The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

2

DEAR JANE MARION:

Within a period of two days, two people-one an editor friend, the other a writer friend- recommended The Green Cover to me, both of them saying the same thing in effect, that if I wanted to know what was happening in contemporary literature I had god-damn well better know your work. When I got the book home (I had been told that the titular essay was the best and to start with it), I realized that you had herein done a piece on Tim Archer. So I read that. All of a sudden he was alive again, my friend. It brings fierce pain to me, not joy. I can't write about him, since I'm not a writer, although I did major in English at Cal; anyhow, one day as a sort of exercise I sat down and scratched out a spurious dialog between him and me, to see if I could by any chance recapture the cadence of his endless flow of talk. I found I could do it, but, like Tim himself, it was dead.

People ask me sometimes what he was like, but I'm not into Christianity so I don't encounter church people that often, al-though I used to. My husband was his son Jeff so I knew Tim on a rather personal basis. Frequently we talked theology. At the time of Jeff's suicide, I met Tim and Kirsten at the airport in San Francisco; they were briefly back from England and meeting with the official translators of the Zadokite Documents, at which point in his life Tim first began to believe that Christ was a fraud and that the Zadokite Sect possessed the true religion. He asked me how he should go about conveying this news to his flock. This was before Santa Barbara. He kept Kirsten in a plain apartment in the Tenderloin District of the City. Very few people went there. Jeff and I, of course, could. I remember when Jeff first introduced me to his father; Tim walked up to me and said, "My name's Tim Archer." He didn't mention he was a bishop. He did have on the ring, though.

I'm the one who got the phone call about Kirsten's suicide. We were still suffering over Jeff's suicide. I had to stand there and listen to Tim telling me that Kirsten had "just slipped away"; I could see my little brother, who had really been fond of Kirsten; he was assembling a balsawood model of a Spad Thirteen-he knew the call was from Tim but of course he didn't know that now Kirsten, along with Jeff, was dead.

Tim differed from everyone else I ever knew in these respects: he could believe in anything and he would immediately act on the basis of his new belief; that is, until he ran into another belief and then he acted on that. He was convinced, for example, that a medium had cured Kirsten's son's mental problems, which were severe. One day, watching Tim on TV being interviewed by David Frost, I realized that he was talking about me and Jeff ... however, there was no real relationship between what he was saying and the reality situation. Jeff was watching, too; he did not know that his father was talking about him. Like the Medieval Realists, Tim believed that words were actual things. If you could put it into words, it was de facto true. This is what cost him his life. I wasn't in Israel when he died, but I can visualize him out on the desert studying the map the way he looked at a gas station map in downtown San Francisco. The map said that if you drove X miles you would arrive at place Y, whereupon he would start up the car and drive X miles knowing that Y would be there; it said so on the map. The man who doubted every article of Christian doctrine believed everything he saw written down.

But the incident that, for me, conveyed the most about him took place in Berkeley one day. Jeff and I were supposed to meet Tim at a particular corner at a particular time. Tim drove up late. Running after him came a gas station attendant, furiously angry. Tim had filled up at this man's station and then backed over a pump, mashing it flat-whereupon Tim had driven off because he was late for his appointment with us.

"You destroyed my pump!" the attendant yelled, totally out of breath and totally beside himself. "I can call the police. You just drove off. I had to run all the way after you."

What I wanted to see was whether Tim would tell this man, a very angry but really a very modest man in the social order, a man at the bottom of the scale on which Tim, really, stood at the top-I wanted to see if Tim would inform him that he was the Bishop of the Diocese of California and was known all over the world, a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr., a friend of Robert Kennedy, a great and famous man who wasn't, at the moment, wearing his clericals. Tim did not. He humbly apologized. It became evident to the gas station attendant after a bit that he was dealing with someone for whom large brightly colored metal pumps did not exist; he was dealing with a man who was, quite literally, living in another world. That other world was what Tim and Kirsten called "The Other Side," and step by step that Other Side drew them all to it: first Jeff, then Kirsten and, ineluctably, Tim himself.

