“Assistants, please prepare the baths to receive our Initiates. Enter here at these doors and make everything ready to receive them. And, now, who will be the sponsors for our beautiful neophytes?”
Emmanuelle pulled Jonas with her, “We are the sponsors.”
“Very well. Bring the candidates and come with me to the ceremonial entrance.”
Then turning to Cal and Poll, “My young friends, you have traveled far, but now you begin the truly epic journey of your lives!”
The assistants scattered toward the doors at the far end of the hallway while Pandit, Emmanuelle and Jonas escorted their charges out to the courtyard and the car, driving with them to the front entrance to the baths. Somehow Emmanuelle fell in at Poll's side while Jonas found himself next to Cal. The great formal steps of the building were illuminated by a single torch set in a bracket on a pillar. They ascended the steps as a group, following behind Pandit. When he arrived at the platform of the colonnade he faced around and made his speech about the sacred character of the place and how they were now entering the astonishing experience of immortality. He asked the couple their names and then began hunting in his head for the requisite heavenly replacements.
“Poll, pol...pal? Why, yes, you can be ‘Palmiro!’ It has the dignity your single syllable was always wanting! And, Cal, how about...how about...Calliope? That seems to suggest itself?”
Cal gazed at him blankly, not fully understanding what he was saying.
“No, no, of course not. You're absolutely right, far too pedantic. Perhaps we should go the other way and stick with ‘p's’. P, p... P-cale. Yes, I have it! Pas-cale! ‘Pascale!’ That is your new name!”
Smiling with satisfaction at his power of creativity Pandit turned and knocked at the great portico. There was silence, which went on for a few minutes until he tut-tutted and knocked again, more forcefully. Finally they heard noises and all at once the doors were flung wide. A half dozen of the assistants appeared dressed in fresh robes, their faces and limbs newly oiled and wearing a look that said, despite all the craziness, this was now the real thing. Cal and Poll’s eyes were drawn to the interior, along the converging lines of glittering lamps, and they too felt that something enormous was about to take place.
Poll steeled himself for whatever was going to happen. He was led forward by the assistants and he felt their hands stripping him of his clumsy undergarments. Emmanuelle was pouring two drinks, one of which she took herself and the other she handed to him. He drained it in one go and felt the same voluptuous caress as when he had opened the big doors to the Baths near his room. This time he consciously surrendered his body to the sensation and the intimate shock it gave him.
Meanwhile Cal was led forward by Jonas. She had begun to enter a different mental space well before Jonas put the glass in her hand. After her experience in the desert she'd returned to her room and slept soundly. When she awoke it was dark and there was the sense of something else, both beautiful and disturbing. It was like having a mysterious, dangerous friend present with her in the room. There was no name she could give to the feeling, and quickly it was gone. The sensation seemed to fit with what had occurred in the desert. Something new was happening to her apart from any initiation. Then even as she was trying to come to grips with it she heard confused sounds coming from the hallway. She slipped off the couch and found her robe. Pulling it over her head she made her way to the door. She opened it to see Jonas holding a lamp and about to knock. Behind him there was the shadowy impression of a small crowd of people.
Jonas smiled and invited her into the hallway, leading her out before a group who were all dressed like him, and very beautiful. She saw how Jonas belonged to these people; he was beautiful just like them. Then Poll came out from his room and Liz was introduced, looking so very different from before. Cal was happy to see her but she had also felt the tension rise when the name of Poll was spoken. Poll himself seemed composed, even if he looked crazy in his underwear, and she was glad that he seemed to be settled in his mind. However, all during this time she was not paying complete attention herself.
Everything that was happening was not really happening to her. It was as if she was observing the event from outside her own body, from above the crowd. So when they had finally made their way to the baths and Pandit began to talk about their names she found it extremely difficult to focus on what he was saying. When she was handed the drink by Jonas she drank almost without noticing. Her mind and her soul were elsewhere, experiencing everything in her own private state.
She allowed herself to be disrobed and immersed in the pool. As she floated on its surface her last connection to her actual surroundings left her and she saw suddenly the roof ripped open and the brilliant sun burst through, shining down on her with all its force. She lay there in its dazzling glare, closing her eyes but with the light beating through her eyelids. It was like a bomb had gone off and it continued to explode slowly and silently above her. After a moment the fierce light seemed to shift a little and soften. She opened her eyes and the sun had become a beautiful white bird with its wings outstretched. One of the wings seemed broken and the great bird began to flutter helplessly down toward her. As it did it became smaller, and smaller, so by the time it landed in the space between her breasts it was a tiny white bird trailing a broken white wing. The bird nestled there and she sought to protect it by keeping herself as still and stable as possible. Yet she could not continue for suddenly the assistants were submerging her and holding her under. She feared for the little bird, and she was right because it was flailing out of its depth and quickly becoming waterlogged. The little bird was drowning. She started to thrash furiously in the water, trying to get back to the surface to give it a place to stand and live. It was too late. She was falling helplessly backward down a deep well and the bird was stretched lifeless above her in the water. She felt a fathomless terror and anguish gripping her soul. Then all was black.
