Our Lady of Babylon
When it was over, John touched his lips, as if his own words had baffled him, as if his further words baffled him even more: “‘Her sins have reached unto Heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities.’ . . . That is what God has ordered me to write,” he whispered, as if attempting to explain his cruelty.
“‘Let God utter the final judgment He’s chosen me to record on you . . . woman.’” Madame echoed John’s words, softly. “‘Her sins have reached unto Heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities.’” Madame stared away, far, far beyond her garden. “We have located the Mystery of Patmos,” she said.
Can time reverse itself and return to its origins, can it sweep forward to search what became in order to locate what was, what happened, what did not occur even while it occurred and is occurring but can’t ever happen unless it does? — and can it move toward the end of time while hurtling back unmoving into a garden — where a flower grew, so beautiful it did not need the decoration of leaves and was destroyed? — and can time whirl back into another garden where mystery —?
“The pieces are in place.” Madame held both my hands in hers to share what I was sure would be the pain of revelation. She proceeded, gently: “Just as God tantalized the angels when He announced an ‘Entertainment’ to design His curses on them, so He announced a mystery to St. John when He chose him, a mad poet, a driven preacher, to be the author of His last book of Testament, a book to be called — oh, how appropriate! — Revelation. God’s new ‘Entertainment’ in Patmos, dear Lady, was a piece of especially cunning theater, wasn’t it? In it, you, a nameless girl of the streets of what John called Babylon — and he did so to connect you to all the past and present outrages he would accuse you of — you, that girl, were converted into a stand-in for God’s true target.”
I remembered the turbulent darkness stirring beyond the cliff of Patmos, and — Was it possible? Yes. I remembered it now, a presence, the same restless presence that had lurked, nightly, in the crevices of the sordid alleys of John’s Babylon.
“John recruited you to be the substitute for the one whom God wanted to judge most brutally,” Madame explained to me what I was already deciphering. “And why was it necessary that that judgment be recorded in that very last book of Testament? To add the emphasis of finality to His judgment.”
Sensing the enormity of these moments, Ermenegildo had plucked a perfect white rose that had leaned over the veranda. He presented it to Madame to place in my hands. She did, unclasping my clenched fingers, gently, and then continued:
“The ‘Mystery’ St. John read on your forehead, Lady, and did not understand, was the mystery of your role in Patmos, and that was to evoke another woman to be damned forever.” Madame’s hands trembled. She leaned back, as if preparing to confront an implacable force. Her words lashed out: “Who really was God branding Mother of Whores, who did He consider the Mother of Abominations?”
“Eve,” I answered.
XXVI
“WE’VE DETERMINED WHY God commanded St. John to speak his deadly words in Patmos,” Madame bent down to explain excitedly to Ermenegildo after profound moments that acknowledged our enormous discovery. “He was reasserting His judgment on Eve!”
Ermenegildo thrust his head back angrily at the magnitude of God’s connivance, although I was sure he did that for emphasis, since he had been listening raptly. Now he strolled over to me and pointed to the beautiful white rose I still held in my hand, reminding me of his contribution to its presentation.
Madame did not wait to thrive on the victory of our discovery: “There’s more to investigate. I sense that we’re very close to locating the true reason why God hounded Eve so fiercely from the very beginning, and we must —”
Not now.
The revelation of the true indictment of Babylon was enough for today. Ermenegildo thought so, too. He sighed.
“We shall do all that tomorrow,” Madame allowed.
I never welcome my departure from Madame. I know she’s equally reticent to separate from me. So we try to avoid usual words of parting, sustained by the fact that our parting will be brief, until the next afternoon. Of course, we’re aware that at any moment events may push us to begin interviews.
Still, today’s long tea — although we had hardly touched the pastries, a fact Madame sought now to rectify by reaching for two — no, three, one for Ermenegildo — yes, today’s long tea and enormous discovery had added wistfulness to this brief parting, imbuing everything with sorrow, as I lit the candle in my lantern, having already adjusted my cowl. To bring them with me for rehearsals in my quarters, I raised the vase securing the pages of the “Account” we had not had time to delve further into, but must, soon.
