The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

5

WHAT I REMEMBER most, in the first newspaper articles to come out, the first intimation we had, anybody beyond the translators had, that this was an even more important find than the Qumran scrolls, was (the articles said) a particular Hebrew noun. They spell it two different ways; sometimes it showed up as anochi and sometimes anochi.

The word shows up in Exodus, chapter twenty, verse two. This is a terribly moving and important section of the Torah, for here God Himself speaks, and he says:

"I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. "

The first Hebrew word is anochi or anochi and it means "I"-as in "I am the Lord thy God." Jeff showed me what the official Jewish commentary is on this part of the Torah: "The God adored by Judaism is not an impersonal Force, an It, whether spoken of as 'Nature' or 'World- Reason.' The God of Israel is the Source not only of power and life, but of consciousness, personality, moral purpose and ethical action."

Even for me, a non-Christian-or I should say a non-Jew, I guess-this shakes me; I am touched and changed; I am not the same. What is expressed here, Jeff explained to me, is, in this single word, one letter of the English alphabet, the unique self-consciousness of God:

"As man towers above all the other creatures by his will and selfconscious action,

so God 'rules over all as the one completely selfconscious Mind and Will.

In both the visible and the invisible realms, He manifests Himself as the absolutely

free personality, moral and spiritual, who allots to everything its existence, form

and purpose."'

That was written by Samuel M. Cohon, quoting Kaufmann Kohler. Another Jewish writer, Hermann Cohen, wrote:

"God answered him thus: 'I am that which I am. So shalt thou say to the children of Israel:

"I am" has sent me to you.' There is probably no greater miracle in the history of the spirit

than that revealed in this verse. For here, a primeval language which is as yet without any philosophy,

emerges and haltingly pronounces the most profound word of all philosophy. The name of God is' I am that

which I am.' This signifies that God is Being, that God is the I, which denotes the Existing One."

And this is what turned up at the wadi in Israel, dating from 200 B.C.E., the wadi not far from Qumran;this word lay at the heart of the Zadokite Documents, and every Hebrew scholar knows this word, and every Christian and Jew should know it, but there at that wadi the word anokhi was used in a different way, a way no living person had ever seen it employed before. And so Tim and Kirsten stayed in London twice as long as they had intended to stay, because the very core of something had been located, the core in fact, of the Decalogue, as if the Lord had left tracings in his own autograph, which is to say, his own hand.

While these discoveries took place-in the translating stage-Jeff wandered around the U.C. Berkeley campus learning about the Thirty Years War and Wallenstein, who had cut himself off progressively from reality during the worst war, perhaps, of all wars, except for the total wars of this century; I am not going to say that I have ascertained which particular drive killed my husband, which thrust from the mix got to him, but one did or they all did in chorus-he is dead and I wasn't even there at the time, nor did I expect it. My expectation came initially when I learned that Kirsten and Tim had gotten involved in an invisible affair. I said what I had to say then; I took my best shot-I visited the bishop at Grace Cathedral and found myself outargued with little effort on his part: little effort and professional skill. It was an easy verbal victory for Tim Archer. So much for that.

If you intend to kill yourself you don't require a reason, in the usual sense of the term; just as, to the contrary, when you intend to stay alive, no verbal, articulated, formal reason is necessary, one you can seize on if the issue comes up. Jeff had been left out. I could see that his interest in the Thirty Years War really had, to do with Kirsten; his mind, or some portion of it, had noted her Scandinavian origin, and another part of his mind had perceived and recorded the fact that the Swedish army was the victor and heroic power of that war; his emotional pursuits and his intellectual pursuits wove together, which was, for a time, to his advantage, and then when

Kirsten flew to England he found himself wrecked by his own cleverness. Now he had to confront the fact that he didn't really give a good goddamn about Tilly and Wallenstein and the Holy Roman Empire; he was in love with a woman his mother's age who was sleeping with his father-and doing that eight thousand miles away, and above and beyond everything else the two of them, to his exclusion, participated in one of the most exhilarating archeological theology discoveries in history, on a day-to-day basis as the translations became available, as the documents got patched and pasted together and the words emerged, one by one, and again and again the Hebrew word anokhi manifested itself, in unusual contexts, baffling contexts: new contexts. The documents spoke as if anokhi were present at the wadi. It or he was referred to as here, not there, now, not then. Anokhi was not something the Zadokites thought about or knew about; it was something they possessed.

