'I'll have to rewind the reel first,' said Edison.
'No; let me see the film plain, in my hands, one picture at a time.'
'Of course,' said Edison.
'What is it, Jack?' said Doyle, watching him closely.
Jack didn't reply.
Minutes later, in Edison's lab, the length of film spread out across a glass panel lit from below, Jack pored over its individual frames with a magnifying glass as the others stood quietly by.
In one of the frames, between his constant movements, Jack found an image of the humpbacked preacher that caught the outline of the man's features nearly distinct.
Jack went instantly pale: Doyle noticed his hands shaking.
'We know this man, Arthur,' said Jack gravely.
'Do we?'
'We know him all too well,' he said, handing the glass to Doyle.
BOOK THREE
CHICAGO
chapter 9
Eilleen tried to steal a glimpse of the sketch pad in Jacob's hand, but he shooed her away with mock annoyance. She sighed and continued to stare wistfully out the window as he instructed, only too accustomed to following a man's directions, watching his pencil working furiously out of the corner of her eye but unable to see the results. Oppressive heat shimmered the horizon line as the train pulled its way through a winding arroyo and began to climb from the flat, sandy landscape into broken promontories of rock.
What went haywire inside a man's head when exposed to a woman's physical charms? Eileen had been bedeviled by the question for years: Put an otherwise sensible man in the company of an uncommonly attractive female—she had enough perspective untainted by wishful vanity to include herself in that category—and the poor fellow was either rendered speechless or consumed by an impulse to possess and dominate her.
She rolled the issue around in her mind: Is this madness a reaction to something I'm doing or the work of invisible biological mechanisms? Either way, short of entering a convent there didn't seem to be a thing she could do about it; nature did not yield to logic. Sex itself wasn't the problem, anyway; it was these damn mating rituals. Better to be born a cat or dog and confine all the torment over who sleeps with whom to quick seasonal frenzies. Part of her sentiments looked forward to getting past the breeding years so she could be treated like any other human being.
On the other hand, old girl, she corrected herself—remembering her worn face in the mirror that morning and how welcome were the full thrusts of a man's attentions when she felt receptive—let's not be too hasty.
'Let me see if I understood you,' she said, resurrecting a recent conversation. 'You're a certified member of your clergy, doesn't that give you the authority to communicate directly with God?'
'Oh, thank heavens, no; only Moses and a few other Old Testament Jews were saddled with that responsibility, and even their conversations were usually filtered through some sort of intermediary; an angel or a burning bush,' said Jacob, bent over his drawing.
'But there must be hundreds of Christian ministers in this country who believe they receive the word of God straight from the horse's mouth.'
'Yes,' said Jacob, with a sad smile, 'I know.'
'But if you have no contact with whoever He is, how can you claim to perform God's will?'
'A rabbi makes no such claim, my dear; that is far too important a job to be entrusted to professionals. If God speaks to anyone it is only through the voice of the human heart and everyone you meet has one of those.'
'Theatrical producers aside.'
'Not to mention certain neighborhoods in New York,' said Jacob. 'My people have a belief that the existence of the world is sustained by the righteousness of a small number of perfectly ordinary people who attract no attention to themselves and very quietly go about their business.'
'Like saints, then.'
'Hidden saints, you might call them, seeking no reward or recognition for what they do. Pass them in the street, you'd hardly notice them; not even
'Sounds more like a job for the Messiah,' she said.
'This whole Messiah business is so terribly overemphasized. ...'
'You don't believe in the Messiah?'
'There is a tradition in Judaism that if someone tells you the Messiah has come and you are planting a tree, first finish planting the tree and then go see about this Messiah.'
'Hmm. I guess if a fellow actually was the Messiah, the last thing he'd do is run around announcing it to people.'
'Not if he wants to live until suppertime. If you look at the subject historically, this idea began because the Jews in Israel wanted a man with supernatural powers to fly down from heaven and rescue them; quite a natural response to a thousand years of slavery, wouldn't you agree?'
'I'd wish for a squadron of them.'
'Then Jesus came along and, regardless of who you believe he was, the rest is history. But ever since in Western culture when we approach the end of a century, as we are now, a terror that the Judgment Day is at hand awakens in us this hunger for a savior to appear and set things right. And with it the strange notion that there can only be one of these persons.'
'More than one Messiah?' asked Eileen. 'But he's one of a kind, isn't he, by definition?'
'In Kabbalah there is an alternative idea that has always struck me as infinitely more reasonable: Within each generation that passes through this life there are a few people alive at all times—without any self-awareness that they possess such a quality—who, if events called upon them to do so, could assume the role of the Messiah.'
'The 'role' of the Messiah?'
'In the same way we are all playing a part in our own lives: strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying God knows what. If you look at it from this perspective, in the great pageant of life the Messiah is simply one of the more interesting characters.'
'So what sort of events might bring these Messiahs forward?'
'I suppose the usual calamities: cataclysm, pestilence, apocalypse. Our hero needs a good entrance. Although according to this theory, He would have been standing in front of us the entire time without anyone noticing.'
'What happens to these people when they don't become the Chosen One?' she asked.
'They live out their days and die in peace, the lucky creatures.'
'Never knowing about the part they might otherwise have played.'
