Winter Issue 9

The only thing I can boast about, apart from Jesus Christ, is that I’m good at admin. Lou Peddar

Christ and the Coronavirus

A Good Death

By Gloria Chung

Two months ago, I began hearing tidings of the coronavirus from my family in Hong Kong. This week, the development of the pandemic truly began to affect us here in Vancouver, as the government and school leadership responded to the rapidly developing situation by closing down large gatherings and moving classes online. Many of us are following advice to stay at home as much as possible. Given what we know, it is entirely reasonable, and even adaptive, for us to experience fear and worry.

We may recall that humankind has experienced similar deadly and contagious diseases before. The global scale is new, because transportation and travel facilitates the wide geographical distribution of the coronavirus. But the fear arises from more than just that; the coronavirus is an unknown. Scientists, public health experts, and frontline medical staff are scrambling to catch up with the spread of the virus, and we haven’t yet developed any viable vaccines or reliable cures. The virus has circumvented attempts to contain it. For a modern culture accustomed to being in control of our health, our society, our bodies, and our mortality, the coronavirus is an unknown variable that starkly shows up our powerlessness – we are not as invincible as we wish to believe. To put it in theological language, this is the powerlessness of fallen image bearers in the face of a created order that rejects our dominion and resists our control. This is also the powerlessness of a creaturely being in the face of his own mortality.

In our culture, death is shielded from view, as we either pretend it is nothing more than a natural, biological phenomenon, or smuggle it behind special buildings and closed doors. Death is also fiercely resisted, as some deaths are torturous and drawn out, the person having been doubly afflicted by disease and by the desperate yet invasive attempts of modern medicine to wrest them from the brink of death. Some even pay to have their bodies frozen for future resuscitation (not resurrection!). The current pandemic drives home the unwelcome old news that our battle against death is a lost fight. Despite the welcome developments in medical technology, we remain helpless in the face of death.

Everyone dies. This acknowledgement does not nullify the work of the medical community in any way, as they continue to extend the gift of healing and preserve human lives. Fundamentally, life is a good gift from God. Yet, in light of the pandemic, I have also been asking myself a seemingly dangerous question – if death is unavoidable for us, might any of our energies might be directed towards euthanatos, the discipline of dying good deaths?

It was in History I that I first encountered the early martyrs Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, and I was so fascinated by them that I eventually wrote a paper on martyrdom in the early church. Ignatius asked Christians in Rome not to interfere in his death with a rescue operation: “Let me imitate the passion of my God.” He considered his martyrdom to be the consummation of a lifetime of discipleship and Christ-imitation. Before his execution, Polycarp prays a prayer that he would have used at the Eucharist as bishop of Smyrna, consecrating and offering up his own life as a participation the sacrifice of Christ. For both, martyrdom is a matter of Eucharistic communion between Christ, the Church, and the martyr, founded on the eschatological hope that the one who loves Christ will be resurrected into Christ even though they die by the persecution of the world. In their martyrdom, both Ignatius and Polycarp sought to follow Christ and embodied euthanatos.

Euthanatos isn’t finally about dying after all. Rather, it is the culmination of discipleship in life, unwaveringly oriented towards Christ till the very end. The Gospel story ends with life everlasting in the presence of God, who first led the way from death into life and abolished the hold of death upon humanity. Our faith gives us a reason to hope despite our current experience of death, and emboldens us to act with Christ-like love in times of crises.

After a plague broke out in the 3rd century, Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria addressed his congregation: “Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead… The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation, so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the qual of martyrdom.”

The best of 3rd century Greco-Roman science prescribed avoidance of all contact with those who had the disease. While many abandoned friends and family and fled from the cities, Christians remained behind to care for any too sick to fend for themselves – what rudimentary nursing they could provide nonetheless lowered mortality by two-thirds. The Alexandrian church willingly accepted the risks to themselves and practised the sacrificial love of Christ: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Upon the cross, Christ transferred our death to Himself and died in our stead. This, too, becomes the call of the Christian who seeks to imitate Christ, living a cruciform life and dying a cruciform death, all the while awaiting the resurrection in hope.

