“My Lord and my God,” he tried to say, “please save me from—Don’t let—”
But he saw only You: shapeless, twisting and undulating and coiling and writhing and leaping.
A great hole. A great mouth.
Ah, he stood at the very brink, at the very edge!—in his frail, rather foolish being, in his utterly insubstantial human form. In that instant, as Nathan gazed into God, he knew that this was the vision Christ had seen: certainly He too had seen it: they were not rival sons but brothers, as all men are brothers. Standing on the edge of You. On the edge of Your ravenous being . . . He knew, and yet the logic of his wisdom, the very words themselves, were snatched from him, blown away; and now he went completely speechless.
“I—I—”
But no sound came. He stood there, crouched, cringing, his skin dead white, and he saw that the hole before him was a mouth, and that the writhing dancing molecules of flesh were being sucked into it, and ground to nothing, and at the same time retained their illusory being. What he knew to be You before him imagined itself quite otherwise—imagined itself broken and separated into parts, into individuals, into people, “men” and “women” and “children.” It was madness, their madness, Your madness, and he was paralyzed before it.
“My Lord and my—”
But he could not speak.
The mouth remained, the molecules remained, in their ceaseless dance, even while the outlines of certain people returned, and their small frantic gleaming faces became clear again. And then in an instant they faded, dissolved into You. And then in another instant they appeared again as You allowed them their delusion . . . Nathan stared in horror. For it was evidently the case that these creatures, mere bubbles in Your mind, were staring at him as if they expected something from him. They were hungry for something, ravenous, worried, intense, pleading with outstretched arms.
“What do you want—Who are You—What do you want from me—”
He was about to collapse. The terrible danger was that he would topple forward from the platform, he would fall and sink and be swallowed in You. But instead he sank to one knee. Grabbing at the microphone, his entire body shivering. His good eye went clear for an instant and then darkened.
On his hands and knees he tried to crawl away. His head swung from side to side, his long coarse hair swung, the nugget of flesh that was his eye throbbed with pain. For some minutes now the singing had stopped. Everything had stopped. There were isolated cries, even screams, and someone was bending over him, he half-saw legs, feet, incongruously shiny shoes, but really he heard nothing and saw nothing, for You had swallowed the entire world. He knew his ministry was over, his life was over, that everything had come to pass as it was ordained, but he knew also—for even then You allowed him the realization of certain truths—that his terror had just begun.
Epilogue
The Sepulcher
I
Thus Nathan Vickery was extinguished, and sank into oblivion. And lies there still in his death-trance. And passes from my consideration, belonging to You and not to me, who despaired of him from the first and wished with all my heart that Japheth Sproul had indeed killed him. So it was, and ever shall be.
So it was: I am capable of no more pity than You are.
NOW IT IS late winter; by the calendar, early spring.
My downstairs neighbors have moved away. I helped them move: loaded cardboard boxes and pieces of battered furniture into the back of a pickup truck, astonished that the husband and wife should turn out to be, close up, so very ordinary; not violent at all; rather subdued, abashed. (After the police came for the second or third time, our landlord asked them to leave.) The woman flame-haired, with a white, unhealthy complexion and a small plump body; the man surprisingly slight, half a head shorter than I, with a small dark mustache and a furtive, shy manner.
In the kitchen of their vacated apartment they offered me a drink. The three of us finished a bottle of red wine, drinking it down ceremoniously. They did not know me, yet did not wonder why I had come downstairs to give them a hand. Neither asked my name. When I asked where they were going, they looked sullen and vague. “That depends on somebody’s brother—is he going to take us in or not,” the man said, laughing. The woman grinned but did not laugh. She poured the last of the wine into my glass, shaking the drops out.
IN THIS COLD reluctant spring everything is scaled down and precise. I count the bills in my wallet, I count change, pushing quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies into little piles.
I listen to the radio, my head inclined toward it, bowed in expectation.
Since You have not come to me, what choice have I, my Lord, but to seek You in the world, limping from one consecrated building to another. The Gethsemane Lutheran Church. St. Barnabas’ Anglican Church. Church of the Nazarene. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. St. Vincent De Paul Church. Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. First Church of God. Christian Reformed Evangelical Church. Emmanuel Baptist Church. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church. Church of the Resurrection With Signs Following. St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church.
