Trigger Warning

I am willing to pay that price, if the empty space in the bookshelf of my mind can be filled again, before I go.

Dear God, hear my prayer.

A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . . F . . . G . . .

Jerusalem

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

– WILLIAM BLAKE

Jerusalem, thought Morrison, was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly. It had engulfed him, engulfed both of them, and he could feel the pressure of time pushing him up and out. Like swimming down too deep.

He was glad to be out of it.

Tomorrow he would go back to work once more. Work was good. It would give him something to focus on. He turned on the radio and then, mid-song, turned it off.

‘I was enjoying that,’ said Delores. She was cleaning the fridge before filling it with fresh food.

He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He couldn’t think straight, with the music playing. He needed the silence.

Morrison closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was back in Jerusalem, feeling the desert heat on his face, staring at the old city and understanding, for the first time, how small it all was. That the real Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, was smaller than an English country town.

Their guide, a lean, leathery woman in her fifties, pointed. ‘That’s where the sermon on the mount would have been given. That’s where Jesus was arrested. He was imprisoned there. Tried before Pilate there, at the far end of the Temple. Crucified on that hill.’ She pointed matter-of-factly down the slopes and up again. It was a few hours’ walk at most.

Delores took photos. She and their guide had hit it off immediately. Morrison had not wanted to visit Jerusalem. He had wanted to go to Greece for his holidays, but Delores had insisted. Jerusalem was biblical, she told him. It was part of history.

They walked through the old town, starting in the Jewish Quarter. Stone steps. Closed shops. Cheap souvenirs. A man walked past them wearing a huge black fur hat, and a thick coat. Morrison winced. ‘He must be boiling.’

‘It’s what they used to wear in Russia,’ said the guide. ‘They wear it here. The fur hats are for holidays. Some of them wear hats even bigger than that.’

Delores put a cup of tea down in front of him. ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she said.

‘Remembering the holiday.’

‘You don’t want to brood on it,’ she said. ‘Best to let it go. Why don’t you take the dog for a nice walk?’

He drank the tea. The dog looked at him expectantly when he went to put the lead on it, as if it were about to say something. ‘Come on, boy,’ said Morrison.

He went left, down the avenue, heading for the Heath. It was green. Jerusalem had been golden: a city of sand and rock. They walked from the Jewish Quarter to the Muslim Quarter, passing bustling shops piled high with sweet things to eat, with fruits or with bright clothes.

‘Then the sheets are gone,’ their guide had said to Delores. ‘Jerusalem syndrome.’

‘Never heard of it,’ she said. Then, to Morrison, ‘Have you ever heard of it?’

‘I was miles away,’ said Morrison. ‘What does that mean? That door, with all the stencils on it?’

‘It welcomes someone back from a pilgrimage to Mecca.’

‘There you go,’ said Delores. ‘For us, it was going to Jerusalem. Someone else goes somewhere else. Even in the Holy Land, there’s still pilgrims.’

‘Nobody comes to London,’ said Morrison. ‘Not for that.’

Delores ignored him. ‘So, they’re gone,’ she said to the guide. ‘The wife comes back from a shopping trip, or the museum, and there’s the sheets gone.’

‘Exactly,’ said the guide. ‘She goes to the front desk, and tells them she does not know where the husband is.’

Delores put her hand around Morrison’s arm, as if assuring herself that he was there. ‘And where is he?’

‘He has Jerusalem syndrome. He is on the street corner, wearing nothing but a toga. That’s the sheets. He is preaching – normally about being good, obeying God. Loving each other.’

‘Come to Jerusalem and go mad,’ said Morrison. ‘Not much of an advertising slogan.’

Their guide looked at him sternly. ‘It is,’ she said, with what Morrison thought might actually be pride, ‘the only location-specific mental illness. And it is the only easily curable mental illness. You know what the cure is?’

‘Take away their sheets?’

The guide hesitated. Then she smiled. ‘Close. You take the person out of Jerusalem. They get better immediately.’

‘Afternoon,’ said the man at the end of his road. They’d been nodding to each other for eleven years now, and he still had no idea of the man’s name. ‘Bit of a tan. Been on holiday, have we?’

‘Jerusalem,’ said Morrison.

‘Brrr. Wouldn’t catch me going there. Get blown up or kidnapped soon as look at you.’

‘That didn’t happen to us,’ said Morrison.

‘Still. Safer at home. Eh?’