Stealing God Read Free

combine so that he came close to self-destruction, now a humble acceptance kept the worst of his demons at bay. His mind strayed to his theological studies; he let it, it helped.
    All his life he’d heard the stories of how Jesus cured people possessed by evil spirits, first at school then on Sundays at Mass. As a child he’d enjoyed them, been impressed and a little frightened that evil spirits could get inside you somehow. As an adult he’d found such stories vaguely annoying when read out at church alongside the eternal truths enshrined in the Gospels. He sometimes wondered how the Church could mix the real Jesus and real miracles with such long-dead superstitious crap.
    He no longer wondered.
    Now he knew it wasn’t superstition and it wasn’t crap. The demons of self-destruction were very real. On arriving to study in Rome one of his first New Testament essays had been on the miracles of Jesus and he had drawn high praise for his understanding of the destructive power of inner demons. For a brief period he was regarded as a possible scholar, even asked out for a drink by a Rome-based English Dominican. But that drink and subsequent essays quickly put him back where he belonged, among the plodders.
    His brain shifted again. Pain.
    Why was the pain of Ron’s remark so much harder to bear, so much harder to deal with, than any physical pain? As a child he had learned that it was possible to control physical pain inflicted from the outside, to feel the fist or the boot, but go to a place deep inside yourself where you could hide, where physical feelings were somehow numbed or suspended. He had had to use the lesson many times himself and, as a policeman, made sure others couldn’t find such a place as he questioned them in a cell or influenced their thinking in some stinking back alley. Yes, many times, too many. But with this pain he could find no place to hide, nowhere was free of it, when it came it possessed him.
    Pain.
    You never got to the bottom of pain. However bad it was you knew it could get worse. Of one thing he was certain, this pain wasn’t something you could beat or hide from or overcome by your own efforts. The best that could be hoped for was to accept it, live with it, and ultimately find forgiveness. If forgiveness ever came.
    Suddenly he realised he had stopped and was leaning on the low parapet, and gazing down into the brown water. It had rained heavily two days ago and the river was moving quickly, muddy and swirling. He stood up and looked towards the traffic on the next bridge. What the hell did it matter? He was who he was, what his past had made him. Now he had to make the best of it, what else was there? He smiled to himself. Nothing, there was nothing else. A pretty young woman was passing and smiled back at him, thinking his smile had been meant for her. She carried on and Jimmy watched her. Slim, in a light blue dress with long dark hair and high heels. Going to work or to meet a boyfriend. Someone with a life before them, things to do, people to meet, and places to go. Yet she had noticed him and smiled. That was nice, a fortuitous piece of uncomplicated human contact. He turned and set off; the young woman had lifted him.
    The quiet road ended at a bridge carrying one of Rome’s main roads which, having crossed the Tiber, carried on for about a hundred metres then went into a big tunnel which swallowed its four lanes. Jimmy walked to the tunnel, once inside he lost all ability to think as his head filled with the traffic noise echoing and bouncing off the walls. After about four hundred metres he turned off the footpath and went down into a pedestrian underpass. It came out on the far side of the main road where a flight of steps took him up, back into the sunlight and out onto a wide piazza. Facing him at the end of the piazza were the massive walls and dome of St Peter’s Basilica with the columns of St Peter’s Square fanning out from it.
    Jimmy