“I’m afraid I’d best not do that,” he says gently, gesturing toward the two in the back who begin to come toward me solemnly. “You see, what we have to do is to jolt you out of these little fugues, these essays in martyrdom, and it would be best if you cooperated; the more you cooperate, the quicker you see that it becomes evident that you are accepting reality, and therefore the more quickly you will be back to yourself. Come,” he says, giving me a hearty little tug, “let’s just bounce out of here now,” and the others flank me fore and aft and quite forcefully I am propelled from the rostrum. To my surprise my congregants do not express dismay, nor are there scenes of riot or dislocation as I might have expected; on the contrary they look at me with bleak, passive interest, as I am shoved toward the door. It is almost, I think, as if they had expected me to come exactly to this state and they are glad that I am being taken off in this fashion.
“Can’t you see,” I say gesticulating to them, “can’t you see what is happening here? They don’t want you to know the truth, they don’t want you to accept the truth of your lives; that’s why they’re taking me away from here, because I was helping you to face the truth.”
“Come on, Harold,” they murmur taking me away. “All of this has its place, but after a while it’s just best to cooperate; just go along,” and now they have me through the doors, not a single one of my congregants making the slightest attempt to fracture their progress. I shake a fist at them.
“For God’s sake,” I say, “don’t any of you care, don’t you know what’s going on here?” and so on and so forth, the sounds of my rhetoric filling my ears, if hardly all of the world, and outside I am plunged repeatedly into the brackish waters of Galilee, which to no one’s surprise at all (or at least not to mine) hardly lend absolution.
* * * *
“You’d better destroy them,” I say in a conversational tone, settling myself more comfortably underneath the gourd. “They’re a rotten bunch of people as you all note. Not a one of them has but a thought of their own pleasure, to say nothing of the sexual perversity.”
“I may not,” he says reasonably. He is always reasonable, which is a good thing if one is engaged in highly internalized dialogues. What would I do if he were to lose patience and scream? I could hardly deal with it. “After all, it’s pretty drastic, and besides that, without life there is no possibility of repentance.”
“Don’t start that again,” I say. “You sent me all of these miles, through heat and water, fire and pain to warn them of doom, and you would put both of us in a pretty ridiculous position, wouldn’t you, if you didn’t follow through? They’d never take me seriously again.”
“You let me decide that, Jonah,” he says, and there is no arguing with him when he gets into one of these moods, no possibility of argument whatsoever when he becomes stubborn, and so I say, “We’ll see about this in the morning,” much as if I were controlling the situation rather than he, which is not quite true of course, and slip into a thick doze populated with the images of sea and flying fish, but at the bottom of the sleep is pain, and when I bolt from it it is with terrible pain through the base of being, my head in anguish, my head as if it were carved open, and looking upward I see that the gourd which he had so kindly spread for me has shriveled overnight, and I am now being assaulted by a monotonous eastern sun. “Art thou very angry?” he says companionably, lapsing into archaicism as is his wont.
“Of course I am very angry,” I say, “You have allowed my gourd to die. And besides I want to know when you’re going to get rid of these people. Looking down from this elevation I can see very distinctly that the city is still standing.”
“Ah,” he says as I scratch at my head, trying to clobber the sun away, “thou takest pity upon the gourd which was born in a night and died in a night; why should I not take pity upon forty thousand people who cannot discern their right hand from their left to say nothing of much cattle?”
“Sophistry,” I say, “merely sophistry.”
“Unfortunately,” he says, “there is no room for your reply,” and smites me wildly upon the head, causing me to stumble into the ground, Gomorrah still upright, and I am afflicted (and not for the first time I might add) with perception of the absolute perversity of this creature who dwelleth within me. At all times.
* * * *
The thieves have died, but I am still alive to the pain of the sun when I feel the nails slide free and I plunge a hundred feet into the arms of the soldiers. They cushion my fall, lave my body with strong liquids, murmur to me until slowly I come over the sill of consciousness to stare at them. Leaning over me is a face which looks familiar. “Forgive them,” I say weakly, “forgive them, they know not what they do.”
