Read Online After the Mourning by Barbara Nadel - Free Book Online Page A

apart from the situation, which was eerie, Django seemed ugly, leering and had very blackened teeth, which, again, I felt at the time had been done to him with makeup. ‘I saw your Christ enter Jerusalem on a donkey and I saw Him die upon a cross,’ the Head said, with what appeared to be great seriousness.
    ‘Did you? Did you really?’
    ‘Yes.’ The makeup around his eyes creased and melted as he suddenly, unnervingly, smiled again. The look of it and what he, this actor, and presumably Lily Lee were doing made me sick. The Duchess is a sincerely religious woman and what they were feeding her here wasn’t nice.
    ‘You know, lady, it was the Gypsies that made the nails that crucified your Christ. No one else would do it. So it is said. So people say.’
    ‘Django,’ Lily Lee’s face was troubled now and she’d put her pipe quickly to one side, ‘the lady don’t need to know—’
    ‘Everybody thinks there was three nails, to smash the hands and the feet together, but there was four.’
    Lily Lee grabbed a battered cardboard box, then said something, in whispers, which sounded very hard, to the Head. He said something back and then, with genuine regret on his face, he said to me, ‘I am sorry, sir, for upsetting the lady. But I can see she wants to know everything about Christ. She is a seeker for the truth and a person of clean spirit.’
    ‘Yes, well, that’s as may be. But that sort of detail is not nice,’ I said, at the exact moment Lily Lee covered the Head with the cardboard box. For probably no more than a couple of seconds I heard it pleading and babbling in its box, and then it went silent.
    ‘The Head is gone,’ the girl said, before removing the box from the table to demonstrate this to us.
    ‘Probably for the best,’ I said, then couldn’t help adding, ‘Can’t have parlour tricks upsetting people’s beliefs, can we?’
    Lily dropped her eyes to the ground.
    ‘Well, that was very interesting, my dear,’ the Duchess said to the girl, as I helped her to her feet. ‘Who do I pay? Is it you or—’
    ‘You buried my sister,’ Lily said to me. ‘You can both go free.’
    ‘Oh, how generous,’ the Duchess said, as she made her way out through the tent flap and into the open air. ‘And very interesting too. Francis, I will just stand outside for a little while . . .’
    ‘All right, Duchess,’ I said, as I glanced – fiercely, I imagined – at the Gypsy girl still leaning on the Head’s table.
    ‘It’s not a parlour trick,’ Lily Lee said to me, once my mother had gone. ‘The Head is real.’
    ‘Oh, in the same way that your “visions” are real?’ I said.
    ‘You were there the first time. You saw me see—’
    ‘I saw you see something, yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think it was the Virgin Mary and neither do you, do you, Miss Lee?’
    ‘I—’
    ‘I’m not saying that what you’re doing here is a bad thing,’ I continued. ‘Your visions have made a lot of people happy, given them hope. But I know you don’t believe it. I heard you deny it was the Virgin with my own ears. And this Head thing, well—’
    ‘Sssh, the Head will hear you!’
    She had real fear in her eyes, but I told her I wasn’t fooled because I believed sincerely that I wasn’t. Smoke and mirrors was what I thought – smugly, I confess – as I left the tent Lily Lee shared with the Head. How was I to know there was any more to it than that?
    ‘Tell your mother to make a tea from coltsfoot for her cough,’ the Gypsy called, once I was in the open air. ‘’Tis very powerful for a bad chest.’
    Nan was having a nice conversation with Miss O’Dowd, who is quite her equal in the spinsterhood stakes, when the Duchess and I found her again. I think it’s the bottle-bottom glasses on top of the tiny, disapproving eyes that disturb me most.
    ‘Have a good time with your Gypsies’ magic, did you?’ Miss O’Dowd said sourly, as we approached.
    The Duchess smiled. ‘Very interesting,’