Our Lady of Babylon

by John Rechy

  “Melodrama!” I was insulted.

  “The risk, Lady, only the risk. I didn’t say there was, had been, or would be melodrama in your account.” Realizing that her veiled admonition for restraint had been unnecessary, she moved on:

  “Let’s proceed to explore events that only you are able to reveal.” She crossed her arms formidably before her, signaling a major test: “But how so, Lady, since you were not there?”

  Her abrupt shift into a question was meant to underscore a major challenge she anticipated from interviewers. I met it easily: “All was learned, Madame, from intimate versions given to me and to Adam by Cassandra —”

  “Ah! Who would doubt her?” Madame greeted.

  “— and by Lucifer — who were there — and by events that extended into the lost Garden.”

  Madame leaned back in emphatic approval of my unassailable answer. “Now let’s hear the truth about the War in Heaven.”

  XXI

  ABRUPTLY, CASSANDRA STOOD within the blue mist of Heaven. She sniffed the morning air. Beside her, Lucifer remained lying on a field of wild grass. He stretched lazily, wondering what had alerted his sister’s attention. All he had detected was the breath of a breeze that had flirted with her airy robe, finally embracing her lustrous flesh before whispering away to brush over his naked body.

  Cassandra’s slightly tilted eyes, so thickly lashed that they appeared outlined in black, followed a bird as it soared beyond. Its white wings were streaked with azure so that it seemed to have sprung from the sky itself. Head lifted, Cassandra waited for the beautiful bird to return, but it did not. She said:

  “There are no boundaries in Heaven.”

  “God says otherwise,” Lucifer spoke automatically. He had not really registered his sister’s startling words. Searching idly among the daffodils that sparked within the wild grass, he located an iris, purple fading to light lavender, one of its petals tinted with a dash of yellow, a speck of red. He swept the flower along his body and then along his sister’s bare feet as she stood next to him.

  “Lady, there were daffodils and irises, in Heaven?” Madame Bernice wondered aloud. “And grass?”

  “Yes,” I assured her, “there were fields of grass and flowers, including —”

  Trilliums — wake robins! — white, pink, dark red, yellow, even startling silver green, side by side; and purple nightshades with bright yellow centers like tiny cones; and splendid mariposas, all reddish streaks; ithuriel’s spears, so simple in their pearly beauty; and — favorites of Lucifer’s — rhododendrons like crinkled roses bursting amid leaves of evergreen shrubs; yes, and masses of gilias shaded not-quite-lavender, not-quite-blue; and penstemons, rosy streaks of violet; and yarrows, each a white bouquet; and magenta redbuds floating over white meadow foam; and — Cassandra’s favorites — poppies everywhere, lightening from deep orange to pale yellow, then blushing into red. Cassandra, watching the poppies intently, longed to detect the exact moment when their hue deepened.

  Those and myriad other flowers surrounded her and Lucifer on the field where only moments earlier they had lain, looking up at the clouds and daydreaming. Yes, there were clouds in the sky of Heaven.

  Still gazing away, Cassandra saw another resplendent bird disappear. She said to her brother, who was tickling her ankle playfully:

  “God says that Heaven is enclosed. It isn’t. There’s a vast universe beyond Him.” She stated that easily, as something that had just occurred to her, and it had. She always made a point of denying that she was able to “prophesy.”

  “She did not consider herself a mystic,” I explained to Madame Bernice.

  Madame waved my last few words away with an indifferent flourish of her bejeweled hand.

  Cassandra claimed only to be able to “perceive.” Other angels referred to her “special gift.” Cassandra was certain God had awarded it to her for His own amusement only, the way He dispensed other unique “gifts” to His angels from time to time. He would always make grand announcements when He granted one, then fashion tests and entertainments involving each — fleetness tested in a race, a glorious voice challenged by a soaring scale, endurance tried in a series of obstacles — all permitted, after long moments of suspense, to end in triumph, to arouse in the angels wonder and gratitude at His beneficence.

