Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (62 page)

Still, the Hermetic tradition had
deeper roots than any of our religions (though not as deep as shamanism), and
was rumored to be preserved to this day by adepts who honored it without
banging any pots and pans. On the other hand, those adepts (sometimes called
the Invisible College) were few in number, weak in influence. Even in its
heyday, Hermeticism had never—so far as anybody knew—turned a single tide of
history. Was there any sound reason to reckon that there would occur a
resurgence of Hermetic interest in the near next century (the millennial page was
so close to flipping one could feel its latent breeze), and that it would thus
inspire or instruct a significant minority of the corporate-molded populace to
tune its cells to a higher frequency? No, there was something about such a
scenario that just didn’t pitch. Granted, he wasn’t much of a consumer, but if
this was what Fatima was selling, he was keeping Mr. Plastic in his wallet, at
least until he kicked a few more tires and drove around the block.

Using one of the stilts, he swatted a
winter lemon loose from a bough, catching it as it fell, a feat that filled him
with immense pleasure. He reamed the fruit with a stiff finger, and for some
perverse reason, thought of Domino and the intimacies of the previous night.
Then, squeezing lemon juice onto a patty of cold falafel, smelling its citric
aliveness, rolling its fresh solar acids—yellow, dynamic, and changeless—along
the bronco spine of his tongue, he turned back to the curious prophecy.

What possible impetus could there be
for a Hermetic renaissance? An unearthing, perhaps, of the fourteen golden
tablets? He tried to imagine a team of Egyptologists brushing the sands of
centuries from the plates, scanning their magnifying glasses along the columns
of glyphs, suggesting, months or years later, during an announcement on CNN,
that if beleaguered viewers were only to heed the oblique instructions so
quaintly encoded in those ancient alchemical symbols, they might develop
techniques and practices for overcoming their human limitations, and, in the
process, a way to understand—and function smoothly within—an immutable cosmic
order. But try as he might, he couldn’t envision the impact of such information
lasting much beyond the cheeseburger and minivan commercials that would follow
it. Hermeticism had its merits, certainly, but it lacked immediacy. It seemed
so stereotypically occult as to be fusty and inane, like the wizard hat that
Mickey Mouse wore when he played the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In his gut (where
the ball of white light was spritzing the acerbic droplets of lemon juice), he
sensed that a neo-Hermetic utopia was even less likely than an Islamic one.

Pausing then, brushing the last
falafel crumbs from his lips, he thought of the old trickster who’d given his
name to those Greco-Egyptian mysteries: old Hermes, god of transitions, runner
of errands between the two worlds, patron of explorers and thieves. Setting up
his three-card monte stand on the frontiers of knowledge, Hermes was neither a
suffering savior deity nor a loving father deity, but a brash bringer of new
ideas and practical solutions to those who were quick enough to grasp them,
strong enough to accept them. Hermes could be regarded as the immortal
prototype of the mortal shaman, and like shamans everywhere, he was a revered
practitioner of folk medicine, conversant on every level with plants,
constellations, and minerals. He could heal, but he also could—and would—play
outlandish pranks. Rather similar, as Switters had earlier noted, to Today Is
Tomorrow, damn his parrot-boiling hide.

In the Aegean and eastern
Mediterranean regions, Hermes had been identified originally as one of the
Great Mother’s primal serpent-consorts, an aspect still alluded to by the pair
of snakes entwined around a rod in the Hermetic logo of the American Medical Association.
Levantine lore went so far as to view Hermes as a personification of the World
Snake, the ruler of time, and in dragging that arcane tidbit from his memory
pond, Switters’s mind again scrolled to the Amazonian shaman. When Switters had
asked R. Potney Smithe if the Kandakandero religion (if it could even be
loosely described as a religion), had a name, the anthropologist had replied
that when the tribal elders referred to anything remotely resembling a belief
system, it was with a phrase that translated as something like, the Cult of the
Great Snake. (“That’s bloody damned epic, isn’t it? Eh? Mind you, I haven’t the
foggiest notion what it infers.”) Switters hadn’t a clear notion, either, but
there in the Syrian bake, he experienced a tiny chill as he remembered that
other character, the crafty, multilingual, ex-Marxist mestizo who, though not a
Kadak (not one of the “Real People”), appeared to be working toward becoming
Today Is Tomorrow’s disciple, if not his lieutenant or rival; and how the dude
had renamed himself Fer-de-lance and sported a constrictor-skin ensemble
(except for gold teeth and Nike basketball shoes). Fer-de-lance radiated some
spooky, transcultural, reptilian charisma, which was not unenhanced by the buzz
that he supposedly had an ongoing relationship—a totemic dialogue, a Moby
Dickian fixation, a vendetta, or a marketing ploy: who could even guess?—with a
forty-foot-long anaconda. Hale fellow, well met.

