A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  “That’s wonderful, Honesto, but – how many times have you read it now?” Simon forced himself up, shifting his feet to the cold floor.

  “This is only the fourth time. I’m memorizing the introduction – it’s so inspirational: . . . There comes a time in every Christian’s life when he must ask himself why he wouldn’t crawl across a thousand miles of broken glass if it would save one sinner’s soul. How beautiful is that? How powerful! Isn’t it, Brother Simon?”

  “Of course . . . Well, that puts my two readings to shame. Are you sure you’re okay, Honesto? Are you still fasting?” Honesto’s eyes were shimmering, the whites glazed pinkish. Though the room was still cool from the night, there were beads of perspiration on his brow.

  “I’ve been fasting all week – except, of course, for the communion wafers Wednesday night, but those don’t count. Compared to what our Lord suffered, my hunger is so little. It is nothing.”

  “True . . .” Simon forced himself off the bed. He checked his face in the mirror. To his disappointment, he still didn’t need to shave again. He splashed some water from his drinking glass onto his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. Stepping back into his costume robe, he glanced over at his roommate, who was already dressed – or still dressed. Honesto probably hadn’t changed out of his own costume at all since the evening prior. His perseverance in lobbying for a role as one of the townspeople in the play had been rewarded, to the displeasure of more than a few who had been waiting for years and were still passed over. But Brother Lundquist had made an exception for Honesto, citing a need for diversity on the stage, for the benefit of the international audience.

  “It’s going to be such a glorious day, Brother Simon! We are so honored to be able to commemorate the sacrifices of both Christ and the Prophet on this Good Friday, the best of all Fridays, the best of all days. Who would have guessed that I would ever be here, in glorious Aurum Valley, and for the Procession itself, and to be actually in the Procession – me, nothing more than a poor boy from a poor village on the other side of the world. Isn’t it a miracle, Brother Simon? I owe our Lord and Savior everything.”

  “We all certainly do.”

  “I will see you at morning prayer. I’m going to the chapel early – I will pray through breakfast for strength. Simon, you were so wonderful as John last night. You know, if envy were not a sin, I might surely envy you. Sister Skye was so resplendent – that’s a word I learned from Brother Lundquist’s book: resplendent. Sister Skye had all the glory of God flowing through her last night, didn’t she?”

  Simon didn’t reply. He was in no mood to share Skye – with Honesto, with God or with anyone else. Of course he felt guilty for his possessiveness of her, as he always felt guilty, as he felt guilty for nearly every feeling he had ever had for Skye, other than his admiration. There were no bounds to his admiration. But the admiration fueled the desire, and in the desire, therein was the sin. Therein was the sin. It was a phrase Brother Lundquist peppered through his sermons, a phrase Simon had begun sprinkling into his own sermons for Youth Services.

  “Honesto, are you sure you’re okay? Do your feet hurt or something? You seem to be walking kind of carefully.”

  “Oh, I’ve never been better, Brother Simon.” There were tears swimming in Honesto’s eyes. He was biting his lip as he turned to go. “This is my first procession, you know, and I’ve never been closer to God. Today – this glorious, beautiful day – we are closer than ever to Christ’s return to earth, with the Prophet at his right hand. Unto his Holy Hill, bathem.”

  “Unto his Holy Hill. I’ll see you at prayer.”

  Simon watched him go. His roommate was no one, really. Just another face, yet another fresh lamb in the Flock, newly arrived in the valley. Yet Honesto’s devotion and fervency put his own to shame.

  Simon cinched his robe about his waist and slipped into his sandals. Today he would be the best disciple John he could be. He committed himself to it. His thoughts would be pure and spotless. He would be a Christian today, the truest of Christians, Christ-like, at least to the best of his ability. He would always fail, of course – always, to some extent – only Christ was perfect – but everyone would be watching him again today, especially Brother Lundquist. The mere thought of being a disappointment to Brother Lundquist was almost too much to bear.

