LIVES OF THE HIDDEN SAINTS (continued)
II You were just a scribe but she listened to you. You liked to tell her stories, to make her face light up with wonder and amusement. When she smiled, there was something beautiful besides her mouth that spread over her face. She had no guile. She would be a priestess some day, but her training had not yet begun. You could have used her, if you wanted, because she was young and hungry for experience and did not know what to expect. The wind spun her hair into fine threads, which darted and thrashed, whipping about her face, excited dancing strands.
You told her about the pale desert flowers that open briefly, secretly in the night. You told her about the wind that blasts out of the fiery holy places to the south, wasted expanses where only gods can be comfortable. You told her that the needs of those gods are simple: an orphan child, caesarean born, if unredeemed from the priests by a stranger for an equivalent value (what is that? she asked), abandoned in the wilderness with ample ceremony to make the priesthood necessary. You told her that such children, according to some unofficial beliefs, are neither torn to pieces by wolves nor starve to death, for they are become of the gods, and the gods protect their own. You told her that from their hermaphroditic loins spring new tribes without need for sexual union. they always find the pale, secretive flower at the moment of its opening, you said. that is the miracle. the moon has nothing to do with it.
You told her about the pearl.
The pearl which you had found among the belongings of an old priest, recently deceased, come now to you through your connection with the archives. Since his body needed to be preserved as befits a man of the cloth, and that “body” included all of the significant physical manifestations of his spiritual nature, the priest’s accumulated papers and holy objects had to be sorted and catalogued, their value as church relics appraised, his writings deposited with all the other writings of priests collected through the millenia, etc. And the pearl, fine and large, so very perfect, its substance both crystalline and amorphous, like the compressed splendor of the profane world, had rolled out from a sheaf of undistinguished confessional reports right into your hand. You didn’t know how it had gotten there, and for your life you didn’t know what to do with it. You held forth for suggestions.
She said, give it to someone you love.
Then, turning her face suddenly away from you, she said, give it to me, an almost arrogant request, in an an almost reproachful voice, yet it seemed the most tender and reasonable demand you had ever heard. She cried when you gave it to her, dissolving it with her tears.
We live in turbulent times. Though the seasons no longer change as they did within the memory of our eldest Elders, new ideas are emerging at an unprecedented rate. A revolution now takes place every six minutes. The average half-life of a meaningful discussion is fourteen seconds. Hamilcar is well aware of these problems; he has deeply studied, publicly discussed, and written at great length about them for years. He occupies an endowed Chair in Ethical, Political, and Natural Philosophy at the most prestigious institute for research and education still standing in the Western Hemisphere¾although it is somewhat more likely, perhaps, that he occupies a folding wooden chair and a small round table in front of the café that faces the public square of his village from its western perimeter. It is of course not out of the question that he could occupy both at once, as the Institute and the Village are one; or they are at opposite ends of the globe, but he is a man with an uncertain identity and background and, moreover, he can be any place he desires¾even many places simultaneously, according to both his most ardent admirers and his bitterest enemies. He sits in the shade of cherry trees that have been in full blossom continuously now for over a hundred years. if only it were like this everywhere, he thinks. He sits quietly, waiting for the moment when his maté will have steeped sufficiently to be drunk.
It is not like this everywhere. Extensive areas of the Earth are at best inhospitable, and at worst uninhabitable. Few are pleasant, and no seasonal variations are possible, as is well known, since the Earth’s rotational axis lies perfectly vertical. It has been proposed that this was not always the case, and indeed there is unmistakable geological evidence that at one time the axis was tilted. This means that in many regions of the planet Summer and Winter conditions varied considerably, making possible seasonal planting and harvesting of food crops in places that are now either eternally parched or eternally sunless and raindrenched, or permanently fixed in impenetrable permafrost, if not buried altogether under hundreds of meters of pure ice. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the shift occurred within the lifetime of our oldest citizens. Skeptics answer that such an adjustment of the Earth’s axis could scarcely have gone unnoticed; it would have been accompanied by global catastrophes, destruction of densely inhabited regions on an unprecedented scale. Few, if any, could have survived such a cataclysm, and those that did would have incredible tales to tell. Exactly, say the Elders; there was a cataclysm; there was destruction; there are stories, outrageous and terrifying. Tectonic plates collided and overran each other, islands and enormous areas of coastal land disappeared into the ocean in minutes, tidal waves swept 100 miles onto what was left; inland earthquakes destroyed every remaining city, mountain ranges tumbled in unimaginable landslides. Where is the record of all this? the skeptics ask. We are the record! shout the Elders. We witnessed these events, and we few who survived are telling you! Then the Elders say all this happened because just one single nistar tzaddik was murdered¾only the combined efforts of the remaining 35 nistarim kept the destruction of the world from being total! And at this pronouncement the skeptics throw up their hands….
