Page 25 of The Running Grave

The screen faded to black, the music faded away.

‘The community Rust joined was, sadly, not everything he hoped it would be,’ said Wace, ‘but a simple life, living close to nature, remained his ideal. When that first community broke up, Rust continued to live in the cabin he’d built himself, self-sufficient, self-reliant, still dealing with the trauma left by the war he’d been forced to fight.

‘It was then that I met him for the first time,’ said Wace, as a swell of new music filled the temple, now joyous, uplifting, and a picture of Rusty Andersen and a thirty-something Jonathan Wace filled the screen. Though Robin guessed they weren’t too many years apart in age, the weather-beaten Andersen looked far older.

‘He had a wonderful smile, Rust,’ said Wace, with a catch in his voice. ‘He held fiercely to his solitary existence, though occasionally I’d cross the fields to persuade him to come and eat with us. A new community was starting to form on the land, one that centred not only on a natural, but a spiritual life. But spirituality held no attraction for Rust. He’d seen too much, he told me, to believe in man’s immortal soul or God’s goodness.

‘Then, one night,’ said Wace, as the photograph enlarged slowly, so that Rust Andersen’s face filled the entire screen, ‘this broken warrior and I went walking together from dinner at the farm, back across the fields to his cabin. We were arguing, as ever, about religion and man’s need for the Blessed Divinity and at last I said to Rust, “Can you know, for sure, that nothing lies beyond this life? Can you be certain that man returns to the darkness, that no divine force acts around us, or inside us? Can you not even admit the possibility of such things?”

‘And Rust looked at me,’ said Wace, ‘and, after a long pause, replied, “I admit the possibility.”

‘“I admit the possibility,”’ repeated Wace. ‘The power of those words, from a man who’d turned resolutely away from God, from the divine, from the possibility of redemption and salvation! And as he said those astonishing words, I saw something in his face I’d never seen before. Something had awoken in him, and I knew in that moment that his heart had opened to God at last, and I, whom God had helped so much, could show him what I’d learned, what I’d seen, which made me know – not think, not believe, not hope, but know – that God is real and that help is always there, though we may not understand how to reach it, or how to even ask for it.

‘Little did I realise then,’ said Wace, as the music darkened again, and Andersen’s smiling face began to fade from the screen, ‘that Rust and I would never have that conversation, that I’d never get the chance to show him the way… because within twenty-four hours, he was dead.’

The music stopped. The silence in the temple was now absolute.

‘A car hit him out on the road outside our farm. A drunk driver killed Rust in the early hours of the following morning, while Rust was taking an early walk, which he often did, being an insomniac, and a man who thought best alone. Rust was killed instantly.’

Another picture filled the screen: of a group standing with heads bowed, over a freshly dug and covered mound of earth, outside Rust Andersen’s cabin.

‘We buried him at the farm, where he’d found a measure of comfort in nature and in solitude. I was distraught. It was an early test of my faith and, I freely admit, I couldn’t see why the Blessed Divinity would let this happen, so soon after the possibility of Their revelation to a troubled soul like Rust. It was in this state of despair that I set to work to clear out Rust’s cabin… and on his bed, I found a letter. A letter addressed to me, in Rust’s handwriting. After all these years, I still know it by heart. This is what Rust wrote, hours before his death:

Dear Jonathan,

Tonight, I prayed, for the first time since I was a little boy. It occurred to me that if there is a possibility that God is real, and that I can be forgiven, then I’d be a fool not to talk to Him. You told me he’d send me a sign if he was there. That sign has come. I won’t tell you what it was, because you might think it stupid, but I knew it when it happened, and I don’t believe it was coincidence.

Now I’m experiencing something I haven’t felt in years: peace. Perhaps it will last, perhaps it won’t, but even to have this feeling, once more before I die, has been like a glimpse of heaven.

I’m not good at talking about my feelings, as you know, and I don’t even know whether I’ll give you this letter, but setting all this down feels like the right thing to do. I’m going for a walk now, after a night of no sleep, but this time, for the best of reasons.

Yours,

Rust.

Beside Robin, the young black woman was wiping away tears.

‘And a few short hours after that, while I slept, Rust was taken home,’ said Jonathan Wace. ‘He died hours after the sign he’d been given, which had caused him a night of joy and of the peace that had been denied him so long…

‘It was only later, while I was still grieving for him, still trying to make sense of the events of that night, that I realised Rust Andersen had died at the time of Holi, an important Hindu festival.’

Now the cinema screen behind Wace was again showing the film of joyful people in colourful robes, throwing powder at each other, laughing and dancing, packed tightly together in the street.

‘Rust didn’t like crowds,’ said Wace. ‘He wandered on from city to city after Vietnam, looking for his peace. At last, he settled on a patch of uninhabited land, and he eschewed human company. The joy of communing with other people was one he partook of sparingly and usually unwillingly, only out of need for money, or food. And as I thought about Holi, and I thought about Rust, I thought how incongruous it was that he should have returned to God at such a time… but then I saw how wrong I was. I understood.

‘Rust would find Holi in the life beyond. All that he’d missed: connection, laughter, joy, would be there for him in heaven. The Blessed Divinity had sent Rust a sign, and in taking Rust on that day, the Divinity had spoken through him to all who knew him. “Rust has no further to seek. He has achieved what he was set upon the earth to do: to gain knowledge of me, which in turn, teaches you. Celebrate the divine in the confident belief that one day, you too will find the happiness he sought.”’

The riotous colours faded again from the cinema screen and a picture of many divine figures took their place, including Shiva, Guru Nanak, Jesus and Buddha.

‘But what is the Blessed Divinity? Of whom am I speaking, when I speak of God? Which of these, or countless others, should you pray to? And my answer is: all, or none. The divine exists, and men have tried to draw the divine in their own image, and through their own imaginations, since the dawn of time. It doesn’t matter what name you give Them. It doesn’t matter what form of words you give your worship. When we see beyond the boundaries that separate us, boundaries of culture and religion, which are manmade, our vision clears, and we can at last see the beyond.

‘Some of you here today are non-believers,’ said Wace, smiling again. ‘Some of you came out of curiosity. Some doubt, many disbelieve. Some of you might even have come to laugh at us. And why not laugh? Laughter is joyous, and joy comes from God.

‘If I tell you today that I know – know beyond doubt – that there is life beyond death, and a divine force that seeks to guide and help any human who seeks it, you’ll demand proof. Well, I say, you are right to ask for proof. I’d rather face an honest sceptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety, their insistence that only they, and their religion, have found the right way.

‘And some of you will be discouraged if I say to you that nothing on this earthly plane comes without patience and struggle. You wouldn’t expect to know or understand the laws of physics in an instant. How much more complex is the originator of those physical laws? How much more mysterious?

‘Yet you can take a first step, now. A first step towards proof, towards the absolute certainty I possess.