Forgiving Ararat

19

City Hall in Buffalo, New York rises thirty-two stories from the eastern shore of Lake Erie, floating upon the waves of the city skyline like an art deco frigate making a port of call. So prominent is the thick spire at the top of the building that pilots, navigating their barges laden with Midwestern grain and ore, use it to reckon their courses from twenty miles out. Inside the sturdy office tower, a different form of reckoning takes place.

As if by some tasteless architectural joke, the Marriage License Office and the chambers of the Divorce Court are both located on the third floor of the building, either making a commentary on the impermanence of marriage or, perhaps more benignly, affording one-stop convenience to people entering into, and departing from, life’s most important voluntary relationship. The irony of this curious placement of governmental services is not lost on Amina Rabun Meinert while walking past the doors of the former, which she visited with her fiancé only four years earlier, and through the doors of the latter, where she now intends to be rid of him. The crisp clip-clip of her heels echoing from the vaulted, melon-colored ceiling telegraphs news of her return and rouses the sleepy young clerk-a somber man of slight build and possessing the exaggerated nasally accent peculiar to those who live near the Great Lakes, as if that water also fills their sinuses. The clerk bars Amina entry because the court, at the moment, is sitting in closed session-something about abuse of a minor and confidentiality. He explains that the case of Meinert v. Meinert will not be called before ten-thirty; and, no, her attorney has not signed in yet.

“When the weather is nice,” the clerk says, trying to be helpful, “folks go up to the observation deck to wait.”

And the weather is indeed nice, surprisingly so for early March. A confused mass of warm southern air has raced up the coast, blessing cities as far north as Montreal with three consecutive sixty degree days.

“What is observation deck?” Amina asks in her broken English and German accent.

The clerk looks puzzled for a moment, then points at the roof. “You can see the lake from the top of the building,” he says, speaking more loudly now, as if the accent is an indication that Amina is deaf; he also waves his arms in a crude attempt to sign his words. “Take the elevator over there to the twenty-eighth floor.”

“Bitte,” she says. “Thank you.”

Amina tucks her handbag under her arm and clip-clips her heels back down the hall, past the Marriage License Office and into the restroom to check her makeup. She presents a perfectly respectable image in the mirror: mousy brown hair bunned respectably tight, pale lipstick applied respectably light, white cotton blouse buttoned respectably tight. The reflection is reassuring. George will be fine, it says to her. He understands. You cannot be with him in that way, with any man in that way. You encouraged him to go to other women, which was generous. And you thanked him by giving him money to establish a business. You owe him nothing. You are doing the right thing, the reflection insists.

But you have seen him cry, Amina, and you did not know men could cry.

This plea comes from a different Amina Rabun, one of five Aminas whose views are arbitrated by Rational Amina, the one who first appeared in the mirror. This is the weak voice of Nurturing Amina. It was this voice that consoled Barratte with whispered lullabies after the Russian soldiers left the house in Kamenz. There is also Fearful Amina, who since arriving in the United States has permitted Amina to venture beyond her home only rarely and wonders at the motives of men and the sources of sounds in the night. Vengeful Amina stokes the constant rage over the destruction of her family-a rage directed against no person, for Vengeful Amina lays the blame squarely on God. She had been raised to give thanks for all good things, but logic demands that God must not take credit for the good without also taking blame for the bad. Finally, there is Survivor Amina, the most dominate of the five Aminas Rabun. Survivor Amina carried Barratte five miles to the hospital at Kamenz and then returned to the country to bury her mother, grandfather, aunt, and cousins. One month later, Survivor Amina identified the bloodied bodies of her father and uncle in a Berlin morgue and buried them too. Most importantly, Survivor Amina located her family’s trusted advisor, Hanz Stossel, the Swiss lawyer who, in exchange for twenty percent, liquidated Jos. A. Rabun & Sons, A.G. and all the Rabun wealth-the land holdings, equipment, automobiles, art collections, gold, and also the Schriebergs’ home and theaters-and moved the fortune to a secure Swiss bank account. It was Survivor Amina who later bribed the Russian officers into allowing her and Barratte to board a train pulled by a Soviet zone locomotive out of Berlin on 13 May 1949, the day after the blockade was lifted. And it was also Survivor Amina who overcame Fearful Amina and seduced Captain George Meinert of the U.S. Army into a bed at the Hotel Heidelberg, then onto an ocean liner with Barratte, and, ultimately, into the Marriage License Office on the third floor of City Hall in Buffalo, New York.

He is patient, urges Nurturing Amina. Don’t hurt him, there’s been enough of that for many lifetimes. Maybe in time-

The blue tiled wall behind Amina in the mirror fills with the brown shoulders and arms of a different man. His face is hidden behind Amina’s head. A red insignia is on his sleeve. Amina Rabun knows this man well. She has been living unfaithfully with him for years, and he accompanies her wherever she goes; he is a jealous, harsh man. But she has grown accustomed to his presence and his demands, and she gave up trying to escape him long ago. She can deceive him, but for only for short periods. All of the Aminas Rabun close their eyes.

Yes, you are doing the right thing, says Rational Amina. You are doing the right thing for George and Barratte, for Bette and your mother, for your grandfather, your aunt, your father, and your uncle. For all the Hetzels and Rabuns. You will not betray them.

From the observation deck atop City Hall, Amina Rabun looks out across the vast blinding expanse of white that is Lake Erie in late winter under a cloudless blue sky. The sudden thaw caused by the warm front has caused the thick crust of ice and snow on the lake to heave and break away at the mouth of the Niagara River where the undercurrent is strongest, grinding huge ice floes against the massive concrete supports of the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Fort Erie, Canada. If the ice refuses to break up and move downriver soon, the Coast Guard will detonate explosive charges to clear the jam for fear of damaging the bridge supports. Amina can see men with ropes cinched around their waists walking on the slabs of ice piled beneath the bridge, jabbing long poles into the crevices to set them free. Despite living so close to Canada, she has never paid a visit to that land. She is afraid of the border officials, who are rumored still to be suspicious of Germans, and she is also distinctly not curious about what she might find there; she has seen enough of the world to know that the same hatreds and fears inhabit both sides of all borders.

Two men stand at the southwestern end of the observation deck, smoking cigarettes. The men’s faces are in the shadows, but as time advances and the earth turns, the sun touches the top of the taller man’s hat, turning it into a gray flannel torch. The men appear very animated in their discussion; one of them keeps pointing at a newspaper folded in half on the ledge. The date on front page is March 6, 1953. Amina draws closer.

“Goodbye, comrade,” the larger man says, flicking his cigarette over the rail.

Fearful Amina is startled by this term, comrade. It is a word used only by communists, a term she heard often when the Russian soldiers spoke to one another throughout that horrible night in Kamenz. Suddenly the rendezvous seems clandestine and dangerous; perhaps she has stumbled across spies.

“Yeah, good riddance,” says the smaller man.

They both laugh and turn inside for the elevator.

Rational Amina picks up the newspaper. It is the morning edition of the Buffalo Daily News and the headline reads, “STALIN DEAD.” A sarcastically benign black and white photograph of the dictator looks from the newspaper upon the assembled Aminas who race their eyes over his features and then back to the headline. They read it again to confirm their understanding, and smile in unison. Not even Nurturing Amina feels shame in such delight. Indeed, the Aminas Rabun on top of City Hall believe that all who learn this news will benefit from it, even Premier Stalin’s own family and perhaps, too, the black soul of his now decaying body, which can no longer wreak its havoc upon the world of the living. The Aminas read on to learn the cause of death and their smiles fade. A stroke in the middle of the night? How unjust and inadequate! It should have been a bullet. A thousand bullets. He should have been made to watch bullets tearing into the flesh of his wife and children, and, only then, his own body; he should have died the slowest and most painful death in the history of the world.

But the news is good just the same. Very, very good. And the air is crisp and warm, the sky blue, the sun bright, the day hopeful. Stalin’s death is certain to emancipate Amina Rabun from the nightmares, and twenty-five stories below, a judge will soon emancipate her from the strains of a marriage of convenience. Perhaps the reckoning of accounts, like the reckoning of barges on the lake after the ice melts, has finally begun for Amina Rabun formerly of Kamenz.

And here, she thinks, is a very strange coincidence. George had asked her to attend Ash Wednesday services with him two weeks earlier; she had said yes, but still did not understand why. Could there be a connection to the death of evil and a change of fortune? Certainly one had been hoped for. Amina had not been inside a church since the funeral of her father, and not once with George, making him all the more bitter. George Meinert wanted all the trappings of a family, including his beautiful wife, sitting in the pew beside him every Sunday morning in the church where he had been baptized. Amina not only denied him the physical intimacies of marriage but also these tiny morsels of relationship and respect. Yet for some strange reason, on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, just two weeks before their divorce would become final, Amina relented. Perhaps in apology for the times her absence had caused George such pain? Perhaps to disprove his conviction that kneeling before an altar would somehow make her a different person and save their marriage? Or perhaps she had begun to forgive God?

And why Ash Wednesday? It was such a strange liturgy, the most primitive and ghoulish of all the Christian holy days. How bone chilling for a priest to whisper those terrifying words: “Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return,” and then, to be certain his grim message was not soon forgotten, to feel his thumb coated with the ashes of last year’s palms smearing an ugly black cross upon your forehead as a badge of mortification. Yet a miracle of sorts had taken place during the service: Amina heard a more subversive message that afternoon than she had ever heard before. “In ancient days,” the priest had said during his homily, “Lent was observed as a time when notorious sinners and criminals who had been excluded from the church were reconciled with the congregation and God.” As the priest spoke, Amina believed she could actually hear the cries of all the penitents of the world daring to ask for forgiveness, and the joyful weeping when open hands were extended, rather than fists. At that instant, Amina Rabun Meinert wondered whether this is what Christianity offered the world-not sacred marks and secret words, but reconciliation. On Ash Wednesday in nineteen fifty-three, Amina Rabun Meinert accepted that offer-on behalf of herself, yes, but, more importantly to her, on behalf of her father and uncle, whose sins committed during the war were unspeakable and who could not ask for forgiveness themselves. Indeed, on that magical Ash Wednesday, Amina Rabun sought forgiveness for all things done and left undone; and for this momentous act of contrition-because God was to blame for all she had suffered-Amina Rabun expected nothing less of God than an end to the long punishment of her family-for she believed the murders and rapes in Kamenz to be a punishment for the sins of her father and uncle-and the beginning of punishment for the men who had caused her such pain.

The sun’s searing, cleansing waves wash across the observation deck, spilling over the edge onto the street below. Perhaps, think the Aminas Rabun, news of the death of Joseph Vissarionvich Stalin is a symbol of the truce reached with God on that Ash Wednesday. And perhaps, I might have added, were I standing in the Urartu Chamber presenting the case of Amina Rabun, the death of Joseph Stalin was as fine a symbol of a covenant with God as the billions of small rainbows sealed into ice crystals across the frozen surface of Lake Erie.

20

When the High Jurisconsult of Shemaya deemed that I had spent sufficient time digesting the life of Amina Rabun, he summoned me to his office in the infinite corridor, which seemed even more cheerless and institutional than during my first visit-a department of motor vehicles for souls. Luas was the chief technocrat. My only question was whether the bureaucrat, or the bureaucracy itself, was corrupted?

I resented him for not informing me of Elymas and the ability to visit Bo and Sarah. For this, I resented him a lot. He knew I had gone, of course, without me saying a word. I expected the scolding Elymas had warned me would come, but instead Luas smiled benignly from across his desk and said:

“So, how shall we present Ms. Rabun?”

We were both playing the same game of evasion. He needed my help as much as I needed his.

“Just as she is,” I replied.

“Naturally,” he said. He was dressed in the same sport coat, trousers, and open-collared shirt he had been wearing when he found me bleeding and naked in the train station. I wore blue jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers-the outfit I would have worn to my office Sunday to write the brief in the Alan Fleming case. He rocked back in his chair. Three thin ribbons of smoke rose into the stale air from the two candles on the desk and the pipe he held in his left hand. “But which part of her? We can’t replay every moment of her life; that would serve no purpose. Our role as presenters is more selective. We must present the choices she made.”

Choices. The same word Haissem had used in the Urartu Chamber to begin the presentation of Toby Bowles: “He has chosen!” Chosen what? To wait in a train shed with thousands of other souls while bureaucrats work the algorithms of their eternities?

