The Habitation of the Blessed

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Hajji looked across the clearing at me, her eyes huge and deep. “John, you must not speak of this to the others. I could not bear it. Do you promise?”

  I nodded, numb, even in that terribly sweet place.

  “You know that we change, in each Abir, life to life. It is more sacred than sacred, and the luck of the draw is law. I am far older than Hagia, or Hadulph, or even Qaspiel. The gryphon is a child next to me. And in my first life, I was called Imtithal, and I married, and became a widow. And I cared for three children whom I loved to distraction, and when they had grown, I wrote down all the stories I ever told them, so that I would not forget the children, nor they me. But John, every one of them down in Nimat drinking Glepham’s milk and listening to the great white lion—they grew up reading the stories I told to those little ones. We do love our stories in Pentexore, and our histories, and our fictions. They grew up imagining I was their mother, their Butterfly. They all get to keep their names and no one breaks the rules; they cut up their hearts and keep the pieces in a thousand separate boxes—but I had to change mine, just to keep that light from striking in their eyes every time I spoke. Despite the Abir, they cannot stop wanting to be loved, wanting me to love them, and I didn’t want to tell stories anymore. I didn’t want to love children anymore. I didn’t want to be everyone’s mother. Thomas died, and the children—” the panoti put her face into her hands and shook once, profoundly. “Sometimes you’re in a story, and also telling it, and it is the worst thing, because you can’t change the ending, you can only live through it. John, all this time they’ve barely been able to contain themselves from embracing me and calling me by my name and begging me to sing them to sleep at night. You saw Hagia and Ghayth—she had only to meet someone she loved enough and all customs evaporate. I suspect she wanted me to scold her, like the nurse I was, so she could have a moment under my rule. Only the most tenuous thread of law keeps them from doing it. I am not the only one—do you think Queen Abir, who began all this, is dead? No one dies—or hardly anyone. Everyone keeps going, forever and ever. But you—” she spread her hands beseechingly, “you’ve never heard of Imtithal. You could love me as Hajji, just as a no one who knew her way through the mountains, you could love me and never ask me to tell you a story in all of your days. You could love me like Didymus did, while he lived, and I could rest.”

  “Saint Thomas didn’t have a wife,” I said, only half understanding her.

  “Perhaps not,” the beautiful tree laughed. “But I did.”

  “You understand, somewhere,” insisted Hajji. “Because you love Tau’ma that way—Thomas. You want to be in his story, to be in the book you read and loved. And he is dead, so there is room in his story. You need him to be a father to you. He could take that burden, and then you could just eat with me, and talk with me, and I could tell you that I knew already about your Christ—knew very much about him. And you would be so pleased. And we would talk about the separation of flesh and spirit and you could feel at home.”

  “John is your name,” the tree said, and it was not exactly a question. His voice was rough and full, as though it sounded in an oak barrel. The birds in his beard rustled. “And you are a Christian, I presume.”

  “Yes, yes,” I breathed, and crept closer—but they did not seem to mind. Hajji, or Imtithal, sat quietly cross-legged at the foot of the great Thomas-banyan. “I have come so far, to find your tomb, for the honor of my teacher Nestorius, whose teachings are now outlawed in Christendom. I thought that if I were worthy, God would show me this secret thing, this lost place, and I could return triumphant, having been blessed.”

  The face of Saint Thomas considered for a moment. “Do you believe now you are not blessed, that you were not worthy?”

  “I…” I felt my face crumble into ugly tears. “I have sinned here,” I choked. “I have sinned.” I could not say more, my throat closed up my speech.

  “Ah, my son, so did I, so did I,” the tree chuckled, and his smile was radiant as candles lit in the black—oh, how my heart hurt. “It’s not so bad. Poor child, how you torture yourself. You cannot be the master of all. If you have sinned, there is forgiveness. There is always forgiveness. Nothing is as we expect, not in the whole world. I thought I would live beyond death at the right hand of my brother on the sea of glass where the throne of Our Father glides forever—instead I live forever here, in a glen near the stars, and it is not so bad, not so bad. I lived well, I loved a wife, and if not for her I would not know what it was to drink rain with my skin. I do miss my brother—I do miss him.”

