Forgiving Ararat

by Gita Nazareth

  Nana went back to the counter to get some coffee. “Maybe you were brought here to change all that. Maybe God needs you to fix it.”

  “God created it, and God is the judge. He’s the one who stops the trials before a defense can be made. Let Him fix it.”

  “That’s not God’s way. We all have free choice. You have a choice about the kind of presenter you want to be, just as you had a choice about the kind of person you wanted to be.”

  “I don’t want to be a presenter at all.”

  Nana sat down next to me. “That choice was already made, child. You chose to come here. The question is not whether you will be a presenter, but what kind of presenter you will be. That is something you must decide for yourself. You’ll feel differently when you meet your first client. The postulants need you, Brek. You mustn’t abandon them.”

  “But, you’re abandoning me.”

  “That’s not true. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to you.”

  My emotions quaked even though somewhere below I knew I was rooted in solid ground because I had been planted there by her, this remarkable woman who had nursed me when I passed through my mother’s womb, and who nursed me again when I passed through the womb of life. “Where will you go?” I asked. “Will I be able to see you?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t describe it to you in a way you’d understand,” she said. “What I can tell you, though, is that, like all places, I’m going to a place I choose and that I help to create. I don’t know where it is, or what it will be like, but I do know that it is a thought to which I go—a thought I’ve been thinking that, like all thoughts cultivated and cared-for, becomes manifest in a tiny corner of the universe so that it may be experienced. Creation transcends everything, child; a million-billion acts of choice become a million-billion acts of creation.”

  “But I already lost you once, Nana,” I said, “ I can’t bear losing you again.”

  “Shhhh, child, Shhhh,” she whispered. And then she gave me what I needed most—one last brief, wonderful moment of childhood. She held me close and pressed my face against the wrinkled skin of her cheek; she allowed me to hear the strong pumping of her heart and smell the sweet fragrance of her skin. In her embrace I felt safe again. And then she said, “Haven’t you learned, child? Don’t you see? Visit my garden when you have doubts. Learn from the plants that live and die there and yet live again. And remember, oh child, always remember that I was here to greet you when you thought I had gone so long, long ago. You did not lose Bo and Sarah, Brek. And you will never lose me. Love can never be destroyed.”

  28

  * * *

  I wanted nothing to do with the sordid proceedings of the Urartu Chamber. I would have rather spent eternity alone than participate in them, and when Nana left Shemaya, so did I.

  Although Tim Shelly had turned on me, he had done me a great favor by showing me that I had the power to go anywhere. I decided to do just that, embarking upon my own Grand Tour, seeing and doing things no person had ever done, or could ever do, in a single lifetime. I started off at a leisurely pace, recreating and sunbathing on the most exclusive beaches of Barbados, the French Riviera, the Greek Islands, Tahiti, Dubai, and Rio de Janeiro. I lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous, sleeping in the most exclusive villas and resorts, sailing aboard the most luxurious yachts, flying on private helicopters and jets, arriving in the most expensive limousines, dining at the finest restaurants, drinking the most expensive champagnes, shopping at the most exquisite jewelers and boutiques, and winning—and losing—millions of dollars at the most exclusive casinos. It was a dream life, a heaven, but eventually even the richest person in the world—which I was, hands down—grows weary of pampering and decadence. After what felt like a year of glorious, but ultimately dispiriting, self-indulgence—I was, after all, alone on the beaches, in the villas, on the planes, and in the casinos with nobody to share my good fortune or to envy me from afar—I was ready for some adventure and set out on a journey that would have made even the most intrepid explorer weep. Within a span of months, I scuba dived the coral reefs of the Galapagos, climbed the highest mountains of every continent on earth, including Mount Everest, trekked across the Sahara, sailed solo around the world, paddled a canoe the entire length of both the Amazon and the Nile, walked the Great Wall of China, visited the North and South Poles, went on safari across the game lands of Africa, made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Varanasi, and Mecca, explored the deepest crevices of the ocean by submarine, piloted several fighter jets, drove race cars, and concluded my journey with a trip to the moon and Mars, as captain of the Space Shuttle, which I landed expertly on the surface and re-launched even though such a feat in the living world would have been impossible. After returning to earth exhausted but exhilarated, I craved another period of rest and relaxation and decided to make the great palaces of Europe and Asia my home for several months, followed by some long, meditative stays in the great monasteries and ashrams of India, Tibet, and Christendom.

