Messiah

by Gore Vidal

  2

  I've not been able to write for several days. According to the doctor, it is a touch of heat but I suspect that this is only his kind euphemism.

  I had broken off in my narrative to take a walk in the garden last Friday afternoon when I was joined by Butler whose attentions lately have been more numerous than I should like.

  "He'll be here Sunday, Hudson. Why don't we all three have dinner together that night and celebrate."

  I said nothing could give me more pleasure, as I inched along the garden path, moving toward the hot shaded center where, beneath fruit trees, a fine statue of Osiris stood, looted in earlier days by the hotel management from one of the temples. I thought, however, with more longing of the bench beside the statue than of the figure itself whose every serene detail I'd long since memorized. Butler adjusted his loose long stride to my own uneven pace. I walked as I always do now with my eyes upon the ground, nervously avoiding anything which might make me stumble for I have fallen down a number of times in the last few years and I have a terror of broken bones, the particular scourge of old bodies.

  I was as glad as not that I didn't have to watch my companion while we chatted, for his red honest face, forever dripping sweat, annoyed me more than was reasonable.

  "And he'll be pleased to know I've got us a Center. Not much of one but good enough for a start."

  I paused before a formidable rock which lay directly in my path. It would take some doing to step over it, I thought, as I remarked, "I'm sure the Pasha doesn't know about this."

  "Not really." Butler laughed happily. "He thinks we're just taking a house for ourselves to study the local culture. Later, after we get going, he can find out."

  "I should be very careful," I said and, very careful myself, I stepped over the rock: my legs detested the extra exertion; one nearly buckled as it touched the ground. I threw my weight on my cane and was saved a fall. Butler had not noticed.

  "Jessup is going to bring in the literature. We'll say it's our library. All printed in Arabic, too. The Dallas Center thinks of everything."

  "Are they . . . equipped for such things?"

  "Oh yes. That's where the main university is now. Biggest one in the world. I didn't go there myself. Marks weren't good enough, but Jessup did. He'll tell you all about it. Quite a crew they turn out: best in the business but then they get the cream of the crop to begin with."

  "Tell me, are the Residents still in charge of the Centers or do they share the administration with the therapists?"

  "Therapists?" Butler seemed bewildered.

  "In the old days there used to be the Resident and his staff and then a clinic attached where . . ."

  "You really are behind the times." Butler looked at me as though I'd betrayed a first-hand knowledge of earth's creation. "All Residents and their staffs, including the Communicators like myself, get the same training; part of it is in mental therapy. Others who show particular aptitude for it are assigned clinical work just as I do communication work in foreign countries. People who get to be Residents are usually teachers and administrators. Sometimes a Communicator gets a Residency in his old age as a reward for the highest services." He then explained to me the official, somewhat Byzantine structure of the Cavites. There were many new titles, indicating a swollen organization under the direction of a Counsel of Residents which, in turn, was responsible for the election from among their number of a unique Chief Resident whose reign lasted for the remainder of his lifetime.

  With relief, I sat down on the bench beside Osiris. Butler joined me. "Dallas of course is the main Residency," he said.

  "It used to be in New York, years ago," I said, thinking of the brownstone house, of the loft on Twenty-third Street.

  "Around twenty years ago it was moved to Dallas by the Chief Resident. Not only did they have the best-equipped Center there but the Texans make just about the best Cavites in the country. What they won't do for Cavesword isn't worth mentioning. They burned the old churches, you know . . . every one in the state."

  "And one or two Baptist Ministers as well?"

  "You can't break eggs without making an omelet," said Butler sententiously.

  "I see what you mean. Still, Cave was against persecution. He always felt it was enough for people to hear Cavesword . . ."

  "You got a lot of reading to do," said Butler sharply. "Looks like you've forgotten your text: 'And, if they persist in superstition, strike them, for one idolater is like a spoiled apple in the barrel, contaminating the others.'" Butler's voice, as he quoted, was round and booming, rich in vowel-sounds while his protruding eyes gazed without blinking into the invisible radiance of truth which hovered, apparently, above a diseased hibiscus bush.

