The Story of B Read online

  If someone tells you that Saddam Hussein is the Antichrist (and he has in fact been nominated for that honor), you’re absolutely right to laugh. The Antichrist isn’t going to be a worse sort of Hitler or Stalin, because worse than them will just be more of the same in a higher degree—sixty million murdered instead of six million. If you’re going to be on guard against the Antichrist and not just some ordinary villain, you have to be on guard against someone of an entirely new order of dangerousness.

  And that’s where things stand at the end of the second millennium. But not exactly. This is just the “official” word, and the impression you get on receiving it in the Laurentian novitiate is that the Antichrist thing is a dead issue and has been so for nearly two centuries.

  What I now learned from Fr. Lulfre was that this impression is a false one, engendered as a deliberate policy in the novices, primarily to forestall babbling that could end up as an embarrassing story in the sensationalist press. The policy works. Among the peasantry of the order, the subject of the Antichrist never comes up. At the topmost levels, however, a discreet watch is still kept. Very occasionally—maybe once in fifty years—a worrisome individual pops up, and someone from the order is sent out to have a look.

  Someone like me. Someone exactly like me.

  The candidate

  The candidate was one Charles Atterley, a forty-year-old American, a sort of itinerant preacher who had been circling the middle states of Europe for a decade, picking up a fairly large but unorganized following that seemed to defy all demographic sense and wisdom. It included young and old and everything in between, both sexes in roughly equal numbers, mainstream Christians and Jews, clergy of a dozen different denominations (including the Roman Catholic), atheists, humanists, rabbis, Buddhists, environmentalist radicals, capitalists and socialists, lawyers and anarchists, liberals and conservatives. The only groups notably unrepresented in the mix were skinheads, Bible-thumpers, and unrepentant Marxists.

  Atterley’s message seemed difficult to summarize and was typically characterized as “mind-boggling” by those who were favorably impressed and as “incomprehensible” by those who weren’t. I told Fr. Lulfre I didn’t understand what made him seem dangerous.

  “What makes him dangerous,” he said, “is the fact that no one can place him or his product. He’s not selling meditation or Satanism or goddess worship or faith healing or spiritualism or Umbanda or speaking in tongues or any kind of New Age drivel. He’s apparently not making money at all—and that’s disquieting. You always know what someone’s about when he’s raking in millions. Atterley’s not another example of some familiar model, like David Koresh or the Reverend Moon or Madame Blavatsky or Uri Geller. In fact, his presentation and lifestyle are more reminiscent of Jesus of Nazareth than anyone else, and that too is disquieting.”

  “Disquieting I understand,” I said. “Dangerous I don’t.”

  “People are listening, Jared—possibly to something quite new. That makes it dangerous.”

  This I could understand.

  Anyone who thinks the Church is open to new ideas is living in a dreamworld.

  The assignment

  Atterley was presently in Salzburg, Fr. Lulfre said. I was to go there, listen, watch, hang out, and report back. When I asked who my European contact would be, I was told there would be none. I was to contact no one in the order under any circumstances. I would travel under my own name, making no secret of my priesthood but not broadcasting it either. I would travel in civilian clothes, as if vacationing.

  “Why doesn’t someone in Europe handle this?” I asked.

  “Because Atterley’s an American.”

  “But he’s talking to Europeans.”

  “Don’t be simple, Jared. Europe is just a rehearsal. Whatever else the United States has lost in the last three or four decades, it’s still the world’s style setter, and nothing will catch on everywhere unless it catches on here first. Atterley knows this, if he’s half as bright as people think he is, and when he’s ready for us, he’ll be here, count on it. And that’s why you’re going to Europe: We want to be ready for him before he’s ready for us.”

  “You seem to be taking him very seriously.”

  Fr. Lulfre shrugged. “If we don’t take him seriously, then we might as well not take him at all.”

  After discussing a few mundane matters, like travel agencies and credit cards, I got up to leave, a heavy question in my mind causing me to drag my feet. At the door I finally got it out.

  “And what happens afterward? To me, I mean.”

  He chewed on this for a minute, then asked me what I wanted to happen.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If you think I’m being wasted at St. Ed’s, then what’s the plan? Were you thinking I’d go back and waste myself some more?”

  “You’re right to ask,” he said, as if I didn’t already know it. “There is no plan as such, but I feel it’s an unspoken assumption that this would mark the beginning of something new for you.”

  “I’d rather hear it as a spoken assumption, Fr. Lulfre.”

  “You’ve heard it spoken by me, Jared. Won’t that do?”

  I wouldn’t have minded hearing it spoken by a few other people, but he didn’t offer to arrange such a thing, and I didn’t want to be churlish about it, so I told him sure.

  The end of the beginning

  That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday and today I’ve spent canceling appointments, parceling out my duties at St. Ed’s, making travel arrangements, and bringing this diary up to date. There’s something else on my mind that should go in here (maybe a lot), but I don’t quite know what it is and won’t have any leisure to look for it till I get on the plane to cross the Atlantic.