  Having explored and indulged in all the world I had known had to offer, I found myself bored yet again and decided to take a new journey, this time traversing both space and time. In an instant, I found myself wandering the great civilizations, from the kingdoms and dynasties of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, and India, to the rise of the Semitic peoples, the Greek and Roman empires, the Inca civilizations of South America, the Aborigine villages of Australia, the fiefdoms of Europe, the colonization of North America, and the expansion and contraction of the British empire. This journey was a historian’s dream, but a tourist’s nightmare—can an uninhabited empire even be considered a civilization, aren’t people required for that? I discovered along the way that the nature of the universe itself is loneliness, that God is lonely. It isn’t like God has a family and friends to hang around with, or that there are resorts for God and God’s friends where they can dine together, share a bottle of wine, and talk about their day and their problems. In realizing this, I found a strange comfort in my own loneliness.

  And then one day I realized that although the nature of the universe might be loneliness, even God can’t tolerate it for long. There is no greater sorrow in all the universe than having all of this and no one to share it with. As I traveled alone from one wonder of the world to another, from ocean to mountain to cosmos, I came to understand why God would have been willing to risk everything—even rejection, suffering, and war—for the joy of hearing just one breathless human being say, “Oh, my God...look at that!”

  Yes, I had been able to avoid Tim Shelly, Mi Lau, Luas, Elymas, and what I considered the tragedy and injustice of the Urartu Chamber, but I needed to share my experience of the afterlife as much as I had needed to share my experience of life itself. Like God, perhaps, I grew increasingly desperate for something to create, a purpose for being, an objective to accomplish—a soul with which to share; and I understood now why the serpent had told Eve that it is the risk of failure and harm, the risk of evil itself, that makes life rich, and the experience of contentment and joy even possible. In short, I slowly began to realize that I had returned, in a way, to the Garden of Eden and found it as wanting as Eve had found it; I was ready, again, to be cast out of paradise, and to accept that risk—even the risk of being assaulted by Tim Shelly and being reminded of what I had lost: my husband, my daughter, my life, my world. I was even willing to accept the risk of souls being unjustly convicted and sentenced for all of eternity.

  And so, as Gautama had said, I returned to the place of my journey’s beginning, seeing it again for the first time. I returned to Shemaya Station, ready now for my first client but secretly hoping, as I had hoped every day since I arrived in Shemaya, that this would be the day I would be told it had all been a very strange and terrifying dream, and it was time to wake up.

  29

  * * *

  Luas didn’t answer when I knocked on his office door. Legna appeared in the hallway instead and informed me that the High Jurisconsult was occupied and would see me after
I had met with my first client; I was to go to my office and wait.

  I did as I was told, and soon Legna arrived with a postulant, closing the door behind on the way out and leaving us alone together in the darkness. I had decided not to light the candles. I wanted to postpone the exploration of my client’s past as long as possible and communicate first under present conditions, one fellow soul to another, lost from a common home, left to a common fate. I would not lightly rob my clients of their memories, or demand that they wait in the other room while I negotiated eternity with their Creator; they would be given the opportunity to participate in their own defense, to explain on their own terms what had happened during their lives and why.

