by James Morrow
“I must ask you a question,” said Ralph to Akawo. “If you opened the door and stepped into the clouds, would your gods protect you?”
“Probably not. Our gods are—what is English word?—capricious.”
“Then what good are they?” asked Ralph.
“In truth, no good at all,” said Akawo. “Ah, but you see, they know themselves to be useless, which makes them so very grateful for our songs and sacrifices.”
“I think the God of Abraham might profitably take instruction from Akawo’s pantheon,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Hear me, O King of the Universe. Stop making covenants you don’t intend to keep. Promise nothing, and expect nothing in return.”
“A perfectly sensible arrangement,” said Solange.
“Nihil pro quo,” said Ralph.
Chloe kept her thoughts to herself. Fond though she was of her friends, she wished she might occasionally render them mute—much as Papa, having placed a talkative kettle, loquacious candle, or voluble clock at the center of a puppet play, could on a whim banish it to the country of the dumb, where the creature would remain in splendid silence until he once again gifted it with a tongue.
* * *
Hand on the helm, face pressed against the observation port, Malcolm surveyed the valley, the lambent shafts of noonday sun piercing the Rio Jequetepeque like the javelins wielded by the indigenous fishermen. On all sides the dwarf hills and shallow gorges testified to a gratifying fact: the Lamarck had traversed the Andes. If the company’s luck held, they would reach Akawo’s village ere the day was out.
Even as he contemplated the equatorial vistas, Malcolm pondered the equally mottled terrain of his soul, not only the marks left by the murder of the mercenaries but also the stain caused by his newfound and gnawing desire to win the Great God Contest. Now that he’d defrocked himself, he dreaded his eventual return to Wroxton: no parsonage, no larder, no income—problems that the Byssheans’ gold promised to dissolve like sugar in hot tea. True, netting the Shelley Prize would entail difficulties he could barely begin to imagine, but for a cut of the £10,000 Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop would doubtless be happy to help him collect illustrative specimens and somehow get them to England.
Malcolm winced strenuously. He gritted his teeth, thinking, Get thee behind me, Mammon. If he were an honorable man, he would not try to acquire that tainted purse, lest he thenceforth prefer supping with swine to living with himself.
No sooner had he won this duel with his cupidity than a more immediate threat arose. Directly ahead, a squadron of four condors rode the lofty currents, bound for the Lamarck. Even at this distance, Malcolm believed he could infer the flock’s collective opinion of the balloon. From a condor’s perspective the thing was a rival creature in the struggle for existence.
“Mon Capitaine, I think we’re under attack!” cried Malcolm.
Elbowing his way to the helm, Léourier shouted, “Hard right rudder!”
Malcolm spun the wheel, thus inadvertently steering the Lamarck into a second, larger condor flock. Caws and squawks filled the gondola, followed by a ghastly ripping noise, as if some heavenly tailor, having made a botch of God’s trousers, were tearing them apart at the seams. The observation port displayed the whole catastrophe, the hideous bald birds sinking their talons into the marauder, shredding the silk bladder, and releasing its heated vapors into the cool coastal air.
“Christ!” wailed Miss Kirsop.
“Damn!” yelled Dartworthy.
Léourier seized the burner control and shut off the flame—a sensible tactic, Malcolm decided: if they were destined to meet the ground, the collision would be terrible enough without the Lamarck becoming a pillar of fire. For a brief instant the wounded balloon buoyed the gondola, but then gravity prevailed, and the flying-machine plummeted towards the valley floor. The passengers loosed a choral scream, discharging blasts of hot breath into the carriage, though not in quantities sufficient to arrest the ship’s fall.
Malcolm was surprised to discover that contrary to conventional wisdom his life did not flash before him, no mother weeding her vegetable patch, no father selling nostrums in the family apothecary, no boyhood spaniel chasing rabbits into the bracken. He was aware only of the sickening descent and the thump-thump-thump of the gondola scudding along the crests of the trees. An instant later the Lamarck made calamitous contact with the nation of Peru, the shock-wave tearing open the larboard hatch and hurtling Malcolm backwards through the portal, so that before blacking out he judged himself a loser in the great evolutionary lottery, bested by some fitter cleric.
