The Book of Rapture Read online

  NIKKI GEMMELL

  The Book of Rapture

  To A, L, O and T

  My wild love

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Part 1 - Prisoner Number: 57775

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152 - The Last

  Sources

  Also by Nikki Gemmell

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  What we know, and what we don’t,

  about this mysterious document

  The Book of Rapture was originally written in Latin, a universal language unused in this day and age. Why? We can only speculate. Did the author want to obscure, to some extent, the content from her captors? Did the author want to mask her identity and indeed nationality? Did the author resist the idea of her words being pinned down — and thus marginalised — by place, religion or date? Indeed, the text could have emanated from any number of countries over the past century, from communist Eastern Europe to rightist regimes in South America to dictatorships in Africa or South-East Asia. It is obvious that names have been changed; all we can conclude, with precision, is that a woman wrote it.

  It was handed to the Chief Philologist of the British Library by a man who described himself as a social worker, with an interest in children. On the front of the handwritten manuscript, bound in string, was a pink slip of paper with Prisoner Number 57775 typed upon it. The pages themselves bear the markings of a remarkable journey. Some are torn, some are bloodstained.

  The social worker explained that a child, who was with two others, had lifted the manuscript from her suitcase and had handed it to him ‘with an arresting gravity’. When asked what the bundle was, the youngster had replied, in a whisper, ‘It is the words that roar.’ The man said that the girl herself did not read Latin, and this in itself is a mystery: was the child aware of the document’s contents? Was she connected to the protagonist, or indeed the social worker? Are they — as has been speculated — the father and daughter within the text?

  We do not know, because despite strenuous efforts the man, institution he worked for, and children were never traced. They have all proved as elusive and mysterious as the document itself. There is one other fragment that was related by the social worker as he handed over the document. He said the child told him, ‘Please don’t forget us,’ echoing, of course, the words in chapter 100 of the text.

  The Book of Rapture is a historical enigma. Its author, provenance and audience are unknown to us. Scholars have striven to pin certainties upon it but the debate provides progressively less consensus every year. The honest and defeatist truth is that it is undatable and unsourceable.

  It is of our time, and timeless. Near the beginning, and at the end, is the haunting statement, ‘Now is the time when what you believe in is put to the test.’ Rapture is a document of mysteries, just like the central question it asks: is all that is left a god of mysteries? It explores with an almost mythical quality the conflict between science and religion, notions of theological sacrifice, and a woman’s impotent — and potent — rage. It asks that vexed question: if science does succeed in destroying religion, what moral code do we then live by?

  There are no certainties. What journey has this document itself gone on? And its protagonist? Since its discovery the text has been debated over, fiercely attacked and fiercely defended. It is important for philologists to admit that we cannot place it precisely. Let us say, instead, that it is a document of the human condition. Many of its themes, surely, are as old as humanity itself.

  Professor A.R. Bowler, University of London

  Prisoner Number: 57775

  It is the mark of a narrow world t
hat it mistrusts the undefined.

  JOSEPH ROTH

  1

  So. They are in there. Your children. Close but you cannot reach them, talk to them. In a room they’ve never seen before. That they’ve just woken up in. And the three of them are like tiny wooden boats in a wind-tossed sea, swivelling, unanchored, lost. Now a key has come. Rattling hard on the other side of the door; the only way to escape. You haven’t a clue who’s on the other side. Neither do they. The rattling’s brisk, curt, adult. You feel like your heart is being compressed into your chest, a great weight is upon it, breathing is hard. Your middle child’s knuckles are pressed into his temples, you can read his screwed-up face — this could be good-strange but he doesn’t know — he’s too huge-hearted for this. Always glass half-full but the dark side of optimism is trusting too much. Not his brother or sister. They’re too aware for trust, they’re thinking the worst. Question everything, you’ve told them all, so many times, and that’s exactly what they’re both doing.

  The fear plague has come, it has hit.

  And all you can do is stand here helpless in the wings of these words with your greedy, voluptuous love haemorrhaging out.

  Nothing evolves us like love.

