by Mary Rakow
THIS IS WHY I CAME
Copyright © Mary Rakow 2015
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rakow, Mary.
This is why I came: a novel / Mary Rakow.
pages; cm
1.Women authors—Fiction.I. Title.
PS3618.A44T48 2015
813'.6--dc23
2015009415
Cover design by Kelly Winton
Interior design by meganjonesdesign.com
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10987654321
e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-672-8
In 1955 at Ronchamp Le Corbusier said, “Certain things are sacred and others are not, regardless of whether or not they are religious.” To describe the space he’d built there he used the phrase, “Ineffable space.” “Ineffable,” the un-understandable.
SHE HAS COME after an absence of many years. The cab was late, she is angry and her neck hurts, up the back, over the top of her head, so that she tries to remember not to rub it as she sits on her chair in a row with others. She doesn’t want to be angry at the cab driver, doesn’t want to worry that her headaches could mean a tumor or cancer. Doesn’t want to be afraid of aging and death, always afraid and worrying. She knows it isn’t just age. When she was young she was also a believer and she rode through her life feeling held from behind and below as if in a rickshaw, calm and still as she moved without fear into her future. She knows that her faith gave her those things, cheerfulness, generosity, detachment, faith strong enough to cast out fear. But she can’t find her way back.
IT IS GOOD FRIDAY afternoon, the Passion has been reenacted by the school children and the church is dark, quiet and cool. The statues have been draped in purple all of Lent, and now, in addition, a further stripping away, the flowers have also been removed from the altar and the three layers of white linen reverently folded by the young altar servers, so that the altar is bare, just wood, which she finds almost embarrassing in its nakedness.
She had forgotten that people see each other in line, see each other come out of the confessional, some crying, some not, some inside a long time, others briefly. Waiting is both public and deeply private. Two teenage boys stand, letting older men and women like herself have their chairs. The first boy goes in, comes out, moves silently to a pew and kneels, lost in his thoughts. She moves a chair closer. In the half-darkness a simple candle casts a warm light on the confessional’s narrow door.
On the floor, at an angle against the shallow steps that lead to the altar, a wood cross larger than life rests and on it the corpus. One by one, people kneel down, touch it in their different ways, a hand lingering, another stroking, an embrace, a kiss. One woman shows her young child, a baby girl just learning to walk, to be quiet and still, to wait.
IT IS HARD to keep awake, her body folded over on the chair, hard because it is all more beautiful than she remembers and the beauty weighs down on her like a heavy cape. Hard because the strangers are welcoming in their reserve, hard because she feels all that she has missed, time folded over and onto itself like a paper bird with pert wings, those sharp folds of something flat into something that could fly, the Holy Spirit like a dove, all of it pressing down with awe and sorrow, sorrow being time’s twin.
After an absence of more than thirty years, she’s at last come back inside the walls, into the body of the whale, and it is more beautiful because it is more real to her than she expected, that is the trouble, and that is why she is staying, why she has taken the little hand-made book out of her purse and fingers its rough edges while her eyes are closed, feels the tiny white stitches where she sewed the center seam, the uneven bulkiness because on some pages she also taped images cut from magazines, art museum catalogues, photocopies from art books in her home because the images spoke to her of what she had written in various inks over the years, blue, black, green, making a Bible of her own, a testament where she could cast a thread through the silence and separation and anger of those years, some line to catch herself, strong enough to bear her full weight, dragging her through the water, the hook still caught in the side of her cheek, the cheek flesh healed around it, the wounds of Christ, lying, as he is now, on the incline of the shallow steps leading to the altar, his long carved legs bent at the knee, the nail driven through the arches of his feet, one stacked on the other like kindling, that ancient way of seeing him, timeless, that ancient way of saying, “Suffering is why I came, Bernadette.”
Maybe she will show the priest her book. See where my needle carried the thread? See this picture of Adam I taped in? See this image of Mary Magdalen, so sorrowful with her jar of oil?
Her little book with its tidy Table of Contents. She has come because she somehow wants to join the book to the corpus on the floor, the faithful moving slowly up the aisle to reverence it, the wood and paint and real people, real pews, real altar, that place of radical change, real nails that were hammered into real flesh centuries ago, all of it, ancient and visceral, weaving and interweaving of past and present, waking and dream, to make of all of it, if that joining is possible, one thing, one glorious, true thing.
Eyes still closed, she feels the cool pages for the image of Adam, the first. To the artist, it wasn’t Adam, but to her it became the image of the one she calls, “the Maker.”
Slumping on her chair, the line long, she dreams each story again as if it were new.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.
1. Adam the Maker
2. Cain and Abel
3. Cain and the Dream of the City
4. Noah
5. Abraham and Isaac
6. Isaac Afterward
7. Sarah and Abraham
8. Isaac in the Field
9. Isaac and Rebekah
10. Moses and the Burning Bush
11. Manna
12. Moses and Memory
13. Moses and the Dream of the Law
14. The Queen of Sheba
15. Jonah
II.
