Michael Bishop - Ancient of Days

“Amen,” I said. The word slipped out, impelled, I think, by an unconscious memory of my slipshod Congregationalist upbringing in Tocqueville.

Theoretically a believer, RuthClaire gave me a dirty look.

McElroy wiped his hands. “Mrs. Montaraz, please know that I’ve also lifted a prayer for Adam’s speedy recovery.”

“Thank you.”

“What about that handsome boy there?”

“What about him?”

“Has he been baptized?”

RuthClaire folded her arms around T. P. “You’ve performed your ceremony for the day. It’s time for you to leave.”

“Delay could be a mortal mistake, ma’am. It could cause—”

“He’s hardly in danger. Baptists wait until they’re twelve or thirteen, don’t they?”

“You’re not Baptists, ma’am. Nor are we at the Greater Christian Constituency. We embrace the denomination, of course, but my own doctrinal origins are Methodist. We’re brother and sister, Mrs. Montaraz.”

Adam began to sign, feebly but urgently.

“No,” RuthClaire told him. “Absolutely not. If it’s done, it’ll be done in a church, with a congregation and a robed minister.” When Adam persisted, she bore down: “You’re overstepping what you have a right to ask! You’re not the only one in this room responsible for Tiny Paul’s spiritual dispensation!”

McElroy said, “There’s a Biblical injunction commanding wives to—”

“Get the holy hell out of here!” RuthClaire yelled. T. P. burrowed into her armpit. Adam’s eyes fluttered shut. Like me, he had probably never heard her utter an epithet stronger than “Heck!” or “Drat!”

McElroy appeared ready to keep the argument going, but a portly man and a youth in his early twenties stopped at Adam’s doorway, distracting him. The younger of the two men reproduced McElroy’s lank physique almost exactly.

“Daddy,” he said, “Dr. Siebert’s come to take you to your next lecture over in White.”

“Adam, stay in touch, hear?” McElroy said cheerily. “It’s been a joy, sanctifying you in Christ’s sweet name. The boy next time, mebbe.”

“Take the stupid bedpan with you,” RuthClaire said.

McElroy gave her a thin smile and spoke to his son: “Come get the font, Duncan. I’m finished with it for today.”

Duncan McElroy obeyed, retrieving the bedpan from the cantilevered tray and carrying it out of the room like a wise man bearing a thurible of perfumed incense. The evangelist gave a perfunctory salute, then followed Duncan and Dr. Siebert out of the room—off toward the elevator and another elevating session with some of Candler’s theology students.

RuthClaire, wrung out, began very quietly to cry.

Over the next week, RuthClaire and I visited Adam daily, spelling each other when one of us needed a break. Livia George managed the West Bank in my absence. I drove down twice to check up on her, but her efficient handling of matters made me feel about as useful there as a training wheel on a tank.

Adam improved rapidly, but his doctors still forbade the removal of his plastic chin support and the bandages holding it in place. So he took nourishment intravenously and talked with us with sign language. Also, he had a lap-sized electric typewriter that he had taught himself to use by the hunt-and-peck method.

McElroy returned to Louisiana the day after Adam’s baptism, but one unsettling consequence of the Bedpan Ceremony was the habiline’s frequent recourse to prayer. The Lord’s Prayer. The prayer of St. Francis of Assisi beginning, “ Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace .” Any number of Old Testament psalms. “ Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep .” The Pilot’s Prayer. The Newspaper Columnist’s Prayer. A few obscure Eastern supplications, including Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and of course Sufic formulae. And a small anthology of weird but occasionally moving prayers—petitionary prayers—that Adam had written himself.

Indeed, although Adam had accepted baptism in Christ Jesus’s name, the prayer ritual in his hospital room had an ecumenical cast. Here is one of his prayers, typed out on the little machine he used to engage in animated dialogues with us:

After the baptism, every visit to Adam’s room concluded with a prayer. Once, I asked him what he believed he was accomplishing with such ritual.

On his lap machine, he typed: THERE IS NO TRUE RELIGION WITHOUT PRAYER.

That led me to question the value of religion, true or not, and Adam struggled to answer that one, too. Finally, he typed this compound word: SELF-DEFINITION.

He found it amusing that the value of a belief in a Higher Power had its ultimate ground in one’s own ego. Was that a contradiction? No, not really. A paradox? Probably. But if Adam felt a greater sense of urgency about his relationship with God than did most twentieth-century human beings, the ambiguity of his status vis-à-vis both God and his two-legged fellows fueled that feeling.

“You know,” I told him after reading his “Gut and Mind” prayer, “you’re assuming a rigid line between the ensouled and the soulless, human beings and humanoid animals.”

Go on, he signaled.

“You’ve made it an either/or proposition. But what if there’s a gray area where the transition takes place?”

LIKE THE DUSK SEPARATING DAY FROM NIGHT?

“Exactly.”

I read his next haltingly written response over his shoulder: I UNDERSTAND, MISTER PAUL, THE BASIS OF HOW YOU ARGUE HERE. THE WORRY ABOUT WHAT AN EARLY HOMINID IS, BEAST OR PERSON. BUT MANY THINGS, I THINK, IT TAKES TO MAKE A CREATURE HUMAN , AND IF A CREATURE IS MISSING ONLY ONE OR TWO, I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS RIGHT TO SAY, AH HA, YOU DO NOT BELONG TO HUMAN SPECIES.

“Okay, Adam, if you believe that human beings have souls, then anyone on this side— our side—of the transitional area has one. You’re safe because… well, because you’ve successfully interbred with a human woman.”

IT IS NOT SO EASY

“Why not?”

BECAUSE A CREATURE GOING THROUGH ANIMALNESS TO HUMANITY—IN THEORY, I TELL YOU—GOES THROUGH A MAPPABLE SORT OF EVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY. BUT A SOUL DOES NOT DIVIDE OR BREAK. YOU CANNOT GET CHANGE FOR IT. YOU HAVE ONE IN YOUR POCKET OR YOU DO NOT. WHERE DOES GOD REACH INTO THE DUSK TO GIVE A SOUL TO ANY CREATURE ON THIS JOURNEY? WHAT REASONS DOES HE HAVE TO MAKE THIS MYSTERIOUS GIFT?

“If God’s gift is mysterious, Adam, maybe it’s impossible to know and futile to fret. Maybe we should forget the whole stupid notion of souls, immortal or otherwise.”

DOES IGNORING SUCH HARD QUESTIONS SEEM TO YOU, MISTER PAUL, AN ADMIRABLE WAY TO LIVE?

“If they’re nonquestions. If they don’t have any answers.”

Adam considered my reply. FOR ME, THEY ARE REAL QUESTIONS. He advanced the sheet of paper and added at the bottom of the page: LET US PRAY.