Messi@

by Andrei Codrescu

  After Felicity went home, the major, in a state of uncharacteristic agitation, called his PA (psychic adviser), Carbon, to arrange a consultation. Carbon arrived promptly at Notz’s door, as he always did when his favorite client called. He was a most unlikely-looking psychic, nearly as fat as the major but towering over him at six feet six inches. He dressed in the battered leather uniform of a biker, with spike-studded boots, brass-ring knuckles, and leather hood. An unruly red beard framed his cheeks and spilled forth from his chin like a waterfall. He was an eclectic practitioner, performing past-life readings, regression, aura adjustments, tarot card readings, palm readings, dream interpretation, healing massage, and above all, channeling. Major Notz had availed himself of all these services at one time or another, but he prized above all Carbon’s ability as a medium. He channeled a variety of spirits—some were trustworthy and accurate, others were lying scum, but as Carbon said, why should the spirit world be any different from this one?

  “Carbon,” said the major after the psychic settled his bulk in a carved armchair Notz had acquired in Domrémy, France, where Joan of Arc had been born, “I need you to ask Hermes, or his equivalent, to look into the future and apprise me of my niece’s activities. What is her direction?”

  As was his habit, Carbon pressed his huge leathered hands against his eyelids, and his head relaxed, falling forward into his beard. A high and oddly operatic voice issued from his ragged throat.

  “Greetings, Major. It is said that the angels are awkward and don’t like to be called into meetings. Some of them are large and fluffy like bread pudding, while some are no bigger than an incense stick and just as bright. For the most part they know their jobs because their missions are built in. But some have not had a mission assigned, and all they do is play all day long. Angels with a mission regard these unassigned angels as grown-ups regard children. They are all, actually, unidimensional, so that even though there are millions, maybe trillions of them, they are no thicker than a thin sheet of paper, or a flake of phyllo. The more substantial, thicker beings in charge of the angels walk about in a state of terminal annoyance at having to keep track of so many. But by far the worst job is that of the Namer.”

  “Why are you giving me a lesson in angels?” Major Notz demanded, not pleased at all. “And who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Hermes, the messenger,” said the piqued entity, equally put off. “If you wanted Pythia you should have said so. It’s not like we aren’t busy, Miss Human.”

  The major was willing to make peace. “Tell me, how serious is Felicity’s involvement with entities from the past, these things called cyberbeings?”

  “If you are willing to listen. As I said, the hardest job concerning angels is naming them, so the Namer is an important figure. It is said that in the waning days of the twentieth century an angel will fly into the city of New Orleans on a delicate mission. His name will be Zack, short for Hezekiah. It is not the most resonant name for an angel of such importance. On the day of his naming, the Namer on duty was absentminded and cranky. He had been recalled from a job tending the waters of life and death to fill in for a Namer who’d run out of inspiration.

  “‘Name him yourselves, nard-sotted bureaucrats!’ he groused when the shiny, still-wet angel pupa was brought before him. ‘Heaven’s getting as specialized as the baculum of a dog! Now there are Bearers and Bathers and Namers and God knows what else, but I’m sure he doesn’t! And to what purpose? You name them Ezekiel or Isaiah, but in the end they turn out to be just ornamental putti on pink puffs! Not a real Isaiah or Ezekiel in the bouquet! It’s worse than earth!’

  “It is said that after these dismissive and terrible words, the Namer wrote with the light of his finger on the soft chamois of the pupa and sent him off to do the jobs of the universe. As it turns out, his first big job, after a basic training period of eight angel mok, which corresponds to the time it takes a sequoia to grow from seed to a height of one hundred feet, is rather momentous. He is to insure the flawless unfolding of a formidable Council of the Minds, who will meet in New Orleans in order to decide whether to bring on the End of the World in the manner described by John in Revelation or in some other form.”

  “Wait one minute!” shouted the major. “What Council of the Minds? How many? Who are they?”

