The Judas Rose (36 page)

But I am crying now. Because I am wondering . . . the other small broken ones, at the place where I used to be, all the small ones that lasted only a handful of cold times and hot times, that were trying to make words and could only make empty noises. . . . What if they had come here? What if they had had one of the small boxes, as I have? Could they have shared words with other persons, as I share them now? Perhaps they were only broken in the same way that I am broken. Perhaps then they would not have gone to sleep forever, while they were still so small?

They are sorry that I am crying. They want me to share the why. But I can't. There are no words on the small box for what they want me to tell them. They are so sorry.

And I am so sorry. I am so sorry because all the poor small ones are gone, before I can show them how the magic works. It is a sad thing, to go with the new happy things. This is what I want to say to you.

CHAPTER 16

“It's all very well to talk of faith transcending language, and of the pettiness of quibbling over the little touch of sexual gender a language may drag into a sacred text here and there. I do understand, and of course it is only primitive superstition to visualize the Lord God Almighty as either male
or
female, in the sense that a human being is either male or female. But have you ever considered what
very
odd images come to one's mind if one says “The Lady is my shepherdess, I shall not want?” One can just
see
the dear little creature, with her petticoats flying in the spring breeze, and the big pink satin bow on her crook . . . don't you think?”

           
(Langtree Moulineux, Professor of Religious Studies, Midwestern Multiversity, speaking on the newsthology talk show, “Meet the Clergy” . . .)

“Fathers, I am sorry—it is just as you suspected it might be,” said Sister Miriam; her voice was grave, and measured, as was suitable for speaking of things of this kind. “Of course I am not qualified to say if it is either blasphemy or heresy. But I am very sure that it is not something that you, or Holy Mother Church, would approve of. And if you will allow me an opinion . . .”

She paused and waited until Father Dorien said that yes, she might express her opinion, and then she went on.

“It is my opinion that it contains at least the
seeds
of goddess worship,” she told them, not hesitating at all over the words of condemnation. Her face had the expression appropriate for removing a small dead animal from the hotbox of a flyer, but she did not stammer over the word; she spoke straight out.

Father Agar's breath hissed through his clenched teeth, betraying
his fascinated interest in what he should not have found interesting, and Father Claude glared at him fiercely. Father Dorien ignored them both, and spoke to the nun.

“Please continue, Sister,” he urged. “You may dispense, for the duration of this meeting, with the requirement to wait for our permission to speak.”

“It is my privilege to obey,” answered Sister Miriam, “and I thank you for the courtesy—it will certainly save a great deal of your time. But there's little more to report, Fathers. The other nuns and I have followed your orders; as you anticipated, we were welcome as guest speakers at the women's chapel meetings. We had no difficulty obtaining materials for examination, and I have brought you some samples.”

She laid three microfiches on the table, each in its own sheath, within their easy reach; and she stood quietly waiting while they inserted them in the readers that hung on black cords round their necks, her hands clasped properly behind her back. They made the sort of noises fussy spinsters make when faced with the private reading collections of healthy adolescent males, and Father Dorien suspected that Sister Miriam was perhaps amused at the variety of clucks and sniffs and snorts that she was witnessing from the end of the table; if so, no trace of that, or of any emotion other than courteous respect, appeared upon her face.

Dorien was the first to move; he pulled the fiche from the reader with the tips of two fingers as if it were something slimy and decomposing, set it into the comset recess on the tabletop, and pushed the stud that would display a selected page on the overhead screen.

“I direct your attention,” he said sternly, “to the tenth line and to its translation. Sister Miriam Rose, do you vouch for the accuracy of that translation?”

“I do, Father,” she assured him. “It has been done morpheme by morpheme. However, some details have perhaps not been made entirely clear. Do you wish me to comment on it, Father Dorien?”

“Please.”

“
Boóbin Na delith lethath oma Nathanan,
” she said easily, reading off the line. “You see that it is easily pronounced, Fathers.”

“Indeed. As one would expect.”

“Yes, Father Claude; just as you say.”

“Please continue, Sister,” Father Dorien directed. “And I will be grateful if my colleagues will refrain from interruption—this
is quite difficult enough for the sister without our intermittent comments.”

“A word at a time, Fathers,” she said, nodding her agreement to the command. “
Boóbin
: that is the verb, to
braid
. It has no other meaning, although it has a transparent relationship to the numeral three, which is
boó
.”

“Charming!” warbled Agar, drawing the glares of both the other priests at once. “Well, it
is
,” he insisted defiantly; he knew he was safe from Dorien's tongue as long as the nun was present.

“Go on, Sister Miriam,” said Father Dorien harshly. “Please.”

“
Na
: that is the subject pronoun, second person singular, with the suffix from the grammatical class designated as ‘beloved.' Perhaps ‘Beloved Thou' is the closest I can come to it . . . and it should be noted that it begins with a capital letter to denote reverence as well.
Delith
: that is the noun meaning ‘hair.' Human hair.
Lethath
, next: that is the first person singular pronoun, marked with the possessive and objective case endings. The choice of ‘-tha-' for the possessive indicates that the reference is to something possessed by reason of birth. ‘
Delith lethath
'; it means ‘my hair, that I was born with,' and is the direct object of
braid
.
Oma
: that is
hand
or
hands
; in this context, it is plural. And finally we have
Nathanan
: possessive-by-birth, in the pattern meaning beloved and revered, second person singular, and marked for the instrumental case. Referring to ‘Thy (Beloved) hands,' plus the instrumental ‘with.' ”

The priests listened to this torrent of grammatical terminology without difficulty; they knew all about such things from the painful learning of both Latin and Greek, and Fathers Dorien and Agar both had a smattering of Hebrew as well. They sat nodding their heads as she went along, watching the screen, punctuating each chunk of information with a small movement of acknowledgment.

