Messi@ (31 page)

When the stinging subsided, Andrea felt very warm. Stretched out on the rug, she listened to the rain. Sometimes she could understand what it said. It was delivering a message to the Yuin priest. The rain said:
I have watched you trying to use your bull-roarer in the difficult environs of Jerusalem, which is a loud city without a single private place!

The message was not intended for her. The entity speaking was Darumulun, a Yuin god. She tried to warn him: “Father Zahan isn't here, Mr. Rain. You may be confused because everybody here in Jerusalem is always communicating with God, which kinda jams the airwaves!”

Andrea closed her eyes trying to imagine what Father Zahan's god looked like. She saw a massive shape, a pyramidal being swathed in rolls of quivering fat. In his enormous fist he held a taut bull-roarer. In his belly button, which was as big as a cave, there were blue sparks. This is where the rain and the voice came from. Intrigued by her ability to see all the way inside this supernatural being, Andrea looked around. Some naked young boys were tending Darumulun by throwing pails of scented water on his hot skin. She realized that the boys were in the first year of their initiation: they were forbidden to talk. Also, they ate only from the forest floor and they slept only from midnight until dawn. The god Darumulun was a huge telegraph that the Yuin people used to communicate with one another and their ancestors. No matter how far away a Yuin might find himself, he could always reach Darumulun with a bull-roarer.

Father Zahan, meanwhile, was having a fit of nerves. The absence of the bull-roarer had given him a tremor in the hands and legs that would not subside. He could think of no one cruel enough to deprive him of his whip. He searched his room as if hidden within its modest dimensions were holes leading to other worlds. Finally, he curled up on his bed and attempted to guide his shaky thoughts to Darumulun. It was for naught. He trembled like a sapling. It was then, at his most tenuous, that he saw Andrea etched with India ink in his mind. She regarded him with the curiosity of one who knew the future. Gratitude, or something akin to it, filled him. It was time to return home.

“Instruct me,” he whispered.

Andrea lay the stinging whip with its voices down on her bed. The bull-roarer vibrated there as if a low-voltage current coursed through its strands. She would have liked to lie on top of it but was afraid that the slight trembling would turn into a thrashing. The thought of what it would be like to be quashed by a massive shape such as Darumulun stopped her. In camp, she'd had to submit to an immense sweaty soldier who'd completely hidden her in his folds of fat. Even the other soldiers, waiting their turn, had protested. The giant finished before he suffocated her, but she'd wished herself dead.

Andrea felt a sudden need for affection. Cautiously, she opened her door a crack and peered down the corridor. No one there. The feeling that she was about to do something naughty never failed to thrill her. But what to do? She had already been inside the guest rooms and taken things. The thrill was keenest at the moment when she actually slipped something under her blouse or stuck it down the leg of her jeans. The possibility of getting caught caused a delicious vibration in her fingertips. The down on her upper thighs and lower back ruffled lightly. She had even let herself into Mother Superior's room, but it was so austere it repelled her. Apart from the black crucifix on the white wall above the narrow bed, there was only a locked steamer trunk. She had fiddled with the heavy, old-fashioned lock, but its secrets held. Just before she abandoned the attempt she'd had the strange thought that if one of her tears fell into the keyhole, the lock would open suddenly.

Andrea looked to the worn stone steps that twisted up to the second story, where the novices' cells were located. No sound came from up there, which meant that the sisters were about their chores at the school or in the garden. She tiptoed up. Just as she expected, the first door she tried was unlocked, but the cell was not empty. Kneeling before the sliver of light that came through a narrow window was Sister Rodica, wearing only a nightshirt. She was weeping. She did not hear Andrea come in.

Andrea closed the door behind her and swiftly took the single step between herself and Rodica before the young nun could turn around. She fell to her knees behind the sister and embraced her. She cupped the sister's breasts from that position, feeling their scared thumping like trapped birds. Sister Rodica's heart beat so furiously that both women thought it might burst. But then, Andrea's heart also thumped out a mad rhythm on the skin of Rodica's back.

