Chapter 34: The Ship that Launched a Thousand Faces
Same streets; same alloy wheels rolling over the tarmac; same trees (well, not quite the same, the cherry trees had blossomed during the last few days); same red-brick houses with white, uPVC framed windows; same poles with sagging wires. And yet all quite different. All imbued with a life-force I’d never noticed before. Everything around me was glowing with happiness. You Have Increased the Joy of the World sang the fencing, the kerbs, the bus stop and the lampposts; not in harmony but in different timbres. I wouldn’t say this to Daniel or Niall, but my feeling of having completed the mural successfully was more rewarding than the feeling of having had great sex. To be post-pictura was to be happier than to be post-coital.
Although it had the unfortunate consequence of obliging a woman in white runners to change course in order to avoid me, I had to stop walking to examine that thought more carefully. It deserved amendment. To be in Daniel’s or Niall’s arms while returning from the stars, drowsing, perhaps listening to music, was a more intense happiness than I now felt. The difference was that it didn’t last as long. Over a day had passed since I ceased work on the mural and I still felt like skipping with every footstep. It helped that I was sharing the streets with sunlight as bright as though it were a day in June, not March.
A white tourist coach applied its brakes, the loud, pneumatic exhalation ending my musing. I was half way down Francis Street and could get out of the way of traffic and people by stepping into the calm of the pedestrian entrance to a church with two tall columns either side of a navy, rectangular door. St Nicholas of Myra, Celine informed me with an image. Nothing was lost to Celine, not even the memory of a slide displayed to my class for no more than two minutes during a lecture at NCAD, one of a Russian artist’s painting of St Nicholas saving three innocent men from execution.
I waited, hopeful that one of my friends would pass me on their way to the nearby La Catedral Studios. Perhaps I should get a drink from the café just twenty metres from me and sit outside in the sunshine.
Waiting with Celine melded into my awareness was like participating in a treasure hunt with clues all around me, all effortlessly accessible. A magpie was calling to its mate and fellows that a cat was sitting on the wall of the church yard. A lone cloud with the theme tune of the evil empire in its thoughts slid across the sky like an imperial battlecruiser from Star Wars. A scent of coffee came from a china cup which had been touched by the lips of a woman with more horror in her history than love. A breeze against my cheek was like the touch of a white witch. And all at once I gained the knowledge that I must flee, abandoning my plan to wait for Tony or someone else from the studio.
The woman approaching me was wearing black trousers, black jacket and black hood, her right hand was raised in a half-wave to get my attention, her left poised as though for a punch. The man walking fast on the pavement behind her – black jacket, tan trousers, black and tan baseball hat – was about to step into the road to move past us both and behind me. On the far side of the street a black Mercedes pulled up, windows a dark sheen.
‘Excuse me, are…’
My sprint, not allowing her to come close enough to complete the sentence, gained me about five metres. Given that these people were fit, regular gym users, I knew they would outrun me and I must rely on Celine. I let her take over.
Not left around the church, echolocation tells me there is an obstruction. Right then. A door? Go on in. Two murderers follow me.
‘Surrender,’ they cry, ‘and return to commune with he whom you have expelled from your dreams, and restore his powers to him whom you have suspended.’
I answer, ‘There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve Neo.’
‘Then you shall die,’ they cry, ‘and receive what you deserve.’
‘Priest! Vicar? Reverend? In any case, Father! I beg sanctuary!’ I reach the altar and tap it with my right hand. ‘Den!’
‘When gentility is absent from our lives, Lord have mercy,’ says the robed man standing at a lectern and the elderly people kneeling among the benches mutter their response.
‘When anger seems to be all we have, Christ have mercy.’
‘Christ have mercy.’ This time I join in.
The male murderer, fired with a terrible rage at this severe repulse, waves his fists over my sacred head. 'No mercy, he cries, 'nor subjection do I owe you against my fealty to my lord Neo the Edge.’
I point to the camera above me and another one over to our right. ‘Among the wonderful technological discoveries which men of talent, especially in the present era, have made with God's help, the Church welcomes and promotes with special interest those which have a most direct relation to men's minds and which have uncovered new avenues of communicating most readily news, views and teachings of every sort. The most important of these inventions are those media which, such as the press, movies, radio, television and the like, can, of their very nature, reach and influence, not only individuals, but the very masses and the whole of human society, and thus can rightly be called the media of social communication.’
He scowls. She scowls. I smile at the cameras and give a little wave.
‘Excuse me,’ says the priest and I look solemn once more.
The male murderer whispers to the female murderer. She walks towards the main entrance. He sits on the front bench, crosses his legs and folds his arms. He might equally have walked over to the pulpit and used the microphone to announce his determination not to let the trapped artist escape, such was the evident message of his pose and glare.
