The Grey
Life, Chapter XXII
They
shot Emmanuel the fourteenth of September, two thousand thirty-six,
before the eyes of the entire Western world. Fortunately enough for
him, there was too much confusion during the dark tide of violence
that followed to prevent his followers from bearing his body safely
away. To this day no white man or woman knows exactly where he is
buried, but the rumor surrounding the pomp and flourish - the
feasting - in honor of his passing are many. Never before in the
history of multimedia was such an event recorded in the detail that
it was, and from so close a perspective. Because for those of us who
were watching at the time (and from what I understand there were
billions) it was as if we were somehow there with them, standing on
that dark street artificially lit by the military spotlights and the
harsh glare of the cameras and then all the bloody agony that
followed. Television was - is - after all the only link any of us
really have to each other anymore, now that traveling even within our
own country is restricted. And this was an event which had been in
the coming for some years. There were those at the time who could
still recall when President Kennedy and his would-be President
brother were shot dead, both with the cameras fixed on them, but this
was much different. This time, we were all expecting it. This time,
the event was billed as entertainment, and the electronic equipment
had been installed long before in anticipation. The anchor persons
talked lewdly of the endless possibilities for blood and violence,
hoping to attract viewers to their stations because the marketing
executives were charging an arm and a leg for advertising. And this
time, there was a significant portion of our population secretly
hoping for the demise of our wizened friend, standing there unafraid
at the pinacle of his career and who some now name a Prophet. They
thought he should get what was coming to him.
I
had been in our bedroom in the flat Sarah and I rented in Santa Cruz
smoking a joint. Sarah, upset that I was smoking a joint, had stormed
out of the room into the kitchen where I know she stood watching as
well. In that way, I was perfectly alone when the first shots rang
out and Emmanuel's body sagged to the ground along with several of
those who had been standing around him. There were shouts and cries,
I remember. The camera veered in confusion, and for a moment the only
thing I could make out was that a lot of people were running madly
about. The screaming and the cursing and gunshots were slightly
distorted through the microphones so that it sounded as if the whole
thing were taking place inside of a barn. The soldiers were firing on
Emmanuel's companions, but I couls also see that Emmanuel's
companions were firing back. "The fucking nigger bastards!"
I heard a U.S. soldier sing on his way by the camera, accompanied by
rising crossfire.
"Holy
shit!" the camera man's voice came distinctly over the air
waves, his voice ground and swatted by the nearby and petty retorts
of machine guns all around. The image on the screen stabilized
suddenly on a street now devoid of living flesh but littered with the
dark skinned bodies of Emmanuel's Patriot soldiers. It was some
comfort to note that lying among them as well were a few distinctly
white men in khaki uniforms. There was fire from all directions, I
could hear, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. It appeared
as though our unfortunate camera man had suddenly found himself in
the center of a battlefield. Everyone else had either got out of the
way or had taken up positions along the perimeter. And now that I was
looking closely I could determine that not all of the bodies out
there were soldiers. There were civilians as well. I never understood
why the government hadn't cleared the area of civilians before the
confrontation, but I suspect they never expected this much
resistance.
"Christ!"
the camera man's voice cried out. "It's fucking war zone out
here!" The camera swung around to face the outside of the
District of Columbia National Granary Number One, the wide steps of
which were now slick with blood and organ tissue. There were black
commandos, I could see - probably ex-army - with heavy machine guns
firing heatedly in the camera's direction. The spotlights started
going out then, and later I discovered that some of their marksmen
were shooting them out. The Patriots had trained for night missions
anyway. It was suddenly apparent that they were fighting to win. I
looked but could not pick out Emmanuel's corpse from the pile at the
bottom of the steps.
"Dick,"
came a muffled voice from somewhere next to the camera, and then I
remembered the reporter who had disappeared suddenly from view when
the shooting started. "Don't you think we should -?" Should
what? Get out of here? It probably would have been the first thing on
my mind once corpses started dropping, but today's reporters aren't
known for their great intellect, only their ability to act. Like most
of us in the modern society they just do what they are told, and
perhaps someone over at the station had told them to maintain their
positions. After all, the station was concerned about ratings. I
never found out what he thought they should do, though, because the
next thing I knew the reported fell across the camera's field of
vision, screaming and clutching the side of his face. Blood was
streaming between his fingers.
"Holy
shit!" I heard the camera man say again, and then there was a
wild grunt. The camera spun in a circle, allowing brief and blurred
glimpses of many men approaching and someone very close by - I assume
the mysterious camera man himself - holding half his brain in one
hand, before the thing finally toppled to the ground. I got a good
view of a white man's hand lying inert off to one side of the lens
and someone else's bloodied hair to the other. A few feet away there
was a U.S. soldier staring unseeing into my eyes. It was only after a
few moments that a great stream of blood trickled from the direction
of the hair, smearing the bottom of the screen and making a bee-line
for the still hand. Then there were the sounds of pounding feet and
rough voices all around, and I could see that the men who had taken
out our daft camera crew were now on their way over what had been
established as the Patriots' side of the street. Then the screen went
blank.
I
stared at it for a couple of moments, unable to discern anything in
the fierce black and glossy depths. The chair I was sitting in seemed
suddenly cold, but that was all. Another drag off the joint, listing
calmly to the silence all around. It was as if the whole world had
suddenly stopped, even the birds, pausing. Waiting?
Downstairs
I heard Sarah knock something over in the kitchen. As if at her cue a
great slew of noise from the streets of the city, all around, reached
my ears. The judgemental sounds of weeping. Great troughs of sorrow
and tears, rising up from the earth like steam. Some women in a
nearby block were wailing, their lofty voices sagging with
bereavement ballooning over the city. 'Oh, my god, David!" I
heard Sarah cry as she bounded to the bottom of the stairs. But I
kept my eyes fastened to the television screen. Perhaps there was to
be more? "David!" Her voice seemed to be scratching her
throat, readying her eyes for tears. "They've killed him,
David!" As if I hadn't seen for myself. "David, they shot
Emmanuel!"
