Ray Bradbury. The Messiah

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The Messiah
                1971

     "We all have that special dream when we are young," said Bishop Kelly.
     The others at the table murmured, nodded.
     "There is no Christian boy," the Bishop continued, "who does not some night
wonder:  am  I  Him?  Is this the Second Coming at long last, and am I It? What,
what, oh, what, dear God, if I were Jesus? How grand!"
     The  Priests,  the  Ministers,  and  the  one  lonely Rabbi laughed gently,
remembering  things  from their own childhoods, their own wild dreams, and being
great fools.
     "I suppose," said the young Priest, Father Niven, "that Jewish boys imagine
themselves Moses?"
     "No, no, my dear friend," said Rabbi Nittler. "The Messiah. The Messiah!"
     More quiet laughter, from all.
     "Of  course,"  said Father Niven out of his fresh pink-and-cream face, "how
stupid  of  me.  Christ  wasn't  the  Messiah, was he? And your people are still
waiting for Him to arrive. Strange. Oh, the ambiguities."
     "And  nothing  more  ambiguous than this." Bishop Kelly rose to escort them
all  out  onto  a  terrace  which  had  a view of the Martian hills, the ancient
Martian  towns,  the  old highways, the rivers of dust, and Earth, sixty million
miles away, shining with a clear light in this alien sky.
     "Did we ever in our wildest dreams," said the Reverend Smith, "imagine that
one  day  each  of  us would have a Baptist Church, a St. Mary's Chapel, a Mount
Sinai Synagogue here, here on Mars?"
     The answer was no, no, softly, from them all.
     Their quiet was interrupted by another voice which moved among them. Father
Niven,  as they stood at the balustrade, had tuned his transistor radio to check
the  hour.  News  was  being  broadcast  from  the  small  new  American-Martian
wilderness colony below. They listened:
     "-  rumoured  near  the  town.  This  is  the first Martian reported in our
community this year. Citizens are urged to respect any such visitor. If -"
     Father Niven shut the news off.
     "Our  elusive congregation," sighed the Reverend Smith. "I must, confess" I
came  to Mars not only to work with Christians, but hoping to invite one Martian
to Sunday supper, to learn of his theologies, his needs."
     "We  are  still too new to them," said Father Lipscomb. "In another year or
so  I  think  they will understand we're not buffalo hunters in search of pelts.
Still,  it  is  hard  to  keep  one's  curiosity in hand. After all, our Mariner
photographs  indicated  no  life  whatsoever  here.  Yet  life  there  is,  very
mysterious and half-resembling the human."
     "Half,  Your  Eminence?"  The Rabbi mused over his coffee. "I feel they are
even  more  human  than ourselves. They have let us come in. They have hidden in
the hills, coming among us only on occasion, we guess, disguised as Earth-men -"
     "Do  you  really  believe  they  have telepathic powers, then, and hypnotic
abilities  which  allow  them  to  walk  in our towns, fooling us with masks and
visions, and none of us the wiser?"
     "I do so believe."
     "Then this," said the Bishop, handing around brandies and creme-de-menthes,
"is  a  true evening of frustrations. Martians who will not reveal themselves so
as to be Saved by Us the Enlightened -"
     Many smiles at this.
     "-  and  Second  Comings  of Christ delayed for several thousand years. How
long must we wait, O Lord?"
     "As for myself," said young Father Niven, "I never wished to be Christ, the
Second  Coming. I just always wanted, with all my heart, to meet Him. Ever since
I was eight I have thought on that. It might well be the first reason I became a
priest."
     "To have the inside track just in case He ever did arrive again?" suggested
the Rabbi, kindly.
     The  young Priest grinned and nodded. The others felt the urge to reach and
touch  him,  for  he had touched some vague small sweet nerve in each. They felt
immensely gentle.
     "With  your  permission.  Rabbi, gentlemen," said Bishop Kelly, raising his
glass.  "To the First Coming of the Messiah, or the Second Coming of Christ. May
they be more than some ancient, some foolish dreams."
     They drank and were quiet.
     The Bishop blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

    
     The  rest  of  the  evening  was  like  many  another  for the Priests, the
Reverends,  and  the  Rabbi.  They  fell to playing cards and arguing St. Thomas
Aquinas,  but failed under the onslaught of Rabbi Nittler's educated logic. They
named him Jesuit, drank nightcaps, and listened to the late radio news:
     "-  it  is  feared  this  Martian may feel trapped in our community. Anyone
meeting him should turn away, so as to let the Martian pass. Curiosity seems his
motive. No cause for alarm. That concludes our -"
     While  heading  for  the  door, the Priests, Ministers, and Rabbi discussed
translations  they had made into various tongues from Old and New Testaments. It
was then that young Father Niven surprised them:
     "Did  you  know I was once asked to write a screenplay on the Gospels? They
needed an ending for their film!"