* * *
Shortly after The Reverend Granville Heathway finished painting The Eye of God, his austere rendering of Father Teilhard’s Omega Point, he realized he’d not exhausted the subject. The dot in question was the very wink of infinity, worthy of multiple interpretations. Taking up his brush, he dipped it in white pigment and once again jabbed a blank canvas with a quick darting motion, thus bringing The Second Eye of God into being.
Other such devotions followed. The Third Eye of God begat The Fourth Eye of God, which led to The Fifth Eye of God, which occasioned The Sixth Eye of God, and there would have been a seventh had Granville not run short of canvas. For a full hour he brooded on the deficit, but then Catullus swooped into the cell, landing atop the dovecote. Granville banished the canvas crisis from his mind. What mattered at the moment was the fate of the man his son had called “this cosmically inclined curé.”
Dearest Father,
Yesterday morning Mustafa Reshid Pasha invited me to his private suite in the Topkapi Palace, where we shared strong coffee and an even stronger camaraderie. I told him that I had thus far met two alleged time travelers in Yusuf Effendi’s establishment: Abbot Mendel and Père Teilhard. The Grand Vizier admitted that, as a devotee of reason and mathematics, he was inclined to explain these encounters in reference to the hashish.
“Being a practical man, untutored in metaphysics, I would say that those two worthies were probably—you will forgive my little joke—hookahlucinations. On the other hand, they might have been angels sent by Allah to impart a few minor cosmic secrets to a deserving infidel. Pay close attention to your water-pipe companions, Bertram Effendi. You may learn something of value.”
Now Reshid Pasha bent closer and in a whispered confidence told me of his exasperation with the Sultan. Two weeks earlier, Abdülmecid had signed a treaty with Louis Bonaparte whereby the Vatican would become the protector of all Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, whether Catholic, Protestant, or—an inclusion certain of antagonizing the Tsar—Eastern Orthodox. Naturally I asked Reshid Pasha if these developments portended difficulties for the Ararat expedition. Assuming that the Diluvian League recovered the Relic of Relics, could we still count on the Turkish government to reprovision the Paragon and grant both Deardon’s brig and Noah’s ark safe passage through the Bosporus?
“Were Russia to attack us tomorrow, destroy our army, and force the Sultan to sue for peace, then the answer is no,” the Grand Vizier replied with frigid candor. “Such a disaster would render moot our scheme to have your Reverend Dalrymple petition the Archbishop of Canterbury on our nation’s behalf. But I am guardedly optimistic. Last week Prince Menshikov arrived in Constantinople to persuade the Sultan to renounce this preposterous treaty. I believe he will succeed, thereby delaying the war by a year at least.”
I decided to celebrate Reshid Pasha’s prediction by patronizing the hookah-den. No sooner had I filled the hashish bowl than Père Teilhard approached, explaining that he’d traveled by coach all the way from the Rome of 1950. We embraced. He slumped onto a divan, then retrieved from his valise a fat and battered manuscript called Le Phénomène Humain.
When last we sat down to share a pipe, Teilhard had seemed to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders, the Holy See having forbidden him to publish any speculations concerning Adam’s fall or Peking Man’s rise. Today he looked even sadder, as if sustaining the infinite mass of the Omega Point itsel
f.
Seeking to cheer him up, I indicated the manuscript and exclaimed, “Hoorah—you finished your book!”
“Vraiment, despite malaria, heart troubles, and Rome’s insistence on exiling me to China again,” said the priest, inhaling Cannabis. “In these pages I have articulated my theory of orthogenesis. Evolution is purposeful, Bertram. Higher consciousness is the human destiny.”
As my friend continued to summarize his book, he grew sublimely animated, his fingers fluttering as if to make a marionette dance. The Gospel according to Teilhard, I soon learned, begins in the domain of prelife, the lithosphere, our planet’s inert shell. Over the aeons, the lithosphere becomes surmounted by the miracle of self-replicating molecules, the biosphere, with primitive “viruses” ascending towards bacterial “prokaryotes” that in time evolve into nucleated “eukaryotes,” a process that culminates in mammals, including our own simian ancestors. Eventually the biosphere is itself encapsulated by a uniquely human realm, the noosphere, the mantle of thought that enshrouds the world. But the process does not end there. Beyond the noosphere lies the Cosmic Christ, that divine crucible in which all minds will one day meld to form the supreme consciousness towards which le Tout was heading from the moment God declared, “Let there be light!”
