The Open Curtain (22 page)

The lights went down and the man behind the altar lumbered to a seat just in front of the blue curtain. A screen opened up. On the screen, she could hardly sort it out: some vague and cosmic images, eventually jump-cutting back and forth with scenes from nature. From the ceiling came voices rendered echoic and hollow, supposedly God and Jesus and the Archangel Michael.
I will go down,
Michael said, and by doing so became Adam, the father of all. Lights on, off, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, bushes and branches conveniently placed to hide their privates. The appearance of the devil, identified by his dark beard.
It’s a passion play,
she thought. Eve was given the fruit and ate of it.
Adam,
God called out.
Adam, where art thou? There
was a rustling in the bushes. Adam appeared.

I
heard thy voice and hid myself, because I was naked.

Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou partaken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which we commanded thee not to partake?

The woman thou gavest me, and commanded that she should remain with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I did eat.

The lights came on and Lyndi was taught what they called a sign and a token, and was made to open her bundle and put on the apron that represented the apron of fig leaves Adam and Eve had made to cover their nakedness.
But I’m not naked,
Lyndi thought. The movie came on again, Adam and Eve wandered the lone and dreary world, God appeared as a floating, glowing, venerably bearded old man. God kept sending people down to Earth to provide Adam
further light and knowledge.
Each visit, she was made to put on more clothing or to rearrange the clothing she already had on. She took off the apron, put on a gauzy robe, a veil, a sash, then put the apron on again. She moved the robe from left shoulder to right. She was given tokens and signs, certain handshakes and gestures—the sign of the nail, the sure sign of the nail—and with each received also a certain name.

She was being shown, the disembodied voice told her, the signs and tokens that she would have to use in the afterlife, presenting them in proper sequence and order to those angels who stood as sentinels along the path to heaven.

They moved from the signs and tokens to the penalties—promises that one would never reveal the signs and tokens, even at the peril of one’s own life. If you were put in a position where you were forced to reveal the signs, you were apparently supposed to kill yourself. She was made to draw her hand across her throat as if it were a knife. She was made to pull her hand across her chest and then let both hands fall, as if she had opened her chest to let blood spill down her ribs. Later still, the back of her thumb traveled symbolically from one hip to another, slitting open her loins.

This was, she suddenly realized with a shock, the way her family had died, the three significant gashes, though they had not taken their own lives but had had them taken by someone else. She looked about for Rudd, searching the rows, and caught a glimpse of him beyond other heads, extremely pale. It wasn’t, she told herself, the temple’s fault. Anyone could pervert anything; the temple ceremony was pure. But why were the penalties needed?—not only the promise not to tell but very specific means of self-slaughter associated with each token and sign?

And what, she wondered, if her father had been killed because he had revealed the signs and tokens? Was this beyond the realm of possibility? No, she said to herself, as she made motions to slit open her belly, this couldn’t be. Besides, what about her sister? Like Lyndi, she was too young to have been in the temple. She knew nothing about the temple. There would be no point in killing her.

They were made to lift their arms high above their heads and, while lowering their arms slowly, to chant aloud the words “Pay Lay Ale.” This, according to the disembodied voice meant “O God, hear the words of my mouth.” Several couples were invited to come forward and enter into the true order of prayer. Since it was their first time, both she and Rudd were required to come. Rudd was pale. He looked decidedly ill. His neck was seeping slightly, she saw, from where he had drawn his finger across it while representing the first penalty. In the circle, they repeated all the signs and tokens they had learned, then joined hands with the person next to them using the sure sign of the nail, raising their free arm to the square and resting their elbow on the shoulder or arm of the person beside them. Her arm, raised high, started to ache, and she worried that she was resting it too heavily on Rudd’s shoulder. And then the prayer was over and the circle was breaking up, the man at the altar slowly getting up. She squeezed Rudd’s hand, watched him stumble, dazedly, back to his seat.

