Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The man stared at him. His smile faded at once, his expression went blank. Nathan looked frankly upon him and perceived, as though he could read the man’s thoughts, that never in his life had the creature been so profoundly insulted. His geniality masked a ferocious egotism; like many of the chaplain’s guests at this dinner, he was not truly a Christian, he merely played at being condescending and tolerant of Christians. Ah, Nathan knew him, Nathan knew him well! For it was by Your grace that he had the ability, at times, to peer into the souls of others; to swim through the tangled, cloudy thought-clusters that were consciousness and to penetrate the soul that lay hidden far inside.

  “I really don’t understand,” the man said, flushing. He too set down his fork on his plate. “You seem to be saying . . . taking the position . . . You seem to be saying that I can have no true idea of you at all, no idea of your existence at all?”

  “No idea at all,” Nathan said softly.

  “But that’s ridiculous!” the man laughed. “It might be that I know you better than you know yourself: know your type, that is, and something of the background of your church. When we were introduced I saw that my name meant nothing to you, and no doubt that’s as it should be, for I hardly imagine myself famous! . . . but I am, in fact, the author of a study on the sociology of religion in America, with an emphasis on the fundamentalist and apocalyptic sects . . . the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, the Millerites . . . And someday, perhaps, I will do an assessment of the Seekers for Christ: if the movement lasts beyond a few more years.”

  “You know your own idea, you write about your own idea,” Nathan said calmly. “Your consciousness turns round and round, going nowhere, while your soul stands apart, contemptuous and bitter. Your soul despises you, which is why you carry about with you that mocking little smile, the smile of the Devil, that devalues other people without seeking to love them. You look for the living God among the dead, the dead ideas of your own consciousness. And you will suffer for it: you will receive the due reward of your deeds.”

  The man laughed in amazement, looking around at the other guests. Japheth’s expression was one of utter dismay.

  “I don’t think you ought . . . don’t think we ought to be too hard on Frank, after all he’s . . . he’s not really of the Devil’s party,” the chaplain said in a high, jovial voice. “He may cause us a bit of trouble in the college senate, but . . .”

  “Of the fourteen people at this table,” Nathan said, clearing his throat, “surely one of you is a devil . . . ?” And he smiled broadly, to show that he was joking.

  The young woman stammered a question. She wished to draw the conversation into another area, she wished to have them talk of the history of devil-belief: the worship of devils, and the exorcism of devils. But the man with the mutton-chop whiskers interrupted, saying in a flat, jeering voice, “Mr. Vickery is an expert on devils because he drives them out of the afflicted, don’t you? Heals the sick! Cures the incurable! Unfortunately, we hadn’t anyone sick for you to work your miracles on this afternoon, wasn’t that a pity? The press photographers felt a little cheated.”

  Nathan gazed upon the man and saw him disintegrate into the elements that composed his heavy body and his flushed, beefy face. Last of all remained the pinpoint of consciousness that was the soul: wild and bitter and terrified; and this soul, Nathan perceived, wished to call out to him. But it was too remote, it was locked too far behind that coarse mocking face.

  “Well, Mr. Vickery has, you know, he has performed certain . . . has had a remarkable effect on certain people,” the chaplain said, smiling nervously. “It’s incontestable, Frank. I know what your position is on such matters, but . . . but, well . . . there are miracles of a sort . . .”

  “Those are ridiculous claims,” the man said rudely. He seemed as angry at his host now as he was at Nathan. “Self-diagnosed illnesses that were never illnesses at all, miraculously cured! Cancer, heart trouble, tumors, deafness, blindness—all of them hysterical symptoms, the symptoms of hypochondriasis—nothing but nerves and imagination. And so the tent preacher comes along and gets the “sick” to cough up their demons, and they’re well again. Perfectly well again! And willing to go about the countryside raving about the preacher and Christ coming into their hearts, or the Holy Ghost, or whatever gibberish they’ve been told—and unshakable in their beliefs. Even if the symptoms return, even if they eventually die of whatever it was Christ cured, they’re unshakable; fixed for life. But I don’t think the rest of us have to be impressed on that account.”

