'Listen to me carefully," she said, as Marilena felt her chest tighten. "A spirit of high rank tells me that your need for a child will cause a permanent break in your relationship with your husband."
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Marilena's breathing became labored, her mouth dry. "True," she said.
"True? Already?"
"Yes."
"The spirit says you should continue to push for your husband to stay with you until the child is born so he may bear your husband's name."
"He? It will be a son?"
"That is the way it was rendered. The fact that the spirit used the phrase 'continue to push' indicates you have already broached this with your husband."
"I have."
"Do you need more?"
"Is there more?"
"If there was, would you need it?"
"I would certainly want to hear it," Marilena said.
"Of course, but if you require it still to be convinced, I sincerely fear we will try the patience of the spirits."
"No. It is fair to say I am thoroughly convinced."
"I would be too, dear."
"But if there is more to hear, may I hear it?"
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SEVEN
inhere was more to hear all right. In fact, Viviana IviniIjlova requested a meeting with Marilena and her husband at their apartment.
"Whatever for?" Marilena said. She told Viviana inhere Sorin stood on the issue.
The older woman sat silent for a moment. "Well," she said finally, "it does sound as if you need to prepare him. (* Naturally, I have run into my share of skepticism over the years. I am not intimidated by it or by higher IQs i. than my own. It's all right with me if he receives me with a distractie, but--"
"Amusement would be the least of it," Marilena said. *He might want to debate you all day and night."
"I don't mind that either. What I would not want is for him to feel impatient, invaded, anything that makes him angry."
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Marilena agreed to try to prepare Sorin, to nudge him toward agreeing to at least meet with Ms. Ivinisova some evening.
"My greatest fear," Marilena said, "is whether I can manage this on my own. Where will I live? Will I have enough to support myself and my child? Sorin has said he will force me to absolve him of any financial responsibility, even if the child bears his name."
Ms. Ivinisova seemed to suppress a smile, and Marilena couldn't decide whether the woman had a delicious secret or simply found her entertaining. "What will I do, ma'am?"
Viviana leaned forward and embraced her. "Must you hurry off, or do you have a few minutes?"
"Nothing is more important than this," Marilena said.
"Let me tell you how I assess your spiritual journey so far," Viviana said. "Correct me where I am mistaken. You came to my classes for diversion, something to take your mind off your longing for a child. Your intellect made you a skeptic, yet you couldn't deny the truths that reached to your core."
Marilena nodded after every assertion.
"During the days between meetings you tried to poke holes in everything you heard and experienced, but eventually you could deny it no longer. There was something to this and something specifically for you."
Marilena shrugged and nodded again.
"By now you are convinced. There is personal interest in you from the spirit world, and it is quickly becoming
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clear that this will benefit you. Your dream will come true. You will have a child."
"And yet my life may grow more complicated, much more difficult."
"That is where you are wrong, so wrong."
"I'm listening."
"So far," Ms. Ivinisova said, "you have still come 'at this new vista in your life from an academic point of view. Oh, it has made you emotional, opened your eyes to a new world, excited you. But largely you are still fvdinical about it. You're a believer, but you are focusing On the cause and effect. 'If it's true, what will happen?'" "I see. Yes. How should I be viewing it?" "I would hope, Marilena, that you would soon deduce from all this that the interest shown in you from the
Other side feels personal because it is. The spirits care for you, want the best for you. You should feel loved."
Marilena squinted. Feel loved. "To be honest, I'm still scared."
"Naturally. People have misconceptions about spirit- f world beings. They can't imagine them loving those of his on this side of the veil."
"But who is it, then? Who cares for me? loves me? Unnamed, unseen spirits? And why?"
Viviana stood and reached for Marilena. She rose, and the older woman said, "Let's walk."
The evening was cool, and Viviana strolled with her arm gently around Marilena's shoulder. "Let me tell you my story," she said. "Perhaps it will shed some light on yours."
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Viviana explained that when she was growing up in Russia, her parents had for decades considered themselves holdovers from the past when atheistic Communism had been the accepted order. "A form of democracy swept the Soviet Union, but religion flagged. There may have been pockets of Christians and devout Jews, Muslims certainly, who practiced their faiths as minuscule minorities. But there was no real uprising of people of faith, despite the new freedoms. My parents reviled religion, but they were also contrarians to the state. They despised Communism and had never been card-carrying atheists. They allowed that there might be supernatural beings and worlds beyond knowing. This manifested itself when they dabbled in what some called the occult sciences."
"Demons and such?"
"Well, that's complicated. My parents did not believe in heaven and hell and God versus Satan. They believed in the powers of good and evil. But their foray into spiritualism began as recreation. My mother as much as admitted to me that she began speaking positively of clairvoyance and the like merely to offend the sensibilities of her scholarly friends."
