Baal

Baal Page 12

Part TWO

"...and who is able to war with him?"

- Revelation 13:4

Chapter 11

HE HAD WOKEN at six o'clock and was now sitting in the breakfast nook of his quiet apartment, reading the morning newspaper as the sun threw purple shadows along the cobblestoned street below.

This was his time of the day, before the noise of awakening Boston reached him, urging him forward with a note-filled briefcase. Now he sipped at a cup of hot dark tea and watched the day brighten, thinking how beautiful and distant the furry cirrus clouds looked over the towers of the city. In the last few years he had found that he enjoyed the little things so much. The tea's sharp taste, the blues and whites that stretched the sky and gave it life, the peaceful silence of the apartment with its shelves of books and busts of Moses and Solomon: he wished so much, as he did always these early mornings, that Katherine could be here to share these things with him. But death, he knew, was never the end. Her death had made him reanalyze his own life; he knew she was at a blessed peace that he had finally learned to share.

He scanned the newspaper's front page. Here was a catalogue of what had happened in the world while he'd slept. The headlines screamed of a world hungry for either relief or destruction. Every morning it was the same; in fact, the horrible had become commonplace. There had been more than a dozen murders in Boston alone. Kidnappings, arson, robberies and beatings spread across the nation like a thread of blood from a ripped-open wound. A bombing in Los Angeles had killed ten and wounded thrice that many, perhaps, he thought, at the same time he'd rolled over in his sleep; a mass murder in Atlanta while he pulled the blanket up around him; gang warfare in New York while his eyes darted beneath closed lids in pursuit of dreams. Here at the top of the page a suicide pact, in the lower column abandoned children. A tramway explosion in London, a burning monk in the streets of New Delhi, a terrorist group in Prague holding captives and vowing to murder them slowly, one by one, in the name of God.

During the night, while he slept, the world had moved and agonized. It had writhed in fits of passion. Old wounds had been reopened, old hatreds stirred, until bullets and bombs were the only voices to be heard. Indeed, even the bullets and bombs spoke softly now. Soon, perhaps, the loudest voice of all, that blasting voice that rocked nations and burned cities to rubble, would descend screaming through the night. And when he awakened the next morning and looked at the headlines, perhaps he would see no headlines there at all, just a question mark because then all the words in the world would be powerless.

He finished his tea and pushed the cup aside. The pain of the night had settled within him. And the pain of the nights ahead was already unbearable. He knew that his feeling of awful frustration also tormented many of his colleagues at the university, the frustration of speaking out but never being heard.

Many years before he'd had great hopes for his books on philosophy and theology, and though they had been academic successes, they had all died quiet deaths in that limited literary arena. He realized now that no book could ever change a man, no book ever quiet the rush or violent fever on the streets. Perhaps they'd been wrong; the sword now was much mightier than the pen. The sword wrote in red passages of carnage and violence that seemed now to outweigh by far the black words on white pages. Soon, he thought, the time for thinking would be past and men, like automatons, would grasp guns to scrawl their signatures in flesh.

He looked at the grandfather clock in the hallway and noted the time. Today, fittingly, he was lecturing to his morning class on the Book of Job and the theme of human suffering. It had begun to concern him that time was passing very swiftly indeed; he'd been lecturing day in and day out for almost sixteen years with only a few visits to the Holy Land to break the routine. It had begun to concern him that he should always be either traveling or working wholeheartedly on another book. After all, he told himself, he was past sixty-five - he would be sixty-seven in three months - and time was passing. He was afraid of senility, that disease of old minds, that horrible thing of drooling lips and uncaring eyes, partly because in the last few years he'd already observed the aging process in several of the theology professors at the university. As head of the department, it had been his responsibility to cut back their teaching assignments or, as tactfully as possible, suggest they work on independent studies. He'd hated being administrative hatchet-man but there was no use in arguing with the Board of Review. He was afraid that, in a few years, he would find himself on that scholarly chopping block.

He drove his accustomed route to the university and saw it awakening in the golden morning as he walked, briefcase in hand, up the wide stone steps, flanked by time-scarred statues of angels about to spring toward the sky, of the Theology and Philosophy Building. He walked across the marble-floored hallway and took the elevator to his office on the third floor.

His secretary said good morning. She was a good worker, always there before him in the morning to straighten his papers and arrange his appointments around his classroom schedule. He made small talk with her for a few moments, asking her about the trip to Canada he knew she was going to take in two weeks, and then went on through the frosted-glass door bearing in black letters the name JAMES N. VIRGA and, in smaller letters, PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, DEPARTMENT HEAD. In his comfortable dark-blue-carpeted office, he sat at his desk and arranged his notes on the Book of Job. His secretary knocked at the door and entered with his appointment agenda.

He scanned the names to get an idea of what was ahead for the day. There was a coffee meeting with the Rev. Thomas Griffith of the First Methodist Church of Boston; in midmorning a session with the University Financial Board to compile budget information for the coming fiscal year; in early afternoon a special seminar on the Crucifixion with Professors Landon and O'Dannis in preparation of a public television taping; in late afternoon a conference with Donald Naughton, one of the younger professors who was also a close personal friend. He thanked his secretary and asked her if she would leave Friday afternoon clear of appointments.