  “You speak metaphorically,” I said carefully, a dread growing in me. I could not hear any more inversions of the world. I could not.

  “I speak literally, my son. What do you call me—Didymus Thomas, Thomas Judas, Thomas the Twin? Who did you think was my twin?”

  “No, no, Christ was born alone, to Mary, in Bethlehem!”

  The Thomas-tree pursed his moist lips. “What is it your teacher Nestorius preaches?”

  I reeled within myself, pouring over every Scripture I could recall by heart, to refute the tree, and cling to what I knew to be true: the Logos, the light, the mystery of Christ. “That Christ possessed two natures.” I whispered faintly, my stomach sinking as I began to understand, though I did not wish to. “The Word and the Flesh, the Logos, the Light of God, and the Human, the man, and these natures dwelt within him, but were not joined as one. They call this heresy, that it denies His divinity, that it makes of Mary but a clay jar and God a poor foster father.”

  “John, if you listen to me I will tell you how it was, then, with us, before anyone thought to fancy it all up with Greek diagrams. You may believe the word of a tree in the dark, or you may continue splitting Christ down the middle over and over until he ceases to be entirely. I have no stock in it anymore—I am a tree, and I want little but to look at the stars and look forward to my wife’s visits—and she is a wife, and I had a wife, just the way you say you have sinned here and did not mean to. I did not mean to have a wife, but God put her in my path, and I do not make it a habit to deny His wishes.”

  “I will listen,” I said faintly. The perfume of the place made me dizzy.

  “The simple truth of my name is that I was a twin, that I was born second, after my brother Yeshua. I was born with the caul draped over my face like a maiden’s veil, and I was sickly, where Yeshua was strong, and cried loudly as soon as he left our mother—his hands were red and so were his feet, and he squalled and beat the air. I almost did not take my first breath. Our father removed the caul, but I was grey. He struck my backside, but I did not cry. Finally, they lay me next to my twin, and with those little fists he struck his first brother’s blow—and I flushed red and wept and breathed and our mother was not relieved, for we were poor and one son would have been enough. She meant me no ill, but if I had died she would have wept her piece and gone on living—little enough bread and oil was there for the three of them. As we grew, she had never enough milk for me, Yeshua was so hungry, so thirsty all the time, as though he were hollow and could never, never be filled. I grew thin, with only a trickle left in Maryam’s breast for me. He was always so full, and I was so empty.

  But I adored our mother. I followed her everywhere, barely toddling after her—long after Yeshua had learned to run headlong from one end of the street to the other— as she washed and cooked wheat in the great iron pot which had been the better part of her dowry. I kissed her cheek until she smiled whenever I saw her sad, and I drew pictures of her in the dirt while the other boys played. Yet she never looked at me the way she looked at Yeshua, with a kind of awe, and fear, and love, as he grew lean and strong but so terribly hungry, like a wolf’s babe.

  As boys it was much the same—he charmed our teachers and knew his Torah as though he had written it. The girls in the village went soft and moon-mouthed over him as his curls grew shiny and thick, his skin deep and rose-brown. They ignored me, or did not see me at all, and I could not remember the holy books lik
e he could, no matter how I studied. But for all that, Yeshua doted upon me, and included me in all his games. We slept in one bed, and told each other children’s secrets in the thick of the night. I worshipped him, abjectly. When he looked at me, John, when he looked at me it was like the sun had suddenly noticed me in particular, and shone on no one else for a moment. His attention was exquisite as a knife, and when he turned back to his tablets or his nails and wood, it was as though a darkness had fallen in my heart, suddenly, utterly.