The
visophone rang. The both of us were uncannily silent for a brief
moment. I could hear Sarah's ragged breathing at the bottom of the
stairs as she tried to collect herself. It was eerie to hear her so
upset, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. After all,
she had never liked Emmanuel. As a matter of fact, she hadn't
particularly cared for any of the Immortals, including myself. But
then again, that was years and years ago, and many things had
changed. The sounds of the women outside were growing louder, were
accompanied now by great, male voices furious with despite. I could
almost taste the anger in the air. How could they do this? they were
asking each other. Then I heard Sarah make a mad dash for the
visophone. The unusual urgency in her steps, the offhand passion I
discerned in those footfalls jarred me. I was able to use the remote
control to change the channel.
A
hectic white woman trying visibly to remain calm greeted me from the
chaotic background of a newsroom. A lock of perfectly blond hair
grazed a powdered cheek. That one flaw in the robotic appearance we
all have grown accustomed to in the faces on television was alarming.
That, and the fact that she was out of breath. So could it really
have happened? Could it be true? Or was the government trying to goad
us into civil war so that a direct solution to our problem would be
forthcoming? " - severe rioting has already been reported in Los
Angeles, Baltimore, San Antonio, and Detroit," she was wheezing
into the camera. "I can't stress enough that all citizens should
take cover from the violence that seems to be spreading like an
epidemic across the country. Look your doors, gather together any
weapons that you may have. Under no circumstances should you leave
your homes or answer the door!"
I
heard Sarah's tattered voice through the din of the decent citizen on
the television screen and all the wailing and crying and shouting of
the indecent citizens in the streets outside. Distantly I remarked to
myself that she didn't seem to be holding herself together very well.
"David!" she suddenly called up to me, "it's Lee!
Lee's on the phone!" But I didn't answer her. I was listening to
the decent citizen informing me about the information blackout in
Washington. Apparently, no one was allowed to broadcast anywhere in
the city, where most fo the heavy fighting between government forces
and the Patriots happened to be. I guess the government didn't want
the systematic slaughter that followed recorded for all posterity to
judge it by.
Outside
not many blocks away I distinctly heard the sharp sounds of glass
shattering.
"David!"
Sarah cried to me, moving up the stairs as fast as her aging body
would carry her. "Get your gun!"
"Why?"
I answered meekly. "I'm sixty-three. I'm ont going to shoot
anybody."
"What?"
she screamed at me from her bedroom. "We're going to leave the
city, David," she said, a little more calm now. Perhaps she was
answering a question she thought I had asked, or cared about. "Pack
your things."
But
I just sat there, the remote control in one hand and staring coolly
at the television.
A
minute or two later she came into my room, saw me sitting calmly
finishing the joint. "David!" she shrieked at me, dropping
her hastily packed suitcase. "What are you doing? Are you just
going to sit there and wait for them to come kill you? David, listen!
Can't you hear? They're already rioting! David!"
I
turned to look at her, saw that there were tears on her cheeks. The
look she returned to me was a mess of emotion - of grief, of anger,
of betrayal and of a keen sense of urgency I had never known her to
possess. Something stirred in my tired body, so slowly I stood up,
turned off the television, and threw the remote on the seat of the
chair. I calmly put the joint out in the ashtray and sighed heavily.
"David,"
she moaned softly to me, still standing inside the doorway. Her eyes
were capitulating slits that glared ruefully at the floor. "They
just shot him."
"I
know, Sarah," I told her, walking over to her. "I kind of
thought they might." I pulled her into my arms then, let her cry
a moment on my shoulder amid the sounds of the rising violence that
punctured the din around us. Not too far away someone's scream
shortly pierced the air. "Just not this way," I whispered
to her, feeling her body quiver with a silent sob. "I never
thought -" But I couldn't finish. I didn't know what I had
thought.
"What?"
she asked me, lifting her face from my damp shoulder. Her eyes were
red and needing.
"Nothing,"
I said, pulling awkwardly away from her. "Let's get going. We'll
drive north, I guess. Away from any cities whatsoever."
"Aren't
you going to take some of your things?" she asked me in a
clearer voice. I strode into the hallway, trying to be strong for
her. But really, I was very calm and peaceful. She sniffled behind
me, wiped her eyes, and then grabbed her suitcase and followed.
"No,"
I said on my way down the stairs. "Only some food. The less we
have the better," I said, making some useless gesture in a vague
direction. "Let them have it all if they want."
Not
long after, while Sarah and I were still staying with two of her
cousins somewhere in eastern Oregon, the government issued and
international apology to the decent families of those had who had
been mistakenly been killed in the long battle, a number of which
mysteriously included virtually all of the journalists who happened
to have been present. It was something that vaguely reminded me of
President Reagan's solemn apology to the French concerning the
embassy that was mistakenly destroyed during our raid on Libya. Don't
fuck with us, was the message. I think that was the message this
time, too.
Americans
always had this strange belief in the permanency of the world order
that had them perched comfortably at the top, pulling all the
strings. Perhaps it had something to do with our lack of history, the
spready of the years that we fear. History on this side of the planet
begins in 1620 and then only vaguely. Before you know it you're
talking about 1781 and then the great Republic and so on. On this
side of the world only two wars have been lost. There was almost a
third, but thanks to Napolean we were spared reassimilation into the
British Empire. The two we officially lost were in Asia and affected
us only as much as the media and the survivers were able to
communicate. In fact war itself has not touched our soil since the
Civil War. We have known no full-scale invasions. Not yet, anyway.
Until the breakdown of the world economy the United States was the
richest nation and probably still is. But even if the Famine had not
come the United States was doomed to fall. Never, they say, but so it
was said in Rome. The gravest dangers are the ones that the society
refuses to perceive. Usually they come from the inside. In Rome it
was the addiction to luxury, the constant taxation of usurpers, a
horribly debased currency, a declining populaton, and a general
feeling of despair. In the West the causes would have been similar,
and instead of barbarian invasions to topple the rotting regime it
would have been racial confrontation.