They knelt like this for a million years. Then Sister Rodica broke away and asked plaintively, “What are you doing to me, Andrea?”

Rising to her feet, Andrea pointed to the naked man on the crucifix, identical to the one in her room.

“Loving you,” she answered.

Sister Rodica whispered through tears, “Do you love me like yourself?”

Andrea kissed her on the lips. She moved her hand under the nun's nightshirt, stroking the shivering skin until she reached the soft pelt covering her pubis. With her other hand, she pulled up her sweater and guided Sister Rodica's hand to her breast. Andrea traced lightly the girl's moist, thin squiggle with her index finger.

“This is how I love myself,” Andrea said, holding Rodica's eyes with her own.

Rodica looked into Andrea's eyes and gave herself over to the fire. She had seen pictures of burning martyrs, and she was sure that her turn had come. She would combust spontaneously before the beauty of this shameless orphan. A new millennium would begin tomorrow, but the promise of redemption no longer applied to her. She would belong wholly to her time. Sister Rodica surrendered to the flame and took Andrea in her arms.

Chapter Nineteen

Wherein we discover Felicity in a strange place of worship, where syncretic experiments are conducted

Felicity knew neither where she came from nor where she was. Still, what she could see of the outside was familiar. Through the barred window she could see palms and banana trees growing untrimmed over the oval of an empty swimming pool. Bunches of small black bananas lay at the bottom of the pool under giant spiderwebs. She could also see a gallery that ran the length of this courtyard, festooned with pink and blue flowers. Night jasmine twined itself around the aging grillwork. Here and there glinted strands of Mardi Gras beads caught years ago on the rusted spikes that topped the brick walls.

She remembered being driven for a long, viscous, thoughtless time. A soldierly man with a crew cut had blindfolded her from the backseat. She had tried to concentrate during the drive, bring herself back. When the car finally stopped, she had succeded at last in remembering her name: Scheherazade. She said it softly under her breath several times and liked the sound of it. She resolved to hold on to her name no matter what they were going to do to her.

The young soldier type, who smelled like pine deodorant, helped her out of the Cadillac and removed her blindfold. Her eyes were smarting. She rubbed them with the back of her hand before she could see anything. They climbed a rickety staircase. Another young man walked in front of them, leading the way. Cute ass, she thought through her trance. It was an observation without context because she could not think of any other example of such a thing. Who else has a cute ass? she asked herself. But her store of images was empty; it returned nothing.

Still—she stubbornly reasoned in the emptiness—I know enough to describe the young man's behind as cute, therefore I must be able to construct a familiar situation. The cute ass before her was tied to her understanding by a slender thread of feeling. She could not recall the name of this thread, but she became certain that it led the way out of her submerged state. The thread had a name, she was sure of it, but it was more important now as a feeling that led from the young man's cute ass to the world outside.

The men led her to a room filled with school desks. The room also looked familiar, and Felicity was even more hopeful. She could not remember any specific schoolroom in her own past, but school and school desks were, generally, known to her. She knew what they were and she realized that they, too, were linked by the thread of a nameless feeling. This thread was different from the thread of the cute ass; it was more unpleasant, more anxious. She imagined twining both threads around each other to make a bracelet. She imagined it around her left wrist. There were two other bracelets there, one ebony, one gold, but she didn't know what they were doing there. She removed them just as a large man came toward her with an extended hand.

“Welcome to the School for Messiah Development.”

This struck her as funny for some reason, like an inside joke. She couldn't remember whose inside joke, though. She did recall, however, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. In that case, she asked herself quite logically, how could he be “developed”? What kind of school would Jesus need in order to become Jesus? What absurd place was this?

As if in answer to her question, the teacher put out his hand in a kind of blessing.

Felicity thought that he wanted her bracelets, so she handed them to him. He took them and smiled. “I merely wanted to bless you, young woman. But thanks, anyway.” He put the bracelets on a desk in front of the room and asked her her name.