It is very hard to read your library books and listen to a Donovan record, no matter how good, when a discovery of that magnitude is going on in another part of the world, and if your father and his mistress, both of whom you love and at the same time furiously hate, are involved in that unfolding discovery-what drove me frantic was Jeff playing and replaying Paul McCartney's first solo album; he liked "Teddy Boy" in particular. When he left me to go live alone in the hotel room-the room where he shot himself-he took the album with him, although he had, it turned out, nothing to play it on. He wrote me a number of times, telling me that he was still active in antiwar happenings. Probably he was. I think, though, by and large he just sat alone in the hotel room trying to figure out how he felt about his father and, even more important, how he felt about Kirsten. So that would be 1971, since the McCartney album came out in 1970. But see, that left me alone, too, in our house. I got the house; Jeff died. I told you not to live alone but I am speaking, really, to myself. You can do any goddamn thing you want but I am never going to live alone again. I'll take in street people before I let that happen to me, that isolation.

Just don't play any Beatles albums around me. That's the main thing I ask. I can take Joplin, because I still think it's funny that Tim thought Joplin was alive and black instead of dead and white, but I do not want to hear the Beatles because they are linked to too much pain in me, inside me, in my life, in what happened.

I am not quite rational myself when it comes down to it, to, specifically, my husband's suicide. I hear in my mind a melange of John and Paul and George-with Ringo thumping away in the rear somewhere-with fragments of tunes and their words, critical terms pertaining to souls suffering a great deal, although not in a way I can pin down except, of course, for my husband's death and then Kirsten's death, and finally, Tim Archer's death—but I suppose that is enough. Now, with John Lennon shot, everyone is pierced as I have been, so I can fucking well stop feeling sorry for myself and join the rest of the world, no better off than they are, no worse off either.

Often, when I look back to Jeff's suicide, I discover that I rearrange dates and events in sequences more syntonic to my mind; that is, I edit. I condense, cut bits out, do a fast number myself so that-for example-I no longer recall viewing Jeff's body and identifying it. I have managed to forget the name of the hotel where he stayed. I don't know how long he stayed there. As near as I can make out, he didn't hang around the house very long after Tim and Kirsten flew to London; one early letter came from them, typed: signed by both of them but almost certainly written by Kirsten. Possibly Tim dictated it. The first hint of the magnitude of the find showed up in that letter. I didn't recognize what the news implied but Jeff did. So, perhaps, he left right after that.

What surprised me the most was to grasp, all at once, that Jeff had wanted to go into the priesthood, but what point was there, in view of his father's role? But this left a vacuum. Jeff did not want to do anything else either. He could not become a priest; he did not care about any other profession. So he remained what we in Berkeley called a "professional student"; he never stopped going to Cal. Maybe he left and came back. Our marriage hadn't been working for some time; I have blank spots back to 1968, perhaps a full year missing in all. Jeff had emotional problems that I later repressed any knowledge of. We both repressed it. There is always free psychotherapy in the Bay Area and we took advantage of it.

I don't think Jeff could be called-could have been called-mentally ill; he simply wasn't terribly happy. Sometimes it is not a drive to die but a failure of a subtle kind, a failing of the sense of joy. He fell out of life by degrees. When he came across someone he genuinely wanted she became his father's mistress, whereupon they both flew to England, leaving him to study a war he didn't care about, leaving him stranded back where he had started from. He started out not caring; he wound up not caring. One of the doctors did say he believed that Jeff started taking LSD during that period after he left me and before he shot himself. That is only a theory. However, unlike the homosexual theory, it may have been true.

Thousands of young people kill themselves in America each year, but it remains the custom, by and large, to list their deaths as accidental. This is to spare the family the shame attached to suicide. There is, indeed, something shameful about a young man or woman, maybe an adolescent, wanting to die and achieving that goal, dead before in a certain sense they ever lived, ever were born. Wives get beaten by their husbands; cops kill blacks and Latinos; old people rummage in garbage cans or eat dog food-shame rules, calling the shots. Suicide is only one shameful event out of a plethora. There are black teenagers who will never get a job as long as they live, not because they are lazy but because there are no jobs- because, too, these ghetto kids possess no skills they can sell. Children run away, find the strip in New York or Hollywood; they become prostitutes and wind up with their bodies hacked apart. If the impulse to slay the Spartan runners reporting the battle results, the outcome at Thermopylae, rises in you, by all means slay them. I am those runners and I report what you do not want, most likely, to hear. Personally, I report only three deaths, but three more than were necessary. This is the day John Lennon died; you wish to slay those who report that, too? As Sri Krishna says when he assumes his true form, his universal form, that of time:

"All these hosts must die; strike, stay your hand-no matter.