Brother Francis pulls another chair up to Hamilcar’s table and sits down, breathing rapidly. He is dressed in capacious black clerical robes, a heavy cross, sandals. Hamilcar watches Brother Francis settle his extensive frame onto the limited landing space of the chair with his shoulders far back, his hips sliding forward until it appears as though his buttocks, if indeed he has any, must be nearly off the front edge of the seat. He swivels his head from side to side a few times, finally letting it come to rest well behind his shoulders, so that he would be looking directly up at the sky if his head were not also turned ninety degrees to his left. His eyes roll upward in their sockets until they find the owner of the café, who spends most of the day relaxing at a table of his own establishment, since there is usually little to do. Without a word, the owner gets up and goes inside to fix Brother Francis a maté.
“Some things can’t be explained by any theories of cataclysm,” Hamilcar says quietly, as though picking up the thread of a barely interrupted discussion, although in fact he has not seen Brother Francis in several weeks. Immediately, Brother Francis pulls himself to a more or less normal sitting position, now leaning attentively forward over the table to give Hamilcar his undivided attention. Brother Francis is a large man, and his chair should creak, but it doesn’t. Hamilcar sometimes wonders if there is really a body under Brother Francis’ robes. “For example,” he continues, “if one accepts the possibility of a such a sudden axial realignment, then enormous shifts in climate, mass extinctions of narrowly adapted species, and so forth, these results are not irreconcilable with geophysical and evolutionary mechanisms we have gradually come to accept. On the other hand, there is no acceptable theory to explain why the cherry trees in this village square are always in blossom….”
“I’m just a scribe,” says Brother Francis, after a brief pause, “not a scientist.”
“Perhaps, as a man of literature, you’re in a better position to comment.”
“But I’m not a man of literature. I just transcribe the writings of others.”
“And you don’t read what you write? You don’t develop any thoughts about what you copy?”
“I promise you I don’t!” Brother Francis shakes his head in amusement, a profound chuckle heaves up the burdensome cross on his chest. “Now, now, after all, who is being interviewed here?” He holds up a copy of Hamilcar’s latest book, “Lives of the Hidden Saints,” and a number flashes at the bottom of the monitor. “It’s time we took questions from the audience; and you viewers at home, if you have questions or comments for today’s guest, Hamilcar Barca, please call us at the phone number you should now see on your television screens.” Brother Francis takes a microphone and makes his way down among the audience, men and women from all walks of life who have waited in line for hours just for this opportunity to interact directly with the famous author.
“Do you feel you owe more to Borges or to the French experimentalists of the Nouveau Roman?” asks a young woman who seems barely out of her teens.
“What specifically are you referring to?” Hamilcar asks.
“Well, some passages are reminiscent of certain ‘ficciones’ of Borges, consisting of pseudo-reviews of non-existent books¾a formal conceit that reached a sort of apotheosis in Nathalie Sarraute’s ‘The Golden Fruits,’ whose hero is itself, the rise and fall of a fictional book called ‘The Golden Fruits’….”
“You’re very clever to see that,” answers Hamilcar, “whether or not there’s a direct influence….”
