The Holy Machine

8

I went to the meeting of the Holist League. It took place in the function room of a bar in Upper Edison. There were about thirty people there, among them Marija, looking very beautiful in a loose white jumper. She smiled and gestured to the seat beside her. I was still trying to think of something to say when the meeting began and the main speaker was introduced.

It was a philosopher called Paul Da Vera, a strikingly good-looking Brazilian perhaps five or six years older than Marija and myself who spoke with great fluency and wit for about an hour, mainly about the meaning and origin of words.

‘Spirit’ was one of these words, I remember. Da Vera said that pre-technological societies would attribute all kinds of events to the presence of spirits. More technological societies, with more organized religions, would limit spirits to certain locations: there were ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ objects, a material and a spiritual world. And then science-based societies, such as Illyria and its precursors, had tried to dispense with spirits altogether.

But Da Vera argued that every Illyrian from Ullman downwards did still believe in spirit and would not be able to function without that concept – even if it wasn’t given that name. He demonstrated this point with common English expressions such as ‘the spirit of the law’ (as opposed to the ‘letter of the law’) which Ullman and others had regularly used in speeches. ‘Spirit’ referred to the attributes which things possessed as wholes and which transcended the sum of their parts.

‘And once we accept the idea of wholeness,’ Da Vera said, ‘we are a mere step aware from the idea of holiness, which derives from the same etymological root.’

Tame and commonplace as this might sound, it was strong stuff for an Illyrian audience at that time.

I have to admit that at this point I lost the thread of his argument because I had more immediately pressing things on my mind. I had made my mind up that I ought to ask Marija to have a drink with me afterwards. But the idea of actually speaking any such words made me almost physically sick. I spent the entire second half of the meeting rehearsing and discarding one sentence after another in my mind.

‘I wondered, Marija, if you would like a…’

‘Have you got anything on, Marija, or do you fancy a…’

‘Marija, I thought I’d have a glass of wine before I went home and I wondered…’

‘Do you know any good bars in this part of town, Marija? I was just…’

Meanwhile Da Vera finished speaking and invited comments. A discussion of some sort followed in which Marija played a part. And then the meeting ended.

‘That was very interesting didn’t you and I was wondering if you’d like to have a bar with me…’ I said to Marija.

‘Sorry?’

(I had omitted to get her attention before I started to speak.)

‘I did wondering you would drink?’

‘A drink?’ She smiled. ‘Well… I’d like to, but I’ve got something else on…’

‘Yes of course, sorry…’

I rushed away.

‘See you at the next meeting perhaps?’ she called after me.

At the door someone pushed a leaflet into my hand and I glanced back at Marija. She had gone across to the speaker, Da Vera, put her arms round him and given him a kiss.