Wonders of a Godless World

Even the things she had seen that weren’t obvious, that indeed seemed the opposite of obvious, did not shake her conviction. There was the mystery, for instance, of how people were held to the earth—despite it spinning—rather than being flung away. She had no explanation for that. But nor did she doubt that it was a natural phenomenon, a force rooted in the fabric of the world. Something in the earth pulled objects to itself, and she and the foreigner had only been able to escape it and fly because they had been in shadow form. Weightless. And even then, it had cost them pain.

No, she could not believe that any of this was madness, nothing she had seen, nothing she had heard. It wasn’t in her to create such marvels and puzzles. It was a knowledge that came from outside of her. It was a wisdom.

And it’s all ours, my orphan. Yours and mine alone.

Again, wonderful.

Yet questions remained. In particular—was she truly clever now? If she had learnt so much, was she no longer retarded, or stupid? Had the foreigner made her smart?

By mid-morning, she wasn’t at all sure.

For one thing, if she was smart, then why was she still having so much trouble understanding people when they spoke to her? The foreigner, oh yes, when he was talking his words fairly hummed with meaning—and she’d hoped that it might be that way when anyone spoke now, that the old failing in her mind had been repaired or removed. But it seemed not.

In fact, the problem was worse than ever. In all her various encounters that morning with the patients and nurses, the orphan could not decipher a single word that was said to her. For the most part she coped anyway. She knew her duties well enough to guess what people wanted. But there came a moment when a nurse requested something the orphan could not grasp at all. Nor were there any clues—no patient nearby who needed new sheets, no puddle of urine waiting to be mopped up. The nurse, if anything, seemed to be waving at the empty air.

The orphan was close to panic when—

There’s no cause for alarm. She wants you to replace the mosquito coils in the rooms down the hall, that’s all. The patients are getting bitten.

The foreigner had come to her rescue!

And why not? He was there in her mind, wasn’t he? He could hear everything that anyone said to her. And he was not slow. He could understand exactly, and then tell her what was required. How very convenient.

But as she hurried away to the storeroom, the orphan couldn’t help noting that she’d been asked many times before to change the mosquito coils, and had always managed somehow to understand. So what was wrong now?

Nothing! And even if there was, what did it matter? The problem might go away, and if it didn’t, she was better off anyway with the foreigner there. She wouldn’t have to struggle with words anymore; he could simply translate for her.

Except…

He wasn’t always there. Not every moment. Twice more that day he helped her, interpreting instructions from the staff, but a third time, while she was being addressed by a laundry woman, the orphan reached out for his aid and found nothing. She was alone in her head. And she could only stand there, baffled and ashamed, until the laundry woman, impatient, gave up on her and turned away.

I was asleep, was all the foreigner said when he returned.

Asleep? But wasn’t he always asleep, and yet really awake?

My mind must truly sleep at times. I can’t watch you every moment. I’m a man, not a guardian angel.

But couldn’t she rouse him? Couldn’t she demand his attention? Or was the connection made only when he chose it, and not when she did?

But he was gone again, and didn’t answer.

Indeed, he was gone much of the time over the next few days. And for some reason her duties did not take her to the crematorium at all in that same period, as they usually would have, so she was denied even the sight of him.

And other questions arose for the orphan.

Television, for instance. As an experiment, she went and stood in front of the TV in the main dayroom. Half a dozen patients were there, staring up at the wire cage. The orphan studied the screen hopefully, but, as ever, she could determine nothing from the flickering colours. And the foreigner remained absent. He didn’t take over her eyes and show her what everyone else in the room, apparently, could see.

It was the same with her radio. She turned it up extra loud, and waited for the foreigner to make sense of the tantalising sounds for her. But he didn’t. She even tried staring at posters around the hospital, hoping for the squiggled lines on them to be transformed by the foreigner into messages of some kind. But again, nothing. And when she wondered why this was so—why he either refused to help her, or was incapable of doing so—he offered no excuse and no explanation.

His silences, she began to suspect, could be deliberate. But then she would feel guilty. How could she be so ungrateful, so doubting, after all he had given her?

Finally, late on the fifth night after the eruption, he spoke to her while she was cleaning the old doctor’s office in the front wards.

I feel better tonight, orphan. I’m sorry if I’ve been inaccessible these last days—I was more drained by our flight than I realised.

Oh, he was forgiven, of course. Now that he was with her. Everything was forgivable when he was with her.

Good. There’s something I want to show you. It might be useful. There. Do you see it? On that shelf in the corner?

She looked. It seemed that he was talking about an ornament which sat there. It was a multicoloured plastic ball, on a stand. She had noticed it many times before, and knew that it spun if she flicked it with her fingers. But that was all it did, and she’d always thought it odd that the old doctor would keep such a toy.

Really look at it. Does it remind you of anything?

She stared harder, hearing the test in his question and wanting to pass. But the ball was just a ball.

Strange…but then I suppose any artificial representation or abstraction…the same as it is with names, or pictures…

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