  Diligently practicing every day, concentrating rigorously, fiercely committed, Cassandra had honed the perceptions given to her so casually by God for His amusement. Each day she strengthened them more, making them her own, increasingly connecting her gaze to God’s. Often now, when He caught her scrutinizing Him intensely, He would lean from His throne and say: “Now tell Me, Cassandra, what do you see, My dear?”

  One such time she quickly described wild grass, daffodils, poppies, a dazzling array of flowers in widening fields. The angels — but not Lucifer — laughed with delighted disbelief at her imagination. Lucifer had seen God’s look grow sober. The next day all the flowers were there, in stretching fields.

  Cassandra had assumed that God had created them to support her “vision,” and so startle her and all the others with His capacity and willingness to grant them their wishes. And indeed, at that day’s gathering, He announced to Cassandra, but for all the others to hear: “It was such a charming image your imagination conjured, darling, that of course I had to grant it to you.” The angels applauded yet another manifestation of God’s beneficence, His startling shifts and turns, His unexpected “entertainments.”

  As, that morning with her brother, Cassandra continued to stare toward the horizon into which the beautiful birds had soared, Lucifer also stood abruptly, startled, because he had suddenly understood his sister’s meaning. He ran his feet over the grass, to feel its thrilling touch on them. “Beyond God, there’s more?” he asked.

  Other beautiful naked angels, who had been lazing on the fields of Heaven, heard the exchange between Cassandra and her brother. The youthful Sisyphus, his face always expectant; Electra, a pretty girl with enormous black eyes; Narcissus, a dreamy angel; Ishtar, proud of her divine breasts, even aggressive about them; Isis and Osiris, inseparable, who often joined Cassandra and Lucifer on warm evenings, competing to see who would spot the first star — Cassandra always won; Iphigenia, a playful, exuberant child with long wonderful legs; Oedipus, fond of gentle riddles; Prometheus, his young muscles beginning to assert themselves: Those and other angels all gathered about Cassandra and her brother, and they listened raptly.

  “They were all angels?” Madame Bernice asked.

  “Of course.” I saw no reason to dwell further on that matter.

  Apparently Madame did. “Those angels — I believe that to most of us they’re known as gods and goddesses. That might create a stumble during interviews.” Her voice deepened, into that of an interviewer: “Lady! Why are so many of the angels Greek?”

  Of course, Madame was simply preparing me. I would pass this test, as I had passed all others. “The names of many of the angels, I agree — but do recall that there were prominent exceptions — correspond to those of Grecian gods and goddesses. It was one of the properties of angels that they would be granted other names, by other people, in other countries, at various times.”

  Madame was not only satisfied, she was clearly thrilled: “An egalitarian nomenclature!”

  At first, the Angel Gabriel, gentle-eyed, somewhat shy, remained a distance apart from the other attentive angels listening to the astounding words Cassandra and Lucifer were speaking; but he inched closer and closer to them, until he was among the congregation.

  Only later did the thrilled angels detect that the Angel Michael was scrutinizing them closely from a hill. The handsome Michael always carried a sword with him, in a sheath at his hip. No one had ever seen him draw it. So it was rumored that he wore it only to emphasize his muscular thighs. It was Icarus who commented that Michael looked like “a general.”

  Excited by Cassandra’s easy announcement of unbounded heavens unscouted, Lucifer said to his sister, “
If that’s true, can we explore them?”

  “Yes!”

  Lucifer’s delighted smile invited the other angels to come with them. He spread his arms, in preparation for a new flight, a new adventure. Cassandra raised hers. The others imitated their motions.

  Their luminous naked bodies rivaling the glimmering dew of the bright morning, the angels soared! They flew, laughing and thrilling, twisting and turning on waves of space and wind that tossed and swirled about them and with them and guided them even farther into the deepening blue sky, beyond, until their bodies glowed, illumined red by the disappearing sun, till night shaded them and the moon painted them silver, and still they soared, exhilarated, dipping in and out of space.

  “Farther!” Cassandra coaxed.

