Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two]

by Stan I. S. Law

  How could I have done it?

  He knows I love him, and it was not really I that denied him. Someone did. Just as he said. But if he knew, why didn’t he stop me? Does he enjoy seeing me suffer? If only he hadn’t mixed me all up. He said that he was within me. If he is within me then maybe he denied himself? I wouldn’t, I couldn’t have done it on my own.

  Never! No...

  Not on my own.

  And he also said that heaven is within me. Within him and me. Within all of us. And he said that the Father is in heaven. Well, if the Father is in heaven and heaven is within me, then how could I have denied him? It just doesn’t make any sense. Not three times... Had I known that he didn’t mean me to do it, I would have stayed at home. I’ve got friends! Not many, but I have some who would’ve put me up, right? And instead he lets me deny him thrice.

  What could I have done? Should I have opposed his will? Contradicted him?

  But isn’t he always right? So what of my free will?

  At least I didn’t betray him. If I’d been chosen for that job I would have hanged myself. I very nearly did, anyway.

  Why can’t I understand his words...?

  Every time Alec had such dreams he would wake up sweating. And lately, such dreams haunted him almost every night. The dreams had been vivid. He not only saw and heard whatever happened, but shared the full emotional impact, the full anguish as he sat there, in the silent courtyard at the dawn of a dismal day. Simon’s thoughts may have been rebellious, but his heart was broken. He’d suffered agonies like he’d never suffered before. He’d been scared, not just for himself. He couldn’t even face reality. And there was nothing Alec could have done for him. Not a word of consolation. Not even a pat on the shoulder.

  This just wasn’t fun. Not any more. When he was a boy, all Alec’s dreams had been magnificent escapes. They’d been filled with joy and daring, and danger and courage—and invariably crowned with final victories.

  What happened?

  When I was a child... I thought as a child; but when I became a man… Is this what happened? Were the early escapades designed for children only? No wonder adults don’t dream as I do. They didn’t put away childish things; they just grew out of them. Perhaps all such dreams, dreams of alternate realities, are hard on the dreamer. Perhaps...

  “At least Peter also had his problems. So... I’m not alone,” he thought.

  Somehow this realization made him feel better. He was not alone. And, he felt he was getting there. Wherever ‘there’ took him.

  ***

  21

  Who am I?

  “I am a biochemical machine, which exhibits a cerrtain level of intelligence?” Desmond replied automatically. It sounded as much a question as a statement.

  It has been a while since he’d given the riddle any thought. He wondered what had prompted Alec to bring up the question. Alec was at his best when at work at the Institute, but outside, he looked perturbed lately. Desmond could help him with math and logic, and with a lot of questions on physics, but this? What does he mean: ‘Who am I’? Doesn’t he know?

  “Or am I intelligence which at some level of perception guides biochemical processes by the encoding of intelligence or instructions in the gene to produce a biochemical machine which enables this intelligence to enjoy the process of not necessarily just physiological becoming...”

  “...but rather the pleasure of partaking in the advancement of arts, of creativity, of intellectual pursuits, music or even just free thought?” Alicia made her contribution.

  “Did you know that Krishna in Hindu means ‘All Pleasure’?” asked Suzy.

  “I like that. I like that a lot,” Alicia approved.

  “I thought you might.” Suzy was pleased. The two ladies shared a lot together, not the least among them being their view of the world.

  “What do you think, Des?” Alicia was leaning on Desmond’s arm.

  “I definitely think Krrishna was rright. Especially since I’ve met you.” Desmond sounded dead serious.

  “I love you too, darling,” Alicia whispered in his ear.

  “You have to. We’rre getting married tomorrow.” He gave her the naughtiest of winks.

  Tomorrow came very quickly.

  The church was small; perhaps two hundred could fit in, if most remained standing. Maria had made all the preliminary inquiries. She found three small churches that met Alicia’s description, and later she and Alicia drove around to pick one to Alicia’s liking. Actually the church was little more than a chapel. Originally it was Roman Catholic, but now, with the decline in church attendance, it had opened its doors to all denominations. It stood on a hill, as all good churches should. It was covered with stucco that looked freshly whitewashed. Leading up to it was a narrow winding road, little wider than a path, with edges overflowing with Bougainvillea dressed over a low stone wall. Red over white.

  “Canadian colours,” Suzy remarked. “How nice!”

  It was nice.

  At three in the afternoon the church was empty, holding its breath for the wedding. Maria, dear Maria, made sure that the main altar would be awash with flowers; all local, all fresh, all festive. Even Desmond was impressed. He wasn’t as artistically sensitive as his wife to be, nor did he accept that religious rites should impede on his private union with Alicia. In fact he wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about. They’d already recited their lines at the civil ceremony as required by law, and that was more than good enough for him. Didn’t the Good Book say ‘thou shalt not swear’? Or ‘swear not at all’? Something like that. No matter. Nobody listened to the Good Book anyway. Least of all the padres. I suppose they had to make a living, Des thought, and people wanted to swear. They thought they were making a commitment. They needed that formality. It gave them, they thought, some kind of handle on their future. Only it didn’t work. Around fifty percent of first marriages in the States ended in divorce. A lot more in California, he suspected. Marriages were good for the priests and good for the lawyers. Not so good for the people.