Sometimes I tell myself that Tim still exists but totally, now, in that other world. How does Don McLean put it in his song "Vincent"? "This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." That's my friend; this world was never really real to him, so I guess it wasn't the right world for him; a mistake got made somewhere, and underneath he knew it.

When I think about Tim I think:

"And still I dream he treads the lawn, Walking ghostly in the dew, Pierced by my glad singing through ..."

As Yeats put it.

Thank you for your piece on Tim, but it hurt to find him alive again, for a moment. I guess that is the measure of greatness in a piece of writing, that it can do that.

I believe it was in one of Aldous Huxley's novels that a character phones up another character and exclaims excitedly, "I've just found a mathematical proof for the existence of God!" Had it been Tim he would have found another proof the next day contravening the first-and would have believed that just as readily. It was as if he was in a garden of flowers and each flower was new and different and he discovered each in turn and was equally delighted by each, but then forgot the ones that came before. He was totally loyal to his friends. Those, he never forgot. Those were his permanent flowers.

The strange part, Ms. Marion, is that in a way I miss him more than I miss my husband. Maybe he made more of an impression on me. I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me; you're the writer.

Cordially,

Angel Archer

I wrote that to the famous New York Literary Establishment author Jane Marion, whose essays appear in the best of the little magazines; I did not expect an answer and I got none. Maybe her publisher, to whom I sent it, read it and flipped it away; I don't know. Marion's essay on Tim had infuriated me; it was based entirely on secondhand information. Marion never knew Tim but she wrote about him anyhow. She said something about Tim "giving up friendships when it served his purpose" or something like that. Tim never gave up a friendship in his life.

That appointment that Jeff and I had made with the bishop was an important one. In two respects, official and, as it turned out, unofficial. Regarding the official aspect, I proposed and intended to carry off a meeting, a merger, between Bishop Archer and my friend Kirsten Lundborg who represented FEM in the Bay Area. The Female Emancipation Movement wanted Tim to make a speech on its behalf, a speech for free. As the wife of the bishop's son, it was thought I could pull it off. Needless to say, Tim did not seem to understand the situation, but that was not his fault; neither Jeff nor I had clued him in. Tim supposed we were getting together to have a meal at the Bad Luck, which he had heard about. Tim would be paying for the meal because we didn't have any money at all that year, or, for that matter, the year before. As a clerical typist in a law office on Shattuck Avenue I was the putative wage- earner. The law office consisted of two Berkeley guys active in all the protest movements. They defended in cases involving drugs. Their firm was called BARNES AND GLEASON LAW OFFICE AND CANDLE SHOP; they sold handmade candles, or at least displayed them. It was Jerry Barnes' way of insulting his own profession and making it clear that he had no intention of bringing in any money. Regarding this goal he was successful. I remember one time a grateful client paid him in opium, a black stick that looked like a bar of unsweetened chocolate. Jerry was at a loss as to what to do with it. He wound up giving it away.

It was interesting to watch Fred Hill, the KGB agent, greeting all his customers the way a good restaurateur does, shaking hands and smiling. Hill had cold eyes. According to the talk on the street he had the authority to murder those under Party discipline who seemed restive. Tim paid hardly any attention to Fred Hill as the son of a bitch led us to a table. I wondered what the Bishop of California would say if he knew that the man handing us our menus was a Russian national here in the U.S. under a fake name, an officer in the Soviet secret police. Or perhaps this was all a Berkeley myth. As in the many preceding years, Berkeley and paranoia were bedfellows. The end of the Vietnam War was a long way off;

Nixon had yet to pull out U.S. forces. Watergate still lay several years ahead. Government agents rooted about the Bay Area. We independent activists suspected everyone of conniving; we trusted neither the right nor the CP-USA. If there was any single hated thing in Berkeley it was the smell of the police.

"Hello, folks," Fred Hill said. "The soup today is minestrone. Would you like a glass of wine while you decide?"

The three of us said we wanted wine-just so long as it wasn't Gallo-and Fred Hill went off to get it.

"He's a colonel in the KGB," Jeff said to the bishop.

"Very interesting," Tim said, scrutinizing the menu.

