Messiah

periturum' was the instruction given poor Maxentius when he marched against Constantine: needless to say he perished and consequently fulfilled the prophecy by himself becoming the enemy of Rome, to his surprise I suspect. My point, though, in honoring you with the only complete Latin sentence which I can ever recall is that at no time can we escape the relativity of our judgments. Truth for us, whether inspired by messianic frenzy or merely illuminated by reason, is, after all, inconstant and subject to change with the hour. You believe now whatever it is this man says. Splendid. But will the belief be true to you at another hour of your life? I wonder. For even if you wish to remain consistent and choose to ignore inconvenient evidence in the style of the truly devoted, the truly pious, will not your prophet himself have changed with time's passage? for no human being can remain the same, despite the repetition of…'

'Enough, enough!' she laughed aloud and put her hand between us as though to stop the words in air. 'You're talking such nonsense.'

'Perhaps. It's not at all easy to say what one thinks when it comes to these problems or, for that matter, to any problem which demands articulation. Sometimes one is undone by the flow of words assuming its own direction, carrying one, protesting, away from the anticipated shore to terra incognita. Other times, at the climax of a particularly telling analogy, one is aware that in the success of words the meaning has got lost. Put it this way, finally, accurately: I accept no man's authority in that realm where we are all equally ignorant. The beginning and the end of creation are not our concern. The eventual disposition of the human personality which we treasure in our conceit as being among the more poignant ornaments of an envious universe is unknown to us and shall so remain until we learn the trick of raising the dead. God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased and conceived. We are prisoners in our flesh, dullards in divinity as the Greeks would say. No man can alter this though of course human beings can be made to believe anything. You can teach that fire is cold and ice is hot but nothing changes except the words. So what can your magus do? What can he celebrate except that which is visible and apparent to all eyes? What can he offer me that I should accept his authority, and its source?'

She sighed, 'I'm not sure he wants anything for himself; acceptance, authority… one doesn't think of such things, at least not now. As for his speaking with the voice of some new or old deity, he denies the reality of any power other than the human…'

'A strange sort of messiah.'

'I've been trying to tell you this.' She smiled. 'He sounds at times not unlike you just now… not so glib perhaps.'

'Now you mock me.'

'No more than you deserve for assuming facts without evidence.'

'If he throws over all the mystical baggage what is left? an ethical system?'

'In time, I suppose, that will come. So far there is no system. You'll see for yourself soon enough.'

'You've yet to answer any direct question I have put to you.'

She laughed. 'Perhaps there is a significance in that; perhaps you ask the wrong questions…'

'And perhaps you have no answers.'

'Wait.'

'For how long?'

She looked at her watch by the candles' uncertain light. 'For an hour.'

'You mean we're to see him tonight?'

'Unless you'd rather not.'

'Oh, I want to see him, very much.'

'He'll want to see you too, I think.' She looked at me thoughtfully but I could not guess her intention; it was enough that two lines had crossed, both moving inexorably toward a third, toward a temporary terminus at the progression's heart.

4

It is difficult now to recall just what I expected. Iris deliberately chose not to give me any clear idea of either the man or of his teachings or even of the meeting which we were to attend; we talked of other things as we drove in the starlight north along the ocean road, the sound of waves striking sand loud in our ears.

It was nearly an hour's drive from the restaurant to the place where the meeting was to be held. Iris directed me accurately and we soon turned from the main highway into a neon-lighted street; then off into a suburban area of comfortable-looking middle-class houses with gardens. Trees lined the streets; dogs barked; yellow light gleamed at downstairs windows. Silent families were gathered in after-dinner solemnity before television sets, absorbed by the spectacle of figures singing, dancing and telling jokes.

As we drove down the empty streets, I saw ruins and dust where houses were and, among the powdery debris of stucco all in mounds, the rusted antennae of television sets like the bones of awful beasts whose vague but terrible proportions will alone survive to attract the unborn stranger's eye. But the loathing of one's own time is a sign of innocence, of faith. I have come since to realize the wholeness of man in time. That year, perhaps that ride down a deserted evening street of a California suburb, was my last conscious moment of particular disgust: television, the Blues and the Greens, the perfidy of Carthage, the efficacy of rites to the moon… all were at last the same.

'That house over there, with the light in front, with the clock.'

The house, to my surprise, was a large neo-Georgian funeral parlor with a lighted clock in front crowned by a legend discreetly fashioned in Gothic gold on black: Whittaker and Dormer, Funeral Directors. A dozen cars had been parked closely together in the street and I was forced to park nearly a block away.

We walked along the sidewalk, street lamps behind trees cast shadows thick and intricate upon the pavement. 'Is there any particular significance?' I asked. 'I mean in the choice of meeting place?'

She shook her head. 'Not really, no. We meet wherever it's convenient. Mr Dormer is one of us and has kindly offered his chapel for the meetings.'

'Is there any sort of ritual I should observe?'

She laughed. 'Of course not. This isn't at all what you think.'

'I think nothing.'

'Then you are prepared. I should tell you, though, that until this year when a number of patrons made it possible for him' (already I could identify the 'him' whenever it fell from her lips, round with reverence and implication) 'to devote all his time to teaching, he was for ten years an undertaker's assistant in Oregon and Washington.'

I said nothing. It was just as well to get past this first obstacle all at once. There was no reason of course to scorn that necessary if overwrought profession; yet somehow the thought of a savior emerging from those unctuous formaldehyde-smelling ranks seemed ludicrous. I reminded myself that one of the more successful messiahs had been a carpenter and that another had been a politician… but an embalmer! My anticipation of great news was chilled; I prepared myself for grim comedy.

Iris would tell me nothing more about the meeting or about him as we crossed the lawn. She opened the door to the house and we stepped into a softly lighted anteroom. A policeman and a civilian, the one gloomy and the other cheerful, greeted us.

'Ah, Miss Mortimer!' said the civilian, a gray, plump pigeon of a man. 'And a friend, how good to see you both.' No this was not he. I was introduced to Mr Dormer who chirped on until he was interrupted by the policeman.

'Come on, you two, in here. Got to get the prints and the oath.'

Iris motioned me to follow the policeman into a side-room, an office. I'd heard of this national precaution but until now I had had no direct experience of it. Since the attempt of the communists to control our society had, with the collapse of Russian foreign policy, quite failed, our government in its collective wisdom had decided that never again would any sect or party, other than the traditional ones, be allowed to interrupt the rich flow of the nation's life. As a result, all deviationist societies were carefully watched by the police who fingerprinted and photographed