Messi@

by Andrei Codrescu

  “No,” she squeaked, trying to make her eyes fierce.

  The music teacher shrugged and picked up his baton. A cherubic little girl with gold ringlets passed out hymnals. Felicity took one, and the girl looked straight in her eyes. It was the girl from the house on fire, minus her wings. A current of recognition passed between them. She too is someone who resists, thought Felicity. She knows that I saved her.

  The conductor hit the stand with his baton and directed the listless-looking chorus to simply repeat what he sang. The hymnal was already open to the right place.

  Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee—let the water and the blood …

  Felicity soared. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to a vast blue simplicity.

  Not the labors of my hands can fulfill the law’s demands—could my zeal no respite know—Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress …

  She floated up there, naked, and Jesus poured a diaphanous robe around her. From the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, a sense of well-being flooded through her, sweeping away her doubts.

  While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall close in death, when I soar to worlds unknown …

  All she wanted to do was sing. She was no longer tired; she was a pure voice, clean as a spring, soaring and spreading delight.

  Felicity glanced at the others and was startled. They were all in the process of being transformed. Some of the girls looked partly made out of light, as if their bodies were undergoing some kind of chemical process. Joan was shining as if she were wearing her gold armor in battle. Amelia’s red hair looked as if it were on fire.

  And then everything changed. The teacher led them into the singing of “Nothing but the Blood,” and persistent sadness, like a small rain, touched her everywhere.

  What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus—For my pardon this I see: nothing but the blood of Jesus—Nothing can for sin atone; nothing but the blood of Jesus—This is all my hope and peace: nothing but the blood of Jesus.

  He who had given her her robe of light now stood pouring blood from his wounds like a fountain. His blood covered her, the sky, the other girls. They were immersed in its cloying waves and there was no hope for anyone, no matter what the song said. She wanted to sing “Rock of Ages” again, but there was no going back. Not for her nor for the world. From where did such despondency come? In the absence of memories to anchor her sorrows to, Felicity was a puddle of unhappiness, this all the more distressing for being pure feeling. If such sorrow was in the world, there was no saving it. The job was too big even for Jesus.

  Just as Felicity was about to sink to the floor, the maestro led them into the singing of “Alone in the Garden,” and joy returned to the world.

  I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear, he speaks, and the sound of his voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing, and the melody that he gave to me I’d stay in the garden with him though the night around me be falling but he bids me to go …

  This time, the sweet joy that suffused her was without ecstasy. It was the sad joy of knowing one’s aloneness but also the comfort of the mystic night. The song had plainly named “the voice I hear falling on my ear” as the source of all feeling. She had known this once: sound was the universal source. A song suffused creation and dictated its shape through its notes. Either God sang all the time, giving form to the world, or God was sound, in which case everything was song. And things, such as they were, were only seemingly solid; they were only projections of sound. All of this occured to Felicity in an instant, in the interval between two notes. And just as instantly, she forgot it.

  Days passed, merging with one another, each day very much like the next. The woolen blanket on her bunk was too small, and there was only one pillow, but the strangest thing happened. Felicity, who had always had trouble falling asleep and had spent hours adjusting her two pillows in a special way, now slumbered as soon as she lay down. At the end of each day, sleep closed in on her like water. She did not know the other women in her dorm, who seemed always to be humming under their breath with their eyes half closed. They did not speak to her but appeared friendly and kind.

  Two plain meals were served every day at a long wooden table. The women took turns cooking, serving, and doing the dishes, but Felicity had not been asked. For breakfast, there was oatmeal and skim white milk. The midday meal was a plate of boiled white rice, white beans, and cauliflower. Pitchers of decaffeinated iced tea were quietly passed around. It was poor and bland fare, but it suited Felicity fine. The meals were eaten in silence, after one of the women said grace. They ended with a grateful hymn. Felicity studied her table companions, a dozen women or so, and wondered where they had come from. From rare occasional remarks she understood that some of them had been recruited from the streets of New Orleans by Bamajans. They did not know why they had been chosen, but they had readily acquiesced, or been made to acquiesce, to their new situation. It is a long time ago, far away. I have taken vows of poverty and silence. Sometimes an image came to her in the wake of this thought: a convent perched on a rock face while a blue-black sea foamed below. She found herself sometimes wanting to ask Joan of Arc and Amelia Earhart questions about their lives, but each time something in the women’s demeanor stopped her. In the end she realized that Joan and Amelia, like herself, did not remember their lives. Perhaps they did not even know who they were. Perhaps only she, Scheherazade, knew her own name.

  Felicity felt more and more at peace with herself. She sang and she lived feeling. She had no past and she felt no need to think of the future. She lived in an eternal now, punctuated by the steady rain that fell on the roof of the building like a lullaby. One night a violent thunderstorm shook the building, but the thunder and lightning that had frightened her so much, once upon a forgotten time, did little more than punctuate her happiness. She recalled vaguely that she lived in a city that floated on water, where rain came often in great bursts, but she did not care for the outside any more than she did for her past. Her secret knowledge that some of the women in her class were famous historical figures remained twined around her arms in the invisible bracelet, but she rarely sensed its presence now. It did not seem to matter. She saw them every day and was glad to see them, but little by little they became transformed and quiet. If they were indeed who Felicity thought they were, they gave no sign of it. They rarely spoke, and the silence was soothing.