There
was such a web of hatred spread across this country, forced to simmer
angrily because for about one hundred years the society attempted to
supress its prejudices rather than deal with them appropriately. They
called this the politically correct movement, and in their ignorance
they created "inoffensive" words to replace those they felt
were not suitable to their vision of the ideal society. If only they
had tried to address the root of the problem rather than supress its
symptoms. No, instead they made up words like "horizontally
challenged" because "fat" makes fat people feel badly.
But the reason why fat people probably feel badly about themselves is
because they receive negative feedback from their peers, and masking
that through artificial language just diminishes the certainty of the
event. Because fat people are still fat whether they are
"horrizontally challenged" or "waterbuffalos",
and if the latter the chances are greater they will stand up for
themselves.
Sides
in this conflict had been strictly defined after the turn of the
millenium, despite the desperately politically correct movement that
was trying to convince the population that everything was just fine
if only we'd just stop hating one another. And it's true, everything
would have been fine, but you can't make people stop hating each
other just by wishing it, or telling them that it is improper to
hate. The confusion they created only helped to hasten the slaughter
and the destruction. Because the pressure built until one day some
little incident became the rallying cry for millions of Americans
whose passionate, improper emotions got the best of them. It feels
incredibly good to submit yourself to something desired but
forbidden, and the forbidding only makes the desire even stronger.
First
and foremost there were the rich white people. This was the class of
people who had ruled this country since its inception. This was the
class of people for whom the republic was instituted, and this is the
class of people who have enjoyed all of its benefits. Congressmen and
Presidents were drawn from their stock, or else were hopelessly
assimilated into it. This was the class of people with the greatest
vested interest in the status quo, and this was the class of people
most unwilling to stake their lives on it. Then there were the
middle-class and poor white people, who were the unwitting tools of
the rich white people. These comprised the vast majority of the
nation's population, and these proved once again ready and willing to
be swayed by pretty speeches, nonsensical ideology, and a few petty
bones handed out at the appropriate moments. Enough about them. Then
there were the poor and middle-class black people, who were portrayed
as the enemy. And it was easy enough for the poor and middle-class
white people to believe this, because even though few had ever had
any crime committed against them personally by a poor or middle-class
black person, they had seen it countless times in the movies or in
the news or heard about it from some yuck rambling drunkenly in a bar
about his friend. Now, the poor and middle-class black people had the
most to gain from the Revolt, because what they were demanding was
freedom. Not political freedom, because unless you were rich and
white that didn't mean anything in this country, but social freedom,
which is the most important for a full and enjoyable life. And lastly
there were the rich black people, caught precariously in limbo and
wondering just where their priorities lay.
The
rich white people thought they had all the guns, of course, but as it
turned out they were gravely mistaken. After all, hadn't violent,
black youths already experienced in the art of killing been arming
themselves in our streets for decades? Wasn't a great portion of our
armed forces filled with young black men and women who had access to
weapons in great numbers? And the black people possessed an added
advantage in this conflict in that they were fighting for something
they were also quite willing to die for.
Emmanuel's
death became a focal point for the passions of American blacks who
were tired to clandestine economic repression. His name became a
rallying cry for victory. It has also become something synonomous
with holy, and that, I fear, is a grave danger to whatever spiritual
advancement Emmanuel hoped to bequeath to us when he freed us from
the heavy chains of monotheistic religion. As I've said before,
humans are beasts that require beliefs, and still we have not cured
ourselves of this habit of discerning vague and divine forces in the
Nature around them. That is why I see Purpose has so far yet to bring
us.
When
will humankind see that the only thing even resembling the divine is
in his own head?
Emmanuel's
debut on national television came one year after the turn of the
millenium. Sarah and I had been living in Los Angeles together for
two years and were still relatively uncomfortable in our somewhat
forced union. There was still fear broiling in every thought that
entered my head, and she had not escaped the distraught need that had
animated her with the memory of her best friend's wanton death fresh
on her mind. She tried to blame it on me, of course, followed me for
four years after I graduated out of bitter spite. But I suspect that
there were other forces at work, and after enough empassioned arguing
we both realized that we really didn't want to be apart anymore. It's
funny, I guess, how things like that work out.
Anyway,
I hadn't really thought much about Emmanuel since I left Baltimore. I
was trying, in fact, not to think about anything remotely involving
my school days and not succeeding very well. But mostly my dreams
were fraught with ghastly images of Shanai leaping gracefully from
the tops of tall buildings, descending in slow motion towards nothing
with an escort of seagulls whose shrill speech echoed in the air
around me. That was why I was so surprised when I suddenly saw my old
friend's face on the television. It seemed quite out of place to my
eyes, as if it didn't belong there.
He
made the last five minutes of the news, the reports that seem to be
more filler between commercials than genuine news. One minute I was
sipping my beer peacefully, enjoying the late evening, and the next I
had knocked the glass onto the floor where it disintegrated into
several large fragments, staring with my mouth open. Sarah called
angrily from the kitchen, but I didn't find it at all necessary to
respond. It was only after she came marching into the room, armed
with words of respite and most likely a sharp command to fetch the
vacuum, that I said, "Look, Sarah. It's Emmanuel. He's on
television."
After
graduation, Emmanuel took up residence in the city with a young woman
a year younger than himself whom he had met at the university. One
night they decided it would be incredibly erotic to screw on the
steps of the bell tower at St. Joseph's Cathedral. So, without even
hesitating a moment, they took a cab to the church and, after making
sure no one was looking, broke in. Emmanuel's cock was pushing
uncomfortably against the inside of his jeans as they entered, and
all of his thoughts were geared in a single direction. His woman,
too, was distracted by thoughts of pleasure, because Emmanuel was
such a good lover, and so neither of them noticed that in the
distance some of the lights were on. Yes, the church had not been
left unguarded. The resident priest regularly volunteered to watch
the place at night. He liked to pray, he told his superiors, but the
truth is that the man wasn't devoted to God nearly much as the half
bottle of bourbon that was his life's only true companion. If he was
drunk enough, he would finish the bottle at the top of the tower and
throw it into the street below. There were always hoodlums to blame.
