Transcripts

Episode 2: Stacking Sandbags

I watched as the harbour disappeared beneath the waves.

Most of the people had left; there was nothing to do now. I wondered how many of them would be fleeing inland tonight; how many would stay in the city. Seeing those buildings under water did something to you. It was like a statement of fact. Everything fades. Everything crumbles.

Standing there all on my own, I felt an unbearable tension in my entire body, and now more than ever I missed my faith.

Religion, I realized, was a story. A story of immense power, a story that comforted and uplifted me. But like every story, it required suspension of disbelief. Once you realized that it was just a story, its magic was lost in an instant... and almost impossible to regain.

Still, some part of me desperately wanted to regain it. No matter how I looked at it, the way I felt when I truly believed - and I do think that at some point, I did - was infinitely superior to how I felt now. To feel that life has meaning, to not be afraid of death, is a kind of security. It's like being wrapped in a warm, soft blanket. I could remember that feeling, I could remember that state of mind... in fact, it felt so close, just out of reach, like... if I could just follow the right train of thought, hear the right words, I could slip back into it like continuing a dream after waking up.

But reality was too stark to deny. Every breath that I took reminded me that I was just another oxygen-processing organism. Every earthquake reminded me that I lived on a rock floating in space. Watching the waves slowly creep up the street, thinking about water eating away at stone, I understood the real, horrifying scale of Time. In a universe billions of years old, it was impossible to believe that a man who died on a cross two thousand years ago was the one true incarnation of God.

It was a good story. One of the best. But it wasn't real like the waves were real.

Or was it? Was it possible to hold on to some kernel of genuine truth? Was it possible to find my way back to that feeling of safety, or to something like it? Maybe it was cowardly to give up. Maybe the most human thing to do was to refuse to give in, to keep looking, to dig deeper. After all, I wanted it. I could no longer lie to myself to maintain the illusion, but if there was a way of recovering my faith, wasn't it worth trying?

And what did I have to lose, anyway? The whole world was about to drown.

There were seven of us, in the beginning. Thomas, Jacob, Bartholomew, Simon, Matthew, John, and myself. Seven young men preparing to serve God. I knew what had happened to Thomas, but what about the others? We'd drifted out of touch long ago, but maybe... if I could understand their paths, I could figure out my own.

It was something, at least. A beginning; a direction to move in, away from the encroaching sea. I couldn't go back to the church, but I had to go somewhere. So I started walking again.

The streets were strangely quiet now, as if everyone was in mourning. Maybe people had given up. Or maybe it was the quiet before the storm. I had no way of telling.

It did not take me long to reach the truly poor part of town, a no man's land between the harbour and the industrial district. This was not some kind of bohemian refuge with seedy bars and colourful brothels full of tragic artists and wise prostitutes; there was nothing but rows upon rows of cheap, shoddy housing that looked grey even when it wasn't. Most of the people who lived here worked two or three jobs, coming home only to sleep. 

I tried to imagine growing up here, but I couldn't. There was nothing for my imagination to latch on to; it was like a featureless corridor. Maybe this was Hell: not a place of torture, but a place where neither your dreams nor your fears mattered.

I found Jacob near his church, a squat, ugly building that did not even offer the appearance of hope. He looked old, older than he should be; he had a thick grey beard and calloused hands. He did not notice me; he was too busy stacking sandbags onto what I presumed was a barrier to keep the water from flooding the area. He was doing it by himself, covered in sweat.

My initial reaction was... puzzlement, I suppose. Why work so hard on something that wasn't going to hold? And why try to protect these miserable, worthless streets? Was he one of the people who believed the sinking was about to stop, that if we held out just long enough, everything would be fine?

I did not remember him as someone who would easily fall for something like that. He had been a remarkably stubborn student, demanding answers to difficult questions and challenging every teaching that seemed contradictory. He knew Scripture better than any of us, and was deeply, personally invested in theology in a way that seemed almost too intellectual. I'd found him hard to talk to; conversations often became uncomfortably intense as he insisted on some minute, trivial-seeming point.

The man I spoke to now was different. He smiled and asked me to help him, and I did. We stacked heavy sacks of sand for what seemed like hours; my muscles screamed in agony, but somehow I didn't want to stop until he did. The exercise felt cathartic, and some part of me hoped that the physical suffering would help me cleanse myself, as if Jacob had been sent by God to help me find my way back.

We did not speak, and that too contributed to the feeling that the work was sacred or symbolic; the point was not to stack sandbags, but to be humbled and to serve God. I felt dizzy and light-headed and just for a moment I almost convinced myself that I was about to reach some sort of clarity.

But I was just hungry and tired and really desperate to believe in the story again.

When we were done, Jacob and I sat in front of the church and had sandwiches. Now we spoke, and although Jacob had certainly changed, he had no divine lessons for me. He told me about all the things he'd witnessed working in this part of town: men and women abusing each other, children going hungry, people dying of easily-cured diseases because they couldn't afford treatment... a relentless onslaught of misery, day after day after day.

And yet he'd stayed. For all these years he'd been their anchor, their shelter, their friend. He kept stacking sandbags even after everyone else had given up. How had he maintained his faith? He seemed like a saint to me, and I begged him to tell me how I could regain even a fraction of what he had.

Did he pray? Did God speak to him in dreams? Was there some secret passage in the Bible that I was unaware of that granted him this impossible serenity?

He laughed at my question. Not bitterly or sarcastically, but quite loudly.

And then he told me that he had stopped believing in God a long time ago. These days, he said, he was a strict materialist. We live, we die, that's it. There was no soul, and the sinking of the continents was not some apocalyptic test of humankind but merely an unexplained natural phenomenon.

His loss of faith had been quite sudden, he said, and rather comical. It had nothing to do with the suffering he witnessed every day: even when he had found out that a small child had starved to death in its crib, he had felt no doubt, only rage at the modern-day Caesars who let such things happen. No, he'd lost his faith while watching a documentary.

There was a cargo cult in Vanuatu, he told me, that worshipped a man called John Frum. John Frum, according to their religion, was a prophet who took the form of an American soldier, and if people followed him and acted according to his principles, rejecting all outside influences - except those of supernatural American G.I.s - then one day he would return and bring with him everything they desired... especially American consumer goods.

When Jacob heard about this, he started laughing. He couldn't stop himself. It was all so obviously fake, so obviously based on misunderstandings, so obviously... silly. How could people believe something like that? And then, he said, in an instant it became obvious to him that what he believed was exactly the same thing - it had just started longer ago. The carpenter who came back from the dead was just as silly as the G.I. who brought the cargo planes.

It all fell away from him in that moment, he said, and after he was done laughing he felt lighter than he'd ever felt before.

I was shocked and confused. If he had no faith, why was he still here? Why was he serving these people, sacrificing so much, so selflessly? Why was he stacking sandbags?

He shrugged.

"I don't believe in God," he said. "I just work for him."

—

Narrated by Peter Wingfield

Written & Directed by Jonas Kyratzes

Music & Sound by Chris Christodoulou

Violin - Kalliopi Mitropoulou

Violoncello - Zoé Saubat

Cover art - Daniele Giardini