by Gore Vidal
Cuder Two said, "There is far too much time. Everyone is now channeling back to Golgotha. Including"—he winked at his younger self—"the Hacker.
"While you were—and I still am—at GE, our task was simple. To put NBC first in the coming November sweeps, with a world-wide satellite audience that would sink CNN once and for all. As we speak, Chet Claypoole is putting together a camera crew. ..."
"I have agreed to act as anchor," I said, not wanting to be left out of the action. "Chet says business affairs has concluded my contract." This was not stricdy true, but I am ninety percent certain I have the job.
"Why," asked Cuder One, "aren't you wearing our hearing aid.>"
"Because a small operation on the inner ear has restored two thirds of my hearing. Leap at it when it comes your way three years from now."
"But will it come my way?" Cuder One was morose. "How do I know we're on the same tape?"
"Because I'm here. Because you're here. Because this tape is the only one that the virus hasn't destroyed, which means that this knucklehead is our last best hope." He stared at me. What, I wonder, is a knucklehead.>
I cleared my throat with an episcopal rumble. "Let us
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review the bidding, as Petxonius used to say. It is dear to me that you are both, at different times, of course, the same person with a single mission which has to do with my mission." This was neat, I thought, and I could see that I had at least got through to the white-haired Cutler Two, who is something of a smart aleck.
I indicated the second scroll. "You are eager to substitute your own version of events for mine even though I have lived through it all and you are ..." I searched for a powerful put-down; found it: ^^Unboml^^
"Now, now ..." Cuder One fiddled nervously with his hearing aid.
"Since the evidence of the unborn is not allowable in any court of the land," I preached, "so the testimony of the unborn carries no more weight than that of a mustard seed."
"Than a whatr asked Cuder One.
"Mustard seed!" shouted his older self. "You really need that operation. Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat will perform the preliminary ..."
"Shut up!" I smiled. "Since the Hacker has blocked your approach to the other principals involved in the Greatest Story Not So Far Told, I suggest you come clean with me. Tell me, Dr. Cuder, and you, too. Dr. Cutler, what input are you trying to . . . to . . ." Confused from listening to too many prime-time television talk shows, I ended weakly, ". . . to put in.>"
"There is a difference between us," said Cuder Two, whom I dislike, as opposed to Cuder One for whom I have a certain warm feeling. He is so vulnerable, as they say on the tube when someone has been screaming very loudly for a very long time and only the welcome arrival of a commercial can stop him.
Cuder One was staring intendy at his older self. "Where does Marvin Wasserstein stand in all this?"
Cutler Two slipped a pair of contact lenses beneath his eyelids. Despite snowy hair, wizened face, he looked a decade younger and far healthier than my poor Cuder, who kept staring at himself, fascinated.
"Let's say that Marvin is now, as am I, a loyal employee of Gulf H- Eastern. He does not question the management, nor do I." Cuder Two blinked his contact lenses at me, rather the way that Saint used to bat his eyes when about to tell a lie. "The revelations about your private life with Paul will humanize the entire story, and give aid and comfort to a generation decimated by AIDS and, of course, nuclear war. It is your solemn task, Timothy, to reveal to us what it was really like back here in the early days. What Jesus was really like . . ."
"You know as well as I do that neither Saint Paul nor I ever met Him."
"But you've seen Him, listened to Him . . ." Cuder Two had begun to pace the room.
"Never. At least not yet." I could be sly, too. Particularly now that I am the only game in town.
Cuder Two drew a Polaroid from his pocket. "Here's a shot of you, Tim. At Golgotha. Proof that you were a bona fide witness to the Crucifixion."
I looked at the picture. There I am, looking the way I do now, bald and haggard, while next to me is Mary Baker Eddy, gazing rapturously at the far-off cross.
"I don't remember being there," I began.
"Because on this tape you haven't been there yet. But you will be there. . . ." Cuder Two clapped his hands. "That picture's proof"
"If Marvin is there then I am there—or are you the me that is there.>" Cuder One glared at his fixture self.
"That's for me to know and for you to find out. Let me
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say, Tim-san, that Saint Paul wants you to cooperate in the worst way."