As near as Switters could recollect,
Today Is Tomorrow, himself, expressed no direct interest in any kind of serpent
magic, not in regard to time or anything else. However, this circuitous
reminiscing about the witchman had brought his image fully to mind, and,
abruptly, at that instant—wham! bam!—a thought hit Switters like a stockyard
paddle smacking a porker’s backside. Could it possibly? . . . Yes! Of course!
How obvious! That was it! He felt the validity of it in every gob of his
marrow. And in a sudden rush of eureka, he forgot himself, taboowise, and very
nearly sprang to his feet.

He had caught himself, steadied
himself, realigned his heels on the loaf of red rock where they’d been
carefully propped, and leaned back against the spindly trunk. Overhead, the
lemons swung like papier-mâché stars in a cheesy planetarium. It was a totally
bizarre theory, he supposed, this connection he was entertaining, but the
Fatima phenomenon was pretty crazy, too, and the mere fact that it had been
accredited by a major mainstream institution didn’t render it any less so.
Switters was, well, if not thoroughly emotionally excited, at least
intellectually stimulated, and he was anxious to share his “discovery” with
Domino. Much as she had shared the secret prophecy with him? Had drawn him into
the pudding? Irrationally, perhaps, he thought of Eve introducing the
consciousness-expanding snake fruit to her partner in Eden. The sharing of
certain kinds of knowledge is seldom without consequences.

For better or for worse, however, his
desire to apprise Domino was thwarted. She remained in seclusion the whole of
Christmas Day, thickly cocooned in prayer, though whether to please Baby Jesus,
the Virgin Mary, or Masked Beauty was never evident. Frustrated, Switters had
brainstormed awhile longer under the furniture-scented tree, then stilted off
to the office to e-mail a holiday greeting to Bobby Case. To his surprise, his
friend had returned the sentiment immediately.
Massive merriment to you,
son. Here on Oki, we got us raw octopus with all the trimmings. How you
spending your day?

There being no way to truthfully
explain, Switters replied that he had to leave right away to attend a
performance of
The Nutcracker
.

Hope it’s the one with Tonya
Harding,
wired Bobby. And that was that.

In his room, having retrieved the
remainder of the arrack from the tower, Switters drank, pondered, drank some
more, pondered some more. Within an hour, both the drinking and the thinking
petered out, and he turned to
Finnegans Wake
, though he got no further
than a line in the preface, where Stan Gebler Davies wrote of Joyce, “The man
had an interesting life, which most men do who have an abiding interest in
women, drink, high art, and the operation of their own genius.” Stopping to
consider that statement—wondering why it seemed so tricky, so difficult, to
lead simultaneously an interesting life and a conventionally moral life (it was
as if some pathology of dualism conspired to make them mutually exclusive)—he
fell asleep and did not wake until morning, when there was an urgent rapping at
his door.

“Monsieur Switters! Le camion! Le
camion!”

“Pippi?” It had to be Pippi, for even
the voice sounded freckled and red-haired. “What? The truck?
Le camion?
Pourquoi?
”

It was true. The supply truck had
arrived. It hadn’t been expected for another couple of days. Switters was tempted
to kiss it off, to catch it the next time it came through, which would be only
two or three weeks. But then he remembered his “discovery” and rushed to get
out of bed and throw his things together.

“Dépêchez-vous!”

“I’m hurrying.
Où est
Sister
Domino?”

Pippi assured him that Domino would
meet him at the gate. And she did. Had it not been so abrupt, she probably
wouldn’t have cried, but she had no time to prepare herself, and teardrops, one
after the other, rolled like dead bees down the overturned hives of her cheeks
as she explained to the astonished driver that the white-suited male (A man?
Here?) in the wheelchair would be needing passage to Deir ez-Zur.

The trucker insisted that Switters
ride in the front with him and his assistant, undoubtedly as much out of
curiosity—he wanted to question him—as politeness or respect. He fired up the
engine and waited, with impatience and disbelief, while the crippled American
and the French nun embraced.

