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He wrote, 'Call me Ishmael.' And with
those three words Melville set his quill on a fragment of immortality.
It was easy for Herman. Not so for me. I have no name. Call me
Nobody? A Nomad? Or even Petrus Latter? Or Lazarus? Some might
remember the body I wore as having belonged to a man named Peter,
the original name I carried from my baptism to the day when my
hands became blessed with the power of healing. Not I, please
note, my friends, just my hands. I was cursed. My medical career
destroyed. My future?
People will tell you that anyone who has the
gift of healing realizes that it is a spiritual phenomenon. That
it is not the hands, but the power that flows through them. Not
so, my friends. I felt no power. No transfer of spirit, no flow
of energy, no sense of elation. Nothing. No spiritual
phenomena of any sort. Just my hands. Cool, listless, virtually
unwilling, they were the instruments of an agency that chose
to remain beyond my senses, beyond my understanding.
Even in Rome I couldn't . . . but that comes
later in the story.
Believe me. I had nothing to do with the effect
my hands had when they came in contact with people. Whatever
took place was not the result of my will, nor even the consequence
of my medical knowledge or the skills acquired at great effort
and sacrifice over many years. Yes. In those early days I had
been known as Dr. Peter Thornton, FRCSP, a fresh inductee to
the society of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons
and Physicians.
Somewhere in the hoary past. Another time,
another life-time.
Now? Now I am once more Nobody. I've spent
considerable effort trying to maintain my anonymity. Sometimes
successfully. At other times...
Three times I've left my lair. Three times
I'd been accosted.
Then came the separation from the world. I
crawled into a hole and pulled the covers over me. I died. In
every sense but physically. We all do at times only few of us
realize it. Even fewer of us ever come back to life.
"When did it all start?"
I asked Smith, in the hope of catching him off-guard.
For a while Winston continued to arrange crystal
glasses, upside down, in a stainless-steel cradle suspended from
the ceiling on long rods. It seemed to absorb all his attention.
When he stopped he faced me with a vaguely amused smile. A funny
smile that was hardly visible, yet lightened his deeply lined
face.
"About twelve billion years ago, some
say further back, Sir," he said, slowly stressing every
word. "About the time Elohim created the world," his
eyes smiled but his face remained serious. "From that moment
on, we were each given a choice, to be gods or minions."
At the time I took it as a turn of phrase.
It never crossed my mind to take his words literally.
"To put it in a different way,"
Winston continued, apparently changing the subject, "when
matter came into contact with antimatter . . . or really separated.
When the conversion of energy into matter was of such magnitude,
well . . . .scientists these days call it the Big Bang. We, you
and I, are one half of that explosion. The other half remains
locked in the hearts of the countless black holes. None had existed
before the world came into being. When the two were still one
there was only one realityomnipresent, single, without
differentiation. A Single Soul, not individualized. To this day,
some people call it God."
So much for catching Winston Smith off-guard.
According to Smith, it was then, in that evanescent
instant, that I was born, even as we all were, into a reality
of contrasts, of black and white, of hot and cold, and of good
and evil. Into the world we all live in. At least we think we
do. The world of illusion, of Maya. The world we all perceive
as real.
For a while, apparently an extremely long
while, I served the illusive reality. I served Caesar. Like we
all do. And then? And then my life took a different turn. I got
caught up in a vortex of forces that refused, and still refuse,
to let me go. Don't even imagine that we, humans, are granted
the so-called 'free will'. It is there, but it is coiled up inside
us like the many dimensions the scientists are talking about.
Quantum mechanics, they call it. Go look it up! Go on! You can
read all about it on the Internet. It's all coiled up, invisible.
Held in abeyance. Free will, as we think of it, is the greatest
fallacy religions have spread to the people of the world. We
are puppets. We can oppose the currents carrying our vessels
for a little while, but soon, all too soon, we will be swept
up again and taken to our destination. Some to heaven, some to
hell. Others? Most others just onto another joyride on the eternal
carousel of life.
I still believe that it all really began when
I joined the semi-nary. I mean, began for me, in this particular
cycle. I had the best of intentions of becoming a priest. To
serve my God and His people. Ultimately, to earn my place in
paradise. It seemed like the right thing to do. Later? Later
I seemed to have contracted a severe case of cold feet. The hunger
remained but the will waned, dissipated in a reality that denied
the invisible, the intangible. The world was too solid, too hard
to pierce with ideas, or with ideals of the ephemeral.