Seem to slay. By me these men are slain already."

It is an awful sight. Arjuna has seen what he cannot believe exists.

"Licking with your burning tongues,

Devouring all the worlds,

You probe the heights of heaven

With intolerable beams, O Vishnu."

What Arjuna sees was once his friend and charioteer. A man like himself. That was only an aspect, a kindly disguise. Sri Krishna wished to spare him, to hide the truth. Arjuna asked to see Sri Krishna's true form and he got to see it. He will not now be as he was. The spectacle has changed him, changed him forever. This is the true forbidden fruit, this kind of knowledge. Sri Krishna waited a long time before he showed Arjuna his actual shape. He wanted to spare him. The true shape, that of the universal destroyer, emerged at last.

I would not want to make you unhappy by detailing pain, but there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk.

When Kirsten and the bishop had returned to the Bay Area-not permanently but, rather, to deal with Jeff's death and the problems raised by it-I could upon seeing them again notice a change in both of them. Kirsten looked worn and wretched, and this did not seem to me to emanate from the shock of Jeff's death alone. Obviously she was in ill health in purely physical terms. On the other hand, Bishop Archer seemed even more animated than when I had last seen him. He took complete charge of the situation regarding Jeff; he selected the burial spot, the kind of gravestone; he delivered the eulogy and all other rites, wearing full robes, and he paid for everything. The inscription on the gravestone came as a result of his inspiration. He chose a phrase which I found quite acceptable; it is the motto or basic statement of the school of Heraclitus: NO SINGLE THING ABIDES; BUT ALL THINGS Flow. I had been taught in philosophy class that Heraclitus himself invented that, but Tim explained that this summation came after Heraclitus, by those of his school who followed him. They believed that only flux, which is to say change, is real. They may have been right.

The three of us joined together after the graveside service; we returned to the Tenderloin apartment and tried to make ourselves comfortable. It took a while for any of us to say anything.

Tim talked about Satan, for some reason. Tim had a new theory about Satan's rise and fall that he apparently wanted to try out on us, since we-Kirsten and I-were the closest people at hand. I presumed at the time that Tim intended to include his theory in the book he had begun working on.

"I see the legend of Satan in a new way. Satan desired to know God as fully as possible. The fullest knowledge would come if he became God, was himself God. He strove for this and achieved it, knowing that the punishment would be permanent exile from God. But he did it anyhow, because the memory of knowing God, really knowing him as no one else ever had or would, justified to him his eternal punishment. Now, who would you say truly loved God out of everyone who ever existed? Satan willingly accepted eternal punishment and exile just to know God-by becoming God-for an instant. Further, it occurs to me, Satan truly knew God, but perhaps God did not know or understand Satan; had He understood him, He would not have punished him. That is why it is said that Satan rebelled-which means Satan was outside of God's control, outside God's domain, as if in another universe. But Satan did I think welcome his punishment, for it was his proof to himself that he knew and loved God. Otherwise he might have done what he did for the reward ... had there been a reward. 'Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven' is an issue, here, but not the true one: which is the ultimate goal and search to know and be: fully and really to know God, in comparison to which all else is really very little."

"Prometheus," Kirsten said absently. She sat smoking and gazing.

Tim said, "Prometheus means 'Forethinker.' He was involved in the creating of man. He was also the supreme trickster among the gods. Pandora was sent down to Earth by Zeus as a punishment to Prometheus for stealing fire and bringing it to man. In addition, Pandora punished the whole human race. Epimetheus married her, he was Hindsight. Prometheus warned him not to marry Pandora, since Prometheus could foresee the consequences. This same kind of absolute foreknowledge is or was considered by the Zoroastrians to be an attribute of God, the Wise Mind."

"An eagle ate his liver," Kirsten said remotely.

