I must apologise if my last remarks caused offence. It’s not my wish to sow the seeds of contention. I’m aware that this is supposed to be our morning away from such issues. And yet, as must have become obvious, my interest in Eyam derives as much from its metaphorical associations as from its historical acts.
And I couldn’t help noticing several of you looking uneasy when I described the sealing off of the village; the idea of a cordon sanitaire seems uncomfortably close to camps. But as yet it’s only in Cuba, that most malign of dictatorships, that people with AIDS have been incarcerated. Whereas here the decision wasn’t imposed from on high, but agreed communally. And Mompesson remained constantly amongst his charges, not just sharing, but alleviating their woes.
That in turn has led to a further and still more damaging attack on him and one, moreover, that has been made on far too many priests over the years; which was that, whatever its practical value, he rejoiced in the sacrifice demanded of him, and that such self-denial was no more than self-loathing writ large. It’s claimed that his heroism reveals the hysteria at the heart of most religious practice… a desire to suffer as long and as painfully as possible in order to share in the Passion of Christ.
I fear that in reporting such calumny I insult your intelligence almost as much as its perpetrators do his memory. And yet I mention it solely in order to dismiss it. Besides, to many of the villagers flight was never a serious option. Plague or no plague, they either had to work their land or starve. Nevertheless, having elected to stay they contrived to make a virtue of necessity; indeed they gave virtue itself a new name. And the horror of their internment, as they found themselves literally numbered amongst the dead, beggars belief. They had no hope; but they show us even now that to have no hope is by no means the same as to despair. For though they may have failed to preserve their physical community, they preserved the idea of that community – the ideal of that community, without which mere survival would have been vain.
They joined in a true communion: a sharing and a sacrifice. And they contained the contagion within the village, but at a terrible cost to themselves… And now, so long as you’re all wearing sturdy shoes, we’ll take a short-cut across a steep and somewhat stony pathway to the other side of the village and the graves that reveal that cost most clearly.
If one of the critical distinctions between men and animals is that we laugh, then what about God? After all, we were made in his image. So does he have a sense of humour? And if so is it rarefied and refined? Or is the whole of life just a crude joke? On his release from hospital Mark applied for a buddy… no, you’ll never guess.
You must have heard of the system: someone to do those things that even his best friend can’t do for him. I tried to explain that his best friend would be more than happy, if he were only asked. It seems superfluous, particularly when there must be a great many people in genuine need. What’s worse, it feels like an admission of defeat or at least dependence. But I suspect that he sees it as a gesture of independence, at any rate from me.
Although since he crossed his medical Rubicon and his HIV metamorphosed into ARC, he’s entitled to far more support – I must take care; I almost said his medical Styx. For instance, he’s eligible for a drug made with egg yolks which the hospital wasn’t previously permitted to prescribe. What was most galling was that I’d only just persuaded him to set aside his princi – prejudices and allow me to buy it for him on the open market, which he persisted in calling the black. And whilst he grudgingly accepted my offer, by far the bitterest pill was his swallowed pride.
He can’t bear to feel indebted. Now that the flat has gone and we’re back again in Little Venice, he even wants to pay rent. He mistrusts my concern, accusing me of using him as a shortcut to Heaven: if I can no longer be a priest then I’ll go one better and become a saint… And yet I don’t feel the slightest sanctity. On the contrary, I’m well aware I’ve been spared on a technicality – and it’s one which I’m ashamed to admit. Love is the supreme virtue; but I’ve been protected by my own lovelessness. Whereas he declares himself just an incurable romantic. And his flippancy chills my blood.
I increasingly feel that he resents me, and not simply my good health, which would be understandable, but the inexperience which lies at its heart. And when I try to console him over Adrian he shrugs me aside, as though I can have no conception of what he has to endure and he can’t be bothered to enlighten me. And I’m afraid he’s right. Let the dead and dying bury their dead; the rest of us have no place even at the graveside. Our tears are inevitably adulterated with relief…
Oh, it’s so unfair. I yearn for intimacy and have to make do with inadequate imagery. Which is why I still come here. You’re the only one who can begin to understand. These last few weeks I’ve felt so alone that once again I’ve started to contemplate suicide… Has nothing changed at all in the past two years…? It wouldn’t pose any problem. I remember a schoolboy joke about a bastard who ran amok with a pin in a condom factory – although there the intention was quite the reverse. I could lure Mark into love-making and then privately prick the prophylactic: a new blood brotherhood: a bond beyond the grave. In which case, as in no other, the bigots would be right and the wound indeed be self-inflicted, although not from perversity but from love.
And yet no schoolboy joke can begin to compare with God’s. Do you, remember Jack? How can you fail? He’s filed away somewhere in that capacious memory you call a brain. I ask out of embarrassment, in case you consider the coincidence so great that it must be my own invention. They say that truth is stranger than fiction; although I’m not sure where that leaves therapists. To you most of our truths are fictions anyway… Mark’s buddy is Jack.
