Under the canopy of a dead street lamp, freshly kicked out by one loitering alongside it, Paul leans up against Jude’s car, arms folded and smirk on his face as he watches Jude approach.
“Why you leaving Mass so early Jude?”
A bowel-gripping fear tightens Jude, but he says nothing. Paul laughs and then speaks out loud, as if to anyone who might be listening.
“Christian or Jew, turning the wheel of your life, when you look to the wind, consider from where it blows and remember Jude, who was once living like you.”
He looks back at Jude.
“Me and my friend here need a lift back to the house for our Christmas party. What do you say? Do you mind?”
Jude feels the ominous presence of the other man suddenly behind him and knows now he has no choice. He just opens up the car so that they all clamber in.
As Jude pulls away, Paul settles back, puts his feet on the dashboard and lights a cigarette. He gives it to Jude, and then lights another for himself. Inside Jude the fear is beginning to grow. Paul leans across and scrutinises Jude’s face and then laughs.
“You still freaked over our bloody coup this evening? Is that why you came to Mass?”
He shakes his head and looks with disgust at Jude.
“Tonight we’re going to resurrect new and fertile life, you’re presiding over it and you come to Mass?”
Paul laughs incredulously.
“Well Jude, all I can say is this. Your persistence in running back to a dying institution at moments of crisis inspires no confidence in me.”
Jude winds down the window and flicks his cigarette defiantly out of it.
“You can destroy the Church, but you can’t destroy God.”
Paul smirks as he still draws leisurely on his own cigarette.
“You know Jude. No wonder you failed as a priest. You never did make the connection that if you destroy the Church, you destroy God’s power here on earth. They’re inextricably linked through Christ’s sacrifice. So to destroy the Church, you first destroy the faith of the faithful, which suffocates the Spirit in them. Then you get them to resurrect the god of earthly fertility to snuff out the Spirit. If you do that, you’ve defeated Christ’s blood sacrifice. And you only have to do that in one person, and you’ve won.”
Paul draws lazily again on his cigarette.
“That’s why I picked you Jude, a young, naïve novitiate, barely grasping the tenets of his own faith, but so obviously inhabited by the Spirit. And I destroyed that. I destroyed your faith Jude. I made you what you are today. And tonight my work will be made perfect, and then it will be in my hands to demolish this infernal shadow of a mountain, if I want.”
He waves contemptuously in front of him as Jude’s car climbs the steep hill towards the house, outside which are parked many other cars. They sit in silence until Jude pulls to a halt at the end of the gravel drive. Paul looks at him.
“Everything’s ready inside. Let’s go.”
Wasteland Mix: Fragment 84