  So there we sat in the darkness, my first ecclesiastical client and I, together on the precipice of eternity. I reached out, across the unfathomable chasm separating us from each other, fearful not for myself or what I might find, but for the soul on the other side and what lay ahead. Then I hesitated: every lawyer has doubts, and what was at stake in the Urartu Chamber was far greater than what was at stake in any courtroom on earth. I wanted to leap back through the darkness into the familiar, dull light of my own misery. How could I bear another’s burdens when I could not even bear my own? How dare I attempt to reconcile another’s accounts when my own debts remained unpaid? Turn back, warned instinct, turn back.

  I stumbled beneath the weight of these doubts, and I did begin to turn; but from my client came a sound: a small, barely audible plea for mercy that could not be left unanswered, no matter what demons haunted me. Not only did this plea from the darkness stir my compassion, but it made plain for me, as if there all along, that this was the call I had prepared all my life to answer, and the reason I had been chosen to defend souls at the Final Judgment. The mystery of my own life, and afterlife, had been revealed unexpectedly in the suffering of another soul. I would devote myself to rescuing my clients from the desolate pit of despair and injustice. I would redeem them before the throne of God.

  With the joy of this revelation, I no longer wanted to keep the soul across from me enshrouded in the darkness. I yearned to see his or her gentle, vulnerable face in the light of truth, and to learn everything I could about the life he or she had led, both the good and the bad. I would bless, not judge, and do everything in my power to guarantee my client every benefit and annihilate every doubt. I would speak out in the Urartu Chamber with the partisan voice of an advocate and risk even my own punishment, if necessary, to win justice. I would never allow to happen to this soul what had happened to Toby Bowles, Amina Rabun, and my Uncle Anthony.

  These were the promises I made when I struck the match and lit the candles—promises I had made years ago, as a young girl, when a conveyor chain disfigured my body and reconfigured my life. I knew now that I had been brought to Shemaya to fulfill those sacred vows and, perhaps, to secure my own redemption. I could see now how defenders of justice are created in childhood, during tender moments of awareness when they first understand that the insects in their hands, the crayfish in their buckets, and the puppies on their laps depend upon their benevolence for their very survival; that they wield the awesome power of life and death over other living creatures, and choose not merely to allow life to continue, but to protect and nurture it no matter the cost—because they too have trembled before their own vulnerability and prayed for someone to deliver them from the careless and cruel hands of fate.

  The candles flicker and burn brighter, and from the shadows emerge this beautiful, helpless creature upon whom I will lavish my devotion, my love, my eternity. But the light reveals a very different kind of face; it is the wicked face of a tormentor, not the innocent face of a victim. And there are the hands that have ground life from the innocent limbs of insects, crayfish, and puppies.

  No...no, not him. Please...please, dear God, not him!

  But it is too late.

  The man who murdered my daughter and me has died and gone to Shemaya.

  And now his soul roams inside me.

  PART FOUR

  30

  * * *

  Otto Rabun Bowles met his grandfather only twice—first during a football game when he was eight years old, and then, four years later, at the old man’s funeral. Ott’s father made sure it would be no more than this, and that Ott knew this was for his own good. Thus, of the life of Tobias W. Bowles played back through his oldest son Tad’s bitter words and actions, his grandson Ott caught only a glimpse, and that taken from the same fraction of life Haissem had presented in the Urartu Chamber before Legna said a decision had been made.

  In fairness to Tad, he honestly believed there was nothing else to know about his father, because he could remember nothing else. But in fairness to Toby, his son never tried to cultivate another belief, and never stepped back from his jealously guarded version of the past long enough to see whether a different point of view could be sustained. Tad even resented his aunt Sheila because she received from his father the tenderness and affection he believed rightfully belonged to him.