“And the whole line,” said Father Dorien slowly, “is to be translated ‘Thou braidest my hair with Thine own hands.' ‘Thou' and ‘Thine' being understood as containing in addition the morpheme ‘Beloved.' Is that correct, Sister?”

“Yes, Father. Quite correct.”

“And that is supposed to be the Langlish translation of ‘Thou anointest my head with oil'?”

“Yes, Father.”

Father Dorien glowered at the line, and glowered at her, and then realized that his display of emotion contrasted badly with
her serenity; after all, if anyone here should have been shocked, it was the good sister. Hastily, he composed his face.

“Very different from the King James,” he observed. “They've taken extraordinary liberties.”

“Yes, Father. It's not even a close approximation.”

Dorien steepled his slender white hands before him, the heavy ring with its single square stone catching the light, and looked at his colleagues. In a voice of grim determination he said, “Father Agar, Father Claude—I have had the benefit of a brief prior discussion of this material with Sister Miriam. And I would like you to hear what she has to say about the
interpretation
of this particular line, which might seem at first to be no more than a glaring example of feminine inability to translate accurately. Sister, please tell them just what you told me.”

Miriam allowed herself a expression of faint reluctance, and was not surprised when Father Dorien interrupted her opening words to tell her please to sit down, obliging her to begin again. She did as she was told, and then said, “This is an excessively feminine recasting of the line, Fathers, in my humble opinion. First, it was necessary to render the sense of Our Lord performing some act that would be an honor to a human being. And a woman, Fathers—” She cleared her throat, very quietly, and let her eyes fall modestly for a moment. “A woman would
not
wish to be anointed with oil. That would be a messy procedure, you see; afterward, she would have to wash her hair, and probably her clothing as well, since drops of oil would inevitably trickle slowly down. . . . If God were anointing you with oil, even a very small quantity of oil, you could hardly avoid that. It would not be respectful, or worshipful, to avoid it. That is the first point.”

Father Claude broke in, his voice almost petulant. “So they replaced it with having their hair braided? Sister, I don't see it. What is there about braiding hair that could be viewed as an
honor
? It's such an everyday, trivial . . . No, I don't see it at all.”

Sister Miriam looked down at the gleaming boards of the floor; they were real wood, very old, and they pleased her. And she spoke in such a way that it was as if she were only agreeing to something that Father Claude had been thinking of himself. “When the Son of God washed the feet of His disciples, one wonders if they were not perhaps honored. . . .” She let the words trail off, and added, “Of course, Fathers, the translators are women. One must remember that. And they are theologically without any training at all.”

Father Dorien picked up the dropped ball on the first bounce, secretly amused, but too well-bred to let it show. “I believe you had finished with your first point, Sister,” he said. “Please go on.”

“Yes, Father,” she said. “It is my privilege to obey. Well, then! There is the substitution of the act of braiding the hair, which does not carry with it the physical consequences—that is, oil in one's hair and on one's person—that anointing does. If I may speak
as
a woman, Fathers . . . I would consider it an inexpressible honor if divine hands were to braid my hair. It is an intimate service, and one that demands closeness.”

She saw something on their faces—the beginning of a hint of comprehension, perhaps? Agar had begun to fidget and would be breaking in on her with a speech if she didn't take the floor quickly.

“Secondly,” she continued, “and I believe most significant, is the fact that—if you will forgive me for pointing out what you have of course already realized—the braiding of hair is not something that men
do
in our world. Or know how to do.”

She let that hang in the air, just under the seventeen-second limit, and then observed politely that of course God knew everything, and how to do everything, but that the point undoubtedly remained clear to the Fathers . . . who must remember the theological ignorance of the women who had written the translation of the line.

There was that hissing noise again—Father Agar sucking his breath in through his teeth. And Father Claude, to everyone's astonishment, pounded on the table with his fist and very nearly shouted at her.

“For
these
women, then,” he demanded angrily, “the act would have to be performed by a . . . a female god? That's what you're saying,
isn't
it? You're saying that the reference is
perforce
to a goddess, aren't you, Sister Miriam?”

“Well, Father,” answered Miriam, still looking steadily downward, “they could of course defend themselves against any such charge by pointing out that (a) it is a sin to anthropomorphize God, so that to say that He is male or female is idolatry; and that (b) God has been here since before the Beginning and has seen many a period of human history come and go during which men braided their hair; and that (c) even to suggest that there is some human act of which God is ignorant is heresy.”

The summary had come so swiftly, and had been so unlike her usual submissive murmurs, that all three men stared at her, startled.

“Of course,” Miriam added, “none of that is, to my mind, what they
were
thinking. I believe that the image intended is, unfortunately, the image of a—” She stopped short, and put the fingertips of both hands over her lips, moving her head from side to side, helpless in her distress.

“The image intended is the image of a
goddess
,” announced Father Agar gallantly, seeing that she was unable to bring herself to use the word. “A
goddess!
Sister, you are quite right; the theological subtleties that would constitute a defense would be far beyond their capacities. They would have had to be spelled out by a man, as they were for you. And, dear child—”

Father Dorien cut in, right across Agar's bow, leaving the other man sputtering with outrage, but silent. “Let us remember,” he snapped, “that we are not dealing with ordinary women here. These are women who have spent all their lives taking part in
interplanetary negotiations
, and who are able to provide simultaneous interpreting between Alien languages and the tongues of Earth. It would be foolish to assume that they are incapable of subtleties.”