     "Surely," protested the Bishop, "there's only one ending to Christ's life?"
     "But,  Your  Holiness,  the  Pour  Gospels  tell it with four variations. I
compared.  I  grew  excited.  Why? Because I rediscovered something I had almost
forgotten. The Last Supper isn't really the Last Supper!"
     "Dear me, what is it then?"
     "Why, Your Holiness, the first of several, sir. The first of several! After
the  Crucifixion  and  Burial  of  Christ,  did not Simon-called-Peter, with the
Disciples, fish the Sea of Galilee?"
     "They did."
     "And their nets were filled with a miracle offish?"
     "They were."
     "And  seeing  on  the  shore of Galilee a pale light, did they not land and
approach  what  seemed  a bed of white-hot coals on which fresh-caught fish were
baking?"
     "Yes, ah, yes," said the Reverend Smith.
     "And  there beyond the glow of the soft charcoal fire, did they not sense a
Spirit Presence and call out to it?"
     "They did."
     "Getting  no  answer,  did  not  Simon-called-Peter  whisper again, 'Who is
there?'  And  the  unrecognized Ghost upon the shore of Galilee put out its hand
into  the  firelight,  and  in  the palm of that hand, did they not see the mark
where the nail had gone in, the stigmata that would never heal?
     "They  would  have  fled, but the Ghost spoke and said, 'Take of these fish
and feed thy brethren.' And Simon-called-Peter took the fish that baked upon the
white-hot coals and fed the Disciples. And Christ's frail Ghost then said, 'Take
of  my  word  and  tell it among the nations of all the world and preach therein
forgiveness of sin.'
     "And then Christ left them. And, in my screenplay, I had Him walk along the
shore  of  Galilee toward the horizon. And when anyone walks toward the horizon,
he  seems  to  ascend,  yes?  For all land rises at a distance. And He walked on
along  the  shore  until He was just a small mote, far away. And then they could
see Him no more.
     "And  as  the  sun rose upon the ancient world, all His thousand footprints
that lay along the shore blew away in the dawn winds and were as nothing.
     "And  the  Disciples  left  the  ashes  of  that bed of coals to scatter in
sparks,  and  with  the  taste of Real and Final and True Last Supper upon their
mouths,  went  away.  And  in my screenplay, I had my CAMERA drift high above to
watch  the  Disciples move some north, some south. Some to the east, to tell the
world  what  Needed  to Be Told about One Man. And their footprints, circling in
all  directions,  like the spokes of an immense wheel, blew away out of the sand
in the winds of mom. And it was a new day. THE END"
     The  young  Priest  stood  in  the center of his friends, cheeks fired with
colour, eyes shut. Suddenly he opened his eyes, as if remembering where he was:
     "Sorry."
     "For  what?"  cried  the  Bishop, brushing his eyelids with the back of his
hand,  blinking  rapidly.  "For  making  me  weep  twice  in  one  night?  What,
self-conscious  in the presence of your own love for Christ? Why, you have given
the Word back to me, me! who has known the Word for what seems a thousand years!
You  have  freshened  my  soul,  oh  good young man with the heart of a boy. The
eating of fish on Galilee's shore is the True Last Supper. Bravo. You deserve to
meet Him. The Second Coming, it's only fair, must be for you!"
     "I am unworthy!" said Father Niven.
     "So are we all! But if a trade of souls were possible, I'd loan mine out on
this  instant  to borrow yours fresh from the laundry. Another toast, gentlemen?
To Father Niven! And then, good night, it's late, good night."
     The  toast was drunk and all departed; the Rabbi and the Ministers down the
hill  to  their holy places, leaving the Priests to stand a last moment at their
door looking out at Mars, this strange world, and a cold wind blowing.

    
     Midnight  came  and then one and two, and at three in the cold deep morning
of  Mars,  Father  Niven  stirred.  Candles  flickered  in soft whispers. Leaves
fluttered against his window.
     Suddenly  he  sat  up  in  bed,  half-startled  by a dream of mob-cries and
pursuits. He listened.
     Far away, below, he heard the shutting of an outside door.
     Throwing  on  a  robe.  Father  Niven  went down the dim rectory stairs and
through  the  church  where a down candles here or there kept their own pools of
light.
     He  made  the  rounds of all the doors, thinking: Silly, why lock churches?
What is there to steal? But still he prowled the sleeping night...
     ...  and  found  the  front  door  of the church unlocked, and softly being
pushed in by the wind.
     Shivering, he shut the door.
     Soft running footsteps.
     He spun about.
