Live From Golgotha

by Gore Vidal

  ''''Our religion ..."

  "James, our religion predicts a messiah who will establish the Kingdom of God. Our religion says nothing about his being arrested and crucified, dead and buried and resurrected. But that is what happened to your brother. This means that whatever He was. He wasn't just the messiah."

  James rallied feebly. "We say that he rose again from the dead only because—"

  "Because the divine plan of which He is a part, the earthly active part, required Him to suffer for us all. To die and to come back to life. He is the perfect exception. That is vi^hy He is Christ, and whtn He returns ..."

  James shook his head. "The Jew^s will never accept the idea that the messiah came to us and then was killed and then came back to life and went away. We Jesists try, of course, to rationalize ..."

  "Not enough." Saint was wired. "If the One God is only for the Jews then He cannot be the One God. He's just a tribal god as the other tribes have their deities. . . ."

  "Pagans. Unclean ..."

  "Is it not better that, through Christ, there is one God for all?" Saint waved to a group of Ephesians who had just taken the places at a table opposite. "What did Jesus say to you when He came to you after the Crucifixion and the burial.^"

  James smiled and said, or I think he said—there was so much noise in the restaurant as the Pharisee waiters shouted orders to the cooks—"He said trust Dr. Cuder."

  Before I could make certain that that was what he said, one of the Ephesians, a coppersmith, came over to our table and said, "I almost didn't recognize you. Reverend, with that haircut."

  Saint smiled the smile which means "God be with you, and now get lost." But the coppersmith was persistent in his boredom. "I'm surprised you're here at the Temple. I thought you told us that the cross had crossed out the Torah. ..."

  "You said what}''' James obviously understood more Greek than he let on.

  "A slight misunderstanding," Saint began. But a number of non-Christian Jews had heard what the coppersmith

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  said. A cup was thrown at Saint, who caught it. Then he picked up another cup and began to juggle. Usually this distracted even the angriest crowd, but there were a number of zealous Zionist Jews in the restaurant and before you could say Holy Moses, there was a riot which was finally broken up by the Roman centurions who, at the insistence of a zealous Zionist Jew, arrested Saint and charged him with blasphemy in the Temple. The fact that we were at the Pharisee Inn, which is closer to Fort Antonia than it is to the Temple, cut no ice. Saint was taken away in chains. James had vanished in the middle of the brawl.

  The next morning I was allowed to see Saint in his cell.

  "You have not abandoned me, O Timothy." He was very much in what I always thought of as his O mood.

  "No, O Paul, I have not, but it was the dumbest thing you could have done, coming down here and putting yourself into the hands of those Zionist freaks, like James."

  "It was my mission, angel. My destiny. Anyway, we shall soon be out of here. I've sent for the governor."

  "T(9« have sent for /;^'w?"

  "Yea," Saint yea-ed complacendy, "as a citizen of Rome I have the right to be tried in Rome, so we're going to get a fi*ee trip to the capital where we already have a team of first-rate lawyers. ..."

  To my amazement, we were joined by a small man with a cleft palate; it was Felix himself. "I just happened to be in Jerusalem for the flower show and when they told me you had been arrested, I came straight over. Any friend of Glau-con is a friend of mine. He told me all about you when he heard I was coming out here. I really love his plays. You know, he has a comedy opening in Rome next month at Petronius's theater."

  Saint was as starded as I was. "Priscilla's boyfriend, Glaucon.>"

  Felix nodded. ''He's the hottest playwright in Rome— this season, particularly. The Centurion's Wife has been running for two years now. Probably the funniest satyr play I've ever seen. Sexy, too. There is this scene when the centurion comes home—I should say it's the night of the festival of Lupercal, you know, all those phalluses and tin horns— anyway his wife isn't expecting him so she ..."

  Felix then gave us the plots of several of Glaucon's plays and in no time at all even Saint was laughing. Felix was a natural comic, and the cleft palate that made him differendy advantaged was wonderful for telling jokes.

  "Priscilla will be furious!" Saint wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes.