How might these lessons from the early church help us think about the coronavirus crisis we are facing today? Emphatically, seeking to live and die in a Christ-like manner is the furthest thing from blind heroism, which seeks to assert itself in pride. We should not recklessly expose ourselves to disease, or defy public efforts to maintain quarantine and social distancing. Rather, might we accept the present inconveniences and discomforts cheerfully, seeing these actions as small sacrifices for the good of our neighbours? And in a climate of fear and self-preservation, when resources like food, disinfectant, and toilet paper (!) are plundered from the shelves and hoarded, might we act with Christ-like love by caring for the vulnerable among us, by making sure they have enough? Might we also support and encourage those fighting the disease on the frontline, offering them our prayers and ungrudging cooperation? Finally, might we remain always ready to point to Christ, the reason for our hope in the valley of the shadow of death?

The Manager’s Briefcase

By Kirsten Tarves (KT)

It was ten past six in the evening, and Tom was standing at his bus stop. It was raining, and he had forgotten his umbrella in the office. His tail had gotten damp. Three buses came and went, and none of them were his. The briefcase at his feet was beginning to look drearily moist. Tom, staring at it bitterly, thought it was just about serve his manager right if the papers inside did get wet. Sending home files on All Hallows Eve! This is what came of being in the lower divisions. Tom dried his glasses smudgily on his tie for the fifth time, entertained the pleasing image of arriving at work to drop a log of sodden paper on his manager’s desk tomorrow, and moved the briefcase to the drier peat beneath the lamppost with a sigh. Of course he did not dare to let the papers inside get wet. He would go home, and turn on the lamp, and copy the files meticulously. Tomorrow he would lay them on the manager’s desk, and he would say “Oh no, it was no trouble at all! I’m a homebody really.” It was disgusting how crawling one became when one needed to pay rent, he thought. How old I’m getting, added another thought helpfully. In order to neutralize this discouraging reflection, Tom at once set in motion his favourite daydream. Thus happily occupied, he missed his bus.

Tom soggily reached the door of his flat two hours later. He was still congratulating himself upon having successfully avoided the landlady at her peeling desk in the lobby by shinnying up the drainpipe to the second floor when he discovered he had left his keys in his umbrella. The landlady had a copy, he knew. She reproached Tom the entire way up the dark narrow staircase and left only when he closed the door, suggesting through the keyhole he might consider paying his rent if he wanted to retain use of both legs. In affectionate parting she kicked the door with one solid boot. The entire wall shuddered and Tom, leaning against the door to hold it shut, did too.

Stirring his tea a half hour later while his wet jacket steamed on the radiator and fogged over the one window above the kitchen sink, Tom reflected that the problem wasn’t that his landlady was perfectly awful, but that he did not enjoy arguments. He thought he wouldn’t mind them so much if he didn’t lose them. But he always did, and in the end it seemed much simpler to take a briefcase of files home, or to pay rent twice – or even thrice, sometimes, if the landlady was particularly diligent that month. Tom sighed again and turned on the lamp at his shabby desk. He unceremoniously dumped the contents of the briefcase onto the ratty chair beside it and mechanically, without reading a word he was writing, began to copy each page.

When he was nearly a quarter of the way through the stack, the electricity went out. The fridge made a melancholy, resigned sound and everything went dark. Tom could hear the landlady shouting and stamping below. She went out and came back in a few moments later. He bent his ear hopefully over the edge of his desk, having learned some time before that the heating duct ran directly to the filthy little lobby below.