Nodding, Tim said, "Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him and sending an eagle to eat his liver, which regenerated itself endlessly. However, Hercules released him. Prometheus was a friend to mankind beyond any doubt. He was a master craftsman. There is an affinity to the legend of Satan, certainly. As I see it, Satan could be said to have stolen-not fire-but true knowledge of God. However, he did not bring it to man, as Prometheus did with fire. Perhaps Satan's real sin was that upon acquiring that knowledge he kept it to himself; he did not share it with mankind. That's interesting ... by that line of reasoning, one could argue that we could acquire a knowledge of God by way of Satan. I've never heard that theory put forth before." He became silent, apparently pondering. "Would you write this down?" he said to Kirsten.

"I'll remember." Her tone was listless and drab.

"Man must assault Satan and seize this knowledge," Tim said, "and take it from him. Satan does not want to yield it up. For concealing it-not for taking it in the first place-he was punished. Then, in a sense, human beings can redeem Satan by wresting this knowledge from him."

I said, "And then go off and study astrology."

Glancing at me, Tim said, "Pardon?"

"Wallenstein," I said. "Off casting horoscopes."

"The Greek words which our word 'horoscope' is based on," Tim said, "are hora, which means 'hour,' and scopos, which means 'one who watches.' So 'horoscope' literally means 'one who watches the hours.' " He lit a cigarette; both he and Kirsten, since their return from England, seemed to smoke constantly. "Wallenstein was a fascinating person."

"So Jeff says," I said. "Said, I mean."

Cocking his head alertly, Tim said, "Was Jeff interested in Wallenstein? Because I have-"

"You didn't know?" I said.

Looking puzzled, Tim said, "I don't think so."

Kirsten regarded him steadily, with an inscrutable expression.

"I have a number of very good books on Wallenstein," Tim said. "You know, in many ways Wallenstein resembled Hitler."

Both Kirsten and I remained silent.

"Wallenstein contributed to the ruin of Germany," Tim said. "He was a great general. Friedrich von Schiller, as you may know, wrote three plays about Wallenstein, whose titles are: Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolominis and The Death of Wallenstein. They are profoundly moving plays. This brings up, of course, the role of Schiller himself in the development of Western thought. Let me read you something." Setting his cigarette down, Tim went over to the bookcase for a book; he found it after a few minutes of hunting. "This may shed some light on the subject. In writing to his friend-let me see; I have the name here- in writing to Wilhelm von Humboldt, this was toward the very end of Schiller's life, Schiller said, 'After all, we are both idealists, and should be ashamed to have it said that the material world formed us, instead of being formed by us.' The essence of Schiller's vision was, of course, freedom. He was naturally absorbed in the great drama of the revolt of the Lowlands- by that I mean Holland-and-" Tim paused, thinking, his lips moving; he gazed absently off into space. On the couch, Kirsten sat in silence, smoking and staring. "Well," Tim said finally, leafing through the book he held, "let me read you this. Schiller wrote this when he was thirty-four years old. Perhaps it sums up much of our aspirations, our most noble ones." Peering at the book, Tim read aloud. "'Now that I have begun to know and to employ my spiritual powers properly, an illness unfortunately threatens to undermine my physical ones. However, I shall do what I can, and when in the end the edifice comes crashing down, I shall have salvaged what was worth preserving.' " Tim shut the book and returned it to the shelf.

We said nothing. I did not even think; I merely sat.

"Schiller is very important to the twentieth century," Tim said; he returned to his cigarette, stubbed it out. For a long time, he stared down at the ashtray.

"I'm going to send out for a pizza," Kirsten said. "I'm not up to fixing dinner."

"That's fine," Tim said. "Ask them to put Canadian bacon on it. And if they have soft drinks-"

"I can fix dinner," I said.

Kirsten rose, made her way to the phone, leaving Tim and me alone together.

Earnestly, Tim said to me, "It is really a matter of great importance to know God, to discern the Absolute Essence, which is the way Heidegger puts it. Sein is his term: Being. What we have uncovered at the Zadokite Wadi simply beggars description."

I nodded.

"How are you fixed for money?" Tim said, reaching into his coat pocket.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're working, still? At the real estate-" He corrected himself. "You're a legal secretary; you're still with them, then?"

"Yes," I said. "But I'm just a clerk-typist."

"I found my career as a lawyer taxing," Tim said, "but rewarding. I'd advise you to become a legal secretary and then perhaps you can use that as a jumping-off platform and go into law, become an attorney. It might even be possible for you to be a judge, someday."

"I guess so," I said.

Tim said, "Did Jeff discuss the anokhi with you?"

