Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Nathan responded by saying that he did care, of course.

  And it was true: he cared, with one part of his mind. He found himself caring very much. It moved him to hear another person speak of his childhood, confessing that it hadn’t seemed right, somehow, not the childhood everyone else seems to have had. Nathan would have liked to speak of his own childhood, but he didn’t know quite what to say. Had he been lonely? No. At any rate, he didn’t think so. (But what was loneliness? Was it possible to be lonely when one was with God?) He began to tell Japheth about his mother, and his grandmother, and his grandfather who had died so suddenly, but the words struck him as hopelessly inadequate, and something in the young man’s keen, assessing gaze made him falter. Japheth Sproul did not want to hear that Nathan Vickery was similar to him; he surely did not want to hear that Nathan had had a childhood that hadn’t been altogether . . . But Nathan would not have known what to call it. Happy? Unhappy? The words seemed to him misleading and trivial. What did happiness matter, really? His sould turned away in revulsion from the tawdry happiness of ordinary life. The God of his visions was not a God concerned with anything as banal as happiness; there was only His will to be lived.

  Friendship puzzled him. Erotic love puzzled him. (There were young women who approached him even now, staring at him as if they saw, in him, a creature of their own invention; but since his experience with Leonie Beloff and the terrible penitence God had exacted from him, he appeared at last to be invulnerable.) He understood that men are commanded to love one another, but not how: and not why. The love he had felt for his Grandfather Vickery had not helped his grandfather, nor had it helped him. Love for one another . . . Brothers and sisters in . . . If God was in all, what difference did it make whether the parts loved one another or were even aware of one another? As Japheth spoke of some humorous, complicated incident that had taken place a few years ago, Nathan listened intently to his words without hearing them, and gazed at the young man as if he were watching him from a great distance. He loved Japheth because Japheth was a fellow Seeker for Christ, but he did not know whether he liked Japheth: for what did that mean, liking? Every earthly attraction was in conflict with one’s absorption in God . . .

  “Ah, I’m boring you! I can tell!” Japheth laughed harshly.

  Nathan blushed. He tried to protest.

  “No, no, I understand! I shouldn’t be telling you these ridiculous things. Your time is far too important. There are hundreds of people who’d like to tell you their life stories, and most of them would be far more meaningful than mine . . .”

  “I was thinking,” Nathan said, “of loving and liking. Of friendship . . . I was thinking that I didn’t really understand what they mean.”

  “Understand what they mean?” Japheth repeated blankly. “Why, they mean . . . they mean . . . People are attracted to one another, that’s all. It can’t be explained.”

  Nathan nodded slowly. “And sometimes they fall in love.”

  “Well, yes. Sometimes. But it doesn’t last,” Japheth said, frowning. “It always appears as if it will last, but it doesn’t.”

  “Nothing abides but God,” Nathan said faintly.

  “Nothing abides but God.”

  Nathan looked at Japheth, wishing to see whether the cloudy spirit did indeed dwell in his soul: but he was distracted by the young man’s quizzical expression.

  “Why are you staring at me?” Japheth asked. “Did I say something that offended you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan said.

  “You have a certain . . . It’s uncanny . . . Oh well,” he said, grinning, “I’ll never understand, so why should I try? Sometimes I think I want to establish a human contact with you, Nathan, even if it’s only to make you draw away from me in disdain; at other times I know I don’t want that. I joined the Seekers, I’ll confess to you, not because of the Holy Spirit or God or Christ or whatever, but because I couldn’t shake you from my mind: because I dreamed about you night after night. I was convinced that you are the . . . you are the center of . . . My life turns about you; why should I pretend it doesn’t? I tried to tell myself for a while that I joined your church in order to get close enough to you to determine whether you were a conscious fraud or simply a madman. I tried to rationalize my behavior. But it’s hopeless, it’s degrading. I dreamed of you as an avatar of Christ and I think . . . I really think, you know,” he muttered, “that you are.”

  “An avatar of Christ,” Nathan said softly.

  They walked for a while in silence. Neither was conscious of the sky above, or the earth below. Neither was conscious of the mist that lay lightly upon the river. After some time Japheth began to speak of a childhood fantasy, an imaginary playmate he had created out of his loneliness, being the only child of older parents; his friend’s name was Billy-o, and he had had red hair and a reckless, rather naughty manner, unafraid to speak up for whatever he wanted . . . most of the time a companion to Japheth, but occasionally an enemy. It was as if, Japheth said, some power of his own had flowed into Billy-o and might then be turned against him.

  “In the end he frightened me. He threatened to make me say things and do things that weren’t what I wanted at all. And he grew so big . . . a head taller than I was. My own age, and so big! He tried to force me to knock things over, or spit in my father’s face, or shout in church. The little bastard.”

  “What happened to him?” Nathan asked.

