The child was a boy and Sophia duly named him Catherine, but his birth was the great tragedy of her life. From that day on Wallenstein never again spoke to her, never touched her, never saw her when she was standing in front of him. Unknown to her, behind his grin, he had been pondering for some time the possibility that he might not be merely Melchizedek, no matter how august that primary priest of antiquity.
Secretly, for some time, he had been considering the possibility he might be God.
Now with the birth of a son his own daring overwhelmed him and the already incredible profusion of his brain was pushed into an ultimate or original chaos. In his mind Catherine was Christ and he at once descended into the limitless prophecies of the Bible he had buried in Jerusalem, a vision from which there was no return.
And now that he was God the legions of his creation were so vast, the dimensions of his universe so grand, he could never stop talking, not even for an instant. Yet he also sensed it was beneath him to continue addressing rocks and trees and bushes. Those were the duties of Melchizedek, bringer of the divine message.
Undoubtedly God passed His time in some other way, but how?
Wallenstein raised his wooden ear hoping to catch a familiar sound. When he had become God, not surprisingly, he learned that God was also never silent. Not surprisingly, God talked just as incessantly as he had when he had been Wallenstein. But what was so important that only God could say it?
A name? The very name he had been invoking for years in his rapid deliveries? A name spoken so reverently, so quickly, there had never been time to include any vowels in it? A name, therefore, that could only be pronounced by Him? A name that was nothing but noise to anyone else?
Wallenstein tried it. He said it quite loudly.
YHWH.
It sounded right and he repeated it, astounded that he could sum up the entire universe and describe everything in it simply by identifying himself, exactly what he had been looking for during all those years of tirade, one unpronounceable word at the end of time, his own name.
YHWH.
Yes he had the timbre of it and it was a surpassing method for affirming the truth.
Suddenly he grinned. All at once he had advanced from the blind man’s secret three thousand years ago in the dusty waysides of Canaan to the secret of the imbecile scribe. Now never again would he bother to lecture a stone or a tree or a bush. Never again would he eat or sleep or put on more or less clothing or march down corridors and gardens varying his accounts to verify the truth. Now there would be no more winters and summers for him or days and nights at the foot of the mountain.
He had finished his autobiographical footnote, saith end ending of endings end, and now he could stand absolutely still through all eternity repeating his own name.
Sadly Sophia watched him shouting his senseless noise and knew there was only one way to save him, only one way that he could live, so she took him by the hand and led him down through the deepest recesses of the castle to a soundless black dungeon many hundreds of feet below the ground, sat him down on the cot and locked the iron door, thereafter faithfully visiting him three times a day with food and water and lovingly stroking him for an hour or more as he shouted out his incomprehensible name to the entire assembly of worlds he had made, tenderly adjusting his wooden nose and his wooden ear before kissing him good-bye and locking the door once more so moments might come in the black stillness when he could forget his manifold duties as creator of all things and grow silent, finding at last each day the food and sleep necessary for life, which the former hermit and forger did for another three decades, surviving beneath the castle until 1906, through Sophia’s love living to the advanced age of one hundred and four deeply buried in the boundless darkness or light God had found for Himself in the universe of His cave.
7 The Tiberias Telegrams
The desire of the stranger is to his people. Speed the stranger home.
NEWS OF THE TRIUMPHANT book-burning episode in Basle and Parliament’s emergency legislation against him reached Strongbow by way of a Roman newspaper months out of date.
While tarrying in the cabalist center of Safad he had gone down to Galilee one morning to fish. The air was fresh, the land still, the water unruffled. In due time he caught a fish and searched his robes for something to wrap it in, but all he had with him was a worn copy of the Zohar.
A clamor from the hillside above attracted his attention, a noisy band of Italian pilgrims climbing up to have a breakfast picnic on the site where Christ had preached the Sermon on the Mount. As they trudged along one of the men impatiently broke out a large salami and ripped off a mouthful of meat, discarding the wrapping paper, which floated down the hill in Strongbow’s direction.
Strongbow was about to wrap up his fish in the newspaper page when he saw his own name looming up in a greasy headline that led into the fish’s mouth. The dispatch was slimy but included all the essential facts.
At once Strongbow strapped his heavy bronze sundial to his hip and marched down the shore to Tiberias, where a small Turkish garrison was quartered. Without a word he pushed aside the guards and slammed his way into the private apartment of the Turkish commandant, a young man who was sipping his morning coffee, not yet dressed.
The commandant grabbed his pistol from the night table and wildly fired off all nine rounds at what he took to be an immensely tall old Arab holding a fish and wearing a sundial and carrying a book of Jewish mysticism. When the bullets stopped crashing into the walls the Arab calmly laid the fish on the night table and placed a Maria Theresa crown beside it.
I’ve just caught a herbivorous fish that thrives on algae and I want to send news of the catch to England.
What?
A St Peter’s fish, rather bony but tasty. Are you in contact with Constantinople by telegraph?
Yes, whispered the terrified Turk, staring first at the fish and the book, then at the gold coin, then at the cryptic Arabic aphorisms engraved on the sundial.
Good. Send two telegrams for me to Constantinople, to someone you can bribe or trust, with instructions that they are to be taken to a commercial telegraph office and forwarded to an address in London I will give you.
But I don’t even know who you are.
Strongbow placed a second gold coin on the table beside the fish. The Turk’s eyes narrowed.
How can I be sure your catch is authentic and your fishing expedition isn’t meant to harm the Ottoman Empire?
Strongbow placed another coin on the table and the Turk’s eyes widened as he stared at the six glistening gold breasts of the former Austrian empress, largely bare and bulging impressively after having nursed sixteen children.
Or perhaps even meant to destroy the Empire?
Strongbow placed a fourth and last coin on the table, surrounding the fish with gold. He raised his sundial and studied it.
At this moment in your life the Prophet has presented you with a choice.
He has? What is it?
Pocket this money, send my telegrams, order the fish cooked for your lunch and shoot any of your men who are insubordinate. Or conversely, refuse the money and I will shoot you and all your men, send the telegrams myself and cook the fish for my own lunch.
The tall Arab checked his sundial again. In fact this apparition from the desert was so unnaturally tall and self-assured the Turk wondered if he might not be the Prophet himself, in which case it made no difference what he decided. And although he was still afraid to send the telegrams on his military circuit, the eight large breasts of Maria Theresa made a handsome sum of money.