  "She'll die of jealousy," I said. If there was one thing that Priscilla could not bear it was for a lover—or even an acquaintance—^to succeed in the arts. "But she did end up with Glaucon's wife."

  "Really.^" Felix sat on the only stool in the cell, with its one window overlooking the Fort Antonia parade ground where a Roman legion was going through its paces. "Glau-con never mentions a wife. Are they divorced.^"

  "No, sir." I was very much at ease with the governor: No one who likes satyr plays can be all bad. "She just left him for a friend of ours in Ephesus, a very good Christian called Priscilla, who does modem dance recitals. I think that basically they are both Sapphic in their sexual preferences, though you never can tell with ladies, can you.^"

  "No, you can't, sonny. But there's a lot of that going on in Rome, let me tell you. Adultery is a thing of the past at Court, though Glaucon's doing his best to bring it back. Sappho rules the roost these days. Now then, Paul of Tarsus." Felix got down to business. "The locals have charged you with blasphemy, which is no business of mine, and with

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  causing a riot against Rome, which is my business. So what happened, bubulla?"

  Saint told him as straightforwardly as Saint knew how. Felix was very understanding. "Well, it doesn't sound like such a big deal from where I'm coming from." Then he glanced at what must have been the list of charges against Saint. "It says you were with Mossad."

  "That was years ago. Then I saw the light."

  "We're going to have to teach them a lesson one of these days. I don't suppose there has ever been an empire anywhere that left its conquered people as much alone as we Romans do. Pay your taxes and go on about your business. So whenever I start hearing all this separationist crap ..."

  "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"—Saint looked very pious—"and unto God that which is God's."

  "You can say that again," said Felix, not getting the joke. Saint's formula, which pleased the Roman administration, was never understood by the Romans. To the dedicated Zionist, Palestine was not Caesar's country but God's. So what sounded like a nice acknowledgment of the separation of Church and State was really a secret Zionist war cry. I don't think Saint actually thought it up, but he is always given credit for it in Bardett's.

  "All right, Paul. We'll run you through a quick trial out at Caesarea-on-Sea, away from these maniacs, and you'll get a couple of years, which I'll remit after a month or two, and then you'll be on your way, selling that religion of yours. By the way, how is the food at the Pharisee Inn?"

  Saint said that the aubergine soaked in goat's milk was a winner, if you liked the Pharisee style. Then he said, "I am a citizen of Rome."

  "So am I," said Felix. "Generally, dairy does not agree with me either, but if they go easy on the frying ..."

  "I want to stand trial in Rome, as is my right as a citizen not to mention a loyal subject of Caesar's." Of course, all that Saint really wanted was a free trip to Rome. In the end, his cheapness did him in.

  Felix whistied through his cleft palate. "You want to go all the way there when I can fix this ticket for you right here?"

  "It is my destiny, O Felix!"

  "Oh boy!" Felix shook his head. "You know there's a firnny bit in Glaucon's play about this tax collector—I forget the tide—but he goes to this village idiot who owes a two-obol fine because he was late in paying taxes and the idiot starts to pay but his lawyer talks him out of it. 'Appeal,' says the lawyer. He does. He loses. 'Pay the two obols,' he begs his lawyer but the lawyer won't give up. He'll go to a
higher court. He does. The client is ruined, of course."

  "His Excellency is right." I stuck my oar in. "Pay the two obols. Here."

  Saint shook his head. "I must go to Rome, to Caesar himself."

  Felix shrugged. "It's your funeral, buddy. For the history books, I shall say, 'This man could have been set at liberty had he not appealed to Caesar.' Not a bad line but pretty pale stuff compared to some of the nifties my predecessor, Pontius Pilate, got oflf."

  the Hacker's alterations at the source become set for all time, and the good news is very bad news indeed. Rome . . .

  I was in the mop room of the basilica, looking for a good place to hide this manuscript once I finish it. The room is full of cobwebs, very damp, rather creepy, actually.

  I was investigating a cupboard with a wooden door and wondering how the book would keep dry for the next two thousand years, when a small woman in black appeared from behind one of the urns that contains the ashes of—I believe—^ten virgins from Smyrna, a valuable relic for which Atalanta, in a fit of mad extravagance, paid far too much to Relics & Company, the wholesalers. At first I thought it was Mary Baker Eddy, channeling in for another session on how it's all in the mind.