A wind that seemed to have originated right between my hands plucked at the pages of the “Final Installment,” which had lain on top, and it whirled them about and off the table. I grabbed at them urgently — and so did Madame, while I hastily clamped the others with the vase. Ermenegildo secured with his tail those that had spilled onto the lawn. The strange wind was carrying away one page, which tumbled, was abandoned, lifted, aloft again, borne farther.
Our straining eyes followed its course as the gust pushed it against the darkness of tangled bushes and overgrown oleanders that bordered and enclosed the lawn of the château down the road, the château of the new tenant. The desultory wind continued to shove the sheet as if to bury it within the bushes. The sheet disappeared.
“Perhaps that page is from those we’ve already read,” Madame Bernice consoled.
“Perhaps.”
As we restored the recovered pages to their numbered sequence, I tried to avoid reading any of their lies, but my eyes could not help but fall on phrases I should have by now become used to, but had not, its gross indictments:
“. . . the vileness of everything she touched . . .” “. . . no degeneracy beyond the capacity of the Whore, even performing blasphemous charades in a house of dissolute lewdness . . .”
“The missing page is the very last one of the ‘Final Installment.’” Madame announced what I had anticipated. She had hardly finished speaking those words when Ermenegildo sped away toward the darkened bushes in search of it.
“He’ll find it, I have no doubt,” Madame said staunchly. She held her opera glasses fixed steadily ahead. “He’s pushed past the oleanders.” Her voice was edged with alarm.
We waited in tense silence, tenser silence, longer silence.
Then with a speed I could not have imagined her capable of, Madame ran along the lawn, across its wide field. I ran after her, to the edge of her grounds, to the clutch of oleanders that were of an unnaturally dark red color.
“Ermenegildo, Ermenegildo!” Madame called out into them. She clawed at the underbrush of vines and bushes that tangled at the edge of the lawn of the new tenant’s château. “Ermenegildo!” Dried twigs grappled with her, scratching at her hands, her face; a streak of blood appeared on her forehead.
I pulled her gently but firmly away. “You mustn’t hurt yourself, please, Madame. I’m sure he’ll be back immediately.” I ministered to her bleeding forehead with my cowl.
“I know he’ll be back immediately!” Then Madame’s frown surrendered to a wide, knowing smile. “Oh, I know his ways, that Ermenegildo. He has a sense of drama, you know, and he’s playful. I’m sure he found the missing page, and — Oh, how well I know him! You know where he is, Lady?”
“Oh, where, Madame?”
“Waiting for you at your château, to present you gallantly with the missing page, that’s where!”
Claiming she was certain of that “beyond any doubt, no doubt whatever,” she marched back toward her château, dabbing absently at her scratched forehead, repeating, “I’m sure of it, there’s no doubt in my mind, none whatever, he’ll be at your gates, I’m sure of it. Nevertheless, I shall wait outside on the veranda until he returns so I can congratulate him for his commitment to our cause — which, of course, is his, too.”
As she
moved along, I stood and watched this dear soul whom I have loved from the first moment she appeared in my life, this dearest soul I’ve grown to love even more, watched her as she trudged up to her “mansion.” I realized then how weary she’s grown in the years of her life. There was a slight stoop to her walk, an ample awkwardness that I didn’t want to see. I realized how very little I know about this gentle, fervent, formidable, beloved soul. Why, I have never even asked how many years she’s graced the world; after all, I’ve roamed through centuries but do not show it. Oh, I realized then how completely Madame Bernice has managed to keep her life a puzzle for interpretation.
I caught up with her and walked her back to her veranda. Night had once again found us at tea. There was no moon. Only the candle of my lantern cast any light. Even within darkened shadows, the new oppressive lilies glowed, exuding their dizzying perfume.
