CHAPTER FOUR #2
He remembered it in snapshots. Going to the locker at Grand Central Station.
His hands were trembling and sweaty as he took out the package the Man had left for him, the instructions.
Getting lost on the subway. The artist: friendly, puzzled, turning hostile.
The bewildered look in his eyes when the spray hit him and he couldn't move.
Afterwards: washing his hands at the sink.
The shopping list on the door of the refrigerator.
He'd laughed about that; what would the artist need Cheerios and soap for, in Hell?
Kept on laughing, then on the subway, all the night's energy pouring out of him, the laughs turning to sobs.
Not pity, not sorrow, only pure, sweet joy.
The carriage was full of people, but not one of them looked at him.
And the next day, back in the mountains, a family was on the trail.
His trail. The father said 'Howdy, the mother just stared, and pulled the children close.
He was angry, took a wrong turn. But it wasn't wrong at all.
It was just right. Further upstream, protected by a thick stand of chestnut trees.
It was like a little slice of Eden, perfectly designed around him.
The tree roots formed a little staircase down to the riverbank, ending exactly where the clay was thickest; that overhanging branch was just ideal for his bucket.
When he plunged his hands in, he felt he was holding onto the planet itself, feeling it turn beneath him, pulsing in his hands.
He quickly filled the bucket, enjoying the cool, slippery feeling of the clay between his fingers, up his arms. The idea of harvesting it any other way was unthinkable.
To touch this stuff, which was the raw essence of His Creation, with some cheap, harsh, ugly thing made in a factory, would be like delivering a baby on a shovel.
Or cutting a diamond with a chisel. An act of sacrilege, every bit as brazen and appalling as that man Ashworth and his so-called art.
Ashworth had realized the gravity of his sin, in those precious, vital moments between the first blow and the second.
The so-called artist – ‘striving for originality and revelation’, so he’d said in the newspaper interview – had been far from original in death.
He'd threatened, pleaded, and insulted in that order.
Then offered money, bargained, promised, and in the end, left this life in a state of deep, deep regret.
As they all did, when they realised that God was in the room and that God did not forgive.
And God did especially not forgive those who broke His second commandment.
He thought back to that day in the little gallery in New York, everywhere so hot and dusty.
The day when everything had changed. The rest of the group from the hospital shuffling past, barely noticing.
While he was transfixed, pinned by magical beams of light and shade to those sculptures in the corner.
Twelve of them, like the Apostles. He had cried, because he’d thought never seen anything so beautiful.
And because it was wrong, it was a sin. His grandma had told him so. To imitate Creation was to imitate the Creator. He was going to burn in hell for loving the sculptures.
But The Man had explained it so simply. How could something this beautiful be a sin?
God is the source of all beauty, all gifts, all talent.
The sinners are those who've been given that talent and use it mock God, to shame the faithful, to cheapen the sacred.
For them, there is no mercy, only torment.
The Man had this way of making it all okay, with his words, and with his clear, blue gaze.
What The Man hadn't said, perhaps had left to his disciple to discover for himself, was how remarkable it was, to be right up close to someone in their final moments.
It was a privilege granted only to a few.
Your eyes looking straight into theirs, you seeing your own image in their dilated pupils.
Exploring the surface of their skin, like a distant planet, the tiny marks and grooves, the stray hairs they'd missed when shaving, the faint pulsing of a muscle beneath the sweating flesh of their neck.
Feeling their final breath against your cheek.
He recited the words he’d said over Ashworth’s twitching body:
‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God.’
Back at the car, he was drying his hands when the phone lit up.
He wondered how come that always happened.
As if The Man knew exactly where he was, and what he was doing.
Once his hands were completely dry, he picked it up and looked at the message.
It was a picture of the next one. She was quite beautiful, with dark curls, like the Roman women he’d seen at the museum.
But her beauty wouldn’t save her.