And yet, Will could see that TC had lost something by leaving. He could hear it in Rabbi Mandelbaum’s voice and he had seen it in TC’s eyes. He had experienced it for himself in those few hours before he was grabbed and grilled on Friday night. This place had something Will had hardly known, either growing up in England or living as an adult in America. The bland word for it was ‘community’. People fantasized about that often enough. Back home, the myth of the English village, where everyone knows everyone else, still exerted a powerful hold, though Will had never seen it for real. In America, suburban picket-fence neighbourhoods liked to think they were communities – with their car pools and block parties – but they did not have what Will had seen in Crown Heights.
Here, people were as involved with each other as one large, extended family. An elaborate welfare system meant that each provided for the other as if they were drawing from a common pot. Children were in and out of each other’s houses. No one seemed to be strangers. TC had explained that the claustrophobia could be choking: she had had to get out to breathe. But she also described a warmth, a shared life, she had never known again.
Rabbi Mandelbaum had his head down, turning the pages of yet another book. ‘There is one more thing. I don’t know if this will be useful or not. According to several legends, one of these thirty-six men is even more special than the others.’
‘Really? What kind of special?’
‘One of these thirty-six is the Messiah.’
Will leaned forward. ‘The Messiah?’
‘“If the age were worthy of it, he would reveal himself as such.” That’s what the scholars say.’
‘The candidate,’ Will said softly.
‘Someone explained this to you already?’
‘TC told me that in every generation there is a candidate to be Messiah. If now were the Messianic time, then that man would be it. If it’s not the time, then nothing happens.’
‘We have to be worthy. Otherwise, the opportunity is lost.’
Almost involuntarily, Will looked at the photographs of the Rebbe, gazing out from every wall and every angle. Dead more than two years, his eyes still shone.
‘Exactly,’ said Rabbi Mandelbaum, following Will’s eyes. And the two men looked at each other.
The door opened. TC was standing there, clutching her phone. There was no colour in her face; her eyes were glassy, like an animal stunned for slaughter.
She bent down and whispered in Will’s ear. ‘The police are after me. I’m wanted for murder.’
Monday, 2.20am, Darwin, Northern Australia
The music had stopped, that was why he had gone in. He kept this up throughout his shift, whether it was day or night – tip-toeing into the room to take out the finished CD and replace it with a new one. The bedside cupboard was full of them, Schubert mainly, left there by the old man’s daughter. The family had not asked Djalu to do it, but he knew it was what they wanted.
He put on the record. He could hear wailing from the next room along; he would have to be there in a second. But he wanted to stay a while with this resident, Mr Clark, the man who loved music. Djalu had only seen him awake for an hour or two each day; the sedative kept him asleep the rest of the time. But in those conscious minutes, Mr Clark seemed healed by the sounds of violins and cellos which uncoiled from the CD and into the room like stretches of fine thread. His aged lips parted as if to taste the melodies; his mouth sometimes made the same tiny movement even when he was in deep slumber.
Djalu would seize on those moments to take the small sponge, mounted on a stick, dip it into the bedside glass of water and brush it onto Mr Clark’s mouth. The old man, nearly eighty-five, could no longer eat or drink, not without vomiting. So this was the only way to give him sustenance. He was dying, like so many of the people in this place, not from the disease that had assailed him for months but of starvation and eventual dehydration. Once it was clear that the patient could never be cured, the organs would be allowed to pack up, one by one until death finally arrived.
It seemed a cruel way to let a person die. Djalu’s father denounced it as typical of ‘white man’s’ medicine, all science and no spirit. Sometimes Djalu thought he was right; after all, he had seen some terrible things in this place. Old women lying in pools of their own urine; men crying out for hours to be helped to the toilet. Some of the nurses quickly lost patience, shouting at the residents, telling them to shut up. Or addressing them by their first names, as if they were babies.
In his first few months, Djalu had gone with the flow. He did not want to draw attention to himself, one of only two aborigine care assistants in the home. His position was hardly secure, not with a résumé which included two spells in jail – one for burglary, the other for shoplifting. So he said nothing when the senior staff would hear moans or screams from down the corridor – and would turn up the TV to drown out the noise.
Even now he said nothing. He made no complaints to the matron or the manager; he wanted no fuss and no hassle. Sometimes he even joined in the jokes about the ‘crinkly old buggers’. But he did what he could.
So when he heard a resident crying out, he ran. He was part of what the nursing home called Team Red, responsible for about two dozen beds. But if he saw a light flashing for a resident in Blue or Green, he went anyway – often sneaking in, hoping none of the staff would see him. He made sure Mr Martyn sipped some water or that Miss Anderson was turned over. And if they had soiled themselves, he would clean them up, wiping them gently, afterwards stroking their hair, trying to soothe away their shame.
He heard how some of the residents referred to him. ‘Matron, I don’t want that boong touching me,’ one had said when Djalu had first appeared at his bedside. ‘It’s wrong.’ But Djalu put that down to their age. They did not know any better.
Mr Clark had not been much friendlier. ‘Which one are you?’ he had asked.
‘Which one, Mr Clark?’
‘Yes, there’s that other abo, whatisname? Which one are you?’
But Djalu could not feel angry, not with a man who was in the last days of his life. So he brought tea and biscuits when Mrs Clark visited; brought her a tissue when he found her quietly sobbing; and when she fell asleep in the chair by the bed, he draped a blanket over her.
Maybe his father was right that European medicine was a cold, metallic discipline. So he, Djalu, would give it a warm, human face – even if that face seemed to scare so many of these dying white folks.
This was his favourite time to work, late at night when he could have the corridor to himself. He would not need to explain his presence in the rooms, would not need to make up excuses for why he was reading the newspaper out loud to a woman on the second floor, not on the Red list, or simply holding the hand of a man who craved the touch of another human being.
So he jumped when he saw the door to Mr Clark’s room creak open. The woman who came in had her finger to her lips, hushing Djalu. Her eyes were smiling, as if she were planning on giving Mr Clark a surprise and did not want Djalu to ruin it.
‘Good evening, Djalu.’
‘You