"The blood is not there nor the body either."
The priest paused and looked to see who had spoken.
"You do not have the authority," Emmanuel said. And, upon saying that, he turned and walked out of the church. Elias found him in their car, listening to the radio.
"You can't do that," Elias had said as they drove home. "You can't tell them things like that. They'll open a file on you and that's what we don't want." He was furious.
"I saw,"Emmanuel said. "It was a wafer and wine only."
"You mean the accidents. The external form. But the essence was-"
"There was no essence other than the visible appearance," Emmanuel answered. "The miracle did not occur because the priest was not a priest."
They drove in silence after that.
"Do you deny the miracle of transubstantiation?" Elias asked that night as he put the boy to bed.
"I deny that it took place today," Emmanuel said. "There in that place. I will not go there again."
"What I want," Elias said, "is for you to be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove."
Emmanuel regarded him.
"They killed-"
"They have no power over me," Emmanuel said.
"They can destroy you. They can arrange another accident. Next year I'm required to put you in school. Fortunately because of your brain damage you won't have to go to a regular school. I'm counting on them to-" Elias hesitated.
Emmanuel finished, "-Consign anything they see about me that is different to the brain damage."
"Right."
"Was the brain damage arranged?"
"I- Perhaps."
"It seems useful." But, he thought, if only I knew my real name. "Why can't you say my name?" he said to Elias.
"Your mother did," Elias said obliquely.
"My mother is dead."
"You will say it yourself, eventually."
"I'm impatient." A strange thought came to him. "Did she die because she said my name?"
"Maybe," Elias said.
"And that's why you won't say it? Because it would kill you if you did? And it wouldn't kill me."
"It is not a name in the usual sense. It is a command."
All these matters remained in his mind. A name that was not a name but a command. It made him think of Adam who named the animals. He wondered about that. Scripture said: ... and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them... .
"Did God not know what the man would call them?" he asked Elias one day.
"Only man has language," Elias explained. "Only man can give birth to language. Also-" He eyed the boy. "When man gave names to creatures he established his dominion over them."
What you name you control, Emmanuel realized. Hence no one is to speak my name because no one is to have-or can have -control over me. "God played a game with Adam, then," he said. "He wanted to see if the man knew their correct names. He was testing the man. God enjoys games." "I'm not sure I know the answer to that," Elias said. "I did not ask. I said." "It is not something usually associated with God." "Then the nature of God is known." "His nature is not known."
Emmanuel said, "He enjoys games and play. It says in Scrip- ture that he rested but I say that he played."
He wanted to feed that into the hologram of the Bible, as an addendum, but he knew that he should not. How would it alter the total hologram? he wondered. To add to the Torah that God enjoys joyful sport ... Strange, he thought, that I can't add that. Someone must add it; it has to be there, in Scripture. Someday.
--------------------------------
He learned about pain and death from an ugly dying dog. It had been run over and lay by the side of the road, its chest crushed, bloody foam bubbling from its mouth. When he bent over it the dog gazed at him with glasslike eyes, eyes that already saw into the next world.
To understand what the dog was saying he put his hand on its stumpy tail. "Who mandated this death for you?" he asked the dog. "What have you done?"
"I did nothing," the dog replied.
But this is a harsh death."
"Nonetheless," the dog told him, "I am blameless."
"Have you ever killed?"
"Oh yes. My jaws are designed to kill. I was constructed to kill smaller things."
"Do you kill for food or pleasure?"
"I kill out of joy," the dog told him. "It is a game; it is the game I play."
Emmanuel said, "I did not know about such games. Why do dogs kill and why do dogs die? Why are there such games?"
"These subtleties mean nothing to me," the dog told him. "I kill to kill; I die because I must. It is necessity, the rule that is the final rule. Don't you live and kill and die by that rule? Surely you do. You are a creature, too."
"I do what I wish."
"You lie to yourself," the dog said. "Only God does as he wishes."
"Then I must be God."
"If you are God, heal me."
"But you are under the law."
"You are not God."
"God willed the law, dog."
"You have said it, then, yourself; you have answered your own question. Now let me die.
When he told Elias about the dog who died, Elias said:
Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here. obeying her behests, we fell.
"That was for the Spartans who died at Thermopylae," Elias said.
"Why do you tell me that?" Emmanuel said.
Elias said:
Go tell the Spartans, thou that passeth by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
"You mean the dog," Emmanuel said. "I mean the dog," Elias said.
"There is no difference between a dead dog in a ditch and the Spartans who died at Thermopylae." He understood. "None," he said. "I see."
"If you can understand why the Spartans died you can under- stand it all," Elias said.
You who pass by, a moment pause;
We, here, obey the Spartan laws.
"Is there no couplet for the dog?" Emmanuel asked. Elias said:
Passer, this enter in your log: As Spartan was, so, too, the dog.
"Thank you," Emmanuel said. "What was the last thing the dog said?" Elias said. "The dog said, 'Now let me die.' Elias said:
Lasciatemi morire! E chi volete voi che mi conforte In cosi dura sorte, In cosi gran martire?
"What is that?" Emmanuel said.
"The most beautiful piece of music written before Bach," Elias said. "Monteverdi's madrigal 'Lamento D'Arianna.' Thus:
Let me die! And who do you think can comfort me in my harsh misfortune, in such grievous torment?
"Then the dog's death is high art," Emmanuel said. "The highest art of the world. Or at least celebrated, recorded, in and by high art. Am I to see nobility in an old ugly dying dog with a crushed chest?"
"If you believe Monteverdi, yes," Elias said. "And those who revere Monteverdi."
"Is there more to the lament?"
"Yes, but it does not apply. Theseus has left Ariadne; it is unrequited love."
"Which is more awesome?" Emmanuel said. "A dying dog in a ditch or Ariadne spurned?"
Elias said, "Ariadne imagines her torment, but the dog's is real."
"Then the dog's torment is worse," Emmanuel said. "It is the greater tragedy." He understood. And, strangely, he felt con- tent. It was a good universe in which an ugly dying dog was of more worth than a classic figure from ancient Greece. He felt the tilted balance right itself, the scales that weighed it all. He felt the honesty of the universe, and his confusion left him. But, more important, the dog understood its own death. After all, the dog would never hear Monteverdi's music or read the couplet on the stone column at Thermopylae. High art was for those who saw death rather than lived death. For the dying creature a cup of water was more important.
"Your mother detested certain art forms," Elias said. "In particular she loathed Linda Fox."