  "I've forgotten that particular quotation," I said.

  "Seems funny you should since it's just about the most famous of the texts." But, though my ignorance continued to startle Butler, I could see that he was beginning to attribute it to senility rather than to laxity or potential idolatry.

  "I was a close follower in the first few years," I said, currying favor. "But I've been out of touch since and I suppose that, after Cave's death, there was a whole mass of new doctrine with which I am unfamiliar, to my regret."

  "Doctrine!" Butler was shocked. "We have no doctrine. We are not one of those heathen churches with claims to 'divine' guidance. We're simply listeners to Cavesword. That's all. He was the first to tell the plain truth and, naturally, we honor him but there is no doctrine even though he guides us the way a good father does his children."

  "I am very old," I said in my best dying-fall voice. "You must remember that when you are with me you are in the company of a man who was brought up in the old ways, who uses Christian terms from time to time. I was thirty when Cave began his mission. I am, as a matter of fact, nearly the same age as Cave himself if he were still alive."

  This had its calculated effect. Butler looked at me with some awe. "Golly!" he said. "It doesn't really seem possible, does it? Of course there're still a few people around who were alive in those days but I don't know of anybody who actually saw Cave. You did tell me you saw him?"

  "Once only."

  "Was he like the telecasts?"

  "Oh yes. Even more effective, I think."

  "He was big of course, six feet one inch tall."

  "No, he was only about five feet eight inches, a little shorter than I . . ."

  "You must be mistaken because, according to all the texts, he was six feet one."

  "I saw him at a distance of course. I was only guessing." I was amused that they should have seen fit to change even Cave's stature.

  "You can tell he was a tall man from the telecasts."

  "Do they still show them?"

  "Still show them! They're the main part of our weekly Get-togethers. Each Residency has a complete library of Cave's telecasts, one hundred eight including the last. Each week, a different one is shown by the Resident's staff and the Resident himself, or someone assigned by him, discusses the message."

  "And they still hold up after fifty years?"

  "Hold up? We learn more from them each year. You should see all the books and lectures on Cavesword . . . several hundred important ones which we have to read as part of our communication duties, though they're not for the laymen. We discourage nonprofessionals from going into such problems, much too complicated for the untrained mind."

  "I should think so. Tell me, is there any more trouble with the idolaters?"

  Butler shook his head. "Just about none. They were licked when the parochial schools were shut down. That took care of Catholicism. Of course there were some bad times. I guess you know all about them."

  I nodded. Even in Egypt I had heard of massacres and persecutions. I could still recall the morning when I opened the Cairo paper and saw a large photograph of St Peter's Cathedral smoldering in its ruins, a fitting tomb for the last Pope and martyr who had perished there when a mob of Cavites had fired the Vatican. The Cairo paper took an obvious d
elight in these barbarities and I had not the heart to read of the wanton destruction of Michelangelo's and Bernini's works, the looting of the art galleries, the bonfire which was made in the Papal gardens of the entire Vatican library. Later, word came of a certain assistant-Resident of Topeka who, with a group of demolition experts and Cavite enthusiasts, ranged across France and Italy destroying the cathedrals with the approval of the local governments, and to the cheers of Cavite crowds who gathered in great numbers to watch, delightedly, the crumbling of these last monuments to superstition. Fortunately, the tourist bureaus were able to save a few of the lesser churches.

  "The edict of Washington which outlawed idolatrous schools did the trick. The Atlantic government has always believed in toleration: even to this day it is possible for a man to be a Christian, though unlikely since the truth is so well known."

  "But he has no churches left and no clergy."

  "True, and if that discourages him he's not likely to remain too long in error. As I've told you, though, we have our ways of making people see the truth."

  "The calculable percentage."

  "Exactly."

