud of him.
Brother Love is nearby, purifying her devotion in silence.
Len drinks in the silence like the water of life.
All in all, it seems, Len has his salvation, which, everything considered, is not doing too bad given his track record. It could have been worse. Bearing in mind his place in the scheme of things, his contribution to the world, he hasn’t done too badly.
Not too badly at all.