"They're really underpaid," I said.

"That would be why he has opened up a restaurant," Tim said, looking around him at the other tables and patrons. "I wonder if they have Black Sea caviar, here." Glancing up at me, he said, "Do you like caviar, Angel? The roe of the sturgeon, although they do sometimes pass off the roe of Cyclopterus lumpus as caviar; however, that is generally of a reddish hue and larger. It is much cheaper. I don't care for it-lumpfish caviar, I mean. In a sense, to say 'lumpfish caviar' is an oxymoron." He laughed, mostly to himself.

Shit, I thought.

"What's wrong?" Jeff said.

"I'm just wondering where Kirsten is," I said. I looked at my watch.

The bishop said, "The origins of the feminist movement can be found in Lysistrata. 'We must refrain from all touch of baubled love ...'" Again he laughed. "'With bolts and bars our orders flout and-' " He paused, as if considering whether to go on. " 'And shut us out.' It's a pun. 'Shut us out' refers both to the general situation of noncompliance and a shutting up of the vagina."

"Dad," Jeff said, "we're trying to figure out what to order. Okay?"

The bishop said, "If you mean we're trying to decide what to have to eat, my remark is certainly applicable. Aristophanes would have appreciated that."

"Come on," Jeff said.

Carrying a tray, Fred Hill returned. "Louis Martini burgundy." He set down three glasses. "If you'll excuse my asking-aren't you Bishop Archer?"

The bishop nodded.

"You marched with Dr. King at Selma," Hill said.

"Yes, I was at Selma," the bishop said.

I said, "Tell him your vagina joke." To Fred Hill I said,

"The bishop knows a real old vagina joke."

Chuckling, Bishop Archer said, "The joke is old, she means.

Don't misunderstand syntactically."

"Dr. King was a great man," Fred Hill said.

"He was a very great man," the bishop said. "I'll have the sweetbreads."

"That's a good choice," Fred Hill said, jotting. "Also let me recommend the pheasant."

"I'll have the veal Oscar," I said.

"So will I," Jeff said. He seemed moody. I knew that he objected to my using my friendship with the bishop in order to get a free speech-for FEM or any other group. He knew how easily free speeches got tugged out of his father. Both he and the bishop wore dark-wool business suits, and of course Fred Hill, famous KGB agent and mass killer, wore a suit and tie.

I wondered that day, sitting there with the two of them in their business suits, if Jeff would go into Holy Orders as his father had; both men looked solemn, bringing to the task of ordering dinner the same intensity, the same gravity, that they brought to so much else: the professional stance oddly punctuated on the bishop's part with wit ... although, like today, the wit never struck me as quite right.

As we spooned up our minestrone soup, Bishop Archer talked about his forthcoming heresy trial. It was a subject he found endlessly fascinating. Certain Bible Belt bishops were out to get him because he had said in several published articles and in his sermons preached at Grace Cathedral that no one had seen hide nor hair of the Holy Ghost since apostolic times. This had caused Tim to conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity was incorrect. If the Holy Ghost was, in fact, a form of God equal to Yahweh and Christ, surely he would still be with us. Speaking in tongues did not impress him. He had seen a lot of it in his years in the Episcopal Church and it struck him as autosuggestion and dementia. Further, a scrupulous reading of Acts disclosed that at Pentecost when the Holy Ghost descended on the disciples, giving them "the gift of speech," they had spoken in foreign languages which people nearby had understood. This is not glossolalia as the term is now used; this is xenoglossy. The bishop, as we ate, chortled over Peter's deft response to the charge that the Eleven were drunk; Peter had said in a loud voice to the scoffing crowd that it was not likely that the Eleven were drunk inasmuch as it was only nine A.M. The bishop pondered out loud-between spoonfuls of minestrone soup-that the course of Western history might have been changed if the time had been nine P.M. instead of nine A.M. Jeff looked bored and I kept consulting my watch, wondering what was keeping Kirsten. Probably she had gone in to have her hair done. She fussed forever with her blond hair, especially in anticipation of momentous occasions.

