Mission

by Patrick Tilley

  It was only new, of course, in the sense that it was the modern, media-fuelled expression of mankind’s apparently timeless preoccupation with sex. As a hobby; a favour; to relieve boredom; for financial gain; as a bonus for the boys following military conquest; as a means of achieving social advancement; as a revenge weapon deployed to compensate for psychological inadequacies; as the box-office attraction in certain pre-Christian religions and the Californian brand of psychotherapy.

  But in the past, excesses had led to the violent eclipse of nation-states; perversions had been held in check by hard-nosed prophets like Moses and Elijah. And they had needed to be. One of the host of injunctions that Moses had slapped on the Israelites put the blocks on anyone who got his kicks with oxes, asses, sheep and goats. Sodom and Gomorrah got theirs for indulging in more of the same only in spades. And in Greece, where they were kinder to animals, the Minotaur got his rocks off with Cretan maids and local boy scouts until Theseus turned him into ox-tail soup and made the island safe for tourists.

  But nowadays, it was different. Protest was not only unfashionable, it was downright anti-social. To acolytes of the new religion, sexual licence and unbridled perversion were the central articles of faith and the cure for all the ills that beset mankind; to overtly challenged this assumption was regarded as a major heresy. Any modern, would-be Theseus would immediately find himself denounced by self-appointed apologists for paedeophiles, necrophiles, snuff-movie fan, clubs, pig-fanciers from Appalachia, and mother-fuckers everywhere.

  I had come from a humane, wholesome family but, like my contemporaries, I had swung through the Sixties, stalked the singles bars in search of talent, watched the girls on the gate-folds of Playboy sprout nipples and pubic hair, had subscribed to the success of Hustler and had treasured their famous break-through issue with the ‘Sniff-Me’ cover.

  I had plumbed the depths of eroticism in print and in practice and if, in the end, I had found it wanting, it was not for lack of trying. To be fair, my encounters had been limited to those available to an imaginative heterosexual but apart from that minor character defect I was a man of my time. A fully paid-up member of this crooked age. But the process of disengagement had, in all honesty, begun before The Man had arrived to bug me.

  It was right that the web of hypocrisy surrounding our sexual relationships had been blown away but as society had shed its inhibitions, it had become ensnared in a new web of deceit spun by the dream merchants. The new freedom it purported to represent was merely a new form of bondage. The expanding market created the need for new and ever more extreme forms of sexual imagery to stimulate the jaded appetites of its customers. But to satisfy the desires of some meant the exploitation of others. And they were not all consenting adults working for a hundred bucks an hour; or for free, just for the hell of it. Did the five-year-old kids cajoled into fellatio ever recover? Did the South American slum whores killed in snuff movies ever collect? The excesses of the permissive society were no more a celebration of life than a prison riot was the celebration of the fellowship between inmates and warders.

  The dream world of sexual fantasy was a cruel illusion and all attempts to turn it into reality merely increased the alienation between human beings. What we needed was not sexual freedom but freedom from sexuality. It was not a question of it being wrong, or bad, or sinful. It was unnecessary. A blind alley that led us away from self-realisation; not towards it. We had been assiduously conditioned to think of the outward expression of our sexuality as a measure of male virility and female desirability. The power of our animal magnetism and its assiduous application assured us of a favoured position in the social pecking order. I realised now what The Man had meant when he had said that language had been designed to prevent us from understanding one another. For the misuse of language played a major part in the all-consuming quest for self-gratification. Speech had not been heaven-sent. It was a gift from ‘Brax. It made it possible for us to lie to one another, and fuelled our infinite capacity for self-deception. We all knew what was going on yet we remained party to the continuing conspiracy to deprive language of its true meaning. It had become a debased currency and the supreme example of this relentless devaluation was the word ‘love’. A word that described everything that The Man stood for, and which had been taken over by ‘Brax.

