“And then she left. I was a broken man. In my sermon that week, I could say nothing without hearing the long insipid warble of my voice. I took as a humiliating patronage the kindness of my parishioners. I couldn’t tell anyone what was the matter with me, which forced an estrangement. And what did I give them? I looked at my congregants and saw them trapped with me, trapped by me. Yael knew she would offend the balance here by recording them singing because the tape would show that my flock uses the church not to be closer to God but only for the acoustics.
“They come to me because they have nothing left. Maybe this is the way faith begins, but I don’t like it. I’m sick of the language of faith. We tell them: Yes, you have been degraded; Yes, in part by the religion I want to revive for you, because nothing remains of Paradise but your faith; Yes, faith alone won’t feed your children, but without faith their bread will turn to ash. I know all of that. And I hate it. I hate the rhetoric of the religious party line, the stickiness of professional compassion, the tone of consolation ensorceled by greed. Greed for congregants and converts.
“I stopped talking. I wrote Phineas a note, telling him to tell the people that I was on the warpath against gossip. My silence, to avoid all that steams out of me, appeared to them as a sensational achievement. I wrote ‘hello,’ ‘good-bye,’ and ‘thank you’ on three white file cards. When a few small boys threw rocks at me so I would yell at them, I showed them ‘thank you.’ I kept this going for a week, and I felt much better.”
It was two months before the missionary sent another letter.
“I am not naive. I know the ways that people deform themselves. If I didn’t, I would have no claim on wanting to make the world better. And I admit that I probably know some aspects of the world only by rumor or refraction through magazines, television, and public scandal, but if I don’t have the experience of sin, I can smell it. The world of sin clings like smoke. The fires are here in Jamaica.
“I heard the story from my laundress’s husband, who heard it from someone else. I knew this much already: a few weeks ago Yael and Aston moved into a village some miles deep in the bush, where the people have no enemies and few gods. There’s no television there, the only entertainment is community. That’s why she wanted to go. One night, so I was told, everyone was stoned—on ganja from Bob Marley’s personal plantation, where else?—and they built a bonfire. The people banged on drums of their own design and danced.
“According to the story, Yael commanded the center of the circle around the fire. She invited Aston to join her. You’ve seen the Jamaicans dance, you know how unrestrained they are, how sexual. Couples here dance close enough to be hanged in Arabia.
“Their dancing progressed beyond simulation. Yael, so I was told, made love to, or at least had sex with, Aston while everyone watched. And apparently, while she was having sex with him, she offered herself to one of the men nearby, and if what I heard is true, she took Aston and the other man together.
“Here’s a surprise: that’s not what bothers me. I’m telling you, I know about group sex, I know about the orgiastic current in the world. The horror of this episode is not what happens among some stoned fools wasted in the hills. Let them stay there. But the people in my town know the story and treat the event as just another episode made of the world’s bundled energies. They don’t particularly care. And Phineas! Phineas asked me, ‘Sir, what is an orgy?’
“‘An orgy. Yes. Well. Let me tell you that ‘orgy’ is a way of saying ‘contradiction of God’s desire.’ Or the perversion of God’s desire as a rampancy of desire. We speak of an orgy of violence, or an orgy of shopping.’
“But the boy knows what’s going on by the bonfires. I fear he may already be lost, because even hearing about such hot, radioactive desire will itself begin a chain reaction of desire.”
...
The bishop called. “Leave the woman alone. Draw a circle around the church and the people in the community whose faith you count on, and become the lighthouse for everyone else. Ignore Yael and her people. You’ve heard of witches? Yael is the real thing. This woman enchants her people with pleasure they cannot afford. The more you engage with her, the weaker you become. This is the formula for her success. We can’t burn her, so ignore her. If witch burning would end witchcraft, I’d build the pyre myself, but it doesn’t.”
“What about her followers?”
“You have to ask yourself why people take such risks with their souls, and then ask yourself why some people protect themselves, why some people are faithful.”
“Out of fear of God.”
“Fear of God, yes, respect for terror, yes, but not love for Him. Discern who among your flock are faithful out of love. For the rest, they’ll always be torn between opinions. Their faith will always be a battleground of resentment for bad luck and prayers not answered.”
The missionary asked the bishop how he should proceed among the contradictions in his advice.
“I don’t see contradictions.”
“You’d kill her if you could.”
“No, I’d kill her if her death would stop the plague.”
“But if I ignore her and she continues …”
“She will.”
“Then what do I do? I need a sign.”
“She is the sign.”
...
There was a long silence after this.
Tom heard a rat in the corner of his cell. “She is the sign? She is the sign of what?” It was the man in the next cell. The sounds of the prison were coming back. The man in the next cell called out, “Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“What happens next?”
