Mirage

by Perry Brass

  Jack looked around. "Doesn't look that bad to me. We're early. I think we should have called first. They may not even be around."

  "Where could they go?" Ceil asked. "So, they aren't here—we leave a note or something. Anyway, we can have a look around."

  We followed them, although they could not see us, as they went through the whole house. Ceil screeched, dished, gossiped, and cackled. Jack smiled. "The name is a hoot, isn't it, Ceil—Holy Resurrection?"

  "Yeah, about as much fun as the Bowery at Christmas. There's something screwy about this place, Jack. Let's get out of here."

  They walked down the stairs from the third floor, and suddenly at the back of the first floor, found the stairs to the basement. The door was ajar and the light was on.

  "Shall we?" Ceil asked. "Maybe there're down there making wine or something?"

  "Ceil," Jack said, as they started cautiously down the stairs. "One day this curiosity of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble."

  We would have left at that moment, had we not realized that Reggy and his delegation of Sudanese gentlemen were knocking at the front door. Reggy was dressed to the nines, in contrast to his clients who were wrapped in poverty. Reggy knocked and knocked, then opened the door. He and his future buyers walked in and the first face he saw was Richard Halpern's—white as any ghost. It occurred to us that Reggy now would have no problems taking back the property. If only the Sudanese did not believe in a permanent residue of the supernatural.

  Epilogue

  It is midday, in the darkest part of the forest. The part that we know with our eyes closed. Greeland is away on a hunt. He has been gone for three days, and will be back this evening. At least that's what he told me. There is no telling what the real story is.

  Perhaps he went to another enclave and has been talking to the other brothers there. He has been agitating now for several Ten Moons—secretly. He will be made leader of us. I know it. The revolt will come against the Off-Sexers. We will no longer worship the Goddess, but a God. He has been telling the other Same-Sexers about the Earth, and that story of the three-balled men who came from Sumer. Most of them don't believe him. Woosh says he's lying. He is furious that Greeland is undermining the balance of the planet, or so Woosh says. He has become Greeland's sworn enemy. He has spread the word that Greeland is a demon, or possessed by them. An anti-god. I wonder if Woosh is frightened that this is indeed the "higher knowledge" that can kill him. I don't know. But even Aawkwa—who loved Greeland so much—now turns his face away from him when they meet in the old men's hut. He, too, is unsettled about the course of our planet. Now, about once every change of the Moons, Greeland runs off. "I'm going out hunting," he says. And I tell him it's fine, since I can't leave anyway.

  We've been back for five Ten Moons, and now have a beautiful, young son. Getting him was surprisingly easy. The priestesses realized Greeland was no longer someone to be intimidated or trifled with. At first they stalled him at the Temple. They said we'd have to wait our turn like everybody else. Dozens of other couples from the enclaves were waiting.

  We went back home, to the Dark Men, and I asked him what were we going to do.

  "Don't worry. I'll go back in a few days. I'll speak to our Sisters in private. If they know what's good for them, they will give us our son."

  And he did, and they did.

  When he came back, I asked him what he said to them. "I told them if we didn't get our son, I would destroy all of them. The Same-Sexers will revolt; the time will come soon. I know the secret—and the priestesses themselves must realize I know. They know I won't be stopped now. There is no Goddess. That's why she has no face. Have you noticed that her statue has no face at all?"

  "I thought it was so that every woman could be Her."

  "No, Enkidu, she has no face because she is no more real than any of the other ancient gods. She is simply a statue without a face. The only thing that has power on Ki is the third ball. And we have that. That's why the Off-Sexers hate us so much."

  "You'll destroy the balance of this planet," I told him.

  "Shut up," he said. "Since when do you understand the balance of this planet? I want our son."

  "Then I will get to name him," I said.

  He hesitated. Greeland could smell a trick now. He'd learn to lie. He'd learned to use subterfuge, force, deceit. And I had learned to see it. "If that's what you want. What will you name him?"

  I had thought about the name for a long time. "Albert."

  "You little shit!" He could read my mind. He could read every word behind my eyes. "Why would you hurt me like that?"