“...says not before nine tomorrow...” he heard her say. “...bloody idiot...I told him...” There was a murmured response from somebody else, another tenant or the doorman, perhaps, but Tom wasn’t listening. No electricity before nine! And he was supposed to hand these documents over to the manager at eight thirty sharp! He did some swift calculations. If he took the drainpipe and went through the neighbours’ yards instead of around them, and ran most of the way, the corner shop might still be open. Surely somewhere in that dusty little place there would be a torch or at least a few crumbly candles and a lighter. No sooner said than done. Hugging the walls to avoid the creaks, Tom crept down the two flights of stairs to the second floor. The window in the hallway opened noiselessly, Tom previously having taken the precaution of liberally applying oil to its hinges. The drainpipe groaned under his weight, and he made a mental note to reaffix it to the siding in near future. No need to break his legs before the landlady got to him, he thought.

Once he reached the ground, Tom took off at a run, tail stretched out like a thin kite string behind him. The dogs in the first neighbour’s garden stood up to chase after him, but stopped and wagged their own tails in recognition when they saw it was only Tom. They thought it odd that he should be sprinting to work in the middle of the night, and odder still that he did not have any dried liver for them as he usually did, but then, people on two legs were unaccountable creatures. Tom felt fleetingly guilty for forgetting the liver and shrugged at the dogs apologetically, but the horror of the unfinished copying spurred him onward. Panting and bespattered with mud from the gardens, he arrived at the corner store just as its owner locked the doors. No amount of pleading would convince him to reopen it. Tom was forced to run another half-mile to the next shop, where it turned out that the last candles had been bought but a moment before. Tom rushed out after the woman and bought three chalky candles off her at a notable markup and plodded home. He wearily climbed the drainpipe and shuffled up the two flights of stairs, hardly even taking the time to notice whether or not he avoided the creaks. It was not until he had cast off his jacket, found a matchbook with three matches left because the woman had refused to sell him the lighter, lit a candle, and turned the kettle on that he noticed the briefcase and all its contents were gone.

Tom stared. Holding the candle in trembling fingers he rushed to the desk. He got on his knees and peered under the ratty chair. Desperation growing, he flung open every drawer and cupboard in his meagre flat and even lifted the rugs. There was neither briefcase nor papers anywhere. Tom stood in the middle of the room and quivered. Surely not the landlady? he thought. Perhaps she had come to demand her rent, and finding him absent had come in looking for something to hold ransom and decided upon the papers? In uncharacteristic, fumbling rage he leapt down the stairs two at a time, but the landlady had retired and Tom knew – from observation, not experience – that no amount of banging on her door would rouse her.

He noticed then the wet footprints. He knew they were the wrong tread for anyone in the building. He followed them back up the stairs. They became too faint to follow halfway between the third and fourth floors, but Tom was wildly, irrationally certain by then that this someone had gone straight to his room, stolen the briefcase and the papers, and disappeared into the night. He went back into his room and sniffed. Yes, a faint lingering scent of other. He was sure of it now. Trailing the scent with tail still kinked in outrage, he went down the stairs and out the door. Down the street; a left turn into an alley that looked like a place that on any other occasion he would certainly have gone far out of his way to avoid; a right onto West Street; a slight decline towards the harbourfront; and then – horrors! the cathedral rose stark and black before him, and the intruder’s scent went straight up the wide stone steps into its interior. This was a setback: Tom couldn’t go into a cathedral, naturally. But he also knew that the church had fallen on hard times and was obliged to rent out the little rooms at its rear as shops. He rushed round the west side of its stony-faced exterior. Yes! The bans had been lifted there. The shops were closed, of course, but Tom had barely paused to consider this before he had jimmied open a diner’s window and was shutting it quietly behind him.

Tom went as softly as he could, but it was next to impossible in an unfamiliar dark room. He bumped into a trolley immediately, and it rolled away and crashed into something else. He froze. Everything went quiet again. Tom’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he tiptoed – hands in front of him now, in order to feel for other obstacles, just in case – towards a greyly lit doorway. He peered in. It was the kitchen, as he expected.