Emmanuel and his woman had been going at it so hard that they never
even heard the door open at the bottom of the landing, nor the off
key whistling of the good priest on his way towards them. The priest,
it seems, was rather deaf and of somewhat dimmed vision - not to
mention drunk - so he didn't even realize anything was amiss until he
was almost upon them.
Emmanuel
and his woman had chosen a small alcove in the stairwell where lived
a small, alabaster statue of Mary holding her baby. "It was
supposed to be inspiring," Emmanuel said on the news, "and
believe me, it was. The statue was quite warm to the touch."
There was enough room to allow him to sit comfortably at her feet.
His head nestled nicely beneathe the Virgin's upraised arms, his bald
and shiny scalp just brushing the stern lips. His woman had plenty of
room to straddle him, and was quite able to maneuver as she pleased
provided she held onto the baby Jesus for support. So there they
were, the two of them, making gorgeous love in the lap of Mother Mary
cradling her infant Son. Emmanuel's woman clutched the feet of the
baby Jesus with a passion that could be mistaken for fervor. The
eyeless sockets were hidden behind those familiar mirrored
sunglasses, he with such a smile on his lips that it seemed he must
have stolen it from the Virgin, who herself appeared more the
Babylonian love goddess Ishtar than the Holy Mother of the prude God
she was believed to be.
The
good priest only detected their sinful copulation when he reached the
top of the landing. Quickly, he stuffed what little was left of the
bottle into his robe. Peering hesitantly at the two squirming young
adults in the dark, he began fumbling for his glasses. "Clarence?"
he squawked angrily at them, leaning forward and trying to get a good
look before the evidence could be eliminated. "Jerome? Are you
two vandalizing the statue of the Holy Virgin Mary yet again?"
Emmanuel's
woman was so startled by the sudden voice and its close proximity
that she emitted a startled shriek and tried to cover her nakedness
by ducking her head and pressing her body against Emmanuel.
"Agatha?"
the priest barked into the darkness, "is that you? Do you
realize what kind of trouble you are in? Hugging the statue of Mary
won't do you any good now. Just back away and let me take a good look
at what you've done." Still fumbling with the bottle in his
robes, the priest grabbed the woman's arm and yanked her from
Emmanuel. She screamed again, batting at the old man's arm, but his
grip was firm with vigor for his god and the right to punish.
"Carrying on will do you no good, Agatha," he purred as he
released her. "Now just stand there quietly and pray for the
mercy of God and Father Johnson. I think he'll be quite disappointed
in you, my dear. Why," he added, positioning himself in front of
the statue where Emmanuel, as yet undetected, sat smiling broadly, "I
wouldn't be surprised if he decided not to let you on next week's
retreat at all."
"Jesus
Christ, Emmanuel!" the woman screamed, trying desperately to
cover herself with the only two limbs she had available, "I
don't see what's so fucking funny! Just because you can't fucking see
-"
"Watch
your language!" the priest snapped, fixing her with a harsh
glare. "There's no need for vulgarity."
"Vulgarity?"
the woman said, slipping away to where their clothes were stashed.
"You just wait, old man."
"Well,
we'll see what Father Johnson has to say about that," the priest
concluded, returning his attention to the statue. "Ah, yes, my
spectacles," he breathed as if he were remembering what he was
doing, and all the while peering at the statue and Emmanuel, waiting
cruely in the darkness. "My goodness, child," he exclaimed,
"what have you done? Did you douse it with black paint?"
"Not
exactly," the woman answered with a hint of a sneer in her
voice, stuffing one of her legs into her tight jeans.
"Not
exactly, eh?" the priest grated angrily, finally removing the
spectacles from his robe. "Well, we'll just see what exactly it
is -" But the good priest never finished his sentence. Almost
triumphantly, he had planted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose
and pressed his head close to the statue as if to get a better look.
He had been expecting some form of vandalism. Perhaps the child had
decorated the statue with sunglasses and painted her fingernails, or
had defaced her in some other way, but in any event he was not
prepared for the sight of Emmanuel's stiff cock jutting up from the
lap of Our Lady not two feet away from his face.
The
priest's mouth dropped open when he realized what he he was staring
at, and now it was Emmanuel's turn to laugh. "See anything you
like?" he asked, gesting toward his erect penis. But the priest
never had a chance to grasp the humor in his words. The next thing
either of them knew the old man had dripped over the hem of his robe
trying to step away and tumbled backwards down the stairs. Shocked,
Emmanuel stood up and listened to the old man's shaky descent,
perhaps hoping it wasn't what he thought it was and noting that on
the way down he heard something shatter. The priest landed still and
quiet on the landing below, his robe soaked in alcohol. Emmanuel,
perhaps as surprised as the priest had been a moment before, simply
stood at the top of the stairs in disbelief, losing his erection,
hoping the old man would suddenly stand up and announce that he was
perfectly fine, if only a little drunk. "Najiya," he asked
quietly into the silence that ensued, "is he alright?"
"Jesus
Christ, Emmanuel," his woman muttered as she came quietly to his
side, still fumbling with her blouse. She threw another glance down
the stairwell. "You didn't have to kill him."
"Don't
be ridiculous," Emmanuel snapped at her, wishing suddenly that
he could see. "He's probably just fainted from the fall."
Najija
shrugged. "Well, he looks dead to me."
Of
course, the priest was already well aware of the stark non-existence
of an afterlife, a fact that was entirely lost upon the poor old man.