“What choices are those?” I asked.

“The choices Yahweh promised Noah we would make,” Luas replied, gripping the pipe between his teeth and talking between them. He was obviously obsessed with Noah and the Great Flood; all his metaphors eventually began and ended there.

“Did you get here by drowning?” I asked with a smirk.

“No. I was decapitated, actually. See-”

Luas’ head, with the pipe still clenched in its teeth, rolled right off his neck and onto the desk, as if the blade of a guillotine had dropped out of the ceiling and chopped it off. A gush of blood shot up between his shoulders like a small fountain. I jumped back and screamed. Having made his point, his arms retrieved his head from the desk and put it back where it belonged.

“Sorry to startle you,” he said coyly, “but you did ask.”

“Don’t ever do that again!” I said. “How did it happen? I mean, how were you decapitated? Were you in an accident?”

Luas puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “One must begin at the beginning to answer such a question. Why did Yahweh promise not to destroy the earth after having just destroyed it?”

Like I said, obsessed. “I think we went all through this when I got here,” I reminded him.

“Did we…? Oh, yes, you’re right. Sorry. I’ve confused you with one of the other new presenters. Let’s pick up where we left off, then. What if Noah had disobeyed?”

“Already asked and answered, your honor,” I said impatiently.

“He’d have been killed with the others. The price of disobedience was exceptionally high, don’t you think?”

“Well, the death penalty is the ultimate punishment,” I said. I was in a very snitty mood. I wanted him to know I was upset.

“But this was the ultimate death penalty, Brek. Not only Noah’s life but his family’s and the entire human race. The animal kingdom as well. Disobedience meant the end of everything, not just the end of Noah. The stakes could not have been higher.”

“You’re all about choices,” I said. “What choice did Noah have? Build an ark or everything dies? People make him out to be some kind of hero doing God’s bidding. He had the biggest gun in the world pressed against his head; who wouldn’t build an ark? He was just doing what anybody else would have done to save their own neck.”

Luas put his pipe in an ashtray on his desk and got up.

“Precisely. Now, how shall we present Ms. Rabun?”

“Precisely what?” I said.

“What’s the first thing Noah did after the Flood?”

“Towel off?”

“He made a burnt offering.”

“That’s what the Bible says.”

“Why make a burnt offering?”

“To give God thanks.”

Luas began pacing the small room. “Correct, and what was it worth, this offering?”

“I guess what all offerings are worth.”

“Really?” Luas said. “This man, Noah, had just witnessed the mass murder of millions of people and animals. As you said about building the ark under threat, who wouldn’t have been grateful for having been spared after all that? But look at it from God’s perspective, Brek. What did God really want in all this?”

“Love, I guess. Love, respect, the same things everybody wants.”

“Precisely. Now, is that what billowed up from Noah’s burnt offering? Love? Or was it the stench of fear? The fear of instant death and annihilation-”

“But-”

“Throughout history, the tendency has always been to read Genesis from mankind’s perspective, from the perspective of the accused: man’s fall, man’s destruction, one man’s obedience, one man’s deliverance, one man’s thanksgiving, mankind’s guaranteed survival. Perhaps the story is told not so we understand better the condition of man, which we know all too well; perhaps it is told so we understand better the condition of God. Noah built the ark because the price of disobedience was intolerable and later praised God to appease God, not out of love for God. Not that we should criticize Noah…he did exactly what was his to do. But if we look more closely, we see that it was divinity itself, entangled in the greatest of all ironies, that cheapened the gesture and desecrated both the obedience and the sacrifice. The story of Noah is the story of God’s need for man, Brek, not man’s need for God. It also explains why, because of that divine need, the possibility of evil must be permitted to exist for there to be any possibility of love; it explains why a serpent inhabited the Garden at the beginning of time, and why it will continue to coil around our feet until the end of the age.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Look,” Luas said. “What changed in those forty days was the very essence of God’s relationship to man, not man’s relationship to God. God changed His ways; we didn’t change ours. Yahweh recognized the problem instantly, the moment the waters receded and the sacrificial fire was lit. By punishing man for disobeying and turning away, the Flood had destroyed love itself. For true love to exist, the option not to love-without compulsion-must also exist. When love is demanded and extorted, it becomes fear, and fear is the opposite of love. So, Yahweh had a choice: He could accept the possibility of sin to achieve the greater prize of love, or He could endure the false praises of creatures too terrified to do anything else. He chose the former, gifting to humanity the freedom to choose. So critical is our understanding of this act that Yahweh selected the refraction of sunlight into the many colors of a rainbow as the eternal symbol of our freedom to follow many different paths. No matter how far we may stray, no matter how much it hurts-God or us.”

Luas returned to his chair behind the desk.

“Amina Rabun is an heir to that promise, Brek. But that promise is both a gift and a curse. With the freedom to choose comes the responsibility for one’s choices. The Urartu Chamber is the place where those choices and responsibilities are reckoned. So, I ask you again: How shall we present the case of Amina Rabun?”

21

Elymas sits on the rocking chair in Sarah’s room, pushing himself back and forth with his cane against the corner of her crib. I have made my decision: I must see them again. The toothless smile appears when he hears me enter. I’m here to see my husband and daughter, but it feels shady, like a drug deal.

“Shall I take you?” Elymas asks.

“Yes.”

His eyes widen and I disappear into them. I emerge this time in a quiet country cemetery on a sloping hillside bent in prayer against the wooded pew of Bald Eagle Mountain. I have been here several times before. This is the cemetery near my grandfather’s farm where the Cuttlers bury their dead. It is a pretty place. And sad. The sun this day burns warm and bright, but the graves do not taste the sun or feel its heat. A requiem of red oak trees enshrouds those who sleep here, denying them any sense of the dazzling display of fusion at work in the heavens above. Maybe it is not so dazzling after all: a paper-thin membrane of chlorophyll in the tree leaves demonstrates the easy dominance of darkness over light; but the shadows moving beneath the leaves appear to be of a different darkness and a different light; they flicker over and around the stones and dance across the grass without relation to the sway of the trees. A warm breeze stirs the memorial flags; the shadows examine them and retreat, satisfied with the crisp red, white, and blue fabric fixed with staples not yet rusted into shafts of blond wood not yet weathered.

At the end of a row of well-kept plots without flags kneels a man in his fifties. His hair is thinning and his middle thickening. He resembles Bo’s father, Aaron, when I was first introduced to him, pulling weeds from the garden behind their house. The man in the cemetery hears me rustle through the grass and rises to his feet. In his right hand he holds a small silver tea cup, in his left, a black yarmulke. The cup falls when he sees me, crashing onto a sterling silver tray placed at the base of a small, granite gravestone. I cannot see the name. The collision knocks over a silver teapot and two other cups, spilling their contents.

“Brek?”

“Bo?”

We race around the gravestones to hug each other.

“I knew you’d come today,” he whispers.

I look at him. He looks hollowed out, like he has aged decades, a faint shell of the man I once knew. “Are you sick?” I ask.

“No, why?”

“Because… because you don’t look well. You look so different from when we met two days ago.”

“Two days ago?”

“Yes, two days ago, at the playground with Sarah. Have you forgotten already?”

He holds me at arm’s length. “That was twenty years ago, Brek.”

“No it wasn’t,” I insist. “It was the day before yesterday. Remember? You had just finished your jog, and we put Sarah on the swing. You told me how you’d been staying with David and that things were starting to get back to normal. You were looking for a job in New York.”

“I remember. That was twenty years ago, look-”

He walks back to the grave, pulls a copy of the Centre Daily Times from beneath the serving tray, and shows it to me. The headline reads, “BOWLES EXECUTED.” The dateline reads, “July 21, 2009.”

Bo leads me to the trunk of a large oak tree at the end of the row of gravestones, and we sit down together. He’s wearing wrinkled slacks and a polo shirt that looks as if he’s slept in it; his face is covered with gray whiskers. “I got the job in New York and lost it,” he says dejectedly. “I haven’t been able to keep a job for more than six months at a time since. No television station will touch me; they’re afraid of people who tell the truth. Maybe I drank a little too much and missed a few deadlines; but television is a sham, Brek, and the news is a sham. It’s all make-believe. I’m doing fine though. I’m a counselor at a homeless shelter now; they let me stay there while I get myself together. Good people. I run an AA meeting and keep an eye on things; I’m thinking about doing a documentary. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station. People think the homeless are animals, but they’re just like everybody else; they had normal lives, just something went wrong.”

Bo reaches out to hold my hand, but I pull it away.

“Have I changed that much?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’ve missed you, Brek. When I heard they were executing that bastard at Rockview this morning, I had to drive up to see it. He asked the guard to read a Bible verse and that was it. No apology. No remorse. Nothing. I loved seeing him shake when they fried him. You saw it all, though; I knew you were there. I could feel you in the room.”

“Who, Bo? Who are you talking about?”

“Ott Bowles. That’s why you came back, isn’t it? Because it’s finally over and justice has been done? We can finally rest in peace. I’m gonna make a fresh start now. Clean myself up. I’m not that old. Maybe I’ll even get back into the news. I’d be a great producer. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station-”

“Where’s Sarah?”

In the distance, I see Elymas slowly climbing the steep gravel road that severs the graveyard in two. His feeble body assimilates each small step before taking another.

“It’s time.” he calls out in a dry, hacking voice. Bo doesn’t see or hear him. “It’s time, Brek Abigail Cuttler. Come with me. It’s time.”

“What do you mean, where’s Sarah?” Bo says.

“Where is she? I want to see her?”

Bo’s face purples as if it’s been bruised by a punch. He jumps up from the grass and starts running away, weaving through the gravestones with his hands gripping his head as if he’s in pain. I chase after him.

“Wait, Bo, what’s wrong?”

“Why are you doing this?” he yells. “Please, please just leave me alone.”

He makes a loop and staggers to the ground beside the upset tea service. Tears streak down his cheeks. Except on the day Sarah was born, I have never seen him cry.

“Come with me,” Elymas says. “It’s time.”

“Bo,” I say, kneeling beside him, “it’s all right. Everything’s all right. Just tell me where Sarah is?”

“What do you mean where’s Sarah?” he yells at me. “Don’t you know?” He points at the gravestone. Engraved into the top of the monument is a crucifix superimposed over a Star of David. The sight of this heresy startles at first, but the symbols look somehow correct together, as if the perpendicular lines complete the thought of the interlocking triangles and are their natural conclusion when manipulated properly, like a Rubik’s cube. Engraved beneath them in large block letters across the polished surface of the stone are the words CUTTLER-WOLFSON. Beneath these, in smaller letters, is this:

BREK ABIGAIL

December 4, 1963-October 17, 1994

Mother

SARAH ELIZABETH

December 13, 1993-October 17, 1994

Daughter

Hot tea and bees honey, for two we will share…

22

I found Nana Bellini in the garden behind her house, stooped low over a row of tomato vines sagging with ripe, red fruit. Her silver hair, pulled back in a bun, shimmered under the cloudy skies of an approaching summer storm. She hummed a tune while filling a small basket with fresh produce, aware that I stood nearby in the cool spring air watching her. Reaching the middle of the row, she twisted off a huge beefsteak tomato, so large and swollen that its skin had split open exposing its tender pink meat inside. She held it up for me to see.

“Even vegetables suffer as much from abundance as from want,” she observed. “Some, like this one, are bold and flashy, taking everything they can; others sip only what they need, content to share with the community.” She pulled apart a snarl of average sized tomatoes and pointed to a stunted tomato vine off by itself in a patch of cracked, barren dirt. “And then there are the ascetics, joyfully suffering without any hope of bearing fruit themselves, secure in the knowledge that their sacrifice will make the soil richer next season and they’ll become the fruit of future generations.” She turned around to me. “The wise farmer values them all, equally. If one is favored over the other, the entire garden suffers.”

I drew closer. I wasn’t there to talk about gardening. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah was dead?” I asked. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

Nana stopped picking and slid her arm through the hoop handle of the basket so that it swung from her elbow. Flecks of black soil clung to her wrinkled fingers and denim blue skirt. “There was nothing to tell, dear,” she said. “You knew it all along. You didn’t want to remember, you weren’t ready.”

