‘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 presented no earthly barrier to him, striding into my rooms as I stood and silently watched him, his flames flickering over the walls and ceiling, throwing alternate patterns of dancing light and murky shadows throughout the room. And then he stood still, turning his head as though searching, his flames dancing and leaping about him. His eye fell on the card Stephomi had given me, lying on the table by the phone. He reached out a burning hand, picking it up and setting it alight with the tips of his golden, fire-edged fingers. My scream of desperate horror woke me and I leaped from the sweat-soaked bed and ran into the living room, flicking on the light and staggering over to the table where Zadkiel Stephomi’s card had been mere hours earlier. It was gone, as I had known it would be. A wretched, dry sob escaped me and I swept through the whole apartment looking; looking even though I knew I would not find the card. And then, when I could no longer deny what I knew to be true, I destroyed my apartment inch by inch. If I hadn’t found some way of venting my anger, I’m sure I would have suffered some kind of heart attack or brain haemorrhage.
I don’t think I ever would have stopped if it weren’t for the blue lights I suddenly noticed flashing down in the street outside. The noise I’d made had obviously caused one of the other tenants in the building to phone the police. I stared madly round in horror. What was I going to do? How was I going to explain this? I couldn’t simply tell the officers that sometimes I became so consumed with rage, that I did things without meaning to. They’d lock me up for sure!
My first instinct was to run, but I had nowhere to go. And if the police searched my apartment, they might find the bag of money I had been so careful to hide. So when they started knocking at my door, I ran into my bedroom, which was as I had left it a mere half hour ago, and got into the cupboard. As soon as I could hear the police in my kitchen, I knocked my foot against the wooden door, hoping it would sound accidental. A moment later, when the cupboard door was flung open, I shrank back with a cry of false fear. After that it was an easy enough thing to convince the police that burglars had trashed my apartment while I had hidden in this cupboard, too scared to move. After all, why should they question my story? What kind of nutcase would do this to his own home?