***
Jonas would have been dead on his feet if Emmanuelle had not given him a couple of the little pills she miraculously still had with her. Now, on top of this stimulus, the prospect of the powerful initiation drug, inducing a mystical near-death, did not seem very safe. At all events he needed to keep going to be sure the things that were still to be done were in fact done. So he faked drinking from his own glass when he handed one to Pascale. Thankfully she did not seem to pay attention and she drank the cup to its dregs. He was deeply distracted by her beauty, in fact he desired this young woman intensely, more than anyone he could remember. But he knew if he were to have any relationship with her she had first to become a fully accredited part of the Homeland of Heaven.
The ritual wasn’t over yet, so he was forcing himself to concentrate on the remaining details. He knew Pandit and other assistants would head straight for their colonies once their responsibilities were concluded. They too were exhausted and wanted their beds and familiar comforts. Perhaps Emmanuelle would stay on, but he still needed Cyrus. Cyrus the famed historian was the man with all the necessary gravitas to persuade inductees to accept the doctrinal principles of the Heavenly Homeland. In the case of Pascale and Palmiro he was needed more than ever. Which meant that he would have to head off once more in the car to find him.
He was growing desperate, would this thing ever end? Then abruptly everything became dramatically worse. The ritual had reached the point where the initiate was being held beneath the surface. Up to this point Pascale had been so relaxed it seemed the drug had taken its effect almost at once. Now without warning she began to move her arms and legs with a dream-like slowness, in a way that said she was trying desperately to wake up. Jonas was immediately concerned.
This was a point in which the body should not be experiencing any stress and it meant Pascale was not having the personal experience of release essential for the mind of an Immortal. But he was helpless. Pascale was beyond communication. Whatever was happening to her there was no way of making contact with it. He wanted to reach u
nder the water to hold her hand but even that could perhaps be wrong, interfering with the solitary nature of the ritual moment. The assistants thought the same thing, for they were simply looking at her as if this was Pascale’s problem and nothing to do with them.
Quickly Pascale’s movements subsided and she became lifeless. In a sense this was what was meant to happen, but the way she looked suggested she had gone well beyond a mere slowdown in organic functions. She looked dead. Jonas signaled frantically to the assistants to get her out of the water. Together they pulled her to the end of the ceremonial pool and lifted her up the steps onto the marble floor. She lay there naked with the water gathered in little domes on her oiled body. Jonas waited desperately for a sign of life. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew there was such a thing as cardiac resuscitation, but in a world of Immortals it had never been needed, and again he was fearful of doing anything that could be counted as interfering with the ritual. As far as he knew the drug had some kind of self-regulating ability so no harm could ever come. Yet Pascale had experienced an unheard of crisis, reacting frantically when the drug should have been producing maximum sedation. He had no idea what that could mean.
He told the assistants to carry her to her room, and to retrieve their robes. For now he grabbed a couple of large towels from the racks at the end of the pool, wrapping himself in one, and when he got to the room he used the other to cover her inert body. He stood bending over her, watching her. She looked terrible, waxy and pinched, and still she had not drawn breath. Suddenly he did something which surprised him, and entirely so. He lay his head on her breast and started to weep. He put his hands on her shoulders and he spoke, between sobs. “Pascale, Pascale, please don’t die. Please, please come back. It’s alright, everything is alright. You must come back”
Still she did not move. After a moment he controlled himself and raised his head and looked at her. “What’s more, you know, Pascale, I love you, I need to be with you. I have since I first saw you.”
There was silence and then something seemed to alter. There was a slight tremor in Pascale’s body, and she drew a small short breath.
“Yes, yes, I knew you could do it. Now take a real breath!” Jonas clenched his fists and held his own breath, willing her to breathe deeply. After a few more moments Pascale took a longer, quivering breath and the bridge seemed to have been crossed.
Jonas staggered and collapsed against the wall, completely amazed at everything that had happened, and most of all at himself. He sat there in a daze. He felt drunk with sensations that were utterly new for him, and with exhaustion, one effect piling on top of the other. He knew there was no way he could get back in the car to look for Cyrus. And he almost didn’t care anymore. He hauled himself up to his feet and with one more look at Pascale, who was now breathing slowly but regularly, he stumbled out to the hall. He found a Louis XVI upholstered couch set against the long wall and he collapsed on it. Almost instantly he was asleep.
3. LOVERS AND MENTORS
Late the following morning Jonas was rudely awakened. A tall figure with robes wrapped awkwardly around his torso was shaking him and looking at him intensely. For a moment Jonas did not recognize Palmiro.
“Jonas, what’s happening? Where’s Cal?”
Jonas tried to gather his thoughts. He had gotten up once during the night to check on his neophyte and found her sleeping normally. Now it seemed the anxiety was to begin all over again, and it was the one who had provoked so many of the difficulties yesterday who was starting it.
“You mean Pascale, don't you? And what are you saying? I left her in her room.”
“OK, Pascale, whatever, she’s not there. I looked out in the courtyard too, she’s nowhere. And what’s supposed to be happening anyway? Where is everyone?”