An hour later, he moved back and forth behind his podium, framed by the blackboard that bore his distinguished handwriting tracing the probable lineage of Job, identifying him as Jobab the second king of Edom.

The faces of the students in the amphitheater watched him, dipped as notes were made, watched him again as he emphasized his words with sweeping gestures.

"It was at a very early time," he was saying, "that man began wondering why he must suffer. Why?" He threw up his hands. "Why me, Lord? I haven't done anything wrong! So why should it be me? Why not that guy who lives over across the chasm?"

There was a murmur of respectful laughter.

"That's right!" he continued. "And that's an attitude and question that lingers today. We cannot understand the type of God who is represented to us as a kind Father yet who does nothing - at least in our limited perception - to turn back the tide of suffering from innocents. Now look at Job, or Jobab. He maintained he was always a moral, upright man, as much a sinner as anyone else but certainly no more so. And yet when he was at the height of his power he was struck with what we believe to be a form of leprosy, complicated also by what was most probably elephantiasis. He was afflicted with swollen flesh that broke and tore with every movement; his herds of camels were stolen by Chaldean thieves; his seven thousand sheep were killed in a thunderstorm, his ten children were wiped out by a cyclone. And yet Job knows himself; he proclaims his innocence. He says, "'Til I die I hold fast my integrity.' Our minds boggle at this vast reserve of faith despite his ordeal.

"The Book of Job," he said, "is primarily a philosophic meditation on the mysterious ways of God. It is also a book that explores the relationship between God and Satan; God observes as Satan experiments with the strength of Job's faith. So then this is the question: Does human suffering come about because of an eternal game between God and Satan? Are we simply pawns in a game that would stagger the imagination? Do we exist only as flesh to hold the sores?"

Eyes flickered up from notebooks, then back down again.

He held up a hand. "If this is true then the whole world, the universe, the cosmos, is Job. And we either endure the sores, which are certain to come, crying for help, or we say, like the Biblical Job, integrity. And this is the philosophic core of the book. Integrity. Bravery. Self-knowledge."

He lunched on a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee in his office while he worked up an outline on the Crucifixion seminar. After his last class he returned and began reading a newly published work entitled The Christians versus The Lions, a lengthy account of early Christianity in Rome, written by a scholarly friend who taught at the College of the Bible. He sat with the afternoon sun glinting through the window over his shoulder, carefully reading page after page and wondering how he'd let his communication with the man grow so lax. He'd heard nothing about the publication of this book and here it had shown up in the morning mails. He made a mental note to telephone the man the following day.

His secretary looked in. "Dr. Virga?"

"Yes?"

"Dr. Naughton is here."

He glanced up from the book. "Oh? Yes. Show him in, please."

Naughton was in his mid-thirties, a tall lean man with inquisitive blue eyes and fair hair that had begun to retreat farther and farther up his forehead during three years at the university. He was a quiet man who rarely attended faculty luncheons or teas, preferring instead to work alone in his office down the corridor. Virga liked him, seeing in him a conservatism that made a steady, conscientious teacher. The man had been working of late on a history of messianic cults; the research involved was very time-consuming and Virga hadn't seen much of Naughton in the past few weeks.

"Hello, Donald," said Virga, motioning toward a chair before his desk. "How is everything?"

"Fine, sir," he said, taking the seat.

Virga relit his pipe. "I've been meaning to take you and Judith to lunch sometime soon, but it seems you're so busy these days even your own wife can't keep track of you."

He smiled. "I'm afraid the research has kept me tied up. I've been spending so much time in libraries I'm beginning to feel like a fixture."

"I know the feeling." Virga looked across the desk into the man's eyes. "But I know it's worth it. When can I see a first draft?"

"Sometime soon, I hope. I also hope that after you've read it you'll still feel it's academically justified."

"Oh?"

"Well," he said, leaning forward fractionally, "I've gathered a great deal of information on latter-day cults, those originating toward the end of the eighteenth century up until the present. Almost without fail these cults are based not on the deeds of the messianic figure, but instead on his personality, his ability to attract converts into his flock. The mass worshiped his talent for domination instead of any true God-given vision. So the more recent cults evolved around strong-willed fanatics who were adept at impressing their beliefs onto others."

Virga grunted. "And you've stumbled into a religious viper's nest?"

"Viper is the correct term," Naughton said. "The 'messiahs' shared two common motives: money and sexual power. In Great Britain in the early nineteenth century the Rev. Henry Prince announced he was the prophet Elijah and became the master of a religious movement that regarded all female disciples as members of a huge harem; Aleister Crowley built a castle on Loch Ness and proclaimed himself 'The Great Beast,' converting hundreds of women into his concubines; Francis Pencovic, Krishna Venta, established the Fountain of the World in the San Fernando Valley and was later blown up by a rebellious disciple; Paul Baumann, Grand Master of Methernitha, a cult based in Switzerland, advocated the purification of female converts by sexual intercourse; Charles Manson held his Family on a threat of sexuality and murder. The list, unbelievably, goes on and on."