“They know what they do.”
“Jamais,” I say and to clarify, “never.”
“You have not been crucified,” he says. “You’d better accept that.”
“Then this must be hell,” I say, “and I still in it.” He slaps me across the face, a dull blow with much resonance.
“You’re just not being reasonable,” he says. “You are not a reasonable man.”
“Help me up there, then,” I say. “It is not sufficient. Help me up there and crucify me again.”
“Harold?”
“Jesu,” I say admonishingly and close my eyes waiting for ascent and the perfect striations of the nails through the wrist: vaulting, stigmata.
* * * *
The face looking at me is Edna’s, but this is strange because Edna will not be born for several centuries yet, and what is even stranger than that is the fact that despite this I recognize her. How can this be? Nevertheless, one must learn to cope with dislocations of this sort if one is to be a satisfactory martyr. “They asked me to come here and speak to you,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t think it will be of any use whatsoever. But I will talk to you. You have got to stop this nonsense now, do you hear me?”
“You could help by getting me out of here,” I say, plucking at my clothing. “My appearance is disgusting and it is hardly possible for me to do the work when I am confined to a place like this. Or at least you could have them hurry and order up the crucifixion. Get it over with. There’s no reason to go on this way; it’s absolutely futile.”
“That’s what they want me to talk to you about. They seem to think that this is something that can be reasoned with. I keep on telling them that this is ridiculous; you’re too far gone but they say to try so I will. They’re as stupid as you. All of you are stupid; you’ve let the process take over and you don’t even understand it. Face reality, Harold, and get out of this or it is going to go very badly?”
“Jesu,” I remind her.
“Do you see?” she says to someone in the distance. “It’s absolutely hopeless. Nothing can come of this. I told you that it was a waste.”
“Try,” the voice says. “You have to try.” She leans toward me. Her face is sharp, her eyes glow fluorescent in the intensity. “Listen, Harold,” she says. “You are not jesu or anyone else any of your religious figures. This is 2219 and you have been undergoing an administered hypnotic procedure enabling you to live through certain of your religious obsessions, but as is very rarely the case with others you have failed to come back all of the way at one point, and now they say you’re in blocked transition or something. They’re quite able to help you and to reverse the chemotherapeutic process, but in order to begin you have to accept these facts, that we are telling you the truth, that they are trying to help you. That isn’t too much, is it? I mean, that isn’t too much of an admission for you to make; and in return look at the wonderful life you’ll have. Everything will be just as it was before, and you can remember how you loved it that way.”
“Let me out of here,” I say. “Where are my robes? Where are my disciples? Where are the sacred scrolls and the voice of the Lord? You cannot take all of this away; you will be dealt with very harshly.”
“There are no sacred scrolls or follow
ers. All of those people died a long time ago. This is your last chance, Harold; you’d better take it. Who knows what the alternative might be? Who knows what these people might be capable of doing?”
“Magdalene,” I say reasonably, “simply because you’re a whore does not mean that you always speak the truth. That is a sentimental fallacy.”
Her face congests and she spits. I leave it rest there. A celebration. A stigmata.
* * * *
Conveyed rapidly toward Calvary I get a quick glimpse of the sun appearing in strobes of light as they drive me with heavy kicks toward the goal. The yoke is easy at this time and burdens light; it is a speedy journey that I have made from the court to this place and it will be an easier one yet that I will make to Heaven. A few strokes of the hammer, some pain at the outset: blood, unconsciousness, ascension. Nothing will be easier than this, I think; the getting to this condition has far outweighed in difficulty this final stage. Struggling with the sacred texts has been boring, the miracles sheer propaganda; now at last I will find some consummative task worthy of my talents.
“Faster,” they shout, “faster!” and I trot to their urging. Vite, vite, vite to that great mountain where I will show them at last that passion has as legitimate a place in this world as any of their policies and procedures and will last; I will convince them as I have already convinced myself a hell of a lot longer. Brava passione! Brava!
