John the Revelator by Peter Murphy Page A

the village, a good half-hour’s hike. I’d decided to comb through the rubbish for
Harper’s
Compendium.
The odds against finding it were a million to one or worse, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was to satisfy myself that it was gone for good.
    The sun beat down on stubbled yellow fields. The earth was shorn of its blond hair, and the hay was gathered in bales the size of wagon wheels. By the time I got to the dump I was lathered in sweat. All afternoon I combed through heaps of refuse. I rooted through PVC sacks full of rotten food and dirty nappies and Styrofoam cups. I sifted mounds of sun-bleached newspapers, broken radios and VCRs and ribbons of videotape. I sorted through sad rain-spoiled soft toys, cracked plastic fish tanks, rotten rabbit hutches carpeted with pellets, big bulging sacks the shape of really fat people. By the time the sun had begun to set I was dog-tired and thirsty and my arms and legs ached.
    The highest mound of muck afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding landfill and the bare fields beyond. The holy light of sunset transformed the dump into a glittering city of worship, mosques and cathedrals and citadels of junk, congregations of rats and cats and seagulls. It no longer mattered that the book was lost. I’d read it so often I could remember reams of it by heart. Probably could have recited the sections on parasites from memory. I sat lotus-legged atop the pyramid imagining I was some kind of Zen master or warrior monk. A seagull circled overhead, wingtips describing mystical whorls and spirals in the burnt-orange sky.
    I drew a deep breath, located the centre of myself and called out to the gull.
    â€˜For every self-sufficient creature on earth,’ I said, ‘there are four parasites. 1.4 out of 6 billion people have roundworm. 1 billion have whipworm. 1.3 billion are infected with hookworms. Fourteen different kinds of parasites can live in the bowels of a duck.’
    I rose to my feet and gestured at the sprawling topography of rubbish, and again called out to the wheeling, showboating gull.
    â€˜The tapeworm is a flat creature with no mouth or eyes that lives in the intestines,’ I said. ‘It can lay up to a million eggs a day and grows up to sixty feet long. He—or she—is made up of thousands of segments, each with its own male and female organs. Having no mouth or stomach, the tapeworm absorbs food through millions of gills.’
    My chest swelled and my eyes rolled over the landfill, taking in the banjaxed washing-machines and ratty armchairs, the collapsed cardboard boxes and broken umbrellas and discarded items of clothing. Shoes. Lots of shoes, estranged from their former partners, gone downhill since the separation, laces frayed, tongues showing. A duvet stained with the shapes of countries that never existed. Bursted pillows, feathers everywhere. Used condoms, bodily fluids curdled in rubber nipples.
    â€˜
Toxoplasma gondii,
’ I said, ‘otherwise known as eggs in cat shit, can cause fatal brain damage in foetuses. Rats tested with
Toxoplasma
have been shown to become reckless to the point of being a danger to themselves. Some people reckon the same affliction makes human males feckless, women highly sociable and accommodating.’
    I took another breath and spewed out facts like a human computer.
    â€˜Tanbura’s guinea worms grow to two feet long and escape the body by crawling out through blisters. Threadworms live in the large intestine and the rectum, laying eggs at night. When you scratch your butt in your sleep, the eggs get under your nails, into your mouth, down the hatch, hatch, and the whole cycle starts again.’
    All across the dump were scattered reams of wasted paper, bills, brochures, fast-food coupons, offers of credit cards, debt-consolidation plans.
    â€˜If you eat and eat,’ I said, ‘but you can’t seem to get full, that’s probably a parasite stealing all the