Barry N. Malzberg - Le Croix.pdf - Barry N. Malzberg - widez2

Le Croix

by Barry Malzberg

Depersonalization takes over. As usual, he does not quite feel himself,

which is for the best; the man that he knows could hardly manage these

embarrassing circumstances. Adaptability, that is the key; swim in the

fast waters. There is no other way that he, let alone I could get through.

“Pardonnez tout ils,” he says, feeling himself twirling upon the crucifix in

the absent Roman breezes, a sensation not unlike flight, “mais ils ne

comprendre pas que ils fait.”

Oh my, is that awful. He wishes that he could do better than that. Still,

there is no one around, strictly speaking, to criticize and besides, he is

merely following impulse which is the purpose of the program. Do what

you will. “Ah pere, this is a bitch,” he mutters.

The thief on his left, an utterly untrustworthy type, murmurs foreign

curses, not in French, to the other thief; and the man, losing patience with

his companions who certainly look as culpable as all hell, stares below.

Casting his glance far down he can see the onlookers, not so many as one

would think, far less than the texts would indicate but certainly enough

(fair is fair and simple Mark had made an effort to get it right) to cast lots

over his vestments. They should be starting that stuff just about now.

Ah, well. This too shall pass. He considers the sky, noting with interest

that the formation of clouds against the dazzling sunlight must yield the

aspect of stigmata. For everything a natural, logical explanation. It is a

rational world back here after all. If a little on the monolithic side.

“I wonder how long this is going to go on,” he says to make

conversation. “it does seem to be taking a bloody long time.”

“Long time?” the thief on the left says. “Until we die, that's how long,

and not an instant sooner. It's easier,” the thief says confidentially, “if you

breathe in tight little gasps. Less pain. You're kind of grabbing for the

air.”

“Am I? Really?”

“Leave him alone,” the other thief says. “Don't talk to him. Why give

him advice?”

“Just trying to help a mate on the stations, that's all.”

“Help Yourself,” the second thief grumbles. “That's the only possibility.

If I had looked out for myself I wouldn't be in this mess.”

“I quite agree,” I say. “That's exactly my condition, exactly.”

“Ah, stuff it, mate,” the thief says.

It is really impossible to deal with these people. The texts imbue them

with sentimental focus but truly they are swine. I can grasp Pilate's

dilemma. Thinking of Pilate leads into another channel, but before I can

truly consider the man's problems a pain of particular dimension slashes

through me and there I am, there I am, suspended from the great cross

groaning, all the syllables of thought trapped within.

“Ah,” I murmur, “ah,” he murmurs, “ah monsieurs, c'est le plus,” but it

is not, to be sure, it is not le plus at all. Do not be too quick to judge.

It goes on, in fact, for an unsatisfactorily extended and quite spiritually

laden period of time. The lot-casting goes quickly and there is little to

divert on the hillside; one can only take so much of that silly woman

weeping before it loses all emotional impact. It becomes a long and

screaming difficulty, a passage broken only by the careless deaths of the

thieves who surrender in babble and finally, not an instant too soon, the

man's brain bursts . . . but there is time, crucifixion being what it is, for

slow diminution beyond that. Lessening color; black and grey, if there is

one thing to be said about this process, it is exceedingly generous. One will

be spared nothing.

Of course I had pointed out that I did not want to be spared anything.

“Give me Jesus,” I had asked and cooperating in their patient way they

had given me Jesus. There is neither irony nor restraint to the process,

which is exactly the way that it should be.

Even to the insult of the thieves abusing me.

* * * *

Alive to the tenor of the strange and difficult times, I found myself

moved to consider the question of religious knowledge versus fanaticism.

Hard choices have to be made even in pursuit of self-indulgence. Both

were dangerous to the technocratic state of 2219, of course, but of the two

religion was considered the more risky because fanaticism could well be

turned to the advantage of the institutions. (Then there were the

countervailing arguments of course that they were partners, but these I

chose to dismiss.) Sexuality was another pursuit possibly inimical to the

state but it held no interest for me; the general Privacy and Social Taboo

acts of the previous century had been taken very seriously by my

subdivision and

I inherited neither genetic nor socially-derived interest in sex for its

own non-procreative sake.

Religion interested me more than fanaticism for a permanent program,

but fanaticism was not without its temptations. “Religion after all imposes

a certain rigor,” I was instructed. “There is some kind of a rationalizing

force and also the need to assimilate text. Then too there is the reliance

upon another, higher power. One cannot fulfill ultimately narcissistic

tendencies. On the other hand—fanaticism dwells wholly within the poles

of self. You can destroy the systems, find immortality, lead a crushing

revolt, discover immortality within the crevices. It is not to be neglected; it

is also purgative and satisfying and removes much of that indecision and

social alienation of which you have complained. No fanatic is truly lonely

or at least he has learned to cherish his loneliness.”

“I think I'd rather have the religious program,” I said after due

consideration. “The lives of the prophets, the question of the validity of the

text, the matters of the passion attract me.”

“You will find,” they pointed out, “that much of the religious experience

is misrepresented. It leads only to an increasing doubt for many, and most

of the major religious figures were severely maladjusted. You would be

surprised at how many were psychotics whose madness was

retrospectively falsified by others for their own purpose.”

“Still,” I said, “there are levels of feeling worth investigating.”