  “Well, we all have different interpretations of such phenomena,” the young woman said slowly, “and I think . . . It’s only fair that . . .”

  “Very little is understood, yes,” the chaplain said. “After all, it’s recorded in the Gospels that Christ did work miracles . . . even raised the dead . . . or the comatose, at least . . . I’ve personally taken a very, very careful position on these matters, Frank, because after all there’s more in heaven and earth than . . .”

  “But you do believe in devils, Mr. Vickery? Eh?” Frank asked.

  “Devil is a word, a human word; a sound merely,” Nathan said.

  “A what?”

  “One of your words. One of your human thought-clusters.”

  Frank cupped his ear as if he could not hear, though Nathan spoke clearly enough.

  “A what?—Thought-cluster? What?”

  You rose majestically in Nathan, lifting Your strength up his spine. Slowly, slowly, with regard for Nathan’s comparative weakness, slowly You rose to the base of his neck, and then into his skull. A warm, powerful, yet somehow muscular radiance: which began to show in his face, which had been sallow from exhaustion.

  “One of your ridiculous human words,” Nathan said, smiling.

  For a brief while there was silence around the table. Then Japheth murmured something about the lateness of the hour, and the fact that Nathan and he had to be up quite early; at six o’clock. The professor of philosophy was staring fixedly at Nathan. Small-featured, rather comely, a death’s-head of a skull, with stiff white hairs in his ears and his eyebrows; Nathan gazed upon him and saw a sudden manifestation of the man as a form of God, and read in his thoughts a profound, almost frightened sympathy with Nathan that the circumstances of the evening would not allow him to express. The Lord God blesses you just the same, Nathan told him in a smile.

  But Frank would not allow the subject to die. He shifted his weight violently in his chair and raised a forefinger and said, “But you do believe in devils! In demonic possession! And in godly possession! You are responsible for what you tell people!—The horror of it today, hearing you tell our students those primitive, barbaric, sick things, things they no doubt wish to hear, in their crudest and most infantile souls: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife . . . and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. A gospel of hate! Of regressive disdain for human relationships! You tell them it’s perfectly all right, it’s even necessary, for them to kick themselves free of their families, and of the past—you tell them they must kill all human, natural feeling in themselves in order to enter the ‘kingdom of heaven.’ But what is the kingdom of heaven? Where is it? Surely not the womb, not after twenty centuries of consciousness!—not after our struggle to preserve civilization in our own century! These things cannot be countenanced. They simply cannot be. Many of us on the faculty intended to be sympathetic with you, and even supportive of you, because we wanted to learn—because we are genuinely interested in the new religions and what they have to tell us about contemporary life, and about ourselves as well—our failures, I suppose, as teachers and adults—we were even quite enthusiastic about bringing you here—we were not being hypocritical or cynical, as you seem to think. But your attitude is astonishing—to me, at least, it’s astonishing! You disclaim all responsibility for what you say, and consequently for the results of your preaching: you sit there quite calmly and tell me I can have no idea of you at all, and
that the words you use are without meaning, and—”

  Nathan interrupted and said in a serene, measured voice: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”

  “Now, what is that supposed to mean!” the man laughed angrily. “Tell us—what is that supposed to mean! Light, darkness—your Biblical intonations—your air of insupportable hauteur—If you would break down and admit to us that the Seekers for Christ is a money-making organization, that you and your associates are in business, and doing very nicely, I understand—investments in real estate and in the stock market—imagine, Christ investing in the market!—if you would share with us your trade secrets, or at least the spirit behind them—why, we might admire you in a way: we would admire your honesty at least. But under the present circumstances what can we do but reject you as—”

  “Frank,” the chaplain said sharply. “I really don’t think—”

  “Please don’t interrupt me. Please. I know no one intended this dinner to be an occasion for the uttering of truth, of certain truths, but if the time has come—if I am the only person willing to speak—” He looked around the table, his shoulders hunched forward. “If I am the only one among us honest enough, unintimidated by this charlatan and his quackery and—”

  Everyone began to speak at once.

