Mission (37 page)

It is depressing to discover that the current animosity between Arab and Jew was poisoning the body politic even then. And even more so when you considered how well the Jews fared under Islam, compared to their fate at the hands of Christians everywhere since Theodosius gave the Church of Rome its licence to kill.

The province of Judea, with its prized city of Jerusalem, the political, religious and financial centre of the nation became the scene of sporadic uprisings then, finally, open armed rebellion. Alarmed by the news that Palestine was coming apart at the seams, Varus – the Roman Governor of Syria – marched south with two full legions. About twenty thousand professional soldiers from the most powerful and best organised army the ancient world had ever known, and which has only been matched for its machine-like efficiency and calculated ferocity by the
Waffen SS.

The Man's face tightened as the recalled his memories of Varus's short, sharp, bloody campaign. Mary and Joseph had taken him to Bethlehem to visit Eliza and her son Johanan-Gabriel when news came that Varus's legions were heading south. One along the coast; the other through Galilee. Their objective was Jerusalem – where Eliza's husband, Zacharias, now held a modest post in the Temple hierarchy. Eliza went to fetch him. Mary and Joseph took Joshua-Ya'el and Johanan-Gabriel into the open country south-west of Bethlehem setting up camp near the present-day Gaza strip.

‘We waited there for weeks,' recounted The Man. ‘Hoping that Eliza and Zacharias would be among the stream of refugees coming from the direction of Jerusalem. Finally word came that the Romans had regained control of the province. So we started back towards Bethlehem. People we met on the road told us that the Romans were looting the towns and villages so we stayed in open country. Mary
went into Bethlehem after dark and made contact with her relatives. They told her that Eliza had not returned from Jerusalem …'

The Man paused. Reflecting on what, for a young child, must have been a harrowing experience. ‘We headed north. It was terrible. The Romans had crucified over two thousand people. The crosses were set up all the way around the walls of Jerusalem. Some of the bodies had hung there for weeks.'

‘Must have been a bad scene,' I said, displaying my mastery of useless observation.

The man looked across at me. His face suddenly haggard. ‘It was. The memory of it haunted me for the rest of my earth-life. In fact, it still does.'

And us too, I thought. The scene he had described was one that had been repeated time and time again. Different methods, different locations, new executioners. Variations on a theme by ‘Brax: Masada, Auschwitz, Warsaw, Babi Yar. And Jerusalem.

Always Jerusalem …

He smiled wryly at Miriam. ‘Perhaps now you can understand why I almost did not have the courage to go through with it when it came to my turn.'

Miriam leaned across from where she was sitting and touched his arm. ‘We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to.'

The Man took her hand. ‘I
want
to tell you about it. It's important for you to know what happened.'

‘Was – was Zacharias one of the people who were crucified?' asked Miriam.

‘No,' said The Man. ‘He'd been killed earlier in the street violence, along with hundreds of others that the Romans didn't even bother to count. Gabriel and I were able to guide Joseph and Mary to where Eliza was hiding in a cellar. The atmosphere was still tense and there were troops on patrol everywhere. So we went on up to Nazareth in Galilee, where we had heard that things had stayed relatively quiet.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Miriam. ‘But I have to ask this. Why did you let it happen? And if you couldn't stop it, why does God – I know that may not be the name of whoever you work for, but you know who I mean – why does he allow such things? It's easy to say that ‘Brax is to blame for what we do to each other but why must there be all this suffering in the first place?'

His reply reflected the gentle concern with which she had put the question. ‘Has it occurred to you that God might suffer too?'

Miriam shrugged. ‘We'll have to take your word for that.'

Which, I thought, was a pretty good reply. After all, how could we know? And anyway, what kind of suffering could be experienced by a disembodied, transcendent being who, as far as I could gather, was safely separated from the nastiness of the World Below by the impregnable ramparts of the Empire? Were we talking about the spiritual equivalent of a finger and toe-nail pulling session laid on by the
Gestapo
? Or the less traumatic self-inflicted agonies of doubt that besiege every artist who attempts to create a master-work?

