My Chocolate Redeemer by Christopher Hope

red giants, or collapse into tiny bodies so heavy that a teaspoonful would weigh more than the earth, white dwarves, or neutron stars, or simply disappear altogether into black holes. All this my uncle puts down the way a kid puts down a book, or a dog drops a ball – and runs away to play with the Angel, games of running and jumping and fists called ‘Protecting France for Future Generations!’
    I believe we exist in order that the universe should have someone to register it. The universe exists in order that we should have somewhere to project our fantasies. ‘Nothing but physics and necessity!’ says Uncle Claude when asked about the nature of the cosmos. He might as well reply, ‘Baseball bats and knuckle-dusters!’ Or is it that the universe exists in order that Uncle Claude can make people do as they are told? Five billion years since the birth of the sun and all that time spent preparing for Uncle Claude to bully the rest of us. It seems such a waste really.
    â€˜Bella,’ says Grand-mère, ‘why are you crying again?’
    â€˜I’m sorry, I can’t help it.’
    â€˜But you must help it! Imagine what would have happened if Joan of Arc reacted as you do when she stood before Orleans? Or Pétain at Verdun? Or your dear brave grandfather when he faced the firing squad?’ And she waves a hand at the holy trinity on her bedside table.
    My grandmother’s holy trinity comprises a lovely small statue of Sèvres porcelain in which blessed Joan of Arc sits astride a white horse and lifts her sword to the skies, the divine maid about to charge into battle and rout the accursed English. There is also a large photograph of a man wearing lots of medals, whom Grand-mère touches with a finger, a slim white finger like a wafer of ice, in a kind of tender salute and who she says is Marshal Pétain; and there is a young man in sepia who looks somewhat blurrily out into the world, as if the photographer took him by surprise just as he was on his way elsewhere. Because he wears a uniform and cap it is not possible to see much of him anyway, except that he is dark with a fine curved nose and bold eyebrows, in his early twenties. Grand-mère was deeply in love with him, she tells me, and in deference to her feelings I have never pressed her as to why he died in this savage fashion. But I did once ask her if she had been desolated by his death and she said: ‘Absolutely. I loved him more than the world. But, alas, he loved honour and his country more.’
    I was less sparing in the case of Uncle Claude. He is the sort of person who needs hard questions asked of him, so one day I said: ‘Does anyone know why Grandpapa was executed by firing squad?’ To this my uncle gave a surprising answer. ‘For reasons of loyalty.’ He added: ‘His molecules are now dispersed in new patterns, that is all.’
    What can anyone do with a man like that? What I want to know is: where are the new blasphemers, those who spit on the certainties of science? I mean, it’s common enough, even boringly familiar, to encounter entire phalanxes of people who take for granted the non-existence of God. So tell me, where are the new atheists? Where are the black masses performed by naked research assistants upon the tomb of Einstein? Who practises self-abuse in a particle accelerator? Who has been known to mock the muon, the gluon or the quark? Why does no one deny the existence of Rutherford?
    Well, then, is it any wonder that I go around most of the day with a pair of earphones playing pretty loud sounds of one or the other heavy mob, like In Extremis, who are simply great! Do you hear that … great ! I don’t care what the papers say about their being into sadomasochism, and I don’t believe all that rubbish about that dead girl fan being found in the toilet or wherever it was with whip weals, or chain marks, as the papers say. In Extremis are heart’s