Gospel (102 page)

32.
Upon the morning of my departure, I told Mary where I was traveling and for what it was I looked, Joseph of Arimathea's former slave Benjamin and the secrets of that famed sepulcher and that momentous night.

She said to me, “Yes, I have heard this tale. I am sure it is just a tale. I myself embraced Our Teacher after He rose from the dead.”

However, it struck me—and I will maintain that my perceptions concerning people are quite acute, and indeed have been told so on many occasions—it seemed to me that Mary's voice was not confident. So I asked her, “Do you have doubts of this, my dear Mary?”

She said, “I have no doubts of my love for Our Master and the correctness of His teachings. But I must tell you that when I met Him again, after the tomb was found to be empty, I did not recognize Him. Your colleagues, the once-faithless Twelve, shunned me afterward and escaped with Him, and I never saw Him again. It is maintained that He ascended to the Seventh Heaven. Frankly, it does not matter to me what really happened.”

33.
I was shocked to hear this!

Mary explained to me, “What do the circumstances of His death change? I knelt at His feet and heard Him speak. That is enough. Think of the millennia that have preceded such a man and such an opportunity; think of the worthy women, so much more deserving than I, who never beheld the Deliverer. And yet it was I who was to spend years beside Him. We were, as you may know, to marry.”

This I had heard. Arranged by the parents, Our Master of a chief family of Bethlehem betrothed to Mary, daughter of the chief family of Migdal. They were to be married in the synagogue in Capernum and all of Galilee was to celebrate.

Mary of Migdal said to me, “He proposed a higher marriage in which the mysteries of the soul and a foretaste of Heaven was given me. I cannot speak of it. Nor have I written of it. It was, I believe, for me alone.”

34.
Pursuing my own researches, I asked of her, “What was Our Master like as a youth?

She said, “Entirely beautiful, possessed of every grace and kindness. There was never another nature like His.” Her eyes again filled with tears. She said then, “I often reflect upon our reunion in Heaven, where I wonder if there I shall be His bride. He said words that I could so interpret, but I do not dream of this for fear … for fear of blasphemy.”

I concurred that this prohibition was very wise. And then with great reservation I asked of Mary, “Do you recall Our Master having said anything, good or bad, about me?”

35.
She did not answer, but said to me in parting, “You go to Elephantine to prove a doubt true. Our Master would tell you that you would better make a journey to prove your faith true. As He told me, ‘She that looks for reasons to doubt, will find much reward in this world. But she that looks for reasons to believe will find her reward in Heaven.'”

I confessed to Mary that I had no choice but to find out the truth of Benjamin and the slanderous tale of the sepulcher. How I longed for it to be untrue! But I must discover if I have followed false paths, if my life had been devoted to a mistake! What, after all, could explain a former slave of Joseph of Arimathea, ensconced like a king in Elephantine?

Then Mary said to me, “Do you know the Blessed Wisdom?”

36.
I said I had read all of the Wisdom literature while a student in Alexandria.

Mary said to me, “Truly all you have read has done you little good, dear brother. Our Master once told me when I understood a parable without His explanation, that men read things and do not know them, whereas women know things they have never read.”

She said further to me, “No, you must not know
Sophia,
or you would not go on this voyage of doubt to listen to other people's lies and misrepresentations. But go if you must. I will pray that She be with you. You cannot understand how She has sustained me here in the desert. I wonder sometimes, though I remember much of Our Master, whether I would understand anything if not for Her.”

Then Mary retreated into the convent only to return some minutes later, handing me a sealed phylactery, tiny enough to fit into a pocket.

I asked of her, “What is this scroll?”

She said to me, “When you find your answer, and not before, I want you to read this. It is by a man now departed, one who once knew
Sophia.
You may prove this tale of the slave Benjamin untrue, learned Disciple, and still not find your faith. That only
Sophia
can restore.”

37.
Then impulsively, her eyes flashing, she said to me, “I have given my all for him. I have sacrificed my youth, then my young womanhood where I might have married, and under these robes my beauty. These robes hide scars, small cuts of the knife into which maggots were introduced burrowing in this cheek, leaves soaked in lye applied to my face and breasts…”
19

I exclaimed, “Mary, no!”

“This I did so no Roman might desire me should our convent ever be attacked. No, fear not, I shall not unveil myself to you—you need not fear. Ah, but old age would have done as good a job. Does it not? One day soon, in Heaven before Him, my beauty will be returned to me, I shall be fair as the angels … betrothed anew to a Celestial Groom.”

Then she seemed to plead to me, “Matthias! If you should prove this tale true, this libel about the slave Benjamin and a stolen body from the tomb … Do not ever let me know. Will you promise?”

I gave her my word.

38.
And so before the sun was fully risen, I left Thmuis with Mary's blessings. What a remarkable woman! It saddens me to know I shall never see her again.

Really, Tesmegan, what a variety the Lord has spread before us concerning womankind—from such pure souls as Mary of Migdal, and Maryam of Bethany, the charitable Queen Helen, and your own gracious sovereign here in Meroe, in contrast to that other Helen, that walking abomination! Oh, even now, thousands of miles from her splayings and writhings in the lowest cesspit of Hell, the thought of the Magus's harlot horrifies me.

Her dreaded paps!

AFRICA

 

Verily, they who believe [the Moslems], and they who follow the Jewish religion and the Christians, and the Sabaeans—whoever of these believeth in God and the last day, and doeth what is right, shall have their reward with the Lord: fear shall not come upon them, neither shall they be grieved.

—Quran 2:59
M
OHAMMED

One knocked at the door of God and a voice from within inquired, “Who is there?”

    Then he answered, “It is I.”

