The Temple (18 page)

As he paced up and down his
empty flat thoughts raced through his mind. “This isn’t happening.”
“It’s just a nightmare and you’ll wake up again. Wake up!”

But he didn’t wake up and the
nightmare was his life. Over and over again pictures and sounds
tormented his mind, the sound of an explosion, the wailing funeral
march, the sound of earth falling on a coffin, the giggling of his
baby, his wife’s voice,… again and again in an infinite loop.

He stayed in the confines of his
home refusing to open the door even to his close friends and
relatives until the day of the great protest march. When he saw
John Drew at the head of thousands marching through the city to
demand justice he awoke from his stunned grieving torpor.
Spontaneously he put on his shoes to join the march. The walk
amongst the milling multitude was like a liberating breath of fresh
air. For the first time he felt there was a way out of the land of
darkness he felt himself trapped in. The demand for justice and
action offered the hope that he would be given the opportunity to
come to terms with his unbearable loss. He marched side by side
with thousands of others, and when everyone chanted their slogans
he shouted out his grief, his anger and his frustration. After the
march he went to have dinner before going home. It was the first
time since the bombing that he was able to sleep through the
night.

The following morning he
prepared himself some breakfast and sat down in the living room
with it. Eager to see if there was any reaction from the government
to the protestors’ demands he switched on the TV.

“…in what a government spokesman
has described as a crackdown on rightwing extremists police units
raided dozens of homes last night and arrested the ringleaders of
yesterday’s unrest. Four hundred officers executed 38 warrants on
Thursday. In all Police said they arrested 32 people aged between
16 and 44. Twenty-seven were men and five were women. Five of those
arrested were charged with national security offences and the other
13 with incitement. All those charged have been remanded in custody
to appear at Court later. The other 14 people arrested have been
bailed pending further enquiries, police said.”

The cup of coffee dropped out of
his hand spilling the dark brown liquid on his white carpet. The
brown stain spread as the coffee soaked into the material.
Speechless with rage he turned the TV off and spent the rest of the
day brooding.

When evening turned to dusk he
went rummaging through his flat for a number of things that he took
to the bathroom one by one, a large empty glass bottle, an old rag,
a siphon, a cork and a tin of turpentine left from the decorating
work he had done some weeks earlier. He put on a pair of rubber
gloves and then put the siphon in the bottle and poured the
turpentine into it. Then he closed it tightly with the cork. He
carefully wiped the bottle with a wet soapy cloth to make sure
there were no fingerprints on it. He packed the bottle, the rag and
a cigarette lighter in a small rucksack and then dressed in dark
clothes and running shoes. He was just about to open the flat door
when he paused and went back to the bedroom. He opened several
drawers and cupboards before he found what he was looking for – a
balaclava. Stuffing it into the pocket of his jacket he grabbed the
rucksack and left his home.

The sky was dark and the streets
were full of people, many of them heading for home after a long day
at work, others going out to enjoy themselves. Nobody took any
notice of the solitary dark figure walking through town, his mind
focused on his target. Passing through a park he saw a stone lying
on the ground. He stopped to pick it up and let it slide into one
of his large pockets. After almost an hour’s walk his target was in
sight – the Dryvellist Temple. He looked around. Suddenly he felt
very nervous. His heart was beating strongly and he felt the sweat
on his hands. There was no one in sight. He took out the balaclava
and pulled it over his head. Then he uncorked the bottle of
turpentine and stuffed the old rag into the bottleneck. The
turpentine soaked into the fabric. He hid the bottle inside his
jacket, took the stone in one hand and the cigarette lighter in the
other and approached the temple. The streets around the temple were
deserted. ‘Lucky,’ he thought. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone around now.’
He walked around the building until he found some windows. One last
look and he hurled the stone at one of them. The glass shattered.
He quickly lit the rag in the bottle and threw the Molotov cocktail
through the broken window. Then he ran without looking back.

