The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

13

ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, Tim picked me up in a rented Pontiac. I wore a black strapless gown and carried a little beaded purse; I wore a flower in my hair, and Tim, gazing at me as he held the car door open, remarked that I looked lovely.

"Thank you," I said, feeling shy.

We drove to the restaurant on University Avenue, just off Shattuck, a Chinese restaurant that had recently opened. I had never been there, but customers at the Musik Shop had told me it was the great new place to eat in town.

"Have you always worn your hair up like that?" Tim asked, as the hostess led us to our table.

"I got it done for tonight," I explained. I showed him my earrings. "Jeff got me these years ago. I usually don't wear them; I'm afraid I'll lose one."

"You've lost a little weight." He held my chair for me and I nervously seated myself.

"It's the work. Ordering far into the night."

"How is the law firm?"

I said, "I manage a record store."

"Yes," Tim said. "You got me that album of Fidelio. I haven't had much chance to play it ..." He opened his menu, then; absorbed, he turned his attention away from me. How easily that attention waned, I thought. Or, rather, alters its focal point. It isn't the attention that changes; it is the object of that attention. He must live in an endlessly shifting world. Heraclitus' flux world personified.

It pleased me to see that Tim still wore his clericals. Is that legal? I asked myself. Well, it's none of my business. I picked up my menu. This was Mandarin-style Chinese food, not Cantonese; it would be spiced and hot, not sweet, with lots of nuts. Ginger root, I said to myself; I felt hungry and happy, and very glad to be back with my friend again.

"Angel," Tim said, "come with me to Israel."

Staring at him, I said, "What?"

"As my secretary."

Still staring, I said, "Take Kirsten's place, you mean?" I began, then, to tremble. A waiter came over; I waved him away.

"Would either of you like a drink?" the waiter said, ignoring my gesture.

"Go away," I said to him, with menace in my voice. "The goddamn waiter," I said to Tim. "What are you talking about? I mean, what sort of-"

"Just as my secretary. I don't mean any personal involvement; nothing of that sort. Did you think I was asking you to become my mistress? I need someone to do the job Kirsten did; I find I can't manage without her."

"Christ," I said. "I thought you meant as your mistress."

"That's out of the question," Tim said, in the stern, firm tone that meant he was not joking. That, in fact, he disapproved. "I think of you still as my daughter-in-law."

"I run the record store," I said.

"My budget permits a fairly good outlay; I can probably pay you as well as your law office-" He corrected himself. "As the record store pays."

"Let me think about it." I beckoned to the waiter to come over. "A martini," I said to him. "Extra dry. Nothing for the bishop."

Tim smiled wryly. "I'm no longer a bishop."

"I can't," I said. "Come to Israel. I have too many ties here."

In a quiet voice, Tim said, "If you don't come with me, I will never-" He broke off. "I saw Dr. Garret again. Recently. Jeff came across from the next world. He says that unless I take you to Israel with me, I'll die there."

"That is pure nonsense," I said. "Pure, absolute bilge. I thought you gave all that up."

"There have been more phenomena." He did not elaborate; his face, I saw, looked strained and pale.

Reaching, I took Tim's hand. "Don't talk to Garret. Talk to me. I say, Go to Israel and the hell with that old lady. It isn't Jeff; it's her. You know that."

"The clocks," Tim said. "They've been stopped at the time Kirsten died."

"Even so-" I began.

"I think it may be both of them," Tim said.

"Go to Israel," I said. "Talk to the people there, to the people of Israel. If ever any people was embedded in reality-"

"I won't have much time. I've got to get right to the Dead Sea Desert and find the wadi. I have to be back in time to meet with Buckminster Fuller. I think it's Buckminster I'm supposed to meet with." He touched his coat. "It's written down." His voice trailed off.

"It was my impression that Buckminster Fuller is dead," I said.

"No, I'm sure you're wrong." He gazed at me; I gazed back, and then, by degrees, we both began to laugh.

"See?" I said, still holding the bishop's hand in mine. "I wouldn't be any help to you."

"They say you would," Tim said. "Jeff and Kirsten."

"Tim," I said, "think of Wallenstein."

