I stared at him in astonished silence.
"You mean this? Come and go there?"
"Yes. Anytime. As I told you. Don't you know the Scriptures? I'm not claiming an authenticity for the fragments that remain, or even the original poetry, but of course you can come and go. You won't be of that place until you are redeemed and in it. But you can certainly get in and out, once you're on my side."
I tried to realize what he was saying. I tried to picture again the galleries, the libraries, the long, long rows of books, and realized suddenly it had become insubstantial; the details were disappearing. I was retaining a tenth of what I'd beheld; perhaps even less. What I have described here in this book is what I could remember then and now. And there had been so much more!
"How is that possible, that He would let us into Heaven!" I said. I tried to concentrate on the Scriptures, something David had said once a long time ago, about the Book of Job, something about Satan flying around and God saying, almost casually, Where have you been? Some explanation of the bene ha elohim or the court of heaven—
"We are his children," said Memnoch. "Do you want to hear how it all started, the entire true story of Creation and the Fall, or do you want to go back and just throw yourself into His arms?"
"What more is there!" I asked. But I knew. There was understanding of what Memnoch was saying. And there was also something required to get in there! I couldn't just go, and Memnoch knew it. I had choices, yes, and they were these, either to go with Memnoch or return to the earth. But admission to Heaven was hardly automatic. The remark had been sarcastic. I couldn't go back and throw myself in His arms.
"You're right," he said. "And you're also very wrong."
"I don't want to see Hell!" I said suddenly. I drew myself up. I recoiled. I looked around us. This was a wild garden, this was my Savage Garden, of thorny vines and hunkering trees, of wild grass, and orchids clinging to the mossy knuckles of branches, of birds streaking high above through webs of leaves. "I don't want to see Hell!" I cried. "I don't want to, I don't! .. ."
Memnoch didn't answer. He seemed to be considering things.
And then he said, "Do you want to know the why of all of it, or not?
I was so sure you would want to know, you of all creatures. I thought you would want every little bit of information!"
"I do!" I cried. "Of course I want to know," I said. "But I ... I don't think I can."
"I can tell you as much as I know," he said gently, with a little shrug of his powerful shoulders.
His hair was smoother and stronger than human hair, the strands were perhaps thicker, and certainly more incandescent. I could see the roots of his hair at the top of his smooth forehead. His hair was tumbling soundlessly into some sort of order, or just becoming less disheveled. The flesh of his face was equally smooth and apparently pliant all over, the long, well-formed nose, the full and broad mouth, the firm line of the jaw.
I realized his wings were still there, but they had become almost impossible to see. The pattern of the feathers, layer after layer of feathers, was visible, but only if I squinted my eyes and tried to make out the details against something dark behind him, like the bark of the tree.
"I can't think," I said. "I see what you think of me, you think you've chosen a coward! You think you've made a terrible mistake.
But I tell you, I can't reason. I... I saw Him. He said, 'You wouldn't be my adversary!' You're asking me to do it! You took me to Him and away from Him."
"As He Himself has allowed!" Memnoch said with a little rise to his eyebrows.
"Is that so?"
"Of course!" he answered.
"Then why did He plead with me! Why did He look that way!"
"Because He was God Incarnate, and God Incarnate suffers and feels things with His human form, and so He gave you that much of Himself, that's all! Suffering! Ah, suffering!"
He looked to heaven and shook his head. He frowned a little, thoughtfully. His face in this form could not appear wrathful or twisted with any ugly emotion. Blake had seen into Heaven.
"But it was God," I said.
He nodded, with his head to the side. "Ah, yes," he said wearily, "the Living Lord."
He looked off into the trees. He didn't seem angry or impatient or even weary. Again, I didn't know if he could. I realized he was listening to sounds in the soft garden, and I could hear them too.
I could smell things—animals, insects, the heady perfume of jungle flowers, those overheated, mutated blooms that a rain forest can nourish either in the depths or in its leafy heights. I caught the scent of humans suddenly!
There were people in this forest. We were in an actual place.
"There are others here," I said.
"Yes," he said. And now he smiled at me very tenderly. "You are not a coward. Shall I tell you everything, or simply let you go? You know now more than millions ever glimpse in their lifetimes. You don't know what to do with that knowledge, or how to go on existing, or being what you are . . . but you have had your glimpse of Heaven. Shall I let you go? Or don't you want to know why I need you so badly?"
"Yes, I do want to know," I said. "But above all, more than anything else, I want to know how you and I can stand there side by side, adversaries, and how you can look as you look and be the Devil, and how . . . and how ..." I laughed. ". . . and how I can look like I look and be the Devil I've been! That's what I want to know. I have never in my whole existence seen the aesthetic laws of the world broken. Beauty, rhythm, symmetry, those are the only laws I've ever witnessed that seemed natural.
"And I've always called them the Savage Garden! Because they seemed ruthless and indifferent to suffering—to the beauty of the butterfly snared in the spiderweb! To the wildebeast lying on the veldt with its heart still beating as the lions come to lap at the wound in its throat."
"Yes, how well I understand and respect your philosophy," he said. "Your words are my words."
"But I saw something more up there!" I said. "I saw Heaven. I saw the perfected Garden that was no longer Savage. I saw it!" I began to weep again.
"I know, I know," he said, consoling me.
"All right." I drew myself up again, ashamed. I searched in my pockets, found a linen handkerchief, pulled it out and wiped my face. The linen smelled like my house in New Orleans, where jacket and handkerchief both had been kept until sunset this night, when I'd taken them out of the closet and gone to kidnap Dora from the streets.
Or was it the same night?
I had no idea.
I pressed the handkerchief to my mouth. I could smell the scent of New Orleans dust and mold and warmth.
I wiped my mouth.
"All right!" I declared breathlessly. "If you haven't become completely disgusted with me—"
"Hardly!" he said, as politely as David might have said.
"Then tell me the Story of Creation. Tell me everything. Just go on! Tell me! I...."
"Yes ... ?"
"I've to know!"
He rose to his feet, shook the grass from his loose robe, and said: "That's what I've been waiting for. Now, we can truly begin."
11
LET'S move through the forest as we talk," he said. "If you don't mind the walking."
"No, not at all," I said.
He brushed a little more of the grass from his garment, a fine spun robe that seemed neutral and simple, a garment that might have been worn either yesterday or a million years ago. His entire form was slightly bigger all over than mine, and bigger perhaps than that of most humans; he fulfilled every mythic promise of an angel, except that the white wings remained diaphanous, retaining their shape under some sort of cloak of invisibility, more it seemed for convenience than anything else.
"We're not in Time," he said. "Don't worry about the men and the women in the forest. They can't see us. No one here can see us, and for that reason I can keep my present form. I don't have to resort to the dark devilish body which He thinks is appropriate for earthly maneuvers, or to the Ordinary Man, which is my own unobtrusive choice."