1. The Annunciation
2. Annunciation, II
3. The Visitation
4. Joseph’s Decision
5. The Nativity of Jesus
6. Mary Loving-kindness
7. Epiphany
8. The Slaying of Infants
9. The Murder of Zachariah
10. Holy Family
11. Finding Jesus in the Temple
12. Elizabeth
13. John and Jesus as Children
14. A Colloquy
15. John the Forerunner in the Wilderness
16. The Baptism of Jesus
17. On the River Bank
18. Temptation
19. Jesus Calling His Disciples
20. Wedding at Cana
21. The Woman with an Issue of Blood
22. The Woman with an Issue of Blood, II
23. Legion
24. Joseph Visiting
25. The Man Blind from Birth
26. Elizabeth’s Dream
27. The Martyrdom of John the Forerunner
28. Lazarus
29. Mary Magdalen
>
30. John the Beloved
31. The Last Supper/Remember Me
32. Veronica
33. The Place of the Skull
34. Joseph at Golgatha
35. Mary Magdalen at Golgotha
36. God
37. Joseph of Arimathea
38. Legion, II
39. The Descent into Hell
40. Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre
41. Mary Magdalen, Penitent
42. Zaccheus
43. John on Patmos
44. Mary the Mother of Jesus Later in Life
45. Joseph the Dreamer
46. The Dormition of the Virgin
47. Jonah in the 21st Century
Notes
Acknowledgments
I.
1
Adam the Maker
HE FASHIONS PEACOCK, dove, and parakeet, all the species and subspecies, microscopic and immense, yet is unable, no matter how hard he tries, to make the form he longs to see, the song he hears but cannot put outside himself, unable to compose the right sequence of notes, unable to make the form that will tell him who he is.
He traces his hand, his foot, in the sand. Lying on his back, reaches over his chest with a stick, traces his entire body there then stands, but it does not move, unable to make a form like himself that also breathes. The water erasing it like an encouraging teacher at first, saying, try, try again, then mocking.
Destroying this drawing and that. All around the island, in the wet sand and dry, sketches and more sketches, pages in messy piles under the trees, floating on the lakes, clay models on the riverbanks, countless mud statues, all of them false. Fabricated then abandoned, revised, fabricated anew then abandoned again. Clumsy or elegant, it doesn’t matter. The debris is everywhere and the animals are multiplying faster than he can keep up, all of it not what he wants to see.
He cannot find a way to put out into the world the form he cannot not see. Bound by this need more visceral than if his legs were bound by leather straps tight on his body, digging in. If he walks to the left it is there. If he walks to the right it is with him. This formless thing demanding a form and he cannot get it right. Draft after draft after draft.
“We had such high expectations for you!” he hears the waves say. Sometimes he thinks it is the chorus of animals, donkeys and macaws, jealous that he is not satisfied with them. “Why are you despondent?” the robin asks, “Look at my wings!” and the ant, “Look at my diligence!” And he does look, trying to preserve what is left of hope, and does study his companions that are his successes and so near, but this does not solve the problem and brings no peace.
Out of respect, he has given all of them their individual names, zebra, koi, antelope. But the real name for each, the name he keeps to himself, is “Not-me.” You are Not-me. You also are Not-me. It is endless, the diversity of what is Not-me a torment, so that finally at one sunset at the close of one particular day, the remnant of hope impossible to revive, he denies his desire, denies whatever it is that pushes him to transcend who he is, to exceed all the animals and the plants and the stars, the sea and the dry land, all that he has already made, even though it is all, and he knows this, which is a mystery and confusing, that it is all undeniably good.
He imagines, instead, the pleasure of not being driven, and so formulates a different end to his loneliness and, taking the sharp blade, lies down thinking to end his life. It seems dignified. A gate to relief, perhaps even to happiness. But when he lifts the blade over his abdomen he fails again, unable to pierce himself, as if failure were endless, as if failure itself is what he is best at inventing, and finding that he lacks the necessary courage falls asleep hoping to never wake.
SHE COMES TO him in a dream so startling it wakes him and he sees that she is not a dream at all but is as real as the field mouse, the ostrich, the hen and hawk. For a long time they stare at each other without speech, motion, and he compares her to the elegance of the serpent and imagines her softness like the goose’s down. Seeing that she is unlike the other creatures he has made, he thinks her name will not be Not-me but perhaps Not Not-me, yet seeing that she is equal to himself, does not name her at all but asks, “What is your name?” and she replies “Eve.”
He wonders from where she comes. Wonders, since he has not made her, if there is a maker mightier than himself, one who, by implication, holds him in a deep understanding, his hunger clearly and intimately known by this other, as it has now been made visible in its answer, which causes him, as he stares at her, arm and leg and neck, to wonder if all the creatures in the sea and on the dry land and all the stars in the heavens that he thought he had made weren’t made by him at all, but rather by this other. And he desires to know this one, and names the maker he cannot see but whose work he sees, “God.”