I left her in the garden and walked through the woods to the entrance of the train station. Flinging the doors wide, I shouted to the souls inside: “Run! Run now, while you still have the chance!” They didn’t dare move. They looked at me with the same suspicion my grandfather’s cattle looked at him when he was trying to do something for their own good, then they lapsed back into their catatonic march back and forth across the train shed floor. There was a time when they would have rushed through those doors, but that was when they still believed mortality was the fantasy; how very real it had become, and how very soon would the final judgment be passed on their lives. Cattle. It was the proper metaphor; like my grandfather’s herd, the great herd of souls arriving at Shemaya Station each day moved obediently up the loading chute and into a packing plant for slaughter, submitting themselves to what was to come and living in the memory of what once was.

I had entered the train shed without a blindfold because I was searching for Sarah. This was a grim task. There were infants, children, and adults in every horrifying shape and condition of death: wasted away by starvation and disease, blistered and burned, gnawed and digested, shot through with holes, stabbed and sliced, blue from drowning, bloated from rotting, blown apart, hacked, crushed, poisoned; suicides, murders, accidents, illnesses, old age, acts of God. Their stories no longer affected me. Only one story concerned me now. I looked everywhere, but Sarah was not among them; although I wanted desperately to see her, like a parent searching a morgue after a calamity, I was relieved. And then terrified.

What if her case had already been called? What if she had already been judged and gone on without me?

I ran from the train shed, frantic to find her. The golden key Luas had given me turned the lock, depositing me inside the Urartu Chamber. There was no one, just God and me, alone, inside the Holy of Holies. He had taken my daughter. I had come to take her back. I was not as trusting as Abraham with Isaac. I moved to the presenter’s chair and looked up at the sapphire monolith, searching the smooth surface for the slightest blemish that might indicate a hint of acknowledgment or compassion. When I found none, I asked meekly in my nakedness:

“May I see her? I gave her life.”

God looked on, unblinking and unmoved, my existence too infinitesimally small to notice, my plea too insignificant to deserve a response.

“Where is she?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The answer came back as a deafening concussion of silence-the silence of God’s love being withdrawn into the infinite vacuum of space, heard by the soul, not the ears, and mourned by the soul, not the heart. I looked around the Chamber. Its walls pulsed with the purest energy of the universe while just outside, in the train shed, the walls were spattered with the innocent blood of humanity-the blood of those judged against unattainable standards by a judge who, Himself, was guilty of the crime.

“Where is my daughter?” I screamed again. “Goddamn you! What have you done with her?”

God created all things.

God created evil.

God is all things.

God is evil.

God shall punish the wicked.

Therefore, God shall punish Godself.

I raised my arms as Haissem had done presenting the case of Toby Bowles. And in unison with every man, woman, and child since the beginning of time, I spoke:

“I PRESENT GOD, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH…HE HAS CHOSEN!”

The Chamber shattered into a billion shafts of darkness.

I am.

I am creation, a first thought, a last, a beginning without end.

I am a before, an after, a space in between.

I am spirit, a single breath of God.

I am love.

“I am love! I am love!” the air sings. And the waters, too, and the creatures that swim, creep, fly, and walk. The stones whisper “I am love” as they support the soil, which whispers “I am love” and supports the plants, which whisper “I am love” and support the creatures even as they raise their heads toward the sun, which whispers “I am love” and warms the Garden through which I tread.

Another like me walks in this Garden.

“We are Love! We are Love! We are Love!” we sing. And we are love. Love given. Love unending. Love without condition. And the knowing we are all of this, and the knowing that this is All There Is.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

“That is the only way, then?”

The serpent coils upon a rock so I may see him more closely. When he is not speaking, he, too, sings “I am love! I am love!” with the other creatures in the Garden. He stops his song for me again. “Yes, it is the only way. You long for the experience of love. But this experience may be had only by calling upon that which you are not, for you cannot experience that which is Love until you first know that which is Not Love. Therefore must you separate yourself from Love and enter the realm of Fear and Evil.”

“But what is Fear? What is Evil?”

“All that you are not.”

“And I will not die?”

“You are of God, the Eternal One. Think you God can die? Think you God would place in this Garden the fruit and the tree and call me into being without purpose? Think you this purpose is to harm you? To trick you? To murder you, His beloved creation? Think you this of God? Of Love? The Lord God said, if you eat the fruit then shall you experience death. For how can you experience together without having been apart? How can you experience contentment without having been discontented? Hot without cold? Love without hate? No, you shall not die, but yes, you shall experience death. And in experiencing death, shall you experience life.”

“I am Love! I am Love! I am Love!” But what does this mean? I am as a drop of water in the ocean, unable to experience its own wetness.

I eat of the fruit, and call upon the desert, and find for the first time silence. Where is the singing of the waters, the soil, the grasses and the creatures? For the first time I hear nothing in the Garden; it is both a terrible and wonderful sound. I am one, when once I had been Many. I am Good, but for the first time I have done Evil. I take Adam’s hand. He has not tasted the fruit yet and does not understand. He does not hear the silence. He lives where there is only Love, and therefore he knows nothing of Love. I cling to him because I am now apart. I tell him I need him, that I am empty and cold without him. I tell him I love him, and that the fruit is the sweetest in all the Garden.

We hear God’s voice. Adam rushes me among the trees to hide. We tremble and giggle. Our bodies touch the leaves and feel their chill, but also touch each other’s body and feel our warmth. Adam is large, strong, and coarse; I am smaller, weaker, and soft. In seeing and touching him, who is so different, for the first time do I experience and feel myself. We long not to join with God, but to join with each other. And then we are ordered to leave.

Adam presses his lips to mine. I melt in the taste of his mouth. Now this I whisper: “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

They call me Cain, son of Adam.

The wind of the earth is hot and filled with dust. I shield my eyes. I jab the point of a stick into the ground and pour seeds into the holes.

My mother has told me of a place close but far away, a beautiful place, lush and green, where there is always enough to eat and drink, where the wind is cool and clean. She told me she left this place to experience love and from that experience she produced me. She told me that when she created me, when she first laid her eyes on me, she felt what God felt when he created my father. She tells me I am created in God’s perfect image because she and my father had been created so. I do not see the resemblance.

Abel came after me. My mother and father say they love him as much as they love me, but they have always made his life easier than mine. He follows the herds, while I break the soil. He brings God the fatty cuts from his best lambs, while I can offer only the meager produce from my fields. God is more pleased with Abel’s gifts than mine. I hate him.

“Why are you so angry?” God asks. “Are you not also perfect in my sight?”

“Because you love Abel.”

“Yes, but if you dwell on this, it will be your ruin. Even so, you may do as you please.”

Abel is weak and easily fooled. I tell him a lamb is injured and lead him into the fields. He does not see me unsheathe my knife. I come up behind him and slit his throat. I watch his blood spill onto the ground. He should not have taken God’s love from me.

Justice is the sweetest fruit in the lands east of Eden.

The Urartu Chamber reappears. I turn and find Luas and Elymas seated on the observer chairs, watching me.

“Come sit with us, Brek Cuttler,” Elymas says. “Watch and see justice done.”

Luas shakes his head mockingly. “Ha! You haven’t seen anything since the day I blinded you for your insolence, you old beggar.”

“That is true,” Elymas replies, “but justice herself is blind and yet she sees more clearly than any of us. And you, Luas, were once blinded for your own wickedness as I recall. When will you stop thinking you’re better than me? Who’s next on the docket?”

“Amina Rabun.”

A withered old man in not much better shape than Elymas enters the Chamber holding a golden key like mine. He is tall and frail but wears an elegant double-breasted suit in the European style.

“Ah, hello, Hanz, please come in,” Luas says. “We’ve been expecting you.”

23

The door to the publisher’s office of The Lockport Register opens and a large, powerful man appears in the threshold. Behind him, the newsroom buzzes with ringing telephones and reporters busily typing their stories. The man in the doorway has a fierce face but looks frightened, as though he is about to encounter a foe even more formidable than himself. His lacquered black hair emphasizes the severity of this expression, together with dark wings of perspiration spreading across his blue dress shirt, which is open at the throat exposing a patch of moist skin and a few gray curls of chest hair. The temperature outside is eighty-eight degrees with one hundred percent relative humidity; the waters of Lake Erie that froth themselves into blankets of snow in January evaporate into suffocating clouds of humidity in August. Inside the office, the air is only slightly cooler and less humid but the man takes in a deep, luxurious breath and savors it, puffing his cheeks into small pink balloons. With his right hand, he mops a soggy handkerchief across his smooth forehead; with his left hand, he holds a long cardboard cylinder, the type used by architects to carry blueprints.

Amina Rabun sits comfortably behind the desk inside the office, in front of a quiet fan. She is wearing a white linen blouse and heather skirt, holding in her left hand a telephone handset into which she threatens a newsprint company salesman with cancellation of her order if he fails to match a ten percent discount offered by a competitor. The salesman on the phone, a French Canadian, barely understands the English words tangled in Amina Rabun’s German accent. While the man at the door waits for the conversation to end, his blue eyes wander ahead into the office like a pair of curious bottle flies, coming to rest on a beautiful Tiffany lamp in the corner; they caress the colorful glass petals and measure their value, then fly off to the framed black and white photograph of a modest bride and groom standing in front of the Dresden’s baroque Frauenkirche, and finally coming to rest on an engraved plaque naming The Lockport Register the best small-town newspaper in New York. Amina had been advised by her counsel, Hanz Stossel, to purchase the newspaper as a passive investment, but she found herself in need of something to fill the expanding emptiness created by her divorce. She decided to learn the newspaper business and soon fired the publisher and took over operations.

The office is simple and sparse, as one would expect of a small-town paper of limited circulation, but on the white wall opposite Amina’s desk hangs an extraordinarily valuable work of art-an original oil painting by the French impressionist master, Edgar Degas. This treasure was a gift from a man, much like the man waiting in the doorway, who also happened to find himself in the same predicament. Degas’ subject in the painting is a bristly-bearded father dressed in a light overcoat and wearing a black top hat enjoying a cigar as he strolls along the edge of a Parisian park with his two handsomely dressed daughters and their dog, all moving in opposite directions at once. The painting has a snapshot quality to it, freezing mid-stride, and waist-high, the diverging characters as portions of a horse-drawn carriage and an onlooker slip into the frame. On the rare occasions when Amina rests back in her chair to admire this work, she thinks of strolling with her own father on Saturday mornings along Dresden’s broad boulevards to the offices of Jos. A. Rabun & Sons, and then to a small café for lunch. Sometimes in the café she would see Katerine Schrieberg and her father. The men would sip coffees and speak of subjects that did not interest their daughters, who in turn would sip hot chocolates and speak of subjects of no interest to their fathers.

Beneath the Degas painting stands a polished walnut case filled with copies of the four books of poetry published by Bette Press during its brief existence. The binding of each book bears in gold leaf the Bette Press colophon: a square imprint of a little girl eternally fixed in mid-swing beneath the thick branches of a poplar tree, her hair and dress rippled softly by a breeze. She laughs and looks upward, beyond the ropes that lift her toward the heavens and the branches that anchor her to the earth. The original wood carving of this colophon, still stained with ink from the first run of cover pages, rests on top of the bookcase. It is the work of master printer Albrecht Bosch, who studied at the Bauhaus School before fleeing the Nazis to Chicago. Mr. Bosch convinced Amina to print books alongside her newspaper and to employ him as her production manager. The carving did all the persuading necessary. He produced it without commission, as a prospectus, from memory of an early photograph of Bette Rabun glimpsed on a table in Amina’s study. He knew only that the girl had been Amina’s cousin and had died very young. Amina hired him on the spot and ordered the immediate installation of a Colt’s Armory hand-fed press next to the Goss Community web press that produced the Register each day.

