‘Isn’t English your first language?’ I asked in surprise.
The stranger smiled. ‘I grew up speaking Italian and English,’ he admitted. ‘I have a gift for languages.’
Something we had in common, then, for I knew from the collection of books I had at home that I was fluent in several languages. In fact, we had two things in common, for we were both foreigners here in Hungary. That pleased me. I didn’t seem to have much in common with the average people I saw in the streets. In fact, this was probably the longest conversation I’d had with anyone since I started this journal. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing in here, I do; and indeed sometimes I seem to have spent most of the day doing so… It’s just that it simply isn’t enough. Writing in a journal like this is just one step removed from talking to myself. A book can’t talk back. I don’t think I had realised myself how lonely I was until I started talking to this stranger.
I realised that I was grinning at him stupidly. He laughed good-naturedly and held out his hand. ‘I’m Zadkiel Stephomi.’
‘Gabriel Antaeus,’ I replied, shaking his hand and feeling pleased that — just like a normal person — I did not struggle to remember my last name at all this time.
‘Antaeus?’ Stephomi repeated.
‘Do you know it?’ I asked sharply, my grip on his hand tightening unconsciously.
‘Er… no, no I’m afraid I don’t,’ Stephomi replied, extricating his slender hand from mine and rubbing it absently. ‘Should I?’
‘No. No, it was just… the way you said it…’
‘Unusual name, though, isn’t it?’ Stephomi said, looking at me with clear blue eyes. ‘What’s its origin?’
‘Origin?’
‘Yes, where does it come from?’
‘Oh, er…’ I cast around desperately for a country. ‘It’s a French name, I think.’
‘French?’ Stephomi repeated. ‘You don’t think, perhaps, Greek?’
‘I think it was French,’ I said again desperately. ‘But I really don’t know much about my family history.’
I was enjoying talking to him, but these questions were making me feel awkward. Perhaps I should just have said that I didn’t know; that I couldn’t remember. But would he have believed me? I mean, it’s not normal, is it, by anyone’s standards? I thought fleetingly, and bitterly, of how easy such conversations must be for other people; not to have to struggle to make up plausible lies second by second. I felt a familiar panic starting to rise, just as it had done when I had tried to talk to my teenage neighbour. Was I even capable of having a normal, two-way conversation? What could I possibly talk about? My name is Gabriel. I know that, at least. It can’t be all that bad as long as I know my name.
‘What are you doing in Budapest?’ I asked, trying to deflect attention away from myself.
‘Sightseeing, really. And researching. I’m visiting the churches and cathedrals. I have a doctorate in religious philosophy,’ he said. ‘I used to lecture on the subject.’
‘But not any more?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Were your lectures too controversial?’ I asked, knowing what a sensitive subject religion could be.
‘Ha! Controversy wasn’t the problem so much as the fact that I could prove a lot of my theories — or come close to proving them, anyway. People don’t like that. Anyway, now that my lecturing career seems to have come to a premature end, I’m just pursuing a private interest in the subject.’
‘Budapest is the right place for that,’ I said. ‘There are so many beautiful churches and cathedrals here.’
‘There are indeed. And I’d better get on if I want to visit them all,’ the young scholar said.
Don’t go, I wanted to say. Please… don’t leave me here like this! I have no one. I fingered the edges of the fish food box in by pocket. I was sick of waiting for everyone to come home. Although I had only had a very brief conversation with him, I instinctively liked this man. I wanted to be friends with this person right here. No one else would do. For a wild moment I even considered knocking him down where he stood and taking him back to my apartment, tying him up and keeping him so that I might have someone to talk to and live with. Someone who could maybe replace this diary for me. But people would notice me carrying him through the streets, and there would be a fuss when a bright young man went missing, and then police investigations, and I would risk unwanted official attention. And anyway, it is not right to kidnap people. So I would never resort to something like that.
‘I’m sorry?’ I said, realising that, preoccupied as I was with my thoughts, I’d missed what Stephomi had just said.
‘I was just saying that we should meet up for a drink some time,’ he repeated with a smile. ‘I don’t know anyone in this city, my Hungarian is not quite up to the standard of my English, and I admit I could use the conversation.’
‘Really?’ I blurted out, hardly daring to believe what I was hearing.
‘If you’re interested,’ the scholar said with a shrug. ‘I realise you must have your own friends here if you’re living in the city but,’ he paused and smiled slightly, ‘I’m hoping you’ll take pity on me as a friendless traveller.’
‘I’d be more than happy,’ I replied, pleased to note that I didn’t sound at all desperate.
Stephomi pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Well, my mobile number’s on there. Give me a call some time.’
We shook hands and he strode away, back into the trees, leaving me alone outside Michael’s church. As I gazed up at the carved sculpture of Michael, I couldn’t help but feel deeply thankful towards the church. It was, after all, our shared interest in God that had led Stephomi and I to meet in the first place. It will be nice to have an actual person to talk to.
I took the card out when I got home, and carefully placed it on the table by the phone. Then I stared at it for a while. I wanted to phone Stephomi right then and there. He had said to give him a call ‘some time’, but what exactly had he meant by that? How long did I have to wait? What would be a socially acceptable period? I wrestled with the dilemma for a few hours and, in the end, I decided that by ‘some time’ Stephomi had probably meant in a few days or a week or so. So I have decided that I will wait three days before contacting him. I don’t think I could physically wait any longer than that.
There will be no need to kidnap anyone if this works… Not that I would ever have seriously considered doing so, for I am quite clear on the difference between right and wrong. Besides, I’m okay on my own. I’m certainly not one of those people who are for ever needing others to boost their own sense of self-worth. Forever needing to be surrounded by friends and loved ones to tell them how wonderful they are all the time. That would be pathetic. No — mine is nothing more than a perfectly healthy desire to see another person every once in a while.
5th September
There are devils in my head. I’ve feared it for a while now. But I didn’t want to record those fears here because it would have made them too real. Now I can’t deny that they’re there. And they hate me! They’ve prised everything from me with their bare, clawed hands, with the curled, bent fingers and leathery skin. They possessed me while I destroyed my apartment inch by inch, shattering and tearing and shredding in a sinful glut of destruction. They made me feel that all the violence and bloodshed in the world would not lessen the horrible rage that was thumping in my head or get rid of the bitterness that was rising like bile in my throat.
But now they have gone at last, the horned devils all scampering back to their hellish realm, and I am left with nothing… Nothing but this great, aching emptiness within that will never be filled, no matter how much I give to it, no matter how long I wait, no matter how many boxes of fish food I buy. It almost makes me wish I were dead. Why is this happening to me? What did I do to make God hate me so badly?
8th September
I need to record what happened. I don’t want to, I have avoided it
… but I’ll have to write it down at some point.
The day I visited Margaret’s Island, I went to bed quite late. But when I eventually slept, my dreams were full of fearful, disturbing images and whispering voices that tried to speak to me; but there were too many all trying to speak at once and too loudly and I could not make out any individual words. And there were people trying to show me things but not giving me time to look, and the shapes and pictures were blurred and shifting so that there was only the odd image that I was able to recognise — Michael’s church; the lost and wandering mystery woman who had run from me in the alley, her eyes widened in fear; a carved stone angel crying tears of blood; a laughing Stephomi; naked demons that thrashed in flames, biting and fighting one another And then, quite suddenly, a sharp, crystal-clear image. A tall man with fire radiating from him and wet flames dripping from his clothes, walking through the streets of Budapest until he came to my apartment. He passed straight through the doors as if they