Jonas sat bolt upright, fearful again for Pascale. “I don’t know, there should be breakfast and a tour, I’m not sure. I have to find Pascale. You better wait here, in case someone shows up. I’ll look. She can’t be far.”
The Northerner was not satisfied, but Jonas had no choice but to leave him there. Perhaps Pascale’s distress during the ritual had returned when she awoke, which would mean her initiation to the Heavenly Homeland had been a failure. He had to find her at once to try and cope with the situation. He hurried down the hall, through the courtyard and out onto the road, looking in either direction. She was nowhere to be seen. He crossed to the road’s far edge, venturing out on the semi-desert which marked the western boundary of the Homeland.
The sky was a deep blue circle around a diamond sun. Little patches of yellow daisies and mistflower shone mirror colors back from the ground. As the land stretched into the distance a slight shimmer twisted the frieze of creosote bushes and juniper, making it jump unexpectedly: it would be very easy to get lost out here. He walked a couple of dozen paces, shouting Pascale’s name. It was possible she could have found her way to the Agora, but he could not imagine why. His instinct told him she had to be here, in the open country. He walked on, calling out anxiously.
“Pascale, Pascale, are you out here? Where are you?”
He turned around in a full circle, searching, and as he faced back toward the desert suddenly she was there, right in front of him. For an instant the cascading light seemed to come to a full stop. He was stunned by her beauty. It made the desert a place of perfection. At the same time he was overwhelmed by a look on her face, so different, so full of an emptiness and pain he could not have imagined yesterday. She came toward him, hesitantly at first, almost as if she was sleep-walking. He put his hands out to her and she fell on his chest and clung to him. The pleasure of her embrace took his breath away, but his stomach was knotted by the affliction in her eyes.
“What happened, Pascale? What’s wrong?”
She did not reply but slowly her body was shaken with sobs. He held her as grief pulsed from her belly up into her throat. He did not know what to say or do, the experience was so foreign and new. People did not do this in Heaven, or if they did it was because they were the very small minority incapable of the life of immortality.
“Please, please, Pascale, be happy. You are in Heaven now. Whatever you have experienced cannot take that away. Everything here is perfect, can’t you see?”
She turned her head to look at him. “Jonas, you’re real, aren’t you? You came for me?”
“Yes, of course I did. I am your sponsor, your friend.”
He bent at once and kissed her on the lips, running his hands across her face and neck and down her back. She responded instinctively, pressing herself close to his body, kissing him hungrily, desperately.
Jonas’ heart was pounding like a drum and his legs were buckling under him. He wanted to pull her down and make love with her there on the sand under the flawless sun. But despite the avalanche of desire falling on him there was a still greater urgency. He had to make sure she was going to be able to calm herself, to be in her right mind. Otherwise the rest of Heaven would never accept her as worthy of immortality.
“Stop, stop, Pascale, you have to stop. Listen to me, please, look at me. Speak to me. Say something!”
Slowly, unwillingly she stopped and pulled herself back slightly. Her eyes had lost their lifeless look, recovering a little of their light, but there was still pain and fear in them.
“Jonas, don’t leave me. I feel sunshine again when you’re near. You must promise to stay close, here in Heaven. You promise me?”
“Of course, of course, Pascale, I promise, I will never leave you. But, tell me, what are you doing out here? What happened?”
She did not reply. She just shook her head, and put her arms round him once more, this time just standing there with her head resting on his shoulder. He held her while the moment of intense desire seemed to pass, wrapped as it was in her sorrow that did not have a name.
“Tell me, at least, are you able to come back with me? Palmiro is looking for you, and I think people from the colony are bound to be here soon. You must decide c
learly, Pascale, are you ready to be one of our company of Immortals?”
She pulled back from him once more, looking at him. She seemed to weigh his words, trying to understand for herself what they could mean. She started to speak, stopped, and seemed almost to shiver. Finally she said. “I don’t know, Jonas, but with you I can try.”
Just then they heard a woman’s distant voice calling their names. “Jonas, Pascale, where are you? Are you out here?”
It was Emmanuelle, and Jonas knew that the answer Pascale had given had to suffice.
He shouted, “Yes, yes, we’re here. We’re coming.” He looked at Pascale questioningly and she nodded. They grasped hands and together threaded their way back through the scrub oak and juniper to the road and the Baths.
Emmanuelle was waiting for them at the edge of the road. She looked even more tousled and rumpled than yesterday but when she saw them her face lit up with a radiant smile and a wink. “Well, look at you! I thought Palmiro was the love interest, but it seems the two of you have hit it off!”
Jonas mumbled something, embarrassed. He couldn’t begin to explain. But Emmanuelle was having none of it. “No, don’t apologize, really, I have to thank both of you most heartily. I haven’t had such fun since I don’t know when. What a Doblepoble! All the drama of a late-night initiation, a little sip of Pandit’s sweet brew, and then waking up to one more kick-start so I could bring in the cavalry!”
“You brought Cyrus?”
“Oh that dreamer, no, he’s lost to the world. I couldn’t find him anywhere. So I took things into my own hands. I rounded up some fun people who would give a pretty good idea of who we are in the HH. You’ll be amazed! And I brought breakfast. You guys must be starving!”
Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven Page 23