"Not really real," I said. "God is a matter of belief. It isn't real in the sense that that car—" I pointed to a parked Trans-Am—"is real."
"You couldn't be more wrong."
I started to laugh.
"Where did you ever get an idea like that?" Tim said. "That God isn't real?"
"God is a—" I hesitated. "A way of looking at things. An interpretation. I mean, He doesn't exist. Not the way objects exist. You couldn't, say, bump into Him, like you can bump into a wall."
"Does a magnetic field exist?"
"Sure," I said.
"You can't bump into it."
I said, "But it'll show up if you spread iron filings across a piece of paper."
"The hieroglyphs of God lie all about you," Tim said. "As the world and in the world."
"That's just an opinion. It's not my opinion."
"But you can see the world."
"I see the world," I said, "but I don't see any sign of God."
"But there cannot be a creation without a creator."
"Who says it's a creation?"
"My point," Tim said, "is that if the Logia predate Jesus by two hundred years, then the Gospels are suspect, and if the Gospels are suspect, we have no evidence that Jesus was God, very God, God Incarnate, and therefore the basis of our religion is gone. Jesus simply becomes a teacher representing a particular Jewish sect that ate and drank some kind of—well, whatever it was, the anokhi, and it made them immortal."
"They believed it made them immortal," I corrected him. "That's not the same thing. People believe that herbal remedies can cure cancer, but that doesn't make it true."
We arrived at the little grocery store and stood momentarily.
"I take it you're not a Christian," Tim said.
"Tim," I said, "you've known that for years. I'm your daughter-in-law."
"I'm not sure I'm a Christian. I'm now not sure there in fact is such a thing as Christianity. And I've got to get up and tell people—I have to go on with my ministerial and pastoral duties. Knowing what I know. Knowing that Jesus was a teacher and not God, and not even an original teacher; what he taught was the aggregate belief-system of an entire sect. A group product."
I said, "It could still have come from God. God could have revealed it to the Zadokites. What else does it say about the Expositor?"
"He returns in the Final Days and acts as Eschatological Judge."
"That's fine," I said.
"That's found in Zoroastrianism also," Tim said. "So much seems to go back to the Iranian religions ... the Jews developed a distinct Iranian quality to their religion during the time ..." He broke off; he had turned inward, mentally, oblivious, now, to me, to the store, our errand.
I said, trying to cheer him up. "Maybe the scholars and translators will find some of this anokhi."
"Find God," he echoed, to himself.
"Find it growing. A root or a tree."
"Why do you say that?" He seemed angry. "What would make you say that?"
"Bread has to be made out of something. You can't eat bread unless it's made from something."
"Jesus was speaking metaphorically. He did not mean literal bread."
"Maybe he didn't, but the Zadokites apparently did."
"That thought crossed my mind. Some of the translators are proposing that. That a literal bread and a literal drink is signified. 'I am the gate of the sheepfold.' Jesus certainly did not mean he was made of wood. 'I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more.'"
"Well, it's a vine, then," I said. "Look for a vine."
"That's absurd and carnal."
"Why?" I said.
Tim said savagely, "'I am the vine, you are the branches.' Are we to assume that a literal plant is referred to? That this is a physical, not a spiritual, matter? Something growing in the Dead Sea Desert?" He gestured. "'I am the light of the world.' Are we to assume you could read a newspaper by holding it up to him? Like this streetlight?"
"Maybe so," I said. "Dionysos was a vine, in a manner of speaking. His worshippers got drunk and then Dionysos possessed them, and they ran over the hills and fields and bit cows to death. Devoured whole animals alive."
"There are certain resemblances," Tim said.
Together, we continued on into the little grocery store.
6
BEFORE TIM AND Kirsten could return to England, the Episcopal Synod of Bishops convened to look into the matter of his possible heresies. The jerk-off—I should say, I suppose, conservative; that is the more polite term—bishops who stood as his accusers proved themselves idiots in terms of their ability to mount a successful attack on him. Tim emerged from the Synod officially vindicated. It made the newspapers and magazines, of course. Never at any time had this subject worried him. Anyhow, due to Jeff's suicide, Tim had plenty of public sympathy. He had always had that, but now, because of the tragedy in his personal life, he had it even more.