2
Cain and Abel
A BEL, AN INVALID, in the covering of night, took aim and threw the stone out the window, hitting the ewe. He dragged himself outside, everyone asleep, and thought, this time I will not ask Cain to hide what I have done from our father. Instead Abel slit the ewe’s throat, watched the blood drain onto the grass and slowly, with great difficulty, gathered wood, lit a fire, and waited, hoping, rather than fearing his father, to please him.
In the morning Cain arrived bringing poppy cakes, breads and crackers, flaxseed, cooked squash and onions. He loved his work, setting down the seeds, vines grafted, the grapes better each year, the sweet fruits handled gently, packed in boxes with straw. He’d prepared lentils with mint, parsley and olive oil, his father’s favorite. But when his mother opened the door Cain saw his father already at the table, a bone in his hand, pulling flesh with his teeth, oil dripping from his fingers, the flesh still pink, the fat crispy. “We’ll have those later,” he pointed to Cain’s fruits and grains, waving him in, but Cain stood at the door terrified, then fled.
BLOOD STAINED THE ground where the young ewe was slain. Weeping, Cain gathered what remained, recognized its soft hide, its four dainty hooves, its head with two ears flush with stiff hair, that it was the new one, the youngest, the one they hadn’t yet named. He wept for the ewe until anger rose up his back like heat and when he stood he knew that he could not not harm his brother. That vengeance would come to Abel, and come through him.
To others Abel was known as the weak brother, tender-hearted, the poor invalid, but to Cain, Abel was the one who threw stones at his sheep, lambs and baby goats, the one who found pleasure that way, wounding them so they could no longer run like the wind but would be broken like he was. Sometimes Abel taunted Cain, taking aim at the first born saying, “He’s like you!” because Cain was the first born, and continued until Cain cried out, “Stop!”
Like fire on dry grass, the news spread and in a short time Abel had assistants, a new livelihood. Animals, no longer given family names, were raised to be slaughtered. Cows, goats, chickens, even the turtledoves. Old words changed their meaning. “Tender” no longer meant an animal’s sweet disposition but how its flesh slid between the teeth. “Tough” no longer fierce and noble like the bull, but a lack of fat and undesirable. Animals became “meat,” their bodies cut into parts and each part also named, “flank steak,” “rump roast,” and “ribs.” Abel taught others how to slaughter mercifully and Cain thought, he’s teaching as if he’d been merciful. My brother a hero. “How did you discover this?” they asked him. “Even my crops are thriving!” “My daughter walks again!” And Cain wondered, is he growing in compassion while I grow in bitterness?
Cain grieved that animals were slain, and always would be slain. He neglected his fields, grapes on his vines withered, then the vines themselves fell. It seemed that blood was everywhere—on tabletops, in bowls, smeared on aprons so that he could no longer bring himself to eat red foods, pomegranate, watermelon, kidney bean. His mother’s consolations fell away like water, making him feel more alone, while his father, jovial and proud of Abel, so long an embarrassment to him, made jokes about the new foods. Eating the
calf’s heart, its liver and brains, said, “Surely this is sweet bread!” which stung Cain, his raisin breads and fruit tarts, his barley and dates. “It’s just a joke!” his father said, touching the back of Cain’s head, squeezing his neck for emphasis.
Cain left messages, wanting to be remembered by his family. Nut cakes and fruit spreads in jars tied with string. “Look under the table,” and, “It’s in the garden, love, Cain.” But they did not look. He told himself, I would have looked. I would have read notes from my son.
EVERYONE SEEMED TO be doing passionate things. A tightrope walker tied his rope between trees and danced across it like a bird. A man lying on the grass held a heavy woman to himself, her thighs like barrels, lost in pleasure, the grass sticking to her legs. A girl in a sleeveless top with shapely arms played a flute for three of her friends. Life had taken a wonderful turn. But when Cain approached a bench to sit down, the women covered their heads with scarves and he thought, they’re pretending to hide their faces from the sun but really they’re hiding from me. A bell tolled two o’clock then three. He watched shoes, the bottoms of legs, sandals, bare feet, ankle bells, toe rings, his eyes most comfortable looking down. A man walked past wearing a skirt flounced out by a petticoat. A print of thrones and, at his sleeves, ruffles. Cain had never seen such a silhouette and it pleased him, but then he thought, I’ve never dressed like that. I have never been original.
He felt inferior to Abel and to anything on which his eye fell. The rabbit is softer than I am to touch. The owl more wise. The raven more bold. The snake more elegant in the moon’s blue light.
In the new world filled with enterprises and projects, memory called to Cain of the life he used to live, held in a cycle of planting and harvest, of bare vines that sprung new leaves and grapes year after year, leaving for a time then re-appearing. Memory called with tiny bells and sweet songs so that Cain tasted it like honey on his lips and tongue, then the back of his tongue, so sweet his teeth ached and, again, his anger grew fierce against his brother.