  The ungainly, solitary birds flew across the polar cap, while Nathan gazed in helpless rapture. To be one of them! Alone, in utter isolation, in a cold so bitter it could not be gauged, where even Christ could not have hoped to follow! Their white feathers were waxen, and icy, their long crooked necks and hooked beaks had the look of sculpture, unliving, perfect in exquisite ugliness. What had love to do with them? The God that was Love had not yet come into existence, and what need was there for Him? Nathan gazed upon the sweep of the ice cap, the lonely dazzling curve of the earth, and saw from the great tower that was himself how all creatures shrank to pinpoints of consciousness, and came close to extinction, yet were not allowed the release of extinction—for it was not Your wish that they escape Your dominion.

  “Come,” Nathan said, rising, and extending a hand to the man who mocked him, “come, my brother, and let us touch and forgive each other, before we both regret what has come to pass.”

  Something had fallen to the floor—a white napkin. Nathan stepped away from the table and stood with both hands extended, and as the others stared, as even Japheth stared, he smiled a broad, uncanny smile.

  “I don’t—I don’t think I want—I—What is there to forgive!” the man shouted. “You are outrageous, really! A clown, a fool! And like all clowns, cruel and antagonistic and inhuman! You won’t respond to my charges against you—you won’t behave as we must, in civilization—You skip away from the most serious of charges as if they meant nothing at all, as if we were only passing the time with one another here tonight! And now you expect—”

  “Come, are we not brothers in Christ?” Nathan said, lightly mocking.

  “I am not a brother to you in any sense of the word!”

  “But we share the same anatomy. The same language. If we are deluded, we share some of the same delusions. We’ve broken bread together tonight, haven’t we! We’ve shared a certain space of time that will never come again. Come now,” Nathan said cajolingly, as one might speak to a child, “come before it’s too late and you regret bitterly how you kept yourself apart from the Holy Spirit. Devils are mere words, and yet it’s a devil that has hold of you! Yes, at this very moment! A devil that keeps you away from me, holding you paralyzed in his grip! Break the hold of your devil, my brother, and come and receive my blessing, and allow the Holy Spirit to touch you, and to flow into you, before it’s too late.”

  The man remained seated, staring at Nathan. His forehead was damp; his eyes bulged slightly. “You are outrageous,” he whispered.

  “You are not outrageous,” Nathan said, “but merely pitiful. Locked in the grip of a cloudy, waspish, sluggish devil—not even a very attractive devil—certainly not a very formidable devil, compared to those I have driven out of others. Believe me, my friend, your soul stands apart from you and despises you, and works against you, seeking your own destruction. I hardly know you and yet it’s perfectly clear to me, as it must be clear to everyone close to you, that you care very little for life: imagining yourself a failure as a scholar and as a man, imagining your life is bound up in the accomplishments of the ego, and of the body, and so condemning yourself to death! Your health is poor: your heart is pounding at this very moment. How red your face is, beet-red! It looks as if the skin is about to burst! Your blood is pressing against it, and against your organs, a terrible pressure, a merciless pressure, for it’s life itself you despise, having turned aside from the Lord God many years ago. How can you keep yourself from me?—from the power of the living God?”

  “He’s mad,” the man said.

  In Nathan alone was the link between earth and heaven, and in Nathan alone the power of life and death, but he held himself apart from the brandishing of this power; he felt a sudden pity for the very person who mocked him, and did not wish him harm.

