But whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.
He’s had a long, exhausting day, wading thigh-deep
through the hard, yellow grasses of the out-world; beneath a raw, white sun, he's been scavenging
with Roy for bits of old machinery among the stony ruins of long-forgotten settlements. He starts to nod, and his chin finally drops onto
his chest; and it’s remarked by two wise, old heads, Theodor and Benn, tribal elders
gathered beneath the stars, across the sacred circle round the fire: that he has
gone.
He has gone. And he finds himself back in the same
old place; and he feels the same, eerie stillness, the same dumb pressure on
his temples. He swings his head around, desperately seeking something familiar,
something he knows: a rock, a bush, a river, a familiar sky even, a familiar
sun. He finds none. There is nothing. He stands alone on alien ground. He’s like
one who has fallen from the sky, breathless, abandoned, exposed on a dry, stony
hillside; one whose limbs have been brutally broken, one who cries to the distant, foreign moons and stars, ‘Father,
why have you forsaken me?’ No answer comes. He hears only the dry wind over desert lands.
There’s nothing to be done, so he sets off walking. Not heaving heavy boots through thick, coarse grasslands with a trusted
companion: this time he’s limping alone over hard, endless grey limestone, a
screaming, sideways wind beginning to batter the side of his face; across a
desolate landscape, emptied of any living things, save for – scattered here and
there – the odd crippled tree, sheltering amongst dry, broken stones in a deep,
rocky scar.
He halts. Something is suddenly familiar about
these particular gnarled and twisted limbs that reach out in desperate need
from the gully nearest to hand. He remembers the day they painted trees. Ged’s
tree grew strong, straight and tall in a meadow; it was sturdy, full and round,
glittering green in a clear blue sky, animated by cheery, fluttering, twittering
birds; his stood all alone, tense, breathless,
frail and leafless, exposed and close to death on barren, purple steppes. He
hadn’t been a happy child.
And as he remembers, he thinks he hears Jacques' chanson - you know the one, David:
But
whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.
He thinks he knows what’s behind the door. He had heard
the inhuman shriek behind the door as a child, as he trembled on the bend at the top of
the stairs; and one by one his mother and father had gone to answer a
knock at the door.
And what was behind the door was the one thing they couldn’t protect him from.
But at least now, he didn’t care – or, at least, he cared less. For in front of that door, there was Tina.
Yes. At least, there was someone. At least there
was something. Even if it was only his humdrum life with Tina, and the mortgage,
and the kids (whose names he couldn’t remember) and the drab routines of the education
factory, the reliable, reassuring tick-tock of the modern human machinery. The career
plan, the property ladder, Christmas and the holidays. The whole package (from cradle to grave). It was the conventional family story, the Wonderful Life they saw from the
living room sofa (two more payments and it was theirs) every evening in the building
society ads. The ones that made Tina purr so contentedly.
God is dead, said Nietzsche, and the moderns buried
him, out there in the desert. Don’t go looking for him, though: he isn’t there.
Of course, the furniture of Jesus’s world was very
plain and rustic: a lake, a few fishing boats pulled onto the sand, some nets
and baskets, a dusty town square and a water-hole with a surly lip; a random
huddle of square, white-painted, mud houses, a cave or two in the surrounding
hills, a bigger hill with some crosses, some noisy, clanking Roman soldiers -
all metal with a flash of red - some holy-men in rough, colourless robes,
sundry poor villagers; and a temple.
It occurs to O that with a few minor alterations,
it was a place where you could arrive with some old gunslinger chums and save a
whole village of poor peasants from the tyranny of an evil bandit.
Of course, to operate like Jesus - or Yul Brynner and
Steve McQueen, for that matter - is not easy in a large Brutalist
building of stone, steel and glass, in a room arranged into rows and rows of
desks, and children in uniforms, and adults in matching suits and ties, and the endless modern corridors.
There’s the rub, as they say. How do you live a
life of love and kindness, of untamed wildness, a life worth living; in a world
of corridors and timetables?
There is only art. Only words. There is no escape. Like the Prisoner ('Be seeing you' in neat blazer, slacks and sailing shoes, or 'wait and hope' in billowing, rakish sleeves), the Outlaw needs to go beyond the walls to find out
for sure. But he is afraid of what he might find. That there is nothing.
He
needs to go out into the desert lands to search for meaning; to search
for God. He knew it couldn’t be this!
But he feared there was nothing else.
So, does he wait and hope to meet a nice girl, who works in
sales in the modern city, who will make him happy?
Or does he walk into the desert to find Tina's rebel twin in a broken Mad Max out-world? The stunningly wild and beautiful, dangerous
and damned vampire queen. They call her Tiaa - there is always an alternative.
He remembers from his literary youth the choice offered
in The Cocktail Party. Which was
it to be: the solitary saint or the routine married couple?
Seems he must go
out alone, go into the desert and risk all. Risk his life, risk death to find out.