  I looked at Osiris in the green shade. His diorite face smiled secretly back at me. "Did you have much trouble in the Latin countries?"

  "Less than you might think. The ignorant were the big problem because, since they didn't know English, we weren't able to use the telecasts. Fortunately, we had some able Residents and after a little showmanship, a few miracles (or what they took to be miracles) they came around, especially when many of their ex-priests told them about Cavesword. Nearly all of the older Residents in the Mediterranean countries were once Catholic priests."

  "Renegades?"

  "They saw the truth; not without some indoctrination, I suspect. We've had to adapt a good many of our procedural methods to fit local customs. The old Christmas has become Cavesday and what was Easter is now Irisday."

  "Iris Mortimer?"

  "Of course; who else? And then certain festivals which . . ."

  "I suppose she's dead now."

  "Why, yes. She died six years ago. She was the last of the original five."

  "Ah, yes, the five: Paul Himmell, Iris Mortimer, Ivan Stokharin, Clarissa Lessing and . . ."

  "And Edward Hastings. We still use his introduction even though it's been largely obsoleted by later texts. His dialogues will of course be the basis for that final book of Cave which our best scholars have been at work on for over twenty years."

  Hastings, of all people! I nearly laughed aloud. Poor feckless Hastings was now the author of my dialogues with Cave: I marveled at the ease with which the innumerable references to myself had been deleted. I began to doubt of my own existence. I asked if Hastings were still alive and was told that he too was long dead.

  I then asked again about Iris.

  "Some very exciting things have come to light," said Butler. "Certain historians at the Dallas Center feel that there is some proof that she was Cave's sister."

  I was startled by this. "How could that be? Wasn't she from Detroit? and wasn't he from Seattle? and didn't they meet for the first time in southern California at the beginning of his mission?"

  "I see you know more Cavite history than you pretend," said Butler amiably. "That of course has been the traditional point of view. Yet as her influence increased in the world (in Italy, you know, one sees her picture nearly as often as Cave's) our historians became suspicious. It was all perfectly simple, really: if she could exert nearly the same power as Cave himself then she must, in some way, be related to him. I suppose you know about the Miami business. No? Well, their Resident, some years ago, openly promulgated the theory that Cave and Iris Mortimer were man and wife. A great many people believed him and though the Chief Resident at Dallas issued a statement denying the truth of all this, Miami continued in error and it took our indoctrination team several years to get the situation back to normal. But the whole business did get everyone to thinking and, with the concurrence of Dallas himself, investigations have been made. I don't know many of the details but my colleague probably will. He keeps track of that kind of thing."

  "If she is proven to be Cave's sister will she have equal rank with him?"

  "Certainly not. Cavesword is everything; but she will be equal to him on the human level though his inferior in truth: at least that appears to be the Dallas interpretation."

  "She was very active, I suppose?"

  "Right until the end. She traveled all over the world with Cavesword and, when she grew too old to travel, she took over the Residency of New York City which she held until she died. As a matter of fact, I have a picture of her which I always carry. It was taken in the last years." He pulled out a steel-mesh wallet in which, protected by cellophane, was a photograph of Iris: the first I had seen in many many years. My hand shook as I held the picture up to the light.

  For a split second I felt her presence, saw in the saddened face, framed by white hair, my summer love which had never been except in my own dreaming where I was whole and loved this creature whose luminous eyes had not altered with age, their expression the same as that night beside the western sea . . . but then my fingers froze; the wallet fell to the ground; I fainted into what I supposed with my last vestiges of consciousness to be death, to be nothing.

  3

  I awakened in my own bed with my old friend Doctor Hussein beside me. He looked much concerned while, at the foot of the bed, stood Butler, very solemn and still. I resolved not to die with him in the room.

  "My apologies, Mr Butler," I said, surprised that I could speak at all. "I'm afraid I dropped your picture." I had no difficulty in remembering what had happened. It was as if I had suddenly shut my eyes and opened them again, several hours having passed instead of as many seconds. Time, I decided, was all nonsense.