I escaped. I suppose, I've been running ever
since. A year after the seminary, I decided that if I couldn't
serve my soul, I would do my best to serve my body. Or anyone's
body. I took up medicine.
I was lucky. My brother died. It sounds callous
to equate my luck with my brother's death. But if it hadn't been
for his untimely demise, I would never have moved to his house,
never taken up residence in Westmount to look after Ruth, his
widow, never enjoyed the company of Jonathan and Moira, Jo and
Mo. But most of all, I wouldn't have met Winston, the sublimely
normal yet still enigmatic, major domo who's affected my life
in a way that to this day remains quite unpredictable.
After five years of medicine at McGill University,
and four years of residency at the Montreal General, I finally
passed my Fellowship exams. I became Dr. Peter Thornton, MD.,
FRCSP. Something to be proud of. That's as high as you can get
in my . . . in my ex-profession. I lost the license to practice
medicine due to a technicality. I lost my credentials thanks
to my "gift". I discovered that my touch, the touch
of my hands, healed people. Not my strenuously acquired medical
knowledge, nor my years of burning the midnight oil, nor even
the four years of residency at Montreal's best teaching hospital.
Just my hands. Or whatever used them.
I felt like a second rate TV evangelist administering
the 'touch' of the Holy Spirit on the sinners. On the sinners,
abusers, perverts, or just the unfortunates who'd lost their
way. Only there was no 'spirit', no invisible or visible light
emanating from my palms. I didn't wield the Bible in my hands
to add weight to my actions. I touched them and they recovered.
Rather like the rays of sun healing you, or an aspirin removing
your headache.
There was no point in pretending to be a doctor
any more. Again, I escaped.
I wasn't a doctor anymore, I was a freak.
Some men, some women, become magnificent poets, some produce
immortal works of art, some play a music that stimulates your
soul and mind to greater things. I healed. Or my hands did. I
became an instrument of something over which I had absolutely
no control. Nor could I refuse to heal anyone. I could not touch
them and let them remain sick. The diseases eased, the bones
mended, as though invaded by an onslaught of stem cells that
rebuilt the injured organs, arms, or legs in an amazingly quick
time. I was a nobody with a gift.
I still am, I suppose. A Nobody.
Immediately following the discovery of my
curse, gift to some, Ruth gave me a home where, thanks to her
generosity, I managed to escape reality and hide from the hordes,
or at least from quite substantial crowds, who followed me in
the hope of a miraculous cure. Later, but more secretly, I continued
to practice my gift until the exhaustion of trying to serve too
many too quickly nearly cost me my life. I'd forgotten about
Buddha's admonitions about the middle path. About not worrying
about tomorrow. I took my patients' maladies upon myself. I wasn't
ready for such a burden. I was a doctor of medicine, not a saint.
Winston, the ever-enigmatic major domo, saved
me. Cathy did the rest.
Cathy
Even as I write this, her jade green eyes,
as dreamy as they are piercing, draw me into a forbidden garden
of Elysian promise. She is the only one who seems to understand
my soul when I loose control over my own inner being. She may
be across the ocean, the vast Pacific, yet her eyes, shimmering
behind my own eyelids, draw me into the mysteries that churn
within her own soul, lapping the very limits of my consciousness,
enticing my dreams, my desires. Like magic.
I owe her my life.
Things happen. Things over which we
have little control. Events swept me to Gdansk, where the expectation
of my healing ability put me face to face with Lena, the most
fascinating woman I've ever met: Lena Walesa, the granddaughter
of Lech, the famous founder of the Solidarity movement. She was
then, even as she is now, running Solidarity International, the
organization that, according to Ruth, has two billion members.
Some organization! It recognizes no borders, no national identities;
it crosses oceans with equal ease. Last year, Ruth, once its
staunch opponent, had a change of heart. Now, she's committed
her life to Lena's ideals.
And then there was Rome. No words can describe
what happened there. Suffice it to say that the Holy Roman and
Apostolic Church would never be the same. Never. It cannot. Not
with Lena looking after its worldly domains with the Last Pontiff's
blessing.
It is a strange world. If it hadn't been for
Cathy's mother, who tried to recount those events in her book,
the One Just Man, I would never have believed them myself. Judge
for yourself.
When last year Cathy, Ruth, and I returned
from Rome, I thought that, at least for a short while, I could
hide out in Ruth's cabin, up north, perhaps, once again, with
Cathy for company. I had memories there. I also had fresh memories
to sort out. There was so much we had to say to each otherCathy
and I that is. She's such an incredible woman. She gives without
ever expecting anything in return. Perhaps there are other people
like her, but I haven't met any. Completely selfless. She's the
sort of person Winston alludes to when he points to humanity's
future.
