Again, Dangerous Visions Part 16

I saw an old woman sitting on a bench, and I thought she was dead because her skin was so blue, but then she moved. Old age is always horrible. Only fools see anything good in it.

"You won't be old," said the dark angel in my ear.

I was used to hearing strange voices when I drank too much, so I paid no attention. I just bought a few newspapers at random and started back through the milling mob.

Then I heard the train coming in, puffing and chugging and hissing like a winded dragon. And I saw it...or anyway the clouds of smoke it was belching out, so I tried to run, but the crowd was so thick it was like swimming in mola.s.ses. At the edge of the platform there seemed to be some clear s.p.a.ce, so I tried to get through there.

The locomotive was coming now, drivers pumping with a slow easy roll.

Then someone pushed me.

I went off balance for an instant, then fell onto the tracks, landing on my side with a painful thud. There were two thoughts in my head, before the train hit me. The first was of Marie, that she would think I had done it on purpose. The second was of my songs. "Oh, why didn't I ever write anything down?"

Miriam apo Magdalla, when I spoke of writing down her account of the Master's life and sayings, answered mockingly, "If Jesus had wanted a book written he would have written it himself. It was to free us from a book that He took on flesh! What need have we of a book when G.o.d speaks through us directly? Did Jesus not say, 'The letter brings death; the spirit, life'? He who lives by a book is unfaithful to the Holy Spirit within himself, as if G.o.d, having spoken once, could never speak again. I say, on the day that men open the book of ink and papyrus, they will close the book of the Spirit, and men will no longer do good, but only devote their lives to catching each other in errors, pointing to the papyrus and saying, 'See! I am right and you are wrong!' Is this faith, to say that G.o.d's words may be lost? I say, if all record of G.o.d's words be lost, He need but say them again, and those who have ears to hear will hear. And I say further that those who love a book more than G.o.d will become murderers and torturers and liars and tyrants and be able to justify every sort of monstrous cruelty by quoting their book. G.o.d is within me, or there is no G.o.d! G.o.d is within me, or there is no G.o.d! And if He is within me, He will tell me Himself, directly, all that I should know." And if He is within me, He will tell me Himself, directly, all that I should know."

So I left the old woman, Mad Miriam of Magdalla, without the words I had come to record on my scroll, and walked the streets of the Jewish quarter in Alexandria. A grim-faced Roman soldier pa.s.sed in a chariot, red cape twisting in the hot, sand-laced wind. The wheels of the chariot were bright-painted wood rimmed with iron, and the sound of the iron clattering on the stones of the street lingered in the air long after the chariot had pa.s.sed. I, an Egyptian by birth but a Greek by education, had no love for the Roman conquerors, but on these streets the sight of a servant of law and order was a welcome sight indeed, what with the riots and violence that filled our streets every night. And now night was almost upon me!

I was dressed as a Jew, and so was fairly safe from the knives of the Jews, but what if I should meet a Greek? Would I have time to tear the Jewish deep blue ta.s.sels from the hem of my tunic? What indignity! That the life of a gentleman, a scribe of the Great Library of Serapis, should hang upon a blue ta.s.sel!

And yet, would you believe it, I ventured into that lawless, bloodstained quarter again and again, drawn as if by a wizard's spell to that strange old woman who claimed to have kissed the lips of the G.o.d-King of the Jews. There were those who said she was a witch. And more who said she was possessed by seven demons.

For my superiors, religion was but an instrument of politics, and a new gospel from this old woman would serve no other purpose than to be another means of holding down the fanatical rebelliousness of the Jews. If they must have a Messiah, let it be a Messiah of Peace, not like the others who spring from every stone in the streets of Jerusalem to raise a sword against Rome.

At first, I felt the same.

And then, who knows? Perhaps she bewitched me.

Why else would I listen to tirades like this one?

"You should have seen how grudgingly the Twelve allowed my presence by the Master's side. Those idiots! How many times did their slow wits try the patience of my Rabbi, my Lord, my King? I, only I, really understood Him, for only the mad can know the mad. His kingdom had three ranks...those who know, those who only believe, and those who neither know nor believe, but only wander in ignorance. Only He and I dwelt in the highest rank, for only to us did the voices speak and the visions appear. Because of our visions, this lower world cast us out, and we lived in another, but the Twelve remained in this lower world. They chose which world they'd follow. When my Rabbi went to the stake, they ran and hid themselves while I stayed with Him to the end. In their shame they could not bear to see me or hear my scorn for their cowardice, and they quickly did what they dared not do while the Master was alive. They sent me away, saying that because I was a woman I was not worthy to be one of them. Now we hear talk that they, too, see visions, hear voices and even speak in tongues, yet I know that whoever it is that speaks through them, it is not my Rabbi! My Rabbi, in the flesh, never preached the Jewish virtues of law, work, family and ritual. When He said He had come to fulfil the Law, He meant He'd come to end it! The Law called for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but Jesus freed us to become kind."