"I have a choice," Tim said in a low but clear voice, a voice of brisk authority, "between believing the impossible and the stupid-on the one hand-and-" He ceased speaking. "And not believing," I said.

"Wallenstein was murdered," Tim said. "No one will murder you."

"I am afraid," Tim said.

"Tim," I said, "the worst thing is the occult crap. I know. Believe me. That's what killed Kirsten. You realized that when she died; remember? You can't go back to that stuff. You will lose all the ground-

"'Better a live dog,' " Tim grated, " 'than a dead lion.' By that I mean, Better to believe in nonsense than to be realistic and skeptical and scientific and rational and die in Israel."

"Then simply don't go."

"What I need to know is there at the wadi. What I need to find. The anokhi, Angel; the mushroom. It's there somewhere and that mushroom is Christ. The real Christ, whom Jesus spoke for. Jesus was the messenger of the anokhi which is the true holy power, the true source. I want to see it; I want to find it. It grows in the caves. I know it does."

I said, "It once did."

"It is there now. Christ is there now. Christ has the power to break the hold of fate. The only way I'm going to survive is if someone breaks the hold of fate and releases me; otherwise, I will follow Jeff and Kirsten. That's what Christ does; he unseats the ancient planetary powers. Paul mentions that in his Captivity Letters ... Christ rises from sphere to sphere." Again his voice trailed off, bleakly.

"You're talking about magic."

"I'm talking about God!"

"God is everywhere."

"God is at the wadi. The Parousia, the Divine Presence. It was there for the Zadokites; it is there now. The power of fate is, in essence, the power of world, and only God, expressed as Christ, can burst the power of world. It's inscribed in the Book of the Spinners that I will die, except that Christ's blood and body save me." He explained, "The Zadokite Documents speak of a book in which the future of every human is written from before Creation. The Book of the Spinners; it's something like Torah. The Spinners are fate personified, like the Norns in Germanic mythology. They weave men's fortunes. Christ, alone, acting for God here on Earth, seizes the Book of the Spinners, reads it, carries the information to the person, informs him of his fate, and then, through his absolute wisdom, Christ instructs the person on the way his fate can be avoided. The road out." He was silent, then. "We'd better order. There are people waiting."

I said, "Prometheus stealing fire for man, the secret of fire; Christ seizing the Book of the Spinners, reading it and then carrying the information to man to save him."

"Yes." Tim nodded. "It's roughly the same myth. Except that this is no myth; Christ really exists. As a spirit, there at the wadi. "

"I can't go with you," I said, "and I'm sorry. You'll have to go by yourself and then you'll see that Dr. Garret is pandering to your fears the way she pandered to-and viciously exploited- Kirsten's fears."

"You could drive me."

"There are drivers there in Israel who know the desert. I don't know anything about the Dead Sea Desert."

"You have an excellent sense of direction."

"I get lost. I am lost. I'm lost now. I wish I could go with you but I have my job and my life and my friends; I don't want to leave Berkeley-it's my home. I'm sorry but that's God's truth. Berkeley is where I've always lived. I'm just not ready to leave it at this time. Maybe later." My martini came; I drank it down, all at once, in a spasmodic gulp that left me panting.

Tim said, "The anokhi is the pure consciousness of God. It is, therefore, Hagia Sophia, God's Wisdom. Only that wisdom, which is absolute, can read the Book of the Spinners. It can't change what is written, but it can discern a way to outwit the Book. The writing is fixed; it will never change." He seemed defeated, now; he had begun to give up. "I need that wisdom, Angel. Nothing less will do."

"You are like Satan," I said, and then realized that the gin had hit me in a rush; I had not meant to say that.

"No," Tim said, and then he nodded. "Yes, I am. You're right.

"I'm sorry I said that," I said.

"I don't want to be killed off like an animal. If the writing can be read, then an answer can be figured out; Christ has the power to figure it out, Hagia Sophia-Christ. They're homologized from the Old Testament hypostasis to the New." But, I could see, he had given up; he could not budge me and he knew it. "Why not, Angel?" he said. "Why won't you come?"

"Because," I said, "I don't want to die there in the Dead Sea Desert."

"All right. I'll go alone."

"Someone should survive all this," I said.

Tim nodded. "I would want you to survive, Angel. So stay here. I apologize for-"

"Just forgive me," I said.