At this moment a rolling pin descended with definiteness and precision upon his head. Tom saw stars and reeled into the kitchen. He caught himself on the sink as he fell, but it was freestanding on warped metal legs and fell on top of him, and a sinkful of soapy tepid water drenched him and half the kitchen as well. His assailant struck a light in an old-fashioned lantern and held it up while Tom floundered.

She was tall, taller than Tom, and her brown hair was up in a ponytail to stay out of the soap and grease. A plaid shirt was rolled up to the elbows behind an impossibly dirty apron. Calm brown eyes looked at him in a considering way over a narrow turned-up nose. Tom thought she was alarmingly beautiful, and he fell to pieces at once. He babbled and wobbled, hardly knowing what he was saying or doing.

Lana had been a waitress at the pizzeria for nearly two years. It was not engaging work, but the manager obligingly let her leave to pick up Jo from school so long as she came back for another few hours’ work after he had been put to bed. Lana had wanted to finish her studies in biology at the institute, but when Jo came along and Mark had left, she shrugged and went to work at the pizzeria instead. Making pizzas was not so bad most of the time, she thought. There was a science to it. Obviously she loved Jo, she told herself, but it was nice to have a little time away from the endlessness of motherhood. And Jo had been particularly tiresome that morning. The problem with children, Lana thought as she drove away from the school, was that even when they were behaving their conversations were so boring. There was absolutely no new information to be gained. Some days it took all her patience to pay any attention at all to what Jo was telling her. After school today he had prattled on about Allhalloween, his costume and school theatre or something-or-rather, and Lana was tired and had been impatient with him. Then she had felt guilty and she given him a biscuit after supper to make up for it, wondering as she did so what horrifying psychological blow she was dealing his tender developing mind. Really, motherhood was a bit awful. It was a relief to escape back to the pizzeria. When the power had gone out the sink was already filled and the kitchen dimly lit from the windows. There was a lantern, but the darkness was a relief too, she found.

She washed all of the dishes in the dark and was wiping down the counters when she heard the window being pried open and shut. There was the unmistakeable feeling of a person breathing in the darkness of the dinette. Lana picked the rolling pin off the draining board then, and climbed the stepladder beside the door and waited. I’ve used up all my patience on Jo, she thought. There’s nothing left but rolling pins. And she admitted that the thunk of the rolling pin landing on the intruder’s head was refreshingly satisfactory. The following chaos startled her more than she expected, and she lit the lantern quickly. And now she found herself looking with some bewilderment at a red-faced, bald little man in glasses and shabby business wear bumbling about before her, wringing his hands and bobbing so bashfully that his bristly goatee waggled. She thought she had never before seen someone who so resembled a wrung-out dishcloth.

“I’m so sorry,” gasped the bobbing little man.

Wrung-out, but not disagreeable, Lana thought.

“We’re closed,” she said, without thinking.

“Yes, of course,” the man was prattling hopelessly now. Almost as bad as Jo, thought Lana. She felt inclined to giggle. This burglar was so obviously desperately miserable.

“Ice?” she inquired. Without waiting for an answer she pulled open the freezer and handed the burglar a bag of peas. The man drooped it obediently over what was surely going to be a glorious lump.

“Thank you,” he said humbly. Lana got the idea that crawling humbleness might be a fairly familiar condition for him.

“Help clean this up and tell me what it’s about,” Lana told him, and handed him the mop.

In the moment the fateful rolling pin fell, all the indignation that had turned Tom’s horror and fear into a brief spurt of courage dissipated. In its place he felt the familiar twinge of meekness. It wasn’t that he liked it, he thought miserably. It was just who he was. He swished the mop across the floor morosely. How stupid it all was, and how his head ached. As he mopped he began to tell Lana how the officer manager had asked him to copy all the papers –

“On Allhalloween?” interrupted Lana incredulously.

– Yes, but the papers were important, and then how when the power had gone out he had had to go and buy candles (he omitted the bit about the drainpipe, feeling it not quite necessary to the story), and how when he had come back the briefcase and papers were gone, and he had followed the thief’s scent all the way to the cathedral but of course couldn’t go in –

He works in that Office, thought Lana, realization dawning. In the lantern’s dim light she looked more closely at the burglar and saw his tail.

