Forgiving Ararat

by Gita Nazareth

  He was talking way over my head. I was there to celebrate becoming a presenter, not engage in a philosophical exegesis of time, space, and perception. I scanned the crowd for Luas and Nana and a polite way out of the conversation.

  “My name is Gautama,” the man said, perceptively extending his left hand.

  “Brek Cuttler,” I said, smiling sheepishly, embarrassed at having been caught looking for an exit.

  One of the faceless attendants arrived to retrieve my empty glass and plate.

  “Yes, I know who you are,” Gautama said. “I hope I haven’t bored you. I myself am far more interested in the smaller steps along the journey, but standing back on occasion to glimpse the whole can be useful. For instance, it explains the presence of the postulants here among us right now, and our mutual inability to see each other because of our chosen levels of perception.”

  “Does it explain why every presentation in the Urartu Chamber is terminated before a defense can be presented? I assume this has been your experience as well?”

  “I’m not a presenter,” Gautama said. “I’m a sculptor...among other things.”

  “You sculpted this?” I asked, even more embarrassed.

  “Yes, do you like it?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “It’s fascinating...but a bit intimidating.”

  “We’re not comfortable making choices; we prefer others to make them for us. But choice is what makes everything run, you know; it’s the energy that powers the universe. To create is simply to choose, to decide. Even the Ten Commandments are choices—ten choices each person must make at any instant in time that create who they are and who they will become, although they can be reduced to three, which is what I’ve tried to do here with my sphere.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes. The first four Commandments are simply choices about the Holy One, are they not? Will we acknowledge God—or Spirit, or Truth, whatever language you wish to use—or will we worship material things and settle for the impermanent world? Will we invoke the power of God, the creative force, to harm or destroy others, or will we love them as ourselves? Will we set aside time to appreciate Creation and Truth, or will we consume all our time in pursuit of finite ends? The remaining six Commandments concern choices about others and self. Murder, theft, adultery, the way one relates to one’s parents, family, and community—these reflect how one chooses to regard others. Whether one is envious, and whether one conceals the truth, are ultimately decisions about one’s self.”

  “Interesting way of looking at it,” I said.

  Gautama turned toward the crowd.

  “Your understanding of this, my daughter, is essential, for these are the choices that must be presented in the Urartu Chamber. From these choices alone is the Final Judgment rendered and eternity decided. The Judge is demanding and thorough. Some might even say the Judge is unforgiving.”

  “The presentations are never completed,” I said. “Some might say the Judge is unjust.”

  “Ours is not to question such wisdom; but you might ask yourself how many times the same choices must be presented before the story is accurately told.”

  “Since I arrived in Shemaya, I don’t think I’ve met anybody, except my great-grandmother, who wasn’t a presenter. You said you are a sculptor, among other things. What things are those?”

  “I help postulants recognize themselves and their choices. That is why my sphere is located here in the train station. ”

  We turned back to the sphere. “I still don’t understand the reflections on the door,” I said. “I saw two different versions of myself.”

  “Are not all choices based in personal desires? And are not all desires reflections of who we are or wish to become? We could distill the three choices presented here by the three pairs of doors into one, and conclude that all things in life turn upon choices concerning Creation itself. We could distill this even further and conclude that all things turn upon Creation’s choices about Creation itself. In other words, Brek, we are co-creators with God. At the highest level of reality on the sphere, at the pole from which we start, and to which we will inevitably return, there is but one possible here and now. All the rest flows from it, and returns to it, in the course of Creation—in the course of making choices. We choose who we are or wish to become, but in the end we are only one thing, permanent and unchanging, no matter what choices we make. The journey around the sphere is, in essence, an illusion.”

  Tim Shelly staggered up between Gautama and me, reeking of alcohol. His eyes were glazed over and his bowtie undone.

  “Hey, great rock!” he said, slurring his words. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder and slid it down my back inappropriately. “Go get somebody else, Gautama,” he said. “Brek’s mine.”

  “You seem to be enjoying the evening, my son,” Gautama replied, not bothered by the remark, or Tim’s apparent drunken condition. I, however, was very uncomfortable with the way he was behaving.

  “I think he’s enjoying it a little too much,” I said, pushing him away.

  Tim grabbed me again and tried to kiss me full on the lips.

  “Stop it, Tim!” I yelled, turning my face away. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “What’s the matter, Brek? Too good for me?”

  “I believe it is time for you to go home, my son,” Gautama said.

  “Why?” Tim said, “so you can have her?” He winked at Gautama and gave him a punch on the shoulder. “I’ve been watching you...I know you older spiritual guys still got it in you.”

  Gautama smiled but said nothing, as if he were dealing with a misbehaving child.

  “Problem is,” Tim continued, “she thinks she too good for you, too. She only screws Jew boys. She likes them circumcised. Well, I say it’s time for her to find out what a real man looks and feels like. You wait your turn here, Gautama, and we’ll see what she thinks. It won’t take long.” Tim lunged toward me and I screamed, but Gautama stepped in front of him and spun him around in the other direction.