(What is a church: God’s dwelling place, four walls meant to contain the invisible; ceiling above and floor below and pews set neatly in place, the infinite scaled down by stone and glass and wood. And human flesh: for in all churches abides a person set apart as Your spokesman, and in his face there is the old uneasy claim of proprietorship, and the dread that You will someday expel him.)
IN ST. VINCENT De Paul’s I sat for hours staring at a stained-glass window. Human figures were represented in the window but I could not identify them. A man and a woman in brilliant robes, and an infant in white. Halos circled their heads. The sky behind them was a rich glaring blue. I stared and saw the figures slip into their separate parts, their separate colors. Blues, yellows, reds, greens. Flat. Blunt. The sun glowed behind the window and the colors lifted into life and were almost too brilliant to contemplate.
My Lord and my God . . . !
But as I stared, the sunlight faded abruptly and the colored glass became merely colored glass again, fitted cleverly together. It was meant to represent—what? A man and a woman in absurdly bright robes, an infant in swaddling clothes with a halo about its head, human figures, highly stylized, flattened human figures, meant to represent—?
After some time people began to come into the church. Mainly older women. A priest and an altar boy appeared. I remained in my pew, I knelt, I made every effort to pray, leafing through the prayer book, wishing to be drawn to You through the priest’s chanting, and through the congregation’s response. There were not many of us. Our voices were alternatingly feeble and overloud. Did You hear? Were You touched by our effort?
You withdrew and contemplated us from afar. You were not coaxed down into the priest’s magical instruments—You did not enliven the wine, or slip into the stamped-out bits of bread. The priest’s face was flushed with a kind of busyness and self-importance: for though You did not appear in his church he had to pretend You did, in order that his communicants not be dismayed. He was an actor performing for an audience and there were certain conventions that must be observed; otherwise the performance would come rudely and comically to an end. You did not indicate Your displeasure with the charade, and so it continued, harmless as before; but neither did You indicate Your blessing.
DURING A SUNDAY-MORNING service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian I saw in the third row from the front, near the center aisle, the man who had been Nathan Vickery’s disciple—Japheth Sproul himself. I saw only the back of his head and a sliver of his face. He was wearing glasses. As the minister spoke to his congregation of Christ’s mission on earth, and the progress of the building fund, and the importance of voting in the upcoming municipal elections, I stared at Japheth Sproul and felt a great chill rise in me and could not move; it was as if I were paralyzed, I could not move, until something happened—the minister concluded his talk, another part of the service began—and I was releas
ed.
Strangers glanced at me as I hurried out, surprised and curious and pitying.
IN ST. BARNABAS’S drafty tomblike space I sat alone one weekday at noon, listening to an organ. There were no services, the church was empty and unheated. Far above and behind me someone was playing a complicated piece, rather difficult to follow, ferocious and elegant. I sat listening. I sat in a kind of daze, listening. The invisible organist stopped suddenly and repeated several bars, stopped again, and then played again, practicing a complex run.
Alone and invisible I sat in the darkened church. My hands rose suddenly to my face, I found myself weeping, but there was no need for self-consciousness, there was no one to see.
II
He was extinguished, he died and slipped into oblivion, and after many months stirred to life again, and was cast upon the shore again—for You did not intend that his earthly existence should end, only that he be destroyed.
It was rumored that a furious glaring † had appeared on his forehead at the time of his collapse: the flesh raw and bleeding as if slashed by a knife. Dozens of people claimed to see it, a woman fell into a dead faint at the sight of it, and could talk about nothing else for weeks. It was rumored that enemies of the Seekers for Christ had poisoned him; a rival church, Devil-worshipers in the guise of mainstream Christians, had infiltrated Seekers’ headquarters and had been trying for months to kill Nathan. It was rumored that the United States Government itself, frightened of the growing membership in Nathan’s church, had ordered his death; for the Seekers wished nothing less than a revolution—a revolution of the spirit that would bring about, almost immediately, a revolution of the state. (The deceased, traitorous disciple Japheth Sproul was in some cases an agent of the Government, in other cases a member of a rival church, in still other cases a manifestation of the Devil himself.)
