“Monsignor, I am sorry, but you are missing the point.”
This time Rodriguez sucked in his breath and could not quite keep his composure, but before he could reopen his mouth there was a tap on the door behind him and his private secretary popped his head through. “Your Eminence, there’s absolute mayhem upstairs. They’re sending out search parties but they can’t find Him. The cavern is empty and…”
“Oh, do go away! We already know all about this little Michael fellow,” said O’Hara.
“I don’t mean the young Englishman,” said the secretary, turning to Rodriguez. “I mean Jesus! He’s gone. His tomb’s empty and they don’t know where He is.”
“How can that be?” Rodriguez propped himself up against the bars.
O’Hara saw hundreds of tiny bright lights dancing like fireflies in front of him. He grabbed Rodriguez and spat his booze-smelling words into his face: “I warned you, you stuck-up Spanish git. I told you to deal with that corrupt, fat swine. Why didn’t you have Giacomo killed? Why?”
“In fact it was your job, wasn’t it? And you failed,” Rodriguez spat back.
O’Hara released his grip on the maggot liaison officer and took another slug at his bottle. “You never listened to me, did you? Oh no, you were always against me. Just because you could see others ridiculing me you had to do the same. You never had a mind of your own, you’re a trivial little shit. You empty the pontiff’s chamber pot and this makes you feel important. You’ll go down in history as one of the idiots who misplaced our Shining Star, our Lord.” He stopped to regain his breath, then opened his mouth wide and cried: “Whose responsibility was it to keep a close eye on the Maggot Church and ensure the safekeeping of our precious Holy Lord? It was yours, you snail-eating Spanish fuck. You failed to…”
But his sentence was cut short. While he’d been raging, Rodriguez had popped his head out of the door and ordered a guard inside to perform a little task.
O’Hara didn’t see it coming.
He never had the vaguest presentiment of mortality as he launched into his attack on Rodriguez. Why not release his pent-up fury? He was finished anyway. This Spaniard was not ever going to see it his way. All that awaited O’Hara now, at best, was a return to Limerick, where he would spend his last days staring idly at the shamrock etched into the thick white foam of his pint.
When he looked up, something came whistling through the air, hitting him very hard in the face and knocking him over. He enjoyed a momentary, close-up perspective of the fibrous weave of a rug, which struck him as fascinating.
It occurred to him that he should have spent more time in his life looking at the tiny things.
38
The resurrection of Jesus had taken place as follows:
On the third day of their vigil by the steel doors, Michael and Ariel had hidden in a side passage when they saw a procession of women in white robes moving towards them with lit candles. They shuffled along as if tranquilized — utterly catatonic, singing torpidly while their eyes gazed into infinity.
When the serpentine procession reached the steel doors, two stout Teutonic maids with tresses like golden loaves of bread stepped up to the scanners and pressed their palms to the glass screens.
There was a rumbling sound as the steel doors rolled aside for them like the waters of the Jordan.
Michael and Ariel had simply joined the tail end of the line as it curved into the Lord’s chamber.
The women did not hang about once they got inside. Within seconds they were burning incense, sweeping, mopping, sprinkling the floor with essential oils and opening the Lord’s sarcophagus and rubbing ointments into his skin.
Ariel grew conscious of a great inner turmoil. She sat down and pressed her palms against her temples. Thoughts bubbled up in her, and she would have loved to turn off what felt like a churning radio inside her head.
Michael seemed to be having the same problem. He paced about, muttering: “What do we do now? We have to do something.”
Ariel closed her eyes and felt herself falling into a trance. She smelled damp soil under trees, heard wind rustling through overhead leaves. The physical world beyond this place, the wheeling stars, the operation of the Earth — these were the images that ran through her mind.
She felt something wriggling against her stomach, under her blouse. She unbuttoned herself. What she saw was a surprise, even to her.
A small hole had opened in the middle of her navel.
A fat, orange maggot wriggled out and lay against the lining of her trousers. She almost did not want to touch it. It had two black, glistening eyes and it seemed to be looking at her.
Ariel stood up and slowly advanced towards the sarcophagus where Jesus lay. The women stood aside to let her pass. She opened Jesus’s mouth and placed the orange maggot on his tongue.
Within a few seconds, colour returned to the sallow, pale cheeks. His eyes swiveled and opened. They were light brown, like sandalwood. The speed at which the body refilled itself was nothing short of miraculous.
By the time the women had filed out of the chamber, still singing, Jesus was rising out of his sarcophagus. He stepped out and brushed the dust off his cloak.
His hair had been combed and oiled every week for two thousand years, and his face massaged and moisturized. He looked like a normal man in his early thirties, who hadn’t had his hair cut for a good while.
“Follow me,” said Jesus, who seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He walked briskly to an elevator, which he called down even though it was locked and alarmed. The doors opened smoothly and they all stepped inside.
A few minutes later they were back on the surface, walking through a crowded street in Rome. After the darkness of the caves, the bright streets filled them with wonder. The sun beat down, transforming every crumbling façade, every weather-beaten face.
“What do we do now?” Michael whispered to Ariel. “I don’t know. We follow him.”
They looked at the figure of Jesus in front of them. He was walking briskly, a certain amusement in his eyes as he took in the urban scene: the cars, the aircraft passing over.
They stopped off briefly at a cash machine, which spasmodically spat out money until they had more than they needed.
As they walked away, money lay scattered on the pavement behind them.
“We must leave this place,” said Jesus, “and get to the mountains. I have no business in the city among these empty buildings. We need a large chariot to take us away.”
Quickly they dived into a taxi, asking to be taken to a mobile home showroom on the outskirts of Rome. Within an hour, they had bought a gleaming air-conditioned camper van with a galley kitchen, two separate sleeping cabins at the back, and a bathroom with a small Jacuzzi.
Jesus sat quietly in an upholstered sofa staring out of the window as they drove out of Rome.
“It’s good to be back in the world,” he said, smiling jauntily at them.
“It must be, my Lord, after all the time you spent sleeping,” said Ariel politely.
“Time doesn’t mean a thing. Time is one of your little inventions,” said Jesus. “Please stop calling me Lord, would you? I have no desire for any sort of veneration. Certainly it is true I’m not actually a human being at all, yet I’d prefer it if you treated me as one.”
Michael cleared his throat and said, tentatively: “Ah… Jesus? Would you like to hear some music?”