“What are the prospects of your thesis seeing print?” I asked.
“Like a sinner standing before Hell’s portal, I have abandoned hope,” said Père Teilhard, grimacing. “Last year I met with the superior general. He told me if I published Le Phénomène Humaine in any form whatsoever, it would automatically appear on the Index of Forbidden Books. I was not entirely surprised, given the order’s reflexive hostility to Monsieur Darwin. The general also explained that if I didn’t leave Europe posthaste, the Vatican would again be obliged to exile me. So here I am on a trip to Africa, where Louis Leakey has invited me to inspect his excavations at Olduvai Gorge.”
“If it were my decision, Père Teilhard, I would see your book distributed far and wide. Which is not to say I understand your orthogenesis in full.”
A husky female voice intruded on our conversation. “It’s doubtful whether Pierre himself understands his orthogenesis in full.”
The paleontologist and I glanced up to behold a handsome woman of mature years looming over us, dressed in a safari jacket and jodhpurs. She exuded a capacious intelligence, as if her mind encompassed a particularly large sector of the noosphere.
“Lucile!” cried Père Teilhard.
“Mon cher!” exclaimed the woman. “At last I’ve tracked you down.”
The paleontologist made the introductions, presenting me as “my faithful water-pipe companion” and his friend as “Lucile Swan, the sculptress who fashioned the first bust of Peking Man. She is also my best friend in the world.”
“Pierre claims to know all about evolution, yet he scorns its erotic essence,” said Miss Swan, inserting an empty chair between Père Teilhard and myself. “He knows nothing of concupiscence.”
I felt my face turn scarlet with mortification, though in this murky place the change was probably imperceptible.
“I’m no stranger to concupiscence, Lucile, merely to its conventional culmination,” said Père Teilhard pointedly.
Settling into her chair, Miss Swan fixed me with a gaze so luminous it cut through the smoky grotto like a beam from a lighthouse. “If Pierre’s biographers are honest men, they will call me the love of his life.”
“When I committed myself to poverty, obedience, and chastity, I intended to honor all three vows,” Père Teilhard admonished his friend.
“On paper you may be poor, Pierre,” Miss Swan replied, “but I’ve noticed that priests who travel with the scientific elite enjoy a posh sort of privation. As for obedience, your Holy Office dossier has grown so thick that Rome now holds you a borderline heretic. Evidently chastity is the only pledge you take seriously.”
“Lucile…”
“This man lives atop a mountain the rest of us can only dream of scaling,” said Miss Swan, caressing my hand. She took a puff of hashish, slid the nozzle from her lips, and pointed the tip at Père Teilhard. “Once again, my love, I must implore you to descend to my level. Perhaps our species is destined to fuse with a Cosmic Christ. I cannot speak of such matters, and I’m not persuaded you can, either. What we do know is that Homo sapiens is here because once upon a time a population of celibate algae transformed themselves into lusty eukaryotes. There’s no noosphere without ten trillion acts of physical love, Pierre, no transmutation without plenary copulation!”
“But one day we shall be past all that,” Père Teilhard insisted. “The universe is moving forward, Lucile! We cannot return to the Urschliem!”
“Listen, Pierre, the instant I finished telling Yusuf Effendi my story, he looked me in the eye and said, ‘I am moved by your plight, madam. For the rest of the afternoon, my humble cellar rooms belong to you and your holy man.’ He gave me a tour of his salle de lit. The sheets are clean. The pillows are soft.”
“Please, Lucile. This is madness.”
“Hear my logic. Your vows apply only to the life you’re living on planet Earth in 1950, whereas at present we occupy a fantastical netherworld emanating from the vanished Byzantine Empire. We may be a far cry from the Omega Point, but we’re equally distant from Rome.”
“My dearest, loveliest, sweetest Lucile…”
Seeing an opportunity to make a judicious exit, I feigned a headache, speculating aloud that it might be eased by a steam bath back at the palace.
