The Last Rational Man Page 17

had a child from that ill-advised night we spent together! There was little doubt about it. My name is unusual, and the timing was about right. That meant I had a son! But a son who was a Catholic Bishop!

  My head was lost in a flurry of thoughts. My emotions ran wild. All of those childless years, and it turned out that I had a son. But a Bishop. My blood raced. My heart pounded. My vision became blurry. I tried to speak, to ask my guest a question, but my lips couldn't form the words. My head slumped forward, and I collapsed on my desk.

  The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital. It took me a while to get my bearings, but I understood that I had had a major stroke.

  I took me months to recover, but it was only a partial recovery. I never walked again, and I never spoke again. The woman who had brought me that note had disappeared, and there was no way to even ask what had happened to her. I couldn't control my fingers well enough to write a note.

  My followers didn't let my stroke get in their way. They said that my suffering was a necessary part of the Messianic process. I had no way of cooling their fervor, which reached a feverous pitch before I died.

  When I died, I assumed that they would give up on my being the Messiah. After all, dead Messiah's are a Christian thing, not a Jewish one. I was wrong.

  My death didn't cool off anybody's belief. If anything, the opposite occurred. There was a regular frenzy among my followers. Being dead was a minor problem for the Messiah! Besides which, I wasn't really dead at all. I had gone temporarily into the other world, to straighten out a few mystical matters before coming back to herald in the Messianic age.

  That is what my followers thought. But I found myself in a bind. Here I was in this purgatory, with no way out. Elvis and Jesus are OK, but it is not much company for eternity. And it looked like it would be an eternity, or close enough that it didn't matter. Jesus was stuck here for two thousands years already, with no end in sight. There was no reason to think that my followers wouldn't hold out for a good long time. There was no way out!

  But there was a way. Just a chance, but it might work. I needed to change my followers' belief. If it turned out that I was not the last of my line, that there was an heir to the throne, so to speak, then I would not have to be alive in their minds, and the whole thing would settle down.

  Yes, the fact that my son is a Bishop could be a problem. But a child, born as a Jew, now a Bishop, who returned to his roots and took his father's place? It might just work. It seemed to be the only chance that I would have. Once my son had died my last door to a proper death would be slammed shut. As it was, it was only open a crack.

  You are reading this, and wondering what to make of this story. I know that it seems weird. I am hoping that the weirdness has kept your attention, but I know that it will not convince you.

  I am asking a very difficult thing. To leave your faith, leave the honored position that you have worked so long to reach. And all of that just to help your dead father, a father whom you have never met, whose very existence was unknown to you until a few minutes ago. Why should you believe this?

  I am aware of this problem. I have thought this through very carefully.

  There is one person who can help me convince you. You may find it interesting to speak with him. He will convince you that this letter is true, that you should leave the Church, and present yourself to the Hasidim. Once you are convinced, I can help you convince the Hasidim. But first I need to convince you.

  When you are done reading this, you will hear a knock on the door. Open the door. You will see a dark, short, middle-aged man with a hooked nose. There is no need to be afraid – it is only Jesus, helping out a friend.

  Anatomy Lab

  He stood in front of the mirror, foam on his face, razor in hand. It was hard to imagine a world without safety razors. To the best of his knowledge, his father had never used one. The last one in the family to use a straight razor was probably his grandfather. He had no memory of his grandfather shaving, but he could imagine him honing the blade on a leather strap, slowly pulling the blade across his cheek, carefully running it over his neck.

  There would be a shaving brush, and a cup of foamy soap that he would spread on his face. There would be a styptic pencil to stop the inevitable bleeding, or perhaps little bits of toilet paper stuck on the wounds. He wouldn't have cut himself daily, but surely often enough that it was real bother. That blade, after all, had to be really sharp to shave with.

  All-in-all he was glad that the safety razor had been invented. It was still possible to nick yourself, but it had to be a lot better than in the old days, when every clean-shaven man essentially took a carving knife to his neck every morning.