  "Think nothing of it; I'm only . . ."

  "You must not strain yourself, Mr Hudson," said the doctor: a touch of sun, a few days in bed, plenty of liquids, a pill or two, and I was left alone with a buzzer beside my bed which would summon the houseboy if I should have a coherent moment before taking a last turn for the worse. The next time, I think, will be the final one and though I detest the thought, these little rehearsals over the last few years, the brief strokes, the sudden flooding of parts of the brain with the blood of capillaries in preparation for that last arterial deluge, have got me used to the idea. My only complaint is that odd things are done to my memory by these strokes which, light as they have been, tend to alter parts of the brain, those parts which hold the secrets of the past. I have found this week, while convalescing from Tuesday's collapse, that most of my childhood has been washed clean out of my memory. I knew of course that I was born on the banks of the Hudson but I cannot for the life of me recall what schools I attended; yet my memories from my college days on seem unimpaired though I have had to reread this memoir attentively to resume my train of thought, to refresh a dying memory. It is strange indeed to have lost some twenty years as though they'd never been and, worse still, to be unable to find out about oneself in any case, since the will of others has effectively abolished one. I do not exist to the world and very soon (how soon I wonder?), I shall not exist even to myself, only this record a fragile proof that I once lived.

  Now I am able to work again. Butler pays me a daily visit, as does the doctor. Both are very kind but both tend to treat me as a thing which no longer matters. I have been written-off in their minds: I'm no longer really human since soon, perhaps in a few days, I shall not be one of them but one of the dead whose dust motes the air they breathe. Well, let it come. The fraternity of the dead, though nothing, is the larger kingdom.

  I'm able to sit up in bed (actually I can get around as well or as badly as before but it tires me too much to walk so I remain abed). Sunday is here at last and from the excited bustle in the air which I feel rather than hear, Butler's colleague must have arrived. I am not ready for him yet and I have hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, composed empha
tically in four languages. It should keep them out for a few days.

  I have a premonition of disaster which, though it is no doubt perfectly natural at my age with the last catastrophe almost upon me, seems to be of a penultimate nature, a final human crisis. All that I have heard from Butler about this young man, this colleague of his, disposes me to fear him. For although my existence has been kept a secret from the newer generations, the others, the older ones, the chief counselors are well aware of me and though I have so far evaded their agents and though they undoubtedly assume that I am long since dead it is still possible that a shrewd young man with a career in the making might grow suspicious and one word to the older members of the hierarchy would be enough to start an inquisition which could end in assassination (ironic that I should fear that at this point!) or, more terrible, in a course of indoctrination where my apostasy would be reduced by drugs to conformity. It would be the most splendid triumph for Cave if, in my last days, I should recant: the best victory of all, the surrender of the original lutherist upon his deathbed.

  Yet I have a trick or two up my sleeve and the game's not yet over. Should the new arrival prove to be the one I have so long awaited, I shall know how to act: I have planned for this day. My adversary will find me armed.

  But now old days draw me back; the crisis approaches in my narrative.

  4

  The first summer was my last on the Hudson, at peace. Iris wrote me regularly from the Florida keys: short, brisk letters completely impersonal and devoted largely to what "he" was doing and saying. It seems that "he" was enchanted by the strangeness of the keys, yet was anxious to begin traveling again. With some difficulty, I gathered between the lines, Iris had restrained him from starting out on a world tour: "He says he wants to see Saigon and Samarkand and so forth soon because he likes the names. I don't see how he can get away yet, though maybe in the fall after his tour. They say now he can make his talks on film all at once which will mean of course he won't have to go through anything like last winter again." There followed more news, an inquiry into my health (in those days I was confident I should die early of a liver ailment: my liver of course now seems the one firm organ in my body; in any case, I enjoyed my hypochondria) and a reference to the various things I was writing for the instruction of converts and detractors both. I pushed the letter away and looked out across the river.