"Well, you wrote to us. And we saw newspaper and magazine articles."

"They used the term in a special sense, a technical sense-the Zadokites. It could not have meant the Divine Intelligence because they speak of having it, literally. There is one line from Document Six: 'Anokhi dies and is reborn each year, and upon each following year anokhi is more.' Or greater; more or greater, it could be either, perhaps lofty. It's extremely puzzling but the translators are working on it and we hope to have it during the next six months ... and, of course, they're still piecing together the fragments, the scrolls that became mutilated. I have no knowledge of Aramaic, as you probably realize. I studied both Greek and Latin-you know, 'God is the final bulwark against non-Being.' "

"Tillich," I said.

"Beg pardon?" Tim said.

"Paul Tillich said that," I said.

"I'm not sure about that," Tim said. "It was certainly one of the Protestant existential theologians; it may have been Reinhold Niebuhr. You know, Niebuhr is an American, or rather was; he died quite recently. One thing that interests me about Niebuhr-" Tim paused a moment. "Niemoller served in the German navy in World War One. He worked actively against the Nazis and continued to preach until 1938. The Gestapo arrested him and he was sent to Dachau. Niebuhr had been a pacifist originally, but urged Christians to support the war against Hitler. I feel that one of the significant differences between Wallenstein and Hitler- actually it is a very great similarity-lies in the loyalty oaths that Wallenstein-"

"Excuse me," I said. I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet to see if the bottle of Dexamyls was still there. It was not; all the medicine bottles were gone. Taken to England, I realized. Now in Kirsten's and Tim's luggage. Fuck.

When I came out, I found Kirsten standing alone in the living room. "I'm terribly, terribly tired," she said in a faint voice.

"I can see that," I said.

"There is no way I am going to be able to keep down pizza. Could you go to the store for me? I made a list. I want boned chicken, the kind that comes in a jar, and rice or noodles. Here; this is the list." She handed it to me. "Tim'll give you the money."

"I have money." I returned to the bedroom, where I had put my coat and purse. As I was putting on my coat, Tim appeared from behind me, anxious to say something more.

"What Schiller saw in Wallenstein was a man who colluded with fate to bring on his own demise. This would be for the German Romantics the greatest sin of all, to collude with fate, fate regarded as doom. He followed me from the bedroom, down the hall. "The whole spirit of Goethe and Schiller and-the others, their whole orientation was that the human will could overcome fate. Fate would not be regarded as inevitable but as something a person allowed. Do you see my point? To the Greeks, fate was ananke, a force absolutely predetermined and impersonal; they equated it with Nemesis, which is retributive, punishing fate."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I have to go to the store."

"Aren't they bringing the pizza?"

"Kirsten's not feeling well."

Standing close to me and speaking in a low voice, Tim said, "Angel, I'm very concerned about her. I can't get her to go to a doctor. Her stomach-either that or her gall bladder. Maybe you can convince her to undergo a multiphasic. She's afraid of what they'll find. You know, don't you, that she had cervical cancer a number of years ago."

"Yes," I said.

"And a hysterocleisis."

"What is that?"

"A surgical procedure; the mouth of the uterus is closed.

She has so many anxieties in this area, that is, pertaining to this topic; it's impossible for me to discuss it with her."

"I'll talk to her," I said.

"Kirsten blames herself for Jeff's death."

"Shit," I said. "I was afraid of that."

Coming from the living room, Kirsten said to me, "Add ginger ale to the list I gave you. Please."

"Okay," I said. "Is the store-"

"Turn right," Kirsten said. "It's four blocks straight and then one block left. It's a Chinese- run little grocery store but they have what I want."

"Do you need any more cigarettes?" Tim said.

"Yes, you might pick up a carton," Kirsten said. "Any of the low-tar brands; they all taste the same."

"Okay," I said.

Opening the door for me, Tim said, "I'll drive you." The two of us made our way down the sidewalk to his rented car, but, as we stood, he discovered that he did not have the keys. "We'll have to walk," he said. So we walked together, saying nothing for a time.

"It's a nice night," I said finally.

"There's something I've been meaning to discuss with you, Tim said. "Although technically it's not within your province."

"I didn't know I had a province," I said.

"It's not an area of expertise for you. I'm not sure who I should talk to about it. These Zadokite Documents are in some respects-" He hesitated. "I would have to say distressing. To me personally, is what I mean. What the translators have come across is many of the Logia- the sayings-of Jesus predating Jesus by almost two hundred years."