  Regardless of justification or blame, the fact was that all the wounds, resentments, and indignations visited upon the son were showered down upon the grandson in a cold, steady rain; a soft rain often, just enough to germinate apprehension in the little boy, but at times a violent storm too, sometimes unintentional, and other times vindictive. What else does an angry adult child have? He can withdraw his love from his father, but that is never enough to feed the hungry flames of revenge; so he withdraws the love of his own children too, multiplying the loss by denying his aging father any connection to the future for the sake of righting wrongs visited during an increasingly distant past. Such had been the case between Toby and his own father, Gerard Bowles, who abandoned the family when Sheila was born; had this man reappeared at any point in Toby’s life, Toby would have done exactly what Tad had done to him; and, indeed, Toby did make certain Tad knew nothing of his grandfather so that even his memory could not survive another generation. Thus, if one were to play back the life of Otto Rabun Bowles—and that is what presenters in the Urartu Chamber do—one would find four generations of Bowles—Gerard, Toby, Tad, and Ott—starring in the same morality play, reversing roles with age and taking turns personifying the vices of fathers and their sons.

  But what of the grandmother, Claire Bowles, in all of this? Surely Tad allowed her sunshine to beam down upon young Ott through such menacing clouds? Unfortunately, no. This might have been the case if Claire had left Toby after his infidelity, but Toby promised to end his relationship with Bonnie Campbell and begged for Claire’s forgiveness. After much soul-searching, she granted it to him and accepted him back. For Tad, who had risked everything to win his mother’s love and vindicate her honor by pursuing his father into a mistress’ bedroom, this betrayal was incomprehensible, and stung as deeply as the many years of his father’s relentless abuse. Having unknowingly starred in a Greek tragedy of a different sort, Tad became estranged from both parents, breaking the heart of the mother for whom he had sacrificed his relationship to his father. There were attempts by the mother, all unsuccessful, to reconcile father, son, and, later, grandson. The last of these experiments involved arranging for Toby’s surprise appearance at Ott’s junior football game. This is when Ott Bowles met his grandfather for the first time, and the last.

  Of course, little Ott understood none of this at the age of eight. He knew only that he had been hit viciously during the football game by children nearly twice his size. During halftime, he pleaded with his father not to be sent back into the game. His father, like his father before him, responded by belittling him on the sideline for acting like a baby and ordered him back onto the field. Yet a strange thing happens to men as they age: Toby Bowles, the grandfather and former perpetrator of such callousness, climbed down from the bleachers to make his surprise appearance by intervening on his grandson Ott’s behalf, asking Tad to give the boy a break. Ott was all bruises and wonderment at this fallen angel about whom he had heard onl
y terrible things, but who bore such a strong resemblance to his own father. Although he had never laid eyes on the man before, he suddenly seemed like his only friend in the world, and Ott loved him on contact. But Tad, the victimized son and current perpetrator, was enraged. Harsh words were exchanged between the two men—words that should have been spoken fifteen years earlier when there was context in which to understand them and love left to heal them, but that landed now like hammers on the firing pins of revolvers. When Tad could bear no more and restrain himself no longer, he shoved his father—hard enough to cause Toby to lose his balance and fall to the ground in front of the other parents, spectators, and children. Ott’s wounded eyes swelled with hatred into hostile slits—eyes that Toby, sprawled on the ground, recognized instantly as his own son’s eyes in the back seat of the car at church after the fight with Claire about Paul and Marion Hudson. Stunned and embarrassed, he used the bleachers to support himself, got up, and walked away, never to be seen by Ott, or Tad, again. Four years later, Tad’s mother called and, in a voice both accusatory and guilty—a co-conspirator willing to testify to receive a lighter sentence—reported that Toby had died of a heart attack. By then, the opportunity for Ott to forge a bond with his paternal grandmother had come and gone.

  Ott did, however, come to know his maternal grandmother well. Nonna Amina, he called her, even though she was actually his second cousin, only eight years older than his mother, and his real grandmother, Ilse Rabun, lie in a Kamenz churchyard beside the grandfather after whom Ott had been named. The close relationship between Amina and Ott was made possible by a miraculous remission in the cancerous relationship between Amina and Ott’s mother, Barratte Rabun, brought about in the same manner most forms of the disease are conquered: by nearly killing the body to save it.