Forgiving Ararat

by Gita Nazareth

  “You’re all about choices,” I said. “What choice did Noah have? Build an ark or everything dies? People make him out to be some kind of hero doing God’s bidding. He had the biggest gun in the world pressed against his head; who wouldn’t build an ark? He was just doing what anybody else would have done to save their own neck.”

  Luas put his pipe in an ashtray on his desk and got up.

  “Precisely. Now, how shall we present Ms. Rabun?”

  “Precisely what?” I said.

  “What’s the first thing Noah did after the Flood?”

  “Towel off?”

  “He made a burnt offering.”

  “That’s what the Bible says.”

  “Why make a burnt offering?”

  “To give God thanks.”

  Luas began pacing the small room. “Correct, and what was it worth, this offering?”

  “I guess what all offerings are worth.”

  “Really?” Luas said. “This man, Noah, had just witnessed the mass murder of millions of people and animals. As you said about building the ark under threat, who wouldn’t have been grateful for having been spared after all that? But look at it from God’s perspective, Brek. What did God really want in all this?”

  “Love, I guess. Love, respect, the same things everybody wants.”

  “Precisely. Now, is that what billowed up from Noah’s burnt offering? Love? Or was it the stench of fear? The fear of instant death and annihilation—”

  “But—”

  “Throughout history, the tendency has always been to read Genesis from mankind’s perspective, from the perspective of the accused: man’s fall, man’s destruction, one man’s obedience, one man’s deliverance, one man’s thanksgiving, mankind’s guaranteed survival. Perhaps the story is told not so we understand better the condition of man, which we know all too well; perhaps it is told so we understand better the condition of God. Noah built the ark because the price of disobedience was intolerable and later praised God to appease God, not out of love for God. Not that we should criticize Noah...he did exactly what was his to do. But if we look more closely, we see that it was divinity itself, entangled in the greatest of all ironies, that cheapened the gesture and desecrated both the obedience and the sacrifice. The story of Noah is the story of God’s need for man, Brek, not man’s need for God. It also explains why, because of that divine need, the possibility of evil must be permitted to exist for there to be any possibility of love; it explains why a serpent inhabited the Garden at the beginning of time, and why it will continue to coil around our feet until the end of the age.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Look,” Luas said. “What changed in those forty days was the very essence of God’s relationship to man, not man’s relationship to God. God changed His ways; we didn’t change ours. Yahweh recognized the problem instantly, the moment the waters receded and the sacrificial fire was lit. By punishing man for disobeying and turning away, the Flood had destroyed love itself. For true love to exist, the option not to love—without compulsion—must also exist. When love is demanded and extorted, it becomes fear, and fear is the opposite of love. So, Yahweh had a choice: He could accept the possibility of sin to achieve the greater prize of love, or He could endure the false praises of creatures too terrified to do anything else. He chose the former, gifting to humanity the freedom to choose. So critical is our understanding of this act that Yahweh selected the refraction of sunlight into the many colors of a rainbow as the eternal symbol of our freedom to follow many different paths. No matter how far we may stray, no matter how much it hurts—God or us.”

  Luas returned to his chair behind the desk.

  “Amina Rabun is an heir to that promise, Brek. But that promise is both a gift and a curse. With the freedom to choose comes the responsibility for one’s choices. The Urartu Chamber is the place where those choices and responsibilities are reckoned. So, I ask you again: How shall we present the case of Amina Rabun?”

  21

  * * *

  Elymas sits on the rocking chair in Sarah’s room, pushing himself back and forth with his cane against the corner of her crib. I have made my decision: I must see them again. The toothless smile appears when he hears me enter. I’m here to see my husband and daughter, but it feels shady, like a drug deal.

  “Shall I take you?” Elymas asks.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes widen and I disappear into them. I emerge this time in a quiet country cemetery on a sloping hillside bent in prayer against the wooded pew of Bald Eagle Mountain. I have been here several times before. This is the cemetery near my grandfather’s farm where the Cuttlers bury their dead. It is a pretty place. And sad. The sun this day burns warm and bright, but the graves do not taste the sun or feel its heat. A requiem of red oak trees enshrouds those who sleep here, denying them any sense of the dazzling display of fusion at work in the heavens above. Maybe it is not so dazzling after all: a paper-thin membrane of chlorophyll in the tree leaves demonstrates the easy dominance of darkness over light; but the shadows moving beneath the leaves appear to be of a different darkness and a different light; they flicker over and around the stones and dance across the grass without relation to the sway of the trees. A warm breeze stirs the memorial flags; the shadows examine them and retreat, satisfied with the crisp red, white, and blue fabric fixed with staples not yet rusted into shafts of blond wood not yet weathered.