I know that both of us were too timid to press him on this point but the fact was that his answer begged the question. I could only see one solution to the problem Miriam had raised. And that was by positing a situation where God was neither omnipotent nor unique. He might be the head of the Celestial Empire but in the way that Louis B Mayer had been head of MGM. God could be imagined as the producer who had come up with a great story idea which he'd given to ‘Brax – a Celestial Eric von Stroheim – to direct. ‘Brax had then departed with his film crew into the depths of the cosmos where he had promptly torn up the script, taken the telephone off the hook and begun shooting his own version of the movie. What had begun as
The Sound of Music
now resembled
The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre.

The battle now in progress could be viewed as the struggle for creative control of the project: The Man, Gabriel, Michael
et al,
as executives despatched to the location by Head Office in an effort to talk or beat some sense into ‘Brax. The problem was compounded by the fact that ‘Brax could not be fired because he had a cast-iron contract with Celestial Studios, and Head Office could not suspend production because everything they owned had been sunk into the locations, cast and costumes. And God, up there in the penthouse, kept telling his weary staff that there was nothing wrong with the original story. It was still a great idea. And that maybe, if they could just stop ‘Brax from going completely overboard, when shooting was completed, they would be able to splice their own version together from the out-takes.

I liked this idea better than the Celestial block-buster of which God was the sole author and in whose pages we were reduced to puppet status. As someone with a great idea that had gone wrong, God appeared – to me at least – a lot more lovable. It also shifted most of the blame on to ‘Brax.

The trouble with the book analogy was that, if you thought it
through, it meant that we were as insubstantial as the characters that populated the world of literature. It brought us right back to the ‘
I think, therefore I am/I am therefore I think
' controversy. If the Hindus were correct in their ancient belief that the external world, which they called
Maya,
was an illusion, then you could posit a situation in which we, this wretched planet and the whole cosmic drama were nothing more than products of God's imagination.

Now I am aware that that statement may seem diffuse but, as a theory, it was no more untenable than the widely-held alternative world view which consisted of looking up at the wonder of the star-lit heavens and accepting that it all existed without rhyme or reason. Or that, conversely, if it
had
any meaning then we wouldn't understand it, so why waste time trying? And it was infinitely preferable to the third, most popular, alternative which consisted of keeping your nose stuck firmly in the trough and never thinking at all.

It was the knowledge that I had experienced these alternate states of mind in my feeble efforts to make sense of my own life that enabled me to appreciate, in some smallmeasure, the difficulties The Man had faced then and the much greater problems he would encounter if he were to attempt the same task today.

We, the sum total of human/divine consciousness, might have started out as twelve pristine Celestial over-minds, each with its own tidy flock of human hosts, but the situation now was completely out of control. It was true that Isaiah had uttered the prophetic line – ‘…
Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return
', but there were now over four
billion
people on this planet with more due every day.

That meant the Ain-folk element in each of us was now only a fraction of what it had been in less populous times. Was this all part of the plan, or was the injunction to ‘
Go forth and multiply
' a crafty bit of editing by ‘Brax? The fact that our present share of the trapped Celestial presence was only a fraction of what it must have been, could account for the disappearance of those legendary powers our ancestors were said to possess: second-sight, telepathic and healing ability, the understanding and mastery of the power stored in the stones, trees, earth and sky, and intuitive rapport with the world of nature and the ability to penetrate other planes of existence.

Nowadays, the vast majority of us had lost touch with the ‘other-world'. It was only the odd individual, or isolated groups, like the last true Mayans now living on the border between Mexico and
Guatemala, who exhibited those strange powers that defied rational explanation. For the most part, they were derided or ignored by the rest of us who preferred to adopt the more comfortable unquestioning approach to life. To concentrate on the practical day-to-day problems of living. I had done the same thing myself quite happily for many years. I might pause now and then and ask myself, like Alfie, what it was all about, but asking questions does not necessarily entail a commitment to change. And even from where I'm sitting now, I know that speculating on just what the hell God is up to does not pay the rent. If you and I just sat around like the lilies of the field waiting until somebody clothed us we'd end up with double pneumonia.