Yes, even you look startled. So imagine what it was like for me… I missed his first visit. I returned to find Mark cock-a-hoop. He’d warmed to him right from the start and was convinced that we’d all prove the best of friends. I was overjoyed; although I have to admit to a slight twinge of jealousy. But then I invariably feel inadequate after a meal with my trustees. He didn’t want to say too much in advance; though when he mentioned he was attached to Queen Mary’s College, researching for a Ph.D. in history, I was seized by a strange sensation, which I mistakenly put down to the richness of the lunch.
I met him again on Saturday. Even with his back to me I could feel the familiarity of his presence; and the moment he turned, I was filled with horror – no, the horror was all around me whilst inside I was nothing but air. I went through the motions: that is my body moved slowly towards him, although my legs remained by the door. I was convinced that I must have misheard. Had Mark phoned for a masseur? Had everything sunk as low as that? And his formal introduction compounded my confusion. But I stepped up and steadily shook his hand.
You wouldn’t believe – but then you’ve never met him… I could barely believe it was the same man. He was dressed in a grey thick-knit cardigan, collarless shirt, fawn cords and white canvas sneakers; he no longer even tolerates leather shoes. And this was someone for whom leather had once been second nature, or at any rate a second skin. And he was wearing round, rimless glasses. I’d known he wore contact lenses despite considerable discomfort. He’d insisted that no whore, as he’d styled himself, could admit to being short-sighted; it was enough of a liability being able to read. But then he’s no longer a whore and the look in his eyes is quite different. Is it a new-found compassion or simply the absence of strain?
But his change of look had nothing on his change of outlook. I stammered that I’d been expecting an Indian. He laughed sympathetically and I felt strangely at ease. For although my cheeks smarted with the memory of our last encounter – and it was a far more specific smart than simple shame – it was he who’d been genuinely rechristened… no, that’s quite the wrong word. He’s become a devotee of the Vedic scriptures. He spent six months in India, where he was renamed Krishnan Krishnaswami – which as you can hear still sits rather heavily on the tongue. Krishna’s one of their gods and swami means teacher; it’s generally reserved for the name of a guru and was attached to his as a mark of special faith. So if in the past you ever queried my concern with all the Todds, Dwaynes and Garys, and even mumbled to yourself ‘What’s in a name?’, now you know.
One of the drugs Mark takes for his blood exerts a strong effect on his bladder; and while he went off to the loo, we hurriedly agreed to maintain the pretence and meet again at Warwick Avenue Station later that afternoon. He left first; I discovered him sitting on a bollard. And as the weather was mild we decided to stroll along the canal. I felt heartened that whereas two years ago I’d have given my eye-teeth for a moment of such intimacy, the prospect now left me cold.
He was certain I’d expect an explanation, which he at once proceeded to offer. I’d been wrong; he hadn’t been surprised to see me. Recognition was an occupational hazard. It’d purely been the context that had unnerved him. And there was one thing he was dyi – burning to ask, although he knew he had no right: Was I also HIV? I was amazed at how much my reply reassured him. He insisted that he wasn’t either, and then seemed put out by my composure. But surely, I declared, we’ve moved on from the world of Moses where infection was spread by divine command? Oh yes, he agreed, there’s no justice – a phrase he kept on repeating. When what he meant was that there was no mercy: the pallid palliative of Christ.
He had a boyfriend, Kerry. I met him once; though if you’ve forgotten then all to the good… He died… I desperately searched for his face, but all I could see was his skin: the dimple in his elbow and the fold of flesh underneath his arm. It was so smooth you’d have supposed him a great lady of the Ancien Régime, with no function in life but to be cosseted and corseted and creamed and powdered, not a boy who worked as a barman and picked up tips and tricks on the side… But this boy with the skin that’d survived the guillotine couldn’t survive the virulence of the virus. And as he walked around London trying to make sense of the verdict, he decided to walk under a train. It was at Barking: a busy station. Several thousand passengers were late home that night; whilst the driver had to be hospitalised for shock.
He threw stones in the canal, not idly trying to skim the surface but passionately trying to plumb the depths… He had to identify the body even though he wasn’t able to recognise it. Did I have any idea how it felt to look down at an unrecognisably identifiable body? And I remembered Adrian with his patchwork of polyps. But to spare him I said ‘no’ even as I thought ‘yes’.