Somewhere Plato says that if you are going to shoot at a king you must be sure you kill him. The conservative bishops, in failing to destroy Tim, left him as a result even stronger than ever, which is the way with defeat; we say about such a turn of events that it has backfired. Tim knew now that no one within the Episcopal Church of the United States of America could bring him down. If he were to be destroyed, he would have to do it himself.
As for myself, in regard to my own life, I owned the house that Jeff and I had been buying. Jeff had made out a will, due to his father's insistence. I did not acquire much, but I acquired what there was. Since I had supported Jeff and myself, no financial problems confronted me. I continued to work at the law office and candle shop. For a time I believed that, with Jeff dead, I would gradually lose touch with Tim and Kirsten. That did not turn out to be the case. Tim seemed to find in me someone he could talk to. After all, I was one of the few people who knew the story about his relationship with his general secretary and business agent. And, of course, I had brought him and Kirsten together.
Beyond that, Tim did not jettison people who had become his friends. I amounted to much more than that anyhow; a great deal of love existed between the two of us, and out of that had come an understanding. We were, literally, good friends, in a sort of traditional way. The Bishop of California who held so many radical views and advanced such wild theories was, in his immediate life, an old-fashioned human being, in the best sense of the term. If you were his friend, he became loyal to you and stayed loyal to you, as I informed Ms. Marion years later, long after Kirsten and Tim were, like my husband, dead. It is a forgotten matter about Bishop Archer, that he loved his friends and stuck with them, even if he had nothing to gain in the sense that they had, or did not have, some power to advance his career, to enhance his station or advantage him in the practical world. All I amounted to in that world was a young woman working as a clerical secretary in a law office, and not an important law office. Tim had nothing to gain strategically by maintaining our relationship, but he maintained it up until his death.
Kirsten, during this period following Jeff's death, showed progressive symptoms of a deteriorating physical condition which, finally, the doctors diagnosed correctly as peritonitis, from which you can die. The bishop paid all her medical expenses, which came to a staggering sum; for ten days she languished in the intensive care unit of one of the best hospitals in San Francisco, complaining bitterly that no one visited her or gave a good goddamn. Tim, who flew all around the United States lecturing, saw her as often as he could, but it was not nearly often enough to suit her. I came over to the city to see her as frequently as possible. With me, as with Tim, it was (in her opinion) far too inadequate a response to her illness. Most of the time I spent with her amounted to a one-way diatribe in which she complained about him and about all else in life. She had aged.
It strikes me as semi-meaningless to say, "You are only as old as you feel" because, in point of
fact, age and illness are going to win out, and this stupid statement only resonates with people in good health who have not undergone the sort of traumas that Kirsten Lundborg had. Her son Bill had disclosed an infinite capacity to be crazy and for this Kirsten felt responsible; she knew, too, that a major factor in Jeff's suicide had been her relationship with his father. That made her bitterly severe toward me, as if guilt—her guilt—goaded her into chronically abusing me, the chief victim of Jeff's death.
We really did not have much of a friendship left, she and I. Nevertheless, I visited her in the hospital, and I always dressed up so that I looked great, and I always brought her something she could not eat, if it was food, or could not wear or use.
"They won't let me smoke," she said to me one time, by way of a greeting.
"Of course not," I said. "You'll set your bed on fire again. Like you did that time." She had almost suffocated herself, a few weeks before going into the hospital.
Kirsten said, "Get me some yarn."
"'Yarn,'" I said.
"I'm going to knit a sweater. For the bishop." Her tone withered the word; Kirsten managed to convey through words a kind of antagonism one rarely encountered. "The bishop," she said, "needs a sweater."