“Then you have the seemingly deliberate lack of coherent plot or characters, the abrupt sidewise transitions between scenes, the sado-gothic misogyny of Robbé-Grillet, as in ‘Maison de Rendez-Vous,’ ‘Topology of a Phantom City,’ ‘Project for a Revolution in New York’….”
Before Hamilcar can reply to the young woman’s further comments, an even younger boy sporting a purple mohawk shouts from three rows back, “…Yeah, right, but it’s poorly done!” Brother Francis runs to where the boy is now standing up, thrusts the microphone near his pierced lips. “It’s a coagulated stew of second-hand tidbits ripped off from 20th century experimental fictions, third-hand pseudo-science and Kabbalistic mumbo-jumbo, whatever…!”
Brother Francis senses the discussion plummeting out of control. “That’s going a bit far,” he says. An assistant signals that an outside call has been transferred to the studio conference line. “We have someone on the line,” he announces, somewhat relieved for the distraction. “One of our distinguished Elders…all the way from the Northwest coast! Sir, do you have anything to add to this discussion…?”
“The boy’s right!” blurts the unseen caller, accusingly. “Even the bicycle is a prop stolen right out of Robbé-Grillet’s ‘The Voyeur’!
“An homage,” suggests Brother Francis.
“How do you distinguish between homage and despicable theft?” the voice shouts back. “What’s the difference? Where’s the line¾?” At this point Anita could no longer contain her impatience and pressed the mute button on the remote. The televised discussion staggered on, silently. She turned, exasperated, to her father, who had been watching the show with her.
“What the fuck’s going on here¾am I the only one who can see the pages are blank?” she asked. “I feel like the child in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’…!”
“You’re absolutely right,” said her father, “but you could look at it another way….”
“You can make sense of this?”
“Well, you’re perhaps aware that twelfth and thirteenth century Kabbalists spoke of a mystical hidden or ‘White’ Torah, which is the true holy scripture written by God in white fire¾”
“¾Rabbi Isaac¾!”
“¾yes, the manuscript of Rabbi Isaac, which in Dr. Scholem’s interpretation further proposes that the truly “written” product of Divine Compassion is in fact invisible to all save the most saintly prophets¾”
“¾and of these only Moses got more than a fleeting glimpse!”
“Right again,” Darwini said, demonstrating his assent with an upturned right hand. “And this passage has been taken by others, somewhat incorrectly perhaps, to indicate that the most essential knowledge is hidden in the white spaces between the visible black letters. In that sense a book consisting of only blank pages could be considered as a profound, if wrong-headed, exegesis on the nature of divine scripture….”
“Perhaps,” said Anita, “but as Scholem also wrote in his commentaries, without the interpretations and definitions expressed in the explicit form of visible black letters¾”
“¾somewhat paradoxically referred to as the ‘oral’ Torah¾”
“¾yes, in any case the form that can be seen and comprehended is only revealed through the medium ‘of the letters inscribed in ink’…only through the power of the ‘black fire’ referred to by Rabbi Isaac has the Torah acquired a corporeal form on earth…it doesn’t even exist here otherwise…so Scholem concluded that the ‘White’ carries no meaning useful to ordinary people without the contiguous presence of the ‘Black’….”
“Are you then saying that a blank page can carry no meaning at all, not even a connotation of the unknown, the unwritten, the ineffable…?”
“I’m saying that you give Mr. Barca too much credit.”
Darwini paused, almost stunned with fatherly pride and admiration. These days she argued with him as an equal; she was erudite and articulate; what’s more, he felt, she was usually right. my god she has grown! he thought. She had finished with graduate school and was in a few weeks moving on to take an Assistant Professorship at a West Coast university where he himself had once taught. Was it that long ago she seemed unable to carry on a discussion with him for more than thirty seconds before having to leave the room so he wouldn’t be able see her tears of frustration and anger? Did he have any responsibility for the woman she had become? He felt like weeping.
“So, how long are you staying?” he asked.