  The School for Messiah Development was rigorously segregated. The women, who were all students, ate alone. The teachers were all men, but Felicity had glimpsed other males, muscled types with dark sunglasses who never looked at her.

  In a small classroom with pillows on the floor, an Indian man with a white turban spoke about Jesus. On the wall behind him were brightly colored lithographs from his life. Jesus was blond and blue eyed, not dark and Semitic the way she had seen him in song. His hair reached past his shoulders. One of his hands stretched out in blessing, while the other rested on top of a crooked staff that was also a snake. His eyes followed her everywhere, no matter which way she turned her head.

  “You wonder,” the turbaned man said, “what kind of Christian I am. I was not always a Christian, but all that is left of my past is the turban on my head. My heart is full of Jesus and my mind does his work. You too will have only an outward trace of your wicked life left, after you accept him. You can decide now what you want to keep, or later, but it will be harder later.”

  Felicity was certain that nothing remained from her former life. All that must have at one time mattered to her was no longer an inner concern, but something removed from her like dresses worn on occasions no longer important. She knew that she was not alone; Jesus was with her. Now and then an anguished voice within protested this, but it broke against the joy she experienced.

  Beware, the broken inner voice said; this happiness you feel is false. But it di
d not feel that way at all. Light danced in all her bones, and her heart was seized with so much tenderness she cried often and with abandon.

  “Pay good attention,” the teacher said, reading from Revelation words that struck a painful and familiar chord in her:

  “‘Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked to me,’ wrote John, ’saying to me, Come I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication.… So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’”

  Felicity knew then that in her wicked former life she had been that woman. All the happiness drained from her, replaced by a wave of sorrow so profound her weeping changed. The salt of her tears was bitter now. She knew that this bitter salt was the oldest salt on earth, an element stretched like a shroud over the first layer of matter. Felicity saw the air fill with millions of salty sevens. The very fabric of the air was woven out of myriads of that number writ in salt. And she saw the woman on top of the beast, which gave off an unbearable stench of corpse. The mounted woman was the Whore of Babylon, drinking the cup full of the still-living ejaculates of her many lovers. She, Felicity, was the Whore of Babylon. She became a single cry of agony, reduced only to a burning wish for salvation. She folded in on herself, wet with her own tears, and implored the lithographs: “Take me, Jesus!” Her whole body exploded with light, and the rings in her nipples, the invisible bracelets on her arms, and the gold loops in her ears became incandescent and burned her. She tore them off, without taking her eyes off the Savior, imploring him between sobs, “Save me, save me!”

  Two times a week, the women sat before computer terminals. Felicity’s job was to download streams of names, numbers, and photographs of men and women. Some of them wore suits, others had on work clothes and hard hats. At first she thought that these were employment records, but soon she realized that they were more than that. She seemed to be downloading the contents of some vast industrial company’s computer. Other women were similarly engaged with long files.

  At the end of her first hour, Felicity tired. She rested her arms on top of the console, and her invisible bracelets began vibrating. After a time, she found herself touching the keyboard lightly. Her fingers punched in an oddly familiar sequence, though she couldn’t remember its purpose. Make Love to People from History appeared on the screen. The message confused her. She was as filled with love as she could hold. How was it possible to “make” more love?

  She walked out of the room, and nobody stopped her.

  Day after day, her happiness alternated with sorrow. At night, spent and thin, she sunk beneath her coverlet of darkness and was as if dead. She knew only day and night and was unaware of either the year or the season.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wherein Andrea and Ben hastily depart Israel

  Yehuda ben Yehuda withdrew from his account all the money that his father, Dr. Redman, had reluctantly surrendered to his son’s religious education, and bought two airplane tickets with it. They were the cheapest tickets available, on BookAir (“The Airline for People Who Read”), a cut-rate airline that offered no-frill flights around the world. Instead of fancy electronic entertainment—movies and music and earphones—BookAir offered only rafts of used books left behind by previous travelers. Their flight was scheduled to leave in the early evening from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, arriving in Atlanta next morning.

  Andrea’s lack of papers was a problem Ben undertook with some pleasure. He had created numberless fake IDs in high school for his underage classmates. His work had been quite renowned. He had with him an expired driver’s license that had belonged to his sister Clarisse. He pasted a small picture of Andrea over Clarisse’s. He next produced a birth certificate modeled on his own, a painstaking calligraphic work that Xeroxed perfectly. He booked Andrea’s flight under the name Clarisse Redman.

  They boarded a bus full of soldiers, many of whom leaned on their guns looking dreamily at Andrea, who wore a tiny miniskirt out of which her skinny legs stuck out like a puppet’s. They recognized her.

