Fifth Gospel(50)

‘But why do my teachers at the synagogue not teach this marvellous truth?’ Lazarus asked.

Photismos looked out to the valleys and hills and mountains. ‘A long time ago, the great prophets and teachers could still see the light-word, but as time passed they grew blind and saw only the physical light of the sun, and it damaged their eyes to look upon it.’

‘Do you say that men have grown blind to the word of God?’ Lazarus asked.

‘Yes…and it is for this reason that a god descended to the moon in order that from it he might reflect the wisdom and the love of the sun; for this reflected light caused men no harm.’

‘Who is this god?’

‘He reflects the light-word, and so he is called…Jehova! I am that I am.’

Lazarus grew fearful; this was the forbidden name, which was never to be spoken out loud. Men were stoned to death for saying it.

‘Do not be afraid, child…soon a man will come who will see the fullness of the word and he will speak of it without fear. This man will look at the God of the Sun directly in the day, because His light will not harm his eyes.’

‘Who is this man who will see this God, and why will His light not harm his eyes?’

‘He will be the forerunner, child,’ he said to Lazarus, ‘and he will see this Sun God, the true light of the I am, because He will enter into a body of flesh, to dwell among men.’

‘Will I ever see Him, the bearer of this light?’

Photismos looked at the boy with a serious face. ‘You? You most of all, child! Why do you think I spend so much time on you?’

‘But how will I find him?’

‘Many years from now, you will hear the voice of His forerunner, crying out in the wilderness. He will direct you to the Man who will be the bearer of the light-word. You must listen to that call.’

‡

‘As the years passed, pairé, Lazarus waited for the call of the one whom Isaiah prophesied; the one who would bear witness to the incarnation of the Word of words. But it was not until he was a man, some months after he and his sisters had moved from their Galilean home to Bethany, that Lazarus had a waking dream. He dreamt that he was standing on the parapets of that great tower of Magdala again, but now it was not his own voice calling out his name, but another voice from afar, in the distant wilderness of Judea, that was calling it. The sound of it entered into his ears, and moved his heart to make it skip beats, it made him flush with warmth and it directed him to the wilderness, to a man called John.’





24


ISIS




She finished her words and I realised that it was morning again and another night had passed. That is how it was during those nights with Lea, sitting in the upper room by the fire. The hours went by in a dream, but a dream more awake than life itself, for it was a life that took me to the heights of knowledge. When day came then, and life in the fortress resumed its dismal rhythm, I was forced to fall back to earth, forced to face the siege with its moments of frenzied fighting, followed by long hours of inactivity.

In the daily hours I received those who wished to see me, I bandaged wounds and applied compresses and saw to men and women who were dying from injury or from disease. It was an endless round of waiting and prayer, of hope and despair for the injured and the dying.

The night was my solace.

But when some nights had passed without a visit from Lea it made me full of concern and I resolved to go in search of her. Perhaps she was not an apparition but a woman after all? If so, she may have fallen sick, like so many, from lack of food and clean water, from the cold and the crowded conditions. I imagined her in some corner of the fortress, coughing, with a fever on that brow as pale as a pearl, and felt my heart quickening with devotion. I could not tell if this devotion was not an illusion sent by the devil to try me and so I put it out of my mind and searched, looking for her in the pentagonal courts and where people gathered for the sermons.

Sometimes I thought I did see her, or at least something of her. But what I saw was the warm smile of a mother, the peculiar turn of the head of a lover, the wisdom in the eyes of a grandmother – evidence of the soul that is shared by all women, but which a man can only aspire to love from afar. I was thinking this, as I looked for Saissa de Congost, that wonderful woman whose castle at Puivert had once been the home of music and troubadours before the French seized it.

Saissa had taken it upon herself to keep the young girls of the fortress busy, and I reasoned that she might know something of Lea if she were, indeed, a real woman. But along the way I was diverted from my task by a tearful boy wandering among the crowds of people without aim. A beautiful child with delicate features and far reaching eyes. I asked him his name but he did not answer and those around me did not know who he was. I took him by the hand to Saissa who was teaching embroidery to a group of young girls.