“What is his mission, Mary?” I chose a large pomegranate from a passing vendor. Did this beautiful woman hate desire? Why?
“A holy mission announced to me . . . by an angel. No one must attempt to thwart it.” She smiled, a glorious smile.
In the heat, I felt cold as Mary moved away, followed by the gasps and sighs that her startling presence always aroused.
Joseph had remained by a wall. Wanting to speak to me? Had he overheard us? I nodded in greeting. He smiled, a wearied smile. There was so much I wanted to say, to ask. But exactly what? All I could think to say was: “Your son, Jesus —”
Joseph shook his head, no. Mary waited for him, and he joined her.
Had he meant Jesus was not his son? Or had he meant to convey that he didn’t want to speak to me about what he had overheard? I recalled that ambiguous moment often.
In the desert soon after, Jesus, Judas, and I came upon a field of lush bushes with tiny buds sputtering like flames. I knew of them, knew of the magic of these buds.
We — Jesus and I and Judas — he, too, knew of their magic — ate the mushrooms.
In moments the bush we ate from flared alive in flames of fire!
“The flaming bush of Moses.” Jesus reacted in wonder to the magic of the mushrooms.
We held each other, discovering each other’s tearful joy, joyful tears — Jesus outlined them on my cheeks, then on Judas’s, then on his own, fusing them into our tears. Laughing, we coated ourselves and each other — suddenly we were naked — with sand and grass, petals of yellow flowers, which became yellow stars.
As if it had summoned us, we witnessed the bursting miracle of a sunset: Paling shades of red erupted into crimson in the same moment. And we discovered within the lucidity of the mushrooms the hidden universe as it had been shaped long before our time. We saw a star spin, fall, shatter, soar back into the sky.
We embraced, all three of us. Desire swelled. Would our aroused longing for each other manifest itself now? We remained like that, only like that, for a cherished eternity, one precious moment. I understood then, within the lucidity of the mushrooms, that Judas loved Jesus in a special way, the way he loved no one else, and that Jesus loved Judas in the very same way — and that both loved me, in yet another way; and with that knowledge came a sudden conviction that between the two men there was an added dimension to their love, the suspicion of interlocked doom that had begun its course the moment they had glimpsed each other as children by the River.
As if commanded by a voice that only he heard, Jesus broke away from us. Mary’s voice echoing — admonishing? Judas and I remained lying on soft sand. The magic of the mushrooms was withdrawing, abandoning us on a desolate shore.
Jesus stood alone on the edge of a hill overlooking the Valley. Afraid, I stood up to join him. I heard him shout to someone neither Judas nor I saw:
“Leave me! Move away from me!”
Much later — hours, minutes, seconds — he returned silently to us from his strange outpost. We saw deep pain on his face, new fear. “Satan offered me the golden kingdoms of the world — they appeared as broken jewels before me,” he said. “I rejected him.”
Judas laughed. “It was only the magic of the mushrooms.”
“He tempted me,” Jesus asserted. “I rejected him.”
“That was all unreal,” Judas said. “But this is real.” He embraced me and Jesus.
I wanted to weep when I saw Jesus move away from Judas and run down the hill. Judas and I followed.
Jesus was with Mary when we caught up with him in the City. On the street, he was gasping out his strange visions to her.
Mary took his hand. Radiating with triumph, her eyes swept from Jesus to us. Her stare remained on us as she spoke to him:
“Jesus, my beloved son, you’ve been tempted, and you’ve resisted, you’ve been offered kingdoms of gold, and you’ve resisted, you’ve been exposed to the power of sensuality, and you’ve resisted. In the burst of colors you describe, you’ve been given a vision of the Creation, and now you must accept why.” Then Mary whispered to her son, only to him.
I grasped Judas’s frozen hand, to warm it, but mine was just as cold.
Mary spoke aloud to Jesus: “Now you know whose son you truly are.”
Jesus’ eyes — terrified — sought Judas’s, then mine.
Nearby, Joseph turned away.
Jesus slipped down, kneeling before Mary. He grasped her body urgently. “I’m afraid!” he said.