  Love, in its truest sense and purest expression was a universal, self-denying emotion. Though it might, on occasion, be the bedfellow of desire, they were, in fact, discrete states of being. Physical desire was an affirmation of self; its fulfilment meant the possession of another human being. From experience, I knew that could produce some delectable moments. But I also knew that, as a social activity, it manifested itself in many guises; from a loving, stable, one-on-one relationship all the way down to gang-rape, child molestation and the Boston Strangler. And that because of it, a lot of people had, quite literally, fucked up their lives. ‘Making love’, when stripped of its camouflage, described two aspects of sexual intercourse: procreation and fornication. Both well known to the prophets of old. The impulse to procreate is, as the exponents of socio-zoology tell us, triggered by the implacable desire of our genes to reproduce themselves. Fornication, strictly defined, was sexual intercourse between the unmarried but, by extension, had come to mean fucking, in any known permutation, for its own sake instead of for the sake of the kids.

  A way of making friends and influencing people.

  Don’t let’s knock it but, at the same time, don’t let us delude ourselves by dignifying these two buttock-heaving modes of human behaviour with the word ‘love’. Love can exist without sex, but sex often needs to cloak itself with counterfeit love in order to make itself acceptable. Which does not mean to say that you cannot love someone and also desire them. Just don’t kid yourself that they’re the same thing. There is, in fact, an acid test you can apply to your relationship with the person you share your bed with. And you don’t need litmus paper. All you have to do is ask yourself the following question and answer it honestly: would you still want to be with them, sharing their joys and sorrows, would you consider spending the rest of your life with them without ever engaging in sexual intercourse? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then you may really be on the point of discovering what love is all about.

  When the movie ended, we shouldered our way out back on to the crowded streets. Word images from The Man continued to flood into my mind. It was as if he was feeding me enlightenment intravenously. I understood that love, raying outwards from the soul, could pierce the hard, egocentric shell that held it captive. Its healing power could transform our lives; change the world and, in the final triumph of mind over matter, restore the balance between the opposing forces of the universe. The legendary Harmony of the Spheres without which everything, including the Celestial Empire, would go down the tube. Human consciousness was not a by-product of physical existence. It was not the result of bio-chemical processes but the thing that made those processes possible. It came from beyond Time and Space. From a higher realm of being of which The Man was part and to which he sought to bring us again by the power vested in him. And which was in all of us.

  For each of us held the Key to the Kingdom. Where all things had been shaped by the Light of The Word. The indestrctible, unifying force that flowed through the cosmos and gave life to all within it. It could not be destroyed because it emanated from The One, The Presence, Y * W * H, Allah, the God-Head, the Creator, The Supreme Being, the Shekinah, the Unknowable, the Ultimate Principle; or Whatever. Which, according to The Man, was now locked into a life and death struggle with creatures spawned from its own being. The rebellious legions of ‘Brax.

  But while the power of love could not be destroyed, it could be suppressed, perverted, misdirected. As when its energy was funnelled through our sexual organs and our senses as desire for the things of this world, or transformed by the malevolent influence of ‘Brax into hate.

  It was not some grouchy moralism that had caused the ancient Hebrews to list our
common failings among the seven deadly sins, but a more ancient wisdom. Lust, hate, pride, greed, envy were crippling deformations of the power of the spirit. They were the bars of the cage that imprisoned the soul. The chains that made the Celestial rider the slave of the earth-bound host that carried him through the seductive dream-caverns that ‘Brax had woven about the world.

  To keep us from The Light.

  ‘Brax was playing for high stakes. He didn’t want just what was on the table. He wanted the casino and the rest of this galactic Las Vegas. This was the take-over bid to end them all; and he was playing with loaded dice and a stacked deck.

  One of ‘Brax’s major coups in this titanic struggle had been the forced creation of the ego from which had sprung the cult of the individual and an abhorrence of collectivism. The achievement of the individual was upheld as a triumph of the human will. The proof that Man was master of his own destiny and that rational science would unravel the mysteries of the universe. Belief in God was held to be the vestigial remains of a more primitive, irrational state of mind.