The Episcopal Church is Trinitarian; you cannot be a priest or bishop of that church if you do not absolutely accept and teach that-well, it's called the Nicene Creed:

"... And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified."

So Bishop McClary back in Missouri was correct; Tim had, in fact, committed heresy. However, Tim had been a practicing lawyer before he became a rector of the Episcopal Church. He relished the oncoming heresy trial. Bishop McClary knew his Bible and he knew canon law, but Tim would blow golden smoke-rings around him until McClary would not know up from down. Tim knew this. In facing a heresy trial, he was in his element. Moreover, he was writing a book about it; he would win and, in addition, he would make some money. Every newspaper in America had carried articles and even editorials on the subject. Successfully trying someone for heresy in the 1970s was really difficult.

Listening to Tim dilate endlessly, the thought came to me that he had calculatedly committed heresy in order to bring on the trial. At least, he had done it unconsciously. It was, as the term has it, a good career move.

"The so-called 'gift of speech,' " the bishop said cheerfully, "reverses the unity of language lost when the Tower of Babel was attempted; that is, its construction was attempted. When the day comes that someone in my congregation gets up and talks Walloon, well, that day I will believe that the Holy Ghost exists. I'm not sure he ever existed. The apostolic conception of the Holy Spirit is based on the Hebrew ruah, the spirit of God. For one thing, this spirit is female, not male. She speaks concerning the Messianic expectation. Christianity appropriated the notion from Judaism and when Christianity had converted a sufficient number of pagans- Gentiles, if you will-it abandoned the concept, since it was only meaningful to the Jews anyhow. To the Greek converts it made no sense whatsoever, although Socrates declared that he had an inner voice or daemon that guided him ... a tutelary spirit, not to be confused with the English word 'demon,' which of course refers to an indubitably evil spirit. The two terms are often confused. Do I have time for a cocktail?"

"They just have beer and wine here," I said.

"I'd like to make a phone call," the bishop said; he dabbed at his chin with his napkin, rising to his feet and glancing about. "Is there a public phone?"

"There's a phone at the Chevron station," Jeff said. "But if you go back there you'll trash another pump."

"I simply do not understand how that happened," the bishop said. "I never felt anything or saw anything; the first I knew was when-Albers? I have his name written down. When he showed up in hysteria. Perhaps that was a manifestation of the Holy Ghost. I hope my insurance hasn't lapsed. It's always a good idea to carry automobile insurance."

I said, "That wasn't Walloon he was speaking."

"Yes, well," Tim said, "it also wasn't intelligible. It may well have been glossolalia, for all I know. Maybe there is evidence that the Holy Ghost is here." He reseated himself. "Are we waiting for something?" he asked me. "You keep looking at your watch. I only have an hour; then I have to get back to the City. The difficulty that dogma presents is that it strickens the creative spirit in man. Whitehead-Alfred North White-head-has given us the idea of God in process, and he is, or was, a major scientist. Process theology. It all goes back to Jakob Boehme and his 'no-yes' deity, his dialectic deity anticipating Hegel. Boehme based that on Augustine. 'Sic et non,' you know. Latin lacks a precise word for 'yes'; I suppose 'sic' is the closest, although by and large 'sic' is more correctly rendered as 'so,' or 'hence,' or 'in that manner.' 'Quod si hoc nunc sic incipiam? Nihil est. Quod si sic? Tantumdem egero. Et sic-' " He paused, frowning. " 'Nihil est.' In a distributive language-English is the best example-that would literally mean 'nothing exists.' Of course what Terence means is, 'it is nothing,' with 'id,' or 'it,' understood. Still, there is an enormous thrust in the two-word utterance 'nihil est.' The amazing power of Latin to compress meaning into the fewest possible words. That and precision are the two most admirable qualities of it, by far. English, however, has the greater vocabulary."

"Dad," Jeff said, "we're waiting for a friend of Angel's. I told you about her the other day."

"Non video," the bishop said. "I'm saying that I don't see her, the 'her' being understood. Look, that man is going to take a picture of us."

Fred Hill, carrying an SLR camera with flash attachment, approached our table. "Your Grace, would it be all right with you if I took your picture?"