  “The Holy Spirit has the power to heal as well as to destroy,” he said softly. “Won’t you come to me and allow the Spirit to pass into you? Don’t be afraid. Don’t hold back. If you feel a terrific pressure, if you feel you’re about to faint, it may simply be the passage of the devil out of you—rushing out of you and leaving you exhausted—but it will be only temporary, and when you recover you’ll give praise to the Lord—”

  “Make him stop,” the man begged. He did get to his feet; his chair nearly fell over. “Rick—make him stop. Otherwise I—I must leave—This is hideous,” he said, swallowing so that his words were nearly inaudible. “I’m leaving.”

  “But without shaking hands?” Nathan said.

  Japheth rose and hurried to Nathan’s side. He was very excited; he grinned broadly. “We should leave,” he said. “It’s late and we should leave. The day has been exhausting, everything has been exhausting, I think it would be better if—”

  Nathan approached the man, his hands held out to him. He was smiling his wide radiant smile. The streaks of silvery-gray in his hair were picked up by the candlelight and gave to his appearance a ghostly, altogether bizarre air. It could not have been determined which of his eyes was his own, and which a hard nugget of glass, so frostily did both gleam. “Come, my brother, let me touch you in love—”

  The man backed away, as if frightened. He stumbled against someone who had arisen at his side—one of the wives, in a long flowered dress—his own wife perhaps?—but seemed unaware of her. “Don’t come near me,” he whispered. “You’re insane.”

  “Insane just to want to shake hands?” Nathan laughed. “Ah, my friend, it’s the devil that keeps you from me, it’s nothing but the devil who wishes to keep you in his grip! He wants you to remain a self-despising failure, a hollow rotting husk of a man, he wants you to worry yourself into a premature death—a heart attack in a year or two, and possibly sooner! He wants your destruction; but I am here to thwart him and to bring to you the power of the Holy Spirit. Why else was I brought here tonight? Money, do you think? Money, did you say? But I have no money! I know nothing of money! The Holy Spirit neither knows nor cares about worldly things, nor do I know or care about worldly things, except insofar as the husks of men walk about on the earth, in their pitiful physical forms, and cry out to me for salvation. What does it matter if my touch will burn, if your heart will beat so rapidly you’ll fall into a faint?—it will only last a few minutes, no more than an hour! A slight convulsion as the devil rushes out of you and releases his stranglehold on you, and you’ll black out, and in a short while you’ll rise again giving thanks to the Lord—surely you aren’t afraid of that? Of that, when your very life is in danger if you resist? My friend—”

  “Keep him from me, he’s insane,” the man whimpered, still backing away.

  The others watched in amazement, and
Nathan could not help but smile upon them. How serious they were, how alarmed, as if a solemn rite were being performed—when in fact it was nothing more than Your playful expression of Yourself, like a colt galloping in a puddle-rich pasture in spring; like a bird soaring and dipping in graceful abandon in the sky.

  Japheth tried to step between Nathan and the man, saying in a high, cheerful voice that Nathan was only joking; it was all a joke. But because of the late hour perhaps they should—

  “No? No handshake? No banishing of the devil? Nothing? You’ll walk away and leave this opportunity, turn your back on the living God Himself?” Nathan said.

  Flushing, deeply embarrassed, the man muttered something to the others, made a gesture of farewell in the chaplain’s direction, and turned to leave.

  “But where are you going?” Nathan called after him. He would have followed, but Japheth blocked his way. “My friend, my brother, where are you going? Do you think you can escape the living God? Do you think your devil can carry you away from the living God? Why, you may fall down dead on the sidewalk in front of this house—your poor overtaxed heart might suddenly burst—and should you like me to raise you from that state, perhaps the Holy Spirit won’t accommodate me, and then what? Then what? The Holy Spirit chooses the time and place of my power to heal, and not I,” he shouted after the man, “for it’s exactly as Scripture tells us: The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth . . .”

  “Nathan,” Japheth said, trembling, “please don’t. Please. It’s late and we should leave. They don’t understand you,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve frightened them, Nathan. Please.”