  Re-tucking his bed sheets into tight hospital corners, he wondered if Jesus had ever loved a woman in such a way, if he had ever wanted her, really wanted her, if he had ever had to resist such base, visceral, maddening temptation. Of course Jesus had his own temptations, as it was written, but it didn’t seem possible that Jesus would have allowed himself to entertain such carnal desire and lust for a woman. And therein was the difference – therein was the sin, Simon thought – that Simon had allowed himself to want Skye in the first place, that he had allowed himself, after dipping a toe into the lake of temptation, to wade in up to his knees, then to waist-deep, then to slide in up to his neck, to tread, to swim, to think of her for so many hours and hours on end as he lay on his bed imagining what her body might be like beneath her clothes, daring to imagine that he, Simon Paulson, might ever be able to touch her, to hold her, to have her.

  God knows he didn’t deserve her.

  If only he had mustered the strength and the will to push away those first few thoughts, to push away the first images and desires before they could come to consume him. But he had never really wanted to push them away, had he? Therein was the sin.

  * * *

  Paige had come to the cathedral in her procession costume that morning, as had every member of the audience. Against the modern materials and technologies of the auditorium, the Flock in their robes and head coverings seemed to shift the temporal paradigm surreally – whether back two millennia or forward two, it was a vision of a community out of time, a play at timelessness, a staged dream of immortality.

  Earlier that morning in her apartment, Paige had watched a re-broadcast, on the Church’s local TV channel, of the first part of the Passion Play from the night before. Skye’s performance had carried through the screen, gripping Paige’s emotions again, drawing them up from her stomach, up through her throat. In private, she had made no attempt to hold back the tears. She had sobbed retching sobs – and had felt so much better for it afterwards.

  But she hated crying. She never cried. She wasn’t vulnerable that way. She couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. She was strong and in control. Something within her wanted to hate Skye for making the tears come, but she had laughed at the thought and wiped the tears away, knowing she could never hate Skye, would never hate her – how absurd. But it was all too personal. She had felt exposed, naked. How could Skye do it, exposing her soul and her emotions so fearlessly? Paige didn’t want to share that place with anyone, the vulnerable sacredness, the inner sanctum, the holy of holies. No one else had the right to see it. No one could be so trusted. And the thought of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people around the world, being allowed to see in Skye what Paige had seen in her. . . . For a moment Paige had hated every one of them. She wanted to block the screen with her body, wanted to go and find whatever hard drive the video was stored in and smash and destroy it before the images could be broadcast again, breaking Skye into so many digital pieces again, to be distributed and ingested and adored by the multitude of undeserving souls who would never give her up and never give her back.

  Yet Paige herself had returned to the auditorium that morning for more.

  At nine o’clock, on schedule, the lights went down, the music came up, and the audience quieted. The play resumed on a somber note, with a dark-orange spotlight illuminating a scene behind the lowered scrim. In stark silhouette, an object hung from a rope tied to a high branch of a tree. The body turned slowly, the head awkwardly to the side. A deep voice intoned from above:

  For earthly treasure, Judas, you sold your soul,

  Traded gold above for silver below;

  Thy name will be synonymous fo
revermore –

  With betrayal. . . .

  Distant thunder rolled. A little heavy for nine in the morning, Paige thought. The view faded, the scrim was raised and the lights came up on a courtroom in Jerusalem’s temple.

  Over the next scenes, Jesus endured no fewer than five trials, between the courts of the religious authorities, the Sanhedrin council, and the Roman government. When he deigned to respond at all to the accusations, Jesus refused to recant a single word he had prophesied or proclaimed, particularly his unsparing condemnations of the priesthood. After each guilty verdict, he was taken away. The audience could hear, emanating from offstage, the thudding kicks and punches, the cracking of the whip, the cursing and denunciations. Each time Jesus was brought back he was more bloodied, more bruised, more bowed. Paige worried about the children in the audience witnessing such brutality, even in the fictional abstract.

  One of the guards spotted the disciple Peter standing near Obadiah and the angel at the back of the courtroom. When confronted and questioned, Peter denied his identity. He denied knowing Jesus at all, not once, but three times – just as Jesus had foretold. In fear for his life, he fled.