     The  church  lay  empty. The candle flames leaned now this way, now that in
their  shrines.  There  was  only  the ancient smell of wax and incense burning,
stuffs  left over from all the marketplaces of time and history; other suns, and
other noons.
     In the midst of glancing at the crucifix above the main altar, he froze.
     There was a sound of a single drop of water falling in the night.
     Slowly he turned to look at the baptistery in the back of the church.
     There were no candles there, yet -
     A pale light shone from that small recess where stood the baptismal font.
     "Bishop Kelly?" he called, softly.
     Walking slowly up the aisle, he grew very cold, and stopped because -
     Another drop of water had fallen, hit, dissolved away.
     It  was  like  a faucet dripping somewhere. But there were no faucets. Only
the  baptismal font itself, into which, drop by drop, a slow liquid was falling,
with three heartbeats between each sound.
     At some secret level, Father Niven's heart told itself something and raced,
then  slowed  and  almost  stopped.  He broke into a wild perspiration. He found
himself  unable  to  move,  but move he must, one foot after the other, until he
reached the arched doorway of the baptistery.
     There was indeed a pale light within the darkness of the small place.
     No, not a light. A shape. A figure.
     The figure stood behind and beyond the baptismal font. The sound of falling
water had stopped.
     His  tongue  locked in his mouth, his eyes Hexed wide in a kind of madness.
Father  Niven  felt himself struck blind. Then vision returned, and he dared cry
out:
     "Who!"
     A  single  word,  which  echoed back from all around the church, which made
candle flames flutter in reverberation, which stirred the dust of incense, which
frightened his own heart with its swift return in saying: Who!
     The  only  light  within  the baptistery came from the pale garments of the
figure  that  stood  there  facing him. And this light was enough to show him an
incredible thing.
     As  Father Niven watched, the figure moved. It put a pale hand out upon the
baptistery air.
     The  hand  hung there as if not wanting to, a separate thing from the Ghost
beyond,  as  if  it were seized and pulled forward, resisting, by Father Niven's
dreadful and fascinated stare to reveal what lay in the center of its open white
palm.
     There  was  fixed a jagged hole, a cincture from which, slowly, one by one,
blood was dripping, falling away down and slowly down, into the baptismal font.
     The  drops  of  blood  struck the holy water, coloured it, and dissolved in
slow ripples.
     The hand remained for a stunned moment there before the Priest's now-blind,
now-seeing eyes.
     As  if  struck  a  terrible blow, the Priest collapsed to his knees with an
outgasped  cry, half of despair, half of revelation, one hand over his eyes, the
other fending off the vision.
     "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it can't !"
     It was as if some dreadful physician of dentistry bad come upon him without
narcotic  and  with  one seizure entire-extracted his soul, bloodied raw, out of
his  body.  He felt himself prized, his life yanked forth, and the roots, 0 God,
were... deep!
     "No, no, no, no!"
     But, yes.
     Between the lacings of his fingers, he looked again.
     And the Man was there.
     And the dreadful bleeding palm quivered dripping upon the baptistery air.
     "Enough!"
     The palm pulled back, vanished. The Ghost stood waiting.
     And  the  face of the Spirit was good and familiar. Those strange beautiful
deep  and  incisive  eyes  were  as  he  knew they always must be. There was the
gentleness  of  the  mouth, and the paleness framed by the flowing locks of hair
and  beard. The Man was robed in the simplicity of garments worn upon the shores
and in the wilderness near Galilee.
     The  Priest,  by  a great effort of will, prevented his tears from spilling
over,  stopped up his agony of surprise, doubt, shock, these clumsy things which
rioted within and threatened to break forth. He trembled.
     And then saw that the Figure, the Spirit, the Man, the Ghost, Whatever, was
trembling, too.
     No, thought the Priest, He can't be! Afraid? Afraid of... me?
     And  now  the Spirit shook itself with an immense agony not unlike his own,
like a mirror image of his own concussion, gaped wide its mouth, shut up its own
eyed, and mourned:
     "Oh, please, let me go."
     At  this the young Priest opened his eyes wider and gasped. He thought: But
you're free. No one keeps you here!
     And  in  that instant: "Yes!" cried the Vision. "You keep me! Please! Avert
your gaze! The more you look the more I become this I am not what I seem!"
     But,  thought  the  Priest, I did not speak! My lips did not move! How does
this Ghost know my mind?
     "I  know  all you think," said the Vision, trembling, pale, pulling back in
baptistery  gloom.  "Every  sentence,  every  word.  I  did  not mean to come. I
ventured  into  town.  Suddenly  I  was  many things to many people. I ran. They
followed.  I escaped here. The door was open. I entered. And then and then - oh,
and then was trapped."
     No, thought the Priest.
     "Yes," mourned the Ghost. "By you."