There was no one to whom he could turn. He was forced to admit that he had no friends. People were either clients or lovers; and he resented the clients in that they weren’t lovers and the lovers in that they didn’t pay. He attended a support group for bereaved partners. He told his story. And their sole response was a hug. His voice quavered: there was no human gesture as hollow or humiliating as a hug. It was every bit as hackneyed as a handshake. There was no frustration greater than to long for the fullness of a kiss only to be fobbed off with that endless arms-round hands-off approach. The dynamic was all too clear as they came close but kept their distance, respecting his space but not his needs. How he hated hugs, he repeated, shaking his shoulders. And at first I thought he must be shaking off the memory. But his face was streaked with tears.
I felt at a loss; I wanted to make contact, but I could hardly hug him. So I stroked the strands of hair from his eyes and kissed him first on the forehead and next on the lips. He looked surprised and moved; and we both began to laugh as we recognised the reversal: it was me kissing him. He squeezed my waist and I clasped his hand; which he, ever the realist, diverted discreetly across his shoulder as we circled Regent’s Park.
Kerry had been infected not merely by a dangerous virus but by the far more dangerous fatalism of a vindictive world. And for a while he subscribed to it himself as he went for another test – his fourth – and received his fourth negative result; which was no less than he’d have expected given the security of his sex. But Kerry was a near novice – so where did that leave all the theories of divine vengeance? Unless the Almighty had grown so out of touch that he could be hoodwinked by a common condom… And he vowed that the utter waste of his suicide would never be wasted on him.
At first his resolve was drowned in negativity. Until a one-night stand with a young musician inspired him to a study of the Veda, from which he’d never looked back. He hadn’t seen the man since, indeed now he hoped he never would, since his disappearance flattered his sense of destiny and his gratitude went way beyond words.
He’d desired nothing but his body. And yet as he watched him undress, his eyes were drawn to the small silver amulet strapped to his biceps which, he later discovered, contained portions of the scriptures on minuscule scrolls… And he couldn’t explain why such a chance encounter should have changed his life. But the next day he bought a dictionary of Eastern religion which he devoured from cover to cover, before making his way first to their temple in Harrogate and then to an ashram in India – from where he’d recently returned.
His first step on his homecoming was to give up his massage. He’d only ever intended it as a temporary measure, to pay off his debts and tide him through college.
And yet he’d developed a taste for the work over and above his new-found income, as he allowed himself to be seduced by his own seductions and abused by his talent for abuse. And he’d transformed his sexuality from a source of uncomplicated pride into a subject of degradation and despair.
He laughed… We all laughed, he claimed, at the tart-with-a-heart cliché, but how about the tart with a brain? He was well aware of the risks he was taking with his own probity; but he argued them away. And yet his self-justification was the sheerest sophistry. He’d long inclined towards Marx; and he depicted himself as the epitome of the alienated worker: the one with nothing to sell but his skin. He postulated it as a position from which to subvert society; whereas on the contrary, since half his clients were married and the other half men of affluence, influence and power to whom he offered a convenient outlet, he found himself propping up the status quo.
And he was drawn further and further into sadomasochism, on one level merely to mitigate the boredom, but on a deeper one to ritualise the disgust. And the blackest irony – didn’t I ask whether God had a sense of humour? – was to discover that his clients enjoyed it even more than he did. There was no perversion too extreme for someone to make it his pleasure, and no pleasure too perverse.
But despite his determination to remain a purveyor, he increasingly became a participant. And he lied to himself yet again as he presented it as the ultimate in imaginative sex, when in truth it was the most mechanical. Indeed far from offering a means of liberation it was the philosophy of the prison cell: the tunnel vision of solitary confinement – quite literally, given that De Sade had honed his ideas in the Bastille… Until, with the advent of AIDS, which might well be considered the supreme sadomasochistic fantasy, he was forced to reassess the fantasies which he’d made his life.
And the reassessment of his own life was only the start. His sexuality had brought him a great deal and he was determined to repay the debt. So he trained as a buddy and Mark was his first… what? He couldn’t think of the word, though whatever else it might be it wasn’t client. In addition, he helped run a project to educate rent boys, where he preached the joys of safer sex with all the missionary zeal of a colonial pastor promoting the missionary position – but with rather more sense.
He drew to a halt just as we found ourselves approaching Camden Lock: the light at the end of the tow-path… or was it the tunnel? We leaned over the bridge; and as we confronted our reflections my eyes took on the lustre of a passing patch of oil. He apologised at length for his prolixity; but I was unboundedly grateful for every word. I gathered my thoughts. My head felt cluttered, though my mind was clear. And my memory had acquired a new meaning. After all this time I thought I’d teased out all there was; but I can see now that there was a limit to how deep I could delve on my own.
I hope you won’t take offence. I’m not dismissing what we’ve done here; but it’s not without its constraints. It’s hard to gain a perspective from a position of partial truth. And yet there are so many truths even as there are so many stories. And at some point they must all connect. I used to think that that would only be in death; but I’m now convinced that as I reach out to more and more people so I’ll come to understand their stories, and the partial truths will make total sense.