  The Jews brought the accused man before the Roman governor and asked that he be put to death, but the governor, unable to find that Jesus had broken any Roman law, passed Jesus up to King Herod’s court. When Jesus refused to answer the king’s questions, he was passed back down to the governor.

  The disciple John had arrived at the court with Mary. Horrified to see her son already so bloodied and bruised, she tried to go to him but was restrained by John and the soldiers. The governor attempted repeatedly to release Jesus, but the Sanhedrin sages and the priests persisted. In an effort to mollify them, the governor had Jesus beaten more – almost beyond recognition, his face was so bloodied – yet the Jews and the gathering mob were unsatisfied. The governor, reluctant to bend the law merely to sate their bloodlust, took advantage of the local tradition of freeing a prisoner before Passover. He offered the mob their choice of freeing either Jesus or the notorious criminal, Barrabas – certain that they would free Jesus. The people chose to free Barrabas.

  The governor had a basin of water brought. Washing his hands of the matter, he turned Jesus over for execution. The soldiers drove a crown of thorns onto Jesus’ head and hoisted a wooden cross onto his sagging, bloody shoulders.

  “This will be your throne today, King of Kings,” the captain of the guard taunted. “Carry it now to the hill, where you can be properly worshiped by your followers.”

  Jesus buckled under the cross’s weight.

  “Stand and walk, King of the Jews!” the captain commanded. He raised his whip and drew back his arm, letting the leather cord unwind behind him.

  The audience held their collective breath. Previously, all the beating had been heard but unseen – which was quite awful enough, Paige thought – but a whipping to be done right before the audience’s eyes was surely too much. The captain’s legs crouched, the muscles of his back and shoulders coiled to unleash all of his strength into the blow.

  Paige winced, preparing to turn away.

  At that moment, the scene froze. Every character on stage stopped moving, holding their poses, some in mid-gasp, others in mid-laugh, the governor turning away in regret, Mary attempting to throw herself between the soldier and her son, John reaching out to stop her, Jesus bowing his head to accept the blow.

  The scene was another perfectly composed painting. In color, composition, subject and theme, the creation would have made any Old Master proud.

  The scrim lowered in front of the scene to silence. The lights dimmed. When they came up again, Obadiah was back in the southwestern desert, on his knees, alone and disoriented. His angel was nowhere to be seen.

  A spotlight shone down. The deep voice boomed from above.

  “Obadiah, do you love me?”

  Obadiah looked heavenward. “You know I do, Lord.”

  “The world has forgotten the sacrifice I made, my son’s blood that I spilled for them, the life I gave. They are caught up in their rituals and edifices, enamored with their ceremonies and songs. They have waxed proud and comfortable. They build and they toil and they sin and they play. They think themselves capable of their own salvation by their deeds and their thoughts, by their passing feelings of guilt, for which they offer passing repentance. They go about their days as if nothing of what you have witnessed ever really happened. My sacrifice has become nothing more than another old story to them. But they must be reminded, Obadiah. They must not forget what I am. They must not forget who they are, and what I have done for them. Will you remind them, Obadiah? Will you show them the cost of their salvation so that my spirit may once again burn like a pillar of fire in the hearts and souls of men? So that my word and the story of my love will be carried into the farthest lands?”

  “My Lord, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

  “You will do this, Obadiah?”

  “I will, Lord.”

  With that, the scrim lifted and the scenery panels parted. Ascending arpeggios poured from the organ and the orchestra. The angel reappeared, with a white robe over her arm. She motioned for Obadiah to remove his shirt and boots. When he had done so, she draped and fastened the robe about him. He was left humbly barefoot.

  A bright spotlight came up on the cross on the wall above the organ pipes, exposed again to the view of all. As if by magic, the cross separated from the wall and began floating slowly forward and down towards the stage. The audience responded with shouts and cries of joy, raising their hands in worship. Obadiah prostrated himself on the ground before the apparition. When the cross neared the stage floor, the angel helped guide and set it down on its edge, her loving caresses designed to mask the unclipping of the nearly invisible wires on which it had been lowered. She removed the crown of thorns from the nail near the cross’s head.

