The Holy Machine

65

I was lucky. The rocky overhang where I had sheltered was just below the top of a pass. And when I staggered up it I saw that there was a settlement not far below the ridge on the other side: a score or so of pantiled houses surrounded by trees and fields, and a large white religious building with a bell-tower, a monastery of some kind, at the village’s heart.

Very slowly I made my way down the hill, dragging one leg like an old man. There was a lull in the rain, but water was everywhere. Streams gurgled and tinkled all around me. Muddy water ran in rivulets across the road. I remember I saw a lizard on the stony ground. Because of the cold, it moved away from me not with the normal darting motion of lizards, but in slow motion, one leg at a time.

At the outskirts of the village I met a young man with a long, wet moustache.

‘Excuse me,’ I murmured, ‘excuse me…’

I reached out to him and touched his sleeve. He pulled his arm away indignantly, then dived into a house and slammed the door.

The clouds were breaking up overhead into rags of grey and white and the sun shone through in patches: a tree illuminated here, a ruined house there… The mountainside which I had just descended was now blazing with brilliant, yellow light.

I passed closed doors and shuttered windows. A thin dog came trotting past. It paused to sniff at me, as if wondering whether there was any flesh left on me worth eating.

At the centre of the village there was a square with single shop and a police station, both of them closed and shuttered up. There was a ruined building and some deserted-looking houses. The long, white wall of the monastery formed one whole side of the square. It had barred windows with pale blue stonework around them, and a single, large ornate door.

I hesitated. Where was this? Bosnia? Montenegro? Dalmatia? Istria? Venetia? What alphabet was that above the door of the police station? What language did they speak? I swayed and tottered and nearly fell.

And what religion was it here, I wondered (for I had noticed that geography was the main determinant of religious belief)? Which God did they follow? Should I ask for alms in the name of Allah, or Jesus Christ, or Bogomil, or… who? Some Slavonic god of plenty? To my confused, feverish mind, the question seemed both insoluble and frighteningly important. That dull, persistent aching feeling was pressing heavily against the inside of my eyes.

Which God? Couldn’t I at least know which God?

Help came in the form of a solitary figure in black hurrying across the square. It was an elderly widow, tightly clutching an enormous brown cockerel in both arms.

‘What kind of monastery is this?’ I asked her. ‘Who is it dedicated to?’

I must have spoken something that at least approximated to her own language. She stopped and looked at me.

‘You poor boy! You must go in! The monks are good. They will give you help.’

‘But what kind of monks? Who do they believe in?’

‘They are kind and holy. They’ll help you.’

‘Please,’ I grabbed her arm. ‘Please tell me. What do they believe in?’

She stared at me. Something in my face shocked her. She released the cockerel’s neck, so as to free her right hand to cross herself.

‘It is a monastery of the Roman Church,’ she said, ‘but now that it is given over to the Holy Machine, may the Lord bless his name, who knows what church it belongs to.’

The cockerel, red wattles quivering, had twisted his neck round to stare at me with a fierce yellow eye. It suddenly emitted a loud, cold shriek.

‘The Holy… Machine?’ I mumbled.

‘Yes.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘A great miracle. He is a kind of robot, but God has given him a soul – and not an ordinary human soul either, but the soul of a saint or an angel!’

‘But… I thought robots were… bad…’

‘Yes, of course, and Mary Magdalene was a whore. To God, all things are possible.’

The woman smiled and patted me on the arm.

‘Go in, young man. You’ve got a fever. They’ll get you dry and give you something to eat.’

A sudden eruption of activity and noise made me cower and cry out with fear. But it was just the cockerel. It had worked one of its wings free and was beating it frantically.

‘No you don’t!’ snapped the old woman, grabbing it grimly by the throat.

‘Go in,’ she urged me over her shoulder as she dealt with the offending bird. ‘Go in!’

The rain was starting up again. She hurried on.

Even just the time I had spent standing and talking with the widow had left my body stiff. I hobbled very slowly across the square, only to quail in front of the blue double door. Here was food, warmth, rest. Here more importantly than anything was the possibility of forgiveness that had been the whole purpose of this journey. Somewhere within was that bright, silver being that I so longed to meet. But now I dreaded that encounter.

Very reluctantly I lifted my hand to the knocker. A stab of pain ran through my body. I let the knocker fall.

Thud!

Silence.

Silence.

A cold gust of wind blew the rain across the empty square.

I give up, I thought. Let me just crawl away to some hole in the ground and sink peacefully into oblivion.

I had already turned away from the door when from within came the sound of sliding bolts. The left half of the big door slowly opened to reveal a small, fat, balding monk.

‘I am…’ I hesitated for a moment before I could recall my own name. ‘I am George Simling, an Illyrian. I wondered… I need food, somewhere to sleep. I want to see the Holy Machine.’

‘Come in then, come in.’