“Now go, please go, Lady, quickly,” Madame begged me, “so you can continue your rehearsals in your quarters — and hasten Ermenegildo’s return once he presents you with the missing page he’s surely found and taken there.”
I made my way along the darkened landscape, slowly, extending time, convincing myself that Madame was right— after all, she is a mystic — and that Ermenegildo would be at the gates of my château, with the missing last page.
I could not help but notice that the wandering souls from the City were beginning now to form small camps in the countryside, “ghost towns,” Madame recently called them. That description seemed apt, towns populated by ghosts. Madame has informed me that after a recent temblor in the City, these dissolute souls occupied crumbling ruins of shattered buildings until the authorities routed them away with horses, and boarded up the dark crevices the destitute had claimed as their own. That may account for the increasing number of the wretched souls in the Country, although the practice of routing them has been occurring here, too.
I walked along. I saw that flames pocked the landscape. Some of the lost are no longer attempting to hide the fires that keep them warm at night. Madame believes this restiveness may soon erupt into open rebellion. “Why, new indignities are constantly added to their burden! — how much longer can they carry it?” she mused when we heard the distant but now distinct rattle of carts laden with the ragged possessions the poor souls cling to as they migrate, like an army of tattered skeletons, from makeshift shelter to shelter, often only an improvised shack of boards, increasingly only gathered debris.
And I, Eve, am blamed for it all! — for all the misery!
As I neared my château, I could no longer restrain my doubts: What if Ermenegildo wasn’t there? Impossible. Madame was sure. But what if he wasn’t and there was something else at the gate, a further “message” left beyond the “Final Installment” of the vile “Account”? I lingered along the road. I leaned for moments against a tree, staring up into the darkness. I was aware — in a stilled moment, as if it and I had been lifted from the earth itself — of the vastly indifferent sky that God had disturbed with his violent self-creation.
Hearing a rustle, I peered into the darkness. Nothing but the silhouettes of trees. They moved! Oh, more wanderers retreating into darkness, to resume —
What?
Their existence.
The stomping of horses’ hooves! Was the carriage back? No. I heard shouts of protest as the desperate people were rounded up. I pushed forward into the clenched darkness to add my own protest to this injustice.
Stop! Stop!
I heard hooves approaching, rushing. Oh, I knew what would occur: One of the mounted officials from the City, the one in charge of this raid into the burgeoning camps of the indigent, would stop me. He would raise his lantern to my face.
“What is a lady of quality doing out this late?”
“I stayed late at Madame Bernice’s —”
“She’s the woman down the way, oh, yes.”
“A countess, she lives in the château next to mine.” I tried to add levity to this terrifying moment of confrontation: “She calls it a mansion.”
“If I were you, Lady, I would get out of here.” The voice was edged with intense warning.
The beating of hooves moving away from me muffled the shouts of the vagrants being gathered within shadows.
If I were you I would get out of here!
Was that what it had seemed? A warning, unwarranted, that a woman of my station and alone might be in danger? Or was a profounder heeding intended? Against interviews! Night pulled the event into its darkness, snuffing it out.
I walked on, still in measured paces, but faster.
Ermenegildo was not at my gate! Perhaps he was being playful — hiding? I moved the light of my lantern about. Something — Oh, what?
Attached securely to one of the bars of my gate was . . . oh, no, please, no —
— the twisted feather from Ermenegildo’s comb!
Rush back to Madame’s? Oh, surely Ermenegildo was back with her and breathless from his adventure, during which, perhaps, someone tried to capture him. Intending to hold him for ransom, in exchange for the canceling of interviews? Did Ermenegildo snatch the last page of the “Final Installment” of the salacious novel just as someone attempted to grasp him, but managed only to pluck out his lovely twisted feather, left now for me here as a warning of greater harm? Time enough to consider all that, with Madame. If Ermenegildo were not back with her, certainly she would have come here looking for him. Surely —
I must return to her.
Surely —
I must —
Surely —
I grew so weary that I huddled in the darkness against my gate, feeling my body sinking to the ground, the candle in my lantern dying . . .
