Our Lady of Babylon

by John Rechy

  I gasped with renewed sorrow at the knowledge of that gentle creature’s passing. From that past night, I could see her, vividly, in her carriage, her lace mantilla shading her perfect features. I joined Madame in moments of silence that honored her courage and just defiance — and her love of the fertile gypsy.

  “And Irena probably killed the gentle nun —” Madame continued to muse.

  “— after getting from her the information she wanted?” I needed to believe that the devoted nun had not divulged her secret even when confronted by Irena’s powerful threats.

  “The lovely renegade nun divulged nothing Madame said with a jut of her jaw.

  I was delighted! “But how do you —?”

  She explained it: “If the loyal nun had revealed the Contessa’s secret, that would be included in this installment. The matter of the tulips remains deliberately cloudy. That means Irena still doesn’t know exactly what occurred.” Now she reached out briskly toward the contaminated pages, to read what would follow.

  “No more, not yet,” I beseeched. We would eventually have to deal with whatever further horrors the “Final Installment” contained, including the outrage promised in the last page of the “Third Installment.” Madame, I knew, had not yet read that part. I gauge carefully each day where she leaves off.

  She accepted my suggestion with a long silence that confused me into wondering whether she had read ahead to the terrifying “promise” at the end of the “Third Installment.” “Now, Lady, please continue with the truth about the War in Heaven.”

  My full strength restored — I’m sure I slept last night and strolled over earlier today — I resumed where I had left off, Cassandra’s bewilderment that she had not heard the sounds assuring that the gates of Heaven were shaping, about to lock — and her deciding then to act:

  She heard Lucifer shout to the angels who stood with them the words she had just uttered to him:

  “Storm Heaven now!”

  Lucifer and his band of angels had rushed up a hill, for full vantage of their destination: the edge of Heaven. On another hill, Michael had gathered his squads. The two beautiful angels faced each other, their glistening nudity illumined by Heaven’s startled sun.

  “Join us, Michael! You know we’re right!” Lucifer shouted.

  For moments Michael considered becoming one of the rebels, soaring with them, next to Cassandra. He paused to consider. Now, he would certainly replace Lucifer in God’s hierarchy. And afterwards — his mind raced — who knew? He might — guided by Cassandra, whom he would ask for as a victor’s prize — explore beyond the reaches of Heaven and into the territory Lucifer claimed existed and God denied. Then he, Michael, might inherit the whole universe!

  God’s presence swooped within a turbulent dark wind, whirling around Michael, whispering intimations of great tortures, of a new hell, and in the pit of that wind, which funneled inward, God allowed Michael to glimpse the bottom of the hell He was then conceiving, all its tortures — and Michael closed his eyes. “No!” he rejected Lucifer’s invitation — and charged across the plains with his armed legions.

  And there was War in Heaven!

  The fierce warrior Michael and his cohorts, with arms prepared at God’s instruction the night before, surged against the unprepared insurgents. With courage and equal ferocity, Lucifer and his legions fought back, unarmed, hordes of angels grappling on the plains.

  Heaven waited in suspense.

  This was the tactic Cassandra had hastily conveyed to Lucifer after her exhortation that war be declared: By their determination to win their freedom, they would gain more and more of the hostile angels to their side while fighting their way to the edge of Heaven, the gates not formed, still unlocked, that intention having been pushed away — this is all Cassandra could determine — by the immediate urgency forced upon God to cope with the sudden insurgents. From the edge of Heaven, the growing squadrons of dissident angels would take wing, beyond God’s reach, into the space they had discovered, limitless, ruled only by the stars.

  Now God unleashed all the horrors that had occupied His mind when Lucifer declared his defiance. And hail and fire mingled with blood. And the grass was scorched. And a great mountain was cast into the sea. And the sea became blood. And a burning star fell. And the sun was smitten. And the moon turned into blood. And stars fell burning and scorching. And —

  “Lady, that’s giving me a slight headache. Must we go through all those horrors in detail?” Madame Bernice interjected. “We know that’s God’s version recorded by John the Divine — it does have the undeniable ring of God’s harsh thunder, doesn’t it? Shall we just skip over it and get back to the truth?”

