Messiah

by Gore Vidal

  Who was this American who had come to Luxor? and why?

  For a moment the serenity which I have so long practiced failed me and I feared for my life. The long-awaited assassins had finally come. But then that animal within who undoes us all with his fierce will to live, grew quiet, accepting again the discipline I have so long maintained over him, his obedience due less perhaps to my strong will than to his fatigue, for he is no longer given to those rages and terrors and exultations which once dominated me as the moon does the tide: his defeat being my old age's single victory, and a bitter one.

  I took the pages that I had written and hid them in a wide crack in the marble-topped Victorian washstand. I then put on a tie and linen jacket and, cane in hand, my most bemused and guileless expression upon my face, I left the room and walked down the tall dim corridor to the lobby, limping perhaps a little more than was necessary, exaggerating my quiet genuine debility to suggest, if possible, an even greater helplessness. If they had come at last to kill me, I thought it best to go to them while I still held in check the creature terror. As I approached the lobby, I recalled Cicero's death and took courage from his example. He too had been old and tired, too exasperated at the last even to flee.

  My assassin (if such he is and I still do not know) looks perfectly harmless: a red-faced American in a white suit crumpled from heat and travel. In atrocious Arabic he was addressing the manager who, though he speaks no English, is competent in French, is accustomed to speaking French to Occidentals. My compatriot, however, was obstinate and smothered with a loud voice the polite European cadences of the manager.

  I moved slowly to the desk, tapping emphatically with my cane on the tile floor. Both turned; it was the moment which I have so long dreaded: the eyes of an American were turned upon me once again. Would he know? Does he know? I felt all the blood leave my head. With a great effort, I remained on my feet; steadying my voice which has nowadays a tendency to quaver even when I am at ease, I said to the American, in our own language, the language I had not once spoken in nearly twenty years, "Can I be of assistance, sir?" The words sounded strange on my lips and I was aware that I had given them an ornateness which was quite unlike my usual speech. His look of surprise was, I think, perfectly genuine. I felt a cowardly relief: not yet, not yet.

  "Oh!" the American stared at me stupidly for a moment (his face is able to suggest a marvelous range of incomprehension, as I have since discovered).

  "My name is Richard Hudson," I said, pronouncing carefully the name by which I am known in Egypt, the name with which I have lived so long that it sometimes seems as if all my life before was only a dream, a fantasy of a time which never was except in reveries, in those curious waking-dreams which I often have these days when I am tired, at sundown usually, when my mind often loses all control over itself and the memory grows confused with imaginings, and I behold worlds and splendors which I have never known yet which are vivid enough to haunt me even in the lucid mornings: I am dying, of course, and my brain is only letting up, releasing its images with a royal abandon, confusing everything like those surrealist works of art which had some vogue in my youth.

  "Oh," said the American again and then, having accepted my reality, he pushed a fat red hand toward me. "The name is Butler, Bill Butler. Glad to meet you. Didn't expect to find another white . . . didn't expect to meet up with an American in these parts." I shook the hand.

  "Let me help you," I said, letting go the hand quickly. 'The manager speaks no English."

  "I been studying Arabic," said Butler with a certain sullenness. "Just finished a year's course at Ottawa Center for this job. They don't speak it here like we studied it."

  "It takes time," I said soothingly. "You'll catch the tone."

  "Oh, I'm sure of that. Tell them I got a reservation." Butler mopped his full glistening cheeks with a handkerchief.

  "You have a reservation for William Butler?" I asked the manager in French.

  He shook his head, looking at the register in front of him.

  "Is he an American?" He looked surprised when I said that he was. "But it didn't sound like English."

  "He was trying to speak Arabic."

  The manager sighed. "Would you ask him to show me his passport and authorizations?"

  I communicated this to Butler who pulled a bulky envelope from his pocket and handed it to the manager. As well as I could, without appearing inquisitive, I looked at the papers. I could tell nothing. The passport was evidently in order. The numerous authorizations from the Egyptian Government in the Pan-Arabic League, however, seemed to interest the manager intensely.

  "Perhaps . . ." I began, but he was already telephoning the police. Though I speak Arabic with difficulty, I can understand it easily. The manager was inquiring at length about Mr Butler and about his status in Egypt. The police chief evidently knew all about him and the conversation was short.

  "Would you ask him to sign the register?" The manager's expression was puzzled. I wondered what on earth it was all about.

  "Don't know why," said Butler, carving his name into the register with the ancient pen, "there's all this confusion. I wired for a room last week from Cairo."

  "Communications have not been perfected in the Arab countries," I said (fortunately for me, I thought to myself).

  When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and the key to his room.

  "Much obliged to you, Mr Hudson."

  "Not at all."

  "Like to see something of you, if you don't mind. Wonder if you could give me an idea of the lay of the land."

  I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in the cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace.