  Yet, when he saw Alicia in her wedding dress, the same one, incidentally, that she’d worn twenty-six years ago at her first wedding, he would gladly have driven her to hell and back, if that was what she’d want. Des had studied her family photo albums, and he defied anyone not to admit that Alicia was at least twice as beautiful now as she’d ever been.

  “Sorry, lassie,” he turned his head when he first saw her all decked out. He’d turned to wipe a tear. “But I’ve neverrr seen such an angel beforre...” And he blew his nose with considerable conviction.

  As it turned out, the padre, or the priest, was the nicest man you could hope to meet. He was big, a little on the plump side, jovial and disarming. He came out, outside, to meet them, embraced them all as though he were an old family friend. He seemed to possess that rare trait of actually loving people. It was not a show of the so-called ‘people skills’ but a genuine love that could not go unnoticed. The joy in his eyes that two older people found love, and found it for the second time, seemed to fill him with great personal pleasure. He made all six of them feel that they were entering his personal home, that they were his personal guests, members of his family, and simultaneously the most important people in his life.

  Just looking at the ‘young couple’ was enough to bring tears to Suzy’s eyes. Maria was not doing any better. She seemed to have kept a corner of her heart reserved for the Professor for many years, and now, rather than losing him, she felt she’d gained another friend in Alicia. The Professor had been almost like a father to her. To her whole family. When her husband had lost his job some years ago, the Professor kept her whole family going until her husband found new employment. That took almost six months. No wonder they had to take time to dry their eyes before the ceremony could even begin.

  “I most cerrrtainly do!” Desmond said in a strong, amazingly youthful voice. He thought himself by far the luckiest man in the world.

  “I do!” Alicia echoed and not wai
ting for padre’s permission kissed Desmond on both cheeks and his mouth. She proceeded to kiss the padre, Suzy, Maria in that order. Then, after a momentary hesitation she reached up on her toes and planted a firm kiss on Matt’s cheek. The big man turned bright red. No one knew if the flush was due to pleasure or innate shyness. Matt had volunteered to be the official chauffeur for the young couple. Matt enjoyed volunteering. Apparently, it was in his nature.

  When it was Alec’s turn, she whispered in his ear: “Thank you, Ali.”

  For the wedding fiesta, they’d reserved a private room in a restaurant not far from the church. The padre, of course, had been coaxed into joining them. He spent the next two hours recounting the most hilarious stories about other marriages he’d presided over. Alec tried to make notes so as to pass them on to his colleagues at Caltech. But most of the time he was too busy just laughing.

  Finally, they drove back to the villa. Neither Alicia nor Desmond wanted a traditional honeymoon. “We’re in the loveliest place on earth, surrounded by people who love us,” Alicia insisted. “Why would we want to go anywhere?” She had a point.

  Desmond had a different reason. “I’m too old for that sort of thing,” he admitted some time later when he was alone with Alec, “and it would have been too tiring. My idea of doing something all night is basically sleeping. And you can’t do that on a honeymoon.”

  But on that day, he wouldn’t dare say that.

  By seven o’clock the newlyweds took a walk along the beach. The sun already sunk to a low angle, its rays skimming along the crests, spraying them with glittering fire. Alec and Suzy sat on the terrace watching Sacha, who was still busy examining each square of the security string net. Maria’s daughter, who’d been looking after Sacha during the afternoon, was sent home with one complete tier of the wedding cake. Matt? Matt was nowhere to be seen.

  Alec felt great contentment. Whatever was upsetting his peace of mind lately evaporated into thin air. His eyes followed his mother and Des along the beach. They all felt happy.

  “He’s a good man,” Suzy said.

  Alec knew about Desmond’s goodness. He counted on his judgment in more than just the scientific field. He respected the Professor’s view of the world. Des was a little like Socrates. He didn’t lie. Perhaps he didn’t know how to lie. Alec recalled the Professor’s answer to his question ‘Who am I?’ ‘A biochemical machine…?’ Is this all I am?

  “You know, Sue, few people realize that scientists, the good ones, are people of very deep faith. They talk and sound like atheists, but that’s because they dismiss the simplistic images of God which the sacerdotal fraternity promulgates to the gullible masses. Yet the scientist is a man who is continuously exposed to incredible mystery, beauty, harmony, order and wonder of the universe. We are more aware of this unimaginable affinity than any group of people who do not study the universe for a living.”

  “I must admit, I never thought of you guys that way. They all seemed at the very least agnostic,” Suzy admitted.

  “You say they, but how many have you really met?”