  "Why does it hurt you?" I asked. "I have lost both of them. Alan and Robert. As well as Ert. I'll name him for all of them. Albert."

  But Greeland learned to live with this, as he learned to live with so much that happened. After Albert came back to live with us, Greeland brought a carving of his totem figure, the dog Netch, into the old men's hut. He had carved Netch himself, and although he was not an accomplished carver, even I could see the primitive, blunt power in Greeland's work. The dog was truly frightening; nothing like it had been seen before in the long hut. The old men smiled in their usual ga-ga way and said he'd not forgotten the old ways. Greeland was proud. Then they asked me what figure I would bring. It seemed the right time to choose. I went out into the forest and found a piece of soft wood and carved from it a figure of a lion, exactly as I remembered the animals in stone who lay in the front of the New York Public Library.

  "We have never seen such a beast!" the old men exclaimed, and I told them simply that I had.

  "He is full of interesting visions," fat Onoo said. "What do you call this creature?"

  I had to think for a moment. "The Guardian-of-Books."

  "Interesting," Onoo said, lowering his eyes. "We have never heard this name. What is a book?"

  Albert is now in the hut of my fathers, Wilf and Fel. They're having a great time playing granddads to him. And they babysit those times when I tell them I have to go off by myself. I tell them I need some time alone in the forest, and my fathers just shake their heads and smile. They're good about not asking questions.

  Albert is a sweet child. Clear-headed. Nice. He loves animals. He gets along with other kids. He doesn't seem to have Greeland's impatience and temper. But on the other hand, he may not be very sharp either. Sometimes I think he talks like Greeland. More in grunts than words. That is the problem with kids. You cannot tell how they will come out. But you have to love them anyway. It is a fact of life—and to tell you the truth, I would have loved Albert if he came back to us with three heads and one ball. I knew I was going to love him. He has been the delight of my life.

  As usual, on Ki, I have no idea who Albert's mother is. The priestesses will not say. But one day I will find out. And probably I will discover that Albert is the son of one of my sisters—that is, Ert's sisters. He is dark, like we are, but he has blue-green eyes, and when I look at them everything comes back to me: the whole story that I have told you. I see in my son all of these parts of me, and of course Greeland, too. But the one person I don't see is Wright.

  I grieved terribly for him, and also for Alan. To love some one that you have shared, cohabited with—identified so much with that his identity has become your own—I know this is the essence of our own love, the love of the Same-Sexers. We have to identify with the men we love; we have to see some small part of ourselves in them. And I saw that small part of myself die. I saw Alan die; and I saw Wright die. I saw them die twice, although I can't remember their first death. But I'll never forget their second.

  But as Zachariah told me, "One day, you'll understand everything." And he was right. I did understand the horrible necessity of their deaths.

  And now I understand something else: how we exchange our deepest feelings, personalities, identities; the core of us. Back and forth. Man to man. Psychologically. Sexually. In an exchange of dreams and souls that moves through our depths as we exchange them through ou
r own seed. And I am a part of this exchange—with Greeland, with Wright; and with Alan who still lives inside me, as I had once lived inside him. Now his history, even his name, "Al-an,"—an, the ancient name for heaven itself, awakens me in the middle of the night from my dreams. I see him and I hear his name. He is a part of the dark sky above my head and my own consciousness.

  The Star is directly overhead, so that the shadows in the thickest groves of trees are as black as night. But he knows where to meet me. My heart beats faster. Finally, I am in the grove, and I see him. His face is very dark, and hairy; hairier than we are. He is thickset and stocky, with large muscular shoulders. He is naked and takes me into his arms. "Enkidu, Enkidu," he whispers and kisses me hard on the mouth. His mouth tastes like the forest, like the rain soaking through leaves and grass, like the rain mixed with sweat in the afternoon.

  He pulls me to the ground. "George," I say. "George."

  "Yes."

  My heart is pounding. I feel nervous. We'd been meeting like this for two years. I wonder if Greeland suspects. I kiss him on his mouth and ears. "I'm glad you could get away from them."