Standing near the altar (frowny-face from the priest) I take my phone from my bag and record the male murderer, before slowly panning to the female murderer. Then I post the clip to my socials with my location and the caption: Help! This man and others are trying to kidnap me. Share and if you are in Dublin come to the church as soon as you can.
‘Please take a seat,’ says the priest.
Taking my time, I walk past the front row of benches then turn along the second to sit behind my enemy and whisper, ‘Viral. from the Latin word virus, meaning poison, slime, or venom.’
He reaches for me. I slide away and show him the phone with his picture and the constantly rising number of engagements.
Controlling himself with visible effort, as though he is not, in his imagination, smashing my face with a baseball bat, my enemy says, ‘Neo just wants to talk. To make you an offer.’
‘Kiss me.’ I mean it. He has an attractive, strong-dangerous aura. Bald head. Greying, tidy beard. Calculating, brown eyes.
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘On a bike.’
‘What are you like?’
What am I like?
‘I am the ship that launched a thousand faces. I know a way to slide a brush across the canvass and with a half-twist, fix the ki. And if you make Cyn Sweetwater come to Neo, this kind of business will be a pleasure to me. I am the daughter of Charis; I am a lover of cities. When I remember my mother, I always show pity. Troy will burn. Here’s a lesson you can learn. When Neo weeps disaster and the crash of burning rafter calls out my name, I’m the woman to blame.’
Disgusted, he shakes his head and stands up. When he and his accomplice leave, Celine lets me surface once more.
After an apologetic bow to the priest, I moved to the back of the room, where I could discreetly view my phone. My kidnapping post already had thousands of shares across X, BlueSky, Instagram and TikTok, which was more than a little mortifying. Was that really necessary? I updated them all to thank everyone and say the danger had passed. It might not have, but I had to do something about the accelerating reach of the clip.
A Sky News piece about me was playing in my X stream. Surely, my encounter with Neo’s heavies hadn’t made the news? Crouching down behind the bench with the volume at minimum, I watched the video. No, it was about the new mural. Art experts were hailing it as a masterpiece, which was gratifying, but my body only shook off the embarrassment of my public appeal for help and regained its former state of glowing happiness when children spoke about the mural. Local schools were arranging visits to come down to the shopping centre and one child of about eight was gleefully pointing out to the presenter the battered-but-bold toy cat.
Annoyingly, in the shots of the mural, the QR code was blurred.
Then the camera turned to a spokesperson for DreamAds: a young woman in a light green suit. ‘Yet another wonderful painting that owes its creation to the DreamAds technology. As Neo The Edge has said, we are helping people find their inner artist. But we would like to point out that the DreamAds hood doesn’t give you wild and disconnected dreams, like Ms Sweetwater suggests in the mural. Rather, the point of our hoods is the opposite to that being made in the image. With DreamAds you can visit each other’s dreams or pick the dream you want from our growing number of packages. We now have the romantic encounter, the sporting achievement…’
Not soon enough, the presenter interrupted to cut to a reaction from Desdemona Faraday, owner of the shopping centre. Framed in front of a window that looked out onto a crowd below, Ms Faraday maintained a steady smile. ‘There’s a lot of congestion just now…’ the camera focus shifted to the scene beyond the window, where Gardai were keeping the road clear of pedestrians who had filled the footpaths. ‘… but we anticipate it will diminish over time. And we very much hope that our customers will appreciate their community having such a splendid work of art.’
‘Do you plan to keep it in place here in Phibsboro? Don’t you worry about vandalism?’
‘We’ll have a review of the impact of the mural in two months but my personal preference would be to keep it here, as the artist intended. We will provide lighting throughout the night and the area is monitored by security cameras. The mural is such a joy to look at that, though, that it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to vandalise it.’
A rush of sound from the main entrance to the church caused me to put away my phone and look over the bench. A dozen or more people had come in to the building, shouting, ‘Let her go! Let her go!’
I stood up and waved. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ said the priest curtly, ‘but if you are not here to worship, please leave.’
That was fair and although I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the proximity of the people crowding around me, I left with my rescuers, shaking their hands and offering my thanks for them having taken the trouble to come for me.
How had Neo’s people found me? Was the squat safe any more? Probably not. I just had to stay away from them until my dream, the dream to which I had invited the world. It was necessary to hide out again. But where?
At that moment a white van with lettering saying “Safety At Sea” caught my eye. That was a strong steer from Celine – or the universe – and I thought of Clare Island. Why not? All I needed was a DreamAds hood and good wifi.