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-mache 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.
There being no way to truthfully explain, Switters replied that he had to leave right away to attend a performance of
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
“Pippi?” It had to be Pippi, for even the voice sounded freckled and red-haired. “What? The truck?
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.
“I’m hurrying.
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
“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
“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