“That, of course, is your decision,” they said, relenting. They were

nothing if not cooperative; under the promulgated and revised acts of

2202, severely liberalizing board procedures, there have been many

improvements of this illusory sort. “If you wish to pursue religion we will

do nothing to stop you. It is your inheritance and our decree. We can only

warn you that there is apt to be disappointment.”

“Disappointment!” I said, allowing some affect for the first time to

bloom perilously forth. “I am not interested in disappointment. This is of

no concern to me whatsoever; what I am interested in is the truth. After

all, and was it not said that it is the truth which will make ye—”

“Never in this lifetime,” they cut me off, sadly, sadly, and sent me on my

way with a proper program, a schedule of appointments with the

technicians, the necessary literature to explain the effects that all of this

would have upon my personal landscape, inevitable changes, the rules of

dysfunction, little instances of psychotic break but all of it to be contained

within the larger pattern. By the time I exit from the transverse I have

used up the literature, and so I dispose of it, tearing it into wide strips,

throwing the strips into the empty, sparkling air above the passage lanes,

watching them catch the little filters of light for the moment before they

flutter soundlessly to the metallic, glittering earth of this most

unspeakable time.

* * * *

I find myself at one point of the way the Grand Lubavitcher Rabbi of

Bruck Linn administering counsel to all who would seek it.

The Lubavitcher Sect of the Judaic religion was, I understand, a twenty

or twenty-first reconstitution of the older, stricter European forms which

was composed of refugees who fled to Bruck Linn in the wake of one of the

numerous purges of that time. Now defunct, the judaicists are, as I

understand it, a sect characterized by a long history of ritual persecution

from which they flourished, or at least the surviving remnants flourished,

but then again the persecution might have been the most important part

of the ritual. At this remove in time it is hard to tell. The hypnotics, as the

literature and procedures have made utterly clear, work upon personal

projections and do not claim historical accuracy, as historical accuracy

exists for the historicists, if anyone, and often enough not for them. Times

being what they are.

It is, in any case, interesting to be the Lubavitcher Rabbi in Bruck Linn,

regardless of the origins of the sect or even of its historical reality; in frock

coat and heavy beard I sit behind a desk in cramped quarters surrounded

by murmuring advisors and render judgments one by one upon members

of the congregation as they appear before me. Penalty for compelled

intercourse during a period of uncleanliness is three months of abstention

swiftly dealt out and despite explanations that the young bride had

pleaded for comfort. The Book of Daniel, reinterpreted, does not signal the

resumption of Holocaust within the coming month; the congregant is sent

away relieved. Two rabbis appear with Talmudic dispute; one says that

Zephaniah meant that all pagans and not all things were to be consumed

utterly off the face of the Earth, but the other says that the edict of

Zephaniah was literal and that one cannot subdivide “pagans” from “all

things". I return to the text for clarification, remind them that Zephaniah

no less than Second Isaiah or the sullen Ecclesiastes spoke in doubled

perversities and advise that the literal interpretation would have made

this conference unnecessary, therefore metaphor must apply. My advisors

nod in approval at this and there are small claps of admiration. Bemused,

the two rabbis leave. A woman asks for a ruling on mikvah for a

pre-menstrual daughter who is nonetheless now fifteen years old, and I

reserve decision. A conservative rabbi from Yawk comes to give humble

request that I give a statement to the congregation for one of the minor

festivals, and I decline pointing out that for the Lubavitcher fallen

members of the judaicists are more reprehensible than those who have

never arrived. Once again my advisors applaud. There is a momentary

break in the consultations and I am left to pace the study alone while

advisors and questioners withdraw to give me time for contemplation.

It is interesting to be the Lubavitcher, although somewhat puzzling.

One of the elements of which I was not aware was that in addition to the

grander passions, the greater personages, I would also find myself

enacting a number of smaller roles, the interstices of the religious life, as it

were, and exactly as it was pointed out to me there is a great deal of rigor.

Emotion does not seem to be part of this rabbi's persona; the question of

Talmudic interpretation seems to be quite far from the thrashings of

Calvary. Still, the indoctrinative techniques have done their job; I am able

to make my way through these roles even as the others, on the basis of

encoded knowledge; and although the superficialities I babble seem

meaningless to me, they seem to please those who surround. I adjust my

cuffs with a feeling of grandeur; Bruck Linn may not be all of the

glistening spaces of Rome but it is a not inconsiderable part of the history,

and within it I seem to wield a great deal of power. “Rabbi,” an advisor

says opening the door, “I am temerarious to interrupt your musings, but

we have reached a crisis and your intervention is requested at this time.”

“What crisis?” I say. “You know I must be allowed to meditate.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, we respect your meditations. It is wrong to impose.

I should not,” and some edge of agony within his voice, some bleating

aspect of his face touches me even as he is about to withdraw. I come from

behind the desk saying, “What then, what?” and he says, “Rabbi, it was

wrong to bother you, we should protect, we will respect,” and now I am

really concerned, from large hat to pointed shoe he is trembling and I

push past him into the dense and smoky air of the vestibule where

congregants, advisors, women and children are gathered. As they see me

their faces one by one register intent and then they are pleading, their

voices inchoate but massed. Save us, Rabbi, they are saying, save us, and I

do not know what is going on here, an awkward position for a Talmudic

judge to occupy but I simply do not know; I push my way through the

clinging throng pushing them aside, Oh my God, Rabbi, they are saying,

oh my God, and I go through the outer doors, look down the street and see

Barry N. Malzberg - Le Croix.pdf

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