  “I warned you, listener,” hissed Hermes, “don’t interrupt. I don’t know how many, nor does the poor angel in charge of them. As I speak, he is selecting them, cursing his fate. What is certain is that they will arrive here at any moment, so be prepared. Your mental abilities lag far behind the brilliance of this event. Of course, that isn’t my concern. It is the angel Zack I feel pity for. In addition to setting up the Council of the Minds, a very tall order if you truly knew the chaotic state of the spirit world, Zack has to recapitulate, in essence, two thousand years of religious quarreling, in order to insure that the Messiah is ready to proceed when the cleansing is concluded.”

  “The Messiah,” whispered the major. “Well, at least we are in familiar territory. But this council—”

  Hermes didn’t hear him. He went on: “Then there is the question of the Evil One, the one you call the Antichrist, pretending to be the Chosen One, and the credibility gap that the impersonation will open. Simply engineering the meeting is a big job, but what the Minds will do is a mystery. It does not seem that there is enough earth time to tend to both the Messiah and the Antichrist. Angels are simultaneistic, but what about reincarnated Minds? Do they operate in angelic, or earthly time? Zack will have a time problem, given that the council will be composed inevitably of Minds with differing points of view and different historical contexts, who would quarrel for an eternity if not guided somehow. Zack suspects that the whole thing may even be some unspeakable divine trick, since these Minds have already been quarreling for eternity in the heavens. What will be so different when they incarnate?”

  “He could turn down the job,” grumbled the major. “Get a superangel or something. Somebody experienced.”

  “It was proposed. It is said that nobody in their right mind wanted the job. Most angels are in their right mind; otherwise they wouldn’t be angels. They would be archangels or saints. Young angel Zack is in for a hell of a ride. While he does feel sorry for himself, he demands not to be pitied, because, as he would point out to you, there are perks and mitigations, not the least of which is visiting the city of New Orleans itself. Also, hell is watching with the keenest interest: if the ride is rough enough, they will put it on the menu with the shrimp diablo.”

  The major wondered at Hermes’ intricate knowledge of his city’s fair cuisine. Was Carbon poking through, or had Hermes consulted the Bayonna Restaurant Web page on the Internet?

  “One might argue, as his Namer did, that the selection of this inexperienced and potentially incompetent baby angel proves that the Ultimate does not give a rat’s ass about your world. Whether it ends or not is of no great concern. One of the Namer’s favorite earthlings, Buckminster Fuller, said that humans are an ‘information-gathering function’ in the ‘eternally regenerative universe.’ If they fail to do the job, another functionary will take over. Mushroom spores, for instance. Or fire ants. Humans are entirely too self-important. Still, charging a novice with the fate of Fuller’s fellow creatures is ironic.”

  Hermes fell silent. Notz couldn’t help but admire the spirit’s sense of humor. The communication contained important news. The Council of the Minds came as a total surprise to him, complicating his already complicated task. But for Felicity, he would have had no clue how these Minds would be arriving in New Orleans. The cyberspace site Felicity had stumbled on was one of the nodes through which these Minds were landing. The city was a train station at the moment, with trains full of the illustrious dead pulling in for their great meeting. Felicity’s cyberentities were collecting information prior to their incarnations. Watching the tunnel mouth of her Web site was a good way to observe the beginning of the invasion. But the Internet was doubtless only one o
f the means by which these entities traveled. There were others, and they had to be found. Carbon had become indispensible.

  Chapter Twelve

  Wherein Sister Rodica leads Andrea and the distinguished guests on a pilgrimage to the holy places. Andrea and Lama Cohen commune at the Wailing Wall

  One night Father Hernio asked Sister Rodica, “Sister, are you going to conduct one of your tours to the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre tomorrow? I would very much like to accompany you, to refresh my memory of the holy sites.”

  All the others, with the exception of Father Tuiredh, who pleaded business elsewhere, declared that they would like to go as well. Andrea, whose Christian education was lagging because Sister Rodica had been so inexplicably distant, also expressed her desire to go. She liked the hospice’s guests, and now that the stories had started, she had a thirst for more. In some way, the inmates of Saint Hildegard’s were a lot like the inmates of the refugee camp, who for lack of anything better to do endlessly discussed matters both profound and trivial, or passed the time playing writing and singing games. They knew full well that none of their discussions made any difference to their true activity, which was waiting. In the camps, they all waited for the day when they would be set free. Or killed.