  When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to me as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived there longer), merely shrugged and said, "It's too much for me, sir." And I could get no more out of him.

  2

  The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o'clock, at the hour when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which, at this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its usual size, diminished by heat.

  "Don't suppose we could order a drink . . . not that I'm much of a drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like this."

  I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use alcohol.

  "I know, I know," he said. "Studied all about them, even read the Koran. Frightful stuff, too."

  "No worse than most documents revealed by heaven," I said gently, not wanting to get on to that subject. "But tell me what brings you to these parts?"

  "I was going to ask you the same thing," said Butler genially, taking the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. "The manager tells me you've been up here for twenty years."

  "You must have found a language in common."

  Butler chuckled. "These devils understand you well enough if they want to. But you . . ."

  "I was an archaeologist at one time," I said and I told him the familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost come to believe it. "I was from Boston originally. Do you know Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs." This was a new, plausible touch, "Egypt was always my single passion and so I came to Luxor, to this hotel where I've been quite content, though hardly industrious."

  "How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization."

  "I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special disp
ensation."

  "Old hand, then, with the natives?"

  "But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to die and I live now as though I were already dead myself."

  This had the desired effect of chilling him. Though he was still young, hardly fifty, the immediacy of death, even when manifested in the person of a chance acquaintance, did inspire a certain gravity.

  He mumbled something which I did not catch. I think my hearing has begun to go: not that I am deaf but I have, at times, a monotonous buzzing in my ears which makes conversation difficult, though not impossible. According to the local doctor my arteries have hardened and at any moment one is apt to burst among the convolutions of the brain, drowning my life. But I do not dwell on this, at least not in conversation.

  "There's been a big shake-up in the Atlantic community. Don't suppose you'd hear much about it around here since from the newspapers I've seen in Egypt they have a pretty tight censorship."

  I said I knew nothing about recent activities in the Atlantic community or anywhere else, other than Egypt.

  "Well they've worked out an alliance with Pan-Arabia which will open the whole area to us. Of course no oil exploitation is allowed but there'll still be a lot of legitimate business between our sphere and these people."

  I listened to him patiently while he explained the state of the world to me; it seemed unchanged: the only difference was that there were now new and unfamiliar names in high places. He finished with a patriotic harangue about the necessity of the civilized to work in harmony together for the good of mankind: "And this opening up of Egypt has given us the chance we've been waiting for for years, and we mean to take it."

  "You mean to extend trade?"

  "No, I mean the Word."

  "The Word?" I repeated numbly, the old fear returning.

  "Why sure; I'm a Cavite Communicator." He rapped perfunctorily on the table twice. I tapped feebly with my cane on the tile: in the days of the Spanish persecution such signals were a means of secret communication (not that the persecution had really been so great but it had been our decision to dramatize it in order that our people might become more conscious of their splendid if temporary isolation and high destiny); it had not occurred to me that, triumphant, the Cavites should still cling to those bits of fraternal ritual which I'd conceived with a certain levity in the early days. But of course the love of ritual, of symbol is peculiar to our race and I reflected bleakly on this as I returned the solemn signal which identified us as brother Cavites.

  "The world must have changed indeed," I said at last. "It was a Moslem law that no foreign missionaries be allowed in the Arab League."

  "Pressure!" Butler looked very pleased. "Nothing obvious of course; had to be done though."

  "For economic reasons?"

  "No, for Cavesword. That's what we're selling because that's the one thing we've got." And he blinked seriously at the remnant of scarlet sun; his voice had grown husky, like a man selling some commodity on television in the old days. Yet the note of sincerity, whether simulated or genuine, was unmistakably resolute.

  "You may have a difficult time," I said, not wanting to go on with this conversation but unable to direct it short of walking away. "The Moslems are very stubborn in their faith."

  Butler laughed confidently. "We'll change all that. It may not be easy at first because we've got to go slow, feel our way, but once we know the lay of the land, you might say, we'll be able to produce some big backing, some real backing."

  His meaning was unmistakable. Already I could imagine those Squads of the Word in action throughout this last terrestrial refuge. Long ago they had begun as eager instruction teams; after the first victories, however, they had become adept at demoralization, at brain-washing and auto-hypnosis, using all the psychological weapons which our race in its ingenuity had fashioned in the mid-century, becoming so perfect with the passage of time that imprisonment or execution for unorthodoxy was no longer necessary: even the most recalcitrant, the most virtuous man, could be reduced to a sincere and useful orthodoxy, no different in quality from his former antagonists, his moment of rebellion forgotten, his reason anchored securely at last in the general truth. I was also quite confident that their methods had improved even since my enlightened time.

  "I hope you'll be able to save these poor people," I said, detesting myself for this hypocrisy.

