Crowe's Requiem by Mike McCormack

Author:Mike McCormack [McCormack, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

REVENANT

1

I REACHED THE city that evening and made my way from the station towards Maria’s room. I threw my bag over my shoulder and fell in with a stream of pedestrians who seemed to be going in the same direction.

It was well dark by that time but the city park was ringed with light from the traffic and the street lamps around its edge. The crowds were moving quickly out of the steady rain which had almost flooded the gravel path across the park. I was glad to be back in the city. Much as it bewildered me there were still many things in it I had become familiar with. I climbed the steps beneath the public sculpture and moved under the shadow of the elm tree which stood between the main street and the public toilets.

‘Excuse me, sir.’

A young man with some sort of shield aslant his chest moved out of the shadow of the public toilets. He stood resolutely before me, blocking my way to the street behind him.

‘Excuse me, sir, would you mind answering a question?’

Close up I saw that the shield was in fact a clipboard which he held tight to his chest out of the rain. The young man had a pen in his mouth and was soaked from standing under the dripping skeleton of the tree. He wore nothing on his head, but a thick scarf twined around his neck prevented the rain from seeping down onto his chest. He took the pen from his mouth and posed his question: it was a strange one.

‘Sir, on a scale of one to ten, what do you think your chances are of going to heaven?’ he asked, with no expression on his face.

I took a step back. In spite of the rain and my desire to see Maria I found myself lowering my bag to the ground.

‘Say that again?’ I heard myself ask.

‘On a scale of one to ten,’ the young man repeated, ‘what do you think your chances are of going to heaven? – Ten being a certainty and one not a hope in hell.’ He shook his head slowly and a tail of sodden hair fell across his nose. ‘This isn’t a joke,’ he explained blankly, pushing the hair aside. ‘Just a straight question.’

I believed him. There was no doubting the utter seriousness of his voice and his tired, bedraggled appearance only lent weight to his tone. He didn’t look like the type who’d pursue a joke into a wet evening with a winter chill in the air.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘It’s a government survey,’ he replied.

‘And since when did the government worry about the hereafter?’

‘It’s a survey of contemporary attitudes,’ the young man said with solemn patience. He was having trouble keeping the hair out of his face. He kept sweeping it back on one side of his head and it kept falling down on the other. ‘There were other questions but this is my one. The results of all the questions will be

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