  Andrea was not sure what the scholars were waiting for, but she liked the attention that they gave her—they made her feel she was someone important.

  That night she dreamed of the Mendeleyev table of elements, only each square contained a suffix for her name, like ani, ita, ska, ina, or isha, instead of the elements’ abbreviations. Thus she knew that she was dear to each one of the hospice’s guests who called her privately by an endearment. Andreani, Andreita, Andreska, Andreina, Andreisha … these were her diminutive selves, each one with a weight and a function, just like the elements.

  After this dream, Andrea thought more about the possibility of being a television star like Gala Keria and wanted to hear more about it (blush, blush) from the disgusting Air. Rabindranath. She remembered the young soldier from the first Gal Gal Hamazal show that she had watched. If she had been Gala she would have found a way to let him win, too. And if not, she would have taken him to her bed and folded her big wings over him. In her sensual fantasies, Andrea often sported a pair of fluffy white wings like the Roman statue of Victory at Ashkelon.

  Next morning bright and early, the company met for breakfast. The nuns set before the guests baskets of fresh rolls, cheese, salami, and soft-boiled eggs in egg cups. Black tea and strong, sweet Turkish coffee in small porcelain cups were served. The guests enjoyed this simple Transylvanian repast, though only Earl Smith ate the salami. The rest were vegetarians. Mr. Rabindranath only drank the tea.

  “Are you going to eat your salami?” Earl Smith asked Andrea.

  “No, please help yourself!” She looked mildly surprised.

  Mr. Smith laughed. “You’ll never find a Native American vegetarian! Only fake Native Americans are vegetarians in America! Hippies, that is.”

  Andrea chortled uneasily. She had been under the impression that American Indians ate corn. But all she knew about Indians came from friends of hers, hippie musicians who had lived in a loft, slept on mattresses on the floor, and called themselves Indians. They wore feathers in their hair and had leather pouches around their necks. Faux natives! Mr. Smith explained that Indians had once hunted bison, called buffalo in North America, and that now they were enamored of filet mignon. They ate plenty of corn, too, and beans, and garnishes and sauces. When they went to the big cities they ate Chinese and Mexican cuisine. Take molé sauce, for instance! Andrea had never heard of molé, so she endured a detailed description of this rich chocolate-and-hot-pepper sauce, which had been used, Mr. Smith claimed, to obscure the rather gamy flavor of human flesh. Mr. Smith smacked his lips to everyone’s amusement except Andrea’s. Human flesh was not one of her favorite subjects.

  The group had to take a series of crowded buses to get to the Damascus Gate. On one, Andrea found herself hanging from an overhead support, pressed against a frowning granny with a large bag clutched to her chest, and flanked by Mr. Smith and Sister Rodica. In addition to lurching, stopping suddenly, and weaving erratically, the bus was full of talk, buzzing like a beehive.

  “Thank God for telephones!” a man said emphatically.

  “Amen,” came from different quarters of the bus.

  “I sat in the basement with my gas mask on and called everyone!” said the woman with the shopping bag, giving both the nun and Andrea a look of contempt. “One Scud fell right next to my daughter’s doctor’s office.”

  Sister Rodica tried not to look at the woman’s arms, two sticks of bone clutching the shopping bag. She knew what she’d see: the fading blue numbers. They were everywhere in Israel, ghostly, fading digits of the Holocaust, the phone numbers of hell. But she could feel the woman’s eyes on her and the old man’s voice—“Thank God for telephones!”—echoing in her ears.