The sun was out, a day that augured wonders, a summer day that had summoned everything to thrive, flowers, trees, grass. I had fallen asleep outside my gates. I had even dreamt. Yes, the recurring dream about that strange woman I don’t recognize. I hear her scream. The dream is seizing me again even though I’m awake. I see the forlorn woman trembling. I’m awake and resting outside the gates of my château, and I still hear her scream!
A breeze soothed the perspiration from my brow. What was I holding in my hand? Oh, a feather . . . It all flooded back: Last night. The ambush of wind. The scattered pages, the last one lost — And Ermenegildo!
“Ermenegildo!” I screamed.
“No need to fret, Lady. He’s back,” Madame Bernice told me as I walked up the lawn for our afternoon tea.
There he was, his spread tail greeting me as he stood on the top stair of the veranda, on a carpet of myriad colors woven by the petals of blossoms that yesterday’s wind had scattered. I thought it best for now to hide the twisted feather in my hand.
Madame was already seated, our tea impeccably set on the table and ready to be served. On a silver platter — a superb creation engraved with tiny silver roses — today’s pastries, the daintiest yet — dabs of meringue and fluffs of sugar — awaited our delectation as we would continue to rehearse for interviews that will expose fictions long called truths. “Show her,” Madame coaxed Ermenegildo.
Gathering his spectacular fan of colors, he revealed that under it, placed carefully, was the missing page the wind had plucked away from us last night.
I did not reach for it.
“Oh, he had quite a time of it, retrieving it, fighting the wind and all those bushes — I believe they’re called tumbleweeds. And, Lady” — she whispered this to me, in confidence — “he lost . . . that one certain feather, probably tangled in the dried brush.”
Oh, no, it had been plucked out and left on my gate. I still withheld the information, especially since Ermenegildo seemed not to mind the absence of his unique feather.
“The last page, Madame, it contains —?”
“Lady, I wouldn’t dream of reading it without your permission.” Madame’s manners are beyond reproach. She served my tea, took a tiny dainty, and waited for me to pick up the retrieved page.
I place
d it under the other pages that I brought with me every day to explore when necessary. I located all the installments on the table, securing them under Madame’s usual vase containing her favorite blossom of the day, today — I did not tell her they disturbed me — a stem of blood-red gladiola.
Madame understood my decisive gesture with the installments. “We shall leave our exploration of the ‘Account’ for later, when you’re ready. Now, Lady, on to Calvary!” She whisked her napkin on her lap and with aplomb popped a meringue fluff into her mouth. Perhaps it was Ermenegildo’s return that had put her into such vigorous spirits, even as she dictated our tragic course of discovery for this afternoon: “Let’s gather your memories as carefully as you did yesterday when we went so effectively back to Patmos. I’m sure we’ll be as successful in discovering Magdalene’s role in the vindication of blamed women — and we must explore more about the Blessed Mother’s function in our journey, the beautiful blue lady, as you’ve so sweetly called her — and I suggest you resume with her in that same gentle, sweet spirit —”
My hand reached out and touched one of the deep red flowers in the vase. I pulled away from it. I looked at my fingers, almost expecting — surely I did not truly expect it — that the flower would have tinted it scarlet. I said firmly to Madame: “I shall now rehearse the rest of my life as Medea.”
“Lady —”
“The time has come.” Before she could protest, I resumed from an earlier afternoon: “After the death of King Pelias —”
“— which that woman coaxed his two daughters into performing, inciting them to hack their own father to death —” Madame’s accusations shortened her breath. Apparently her resistance had not been entirely overcome that earlier afternoon. She folded her arms so tightly against her chest that she pinched herself and let out a cry. Ermenegildo rushed to her. But — this is how distraught she had become — she shooed him absently away, a fact Ermenegildo did not appreciate. He pecked at her hand several times, and moved away. “But what else would one expect from a woman who would destroy her own —?”