  Ermenegildo sighed in relief when I gladly accepted Madame’s suggestion.

  In Heaven, and from His throne, God watched in fascination as His angels continued to grapple on the plains. The War of course would be won. Last night, late, He had instructed Michael to wake Him seconds after He fell asleep. Tired as she was, Cassandra — her honed powers of perception still astonished Him! — would seize that opportunity, herself, to doze, briefly but deeply — as she had. In those moments — oh, His own cunning thrilled Him and He laughed aloud in triumph now — He had created the gates of Heaven, and locked them, knowing that Cassandra would be anticipating the sounds she had heard when He had conceived the intention. He had to admit to a bad moment when she had, herself, wakened so soon after the interlude of dozing, just after He had winced at the vaguest suggestion of a lingering echo.

  “He connived to entice a wearied Cassandra into a moment’s respite —” Madame Bernice shook her head at the immensity of God’s duplicity.

  The insurgents did not know that, and so they continued to struggle, inching toward the edge of Heaven — and the locked gates they did not anticipate, which God had blurred with clouds.

  On the plains of Heaven and from atop another hill, Cassandra watched the brutal War of angels. She knew God was allowing the angels to advance toward the edge of Heaven. Why?

  Michael saw Cassandra pondering.

  Breaking away from his troops, he approached her, slowly. Where she stood, the furious War — its raging fires — had not yet destroyed a patch of wild grass sprinkled with . . . white and yellow poppies! — like butterflies courting her, Michael thought, and stopped, to cherish the spectacle of her. He saw her bend, as if carefully selecting a particular poppy. Michael held his breath. As she stood up with the poppy she had chosen, Cassandra’s delicate cloak parted at her breasts. Michael sighed.

  Cassandra turned. “Michael —”

  She was smiling! Even now that vague, beautiful smile floated over her face. “Cassandra —” It was the first word he had ever dared speak to her, though not the first time he had sighed her name over and over to himself.

  “Are you here to arrest me?” she asked him.

  For a moment he did consider enchaining her, to destroy the disturbing feelings whirling within him. The wistful smile conquered even his confusions. He wanted to do something special for her, to help her, to stop the War that would defeat her! The thought astonished him, but not as much as his sudden words:

  “You must tell Lucifer the War cannot be won. God has locked Heaven’s gates.”

  Immediately Cassandra knew: Oh, yes, He trapped me into dozing. So fate had shaped, and the War was lost. God was now extending His punishment, allowing a charade of possibility. She looked down and saw her beloved brother, determined, his body shining with the sweat of battle. She said easily, “Then we must surrender.” She peered at the poppy in her hand, the one she had picked from among the others because she had determined, from having studied them so often, that this one might soon change color, and she would at last see its thrilling shift while she held it.

  “Yes. That will disappoint Him, because He’ll have to end the War, and He didn’t intend that, not yet.” Michael wished he were speaking other words to her, words that would announce his feelings, his — What word did God often use �
�� so facilely — to express what He required of them — a word he, Michael, had never fully understood? He understood it now. He was longing for words that would announce his . . . love . . . for her.

  “If we surrender now” — Cassandra immediately prepared for yet another ambush on fate, which was that very second rushing — “we’ll baffle Him, and we’ll have more time to anticipate — and intercept! — His new strategies of punishment.” Her eyes brightened with resurrected hope.

  Michael nodded. He could speak no more words before this extravagant figure.

  Cassandra looked at the poppy in her hand, smiled in delight at what she saw, touched it to her lips, and held it out to Michael.

  He took it. Was he imagining this? Had it changed color after her lips had touched it? No, he had not imagined it. The flower had changed color, deepening from yellow into pink, and now — was it possible? — into almost red, faintly red, the color of her lips. And — he did not want to think this, but he was aware of a flush of exquisite warmth — did it match the blush he felt on his cheeks? However God might retaliate for what he had done, he would not regret these precious moments. It would be worth it all, to be able to do this: He brought the poppy to his lips.