  The emphasis on the individual belied the truth. Handel may have composed The Messiah, but without a choir to bring it triumphantly to life it is nothing more than marks on pieces of paper. Even the most brilliant concert pianist was nothing without the generations of craftsmen whose collective skill had brought his instrument to its present peak of perfection. And there was a darker side to the supremacy of the individual human will. The Reverend Jim Jones could not have sown terror and death among his followers if they had not willingly subjugated themselves to his baleful personality. And if, instead of pandering to his lunatic ambitions, that fateful coterie of German generals and industrialists had told Hitler to take it down the street, the world might have been spared World War Two.

  The egocentric behaviour of the Me-Generation; the obsession with doing one’s own thing; the calculated selfishness that was required to claw our way to the top of the heap, discarding the people that were of no further use to us; all this was the reverse of The Man’s teachings. We had turned our backs on the proto-communes that his disciples had created in the days immediately following the infusion of his power at the Feast of the Pentecost. And they that believed were together and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. The only people who practiced that now were raggedy-assed Christian Anarchists. And who took any notice of them?

  The trouble with niceness, self-sacrifice and goodness was that it was a real turn-off. And absolute goodness even more so. Like most people, I was capable of minor, unselfish acts but I was always careful not to let it get out of hand. After all, this is a tough world we live in. And in it, do-gooders usually end up by making everyone around them feel bad, or even inciting them to violence. I guess you could put it down to the perverseness of human nature.

  Or ‘Brax.

  For behind any charitable feelings there lurks the insidious conviction that people usually get what they deserve; or should. Which helps us get over that attack of the guilts when we fail to write out a cheque for this week’s good cause.

  And what really gets us off the hook, gives us the excuse we need for not trying, is the discovery that even the good guys have feet of clay. It confirms our worst suspicions and makes us feel a helluva lot better to know that while Martin Luther King may have been to the top of the mountain and looked over the other side, he was also balling chicks in integrated motel rooms; that good old Ike, our open-faced soldier-President, had the hots for the peaches-and-cream English society-girl-soldier who chauffeured him around wartime London. And when we fail to contribute to the fight against leprosy, we can do so in the comfortable knowledge that Nobel Doctor Albert Schweitzer was a tetchy, egocentric old fart who goose-stepped over his staff and patients. And if only we could get some dirt on Mother Teresa of Calcutta, our joy at eating out in expensive restaurants would be unconfined.

  That was the problem with The Man. Apart from cussing a fig tree, he hadn’t put a foot wrong. It was true he had put the hex on the Gadarene swine, but that was in a good cause. He’d also bad-mouthed the scribes and Pharisees, but everyone seems to agree that they were just a bunch of assholes. Despite my ingrained scepticism, I had been struck by his essential goodness. As Miriam and Linda had been. There was a kind of basic integrity about the guy despite the fact that, up to now, he had reacted to everything with an intriguing passivity. But then if, as the Book said, he was the Son of God, he didn’t have to do anything. His presence was enough; and from it, there radiated a quiet strength. Not an aura of physical force, but of incorruptibility. Which, in our day and age, was guaranteed to make people foam at the mouth.

  I was jerked out of my ambulatory reverie by a sudden clamour across the street. A crowd of people stood back from a negro spread-eagled in a doorway. Blood pumped out from under his body and snaked its way towards the kerb. A cop, summoned by a distraught mini-skirted hooker hurried along the outside of the line of parked cars with a drawn night-stick. The sound of approaching sirens cut a shrill swathe through the noise of the traffic.

  The Man took in the scene and started across the street.

  I grabbed his arm and held him back. ‘Listen, stay out of it. There’s nothing you can do.’

  He tried to shake me off. ‘He’s dying.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘They’ll have called an ambulance. Let that cop handle it. He’ll know what to do.’