The disembodied voice was well pleased. It commanded that they be
presented at the veil.
The rich blue curtain rose, and behind it, at a little distance, was an opaque but thin white curtain, with periodic openings, aluminum posts visible from time to time.

A man with a pointer approached the curtain and held a section of it smooth. She could see distinctive marks, the same markings as those on the garment she now wore under her clothing. The disembodied voice began, from above, a discourse on the significance of the marks, the man with the pointer gesturing to each one. The mark of the square, over the right breast—exactness and order, uprightness in thought and deed. In the curtain it was not just a mark but an opening, something big enough to slip your arm through. She imagined a tiny disembodied hand reaching through the mark on her own chest, right into her lung. The mark of the compass, also an opening—left breast—suggesting that Jesus Christ would serve as a compass to guide one to eternal life. The navel mark, an open slit—acknowledging the nourishment we need, not only physical, but the spiritual nourishment of God’s words. The knee mark—the only one on the curtain that was a mark instead of a hole—symbolizing that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ.

They were to come to the veil, a temple worker would be there to assist them. On the other side, behind each section of the curtain, would be another worker, this one representing God. They would come to the curtain,
offer through the veil their given name and their temple name, exchange signs and tokens, and by so doing be admitted into the presence of the Lord.

The disembodied voice ground to a halt and a balding man wearing glasses with flashing gold frames ushered them up. Women to the left, men to the right.

She joined a line waiting for a section of the veil. Her escort plucked at her sleeve. “Not yet,” she said.

“Why not?”

“When you get married, your husband takes you through the veil.”

“He does?”

She nodded. “He’ll go through himself,” she said, “and then they’ll set him up on the other side in the role of God so he can guide you safely through.”

She stood back a little, waiting. She watched God’s hand reach through the navel slit, grasp the hand of someone who wanted to pass through. How odd. She thought of the garment she was wearing, hands reaching in or reaching out through the marks, who was to say which? It was as if God were curled up inside and waiting to reach out to others that approached one’s body. Hands reaching through slits in her breast, her belly, embracing someone, drawing them in beneath the flesh, as if the presence of God were subcutaneous.

She could see Rudd at the curtain, God’s arm pushing through the mark of the square to wrap around his back. Rudd’s own arm was thrust through the compass, the other arm hidden somewhere in front of his waist. His mouth was speaking into the fabric, the veil shivering. And then the embrace was broken and Rudd was ushered through, the veil slowly falling still again.

She looked at the marks, remembered again the graphic rendering of the murder site from above, the bodies at each point, and wondered at its symbolism. She began to think of the bodies not so much as bodies, nor as marks, but as openings, slits in the veil, each murdered body a way of opening the surface of the earth itself and passing through it, endowing the earth with spilled blood. Or perhaps, as a perversion of the temple ritual, it was an attempt to defile, an attempt to close the curtain between God and this Earth, a gesture toward apocalypse. In either case, it suggested why Rudd had not been killed—he had represented the knee mark, found below the others, and there was no opening on the curtain for the knee
mark, nothing reached through the knee. It was just a mark, not a hole. He had been on the hillside as a mark but not as a hole: Rudd had never been meant to die.

Too quickly she was being taken to the veil, still thinking of her dead family, and when, after being called, Rudd extended to her his hand through the navel mark, it was as if he had pushed his hand through her father’s corpse. She was short of breath. She could not remember the words and her escort had to whisper them to her. It was odd hearing Rudd’s voice playing the role of God, his voice muffled through the veil and already flat besides. She took his hand, resting her thumb over one of his knuckles, and gave him her given name through the veil.

Their hands separated and locked into the next grip. “What is that?” his voice asked and she gave him the answer, and when asked the name of the sign, she told him it was her new name. “Will you give it to me?” he asked. “I will through the veil,” she said, and leaned forward and spoke her new name, “Rachel.”

She moved back, tried to release her hand for the next clasp, but he kept his grip.