  Cassandra was already rushing down the hill to tell her brother that they must instantly announce their surrender. It would be difficult, but she would convince him with the new information and what she was already planning. With more time, they might be able to stop the widening sweep of His punishment.

  She addressed Lucifer: “It was too late to stop this part of destiny.” She motioned toward where the giant gates loomed, locked with chains, all blending artfully into the backdrop of sky, whose beauty — after all it was His sky — God had been careful not to compromise.

  Later, he would feel the pain of futility, be consumed by rage at the deceptions. Now Lucifer seized his sister’s words to dredge hope: “Too late to stop this part?”

  “Yes, there will be more.” That’s all she perceived at this moment.

  Lucifer appeared before God, Cassandra by his side.

  “You surrender?” God questioned in surprise from His throne. He had not counted on this, not yet. The War had not gone on long enough. He had prepared more, much more, a longer struggle before the dissident angels discovered it had all been for nothing. He let his rainbow-colored scarf drop to His feet, with that airy gesture reluctantly accepting their surrender.

  For days there was silence in Heaven, days during which the smoke of dying fires and the dust of turbulence began to settle on the plains.

  With her brother, on the unburnt hill she had located — there was a chill in Heaven, and she wore a veily cape that whirled about her — Cassandra breathed deeply until, beyond the stench of smoke, she detected an exact breeze, a breeze that connected her to —

  God, pondering, staring down from His throne. He cupped His excited groin. “My will be done! Let there be light, and darkness, much darkness . . . and a garden, and a new creature, a man —”

  “The real war has started,” Cassandra told her brother as she followed God’s gaze downward from the heights of Heaven.

  “Beyond Heaven?”

  “Into a Garden named Eden.” Cassandra understood: During the War, while all their efforts had been aimed at the futility He had encouraged — their reaching the edge of Heaven, which He had locked — He had set other courses into motion, perfecting His plans; that is what she had sensed during the War, in a whorl of unformed colors. Readied, and with His declaration just pronounced, His plan had fallen into place.

  Cassandra almost reeled! Her perceptions were invaded by new images, flashing, occurring almost simultaneously: The creature — a man! — whom she had discerned earlier alone gazing sadly at an empty bed of orchids now stood gazing with love at another creature — a woman! — and — How strange. God was suddenly enraged. Cassandra felt the heat of His anger, waves radiating across the calmed fields of Heaven. . . Now the man and the woman had . . . fused? . . . in the most extravagantly wonderful way near a flower so glorious it did not need the decoration of leaves. But there had appeared a contorted tree coated with lush berries, which the man was tasting from the woman’s lips — and in the horizon, not yet seen by them, a storm was gathering fiercely —

  “Tell me what you have discerned!” Lucifer demanded.

  “The first steps in God’s crudest punishments.” The distortion of the wishes He had invited in His cynical “Special Entertainment” — she withheld that from her brother, because that had not yet begun. She gazed toward where God sat on His throne, her stare intersecting His. And now she perceived . . . What? A shadow . . . a cross atop a barren mount? The naked bloodied body of a man on it! Impossible! — he was not nailed to that brutal cross!

  “It’s a vast design He’s plotting,” Cassandra allowed excitement at the prospect of altering this course. “It ranges over time.”

  “And you have learned more of His tactics, knowledge we may use now.” Lucifer understood.

  “The two beautiful creatures in the Garden are in danger,” Cassandra said.

  “Oh, Lady, I, of course, remember that from your earlier account, and every single detail of the events that follow from that point, but Ermenegildo might need some reorientation —”

  Disbelieving her audacity, Ermenegildo cocked his head at her, and — I believe — frowned.