I picked up on that, quick as lightning. "So you do know Saint Paul.>"
Cuder Two was smooth. "Before the viral epidemic, when we could channel freely, I took several conference-style meetings with him, but we were never one-on-one. We were saving that for next month in Jerusalem when the Hacker sealed off the tapes, and so poor Cynthia's blocked and I can't travel like I used to, first class all the way."
"You still use Cynthia.^" Cuder One was suddenly cheery.
"I'm still as devoted to her as you were. She's truly special."
"How is she holding up.>"
"Just fine. Except for an easily treatable blood-sugar problem ..."
"Gendemen." I was polite but firm. "As interesting as Cynthia must be . . ."
"How fimny!" Cuder One chuckled. "I'm using her right now to visit the bishop, and you're using her, too, later on." He turned to me. "It's what we call trance-channeling. You see, Cynthia goes into this trance, then Mr. Yamamoto ..."
"For years now the best on the beat." Cuder Two was smug.
"You're here through him, too.>" Cuder One's eyes were huge behind the magnifying glasses, while those of his older self were narrow.
"Yes, indeedy. You see, Tim boy, Mr. Yamamoto's a spiritual entity who works with Cynthia in the trance-state. He's the one who leads you back to your past lives or reincarnations. We made contact with him through the New Age Time Travel Service, who have been truly supportive."
"Very interesting," I said. "But I assume that if the busy Mr. Yamamoto's specialty is to show you your past lives, then you two—or the one of you now in two temporal sections—^must have been me in an earlier life. Otherwise how did he channel you from there to here.>"
Cuder Two was ready for that; ready for anything is my guess. I do not trust him. "It's a matter of concentration really. First Cynthia must know where—and why—^you want to see someone in the past. Cynthia is a very serious woman and ceramicist, with a sense of the sacredness of all life. Naturally, she eats only macrobiotic vegetables and tofli and, of course, nothing that has ever had a face except cauliflower. By the way"—he turned to Cuder One—"she's lost the kiln. There was a fire. The Hockneys were burned, both of them."
"Was she insured?"
"Please." I had had enough of Cynthia, tofli-munching invader of my privacy.
I reached for the false gospel on the table but Cuder Two got to it first. "Our text needs more fine-tuning," he said, looking oddly at his younger self; then oddly at me; then altogether oddly, as he started to fade. "Mr. Yamamoto!" he called. "Please. Not yet." But to no avail. "Cynthia . . . !" he wailed, as he faded to black.
Cuder One shook his head, "This is all very unexpected," he said, "and discouraging. I had hoped to go over the text with you during this session. . . ."
But for once, I was ahead of him. "My gospel either wasn't in the mop room or it was and your older self is now trying to get me to change it, to—'fine-tune' it, as he says."
"I don't trust him." Cuder One was firm. "Even if he is me, I don't like anything about the way he just barged in, knowing I'd be here. I'm not the Hacker. But I could be if he is. In which case . . . Cynthia^' Cuder One was gone.
I immediately went to the Z Channel intercom phone
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and rang Chet. Luckily, he was in. I told him what had happened. He was
very upset, particularly about Dr. Guder's going over to Gulf -f- Eastern. "This means they're going to try to get to Golgotha before we do. Don't make a move till you hear from me." Then I heard him say, "Get me Marvin Wasserstein on line two."
I have just gone through my text from beginning to right here and I think that it is all just the way I wrote it. Yes, there is all the business about Chet and television, but, like metaphors and similes, I don't think that these references give away to what extent I've been dealing with kibitzers during the time frame in which I've been describing my life and times with Saint Paul. Certainly if this alien element is too strong in the gospel, I shall simply cut it out when I prepare the final version which I will noty Dr. Cuder—either of you—cleave where you'd like me to leave it in the cathedral mop room. Rather, I shall take the manuscript myself to Alexandria where my old friend Apollos will do a bang-up job of publishing the. book as is.
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I sat in the back and lcx)ked around. Pumpkin-colored sails had been tastefully stapled to the wooden walls along with torn nets and broken oars. It was sheer Priscilla.