The newsprint salesman at the other end of the telephone finally grasps the meaning of Amina’s words and immediately concedes the ten percent discount, all of which, he wishes her to understand, will come out of his commission. She thanks him for the gesture but feels no gratitude or sympathy; The Lockport Register is his largest client and he has done very well for himself. Amina smiles, places the handset into its cradle, lights a cigarette, and observes the man at the door, who does not cross the threshold until asked. They have not met before, Amina and this man, yet she finds his expression familiar. Three others like him have passed through her door, each feigning the same calm, each indebted to her but somehow indignant. Amina cannot help but see in these men the same arrogance and resentment that covered Herr Schrieberg like a tree bark when he removed his yarmulke in submission to her threat at the cabin in the woods. The irony of this draws her smile a bit thinner until it dissolves into a frown. These men, she thinks, these strong, brave men; how quickly they are reduced to pleas for refuge from the nightmares that haunt them. But where was their compassion when it was requested? Where were they when others sought refuge? Three months ago, the man at the door was Gerhardt Haber. Twelve years before that, he was Einsatzgruppen SS Colonel Gerhardt Haber-a fact confided to Amina in a cable from Hanz Stossel, who asked if she would be willing to help another German family as she herself had once been helped. Since the fall of the Third Reich, the Habers had been on the run, living in considerable discomfort in the Parana River valley in Argentina. The Nazi hunters had tracked them as far as South America.

“Completely false,” Stossel assured her concerning the allegations against Haber, the details of which she did not want to hear. Too much knowledge, she had learned, is dangerous. Amina is unsure exactly why she accepts these risks. Perhaps as a penance for her disloyalty in hiding the Schriebergs, or maybe out of altruistic concern for the hunted, regardless of their crime, or their innocence. Perhaps for the thrill that comes from knowing secrets of life and death that induce the capitulation of those desperate to keep them concealed. Whatever the reasons, and she spends little time on their identification, she convinces herself that given the opportunity to do it all over, she would permit the Gestapo to load the Schriebergs onto the train-and the Nazi hunters to take the Habers to Nuremberg and hang them. But she does not have it to do over.

Neither Hanz Stossel nor Amina Rabun consulted Herr Haber in choosing his new identity; she simply told Albrecht Bosch what to print on the false passport and he did exactly that, without question, in exchange for her indulgence of his expensive appetite for more sophisticated printing equipment and additions to his typeface collections. Amina had not given birth to a child nor ever would, so she took great pleasure in bestowing new identities on the people who came briefly under her care. Gerry Hanson was a nice name, she thought, faithful at least to the first consonant and vowel of the original. And completely inconspicuous.

“Your passport, please,” she asks.

Hanson steps forward and presents the forgery. Amina opens it and examines the exit stamp from Buenos Aires, which appears over the talons and tail feathers of a perfectly reproduced American eagle that bears some resemblance to Hanson himself. The document is flawless.

“Any difficulties?” she asks.

“Nein.”

Amina raises her eyebrows.

“Pardon me, none, thank you,” Hanson corrects himself.

Amina gestures toward a guest chair and directs the fan toward him not out of concern for his comfort but to disperse the offensive scent of his perspiring body, which has suddenly overtaken the office. This most male of odors arouses in Amina the jealousy of the man with the red insignia on his shoulder. He appears briefly in a corner of the office to confirm Amina’s fidelity, then returns quietly to his couch in the living room of her subconscious.

“What are the names and ages of your wife and children?”

Hanson tenses as if he has suddenly forgotten; his contrived calm is easily cracked by the mallet of another interrogation. “Bitte, sorry,” he says. “Hanna, age 39, Franz, age 15, Glenda, age 13, Claudia, 10.”

Amina writes these down. “Hanna?” she ponders. “Would she like Helen? Helen Hanson?”

Gerry Hanson hesitates a moment, then nods his assent.

“You’re sure? We could call her something else. You must be certain, the name cannot be changed.”

“Yes,” Hanson replies eagerly, not wanting to insult this woman who holds so much power over his and his family’s future. His face suggests he does not like the name, but Amina moves on.

“Very well then. And Franz…Franz becomes…Frank?”

“Good,” Haber says. He likes this selection much better. Amina writes it down.

“Glenda… Glenda…? Gladys?”

Haber’s smile sags momentarily but returns. “Yes, Gladys, she will like that.”

“And now Claudia… Oh yes, do you like Cathy?”

Haber brightens a bit more. “Very good. Yes, I like Cathy.”

Amina rewrites the new names on a fresh sheet of paper and calls for her secretary, who appears immediately with a steno pad. Amina is pleased by Alice’s efficiency in front of her guest. “Please take this to Albrecht in the print shop, and tell him these are the additions for the Hanson project. Tell him I need a rush. It must be completed this afternoon.” She does not explain the nature of the project, and Alice does not ask.

Hanson is unable to maintain eye contact with Amina. So close now to freedom, a new identity, and a new life in the United States for his family. He is embarrassed and worried. “Thank you,” he says. “Bitte.”

“Welcome,” Amina replies. For a very brief moment, she feels sorry for the man, but she quickly dismisses this sentimentality and reverts into the shell of Survivor Amina, who has counseled her so long now and who, with Vengeful Amina, has dominated almost to extinction Fearful Amina and Nurturing Amina. “You have something for me?” she asks impatiently.

“Yes, yes,” Hanson says, even more embarrassed now for not having offered first. He stands the cardboard cylinder on end, removes the cap, and extracts a long roll of dingy canvas, producing a cloud of black soot that settles evenly across Amina’s desk. Hanson apologizes for the mess as he unrolls the painting, which despite charred edges is in otherwise good condition. It depicts a funeral procession under gray winter skies, a coffin being carried through a snow-covered churchyard into the shattered ruins of a Gothic chapel. The nave and clerestory of the structure have crumbled, leaving only a broken facade and a few heavy limestone columns surrounding the altar. The name at the bottom right hand corner of the work is Caspar David Friedrich. Amina smiles. She has long admired the nineteenth-century romantics, but most especially Friedrich, who lived in Dresden. The private girls’ school Amina attended in Kamenz, only a few blocks away from the boys’ school in which Helmut was killed, saw to it, by Nazi decree, that she knew first and most about Germany’s own great artists.

“Where did you get it?” she asks.

Hanson hesitates, calculating whether to speak the truth, giving Amina another lever over his soul, or to lie. “It has been in my family,” he says, choosing his words carefully. His evasiveness reminds Amina of the accusations against Haber, and she decides not to press for more information.

“They say Friedrich was influenced by Runge, but I don’t see it in his work,” Amina says. “Do you?”

Hanson has no response to this. He knows nothing about Friedrich, Runge, or romanticism; he knows only that certain objects have great value, measured by what others will do to acquire them. Stossel confirmed by cable to Buenos Aires that Amina Rabun would produce five passports in exchange for the painting. That, then, fixed its value and ended Hanson’s concern for it.

“I trust you are satisfied,” he replies.

“Yes,” Amina says, more coldly now and in the manner with which she dispatched the newsprint salesman. She exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I’m sure Hanz told you I would require authentication. Someone from the Albright-Knox Museum will look at it this afternoon. Assuming there is no problem, you may return at four-thirty for your passports.”

Hanson looks at the painting and then back at Amina, forcing a smile from his lips.

“Yes, thank you,” he says, bowing his head slightly. He turns and walks out of the office. Amina closes the door behind him.

“Victim?” Elymas whispers.

I am seated between him and Luas, watching the presentation. Hanz Stossel stands at the center of the Urartu Chamber, presenting his former client. A shaft of light courses through him, carrying away the fragments of Amina Rabun’s life and splashing them into the room.

“Of what?” I respond, absorbed by the presentation.

Amina props the canvas up on her credenza, leaning books against the corners to keep it erect. She steps back to imagine how it will look when framed. From this perspective, taking more time to observe and admire, the mourners in the painting appear to her as her own family must have appeared when carrying Helmut to his tomb beneath the twisted girders and broken concrete of the memorial her father had assembled for him from the debris of his school.

“Victim of injustice,” Elymas says.

Amina wipes away tears as the memory of that terrible day envelopes her. She has been so consumed with the horror of Kamenz all these years that she has rarely thought of poor Helmut. She succumbs to the unanswerable guilt of such neglect, and of having named the press for her cousin, Bette, instead of her own brother or her own mother or father.

“The creature weeps,” Elymas whispers. “You feel her anguish, Brek Cuttler. But where is the compassion of her Creator? Can you feel that touching her soul? Does the throne express even the slightest concern? One tender thought or word? Where is justice? When will the scales be balanced?”

But Helmut’s death was, in the final analysis, an accident. The Allied pilots could not have known their bombs would raze a school. They did not look Helmut in the eyes and execute him, and that is why she has been willing to forgive them and, therefore, to forget. But not the Russians. No, their crime was deliberate and their faces depraved. There can be no forgiveness for them. Ever.

This self-pitying does not last long, Survivor Amina will not permit it. She dabs the mascara stains from her cheeks and blows her nose. She resolves to display Cloister Graveyard in the Snow in memory of her brother Helmut and to tell those who ask that it means this to her. And then an idea strikes Survivor Amina. She has been planning to publish a letter in the paper, timed to coincide with the death, one year ago, of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Amina had supported McCarthy, using his rabid patriotism as a means of disguising her German heritage. Embracing McCarthy made as much good business sense to the Register in the nineteen-fifties as did embracing the Nazis to the economic well-being of Jos. A. Rabun & Sons in the nineteen-thirties; but there was also a deeper emotional attraction to McCarthy, for he stood alone in Amina’s mind as the only one who truly understood the evil of Russia and the suffering of its victims. These understandings became the germ of Amina’s forthcoming Letter from the Publisher. She would explain in personal terms what the Rabuns of Kamenz had lost to the Red hoards-and she would bravely contrast that with what they lost to the Allied bombs. It would be a moving, convincing, wonderful letter. A fitting tribute to Joseph McCarthy.

The light gushing through Hanz Stossel in the Chamber changes color, signaling that the presentation of Amina Rabun is about to shift forward in time. I am deeply concerned with Stossel’s selections for the presentation. Why has he omitted Amina’s life in Germany and the sacrifices she made for the Schriebergs? Why is he presenting only the dark side of her life and character? And why is Hanz Stossel, who figured such a prominent role in Amina Rabun’s life as friend, confidant, and advisor, presenting her case at all?

24

The presentation of Amina Rabun continues.

Each February, Amina Rabun vacationed on the Caribbean island of Aruba. Buffalo winters could be tolerated only so long. She rented a villa on the leeward side of the island with a luxurious stretch of white sand beach owned by an executive who found it convenient when visiting his company’s oil refineries at the southern end of the island. Amina favored Aruba over other Caribbean destinations for the European architecture of Orangestad and its popularity among German vacationers. Bathed in the desert island’s orange sun and warm turquoise waters, the past for Amina was sanitized, the vessel of memory was freshened, and the delicious summers of her childhood, when the Rabuns of Kamenz vacationed on the French Mediterranean coast, were restored like ancient frescoes under the tender hands of a doting archeologist.

One such vacation occurs in February, nineteen seventy-four. After a three week respite, Amina returns to her drafty home in Buffalo accompanied by Albrecht Bosch, who has enjoyed his second visit to the island as her companion. Amina and Albrecht have become intimate friends but not lovers, for Amina is adamantly asexual and Albrecht adamantly homosexual. They learned these secrets about each other the day they first met, in a bright tavern in the Allentown section of the city on the second anniversary of Amina’s divorce, which also happened to be the first anniversary of the day Albrecht ended a relationship with an artist who convinced him to come to Buffalo from Chicago. And so it was a common nationality and a common fate that brought Amina and Albrecht together-but it was Bette Press that made them inseparable. Albrecht Bosch was in love with the printed word. He would invite anyone who would listen into his magical world of typefaces and printing presses and, once there, explain with an artist’s passion how a simple serif can arouse anger or evoke serenity, and how paper texture and weight can be grave or lyrical, pompous or comforting. He introduced Amina to the ancient struggle between legibility and creativity that ties typography to tradition like no other art form and allows for only subtle innovation; and like Amina’s early teachers of romanticism, he appealed to her Germanic pride by reminding her that Johann Gutenberg gifted the printing press to humanity. In the joyful marriage of paper and ink that followed, Amina and Albrecht experienced the harmony of opposites that had eluded their private lives.