A line of blue smoke rose from the bowl of Virga's pipe. Naughton continued: "It might interest you to know that on one occasion Crowley pulled down his trousers and defecated in the midst of a formal dinner; then he urged the guests to preserve his excreta because, he said, it was divine."

"Mankind under the direction of madmen," Virga mused. "Well, Donald, it's a book that needs to be written. I'm afraid men are only too willing to be led by those who proclaim themselves divine but who are, in essence, only as divine as Mr. Crowley's... offerings."

Naughton nodded. Virga's cool gray eyes were sharp and intelligent through a thin curtain of smoke. Naughton was amazed, as always, at how little Virga reflected his advancing age. There were heavy lines around the eyes; a fringe of white was all that was left of his hair. But the expression on the face, the way the man carried himself, the way he expressed himself, all these were controlled and precise. There was none of the confusion, both mental and physical, that plagued many other men his age. Naughton respected him greatly. Virga smiled faintly and placed his hands on the desk before him. "Did you want to see me this afternoon about anything in particular? Anything pressing?"

Naughton said, "Yes there is. A mutual friend of ours, Dr. Deagan of the Holy Catholic Center, has been helping me compile information in the last few weeks."

"Has he? How is Raymond?"

"Fine. And he wishes you'd call him. But I received a message from him two days ago concerning a report from a missionary family in Iran. It seems they understand a new messianic figure is being financed by oil money in Kuwait. They weren't able to supply details, but Dr. Deagan tells me a great number of people are making pilgrimages into Kuwait City."

"I hadn't heard anything about that," Virga said, "but I suppose it's because I have my nose in a book all the time."

"So far the missionary family believes it to be an underground movement," Naughton said, "with little or no publicity. They only learned of it when they discovered the members of their own village were leaving for Kuwait. These people simply left their belongings and that was it."

"Throughout history, as you well know," Virga said, "that sort of thing has gone on. A powerful man gains financial backing and converts the unfortunately ignorant to a religious fervor. It's not new. What's this one teaching?"

"No information," Naughton said. "The missionaries can't even supply a name or nationality. Evidently, though, the movement involves children in some way."

"How do you know?"

"Our missionary friends report that the influx of children into the area from Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia is phenomenal. But they're at a loss to explain how the children are involved. Anyway, the missionaries are traveling to Kuwait themselves in order to report further."

"Well," said Virga, shrugging, "in the past these men have thrust children up as the vanguard of their flock in imitation of Christ. The pattern seems the same."

"But intriguing, nonetheless, due to the utter lack of publicity. You'll recall that one of the most recent messianic figures purchased a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. In this case the man, if it is indeed a man, prefers secrecy."

"Yes," Virga said. He struck a match and held it above the bowl of his pipe. "Yes, that's intriguing. That doesn't quite follow the usual outburst of 'spiritual resurgence' when a 'messiah' begins to take some sort of control over the mass. Usually the name is shouted from the lips of poor followers who find out too late they're being used."

Naughton cleared his throat. "Up until now I've buried myself in libraries, digging through books for the observations of others on messianic cults. Up until now I've only been able to compile secondhand information. Now I feel this is an excellent opportunity to document a gathering of this nature personally. So I'd like to request from you a leave of absence."

"Oh?"

"Yes sir. I want to go to Kuwait myself. I'd like to request a leave now in order to make the arrangements."

Virga had leaned forward, his eyes shining. He wished he could be undertaking the trip himself. "Can you afford it?"

"Well," Naughton said, "Judith wanted to go as well but I told her no. I can afford myself."

Virga smiled and turned his chair around slightly so the afternoon sun streaked across his face. Beyond the window the sky was a muted blue that held pink-edged clouds. "I'll arrange a leave for you," he said after a moment. "Off into the sky."

"Sir?"

"I'm thinking aloud. I'd go with you if I could. I need some foreign air. But someone's got to mind the store." He swung back around to face Naughton. "Can I ask that you keep me informed of your progress? I'll be very interested in your findings."

"I will," said the other man, rising from his seat. "Thank you."

"Just remember me in your acknowledgments," Virga said. "I'd like for my name to appear in print again one last time. And I still want to take you and Judith to lunch one day before you leave."

"All right," Naughton said. "I'll be in touch." He moved toward the door and reached for the knob. Virga reopened the book and leaned back in his chair.

Naughton turned again and Virga looked up. "You know, sir, I find myself puzzling over the same question that men have asked themselves ever since the time of Jesus Christ. What if this one is... different? What if this one isn't false? What then?"

"If this is a false messiah," Virga said after a moment, "you'll be there to see how men can be tricked. If this is not a false messiah, then," he smiled, "you'll have a fascinating last chapter for your book, won't you?"

Naughton stood at the door for a few seconds. He nodded and closed the door behind him.