– And that was when he’d had the idea to go round the back to get past the bans, and came in through the window, and –

“And here you are,” said Lana.

“Yes,” said Tom, swishing dolefully. He found it easier to explain things when he looked at the mop instead of Lana.

“Well, you got past the bans anyway,” said Lana. “Why not have a look round the cathedral while you’re here?”

Tom forgot he was only looking at the mop and looked at Lana in surprise. She was watching him in the same evaluative way and he looked away again hurriedly.

“I – yes, if there’s a way in,” he said.

“The door opens into a hall,” Lara said, and pointed.

Tom looked where she pointed. The door didn’t look much like one that would open into a cathedral. It was plain and hanging crookedly, and the paint was scabbed.

“Well, pour the water out and go look,” said Lana. She poured her own bucket out into the uprighted sink, and Tom tried the irreligious-looking door. The handle was stiff and the hinges creaked resentfully, but it was unlocked, and it opened onto an empty hallway of stagnant air. Lana came and looked over his shoulder. She gave him the lantern.

“Good luck,” she said.

It was unreasonable to expect Lana to come with him. Tom shut the door, leaving just a crack in order to find his way back.

It was very dark and the smell of the bans was everywhere. They arched high above the cathedral, an enormous knotted dome of crackling, flashing strings of buzzing light. There were so many that all together they made a faint noise, like the twanging of electric streetcars. It was like being a fly sidling beneath an invisible spider’s web, thought Tom. Brush one of these and – what? What kind of spider would arrive? Nobody at the office quite knew what the bans would do to you if you touched them. Better not to know. He set his teeth and crept down the hallway.

The hallway ended in an empty lobby. There were chairs stacked neatly in rows against the wall and a closed kitchen window. Tom was surprised. He had not thought anything so normal as eating went on inside churches.

There was a dark door at the other end of the hall. Tom tiptoed through the doorway and into another empty room. It made sense, he reasoned, that such a large building would have large empty rooms, but it was not comfortable to creep across them while the lantern cast leaping, flaring shadows up the walls. The size of it all began to alarm him. Where could one not hide a briefcase in a place like this?

After several wrong turns and twice ending up back in the room with the chairs – the bans kept meddling with his sense of direction – Tom found he had entered the nave from the south-western corner. The stain-glass windows lit the space with a pale ashy light. Tom put out the lantern and peeped round a buttress towards the quire. A thorough investigation of all the nooks and crannies (they were the transepts and chapels, if he had but known) revealed an utter absence of briefcases. It was simply not there. Tom sat down on a pew and leaned his forehead on the cool wood bar.

“Well hello there,” said a voice. It was that calm, melodious kind of voice that seems to never be afraid, and that you can never mistake for belonging to anybody that has not spent many years speaking from the front of a church.

Tom jumped and squeaked and tripped over the curlicued base of the pew in his haste. “Sorry!” he gasped, and fled blindly. He ran past three doorways, all of which would have led him back to the pizzeria in the most direct ways possible. By sheer luck he stumbled out a side door onto the back steps of the cathedral, thereby making the interesting discovery that the bans were set only to keep people out and not in. They separated lifelessly in front of him like old cobwebs and snapped shut behind him like steel snares.

Lana heard the door slam and opened the pizzeria door. Tom was standing on the step.

“It wasn’t there?” said Lana.

Tom felt tears start to his eyes. It was all too much. He sat down on the steps and wept shamelessly.

“ – “ said Lana. Then she saw this was not quite the moment for whatever she was about to say and sat down silently beside him. It’s damned awkward, she thought. I’m really no good at this. I’m not really the comforting type of person.

“There, there,” she said, stiffly patting Tom’s shoulder. “We’ll find the briefcase. Or you can explain it to your manager,” she added by way of encouragement. I’m being more of a mother to this demon than I am to Jo, she thought.