  "Not a doubt in the world," he clapped his hands. "They don't know what happiness we'll bring them." Difficult as it was to accept such hyperbole, I believed in his sincerity: he is one of those zealots without whose offices no large work in the world can be successfully propagated. I did not feel more than a passing pity for the Moslems: they were doomed but their fate would not unduly distress them for my companion was perfectly right when he spoke of the happiness which would be theirs: a blithe mindlessness which would in no way affect their usefulness as citizens. We had long since determined that for the mass this was the only humane way of ridding them of superstition in the interest of Cavesword and the better life.

  "It's strange, though, that they should let you in," I said, quite aware that he might be my assassin after all, permitted by the Egyptian government to destroy me and, with me, the last true memory of the mission. I had not completely got over my first impression that Butler was an accomplished actor, sounding me out before the final victory of the Cavites, the necessary death and total obliteration of the person and the memory of Eugene Luther, now grown old with a false name in a burning land.

  If he was an actor, he was a master. He thumped on interminably about America, John Cave and the necessity of spreading his word throughout the world. I listened patiently as the sun went abruptly behind the hills and all the stars appeared in the moonless waste of sky. Fires appeared in the hovels on the far shore of the Nile, yellow points of light like fireflies hovering by that other river which I shall never see again.

  "Must be nearly suppertime."

  "Not quite," I said, relieved that Butler's face was now invisible. I was not used to great red faces after my years in Luxor among the lean, the delicate and the dark. Now only his voice was a dissonance in the evening.

  "Hope the food's edible."

  "It isn't bad, though it may take some getting used to."

  "Well, I've a strong stomach. Guess that's why they chose me for this job."

  This job? could it mean . . . ? but I refused to let myself be panicked. I have lived too long with terror to be much moved now; especially since my life of its own generation has brought me to dissolution's edge. "Are there many of you?" I asked politely. The day was ending and I was growing weary, all senses blunted and some confused. "Many Communicators?"

  "Quite a few," said Butler. "They've been training us for the last year in Canada for the big job of opening up Pan-Arabia. Of course we've known for years that it was just a matter of time before the government got us in here."

  "Then you've been thoroughly grounded in the Arab culture? and disposition?"

  "Oh, sure. May have to come to you every now and then, though, if you don't mind." He chuckled to show that his patronage would be genial.

  "I should be honored to assist."

  "We anticipate trouble at first. We have to go slow. Pretend we're just available for instruction while we get to know the local big shots. Then, when the time comes . . ." He left the ominous sentence unfinished. I could imagine the rest, however. Fortunately, nature by then, with or without Mr. Butler's assistance, would have removed me as a witness. Inside the hotel the noise of plates being moved provided a familiar reference. I was conscious of being hungry: as the body's mechanism jolts to a halt, it wants more fuel than it ever did at its optimum. I wanted to go in but before I could gracefully extricate myself Butler asked me a question. "You the only American in these parts?"

  I said that I was.

  "Funny nothing was said about there being any American up here. I guess they didn't know you were here."

  "Perhaps they
were counting me among the American colony at Cairo," I said smoothly. "I suppose, officially, I am a resident of that city. I was on the Advisory Board of the Museum." This was not remotely true but since, to my knowledge, there is no Advisory Board it would be difficult for anyone to establish my absence from it.

  "That must be it." Butler seemed easily satisfied, perhaps too easily. "Certainly makes things a lot easier for us, having somebody like you up here, another Cavite, who knows the lingo."

  "I'll help in any way I can; though I'm afraid I have passed the age of usefulness. Like the British king, I can only advise."

  "Well, that's enough. I'm the active one anyway. My partner takes care of the other things."

  "Partner? I thought you were alone."

  "No. I'm to get my heels in first; then my colleague comes on in a few weeks. That's standard procedure. He's a psychologist and an authority on Cavesword. We all are, of course—authorities, that is—but he's gone into the early history and so on a little more thoroughly than us field men usually do."

  So there was to be another one, a cleverer one. I found myself both dreading and looking forward to the arrival of this dangerous person: it would be interesting to communicate with a good mind again, or at least an instructed one: though Butler has not given me much confidence in the new Cavite Communicators. Nevertheless, I am intensely curious about the Western world since my flight from it. I have been effectively cut off from any real communion with the West for two decades. Rumors, stray bits of information sometimes penetrate as far as Luxor but I can make little sense of them, for the Cavites are, as I well know, not given to candor while the Egyptian newspapers exist in a fantasy world of Pan-Arabic dominion. There was so much I wished to know that I hesitated to ask Butler, not for fear of giving myself away but because I felt that any serious conversation with him would be pointless: I rather doubted if he knew what he was supposed to know, much less all the details which I wished to know and which even a moderately intelligent man, if not hopelessly zealous, might be able to supply me with. I had a sudden idea. "You don't happen to have a recent edition of the Testament, do you? Mine's quite old and out of date."