The Gargoyle (67 page)

Time does not exist when one’s body no longer exists, because there is only the body’s perception of time. We rarely notice our innate feeling for time until it’s removed. This is why amnesiacs are so confused when they become first aware of their condition. It’s not because they’ve lost memories—we all lose memories; it’s because they’ve lost time.

I became aware of presences. You couldn’t call them ghosts or spirits, because they possessed not even that much form. They existed only because I could sense them. But
sense
is again the wrong word, because how could I sense something with no substance? Like the light and the water, they were inside me. I felt them so completely that I knew that not only were they inside me, but they always had been. I had been ignoring them, all my life, in a kind of self-defense. It’s like listening to a conversation—you can’t concentrate on the words if you’re also listening to the clock across the room and the cars outside and the footsteps down the hall and the breathing of the man sitting beside the woman sipping tea. You cannot process all this, so you concentrate only on the words of the speaker. So it is with the infinite voices of the human body. You listen to your own thoughts, and you shut out the rest.

But now I could embrace every voice within me. I could hear all those presences, and they sounded like golden circles. I could taste them, and they tasted like comfort. They touched me, and it felt like music.

See? I wish I could explain it, but I cannot. It is impossible. Anyone who believes that she can explain the Eternal Godhead has never truly experienced it.

Three presences separated themselves from the host and came forward. Although they did not assume physical shapes, I recognized them nevertheless as the humans that they had been, even though in my physical life I’d only ever met one of them, Father Sunder. The second was Meister Eckhart and the third was Mechthild von Magdeburg.

I knew this was not a trick, but a gift to be embraced. It was natural, even comforting, when Father Sunder indicated that he was pleased to be in my presence once more. Words were not used; it was more like I could feel his thoughts brushing up against mine. It was the same with Meister Eckhart and Sister Mechthild when they communicated. Our “conversation” was a kaleidoscope of brilliant vibrations.

They were not there to take me away, they explained, because I was not ready. I had not died properly and I was unfinished. They would help me achieve a state in which I was ready to die and, to this end, they had been assigned as my Masters.

Why am I not being sent to Hell?
I communicated.
I have killed the man I love.

That’s not the way it works. Eve’s sin was to eat fruit, and for this she was punished with the Fall of Mankind. For the transgressions of your life, what atonement is necessary?

This is not for me to decide.

But it is. Your path has taken you from the Life of God and made you the hand behind a death. Do you repent?

No.
Even in the Eternal Godhead, I could remember my life with you.
I may have betrayed my monastic vows and I may have betrayed my prioress and the Lord God in doing so, but I have never betrayed myself. I have remained true to my heart, and I will never repent my love. It is the one great thing I have ever done.

My Three Masters understood that I would hold to my love for you, even in my life’s end. Surely they had seen it before, and surely they would see it again.

Your heart has always been independent, your supreme and most damning gift. Therefore it is through the processes of the heart that your penance will occur.

So be it.

You learned to give your heart over completely to the one, but
you have not yet learned to share the heart beyond the self and the other.

I confess this as true.

You shall be returned to the world, and your chest shall be filled anew with thousands of hearts. You must give each away, until all are gone but one.

How shall I achieve this?

These hearts must be given out of your chest and die for you, while finding life in others. This is so you can overcome your earthly nature and be made ready for Christ.

I do not understand the method of releasing these hearts.

You will learn the method.

And when only my final heart remains?

That one you cannot give away yourself. Your last heart must be passed over to your lover. He must accept it, but he cannot hold it. He must release it, to release you. Only in this manner may you finally be delivered to the Lord.

I do not understand the purpose of my lover’s involvement.

Your lover will know the purpose.

This is where it was left. I was pulled from the Godhead, the light and water stopped flowing through me, and I was violently plunged back into the cold dark currents of the Pegnitz.

When I awoke, I was lying on my back and could not open my eyes. They were fused shut with ice and it must have taken five minutes of effort before I could blink them unglued. It was early morning and the storm had stopped. I tried to speak but was unable to produce any sound, because all my body was paralyzed. I was so much colder than I had ever been.

I began by wiggling my toes and fingers, until I managed to force entire limbs into action. I compelled myself to stand, tottering unsteadily. I was behind a shed of some sort, and a farmhouse was a hundred feet away. I stumbled towards it, hampered not only by frozen limbs but also by the fact that my clothing was stiff with ice. Smoke was rising from the chimney and I don’t know if I could have made it without that promise of heat. I thumped on the door a few times until a farmwoman answered and her eyes peeled back in horror at the sight of me. To her, apparently, I was the dead coming to call.

When she realized that I was not quite dead yet, she called out to her husband and began stripping me of my frozen garments. The old man fed me soup, while the woman wrapped me in blankets and massaged my limbs to get the blood circulating. When I was sufficiently recovered, we tried to piece together what had happened. I’d been washed some miles down the river and had come to rest in an open spot that was not frozen over. It was only by chance that the old farmer had come across my body and dragged me out. My eyes were staring straight ahead, my hair was frozen into stiff fingers, and my body showed not a trace of life.

The farmer believed that everyone deserved a proper burial, and that was why he had pulled me from the river. The ground was frozen too hard to be opened for a grave so, with little choice, he decided to leave me behind their shed and bury me come spring. He couldn’t bring a dead body into their home, of course, but for practical reasons rather than superstitious. It would simply thaw and start to smell. We supposed, together, that the water had been so cold that it made me appear dead. Such things had been known to happen; there were many stories of people immersed in cold water and revived long after they should have died.