He smiled wanly. "You could ride on a camel."

"They smell bad," I said. "Or so I've heard."

"If I find the anokhi I will have access to God's wisdom. After it has been absent from the world for over two thousand years. That is what the Zadokite Documents speak of, that wisdom that we once had open to us. Think what it would mean!"

The waiter approached our table and asked us if we were ready to order. I said I was; Tim glanced about him in confusion, as if just now aware of his surroundings. It made my heart ache to see his bewilderment. But I had made up my mind. My life, as it was constituted, meant too much for me; most of all, I feared involvement with this man: it had cost Kirsten her life, and, in a subtle way, my husband's. I wanted that all behind me; I had started over; I no longer looked back.

Wanly, without enthusiasm, Tim told the waiter what to bring him; he seemed oblivious of me, now, as if I had faded into the surroundings. I turned to my own menu, and saw there what I wanted. What I wanted was immediate, fixed, real, tangible: it lay in this world and it could be touched and grasped; it had to do with my house and my job, and it had to do with banishing ideas finally from my mind, ideas about other ideas, an infinite regress of them, spiraling off forever.

The food, when the waiter brought it, tasted wonderful. Both Tim and I ate with pleasure. My customers had been right.

"Mad at me?" I said, after we had finished.

"No. Happy because you will survive this. And you will stay as you are." He pointed at me, then, with a commanding expression on his face. "But if I find what I am after, I will change. I will not be as I am. I have read all the documents and the answer isn't in them; the documents point to the answer and they point to the location of the answer, but the answer is not in them. It is at the wadi. I am taking a risk but it's worth it. I am willing to take the risk because I may find the anokhi and just knowing that makes it worth it."

I said suddenly, with insight, "There haven't been any more phenomena."

"True."'

"And you didn't go back to Dr. Garret."

"True." He did not seem contrite or embarrassed. "That was to get me to come with you."

"I want you along. So you can drive me. Otherwise-I'm afraid I won't find what I'm looking for." He smiled.

"Shit," I said. "I believed you."

"I have had dreams," Tim said. "Disturbing dreams. But no pins under my fingernails. No singed hair. No stopped clocks."

I said, falteringly, "You wanted me to come with you that badly." For a moment I felt a surge in me, a need to go. "You think it would be good for me, too," I said, then.

"Yes. But you won't come. That's clear. Well-" He smiled his old familiar, wise smile. "I tried."

"Am I in a rut, then? Living in Berkeley?"

"Professional student," Tim said.

"I run a record store."

"Your customers are students and faculty. You're still tied to the university. You haven't broken the cord. Until you do, you will not fully be an adult."

"I was born the night I drank bourbon and read the Commedia. When I had that abscessed tooth."

"You began to be born. You knew about birth. But until you come to Israel-that is where you will be born, there in the Dead Sea Desert. That is where the spiritual life of man began, at Mt. Sinai, with Moses. Ehyeh speaking ... the theophany. The greatest moment in the history of man."

"I would almost go," I said.

"Go, then." He reached out his hand.

I said, simply, "I'm afraid."

"That's the problem," Tim said. "That's the heritage of the past: Jeff's death and Kirsten's death. That's what it's done to you, done permanently. Left you afraid to live."

"'Better a live dog-' "

"But," Tim said, "you are not genuinely alive. You are still unborn. This is what Jesus meant by the Second Birth, the Birth in or from the Spirit; the Birth from Above. This is what lies in the desert. This is what I will find."

"Find it," I said, "but find it without me."

"'He who loses his life-"'

"Don't quote the Bible to me," I said. "I've heard enough quotations, my own and others'. Okay?"

Tim reached out and we solemnly, without speaking, shook hands. He smiled a little, then; after a bit he let my hand go and then examined his gold pocket-watch. "I'm going to have to get you home. I've still got one appointment left this evening. You understand; you know me."

"Yes," I said. "It's okay. Tim," I said, "you are a master strategist. I watched you when you met Kirsten. You brought it all to bear on me, here, tonight." And you almost persuaded me, I said to myself. In a few more minutes-I would have given in. If you had kept up just a little longer.