  “Yes, farther!” Lucifer met and surpassed her challenge, offering his own, which she matched and surpassed, until they flew together, side by side, leading the others even deeper into the universe, between stars and constellations, beyond, far, far beyond what they had thought were the boundaries of Heaven, far beyond and into the infinite space out of which God had created Himself, claiming as His own the portion He had carved out, proclaiming there was nothing more.

  Within the sphere of stars, Daedalus and Icarus broke away for moments, discovering yet more fields of sky, returning to recruit the others to witness those new plains. Exulting in waves of wind, even Gabriel grew bold and soared ahead of the others, then waited, and they all flew together in a flank of gliding angels.

  Below, Michael watched. He raised his arms, as the other angels had done in preparation for their flight. Then he lowered them and touched his sheath.

  Their bodies gleaming with the fresh perspiration of their delirious journey, the adventurous angels returned to God’s Heaven.

  “Father,” Lucifer eagerly addressed God, who sat on His throne for His usual early-evening gathering of angels. “The Universe is vaster than Heaven.”

  “It is not!” God was starkly handsome, with eyes that were fierce under thick eyebrows even when He laughed. He located Himself with posed casualness on His throne, but in such a way that His powerful muscles, though in repose, conveyed His strength. He wore only gold sandals, which wound their straps up the bulging calves of His firmly planted legs. A rainbow-colored scarf curled about His shoulders and came to rest, as if almost carelessly, but actually studiedly, upon His lap. After a dramatic array of gestures that He often displayed, one of His large hands would inevitably come to rest, firmly, upon His formidable groin.

  “My God, Lady!” Madame Bernice had shot up, almost overturning our tea setting and startling Ermenegildo so that he let out an awful squawk.

  “Lady, I —”

  “Madame, I —”

  We were at a serious impasse.

  Madame was sputtering. She bent down as if to gather the tea setting, although it had not spilled. To placate Ermenegildo, who was still rattled by her exaggerated behavior, she crushed a tea cake in her hand and tried to stuff it into his mouth, an untypical development that he resisted with yet another fierce squawk, which sent the twisted feather on his comb into a whirl.

  I watched this performance, letting it play itself out.

  At last it did. Somewhat. Madame sat down, her face framed by glittering hands, her elbows propped uncharacteristically on the table. “Now, Lady,” she said firmly.

  “Now, Madame?”

  “Surely you’re not going to have the Heavenly Lord step down from His throne and then proceed to —”

  I didn’t know whether she was fanning herself or shooing a butterfly away; she usually loves butterflies, especially the white ones.

  “As far as I know, Madame, He remained on His throne,” I said to her.

  She seemed only somewhat relieved, oddly soothing her neck.

  “But keep in mind, Madame Bernice, that my memories do continue to evolve,” I said, “so I cannot guarantee —”

  Before I could finish, she flattened her hand — astonishingly loudly — on the table. “Well, then, Lady, I’m forced to point out that your description of the Heavenly Lord is much, much too —”

  “—graphic? For prudes perhaps,” I measured out my words.

  “For interviewers," Madame amended quickly, “only for interviewers.”

  “I see. Still, that description will remain, Madame, because it’s the exact description of God as conveyed by Lucifer, confirmed by Cassandra and later by my Adam, who was created, without clothing whatsoever, in His image — do remember that, Madame.”

  “I simply will not, will not — will not! — be responsible for how interviewers will react to —” Her voice tangled into mumbles.

  This might assuage her concern: “Besides, Madame, there was no sex in Heaven, just desire, just longing —”

  “God? Was He a prude?” Realizing that she had spoken her question almost eagerly and in a tone that might lead me to infer that she was trying to find in God an ally for her own attitude, she repeated the same words, this time with shifted emphasis: “God! Was He a prude!”

  “Whether or not He was,” I clarified, “withholding His desire for the angels was one of His tactics for controlling them. It baffled them, those beautiful creatures, and so they sought more eagerly to court His favors —”

  “Not sexual favors,” Madame reiterated.

  “I stated that earlier, Madame. There was no sex in Heaven. For God it was enough to know — and He did — that they all desired Him — and they did.”