She caressed his beautiful long hair, just as I had, just as Judas had. I knew Judas was remembering that, too.
Joseph moved away, surrendering Jesus to Mary.
From the clouds of evening a sudden wind attacked the leaves of a tree, tearing at it until all its limbs were bare. The barren branches thrust upon the ground the shadow of a cross.
IX
WHEN I FINISHED NARRATING to Madame Bernice those once joyful interludes that were beginning to twist and turn into the terrifying events we both knew I would eventually reveal, she was silent and solemn. She removed several of her rings, as if to strip herself of decoration in deference to what she had heard. Her pondering extended so long that I felt it necessary to occupy myself with another distraction.
I observed the intricate motions of a butterfly. After having noted the stunning symmetry of colors on its wings, gold, azure, purple, I watched how carefully it chose the exact flower to alight on. Was it being selective of the color, the shape, the scent? It floated over one blossom, considering it, its wings barely fluttering. Now it rose, veered away, so motionless that it seemed to be carried aloft on a sigh — perhaps my own — and then it descended — no, it drifted down, almost but not yet touching, the center of another blossom before —
“We’re back to that — the Holy Mother Mary is about to be pronounced guilty.” Madame’s tone was untypically flat, as if something crushing had landed on her. She took off another ring, an onyx, turned it upside down, and mumbled — she does mumble: “Well, we’re in deep water again.”
I was beginning to infer, without exactly understanding them, what Madame’s unique expressions mean; it is her inflection that reveals what they convey.
“Because of my view of Mary?”
“You were her, too, the Holy Mother?”
I did not like her tone, but I addressed her consternation: “Mary was a complex woman, Madame. For purposes of dramatic presentation — honed, I might add, under your expert tutelage — I’m describing her as I saw her at each stage, not as I came to see her. Who knows what we will discover in the maze of betrayals we must roam through?”
“A sturdy point. Still —”
I’ve come to know Madame’s responses so well that her single last word alerted me to prepare a look of reproval.
“It seems to me that Judas is emerging somewhat sym —”
I issued the look I had readied. “The story is not finished,” I sought to mollify her.
That did not appease her — I read dissatisfaction in her fussy actions: She dabbed meticulously at her lips with a napkin embroidered with her initials — I assume all her embroidery is done by nuns in the silent convent she supports. She restored all the rings to her fingers and extended her hand to Ermenegildo as if to have him choose his favorite. He chose an emerald, which matched the green of his tail. Then he raised his beak, and she leaned over as if — yes — to listen to his opinion on the subject pending between us. Of course, that was only an impression, I was sure, even when, immediately after, Madame broke her silence and suggested:
“Shall we leave, for another tea, further matters pertaining to the Holy Mother and to Judas? Perhaps move on to rehearse —”
“— another life?” I readily accepted her offer. Which life? — resume with the time when —
. . . the voyage with Jason ended. The vortex of the ocean released us. I walked proudly with him in Greece, flaunting the darkness of my skin . . . I saw Princess Creusa make a motion to draw his eyes to her. In
response, his gaze sliced across me . . . When I felt the stirring of his children, I resisted pain . . . but later he would feel it, multiplied . . .
Madame was not ready for that. So we ended that day’s tea.
As I neared my château, I hesitated. What would I find at my gate? Nothing. I breathed in relief. Brief relief, because tossed onto my lawn and wrapped with a coarse piece of string were sheets of paper I recognized even before I read the malignant words: “The True and Just Account of the Abominable Seduction into Holy Matrimony in the Grand Cathedral and of the Murder of the Most Royal Count by the Whore: The Second Installment.”
Read from it to us!
