“I was wandering through a huge rambling house, with all manner of
corridors and passages and stairwells.
It was like being stranded inside an Escher engraving that went on
forever. Finally I came out on the edge
of a cliff, with a steep winding trail going down to the ocean. At the bottom in a rocky shoal I found a
skiff, moored to the rock. My name was
on the skiff. I climbed in and undid the
mooring, soon heading out to the high sea.
I lost my sense of time. I don’t
know how long I was out there. I lost
time. Sometimes there was a little brown
bird, like la sparrow, perched on the bow.
Sometimes I slept. The girl in
the house warned me about this. Eventually,
whether hours or days later, I don’t know, but I set ground on a beach,
presumably on another island somewhere.
I expected to hear the theme song for “Gilligan’s Island; but instead,
there was the girl in white, standing on the shore like she was expecting
me. She put her finger to her lips
before I could say anything, then she led me along a path through the
forest. We went up a steep hill which
led to a clearing, in the midst of which stood a huge Edwardian mansion, not
unlike the huge rambling house I had started in.
‘But this is where I started’, I tried to tell her. At the front gate stood a very elderly woman,
who had evidently been expecting me.
“He’s come home,
Mother”, she said.
“Is he ready to
sleep?” the old woman asked.
“He came as it was
prophesied.”
“Then show him to
his room.” To me she said, “Welcome
home, child.” I struggled to remember my
name, because I wanted to introduce myself.
I couldn’t remember who I was.
“I’m afraid I don’t
know my name”, I said.
“Here you shall
learn it.”
“And what shall I
call you?”
“Why what everyone
calls me, dear child. I am your mother.”
She must have been
very old, but she stood straight and tall, her otherwise stern face
transfigured by the kindest, most radiant smile I had ever seen. I can’t remember how she was dressed. In tweeds, I think. Earth tones.
She had bad hair, grey, which wanted to fly in all directions. I felt that I had indeed come home. The old woman and the girl together led me
along an interminable labyrinth of corridors until upstairs, in the garret I
believe, they showed me my room. It was
small, with white walls and a gently sloped ceiling. The single window looked out onto the ocean. It was spartanly furnished, and as soon as
they left I lay down on the narrow bed and went to sleep.”
Glen was expecting
to see Stephen and Pierre at any moment, both of whom he’d invited to
dinner. Everything was ready: the lentil
soup, the salad, the bread. Christ
crucified as painted by his own hand stared down at him from the far wall. This was the sole survivor of the series that
had been immolated along with his warehouse studio more than seven years
ago. It was the first, and in his opinion,
the most powerful of the Thirteen Crucifixions.
To the untrained eye it appeared at first as a huge black surface, with
a spread-eagled naked man in the centre—Timothy’s lithe physique had translated
wonderfully for this purpose, thus also ascribing to Our Lord a most generously
proportioned manhood. Well, why
not? Though surely it had gone to waste,
though not in Timothy’s case. He had
never known someone so highly sexed. But
Jesus? He tried to imagine him as a
sexual being. Might He have done it with
Mary Magdalene? Or with one of His
Disciples? Maybe John, but certainly not
Peter. The possibilities for speculation
seemed endless. Had he ever
masturbated? Had an orgasm? Surely, as an adolescent he played with
Himself or had wet dreams. If He truly
was God incarnate, and if He surely wanted to experience in full our humanity
in all its horror, limitations and beauty, then how could have Jesus stepped
around anything so primal, so elemental and problematic as sex? Did he ever have erections? Glen wondered what it might have been like,
painting Jesus Christ with a full erection.
Blasphemous? There would be an
enormous outcry, he would never get away with it. Such had been his intention while executing number
thirteen, the Thirteen Crucifixion.
Timothy would consistently get it up just for the occasion. He was just high-lighting the glans when fire
struck. It surely must have been Divine
wrath. So Stephen had come to torment
him, with a body and member identical nearly to Tim’s, and a due reminder of
his folly. Stephen had noticed, upon
seeing the painting, the likeness.
He had seen
God. He still couldn’t remember what
happened, upon losing consciousness, after leaving his body, after being pulled
through that vortex. He had been
transformed, there was no doubt about this; and so for these seven years Glen
had abstained from sex, refraining even from touching himself. It sometimes appalled him that it had been
this easy, even with Stephen around. He glanced over, again, the contents of
Richard’s journal that he had just read, then laid it on the armrest of the chair. He got up to stir the soup.
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