* * * *
So they yank me from the restraints and toss me into the center of the huge room to meet the actors. There they all are, there they are: congregants, disciples, Romans, pagans, troopers, all of the paraphernalia and armament of my mission. Edna and the Magdalene are somewhere, but concealed; I have to take their presence on faith. I have had to take everything on faith, and at the end it destroys me; this is my lesson.
“Enough of this!” they cry. Or at least one of them says this; it is very difficult to be sure. The shout must come from an individual but then again it would appear to be a collective shout; they all feel this way. “This is your last chance, your very last chance to cooperate before it becomes very difficult.”
“I don’t know.”
“Ne rien,” they cry. A great clout strikes, knocking me to the floor. It hurts like hell. Attende bien, I could have expected nothing less; I have waited for it so very long. Still, one tries to go on. I scramble for purchase, hurl myself upright. My capacity to absorb pain, oh happy surprise, seems limitless after all.
“Listen!” they say, not without a certain sympathy, “Listen, this is very serious business; it cannot go on; the matter of the treatments themselves is at stake. The treatment process is complex and expensive and there are complications, great difficulties?”
I confront them reasonably. I am a reasonable man. I always have been. “I will see you with my Father in Heaven,” I say. “That is where I will see you and not a bloody moment sooner.”
“Don’t you understand” Don’t you realize what you are doing” The penalties can be enormous. This must stay controlled; otherwise?”
“Otherwise,” I say. “Otherwise you will lose your world and it is well worth losing. I have considered this. I have given it a great deal of thought. Martyrdom is not a posture, not at all; martyrdom springs from the heart. I am absolutely serious; it did not begin that way but that is the way it has ended. I will not yield. I will not apologize. I will not be moved. Thy will be done, pater noster, and besides, once you get going you can’t just turn it off, if you have any respect, if you have any respect at all.”
There is a sound like that of engines. They close upon me. I know exactly what they have in mind but am nonetheless relieved.
It would have had to be this way. “I will not yield,” I say to them quietly. “I will not apologize. I will not be moved. This isn’t folklore, you know; this is real pain and history.”
They tear me apart.
* * * *
I think of Satan now and am glad that we were able to have that little conversation in the desert the second time, to really get to know one another and to establish a relationship. He was quite right, of course, the old best loved angel, and I wish I’d had the grace to acknowledge it at the time. We wanted him; we called him into it. It was better to have him outside than in that split and riven part of the self. Oh how I would like to embrace him now.
* * * *
They leave me on the Cross for forty days and forty nights. On the forty-first the jackals from the south finally gnaw the wood to ash and it collapses. I am carried off, what is left of me, in their jaws and on to further adventures I cannot mention in bowels and partitions of the Earth.
The Men’s Support Group
SO every month we meet, second Monday, and bring our lives to the table. This night only Wilson the accountant and Chambers the imports guy joined me there. This is not uncommon — the low attendance — as one might think, because most of us have responsibilities and can be out of town a lot. This however was part of a long period at home for me, and getting to the Men’s Support Group was not only an obligation but a splendid way to get me out of the house. I need to get out of the house more and more, and perhaps the middle years of a long marriage are dedicated to finding legitimate excuses. If a group of mutual support and brotherhood among professional men who live in this Northeastern suburb is not a legitimate excuse, then what is?
Let me tell you about my friend Fred, I said. I’ve been thinking about telling this for a long time, but the occasion has never been right. There’s been this or that or someone’s crisis to occupy us or my own misery. But Fred has been on my mind all this time and now I really want to talk about him.
You all know my situation, I said. I don’t have to go into that again, right? A marriage is a marriage until it’s not, and I constructed no alternative to this one, so here I am except that I travel a lot on business and play trumpet with the Sizzlers and take art education so I don’t have to face it maybe three or four nights a week. It’s pretty much the same as it’s always been, I said, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take it. Adele has her own inner life and accommodation.