“During our hashish intervals, I came to treasure your tolerance for my convoluted Weltanschauung,” said Père Teilhard as we embraced for the last time. “If only the Society of Jesus boasted your caliber of patience.”
And so it happens, Father, that I cannot tell you the upshot of Miss Swan’s designs. Sometimes I feel certain that she and her priest descended to the cellar. At other times I feel skeptical. Would you like to know my preferred outcome? Heaven forgive me, but I hope that the afternoon found Miss Swan and Père Teilhard acting the part of Homo concupiscentus.
With boundless affection,
Bertram
Granville felt like dancing. Apart from his son’s obtuse failure to grasp Teilhard de Chardin’s exhilarating philosophy, the new message overflowed with good news. The quest remained on schedule. Once Noah’s ark reached Constantinople, local politics would not prevent its delivery to England, the Russo-Turkish War having been postponed. What’s more, Miss Swan had surely found herself in the arms of her beloved. So momentous was this last occurrence that Granville decided to suspend his Omega Point cycle and instead celebrate Father Teilhard’s initiation into Eros.
The longer he thought about his subject, the more possibilities it revealed. Owing to the pioneering efforts of Adam and Eve, humans had become adept at perpetuating themselves, and now the union of Pierre and Lucile promised to carry the species to a plane beyond the procreative, the empirical, or even the metaphysical. Having experienced seminal ecstasy, Father Teilhard would be inspired to revise his Phénomène Humain over and over until at long last Rome allowed him to share his vision with the world (thousands of readers subsequently coming to perceive themselves not only as living souls redeemed by Christ’s blood but also as vibrant cells in an evolving megabrain). True, Granville still lacked for a canvas, but he would make a virtue of privation, imposing his newest painting atop The Sixth Eye of God.
He labored all afternoon and well past dusk, until No Transmutation without Plenary Copulation had emerged in all its corporeal grandeur. Even in the anemic gaslight seeping into his cell, he could see that he’d done justice to his theme. Being ignorant of Yusuf ibn Ziayüddin’s rooms, he’d taken artistic liberties, appointing the salle de lit with a gilt-framed mirror and a Persian cat, though the spectator’s attention remained focused on the bodies sprawled across the bed. Granville was particularly pleased with his treatment of Miss Swan: Teilhard’s pulchritudinous muse, with an emphatic bosom, inviting
thighs, and a navel that was the Omega Point. The longer he stared at that holy omphalos, the happier he became, and as he climbed onto his mattress that night, he thanked his Creator for that felicitous innovation called flesh.
* * *
Assuming that a person’s hot-air balloon must be attacked by panicked condors in the first place, then the wreck of the Lamarck—its fitful cruise through a palm-tree grove and thence into the soft sands of the riverbank—could hardly be counted a disaster. Certainly Chloe would never rank this event with the sinking of the Equinox, Mr. Flaherty’s consumption by piranhas, or Captain Runciter’s suffocation by an anaconda. True, Mr. Chadwick had lost consciousness, but he’d come to his senses almost immediately, and the passengers’ appreciable injuries were confined to Solange’s sprained wrist, Ralph’s twisted ankle, and the vicar’s cracked rib, beyond which the company had sustained only lumps, bumps, bruises, scratches, and scrapes. As for the airship itself, Léourier believed that the ruptured envelope and fractured gondola could be repaired using silk from the supply locker and wood from the Peruvian savannah. He even insisted that he could replace the shattered glass in the observation port with transparent sheets fashioned from—of all things—the cured swim-bladders of Rio Jequetepeque fish.
“Swim-bladders?” said a skeptical Chloe. “How many swim-bladders?”
“Perhaps a hundred.”
“And how long must we allow for the Lamarck’s resurrection?”
“If we can enlist the aid of at least twenty Indians, I would estimate three weeks,” said Léourier.
“Three weeks?” wailed Chloe, enduring her most virulent attack of frustration since Torresblanco had rejected her various schemes for shortening their voyage up the Solimões. “That is entirely unacceptable, Monsieur le Capitaine!”
“Then I fear you will have to reach the Encantadas through the benevolence of a sea captain putting out of Puerto Etén.”
“And lo, the clouds parted,” said Solange, “and Chloe’s favorite deity dropped a thousand swim-bladders at her feet.”