“I don’t know.” He had heard the story as he pronounced it, and nothing new was coming to him. “That may be the end.”
“That’s not how a story ends.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything else. It’s not my story. It’s the hanged man’s story.”
The light went on overhead, the naked bulb in a wire basket. The guard pushed a tray of food through the slot in the door: meat patties, a few bananas, coffee.
The guard looked in. “You don’t know what happens next?”
“No.”
“I think there’s more.” The guard went away for a few minutes and returned with another plate of food. “Eat this. You’ve been talking a long time.”
“Thank you,” said Tom.
“Everyone is listening,” said the man in the next cell. “I pass it along as you tell it.”
Tom finished his meal and lay back on the cot, floating in a mood of calm regret.
When he asked himself, “Why is this story part of my punishment?” he heard himself answer….
...
The bishop’s command to leave Yael alone sent the missionary into a week of dejection. He wandered through the village, inviting himself into the hovels of the poor and overstaying the tentative welcome offered him by the community. Because he returned their hospitality with so listless an effort at making them understand what he was doing in their houses and in their lives, the little goodwill he was earning for himself and his mission eroded with every meal he begged. When he understood this, he wrote another letter. “A terrible week. I became fogged with an obscure, interior confusion, and my happiness perverted by a sad, lost restlessness. My crisis was less about faith than my ability to honor my convictions. I am here to serve the poor. I reject the cheap piety that would have me say, ‘I am here to learn from them.’ I will earn redemption in the fight with a community’s sin. You are wrong about my staying away from Yael. When Alaric, in his march on Rome, was told of the great army massed against him, he replied, ‘The thicker the grass, the easier it is to mow.’ I need Yael. I need an enemy. I need a battle.”
...
Late that night, the missionary followed the beat of drums to Yael’s camp. The moon was waning, and he brought his lamp and stayed off the trail. He pushed his way through ferns, through patches of wild pineapple. Countless fireflie
s blinked amid the pines in unison.
And then he was there, on the hill above Yael’s camp, watching men and women he knew, some from church, on blankets surrounding the bonfire. The couplings were faster than he expected. Men and women met, fell into each other, were supported by others, and in turn supported them. People were quiet and, when finished, retreated to the edge of the circle. Yael put a blanket on a man’s shoulders, brought beer to another. Then she entered the circle. Three men and a woman wrapped themselves around her, filling her body.
It was something like snakes, and something like archery, each of them pulling the other as a hunter pulls the bow, Yael alert to the pleasures of the others until it was her turn, when she coiled her arms tight around her lovers, and the missionary saw and was certain that Yael felt conscious of nothing else, faces, skin, wet fingers, the hair that brushed her breasts; her body seemed to vanish in widening circles that leaped farther and farther, beyond thought, and then her voice took flight like an arrow.
At Yael’s release, eight arms rocked her. Rejecting their consolations, she twisted into misery, sobbing. Her friends held her tight. After a time, and how much time passed the missionary could not say, she hugged the men and the woman one at a time, speaking quietly to each, offering and accepting assurance.
The missionary stepped into the firelight.
“What did you see?” she asked. She opened herself to him. He looked.
“I saw you flung out of space.”
“Did you see me cry?”
“Yes.”
“Because I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself. As embarrassed as you would be.”
“I doubt it.”
“You think it’s easy? Begging for release with the group brings up every embarrassing torment of compulsion and all the energy we use to deny that compulsion. When the orgy ends, we hold each other with our two bodies, the etheric and the physical, and this hug means more than coming five times in one night; all of the frenzy builds for nothing more profound than these delicate hugs. In times of trouble, we have to affirm our trust; how we do that is a matter of custom. Do you understand the etheric hug?”
The missionary did not.
“The soul remembers what impresses itself on the body,” she said. “And the etheric body makes itself known through conscience. But conscience cannot always be trusted.”
“Why not?” asked the missionary.
“What feels like conscience is not always so. Sometimes the fear of freedom speaks in the same voice. Fear tells you that it’s my fault you want me. That your wanting me is a sin. But let’s take this apart. You want me, but you’re afraid of losing yourself in me. You could be married and be afraid that if you want me and I give myself to you, then you can’t have your marriage, because your wife won’t be able to share you. But if the whole community drops that drama of jealousy, and we all respect one another’s compulsions, and overcome them together, and spread love and trust, then we can tame God’s fearful voice. The Lumarians are training the fear of God out of his little red shell.”
The name stopped him. “The Lumarians?”
“That’s what we call ourselves. The Lumarians. The Light People. We have returned to the beginning of the journey. Adam and Eve were Light People, automatons guided by Messengers of Light.”
“The Messengers are separate from you? You’re puppets?”
“Stop making fun of me. The intimidated fearful conscience, the image of God, turns to violence, and then the scarred etheric body drowns the physical body in blood.”
“You’re elevating sex to a level of worship.”
“Oh, stop it. We’re using sex as a ritual in the service of worship, not as the object of worship. You’ve seen how strong we are, how beautiful. They’re different now, my people, you can see that, can’t you?”
“You’re not worried about disease?”
“We’re clean.”
“Then fine.”
“You don’t think it’s fine.”
“What can I do? What are we supposed to have, a soccer match between your side and mine?”
“They’re the same side. I’m trying to bring them together. I want to heal the split between night and day, between waking and dreaming. I want to heal the world of hallucination, the projection of fearful desires. I want you to stop thinking of me as a succubus.”
“Kind of hard not to.”
“I see you’re still flip. You know I find that offensive, but given that I’ve changed, I’ll tell you the truth, it’s kind of attractive on you. Your sarcasm is sexy. You should join us.”
“You know I can’t.”
“I know you think you can’t.”
“I won’t, then.”
“You could if you wanted to. You should see what I’m doing. I’ve given them the power of the feminine. Jesus and the wound on his side, the labial wound, the wound made by the point of a spear, by a point, by one of those manly points. I want to bring them together. A return to androgyny. There’s a universal religion inside all of us. Look at the people who are with me. You can see the power they have now. This is the power that starts a real revolution, because it starts from a necessity that’s larger than the usual struggle for land and resources. Jamaica is the place for this revolution to begin. The people are so broken and so holy. Why did reggae become so popular around the world? Bob Marley was the kind of man who comes along every two thousand years! The Africans, at home and in their diaspora, are the great challenge to the world now. No other group is so low. No other group needs so much help, and the reason they are beaten down is that the first world knows what threat they carry within themselves that they don’t even know they possess.”
“Then good luck with your Lumarians.”
“Your problem is obvious and pathetic. You want to experience the spiritual, but you can’t let go of your ego. You won’t face the power of your instinct.”
“I know what’s there. I control it.”
“Then you’ll never have illumination.”
“Illumination is a luxury. I’m just here to feed some hungry children.”
“And you want them to stay children. Let me show you what else we do.”
...
The missionary returned to his church and wrote a letter to the bishop, describing some of what he’d seen.
“She brings all the members of her new community into a circle every morning. She asks them to share their dreams of the night before. When a dream is particularly strong, she asks everyone to make that dream into a play. She assigns them roles to perform the dream’s allegory of desire, impulse, apprehension, sensation, and memory.
“She tells them, ‘Now we will find out what our dreams really mean. Shared and acted out, our private dreams become our collective dream. If we share one another’s deepest connections with open hearts, with love, the day will come when we all wake up together having dreamed one dream. We will know what to do. Each will take her part in the pageant without assignment. Each will make his mask or costume, and all of our words and music will come together as we dreamed them, without rehearsal, without script. And then we will spread our message across the island, and then around the world. And this will be like love.’”
...
The missionary read the letter and then sent it, knowing that the bishop would recognize madness. He reflected on his insanity, which was really nothing more than an inconsistency he refused to resist or hide.
Phineas was in the chapel when the missionary went to pray.
“I’ve bewitched myself, Phineas. This isn’t Yael’s fault. This is my fault. I’m in trouble. I feel like I’m cured now, but it’s too late for what’s about to happen to me. If I confess my errors when I go home, if I am rational and clear about all of my mistakes, if I tell them that jungle fever deranged me, I’ll never get another church. I have ruined myself. I entered the ministry with fantasies of the same success that Yael dreams of, the kingdom of heaven on earth. I had spiritual fire, and I wanted to burn a
ll the deadwood in the world. I had such contempt for the old men and their droll caution against religious excitement. Now I’m wise. Failure begets wisdom. Did you know that? But what do I do with my wisdom?”
“The bishop doesn’t want you to see her anymore.”
“You’ve been talking to him?”
“Every day.”
“Is he coming here?”
“This is bigger than you.”
The missionary wrote this letter to the bishop: “What are you telling the boy? Fine, I accept your private connection with him. Phineas will come to the seminary, eventually, of course he will. I’ve been grooming him, and you see what I see. He’ll become important, I’m certain of it, probably of greater meaning to our movement than you or I. I know your limits. I respect you and I love you, but I know your limits. Just let me finish here. Let me find a way to limit the damage. This is a laboratory. The methods we discover in Jamaica to thwart the demons raised by this woman can be our ammunition everywhere.”
Under Radar Page 8