  “I don’t know: he died, maybe. I think he died.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Why, I suppose I must have killed him,” Japheth laughed. “When I was older . . . ten or eleven . . . Billy-o was teasing me one day and I ran across a busy street and almost got hit by a car, and he did get hit, and that was that. I felt the crunch in my own body, and that was that.”

  “And he never came back again?”

  “Oh no. Absolutely not . . . Look, did I embarrass you before? That business about Christ?”

  Nathan shook his head wordlessly. He had no idea what to say. The image of Christ had burst into flames and burned to ashes, inconsequential as any ashes. But he could not tell Japheth that; he could not tell anyone. That “Christ” was a mere image? He dare not tell anyone that truth.

  “My mind veers off into two wholly distinct directions,” Japheth said. “The earthly, the mundane, the practical; and the ethereal, the spiritual, the . . . utterly outrageous. I can’t bring the two directions together. For a while I tried, I tried very hard, I had intended to get a PH.D. along the way while forcing the two together, but it simply didn’t work. So I’ve given up. The earthly must go its own way while I cast my lot with the other. I did dream of you as Christ, and in my imagination I call you Master. I’m a year or two older than you but I call you Master. Am I ashamed? A little. Not much. A few years ago it would have been preposterous, but not now. I accept a certain truth about you that possibly you can’t experience yourself. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t even care if I embarrass you. An avatar of Christ! What nonsense! What an absurdity! . . . Yet I believe. I know. The doubts I have concerning the Seekers are of no more substance to me than mosquitoes whining about my head, or a fly buzzing in an empty room: they are merely thought-clusters, the inevitable doubts the mind casts up simply to keep itself going. Do you understand? Yes? We doubt just to assert our existence. I doubt, hence I am. But it can’t be taken seriously. None of it. The earthly, the mundane, the practical . . . the sane . . . Can’t be taken seriously once one has tasted the other world. Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day . . . for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

  Nathan stared at him. Was it true? He had seen that very page of Scripture burst into flames and shrivel into ashes, he had seen the ashes scattered wildly across the earth . . . But perhaps You had spoken to Japheth with a message for him? Perhaps he had misinterpreted You? But it was hardly possible, Nathan thought, for him, for Nathan, to have misinterpreted .
. .

  While Japheth chattered on, he walked in silence, unaware of his surroundings. The earth that received his footsteps, the caressing air through which he moved, even the sunshine that caused his one good eye to squint: they were of no consequence beside the beam of power that was Nathan’s own soul, stirred to a frenzy by a stranger’s words, a brother’s words. Surely it was God speaking through this person. Surely it could not fail to be God. Master, Nathan was called: in mockery, and yet not altogether in mockery. Japheth laughed at himself, touching Nathan’s arm as if to draw attention to the willingness with which he laughed at himself, for had he not become a fool in glorying, wasn’t he defiantly proud of himself for speaking as a fool—for declaring his love? “The first time I heard you speak I wanted to stand up and shout that you had no right to terrify us with those specters out of Revelation—and did you understand the Book of Revelation yourself—did you have any idea in your passionate zeal that the book can only be interpreted in the light of its historical context—that it was written during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, who wished to persecute Christians all the way to Asia, and so John—whoever John was—saw the world divided into good and evil, into Christians and their persecutors? Did you have any idea that the Beast you referred to was simply Nero, the beast that was, and is not, and is to come—that Nero had killed himself and there was a legend that he would be returning from the underworld, and John obviously took this legend seriously—just as he took everything seriously and inflated a political situation into a vision of the end of history—Armageddon? I wanted to shout you into silence, I wanted to drag you off that platform and take your place myself and tell the frightened audience that—that—But you kept speaking, and I just sat there, and I realized that it didn’t matter what you said—just as it didn’t matter what John said, or what he imagined he said—It didn’t matter that the Beast was or wasn’t Nero, that St. John the Divine was or wasn’t a paranoid schizophrenic, that the entire Bible is or isn’t a direct revelation from God—Do you see? Do you understand?” he said, in his excitement gripping Nathan by the forearm. “Can you? It took me almost thirty years to come into the presence of the Divine, but that presence is unmistakable, and I’m not ashamed to call you Master, or to follow you wherever you go—to sacrifice my life for you, in fact! The way of my father—my fathers—is not the right way, it doesn’t lead to salvation or even to earthly happiness—for what does it profit anyone, to know all there is to know but to feel nothing?—to know the causes of all human motivations, and the backgrounds of every collective event, but to share in nothing, to experience nothing? When I joined the Seekers I gave you all the money I had and about half of it was money I’d gotten from selling my books—some of them rare books—my father’s, my grandfather’s—and it isn’t that I reject that knowledge, and I certainly don’t reject the scholarly world, but—but—But I had to do it, do you see? Otherwise I would have drowned! Suffocated! The weight of so much knowledge, so many books, the entire life’s-work of innumerable men, and—and the prospect of—I was to be one of them, do you see? I was fated to be one of them! William Japheth Sproul the Third! And so I—I—I saw you, and heard you, and ran away in disgust: and for weeks afterward I struggled with you: but as you know I was no match. I had to return. I have never experienced God as you have, Nathan, and so I don’t know whether God exists—I hardly know whether anything exists, in fact—especially when I am so rattled—but there is one thing I know without question, to the very depths of my being: and that is the fact that your divinity acts in me. I see in you—I recognize—You have come into the world to save us, Nathan: to heal us. Some of us are very, very sick, and require your healing. There are devils. Wicked, capricious spirits. Are they demons, are they neuroses, are they the species’ wishes for death—what are they—how are they able to exist, and to thrive—why do human beings tolerate their presence—open their lives to them? I don’t know. Can’t begin to know. And what God intends—whether we are coming to the end—whether you’re right or are merely echoing the words of the chiliasts who have been with us from the start—I don’t know. I don’t know whether God exists, Nathan—but I know that you exist.”