“I’m so tired of working late,” Tom howled, “and there’s nobody to talk to, and the landlady makes me pay rent, and I’m so tired of climbing that damned drainpipe.”

“There, there,” said Lana again, feeling idiotic, but also like she did not quite see the logic in all this. “Come back to my place and have a cup of tea?” she added encouragingly. Why’d I go and say that, she thought. Just what my mother would have said.

Tom followed her obediently, sniffling, too miserable to feel distressed and apologetic for Lana being so beautiful.

Jo woke up when Lana and Tom came in and came padding out of his bedroom.

“Jo dear, this is Tom,” said Lana. “I’m helping him look for some papers he lost when he was copying them.”

Jo looked at Tom with fine distaste. Tom looked back at him with alarm.

“Why’d you go and lose them?” said Jo.

“I didn’t!” Tom protested, possibly for the first time in his life.

“Go back to bed, dear,” said Lana.

“Don’t you have copy machines at your work?” asked Jo practically.

“Of course we do,” said Tom, flapping one hand impatiently, “but some papers have to be copied by hand. It’s a management thing.”

Lana shooed Jo back to bed, privately thinking that Tom’s manager was probably taking outrageous advantage of him.

Over tea Lana suggested they go back to Tom’s apartment and have another look around. I’m becoming invested in this, she thought. It’s almost fun. I haven’t done anything interesting on Allhallow’s in years. She knocked on the upstairs door before they left and the little grey-haired lady in glasses cheerily agreed to listen for Jo, “just in case, of course, dear. Don’t worry about a thing.” Tom listened wistfully to this remarkable exchange.

So back they went to Tom’s apartment, Tom thinking squeamishly of his own landlady the entire way. But she was still asleep, and Tom led the way up the begrimed staircase. The footprints were quite invisible now, but the remembrance of them made Tom angry all over again, and he stumped up the stairs so emphatically that Lana raised her eyebrows. She raised them even more when Tom opened the door, lit the candles, and showed her into his flat. He was ashamed of its shabbiness. He loudly pointed out the place where the briefcase had been, and the ratty chair where the papers had been dumped, in a guilty and forlorn effort to distract her. Ordinarily it would have awoken in Lana a mixture of amusement and pity all over again. But she was not listening. She was staring bewilderedly at the desk and chair.

“But they’re still there,” she said.

“What?” said Tom.

“Right there,” said Lana. Tom looked at the chair and the desk, and then at Lana. She was looking at him in her appraising way again. Tom blushed unaccountably and hated himself for it.

It’s possible he’s quite mad, Lana thought, and wondered why she had been so trusting of a burglar, from the Office no less.

“There. Right there,” she said again. She walked over and picked up the papers and waved them in front of Tom’s face.

Tom looked at her empty waving hand blankly.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Here,” Lana said. She took Tom’s hand and held it palm upward and laid the papers on it.

“By the – “ said Tom. Lana struggled not to laugh when she saw Tom’s astounded expression and watched him gingerly feeling sheets of paper which he could not see. She picked up another sheaf from the ratty chair to distract herself.

Lana looked down at the papers in her hand. Then she narrowed her eyes, sat down at the desk, and looked them over by the flickery light of the crumbly candles. Tom hovered anxiously.

“What are these?” she said. Back came the evaluative look.

“I don’t know,” said Tom. He shrugged awkwardly. “I just copy them.”

“Don’t you read them?” shouted Lana. Her shout made Tom jump and listen in alarm for the landlady’s boots.

“I just copy them,” he repeated helplessly.

Lana jumped up from the chair and stamped about the kitchen waving the papers in the air.

“This – this – ” she shouted, “is an outrage, and illegal – ”

“Sh-hh,” Tom pleaded desperately, nervously padding after her while she stomped and raged.

“And you – ” she said, wheeling on him. Tom cringed and backed up and tripped over the fallen chair. He fell inelegantly and scrambled backwards like a crab and knocked his head on the desk.