  For my part, I had a persistent cough, and bony limbs, lanky hair, and my attention was sought by no one but him. But I was not unhappy. I was clever enough—as he grew more beautiful and wise, as people turned to him for advice and company, he left our mother alone more and more, and a space opened for me to show her that I could be a good son, too. That I could be worthy of love. I helped her to keep the house as no boy should—I burned myself with harsh soap so that she could rest, I learned to cook lentils and garlic in that pot. I recited holy writ to her—and found when I opened my mouth to speak to her, the words appeared as they never had in school with all those severe old men staring at me. And bit by bit, she smiled, and even laughed, and finally, held me close, and called me her lovely boy, and kissed my head, and I shook and shook in her arms, but did not cry. Once, when our father did not come home at night, as often happened, for he drank and preferred company other than Maryam’s, she told me that before Yeshua and I were born, a strange man came to her and told her she would have a special child, a wonderful child, that she had been chosen out of all other women to have him, and that she was blessed. The man frightened her badly, and when she saw him out of the corner of her eye, she saw red wings, dark and burning, so colossal they could not fit in her little room, and she knew he was an angel sent to her from God.

  ‘But he never mentioned you,’ she murmured, and held me close.

  You know much of this tale, I know. He was a great man—everyone listened when he spoke, and so did I. He took on students, and we were a family of thirteen, all of us together, so excited by the nearness of God, by the fire that burned in Yeshua, in all his words and deeds. And then came the fishes. And then the wine, and the boy who was dead but lived. And we all fell silent, because when young men dream together they do not really imagine that things like that will start happening. Yeshua was as surprised as anyone, but he did not show it to the others. In the night, at home, he would open and close his hands and shake, for he did not understand what was happening to him.

  I understood. My brother was perfect, that was all. Had it ever been any different? Whatever he desired appeared. It was a law of the universe.

  Once, I came upon him in a garden full of pomegranate trees, and date trees as well. The air smelled rich and bitter all at once. Yeshua was speaking in low tones to a tall man under the shade of a pomegranate. Red fruit hung all around them. The tall man had very long, very black hair, and upon his shoulders sat a kind of light that was not light. I tried to look at it, but it was like looking at something through the flames of a fire: the air wriggled like oil, and I could not keep my eyes on it, for they burned. Finally my brother finished his business with the man and left the garden by the far gate. I stood where I stood, and the tall man saw me. He looked startled for a moment, then slightly furtive, as though caught out.

  ‘Hello, Thomas,’ he said to me, and my ears ached, though he did not speak loudly.

  ‘Hello. What business have you with my brother?’

  ‘Much business,’ he said softly. ‘And grave.’

  I looked the man in the eye, and we held one another’s gaze. ‘You are an angel,’ I said, and I knew it to be true before I said it. An angel bends your bones apart, to make room for its voice inside you.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You came for my brother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are the same angel that came to my mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because my brother is special.’

  ‘Your brother is the Son of God.’

  The sun beat down upon me. I did not doubt it. I doubted nothing of my brother. Not then. ‘What about me?’ I said softly.

  ‘You were… left over,’ the angel sighed. ‘The Word of God displaces mass. Something of Him was left over. Which is to say: The Lord God conceived Yeshua. Maryam conceived you.’ The angel shrugged apologetically. ‘These things are unpredictable.’

  ‘God could not predict it?’

  ‘God enjoys surprises. Incarnation is… complex. It is not a straight path.’ The angel paused abruptly and joined his hands together. His fingers were very long. ‘You love your brother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps that was what was left over. It’s all love, Thomas. That’s all. Just love, and death, and the striving toward one or the other.’ He turned away from me, and I called out:

  ‘If he is a man, but has within him the Word of God, like a bone or a heart… do I?’

  The angel smiled, so slightly that I almost thought he frowned. His black eyes blazed like iron. ‘I don’t know, Thomas. Do you?’

  And he left the garden. The rich and bitter smell vanished with him, and I was left alone.

  When Yeshua died, I held our mother while she vomited and clawed her cheeks. Her eyes were empty; she had forgotten who she was. We felt as though a great weight had suddenly fallen between all of us, and we all stood staring at the hole it made, we who were now only twelve, twelve and Maryam, which I suppose made thirteen again. Nothing would be the same. He had been the weight, and where he fell he distorted the fabric of the world, before and behind, so that nothing could run smooth again.