Or fantastic claims like this?

"The Great Beast, Nero, is not dead forever, but will return, as shall we all, in a new body, when the time is ripe. We all come, the good, the evil, the indifferent, again and again into the world. John, the Baptist, was, before this, Elijah, the prophet, and I was before this the sister of Moses."

No, it was a certain ring, a certain feeling that hooks the mind, in stories she told about Jesus. Like this one: A certain Zealot asked Jesus, "If the Romans threaten our religion, should we not defend our G.o.d with the sword?"

Jesus answered, "Who is stronger, you or G.o.d?"

The Zealot said, "G.o.d, of course!"

And Jesus said, "Then G.o.d has no need of your defense. It is you who need His."

Or another like it, about a Roman Centurion who was questioned by Jesus in the marketplace: Jesus said to the Centurion, "Why do you need armies?"

The Centurion answered, "To defend the borders of our Empire."

Then Jesus said, "If your Empire had no borders, what, then, would you have to defend?"

Or this one: Jesus said, "Some build temples by laying one dead stone on another, but how can dead things ever give life? I have made my temple as a living tree is made, growing outward from the seed, and in the fruits of that tree are the seeds of new life."

When she told a story she would then explain it, like this: Miriam said, "The Master's thought is like a great tree. It has many leaves and branches and bears rich fruit, but it all grew from one little seed, and that seed is that Man was created in the image of G.o.d. Everything else grows outward from that."

I managed to write down a few of her stories from memory, but what I really needed was a full story, with a beginning, middle and end, like the scroll the Jew, Mark, had made a few years ago for the followers of Jesus in Alexandria, but more complete and bringing out more the radical pacifism of this particular Messiah. Such a doc.u.ment, with the authority given it by an eyewitness like Miriam, could do more to tame the blood-thirsty Jews than seven legions of Caesar's finest.

All the news was of endless bloodshed in the war between the Romans, led by General Vespasian and his son t.i.tus, and the Jewish fanatics in Judaea, so that at times I wondered if my mission of peace would have any effect, even if I were to produce the ma.n.u.script I felt the occasion demanded. And now, with the death of Nero, civil war broke out in Rome itself, where first one emperor, then another, laid claim to the throne of the world.

It was useless to appeal to Miriam on humanitarian grounds. She felt those Jews who put their faith in Herod's defiled temple deserved whatever they got. It was only by chance that I finally hit upon a way to secure her co-operation.

I happened to mention Mark's gospel to her.

"What? Mark wrote a gospel? But he never knew the Master! He was no more than Peter's scribe! How can he write of that which he knows nothing?" she shouted, smashing her withered old fist on the table.

Jealousy! How could I have guessed that saints could be jealous? Yet it had been obvious all along.

"If you were to dictate another," I said carefully, "perhaps Mark's foolish impulsiveness could be corrected."

"You're a sly one," she said to me. "But yes, I'll do it. I'll do it after all!"

I knelt at my writing table, took a reed brush from behind my ear, wet my writing ink, and waited. Miriam's Greek was crude and ungrammatical, but I could polish it as I wrote. Together we might well produce a work of lasting value.

"But first," she said, "you must promise me something."

"Of course," I said, my eagerness overcoming my caution.

"You must promise to defend the truth I give you from all those who would change or corrupt it."

"Of course," I easily agreed.

"Until the end of time," she added.

"Until the end of time? How can I promise that?" I demanded.

"You will remember, from one life to the next, what you have promised to me here, even if you forget me, even if you forget everything else. Is it agreed?"