  “True. I don’t know enough of them to pass judgment,” Suzy nodded again, “but you must also admit that this is a common misconception, such as it is.”

  Alec let that drop. She was probably right and anyway, he’d suggested as much. The physicists did sound detached from the commonly recognized and accepted religious superstitions. But this had little to do with faith. Only the motivation, the object commanding their, of our, faith carried very different connotations. Whether the question ‘who am I’ was an aspect of faith or science, remained a moot point. In recent weeks Alec read volumes on who, purportedly, he was supposed to be. Who anyone was. Or at least, on what role model we were to channel our research.

  Alec was well aware that Suzy knew much more about this subject than he did. He asked her if she could make some notes for him.

  “When we get back, of course,” he added.

  To his surprise she got up and came back with a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. It was a well-worn copy, a book that she’d looked at many times over the years. The funny thing was that neither she nor Alec had ever had any religious attachments. Nor had they ever discussed the question of religious preferences. Perhaps they both just knew too much.

  “You carry that with you?” He looked as surprised as he sounded.

  “You took the Bible, so I took my Gita. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all, but… why this particular scripture?”

  “Well, that’s partially your fault. It is your hero who said that, and I quote: ‘When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous’.”

  “My hero? You must be kidding! My heroes don’t often quote God.”

  “Albert Einstein did. These are his words…”

  For the next half-hour each became lost in their thoughts. Alec continued to thumb through the notes he’d made on the Bible; Suzy was marking up some passages in her own text. The idea was that if the scriptures claim that we are created to reflect some sort of infinite potential they refer to as God, then lets find out as much as we can what they say about God. That should help us to get a handle on what we might be. Not very scientific, but he had to start somewhere. Dreams alone were not enough.

  Soon Alec’s list was ready. The notes he jotted down from the New Testament were short and unsatisfying. They were also predicated by the fact that Christians regarded the author of the statements as their God. He limited himself to statements beginning with the words ‘I am’. This didn’t get him very far, but the part about ‘entering in and going in and out to find pasture’ had an interesting ring to it. He made a mental note to look at this phrase later. As for being ‘the truth and the life’, well, that also needed a closer examination. If our belief system created our universe, then we all are the truth and the life within the confines of our reality.

  The Old Testament fared little better, but at least it was more definitive. It said simply: I AM THAT I AM. This didn’t give away much, but it was also not sending him on a wild goose chase within a symbolic labyrinth.

  He did much better with some extracts from Nag Hammadi Library. He’d jotted them down in LA. The statements in the Gnostic gospels were considerably more explicit. He glanced at his notes: I am he who was within me. Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed.

  This sentence established a dichotomy between the body and the mind, or the spirit. He found this separation expedient to explain some of his own experiences. Also Alec was not sure there was a difference between mind and spirit, as long as you didn’t confuse mind with intellect. He continued reading.

  I am the first-born son who was begotten.

  I am the beloved.

  I am the righteous one.

  I am in the process of becoming.

  I am the honoured one and the scorned one.

  I am the silence that is incomprehensible.

  I am the one before whom you have been ashamed.

  I am strength and I am fear.

  I am war and peace.

  This last placed the ‘I am’ firmly in the realm of duality. Not in any imaginary heaven where, some seemed to imply, there was no differentiation between I am and the Whole. Alec recalled his early encounters with Sandra, many years ago, when she’d said that he and she, the Princess, were like two peas in a pod, but that all the Princes and Princesses were also an expression of a single larger pod. This had been fairly meaningless to him at the time, but now it suggested that our mind could be an individualized expression of a Single larger Mind. Rather like the Egyptians seem to have implied.

  There were some other quotations, but he already had a mouthful of ‘I ams’. Scientifically he couldn’t use many of them.

  But there was one ‘I am’ which particularly caught Alec’s attention. It was the ‘I am the process of becoming’. It caught his attention because he’d seen something very similar before. It was Plato who had
said that our being is a perpetual becoming. How odd, he thought, so many centuries apart.

  “Here you are darling. I hope that’s enough for a start?”

  Suzy handed him her notebook. It was more than Alec had expected. And she got it all just from the Bhagavad-Gita. Alec tended to scribble, Suzy’s notes were written out in her neat, precise handwriting. One would never suspect it after seeing her paintings!

  I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and the moon...

  I am the sound in ether and the ability in man.

  I am the original fragrance of the earth, and I am the light in fire.

  I am the life of all that lives, and I am the penances of all ascetics.

  I am the original seed of all existence, the intelligence of the intelligent, and the prowess of all powerful men.

  I am the strength of the strong, devoid of passion and desire.

  I am the Self, seated in the hearts of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings.

  I am ever detached, seated as though neutral.

  I am the source of everything; from Me the entire creation flows.

  I am seated in everyone’s heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness.

  “There must be many others, of course, but these might keep you going,” she added when he said nothing.