  "Mrs. Eddy.>" I do have glaucoma, according to Dr. Cutier Two, and there is nothing to do about it back here. He said that as soon as the technology exists he'll put me on fast forward to Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat, but at the moment neither of us has the time even if the Cuder Effect was that far advanced.

  "I am Selma Suydam," said the woman.

  "Not the Jewish Princess from Bel Air as foretold by the second Dr. Cutier.>"

  "Except for the fact that I'm not Jewish and and I live at the beach, that's me to a T."

  I peered closely at her and saw that she was not only young but far handsomer than Mrs. Eddy. Selma also belongs to a later period; she was wearing an Oscar de la Renta pret-d-porter, which Atalanta thought quite attractive when

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  we watched it on CNN during Oscar's gala presentation in Paris where Yves Saint Laurent behaved so well.

  "Welcome to the mop room of my cathedral, my child." I gave her my blessing. As I did, I suddenly felt the old urge and I wanted to give her something else, too, but as she was a hologram there would not have been enough friction to do either of us any good.

  An unpleasant thought: Will my whang one day be a major relic? After all, had it not been for my circumcision— the most famous in the world—Saint would never have been able to keep the Jewish and Gentile Christians together as long as he did. I start to tingle when I think of something so truly awesome happening to my organ of generation.

  "I believe, Saint Timothy, that you were in contact with Dr. Helen Schucman during her lifetime."

  "Not as far as I know. Come." I led the pretty creature into the nave of the basilica, empty at this hour, and we sat on a stone bench beneath the stylish proto-Byzantine pulpit where I do my act each Sunday. I had the pulpit copied from a book of Byzantine artworks that will take this part of the world by storm in two or three hundred years. I hope my pulpit won't bewilder the archaeologists too much. It is very stylish, set high on four twisted columns that rest on four lions while mosaics on the sides depict Dr. Helen Schucman just as she looked when she was writing A Course in Miracles, one ear cocked for a voice that was dictating to her as she wrote in longhand what would turn out to be 1,188 pages, as told to her by Jesus Himself

  "Surely you must have had some contact with Dr. Schucman. I mean, really! Here she is, on your pulpit."

  1 blinked; stared. Where once had been Jonah swallowing the whale, there was indeed a strange-looking woman with a cocked ear, writing as she listened to a voice from above or, worse, within. "Is that Dr. Schucman.^"

  Sclma nodded and crossed her long legs. Since so much of desire is visual, why not risk the absence of friction with such a glorious creature? She seemed to read my mind. "No, Timothy. We are both into miracles, as was Dr. Schucman, who managed to reconcile all religions in her great book first published in 1975, and remaindered the following year. It has never ceased to be remaindered in the almost twenty years that have passed since her original revelations."

  "Well, I shall be happy to meet her, of course."

  "She has much to teach you."

  "About Jesus?" It is curious how the people bom after you always think that they know more about everything than you do.

  "About interdisciplinary techniques, involving Jesus and Confucius and L. Ron Hubbard, and how to love one another just like you love yourself. I really and truly love everyone since I became the head of the Chicago Center for Re-living. Now you will soon be getting a visit from this absolute bitch, Marianne Williamson, who has put together her own very popular religion based, as is mine, on Dr. Helen Schucman's three-tome revelations, as dictated to her by Jesus Himself. ..."

  My head was spinning. "I believe that I've heard of a Marianne something or other, a nightclub singer, according to CNN's Hollywood Minute. . . ."

  "Now watch your step with her, because she'll try to get you to work some of her rap into that gospel you're writing. . . ."

  "If Jesus dictated to her—or to Dr. Schucman—the contents of the testament that she teaches, then what I write will be exacdy what good Dr. Schucman took down, as dictated to her in an idle moment by the Holy Spirit."

  Sehna gave me pitying look. "You don't understand what lengths Satan will go to to get control of our religion."