It was later determined that he died before the ambulance arrived due
to massive cerebral hemmoraging induced by a sharp blow to the head,
probably one of the early stairs. Emmanuel, as we could see on the
television, was not quite remorseful enough in the opinion of the
local authorities. "Jesus Christ, man," he was saying as
the police escorted him to a waiting car, "we were just having a
little fun."
"But
because of your 'little fun'," some reporter was saying off
camera, "a good priest now lies dead. What do you have to say to
that?"
"Good
priest?" Emmanuel returned, resisting the policeman's lead into
the back seat. "The man was a drunkard! Besides, he was only a
priest."
Only
a priest. That remark, and the fact that he was a black man refusing
to submit himself before the rancid criminal justice system in which
he so suddenly found himself submerged, got him convicted of some
trumped up felony charge. He spent a year of his life in jail.
Perhaps that experience is what sparked him. Perhaps, if he had never
been arrested and thus not been led to answer back to the society he
felt had wronged him, Emmanuel would have died another faceless death
and history would have taken quite a different course. But he grew so
incenced at his wrongful imprisonment that he took the year to write
his famous book condemning the three modern, monotheistic religions.
Naturally, since he lived in the West, he aimed most of his pungent
criticism at Christianity. After all, he was working on discrediting
the fundamental premis of all three religions: that the world is
starkly divided between good and evil. The notion of God, as he
pointed out, is only secondary to that, a natural consequence. And
what happened to Najiya, his companion in distaster? She was let off
on a misdemeanor and married Emmanuel when he got out of prison,
after which she continued to be his eternal companion in disaster,
was standing behind him, in fact, during his very last.
Sarah,
of course, thought the whole story was quite amusing, but at the time
there were no smiles for my face and I found her quiet chuckling
offensive. "You think it's funny?" I growled, turning to
look at her.
She
shrugged, her eyes still on the television screen. "Yes,"
she answered bluntly. "I do."
"What,
are you a fucking idiot? He's going to go to fucking jail!" I
was staring at her wide-eyed, bewildered, a lot angrier, perhaps,
than I should have been. Perhaps it was the shock of having been
visually confronted with a ghost from those still recent days of
tribulation, to have seen that he had moved on with his life and was
not floundering around in the muck of his past, clutching at faceless
shades, haunting him.
But
Sarah wasn't going to have anything to do with it. She cut me a sharp
glance out of the corner of one eye. "You better clean that up,"
was all she said to me, indicating the pile of broken glass and
spilled beer by the chair, before walking back into the kitchen.
The
sight of her back so infuriated me that I just wanted to walk right
up and smash the back of her head in, but even then I knew some
restraint. So instead I walked out onto the back porch and looked
over our noisy block and furiously smoked a cigarette. I was trying
not to think about Emmanuel or Shanai or Antonius or Salvatore (where
had they all gone?), briefly wondered how long it would take
President Gore to bribe Congress to decriminalize marijuana, before I
came to the sudden and stark realization that Sarah and I were joined
together solely by the miserable recollection of that one little girl
who didn't have enough strength to keep on living. And then all
thoughts were silenced in my brain except for the one that told me
how wrong and awkward that was.
"It's
utterly amazing," Emmanuel was saying from the high podium
studded with microphones, "how long this disease has persisted.
Anyone who has even the slightest intimacy with human history and
decent rationality should be able to see it, if only we weren't so
easily misled by the beliefs others wantonly stick in our heads. Or,
rather, if only we would assume beliefs that conformed well to our
actual environment. After all, would science have gone as far as it
has if rather than forming hypotheses from observable data we formed
the hypotheses first and then tried to apply them to the world around
us?" There were lines on his face, I could see from his picture
on the television. The first signs of age. When would mine begin to
show themselves? How chilling those sudden doses of mortality can be.
How cold the stone becomes as it wears away our weary bodies. I
remember remarking upon how much he had changed since Sarah and I had
left the States. Of course, it had been thirteen years.
"Why
is it that our religions rely entirely upon brainwashing our children
before they realize that they possess the right to choose for
themselves? The basis for belief should be the strength of the
philosophy itself rather than fear and persuasion, because then what
ends up happening is you have religious zealots fighting for one
faction or another with no real understanding of the philosophy he's
fighting for. Because Christians shouldn't be fighting at all. But
don't tell the Pope. He doesn't believe in the firmness of our minds
to understand all that there is. All his thinking has been done long
ago by men who had no idea what natural science was. Because if he
could really see he would realize that Christianity is not a
monotheistic religion at all. That all the gods of old simply have
new faces in the form of the saints, that Jesus's mother is herself
often worshipped as a goddess. One of the very first contraversies in
the history of Christianity was how to reconcile the fact that Jesus
was divine. It implied two gods. They came up with the notion of a
Trinity. Have you ever actually heard someone try and explain it? It
offends every notion of logic.
"And
the gods we had before the Christians. Perhaps more sincere, but
still just figments of our minds to explain the forces that seem to
affect our lives. We can all, after all, understand how awesome the
weather can be. And today we live in homes, travel in cars. We don't
know the night sky anymore. But thousands of years ago, men and women
were very dependent upon the forces of nature. I, at least, can
understand how a people, whose lives depended upon the yearly rising
and falling of a river, could discern a god who was angry or pleased
with them. That is the notion that abounded in Mesopotamia where the
mother to Islam and Christianity arose. But today we understand that
the rising and ralling of the river has everything to do with how
much snowfall there is in the mountains and nothing to do with the
sudden whims of divine ghosts, that one year in particular it was
quite unbelievably heavy and in the spring the whole river valley
flooded. Yes, yes, we know. It was God again punishing his wayward
children."