  “All these soldiers want to kiss me,” whispered Andrea to Ben. “I am going to perfect my kiss so that it becomes atomic, a laser. I’ll then be able to kiss everyone who wants to kiss me.”

  “The whole world?”

  “Why not?” She wrapped her bare arm around his shoulders and put her head on his chest. A female essence like almond and warm burnished copper suffused him.

  “This must be my chingush day,” she said.

  “Your what?”

  “My chingush. Since I was small, I always lose one day a week to the chingush. It’s like a little tornado; it picks me up and it takes me somewhere. When I come back I don’t remember what happened that day at all. I think that only good things happen on my chingush day.”

  “How do you know if you can’t remember?”

  “Because I feel good afterward, like I took a sauna.”

  “Which day is it?” Ben wanted to make sure that he knew so that he could mark it in his calendar: “Wednesday is Andrea’s chingush day. Don’t expect to see her.” His father always marked his wife’s periods on his desk calendar. “Be extra careful,” he wrote in the squares.

  “I never know which day it is. All I know is it’s once a week.”

  Great. The chingush could strike any time.

  What Ben did not know and Andrea did not tell him was that her chingush had once lasted four years. That is how long she had been lost until the day a man had brought her to Saint Hildegard’s. She remembered nothing from those years, as if she had not existed at all. If she had told Ben, he might have run away from her. But Ben, from his fairly limited contact with citizens of the Old World, had already understood something about Andrea’s chingush, namely, that being lost was part of every European’s past. What little he understood of history made him aware that Europeans needed to forget the past and were thus often amnesiac and lost, whereas Americans suffered amnesia in the present and were lost amid all their bounty. This was one of the reasons he had left his country. There was another difference, too, which was that the amnesia of Europeans could cover centuries, while Americans could experience an eternity of forgetfulness in the space of just an hour.

  “Do you have all your things?” asked Ben.

  Andrea pointed to the cardboard tube she had laid on the luggage netting over their heads.

  “Is that everything?”

  “Everything.”

  In addition to what she wore, Andrea had kept the round box bought at the suk and Sister Rodica’s cotton underwear. They rattled about inside the cardboard tube.

  “You’ll need another change of clothes,” said Ben. Her miniskirt bothered him, but not as much as her high platform shoes. She looked as if she might topple from them at any moment.

  Andrea allowed that she might. All she really wanted, though, was a pair of fluffy white wings. Once more, she was Victory.

  In Tel Aviv she purchased a gold Byzantine cross from a Yemeni jeweler—Ben protested weakly, thinking of his mother—and a gold pendant inscribed with the Jews’ lament in Babylon. Andrea hung these two symbols on a chain she already wore around her ivory neck.

  “It’s all the clothes I need.” She leaned her head back for Ben to better admire her jewels.

  Ben leaned close and held the Jewish talisman, and read:

  If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

  let my right hand wither;

  let my tongue stick to my palate

  if I cease to think of you,

  if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory
r />   even at my happiest hour.

  Ben-Gurion Airport was a cross between an army barracks, a Roman forum, and a multipurpose church. When they arrived, a cordon of soldiers was keeping the crowds away from an armored limousine. To one side, a wailing family of Palestinians watched their enormous bundles dismantled by Israeli soldiers. Toothpaste tubes were squeezed out over silk pantaloons, and jars of yellow saffron rained over holiday suits. It was not a pretty sight, and Ben, despite his rabbi-induced conservatism, cringed. At heart he was as liberal as his father. Oppression made him sick.

  Andrea’s attention was riveted by a group of arriving immigrants from Russia, who lay on the ground, kissing the asphalt of Israel. They looked like overweight birds stuck to the tar. She saw the joy that radiated from them like puffs of blue smoke. She could taste their tears washing into the tar. Years of quiet terror and a vast store of daily humiliation poured from them like sweat. Enjoy this moment, Andrea urged them silently; it’s the best. This is it. Soon you will receive the blessings of reality, its imaginative hassles, sadistic bureaucrats, inevitable heartbreaks, and you will see the grinning skull of capitalism. Most of your pain will return. Her unspoken compassion was genuine and effective; it swept over the overwrought immigrants like a cool breeze. For a millisecond they stopped sweating and felt at peace.

  Getting onto the BookAir jet presented no difficulty. Andrea slipped unbothered past officials and baggage checkers, through metal detectors and gate security. It was almost as if she were invisible, which was eerie, considering that her face had been in every Israeli living room and her name in every newspaper. Ben observed that she had the uncanny ability to make herself plain, almost bedraggled. She achieved an everywoman look, an air of ordinariness and modesty. She didn’t get a second glance from anyone, despite her miniskirt and platforms.

  They had already rolled onto the runway when the pilot announced that they would be delayed. Andrea looked past Ben and some other people toward the window at the dark sky. The ground and their airplane shook as if struck by a terrific wind.