Ah yes . . . Winston Smith. The man-mountain. A teacher, friend,
sage, and all this while hiding under the sombre mask of our
major domo. He carried me to safety when I went too far, when
I'd diluted my life-force too much. When I was little more than
a beginner on the eternal climb to my ultimate destiny.
Ultimate?
"There is no end to infinity," Winston
would say. More than once.
Somehow our psyche refuses to accept that
there can be existence without a beginning and, therefore, without
an end. We are born, we live, and we die. We fool ourselves that
there is a hereafter. Not so. There is no beginning that we know
of.
"You sound like an atheist," Ruth
remarked, probably afraid that I might impart my pagan philosophy
on her children. This exchange happened only a few months ago,
before I learned to keep my thoughts to myself.
"If you define your God, you'll limit
Her by your definition," I replied softly. "If you
don't, what am I to believe in?" I had been thinking of
Spinoza's admonition.
"It is the here and now that matters,"
Winston would murmur in a voice that could penetrate walls. A
deep basso that could attain fame and fortune on any stage of
the world. With his six-foot-six stature, an overpowering dramatic
presence, he could have become a star in Hollywood overnight.
Or in New Delhi. Or Beijing. There are no barriers that could
constrain Winston. Not the Winston I know.
Not that I really know him. A man as cryptic,
as enigmatic, as obscure as what had happened to me, way-back-when,
at the General Hospital. One day I was a promising member of
the teaching staff, the next, a has-been with healing power flowing
from my unwitting hands.
"It doesn't flow from your hands, Peter,"
Ruth told me. "The power flows through you!"
How come people who never healed anyone know
so much? "When I kiss them, or kick them, no one gets healed,"
I barked, and immediately regretted my temper. She meant well.
I cursed the day when it happened. I don't
any more. Nor am I grateful. I am simply resigned. I've learned
the meaning of submission. Islamisn't that what it
means? Submission? Only I still have no idea to what. Or to whom?
I've learned that it is completely useless to resist or oppose
the power that's taken over my life. I had ample evidence of
it in Rome. And since.
And then we were back in Westmount.
At the time, I didn't know how long I would
be allowed to remain in Ruth's home before the leaches, grasping
for my in-imitable power, caught up with me. If and when they
did, I told myself, I shall no longer be Nobody. Once more I
would be-come a Nomad.
I admit it. I was scared. I've been scared
for a long time.
I no longer left the house. I didn't dare.
We couldn't have stayed up north any longer, either. Cathy had
her work. In the meantime, I had to gather my thoughts. I had
to attempt to understand what had happened to me. In some ways,
it all still remains beyond my understanding, though most events
have be-gun to fall into place. My eyes are being opened. Slowly.
I now know that it will be a long journey.
I refused to be just a thing, an instrument
over which I had no control. None at all. I felt an overpowering
need to learn who I was. What was my purpose. Indeed, what was
the purpose of humanity. Winston would help me, I knew that even
then. And, in quite a different way, so would Cathy. I can't
claim that I knew it, but I felt it. It's quite amazing how many
things I just feel even now. It is as though I have become an
observer of my own life unfolding on a course over which I still
have little control. Right now, I tell myself, I must go to sleep.
When I wake up, perhaps all the problems will have gone away.
They never do, of course. They probably never will. Never.
I thought that I should have undergone plastic
surgery on my face and should have bought asbestos gloves to
keep me from affecting anyone. Asbestos gloves and a veil of
invisibility. I was tired of being exploited. By anyone. By distraught
mothers, by drunks with pickled innards, by smokers with cancerous
lungs, even by the Gdansk henchmen of the most fascinating woman
in the world. Or, for that matter, by the Holy Father himself,
though I very much doubt he had much to do with what happened
at the Vatican. Finally, I refused to be exploited by the power
within me. Whatever it is.
I developed a single profound ambition. To
be like other people. I wanted a white picket fence with Cathy
and myself raising a dozen children. Just the two of us. Far,
far away, at the end of the rainbow, in a long forgotten corner
of this wonderful world of ours. I wanted time to see it. To
dip my fingers in lakes and rivers, to dive into their caressing
waters and . . . to forget. It was all moving too fast. Much
too fast. I needed time to grow old. Like other people. To forget
about the power in my hands.
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