The Visitor

                                                             Tyger Tyger burning bright

                                                             in the forests of the night

                                                             what immortal hand or eye

                                                             could frame thy fearful symmetry—William Blake

                                                    

I quickly transited down the spiraling stairs of the campanile. Lightning flashed through the open porticos as rain pelted the structure with the force of a roiling undammed ocean. At the base, I could see the form of the Leviathan, intermittently twitching, like a Hebrew shaking in the throes of a Kabbalistic incantation. It appeared to be summoning some dark, shrouded, deity from the innards of the soil, perhaps even the stone itself. I raised the axe, in a final gesture of pious benediction—an ironic indication of gratitude towards the demon that had, indirectly, like Pharaoh, tested the faith of my flock; but, it was un-necessary, as the creature, defenestrated and broken, relaxed into a Kraken-like, ball of Medussan limbs. I should have been flushed with ecstasy, but instead felt a strange knot of presentiment, clogging my innards like a swallowed fishbone. At what point, during this very long day, had this outcome been cast into inevitability?

It had been cold in the sacristy that morning, as my assistant Renaldo and I searched for the appropriate vestments for the evening service. The door to the vestry was jammed, and we had to pry it open with a grappling hook before it would give way, allowing Renaldo to negotiate a path through the closet sized space in order to locate the robes that I intended to wear at the start of Vespers. Of course, there was nothing unusual about this ritual, and were it not for the strange cloud formations building outside I would have confidently predicted clement weather to accompany the services. But something about those clouds made me uneasy; they seemed to glow in a most unnatural purple, mauve, like the dark plums imported from the eastern spice-lands, that I remembered seeing as a child. More than that, they were billowy, like the folds of the un-hemmed and frayed drapery in the Bishopric office that usually piled up, at days end, on the floor next to the bay windows. Something about the way that it was compressed, into stratified wrinkles, alternating with puffy swells, put one in mind of storm-waves caught in mid-motion, breaking against the masonry retaining walls lining the Venetian harbor. It made me deeply uncomfortable. This was the same feeling that I had whenever I looked at the organ pipes during Mass. In an organ, all of that compressed material produced beautiful vibrations of resonant sound; in a storm, however, the same visual arrangement brought hail, high winds and devastating floods.

The basilica had successfully weathered many such storms of course; but the basement, where numerous copies of sacred texts were stored, in boxes lined with salt-filled batting to absorb moisture, had a tendency to flood. I decided to move the containers to a higher level—even if that meant arranging them temporarily along the aisles of the nave—to prevent the possibility of water damage. Renaldo had fashioned the perfect implement for just this kind of job, through the metallurgical welding of two iron rods into an L-shape, to which he then affixed the tiny wheels of a donkey-cart. The resulting hand-transport provided the necessary leverage to lift heavy objects, which was exactly what we needed to move the large wooden containers off of the basement floor and upstairs to the nave. At first the job went exceedingly well—Renaldo would push down on the device, while I applied strategic leverage, thus enabling us to transport most of the documents away from the flood-prone area before the afternoon meal. However, one container seemed stuck to the floor, and resisted all of our attempts to dislodge it. Upon further inquiry, I quickly discovered the cause. It was a heavy sheath of papers, bound in a wooden tube, which was caught between the bottom slats of the box, and a space between the lower basement wall, where it ran into the dirt floor. The tiny ellipse between the two made a perfect wedge, and I had to employ the help of several well-nourished monks—who were, providentially, present that afternoon, working to repair some broken windows in the clerestory—to assist Renaldo and myself in dislodging the tube. When the cylinder gave way, we were all thrown back suddenly onto our fundaments—but the event provided cause for a good laugh, and broke the monotony nicely. I then placed the tube on top of the last container, and we brought it upstairs.