Nor am I afraid you’ll suspect me of fabrication. For truth isn’t only stranger than fiction, but neater. While the arbitrary is clearly the greatest fiction of all.
We took ourselves off for a meal in the nearby brasserie; and Krishnan marvelled at the changes there’d been in me since he was Jack. He insisted that the last thing he wanted was to reopen old wounds but he couldn’t forget the occasion when, having come back to find me on my knees, he’d been convinced I was conducting an exorcism. Indeed there were times he’d felt certain that I saw him as the Devil incarnate… I was grateful for the subdued lighting… But I assured him that the wounds were healed and the scars faded. Besides, I no longer believed in the Devil. I still believed in evil, but not as some kind of Manichaean motive force. I lost my belief in the Devil when I lost my faith in God.
He looked perplexed. You no longer believe in God? he asked. Oh yes, I said, I believe in him; I just don’t have faith in him. They’re two very different things. And he nodded… How can I have any faith in his absolute goodness when I’ve seen how he abrogates his responsibilities? It’s not so much the sins of our individual fathers as those of our universal Father that have been visited on his children, as he leaves us to flounder in a morass of his making which countless apologists have sought to convince us is our own fault.
And so the Devil is simply a cosmic scapegoat: a case less of ‘Did he fall?’ than ‘Was he pushed?’ And all I now wish to exorcise are the last vestiges of bell, book and candle that linger like the sickly scent of incense in my veins. Whilst the sole faith to which I adhere is utilitarianism: the greatest happiness for the greatest number. At least its founding father left a relic we can trust: a human skeleton and not an empty tomb.
Ja-Krishnan seemed taken aback, though more by my change of heart than by the whole-heartedness of its expression, particularly as Mark had been equally adamant that I’d one day be ordained. I was saddened to think that after so long he should have known me so little. How could I ever become part of a church where there are priests who deny people with AIDS the sacraments even at Easter, and congregations who find a poisoned chalice in the communion cup?
And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good… Well, I’m sorry, but all I can see is suffering. And in case he should have thought, or indeed you do, that I was generalising from too private a pain, I reaffirmed my view that there was one event in everyone’s life – one act of God, or more accurately, one inaction – be it fire or famine, earthquake or flood, war or massacre, holocaust or horror, or degrading, disfiguring disease that enabled him to perceive his creator in his true light.
For whatever our responsibility towards one another, it’s nothing compared to God’s. With him lies the responsibility not just for bringing us into the world, but for bringing the world into being. And, desperate to convince ourselves of his good will, we claim he acknowledged it by sending his only son to suffer on our behalf. Although I’m more inclined to believe that having sacrificed everyone else’s children he had no choice but to offer up his own.
It was this sense of shared suffering which once, above all else, bound me to Christ. But I’ve come to recognise that his was the supreme duplicity… He was indeed his father’s son. Do you recall his reply to the disciples’ question about the congenitally blind man: that he was blind not through any fault of his own, nor even his parents’, but so that the works of God might be made manifest in him? And you still hear that advanced as evidence of his enlightened view. Well, I’ve no doubt that the blind man considered it a huge consolation… What works? Couldn’t God find any other way?
And if that’s his response to the problem of suffering, then I reject it along with all the rest of his doctrines. We’ve been told that by laying down his life he laid the foundations of a new era; and yet absolutely nothing has changed. If he suffered to redeem humanity, why are we still suffering? In an Old Testament world it’s conceivable that our pain might have served some purpose. But Christ’s death renders it superfluous: an affront to human dignity, if not to God’s.
My throat had grown dry. Krishnan poured me the last drops of wine. I was conscious of my flushed face and flustered fervour; but he brushed aside my apologies and assured me that he understood my disillusion all too well. It’d hit him young when, as a good Catholic boy pressed into service at the altar, he’d been seduced by a sidesman on the sacristry floor… And I recognised a further strand to his story which I’d never suspected – but which he quickly dismissed. He’d found a new faith from an unexpected source and an uncompromised tradition; and to his surprise, it’d even enabled him to look tolerantly on the old.
For, unlike his Jesuitical masters, he declared, he wasn’t in the business of making converts. On the contrary, he pointed me towards an AIDS project being run by a group of Christians. He’d seen leaflets at the Terrence Higgins Trust announcing one of their retreats. He offered to find out more and I could think of no good reason to stop him, even though I hadn’t the least intention of following it up. And then he rang on Monday to tell me it was scheduled for this weekend. That in itself must rule it out as there’s no way I can take off at such short notice. How could I leave Mark? Don’t answer… Besides, it’s being held in some remote village in the wilds of Derbyshire, and it’s bound to be fully booked. The idea’s a complete nonstarter… In which case why has it stuck in my mind?