40.

Two young black boys--rascals in the middle of raillery and jokes--came through the system of pipes, along the cement paths in between dripping and hissing copper. They were the most lighthearted creatures Joshua had ever seen--flicking fists at one another, running knuckles on wooly heads alternately, calling each other foul words. "Hey!" cried Joshua. "There's somebody down here, in this cell!"

When they came closer Michael suddenly drew back in horror, into a little corner of the cell, trying to hide himself vainly, desperate. "Don't call to them!" he said. "Christ--you'll bring them over here! Fuck, stop yelling you idiot!"

"They're just a couple of boys," said Joshua. "Hey, over here!"

The two young boys paused in their play and lined up on the other side of the iron bars. One of them used a key in the door--it was a generic key, the kind of key you'd imagine if you said the word "cartoon key" then shut your eyes. Then when the door swung open the one on Joshua's right saluted and said, "Sir! The Captain wants to meet with you, Sir!" Both the boys broke out in giggles.

Joshua, astonished, said simply, "Okay." He followed them out, leaving the door open. He glanced back once they were deep into the system of pipes, following a concrete path broken here and there by stone steps. Michael still hadn't dared to peek out through the bars, much less come through the open door of the cell. The cement was splattered all over with water.

They walked a good time, now and then going up ladders of iron, mostly walking across the smooth gray concrete. The heat of the steam warmed Joshua at first but now it became more and more uncomfortable. Through high windows he got glimpses of bright day. Little flecks of yellow light became more and more frequent, not seeming to come through windows now, but flecking in uneven patterns, little dots and patches. A window always leaves a rectangular pattern of light. Were they curtains that turned it into uneven specks and splotches?

But wait, now there was no roof over them--certainly this was fresh air, outdoor air. The tropical humidity stuck to his skin on all sides. He'd thought he had been following those boys through some godforsaken underground labyrinth--but no, there they were ahead, engaged in play just like always, going fast--they were playing around trees, bushes. There was brown earth under Joshua's feet. Was this his escape--was this just another dream?--but no, this seemed real, realer than anything so far in the Dreamtime.

The boys' clothes had changed--they were now decked out in native African garb--loincloths, feathers and face paint--they were from old Africa, an Africa that abounded in meat and vegetables, a place where men grew fat on little toil, where men lazed about the sun and drank palm wine in prosperity. It seemed suddenly like he'd followed that thought sometime before, like he'd experienced this before. If not this, then something like it, but dreamed.

Finally they arrived to the village. The Africans in it were mild people. They looked to him in his Western clothes neither with reverence nor wonder; they stared quiet and indifferent. But even this quiet seemed to tell Joshua they thought the moment of his arrival grave and important.

A young woman with bare breasts took him by the hand, the two boys having disappeared into the village. She nodded to him, making him understand that they had no common language between them, but that he knew he was to follow. She led him to a grass hut, a little structure of broad green branches thrown over wooden stands, and she halted. He knew he was to enter.

Jesus was inside. He'd known that before he'd entered. Now he saw him--that stern face, those dotted scars across his scalp, the permanent birthmark that had formed out of the blood that had once run down his face with the crown of thorns. He was black, and this did not surprise Joshua. He wore a savage loincloth such as the blackest African would wear, face paint, scars making bizarre designs over his chest and shoulders--certainly not from wounds, but artifice, flesh-decoration.

The silence from outside dissolved into drumming, singing--it sounded like gibberish to him, but at least a system of gibberish.

"I . . ." began Jesus . . . "I've done a terrible thing." His back was turned to Joshua; but now he slowly rotated around and sat on the grass floor mat cross-legged. "I don't like to stare up at you," was all he had to say to get Joshua to sit across from him.

"I told men fairy tales of paradise"--he was practically laughing now--"bugaboos of hell, a kingdom in the clouds. Ha! What nonsense! But they . . . they would not do the right thing unless I'd lied in that way. And even with the lie most of them take the wrong path."

He cleared his throat. Joshua knew Jesus wanted no answer from him, not even a "yeah" or an "uh-hu". He nodded at Jesus' eyes.

"If we live as we do in this world," said Jesus--"if we are nothing before birth, nothing after death; if we come from nothing, go to nothing, get one life--what a miracle this world is! How precious is even the most tortured existence! But, as in most things, there is a catch. There is a consequence. Whether we're saints or murderers, we won't live forever, but we will forever have lived. We don't live our lives eternally, but our lives eternally exist. What could be worse, more horrible than any Lake of Fire, than to get a single life, that miracle, and forever have lived wrongly. One life--and there is such a thing as a valuable life, there is a good life and an ignoble one. To live, to die nobly--this should be, and is, the one goal of every man and woman. I don't think you can appreciate what a stain it leaves upon Eternity to forever have lived and died wrongly, even when these wrong lives are not contemplated by anyone. Things exist whether we see them or not; the sun preceded the existence of men's eyes; one plus one equaled two before there were men who knew it. And so, this 'I'--if this 'I', this self, lives and dies ignobly, it . . . it is forever there, on some eternal plane--the one thing it is and could ever be is not a beautiful portrait, not a brilliant lovely painting--but a stain, filth, refuse. This . . . this is why every man and woman ought to do everything possible to live and die nobly. Not because of some bugaboo that lies beyond the grave--no. Precisely for the reason that nothing lies beyond the grave--that this is our one chance, our single crucible with which we leave a mark upon the world and cosmos, to forever remain as we have fashioned it, whether it is a precious sight or the ugliest smear. One life--one chance--this, this is the reason we must live and die in a noble way--if we lived eternally nothing would matter, there would be no mistake that could not be undone, nor achievement that would not be erased."

He cleared his throat again. He paused, then drank from a wooden beaker of water by his side, slowly swallowed.

"You may know--you may have read it in the Gospel--that I predicted the end of history would come in my own generation. It did not happen as I said it would. I was right to say it--but I failed, and failed miserably. You probably know I cried to God when upon the cross, 'Why have you forsaken me?' God assured me all along that, should my torment be too great, I could change my mind at any time, and be delivered, though this would mean failure to bring the earth into God's reign. I did--I did so decide--the agony I could not bear one more second. I cried out to God to call the whole thing off--and though I did in fact call it off, fail in my mission, God would not deliver me from my torment. This is why I asked him wherefore had he forsaken me. I do not care to find the answer now--I regret everything about that whole episode, my ministry. It doesn't seem like it has done the world a bit of good."

He stared Joshua in the eyes. They looked deep into each other, both discerning every nuance of sparkle in the pupils of the other. His face turned stern. He spoke: "You have a choice. Remain in the Dreamtime for all eternity, and mankind shall be saved. The rule of God on earth will be begun. All this war, chaos that rules men's lives--it shall be cured. But you shall stay stuck in this Dreamtime forever. Or--or go back to your life, with no memory of your time here."

Joshua's lips parted suddenly but Jesus stopped him.

"No," he said--"you don't decide with your mouth. You shall decide with your heart. I shall read your heart--now--now!--and the first answer you give shall be final."

A terror suddenly overcame Joshua as he stared the man in the face. This man knew his thoughts, knew them better than Joshua did himself. He was staring into Joshua's heart, into every nuance of his consciousness.

Jesus stood and turned his back. "The decision has been made," he said, and Joshua had no idea what he'd decided.

Joshua wasn't sure if he heard Jesus say it, or whether it came from the skies, from some crack in the earth, a hallucination or even from himself. But whatever their source, he heard the words: "The day is certainly coming in which thou wilt have to make a dreadful choice: Truth, or the Kingdom of God."