Her animosity centered on the fact that Tim had proved able to handle his affairs quite well in her absence; at the moment, he was all the way up in Canada somewhere, delivering a speech. It had been Kirsten's contention for some time that Tim could not survive a week without her. Her confinement in the hospital had proven her wrong.
"Why don't Mexicans want their children to marry blacks?" Kirsten said.
"Because their kids would be too lazy to steal," I said.
"When does a black man become a nigger?"
"When he leaves the room." I seated myself in a plastic chair facing her bed. "What's the safest time to drive your car?" I said.
Kirsten gave me a hostile glance.
"You'll be out of here soon," I said, to help her cheer up.
"I'll never be out of here. The bishop is probably—never mind. Grabbing ass in Montreal. Or wherever he is. You know, he had me in bed the second time we met. And the first time was at a restaurant in Berkeley."
"I was there."
"So he couldn't do it the first time. If he could have, he would have. Doesn't that surprise you about a bishop? There are a few things I could tell you ... but I won't." She ceased speaking, then, and glowered.
"Good," I said.
"Good what? That I'm not going to tell you?"
"If you start telling me," I said, "I will get up and leave. My therapist told me to set clear limits with you."
"Oh, that's right; you're another of them. Who's in therapy. You and my son. You two ought to get together. You could make clay snakes in occupational therapy."
"I am leaving," I said; I stood up.
"Oh Christ," Kirsten said irritably. "Sit down."
I said, "What became of the Swedish mongoloid cretin who escaped from the asylum in Stockholm?"
"I don't know."
"They found him teaching school in Norway."
Laughing, Kirsten said, "Go fuck yourself."
"I don't have to. I'm doing fine."
"Probably so." She nodded. "I wish I was back in London. You've never been to London."
"There wasn't enough money," I said. "In the Bishop's Discretionary Fund. For Jeff and me."
"Oh, that's right; I used it all up."
"Most of it."
Kirsten said, "I got to go nowhere. While Tim hung around those old faggot translators. Did he tell you that Jesus is a fake? Amazing. Here we find out two thousand years later that somebody else entirely made up all those Logia and all those 'I am' statements. I never saw Tim so downcast; he just sat and stared at the floor, in our flat, day after day."
To that I said nothing.
"Do you think it matters?" Kirsten said. "That Jesus was a fake?"
"Not to me it doesn't," I said.
"They haven't really published the important part. About the mushroom. They're keeping that secret for as long as they can. However—"
"What mushroom?"
"The anokhi."
I said, incredulous, "The anokhi is a mushroom?"
"It's a mushroom. It was a mushroom back then. They grew it in caves, the Zadokites."
"Jesus Christ," I said.
"They made mushroom bread out of it. They made a broth from it and drank the broth; ate the bread, drank the broth. That's where the two species of the Host come from, the body and the blood. Apparently the anokhi mushroom was toxic but the Zadokites found a way to detoxify it, at least somewhat, enough so it didn't kill them. It made them hallucinate."
I started laughing. "Then they were a—"
"Yes, they turned on." Kirsten, too, now laughed, in spite of herself. "And Tim has to get up every Sunday at Grace and give Communion knowing that, knowing they were simply getting off on a psychedelic trip, like the kids in the Haight-Ashbury. I thought it was going to kill him when he found out."
"So then Jesus was in effect a dope dealer," I said.
She nodded. "The Twelve, the disciples, were—this is the theory—smuggling the anokhi into Jerusalem and they got caught. This just confirms what John Allegro figured out ... if you happened to see his book. He's one of the greatest scholars vis-à-vis Near Eastern languages ... he was the official translator of the Qumran scrolls."
"I didn't see his book," I said, "but I know who he is. Jeff used to talk about him."
"Allegro figured out that the early Christians were a secret mushroom cult; he deduced it from internal evidence in the New Testament. And he found a fresco or wall-painting ... anyhow, a picture of early Christians with a huge amania muscaria mushroom—"
"Amanita muscaria," I corrected. "It's the red one. They are terribly toxic. So the early Christians found a way to detoxify it, then."
