Gore Vidal - Messiah

"Clarissa knows what is happening here. That's why she has come West, though she can't bear California. She wants to be in on it the way she's in on everything else, or thinks she is."

"You mean John Cave, your magus ?" It was the first time I had ever said that name: the sword was between us now, both edges sharp.

"You guessed? or did she tell you that was why I came back?"

"I assumed it. I remembered what you said to me last spring."

"He is more than… magus , Eugene." And this was the first time she had said my name: closer, closer. I waited. "You will see him." I could not tell if this was intended as a question or a prophecy. I nodded. She continued to talk, her eyes on mine, intense and shining. Over her shoulder the night was black and all the stars flared twice, once in the sky and again upon the whispering smooth ocean at our feet, one real and one illusion: both light.

"It is really happening," she said and then, deliberately, she lightened her voice. "You'll see when you meet him. I know of course that there have been thousands of these prophets, these saviors in every country and in every time. I also know that this part of America is particularly known for religious maniacs. I started with every prejudice, just like you."

"Not prejudice… skepticism: perhaps indifference. Even if he should be an effective one, one of the chosen gods and wonder-workers, should I care? I must warn you, Iris, that I'm not a believer. And though I'm sure that the revelations of other men must be a source of infinite satisfaction to them, individually, I shouldn't for one second be so presumptuous as to make a choice among the many thousands of recorded revelations of truth, accepting one at the expense of all the others: I might so easily choose wrong and get into eternal trouble. And you must admit that the selection is wide, and dangerous to the amateur."

"You're making fun of me," said Iris, but she seemed to realize that I was approaching the object in my own way. "He's not like that at all."

"But obviously if he is to be useful he must be accepted and he can't be accepted without extending his revelation or whatever he calls it and I fail to see how he can communicate, short of hypnotism or drugs, the sense of his vision to someone like myself who, in a sloppy but devoted way, has wandered through history and religion, acquiring with a collector's delight the more colorful and obscure manifestations of divine guidance, revealed to us through the inspired systems of philosophers and divines, not to mention such certified prophets as the custodians of the Sibylline books, ' lllo die hostem Romanorum esse periturum ' was the instruction given poor Maxentius when he marched against Constantine: needless to say he perished and consequently fulfilled the prophecy by himself becoming the enemy of Rome, to his surprise I suspect. My point, though, in honoring you with the only complete Latin sentence which I can ever recall is that at no time can we escape the relativity of our judgments. Truth for us, whether inspired by messianic frenzy or merely illuminated by reason, is, after all, inconstant and subject to change with the hour. You believe now whatever it is this man says. Splendid. But will the belief be true to you at another hour of your life? I wonder. For even if you wish to remain consistent and choose to ignore inconvenient evidence in the style of the truly devoted, the truly pious, will not your prophet himself have changed with time's passage? for no human being can remain the same, despite the repetition of…"

"Enough, enough!" she laughed aloud and put her hand between us as though to stop the words in air. "You're talking such nonsense."

"Perhaps. It's not at all easy to say what one thinks when it comes to these problems or, for that matter, to any problem which demands articulation. Sometimes one is undone by the flow of words assuming its own direction, carrying one, protesting, away from the anticipated shore to terra incognita . Other times, at the climax of a particularly telling analogy, one is aware that in the success of words the meaning has got lost. Put it this way, finally, accurately : I accept no man's authority in that realm where we are all equally ignorant. The beginning and the end of creation are not our concern. The eventual disposition of the human personality which we treasure in our conceit as being among the more poignant ornaments of an envious universe is unknown to us and shall so remain until we learn the trick of raising the dead. God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased and conceived. We are prisoners in our flesh, dullards in divinity as the Greeks would say. No man can alter this though of course human beings can be made to believe anything. You can teach that fire is cold and ice is hot but nothing changes except the words. So what can your magus do? What can he celebrate except that which is visible and apparent to all eyes? What can he offer me that I should accept his authority, and its source?"

She sighed, "I'm not sure he wants anything for himself; acceptance, authority… one doesn't think of such things, at least not now. As for his speaking with the voice of some new or old deity, he denies the reality of any power other than the human…"

"A strange sort of messiah."

"I've been trying to tell you this." She smiled. "He sounds at times not unlike you just now… not so glib perhaps."

"Now you mock me."

"No more than you deserve for assuming facts without evidence."

"If he throws over all the mystical baggage what is left? an ethical system?"

"In time, I suppose, that will come. So far there is no system. You'll see for yourself soon enough."

"You've yet to answer any direct question I have put to you."

She laughed. "Perhaps there is a significance in that; perhaps you ask the wrong questions…"

"And perhaps you have no answers."

"Wait."

"For how long?"

She looked at her watch by the candles' uncertain light. "For an hour."

"You mean we're to see him tonight?"

"Unless you'd rather not."

"Oh, I want to see him, very much."

"He'll want to see you too, I think." She looked at me thoughtfully but I could not guess her intention; it was enough that two lines had crossed, both moving inexorably toward a third, toward a temporary terminus at the progression's heart.

It is difficult now to recall just what I expected. Iris deliberately chose not to give me any clear idea of either the man or of his teachings or even of the meeting which we were to attend; we talked of other things as we drove in the starlight north along the ocean road, the sound of waves striking sand loud in our ears.

It was nearly an hour's drive from the restaurant to the place where the meeting was to be held. Iris directed me accurately and we soon turned from the main highway into a neon-lighted street; then off into a suburban area of comfortable-looking middle-class houses with gardens. Trees lined the streets; dogs barked; yellow light gleamed at downstairs windows. Silent families were gathered in after-dinner solemnity before television sets, absorbed by the spectacle of figures singing, dancing and telling jokes.

As we drove down the empty streets, I saw ruins and dust where houses were and, among the powdery debris of stucco all in mounds, the rusted antennae of television sets like the bones of awful beasts whose vague but terrible proportions will alone survive to attract the unborn stranger's eye. But the loathing of one's own time is a sign of innocence, of faith. I have come since to realize the wholeness of man in time. That year, perhaps that ride down a deserted evening street of a California suburb, was my last conscious moment of particular disgust: television, the Blues and the Greens, the perfidy of Carthage, the efficacy of rites to the moon… all were at last the same.