“That’s not right,” he whispered through the veil, and she said, “What?” and her escort shushed her, and Rudd said, “Give me the right name,” and she said, “That is the right name, Rudd,” and she heard, through the curtain, whoever was serving as his escort say, “Didn’t she say it right?” and Rudd, beginning now to raise his voice said, “No, she was wrong. The name was
Elling.
Elling,” he said, quite loudly, and he was shushed and corrected by his own escort. He let go of her hand and her escort led her away from the curtain. She felt horribly confused and ashamed. “What do we do?” she asked the escort, and the escort shrugged and said, “Why don’t we just start from scratch?”

She was led again to the veil, God was summoned by means of a mallet on the side of the aluminum post between sections of curtain, the veil parted and God asked, “What is wanted?”

“Eve,” said her escort, “having been true and faithful in all things, desires further light and knowledge by conversing with the Lord through the veil.”

Rudd’s/God’s voice: “Present him at the veil, and his request shall be granted.”

“Her,” she heard his escort correct him.

“Present her at the veil, and her request shall be granted,” Rudd said.

The veil closed and Rudd’s hand snaked again through the navel hole and they negotiated the first clasp and her own given name and then she gave the clasp associated with her new name. She leaned forward to whisper the new name to him. “Rachel,” she said, and felt his grip tighten until it hurt. “Say it,” he hissed, and she leaned even farther into the curtain until she could feel his ear with her lips, and she whispered, almost inaudibly, “Elling.”

Later, they sat on two plush chairs in the room behind the veil, the celestial room, waiting to be taken to a sealing room to be married. It was filled with men and women in temple clothing, some circling about, some sitting, some praying. Everyone conversed in the verbal equivalent of earth tones. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling. Rudd was smiling in a way that looked like he was about to go mad.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

She straightened her apron, smoothed it over her belly. “You don’t feel any different?” she asked.

“Different?” he said. “Of course I feel different. I’ve just played God. That would have an effect on anyone.”

He stopped to straighten his hat. “Did you hear?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

“Pay Lay Ale,” he said. “His name is in that.”

“Whose name?”

“Lay Ale,” said Rudd. “Lael.”

“Stop it,” she said, covering her eyes with one hand. Her head hurt.

“Pay him,” he said. He was speaking too rapidly. “We have to pay him. It doesn’t mean, ‘O God hear the words of my mouth.’ It means just what it says.”

“Look,” she said. “About what you did at the veil—”

“It’s Elling,” he said. “Your name is Elling. I named you and you accepted the name. We’ve pulled a fast one on God.”

“The name wasn’t Elling,” she said. “That wasn’t my name.”

“No, we changed it,” he said, nodding.

“I don’t want to marry you,” she said.

“You don’t?” he said, and seemed genuinely confused.

She looked away from him, back toward the veil. The temple workers were standing near it, talking softly.

“Who’s Elling?” she asked.

“You are,” he said.

“But where’s the name from?”

“Nowhere,” he said, and turned away.

“Why did you want to give it to me?”

“I had to do it,” he said. “Because of the new name I was given.”

“What name?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I can know your name, but you can’t know mine.”

“Was the name Lael?”

He shook his head.

“You’re crazy.”

“You still believe that you’re living out your own life,” he said. “But you’re not. All of this,” he said, gesturing around the celestial room, “giving you a new name, having you play a role, is to thrust another life onto you.”

“Don’t, I’m not—”

“Listen,” he said. “What’s it about if not possession? I play God at the veil, and God lives through me. For a moment, I become God. We’re told to open ourselves to the spirit of the Lord, we act under inspiration, having breathed in the life-breath of another. That’s the message of the Gospel: anyone is subject to possession, but only the holy open themselves to it willingly.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And that’s why we’re taking charge. We don’t want to be vessels that the Lord can fill. We’ve taken on names other than those He tried to give us, and now we’re going to let them stick in our craw and never get out of us.”