"That's Allegro's contention. And they saw cartoons." She began to giggle.
"Is there actually an anokhi mushroom?" I said. I knew something about mushrooms; before I married Jeff, I had gone with an amateur mycologist.
"Well, there probably was, but nobody today knows what it would be. So far, in the Zadokite Documents, there's no description. No way to tell which one it was or if it still exists."
I said, "Maybe it did more than cause hallucinations."
"Like what?"
A nurse came over to me, at that point. "You'll have to leave, now."
"Okay." I rose, gathered up my coat and purse.
Kirsten said, "Bend over." She waved me toward her; in a whisper directly into my ear she said, "Orgies."
After kissing her good-bye, I left the hospital.
When I arrived back in Berkeley and had made my way by bus to the little old farmhouse that Jeff and I had been living in, I saw, as I walked up the path, a young man crouched over in the corner of the porch; I halted warily, wondering who he was.
Pudgy, with light-colored hair, he bent stroking my cat Magnificat, who had curled up happily against the front door of the house. I watched for a time, thinking: Is this a salesman or something? The young man wore trousers too large for him, and a brightly colored shirt. On his face, as he petted Magnificat, was the most gentle expression I had ever seen on a human face; this kid, who obviously had never encountered my cat before, radiated a kind of fondness, a kind of palpable love, that in fact was something new to me. Some of the very early statues of the god Apollo reveal that sweet smile. Totally absorbed in petting Magnificat, the kid remained oblivious to me, to my nearby presence; I watched, fascinated, because for one thing Magnificat was a rough-and-tumble old tomcat who normally did not allow strangers to get near him.
All at once the kid glanced up. He smiled shyly and rose awkwardly to his feet. "Hi."
"Hi." I walked toward him, carefully, very slowly.
"I found this cat." The kid blinked, still smiling; he had guileless blue eyes, absent of any cunning.
"It's my cat," I sa
id.
"What's her name?"
"It's a tomcat," I said, "and he's named Magnificat."
"He's very beautiful," the kid said.
"Who are you?" I said.
"I'm Kirsten's son. I'm Bill."
That explained the blue eyes and the blond hair. "I'm Angel Archer," I said.
"I know. We've met. But it was—" He hesitated. "I'm not sure how long ago. They gave me electroshock ... my memory isn't very good."
"Yes," I said. "I guess we did meet. I just came from the hospital visiting your mom."
"Can I use your bathroom?"
"Sure," I said. I got my keys from my purse and unlocked the front door. "Excuse the mess. I work; I'm not home enough to keep it neat. The bathroom is off the kitchen, in the back. Just keep on going."
Bill Lundborg did not close the bathroom door behind him; I could hear him urinating loudly. I filled the tea kettle and put it on the burner. Strange, I thought. This is the son she derides. As she derides us all.
Reappearing, Bill Lundborg stood self-consciously, smiling at me anxiously, quite obviously ill at ease. He had not flushed the toilet. I thought, then, very suddenly: He has just come out of the hospital, the mental hospital; I can tell.
"Would you like coffee?" I said.
"Sure."
Magnificat entered the kitchen.
"How old is she?" Bill asked.
"I have no idea how old he is. I rescued him from a dog. After he had grown, I mean, not as a kitten. He probably lived somewhere in the neighborhood."
"How is Kirsten?"
"Doing really well," I said. I pointed to a chair. "Sit down."
"Thanks." He seated himself; placing his arms on the kitchen table, he interlocked his fingers. His skin was so pale. Kept indoors, I thought. Caged up. "I like your cat."
"You can feed him," I said; I opened the refrigerator and got out the can of cat food.
As Bill fed Magnificat, I watched the two of them. The care he took in spooning out the food ... systematically, his attention deeply fixed, as if it were very important, what he had become involved in; he kept his gaze intent on Magnificat, and as he scrutinized the old cat he smiled again, that smile that so touched me, so made me start.
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (Valis) Page 8