For the past two years, Amina and Albrecht have resided in separate rooms of her small, slowly decaying mansion on Delaware Avenue, built in the nineteen-twenties by a Great Lakes shipping baron. The house is cold when the travelers arrive from their journey to the tropics, infuriating Amina because she had left specific instructions for the housekeeper to turn up the heat two days before their return. Amina asks Albrecht to adjust the thermostat and light a fire in the study, then heads for the mail, which has been stacked neatly for her on the large mahogany dining room table. She scans through the envelopes quickly, searching for anything that looks important or interesting, setting aside the monotony of bills and solicitations. Two envelopes fit the former criteria: a large, beige square of heavy cotton fiber bond addressed to “Ms. Amina Rabun and Guest,” and a menacing business envelope with a return address of “Weinstein & Goldman, Attorneys-at-Law.” She takes both envelopes into the kitchen, puts on a pot of water for tea, and opens the invitation first. To Survivor Amina’s delight, she reads that the prestigious Niagara Society has, for the first time, requested the favor of her presence at its annual Spring Ball-the social event in Buffalo each year.

“Albrecht!” she calls.

“What is it?” Albrecht groans with his head in the fireplace trying to resuscitate a few fading embers. He has already gone through half a Sunday newspaper but still can’t coax the wood to ignite.

“We’re going to the Niagara Society Ball!” Amina sings. “Get your tuxedo pressed.”

“Not if I die of asphyxiation first,” Albrecht coughs.

The telephone rings as the water comes to a boil.

“Can you get that, Albrecht?” Amina asks. “The tea’s on.”

Albrecht takes the call in the living room while Amina pours the bubbling water into a creamy Beleek teapot. She adds Earl Gray tea leaves to the infuser; sets a tray with two matching cups, milk and sugar, the invitation, and the letter and carries the tray into to the study. After settling into her favorite wingback chair and fixing herself a cup, she opens the envelope from the law firm, finding the enclosed letter:

Dear Ms. Rabun:

I represent Mrs. Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson in her capacity as Executrix of the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Jared A. Schrieberg.

As you know, my client has written to you on several occasions concerning ownership of certain theaters and real property in Dresden acquired by your family from the decedents during the war for the sum of 35,000 Reichmarks, equivalent at the time to approximately $22,000 U.S. You no doubt realize the purchase price was far below fair market value and the sale was made under duress and threat of seizure of the property by the Nazi government and incarceration of the decedents in the Nazi death camps. Therefore the sale was and is, invalid.

Mrs. Schrieberg-Wolfson, on behalf of the Estate, seeks rescission of the purchase contract and return of all property. In that connection, she has previously offered in writing to refund you the $22,000 plus interest from the date of the sale. You have not responded to Mrs. Schrieberg-Wolfson’s offer and she has, therefore, retained me to take the necessary steps to rescind the contract and recover the property or its value.

My research has disclosed that your family no longer owns the property, it having been sold in 1949, at your personal direction, by Mr. Hanz Stossel, Esquire. I am in the process of determining the compensation received from that sale. I also understand that although the property had been purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Otto Rabun and not you directly, the proceeds of the sale were paid to you personally, or in trust for their daughter and your prior ward, Barratte Rabun. As I do not know the location of Ms. Rabun, I ask that you pass this correspondence on to her if appropriate.

Assuming the property was sold by you for fair market value, my client has authorized me to accept the proceeds of that sale plus interest, minus the purchase price, in full payment and settlement of the Estate’s claims. We believe fair market value in today’s dollars would equal at least $3,500,000 U.S. If such an arrangement cannot be reached, we will be forced to initiate legal proceedings to invalidate the purchase and to recover the full value of the property. We believe the courts in this country and Germany will be sympathetic to these claims.

My client deeply regrets the need to resort to the courts, but is firm in her resolve. She is and shall forever be grateful to you for sheltering her family during those terrible years, and has expressed as much in her letters to you. This is, however, a matter of the unfair acquisition of property by your uncle under extreme conditions. As a result of that action, my client and her surviving family were forced to live in relative poverty compared to the lifestyle which you and your family have enjoyed. Mrs. Schrieberg-Wolfson seeks no more than to right that wrong; she bears neither you nor Miss Barratte Rabun any ill will.

I am authorized to initiate legal proceedings if I receive no response from you to this letter. In light of your position as publisher of a newspaper, it would seem that the negative publicity surrounding such a case would prove very uncomfortable. In that regard, our investigators have learned that Otto Rabun was a member of the Waffen SS and that your father’s construction firm, from which much of your family’s wealth emerged, was under contract to build the crematoria at Majdanek, Treblinka, and Oswiecim. Such extraordinary facts will be difficult to conceal from the public in litigation.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Very truly yours,

Robert Goldman, Esq.

“How dare she threaten me!” Amina fumes.

Amina had received letters from Katerine Schrieberg and thrown all of them away. She had come to see the Schriebergs as responsible for the horror of Kamenz. While the Russian soldiers murdered members of her family and raped her and her cousins, the Schriebergs remained huddled in a Rabun hunting cabin nearby and did nothing, risked nothing; when she ran to them for help the next morning, they were gone. Indeed, Amina had come to blame all Jews for these things: in her view they had sunk Germany into poverty and, ultimately, war, and their outrageous claims about death camps had defamed her father and uncle and shamed the nation. Now this, after all their cowardice, after all Amina had risked to protect them, Katerine Schrieberg repays her by threatening to ruin her? It was too much. Amina takes the letter to the hearth, ignites it with one of the matches left behind by Albrecht, and places it into the fireplace on top of the charred newspaper, warming her hands by its flames.

“What’s going on in there?” Albrecht calls from the living room. “Barratte’s on the phone, do you want to speak to her?”

This news startles Amina even more than the letter. She has not spoken to Barratte in nearly twenty years. The bond between cousins strained when Amina decided to flee Germany with Captain Meinert and take Barratte with them. Barratte despised the Americans for the death of her father in Berlin as much as she despised the Russians for the deaths of her mother, sister, and brothers in Kamenz. She considered Amina a traitor to Germany for marrying an American soldier, and a traitor to their family for liquidating their assets and running. Brought to the United States against her will, Barratte did not adjust well. She found the language and customs difficult, performed poorly in school, and was unable to make friends. The other children-children of American veterans dead and alive-tormented her as a Nazi in their midst, an orphaned “Kraut girl” whose parents and country got what they had coming. She never revealed to them the horrific price she and her family had paid in Kamenz. Her teen years were spent in quiet desperation; she substituted her rape with a story that she had seduced and slept with young German officers at the age of eleven, bragging about this to the other girls and, in this way, finding acceptance among them as worldly and exotic, responding to her trauma in the exact opposite manner of her cousin. She found acceptance, too, among older boys, who were pleased to find a willing, experienced partner regardless of background and accent. Barratte thus developed an unflattering reputation, and this eventually found its way to Amina, who was furious but, privately, jealous that her young niece seemingly had been able to put Kamenz behind her in this way. As her guardian, Amina punished Barratte severely for her behavior, and in response, Barratte grew colder and bided her time. Within weeks of her eighteenth birthday, she hired a lawyer, took control of her inheritance, and left for New York City. Amina knew little about Barratte’s life during the years after that. The surprise telephone call on that cold Saturday in February came to her as a complete shock.

“What does she want, Albrecht? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s wonderful!” Albrecht replies. “Barratte had a baby boy this morning! Seven pounds, five ounces! She named him Otto Rabun Bowles! You’re a grandmother, or a great aunt, or something, Amina! Here, come speak to her!”

The Urartu Chamber reappears. “A decision has been made,” Legna announces with the hollow voice of a proctor calling time, terminating the presentation of Amina Rabun before the final essay on her life can be completed. Another postulant in Shemaya graded on less than half her work.

“Well done,” Luas says, shaking Hanz Stossel’s hand.

“Yes, well done.” Elymas agrees. “Well done.”

“We’re going out tonight,” Nana said.

It was late afternoon and we were in the study. She was reading, of all things, the 1897 Farmer’s Almanac-the year she was born-and I was needlepointing a Christmas stocking for Sarah. We had never gone out before. I pulled the needle through the fabric.

“Where?” I asked.

I had started the stocking when I was pregnant; it would have been finished in time for Sarah’s first Christmas. I picked it back up again when I went home to meet Elymas after the presentation of Amina Rabun. I waited for days, but he never came. Doing something with my hands (hand)-doing something for Sarah-became my way of mourning, and protesting, her death. I decided to act as though she was still alive-that we were both still living. I made bottles of formula for her every morning and ran her a bath; I washed her tiny clothes and crib sheets; I drove to the daycare and then to work, and back to the daycare and then to the convenience store. The unmarked police car flashed its lights to pull me over, but I kept driving until it disappeared from the mirror. When the loneliness became too great, I returned to Nana’s house and brought the stocking back with me to finish.

“It’s a surprise,” she said, her lips spreading into a smile. This was actually the first time we’d spoken since I came back. We had spent several days silently passing each other in the house.

“I don’t think I can take any more surprises,” I said.

“Elymas does have a flair for them,” Nana replied. “It’s part of his charm, I suppose. But I wouldn’t trust everything he says and does.”

I looked at her. “Should I trust you?”

“You should trust the truth, child.”

“What is the truth, Nana?”

“The truth is what makes you feel calm and loved, nothing more than that.”

“That’s meaningless.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the only meaning. Truth is never anger or fear. They’re illusions, and Elymas traffics in them.”

I looped the thread and pushed the needle back through the fabric. I was working on the toe of an angel blowing a trumpet.

“He told me you would call him a false prophet.”

“He also told you that I’d be upset, but I’m not. You’re free to follow false prophets if you wish. They all expose themselves eventually… and truth is never far away.”

“I saw Bo and Sarah with my own eyes. I held them in my arms.”

“I know, dear, I know. And you sailed on a caravel and walked through Tara, and everything around you here seems so real. But it all disappears. Things and bodies are not real. They’re symbols, and symbols are impermanent. Life is impermanent.”

“Bo’s life has been ruined.”

“According to Elymas, it has. But who’s to say? Is Bo closer to the truth by working at a homeless shelter or sitting in front of a television camera?”

“What happened to her? What happened to me? What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything, child. It’s you who doesn’t see the truth all around you.” She closed the almanac and pushed herself up from the chair. “When you’re ready to see it, you will. It’s time now for us to get ready.”

“For what?”

“You’ll need an evening gown.”

That got my attention. “And where do you expect me to find one of those in Shemaya?”

She had the devious look of a grandparent teasing a child with a present. “In your closet.”

I went upstairs and opened the closet in my mother’s room. There were five different gowns-beautiful silks, satins, and crepes with matching stockings and shoes. I was thrilled. Nana stood at the door, watching me.

“They’re beautiful,” I said, holding each one in front of me. “Won’t you tell me where we’re going?”

“I can’t,” Nana said, “it’s a surprise.”

She sat on the bed as I tried on each gown, twirling past her. They all fit perfectly, but we liked the black satin gown with straps and the low bodice that exposed my shoulders and back the best. I was actually enjoying myself. We went through the same process in her room, settling on a gown for her with more color and a high neckline. She pulled two strands of pearls and two matching pairs of earrings from her jewelry box and gave a set to me. Standing before the mirror, we made a striking couple, and neither of us needed hair brushes or makeup. Hair and complexions are always perfect in Shemaya.

We left the house with the last of the four suns from the four seasons dropping beneath the treetops. Nana led me out the back door and through the woods on foot to the entrance of the train station. There were strange new sounds when we entered the vestibule, mystical and resonant-the sounds of water rushing and wind blowing, of dolphins laughing and birds singing, of children talking and parents sighing, of all creation living and dying. It was the sound of the earth rotating, if it could have been heard from space, primordial and otherworldly, as viewing the earth from orbit feels both primordial and otherworldly. It turned out to be the sounds of a band. A handwritten note on the doors read: “RECEPTION FOR NEW PRESENTERS.” We walked in.

All the postulants were gone, and with them the static discharge of their memories and the sad, horrifying, but sometimes beautiful, states of their deaths. On an elevated stage near the board showing arrivals but no departures, hovered four faceless minstrels, like Legna, dressed in long gray cassocks. Two played instruments that looked like violins, one a bass, and the other a cello that vibrated in colors: auroral greens, violets, and blues. Before the band milled a crowd of formally attired men, women, and children, some off by themselves enjoying the performance with a plate of hors d’oeuvres and a glass of champagne (or milk for the children), others gathered into small groups, talking and laughing. Banquet tables had been erected in the four corners of the hall and piled high with pâtés, caviar, cheeses, fruits, and other delicacies, and next to these were bars fully stocked with wine, liquor, and other refreshments. A small army of faceless, gray-dressed creatures tended the tables and bars and collected the empty glasses and plates from the guests. A magnificent crystal chandelier and a constellation of lesser chandeliers bathed the room in a warm, sparkling light. I looked around, trying to gain my bearings. Luas emerged from the crowd, dressed handsomely in a single-breasted tuxedo.