“About a week.” Before she said this her head dipped a bit and a few strands of straight black hair fell forward over her left ear. He remembered a time when her hair had been much longer, when, unless restrained, it would have completely hidden the elaborate, multi-hued mural that stretched across her upper back from one shoulder to the other. It had reminded him of a Matisse when he first saw it, and he couldn’t help, instead of applying the obligatory parental scolding, commenting on the boldness of the colors and the obvious skill of the tattooist. Then he’d fretted that it could affect her job prospects, warning her that she should hide it during interviews, but she had ignored his advice and gotten the position she wanted anyway.
“Your job doesn’t start until September….”
“I need to get there early¾you should know as well as anyone¾I have to find a place to live, start preparing courses….”
“Still….”
“I want to take a trip, bike around the Northwest…I need to see something besides….”
“By yourself¾?”
“You know I can take care of myself!” yes, he thought, that she can indeed…that’s how she’d been raised, after all, and unlike her father she was not physically weak. She climbed and rode and could run a mile in less than six minutes. She was a complete person, he’d already had whatever influence was possible, and she didn’t need his protection any more. The last few years, he with his work, she away at graduate school, immersed in her studies, her research, her relationships, they had not had much time to connect. When she did have an opportunity to visit, he would be away organizing a conference, or working all hours to meet a deadline; when he had time, she would have exams, families of friends to visit, deadlines of her own. They both knew this was how their chosen lives worked¾she with much less thought¾so how could he now complain that she didn’t plan to spend more time at home before moving on to her first academic appointment? He smiled his already crooked smile.
“Yes, of course you can….”
“Are you worried I don’t need you any more?” She rose and knelt beside his chair, encircling Darwini’s neck with both her arms. He inclined his head toward hers, and she kissed his cheek.
“You’ll make sure to call when you get a chance?”
“I’m not gone yet!” she said.
Later, he would remember in particular how strong her arms felt, that her wrists and fingers were unadorned, and he would recall the way she had argued with him, confidently and without hesitation, but he would remember these later as elements of a dream, and still later as a dream told by someone else, or perhaps as a story written in a book¾“Lives of the Hidden Saints” for example¾a story which, since the pages of the book were blank, had to be his own.
It is Sunday, but for Darwini there is an ongoing summer session; as dusk approaches he wanders off to prepare his lectures for the beginning of the week, and Anita settles into his chair in the darkening room. The televised image has deteriorated, shadowy distorted figures drift across the screen. She turns the sound back on, but it’s still difficult to make out what’s happening. when is he going to get cable? she thinks. Hamilcar Barca has just left the stage. “…a word from our sponsor…,” Brother Francis is saying, this apparently a local outlet for Persian rugs sold at greatly reduced prices. On the screen a broad crimson carpet appears, laid out over the sand of an unidentified desert. Twelve infants lie on it: six male and six female, all orphans. A great open-sided canopy protects them from the sun. The eunuchs are singing. Their voices peel like bells. The babies are fed for the last time by female attendants, and then the prayers begin. The rituals are elaborate and somewhat tedious. Priests paint the infants’ bodies with ox blood. They protest very little. Sacred objects are produced, fussed over, buried in the sand, dug up, returned to their original containers. As the afternoon wears on, the children, growing hungry and restless, finally begin to cry, first one, then a few, then all. The priests, the attendants, the eunuchs, all begin to retreat, backing away slowly at first, then facing about one by one to form a processional line. They file back to the city in silence. A dry wind stirs the sand. It tears at their ceremonial robes. Within the folds they move effortlessly by means of levers hooked to thin chains, small flywheels furnishing a spare momentum, their bodies invisible.
Now the twelve infants are alone in the fading afternoon light, some on their backs, some turned on their bellies, all screaming. The heat begins to dissipate. Soon animals begin to approach, ears cocked, sniffing the air: cougar, wild dogs, coyotes. One of them, a great gray wolf, a leader, plants his forepaw on the thick gold braid at the edge of the carpet. He pants softly, yellow eyes ablaze. Other predators follow him onto the carpet. Some subtle gesture is understood as a signal, and they all move forward. Then it is night, and the moon is falling, falling into the sky....
(To be continued)
© Zalman Paktorovics/Steven Levery