  Tuesday, May 14

  Salzburg

  If a spymaster in Len Deighton or John Le Carre sends you to have a look at a man in Salzburg, chances are the man will be found in Salzburg. Real-life spymasters are not as reliable as this. Charles Atterley is not in Salzburg. As far as I’ve been able to learn in two days, he’s never been here and isn’t expected here. In fact, no one has ever heard of him.

  Salzburg, however, is very cute and full of Olde Worlde Charm, and the locals tell me again and again, “Your friend is probably waiting for you in Miinchen.” They make it sound as if Munich is packed solid with American friends that have been mislaid in Salzburg, and one of them is bound to be mine.

  I may as well have a look.

  Thursday, May 16

  Munich

  I haven’t been able to turn a trace of Atterley here, and I’m beginning to feel rather stupid. I didn’t come to Europe prepared to play detective, and I haven’t got a single “in” anywhere.

  I did manage to find a friendly librarian with a computer, and she gave the problem half an hour, but you can’t be very inventive when all you’re drawing is a blank. What do you do after you’ve checked all the newspaper files back to the Beer-Hall Putsch? Ask the concierge, I suppose. The concierge knows everything. But what do you do after the concierge gives you a vacant stare?

  I suppose I should call and confer with Fr. Lulfre, but this isn’t an idea that appeals to me.

  To this point, I’ve been behaving rather compulsively (though that may not be quite the word I’m after). I’ve been acting as though I could find Charles Atterley by dint of sheer, unremitting determination. This strategy certainly hasn’t worked, and pursuing it has left me feeling ridiculous and inept.

  The following are facts: I wasn’t given a deadline, no special urgency attaches to my mission, and I have no idea what to do next. Therefore (therefore!) I might as well relax and go with the flow for a while.

  Adieu.

  An invitation

  I went for a walk.

  I’m not, in truth, an adventurous traveler. As I say, I went for a walk in the vicinity of my hotel and looked in shop windows. I paused here and there to study a menu in a restaurant window, as if I knew what any of it meant. There went an h
our, frittered away like a carefree vagabond. I slunk back into my hotel and hung around the desk in the absurd hope that someone would tell me a message had come during my absence. Finally, hopelessly, I slunk into the bar, sat down at a table, and ordered a beer. After a few minutes the barman brought over a bowlful of salted peanuts and said the gentleman at the bar wondered if I was American, and if so, would I object to his joining me?

  The gentleman at the bar was a spare, bright-eyed person in his sixties, European, from the cut of his elderly but very respectable suit. I wondered why he would want to join me if I was an American but presumably not if I wasn’t, but gave him a nod and a welcoming smile, and he brought his drink over, introduced himself with Teutonic formality, and sat down.

  I was ready for some sympathy and suggestions, and Herr Reichmann didn’t have to pull out my fingernails to get me to talk about my quest for a man named Charles Atterley (though of course not a syllable of the word Antichrist passed my lips). I had long since invented a flimsy but apparently adequate cover story to explain my interest: I am a freelance writer investigating a man said to be leading a new religious movement.

  “A new religious movement?” Herr Reichmann inquired with amused incredulity. “You know, we Europeans are not so gullible as you Americans, with your angels and your magic crystals.”

  “Exactly so,” I replied smoothly. “That’s just why Atterley seems so significant.”

  We made polite small talk for a few minutes, then Reichmann paused and gazed thoughtfully into a distant corner of the room. “I can put you in the way of someone far more significant than this Atterley,” he said. “And possibly a member of his circle will be able to advise you.”

  “I’d be most grateful for that,” I told him earnestly.

  He wrote down a name on a beer coaster and handed it to me, saying, “Der Bau, nine this evening. The concierge will be able to give you directions.”

  He stood up and began to walk away, then suddenly turned about-face and bowed.

  “Make him give you a map,” he said.

  A few minutes later I obediently carried the coaster to the concierge and demanded directions and a map. He thought the map unnecessary but grudgingly produced one when I insisted. I asked him what a Bau is.

  “A Bau is a tunnel,” he said, then, after a moment’s thought: “No, I am mistaken. A Bau is like … is like an underground hiding place.”

  “A catacomb?”

  “No, an animal’s hiding place.”

  “A burrow?”

  “That’s it. A burrow.”

  In the burrow

  I can’t imagine that such a place as Der Bau exists anywhere in the New World, though there might be places created to look like it. When it was built, not far from the Karlstor, c. 1330, it was the cellar of a noble’s palace. The level of the streets around the palace rose with the accretions of centuries, gradually turning the ground floor into a cellar and the original cellar into a subcellar. During World War II the subcellar housed treasures from nearby churches and museums. Afterward the palace stood in ruins until 1958, when it was razed and replaced by a commercial structure. The subcellar was preserved as Der Bau, a cabaret along classic lines, a boozy laboratory of artistic and intellectual experiment rather than a venue for popular entertainment. It was accessible from the lobby of the new building by means of a winding staircase that seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth.