“Welcome! Welcome!” he said, greeting us. “We’ve been waiting for you!” He gave each of us hugs, then turned and waved his arms over the crowd. “Grand, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I yelled over the din.

“And all in your honor, my dear. You’ve graduated with flying colors, and you’re ready for your first client. I must say, we’ve got an excellent group of new presenters. Time for a little play before the work begins. You both look wonderful.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I really don’t feel like I’m ready to graduate or represent anybody. I barely understand the process…and I don’t think I agree with the results.”

“Have no worries, Brek,” Luas assured me. “Everyone’s nervous the first time, you’ll do just fine.”

“Brek was very suspicious about tonight,” Nana said. “She almost forced me to ruin the surprise.”

“Was she now?” Luas said. “Ah, but she’s an inquisitive one. That’s what we love about her.”

“Here’s another question, then,” I said. “What have you done with all the postulants? The hall was filled a few days ago.”

“And a perceptive question as usual,” Luas said. “Didn’t I tell you, Sophia? They’re still here, actually. Come, I’ll show you.”

We walked back out of the train shed and closed the doors. “Okay,” he said, “now, open them again.”

All at once the music was gone, along with the minstrels, food, tables, chandeliers, and beautiful guests, and the postulants were back-thousands of souls lurking in the dim, sulfurous light of the train station, comatose and naked, wandering endlessly over the cold, filthy floor. The soul of a teenage girl approached me, and in her I saw a doctor explaining that there is nothing he can do to stop the treatment for her leukemia from making her nauseous; her stomach hurts and she’s crying, squeezing her stuffed rabbit, Mr. Ears. She returns to school thin and bald, a freak in her own eyes. Her mother has quit her job to care for her; she is a tender, loving mother, but the girl despises the woman because she is healthy and beautiful, and responsible for bringing her into this horrible world. Most of all, the girl despises her sister, who is younger and also healthy and beautiful; she plays soccer and flirts with boys, flaunting her life. She has no idea of suffering. The sick girl refuses to speak to her sister, and refuses to smile. She infects others with the blackness that infects her, for she believes no other goals are attainable, and she is alone. She would die for a last laugh. And she does.

I looked next into the soul of an old man from Congo, and from him I received magnanimous humor and love. His life begins in a shack with a dirt floor, in a village with a dirt road, and ends in the same shack with the same road and the same dirt. He has fourteen children and loves each one, although eight died before the age of ten. He loves his neighbors, his fields, and even the wild boar that gores him to death. Most of all, he loves his wife, who tries with all her strength to heal the infection that becomes gangrenous and ultimately kills him. Offered to do it all over, he would happily say yes.

“How can they be here?” I said to Luas.

“Creation is a matter of perspective and choice. What one wishes to see becomes what one is able to see. You have never seen the subatomic particles pulsating in the furnishings of your living room, nor the place of your living room in the pin-wheeling galaxies millions of light years away, but this does not mean subatomic particles and galaxies do not co-exist. Your powers as a presenter are maturing, Brek; you are seeing more of what there is to see. You are seeing through microscope and telescope.”

The soul of a man with bulging eyes and a shaved head glanced up at me and turned away. He seemed familiar, like somebody I once knew, but I couldn’t place him before he disappeared into the crowd of souls. From elsewhere in the crowd, the soul of a young girl stared at me with haunted, defiant eyes. She stood among a group of souls missing arms and legs. I expected to see the images of her life but saw nothing, only a void, as if she had lived no life at all. Her right arm was missing and she reminded me of me as a girl.

“Do you know her name?” I asked Luas, “the one over there without the right arm. Maybe I could represent her since we have something in common.”

“That won’t be possible,” Luas said. “The girl already has a lawyer, and your first client has already been selected. He’s at the other end of the hall, but this isn’t the time or place for an introduction. You’ll meet him tomorrow. This is a time to celebrate. Shall we return to the reception while there’s food left?”

We exited the train shed and re-opened the doors back into the party. The music and light instantly washed away the despair of the hidden room, and I wondered whether subatomic particles and galaxies ever contemplate their existence.

25

My new colleagues-the many honorable and longstanding members of the bar of the Urartu Chamber-were eager to welcome me at my graduation party and share stories of their first presentations. Disturbingly, each of them related similar tales of trials terminated before a defense could be made, and what seemed like eternities spent trying the same soul over and over again to the same conclusion. Yet, none of them seemed much bothered by it. Constantin, for example, an older man with blackened teeth and scars on his face, told me he presented the soul of a police officer whose duty, and pleasure, it had been to torture prisoners into making confessions. “He was a singularly cruel man,” Constantin explained, “but Legna sees fit to end the presentation each day before I can inform the Chamber of his fondness for abandoned animals found on the street, which he sheltered in his apartment.” Another presenter, Allee, a pregnant teenager with swollen cheeks and hands, presented the soul of a young man who left his girlfriend after impregnating her. “He risked his life to save a child from a fire that swept through his neighbors’ house one day,” she said. “I try to bring it up in the Chamber, but we never seem to get to it. I guess God doesn’t think it matters.” Another presenter, a young boy named Julio with soft features and a lisp, presented a bully who beat and tormented his classmates. “I guess he wasn’t all that bad,” Julio conceded, “his father was sick and he helped take care of him; he even helped him use the bathroom-yuck! I can understand why God doesn’t want to hear about that.”

I lost Luas and Nana in the crowd and continued on alone to a banquet table. After helping myself to some pâté, brie, and crackers, I drifted off toward an amazing stone sculpture in the corner of the room that I hadn’t seen earlier. It was a perfectly smooth sphere as tall as me and might have represented the earth. A miniature stone figurine of a woman with long hair and wearing a skirt stood on the surface of the sphere at the top with three miniature pairs of stone doors arrayed before her. When I looked more closely at the figurine of the woman, the sculpture somehow reconfigured itself, like the shape-shifting sculpture of the monastery and synagogue in the hallway, so that I was now seeing the three pairs of doors before me, as if I were the figurine of the woman on the sphere. Over the first pair of doors in front of me was a sign that said “SELF,” over the second, a sign that said “OTHERS,” and over the third, a sign that said “SPIRIT.” All three pairs of doors had mirrored surfaces, and I could see my reflection in them, but the left and right doors of each pair reflected back different images of me. The left door of each pair displayed an image of me I had always wanted to see: taller, with more pronounced cheekbones, fuller breasts, and two complete arms. This Brek Cuttler was witty and sophisticated, a loving mother, brilliant lawyer, devoted daughter, exquisite lover, competitive tennis player, accomplished violinist, and wonderful chef-the perfect specimen of a woman, envied for having a perfect career, perfect body, perfect mind, perfect husband, perfect children, and perfect home. The right door of each pair mirrored back a far less glamorous image of myself. This Brek Cuttler was more round and plain, with a blemished face, thin lips, small breasts, limp hair, and no right arm. These were her only distinguishing characteristics, yet she seemed more noble and less frantic than her twin reflected in the other doors, as if there were no need for further identification and even these few features were unnecessary. This Brek Cuttler defined herself by everything the other Brek Cuttler was not: comforting rather than competitive, spiritual rather than intellectual, forgiving rather than condescending, complimentary rather than complimented, trusted rather than feared-perfectly defenseless and, thus, perfectly indestructible; dependent upon everyone and, thus, independent. The Brek Cuttler in this reflection was a creator of possibilities, not a victim of expectations, incapable of envy because she understood that everything belonged to her and she, in turn, belonged to everything.

“Love me,” pleaded the perfect Brek Cuttler reflected in the left doors of each of the three pairs with the signs above them. Behind her in the mirror assembled the trappings of her success-the awed glances of men and women, the beautiful clothes and home, the powerful friends and powerful titles, the luxurious vacations, the coveted invitations, the ruthless victories. Her slightly queer little twin reflected in the right doors of each of the three pairs said only, “I am.” Behind her assembled the trappings of her freedom-represented by the universe itself, from the smallest gnat to the brightest star, each perfect in its own way, and in its own time.

The magical sculpture divided my miniature avatar into three, and each of us stepped forward to make our choices between the three pairs of doors. We were greeted at the thresholds by parents, teachers, and friends: to the left they all pointed, and through the left doors we went, finding behind them more doors and the same sets of choices. To the left again we went, receiving the same guidance, and to the left again, again, and again, as we had been taught and raised, eventually choosing on our own. We chose an occasional right door, demonstrating our compassion, but quickly turned left again, and again, the sculpture rotating slowly, like a boulder being pushed uphill, the doors opening and closing. Suddenly the sculpture transformed itself back to the way it had been, a large sphere with me no longer part of it but standing by its side. Looking down upon its surface, I see, as though viewing the earth from high altitude, a labyrinth of doors, paths, and choices crisscrossing the surface like so many rivers and highways.

A man’s voice, deep but gentle, came from my right, startling me: “A traveler who sets out in one direction eventually returns to the place of his beginning, seeing it again for the first time.”

I turned to find a strikingly exotic man standing beside me. He was thin and of middle height and middle age, shirtless and shoeless, with smooth, titian skin and dark, black eyes; he wore a rainbow-colored dhoti wrapped around his waist and legs in the style of a Hindu ascetic, and on his head a skullcap made of small gold beads. His face was peaceful, unfathomable, like that of a Buddhist monk during meditation. He was beautiful in the way a gazelle or an antelope is beautiful.

“Oh, hello,” I said, trying to recover from the shock of his appearance while blushing and coughing on a cracker at the same time. “I didn’t see you standing there…” I coughed again and cleared my throat. “Wow, pardon me,” I said.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Quite an interesting sculpture, isn’t it? But to me, it seems to be saying that a traveler can’t maintain a single direction. Choices are constantly being made, changing her path.”

The sphere rotated, and my three virtual representatives disappeared around the far side.

“But time leads in only one direction from which there can be no deviation,” the man said. “If your point is that there can be many possible present moments, then I would agree. One may choose between them.”

“I’m not sure that’s what I meant,” I said. “How can there be many present moments?”

“I believe the sculptor intended for the forward rotation of the sphere to represent the unchanging direction of time. This means that any point on the surface where the figurine happens to stand represents the present moment as experienced by her at any particular instant of rotation. If so, then stretching behind her from that point on the sphere is the past, and out in front of her lies the future. Yet, it is a sphere, so what is behind her must eventually rotate around and appear again in front of her, illustrating that the past inevitably becomes the future. From the traveler’s perspective, she will be seeing it again, as if for the first time.”

“You seem to know a lot about this sculpture,” I said.

“I’ve studied it a great deal,” the man replied. “Now, suppose you were to draw a longitudinal line halfway around the sphere from the present moment where she stands-a prime meridian. You would see that this line represents all possible places on the surface of the sphere where the traveler can stand and still be within the present moment. The doors represent the decisions she must make on where to stand along that line.”

“If that’s what the sculptor was trying to say, I missed it.”

“I don’t think that’s all he was trying to say,” the man said. “We’ve accounted for only two dimensions of the sphere so far-time, represented by the rotation of the sphere, and place, represented by the surface of the sphere. We’ve described only a flat disk, I’m afraid-half a pancake.”

“I didn’t do well in geometry.”

The man smiled.

“There must be a third dimension giving volume to the sphere and meaning to the dimensions of time and place. The meridian line I mentioned, representing the present moment, doesn’t just float upon the surface; it also extends beneath the surface, through to the core of the sphere, giving the sphere its depth and shape. This dimension of depth represents the possible levels of understanding of the traveler at any given present moment-the levels of meaning of place and time. Her perception might be very basic and primitive, in which case her understanding of her time and place would be near the surface; or she might possess a more complete understanding of her time and place and all its nuances, in which case her understanding would be very deep and near the core. Meaning is also a matter of choice, is it not? We may experience the same present reality in many different ways. Thus, although our traveler has no ability to choose her particular time-although she may indeed fantasize about the past and the future-she has complete freedom to choose both her place in the present moment, and its meaning and significance to her-her level of perception. In this way, she experiences reality in three dimensions from a potentially infinite number of locations along the line of the present moment, assigning to her reality a potentially infinite number of meanings corresponding to the depth of her perception.”