"I realize that," I said.

"But that means," Tim said, "that he was not the Son of

God. Was not, in fact, God, as the Trinitarian doctrine requires us to believe. That may pose no problem for you, Angel."

"No, not really," I agreed.

"The Logia are essential to our understanding and apperception of Jesus as the Christ; that is, the Messiah or Anointed One. If, as would now seem to be the case, the Logia can be severed from the person Jesus, then we must reevaluate the four Gospels-not just the Synoptics but all four ... we must ask ourselves what, then, we indeed do know about Jesus, if indeed we know anything at all."

"Can't you just assume Jesus was a Zadokite?" I said. That was the impression I had gotten from the newspaper and magazine articles. Upon the discovery of the Qumran Scrolls, the Dead Sea Scrolls, there had been an enormous flurry of speculation that Jesus came from or was in some way connected with the Essenes. I saw no problem. I could not see what Tim was concerned about, as the two of us walked slowly along the sidewalk.

"There is a mysterious figure," Tim said, "mentioned in a number of the Zadokite Documents. He's referred to by a Hebrew word best translated as 'Expositor.' It is this shadowy personage to whom many of the Logia are attributed."

"Well, then Jesus learned from him, or anyhow they were derived from him," I said.

"But then Jesus is not the Son of God. He is not God Incarnate, God as a human being."

I said, "Maybe God revealed the Logia to the Expositor."

"But then the Expositor is the Son of God."

"Okay," I said.

"These are problems over which I've agonized-although that is rather a strong term. But it bothers me. And it should bother me. Here we have many of the parables related in the Gospels now extant in scrolls predating Jesus by two hundred years. Not all the Logia are represented, admittedly, but many are, many crucial ones. Certain cardinal doctrines of resurrection are also present, those being expressed in the well-known 'I am' utterances by Jesus. 'I am the bread of life.' 'I am the Way.' 'I am the narrow gate.' These simply cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. Just take that first one: 'I am the bread of life. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.' Do you see my point?"

"Sure," I said. "The Zadokite Expositor said it first."

"Then the Zadokite Expositor conferred eternal life, and specifically through the Eucharist."

"I think that's wonderful," I said.

Tim said, "It was always the hope, but never the expectation, that we would someday unearth Q, or unearth something that would permit us to reconstruct Q, or parts of Q; but no one ever dreamed that an Ur-Quelle would manifest itself predating Jesus, and by two centuries. Also, there are peculiar other-" He paused. "I want to obtain your promise not to discuss what I'm going to say; not to talk about it with any one. This part hasn't been released to the media."

"May I die horribly."

"Associated with the 'I am' statements are certain very peculiar additions not found in the Gospels and apparently not known to the early Christians. At least, no written record of their knowing these things, believing these things, has passed down to us. I-" He broke off. "The term 'bread' and the term used for 'blood' suggest literal bread and literal blood. As if the Zadokites had a specific bread and a specific drink that they prepared and had that constituted in essence the body and blood of what they call the anokhi, for whom the Expositor spoke and whom the Expositor represented."

"Well," I said. I nodded.

"Where is this store?" Tim looked around.

"Another block or so," I said. "I guess."

Tim said earnestly, "Something they drank; something they ate. As in the Messianic banquet. It made them immortal, they believed; it gave them eternal life, this combination of what they ate and what they drank. Obviously, this prefigures the Eucharist. Obviously it's related to the Messianic banquet. Anokhi. Always that word. They ate anokhi and they drank anokhi and, as a result, they became anokhi. They became God Himself."

"Which is what Christianity teaches," I said, "regarding the Mass."

"There are parallels found in Zoroastrianism," Tim said. "The Zoroastrians sacrificed cattle and combined this with an intoxicating drink called haoma. But there is no reason to assume that this resulted in a homologizing with the Deity. That, you see, is what the Sacraments achieve for the Christian communicant: he-or she-is homologized to God as represented in and by Christ. Becomes God or becomes one with God, unified with, assimilated to, God. An apotheosis, is what I'm saying. But here, with the Zadokites, you get precisely this with the bread and the drink derived from anokhi, and of course the term 'anokhi' itself refers to the Pure Self-Awareness, which is to say, Pure Consciousness of Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew people."

"Brahman is that," I said.

"I beg your pardon? 'Brahman'?"