  The voice from above asked, “Will you carry my cross, Obadiah?”

  The cross’s solid, square beams were roughened with age, mottled with dark stains. It looked quite heavy to Paige, larger on the stage than it had looked high on the wall. The main post alone would take some effort for a reasonably healthy man to hoist onto his shoulder and carry. With the addition of the cross-piece, it would be that much heavier, more cumbersome and unwieldy. Obadiah bowed his head.

  “Yes, Lord,” he said.

  “Obadiah, will you carry my cross to the summit of the Hill that I have chosen, the Hill in the valley to which I will lead you?”

  “I will, Lord.”

  “There in my valley will I build my Church, and from this cross upon the Hill, my fire will spread unto the whole world.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Preach my word unto the world, Obadiah Skairn. Show the world my sacrifice so that all will kneel before me. Purify thyself and become my Lamb among lambs. Raise yourself up with my cross, and I will raise you up to your reward in heaven, to be at home with me through eternity. . . .”

  The last word echoed and faded away with the spotlight.

  In the ensuing silence, Obadiah gathered his resolve. Approaching the cross, he crouched beneath it, tucked his shoulder into the cross’s intersection and attempted to stand. The cross nearly toppled over, and Obadiah with it. He set it down unsteadily. The stumble was evidently off-script: the angel had come out of character momentarily, panicking as she stepped forward, putting her hand out to help save the cross from falling over. Paige wondered if the actor playing Obadiah had been given the opportunity to practice lifting the cross’s weight. It appeared to be heavier than he expected. But the world was watching. He re-focused, crouched beneath it again, exhaled twice, and lifted, using his legs more this time. There was strain and a fleeting glimpse of despair in his expression, but he rose to a position that was nearly erect. With the cross’s foot remaining on the floor, he was able to maintain his balance. The angel seemed relieved.

  The organ music came up to full volume, and the
cast materialized from the stage’s wings – the townspeople, the soldiers, the disciples, Mary. Even the villainous priests and a freshly resurrected Judas. They all gathered about Obadiah, smiling with adoring appreciation. Mary Magdalene, the woman who had washed Jesus’ feet with perfume, came forward. The angel presented her with the crown of thorns, and as though bestowing the honor of a laurel wreath, the woman placed it gently on Obadiah’s bowed head. The cast began to sing, with the audience joining:

  Hosanna! Blessed is the Lord,

  And blessed be His Prophet!

  Blessed be the kingdom of David

  That cometh in the name of the Lord!

  The soldiers formed in pairs, led down the steps and up the center aisle. With two disciples helping steady the cross and two others lifting its foot, Obadiah followed. At the bottom of the steps, the foot of the cross was lowered to the floor. Obadiah, left alone to his task, strained into the weight and dragged the cross towards the cathedral’s entrance. The cast followed. A cameraman backed slowly up the aisle ahead of the soldiers, capturing it all. The audience, still singing, had come to its feet. Ushers assisted with an orderly outflow, row by row, filling in the procession from behind.

  When Paige emerged from the cathedral, she squinted into the brightness of the late morning, thinking that a darkened, stormy sky would have been more appropriate for a crucifixion – even a mock one – but there was only so much that a church could control, even in Aurum Valley.

  Thousands of Obadites, their robes and head coverings a rainbow of color, were already gathered and waiting outside. Many had camped overnight on the lawn or had come early to take in the morning’s portion of the play on large temporary screens erected for the purpose. At the end of the walkway waited a contingent of mounted Angels dressed as Roman cavalry. When the procession reached the road, the captain of cavalry, distinguished by his white cloak and tall white plume, adjusted a knob on the side of his gilded helmet and spoke into the built-in microphone. He led out through the campus towards the bridge, the gathered crowd parting before the procession like the Red Sea before the Israelites. The captain of the guard, in his red cape and short red plume, ranged behind the cross, cracking his whip, to the delight of the children. Cameramen dodged and ducked between the horses, seeking optimal angles on the cross and the principal characters. The cast began a new song, which was taken up by the crowd.