The moon had wrecked itself on a reef of clouds before everyone showed up. Some of them were glowing with such excitement you’d think a miracle was about to happen. One or two backed away when they saw me at the table, like they’d catch an infection if they sat down next to me. He wasn’t there yet. Did he really think we would all believe him? Did he think we would all just fall down on our knees and accept that he was the Master come back? Then there he stood, the oil lamps rising in his eyes, and speaking in the Master’s voice, to be sure. But that wasn’t proof enough. It could easily have been an actor’s trick. The others seemed convinced. Or maybe they were all pretending, forming a hard, hand-linked chain of silence around him.

I was on my own, the only one in the room who had questions that called out to be answered. He saw me hesitate. Come here, he signed to me. Try me. There’s only one way to make sure, I thought. I stood up. I wanted to root him in his thingness, grab the hem of his robe and test his muscles.
Or show the others he was just a tissue of time. I wasn’t sure what he was but I was sure what

he wasn’t. He was a vapour, the closer I got, a musk fragrance, then wild flowers, then a rank smell of horse. He had been, no longer was, said he was again – would he vanish, would he be again? I stepped up to him, meaning to part the folds before he could stop me, when he threw back his robe and, taking my wrist in a firm grip, straightened my index finger into a bodkin with his other hand and buried it, dirt under the nail and all, a few inches below his right nipple, in an open wound.

Or his twin?

You’ll never know, he whispered in my ear, will you? You’ll just have to find out how deep your own wound is. That’s why I’m sending you away now, out of this room, out of this door, away from those who believed without checking, down to the harbour, to a gaunt ship that will catch the starburst of the whale’s breath, that will take you to a coast where the sun will beat down on you for six months, stopping only to let the rain explode across the rows of coconut palms for the other six, filling the backwaters until they raise and carry your boat east as you sing your psalms, which fill the sky like slowly scattered birdsong, and build your temples on promontories of cloud, and wait for the spear to find you.

Redburn on Shore Leave

Liverpool, 1849