A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence Read Free Book Online Page A

the face of this sinister foolery? I can’t look. I can only sit, as drawn in as possible, my eyes willing themselves to see only the dark-brown oiled floorboards.
    He has stopped. I can’t stand for a hymn. I’ll stay sitting. But that would be too obvious. The decision is taken out of my hands as once again I’m lifted by the unasked-for pressure of elbows.
    Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!
    All I can visualize are the dimly remembered faithful of Corinth, each crying aloud his own words, no one hearing anyone else, no one able to know what anyone else was saying, unable even to know what they themselves were saying. Are these people mad or am I? I hate this hymn.
    Celebrate confusion. Let us celebrate confusion. God is not the author of confusion but of peace. What a laugh. Let the Dionysian women rend themselves on the night hills and consume the god.
    I want to go home. I want to go away and never come back. I want –
    Are we seated? There is a kind of hiatus, a holding of breath in the lungs, a waiting. The quiet man beside me moans, and I’m shocked by the sound’s openness, the admitted quality of it. Has his pulse been quickened or made indefinitely slow? Impossible to tell. But I can see the vein in one of his wrists. Throbbing.
    Calla is holding herself very still. I can feel the tension of her arm through our two coats. If she speaks, I will never be able to face her again. I can feel along my nerves and arteries the squirming and squeamishness of that shame, and having to walk out of the Tabernacle with her afterwards, through a gauntlet of eyes.
    Silence. I can’t stay. I can’t stand it. I really can’t. Beside me, the man moans gently, moans and stirs, and moans –
    That voice!
    Chattering, crying, ululating, the forbidden transformed cryptically to nonsense, dragged from the crypt, stolen and shouted, the shuddering of it, the fear, the breaking, the release, the grieving –
    Not Calla’s voice. Mine. Oh my God. Mine. The voice of Rachel.
    “Hush, Rachel. Hush, hush – it’s all right, child.”
    She is crooning the words softly over me. We are in her flat. The chesterfield is covered with an old car rug, green and black plaid, and it is on this that I am lying. I remember onlyvaguely our getting here, walking through the streets and the wind, the rain pelting against me and I hardly noticing it at all. As for the rest, I remember everything, every detail, and will never be able to forget, however hard I try. It will come back again and again, and I will have to endure it, over and over.
    The crying has stopped now. Calla hands me a handkerchief and I blow my nose.
    “How long did it go on?”
    “You mean – crying? You started in the Tabernacle, and I took you out right away, and –”
    “No. I didn’t mean that. I meant – the other.”
    “Oh. Only a minute. Less, probably.”
    “You don’t have to be kind. How long?”
    “I’ve told you,” Calla says. “But if you won’t believe me, what can I do?”
    “Was it – was I – was it very loud?”
    “No,” Calla says. “It wasn’t loud at all.”
    I have no way of knowing whether she is telling me the truth or not. She is looking at me closely and questioningly, as though trying to decide whether to say something.
    “Look – it’s okay,” she says at last. “I know it wasn’t – well, you know – a religious experience, for you.”
    I feel absolutely cold and detached from everything. My voice sounds flat and expressionless, nearly a monotone.
    “I guess it’s a good thing you realize that, anyway.”
    “I’m not,” she says with unexpected bitterness, “entirely lacking in all forms of understanding.”
    “I didn’t say you were.”
    “No, but you think I’m a crank for going there. Maybe I am. I wanted you to go so you’d see it wasn’t faked. And now look what’s happened, what I’ve done. Oh, Rachel, I’m sorry – honestly I am. I should never –”
    “You’re
sorry?”