I
have Emmanuel's last speech on disk. It was his greatest, I believe,
more so because people were finally ready to listen to what he was
saying. His words were nothing new, but faithlessness has a way of
preparing people's mind for a new answer, readying them to find fresh
wonders in a world that has grown old and grey. It was the same
faithlessness that allowed the cult of superstition - Christianity -
to overcome a dying Hellenism. I actually believed, watching him on
television that day, that perhaps after four hundred years logic
might once again reign in the minds of men. And logic need not
supercede spirituality. After all, why offer our prayers to unseen
gods when the beauty and splendor of the natural universe lies all
around us?
But
who would have known that the spring of 2018 was the beginning of the
end for this era of humankind? But I won't belabor what we all know
quite well, or what will be known as history in the future. As for my
friend Emmanuel, his career was about to change in a most drastic
way, and both science and philosophy would be lost for a good long
time. He was about to embark on an eighteen year campaign for racial
equality that would end in his death and revolution.
"What
I want to stress, my good friends, is that humans are animals who
have the capacity to rationalize and to reason. Such capabilities
have been observed in other animals but not to the degree that our
brains seem to be able to construct and manipulate models of the
worlds around and within us. We as humans have at our disposal an
arsenal of knowledge and observations and a mind that wonderfully
allows us to explore implications and act on our conclusions. Like
mathematics, the greater our knowledge the closer to Truth our
conclusions become. Five thousand years ago, humans discerned gods,
or God, in the world around them because that was all they could come
up with. We are animals of reason, my friends, and because of that we
must try and find a reason in everything that occurs around us."
Emmanuel
had stirred up a lot of trouble during the time Sarah and I were
abroad. It wasn't long before copies of his book were being sold in
Belgium where we were living. I picked up a copy in Brugge and read
it, and I cried. I cried because I understood. After all, Emmanuel
had come into his own before my very eyes.
"We
are animals. We possess instincts not at all unlike those of other
animals. But the faculties of our minds are like nothing we have
observed anywhere else, and like all the other species of animal that
walk or crawl this earth we have only the tissue and blood of our
brains to thank, not God or a fleshy spirit we name 'soul'. We are
the naked ape with the capacity to reason and our miraculous thumb.
And we also have the miraculous ability to produce and distinguish
with uncanny precision a series of sounds that we call speech. Thus
we are the ape that dresses himself in clothing because evolution has
stripped him of his fur. We are the ape that builds for himself
automobiles and lives in houses where he has installed for himself
machines that control the climate. We are the ape that sends
satellites into space and walks on the moon. We are also the ape with
the longest penis and the greatest sex on the planet. But we are
still nothing more than apes with beliefs and if you put this ape in
a situation where the idea of civilization is no longer, then despite
all his artifacts all that remains is the animal."
How
did you come to understand so much? How was it that I stumbled along
the low road, scrambling over rocks and boulders and trying to find
detours around great, yawning ravines, and somehow you emerged at the
other end with a keen understanding of yourself and how you fit into
the world?
"After
all, civilization is nothing more than a belief in itself. Our
beliefs can betray us, of course. They are the source of peace, but
all of madness." But you faltered there for a moment, my friend.
O yes, I saw you pause. Not for effect but because momentarily you
could not continue. We all five of us understand the pits and snares
that lead us to pervert our beliefs into infinite madness. We all
five of us left each other there. "Our beliefs give us an
incentive to be, or to destroy ourselves, as the case may be."
For
some years my old friend had been making international news, had been
forced to live in hiding because there were those committed to his
death. Amazing, that he become the Salman Rushdie of the West.
Amazing, yes, and also unfortunate. Exept here in the West something
remarkable occurred. Men like Newton and Leibnitz and Gallileo
somehow convinced the merchant class that science could earn them a
good living, so in the process endowed their children with an
acceptance of a way of thought that is entirely in opposition to
Christianity. Four hundred years later science had reached a point
where it undermined the people's very belief in the myth of God and
Judgement, and humans seemed ready to seek a new understand of the
nature of the universe.
But
why didn't they listen to you, Emmanuel? Was it truly so difficult to
understand what you were saying?
"Virtually
all of our mental processes can be damaged by lesions in the brain:
our memories, our language skills, our ability to discern anger and
fear in the faces and voices of others. Strip them away and the only
thing that remains is the tenuous, perhaps dubious existence of a
well. Can the will itself be damanged? Science has not yet determined
if it can. Regardless, how can we say there is an eternal soul when
our mental states can be so radically altered chemically and
anatomically? A simple knock on the head can change a man's entire
personality - his beliefs, his emotional responses, as if a new man
had stepped into the old one's body and taken his place."
How
strong and sincere you looked to me, Emmanuel, standing there
surrounded by bodyguards like a Roman emperor, speaking to the
billions of people in the world who had come to understand why things
weren't the way their parents or the highly orchestrated world of
television and church had taught them it should be. And Najiya,
standing tall and firm by your side, whispering in your ear. You
never read from a script, my friend. No, you spoke directly to your
audience and looked them all in the eye, spoke with passion and
brilliance and, most importantly, enlightenment.
"There
is no external good and evil, no higher being watching and judging
our every action. There is no god except for nature, and even in her
there is no will, for she just is, like ourselves. There is only
nature to explain us. We are a piece of her. We do not exist
independently of her."
Perhaps,
but now the matter is irrelevent. You are no longer alive and in your
death you sparked a revolution that ended in slaughter. And like all
martyrs the memory of your words and your actions sparked the very
belief you strove to annihilate in the minds of humans everywhere,
and there are those now who claim you were their Prophet. These men
and women name themselves Humans and they call their religion the
Religion of Humankind. Its adherents are largely the descendents of
the African kingdoms, dispersed throughout the Americas centuries
ago. And they are zealous, like the Christians once were under the
fierce hand of Roman persecution. Because you gave them something
they had been lacking for all those centuries they lay isolated, each
in their own country of imprisonment: a unique and common sense of
their own identity. And now they have something they can call their
own, their own sense of what is God. I am afraid, my friend, that you
did not succeed in vanquishing organized religion. No, in your hope
you destroyed one religion only to allow another to take its place.