  At the entrance, a pleasant young woman tried to persuade me I’d come to the wrong place and would have a much better time anywhere else in Munich. I insisted I knew where I was and had been specifically invited to the evening’s presentation. The name Reichmann bounced off her without effect, but she cheerfully passed me through when she saw I wasn’t going to be deterred.

  The room itself was of course abysmally dark but, thankfully, without the usual bohemian touch of candlelit tables. The ceiling, a surprising five or six meters high, teemed with tiny track lights, at the moment dimmed to near extinction but capable of producing the blaze of noon. The room was difficult to size, since its boundaries disappeared in the gloom, but was probably not more than thirty meters square.

  A low, circular stage revolved slowly in the center of the room under a stationary, four-sided marquee of video screens. In the center of the stage stood a sort of combined lectern and computer keyboard. I groped my way forward till I found a seat at a table not much bigger than my notebook. One of my keys to early success as a scholar was the ability to listen to a lecture while taking it down verbatim in shorthand. I perfected this trick to such an extent that I could perform it in the dark (as I’d have to tonight) and without even thinking about it. Having made my preparations, however, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if I wasn’t wasting my time. Herr Reichmann hadn’t given any indication that tonight’s lecture would be in English. Indeed, why would it be? I looked around for someone to ask but quickly found I didn’t care to reveal the fact that I was such a fool as to attend a lecture in an unknown language. I didn’t even know the speaker’s name, for God’s sake.

  These fretful thoughts were cut short when the lights under the marquee brightened, marking the arrival of the man himself—the arrival of a man and a woman, as it turned out. They stepped onto the stage, and the man took his place at the lectern and turned on the keyboard. As he worked at the board with silent concentration, oblivious of the audience, he reminded me of a large bird of prey, with his black suit, piercing eyes, and beaky nose. He also reminded me of a gargoyle, with his broad cheekbones and wide mouth, and of a lanky Parisian gangster I’d once met at a cocktail party who quoted Augustine and Schopenhauer and bore in his face the shadows of a terrible past. I thought he looked to be in his early or middle forties.

  The woman—tall, athletically built, in her early thirties—took a position at the opposite side of the stage, facing the audience. Wearing jeans tucked into boots, a black silk shirt, and a tawny rawhide jacket that matched the color of her hair, pulled back into a ponytail, she looked out solemnly over the crowd. As the revolving stage slowly brought her round to my side of the room, I saw she had an extraordinary tattoo across her face—a red butterfly. From her rich complexion and exotic features, I felt sure some parent or grandparent had given her an infusion of Africa, Asia, or pre-Columbian America.

  Suddenly the video screens popped into life bearing a title:

  THE GREAT FORGETTING

  The man gave the audience a moment to look at it, then began to speak.* I felt the woman’s eyes on mine as she, too, began to speak … in sign.

  Almost from the first words out of his mouth, I knew I’d been deceived—mysteriously and gratuitously. This could be no one but Charles Atterley. I knew this not by any strictly logical process, though logic certainly played its part. That he was an American was beyond doubt. That was enough. It wasn’t possible that two different speakers from America could be spreading inflammatory ideas around Central Europe at the same time.

  It seems strange to me now, after the event, that this revelation should have upset me so. I simply couldn’t fathom why Herr Reichmann had taken the trouble to mislead me. It seemed completely pointless, and it was this pointlessness that stunned me. Luckily, my training didn’t fail me. Even if my brain was stalled, my hand continued to work. Atterley’s words marched across the page as if awakened by magic, as if they’d been written in invisible ink and were being drawn up out of the paper by the action of my pen. I realized I was watching my hand when it suddenly stopped—because Atterley had stopped. I looked up to see a new set of words forming on the screen:

  VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU …

  AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

  For some reason, this succeeded in jolting me out of my trance. I’d missed the first four or five minutes of Atterley’s talk, but of course I hadn’t missed them entirely. The minutes were there as a sort of echo that I was able to play back for the gist of his message.

  Atterley was talking about matters close to my life and e
ven closer to my work—and I didn’t like what I heard. This wasn’t because it wasn’t true but for exactly the opposite reason: because it was true and I’d missed it. He was making acute observations about phenomena I’d witnessed a thousand times and never thought to notice. I’d been living like a horse in the winner’s circle at Ascot; the horse isn’t at all impressed if he receives a royal visit, but this isn’t because he’s a republican, it’s because he’s a dimwit.

  Everything Atterley was saying was obvious, and all of it was new. This made it maddening, because what is obvious should be old—and therefore well known, boring, and unnecessary to say. I glanced at the listeners around me, and seeing them riveted by Atterley’s words, I wanted to kick them in the shins, grab them by the hair, and shake them, screaming, “Why are you paying attention to this? You know this! You could have worked it out yourself!”