The Habitation of the Blessed

by Catherynne M. Valente

  I was confused. Why should there be any shame within a family? You are Nimat now, and one of mine. It is not my fault your Yeshua had such small ears and could not teach you proper manners or sit in your lap.

  No, he said roughly, that is not what I mean. A husband and wife might embrace thus, but not an unmarried woman and an old man.

  I did not understand him. He did not understand me. So I did as I liked.

  Didymus liked best to tell his stories, of his brother, and their friends, and Yerushalayim in the autumn-time, when they ate goat together around a long table, and talked together about the nature of the world, and the nature of the soul.

  What is a soul? I said.

  A soul is what makes a man a man, he told me, and not a beast. It is the immortal substance of a man, that will live forever.

  I will live forever, I said, and leaned my cheek against his.

  Didymus did not really believe me. In his world, people live a short time and then die, like the first pioneers who settled the capital of Nural. In his world, when you bury a person in the earth, they stay there, and turn into bones, and do not grow at all.

  Lamis, Who Visited Her Grandmother’s Tree Every Saturday and Talked to Her About Government and Cream-Making: No! No, Butterfly, say it couldn’t be. That’s too terrible, to die and stay dead!

  Ikram, Who Trembled: Don’t cry, Lamis. We don’t live in that awful world.

  Another time, I asked him: Do I have a soul?

  Didymus Tau’ma said: I don’t know, Imtithal. I wish my brother were here. He could tell you. But I am only a man, and I do not know what you have, where my soul is.

  And I could feel all his body beneath me rigid and tense, and I wanted him to be at ease, so I warbled a little, my favorite song, and fluttered my eyelids against his cheek, and he began to weep within my ears, because strangers are mystifying and sometimes incomprehensible.

  Didymus lived with us for many years, until he was terribly old. We tried to tell him about the Fountain, but he insisted that he was happy to be so near to seeing his brother once more, and did not wish to lengthen their time apart. His hair turned white; his skin withered up like a walnut. He learned to make ox-tea. He built a little chapel where he could worship his god and prepare himself to meet his brother. He asked us to join him, but we did not wish to, taking comfort as we do in the universe as it is: subject only to our own love and seeking after wisdom, and governed by no jealous divinity.

  And then, one day, he lay down and did not get up. He called me into his hut and I lay on him, lightly, since he could not move, and covering his face with my ears for the last time. By then, he loved the closing of them around him, the secret space they make. This is what we said to each other:

  “Listen to me, Imtithal.”

  “I listen.”

  “I have been happy here. It has been a good life. I have known joy.”

  “This comforts me. I do not want you to die.”

  “Yet, I must. But before we part, I wish to tell you, and know that you will tell everyone: there are paths from my world to yours. Men will take them. Perhaps not soon, but one day they will.”

  “I will be so jubilant, to meet others like you.”

  “They will not be like me, Imtithal. Not all men from my world are kind, nor ever stood in the light of my brother’s love. They will come with swords and they will come with many loyalties that you will not understand, nor will they try to make you understand.”

  “Like Alisaunder, you mean?”

  And a look crossed his face as he considered the name. It seemed to sit on his tongue like a brand.

  “Do you mean Alexander?”

  Our languages clashed often thus—squabbling cousins.

  “Alisaunder the Red, who closed the Gates, and trapped the tribes beyond the mountains, and made our land safe. It was a long time ago. Long before me, or even my parents. Before even the sciopods founded their great forest away to the east. Did he come from Yerushalayim, too?”

  Didymus Tau’ma shook his head, troubled. I touched his face, grown old, but no less dear.

  “They will come,” he sighed, “and they will not be called Alexander, nor called Thomas Didymus, and they will not make you safe. You must be wary, and not leap into their arms like you leapt into mine.”

  “I am not a child anymore. I do not leap so often.”

  And he laughed a little beneath me.

  “I know now,” he rasped, “that this is part of God’s great scheme, this place. I think perhaps there was never an apple here, nor a snake.”

  “We have many snakes and apples. And I never liked that story. I don’t think it’s true at all. Nothing in it is right.”

  “Not right for you, not here. But the men in my world, they can be so wicked, Imti, so wicked. You will live so much longer than me. They will hurt you, because that story is true for them, and they cannot help the terrible instincts in them, to eat everything, and know everything, and destroy whatever is not like them. If a man should come walking over the sand, treat him carefully. Be wary, like a wolf.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  And after we had lain together thus for many hours, I said: “Let me bury you here, Tau’ma. You do not have to go a Heaven for men who are wicked. Let me bury you, so that we need not be apart.”

  And though he had always refused, in dying he yielded to me. The temptation, when a man from that world stands at the black door, is too great.

  “All right, Imtithal. Bury me deep.”

  Houd, Who Was Also Wicked: And did anyone else come? Did they bring swords?

  It has been many centuries since. Perhaps there is no other world, and my friend was only a bit mad. Perhaps he wasn’t, but it is just too difficult to get here from there. But it is wonderful to think about, isn’t it? Another world, right next to ours, filled with such fantastical things?

  THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED

  Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, meta-collinarum, cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white and red lions, white bears, white merules, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen, and wild men—men with horns, one-eyed men, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell high giants, cyclops, and similar women. It is the home, too, of the phoenix and of nearly all living animals.

  We have some people subject to us who feed on the flesh of men and of prematurely born animals, and who never fear death. When any of these people die, their friends and relations eat him ravenously, for they regard it as a main duty to chew human flesh. Their names are Gog, Magog, Anie, Agit, Azenach, Fommeperi, Befari, Conei-Samante, Agrimandri, Vintefolei, Casbei, and Alanei. These and similar nations were shut in behind lofty mountains by Alexander the Great, towards the north. We lead them at our pleasure against our foes, and neither man nor beast is left undevoured, if our Majesty gives the requisite permission. And when all our foes are eaten, then we return with our hosts home again.

  —The Letter of Prester John, 1165

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  The nail in my candle plinked onto the tin plate, and I stirred myself from that terrible tale. I could not believe, not quite believe, that Imtithal’s friend had been Saint Thomas lost in India, the answer to a riddle older than Prester John. How many secrets did you hide in one small country, Lord? I did not want to think of him beneath that alien storyteller—bold and shameless it was to touch an animal thus, and it dredged silt from my soul to read of it. It did not seem chaste, even if it did not seem lustful, either. I was disquieted, in my still, dark cell, its earthen walls close and warm.

  I rubbed at my eyes. The book before me, Imtithal’s book, all scarlet and thick, had gone deep brown at the edges. The smell of it had sweetened as I read, and the creases showed dark, softened. I knew then that I had little more than that night to read and to copy—the books would rot, would die as a body dies, and their words would vanish as the soul. No wonde
r I could only take three—in one night even I could manage no more, and probably not even this.

  I called for Brother Alaric, my closest friend in our troupe. He is old enough to jealously guard his stories of youthful vigor, which is to say he is near enough to forty, and his mind is swift, severe and sharp. He came silently, and his presence comforted. He brought with him a mug of some thick, fortifying tea and something like a yoghurty beer, a rough plate laid with a slice of fowl the woman in yellow had cooked in her lord’s hearth, and a clay bowl of flat red leaves.

  “She says they are stimulating, and will help you to stay awake. She bade me ignite them, thus,” Alaric said, and he took up my candle, holding the flame to the leaves until wax spattered them and finally, they lit, releasing a savory smoke into the room which did indeed rouse me somewhat. I drank the draught and chewed the dark meat gratefully, while Alaric looked over my copying, exclaiming over this and that thing.

  “Of course we cannot credit that the Priest-king had a wife!” he marveled. “Nor this nonsense about Thomas Judas and some kind of elephant.”

  I inhaled the smoke deeply, and took up the role of the worldly advocate, thinking to draw out Alaric’s thoughts and to help order my own. “You think so? Many holy soldiers did worse in the Holy Land than taking a lawful wife or making friends with a child.”

  Alaric touched the browning pages. “It must be a fiction,” he said firmly. “You know how writers love to sully the reputations of the saints. It is a fiction written by Abbas the king, or worse, that woman with her awful eyes.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, savoring the last of the beer. “I no longer know what to think. For all we are here seeking a man no one has met, and whose deeds are preserved only in an ancient letter.”

  “But Brother Hiob, many have met him! Many doctors of learning and soldiers of fortune have returned from the east with tales of Prester John, and stones from his throne, branches from his orchards.”

  “I have not finished my inquiry, Brother Alaric, I could not possibly say.”

  And thus settled, we sat for a time, enjoying the scented smoke as I allowed my old eyes to rest.

  “As I read, I have been thinking on what has befallen us here, Brother. Do you know, the woman in yellow allowed me only three books from her marvelous tree?”

  “Certainly, Brother Hiob,” said Alaric dubiously. Do not blame him, Lord. He was not there; he did not see the beautiful tree, overflowing with books. I would not have believed me, either. But my thoughts whirled too quickly, one after the other, making connections and chasing after them. I hurried on, feeling alive as I had not for years.

  “Poor man. Incredulity is not a virtue in your line of work. But can you not see what I see? Seth, too, was granted but three grains from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life entwined in Paradise. He ate them and a bush grew from his mouth, all aflame, and from the wood of that sapling came the wood of the doors of Solomon, and even the Holy Cross that bore our Lord Christ.”

  Alaric frowned. “Tell me you do not intend to eat these books.”

  I shrugged, affecting unconcern, embarrassed by my effusion before the younger, stronger man. “No, no. I only find it interesting, to walk in the echoes of the Word of God. One might see it as a sign from Heaven that we have found a true narrative here, for where we repeat the stories of Scripture, surely we walk in virtue.”

  Alaric sunk his head into his rough cowl as shrinking from a chill that was nowhere to be found.

  “Do you believe then, that we are dead, and in Paradise, and that tree you saw and touched was none other than the Tree of Eden, and we poor souls have passed from earth, but not lifted up our glasses to look upon the light?”

  I looked up at the rooty mud roof of my chamber. I wanted a cheerful debate—Alaric gave me sepulchral poetry.

