Conspiracy Theory Read Free

been ordained, he had celebrated a liturgy in a cramped little apartment on a side street in Toldevan, a godforsaken mining town in the middle of nowhere, full of people whose names no one else on earth would ever have been able to recognize. It had been a cold night then too, and November, but he hadn’t had a coat that would protect him from much of anything. The apartment had heat only between midnight and six in the morning. It was eight in the evening. The only warmth came from a paper-fueled fire the grandmother of the family had lit in a large can that had once held lard. You had to be careful with the cans. Some of them melted more quickly than you’d expect. Fires broke out that way all the time, and whole apartment blocks went down in flames. At this liturgy there was himself, Anna, the family, and three other families from the same building, carefully chosen, part of the elect. Still, that had made nearly forty people, and the room they were in was very small. There were no lights in the room. Electricity was expensive, and he was expected to know the liturgy by heart. It was dangerous to carry liturgical books, or books of any kind that had not been published by government publishing houses. His hands were cold. His fingers were stiff with the beginning of premature arthritis, brought on by too many nights consorting with the cold. He had given communion to everyone in the room and felt relieved. He had promised to return to perform a wedding on the third of June. The room smelled of urine, and worse. The only facility was down the hall and not working very well. The people in the apartments used tins, like the one with the fire in it, so that they wouldn’t have to go down the hall in the middle of the night.
    â€œListen,” the grandmother had said to him, in a sibilant whisper, snaking her thin hand around his wrist as he started to pack up. “Listen. God made evil, just the way He made the good. Never forget that.”
    â€œGod didn’t make evil,” he said, a little too loudly. Anna looked up from the other side of the room, alarmed. “God could not make evil. God is all-good.”
    â€œGod made evil,” the grandmother said again, and then she smiled, the worst smile he had ever seen, worse even than the smiles of the secret police ten years later when they murdered Anna. The old woman had had a stroke. One of her eyes was half closed and out of control. The “good” one was rheumy and full of water. Her clothes were crusted over with dirt. She stank. Tibor thought she was decomposing in front of his eyes, except that her grip was so strong. He couldn’t get his wrist away from her.
    â€œGod made evil,” she said again—and then, suddenly, she let go, and he staggered backward, into something soft, someone not expecting him.
    â€œGod made evil,” he said now, coming back to the present, staring still at that brass door knocker. It had his name engraved on it, in script. He unbuttoned his coat again and checked the inside pocket of his jacket again. The letter was still there. That was the worst smile he had ever seen in his life, but that wasn’t the only time he had seen it. He had seen it twice more, and in only the last few weeks. He had seen it just a few hours ago, today.
    Somewhere out on the street, around to the front of the church where he couldn’t yet see, two women were talking. Their voices were high and light and giggly. Their steps on the pavement were sharp, as if they were wearing very high heels.
I should have worn a hat
, he thought, superfluously. He didn’t own a hat.
    Then he turned around and did something he had never done before on Cavanaugh Street.
    He locked his door.
2
    All the way back from New York in the car, Anthony van Wyck Ross had been considering the advantages of poverty. It wasn’t sentimentality. He had no use for Hallmark card emotions, or Lifetime movie epiphanies, or those Great