I stayed with them a few days, but never told them how I came to fall into the river. I just said that I was out for a walk when the ice gave out underneath me. There was no need to recount the story of Engelthal, or of the mercenaries, or my Three Masters. My survival alone was difficult enough for them to accept.

When I was well enough to travel, I returned to the shore of the Pegnitz to retrieve my hidden bag, and then proceeded to Mainz. Where else would I go? I moved into a beguinage and adopted the life of contemplation and prayer. It was a partial return to the life I had before I met you, but I was changed so fundamentally by your love that I could not return fully to what I had once been. I did not continue in bookmaking, although in time I did finish my translation of
Inferno.
My reason for doing so was selfish—not that I thought I was creating a masterpiece to outlive me, but that working on the translation made me feel closer to you.

The rest of my story is unimportant. My years have been spent giving out hearts but I could never imagine an end to my penance until recently, because I always knew that I could never give away my final heart until we met again.

V
ast and black, the ocean stretched away from the shore until its horizon disappeared into the night. I spoke with as much gentleness as I could manage. “I know you believe that story is true, Marianne. But it’s not.”

She looked down into the sand. Her breath caught in her throat, then came rushing out in a confession. “Our baby didn’t survive.”

She looked up, out over the ocean, and then back down at the sand again.

“When I woke up the child was…”

She covered her face with her hands; it was clear she could not look at me.

“Just gone,” she said. “As if I had never been pregnant, as if God’s hand had reached into my womb and pulled out my child as punishment.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“I try not to. I try—I
want
to believe that it was a mercy. That the baby…” Her voice was so soft that I could barely make out the words. “That the baby died because of the freezing water, and God removed the child from me so I wouldn’t have to confront the truth in the living world.”

“If you believe in God,” I said, restraining my natural inclination to add that I didn’t, “you should also believe in His kindness.”

“I’ve always wanted to believe it was a mercy,” she went on, weeping. “If it was a punishment, that would be too much.”

“Marianne, there was no—”

“Our child did not survive,” she insisted. “This is not a thing that one forgets, no matter how old one lives to be.”

I knew better than to keep trying to convince her it was only her imagination. This was another argument that I simply could not win.

It was clear that she was not speaking to me, but for herself, when she added, “It was a mercy, it had to be. It
had
to be.”

Since I could not persuade her this medieval child had never existed, I decided to concentrate on our current lives.

“You’re not going to die, Marianne. There are no Three Masters.”

“All my hearts are gone.”

“Feel this.” I took her hand in my own, and I pressed it to her chest. “Your heart is still beating.”

“For now. What comes next depends on you.” She looked out over the ocean for a few moments before finally whispering, even though the nearest people were dozens of yards down the beach, “Do you remember what you said when I was leaving Brother Heinrich’s house before the mercenaries arrived? You promised that our love would not end.”

I remained silent, not wanting to encourage her, as she pulled her arrowhead necklace up over her head. “This has always been yours, and someday you’ll know what to do with it.”

“I don’t want it,” I said.

She pressed it into my hand anyway. “I’ve kept it all this time so that I could return it to you. It will protect you.”

I could tell she would not let me refuse it, so I took it. But so she would not think that I was endorsing her story, I said, “Marianne, I don’t believe this was ever blessed by Father Sunder.”

She leaned her head into the crook of my shoulder and said, “You’re a wonderful liar.”

And then she asked a question she had never asked before.

“Do you love me?”

Our bodies were pressed into each other, our chests touching. I’m certain she could feel my heart racing. My birth-scar was against the place where, under her sweater, she had carved my name into her breast.

Do you love me?

I had never admitted aloud to anything more than “caring” for her. I had rationalized that she knew the truth without my speaking it. But really, I was just a coward.

“Yes.”

For so long, I had wanted to confess myself.

“Yes. I love you.”

It was time to stop failing her, so I brushed back the wild cords of her hair and poured out the words that had been in the crucible of my heart, becoming pure, since the first moment I had met her.

“I spent my entire life waiting for you, Marianne, and I didn’t even know it until you arrived. Being burned was the best thing that ever happened to me because it brought you. I wanted to die but you filled me with so much love that it overflowed and I couldn’t help but love you back. It happened before I even knew it and now I can’t imagine not loving you. You have said that it takes so much for me to believe anything, but I
do
believe. I believe in your love for me. I believe in my love for you. I believe that every remaining beat of my heart belongs to you, and I believe that when I finally leave this world, my last breath will carry your name. I believe that my final word—
Marianne
—will be all I need to know that my life was good and full and worthy, and I believe that our love will last forever.”

There was a moment in which we just held each other, and then she stood up and began walking towards the ocean. She peeled off her clothing as she went and the moonlight made her skin seem all the whiter. By the time she reached the water she was entirely nude, ghostly in her pale brilliance. There she turned and faced me for a moment, under stars that sparkled like frost through the bitter cold; she stood as if trying to memorize what I looked like, looking back at her.

“See?” Marianne said. “You do have God.”

She turned away from me and waded calmly into the ocean. The water climbed up her legs and back, and soon it shrouded the tattooed wings inked into the alabaster of her skin. She leaned forward and began to stroke out into the vastness of the ocean, her black mess of hair trailing behind.

I didn’t do anything but watch her move away from me until, at last, the waves swallowed the whiteness of her shoulders.

After a quarter hour Bougatsa began to howl terribly and turned in agitated circles, imploring me to do something. But I just sat there. So he ran into the tide, ready to swim, until I called him back. I knew the water was too cold and it was already too late. He trusted me enough to do as I said, but he whimpered as he lay at my feet. Still, his eyes remained hopeful. It was as though he believed that if only he waited long enough, eventually you would come wading back to us, out of the ocean.