  2

  Nothing evolves us like love. Five words. From your husband, in a whisper, from one of his books. His collection of books. The only things with you in this room of held breath, his gift of a bookshelf he was curating for his children. Tomes on every religion. So each child could one day, eventually, decide for themselves. Be a student of all of them or none. That was the plan.

  Did he slip them into your suitcase at the last minute? His final surprise? Once, long ago, it was Mickey Mouse stickers all through your address book and notebook. His silent chant, in gleeful sing-song — ‘I’m he-re’ — that little giggle of impishness from your perpetual boy up the back of the class.

  But now this. A dozen or more books. All that’s left from your past life. All that’s allowed. Each volume fanned with dog-ears on the bottom corners. You know his method, he’s had it since university: each turned-up page will have a tiny indentation down a phrase of interest, a thumbnail scratch to remind him to take note.

  Nothing evolves us like love.

  The first marked words you have come across. A key to unlock all this? A code? You hate uncertainty more than anything, he knows that. Okay. Okay. So. You will stitch his snippets into a quilt of words, trying to glean sense. Your little patchwork blanket in this place. Yes. You need to busy yourself up; need order, industry. To keep you going, to anchor you.

  You cannot hear outside. You’ve always had it close. It’s nowhere now. Where are you? So, your quilt of words. To keep you warm in this room. To brew light. Little rituals, little certainties. Words from your Motl, your Man on the Loose. Sending you a message from God knows where.

  Trust me, Motl said, trust. Those were his last words to you. Trust.

  Now is the time when what you believe in is put to the test.

  Be still.

  3

  You met over Bunsen burners. Wearing white coats. Star students both. Married, louchely, young. Had three kids. A girl, then twin boys. Lived a frugal life, five people in two bedrooms, but it worked: the Giggle Palace was your tiny flat and it was crammed with books and laughter and light. Your husband and you egged each other on at the vanguard of genetic research. Then you both received the summons from the government. And everything sparkled right up.

  Project Indigo.

  World-changing. War-changing. A weapon of mass destruction that would blaze your names into the history books. So audacious, shocking, astounding was the idea. The thought of it once made you smile and lick your lips. That every person on earth would one day know of you, for nothing like this had ever been dared. The grandeur of it. You, the only woman in a team of four. A top-secret coven, searing your place into scientific history, the delicious sweetness of that.

  Then Motl dropped out.

  ‘We’re getting way above ourselves, my love.’ He cufflinked your wrists into a grip that wouldn’t soften. ‘What moral code are we living by if we’re living beyond religion? We’re not working within any known ethical framework here. Are we? Eh?’

  ‘Oh, you.’ You nervously laughed. ‘Humans can be moral whether they believe in a god or not. It’s called evolution, little boy. We’ve outgrown the religious approach to the world. All that, pah’ — you batted the thought away — ‘it’s all lies and creaky myth.’

  ‘I’m just not sure, wife, that it’s possible to create morality in a vacuum. By putting humans first, before a god, any god. There are lots of tasty examples from history of attempts to put people — just one, or an entire race — first.’

  ‘Religion, husband, is an affront to free will.’ You whipped your hands free. ‘It challenges reason, and intelligence, and common sense.’

  ‘Look, I’ve given this a lot of thought.’ His finger pressed in his lips, something big was coming up, ‘As I’ve aged there’s a … retreat … from certainty. That’s the only way I can describe it. And I do not think science is capable of shaping a new moral code — or a better one.’

  ‘Leave the project then. I can do it without you.’

  He did. He resigned. Becoming, in an instant, your man on the loose. The house husband who raised the kids while studying, loosely, for yet another PhD. You became the breadwinner. Project Indigo, your stunning baby, saw to that. You weren’t letting the dream go, oh no, or the boys’ club that revolved around it. To the outside world you were engaged at the forefront of research; benign, for the good of humanity, and you were happy to keep it at that. But every day — magnificently, consumingly — you craved your baby’s illicit potency. You’d wear your Vivienne Westwood Sex shoes and fuck-me underwear under the white coat because the whole vast and greedy ambition of the work sexed you up. It consumed your life. And then you’d go home.

