Apocalypse of Jude

Caul sits in the gaunt dereliction of the living room, reading the Word in a thirst for God, when he looks up to see Paul darken the doorway, unshaven and eating raisins out of his hand one by one.

“Hey you hypocrite. Has your pride so blinded you as to think reading that book is going to resurrect your spirit?”

Caul gingerly closes the book on his fingers, caught off guard again at Paul’s claiming knowledge of his death. Paul laughs in a knowing way.

“You really think I didn’t know? Of course I did. You’re my doppelgänger, my brother, after all.”

Moving across the room to the lintel of the veranda door, Paul hangs a cigarette delicately from the side of his mouth and then proffers one to Caul.

“Come have a cigarette and look at the moon.”

Caul hesitates but gets up, placing the book open, upside down, and resting on the arm of the chair, ready to be entered again. He follows Paul out.

They both stand on the veranda’s surrounding wall and lean back against opposite pillars, smoking. Out to the west, the lights of the unreal city flicker in the dusk. Paul takes a moment to flick some ash into the long grass of the garden. Caul’s stare demands an answer from his half-brother.

“How did you know?”

Paul looks very carefully through the gloom at Caul, as if realising he needs to pick his words now with the greatest of care.

“Because I asked for it.”

In the shock that Caul registers, there is only disbelief.

“That’s impossible. You have no authority to ask.”

That Caul would so belittle him, not see his authority, surges an anger through Paul.

“And where would the authority lie Caul? Did you think it lay with you?”

The insinuation of his powerlessness is too much for Caul to take. His accusations against Paul begin to fall from his mouth.

“I know you want to usurp me Paul, want Jude to kill me and take my priestly right away from me. You want to be Mae’s consort. You always have. Always envied me because of what I was born to.”

Paul shakes his head, laughing, unfazed by Caul’s outburst.

“Your pride is an amazing thing Caul. Have you all this time actually believed you inherited my father’s priestly right? You actually think you’re both consort and priest-king.”

Caul stares blankly.

“Has it never entered your head that the car accident was not just some angry barbarians throwing stones, and that one of the first stone-throwers to the scene that night was there to kill, not your father let it be remembered, but my father. Kill him for the right to his priesthood.”

Paul draws on his cigarette.

“I know now that that man was Mae’s father. Mae’s father is your usurper Caul, not me. He has has no intention of using his priestly right to conduct a rite with his daughter consorting with you Caul, a coloured of all things, and at the same time let his spiritual power pass into insignificance.”

Caul is unable anymore to hide his furious disdain for his brother, shouting his words.

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

Paul whistles out a disbelieving wonder.

“Did my mother tell my father?”

The words still Caul, his very conception suddenly abhorring him.

“Caul, what do you think I’ve been doing since they died. Just being a crack-pot coke dealer? Is that all you think of me? That’s all you’ve ever thought of me, mummy’s bastard boy, child of heaven’s queen. It’s revenge on Mae’s father I’ve been wanting. Mae’s father intends to deny Dionysus his rebirth. I sought Dionysus out, and he gave me the authority to set things right. I asked him that your spirit should die. But I had to let this develop naturally Caul. I couldn’t tell you.”

Caul simply nods, a little stupified by Paul’s claims.

“Does Mae know you’re dead?”

The tangential and inconsequential nature of the question considering Paul’s sudden revelation irks Caul, as if Paul is hungrily fishing for the certainty of his efforts. The same intuitive suspicion that wrought his breast that night in the bar at Whitsuntide rises thick through Caul, but this time he neither insinuates nor answers, but wants his own answers.

“Why now all of a sudden?”

Paul takes a deep drag, burning the cigarette’s coal to its pit. He flicks it away into the dry grass.

“Very well. What I need to say, I’ll say now. It’s time for me to strengthen my authority here and I can’t do it from this house any longer. I’ve sold it to a willing buyer, if you know what I mean, and cleaned my cash. We’ve got a new place thanks again to Gary’s dealings. You’ll like it. Everything is ready for us to take over the true power in his town. All the faithful I’ve chased out or made apostates of.”

A slight bitterness in Paul’s tongue alerts Caul. “Except?”

Paul’s face sours at the thought of what he has to say.

“There is one I have been unable to dislodge. I’ve been unable to find her.”

Paul scuffs his foot in anger against the veranda wall.

“Every means of searching for her at my fingertips and I’ve been unable to find her. She’s like a woman hidden in a desert. Though I have scoured this town for her, she’s a hen who holds her brood close. And if she has not yet left her nest, it must mean her work here is not yet done. She has not yet called all the faithful in. Or is it sheep lost from her pen she’s waiting for? Whatever it is, I am unnerved by it.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 30