The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (16 page)

"Guess so," I said.

"So much evidence turned up at the Zadokite
Wadi
. So much that sheds light on the whole
kerygma
of early Christianity. We know so much, now. In no way was Paul speaking metaphorically; man literally rises from the dead. They had the techniques. It was a science. We would call it medicine today. They had the
anokhi,
there at the
wadi.
"

"The mushroom," I said.

He eyed me. "Yes, the
anokhi
mushroom."

"Bread and broth," I said.

"Yes."

"But we don't have it now."

"We have the Eucharist."

I said, "But you know and I know that the substance is not there, in the Eucharist. It's like the cargo cults where the natives build fake airplanes."

"Not at all."

"How is it different?"

"The Holy Spirit—" He broke off.

"That's what I mean," I said.

Tim said, "I feel that the Holy Spirit is responsible for Jeff coming back."

"So then you reason that the Holy Spirit does still exist and always existed and is God, one of the forms of God."

"I do now," Tim said. "Now that I've seen evidence. I did not believe it until I saw the evidence, the clocks set at the time of Jeff's death, Kirsten's burned hair, the broken mirrors, the pins stuck under her fingernails. You saw her clothes all disarranged that time; we had you come in and see for yourself. We didn't do that. No living person did that; we wouldn't manufacture evidence. Do you believe we would do that, contrive a fraud?"

"No," I said.

"And the day that those books leaped out of the bookshelf and fell to the floor—no one was there. You saw that with your own eyes."

"Do you think the
anokhi
mushroom still exists?" I asked.

"I don't know. There is a
vita verna
mushroom mentioned in Pliny the Elder's
Historia Naturalis, Book Eight.
He lived in the first century ... it would be about the right time. And this citation was not something he derived from Theophrastus; this was a mushroom he saw himself, from his direct knowledge of Roman gardens. It may be the
anokhi.
But that's only a guess. I wish we could be sure." He changed the subject, then, as was his custom; Tim Archer's mind never stayed on one topic for long. "It's schizophrenia that Bill has, isn't it?"

"Yep," I said.

"But he can earn a living."

"When he's not in the hospital," I said. "Or spiraling into himself and on the way to the hospital."

"He seems to be doing fine right now. But I note—an inability to theorize."

"He has trouble abstracting," I said.

"I wonder where and how he'll wind up," Tim said. "The prognosis ... it's not good, Kirsten says."

"It's zero. For recovery. Zilch. Zip. But he's smart enough to stay off drugs."

"He does not have the advantage of an education."

"I'm not sure an education is an advantage. All I do is work in a record store. And I wasn't hired for that because of anything I learned in the English Department at Cal."

"I've been meaning to ask you which recording of Beethoven's
Fidelio
we should buy," Tim said.

"The Klemperer," I said. "On Angel. With Christa Ludwig as Leonora."

"I am very fond of her aria," Tim said.

"
'Abscheulicher! Wo Eilst Due Hin?'
She does it very well. But no one can match Frieda Leider's recording years ago. It's a collectors' item ... it may have been dubbed onto an LP; if so, I've never seen it. I heard it once over KPFA, years ago. I never forgot it."

Tim said, "Beethoven was the greatest genius, the greatest creative artist the world has ever seen. He transformed man's conception of himself."

"Yes," I said. "The prisoners in
Fidelio
when they're let out into the light ... it is one of the most beautiful passages in all music."

"It goes beyond beauty," Tim said. "It involves an apprehension of the nature of freedom itself. How can it be that purely abstract music, such as his late quartets, can without words change human beings in terms of their own awareness of themselves, in terms of their ontological nature? Schopenhauer believed that art, in particular music, had—has—the power to cause the will, the irrational, striving will, to somehow turn back onto and into itself and cease to strive. He considered this a religious experience, although temporary. Somehow art, somehow music especially, has the power to transform man from an irrational thing into some rational entity that is not driven by biological impulses, impulses that cannot by definition ever be satisfied. I remember when I first heard the final movement of the Beethoven
Thirteenth Quartet
—not the 'Grosse Fuge' but the allegro that he added later in place of the 'Grosse Fuge.' It's such an odd little bit, that allegro ... so brisk and light, so sunny."

I said, "I've read that it was the last thing he wrote. That little allegro would have been the first work of Beethoven's fourth period, had he lived. It's not really a third-period piece."

"Where did Beethoven derive the concept, the entirely new and original concept of human freedom that his music expresses?" Tim asked. "Was he well-read?"

"He belonged to the period of Goethe and Schiller. The
Aufklärung,
the German Enlightenment."

"Always Schiller. It always comes back to that. And from Schiller to the rebellion of the Dutch against the Spanish, the War of the Lowlands. Which shows up in Goethe's
Faust, Part Two,
where Faust finally finds something that will satisfy him, and he bids the moment stay. Seeing the Dutch reclaiming land from the North Sea. I translated that passage, once, myself; I wasn't satisfied with any of the English translations available. I don't know what I did with it ... that was years ago. Do you know the Bayard Taylor translation?" He rose, approached a row of books, found the volume, brought it back, opening it as he walked.

"
'Below the hills, a marshy plain
infects what I so long have been retrieving:
that stagnant pool likewise to drain
were now my latest and my best achieving.
To many millions let me furnish soil,
though not secure, let free for active toil:
green, fertile fields, where men and herds go forth
at once, with comfort, on the newest earth,—
all swiftly settled on the hill's firm base,
raised by a bold, hard-working populace.
In here, a land like Paradise about:
up to the brink the tide may roar without,
yet though it gnaw, to burst with force the limit,
by common impulse all men seek to hem it.
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence,
this wisdom's ultimate and true:
he only earns his freedom and existence—'
"

I said, "'Who daily conquers them anew.'"

"Yes," Tim said; he closed the copy of
Faust, Part Two.
"I wish I hadn't lost the translation I made." He then opened the book again. "Do you mind if I read the rest?"

"Please do," I said.

"
'Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away
of childhood, manhood, age, and vigorous day.
And such a throng I fain would see,—
stand on free soil among a people free!
Then dared I hail the Moment fleeting,
"
Ah, linger still—thou art so fair!"'
"

"At that point God has won the bet in heaven," I said.

"Yes," Tim said, nodding.

"
'The traces cannot, of mine earthly being,
in aeons perish: they are there!—
Anticipating here such lofty bliss,
I now enjoy the highest Moment,—this.'
"

"That's a very beautiful and clear translation," I said.

Tim said, "Goethe wrote
Part Two
just a year before his death. I remember only one German word from that passage:
verdienen. Earns.
'Earns his freedom.' I suppose that would be
Freiheit, freedom.
Perhaps it went,
'Verdient seine Freiheit—'
" He broke off. "That's the best I can do. 'Earns his freedom who daily conquers it—them, freedom and existence—anew.' The highest point in German Enlightenment. From which they so tragically fell. From Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven to the Third Reich and Hitler. It seems impossible."

"And yet it had been prefigured in Wallenstein," I said.

"Who picked his generals by means of astrological prognostications. How could an intelligent, educated man, a great man, really, one of the most powerful men of his times—how could he begin to believe in that?" Bishop Archer said. "It is a mystery to me. It is an enigma that perhaps will never be solved."

I saw how tired he was, so I got my coat and purse, said good night, and departed.

My car had been ticketed. Shit, I said to myself as I pulled the ticket from the wiper-blade and stuck it into my pocket. While we're reading Goethe, Lovely Rita Meter-Maid is ticketing my car. What a strange world, I thought; or, rather, strange worlds—plural. They do not come together.

B
ISHOP TIMOTHY ARCHER
conceived in his mind after much prayer and pondering, after much application of his brilliant analytical faculties, the notion that he had no choice but to step down as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California and go—as he phrased it—into the private sector. He discussed this matter with Kirsten and me at length.

"I have no faith in the reality of Christ," he informed us. "None whatsoever. I cannot in good conscience go on preaching the
kerygma
of the New Testament. Every time I get up in front of my congregation, I feel that I am deceiving them."

"You told Bill Lundborg that night that Christ's reality is proven by Jeff coming back," I said.

"It's not," Tim said. "It fails to. I have exhaustively scrutinized the situation and it fails to."

"What does it prove, then?" Kirsten said.

"Life after death," Tim said. "But not the reality of Christ. Jesus was a teacher whose teachings were not even original. I have the name of a medium, a Dr. Garret living in Santa Barbara. I will be flying down there to consult him, to try to talk to Jeff. Mr. Mason recommends him." He examined a slip of paper. "Oh," he said. "Dr. Garret is a woman. Rachel Garret. Hmmm ... I was certain it was a man." He asked if the two of us wished to accompany him to Santa Barbara. It was his intention (he explained) to ask Jeff about Christ. Jeff could tell him, through the medium, Dr. Rachel Garret, if Christ were real or not, genuinely the Son of God and all the rest of that stuff that the churches teach. This would be an important trip; Tim's decision as to whether to resign his post as bishop hinged on this.

Moreover, Tim's faith was involved. He had spent decades rising within the Episcopal Church, but now he seriously doubted whether Christianity was valid. That was Tim's term: "valid." It struck me as a weak and trendy term, falling tragically short of the magnitude of the forces contending within Tim's heart and mind. However, it was the term he used; he spoke in a calm manner, devoid of any hysterical overtones. It was as if he were planning whether or not to buy a suit of clothes.

"Christ," he said, "is a role, not a person. It—the word—is a mistransliteration from the Hebrew 'Messiah,' which literally means the Anointed One, which is to say the Chosen One. The Messiah, of course, comes at the end of the world and ushers in the Age of Gold which replaces the Age of Iron, the age we now live in. This finds its most beautiful expression in the
Fourth Eclogue
of Virgil. Let me see ... I have it here." He went to his books as he always did in time of gravity.

"We don't need to hear Virgil," Kirsten said in a biting tone.

"Here it is," Tim said, oblivious to her.

"
'Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; magnus—'
"

"That's enough," Kirsten said sharply.

He glanced at her, puzzled.

Kirsten said, "I think it's insanely foolish and selfish of you to resign as bishop."

"Let me translate the eclogue for you, at least," Tim said. "Then you'll understand better."

"I understand that you're destroying your life and mine," Kirsten said. "What about me?"

He shook his head. "I'll be hired on at the Foundation for Free Institutions."

"What the hell is that?" Kirsten said.

"It's a think tank," I said. "In Santa Barbara."

"Then you're going to be talking with them while you're down there?" Kirsten said.

"Yes." He nodded. "I have an appointment with Pomeroy, who's in charge of it—Felton Pomeroy. I'd be their Consultant in Theological Matters."

"They're very highly thought of," I said.

Kirsten gave me a look that would have withered trees.

"There's been nothing decided," Tim said. "We are going to see Rachel Garret anyhow ... I see no reason why I shouldn't combine the two in a single trip. That way, I'll have to fly down there only once."

"I'm supposed to set up your appointments," Kirsten said.

"Actually," Tim said, "this will be a purely informal discussion. We'll have lunch ... I'll meet the other consultants. I'll see their buildings and gardens. They have very lovely gardens. I saw the Foundation's gardens several years ago and still remember them." To me he said, "You'll love them, Angel. Every kind of rose is represented, especially Peace. All the five-star patented roses are there, or however it is roses are rated. May I read the two of you the translation of Virgil's eclogue?

"
'Now comes the final age announced in the
Cumaen Sibyl's chant; the great succession
of epochs is born anew. Now the Virgin
returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now
a new race descends from heaven on high.
O chaste Lucina, goddess of births! smile
upon the boy just born, in whose time the
race of iron shall first cease, and a race
of gold shall arise throughout the world.
Thine own Apollo is now king.'
"