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  "Oh, I think I do." And I do, more and more. My life—^which is only one tape in the infinite scheme of tapes— is now a battleground between God and the Devil, or the Prince of this World as we call him. This titanic struggle will soon be resolved, one way or the other, by what I write, which will prepare the way for the return of Christ in the year 2001 A.D. That is my mission, as Saint described it in the dream.

  Selma let her blouse slip to reveal two perfect breasts.

  "This is the house of God," I gasped. Then, unable to control myself, I reached out to pluck, as it were, one pink aureoled alabaster pear only to find that she was, as I feared, a hologram.

  Selma's voice was low and intimate. "For a truly loving God no hologram of a titty is ever alien. If only I were here, in the flesh! You with your golden curls and blue eyes ..." She was definitely turning me on in my own cathedral.

  "But I don't look that way now. So how ..."

  "I've been channeling for years. I've seen you in Rome several times, at Petronius's house. You know, I was the one who taught him how to play contract bridge." She rearranged her blouse. "We never had any reason—^you and I—to speak until now, when I've come to warn you that you will be sorely tempted by Ms Marianne Williamson, who will go into her usual rap about Christ being the unconditionally loving essence of every person. ..."

  "Nothing wrong with that, Selma." My heart was still beating a bit too fast. I was turned on, no doubt of that. I shall have to Hail an awful lot of Marys before Sunday.

  "But she won't stop there. She wants to be the mes-siah."

  "You're joking."

  "You don't know how pushy she is. You also don't

  know what pressure the feminists are putting on everyone to make sure that God is a woman whose only daughter was sacrificed for the sins of men mostly, though there have been some cunts along the way, we have to admit, but nothing like the men with that predatory chromosome of theirs which will lead to a nuclear devastation in the year two thousand one unless Sehna, me, and not Marianne, is declared the messiah, who will come in judgment, as predicted in the Gospel According to Saint Timothy, soon to be discovered in the mop room of the ruined church in Thessalonika. /am the Christ." The hologram, thank God, began to fade.

  "This is outrageous." I was in shock. "Why, you are not even Jewish. And you live at the beach."

  "My first husband was Jewish, and I'm currendy dating a sabra prince named Howard Rosen. ..." Selma was gone, and despite those superb breasts, I don't want
to see her ever again: But then, perhaps, I will have to, as I return in memory to Rome. ...

  What is now happening is that, as I remember the events in my life, they are being altered not only by writing them down, always a danger to the truth, since words only approximate at best things known and remembered, but by the kibitzers who are now crowding into this tape, eager to take over.

  Thus far, I've seen Saint only once, officially, you might say, in a dream. But the Saint that I am now writing about is not quite the Saint that I think I recall. For instance, did he or did he not make a reference to Dr. Cuder while we were in Jerusalem in 53 a.d.? I think he did, and so I've written it down as I recall—or think I recall. But when I enter the past through memory I must now be extremely alert to the possibility that my recollections are being altered in ways that I cannot determine. For instance, reviewing this manuscript,

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  I see that it was not Saint but James who may or may not have mentioned Dr. Cutler in that noisy Pharisee restaurant. What is truth indeed!

  As I came out of the cathedral, I found Chet taking photographs of the basilica. Although he was perfectly visible to the Macedons in the neighborhood, no one paid the slightest attention to him. I suppose they thought he was a Scythian tourist. Even so, the camera should have made them curious, but, by and large, Macedons aren't interested in anything except themselves.

  "Why the pictures.>"

  "I think we're going to rebuild the church after we dig up your gospel. You know, make a shrine out of it, to Saint Timothy. How's it coming, Tim boy?"

  "I'm up to Rome. . . ."

  "That ought to be hot. Nero. Sex. But try to remember all those letters you helped Paul write, and of course the ones he wrote you. You do have them.>"

  I nodded. I have a file of Saint's writings but it is far from complete. "Do you know Selma Suydam.^"

  "Oh God!" Chet sat down on the wheel of a chariot that had turned over in a traffic accident two weeks ago and that no one had come to take away. As city taxes increase, services decrease. "Selma Suydam has got to be the biggest bore in the business."