"I am in the business of saving souls," Tim said enigmatically. I could not tell if he spoke in irony or if he meant it;

I simply could not tell. "Your soul is worth saving," he said, then, as he rose to his feet. "I'm sorry to rush you, but we do have to go."

You always were in a hurry, I said to myself as I also got up. "It was a wonderful dinner," I said.

"Was it? I didn't notice; I'm preoccupied, apparently. I have so many things to finish before I fly to Israel. Now that I don't have Kirsten to arrange everything for me ... she did such a good job."

"You'll find someone," I said.

Tim said, "I thought I found you. The fisherman, tonight; I fished for you and didn't get you."

"Some other time, maybe."

"No," Tim said. "There will be no other time." He did not amplify. He did not have to; I knew that it was so, for one reason or another: I sensed it. Tim was right.

When Timothy Archer flew to Israel, the NBC network news mentioned it briefly, as they would mention a flight of birds, a migration too regular to be important and yet something the viewers should be told about, by way (it would seem) of a reminder that Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer still existed and was still busy and active in the affairs of the world. And then we, the American public, heard nothing for a week or so.

I got a card from him, but the card arrived after the big news coverage, the late-breaking sensational story of Bishop Archer's abandoned Datsun found, its rear end up off the little rutted winding road, up on a jutting rock, the gas station map still on the right-hand front seat where he had left it.

The government of Israel did everything possible and did it swiftly; they had troops and- shit. They employed everything they had, but the news people knew that Tim Archer had died in the Dead Sea Desert because you cannot live out there, crawling up cliffs and down into ravines; you cannot survive, and they did eventually find his body and it looked as if, one of the reporters on the scene said, as if he knelt praying. But, in fact, Tim had fallen, a long way, down a cliff-side. And I drove, as usual, to the record store and opened it up for business and put money in the register and this time I did not cry.

Why hadn't he taken a professional driver? the news people asked. Why had he ventured out on the desert alone with a gas station map and two bottles of soda pop-I knew the answer. Because he was in a hurry. Undoubtedly getting hold of a professional driver took, in his view, too much time. He could not wait around. As with me in the Chinese restaurant that night, Tim had to get moving; he could not stay in one place; he was a busy man, and he rushed on, he rushed out into the desert in that little four-cylinder car that isn't even safe on California freeways, as Bill Lundborg had pointed out; those subcompact cars are dangerous.

I loved him the most of all of them. I knew it when I heard the news, knew it in a different way than I had known it before; before it had been a feeling, an emotion. But when I realized he was dead, that knowledge made me into a sick person that limped and cringed, but drove to work and filled the register and answered the phone and asked customers if I could help them; I wasn't sick as a human is sick or an animal is sick; I became ill like a machine. I still moved but my soul died, my soul that, Tim had said, had never been fully born; that soul, not yet born, but born a little and wishing to be born more, born fully, that soul died and my body mechanically continued on. .

The soul I lost during that week did not ever return; I am a machine now, years later; a machine heard the news of John Lennon's death and a machine grieved and pondered and drove to Sausalito to sit in on Edgar Barefoot's seminar, because that is what a machine does: that is a machine's way of greeting the horrible. A machine doesn't know any better; it simply grinds along, and maybe whirrs. That is all it can do. You cannot expect more than that from a machine. That is all it has to offer. That is why we speak of it as a machine; it understands, intellectually, but there is no understanding in its heart because its heart is a mechanical one, designed to act as a pump.

And so it pumps, and so the machine limps and coasts on, and knows but does not know. And keeps up its routine. It lives out what it supposes to be life: it maintains its schedule and obeys the laws. It does not drive its car over the speed limit on the Richardson Bridge and it says to itself: I never liked the Beatles: I found them insipid. Jeff brought home Rubber Soul and if I hear ... it repeats to itself what it has thought and heard, the simulation of life. Life it once possessed and now has lost; a life now gone. It knows it knows not what, as the philosophy books say about a confused philosopher; I forget which one. Locke, maybe. "And Locke believes he knows not what." That impressed me, that turn of phrase. I look for that; I am attracted to clever phrases, which are to be regarded as good English prose style.

I am a professional student and will remain one; I will not change. My opportunity to change was offered to me and I turned it down; I am stuck, now, and, as I say, know but know not what.