  “Like Thomas Didymus, I do not know,” I sighed. “In all my days I have known nothing stranger nor more unearthly than this place, yet it does not have the tang of Paradise, to me.”

  “Nor me,” breathed my Brother.

  “Leave me to my work,” I said. “Prester John must soon meet the people of his nation, I feel certain. My pulse quickens each time I reach for his book among the others! Go, and make friendly with our hosts. Perhaps if I press, they will allow me to harvest more fruit from that tree.” I felt my excitement growing again, running away with me—for did I not wish to study this mortal trinity of books, to do Your work, Lord, without concern for my own hungering after knowledge, after the Priest-king? But instead of these reasoned thoughts I heard myself barking roughly: “More and more, until I am sated—and God gifted me with a great appetite for books, Brother Alaric!”

  My friend adjourned, shaking his head, and I, my fever stoked all the higher, pushed a new nail into the soft tallow.

  And I prayed for an improvement in the virtue of Prester John in future pages, for as of yet, I loved him more as a man than a priest.

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  Chapter the Fourth, in Which John

  Suffers a Troubling Dream

  I do not remember being found. I only remember a dreaming like drowning, a heavy weight pressing upon me. No matter how I strained, I could not get free. But at least it was dark and cold in the dream, and I saw neither sun nor moon. I liked the dream better than living, better than wandering in a world of unbaptized sheep. I do not even remember being carried, or cleaned, or laid upon a bed of any kind—though I dreamed so long that all of this must have occurred while I slept. I only remember the dream: I sat in a long field under the cooling evening sky, and all the stars, all the many stars, hung like lanterns, their strands tied to the terrible belly of a golden-rose sphere hanging heavy in the sky. The sphere drooped low, huge, bigger than any sun or moon, as big as the whole sky, pure crystal, the color of candlelight, with veins of blood flicking through it. I felt that if I put up my arms I could hold some tiny portion of its grand belly. The stars hung from it on silken strings, each no bigger than a pearl. And yet, when I looked up at it, I felt deep shame, and wept, though I knew not why. It turned, slowly, in my dreaming sight.

  Below this sphere sat a throne of carved black wood, and the posts of that chair had collected a sifting of snow, though no snow now fell. None other than my friend Kostas sat upon the throne, his narrow face regarding me with sorrow. At his feet two hounds crouched, one made of gold and one of bone.

  “In the kingdom of memory,” Kostas said, “the amnesiac is king.” He watched me implacably, the good and measured soul who carried my parchment and ran for wine at dusk with my coin, who remained so perfectly untroubled by the question of whether or not painting the face of God was an act of devilry or divinity, whether Christ was Flesh or Word, or the awful mystery of Word-in-Flesh, who wanted in all the world little more than a few wet dates and a bit of lamb-fat for his bread.

  “Kostas,” I whispered, and fell before him with my face to the stony earth. “I want to go home. I should not have left. Look at how I am punished the moment I abandon my city.”

  “What home can there be for heretics like us?” said my friend, and I knew he spoke the truth—at least concerning myself, who had thrown his lot with Nestorius and the Logos.

  I looked up at him, throned in glory. “What heresy could you have committed? You are an innocent.”

  Kostas put his naked brown hand upon the head of the golden hound; the creature arched her head to meet his palm.

  “I was an idolater, and you my golden bull. I wished not to be like Christ but to be like you. I worshipped you, and tried to imitate your life, instead of that of a saint who might deliver my soul. I dreamed that one day, if I performed every act perfectly, you might praise me with some small word, and that word I would have folded into a cedar box and preserved forever. That word would have been enough.”

  Again, shame washed over me like a hot tide. I pressed my face once into the earth, which gave way in the dream, black and soft. Yet upon my pate a new pair of eyes opened, and I saw
with them perfectly, and was not spared any sight. I whispered: “I have never heard you speak this way.”

  “Well,” said the dream-image, and he removed his hand from the golden hound to caress her bone sister, who ground her teeth in pleasure. I could see her fangs through the bones of her narrow cheek. “I am not really Kostas. In the kingdom of sleep, the insomniac plays his tricks.”

  Kostas turned his dear, lovely head full to one side, and when he turned it back towards me, it had become the face of an old man, but one hale of health and rosy of nose, as though he either drank much or spent his days in snowy crevices where the wind bit at his extremities. He possessed a beard, and dark hair not yet yielded up to white. His eyes shone huge and deep, lights in the dark, stars wheeling within him. All this I saw through my dream-eyes, which blinked on my skull. The golden sphere bore down on us.

  “Raise your head, my son. Did you not come seeking me?”

  I looked through my natural vision, but knew him not.

  “I am Didymus Thomas, Thomas the Twin. I am an Apostle of Christ. Child, do you not know me?”

  Thomas the Saint smiled with a tenderness so keen and sad I thought I might die there and never wake, but wander in this half-lit place forever, until in waking life my bones shivered into dust and blew down the length of some unnamed valley and out of anyone’s memory save a few damned sheep. On his throne beneath the golden sphere, Saint Thomas opened his shirt, not to beckon, but to reveal: he bore a second pair of eyes upon his chest, and a mouth in his navel. Out of this second mouth he whispered: