A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  The audience was silent in their reverence. There were tears in the eyes of many. Many heads were bowed. Many lips prayed in hushed whispers. All waited.

  The reverend surveyed his congregation. The view on the screen scanned the audience in the cathedral, then cut to the audiences in the three big tents on the flats, then cut to audiences in Flock churches around the world, from South America to India, from Africa to Asia. All worshiped their Lord and King.

  The view was on the reverend again. With a satisfied nod, he conjured a solemn, worshipful hymn from the organist. At the cue of the music, in the tent as in the cathedral, platoons of white-robed children, boys and girls in close rows of three, began filing through the entrances, flowing into the aisles, stepping in measured time to the music – some better than others. The middle child in each row carried a wide, flat-bottomed copper basin. The child on the right carried a red cushion, on which was folded a white towel, on which sat a natural sea sponge. The child on the left carried a brown clay pitcher. The procession continued until a trio of children had come to a stop next to each row of seats. In the tent, the congregants sitting on the ends of the rows turned their chairs toward the aisle; in the cathedral, a folding chair had been placed beneath the end of each pew for the purpose. The basins were placed at the foot of the aisle-faced chairs. The cushions, towels and sponges were arranged on the ground before the basins. The basins were filled with water from the pitchers.

  The music shifted in key and tempo, and the children turned and filed out. In the cathedral, Reverend Lundquist had taken his seat behind the pulpit, and as the choir sang of the glory of the first becoming the last and the last becoming the first, the leader of the Flock began removing his shoes and socks. All present in the cathedral and in the tents followed his lead. As she removed her sandals, Paige wondered how many thousands or millions more Flock followers around the world were doing the same, congregated in churches abroad or with their families at home, or even alone somewhere. With those in her row, she slid her footwear beneath her chair. The floor of fine sawdust that had been spread over the alkali was cool and surprisingly soft beneath her bare soles.

  When the hymn concluded, all stood and turned to face the basins. The organist played on as each member of the Flock in turn sat in the chair to have his feet washed by the person kneeling on the cushion before him. In turn, each knelt to wash the feet of the person behind.

  On the screen, Brother Lundquist washed the feet of an infant that had been brought up to him on the stage, followed by the feet of a very old woman in a wheelchair. According to the screen caption, these were the youngest and oldest congregants present, at four-weeks and ninety-six years respectively.

  As Paige advanced towards the end of her row, within three positions, and then within two, she felt her heart beating faster, harder. On the one hand, she found the exercise to be entirely silly – of course it was merely symbolic, but even if her feet had gathered a little dust over the course of the day, she preferred to wash them herself. She had removed the nail polish from her French pedicure – she wasn’t worried about anyone discovering she wasn’t Flock – but she felt a growing and intense aversion to the simple act, an act in which all others present seemed eager and willing to participate. In truth, the washing itself was little different than the service an employee at a nail salon would perform, a service with which Paige had always been perfectly comfortable – indeed she enjoyed it very much – but she had always paid and tipped well for it. The prospect of having her feet washed as an act of charity felt entirely different somehow. Still, she stayed the course, unwilling to jeopardize her mission of discovery over such minor distastefulness. She had experienced and endured so much worse. When her turn came, she sat in the chair.

  The water in the basin was no longer purely clear. There was a thin oily film on the surface.

  The teenage girl who had just had her own feet washed was kneeling on the cushion, head bowed, hair hanging low, almost in the water. Paige lifted and offered a foot. The girl took it by the heel and, shifting it gently over the basin, sponged and wiped it with care, her lips moving in quiet prayer. Paige couldn’t quite make out the words, but given the tone, it sounded as if the girl were either pleading forgiveness or giving thanks, perhaps both. She didn’t once glance up, through drying the foot, through washing the second. As she was toweling the second foot dry, a tear fell and landed on it. The girl dabbed it away and shook her head apologetically. Another tear fell, landing in the water. Paige wanted to console her somehow, to lean down and wrap her arms around her, to hold her, but the girl finished her work and stood, head still bowed. She glanced up to find Paige’s eyes for the briefest moment, through the veil of her hair, before looking to the floor again as she walked to the back of the line.

  Paige rose and took the girl’s place, turning to face the basin, kneeling on the cushion.

  The man in line behind her was large. Very large. Obese. Perspiring. His bare feet protruded from his trousers, pale and swollen, sausage-like. His hairy toes appeared to be stuck together, the toenails yellowed, crudely cut, curling upwards at the ends. With a sigh, he sat heavily, the chair creaking under the strain. He put both feet directly into the basin, spilling the water over the sides. He smiled down at the young woman kneeling before him.

  Swallowing, squinting, trying not to squirm or visibly wince, she rubbed her hands on her dress. She reached out with one hand and, as delicately as she could, with the tip of her middle finger, touched the back of one of his calves, directing the foot to be lifted.

  The foot remained planted. She glanced up. The man’s eyes were closed, a faint smile of pleasure on his fleshy lips. With three fingers extended, her thumb recoiling, she pulled more firmly against his leg, but the foot wouldn’t move. She sat back, uncertain what to do, becoming concerned, alarmed, that she might be doing something wrong, that she might be drawing attention to herself. Finally, the man grunted, leaned to one side and raised the foot himself – but too high, too close to her face.

  She leaned back sharply. Water poured off the foot as off the back of a breaching whale. Through the wetness came a smell, faint at first, but it slipped into her sinuses, clutched her brain and refused to let go.

  She stopped breathing and closed her eyes momentarily. She willed them open again, and with the sponge, began dabbing at the foot, while attempting, as unnoticeably as possible, to push it down and away from her face.

  She tried to feel humble, or at least accepting. She wanted to know what it was that these people felt, or what it was they wanted to feel, and why. She glanced up again. His eyes had opened. He had leaned forward to adjust his view. He was looking down the top of her dress.

  She leaned back and stopped washing. He didn’t lower the foot. His glance lifted from her chest to her mouth to her eyes. He smiled vaguely, apologetically.

  She dabbed at the foot with the towel briefly, then tried to push it down again, and then more firmly. Finally, with a grunt, he lowered it to the sawdust, shifted his weight, and raised the other foot out of the water, as high as he had the first. The smell violated her again.

  She didn’t feel humble at all. She couldn’t feel humble, no matter how she tried. She wondered if she was incapable of it, if she was deficient in some fundamental way. What she felt was closer to humiliation, and it was all she could do not to jump up and flee in disgust and anger. The best she could manage was to escape to that place within herself, the place of non-judgment and neutrality, the quiet solitude, the still nothingness. . . .

  After dabbing perfunctorily with the sponge at the second foot and patting at it with the towel – three or four pats were sufficient, she hoped, for anyone who might be watching – she rose quickly, not waiting for him to lower it. She scrubbed her hands on a drier corner of the towel before letting it drop to the ground in a wad. She wasn’t about to re-fold it. She circled to the back of her row while, as casually and unconsciously as she could make it appear, wiping and scrubbing he
r hands on the sides of her dress. When the line had moved through and she was in front of her own seat again, she was still wiping.

  The children had returned to gather the basins and cushions, the sponges and towels. The music subsided as they re-formed in rows and lines and marched out.

  Lundquist continued his sermon. He told the story of the first Passover, of when God commanded the Israelites, who had been enslaved in Egypt, to bring a spotless firstborn male lamb from their flocks into their homes. They were to live with the lamb for four days, developing a personal attachment to it as one would to a pet, then slaughter the innocent animal, eat its flesh, and wipe its blood on the doorposts of their homes. This act was to satisfy the Angel of Death, serving as a sign that he should pass over the house and spare the firstborn child within from slaughter. As for the Egyptians, who hadn’t been forewarned about the need to slaughter lambs and smear the blood around their doors, the angel would not spare their firstborns. The rivers of Egypt would run red. The carnage would be the last straw, the final devastating calamity, causing the Egyptians to relent and to free the Israelites from bondage.

  Next to Paige, the girl who had washed her feet was sobbing. Her face was tear-stained, her eyes reddened. She appeared both horrified and transfixed as the reverend told of the slaughter of the Egyptian boys – the infants, the toddlers, the youth. He told of how Jesus, the firstborn son of God, had then been sent to earth as the most perfect lamb of all lambs, the ideal human sacrifice, the innocent and spotless firstborn whose blood would be spilled so that all who marked the doors of their souls with his blood would be saved from the bondage of the sinfulness of their nature, saved from the eternal damnation and torture in hell that was their just due, saved from paying the price for being fallible and ever failing, for being incapable of rejecting temptations and earthly desires and the pleasures of the flesh, for being imperfect, for being human.

  The white-robed children were coming again, advancing down the aisles, this time two by two, carrying trays of paper cups filled with a red liquid and bowls filled with flesh-colored wafers. The trays and bowls were passed down the rows. Each congregant took a cup. Each took a wafer.

  The Reverend continued. He told of the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples – his last meal with them, he knew, burdened with the knowledge of the untold pain and the ignominious death he was soon to suffer. He foretold that they themselves, his own disciples, would betray him that night, that they would deny even knowing him. This upset and angered them very much, naturally. They protested. They were hurt, that he would think that they could be capable of such betrayal. But Jesus knew. He knew that they were only human. He knew their limitations. Yet for all his disciples’ failings and imperfections, his love for them and for his flock – his love for all mankind – would carry him through his suffering and tribulations. He loved mankind so much that he would submit to what he was sent to earth by his father to do, to give himself over to be tortured and killed so that the lambs of his father’s flock might be saved from the eternal flames of hell, from being sacrificed alive for their sins. Yes, Jesus Christ was the ultimate example, the perfect model for all men, for all time – and surely no man in all of history had followed Christ’s lead and example better than had the Prophet Obadiah Skairn, bathem –

  The congregation responded with a solemn “Bathem!”