Oh, how quickly you’ve asserted your presence as audience in my quarters. You’re eager to begin rehearsals. You want to learn what new lurid lies are contained in the new installment. I shall not keep you waiting. I read aloud:
To allow the Reader to perceive the enormous corruption of what was soon to follow involving the Whore, the Writer of this sad True Account will here provide background to the saga of depravity he bravely proceeds to explore, while asking the Angel of Modesty, since such there is, to blush for him:
The Count’s Mother, of Spanish origin and lasciviously passionate blood — and to flaunt that fact she insisted on being known as “Contessa” — had, at an early age, attempted to thwart a wise marriage arranged by her family to a Nobleman of great wealth and aristocracy, a fair man, whom she proceeded immediately to malign for reasons known only to her erratic mind, claiming (falsely, the indignant Reader will anticipate by now) that the stalwart Nobleman had somehow betrayed his first wife (who had early — alas, too early — gone to her reward in God’s Glorious Heaven and could therefore not defend, as she surely would have, staunchly, the reputation of the upright man) in a scandal that involved their grown son (who, also all too early, alas, shared his mother’s Heavenly Reward). With cunning, this “Contessa” left her imputations vague, to arouse infamous conjectures, as gossip always does in those of impure minds.
The truth of her rebellion and the reason for her defamation of the Nobleman came out, as Truth must always when it grapples with lies: The “Contessa” proclaimed defiantly her love for a swarthy, crude gypsy. Her rightfully concerned family encouraged the Gypsy Rogue to leave the Country, extending certain less attractive (but just) suggestions if he did not follow their encouragement. Thus, under the devout guidance of a Pious Nun solicited by the wise family, the Contessa would be ushered back to her senses.
A year passed, during which, the wise Reader will deduce, the Contessa must have awaited the return of the Gypsy Rogue. Her dutiful family saw to it that that did not occur. The marriage to the fine Nobleman took place. But the Contessa would not allow its consummation. The Nobleman believed her claims — substantiated by the Pious Nun, whom he continued to retain as the Contessa’s Advisor on the worthiness of a spiritual life — that, especially in the evenings, the Contessa suffered from severe bouts of petit mal, which rendered her incapable of satisfying her wifely duties.
A man of trust — and of equally strong loyalties to his Class, his Country, and God’s Church — the upright Husband and Nobleman strolled one restless evening through his grounds in order to be pacified by the moonlit beauty of his many fountains and flowers. He delighted in his roses, vines of bougainvillea, and especially his favorite blooms, tulips, which he had himself directed to be planted with great care and abundance to create intricate but symmetrical patterns throughout his garden. He was pleased to encounter the Pious Nun in serene meditation as she sat on one of many gracious benches strewn about the lawns. On seeing him, she began reciting her rosary in a sonorous voice, pitched higher and higher, in a gracious attempt, the Noble Husband understood, to extend her blessings to him.
Loud as her Aves were, the Noble Husband heard gasps and moans emanating from shadows nearby. He assumed that an animal, perhaps a deer (the kind man imagined the hurt eyes) had been helplessly entangled in one of the vines. He followed the sounds toward a fountain guarded by a statue of a soaring angel.
Double blasphemy! Under the angel’s spread wings, he found the Gypsy Rogue straddling his Wife lying on the ground. The lurid Gypsy’s engorged quivering organ was so monstrous that for moments the concerned Husband thought his Wife was being assaulted with a terrifying weapon. The moon revealed otherwise. The Gypsy Rogue was about to enter the Contessa to spill his huge villainy into her welcoming thighs (hugged lewdly by the brightness of that night). The year-long separation had added to the ferocity of their renewed concupiscence. The Contessa’s Husband acted just in time. He pulled the Gypsy Rogue off his Wife at the very moment that the lustful fluid erupted and spattered on her wanton nude body and among the violated flowers, which, in her belated but still surprising shame, the Contessa clutched hurriedly, to cover her most intimate part. A fearful coward, the Gypsy Rogue disappeared. Forever.
The once again defiant Contessa walked back (without so much as a stitch) to the Noble Husband’s mansion, so brazen in her resurrected insolence — after the few moments of unexpected modesty on the ground — that she even winked at the Pious Nun, who, finally realizing to her horror what the night and her own loud orisons had concealed, knelt praying in the garden with such passion that her body shook as if convulsed.
The very night that she had been rightly severed from profane intercourse with her Gypsy Rogue, the Contessa swore she would never bear the children of her righteous Husband.
