Part 2
Proud as Lucifer, Covetous as Eve, Lustful as Adam, Angry as Cain…
At Crater Lake, Dr Anna Balm of Walker General in San Francisco stood with the man called Justice Untempered Inexorable Decree.
She had thought he was a man. She had thought his name was Justin. Thought that he had a boyfriend called Martin. She had thought a lot of things. And a lot of things she had tried not to think. She had thought she would never return to Crater Lake, and she had been wrong about that. Wrong about that too.
"Will you show me the place that the Sisters took you to live?" he asked her.
Stubbornly, she wanted to say "no", to deny him and get away from all this. Stubborn pride.
Proud as Lucifer.
She shrugged. "I suppose," she answered.
***
They parked up his motor car, the Jaguar, and walked down the dusty high street. There was the courthouse, and there was the police house, just the same. The little row of shops: the grocery store, the bookshop, the dressmaker. She remembered…
"Surely it cannot be a sin just to look, Sister."
She had been late to return from school one day, dawdling outside the shop window with other girls and just imagining. Sister Zita had found her there and brought her home, with a bony grip tight on her arm. Sister Adelaide had spoken to her sternly.
"The sin of the eyes, child, and the sin of the heart. It was the sin of Eve that she coveted the fruit of the tree of knowledge. A selfish, human desire of the flesh, to which we all fell prey because of her Fall. Remember, child, you are a fallen woman; this is a fallen world. All for the fault of Eve's covetous desire."
She walked on. The shops were shut for the Sabbath anyway.
And there… no, the lumber yard was gone, closed down, and in its place was a car shop offering tires and exhausts. But beyond it, there was… there was…
It was made of cinderblocks with wooden planks for a roof that had once been painted blue but time had seen it weathered to the same grey as the walls. Inside, she knew, there was a kitchen and a sitting room and two tiny bedrooms. There had been a small cot for Anna in the sitting room.
On the first night, Sister Adelaide had sat her down on a three-legged stool and asked her:
"Do you know why you are here?"
***
She did well in her tests, graduating High School with good marks and easily securing a place at a Nursing School up in Salem. At the end of summer, she gathered her few things together and went with the Sisters to catch the bus that would take her away. There were tears and hugs, and reminders to keep clean and to pray. And to her surprise, the Sisters each presented her with a gift. Sister Adelaide gave her an anatomy text book, large and beautifully illustrated; true, it was not new, but it still cannot have been inexpensive. Then Sister Zita gave her a key on a thin gold chain, and Sister Adelaide told her: "Think often of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, child. And pray that God in His mercy will look on a fallen woman such as you and find forgiveness in His heart."
That anatomy book had set her on the path that led to becoming a doctor.
The key she had kept, always.
***
"Shall we go in? Would that be all right, do you think?"
He had knocked on the door only for it to creak open under his hand.
"Hello?" he had called, but there was no answer.
"Don't!" she said. "It's… it's creepy. And it's not my… it's not anything to do with me any more."
"Do you think not? Then you do feel free of the past."
"Yes. No. I don't know. What is it you want, anyway?"
"Perhaps there is someone out back in the yard," he said and moved to go down the alley passage at the side of the tiny house.
***
The Sisters' little house had had no room for a bath. There was a brick washroom at the far end of the yard but no room for a bath. Anna would bring a ewer of water from the kitchen to fill each Sister's washbasin each morning; she herself would wash in the kitchen sink. But once a week, the Sisters would send her to fill the metal bath in the yard to bathe.
Sometimes boys, boys from school, would sneak into Mr Copper's old lumber yard next door in order to spy on her ablutions. Johnny Carlton, Pete Rowan, one time his little brother Bobby. She wasn't surprised. She knew what boys wanted. She'd learned about that from the cult as well. Solomon or David or Yusuf had told her it was special and secret. It occurred to her, though, that it might be another sin.
At school she gained a reputation, but her teachers did not notice, or chose to overlook it. She pleased her teachers, being both diligent and quick-witted, and they talked about college. They told her she should ask the Sisters. Zita looked coldly at her and Adelaide said:
"Each day you will slip further into the world, child."
"Yes, Sister, I know. I will try harder."
Sister Adelaide tutted. "Proud," she said. "Proud as Lucifer."
And Anna thought that that would be that. But the next day, the Sisters took her to her teachers and said medical college. A nurse. Anna would make a good nurse; it would keep her mindful of her place and her duty.
***
She had taken up walking in the woods, when she was able, between housework and homework, between study and prayer. She had kept a look out for any small animals that might have been injured. She'd wanted to test herself. But injured animals were few and shy of her, and the dead she could not help.
One time, she'd seen Johnny Carlton in the woods. He'd been hunting rabbits with his pa's old rifle. He was good, too, moving with determined stealth. She was better, though, and had followed him, and he had not seen her. She'd watched as he bagged a brace of rabbits; and she'd watched when he set his gun down to relieve himself behind a tree. Turnabout is fair play, she had thought. After that she'd giggled and run away through the trees. She had had to hurry to be back in time to prepare supper for the Sisters.