In my heart I did not believe a man has more lives than one, so why not humor the old woman? "Agreed," I said. And so she began: "When he was a child, Jesus was brought here to Alexandria to escape Herod, who called himself King of the Jews, though he was neither King nor Jew. Herod slaughtered all who had rightful claim on the Jewish throne, and Jesus was of royal blood, of the House of David. Like Buddha, Jesus was born an earthly ruler, but renounced earthly rule for the other kingdom, that is not of this world. He was a student, not of one religion, but of them all, for that is what it means to be raised in Alexandria, where every G.o.d in the universe has at least one follower. From the Buddhist Theraputae by the lake He learned monasticism and meditation, from the Rabbi the whole of Jewish law and tradition, and from the shaven-headed priests of Osirus He learned how a man can save his soul by identification with a sacrificial G.o.d, and it was from them, too, that He learned baptism and the wearing of the Cross of Life. Yet He never forgot his people, the Jews, never forgot that He and His brothers and sisters were the true royal family of Judaea, and many were the times, while He was still only a boy, that He spent the whole of the night talking of the sad plight of the Jews with His cousin, John, who was later called 'The Baptist.' He saw, clearer than anyone else, that the Jews could never throw off the Roman rule by force of arms, and that by trying to, they would only bring down upon themselves destruction. He saw, clearer than anyone else, that the Jews had been led away from the religion of their fathers and of the prophets by the false king, Herod, and the false priests Herod appointed, and the false temple Herod built in Jerusalem.

"I knew Him then, but I did not learn holy things from Alexandria. For a young girl who has no money and cannot speak Greek like a lady, Alexander's city of marble has other lessons to teach. I learned that there was something between my legs that I could sell again and again, yet never lose. Jesus said my c.u.n.t was like knowledge in that way, or like truth, for though all my family and friends turned away from me because of what I did, Jesus never turned away. You know that a woman is counted lower than a horse or cow in this world, but though I was a woman, and the lowest of women, Jesus spoke to me as if I were a man, and His equal, and defended me from His friends, who were forced to put up with me, at least until Jesus was dead.

"When I returned to my home in Magdalla, on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and John returned also, and John went south to preach the things he and Jesus had learned in Alexandria, and he soon had a great following, because the people of Judaea were simple and unlearned, except in the Torah, and John had sharpened his wit in debate with the school-trained philosophers from the Alexandrian library. Even on the subject of the Torah and the Jewish traditions, there was not one Rabbi who could best him in a fair argument, and you should know that the Jews decide all things by learned argument, whether it be the origin of the universe, or the proper preparation of food, or the number of days in a year.

"But the people of that day were not content with a prophet. They called out for a Messiah, and many were the false Messiahs who stepped forward to lead them to destruction against the Romans. In all Judaea, in all the world, there was only one who, by right of blood, could be a true Messiah, and that was Jesus, the eldest prince in the House of David. So Jesus went to join John in Judaea, and I believe it was in His mind to look for some sign from Heaven that would tell Him whether or not He was truly the savior His people longed for and cried out for night and day.

"When it came, the sign was a simple thing. At other times it would have pa.s.sed without notice, but it came at the exact moment that John was baptizing Him. A bird, I think it was a dove, came down and lighted on Jesus' arm, and He ran from the water into the wilderness like a man possessed by demons."

"Go on!" I cried. "Continue!"

"No, not now," she said, lowering her head into her hands. "I'm an old woman, and tired. Come back again tomorrow."

So I went away, and returned again the next day.

But it was even more dangerous than usual to pa.s.s through the streets of the Jewish quarter. The Jewish garments that kept Jewish knives away from me now invited attack not only from the Greeks, but from the Roman soldiers in Vespasian's army, now commanded by the general's son, t.i.tus, since the father had become our new emperor. They had defeated the Jews in Jerusalem, but not before many a good Roman had lost his life, and the sight of a Jew could make a soldier draw his sword, particularly if the soldier was drunk. t.i.tus was young, and the troops did not fear him as they did his father.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I was (as I thought) safely inside the filthy little hole where Old Miriam lived, and sat down to wet my ink and unroll my scroll.

It was then that a great pounding at the door destroyed any feeling of safety I might have had, and a loud, drunken voice shouted out in Latin, "Open the door, you filthy Jew b.a.s.t.a.r.d! We know you're in there!"

They must have followed me, I realized with horror.

"If you won't open the door," came another brutal voice, "we'll break it in!"

Calmly Miriam stepped toward the door.

"Wait!" I shouted, and drew my sword.

But as the soldiers burst in she pushed between me and them, saying scornfully, "How many times shall my Jesus and I be betrayed? How can they hurt us? Are we not immortal spirits? Are we not immortal spirits?" And a moment later my chance to fight had pa.s.sed and we were both dragged roughly into the street and bound.