  Knives. You use them all of your life, yet they mean something very different when you are a medical student. It was true of most tools. Suddenly knives, scissors, even saws looked different, only because you were now aware of their multiple uses.

  He had been a bit nervous that first day in the anatomy lab. Everybody was. Most people don't see dead bodies, certainly not naked, cold, bare ones. Sure, you went to your old uncle's funeral, and if your family was into open caskets, there was Uncle Jimmy! But he was dressed and made-up, and, well, not really dead. Just on his way to heaven, but not dead like the chicken at the butcher's or road-kill, some deer that didn't get out of the way of your SUV in time.

  The dead in the anatomy lab, though, were really dead. And the lab, in some ways, was a butcher shop.

  When you first walked in, your immediate impression was the god-awful smell. They had gotten away from formaldehyde as a preservative, but the chemical smell was still overpowering. The lab was a large room, well lit with fluorescent lamps, and supposedly well-ventilated. The cadavers were laid out on tables. There were about fifteen of them, each covered with a clear plastic sheet to prevent them from dehydrating. It would take weeks to finish the lab work, and if the body dehydrated, you would find yourself well-trained as a mummy dissector, but not as a physician or surgeon.

  The bodies had identifying tags hanging on their big toes. What a strange thought on his first day! He worried that when they inevitably started working on the toe, the tag would fall off. It turned out that they never touched that toe. You didn't really need to do both arms, both legs, all ten toes. The students worked in small groups, though, and sometimes it made sense to work on both legs, say, so that more students got hands-on experience.

  He had gotten through most of the semester without much problem. Sure, he avoided looking at the stiff's face. Most people did, until it was time to learn about the facial muscles, find the thyroid hiding in the neck, see what tonsils were really about. The cadavers all had pet names, of course. Some were rather lewd, but his group was pretty civilized, and had gone along with Suzy as a name for their subject, an elderly woman who had donated her body to science.

  He stretched the skin on his face to meet the razor. It was hard to remember the names of the facial muscles. Everything was in Latin, as usual. Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii – which was which? Part was easy. Depressor moved something down, levator moved something up. But what were the supercilli?

  He finished shaving, washed his face, and put on the usual aftershave. He always hoped that its smell would screen him from the stench in the lab, but the mild chemical odor of the lotion tended to remind his nose of the lab.

  It was good living on campus, just a short walk away from the lecture halls and labs. Outside, at least, there was fresh air. He never took the elevator up to the third floor where the labs were, preferring the stairs. His fellow students were gathered around the lab door, exchanging pleasantries and the inevitable macabre joke. He sensed a bit more nervousness in the air than usual. They had gotten used to the idea, the smell, the mechanical reduction of humans to component pieces, like cars stripped down for their parts. Today, though, was face day. They had all diligently avoided looking at that most human part of the body, but today was the day when they would start. Skin would be peeled o
ff, muscles exposed. The anatomy text showed the internal structure of the eye. There were some lively discussions as to whether they would actually slice open eyes themselves, or if that was one thing in the book that they would not actually do.

  He followed the others into the room, grimacing as the stink hit him. After a while he would get used to it, and be able to work, but he would still be aware of the polluted air.

  He joined the others around Suzy. One of the other students, a young fellow with a beard, ceremoniously pulled the plastic sheet off of what was left of Suzy. An open ribcage, some parts, carefully examined and identified, still in place, others removed to expose hidden organs. And today, the face.

  He had the feeling all along that somehow, unlikely as it may seem, Suzy would turn out to be somebody that he knew. It was a common phobia among the students, often joked about. A nightmare that never came true. He forced himself to look at the face, the owner of the body he had been desecrating for so many weeks.

  She did look vaguely familiar. It was bit hard to be sure. The preserved cadavers didn't look the same as living people. It was easy to be fooled. Still, that turn of the chin, the sharp nose. It couldn't be, yet…

  He found himself on the floor, looking up at concerned faces.