Free Requiem by Graham Joyce Page A

was a message someone gave to me.'
    'Who?
    ''A
woman.’ He folded the note and put it back in his pocket. He too squinted into
the sun to avoid her gaze. He couldn't allow his eyes to meet hers for too
long.
    'It's not
easy, Sharon. It's not easy. It's been a bad year.' He felt her hand squeezing
his. 'I've been hallucinating from the moment I arrived in Jerusalem.'
    'Hallucinating? You're
supposed to hallucinate in Jerusalem. That's why it's here. The entire city is
a hallucination.'
    'I'm serious, Sharon.'
    'Sorry,
babe. Did that sound like I was teasing you? Come on, I know a cafe in the
Armenian quarter. We can go there, and you can tell me about your
hallucinations.'

15
    The aromatic coils of
rich roast coffee had hauled them in off the street. Shopping in town one
Saturday afternoon, they'd stopped at a cafe. But they'd run out of words.
Unspoken anger hung like a pall between them as they stared into cappuccino dregs.
Suddenly there was another's presence looming over the table.
    'Couldn't
help seeing you. Had to come over.' It was the drunk from the party. The
absconded priest. He stroked his moustache nervously. 'Wanted to apologize for
my behaviour at my brother's party the other night. I was being a bore by all
accounts.'
    Tom shrugged. 'It was a party.'
    'You were no trouble,' said Katie.
    'It
was my first night of freedom, so to speak. The drink got the better of me, and
I made a fool of myself
    'Forget it,' said Tom.
    'Anyway, my
name's Michael. Michael Anthony.' Rather formally, he shook hands with both of
them. He hovered for a moment, perhaps waiting for an invitation to sit down.
When he realized that an invitation wasn't about to present itself, he said
goodbye decisively and hurried out of the coffee bar.
    Katie glanced up at Tom. Tom looked away.

16
    De profundis clamavi . The words held no significance for Sharon. This left
one other person known to him in all of Jerusalem, so, despite his promise to
himself, Tom paid another visit to David Feldberg. He hoped the old scholar
might be able to divine meaning in the writing on the wall, or at least to
identify the literal sense of the words. So far he'd told Sharon nothing of
David's efforts to entangle him with the scroll fragments.
    Sharon had
listened patiently to his account of the hallucinations. He preferred to speak
of 'hallucinations’ because it deflated the experiences, even though the woman
had been as substantial as the city walls. There was nothing vague or smoky or
translucent about her. Even his recollection of the experiences triggered an
intensity, a brightness, and that mysteriously associated cloying perfume. Only
the phantom's gravity-defying manifestation on the perpendicular walls cast
doubt on her  physicality.
    'Perhaps
she's a real person,' Sharon had suggested at the Armenian cafe.
    'Suspended from the wall?'
    'A trick of the light?'
    'Some trick. She keeps trying to talk to
me.'
    He told her
about the voice in his head. It's in those moments before I fall asleep. I hear
this voice. Like she's telling me a story I can't understand. I don't know who
or what it's about. As if it's in a language I almost know, but not quite. And
every time I focus on it, I lose it, like a radio frequency drifting out. God,
it's weird. Could it be too much sun, do you think?  I've felt strange
ever since I got here. Trembling. Quivering. Could it be the sun?'
    'You're
not suffering from sun-stroke, if that's what you mean.'
    Sharon's
manner suggested she knew exactly what he was suffering from. If she did know,
she fell short of telling him.
    David was absent from his usual
place in the communal kitchen. A dozen or so chipped mugs and cups, all ringed with
mouldering tea or coffee dregs, were clustered around the sink. When he tapped
on David's door there was no answer, so he tried the handle. The door swung
inwards. David was on his sick bed. Someone had cleaned and tidied the room.
Pillows were propped under his grey head, and a grim cortege of