Domino’s smile cut like a prow
through the cascading tears. “I should have no complaints,” she said with a
brightness that was only half false. “I’ve known the full strong love of a man
of the world and yet emerged with my maidenhood immaculate. A virgin
in
partu
.” She tried to laugh, but there was a chirpy lump in her throat.

“Cake and eat it,” said Switters
approvingly, noticing that his own voice sounded as if it were being run along
the pickets in a fence. “Listen. We never got time to talk. About the third
prophecy, I mean.”

“I know. I know. This is happening
too fast. You must write me about it as soon as you can. The truck still brings
our mail.” She glanced nervously at the driver.

“No. Listen. You have to hear this.
It’s not Islam.”

“Not Islam?”

“The word, the message that can
transform the future. It isn’t going to come from Islam. It’s coming from Today
Is Tomorrow.”

“What are you talking about?” Was
this dear man a nut case, after all?

“The prophecy says the cue will be
delivered from the direction of
une pyramide
. Not
les
but
une
.
Singular. The direction of one pyramid. Don’t you recall that Today Is Tomorrow
has this head . . . the man’s a living pyramid! Whatever comes out of his mouth
comes from the direction of a—”

“Ooh-la-la! This is crazy.”

The driver sounded his horn. The
assistant, standing by to help Switters into the cab and fold up his
wheelchair, clapped his hands. Switters quieted them both by snarling something
in colloquial Arabic, the equivalent of “Hold your fucking camels.”

“You’d better go, my dearest,” said
Domino.

“Think about it,” Switters insisted.
“The guy’s a pyramid with legs.”

“So? He’s a savage. He’s an
illiterate witch doctor. A wild primitive who lives in the forest,
incommunicado.”

“True enough. But he’s got a kind of philosophy.
I’m serious. He’s got a concept. A vision. And it’s out of a pyramid, not that
a pyramid per se is any—”

“What kind of ‘philosophy’? What
could he have that would—”

“I’m not sure. I mean, it’s
unique
,
but I only know the general outline. I’ll find out, though. If there are
pertinent details, I’ll find them out when I’m there. Okay?”

“Okay,” she sighed, unsure as to what
she was agreeing to. She made a little furrow in her chin, which the tear
runoff filled like rainwater in a ditch.

The other Pachomians, one by one, had
gathered at the gate to see him off. ZuZu, Pippi, Mustang Sally, both Marias,
Bob. Masked Beauty was last to arrive. She wore her veil, of course, but he
could detect her beauty-buster behind it, glowing like a holographic hush
puppy, a glob of ghost grease in the morning sun. Holding her old body erect,
august as an abbess ought to be, proud as a Matisse nude, she clasped his hand.
“Tell them to limit their procreation,” she said in her flat, childish French.
“Wherever you go, tell them.”

Switters squeezed her bony fingers.
He promised. Then, as the burly assistant lifted him bodily into the truck, he
blew the sisterhood a round of kisses and yelled, “Save my stilts!” He yelled
it again, wedged between the two truckers, as they drove away. “
Au revoir!
Save my stilts!”

In the deep velvet radish of his
heart, he must have realized that it was highly unlikely that he would ever see
those Pippi-made stilts again, yet had he been unwilling to lie to himself, he
would have been a very poor romantic, indeed. Why, he might have asked, did it
seem so tricky, so difficult, to lead simultaneously a romantic life and a
fully conscious one?

During the long, rough
drive—east-northeast to Deir ez-Zur (where they passed the night), south-southwest
to Palmyra (where they again slept over), and on southwestward to the
capital—Switters was compressed like anchovy paste in a living sandwich. The
assistant, on his right, rarely spoke, but Toufic, the driver, encouraged by
Switters’s earlier display of Arabic, questioned him relentlessly. A squat man,
about thirty, with a lath basket of tight black curls, and soft brown eyes that
leaked soul by the ounce, Toufic was a Christian (Eastern Orthodox, of course,
not Roman), and as such, demanded to know what his passenger had been doing in
a convent. Toufic also had relatives in the rug trade in Louisville, Kentucky,
and while he himself had often dreamed of emigrating there, he was incensed
over America’s recent air attacks on the innocent people of Iraq and wanted
from his rider a full accounting for those bully-boy atrocities.