He’d held it against his body. ‘It’s very long,’ he said.
‘It means you won’t need trousers,’ she said, half-smiling. ‘You can be naked underneath. If you want.’
He thanked her but didn’t try it on.
‘You don’t think it’s too girly, do you?’ she said. ‘I think it’s very masculine.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, packing it away. It wasn’t effeminacy that worried him; it was that he couldn’t imagine himself swanning about like an actor in an old Bible movie. It seemed vainglorious, and not at all what modern Christianity was about.
One walk in the Oasan atmosphere had changed all that. His denim jacket, still in a crumpled heap on the floor, had dried stiff as tarpaulin. An Arabic smock and pyjama-style pants, such as he’d seen several of the USIC staff wearing, was probably the ideal alternative, but his ankle-length dishdasha would do nicely too. He could wear it with sandals. So what if he looked like a fancy-dress party sheikh? This was about practicality. He pulled the dishdasha out of the bag, let it unfurl.
To his dismay, it was spattered and stained with black ink. The ballpoint pens that had exploded during the flight had splurted their contents directly onto the white fabric. To make matters worse, he’d evidently scrunched the garment further down in the bag when he was preparing to leave the ship, causing the ink stains to reproduce themselves in Rorschach fashion.
And yet… and yet… He shook the garment straight, held it at arm’s length. Something astonishing had happened. The ink pattern, created randomly, had turned into a cross, a Christian cross, right in the middle of the chest. If it had been red instead of black, it would almost be the insignia on the tunic of a medieval crusader. Almost. The ink stains were untidy, with globs and stray extra lines marring the perfection of the design. Although… although… those faint lines ghosting under the crossbar could be interpreted as the skeletally thin arms of the crucified Christ… and those spiky smudges higher up could be seen as thorns from Jesus’s crown. He shook his head: reading too much into things was a weakness of his. And yet here it was, the cross on his garment where no cross was before. He prodded the ink, to check if it stained his fingers. Apart from a slightly tacky patch in the very centre, it was dry. Ready to wear.
He threw the dishdasha over his head and allowed the cool fabric to slide across his skin, sheathing his nakedness. Turning to appraise his reflection in the window, he confirmed that Bea had chosen well. The thing fitted him, as though a tailor in the Middle East had measured his shoulders, cut the cloth and sewn it for him specially.
The window he’d been using as a mirror became a window again, as lights flared up outside. Two glowing points, like the eyes of some monstrous organism approaching. He stepped closer to the glass and peered through, but the vehicle’s headlights disappeared just as he recognised them for what they were.
6. His whole life had been leading up to this
A rendezvous between a married man and a female stranger, each of them far from home, in the obscure hours before dawn. If there was anything improper or potentially complicated about that, Peter didn’t waste energy worrying over it. He and Grainger both had jobs to do, and God was watching.
Besides, Grainger’s reaction to him, when he opened the door to her knock, was hardly encouraging. She did a double-take: a classic cartoon-style double-take. Her head jerked so hard he thought she might teeter backwards into the corridor, but she just swayed on her feet and stared. The provocation, of course, was the big inky cross on his chest. Seeing it through her eyes, he was suddenly embarrassed.
‘I took your advice,’ he tried to joke, plucking at the sleeves of the dishdasha. ‘About the denim jacket.’
She didn’t smile, just stared some more.
‘You could’ve gone to, like, a T-shirt place,’ she said at last, ‘and got that done… uh… professionally.’ Her own attire was unchanged since their first meeting: still the white smock, cotton slacks, and headscarf. Not conventional Western dress, by any means, yet somehow, on her, it looked more natural, less affected, than his own get-up.
‘The cross was… an accident,’ he explained. ‘A bunch of ink pens exploded.’
‘Uh… OK,’ she said. ‘Well, I guess it gives… kind of a homespun impression. Amateur — in a good way.’
This condescending gesture of diplomacy made him smile. ‘You think I look like a ponce.’
‘A what?’
‘A poseur.’
She glanced down the corridor, towards the exit. ‘Not for me to say. You ready?’
Side by side they walked out of the building, into the darkness. The warm air embraced them with balmy enthusiasm and Peter instantly felt less self-conscious about his outfit, as it was perfect for the climate. Transporting his old clothes all the way to Oasis had been pointless, he appreciated that now. He must reinvent himself, and this morning was a good time to begin.
Grainger’s vehicle was parked right next to the compound, illuminated by a lamp jutting from the concrete façade. It was a big, military-looking thing, clearly much more powerful than the frugal little runabout Peter and Bea owned.
‘I really appreciate you making a car available for me,’ said Peter. ‘I imagine you have to ration them. The fuel and so on.’
‘Best to keep ’em in use,’ said Grainger. ‘They go to hell otherwise. Technically speaking. The moisture’s a killer. Let me show you something.’
She stepped up to the vehicle and flipped open the hatch to show him the engine. Peter dutifully leaned over and looked, although he knew nothing about the inner workings of cars, hadn’t even mastered such basics as Bea could manage, like topping up oil, applying anti-freeze or attaching jump leads. Even so, he could tell that there was something unusual here.
‘It’s… disgusting,’ he said, and laughed at his own tactlessness. But it was true: the whole engine was caked in a greasy gunk that stank like old cat food.
‘Sure,’ said Grainger, ‘but I hope you understand this isn’t damage, this is the cure. The prevention.’
‘Oh.’
She pushed the hatch down with just the right amount of force to make it snap shut. ‘Takes a full hour to grease up a vehicle like this. Do a few of ’em and you stink for the whole day.’
Instinctively, he tried to smell her, or at least retrieve a memory of how she’d smelled before they stepped out into the muggy air. She smelled neutral. Nice, even.
‘Is that one of your jobs? Greasing up the cars?’
She motioned him to get in. ‘We all get grease duty sometimes.’
‘Very democratic. Nobody complains?’
‘This is not the place for complainers,’ she said, swinging into the driver’s seat.
He opened the passenger door and joined her inside. No sooner had his body settled into position than she switched on the ignition and got the motor revving.
‘What about the people at the top?’ he asked. ‘Do they get grease duty too?’
‘People at the top?’
‘The… administration. Managers. Whatever you call them here.’
Grainger blinked, as though she’d been asked a question about lion tamers or circus clowns. ‘We don’t really have managers,’ she said, as she steered the vehicle and got into gear. ‘We all pitch in, take turns. It’s pretty obvious what needs to be done. If there’s any disagreement, we vote. Mostly we just follow the USIC guidelines.’
‘Sounds too good to be true.’
‘Too good to be true?’ Grainger shook her head. ‘No offence, but that’s what some people might say about religion. Not about a simple duty roster for keeping your vehicles’ engines from corroding.’