     Slowly  now, groaning under an even more terrible weight of revelation, the
Priest grasped the edge of the font and pulled himself, swaying, to his feet. At
last he dared force the question out:
     "You are not... what you seem?"
     "I am not," said the other. "Forgive me."
     I, thought the Priest, shall go mad.
     "Do not," said the Ghost, " or I shall go down to madness with you." -
     "I  can't  give you up, oh, dear God, now that you're here, after all these
years, all my dreams, don't you see, it's asking too much. Two thousand years, a
whole  race of people have waited for your return! And I, I am the one who meets
you, sees you -"
     "You  meet only your own dream. You see only your own need. Behind all this
-" the figure touched its own robes and breast, "I am another thing."
     "What  must I do!" the Priest burst out, looking now at the heavens, now at
the Ghost which shuddered at his cry. "What?"
     "Avert your gaze. In that moment I will be out the door and gone."
     "Just-just like that?"
     "Please," said the Man.
     The Priest drew a series of breaths, shivering.
     "Oh, if this moment could last for just an hour."
     "Would you kill me?"
     "If  you  keep  me,  force  me into this shape some little while longer, my
death will be on your hands."
     The  Priest  bit  his  knuckles,  and  felt a convulsion of sorrow rack his
bones.
     "You - you are a Martian, then?"
     "No more. No less."
     "And I have done this to you with my thoughts?"
     "You did not mean. When you came downstairs, your old dream seized and made
me over. My palms still bleed from the wounds you gave out of your secret mind."
     The Priest shook his head, dazed.
     "Just a moment more... wait..."
     He  gazed  steadily, hungrily, at the darkness where the Ghost stood out of
the  light. That face was beautiful. And, oh, those hands were loving and beyond
all description.
     The  Priest  nodded, a sadness in him now as if he had within the hour come
back from the true Calvary. And the hour was gone. And the coals strewn dying on
the sand near Galilee.
     "If - if I let you go -"
     "You must, oh you must!"
     "If I let you go, will you promise -"
     "What?"
     "Will you promise to come back?"
     "Come back?" cried the Figure in the darkness.
     "Once  a year, that's all I ask, come back once a year, here to this place,
this font, at the same time of night -"
     "Come back...?"
     "Promise!  Oh,  I must know this moment again. You don't know how important
it is! Promise, or I won't let you go!"
     "I -"
     "Say it! Swear it!"
     "I promise," said the pale Ghost in the dark. "I swear."
     "Thank you, oh thanks."
     "On what day a year from now must I return?"
     The tears had begun to roll down the young Priest's face now.
     He could hardly remember what he wanted to say and when he said it he could
hardly hear:
     "Easter, oh. God, yes, Easter, a year from now!"
     "Please,  don't  weep,"  said  the figure. "I will come. Easter, you say? I
know  your  calendar. Yes. Now -" The pale wounded hand moved in the air, softly
pleading. "May I go?"
     The  Priest ground his teeth to keep the cries of woe from exploding forth.
"Bless me, and go."
     "Like this?" said the voice.
     And the hand came out to touch him ever so quietly.
     "Quick!"  cried the Priest, eyes shut, clenching his fists hard against his
ribs  to  prevent his reaching out to seize. "Go before I keep you forever. Run.
Run!"
     The  pale  hand touched him a last time upon his brow. There was a soft run
of naked feet.
     A door opened upon stars; the door slammed.
     There  was a long moment when the echo of the slam made its way through the
church,  to  every  altar,  into every alcove and up like a blind flight of some
single  bird  seeking  and  finding  release  in  the  apse.  The church stopped
trembling  at  last,  and  the  Priest  laid  his hands on himself as if to tell
himself how to behave, how to breathe again; be still, be calm, stand tall....
     Finally,  he stumbled to the door and held to it, wanting to throw it wide,
look  out  at  the road which must be empty now, with perhaps a figure in white,
far fleeing. He did not open the door.
     He  went  about the church, glad for things to do, finishing out the ritual
of  locking  up. It was a long way around to all the doors. It was a long way to
next Easter.
     He  paused  at  the  font  and saw the clear water with no trace of red. He
dipped his hand and cooled his brow and temples and cheeks and eyelids.
     Then  he went slowly up the aisle and laid himself out before the altar and
let himself burst forth and really weep. He heard the sound of his sadness go up
and come back in agonies from the tower where the bell hung silent.
     And he wept for many reasons.
     For himself.
     For the Man who had been here a moment ago.
     For  the  long time until the rock was rolled back and the tomb found empty
again.
     Until  Simon-Called-Peter  once  more saw the Ghost upon the Martian shore,
and himself Simon-Peter.
     And  most of all he wept because, oh, because, because... never in his life
could he speak of this night to anyone...