"Friends like my husband."
"Much like him, yes. But like you too."
"But I have become convinced," Marilena said.
"To a point."
"No, I believe."
"You may believe, but you don't take it personally."
"In many ways I do," Marilena said. "I don't mean to
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be contentious, but I'm not following you. Clearly something or someone has communicated to you my innermost thoughts and longings, and you're prophesying that they will be fulfilled. I want to believe that with all that's within me, but--"
"But you are not yet at a place intellectually where you can accept that just because the clairvoyance is clearly legitimate the eventual reality will bear it out."
"I'll believe it when I am pregnant."
"Of course. And until then, though it all seems real, you hold back from loving whomever it is who loves you."
Marilena stopped. "What are you saying?"
Viviana let her arm slide from the younger woman's . shoulder. "Oh, dear one, someone in the other realm loves you and has chosen to honor you, and you remain so atent, so sceptic. ..."
"Wouldn't you be cautious and skeptical if you were me?"
"But I was you, dear! My parents had fun with tarot and clairvoyance and even Ouija at first. And then they discovered the truth of it all. By the time I was six years old, they had me communicating with spirits through the Ouija board every day. It took me a few years, but eventually I realized that the spirits on the other side of the messages knew me, cared for me, loved me. I had been chosen to be a channel, a communicator, an advocate to the mortal world of the skeptics and the cautious."
"You believe I have been similarly chosen?"
"No! You have been chosen to bear a child! Why
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would they care whether you became a mother unless that child was destined for greatness? Yes, they love and care about you and want you fulfilled, but that would be easy. They could help you bear a child. But they care so much, it goes deeper. And I sense you're not getting it."
Marilena found
a park bench and sat, looking up at Viviana. "And if and when I get it, as you say, what will that mean to me?"
"That is the question I was waiting for," Viviana said. "First, you will be the mother of a special child, one close to the hearts and minds of the spirits. And second --and this is my deepest desire for you--it should make you love the spirits as much as they love you."
"Love the spirits?"
"It hits you as foreign, doesn't it?"
"It does," Marilena said. "They have not struck me as personal beings to this point."
"I know. I can tell. That's what I am driving at."
"But they aren't human, are they? Are they ghosts, the departed?"
Viviana sat next to Marilena, and the younger woman could see her breath. "No. No, they are not. They are angels."
"Angels."
"Angels. And they love you."
"But if I am to believe in angels, I must also believe in God."
"Yes."
"I can't say that I do."
"Perhaps it is not the God you think," Viviana said.
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"Then who?"
"This is not the God of the Christians. Not the God of the Jews. Not Allah. But he loves you and has chosen you and longs for you to love him." Marilena shook her head. "Whoever he is, he remains too remote. I want to see him, touch him, communicate with him."
"If you could see him, you would no longer need faith. [But, Marilena, you should require little faith, because he has communicated so directly to you through me. Can you so quickly forget that he has given me the power to know your history, read your thoughts, predict your future?"
"I know. I know. But he seems too impersonal for me to love."
"He's telling me that this is what he wants." "Fair enough, but I must be honest. I will not express love I don't feel."
"He demands allegiance."
"I suppose that is fair too. Perhaps I am unworthy." "Of course you are, dear. That's what should make you love him all the more."
"And if I don't find it within myself?" Viviana stood and stepped away, briefly turning her back. When she spun to face Marilena, her jaw was set, her eyes cold in the faint light from a distant streetlamp. "I shouldn't speak for him unless he tells me something specific."
"And he's not telling you?"
"He is silent for now. Perhaps offended."
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"This is all so alien to me."
"Of course. But imagine how many people, how many barren women, would give anything to be in your place. I shudder when you ask the consequences of not finding it within yourself to love and respect and show allegiance to one who offers you the desire of your heart. For what if his response is that in that case you may not find a child within you either?"
Marilena stood. She wanted to escape, to run, but to where? She had to think. If there was someone she loved, it was Viviana, and yet at this moment she wanted to be alone. "I don't know what to say," she said. "I certainly must be true enough to myself not to express love and devotion to someone merely because I want something from him or am afraid of him."
"Well said. You must take the time to examine yourself and your motives. And meanwhile, prepare your husband and get his permission for my visit. I daresay things will be communicated at that time that will put your heart and mind and soul at rest."
"Rest?" Marilena said. "I feel as if I will never rest again until I come to terms with my feelings toward this god you speak of."
"Think of it this way," Viviana said. "Love him because he first loved you."
"And how will I know my own heart? Should I come to own such a love, how will I know it's true and not based on fear or on my own longing for what he offers me?"