  IT WAS SOMETIME afterward that Nathan approached his friend and said simply: “God exists.”

  And Japheth’s bright, expectant gaze was lowered in sudden meekness, in absolute submission. For he knew it to be true; and all that was required was that his Master touch his shoulder—lightly, in passing, in a gesture of unconscious benediction—for him to know he would carry this truth with him to the grave.

  VIII

  Master, he was called.

  Sometimes he acknowledged it, sometimes not.

  It was held against the Seekers for Christ that they had no need to seek their Christ: for he dwelled among them and his name was Nathan Vickery. So spoke critics of the church, worked to a frenzy at the spectacle of so many converts in so brief a time. And the infantile simplicity of the prayer Nathan sometimes led them in, repeating over and over, chanting, droning, a prayer that was (so he explained frankly enough) meant only for unbelievers who despaired of being healed—Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me. One was instructed to take a full breath and to expel it slowly while repeating the prayer, slowly, slowly enough so that one’s entire being was filled with the rich vibrant sounds of the words. Only when all thoughts were obliterated through the power of the prayer, and when the meaning of the prayer’s individual words was obliterated, could the Holy Spirit descend. And even then, Nathan cautioned, it was possible that nothing would happen. For You do not act in everyone according to how You are bid, but according only to Your desire.

  The Seekers was not a church for everyone, it was explained carefully in official publications. No matter that during services Nathan Vickery and his associates sometimes spoke of rival churches as being “of the Devil without knowing it”—in pamphlets and booklets printed by the organization with such titles as Are You Curious About God’s Most Democratic Church? and Are You A Seeker For Christ Without Knowing It? it was set forth in clear, simple prose that each Christian was drawn to the church most suited for his spiritual needs, and that no church was really superior to another; for Japheth Sproul, who put together most of the publications, knew it would have been a mistake to bring upon the Seekers the jealous wrath of other denominations. (He compiled and edited various sermons of Nathan’s, arranging them in brief paragraphs with spaces between them for easy reading, and the creation of these essays gave him a curious sense of pleasure and satisfaction. In the old days he had written lengthy research papers on obscure Biblical and theological subjects, and though two or three of them eventually made their way into print, he had known all along that no one, with the possible exception of the professor who was grading him, would ever read the papers in their entirety or with any degree of attentiveness. But the twenty-five-page booklet Are You A Seeker For Christ Without Knowing It? went into innumerable printings, and eventually sold—first at a price of $1 and then at $1.50—over four million copies. And perhaps it is selling still, or at least being read.)

  So the church advertised itself as both democratic and exclusive: open to anyone, yet clearly not suitable for everyone. There was only one test of faith and that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which manifested itself in ecstatic states of mind, usually accompanied by speaking in tongues, or fainting, or the spontaneous healing of disorders. And afterward converts frequently chose to call Nathan Master, for how could they resist?—seeing that he had saved not only their souls but their lives as well?

  AFTER THE VISION of the One, Nathan instructed Reverend Lund to cancel his engagements for six weeks, knowing he would need time to absorb Your message; and when he returned to public life in the late autumn, with a three-day crusade for souls in a small industrial city on the Alder River, he told no one, not even Japheth, of the decision he had made. And so his staff and his followers were taken by surprise, though many were to clai
m afterward that they had had premonitions that something extraordinary would happen.

  Greedy for his Master’s preaching, Japheth sat at the very front of the church. He was to help when converts came forward and he was, despite his weak, flat voice, part of the Seekers’ choir. But he was as exhilarated as any newcomer, and it seemed to him very nearly unbearable, the ten minutes or so of singing and music before Nathan appeared. (He sang the gospel songs without hearing them, loudly and mechanically clapping his hands, his mouth stretched into a smile: the words did not matter, all that mattered was the emphatic, joyful rhythm, the sense of magic, as if the crowd in its enthusiasm were drawing Nathan Vickery closer and closer.) And then Nathan did appear, and Japheth saw that he was at the top of his form. He had totally recovered: his voice had regained its strange melodic authority, he did not look so pale and drained and thin, he strode to the center of the raised platform with his arms outspread as if he would embrace the entire room.