“Sorry!” he gasped, and caught the lit candle as it tumbled off the desk.

“You,” shouted Lana, “copying all these things, and never having the decency to look!”

“I just – ” he began again.

“COPY THEM,” supplied Lana ominously. She was suddenly quiet again and looking at the papers.

“Yes,” agreed Tom meekly. He crept to his feet and set the candle back in its place. He watched Lana apprehensively.

“This,” said Lana, “is an order for the transfer of funds from someone named Brax to someone else named White.”

“So?” said Tom.

“Brax,” said Lana, “is paying White for the task of removing someone else named Benson from his corporeal form.” She leafed through the other pages quickly. “And it looks like Eader and Jagles and Jacks get it too, poor boys. And here’s a bill of sale from somebody called Hackler for something listed as UL-410 ‘in blue.’ A lot of it, judging by the amount being paid for it.”

“That’s not possible,” said Tom dully.

But he knew it was. In spite of himself, all at once rather a lot of things connected in his mind. The manager handing him the briefcase after all the others were gone – the order to have it back at 8:30 before the Office properly opened at 9 – the fact that everybody in the office knew Tom never read what he copied. The realizations were more deflating than the rolling pin had been.

Lana looked at Tom and saw he was understanding things.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quite kindly, “but I think you’ve been very stupid, and you’re about to get people killed, and maybe already have.” Probably shouldn’t have added that last bit, she thought belatedly.

Tom nodded, miserable and mute. He sat down on the ratty chair and looked at his hands. Lana looked through the rest of the papers. Then she set them down on the desk and looked thoughtful.

“Tom,” she said after a few moments, “what’s the point of putting some kind of ban on papers you’re supposed to be copying? Who would want papers you had to disappear?”

Tom rubbed his hands together unhappily and thought about the office. A lot of things happened there that he did not care to think about if he could help it. “Anybody,” he said. Another realization came to him. And I wish they wouldn’t, he thought dully. “There were tracks on the stairs,” he said. “A timed conceal would work. Before I took the briefcase.”

Lana raised an eyebrow.

“Somebody who meant to get the papers off the manager,” Tom explained. “I left it by the stairs while I got my coat. They, or anybody really, could’ve put a conceal on it before I left and then came here to get them once I left. They probably even cut the power to make me leave!” he added, understanding that peculiar incident now too. He frowned. It was disheartening to think that all his sprinting about had been somebody’s idea the whole time.

“But they didn’t make it up all the way,” said Lana. “Obviously.”

Tom had a fleeting image of the landlady finding a stranger on the stairs and a moment of sympathy for the would-be burglar.

“I’m going to take this to the police,” Lana told Tom. Tom nodded again. He was still looking at his hands.

“You’ll have to come with me,” she said. “You know how things are when it’s between us and Office people.”

“I can’t,” said Tom. It came out as a feeble whimper and made him feel hot and ashamed.

“Tom,” said Lana, in quite gentle but entirely unambiguous tones, “your manager – Brax I assume? – is killing people, and buying something I imagine he ought not to, and you are coming to the police with me right now.”

And Tom did. Serial docility is difficult to overcome.

It was three in the morning by the time they reached the station. The police officer was none too pleased to be woken from his peaceful slumber behind the desk. His moustached superior was summoned. The moustached superior could not quite believe at first that Tom could not see the papers.

“Bans, or something,” explained Lana, several times.

The officer read the documents and the moustache twitched. He kept glancing up at Tom’s glum face and then at Lana’s calmly determined one.

“Well,” he said at last, and sat back in his chair. “We’ll send people up tomorrow to have a word with this, er, Brax.” He paused, rubbing one temple with a large, capable-looking hand. “In strictest confidence, we’ve thought for a while that something unpleasant might have been happening there. This,” he tapped the briefcase with his other hand, “is, ahem, advantageous. By the way, I think you – “ he turned to Tom – “had better stay away for a while. Actually, it’d better for you if you looked for other work. We’ll overlook your involvement, but best not to try your luck.”

