Watson, Ian - Novel 08 (21 page)

 
          
The
Devil shrieked. It snatched Sean up in its claw. He lofted, dizzyingly. Before
he knew it was happening, he was crammed head first down the dark gizzard.
Peristaltic convulsions squeezed the wind from him. He slid, he oozed. He was
the outside-in of a squirming python. Like a baby, birthing, his head burst
from the stinking cheeks of its rump. His lungs sucked in a suffocating fetor
which no one could possibly breathe. It filled his lungs, nevertheless, as his
head hung down into the fart-sack.

 
          
Pressure
crushed his shoulders. For a moment it felt as though he was going to be sucked
back into the Devil’s bowel. Then he fell free. His face parted the membrane of
the gas-bag. Briefly he stared down the gully pit. The hole in the ground
opened into blackness, nothingness. Down into the darkness he fell. Far off,
deep down, there seemed to be a funnel of light. But either the Devil’s gastric
juices were already at work on his flesh, dissolving it after brief contact, or
the sheer acceleration of his fall overcame him. He blacked out.

 
          
A
hand lightly
held Denise’s wrist. It
took her pulse. Or perhaps it granted her a pulse? Power, wakefulness and life
itself flowed from those fingers through her wrist into her whole body.

 
          
She
opened her eyes.

 
          
A
man in a pink robe bent over her. His feet were bare. He wore a loose toga-like
linen garment, fastened at the neck by a golden brooch. He had golden,
shoulder-length locks, a darker auburn beard and a thin drooping moustache. His
nose was long, his forehead high. His eyes bulged somewhat.

 
          
Making
what appeared to be a sign of peace or blessing, He drew Denise to her knees.
Then, letting go of her, He walked down the greensward where she had awoken,
toward a grove of orange trees. She found she was kneeling on a little hillock.
Beyond the grove she could just see the far side of a lake of milky blue,
shot-silk water. Something pink, like a spire, poked up. A long-eared hare
hopped and bounded, but crouched still as He passed.

 
          
Her
body felt laundered crisp and clean. Her Primavera hair fell sleek and golden
again down her shoulders, over her breasts.

 
          
“Oh,”
she breathed, touching the tresses wonderingly. Her injured foot . . . was healed,
the little toe restored.

 
          
“Wait,”
she called after the departing stranger.

 
          
He
turned, and regarded her with a certain severity. Or was it appraisingly?
Assessing her—as a potential bride? If God descends into the flesh, how far
down into it may He choose to descend? Perhaps He was already wedded to her by
His mere touch upon her wrist . . .

 
          
“You,”
she said chastely, rather abashed. She wondered whether she should cover
herself with her hands. What for? He had already molded her breasts and thighs.

           
“I am He,” He replied calmly and
continued on His way. He disappeared through the orchard.

 
          
So
I’m Eve, she thought. But where’s Adam? She looked around her.

 
          
The
Sun stood at
ten o’clock
.
It was morning, of the world-day. Here was a paradise garden, of lawns and
groves and pools, perhaps more beautiful than the Gardens, but in a quieter
key: of restful pastel colors rather than the bright pigments of the Gardens.
All was in proportion, too; Denise saw no giant birds nor enormous berries—not
yet, at least. Morning mists might just have been warmed away by the kindly
sun—though she also realized that it had been this way for a very long time.
Here was a place of freshness rather than luxury. She wondered whether the
creatures copulated, or simply played ... No, there was a scent of fecundity in
the air: of new creatures, new life. She sniffed: a fragrance of verdant
milkiness, as though crushed grass were to spill not sap, but fresh milk. It
seemed to waft from the lake beyond the grove—not a scent of copulation, but of
birth. She stared hard; the far shore seemed to be . . . bubbling, with a wave
of emerging creatures. She rubbed her belly. Could she too have a child? No,
perhaps not: she
was
His child.

 
          
The
hare bounded up to her, nose wrinkling. Liquid eyes stared up at her. She
ruffled its long ears. It stayed by her for a while, heart and sides thudding,
then abruptly shied away—halting and shying again, as though to lead her.

 
          
“Hi, there.”

           
Muthoni blinked, sat up and rubbed
her eyes. Her body was as black as soot once more. The mottling had all gone.
She ran her fingers over her skin deliciously. Yes, she was restored to
herself. Jeremy, for his part, looked younger and firmer—less hesitant and
equivocal. Muthoni had a curious feeling that someone else had just left them,
tiptoeing away . . .

 
          
They
were in a rough shelter of poles and thatch, leaning against a sandstone wall.
In front of this makeshift hut was a narrow beach, lapped lazily by an opaline
lake. A slim rococo fountain of translucent pink porcelain rose from the center
of the lake. The base of the fountain was a tiny clinker-like isle studded with
various crystal tubes and phials. The fountain spire itself was adorned with
ceramic leaves, sprays and husks. A pheasant and a peacock perched in these
branches. Blades of water spilled at various heights from taps as thin as
fencing foils. Soft rapiers of liquid descended to perturb the lake, adding to
the ripples set up by a gang of mallards paddling among reeds on the far
side—and by a parade of creatures marching and squirming out of the water below
a small honeycombed cliff: frogs, salamanders, axolotls, turtles, tortoises. A
heron stood astride these, dipping its neck occasionally to seize a wriggling
body and toss it down its gullet: the quality controller?
A
single hint of death, balancing the burgeoning new life.

 
          
To
one side of the cliff grew an orange grove. On the other, cropped grassland
rolled away towards a line of blue hills as sharp and abrupt as flints. Grazing
antelope roamed the plain. A solitary elephant, as white as chalk, marched
there with a large ape riding upon its shoulders like a mahout. Flapping her
ears, the elephant trumpeted jovially.

 
          
From
behind his back Jeremy produced a pomegranate which he held out to Muthoni. She
prised open the red-gold rind and sucked in the sweet pulp, spitting the seeds
out into the lake.

 
          
“Thank
God for some fruit! Is this really true? No more cannibalism, no more burnt
roosters, no more raw fish?”

 
          
“Thank
God indeed,” nodded Jeremy. He produced an orange for himself. Together they
breakfasted.

 
          
Sean
awoke. Where was he? He had
ijo
idea.
Once, years and years ago, he had got roaring drunk and woken up next morning
similarly with no idea where he was. What city, what country. Yes, it had been
in a beer garden in old
Salzburg
beside the foaming Salzach
river
that he had
drunk too much, fooling himself that so long as the descending saddle between
two hills in the distance and the ascending peak of another hill beneath it
maintained their perfect criss-cross, the landscape somehow embodied
cross-hairs of sobriety. That old memory . . . ah, it was so like chasing
dreams, each of which held the tail of the previous dream in its
teeth!—reminded him that he had indeed recently got very drunk, somewhere. The
alcoholic amnesia of long ago reminded him of another amnesiac awakening
recently . . . from a very cold sleep. No, not from the
real
cold sleep!

 
          
Now
at any rate it was warm. He stretched his limbs sensuously. He lay on soft turf
under a swollen fleshy tree which bore spiky green fronds in a fan shape: a
nopal cactus mated to a palm tree ... A curiously naive tree. A vine wreathed
its trunk and lower branches bearing clusters of amethyst grapes. Poised on the
trunk, a scarlet lizard fixed its eye upon him. Above the fronds was a powder
blue sky. There were orange trees some way off—and the edge of a lake.

 
          
Who
am I? My personality’s slipping away. I can still reach it if I make the
effort. No, it isn’t really a question of ‘reaching’. Rather, of unreaching: of
falling back into the confines of my old self, readopting that particular
limited existence. In this moment of forgetful awakening, I’m free of myself.

 
          
I
dreamed ... a living dream. Ah yes, of a starship called
Schiaparelli;
of a planetfall on a world which is a painting rich
in the deepest psychic imagery made over into the actual natural environment. I
wandered across Dayside with my friends—till the death-which-was-not-death took
me. I awoke in Hell. The Devil ate me. I can make all that my history and
become someone called Sean Athlone again ... or I can simply make it into
several phrases in a language that speaks of what-I-am-not-yet. Now what did I
say to the Devil to persuade him to pass me through his system, so rudely? Ah
yes, I posed a paradox: That
he
worshipped
me.
I achieved paradoxical
insight. I spoke the language of the psyche, whereas before I only ever spoke
about
it. Now it speaks me, and
everybody who lives and dies and lives again here.

 
          
A
shadow fell across Sean’s face. A pink-robed, bearded man in his
thirties—though by whose counting system
?—
looked down
at him. Sean sat up abruptly.

 
          
The
auburn beard must be a set of false whiskers. The face belonged to . . .

 
          
“
Knossos
!”

 
          
The
man shook his head. “
Knossos
is my son, who lives in the Gardens. My spirit always flies with him—it
is his bird companion.”

 
          
“You’re
. . . the God?
The Superbeing?
Why do you look so much
like
Knossos
?”

 
          
“I
am that aspect of the God, who is God-the-Son: the Son of Man. I must resemble
Man. God and Man
mirror
one another. Only in this way
can I present myself to you, Sean.”

 
          
“But
Knossos
is
really
Heinrich Strauss: a man with such a powerful obsession that—”

 
          
“That
he
compelled
me to resemble him? I
hear your thoughts, Sean.” The God smiled gently.
“Watch.”
Bending over, he scooped His hands into the turf, slicing it as smoothly as
a knife
cuts butter. He held the sod up in cupped hands,
squeezed them together briefly then opened them. A robin redbreast stood
beady-eyed upon his palm. He tossed it away into the air. Up it flew to perch
on a frond of the nopal palm, where it sang joyously.

 
          
Slowly,
the tuft healed its scar.

 
          
A miracle—or a conjuring trick?

 
          
“Where
did you get that bird from?”

 
          
“From elsewhere in this world, where it was dying—in the jaws of a
civet cat.
I am the transmuting medium, Sean. My bones are the
lapis:
the Stone. In My veins flows
aqua nostra
. Enjoy My world, I enjoin
you—learn from it.”

 
          
“I’d
like to learn where
you
came from.”

 
          
“In
a wider sense, I am begotten from the Whole God.” “So you aren’t really the
God?”

           
“I am, and I am not. I was always
here, but did not notice
My
own presence—in your human
sense—till your people, who are now My people, came and became My mirror. I,
who am speaking to you at this moment, am only a part of My Whole Self. I have
resigned from that Wholeness, in order
to
be
for you. My Devil has resigned even further from the Whole Light, even
unto darkness. He is the dark side of the mirror.”

 
          
“Have
you any idea what’s going on in Hell? The pain, the madness, the tormented
, tormenting
machines!”

 
          
“Sean,
since My Devil is there, surely I am there too. Wherever a being is, I am. It
is
My
hope that you will redeem Me, through your
suffering and joy and learning—redeem Me from the darkness of matter, which is
at its nadir and also at its turning point in Hell.”

 
          
“You
want . . .
help?”
asked Sean,
astonished.

 
          
Must
a God necessarily tell the truth? The truth, that is, other than men—such as
Knossos
—could conceive?
Knossos
was clothed to conceal his secret
knowledge; that was his occult robe, as high priest. This God wore clothes too:
to conceal the brightness of knowledge from men—and
even from Himself?
Otherwise, He couldn’t be here on His world in
person? I can talk to the God, thought Sean, but it’s only talk. It isn’t
insight
—into what lies beneath robes and
flesh and bones.