“Scheherazade,” she replied, and immediately regretted it. She ought to have kept her name secret, like the two threads twined about her wrist. She no longer had her bracelets, but she still had the gold hoops in her ears, her nipple rings, and her belly-button ring. Her breasts felt hot under the thin black turtleneck sweater. The rings burned but they also anchored her, as if they were part of an armor.

The man did not introduce himself, but Felicity was certain she knew him. He had a pale forehead with burning black eyes. A globe lit from within by cherry-colored light sat on the desk.

Felicity squeezed into one of the seats and looked around. Several bewildered young women in various stages of disarray sat awkwardly at the school desks. They looked as if they had come from very far away. Some had mud on their clothes and dirty faces.
Very far away:
here was another thread of feeling, different from the other two. It had a taste that squeezed her tongue and a color she couldn't name. She twined it with the others.

Felicity could smell the redhead in the wrinkled velveteen miniskirt in the adjoining seat.
Whiskey flavored
, she thought. And below that flavor was another, a rich womanly musk.
As if she has just been opened and made to release her essence
. These phrases came to her unbidden and presented her with yet more threads for her bracelet.

The redhead whispered, “And to think that there are so many real problems in the world. Like where the hell is my drink?”

“Very far away,” whispered Felicity.

“You can say that again. I flew twenty hours straight before I landed here. Where is my fucking bag? My Prozac's in there.”

Of course
. “Aviatrix!” exclaimed Felicity. “What a clever disguise!”

“Whatever.” The redhead turned to the man at the desk. “Nightcap, teacher man?”

Another girl, on her other side, had doubtless been more girlish the night before, but a five o'clock shadow and smeared mascara were quickly dissolving the illusion. She had taken off her stiletto heels and set them on the desk in front of her. She now regarded them sadly, as if they were the last remnant of her youth. “I don't think this is going to be very amusing,” she said, attempting to smile.

It touched Felicity. Even disguised and without armor, the Maid of Orléans was recognizable. She had been temporarily defeated, but not for long. Felicity felt that, even though Joan's story ended badly, history had vindicated her. Perhaps Felicity had been destined to bring the good news to the French saint. It made her dizzy to suddenly know so much about the two women on either side of her. Felicity didn't know how she knew or where she had learned them, but here were their histories, vivid and complete. The threads of feeling that they radiated were leather-thick thongs. Felicity twined them like the tails of a whip and wound them around her arms all the way to her shoulders. She was sure that any moment now she would recognize everyone, that her world would come flooding back to her with everything, including the elusive memory of her own life.

“Joan,” she addressed the sad one in a voice she did not recognize, “fear nothing. You are going to triumph.”

“You're a dear,” said Joan in a man's voice, and patted her head with a rather large hand.

Now that she had begun threading her way back to reality, Felicity no longer felt that she was in any imminent danger. On the contrary. Not knowing where she was or what was going to happen felt oddly liberating. If she allowed herself to be still, without fretting for answers, she could recognize everyone around her. It was only when she moved her arms and legs that anxiety overcame her. Her body felt adrift as if the steel cable of her identity had snapped, leaving it unmoored. But when she practiced stillness, whole stories came rushing in.

The teacher said: “The School for Messiah Development is dedicated to bringing to fruition the messiah potential in each and every one of you. Within you lies the power to save the world. Some of you have only a little messiah power, others have more. But a few of you have great power, one hundred percent messiah power, and those will lead us to glory. As you divest yourself bit by bit of your physical selves and your earthly memories, you will uncover the radiance of the truth.”

Felicity felt lulled by the man's words. She was floating on a calm blue mountain lake.

“Ladies, allow yourself the luxury of rest. We will play a lovely game together,” the man said. “Imagine that the world has just ended. You're a survivor. Your life depends on one thing, one thing only. You must try to imagine a pink elephant. If you can imagine a pink elephant, you'll live. The city's burning. The charred bodies pile up. A leprous man grabs your ankle. The water is poisoned. Your loved ones are all dead. You are dying. Unless, unless, you can … imagine … a … pink … elephant.”