Have you ever seen a man nailed to a stake? The crowd cares not how that man has lived, only how he dies, so that the most vicious, brutal, stupid murderer can win the favor of the mob if only he can say something defiant or simply keep silent and not cry out when the nails go through his wrists. Miriam died well, even after torture. Though her eyes had been put out with hot irons, still she said to the man who drove the nails, "It is not I, but you who are the prisoner."

As for me, I thought at first to do honor to Miriam's Jesus by saying something worthy of a gentleman, when my time came.

But instead I...

Instead I...

Instead I screamed and pleaded and wept and begged and shouted, as the nails went through my flesh and the crowd of drunken Romans and Greeks cheered. "It's all a mistake! I'm not a Jew! I'm not a Christian! I'm an Egyptian and a Roman citizen! No! No! Don't! For G.o.d's sake don't do it!"

Soon I could no longer form words, but only screams, like an animal in labor, but n.o.body listened to me. They only laughed at me, and drank, and threw empty wine jugs at me.

And finally, with a gesture of contempt, one of the soldiers buried his spear in my belly.

To be pierced! To be pierced! Oh, my G.o.d, have you any idea what it feels like to be pierced? Yet there's some good in it. There's some good. Because it is a pain that brings release from pain, one big pain that ends all the little ones.

I stood, after a while, on a vast empty plain beneath a gray, overcast sky. I was naked, and it was cold. Some distance ahead of me was a crossroads, with paths that led away from it in all directions like strands in a gigantic spiderweb. There were no trees, no gra.s.sy areas, no hills or mountains or streams or bodies of water; just bare dust in all directions as far as the eye could see.

But wait. There was something.

A lone figure was walking slowly toward me from the opposite side of the crossroads. As the figure drew closer I could see that it had wings on its back, and then, a moment later, I could make out that it had a sword in one hand and a silver cup in the other. It had long dark hair, but I could not tell for sure whether it was a man or a woman. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps neither.

It was my angel.

"Drink," said the angel, stopping and holding out the cup to me.

"First tell me, Angel, what's in the cup!"

"Forgetfulness."

"There's nothing I want to forget," I said quickly.

The angel smiled. "Not even what you have done?"

I thought a moment. "No," I answered, but this time with hesitation.

"Not even what was done to you?"

"No."

"Not even the pain?"

I paused. Being pierced. If I could forget that...

"You must forget all or nothing," said the angel, apparently reading my thoughts.

So. Then what is "being-pierced," after all? Every day dead things enter my mouth and pa.s.s through my body and out my a.s.shole. In every life my spirit pierces a new body and pa.s.ses through it, coming out the other side.

"Don't you understand?" said the angel. "I am only trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From the knowledge of good and evil. Only G.o.ds and angels can stand to know what evil there is in the best of earthly things. For you it is a forbidden fruit, so drink. Drink and forget."

I needed time to think. Stalling, I asked, "Where are we?"

"This is the land of Woomtoom, beyond time and outside s.p.a.ce. All these paths lead back into the world, at different points in history."

"There seem to be thousands of them," I said.

"But all are for your feet and yours alone," said the angel. "Now drink, and return to your body."

"No," I said softly.

"So be it," said the angel, pouring out the cup in the dust at his feet. I stepped forward and the angel raised his sword.

"You cannot return now," said the winged being. "You must remain here. You can never return to the world."

But then I remembered again that according to the Bible it was possible to wrestle with angels, and win! I pretended to lunge forward, and the angel's sword swung downward toward me, but at the last possible split-second I sidestepped and avoided the sword at the same time as I leaned close and grabbed the angel's arm. To his intense amazement, I threw him, with a simple Judo spring-hip throw, then threw myself onto him from the rear, in spite of his wildly thrashing wings. The sword flew harmlessly from his hand and skittered into the dust well out of arm's reach, while I leaned in between his two wings, pa.s.sed my right arm around his neck and snapped the hand back toward me so that it grasped my left arm just above the elbow. Then I placed the palm of my left hand against the back of the angel's head, pressing forward with it while pulling back with the other.

"Give up?" I demanded.

The angel only struggled all the harder.

I tightened the choke hold.

"What do you say now?" I asked coldly.

There was no answer, only more thrashing and writhing. I squeezed harder, and the struggling grew weaker and finally ceased. I held the choke a little longer, just to make sure, then let go. The angel rolled over in the dust, completely limp.

I listened for his heartbeat, felt for his pulse.