"In India. Brahmanism. Brahman possesses absolute, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness, pure being, pure bliss. As I recall."

"But what," Tim said, "is this anokhi that they ate and drank?"

"The body and blood of the Lord," I said.

"But what is it?" He gestured. "It's one thing to say glibly,

'It's the Lord,' because, Angel, that is what in logic is called a hysteron proteron fallacy: what you are trying to prove is assumed in your premise. Obviously, it's the body and blood of the Lord; the word 'anokhi' makes that clear; but it doesn't-"

"Oh, I see," I said, then. "It's circular reasoning. In other words, you're saying that this anokhi actually exists."

Tim stopped and stood, gazing at me. "Of course."

"I understand. You mean it's real."

"God is real."

"Not really real," I said. "God is a matter of belief. It isn't real in the sense that that car-" I pointed to a parked Trans Am-" is real."

"You couldn't be more wrong." I started to laugh.

"Where did you ever get an idea like that?" Tim said.

"That God isn't real?"

"God is a-" I hesitated. "A way of looking at things. An interpretation. I mean, He doesn't exist. Not the way objects exist. You couldn't, say, bump into Him, like you can bump into a wall."

"Does a magnetic field exist?"

"Sure," I said.

"You can't bump into it."

I said, "But it'll show up if you spread iron filings across a piece of paper."

"The hieroglyphs of God lie all about you," Tim said. "As the world and in the world."

"That's just an opinion. It's not my opinion."

"But you can see the world."

"I see the world," I said, "but I don't see any sign of God."

"But there cannot be a creation without a creator."

"Who says it's a creation?"

"My point," Tim said, "is that if the Logia predate Jesus by two hundred years, then the Gospels are suspect, and if the Gospels are suspect, we have no evidence that Jesus was God, very God, God Incarnate, and therefore the basis of our religion is gone. Jesus simply becomes a teacher representing a particular Jewish sect that ate and drank some kind of-well, whatever it was, the anokhi, and it made them immortal."

"They believed it made them immortal," I corrected him. "That's not the same thing. People believe that herbal remedies can cure cancer, but that doesn't make it true."

We arrived at the little grocery store and stood momentarily.

"I take it you're not a Christian," Tim said.

"Tim," I said, "you've known that for years. I'm your daughter-in-law."

"I'm not sure I'm a Christian. I'm now not sure there in fact is such a thing as Christianity. And I've got to get up and tell people-I have to go on with my ministerial and pastoral duties. Knowing what I know. Knowing that Jesus was a teacher and not God, and not even an original teacher; what he taught was the aggregate belief-system of an entire sect. A group product."

I said, "It could still have come from God. God could have revealed it to the Zadokites. What else does it say about the Expositor?"

"He returns in the Final Days and acts as Eschatological Judge."

"That's fine," I said.

"That's found in Zoroastrianism also," Tim said. "So much seems to go back to the Iranian religions ... the Jews developed a distinct Iranian quality to their religion during the time ..." He broke off; he had turned inward, mentally, oblivious, now, to me, to the store, our errand.

I said, trying to cheer him up. "Maybe the scholars and translators will find some of this anokhi."

"Find God," he echoed, to himself.

"Find it growing. A root or a tree."

"Why do you say that?" He seemed angry. "What would make you say that?"

"Bread has to be made out of something. You can't eat bread unless it's made from something."

"Jesus was speaking metaphorically. He did not mean literal bread."

"Maybe he didn't, but the Zadokites apparently did."

"That thought crossed my mind. Some of the translators are proposing that. That a literal bread and a literal drink is signified. 'I am the gate of the sheepfold.' Jesus certainly did not mean he was made of wood. 'I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more.'"

"Well, it's a vine, then," I said. "Look for a vine."

"That's absurd and carnal."

"Why?" I said.

Tim said savagely, "'I am the vine, you are the branches.' Are we to assume that a literal plant is referred to? That this is a physical, not a spiritual, matter? Something growing in the Dead Sea Desert?" He gestured. "'I am the light of the world.' Are we to assume you could read a newspaper by holding it up to him? Like this streetlight?"

"Maybe so," I said. "Dionysos was a vine, in a manner of speaking. His worshippers got drunk and then Dionysos possessed them, and they ran over the hills and fields and bit cows to death. Devoured whole animals alive."

"There are certain resemblances," Tim said.

Together, we continued on into the little grocery store.