As Saint had predicted, Priscilla had taken to Ephesus like an anchor to water. In a single season, she had made herself a leading figure in the avant-garde of that arts-mad capital. She had also resumed her career as a modem dancer, to the horror of the Ephesian dance critics, rear-guard to a man. She had also gone back to ballet school, enrolling at the Temple of Diana, where she was surprisingly well regarded by the priestesses who could be found day after day doing their barre exercises.
Since the morning show at the waterfront was only half fiiU, Saint was a bit absentminded during the service. He liked fiill houses. WTien it came to question time, he was fidgety.
An old lady stood up. She was gaunt, ill groomed. 'We have been waiting patiendy—lo! these many years." My hands started to sweat. The one question that we always dreaded was about to b>e put into orbit yet again. "I and my ftiends who first brought me to Jesus, believed Him when He said that He—as the bona fide Messiah—^w ould return to us while we were still alive. Well, my ftiends have long since crossed the shining river and I am barely clinging to the flotsam and jetsam here by de ribberside. So could you kindly share with us His latest adjusted estimated time of arrival?"
''There was, madam, no agreed-on timetable w^hen Our Lord left us to make His preparations in His Father's mansion with its many homes, tasteftilly appointed with Samian drapes." He stared at Priscilla's pumpkin-colored curtains. ''Nay!" Saint exclaimed, disguising a yawn as he yawned. "Verily," he added; and did a two-step to the left.
It was autumn, I remember, a w^arm day, and the chapel was fiiU of the smell of filing fish. I itched. Crabs yet again. A cadeau from Priscilla?
The haggard woman was not about to be satisfied with Samian drapes and only the one "verily." "My friends are now gone," she keened. "It was they who brought me into the church. It was they who died, bitter and bewildered, because it was they who had expected to see Him as He had promised them that they would before they died so that they could make their reservations direcdy with Him for accommodations in Paradise. Then, armed with His travel-vouchers, they could confidently endure the fires and torments of Judgment Day, unscathed and unscathing—be-bop and Abendigo Go! Go!" She cried, from the heart.
"Glory! Glory!" shouted Saint, and the congregation took up the shout. But then, afi:er the Hallelujahs, the haggard woman was still standing there and there was—and is—no answer to her question.
Saint being Saint got out of it as he always did: glossola-lia. He spoke in tongues, rather like those scat singers on the television. That inspired the others. There was a lot of noise. We slipped away.
"This is not getting any easier," said Saint, gazing with lust at a pair of Samian fisher boys repairing a net.
"Eyes front!" I snarled. Saint giggled.
We passed through the sea gate, always open in those halcyon winter days. Then we stepped onto the always-to-me glamorous marble arcaded main street of Ephesus. "A lot of the old-timers," said Saint, "our best customers in fact, are only in this because we've promised—^well, lard-ass promised—that He'd be back before they cooled it!"
"Well, He will come back, won't He.> I mean that's what we preach, isn't it.>"
"Yeah." Saint batted his eyes, as the richly decorated litter of one of the high priestesses of Diana lurched past us, carried on the powerful shoulders of rug-wrapped Armenians. At first we couldn't tell which of the five high priestesses
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it was because the curtains were drawn, but then, as one of the attendant eunuchs slithered past me, he gave me a breathtaking grope. "You can find me at Stephanie's, big boy. Any time!" I doubled up trying to catch my breath.
"Oh, vile!" Saint launched into his anti-eunuch number, one of the best of the golden oldies, while I gagged like a fish, scrotum atingle.
We were joined by Apollos. He was an Alexandrian Jew who had converted to Christianity even before Saint. In fact, Apollos was a genuine aposde who outranked Saint in the overall Christian organization. At the very beginning Asia Minor was Apollos's show, but gradually he let Saint take over, with no hard feelings. Since he had independent means, he enjoyed lending—^that is, giving—^Saint money. For some time Apollos had been setded in Ephesus, the richest and culturally most important of the cities of Asia Minor, which is why it was Saint's headquarters. As Aquila liked to say, "Where the bookkeeping is, there is Jesus."