  "The Off-Sexers are tired of me already. I won't work as hard for them, no matter how hard they beat me. I think they're actually interested in trading me for someone else."

  "Greeland?" I ask.

  "Perhaps. A substitute for the substitute! Would you give them your mate in exchange for me?"

  I can't do that, I tell him. Greeland is also the father of my son. I am not even sure how much I love George. But the first time we met in the forest to make love, he told me a story. He remembered it from his life on Earth. It was another Sumerian myth, over four thousand years old: it seemed to put everything that Greeland and I had done into place.

  He told it to me the first time we'd made love—after he had taken a drop of seed from my Egg in his mouth. I'd let him have that drop, and he fell into the deepest post-orgasm sleep. Then he awoke. The story came to him, he said, in his sleep. It haunted him. "It's one of the world's oldest myths," he said. Later, he repeated it to me several times, so that I knew it word for word.

  "What was it?" I asked him, that first time.

  "The Resurrection. The story of Ianna's Resurrection. It seems perfect for this strange time and place."

  I asked him to tell me. I sat on his large lap, and dug my fingers through the hair on his chest. He began:

  "Inanna, later called Ishtar, was beautiful. But," he whispered into my ear, kissing it, "she was too ambitious. She was the goddess of beauty and war. She reigned over the Earth, but that was not enough. She wanted the Underworld, the land of the dead. I guess she was like one of those movie stars who can't get too many Oscars.

  "The Underworld was ruled by her sister, the horrifying Ereshkigal who was not beautiful but could kill with her eyes. Ereshkigal was jealous of Inanna's beauty. So when Inanna came down into the Underworld, Ereshkigal immediately suspected something. She had her ambitious sister stripped naked and killed, as one god could do to another. Inanna, though, being a smart cookie, had left word with Ninshubur, her own trusted girlfriend, that if she didn't get right back up into Heaven, she was to go to Enki, the wisest of the gods, and Enki would pull her back up from the Dead.

  "Enki, using the water of life—I guess that meant cum, not Scotch—was able to do it. He revived Inanna and brought her back to Heaven. But Ereshkigal was not going to be cheated, so she sent her own evil demons after Inanna. They insisted that since no one ever came back from the Dead, Inanna would have to send a substitute in her place. Inanna looked around and the only one with enough guts to go was her husband, the very homely shepherd-god, Dumuzi. And he loved Inanna, so he went."

  I kissed him on his sweet mouth. "You feel like Dumuzi. Don't you?"

  "Yes, Enkidu. I feel like Dumuzi. I never understood why a gorgeous man like Wright had the hots for me. Now I know. I was going to substitute for you. I guess you could say I'm your own Resurrection."

  "I don't find you that homely," I said.

  "But you were once Alan. Not Wright. I always had the hots for you. But I was sure you weren't interested."

  It was true: once I had been more curious than interested. But I was too embarrassed to say he was correct. However things had changed a great deal. "I'm Enkidu now," I said.

  "Yes, and I'm no longer George. I'm a different being, in a very different place. The Off-Sexers call me 'the Lord of the Mountain.' But the only mountain I have is humiliation."

  "I will not humiliate you," I said.

  "No, you will not," he said. "We will meet—and fool Greeland, as he fooled me. And you will be my salvation."

  "And you will be mine," I said. And it was true.

  It was true. George had become the salvation of my life on Ki; he had given me a life of my own. But what a shock—what a grim reminder—his story was to me, when Greeland and I resumed our lives at the enclave of the Dark Men, after waking up in the cave.

  That was when I learned from Aawkwa—one Moon after we returned—that Greeland had secretly sent George back, and I had not been told.

  I confronted Greeland in our hut.

  Yes, it was true, he told me. That was why his scrotum felt like he'd lost his Egg just before we left Earth. He'd given every bit of his seed to George—his Egg was shrunk to the size of a pin; then he strangled him. "I stuffed him in a black garbage bag and put him in the trunk of his car. I figured no one would notice him for a day. Till we disappeared, and returned. I sent him back, and Woosh took him."

  But why George? "Didn't it bother you to hurt him, and kill him? He'd been your friend?"

