said, the only true horseman of the apocalypse. And the indistinct shadow on the other side of that thin barrier claimed to be responsible for all that.
Reason dictated that he take his time and think clearly. There were sick people in the world who liked to assume the guilt for murders and disasters they couldn’t possibly be responsible for.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘What?’
‘That I’m a fantasist, that there’s nothing to prove what I’m saying is true.’
Michael McKean, a man of reason and a priest by belief, was nothing at that moment but an animal with all its senses on the alert. And every shred of his ancestral instinct screamed at him that the man on the other side of the confessional was telling the truth.
He needed to breathe for a few moments, before continuing. The other man understood that and respected his silence. When he found his voice again, he appealed to a piety he already knew he wouldn’t find.
‘What do all those deaths, all that pain, mean to you?’
‘Justice. And justice should never create pain. So much of it has been dispensed in the past that it has become an object of worship. Why should this time be different?’
‘What do you mean by justice?’
‘The Red Sea opening and closing. Sodom. Gomorrah. I have many other examples, if you want them.’
The voice was silent for a moment. On his side of the confessional, which at that moment felt like the coldest place in the world, Father McKean would have liked to shout out that these were just stories, that they shouldn’t be taken literally, that…
He held back and missed the opportunity to retaliate. The other man took this as an invitation to continue.
‘Men have had two gospels, one for their souls and one for their lives. One religious and one secular. Both have taught men more or less the same things. Brotherhood, justice, equality. There have been people who have spread them through the world and through time.’
The voice appeared to come from a place much further than the tiny distance separating them. Now it had become a mere breath, sour with disappointment. The kind of disappointment that gives rise not to tears but to anger.
‘But almost nobody has had the strength to live according to these teachings.’
‘All men are imperfect,’ Father McKean replied. ‘That’s part of nature. How can you not feel compassion? Haven’t you repented what you did?’
‘No. Because I will do it again. And you will be the first to know.’
Father McKean hid his face in his hands. What was happening to him was too much for one man. If this person’s words corresponded to the truth, then this was a test beyond his strength. Or the strength of anyone who wore a priest’s cassock. The voice pressed on. Not fierce now, but soft and persuasive. Full of understanding.
‘In your words during the mass, there was pain. There was compassion. But there was no faith.’
He tried in vain to rebel, not against those words, but against his fear. ‘How can you say that?’
‘I’ll help you regain it, Michael McKean,’ the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘I can do that.’
There was another pause. Then the three words that set eternity in motion.
‘I am God.’
CHAPTER 15
In many ways, Joy was the kingdom of almost.
Everything almost worked, was almost shiny, almost new. The roof was almost fine and the paint on the outside walls almost didn’t need retouching. The few permanent employees received their salary almost regularly, the outside helpers almost always forewent theirs. Everything was second-hand, and in that display of the old and worn anything new stood out like the light of a beacon in the distance. But it was also a place where every day, with great difficulty, a new piece of the life raft was built.
As he drove the Batmobile along the unpaved drive towards the house, John Kortighan knew that in the bus with him he had a group of kids to whom life had been a terrible counsellor. Little by little it had devoured their trust, and they had been alone for so long they took solitude for the norm. Each one, with that originality typical of adverse fate, had found his or her own destructive way to go astray, and the indifference of the world had covered their traces.
Now in this place, together, they could try to find themselves, realizing that, logically and not by chance, they had a right to an alternative. And he felt fortunate and grateful to have been chosen to be part of that enterprise.
However hard and desperate it was.
John drove in through the gate and a minute or so later the van crossed the forecourt and pulled up under a canopy. The kids got out and headed for the back door of the kitchen, arguing and joking among themselves. For all of them Sunday was a special day, a day without ghosts.
Jerry Romero expressed everyone’s opinion. ‘Boy, we’re hungry.’
Hendymion Lee, a young man of oriental descent, shrugged his shoulders in reply. ‘So what’s new? You’re always hungry. I’m sure if you were the Pope, they’d have to give communion with slices of salami instead of the host.’
Jerry went up to Hendymion and grabbed his head in an arm lock. ‘If it was up to you, gook, they’d do it with chopsticks.’
They both laughed.
Shalimar Bennett, a black girl with funny spiked hair and the body of a gazelle, joined in the joke. ‘Jerry become Pope? He couldn’t even become a priest. He can’t stand wine. At his first mass he’d get so smashed they’d throw him out.’
John smiled. He lingered in the middle of the forecourt, watching them disappear inside the house. He was not fooled by that relaxed atmosphere. He knew how delicate the balance was, how in each of them memory and temptation were one and the same, until they could be transformed into just a memory. But what he witnessed every day was beautiful – the attempt at rebirth, the construction of a possible future.
Alone, standing in the middle of the forecourt, the sun directly overhead, John Kortighan lifted his eyes to the blue sky and looked at the house.
Joy had been built on the edge of that part of Pelham Bay Park that adjoined the Bronx, on a six-acre property facing the stretch of sea that wove its way northward like a finger poking into the land. The main building was a two-storey construction in the shape of a square C, built according to the architectural dictates that characterized houses in New England, using mainly wood and dark brick. The free side was open towards the channel and the green coast beyond it, which, by contrast, descended southward like a hand holding back the sea.
There was the entrance, facing the garden, which you reached via a porch in the shape of a half-octagon, lit by large glass doors. On the ground floor were the kitchen and pantry, the dining room, a small infirmary, a library, and the games and TV room. On one of the short sides, two bedrooms with a shared bathroom for those members of staff who, like him, lived permanently at Joy. On the upper floor, the kids’ bedrooms, and in the attic Father McKean’s room.
The long side faced the forecourt, where a second building had been built to house a laboratory for those who opted for more manual activities instead of studying. In back of the laboratory was the vegetable garden, which stretched as far as the western edge of the property, where there was an orchard.