"He will know."
"You'll tell him?"
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"No, Marilena, you will."
"How?"
'"He is a god. Gods may be prayed to."
"I have never prayed."
"I hope soon that you will not be able to say that."
Marilena shuddered, fighting the question that plagued her. "How should I address him?"
Viviana smiled beatifically. "As the angel of light. As the morning star. As the prince and power of the air."
"That's what I was afraid of," Marilena said. "You
know I'm widely read. I know his name."
Viviana reached for Marilena and pulled her back toward the library. "Of course you do. You are a student and a professor of classical literature. But what you have
read of him is from the perspective of one who is so cosmically jealous of his beauty and power and, yes, ambition, that it must be wholly discounted. I would urge you to read of him from other sources. And then read the Bible again with new eyes. If the God of the Bible lays ' legitimate claim to being the God above all gods who sits high above the heavens, and if Lucifer were really evil, why would God not simply exterminate him?
"No, Marilena, my god--the true and living god, the one who loves me and cares for me and gives me all things--has ascended to the throne as the god of the universe. He has chosen to bestow upon you a son, and for that all he asks is that you pledge him your love and allegiance."
In spite of herself, Marilena laughed. "As you can imagine, this continues to be nearly impossible to
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fathom. But one thing I know: this is one subject you will want to avoid should Sorin be open to granting you an audience."
All the way home on the bus, Marilena sat wrapped in herself, arms folded, chin to her chest, bag in her lap. How was it possible, after fewer than four months, for her to have swung so far from humanism and existentialism to this full-blown acceptance of a spirit world? While she remained resistant to praying to Lucifer, let alone pledging her love, she bore not an iota of doubt regarding his reality, his existence, and even--as Viviana had communicated--his personal interest in her. The question was whether she wanted to pursue a relationship with him at this level. Could she not merely become a spiritualist, a believer, without becoming a disciple?
She arrived yet again to an empty apartment. She could only imagine Sorin in his lover's arms, telling him of the craziness that had come over his wife. Knowing a divorce was looming, probably within the year if Marilena could be impregnated soon, would Baduna begin preparing his wife for a severing as well?
Sorin claimed Baduna was happy at home, but how could that be, given his relationship with his boss? Surely Baduna's wife could not know of his inclinations or his affair. So much for that happy marriage.
Marilena changed into a loose flannel gown and slippers and turned on the television. The news had already moved into sports, which held no interest for her. She turned it off and tried to read, but her mind was a jumble. It was as if physical pressure asserted
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itself at the base of her spine and vibrated at the back of her head.
Unable to concentrate on anything else, Marilena felt compelled to pray. But was it she who wished to connect with this god of the spirit world, or was he trying to reach her? She was convinced of the latter, which scared her.
Marilena could not shake the urge. But how did one pray? She had read of religious devotees who folded their hands, bowed their heads, closed their eyes. Some knelt. Some raised their hands. Some fell prostrate. Viviana sat before a candle. Marilena decided that if there was anything to any of this, she needn't follow convention. She would merely open herself to contact, and if the chief of the spirit world was who Viviana said he was, he would
somehow communicate with her.
Sitting at her desk, Marilena stared at a wall cluttered with notes. "I'm here," she whispered.
Immediately her mind, her soul, her being felt rushed by a spiritual force. She heard no audible voice, but clearly something or someone spoke directly to her heart. The words were cacophonous and dizzying, yet the ones she was meant to hear, she believed, were impressed deeply upon her, and it was as if she knew
them instinctively.
"I love you with an everlasting love. I have chosen you as a vessel. You will conceive in due time. Your gestation will be easy but troubling, as your child will not move. You shall bear a son, and his name shall be called 'victory of the people.' He will tower head and
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shoulders above anyone who has ever lived. He will be considered a stranger, this hammer of my message."
Marilena didn't want to speak, didn't want to answer, but if this was real--and it was more real to her than any conversation she had ever had with a mortal--there were things she wanted to know.
"How will I manage?" she whispered.
"I shall provide a companion already chosen."
"And where will I live?"
"I will provide a place."
"I fear you."
"Fear not."
"My fear hinders reciprocating your feelings toward me. If I find that I cannot--"
"You will."
"But if I can't. . ."
"I have spoken."
"If you really love me, you will tell me the consequences if I don't return your--"
"Then you shall die."
"And my son?"
"He shall never die."
Marilena was overcome and even tempted to conjure up a love she could express. But she heard Sorin's key in the door and quickly disengaged from her reverie.
He looked--she didn't know how else to judge it-- in love. How he and Baduna must have enjoyed planning their future together. Marilena broached the subject of hosting Viviana the next Tuesday and was surprised to find Sorin open to it.