I understand things a lot better now, but I still remember how I felt as we sat listening to The Man that evening in good old New York. It was easy for him to talk about the need to rouse the Celestial remnant that had taken refuge inside us. We, the poor earth-bound vehicles, with our bald tyres, rusty chassis and worn-out motors had to face up to the brutal truth. Which was – to paraphrase President Nixon – in the battle for men's hearts and minds, ‘Brax had us by the spark plugs. And had no intention of letting go.

So far, the only solution The Man had come up with was to cut them off – albeit metaphorically. I was aware that some of the early Christians had gone in for self-castration but, to be frank, it was not a solution you could sell to the hedonists of the twentieth century. Or to Jews with a penchant for metaphysical speculation. I had already made God a gift of my foreskin and, at that point in time, I had no intention of making any further donations.

Wednesday, 6th of May. I arrived at the office at my usual time and spent the day tidying up more loose ends in preparation for my proposed two-week break. I had left The Man at my apartment with a plea to lie low. I did not tell Linda that he was back in town and, unless he walked in through the plate glass door without opening it, I didn't intend to.

In the evening, Miriam came round and we sat through another family-album session with The Man. I won't go into the day-to-day details here. It's all down on the tapes I had been running since our first talk-fest up at Sleepy Hollow. But the broad outline was this: after Varus's legions had crushed the rebel uprising in Judea – in which Zacharias had died – Joseph, Mary and The Man-child Joshua returned to Nazareth in Galilee taking the widowed Eliza and Johanan-Gabriel with them.

Just in case you've forgotten, Galilee was now ruled by Herod Antipas, the second of the old man's surviving sons, whose nickname was ‘The Fox'.

Eliza and her son stayed with Joseph and Mary for the rest of that year then moved to a place called Aenon, near the village of Salim where there was a religious community run by the Essenes – the breakaway sect I mentioned earlier in this account. The enclosed, ascetic life-style of the Essenes had kept their collective
karma
to a minimum. It's something that's hard for us to appreciate but the spiritual power generated by the community formed an umbrella of energy under which Gabriel was able to shelter from the will-sapping vibrations that ‘Brax was beaming in from all sides. By taking cover in this way, Gabriel could keep his own
karma
down to a level which
would allow him to pass back through the Time Gate.

The Man, however, elected to soldier on. He needed to acquire at first-hand, the experience ofliving in the world in order to appreciate the plight of the trapped Ain-folk.

A few weeks after The Man's fourth birthday, Mary gave birth to James, the first of her six other children. Four boys and two daughters. Benjamin, the last, was born when Joshua-Ya'el was eleven. His twelfth birthday was in 6 AD. A year in which several things happened. Archelaus, the weak-kneed elder son of Herod the Great who had been appointed
ethnarch
of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, was deposed by the Romans and handed a one-way ticket to Vienne, in the Rhone Valley. His three-piece princedom was turned into a second class Imperial Province ruled by a Roman
Procurator.
Palestine, I gather, was not regarded as a popular posting among the soldiers and administrators of the Empire. Its history of internecine discord plus the ever-present threat of sectarian violence and covert assassination by Jewish militants, made it as attractive as the US Marine's fire-base at Ke Sanh.

Publius Coponius was the man who drew the short straw. He set up his headquarters at the port of Caesarea Sebaste (now just a heap of ruins near the fishing village of Sedot Yam midway between Haifa and Tel-Aviv). Hold it – I've just realised that parenthetical remark needs some qualification. By ‘Now', I mean ‘Now in 1981'. Okay, back to the story.