What was clear was the fact that Nathan Vickery had been struck down. Thousands upon thousands of people had witnessed his collapse. And afterward it was believed he had died; despite news of his hospitalization it was believed he had died; for hundreds of people claimed to see his soul fly out of his mouth, something vaporous and writhing, near-transparent. It flew out of his mouth as he sank to his knees—so they claimed. Hundreds of people, perhaps a thousand, made their claim. The Master was dead—had been struck dead! Like Jesus Christ before him, he had been cut off at the height of his powers! . . . It was rumored that his body had mysteriously disappeared before burial, and that the authorities were suppressing the facts.
HE WAS HOSPITALIZED as any human being would be hospitalized, at first in a Denver hospital, and then in a clinic nearer Windigo Falls; he was given treatment, and after several weeks he was discharged: not well, perhaps, but no longer sick. Overwork, exhaustion, near-malnutrition, a slight heart murmur. His voice was gone. He could make only a hoarse, rasping, painful noise and his throat burned almost constantly. His voice was gone, he sounded hardly human, rather more like a broken, wounded creature of some kind, utterly baffled by his fate.
Very late one night Japheth appeared in the clinic. His thin boyish face was ashen, his glasses were slightly crooked as always, his fingers trembled as he reached out to touch Nathan’s hand. He was still very angry. Murderously angry. His fingers closed upon Nathan’s, hard. He began to squeeze. Like a woman enduring the agony of childbirth he squeezed, squeezed, his face glowing now with sweat, with rage. Why did you betray me! he whispered. Why did you deny me! I loved you and you cast me down, you cast me aside like rubbish!
Eventually, as the weeks passed, Nathan was able to speak, in a low, hesitant, rasping voice. But it did not much matter, because he spoke rarely. What was there to say? A great cooling silence had bloomed in him, Your flower of a mouth, darkening his brain. What was there to say, even to Japheth? Nathan sank into the bliss of oblivion where there were no words, where there was no language, where You never visited. What was there to say?
SIX MONTHS, TEN months, fifteen months in seclusion. Eighteen months. It was said that with Nathan Vickery’s collapse and his resignation as head of the Church of the Seekers for Christ, a kind of empire was coming to light, and even as it came to light it was disintegrating: there were bitter accusations, hysterical replies and counteraccusations, there were lawsuits on behalf of individuals, and on behalf of municipal governments, and the Internal Revenue Service was investigating the church’s income and holdings; there were charges of mail fraud, and even embezzlement, and rumors of attempted suicides. And at the head of the church was a broken, utterly bewildered man, weighing only one hundred and eight pounds, subject to bouts of delirium and forgetfulness; non compos mentis.
You observed but made no comment.
You observed, surely—? But kept Your distance.
O LORD, HE prayed in his broken, scraping voice, his face hidden in his hands, why do You forsake me? Why do You deny me?
And again, baffled by Your silence, Your absence, yet not despairing: Lord, there is none like You! None! Let all the nations hear, let all of mankind praise! . . . But why do You keep Yourself from us?
IT WAS AN oddity, it was not quite to be grasped: Your absence.
AND SO HE slipped away from the city and for months wandered about the countryside. He sought You there, in solitude. In the inhuman vastness of the landscape: the hills and mountains of his youth. One morning, after an hour of agonizing prayer, he rather boldly renamed himself William Vickery: rebaptized himself in a mocking little ceremony on the bank of the Eden River, near his birthplace in Marsena. Nathanael that was, was no more; William that had never been, was now come into existence; Vickery was a dead man’s name but all he had. “William the offspring of Nathanael,” he whispered, flicking water onto his forehead. He was utterly alone. No one watched, no one listened. No one: and Your absence was palpable, incredible. But he was utterly alone and might have baptized himself any way he wished, or might have thrown himself into the river to his death; no one observed.
A lifetime’s habit of addressing You could not be broken so easily, and so he continued to speak to You as if You were indeed near.