"Let me take a picture of you two together," I said, standing up. "You can put it on the wall," I said to Fred Hill. "That would be fine with me," Tim said.

During the meal, Kirsten Lundborg joined us. She looked unhappy and fatigued, and she could find nothing on the menu that pleased her. She wound up drinking a glass of white wine, eating nothing, saying very little, but smoking one cigarette after another. Her face showed lines of strain. We did not know it then, but she had mild and chronic peritonitis, which can be-and was very soon for her-very serious. She hardly seemed aware of us. I assumed she had gone into one of her periodic depressions; I had no idea that day that she was physically ill.

"You could probably get toast and a soft-boiled egg," Jeff said.

"No." Kirsten shook her head. "My body is trying to die," she said presently. She did not elaborate. We all felt uncomfortable. I suppose that was the idea in her mind. Perhaps not. Bishop Archer gazed at her attentively and with a great deal of sympathy. I wondered if he intended to suggest a laying on of hands. They do that in the Episcopal Church. The recovery rate due to that is not recorded anywhere that I know of, which is just as well.

She spoke mostly about her son Bill, who had been turned down by the Army for psychological reasons. This seemed both to please her and to annoy her.

"I'm surprised to learn you have a son old enough to be inducted," the bishop said.

For a moment Kirsten was silent. Some of the worry that marred her features eased. It was evident to me that Tim's remark cheered her.

At this point in her life she was a rather good-looking woman, but a perpetual severity marred her, in terms of her looks and in terms of the emotional impression that she presented. As much as I admired her I knew that Kirsten could never turn down the chance to offer up a cruel remark, a defect that she had, in fact, honed into a talent. The idea seems to be that if you are clever enough you can insult people and they will sit still for it, but if you are clumsy and dumb you can get away with nothing. It all has to do with your verbal skills. You are judged, like contest entries, on aptness of phrase.

"Bill is only physically that old," Kirsten said. But she looked happier now. "What is it that comic said the other night on Johnny Carson? 'My wife doesn't go to a plastic surgeon; she wants the real thing.' I just had my hair done; that's why I was late. One time just before I had to fly over to

France they did my hair so that-" She smiled. "I looked like Bozo the Clown. The whole time I was in Paris I wore a babushka. I told everyone I was on my way to Notre-Dame."

"What's a babushka?" Jeff asked.

Bishop Archer said, "A Russian peasant."

Regarding him intently, Kirsten said, "That's true. I must have the wrong word."

"You have the right word," the bishop said "The term for the cloth worn about the head derives-"

"Aw Christ," Jeff said.

Kirsten smiled. She sipped her white wine.

"I understand you're a member of FEM," the bishop said. "I am FEM," Kirsten said.

"She's one of the founders," I said.

"You know, I have very strong views about abortion," the bishop said.

"You know," Kirsten said, "I have, too. What are yours?"

"We feel that the unborn have rights invested in them not by man but by Almighty God," the bishop said. "The right to take a human life is denied back to the Decalogue."

"Let me ask you this," Kirsten said. "Do you think a human being has rights after he or she is dead?"

"I beg your pardon?" the bishop said.

"Well," Kirsten said, "you're granting them rights before they're born; why not grant them equal rights after they're dead."

"As a matter of fact, they do have rights after they're dead," Jeff said. "You need a court order to use a cadaver or organs taken from a cadaver for-"

"I'm trying to eat this veal Oscar," I interrupted, seeing an endless line of argumentation ahead, and, emerging from it, Bishop Archer's refusal to make a free speech for FEM. "Can we talk about something else?"

Fazed not at all, Jeff continued, "I know a guy who works for the coroner's office. He told me one time they went into the intensive care ward at-well, I forget which hospital; any how, this woman had just died and they went in and ripped her eyes out for a transplant before the monitors had stopped registering vital signs. He said it happens all the time."

We sat for a time, Kirsten sipping her wine, the rest of us eating; however, Bishop Archer had not stopped gazing at Kirsten with sympathy and concern. It came to me later, but not at the time, that he sensed that she was latently physically ill, sensed what the rest of us had missed. Perhaps it emanated from his pastoral ministering, but I saw him do this again and again: discern a need in someone when no one else, sometimes even the person involved, recognized it or, if they recognized it, took time to pause and care.