  “— although he, too, has a most retentive memory,” she attempted, to placate him. He continued to eye her curiously even after I had begun:

  After our lovemaking, the eating of the luscious berries, the exile from Eden, the Garden destroyed, the glorious blossom that grew only there plucked away, the snow that fell, the bleeding between my legs and my Adam soothing it — after all that, when Lucifer and Cassandra had led us away from God’s fury and east of Eden, farther east, to the end of the world, the edge of a precipice lapped by the waves of a churning ocean —

  Cassandra stared ahead and reared back.

  “What did you see, sister?”

  “The lineage of Adam and Eve.”

  Not understanding what I thought I understood — remember, he had not heard God’s curse on me — Adam was elated, confounded that neither Cassandra nor Lucifer, nor I — although I tried to disguise my fear — shared his joy.

  “Can that course be stopped?” Lucifer had inferred the horror his sister had perceived.

  Cassandra gazed down into the precipice. “It’s still only intention.”

  Adam advanced, to peer down. I kissed his eyes shut.

  “Then they have to know what He intends,” Lucifer urged his sister.

  Taking my hand in one of hers, Adam’s in the other, she led us to the very edge of the craggy cliff. Her vision, her perception, coursed from her hands into ours, flowing into our minds, our eyes, and we saw and heard and felt —

  Torrents of pain and endless moans of grief, hunger, a million variations on cruelty, still more pain and hope crushed, and violence, horror, and more horror, mounting horror, and —

  Cassandra let go of our hands, and the atrocities disappeared.

  “It’s what God intends for you and all who follow,” Lucifer said, watching it all reflected in his sister’s eyes.

  Cassandra said softly: “It begins with you and extends to all your children, including a crucified man tortured beyond endurance, a man God intends to call His son, but he will be your son. They shall all be your children, cursed.”

  “That is His intention for the lineage of Adam and Eve?” Adam pronounced in disbelief. Then his hand rose in a fist. “We’ll defy God!” he said.

  In Cassandra’s startled look, I saw that he had assumed the same stance that Lucifer had when he had challenged God. Was she marveling at how alike they were, the first man and the first angel? But Lucifer had not succeeded.

  Cassandra continued to smile, although the edge of her lips quivered as she spoke: “There’s only one way.”

  Adam clasped my hand. “How, Cass
andra?”

  “By ending it before it begins.” She touched my eyes and then her own with my tears, sharing them. “There’s hope, if we can find it in this: He has already planned a special punishment, just for you. He’ll call it ‘death.’”

  We understood the new word immediately, my Adam and I, understood, as if Cassandra’s touch had imbued us with her own powers of perception, that the only way to stop this curse on our children was to invite, before He unleashed it, what He had already devised for us.

  “Death won’t end our love,” Adam asserted.

  “Never that,” I said.

  “Never,” Cassandra agreed.

  “Only I shall go,” I said to Adam, “and you, alive, shall retain our love.” I inched toward the precipice.

  He pulled me back: “No! From the beginning, we’ve shared everything. Your pain is mine, your sorrow is mine, your life is mine.”

  No further words were needed to decide.

  We looked down. Gnarled rocks protruded from the agitated sea. Holding each other, my beloved and I walked to the very edge of the cliff. By leaping into annihilating darkness, we would seal our love and separate our offspring from God’s terrible intent.

  Cassandra shook her head and laughed softly. “All this suffering as punishment . . . for eating the tasty berries!”

  “Lady! I believe we should avoid sarcasm at this point,” Madame Bernice said testily.

  “If there was sarcasm, I did not put it there. Cassandra did,” I reminded Madame, “and I believe her tone was more ironic than sarcastic. There’s quite a difference.”

  “Please proceed.”

  Cassandra’s eyes grazed the horizon. Then we all saw it, a mountain suddenly lavished with daffodils and marigolds and mariposa lilies, white sage, azaleas, heather, fields of green grass, trees laden with blossoms and fruit, gilias — and a proliferation of poppies — and cascades of tumbling bougainvillea under a sky so blue, wafted by fragrances so sweet —