He was talking way over my head. I was there to celebrate becoming a presenter, not engage in a philosophical exegesis of time, space, and perception. I scanned the crowd for Luas and Nana and a polite way out of the conversation.

“My name is Gautama,” the man said, perceptively extending his left hand.

“Brek Cuttler,” I said, smiling sheepishly, embarrassed at having been caught looking for an exit.

One of the faceless attendants arrived to retrieve my empty glass and plate.

“Yes, I know who you are,” Gautama said. “I hope I haven’t bored you. I myself am far more interested in the smaller steps along the journey, but standing back on occasion to glimpse the whole can be useful. For instance, it explains the presence of the postulants here among us right now, and our mutual inability to see each other because of our chosen levels of perception.”

“Does it explain why every presentation in the Urartu Chamber is terminated before a defense can be presented? I assume this has been your experience as well?”

“I’m not a presenter,” Gautama said. “I’m a sculptor…among other things.”

“You sculpted this?” I asked, even more embarrassed.

“Yes, do you like it?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “It’s fascinating…but a bit intimidating.”

“We’re not comfortable making choices; we prefer others to make them for us. But choice is what makes everything run, you know; it’s the energy that powers the universe. To create is simply to choose, to decide. Even the Ten Commandments are choices-ten choices each person must make at any instant in time that create who they are and who they will become, although they can be reduced to three, which is what I’ve tried to do here with my sphere.”

“Three?”

“Yes. The first four Commandments are simply choices about the Holy One, are they not? Will we acknowledge God-or Spirit, or Truth, whatever language you wish to use-or will we worship material things and settle for the impermanent world? Will we invoke the power of God, the creative force, to harm or destroy others, or will we love them as ourselves? Will we set aside time to appreciate Creation and Truth, or will we consume all our time in pursuit of finite ends? The remaining six Commandments concern choices about others and self. Murder, theft, adultery, the way one relates to one’s parents, family, and community-these reflect how one chooses to regard others. Whether one is envious, and whether one conceals the truth, are ultimately decisions about one’s self.”

“Interesting way of looking at it,” I said.

Gautama turned toward the crowd.

“Your understanding of this, my daughter, is essential, for these are the choices that must be presented in the Urartu Chamber. From these choices alone is the Final Judgment rendered and eternity decided. The Judge is demanding and thorough. Some might even say the Judge is unforgiving.”

“The presentations are never completed,” I said. “Some might say the Judge is unjust.”

“Ours is not to question such wisdom; but you might ask yourself how many times the same choices must be presented before the story is accurately told.”

“Since I arrived in Shemaya, I don’t think I’ve met anybody, except my great-grandmother, who wasn’t a presenter. You said you are a sculptor, among other things. What things are those?”

“I help postulants recognize themselves and their choices. That is why my sphere is located here in the train station. ”

We turned back to the sphere. “I still don’t understand the reflections on the door,” I said. “I saw two different versions of myself.”

“Are not all choices based in personal desires? And are not all desires reflections of who we are or wish to become? We could distill the three choices presented here by the three pairs of doors into one, and conclude that all things in life turn upon choices concerning Creation itself. We could distill this even further and conclude that all things turn upon Creation’s choices about Creation itself. In other words, Brek, we are co-creators with God. At the highest level of reality on the sphere, at the pole from which we start, and to which we will inevitably return, there is but one possible here and now. All the rest flows from it, and returns to it, in the course of Creation-in the course of making choices. We choose who we are or wish to become, but in the end we are only one thing, permanent and unchanging, no matter what choices we make. The journey around the sphere is, in essence, an illusion.”

Tim Shelly staggered up between Gautama and me, reeking of alcohol. His eyes were glazed over and his bowtie undone.

“Hey, great rock!” he said, slurring his words. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder and slid it down my back inappropriately. “Go get somebody else, Gautama,” he said. “Brek’s mine.”

“You seem to be enjoying the evening, my son,” Gautama replied, not bothered by the remark, or Tim’s apparent drunken condition. I, however, was very uncomfortable with the way he was behaving.

“I think he’s enjoying it a little too much,” I said, pushing him away.

Tim grabbed me again and tried to kiss me full on the lips.

“Stop it, Tim!” I yelled, turning my face away. “What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s the matter, Brek? Too good for me?”

“I believe it is time for you to go home, my son,” Gautama said.

“Why?” Tim said, “so you can have her?” He winked at Gautama and gave him a punch on the shoulder. “I’ve been watching you…I know you older spiritual guys still got it in you.”

Gautama smiled but said nothing, as if he were dealing with a misbehaving child.

“Problem is,” Tim continued, “she thinks she too good for you, too. She only screws Jew boys. She likes them circumcised. Well, I say it’s time for her to find out what a real man looks and feels like. You wait your turn here, Gautama, and we’ll see what she thinks. It won’t take long.” Tim lunged toward me and I screamed, but Gautama stepped in front of him and spun him around in the other direction.

“Good night, my daughter,” he said, leading Tim away by the arm. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

26

I left the reception badly shaken and walked down the long office corridor outside the Urartu Chamber to calm myself down. For the first time in Shemaya, I feared for my personal safety. It wasn’t like there was a police department or I could call 911 if Tim attacked me.

But was there really anything to be afraid of? Can a human soul be raped-or harmed in any other way? Tim Shelly looked like a man with a man’s body; I felt his hand on my back, on my woman’s body; but none of these things existed-and yet they did. And how disappointing must it be for Jews to learn that anti-Semitism survives even death! I wasn’t even Jewish, and I never told Tim that Bo was; how did he know, and why did it matter? None of it made sense. Yet, Tim’s ugly words and threats were as palpable and real as if they had been made during my life; there was something genuinely cold and malicious about the way he looked at me. What happened to the sweet guy who thought he was a waitress and camped out with his father-the guy who visited Tara with me, and sailed with me on the caravel, and worried about how his mother was taking his death? Maybe it was just the alcohol talking…but how can a human soul consume alcohol, let alone become intoxicated by it?

I continued walking down the corridor until I reached Tim’s office. A sudden chill came over me, but that was nothing compared to the dread I felt when I saw my name on the office door next to his, on a brand new plaque that read, “Brek Abigail Cuttler, Presenter.” The door was unlocked, and I went in. The office was identical to Luas’ with a small desk, two chairs, and no windows. I was not the first occupant: two white candles sat on the desk, burned unevenly, their sides and brass holders clotted with polyps of wax. It was a claustrophobic little room, not unlike a confessional in a rundown cathedral; the air hung damp and heavy, laden with the sins of those who had exhaled their lives there; but it felt safe and almost cozy-and it was mine. I lit the candles, closed the door, and settled in behind the desk to enjoy the privacy.

Then came a knock at the door.

Tim?

I slipped quietly around the desk and braced the guest chair against the door.

The knock came again, followed this time by a girl’s voice, Asian-sounding and unfamiliar: “May I come in please?”

“Who is it?” I said, wedging the guest chair more tightly into place with my foot.

“My name is Mi Lau. I knew your Uncle Anthony. I saw you leave the reception.”

“Anthony Bellini?” I said.

“Yes.”

I pulled the guest chair away from the door and opened it. What I saw standing before me on the other side was so hideous and repulsive that I shrieked in horror and slammed the door shut again. A young girl stood in the doorway, her body was burned almost beyond recognition and still smoldering, as if the flames had just been extinguished. Most of her skin was gone, exposing shattered fragments of bone and tissue seared like gristle fused to a grill. Her right eye was missing, leaving a horrible gouge in her face, and beneath the socket two rows of broken teeth without lips, cheeks, or gums and an expanse of white jawbone somehow spared the blackening of the flames. The stench of burned flesh overpowered the hallway and, now, my office.

“Please excuse my appearance,” the girl said through the door. “My death was not very pleasant. Nor, I can see, was yours.”

I looked down and saw myself as Mi Lau had seen me-as I had seen myself when I arrived in Shemaya, naked with three holes in my chest and covered with blood. I opened the door again. Mi Lau and I stared at each other, sizing each other up like two monsters in a horror movie. We obviously could not communicate or even be in each other’s presence if our wounds were all we could see, so we engaged in the same charade played by all the souls of Shemaya, agreeing to see in each other only the pleasant hologram reflections of life the way we wished it had been. In this filtered and refracted light, Mi Lau suddenly became a beautiful teenage girl with yellow topaz skin, large brown eyes, and long, thick, dark hair. She was a child on the verge of becoming a young woman-fresh, radiant, and pure, and dressed in a pretty pink gown, making the gruesomeness of her death all the more cruel and difficult to reconcile.

“I am very sorry my appearance frightened you,” she said. She spoke in the rhythmic, loose guitar string twang of Vietnamese, but I somehow understood her words in English, as if I were listening to a hidden interpreter.

“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” I said. “I didn’t expect anybody at the door and then, well…yes, you frightened me. Please, come in.”

Mi Lau sat in the guest chair with her hands folded in her lap. I closed the door and returned to my place behind the desk.

“So, how do you know my Uncle Anthony?” I asked. “He died before I was born.”

“We met during the war,” Mi Lau said, “and he is also one of my clients here.”

“My uncle is on trial here?” I asked. “Can I see him?”

“Yes, you can come see his trial. I present his case every day.”

“Legna ends it before you finish?”

“Yes, like the others.”

“That’s unfair, and it doesn’t make sense. Why bother having a trial?”

Mi Lau said nothing.

“How did you meet during the war?” I asked. “What was he like?”

“Your uncle came to my village with other American soldiers, they were chasing the Viet Cong. The VC stayed with us; we had no choice; they were mostly just young boys; they left us alone and didn’t harm us. When the Americans came, there were gunshots, and my family hid in a tunnel beneath our hut. Always my mother would go into the tunnel first, then my sister, me, and my father last; but the fighting caught us by surprise and this time I was last. The tunnel was narrow, and we had to crawl on our stomachs. We could hear the machine guns and the Americans shouting, and the VC boys screaming. My sister and I covered our ears and trembled like frightened rabbits.”

“It must have been horrible.”

“Yes. But the fighting did not last long. Soon all became quiet until a powerful explosion shook the ground. Dirt fell into my hair, and I was afraid the tunnel might collapse. My father said the American soldiers were blowing up the tunnels in our village and we must get out quickly. I crawled toward the entrance, and that is when I saw your uncle. He was kneeling over the hole, holding a grenade in his hand. I remember it clearly. A crucifix with the right arm broken off dangled from his neck; I remember thinking it looked like a small bird with a broken wing. I smiled up at him. I was so naïve, I thought Americans were there to help us, that they were our friends. But he didn’t smile back. He looked at me with terrible, hateful eyes, and then he pulled the pin and dropped the grenade into the hole. ‘No! No!’ I screamed, we’re down here!’ The grenade rolled between my legs. It felt cold and smooth, like a river stone. I saw him turn his head and cover his ears and realized what was about to happen. And then it exploded.”

Mi Lau spoke without anger or emotion, as if she were describing nothing more than planting rice in a field. I lowered my head, too ashamed and distraught to look at her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Mi Lau said. “I know all about your family from presenting him. They seem like such nice people. Your uncle knew your mother was pregnant with you when he died, but he was convinced you would be a boy, so I was surprised when Luas told me who you were at the reception.”

“I was told he died a hero.”

“Maybe he did,” Mi Lau said, “but hero is something that lives in other people’s minds. After blowing up all the tunnels in our village, he went off with some of the other soldiers to smoke marijuana. He said to them with a laugh: ‘The best thing about blowing up tunnels full of gooks in the morning is that they’re already in their graves and you can spend the rest of the afternoon smoking dope.’ An hour later, he wandered off by himself and shot himself in the head. That was heroic maybe, to take his own life so he could no longer take the lives of others.”

It took me a long time to absorb what she had said.

“How can you represent him if he killed you and your family?” I asked. “I’m sorry about what he did, but how can he get a fair trial? I mean, naturally you would want him to be convicted-and maybe he should be. That’s probably why he’s still here. ”

Mi Lau’s eyes narrowed and she straightened herself indignantly. “I present Anthony Bellini’s life exactly as he lived it,” she said. “I cannot change what he did, and I do not bias the presentation in any way. Luas monitors us closely and disciplines any presenter who attempts to influence the result.”