  “Good night, my daughter,” he said, leading Tim away by the arm. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

  26

  * * *

  I left the reception badly shaken and walked down the long office corridor outside the Urartu Chamber to calm myself down. For the first time in Shemaya, I feared for my personal safety. It wasn’t like there was a police department or I could call 911 if Tim attacked me.

  But was there really anything to be afraid of? Can a human soul be raped—or harmed in any other way? Tim Shelly looked like a man with a man’s body; I felt his hand on my back, on my woman’s body; but none of these things existed—and yet they did. And how disappointing must it be for Jews to learn that anti-Semitism survives even death! I wasn’t even Jewish, and I never told Tim that Bo was; how did he know, and why did it matter? None of it made sense. Yet, Tim’s ugly words and threats were as palpable and real as if they had been made during my life; there was something genuinely cold and malicious about the way he looked at me. What happened to the sweet guy who thought he was a waitress and camped out with his father—the guy who visited Tara with me, and sailed with me on the caravel, and worried about how his mother was taking his death? Maybe it was just the alcohol talking...but how can a human soul consume alcohol, let alone become intoxicated by it?

  I continued walking down the corridor until I reached Tim’s office. A sudden chill came over me, but that was nothing compared to the dread I felt when I saw my name on the office door next to his, on a brand new plaque that read, “Brek Abigail Cuttler, Presenter.” The door was unlocked, and I went in. The office was identical to Luas’ with a small desk, two chairs, and no windows. I was not the first occupant: two white candles sat on the desk, burned unevenly, their sides and brass holders clotted with polyps of wax. It was a claustrophobic little room, not unlike a confessional in a rundown cathedral; the air hung damp and heavy, laden with the sins of those who had exhaled their lives there; but it felt safe and almost cozy—an
d it was mine. I lit the candles, closed the door, and settled in behind the desk to enjoy the privacy.

  Then came a knock at the door.

  Tim?

  I slipped quietly around the desk and braced the guest chair against the door.

  The knock came again, followed this time by a girl’s voice, Asian-sounding and unfamiliar: “May I come in please?”

  “Who is it?” I said, wedging the guest chair more tightly into place with my foot.

  “My name is Mi Lau. I knew your Uncle Anthony. I saw you leave the reception.”

  “Anthony Bellini?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I pulled the guest chair away from the door and opened it. What I saw standing before me on the other side was so hideous and repulsive that I shrieked in horror and slammed the door shut again. A young girl stood in the doorway, her body was burned almost beyond recognition and still smoldering, as if the flames had just been extinguished. Most of her skin was gone, exposing shattered fragments of bone and tissue seared like gristle fused to a grill. Her right eye was missing, leaving a horrible gouge in her face, and beneath the socket two rows of broken teeth without lips, cheeks, or gums and an expanse of white jawbone somehow spared the blackening of the flames. The stench of burned flesh overpowered the hallway and, now, my office.

  “Please excuse my appearance,” the girl said through the door. “My death was not very pleasant. Nor, I can see, was yours.”

  I looked down and saw myself as Mi Lau had seen me—as I had seen myself when I arrived in Shemaya, naked with three holes in my chest and covered with blood. I opened the door again. Mi Lau and I stared at each other, sizing each other up like two monsters in a horror movie. We obviously could not communicate or even be in each other’s presence if our wounds were all we could see, so we engaged in the same charade played by all the souls of Shemaya, agreeing to see in each other only the pleasant hologram reflections of life the way we wished it had been. In this filtered and refracted light, Mi Lau suddenly became a beautiful teenage girl with yellow topaz skin, large brown eyes, and long, thick, dark hair. She was a child on the verge of becoming a young woman—fresh, radiant, and pure, and dressed in a pretty pink gown, making the gruesomeness of her death all the more cruel and difficult to reconcile.

  “I am very sorry my appearance frightened you,” she said. She spoke in the rhythmic, loose guitar string twang of Vietnamese, but I somehow understood her words in English, as if I were listening to a hidden interpreter.

  “No, I’m the one who should apologize,” I said. “I didn’t expect anybody at the door and then, well...yes, you frightened me. Please, come in.”

  Mi Lau sat in the guest chair with her hands folded in her lap. I closed the door and returned to my place behind the desk.

  “So, how do you know my Uncle Anthony?” I asked. “He died before I was born.”

  “We met during the war,” Mi Lau said, “and he is also one of my clients here.”

  “My uncle is on trial here?” I asked. “Can I see him?”

  “Yes, you can come see his trial. I present his case every day.”

  “Legna ends it before you finish?”

  “Yes, like the others.”

  “That’s unfair, and it doesn’t make sense. Why bother having a trial?”

  Mi Lau said nothing.

  “How did you meet during the war?” I asked. “What was he like?”