  To the suburb everyone else wanted to live in. To the sprawling house of room upon room and lonely beds in far corners never used. Rented and furnished by the project and you touched the luxury of the place lightly, didn’t live within it but alongside it, distracted and buzzy and chuffed. To a garden vivid with insistent life. To the children changing physically with all that space to run around in, becoming fleet. To the gardener, the housekeeper, the PA’s PA. To the nanny and her whims but you were at the crest of global fame so be it. And terrorism back then: older kids with slingshots in the next street. Another world, another country, another life.

  There shall be faces on that day radiant, laughing and joyous; and faces on that day with dust upon them, blackness shall cover them.

  4

  Your youngest is crumbling. Here comes Mouse’s scream and your body flinches as he opens his mouth but Soli, your daughter, your eldest, holds her hand high, stopping them all quiet. ‘Sssh,’ she hisses in a voice she never shows to you. You press close, trying to will your love into them, spine them up. Mouse pushes into his big sister, needs her authority close. You know his heart, that little boxer inside him jabbing away at his skin — punch-punch punch-punch. Mummy, he mouths and your palm slams to your lips and you will them all strong, trying to solder calm into their skittery, swivelly backs. But little Mouse, his heart’s ramming so hard, it’s like when you forced him into swimming lessons too young and he screamed at the water’s edge and as you held him tight you could feel his terror battering your chest; it was like some wild unearthly thing in his ribcage, so huge, vulnerable, fast. My God, you thought, he could die here, his heart might just … freeze. With fright.

  The doorknob turns. All their breathings stop, as crisp as an orchestra they stop—

  Then … nothing.

  The door doesn’t open. Doesn’t do anything. The person on the other side is … gone.

  A vast, pluming silence. And your three children: ppfffft, like wilting tyres softening down.

  Now they’ve got to work out how to get away from this place. Fast. Can they do it
without you?

  ‘Trust me.’ Motl’s last words to you and you had to surrender to them.

  Will see your children if you resume the project? Will you see your husband if you give over your secrets? Will you be freed from this room to eat them all with kisses? You hold the key. You do not know what is going on. No one talks, no one answers your questions. They hand you food through a hatch with eyes as dead as models’ on a catwalk. You don’t know who they are, what side they’re on, what authority they’re working for. Or where your children actually are. Or your Motl. All you have to touch, to smell, kiss, are his books; his secret missives in a thumbnail scratch.

  Do not be afraid; you are with them.

  5

  ‘Our country’s smelling of blood.’

  ‘Why, Mummy, is it hurt?’

  Motl and you had swivelled your heads to the cupboard under the stairs, to the voice-that-couldn’t-help-itself coming from inside it. Mouse. Of course. ‘Stop tuning in, you,’ his father had remonstrated, ‘you listen too much.’

  You demanded the notebook your boy was filling up.

  Well, well. Like a forensic detective he’d been recording all the new chatter about him, trying to work his new country out. You sighed. This needed a talk. Because yes, your nation was changing. Battening down the hatches, locking the rest of the world out. And it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the likes of your family. The way you lived was seen by others as lost and bloated and wrong, people like you were being stained by the religion of your parents and grandparents, your reluctant past was becoming nigh on impossible to shake off; like some homeless dog endlessly tagging along and butting up close.

  ‘It’s a fear plague, isn’t it? It’s coming.’

  Your little boy’s deep brown eyes, that went on forever, implored to be treated as an adult.

  ‘Sssh, it’s okay, it’s all right.’ As you held his silky head to your hugely beating heart.

  All the empty soothing platitudes and how you hate them now. Because they believed them, they trusted you. And all you are left with now are the books, all that male strut and threat you’ve always dismissed with a snort. Never really looked at. Carefully you sew your quilt, carefully you sew, writing in the dead language you haven’t used for so long, stretching your brain like a pianist’s fingers over keys, untouched for decades, and it all flooding back. Sew the words, sew.