  At the end of a row of well-kept plots without flags kneels a man in his fifties. His hair is thinning and his middle thickening. He resembles Bo’s father, Aaron, when I was first introduced to him, pulling weeds from the garden behind their house. The man in the cemetery hears me rustle through the grass and rises to his feet. In his right hand he holds a small silver tea cup, in his left, a black yarmulke. The cup falls when he sees me, crashing onto a sterling silver tray placed at the base of a small, granite gravestone. I cannot see the name. The collision knocks over a silver teapot and two other cups, spilling their contents.

  “Brek?”

  “Bo?”

  We race around the gravestones to hug each other.

  “I knew you’d come today,” he whispers.

  I look at him. He looks hollowed out, like he has aged decades, a faint shell of the man I once knew. “Are you sick?” I ask.

  “No, why?”

  “Because... because you don’t look well. You look so different from when we met two days ago.”

  “Two days ago?”

  “Yes, two days ago, at the playground with Sarah. Have you forgotten already?”

  He holds me at arm’s length. “That was twenty years ago, Brek.”

  “No it wasn’t,” I insist. “It was the day before yesterday. Remember? You had just finished your jog, and we put Sarah on the swing. You told me how you’d been staying with David and that things were starting to get back to normal. You were looking for a job in New York.”

  “I remember. That was twenty years ago, look—”

  He walks back to the grave, pulls a copy of the Centre Daily Times from beneath the serving tray, and shows it to me. The headline reads, “BOWLES EXECUTED.” The dateline reads, “July 21, 2009.”

  Bo leads me to the trunk of a large oak tree at the end of the row of gravestones, and we sit down together. He’s wearing wrinkled slacks and a polo shirt that looks as if he’s slept in it; his face is covered with gray whiskers. “I got the job in New York and lost it,” he says dejectedly. “I haven’t been able to keep a job for more than six months at a time since. No television station will touch me; they’re afraid of people who tell the truth. Maybe I drank a little too much and missed a few deadlines; but television is a sham, Brek, and the news is a sham. It’s all make-believe. I’m doing fine though. I’m a counselor at a homeless shelter now; they let me stay there while I get myself together. Good people. I run an AA meeting and keep an eye on things; I’m thinking about doing a documentary. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station. People
think the homeless are animals, but they’re just like everybody else; they had normal lives, just something went wrong.”

  Bo reaches out to hold my hand, but I pull it away.

  “Have I changed that much?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve missed you, Brek. When I heard they were executing that bastard at Rockview this morning, I had to drive up to see it. He asked the guard to read a Bible verse and that was it. No apology. No remorse. Nothing. I loved seeing him shake when they fried him. You saw it all, though; I knew you were there. I could feel you in the room.”

  “Who, Bo? Who are you talking about?”

  “Ott Bowles. That’s why you came back, isn’t it? Because it’s finally over and justice has been done? We can finally rest in peace. I’m gonna make a fresh start now. Clean myself up. I’m not that old. Maybe I’ll even get back into the news. I’d be a great producer. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station—”

  “Where’s Sarah?”

  In the distance, I see Elymas slowly climbing the steep gravel road that severs the graveyard in two. His feeble body assimilates each small step before taking another.

  “It’s time.” he calls out in a dry, hacking voice. Bo doesn’t see or hear him. “It’s time, Brek Abigail Cuttler. Come with me. It’s time.”

  “What do you mean, where’s Sarah?” Bo says.

  “Where is she? I want to see her?”

  Bo’s face purples as if it’s been bruised by a punch. He jumps up from the grass and starts running away, weaving through the gravestones with his hands gripping his head as if he’s in pain. I chase after him.

  “Wait, Bo, what’s wrong?”

  “Why are you doing this?” he yells. “Please, please just leave me alone.”

  He makes a loop and staggers to the ground beside the upset tea service. Tears streak down his cheeks. Except on the day Sarah was born, I have never seen him cry.

  “Come with me,” Elymas says. “It’s time.”

  “Bo,” I say, kneeling beside him, “it’s all right. Everything’s all right. Just tell me where Sarah is?”

  “What do you mean where’s Sarah?” he yells at me. “Don’t you know?” He points at the gravestone. Engraved into the top of the monument is a crucifix superimposed over a Star of David. The sight of this heresy startles at first, but the symbols look somehow correct together, as if the perpendicular lines complete the thought of the interlocking triangles and are their natural conclusion when manipulated properly, like a Rubik’s cube. Engraved beneath them in large block letters across the polished surface of the stone are the words CUTTLER-WOLFSON. Beneath these, in smaller letters, is this:

  BREK ABIGAIL

  December 4, 1963—October 17, 1994

  Mother

  SARAH ELIZABETH

  December 13, 1993—October 17, 1994

  Daughter

  Hot tea and bees honey, for two we will share . . .

  22

  * * *

  I found Nana Bellini in the garden behind her house, stooped low over a row of tomato vines sagging with ripe, red fruit. Her silver hair, pulled back in a bun, shimmered under the cloudy skies of an approaching summer storm. She hummed a tune while filling a small basket with fresh produce, aware that I stood nearby in the cool spring air watching her. Reaching the middle of the row, she twisted off a huge beefsteak tomato, so large and swollen that its skin had split open exposing its tender pink meat inside. She held it up for me to see.