  The Reverend told of how Brother Skairn had followed Christ’s example, with all that was within him. Unlike Christ, the Prophet wasn’t born perfect. Obadiah Skairn had fought and grappled and struggled every day with his human weaknesses and frailties and imperfect nature. But he dedicated himself fully to God and to God’s work until he became the rock upon which Christ built a new church in a new land. Brother Skairn had set a great example for how far any true and devoted follower of Christ should be willing to go in sacrificing his own desires and wants, sacrificing all for the sake of the Lord, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of the world of unbelievers yet to be saved. Brother Skairn had striven to be the epitome of humility and meekness, and each year in the days leading up to Easter, he ensured that his followers observed the foot washing and the communion, insisting that he himself first wash the feet of each of his followers, as had his Lord Jesus. Of course there were only a few dozen followers back then. Before the Flock’s first church was built, the communions in the valley were observed in the plaza beneath the old oak, which was then hardly more than a sapling.

  The video on the big screen had cut to a view of a live reenactment being performed and broadcast from the plaza, where two dozen somber folk in nineteenth-century settlers’ dress were being served communion by a robed, bearded man playing the part of Obadiah Skairn. Lundquist’s voice continued on the audio, telling of how, before the final communion Obadiah had shared with his followers, he enjoined them to carry on with the observance until he returned to earth at the right hand of Jesus, who would be at the right hand of God.

  As the Prophet had read Christ’s words to the Flock during those early communions – the view on the screen cut back to the cathedral – the Reverend Lundquist now carried the tradition forward yet another year. He opened his Bible and, with his voice filled with gratefulness and humility, intoned:

  And Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

  The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

  Then Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whosoever eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

  And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

  With this, the Reverend and every member of the Flock in Aurum Valley – joined by Paige Ellen Keller of Brooklyn, New York – took the wafers into their mouths. They chewed and swallowed, as well as they could. To Paige, the residue of the chewed wafer was tasteless and chalky. A glueyness remained on the roof of her mouth and around her teeth, wanting some liquid to wash it away. The Reverend continued –

  And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

  With the Reverend and the Flock, Paige drank from the cup. The thick dark wine was as sweet as the wafer had been plain. She swirled it around her teeth and tongue. She swallowed. The Reverend raised his hands to heaven in worshipful thanks. The Flock followed. As the tears flowed and the voices were raised around her in worship, the meaning of it all came crashing through the window of Paige’s soul with a startling violence:

  She had just partaken in a ritual of token cannibalism, the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of a man whom those around her professed to worship and adore, a celebration of human sacrifice – a sacrifice of human perfection. And in the heart of modern-day America.

  She closed her eyes, but to her mind’s eye came the image of the basin she had knelt before earlier. The bloated, ugly feet had been replaced by perfect, beautiful feet, with skin as white and smooth as polished marble but softer, warmer, alive, beneath the skin’s surface the veining of faint blue. She was holding one of the feet by the heel, washing it gently, tenderly, when her arms were pulled roughly away, and her wrists were held back as the point of a thick iron nail was positioned on the bridge of the foot. With a blow of a mallet, the nail was driven between the bones, piercing the flesh, separating the skin. Blood bubbled up from around the nail to flow in dark rivulets down the whiteness, trickling between the toes, falling in velvet cords into the water where the crimson color curled and swirled, spreading inkily. The image shifted and spun. When it stopped, a tray
was being passed to her. On it remained a single morsel of pale flesh, the bloodless edges torn. Everyone else had taken one. Everyone else was watching her, waiting. A tray of cups was being filled, ladled from the red basin.

  She was falling forward but, gripping the back of the chair in front of her, caught herself. Closing her eyes, she focused on inhaling and exhaling, on taking long, controlled breaths, one after the other.

  Eleven

  By Thursday evening the cathedral auditorium had been transformed. The stage was now a street in old Jerusalem lined with multi-storied facades of pale limestone. Tented vendors’ stalls were filled with clay pottery, amphorae, and stacks of woven baskets. Stately cypress trees framed arched entrances leading off into narrow, twisting alleyways. In a shaded courtyard, next to a stone well, grew an olive tree. The city beyond, painted on the backdrop and staggered side flats, was faded atmospherically to the distant city walls and rolling hills on the horizon. The set was as impressive, esthetically and technically, as any Paige had seen on Broadway.