  No, Greeland replied, he'd never loved George. But we had to bring somebody back. And the choice was either George or Robert. "I knew you'd never forgive me if I killed Robert. It was in my power to do so, but I spared him for your sake, because"—he paused, nervously—"I love you so much."

  "Thank you," I said. "For not killing Robert."

  "Listen, I'm not that stupid. I wasn't sure if I wanted Robert back here. I'd be way too jealous. In the beginning, I couldn't wait to kill him, after I realized how much Alan was in love with him. Then I wondered what it would be like to have him anywhere on this planet. With you on it."

  Suddenly I smiled. "I'm sorry," I said. "I couldn't help what I felt for him."

  Greeland smiled too, and tried to hold me. He apologized; he realized how painful the whole thing had been for me. "But it would have been a nightmare for me thinking about Robert here; wondering how you were going to get to him. I knew you would have to kill him yourself. And you wouldn't. So George seemed perfect to replace you. The night before we left, I came out with the whole story to him. I came clean as a whistle. I just neglected to tell him that he'd replace you."

  I felt my body flinch. What an awful fate for George.

  "Woosh himself took him to the Off-Sexers," Greeland said. "Without involving the priestesses at all. The Off-Sexers never knew the difference. It might have looked a bit strange, but Woosh told them you sacrificed your Egg, cut it off in a special Same-Sex sacrifice to the Goddess. It's amazing what those idiots will believe when they want to. But people are crazy that way. Didn't we learn that on Earth?"

  "He didn't know he was going to be my substitute, did he?"

  Greeland told me no.

  I asked him if George had been in shock when Woosh took him. "Did Woosh give him any time to adjust?"

  "No, he took him immediately. There was no time—it was as if a full-fledged war was going on. The Off-Sexers were attacking us, and of course they were attacking each other. We had called off the Goddess Dances. We were in chaos. I will avenge all of this eventually, Enkidu. I will organize us. But for now, George is taking your place. He is called Enhursag. Another ancient name. Sumerian, like yours. It means 'Lord of the Mountain.' It actually refers to the Earth. Mountain—‘Earth’—as opposed to the sea. Nice name, isn't it? He picked the name back in Washington."

  "He knew about this?"
r />   "I just told him that I wanted to bring him back—not to take your place. I didn't tell him that, or that I'd have to kill him. The most fabulous sex God ever made, that last time with him. Just—uh—gives me shivers thinking about it. I'd never shot such a load. Drained me . . . well, you remember the way I was before we left. You couldn't feel my third nut at all."

  I still remembered the way Greeland smiled. So clever. So effective. I couldn't hate him. We had to bring someone back and he knew, instinctively, I'm sure, that I couldn't bring back Robert. We had been back that whole first Moon, and no one bothered us—the Off-Sexers never attacked again—before I found out. I even stopped thinking about my substitute. Maybe I had just been in a daze after everything that had happened on Earth. Greeland took over my life again, as he took over everyone else's.

  I didn't think about George. Greeland was achieving power in the enclave. His arrogance bothered me, but I chose to ignore it. I let everything roll off me, until three years later—after our son Albert came back to live with us; and everyone from our enclave was at a Festival of the Ten Moons in the Temple complex.

  There was a Goddess Dance, and I watched. It was an immense, colorful celebration. Wild extravagant costumes. Feathers, paint, fur. Music from bells, flutes, drums. The Dark Men had become even more lavish in their presentations, maybe to make up for the time when we'd called off the Dances. Greeland and I came with the others to the Temple, but he refused to take part. As his partner, I could not either. So I only watched, while Greeland disappeared to talk to old chums.

  The Off-Sexers watched, some sneering, others fascinated. A haughty group of them walked through the gates into the central open plaza. They were in full Off-Sex armor and heavy clothing. With them, I saw George. He was almost naked, reduced to horrible slavery. Filthy. Beaten. Slapped around in public. They made him grovel, carry parcels, fetch like a dog. I saw them whip him, call him names. It was revolting. I felt such pity and love for him. I knew I could have been the one doing this, that he'd been brought to Ki without the knowledge that this would be his reward.