What was there to say, and to whom might he speak . . . ? He wandered about the countryside seeking bits of himself, odd stray memories that might be stirred, overturned, like broken crockery or bricks in a garden exposed accidentally as the soil is being tilled. In Mt. Lambeth there was only a boarded-up frame building where he remembered the church of Brother Micah. How long ago it had been, in another lifetime—the Mt. Lambeth Tabernacle of Jesus Christ Risen. He walked about the building, which was only four walls and a sway-backed roof and five windows, all of them broken behind the Xs of boards. Mt. Lambeth itself seemed not to exist: two other frame dwellings in the area were abandoned, a one-room schoolhouse nearby had been allowed to rot and collapse. He stood for a while with his cheek pressed against the wall of the church, his eyes closed, his mind brought to a halt. He wanted to remember what had happened here, for he knew something profound had happened here. There had been heat lightning, and his grandmother’s feverish excitement, and singing and hand-clapping and Brother Micah’s passionate raised voice, and the Spirit of the Lord had manifested itself, and . . . Something scuttled overhead. He started, and looked up to see a gray squirrel hurrying across the roof, unaware of him.
He remained there for a while, until early evening.
And there was Mt. Ayr in the distance, unchanged; and the countryside unchanged; the dense, lush, overgrown vegetation silent as always, in his mind’s eye trembling with meaning but in itself merely dense and lush, silent. For You had departed from the countryside, just as You had departed from the city. And Your absence was palpable and terrible as any presence.
Won’t You show yourself . . . ? So went William Vickery’s frightened prayer.
IN MARSENA HE saw the old places, which were changed a great deal, and he saw that You had departed from them as well. The Baptist church where Reverend Sisley had been pastor: small and inconsequential and rather dre
ary, with asbestos siding that had already begun to stain. The red brick building his great-uncle had owned: the general store now closed, empty, the barbershop gone, the post office expanded, with a smart-looking plate-glass window. He could not remember his great-uncle’s name. Carlson? He could not remember. The man had died long ago, had been tilled back into the soil long ago, what did it matter what his name had been? A girl of about seventeen in a short dress with a halter top came out of the post office, dragging a small child with her. From across the street he stared at her, his heart suddenly beating, for perhaps it was someone he knew—someone from his school—one of the girls he had noticed on the periphery of his life, while You claimed all his attention in the center. She had long brown hair, her manner was abrupt and irritable, she was pretty, or not pretty; he stared at her and it seemed her features were familiar, and then he realized, with a startled gasp, that she was hardly more than a child and he was a man in his mid-thirties.
He turned aside, laughing silently.
How You led him on, how You played with him . . . ! But he recognized the joke, the jesting spirit, behind all Your cruelty.
AND THERE WAS the old Vickery house. And of course he had to see it, had to force himself to walk to it, prepared for a shock. It had been allowed to deteriorate like the other buildings. A rain-streaked gray, many of the shingles missing, one of the upstairs windows mended with plywood, a scrubby front lawn, only one of the blue spruce remaining along the drive. Dr. Vickery’s little brass sign was gone, as was the iron pole itself. The brick walk was a mass of weeds. He stood and stared and waited for You to speak to him, waited for You to instruct him in what he should feel. He had loved Dr. Vickery. He had loved him very much. And he had killed him: had looked him full in the face as You struck him down . . . And there was a woman who sang to him, hugging him close. O Galilee, sweet Galilee where Jesus loved so much to be. He had killed her too. No, he had not killed her: she was still living. Her hair a shock of white, her face deeply wrinkled, a crazed wide-eyed stare and a haughty, whining voice that spoke of her son who had been the Son of God, and who had been crucified, and who dwelt now with his Father, but would return to earth in a very short while to reclaim his Kingdom. In a nursing home in Windigo Falls an elderly, petulant woman awaited the restoration of the Kingdom of God, and spoke only of her son who was the Son of God, and when her grandson visited her, infrequently as he did, she did not recognize him at all. (Who was this stooping, haggard, gray-haired stranger with the trembling hands? Her son had been magnificent: the Messiah Himself, wrathful and gentle and lamblike and merciless all at once. And very tall, and strong, and handsome. And possessing a marvelous voice.)
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