“But how can you even face him after what he did to you?”

“He can’t hurt me again, and I feel better knowing justice has been done. All is confessed in the Urartu Chamber…there are no lies. Some say Shemaya is where Jesus stayed for three days after his death, before ascending into heaven, presenting all the souls who have ever lived. I believe Shemaya is where the final battle is fought between good and evil. Evil must not be permitted to win. It must not be allowed to hide or disguise itself; it must be rooted out, and destroyed, and all those who perpetrate evil must be punished.”

Mi Lau stood and suddenly she transformed back into the girl whose body had been mutilated and blown apart by my uncle’s grenade. “I must go now,” she said. “Welcome to Shemaya. You will be serving God here. You will be serving justice.”

27

I woke the next morning to the nutty-sweet aroma of Irish porridge. It was a delicious, familiar aroma I hadn’t smelled since my Grandma Cuttler made it for my grandfather and me on the farm. I went downstairs and found Nana Bellini in the kitchen, already dressed for the day in tan slacks and a red sweater. She gave me a kiss on the forehead and placed a steaming bowl of porridge before me at the kitchen table.

“You’ll need your strength today,” she said.

There was something different about her. Her eyes seemed distant and moist, almost melancholy. I hadn’t seen her this way before.

“Thanks,” I said, delighted with the breakfast. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s just that the time has come for me to go, and I’m sad we’ll be apart.”

“Go? What do you mean, go? Go where?”

“Just go, child, go on. You came here wounded and frightened, and there’s still some pain and fear left in you, but it no longer controls you. You’ve recovered from the shock of death; that’s why I was here, to help you. But you’re a presenter now, and I can’t help you with that. You need space to experience, to spread out your thoughts and look them over-space to study and understand. The next steps you take must be your own. You’re ready, and I’m proud of you. We’re all proud of you. You give us hope.”

I was terrified. “Take me with you,” I said. “I don’t want to be a presenter. There’s no justice here. Uncle Anthony, Amina Rabun, Toby Bowles…they’re all convicted before their presenters even enter the Chamber. The same trials are held every day, and the same verdicts are issued. It’s…it’s hell, not heaven.”

Nana went back to the counter to get some coffee. “Maybe you were brought here to change all that. Maybe God needs you to fix it.”

“God created it, and God is the judge. He’s the one who stops the trials before a defense can be made. Let Him fix it.”

“That’s not God’s way. We all have free choice. You have a choice about the kind of presenter you want to be, just as you had a choice about the kind of person you wanted to be.”

“I don’t want to be a presenter at all.”

Nana sat down next to me. “That choice was already made, child. You chose to come here. The question is not whether you will be a presenter, but what kind of presenter you will be. That is something you must decide for yourself. You’ll feel differently when you meet your first client. The postulants need you, Brek. You mustn’t abandon them.”

“But, you’re abandoning me.”

“That’s not true. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to you.”

My emotions quaked even though somewhere below I knew I was rooted in solid ground because I had been planted there by her, this remarkable woman who had nursed me when I passed through my mother’s womb, and who nursed me again when I passed through the womb of life. “Where will you go?” I asked. “Will I be able to see you?”

“Oh, I couldn’t describe it to you in a way you’d understand,” she said. “What I can tell you, though, is that, like all places, I’m going to a place I choose and that I help to create. I don’t know where it is, or what it will be like, but I do know that it is a thought to which I go-a thought I’ve been thinking that, like all thoughts cultivated and cared-for, becomes manifest in a tiny corner of the universe so that it may be experienced. Creation transcends everything, child; a million-billion acts of choice become a million-billion acts of creation.”

“But I already lost you once, Nana,” I said, “ I can’t bear losing you again.”

“Shhhh, child, Shhhh,” she whispered. And then she gave me what I needed most-one last brief, wonderful moment of childhood. She held me close and pressed my face against the wrinkled skin of her cheek; she allowed me to hear the strong pumping of her heart and smell the sweet fragrance of her skin. In her embrace I felt safe again. And then she said, “Haven’t you learned, child? Don’t you see? Visit my garden when you have doubts. Learn from the plants that live and die there and yet live again. And remember, oh child, always remember that I was here to greet you when you thought I had gone so long, long ago. You did not lose Bo and Sarah, Brek. And you will never lose me. Love can never be destroyed.”

28

I wanted nothing to do with the sordid proceedings of the Urartu Chamber. I would have rather spent eternity alone than participate in them, and when Nana left Shemaya, so did I.

Although Tim Shelly had turned on me, he had done me a great favor by showing me that I had the power to go anywhere. I decided to do just that, embarking upon my own Grand Tour, seeing and doing things no person had ever done, or could ever do, in a single lifetime. I started off at a leisurely pace, recreating and sunbathing on the most exclusive beaches of Barbados, the French Riviera, the Greek Islands, Tahiti, Dubai, and Rio de Janeiro. I lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous, sleeping in the most exclusive villas and resorts, sailing aboard the most luxurious yachts, flying on private helicopters and jets, arriving in the most expensive limousines, dining at the finest restaurants, drinking the most expensive champagnes, shopping at the most exquisite jewelers and boutiques, and winning-and losing-millions of dollars at the most exclusive casinos. It was a dream life, a heaven, but eventually even the richest person in the world-which I was, hands down-grows weary of pampering and decadence. After what felt like a year of glorious, but ultimately dispiriting, self-indulgence-I was, after all, alone on the beaches, in the villas, on the planes, and in the casinos with nobody to share my good fortune or to envy me from afar-I was ready for some adventure and set out on a journey that would have made even the most intrepid explorer weep. Within a span of months, I scuba dived the coral reefs of the Galapagos, climbed the highest mountains of every continent on earth, including Mount Everest, trekked across the Sahara, sailed solo around the world, paddled a canoe the entire length of both the Amazon and the Nile, walked the Great Wall of China, visited the North and South Poles, went on safari across the game lands of Africa, made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Varanasi, and Mecca, explored the deepest crevices of the ocean by submarine, piloted several fighter jets, drove race cars, and concluded my journey with a trip to the moon and Mars, as captain of the Space Shuttle, which I landed expertly on the surface and re-launched even though such a feat in the living world would have been impossible. After returning to earth exhausted but exhilarated, I craved another period of rest and relaxation and decided to make the great palaces of Europe and Asia my home for several months, followed by some long, meditative stays in the great monasteries and ashrams of India, Tibet, and Christendom.

Having explored and indulged in all the world I had known had to offer, I found myself bored yet again and decided to take a new journey, this time traversing both space and time. In an instant, I found myself wandering the great civilizations, from the kingdoms and dynasties of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, and India, to the rise of the Semitic peoples, the Greek and Roman empires, the Inca civilizations of South America, the Aborigine villages of Australia, the fiefdoms of Europe, the colonization of North America, and the expansion and contraction of the British empire. This journey was a historian’s dream, but a tourist’s nightmare-can an uninhabited empire even be considered a civilization, aren’t people required for that? I discovered along the way that the nature of the universe itself is loneliness, that God is lonely. It isn’t like God has a family and friends to hang around with, or that there are resorts for God and God’s friends where they can dine together, share a bottle of wine, and talk about their day and their problems. In realizing this, I found a strange comfort in my own loneliness.

And then one day I realized that although the nature of the universe might be loneliness, even God can’t tolerate it for long. There is no greater sorrow in all the universe than having all of this and no one to share it with. As I traveled alone from one wonder of the world to another, from ocean to mountain to cosmos, I came to understand why God would have been willing to risk everything-even rejection, suffering, and war-for the joy of hearing just one breathless human being say, “Oh, my God…look at that!”

Yes, I had been able to avoid Tim Shelly, Mi Lau, Luas, Elymas, and what I considered the tragedy and injustice of the Urartu Chamber, but I needed to share my experience of the afterlife as much as I had needed to share my experience of life itself. Like God, perhaps, I grew increasingly desperate for something to create, a purpose for being, an objective to accomplish-a soul with which to share; and I understood now why the serpent had told Eve that it is the risk of failure and harm, the risk of evil itself, that makes life rich, and the experience of contentment and joy even possible. In short, I slowly began to realize that I had returned, in a way, to the Garden of Eden and found it as wanting as Eve had found it; I was ready, again, to be cast out of paradise, and to accept that risk-even the risk of being assaulted by Tim Shelly and being reminded of what I had lost: my husband, my daughter, my life, my world. I was even willing to accept the risk of souls being unjustly convicted and sentenced for all of eternity.

And so, as Gautama had said, I returned to the place of my journey’s beginning, seeing it again for the first time. I returned to Shemaya Station, ready now for my first client but secretly hoping, as I had hoped every day since I arrived in Shemaya, that this would be the day I would be told it had all been a very strange and terrifying dream, and it was time to wake up.

29

Luas didn’t answer when I knocked on his office door. Legna appeared in the hallway instead and informed me that the High Jurisconsult was occupied and would see me after I had met with my first client; I was to go to my office and wait.

I did as I was told, and soon Legna arrived with a postulant, closing the door behind on the way out and leaving us alone together in the darkness. I had decided not to light the candles. I wanted to postpone the exploration of my client’s past as long as possible and communicate first under present conditions, one fellow soul to another, lost from a common home, left to a common fate. I would not lightly rob my clients of their memories, or demand that they wait in the other room while I negotiated eternity with their Creator; they would be given the opportunity to participate in their own defense, to explain on their own terms what had happened during their lives and why.

So there we sat in the darkness, my first ecclesiastical client and I, together on the precipice of eternity. I reached out, across the unfathomable chasm separating us from each other, fearful not for myself or what I might find, but for the soul on the other side and what lay ahead. Then I hesitated: every lawyer has doubts, and what was at stake in the Urartu Chamber was far greater than what was at stake in any courtroom on earth. I wanted to leap back through the darkness into the familiar, dull light of my own misery. How could I bear another’s burdens when I could not even bear my own? How dare I attempt to reconcile another’s accounts when my own debts remained unpaid? Turn back, warned instinct, turn back.

I stumbled beneath the weight of these doubts, and I did begin to turn; but from my client came a sound: a small, barely audible plea for mercy that could not be left unanswered, no matter what demons haunted me. Not only did this plea from the darkness stir my compassion, but it made plain for me, as if there all along, that this was the call I had prepared all my life to answer, and the reason I had been chosen to defend souls at the Final Judgment. The mystery of my own life, and afterlife, had been revealed unexpectedly in the suffering of another soul. I would devote myself to rescuing my clients from the desolate pit of despair and injustice. I would redeem them before the throne of God.

With the joy of this revelation, I no longer wanted to keep the soul across from me enshrouded in the darkness. I yearned to see his or her gentle, vulnerable face in the light of truth, and to learn everything I could about the life he or she had led, both the good and the bad. I would bless, not judge, and do everything in my power to guarantee my client every benefit and annihilate every doubt. I would speak out in the Urartu Chamber with the partisan voice of an advocate and risk even my own punishment, if necessary, to win justice. I would never allow to happen to this soul what had happened to Toby Bowles, Amina Rabun, and my Uncle Anthony.

These were the promises I made when I struck the match and lit the candles-promises I had made years ago, as a young girl, when a conveyor chain disfigured my body and reconfigured my life. I knew now that I had been brought to Shemaya to fulfill those sacred vows and, perhaps, to secure my own redemption. I could see now how defenders of justice are created in childhood, during tender moments of awareness when they first understand that the insects in their hands, the crayfish in their buckets, and the puppies on their laps depend upon their benevolence for their very survival; that they wield the awesome power of life and death over other living creatures, and choose not merely to allow life to continue, but to protect and nurture it no matter the cost-because they too have trembled before their own vulnerability and prayed for someone to deliver them from the careless and cruel hands of fate.

The candles flicker and burn brighter, and from the shadows emerge this beautiful, helpless creature upon whom I will lavish my devotion, my love, my eternity. But the light reveals a very different kind of face; it is the wicked face of a tormentor, not the innocent face of a victim. And there are the hands that have ground life from the innocent limbs of insects, crayfish, and puppies.

No…no, not him. Please…please, dear God, not him!

But it is too late.

The man who murdered my daughter and me has died and gone to Shemaya.

And now his soul roams inside me.