Perhaps science and logic have just passed through a golden age that
lasted four hundred years or so, and now, soon enough, humankind will
see a return to the kind of strict religious orthodoxy that has
shrouded him in fairy fancy all these centuries. Perhaps. But I
cannot look beyond the course of the destruction, as I will not know
any rebirth except for death.
But
they didn't shoot you because of your beliefs about God; at least,
not mostly because of them. Before 2020 you had government protection
whenever you spoke in public, but after you went around stirring up
trouble in the spiritually battered South you had to supply your own
bodyguards. Najiya was the driving force, I think, behind your
finally accusing the governments of Texas, Mississippi, and New
Jersey of denying their black citizens proper access to their
granaries. I remember that day quite well. After returning from
Europe Sarah and I stayed a month at Drusus and Nancy's in
Pennsylvania, where we saw you give your last speech. We quickly
decided that Los Angeles was too crazy a place for us to return to,
and in the newly found peace we discovered overseas we settled on the
San Francisco area. It was just two years after we moved into our two
bedroom flat in Santa Cruz that once again I saw the vague shape that
seemed to be perpetually haunting me from the screen of my
television.
It
seems that Najiya had mysteriously acquired some illicit camera
footage of three white national guardsmen in Texas refusing to allow
a family of poor blacks with the proper identification to enter the
district's granary. There was a man, thin as a board whose cheekbones
were showing through his face, and his wife with skin that was chalky
and sagging. Two small children cowered behind her as one of the men
taunted their father with what appeared to be a large breast of
chicken, then strick him down when the desperate man tried to take it
from him. "Get out of here, nigger!" one screamed at him,
and another kicked him in the chest. "This ain't no place for
you!"
I
don't know how Najiya got her hands on the footage or who recorded
it, but I do konw that by that time similar incidents were reputed to
be occurring all over the country. I never took the rumors very
seriously until I saw it for myself. After it aired, there was a
national uproar along both coasts and among black people everywhere,
not just in the United States, and during the small period that the
American people were focused on the incident the President made
several promises to investigate. As it turned out, the district
attourneys of all three states met and later denied the allegations,
claiming that the recording was a clever forgery. After that, the
ever forgetful and restless attention of the public moved on to more
pertinent matters, such as the food shortages that seemed to be
worsening by the day. And, of course, we were all watching as the
invaders began to take Europe.
Najiya
desperated tried to keep the public eye on the issue by collecting
more and more evidence from more and more states, but the only thing
that ever came of it was a blacklist. None of the television stations
would touch her story. Emmanuel and Najiya were distraught and
enraged, and perhaps it was then, finally, that the realization
dawned on them that the situation would not change unless it was
forced to change. That slowly and over time white people were going
to try and starve his black brethren out of the country.
Over
the next ten years an underground movement of sorts sprung up in the
back rooms of bars and in basements. I cannot pretend to understand
the mood or guess the purpose, although I would venture to say that
at the beginning the thought of a revolution was not yet a serious
one, or even deemed plausible. Perhaps they were banding together as
a people because they had no one else to turn to , and there is
always strength and safety in numbers. It was by no means an
organized venture, nor was it headed by any one or one hundred
people. But in times of precarious survival humans are usually
willing to lay aside their differences for a common cause, and
instead of a few there were many great leaders. There were men and
women who by day cleared away tables in restaurants or kept the
stockroom full at the office and by night raided granaries and in
some places storing large caches of weapons. At times they would
demonstrate their strength and suddenly a general strike was
crippling the nation's industry. All across the country goverment and
corporate workers desisted from their jobs: clerks, postmen,
soldiers, judges, policemen, firefighters, janitors, Congressmen.
Emmanuel
spent his time touring the South with his wife and his small Patriot
band for protection. Already he had ceased trying to find justice for
his people, for he knew it was like the Fountain of Youth and the
Trinity - legends, myths that for hundreds of years had tortured his
ancestors. He was trying, rather, to prepare them for what was to
come, and comfort them until it had. In farmyards at night he gave
short, inspirational speeches, secret gatherings across the country
where he described to them a time and a place where they were a
people governed by themselves. For Emmanuel believed that if enough
of them converged on one area, struck swiftly and took it during a
moment of great confusion, then with a bit of luck and some well
fought battles they might in fact be able to keep it. Washing and
Oregon were his targets, and his growing Patriot army eventually
became the organization he envisioned would lay the foundation for
the mission.
But
as time went on such an event seemed less and less likely. It was
beyond their grasp and would require a unity that they did not
possess, and as white retaliation for lost foodstuffs and general
unrest began to flow the black resistence hardened into something
quite different. By 2030 the word "revolution" could be
found scrawled on virtually every street corner in major cities
across America, even on historic Pennsylavia Avenue outside the White
House. "Patriot revolution" was the most common phrase, and
it was to become a battlecry of sorts.
Needless
to say, the white power structure found it fit to respond as the
situation grew more strained. After the existence of the underground
was officially recognized the FBI was actively trying to penetrate
and dismantle the organizations the country had come to fear.
Everyday hundreds of black men and women were hauled struggling to
makeshift jails. Racial tension ballooned incredibly during the first
half of the 2030's, especially when white vigilante youth groups
started roving the streets in small bands looking for blacks to
harass. When these same young white youths started turning up dead in
the morning good white mothers raised hell with the police and
further retaliatory measures were taken. Soon there was civil
disorder in the streets of New York City and Baltimore. The curtain,
it seemed, was coming down.
The
whole situation reached a crisis on the fourteenth of September,
2036. That was the day the Patriots seized control of the District of
Columbia National Granary Number One, the very same that fed the
mouths of Congress and the President. In a matter of moments the
whole country was wired to their television sets, white and black
alike, and each with their own hopes about the outcome. As I've
already said, this was an event long in the coming and there were
many who hoped that the men in green would just start shooting. And
there were also a great many hoping that the men in red berrets who
called themselves Patriots would initiate the insurrection so very
many of them cried for, an insurrection that saw such acts of
violence committed that it could only have occurred in the most
violent country in the West. Everybody wanted someone to shoot,
which, in my opinion, is exactly what they did.