"Sorry to be late," said Apollos.
"Late for what.^" Saint pounded my butt until the blood finally began to circulate and I could catch my breath again.
"For the morning service at the waterfi-ont." Apollos eyed me curiously. Balls ringing like church bells, I affected insouciance, Priscilla's favorite word that season. "Are you all right.>" he asked. I gagged—souciandy, I fear—for answer.
"Poor Timmy was just assaulted by one of the high priestesses' eunuchs. ..."
Apollos shoved us inside an arcade; thus, narrowly, we avoided the sharp hooves of a squadron of imperial cavalry. "Which one?"
"He didn't give his name," said Saint.
"He means which high priestess." I was now myself again. "It was Stephanie, and he invited me to pay a call. On
him, not her, to which the answer is No Way, Jose," I added. "But she's really something," I added to my addition.
Like every red-blooded Asia Minor boy I'd been brought up to lust in dreams after the priestesses of Diana. When I finally got to see them in reality and in the flesh, I wasn't at all disappointed like you're supposed to be when you finally gaze upon your heart's desire. Just the opposite. The girls were wonderfiil looking and they were all available under the right "religious" circumstances—or Asia Minor boy! Since they were dancers of high professional caliber, their bodies were perfection, particularly Stephanie's, the number two high priestess, who always led the chorus line after she had finished her New Moon Solo, which never failed to bring down the house. Yes, I was hot for Stephanie. But as of that date fate had not yet mated us. Now, maybe, fate in the form of a horny, melon-soft eunuch was about to pitch me a slow ball.
The main street of Ephesus is long and straight and what with its arcades and fantastic sculptures, easily the most beautifiil street in the whole wide world, and that goes for downtown Rome, which you can have, with its jammed trafiic and horrendous smells. Ephesus is beautifiil while the locals are quick and sharp and Greek Greek, if you know what I mean, old stock, unmixed with foreigners and other col-oreds.
The Ephesian church had rented the lecture hall of Tyrannos for Saint to preach in. So just off the main marble drag. Saint did his number every day of the week. In some ways, this was the toughest part of his mission because he was on his own up there on the stage and the Ephesian audience—^well, it was Greek Greek, and they often gave him a hard time.
Also, in the three years since Aquila and Priscilla had
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taken over the sho
p, as we say, the Temple of Diana had suffered an eleven percent drop in overall box-office revenues. Naturally, we were held responsible and it would be nice if that had been true—as it is true now—but it was not the case then. In actual fact, the Temple administration had become so conservative and set in its ways that there was never a new production while the old productions were so seedy looking and underrehearsed that the Ephesians no longer supported the home team the way they used to. Temple box office depended entirely on out-of-towners, whose attendance depended, in turn, on the international currency exchange rates, at that time in chaos as the Recession of the Consulship of Caligula's Horse was just coming in for a soft landing somewhere.
Over the door to Tyrannos's lecture hall, there was a sign: PAUL of tarsus brings you the good news about
JESUS CHRIST AND THE END OF THE WORLD. ARE YOU READY.>
At the box office, a nice crowd was lined up for tickets.
"Back to the salt mines," moaned Saint, but of course show business was his life, and he skipped into that hall fast as a monkey off his leash.
Apollos walked with me back to the house that Aquila and Priscilla were renting. A servant showed us into the second atrium, all splashing fountains and exotic greenery. "I've found us a neat parcel," said Apollos. "But Aquila thinks that if the word gets around that we're building something permanent then everyone will know that Jesus will not be returning in the near future and there goes our Message down the old drain. So we'll have to buy the property through a dummy company, with bearer shares, of course. Two gin daisies," he said to the ancient buder, an Egyptian slave.
"Two what?" I asked.
"Gin daisies. You'll love them." ApoUos was very elegant, with a long pomaded moustache and pendant diamond earrings that were the hallmark of masculinity in those easygoing times where Irma la douceur de vivre was on every £fallique lisping lip and tongue. Youth! "It's this new drink that everybody asks for. No one knows its origin."