  He swung his arm up and twisted free. I swore under my breath and followed him across the street. We got separated by a couple of passing cars. By the time I reached the other curb, he was kneeling over the body. The crowd closed round him leaving a narrow channel for the blood to drain into the gutter.

  Dear God, I remember thinking, don’t let him start raising the dead. The cop arrived. I stuck close behind him as he and the hooker made their way upstream.

  The Man had rolled up the black guy’s jacket and put it under his head, and had ripped a couple of strips off his shirt to make a pad to staunch the flow of blood from the stab-wound under the ribs. He got the cop to help him bind it into place but I had uneasy feeling that the Red Cross bandage bit was just to mask his magic.

  ‘You a doctor?’ asked the cop.

  ‘No, a rabbi,’ said The Man. ‘But I do a little first aid on the side.’ He laid one hand on the victim’s forehead and placed the other briefly over his punctured heart.

  The black guy gave a little jerk, fluttered his eyelids then rolled his eyes from side to side. Then he raised his head, looked down at his bandaged rib-cage and surveyed the ruins of his shirt. ‘Jeezuss, what d’you do that for, man? I paid sixty dollars for this fuckin’ thing!’

  The hooker, a caramel-coloured fox with a dayglo wig shaped like a giant nylon pan-scourer, went down on her knees with a shrill cry of relief and cradled the ungrateful bastard’s head. Two squad cars beat the ambulance into third place.

  I hauled The Man up and made sure my fingers were riveted to his sleeve. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’

  We left the hooker to explain who had done what to whom and slipped through the three-deep ring of spectators as the paramedics hauled out their stretcher trolley. I glanced back and saw the black guy sit up unaided. I knew they wouldn’t find a mark on him. And that could lead to a lot of awkward questions.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ said The Man, as I hustled him across to the east side of Broadway.

  ‘Just keep going,’ I said. ‘You and your goddamn miracles.’ All I wanted to do was grab a cab and put as much space as possible between us and the scene of the crime. But as always happens in situations like this, there were none available.

  Someone called out behind us. ‘Hey, Rabbi!’

  I held tight to The Man’s arm and kept going. A greasy-looking, broad-shouldered guy in a leather bomber-jacket and tight jeans turned sharply and headed towards us from the other side of the street. His right hand was tucked inside his jacket. Which meant he
either had fleas under his armpit, or a .38 Police Special.

  The palm of somebody’s hand slammed into my right shoulder. ‘Okay, you two – hold it right there.’

  It was the same voice as before. I looked back and saw it belonged to a young bearded guy in a flat tweed cap, with an Army surplus combat jacket over a red and black striped football shirt. He grabbed hold of The Man and spun him around, covering us both with his gun.

  His friend in the leather jacket arrived. A real greaseball. He flashed his NYPD badge. ‘Drug squad. We’re going to have to turn you over, friends.’

  Undercover narcs. It was insane. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What is this? Some kind of gag?’

  Flat Cap waved his .38. ‘Don’t get smart, shit-head. Lay your hands on the roof of that car.’

  I looked at The Man. ‘Just do as they say.’

  We leant against the roof of a white Volvo. Greaseball toed our feet apart and frisked us for concealed weapons. Starting with me.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ I said. ‘I’m a lawyer. A member of the New York Bar Association. And this gentleman is one of my clients from out of town.’

  Greaseball made sure I was clean. ‘Okay, turn around.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Identification.’

  I produced my wallet and showed him my driver’s licence and business card.

  ‘Gutzman, Schonfeld and Resnick …’ Greaseball ran his thumb over the raised ink on the card and passed it to Flat Cap. ‘They look expensive.’

  Flat Cap glanced at it then slipped it into a top pocket. ‘Check out the other guy.’

  I watched Greaseball frisk The Man and got my tongue into gear in readiness to explain away the absence of any means of identification. He turned The Man around and checked the inside pockets of the padded wind-breaker.