One evening without warning she looked up from the assigned story (which had nothing to do with what she was going to say) and announced:
“What we see is a Veil of Appearance, Impure Illusion concealing the True Splendor behind and beneath. But one Nearing Day the Veil will be rent and the True Splendor revealed. That Day is near.”
It had to be a quote. It wasn’t her usual oral style. The intruder again. Our duo was a trio. With a jingle of his bracelets her sweeping gesture took in her living room and I guess everything beyond.
“Do you really think this is all there is, Jerry? There’s nothing behind or beneath, like they say?”
I was disturbed at her asking a question like that. It wasn’t the role I’d assigned her. Knowing the poor unspiritual stuff that lay beneath, I tried to hang on to the illusory surface she’d downgraded. I told her that it wouldn’t be nice at all to have her lovely living room disappear. I didn’t want that to happen, I said.
Her face shone. It wasn’t unpleasant to make her face shine like that. It was in my power, godlike, to rejuvenate her. She asked me what I particularly liked about her living room. She was 100% back in illusory surface. To exercise more power of rejuvenation I was tempted to say “You.” It was a dangerous temptation, involving abuse of power. So I said: “Everything in the living room.” She returned to The Golden Galaxy.
“That wasn’t me. I was quoting. My husband sends me their literature every week. I wish he’d write. It’s way, way out stuff. Too far out for me. Wonderfully poetic but I have real trouble with some of it. For example …”
She let me have it in detail. Apparently she read the literature Jack sent as carefully as if they’d been letters. She could quote whole paragraphs. I closed my eyes and sank deeper in the armchair with the whisky as she began reciting in fatiguing capital letters – she already tended to italicize syllables – about the two Realms, the totally Evil and Illusory Realm of Appearances ruled over by the evil Fallen God Glauk and the shimmering Realm of the Golden Galaxy, our true Spiritual Home. What maintained the Unreal Realm about us was Despair, Disbelief, Spiritual Sloth. When the balance tipped in favor of Belief and Love, the Veil of Appearance would be rent. How could balance-tipping be achieved? Through the process of InGathering.
Beth Anderson stopped. She waited for me to ask about InGathering. Maybe she was testing me to see if I was asleep. I opened my eyes and asked: “What’s InGathering?”
I learned that InGathering was seeking the mass presence of Unbelievers and, by intense spiritual concentration in their unknowing midst, winning them over to Illumination. No whitewashed cell or wilderness for the Golden Galaxy believers. Their church was the multiplied human soul in crowds, wherever the crowd might be, gathered for whatever reason, however trivial: subway, football games, political meetings, discos, etc.
One day – and it was not far – the necessary number of believers would be reached, one billion, three hundred thousand four hundred and twenty three and the InGathering would attain critical mass. At any moment it could happen, mental concentration overcoming dead lethargy.
Apparent reality would then disappear and the usurped reality of the Golden Galaxy would appear in blinding splendor.
I imagined them under broadbrimmed black hats, bearded to the fanatical eyes, trying to win over the shadowy crowds of co-dwellers to Illumination.
“You’re sure about that figure?” I asked. “One billion three hundred thousand four hundred?”
“And twenty-three. Positive. That’s what they say anyhow.” She reached for her glass and took a long swallow.
I certainly didn’t want to offend her. However, I couldn’t help observing that it was the most prodigious bullshit I’d ever heard. She blinked and replied that it was a little weird maybe but she wouldn’t call it … what I’d just said. I had to admit, she said, that it was full of imagination, like a wonderful poem.
I admitted nothing of the sort. I told her that any C student in Comparative Religion could have concocted the tenets of that cult. It was warmed-over Gnosticism.
Gnosticism? she inquired.
Some other evening, I said and pretexted fatigue. The subject of the Veil of Reality was a bore. I’d been behind it and knew the diminished things that were there. Comparative Religion was a little dim in my mind, anyhow. As soon as I got back to the other house I consulted Harvey’s 1930 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and took notes. It was a little like preparing a class. While I was doing it I forgot about the co-dwellers.
The following evening I gave her a guided tour of metaphysical dualism: Zoroastrianism, Manicheasm, the Albigenses, the buggering Bogomils, etc. etc. She didn’t yield. She said that if so many people believed it over the ages even if the name for it changed then it couldn’t be a hundred percent … what I’d said it was.
But she also said: “Gosh, Jerry, is there anything you don’t know?” Which was satisfying to hear even though I’d cheated in a way with those warmed-over encyclopedia articles.
She didn’t neglect her son during our literary sessions. She began to allude more and more frequently to his poems. She seized any pretext. It was tiresome being nagged in this house as well as in the other, in one to produce unwelcome writing, in the other to read it. I couldn’t be hurried with those poems if I wanted to do justice to them, I said. She brightened at that. Oh yes, I know, you need time to savor them, she said. She promised not to hurry me. She let up after that. I’d really have to get around to doing the painful job one day. Whatever the minor annoyances involved, her house was a relief from the other house and my duties there.