  Sister Rodica was offended on behalf of Andrea. She resented the unending lament of the Jews who felt free to broadcast their suffering loudly at every opportunity, especially when she, a sister of the German order, was around. Sure, it was their country, but the horrible fire that had burned those blue numbers on the woman’s arm had gone out over a half century ago, more than forty years before Andrea was born. The Iraqi Scud attacks on Israel had long been over. The telephones, which had been lifelines keeping Israelis in touch while they sat in their bomb shelters with gas masks on, had long since turned back into instruments of idle gossip and business. What about all that had happened to Andrea? Her horrors were so fresh she still wouldn’t speak of them. The sister had seen the fading scars of cigarette burns on Andrea’s thighs and on the underside of her arms. Horrors that most young Israelis thought happened only to their grandparents had happened to this girl. But she had no one’s telephone number. Sister Rodica blazed with indignation even as she became Andrea’s knight in shining armor. She pressed against the girl, as if to protect her from the old woman’s arms and the old man’s raspy voice.

  Sister Rodica’s heavy cloth bag pressed against Andrea’s side, filled with what felt like marbles. She leaned into the nun’s ear and whispered, “What’s in your bag, Sister?”

  Even in the buzzing hive of the bus, the nun’s blush was noticeable. “Chestnuts,” she whispered back.

  Sister Rodica, it turned out, had some business to conduct in the Arab quarter. She sold chestnuts from the convent garden to Arabs in the bazaar. Andrea later noted with some admiration what a tough bargainer the sister was. She rejected indignantly one offer of 25 shekels for a bag and stood her ground for ten minutes before going to the next stall. This was no mean feat; the merchants of Suk Khan ez-Zeit had been bargaining for four thousand years. While their shelves groaned with unsold spices at this unfortunate juncture of history, they had no doubt that long after the world of the twentieth century had evaporated, they would still be here, bargaining with whatever life-forms inhabited the planet. The spice market was too important to end with the world.

  It was an overcast and windy day—Sister Rodica could smell snow on the blades of cold wind that agitated her habit. She loved this smell, the smell of her childhood. In her village, snow came down for weeks in winter, until only the round roofs of the houses were visible. Her father and the other men would clear paths through the snow to the church and to the tavern. During the long winter nights she listened to the singing of the men in the tavern drifting up to the icy pinpoints of the stars. The girls and women sat at home, weaving at their looms and telling scary stories. Smoke from their wood stoves hung in the air above the houses like question marks.

  Of the convent’s guests, only Earl Smith, Lama Cohen, and Andrea truly knew snow. For Earl Smith, the silence of the Second Mesa after a snowstorm represented the sum of all that was good in the universe. He had often mounted his horse and gone a mile or so out of his native village of Old Oraibi, just so that he could be alone in the vast whiteness of the
mesa. This was the center of the world, as foretold in the Hopi prophecies. At no time was the truth of this more apparent than after a snowstorm, when creation was fully awake. If he looked hard enough, he could see the great Wheel of the Cosmos, composed of stars, turn above him. The message he waited for had always been partially hidden. But on the Second Mesa, part of it was visible. One snowy night, an elder of the Spider clan had come to him in a dream and said, “Go to Jerusalem!”

  “The place of the Christians?” he asked, bewildered.

  “And of the Jews, the Moslems, and Israeli television,” the dream elder had replied.

  As for Andrea, the less snow she saw, the better.

  The Damascus Gate was crowded, as usual, with Arab money changers, idle Palestinian boys, and religious Jews handing out pamphlets. Sister Rodica went ahead of the group and cut resolutely through the jeering youth like the prow of a Christian ship. The Arabs glared at her, their faces masks of scorn. A small group of young Orthodox Jews with machine guns over their left shoulders made kissy noises in her direction.

  “Sometimes the Orthodox Jews throw stones at the sisters,” Father Zahan told Andrea, “and shout after them, ‘Go to heaven, you like it so much!’ But the sisters just forge ahead.”

  Sister Rodica turned, her round face filled with happiness. “There is nothing better than suffering for the Lord!” she said.

  “Maybe!” Mr. Rabindranath said, “but there is an art to it!”

  “There surely is an art to throwing stones in Jerusalem!” Father Hernio said ironically. “Here we are, a stone’s throw away from the first Station of the Cross.”

  “And the Intifada,” said Mr. Smith