  But there was desire, and longing, much longing in Heaven, a longing the angels did not fully understand. They felt it when they saw God so grandly handsome on His throne, especially when He wound His rainbow-colored scarf gracefully about His wrist and raised His hand from His lap. The angels felt longing, too, and much more immediately, among each other, toward each other, feelings especially aroused when, accidentally — and soon they began to pretend to stumble — their perfect nude bodies rubbed against others’. At such times, pretending to regain their footing, they reached out, touched more firmly, extending the charade of trying to regain their equilibrium, and wondered at the sparks of — What? They didn’t know.

  “I’m sorry, Lady, but how can you possibly —?”

  “— know all that?” I had now surrendered to having to repeat certain answers about matters interviewers might continue to question insistently. “The same reason as before. Adam told me. That, Madame — that there was no sex in Heaven — is the reason he and I were at first confused and had to explore to locate the source of our yearning. And we did, so lovingly —” The memory of our bodies in Eden lit a glorious warmth in my heart.

  “Ah, yes.” Madame’s mood mellowed. She beamed her most gracious smile at my facility in meeting her queries. “Still, you might reconsider describing —”

  I thanked her for her confidence, but assured her I would describe everyone and everything as they were.

  Other angels — even some who had not joined in the flight — moved closer to Lucifer as he addressed God. “We’ve flown beyond, far beyond these stars —” His voice grew in excitement. Cassandra stood by, her hand — two fingers — poised on her chin. She listened carefully, and watched.

  God laughed. He knew that what Lucifer had said was true. He had Himself on occasion peered beyond familiar stars and seen other heavens, other, even brighter stars. He was apprehensive of the unknown power that might lie — and might be seized — within the unperturbed darkness out of which He had thrust Himself. So He claimed the world He had shaped and commanded was the universe.

  Locating her knowing smile, God addressed Cassandra, “Darling Cassandra, isn’t it enough that I created what you thought your imagination conjured, the grass and the flowers? That was amusing.” He courted laughter from the other angels. “Now, My very dear, you’ve extended your imagination, with commendable power, I agree, to the point of having convinced Lucifer and” — He waved His hand in an arc to include all the questioning angels — “of something false, t
hat Our Heaven has no limits, that it extends — impossibly! — beyond Ourself — that you flew beyond it, whereas all you did was spin within Our gorgeous orbit.”

  Cassandra raised her long neck to the sky, where the birds had disappeared this morning.

  “Surely you do know,” God addressed all the rapt angels in a stern voice, “that beyond Me there is nothing.” One of His hands rose, then fell on the armrest of His throne. His stare captured Cassandra so powerfully that she felt her body pulled forward.

  And then she heard a loud slamming sound.

  Why didn’t the other angels react to it?

  They continued to listen as God’s lips proceeded to spew effusive tributes to the wonders of His own Heaven.

  Had only she heard the violent sound? How was that possible? It had been so loud, so distinct.

  God’s gaze remained on her, hers on Him, locked — even while He smiled for the other angels.

  Now she heard a series of metallic sounds that resonated, so discordant, so deafening that she had to resist placing her hands on her ears to shut them out.

  Still the other angels did not react, not even to the terrifying scraping and clanging that followed — and not, now, to a persistent, harsh, grinding sound. She knew! Distant chains were being tightly secured, rasping, grating.

  She heard a horrifying clang.

  God had created gates about Heaven and had locked them!

  If they were ever to fly again through the vast universe they had discovered, they would have to crash through the powerful new gates — but could they? Cassandra’s mind raced urgently while she continued to smile at God. There might be . . . war in Heaven!

  What a strange new word that was — “war.” It had occurred along with a flash of convoluted images — reflections from God’s resplendent throne? — no, the images were now smeared over with deep, ominous red.

  Cassandra looked about anxiously.

  Heaven was unfettered!

  Had she imagined it all? No gates? She searched for a deepened shadow such enormous gates would etch into the night, no matter how carefully hidden. She saw nothing but Heaven’s fields.