***
The yard was empty. Of course. The washroom was still there, its corrugated iron roof showing signs of rust, corrosion. But the Sisters' woodpile, Sister Zita's bicycle, even the old tin bath were gone.
"Nothing here but memories," she said wryly.
"What sort of memories?" he asked.
"Oh, a lifetime. Well, half a lifetime. Things I couldn't possibly tell you. There was… oh!"
Halfway across the yard she stopped suddenly, remembering.
***
One day, a day she had thought she would never forget, as she was working in the yard, filling the bath, she found a bird on the ground. It was in a bad way; it looked as though a cat had got it. Anna was not afraid of such things nor repulsed; she had seen worse things done in her time with the cult. So she knelt down in the dust and just thought, poor little thing. And she took it up in her hand and felt that its little heart was still beating a tremulous tattoo. So she folded its wings and feathers back into place. And the little bird chirruped and to her complete surprise flew out of her cupped palm and away.
But it cannot have been as hurt as I believed, she said to herself.
That Sunday, Zita looked at her for a very long time, and afterwards Anna prayed to God harder than she had ever done before that he might make her less of a sinner.
***
"How well do you remember?"
"What?"
"How well? Do you remember in every detail."
"Like it was yesterday. Why?"
"Could you remember where you were stood, say? When you say you saw this bird?"
"I… I guess so. Let me see. The bath used to be… here, so I would have been…"
She gasped, ever so slightly, as with a thrill she stepped onto the self-same spot.
"Do not move."
He knelt at her feet and with cupped hands began to dig in the dirt. After a moment he paused.
"You can step back now. I've found a stone here. If you will permit, I will remove it."
"A stone?" she stepped clear as he brushed away the dirt covering a broad flag.
"It is covering something," he said, and finding an edge proceeded to heave it upright. It was a fair act of strength; she wondered if he was showing off, but his focus was not on her.
Under the stone was a metal strongbox.
"Lift it out," he encouraged.
She did so. The smell of old damp soil lifted around her with the casket. Once she had it clear, he let go of the slab and it fell back into the earth with a thud.
"Now," he said, "open it."
"It's locked."
"You have the key."
"What? No, I don't…"
"You do. On the gold chain about your neck. I saw it earlier. You have a key given you by the Sisters in remembrance. Try it."
"That's ridiculous," she said drawing out the key on its chain. "This is just a charm. A religious icon. It's not… oh. Oh my god! It fits."
"Open it. Please."
Her hand was trembling, her body already knowing that this was a moment of some import. She turned the key and the lock and clasp sprang away, as though fresh oiled and not mouldering in the dank earth for who knew how many years. Taut with nerves, she pushed back the lid and reached in to withdraw what was held within.
***
"Can your soul really be a blank slate, little one? Can you really draw a curtain between you and all that your parents have wrought upon you?"
"I don't know, Sister,"
"We are creatures made of history. We are shaped by our environment, by all that we have learned and experienced, and by the choices of all our ancestors who made the world as we find it, and yea by the experiences that moulded our very genes – don't look shocked, girl, of course I've read Darwin."
"Sorry, Sister."
"Evolution tells us that we are animals, with the appetites of animals. This is the inescapable truth of Original Sin: we are made. And only through grace can we do better than our making."
***
It was a stone bowl, a dark slate-like grey here and there flecked with tracks of gold like circuits or veins visible beneath its cinereal surface, the inner face badly scoured as by acid. The last time she had held this thing she had raised it to her lips and drunk.
"Oh god! It's the Grail!"
She dropped it and it fell, striking the edge of the metal box left open on the ground. She thought, for an instant, that it must shatter, but instead it mere rang with a mighty chime.
He bent down to retrieve it and studied it a moment.
"Yes," he said. "It is a piece of our technology. A cup of healing. But see, your solvent has stripped some of the metagenetic surfaces. I am sorry. This is how it became bonded with you."
"What? What are you saying?"
"Here, you should take it."
"I don't want that thing!"
"Nevertheless," he said offering it too her, "it is in your charge."
"Keep it!"
"I think not. See, it does not suffer me to touch it."
He held up his left hand and she should see his fingertips where he had held the grail, blistering and blackening. She could see it spreading in his right hand too, but still he held the cup out to her.
"You're kidding."
"No. Please. Take the cup." There was just a note of pain in his voice. Maybe it was that that convinced her. Tentatively, her hand reached out to his, fingers expecting to burn or shrivel, she ever so gently touched the igneous chalice.
As soon as she made contact, she could feel, through the vessel, the disease that was spreading into his hand, the suppurating corruption that was infecting him. And in the same moment, felt it relent, retreat, release him and his ravaged hand be made whole again. Quickly he relinquished the cup into her grasp.
She swallowed.
Then with as much caution as before, she placed her left hand on his left and that too was cleansed.
"I don't want this."
"Perhaps that is why it has come to you."
"What should I do?"
"Do as thou wilt," he said.
***
He left her the keys to the Jaguar and departed in the manner of his own people, and left her with her choice.
Richard Flowers
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