  “Even vegetables suffer as much from abundance as from want,” she observed. “Some, like this one, are bold and flashy, taking everything they can; others sip only what they need, content to share with the community.” She pulled apart a snarl of average sized tomatoes and pointed to a stunted tomato vine off by itself in a patch of cracked, barren dirt. “And then there are the ascetics, joyfully suffering without any hope of bearing fruit themselves, secure in the knowledge that their sacrifice will make the soil richer next season and they’ll become the fruit of future generations.” She turned around to me. “The wise farmer values them all, equally. If one is favored over the other, the entire garden suffers.”

  I drew closer. I wasn’t there to talk about gardening. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah was dead?” I asked. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

  Nana stopped picking and slid her arm through the hoop handle of the basket so that it swung from her elbow. Flecks of black soil clung to her wrinkled fingers and denim blue skirt. “There was nothing to tell, dear,” she said. “You knew it all along. You didn’t want to remember, you weren’t ready.”

  I left her in the garden and walked through the woods to the entrance of the train station. Flinging the doors wide, I shouted to the souls inside: “Run! Run now, while you still have the chance!” They didn’t dare move. They looked at me with the same suspicion my grandfather’s cattle looked at him when he was trying to do something for their own good, then they lapsed back into their catatonic march back and forth across the train shed floor. There was a time when they would have rushed through those doors, but that was when they still believed mortality was the fantasy; how very real it had become, and how very soon would the final judgment be passed on their lives. Cattle. It was the proper metaphor; like my grandfather’s herd, the great herd of souls arriving at Shemaya Station each day moved obediently up the loading chute and into a packing plant for slaughter, submitting themselves to what was to come and living in the memory of what once was.

  I had entered the train shed without a blindfold because I was searching for Sarah. This was a grim task. There were infants, children, and adults in every horrifying shape and condition of death: wasted away by starvation and disease, blistered and burned, gnawed and digested, shot through with holes, stabbed and sliced, blue from drowning, bloated from rotting, blown apart, hacked, crushed, poisoned; suicides, murders, accidents, illnesses, old age, acts of God. Their stories no longer affected me. Only one story concerned me now. I looked everywhere, but Sarah was not among them; although I wanted desperately to see her, like a parent searching a morgue after a calamity, I was relieved. And then terrified.

  What if her case had already been called? What if she had already been judged and gone on without me?

  I ran from the train shed, frantic to find her. The golden key Luas had given me turned the lock, depositing me inside the Urartu Chamber. There was no one, just God and me, alone, inside the Holy of Holies. He had taken my daughter. I had come to take her back. I was not as trusting as Abraham with Isaac. I moved to the presenter’s chair and looked up at the sapphire monolith, searching the smooth surface for the slightest blemish that might indicate a hint of acknowledgment or compassion. When I found none, I asked meekly in my nakedness:

  “May I see her? I gave her life.”

  God looked on, unblinking and unmoved, my existence too infinitesimally small to notice, my plea too insignificant to deserve a response.

  “Where is she?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  The answer came back as a deafening concussion of silence—the silence of God’s love being withdrawn into the infinite vacuum of space, heard by the soul, not the ears, and mourned by the soul, not the heart. I looked around the Chamber. Its walls pulsed with the purest energy of the universe while just outside, in the train shed, the walls were spattered with the innocent blood of humanity—the blood of those judged against unattainable standards by a judge who, Himself, was guilty of the crime.

  “Where is my daughter?” I screamed again. “Goddamn you! What have you done with her?”

  God created all things.

  God created evil.

  God is all things.

  God is evil.

  God shall punish the wicked.

  Therefore, God shall punish Godself.

  I raised my arms as Haissem had done presenting the case of Toby Bowles. And in unison with every man, woman, and child since the beginning of time, I spoke:

  “
I PRESENT GOD, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH...HE HAS CHOSEN!”

  The Chamber shattered into a billion shafts of darkness.

  I am.

  I am creation, a first thought, a last, a beginning without end.

  I am a before, an after, a space in between.

  I am spirit, a single breath of God.

  I am love.

  “I am love! I am love!” the air sings. And the waters, too, and the creatures that swim, creep, fly, and walk. The stones whisper “I am love” as they support the soil, which whispers “I am love” and supports the plants, which whisper “I am love” and support the creatures even as they raise their heads toward the sun, which whispers “I am love” and warms the Garden through which I tread.

  Another like me walks in this Garden.

  “We are Love! We are Love! We are Love!” we sing. And we are love. Love given. Love unending. Love without condition. And the knowing we are all of this, and the knowing that this is All There Is.

  And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

  And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

  And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

  And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

  Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

  And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.