  “Your uncle came to my village with other American soldiers, they were chasing the Viet Cong. The VC stayed with us; we had no choice; they were mostly just young boys; they left us alone and didn’t harm us. When the Americans came, there were gunshots, and my family hid in a tunnel beneath our hut. Always my mother would go into the tunnel first, then my sister, me, and my father last; but the fighting caught us by surprise and this time I was last. The tunnel was narrow, and we had to crawl on our stomachs. We could hear the machine guns and the Americans shouting, and the VC boys screaming. My sister and I covered our ears and trembled like frightened rabbits.”

  “It must have been horrible.”

  “Yes. But the fighting did not last long. Soon all became quiet until a powerful explosion shook the ground. Dirt fell into my hair, and I was afraid the tunnel might collapse. My father said the American soldiers were blowing up the tunnels in our village and we must get out quickly. I crawled toward the entrance, and that is when I saw your uncle. He was kneeling over the hole, holding a grenade in his hand. I remember it clearly. A crucifix with the right arm broken off dangled from his neck; I remember thinking it looked like a small bird with a broken wing. I smiled up at him. I was so naïve, I thought Americans were there to help us, that they were our friends. But he didn’t smile back. He looked at me with terrible, hateful eyes, and then he pulled the pin and dropped the grenade into the hole. ‘No! No!’ I screamed, we’re down here!’ The grenade rolled between my legs. It felt cold and smooth, like a river stone. I saw him turn his head and cover his ears and realized what was about to happen. And then it exploded.”

  Mi Lau spoke without anger or emotion, as if she were describing nothing more than planting rice in a field. I lowered my head, too ashamed and distraught to look at her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “I know,” Mi Lau said. “I know all about your family from presenting him. They seem like such nice people. Your uncle knew your mother was pregnant with you when he died, but he was convinced you would be a boy, so I was surprised when Luas told me who you were at the reception.”

  “I was told he died a hero.”

  “Maybe he did,” Mi Lau said, “but hero is something that lives in other people’s minds. After blowing up all the tunnels in our village, he went off with some of the other soldiers to smoke marijuana. He said to them with a laugh: ‘The best thing about blowing up tunnels full of gooks in the morning is that they’re already in their graves and you can spend the rest of the afternoon smoking dope.’ An hour later, he wandered off by himself and shot himself in the head. That was heroic maybe, to take his own life so he could no longer take the lives of others.”

  It took me a long time to absorb what she had said.

  “How can you represent him if he killed you and your family?” I asked. “I’m sorry about what he did, but how can he get a fair trial? I mean, naturally you would want him to be convicted—and maybe he should be. That’s probably why he’s still here. ”

  Mi Lau’s eyes narrowed and she straightened herself indignantly. “I present Anthony Bellini’s life exactly as he lived it,” she said. “I cannot change what he did, and I do not bias the presentation in any way. Luas monitors us closely and disciplines any presenter who attempts to influence the result.”

  “But how can you even face him after what he did to you?”

  “He can’t hurt me again, and I feel better knowing justice has been done. All is confessed in the Urartu Chamber...there are no lies. Some say Shemaya is where Jesus stayed for three days after his death, before ascending into heaven, presenting all the souls who have ever lived. I believe Shemaya is where the final battle is fought between good and evil. Evil must not be permitted to win. It must not be allowed to hide or disguise itself; it must be rooted out, and destroyed, and all those who perpetrate evil must be punished.”

  Mi Lau stood and suddenly she transformed back into the girl whose body had been mutilated and blown apart by my uncle’s grenade. “I must go now,” she said. “Welcome to Shemaya. You will be serving God here. You will be serving justice.”

  27

  * * *

  I woke the next morning to the nutty-sweet aroma of Irish porridge. It was a delicious, familiar aroma I hadn’t smelled since my Grandma Cuttler made it for my grandfather and me on the farm. I went downstairs and found Nana Bellini in the kitchen, already dressed for the day in tan slacks and a red sweater. She gave me a kiss on the forehead and placed a steaming bowl of porridge before me at the kitchen table.

  “You’ll need your streng
th today,” she said.

  There was something different about her. Her eyes seemed distant and moist, almost melancholy. I hadn’t seen her this way before.

  “Thanks,” I said, delighted with the breakfast. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s just that the time has come for me to go, and I’m sad we’ll be apart.”

  “Go? What do you mean, go? Go where?”

  “Just go, child, go on. You came here wounded and frightened, and there’s still some pain and fear left in you, but it no longer controls you. You’ve recovered from the shock of death; that’s why I was here, to help you. But you’re a presenter now, and I can’t help you with that. You need space to experience, to spread out your thoughts and look them over—space to study and understand. The next steps you take must be your own. You’re ready, and I’m proud of you. We’re all proud of you. You give us hope.”

  I was terrified. “Take me with you,” I said. “I don’t want to be a presenter. There’s no justice here. Uncle Anthony, Amina Rabun, Toby Bowles...they’re all convicted before their presenters even enter the Chamber. The same trials are held every day, and the same verdicts are issued. It’s...it’s hell, not heaven.”