  And then, one day, his friend Maryam, who shared her name with our mother and whom Yeshua loved dearly, came leading a man into Peter’s house. I did not recognize him—he was so thin and sick, with bony limbs and lanky hair, and the light in his eyes had gone out. He looked so much like me there might have been a mirror between us. Only now I was full, and he was empty. I began to tremble. The man put out his hand to steady himself, and I caught him, by instinct, by habit, because he was my brother, and he lived.

  I did not believe it. Anything else, but not this. I missed him too much. I could not believe it. God would not give me this; He would not be so kind as to let me know my brother again under the sun. For Yeshua, the gifts of God. Not Thomas.

  ‘Thomas,’ Yeshua croaked, weak, for he still bled from his wounds. ‘Embrace me, it is your brother, and I love you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I could not believe.

  And he took my hands and pressed them to his wounds. He winced, but I felt the blood there, blood, and also a soft kind of light, a light that was not light, and I was weeping, horrible, childlike weeping, huge gulps of air and sobbing as I held my brother to me one last time, and he gripped my shoulder, and kissed my brow.

  ‘But you are so weak,’ I said. ‘How can you be weak?’

  ‘Incarnation is not a straight path,’ he said wryly, and the man I had known to be more full of life than any was helped by twelve men to a table, and there we shared wine and bread, but he ate none, for he had not the strength. But we laughed, and shared old jokes, and I loved him so profoundly that day that I did not notice when he went. I simply turned and he was gone, and his chair stood empty, but his glass stood full.”

  [And before my eyes it swam and swelled, the moldering amber, the wavering hairs speckling the surface of that pool of corruption, seething in from the spine, from the corners, from the center. It moved faster than I could read, faster than I could copy, and my hands sobbed with agony, trying to outrace it, trying to defeat it. It devoured words just as my eyes grazed them, and I could not breathe, I could not breathe—the book was dying, dying before my eyes, decaying into gold, passages winking out like stars in the dawn. I caught fragments: from the far side of the great tree spoke suddenly another head, and then another, and three Thomases looked at me with pitying eyes, and Hajji-or-Imtithal kissed them all, one by one, o
n the lips, with her whole mouth. And another: I remember Vyala the pale lion opening her mouth, and how it was red inside her, and as I shuddered, insensate on the long grass, the lion-mother picked me up by the scruff, like a kitten—

  From the moldering page little orange spores puffed up, wetting words down through the next pages, and I turned them as fast as I could, but I was not fast enough, I could not stop it, it was too fast, and John’s book was disintegrating in my hands. I chased it down, down, through the pages, so many left, and I was not fast enough. The words shivered away, the fungal rot snapping at their heels until they were little more than epigrams: you should not believe a thing just because a tree said it.

  A streak of hungry yellow swallowed even that, and set its teeth to the next lines, each letter vanishing as I read it, turning to golden sludge, hot and horrible, staining my fingers:

  Hajji-or-Imtithal went on: he told me these stories on our bridal bed, too. I half-believe them. Why not? I know winged men live and walk and speak very seriously, I know children can be born different, without any living father. I know the body can die, and return when a green leaf breaks the soil. None of those things require a God to occur. They happen every day. Why should they not have happened to him? I think you would find it remarkably freeing to leave religion aside. When you believe no one thing, everything can be true.

  The gold darkened like dusk. I peeled back wet, sopping pages; I saw: in the crook of the white lion’s paw Hagia slept, headless, serene. I saw: I said to her, with her breasts heavy above me, her eyes burning: yes, yes, I will drink from the Fountain. Take me, take me, I will drink.

  The rest dissolved. With a wet sigh it sloughed over my palms and no more remained except this, wriggling, black on the gold, as if the letters moved and breathed and struggled for life:

  I wept.

  I wept.

  I sought God, and crowned myself Hell’s one king.

  I wept.