    And the voice said, “This house will not hold me and thee.” So the door remained shut. Then the Lover of God sped away into the wilderness and fasted and prayed in solitude. And after a year he returned and knocked again at the door. And the voice again demanded, “Who is there?”

    And the Lover of God said “It is Thou.”

    Then the door was opened.

—from the
Meshnavi
(1200s)
J
ALAALU
A
D
-D
INU
A
RRUMI
founder of the Whirling Dervishes

Whatever share of the world Thou wouldst bestow on me, bestow it on Thine enemies; and whatever share of the next world Thou dost give me, give it to Thy friends. Thou are enough for me!

—prayer (740s)
R
A'BIAH
of Basra

Whoever should kill any Moslem will go straight to heaven.

—preaching the Second Crusade (1146)
St. B
ERNARD OF
C
LAIRVAUX

 

 

A
UGUST
15
TH
, 1990

Lucy awoke to the call of the morning
muezzin
:

“Allaahu akbar! Allaaaaaaaaahu akbaaaaaarrrrrr!”

She felt her heart racing from being startled awake. And after a momentary panic of dislocation, Lucy remembered she was in Aswan, in Egypt, and the
muezzin,
electronically amplified from the town's minarets, only wished her to think of God, and how there was no God but God.

“Ash-hadu an laa ilaaha illa 'llaah…”

She was wide awake. It was still dark out, a deep before-dawn blue, cold over the desert in the eastern sky. And yet the marketkeepers and beggars and hotel washerwomen and lazy men of the cafés were ambling down dark staircases, passing one another in the streets, exchanging elaborate Arabic blessings, wishing each other gardens and perfumes and indolence in Paradise, waiting patiently for an opening at the mosque's cleansing fountain to wash the sleep from their eyes and enter God's house and face Mekkah and truly worship Him. Not sit in a church pew politely Sunday morning, but abase themselves, touch head to the floor on their knees and sob in abjection, five times each day, every day of their lives: there is no God but God.

“Ash-hadu an laaaa ilaaaaaaaaha illa 'llaaaaah…”

O'Hanrahan was right, thought Lucy. What a musical language Arabic is when talked, and how well this language adorns the prayer, the incantation. There is no God but God:
Laa ilaaha il-la 'llaah.
A divine tongue twister for the Western mouth, but said over and over this creed, the Kalimah, becomes a trance, the phases of the short and long
a
's giving it a tidal rhythm. Each breath a prayer, the heartbeat and respiration in tune to the worship of Him That Gaveth This Life.

“As-salaatu Khairun mina 'n-naumi!”

(It is better to pray than to sleep. What about it?)

Lucy rolled to her side, adjusting the thin linen sheet provided by the hotel, not feeling so good. I haven't felt right, she thought, since I arrived in Israel. I have horrible tortured sleep, bad headaches, and this heat makes me swollen and irritable … Oh geez, now my bowels are in an uproar too. I spoke too soon to Dr. O'Hanrahan, bragging I had escaped all gastric evils. Lucy sat up on the side of the bed. Her head swam as her stomach lurched and she tasted a nauseating acid in her throat.

She ran to the toilet and vomited.

Moments later, having turned on the ceiling fan full tilt and spread herself on the bed under the blast, she coaxed herself into feeling better. Largely this was futile; sweat poured off her head and she felt her forehead, clammy and sticky. There, she swore, that was the worst of it. She wiped her brow with the sheet.

Morning sickness.

She calculated: I didn't have my period but that could have been because of all the travel, heat, and distress. I'm swollen and grouchy but that could be due to the above as well. And now I've been sick in the morning … which could be Mohammed's Kebab Surprise the other night.

Or I could stop lying to myself.

Lucy imagined what it would be to pass a baby-sized object through her body. Out it will come and a nurse will put it into my arms, a boy or a girl … I think a boy. And I will hold it briefly and then the adoption people will take it from me. That's as unthinkable as the labor and delivery. As unthinkable as my returning to Chicago, having the kid and buying the bassinet and crib and decking out the apartment in baby things—maybe moving in with another single mother, sharing duties, baby-sitting. This little smiling thing that will waddle over to hug me when it's older, that will attempt to walk and fall down on its little diaper-padded bottom. Nope. No good—I can't stir an ounce of maternal feeling or sentiment into this situation. Lucy tried to picture herself holding a son, madonna and child: would I ever look at him and not think, well Lucy, this is what you get to do in this world instead of live your life.

“Hayya 'ala 'l-falaaaaaaah! Hayya 'ala 'l-falaaaaaah!”

She reached over on the nightstand and felt for her rosary beads. She had bought these in Rome for Aunt Lucy but now maybe she needed them more. Maybe they would lead her to the old Lucy, the one without this problem, the one who knew all the answers and had her life carefully proscribed and hemmed in where it couldn't get in any trouble—
that
Lucy Dantan.

(Wouldn't count on it.)

She began a Hail Mary automatically. Yes, it felt empty but, she told herself, eventually it will mean something … She felt her eyes moisten with tears. I've really done it now. I've messed up my whole life. And I've even messed up God for myself.

*   *   *

On the sunny vast porch of the hotel, O'Hanrahan had piled up a week's worth of now-outdated Western newspapers and was sitting in a wicker chair, drinking cups of tea, picking at a piece of bread, managing a smoldering cigar in the ashtray, temporarily a sultan.

“Dr. O'Hanrahan,” Lucy announced herself, up at last at 11:00
A.M.
“We've got to talk, sir. I feel like I ought to be getting home.”

He studied a day-old
London Daily Telegraph,
which had detailed reports of Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait. Foreign workers were having trouble getting out of Iraq as well. “Hmm? Go home,” he repeated distractedly. “It's just starting to get good.”