Brother Thomas was young. He had
spent six months at the temple as an acolyte before being welcomed
into the order as a full brother. It was the proudest achievement
of his life. He revered and almost idolized Master Jeremiah who, in
his eyes, was as close to God as any mortal could get. With
Jeremiah’s help he had found the way to prayer and meditation to
achieve inner peace and a oneness with the divine. He was walking
along a corridor when he heard the stone John Lessing had cast come
crashing through a window. He opened the door to investigate and,
with the hands of fate inexorably pulling him in, entered the room.
Seeing the broken window he walked towards it when the turpentine
filled bottle came flying in. The bottle smashed against the wall
just behind Thomas where it burst into a fiery inferno that
engulfed poor Thomas. The burning turpentine drenched his back. In
an agony of terror Thomas ran out of the room and back into the
corridor, screaming, yelling, crying for his life and for the pain
to end. Horrified brethren peered out of other rooms to see the
human torch run and then collapse before reaching the end of the
corridor. Someone got a fire extinguisher. Little plastic flakes
melted on Thomas and put out the fire. Within a few minutes the
wailing siren of an ambulance joined its voice to the low moans
that still came from Thomas. The horrified paramedics lifted him
onto a stretcher and took him to the ambulance. A shot of morphine.
An oxygen mask. The ambulance raced through the night desperately
trying to stay ahead of the winged death in cold pursuit. Its icy
fingers reached for Thomas who briefly awoke moaning “Let flights
of angels sing me to my rest”. The driver put his foot down and the
roaring engine pulled slightly ahead of their unrelenting pursuer.
The paramedic held Thomas’ hand. It was all he could do. Thomas’
hand tightened as the vehicle was overtaken. The screaming siren
tore through the night carrying his lifeless body.

The next day news of the arson
attack and the gruesome murder filled all the news channels. John
Lessing watched everything on TV. He thought taking revenge would
make him feel better. It didn’t. Like an evil demon sucking away
his blood, his heart darkened and hardened and thirsted for more,
more, always more. The photos of a smiling Thomas didn’t touch his
heart. “He was one of them, so good riddance!” he muttered
bitterly. “Let him rot in hell!” He didn’t see the pictures of
Thomas as a child, he only saw his own son and wife, and the all
consuming cancer of hatred continued eating through his heart.

When the president was told of
the attack on the temple he felt himself vindicated in taking
strong action against the demonstrators. “There you see what kind
of people they are,” he said to the home secretary. “This must not
be allowed to continue. Do whatever you must, but find me those
bastards!” Yet no matter how much the police interrogated those
under arrest, no one would admit to anything. That, of course, did
not stop the media for laying the blame at the feet of John Drew
and his fellow demonstrators who were now called conspirators in a
relentless propaganda drive.

When Jeremiah heard of the
horrific attack he was appalled at the dreadful injustice done
against the holy temple. “So much for the president’s word that
religion must be respected!” he said angrily. “By God I swear that
this shall not remain unanswered!” he yelled with clenched
fists.

When the parents of Thomas were
told of his fiery death they wept.

When the general public watched
everything on TV they recognized an escalating tit-for-tat that was
spiralling out of control and with no one in sight to save the
land.

On the radio someone played
Henry Purcell’s funeral march, the drum beating relentlessly and
the trumpets blowing air under the wings of Death.

That day a storm raged across
the city. The noonday sky was as dark and sombre as though eventide
was approaching. Heavy rain blown about by an icy bitter wind
lashed the buildings and few people ventured outside. The main city
square, where tourists and locals alike usually spent time in a
street café or walked about with an ice cream, was deserted except
for a solitary crow that braved the tempest and sat perched on the
head of the city’s legendary founder.

The wind and rain and cold
seemed to quench people’s thirst for vengeance on that day. They
stayed in their homes or if they had to venture out they dashed to
the nearest place of safety. Yet while the storm raged outside
there were dark clouds of a very different sort on the horizon
inside a number of buildings that day.