"I have the highest regard for FEM," he said, in a gentle voice.

"Most people do," Kirsten said, but now she seemed genuinely pleased. "Does the Episcopal Church allow the ordination of women?"

"For the priesthood?" the bishop said. "It hasn't come yet but it is coming."

"Then I take it you personally approve."

"Certainly." He nodded. "I have taken an active interest in modernizing the standards for male and female deacons .. for one, I will not allow the term 'deaconess' to be used in my diocese; I insist that both male and female deacons be referred to as deacons. The standardization of educational and training bases for male and female deacons will make it possible later on to ordain female deacons to the priesthood. I see this as inevitable and I am working actively for it."

"Well, I am really pleased to hear you say this," Kirsten said. "Then you differ markedly from the Catholic Church." She set down her wine glass. "The pope-"

"The Bishop of Rome," Bishop Archer said. "That is what he actually is: the Bishop of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church; our church is a catholic church as well."

"They won't ever ordain women, you think?" Kirsten said.

"Only when the Parousia is here," Bishop Archer said.

"What is that?" Kirsten said. "You'll have to excuse my ignorance; I really have no religious background or inclinations."

"Neither do I," Bishop Archer said. "I only know that, as Malebranche said, 'It is not I who breathes but God who breathes in me.' The Parousia is the Presence of Christ. The catholic church, of which we are a part, breathes and breathes only through the living power of Christ; he is the head of which we are the body. 'Now the Church is his body, he is the head,' as Paul said. It is a concept known to the ancient world and one we can understand."

"Interesting," Kirsten said.

"No, it is true," the bishop said. "Intellectual matters are interesting and so are odd factual things, such as the amount of salt produced by a single mine. This that I speak of is a topic that determines not what we know but what we are. We have our life through Jesus Christ. 'He is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, everything visible and everything invisible, Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers-all things were created through him and for him. Before anything was created, he existed, and he holds all things in unity."' The bishop's voice was low and intense; he spoke evenly, and as he spoke he gazed directly at Kirsten, and I saw her return his gaze, in almost a stricken way, as if she both wanted to hear and did not want to hear, fearing and fascinated. Many times I had heard Tim preach at Grace Cathedral and he now addressed her, one person, with the same intensity that he brought to bear on great masses of people. And yet it was all for her.

There was silence for a moment.

"A lot of the priests still say 'deaconess,' " Jeff said. He shuffled awkwardly. "When Tim isn't around."

I said to Kirsten, "Bishop Archer is probably the strongest supporter of women's rights in the Episcopal Church."

"Actually, I think I've heard that," Kirsten said. She turned to me and said calmly, "I wonder-do you suppose-"

"I'd be glad to address your organization," the bishop said. "That's why we're having lunch." Reaching into his coat pocket, he brought out his black notebook. "I'll take your phone number and I promise to call you within the next few days. I'll have to consult with Jonathan Graves, the bishop suffragan, but I'm sure I'll be able to find time for you."

"I'll give you both my number at FEM," Kirsten said, "and my home phone number. Do-" She hesitated. "Do you want me to tell you something about FEM, Bishop?"

"Tim," Bishop Archer said.

"We are not militant in the conventional sense of-"

"I'm quite familiar with your organization," Bishop Archer said. "I want you to consider this. 'If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all.' First Corinthians, chapter thirteen. As women, you find your place in the world out of love, not animosity. Love is not limited to the Christian, love is not just for the church. If you wish to conquer us, show us love and not scorn. Faith moves mountains, love moves human hearts. The people opposing you are people, not things. Your enemy is not men but ignorant men. Don't confuse the men with their ignorance. It has taken years; it will take years more. Don't be impatient and don't hate. What time is it?" He looked around, suddenly concerned. "Here." He passed a card to Kirsten. "You call me. I have to be going. It was nice meeting you."

He left us then. I realized after he had gone, very suddenly realized, that he had forgotten to pay the check.