In
the end every black man, woman, and child that could be found within
the borders of the United States and Canada was killed or forced to
flee the country they had helped to build. The Race Revolts were so
violent, so reeking of human animality, that the air virtually stank
of it. I could smell it the entire time Sarah and I lived in quite
hiding in Oregon. For five months the country was immersed in the
kind of turmoil I used only to see on the evening news in far away
countries. In five months the last vestiges of civilization and
decency were washed completely away, so that there were no more
schools, no more electricity for large portions of the coasts, no
more social services. No more freedom. After that, the President
declared a permanent state of emergency and assumed dictatorial
powers. To my undying chagrin, no one really seemed to object.
After
Emmanuel was shot every able bodied Afro-American took to the streets
with his gun. The state of the American armed forces was in such
disarray that a national conscription was invoked to which virtually
every able bodied white man responded. Such a long and bloodied
series of battles it was, and perhaps Najiya and her soldiers would
have had a good chance at success if they had had a clear objective.
But there were too many leaders with their own armies and not enough
followers, and no idea of how to take heavily defended Washington. So
aging Najiya holed up in Baltimore with her forces vowing to take the
capital while the fiercest fighting raged on deathlessly through the
other, more distant parts of the country.
By
January the insurgents were fleeing to Mexico, white men with guns
hot on their heels trying to kill as many as they could. It has been
said that the waters of the Mississippi ran red from Hastings to New
Orleans, that for a second time the banks of the Rio Grande were
littered with corpses starving birds picked to pieces in hours,
sometimes before the wounded had properly bled to death. But I would
not know of such things. All I know is that I was outraged and
helpless to act.
Sarah
and I were sitting together, alone and shivering before the
television, while the tanks and the fighter planes moved in on
Baltimore and razed the city. I think we were weeping, yes, our heads
resting uncomfortably against each other, when the last building
crumbled and the cheering started. Then the white men climbed from
their machines of destruction and started dancing together on the top
of the corpses and the mangled stone. Moments later someone carried a
severed head into view of the camera, proudly lifted it before him as
if the fucking thing were a prize. The camera zoomed in and Sarah and
I found ourselves staring into the bloodied and empty eyesockets of
Najiya, dried blood spilled down her cheeks and nose. It was a matter
of grave irony that in the end she end up blind like her husband.
There was dirt caked over her face like frosting, I remember, and
when I mentioned the analogy to Sarah she slapped me quite hard. Her
mouth was ripped open in a perpetual scream of death, but even from
where I was sitting you could see that there was nothing inside.
As
it was, the first unit to find her was the 101st batallion from
Mississippi. Half their men had been wiped our during the taking of
the city. Of all the invading units they had suffered the most
casualties. They found her in the very skyscraper she had been using
as headquarters for the few years since she had taken up residence
there, after she had kicked out or killed all the white people that
had foolishly remained in the city despite her warnings. Of course to
their surprise they did not find a verile and manacing threat but a
tired and lonely old woman who saw that there was nothing left to
fight for because it was over. When they burst into her command room,
fresh in the madness of battle, eyes wide and muscles twitching with
adrelaline, Najiya was lying coolly on the floor on the other side
alone and without any bullets. She had sent away the last of her
aides to flee as they could. So it was that the soldiers mistook her
for someone else, and they were about to shoot her and move on
through the building when one of them had the bright idea to ask her
where Najiya might be.
The
woman was too proud to have shot herself before they barged in on
her, and when they discovered who she really was they were more than
disappointed. "Hey, guys!" one of the men called out the
door. "You've got to see this!" As more and more of the
soldiers entered the room, men who were really just civilians in
uniform who knew no discipline, I know that Najiya kept her calm and
waiting for what she knew must be inevitable. There would be no pity
for her because of her age. I also know that she remained silent the
entire time it took her to die, that she looked all of them in the
face and refused to utter a word even when they tortured her.
Apparently it was so unnerving to some of them that they could not go
about their business with her. So it was that, after the fifteen or
perhaps the fiftieth man, they angrily gouged our her eyes and cut
out her tongue.
It's
difficult to say when she actually died. The brutality of war is an
amazing thing, but apes are violent beasts and when the violence is
allowed to express itself it usually does in unforeseen ways. How
many men was her limit, I wonder? Seventy? one hundred? perhaps two?
It matters little, I guess. That was a savage war, and things still
have not settled down. This was always a savage country. Not it is a
jungle.
But
if anything my tears were assuaged by the fact that Najiya died a
proud and fighting woman, despite what they say about her now. She
did not die a ridiculously absurd death as did Agrippina, nor a
cowardly one like Messalina. Nor was it as graceful as that of Lydia,
who like Augustus was called divine. She had no lover to die with, as
did Cleopatra, nor peacefully. She died, perhaps, a death worthy of
the third Roman emperor Gaius, also known as Little Boots, but better
than any of them. I have heard that the millions of blacks who
managed to escape have joined their brethren to the south and that
they tell each other the story over and over again. They keep the
belief alive. Already, the legends are forming. Will, perhaps, one
day in a hundred years someone decide to write it all down as he
hears them? What will they be saying then? What glorious wonders and
absurd miracles will men attribute to the hands of the prophet
Emmanuel and his wife Najiya?
I
do not know. All I know is that in the winter of 2037 Baltimore was
razed, the rubble dragged away, and in some pitiful act of ceremony
the earth there was salted and tilled and salted again, so that today
and for hundreds of years in the future nothing will grow there. Not
even a blade of grass. But it is my opinion that nothing would grow
there anyway. I believe that soil can only take so much blood before
its vitality is washed away. But, of course, I am not always right
about such things.
This site and all its
contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one
Adam Wasserman.
All rights reserved.