The Gospel According to Luke by Emily Maguire Page B

returning to someone as dull as Aggie unless the hand of fate was pushing him. This was different; when she was with Luke she knew that they were destined to be enemies, but that she would easily tear the universe into shreds if it tried to stop her having him. Aggie told Mal this and he stopped trying to force her head off his keyboard and instead stroked her hair.
    â€˜However strong the attraction, it would never work long term. His values are diametrically opposed to yours.’
    â€˜Not all of them. He’s honest and trustworthy. He’s a pacifist. He believes that ending poverty is the way to stop terrorism. He’s on the front line of the battle against racism and prejudice, and he is just so unbelievably compassionate. You know he –’
    â€˜Ag, he hates gays.’
    â€˜No, he doesn’t. He loves the sinner and hates the – fuck, Mal, I know, okay? I know. But it’s not his fault. He’s a good man who’s been brainwashed into believing these awful things. He’s ill, really. He uses religion the same way an alcoholic uses booze. And Mal, I
know
addiction, right? I’m good with addicts. I just have to get him to –’
    â€˜Lose his religion?’
    â€˜Yeah.’ Aggie sighed. ‘How do I do that?’
    â€˜Auschwitz did it for me.’
    â€˜What? You were never religious.’
    Mal snorted. ‘I try and block out the memory, but I was a genuine guilt-racked Catholic boy for the first decade and a half of my life. I went to confession every single day the year I turned fifteen, constantly terrified that a bus would hit me between my boyfriend’s house and the church, and I would be condemned to an eternity in the fires of hell. Then I learnt about Auschwitz, and I was instantly cured. I sat there in history class, listening to Sister Marguerite recite the list of diseases and tortures and extermination techniques, and I was just hit with this . . . this epiphany. Not only did God allow this atrocity to occur, but He wouldsurely approve, since He Himself condemned fags and Jews to eternal torment. I decided that if God was on the side of Hitler, then He could shove His heaven up His supernatural arse.’
    â€˜Hurrah for you. Did you convert your mum too? She’s the least religious old broad I know.’ Aggie went to Mal’s mother’s for Christmas dinner every year and the three of them got shit-faced and competed to invent the filthiest substitute lyrics for popular Christmas Carols. Mrs Addison had won last year with her rendition of ‘The Twelve Lays of Christmas’.
    â€˜Dad was the mad Catholic. When he died, Mum kept going out of habit until Father O’Brien told her she couldn’t continue to take communion as long as she allowed me to carry on my
lifestyle
under her roof. She never took communion again. She still calls red wine “blood of Christ” sometimes.’
    Aggie felt lucky to have escaped the strange mythical education that the majority of Australian kids endured. Her father worshipped his wife, his daughter and money, in that order; her mother worshipped herself. Christmas was a picnic of Greek salad and crunchy baguettes at Bondi Beach; Easter meant too much chocolate and three days of sleeping late. When Aggie’s paternal grandmother died, the extended family took turns to read poems in her honour and then cast her ashes out into the Pacific. There was no talk of heaven.
    Aggie’s wedding, too, had been strictly secular. A hired yacht, a celebrant from the yellow pages, abunch of drunk fishermen and stoned uni students, a teenaged bride who was simultaneously drowning in grief and flying high on sexual passion, and a groom who insisted that only the best would do for his wife, and so spent a great deal of her dead father’s money on first class tickets for a honeymoon in Italy.
    Religion was a big thing in Rome, and Aggie remembered how disgusted she felt when she