The Reader will surely applaud the justice of the Good and Noble Husband’s action. He drew a rigorous document that stated that his wife would continue to enjoy the protection of his wealth only if (within a designated period) she fulfilled her obligation to him as a wife and provided him with heirs. If that did not occur, or should he die childless, the perverse Wife would be cast into the streets, a pauper. A most generous punishment, the Reader will surely agree.
And still, the usurious Contessa refused to fulfill the wifely duty assigned to her by the laws of her Maker! — that is, until, with the impetuous suddenness of her hot blood, she announced to her Noble Husband that — under sage instructions from her holy counselor (the Pious Nun) — she had determined where her sacred duty lay: with him in her.
She gave birth to twins, one fair, the other dark, children no less robust for being somewhat premature, a tribute to the Noble Husband’s stout fertility.
For reasons found only in her convoluted mind, the Contessa favored the Dark Twin, although she would claim that it was the Fair Twin who rejected her. The Fair Twin, naturally, turned to his loving Father. After a Daughter of startling intelligence, wisdom, and acute discernment was born, the Noble Father died, surely claiming his just place among those who serve their Maker with beneficent donations to His cause on this orbit we call Earth.
Years passed, the Sons and Daughter grew, as is the wont of sons and daughters launched on their journey to fulfill the Holy’s needs. Increasingly the Daughter sensed injustice in that mansion of secrets, as only a brilliant, perceptive, agile mind is able to. In addition, she overheard whispers between the Mother and the Dark Twin, whispers at times interrupted with laughter at some shared intimacy, gasps of false and imprudent indignation at some past imagined scandal involving the Noble Dead Father.
The Daughter naturally sought the advice of His Holiness the Pope. His Holiness graciously extended it, just as he had so often to her generous Father. From the Holy Prelate, the Daughter learned that her beneficent Father had added to his will a codicil, executed with perfect authority by the best legal minds that donate their intelligence to moral causes. Said codicil — whose existence was made clearly known to the Contessa — assured that the offspring of the Nobleman’s male heirs, the offspring of the Twins, would eventually inherit the vast bulk of the family wealth. This was the Noble Husband’s way of ascertaining that his fortune would remain among those of his own blood into perpetuity, and never be grasped by the Contessa — ever!
With great sorrow, th
e Holy Pontiff informed the gravely concerned Daughter that her notorious Mother, the Contessa, had once, in her Confession to him, revealed “a transgression so vast” that he “often wished his Maker would allow him a special dispensation of his vows of confidence” so he might “divulge it to someone pious who might right the outrage.” After that interlude (he sadly informed the alert, wise Daughter) the Contessa had never again sought the surcease of Confession, nor had she continued the generous indulgences to the Holy Church long established by her late Husband.
“Her scandalous confession involved matters that might determine who eventually inherits the vast wealth involved.” The Pontiff surprised himself by speaking aloud, so moved was he by the rightfully concerned, supremely intelligent Daughter.
“Please, Holiness,” the sagacious Daughter exhorted, “please, just a clue more.”
“Tulips.”
“Again the tulips!” Madame Bernice contemplated when she reached that point in the “Second Installment.”
I had brought the new installment of the growing “Account” to tea with me this afternoon. Again, Madame’s casualness had surprised me earlier — shall I get used to it? I suppose it has to do with her mystic orientation, that she moves into exceptional matters without introduction: “I read the ‘First Installment,’” she had announced, and left the matter at that, at least for now — she does often return, with passion, to subjects she has only earlier seemed to glide by. Indignant at what the “Account” contained, Ermenegildo shook his head, his twisted feather furiously astir. That caused Madame to shake her own head. While I waited — trying to compose myself, knowing what she would be exposed to at each turn of the page — Madame read from the “Second Installment.” Ermenegildo peered occasionally over it and then at me, his head tilted sadly. Surely his responses were based only on subtle signals he had learned to perceive from Madame? Since all the lies in the “Account” were fresh in my mind, I knew exactly what passages Madame was reading: