Part 16 (1/2)

I stood up and stepped over the edge into the water, which was cold. Looking down, I saw that the pool had its tiles arranged into the shape of a giant fish, much like the one I had found on the sh.o.r.e and eaten-a huge silver fish with fins and gills. The water came up to my knees, and the rest of me was drenched by the spray, and it was very cold. But I felt no discomfort.

I was staring down at the giant fish on which I stood when the two of them came up beside me. The man bent, cupping his hands together, held them under water for a moment and then raised them, dripping, to my head. I felt his hands, open now, on my head and then the water from them was streaming down my face.

”I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

The woman reached out and placed her large soft hand on my head. ”Amen and praise the Lord,” she said softly.

We stepped out of the fountain and I waited, with the man, the dogs, and Biff, while the woman went to Sears and came back with towels for our feet. We dried our feet and legs, put on our shoes, and continued walking, in silence.

I felt even lighter than before, more remote and yet more truly present at the same time, extremely alive to what was outside me and inside me at the same time. I felt that I had crossed some invisible line, one that had been waiting for me ever since I had left Ohio, and had now entered some symbolic realm where my life was light, ”like a feather on the back of my hand,” and where only my own experience of that life, my own undrugged experience, was all that I was living for. And if that experience meant death in the Lake of Fire, it would have to be acceptable.

I wonder now, writing this down, if that is how those who immolate themselves feel when they decide to do it. But they are drugged, unaware. And they cannot read.

Could baptism really work? Could there be a Holy Spirit? I do not believe so.

We walked in silence down the wide hall and back up the broad staircase, and the lights behind us dimmed and darkened, and the music became silent and the fountains stopped as we left.

Near the top of the stairs I was able to turn for a moment to look down on the vast and empty Mall, with its chandeliers dimming and its fountains dying down, and its storefronts still bright as if waiting for customers who would never come. I could sense the sad dignity of that place, of its broad, clean emptiness.

They took me back outdoors into what had become evening, and led me, still silently, to one of the large buildings that flanked the obelisk-a big, official-looking building with a well-trimmed lawn and no weeds around it. We went to the back of the building and I saw a garden there and, added on to the building itself, an incongruous back porch made of wood, looking like one I had seen in Birth of a Nation.

We entered by a door on this porch and I found myself in a huge, high-ceilinged room with perhaps thirty people in it, all plainly dressed, all silent, sitting around an enormous wooden table as though they had been waiting for me. The people at the table had been silent when we came in; they remained silent as the old man and his wife led me through the room and around the table-as silent as the eating rooms of a dormitory or of a prison.

We went down a narrow hallway into another, equally large room, with rows of wooden chairs in it, facing a podium. Behind the podium was a wall-sized television screen, now off.

Baleen led me up to the podium. There was a large black book on it and, although whatever lettering might have once been on its cover was now completely worn off, I was certain the book was the Bible.

The lightness and strength I had felt in the Mall were leaving me. I stood there, slightly embarra.s.sed, looking at this quiet old room with its worn wooden chairs and its pictures of the face of Jesus on the walls and the big television screen, and before long the people from the kitchen started coming into the room and sitting down, men and women walking in quietly in twos and threes and sitting wordlessly and then looking at me with a kind of shy curiosity. They all wore jeans and simple s.h.i.+rts, and a few of the men were bearded like me but most were not. I watched them with a certain hope that I might see young people, but that hope was disappointed; no one was any younger than I. There was a couple holding hands and looking like lovers; but they were obviously in their forties.

And then when all of the chairs were full Edgar Baleen stood up and suddenly threw his arms out wide, palms upward, saying loudly, ”My brethren.”

Everyone watched him attentively; the lovers let go of one another's hands. Most of the people were in couples, but in the second row was a woman of about my age, sitting alone. She was tall and, like all of them, simply dressed, wearing a denim s.h.i.+rt with a blue ap.r.o.n over it, but she was striking to look at. Despite my nervousness I found myself watching her as much as I could without being obvious about it. She really was, I began to see, a beautiful woman; it was pleasant to look at her and to get my mind partly off what I had just been through at the Lake of Fire and of what might be in store for me. Whatever might happen, I felt that the crisis was past now; and I deliberately made myself think about the woman.

Her hair was blond, curling slightly around the sides of her face. Her complexion, despite the roughness of her clothes, was clear white and flawless. Her eyes were large and light-colored and her forehead was high, clear and intelligent-looking.

”Brethren,” Baleen was saying. ”It's been a good year for the family, as all know. We've been at peace with our neighbors, and the Lord's provisions at the Great Mall have continued in their bountiful abundance.” Then he bowed his head, thrust his arms forward and upward, and said, ”Let us pray.”

The group bowed their heads, except for the woman I had been watching. She inclined her head only very slightly. I bowed mine, wanting to take no risks. I had seen meetings like this one in films and I knew that the idea was to bow and be silent.

Baleen began to recite what seemed to.be a memorized, ritual prayer: ”G.o.d grant us safety from the fallout past and the fallout to come. Preserve us from all Detectors. Grant us thy love and keep us from the sin of Privacy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.”

I could not help being startled by the words ”the sin of Privacy.” It was completely contrary to my teaching, and yet something in me responded favorably to the phrase.

There were a few coughs and squirmings from the group when Baleen finished, and everyone looked up again.

”The Lord has provided for the Baleens,” he said, in a more ordinary tone of voice now, ”and for all of the Seven Families in the Cities of the Plain.” Then he leaned forward at his lectern, grasping its sides with what I suddenly noticed were small, white, womanish hands-hands with well-manicured nails-and spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper. ”And it may be that now the Lord has sent us an interpreter of his word or a prophet. A stranger has come into our midst, has pa.s.sed an ordeal of fire before my own eyes, and has shown a knowledge of the Lord.”

I saw that everyone was looking at me. Despite the new calmness I had seemed to find in myself, it was very disconcerting. I had never been an object of attention like that before. I felt myself blus.h.i.+ng and had a sudden wish for the old rales of Privacy that forbade people to stare at one another. There must have been thirty of them-all of them looking at me with open curiosity or suspicion. I put my hands in my pockets to keep them from trembling. Biff was at my feet, rubbing herself between my ankles. For a moment I even wanted her to go away, to stop paying attention to me.

”The stranger has told me,” Baleen was saying, ”that he is a carrier of the old knowledge. He says he is a Reader.”

Several of them looked surprised. Their stares at me became even more intense. The woman I had been watching leaned slightly forward, as if to get a closer look.

Then, with a dramatic wave of his arm in my direction, Baleen said, ”Step forward to the Book of Life and read from it. If you can read.”

I looked at him, trying to appear calm; but my heart was beating powerfully and my knees trembled. All those people a.s.sembled in that one place! I had expected something like this to happen, but now that it had come I seemed to have reverted to the person I once had been-before Roberto and Consuela, before Mary Lou, before prison and my escape and my new, rebellious self-sufficiency. Even as a shy professor, lecturing on mind control by repeating words I had memorized and said many times before, I would be nervous in the presence of my largest cla.s.ses-of ten or twelve students at one time. And students were all properly trained to avoid my eyes while listening to me.

Somehow I managed to walk the few feet to the lectern where the book sat. I almost tripped over Biff. Baleen stepped aside for me and said, ”Read from the beginning.”

I opened the cover of the book with a trembling hand and was grateful to be able to look down, avoiding the eyes of the congregation. I stared at the page for a long time, in silence. There was print on it; but somehow the letters did not make any sense. Some were very big and some were small. I knew that I was looking at a t.i.tle page, but I could not make my mind work. I kept staring at it. It was not a foreign language, I knew that somehow; but I could not make my brain a.s.semble the letters into coherence; they were just inked marks on a yellowed page. I had stopped shaking and was frozen. This lasted an intolerably long time. Into my mind had come a frightening image blanking out the page on the oak lectern in front of me: the yellow-orange fire at the bottom of the pit in the mall; the nuclear core that could vaporize my body. Read, I told myself. But nothing came.

I could feel Baleen moving closer to me. I felt that my heart would stop.

And then, suddenly, a clear, strong female voice from in front of me spoke out: ”Read the book,” it said. ”Read for us, brother,” and I looked up, startled, and saw that it was the beautiful tall woman who was sitting by herself and was now staring at me pleadingly. ”You can do it!” she said. ”Read to us.”

I looked back to the book. And suddenly it was simple. The big, black letters that filled most of the page said, ”Holy Bible,” in capital letters.

I read it: HOLY BIBLE.

And then, under that, the letters were small: ”Abridged and updated for modern readers”

And at the bottom of the page: ”Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Omaha. 2123”

That was all that page said. I turned to the next, which was filled with print, and began, more calmly now, to read: ”Genesis, by Moses. At first G.o.d made the world and the sky, but the world had no shape and there was n.o.body living on it. And it was dark, too, until G.o.d said, *Give us some light!' and the light came on. . .”

I went on, more and more easily, and calmly. It was not at all like the Bible I had read from back at the prison, but that one had been much older.

When I finished the page I looked up.

The beautiful woman was staring at me with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. On her face was a look of wonder or of adoration.

And I was peaceful again, inside. And suddenly so tired, so worn and used andovercome, that I dropped my head there at the podium and closed my eyes, letting my mind become blank, empty of everything except the words: My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

I heard chairs sc.r.a.ping the floor as men and women stood, and I heard the footsteps of people leaving the big room, not speaking; but I did not look up.

Finally I felt a hand, strong but gentle, on my shoulder and I opened my eyes. It was the old man, Edgar Baleen.

”Reader,” he said. ”Come with me.”

I stared at him.

”Reader. You pa.s.sed the ordeal. You're baptized. You're safe from the fire. You need some rest.”

I sighed then and said, ”Yes. Yes. I need some rest.”

And so I had come from prison to this-to being ”Reader” for a group of Christians, to being some kind of priest. From that time on for months I have read to them from the Bible in the mornings and the evenings while they listen in silence. I read and they listen and nothing is said.

Writing it now, here in my house at Maugre, alone and safe, and now well-fed, I can hardly remember that strangeness of living with the Baleens. In many ways my older memories of Mary Lou and of the silent films are more vivid and present to me, even though I will be expected to appear for an evening reading only a short time from now. I have spent this entire day writing, since my morning reading. I will stop now and feed Biff and have a gla.s.s of whiskey. Tomorrow I will try to finish this new account of my life. And to tell the sad story of Annabel.

That first night old Edgar put me in a room upstairs to sleep, and left me. There were two beds in the room, with headboards made of bra.s.s tubes that looked like the one the old man had died in in the film where the clock stopped and the dog cried. I took my shoes off and got into the bed with my clothes on and Biff got up on the quilt, curled up at my feet, and went immediately to sleep. I felt envious of her. Although I was exhausted, and although the bed was the most comfortable thing I had ever had to sleep on, with its hugely thick mattress and its big, flower-printed quilt that had a tag reading SEARS' BEST-GOOSE DOWN sewn to its pink binding, yet I could not sleep. My mind was becoming full. In the darkened room and with my senses sharpened by fatigue, I began to picture a mult.i.tude of things from my past with a preternatural clarity. It was something like the vivid mind control that I had studied and taught in Ohio, with clear, hallucinatory images; but it was not aided by the usual drugs, and I had no control over it.