“Thanks,” said Lana. She stood up.

“Not a problem,” said the officer. “Thank you.” He held the door open for them.

Lana and Tom walked the dark streets in silence. Tom thought he had never been so tired before.

When they reached Tom’s turn they stopped for a moment.

“Thanks,” offered Tom at last. He held out a grubby paw. Lana shook it gravely.

“Come round for tea tomorrow?” she said.

And he did.

THE END

La Corona (I)

By John Donne (1572-1631)

This sequence of seven sonnets by John Donne on the life of Christ was sent to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert (the mother of poet-priest George Herbert) in July 1607. Each sonnet is linked by their first and last lines, and the last line of the last sonnet brings us back to the first line of the first sonnet, creating an unbroken circular pattern. ‘Corona’ in Latin means ‘crown’ or ‘wreath’.

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse's white sincerity ;
But what Thy thorny crown gain'd, that give me,
A crown of glory, which doth flower always.
The ends crown our works, but Thou crown'st our ends,
For at our ends begins our endless rest.
The first last end, now zealously possess'd,
With a strong sober thirst my soul attends.
'Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high ;
Salvation to all that will is nigh.

II. Anunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh ;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb ; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother ;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room
Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.

Double Cross

By Embolus

Cryptic Clues

Across:

1. Clip round unhappy sow’s wild flower (7)

5. Core man surprised by love affair (7)

9. He carried the world in what lasted (5)

10. Giver swindled among the elderly caused distress (9)

11. He let cattlemen round up losing his first wartime leader (7,6)

13. I trot baking bread (5)

14. “No!” said Dorothy to pessimists (9)

16. Military organisation you heartlessly program in battle (4,5)

20. Director is in Africa praying (5)

22. Icey waste melting on the near corn (8,5)

24. See 27A

25. Culturally symbolic losing second to become charged (5)

26. Supervise beyond diocese (7)

27 & 24. Wartime leader gains weight before sick assembly (7,9)

Down:

1. See 7D

2. Minx is a mad act (7)

3. Hearing is leaning to one side with confined space (9)

4 & 18. Fragment of liturgy promised by 7,1D

5. Properly correct field by all accounts (7)

6. Wet Chinese Communist lost one (5)

7&1 Never blame China! Ill-conceived politician was also ill-advised (7,11)

8. The Battle of Britain was not this, nor the beginning of this, but it was this of the beginning (3)

12. Kenyan ran in a fast race (4,7)

15. Slow growth from odd curve inaction (9)

17. I am queer! Queer? I lost shelter from rain (7)

18. See 4

19. Inadequate legislation regarding the inadequate? (4-3)

21. Long for Brazil? Just a tasty morsel? (4,3)

23. Cuts journalists? (5)

24. Tail-less water-bird sounds like a dove (3)

Non-Cryptic Clues

Across:

1. Wild flower (7)

5. Novel (7)

9. Book of maps(5)

10. Caused distress (9)

11. Wartime leader (7,6)

13. Flat-bread (5)

14. Those who disagree (9)

16. Combined military force (4,5)

20. Italian director (5)

22. Arctic waters (8,5)

24. See 27A

25. Chemically charged (5)

26. Supervise (7)

27 & 24. Wartime leader (7,9)

Down:

1. See 7D

2. Lynx (7)

3. Paying attention (9)

4 & 18. Hitler’s promise to 7,1

5. Properly (7)

6. Wet (5)

7&1 Wartime leader (7,11)

8. Final goal (3)

12. Citizen of Nairobi (4,7)

15. Slow growth (9)

17. Large tent (7)

18. See 4

19. Legislation for the hard-up (4-3)

21. Edible seed from fir tree (4,3)

23. Ragged cuts (5)

24. Speak nonsense to a baby (3)

RCSAMarch 17, 2020