When the police and fire
services had concluded their investigation at the Dryvellist Temple
Master Jeremiah gathered the brethren in the grand hall. The
weeping Diana had tears of bright red blood pouring down her pale
face. Jeremiah positioned himself next to her and gazed at the
gathering.

“My brothers,” he said
forcefully. “Today is a day of mourning for us. We have had the
comfort of having Thomas as our brother cruelly taken away, but not
that of having had him. He lives on in our hearts and we vow never
to forget him. Young Thomas came to us seeking life and happiness
and yet it is death that he found here at the hands of those who
hate us for what we are. And yet, death? Is it death he found here?
Not so I say unto you, my brethren, for the Lord himself watches
over us. The only certainty we have in life is death, but we
Dryvellers have the certainty in death of being well received by
the Lord in eternity. And thus we can be sure that Brother Thomas
is in a better place, a place where dreams are true, a place we
true Dryvellers may all look forward to one day. And this is even
more so for a martyr, and I can assure you that Thomas is a martyr.
Has the Lord not promised martyrs the entry into superparadise
where delights unimaginable await him who is pure of heart? It is
said that cowards die many times before their deaths while the
valiant never taste of death but once. And so it is with Brother
Thomas. The only question I can ask you here today is this: Do you
want to die many times or only once?”

The brethren lifted their fists
up in the air and chanted “Martyrdom! Martyrdom!...”

Master Jeremiah lifted his hands
to calm the enflamed brethren. “Brothers! The day will come when
this dastardly deed shall be paid for and it is we who will present
the bill. I call for a volunteer, brothers, let a volunteer rise to
his feet.”

The brethren stood up like a
man. Jeremiah nodded satisfied, with a grim smile barely
perceptible on his face.

Three days later. Another dirge
and another funeral. A dark brown wooden coffin containing the
unfortunate Thomas and a copy of The Holy Dryvel was lowered into
the ground. His parents, relatives and friends bade a tearful
farewell and threw handfuls of earth and flowers down on the
coffin. The Dryvellers and brethren stood and waited until Thomas'
family had moved on. Thomas' parents had never been happy about him
joining the order which they perceived as having a bad influence on
him.

Then Jeremiah delivered what was
supposed to be a eulogy but what in fact was a poem he shamelessly
copied from the Roman writer Lucretius:

Departed comrade! Thou, redeemed
from pain
Shall sleep the sleep that kings desire in vain:
Not thine the sense of loss
But lo, for us the void
That never shall be filled again.
Not thine but ours the grief.
All pain is fled from thee.
And we are weeping in thy stead;
Tears for the mourners who are left behind
Peace everlasting for the quiet dead.

He then invited the brethren to
say a prayer for Thomas before he turned and walked away in a slow
mournful way. The whole funeral took place under the watchful eyes
of scores of reporters and some discreet security personnel. They
filmed the brethren filing past the open grave in a long
procession. Each of them said a little personal word of farewell
and when the last of them had gone the gravediggers filled in the
dark sad hole so that cheerful flowers would be able to be a
companion for Thomas and a solace for his grieving parents.

When the gravediggers had
finished they stood in front of the grave and looked at the
gravestone.

“Aye, it’s true,” one of them
said. “Look at that. Never seen a truer word on one in all these
years I’ve worked here.”

The inscription read:

What you are,

I was.

What I am,

You will be.

City of Darkness

There’s no educator better than
necessity.

Xenophon

The imprisonment of John Drew
and the brutal crackdown of the FDL, followed by the gruesome arson
attack on the temple had left the nation in shock. Yet while many
were petrified by the sudden outburst of violence it had the
opposite effect on Cato. His father’s excruciating death in the
Dryvellist Hospital and what could only be called a theft of his
family estate had left deep and lasting scars. Not a day went by
without these two things weighing heavily on his mind and the once
cheerful young man had become quiet, withdrawn and bitter. Where
once he had risen high on the wheel of fortune, his circumstances
were now utterly reversed forcing him to make a living as a waiter.
His sullen appearance meant he got few tips, gradually alienating
him further from society, a society that he already felt deeply let
down by.