“And what is
“Umm. Well. I try not to.”
“You try not to believe?”
“That’s right. I’m on the run from the Killer B’s.”
“Pardon? What have killer bees to do with? . . .”
“B for Belief. B for Belonging. The B’s that lead to most of the killing in the world. If you don’t Belong among us, then you’re our inferior, or our enemy, or both; and you can’t Belong with us unless you Believe what we Believe. Maybe not even then, but it certainly helps. Our religion, our party, our tribe, our town, our school, our race, our nation. Believe. Belong. Behave. Or Be damned.”
“But human beings have—”
“A need to belong somewhere, to believe in something? Yeah, Sister—if I may still call you that—they seem to. It’s virtually genetic. I’m on guard against it, and it still overtakes me. The concern is that we may annihilate ourselves before we can evolve, or mutate, beyond it; but you may rest assured that, even if we survive, as long as we’re driven to Belong and Believe, we’ll never be at peace, and we’ll never be free.”
“Ooh-la-la! That’s crazy. A human who belongs to no group or believes in nothing? What kind of robot, what lost animal? No longer human at all.”
“In the sense that a frog is no longer a tadpole, you may be right. And it may never come to pass, or have to. We just might learn enough tolerance, and jettison enough fear and ego, to compensate. The neutral angels could prevail:
“Beanie Babies? The kiddie stuffed toys?”
“Uh, sorry, that just slipped in. And, obviously, there’re good things that begin with B, too. Bee-r, for example. B-biscuits. The Be-atles. B-Broadway.
“Bei——?”
He wasn’t about to explain that
“So, you do think the Bible a good thing?”
“Umm. Well. To be-labor my apiarian analogy: the honey that’s dipped from that busy hive can be sweet and nourishing, or it can be hallucinogenic and deadly. All too frequently, the latter is confused with the former. Dip with caution. Reader be-ware.”
Domino studied him, but he couldn’t tell if it was with appreciation or contempt. To break the silence, and perhaps to win favor, he revealed that less than a year before, he had been considering joining the Catholic Church. He didn’t mention Suzy.
“What?! Are you mad? How could you possibly be a member of the Church and yet not belong or believe?”
“Easy. It’s the best way. To practice a religion can be lovely, to believe in one is almost always disastrous.”
Understanding him to mean that to practice Christ’s teachings and not believe in them was a finer thing than to fervently believe in them but never put them into practice, she had to nod in tenuous agreement. He was standing hypocrisy on its head. “Is that the way you managed to work for the CIA?”
“Yeah, probably, now that you mention it. It’s called participation without attachment.”
“But I don’t . . .”
“Because the CIA is an extremist organization that has the unusual ability to function outside the compromising channels of normal political and commercial restraint, it has the potential to kick out the blocks here and there and help the world to happen. The original teachings of Jesus and Mohammed et al are also extreme. If a person can participate in those extreme systems without identifying with the humbug they’ve spawned, without becoming attached to, say, patriotism in the case of the CIA, or moralistic zeal, in the case of the Church, then that throbbing nerve that runs from the hypothalamus to the trigger finger might be sedated, minds might be liberated, and—who knows?—the logjam of orthodoxy and certitude might be broken, allowing the—what shall we call it?— river of human affairs to gurgle off freely in new and unexpected directions. Something like that. Cha-cha-cha.”
“Is that your faith then? Freedom and unpredictability?”
He finished off his tea. “My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn’t make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?”
For a moment, she seemed taken aback. Then she snapped, “Comfort.”
“Heh!” He sounded so much like Maestra he almost gave himself a bracelet.
“Hope.”
“I can’t do the math, but wouldn’t
“Solace.”
“Solace? That’s why God made fermented beverages and the blues.”
“Salvation.”
“From what? Aren’t you talking about some form of long-term, no-premium, afterworldly fire insurance?”
Domino didn’t respond, and he worried that he might have gone too far. “Of course,” he said, “I’ve also never seen the point of chicken wings. Either for the chicken, who doesn’t fly, or for the diner, who doesn’t get enough meat to justify all the grease it takes to make them halfway edible.”
A sudden blink of wistfulness caused her eyes to grow even softer than usual. “Tell me, do they still have the Philly cheese steak?”
“You bet they do. There
She smiled, and it was, he thought, like a cross between the Taj Mahal and a jukebox. “Is there anything right now that is making you feel glad about being alive?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m in a foreign country, illegally, in a mysterious convent, inappropriately, and in conversation with the blue nude’s niece, improbably. What’s not to enjoy?”
Briefly, very briefly, she closed her palms and fingers around the fists he’d rested on the armrests. “And in a wheelchair, unfortunately.” She stood. “Okay. I must go now and visit my auntie. The excommunication has hit Masked Beauty quite hard. Hit all of us, really. But we will go forward.” She straightened the sweet-smelling sprig behind her ear. She moved away.
Near the door, she paused. “Now that the patriarchal authorities have found our tiny band of desert nuns unfit to be in their Church, we’re having to redefine our relationship to our religion. In addition to that, we have been trying for some years now to redefine our relationship to Christ, to Mary, to God. God is a fixed point, naturally, God is eternal and absolute, God doesn’t change. But man’s concept of God, man’s interpretation of God, the way we view God has changed many times over history. Sometimes we think of him as more intimate, other times more impersonal and aloof; in some centuries he was seen to be primarily angry and judgmental and vengeful; in others, more loving and accepting. Our image of God evolves. Yes? And what would our ideas of God, of religion, be like if they had come to us through the minds of women? Ever think of that? We concentrate on such matters here, and for that reason I very much appreciate my talk with you, for while I may disagree with many of your absurd notions, you show me how it’s possible to think freely, without constraints or limitations or preconceptions. That’s helpful.”
“We absurdists are always pleased to be of service.”
“I also appreciate getting to tell you our own story. Because even though you refer to our convent as ‘mysterious,’ you now can see that our ceremony at the bonfire was a logical, pragmatic thing, like all of our activities. We are as simple as a candle, Mr. Switters. There’s no magic here, no mystery.”
“No, I guess not,” he conceded. “Except, of course, for the document.”