The rule is that we don’t talk about what the women may feel. We just don’t bring that into play. They feel plenty but that is for their own group and if they want to form one, that’s all right with us. I want to talk about Fred, I said. I have for a long time. Fred is a paradigm. His is the most tragic, the most complex story I know: it is King Lear in Red Hook, Medusa or Electra in the Sisterhood, Medea in the PTA but who would know? Who would know? Fred owns a shoe repair store, he looks like a shoemaker, in fact he is a shoemaker by inclination. Dumpy, merry, mustache, little eyes, big forehead, his features four circles on his face. You look at Fred and want to pass on by. But he’s Lear, I said. This is King Lear I am talking about. It is Jason in the amphitheatre looking at the bodies of his sons. It is Laertes standing by the dead Hamlet.
Listen, I said, listen to this.
Wilson and Chambers said nothing, sat with their arms folded on the table, looked at me quietly. These are the rules of the Men’s Support Group: once one of us begins to speak the others are silent until the end. Then comment or pity may be offered as desired, or perhaps not offered at all. Then to the next statement, the next expostulation. One holds the floor as long as one needs to talk and is never pressed to hurry but once one has finished that is it, the speaker may never start again. So we have one chance to make our case, appeal for the squalor of our lives and then no more until our next turn which may not be for several months or not at all if we leave the group. This rule, worked out over our considerable history, worked out years before any of the present membership was there, was the most central and respected rule of them all and Wilson and Chambers honored it with silence and cold attention.
All right, I said, listen to Fred’s story. A shoemaker, a shoe repair shop guy but more labor than capital, a simple, sad, sweet little guy, fifty-nine or sixty when this happened to him. He got married young like the rest of u
s, got married to the first woman with whom he had any suspicion or real apprehension of sex and of course as time grew the love died, then the sex, then perhaps the rest of it, all but the mechanics and reflex which we all know so well. Which got us to this place, I said. Fred married Frieda — we’ll call her that, you get the idea — at twenty-two and he is married to her today, it is fifty years now, twelve or thirteen years past this thing I am going to tell you about and as far as I know they are still going on. He made money and worked hard and had children and slowly, inch by defined inch, bought substance and accommodation even as love shriveled and the tumble of the sheets became a tangle of spent dreams. The usual stuff, as I say. Do you know? We all know, right? If we know anything we know this. Everybody knows everything.
I stared at Wilson and Chambers until slowly, reflexively, they nodded, giving me that and no more. All right, I said. But there was one factor at the heart of this which changed both everything and nothing. Frieda had a sister Marilyn, three years younger. Fred knew Marilyn then as long as he had known his wife: Marilyn opened the door for their first date. Later, when Marilyn married — forget this part, the guy was named George but he is no factor — the sisters and brothers-in-law spent much time together, holidays, cousins and the like. Fred and Marilyn through all of this, from the week before Fred got married and for thirty years afterward were fucking each other. They did it without Frieda’s knowledge and when George came along he didn’t know either. They snuck into hotels, did it in Marilyn’s office a couple of times when she had a clerical job and a key so that they could sneak in nights. They went to motels and once, excitedly, the Plaza in New York. It was an intensely exciting affair, Fred did things to and with Marilyn of which Frieda had no inkling. It informed his life. It granted him consequence. Do you understand? It changed everything. In front of the curtain Fred hammered shoes, bullshitted the customers, took Frieda and their two sons to the Adirondacks in the summer, spent Christmas with Marilyn and George and the cousins. He lay spiritlessly but necessarily with Frieda in their sheets all the nights of his life. He never spent a night apart from her except for childbirth (the night after, both times, Marilyn and Fred fucked in a motel). Behind that curtain Fred did unspeakable things to Marilyn, found his knowledge and her depth, those depths of expressivity which he could not otherwise have known. Oh it was powerful, powerful!
The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg Page 34