I probably would have forgotten about this minor incident entirely, were it not for the fact that several scrolls of documents managed to shake loose during the short journey to the nave aisle, prompting me to pick them up and deposit them temporarily in the pockets of my robe. Back in the Bishopric office, I fumbled around for the scrolls, and gingerly placed them at my desk. They appeared to be blue-prints of the original basilica design, penned by the architect, Arnolfo Di Cambio, a Florentine, who had journeyed to Verona more than a century earlier to construct the church that I now administered. I had always enjoyed looking at blue-prints; they seemed to approximate an almost spiritual idea of perfection, in the way that they rendered a design into schematic flawlessness, like an ideal, that provided all of the key structures into which everything else could be neatly enfolded. I imagined that this reflected the perfection of God’s realm, like a description I had once heard at seminary of a Chambered Nautilus or the specter of the stars at night, blanketing the earth in a protective netting of illumination. Such things spoke of symmetry between the human and divine worlds; an idea Di Cambio was attempting to unite with the perfected squares and rectangles of the basilica.

But, there was one thing that did not fit this premise. It was a small drawing of a teardrop shaped mass at the structure’s southeasterly corner. At first I believed it to be a diagrammatic of a headstone—given quirky shape as an attempt to visually allegorize the life of Saint Francis, patron overseer of this, the Church of St. Francis at Verona, who wore rags, loved animals of all kinds and had a flawless soul, in sharp contradistinction to his unadorned appearance—but the notation below the schematic seemed to indicate otherwise. It was written in Di Cambio’s own hand, and, initially appeared to be a memo to the stone-masons who were to erect the basilica. A closer look however, revealed that it was an attempt to describe an anomaly, never previously encountered by the architect. I began to read it with much interest:

Upon excavation at the foundation site, workers came across the above-rendered object, which at first glance appeared to be a diamond shaped rock, of a dark blue color, resembling the surface of an Arabian Sapphire. The stone would emit an intermittent glow, which was accompanied by a sporadic low-volume humming, reminiscent of historical descriptions of sounds made by the undersea Kraken, said to terrorize Mediterranean waters in ancient times. Several local stone-masons, offered elaboration on the nature of the obelisk, by pointing out that it was, in fact, well known, and went by the name of the “Glow-stone of Verona,” and simply, “The Stone.” In addition, radiant lights were often seen in the vicinity of the ‘stone’ on certain occasions when it was prone to ‘vibrate and glow, particularly during inclement weather, when the humming was rumored to become continuous.

I was taken aback; my hand shaking slightly, as I suddenly remembered where I had encountered that very same hum. It had occurred on several different occasions, actually—all except one had been on evenings of heavy rain, lightning and high winds—and it was both beautiful and strangely haunting. I could recall that, at first, I had simply attributed it to the harmonics of the choir, as they struck a high note during a psalm; but afterwards, I came to believe that it was due to a faulty valve in the basilica’s pipe-organ. The organist, at the time, an elder named Peter Grespe, an articulate and argumentative man, who took pride in his technical abilities, had protested vigorously; and later, even offered me a chance to play the apparatus so that I would see for myself just how finely tuned it was. Trusting his judgment, I dropped the matter, but the mystery never was satisfactorily resolved.

Later, in the course of my church related duties, and my elevation to the Bishopric, I allowed myself to forget about it entirely. Now, however, it all came flooding back; that mysterious hum that invested the basilica with an air of mystery that made the place seem special, somehow, and set apart from other churches. Yet, that very quality also made me uneasy, in a way that was insulated from the effects of prayers and benedictions. Surely, there was no force stronger than the word of God, but here was something that required the mind of a great scholar, or even a prophet, to dissect, and explain. In my managerial and wholly insufficient grasp however, the mystery merely deepened and developed the pallor of unfamiliarity, that so often, as I have observed in other cases, makes lesser men, myself included, retreat from asking difficult questions.

That evening as an ominous wind, buffeted the outer-stone walls of the cathedral, I prepared to begin Vespers Mass. I stood under the Apse at the transept archway that divided it from the rectangular aisles of the nave, and stared at the ribbed ceiling vaults absent-mindedly. Di Cambio’s, simple, elegant, design reproduced the equality that was reflected in the rows of church pews that reached to the nave entrance, and flanking columns, at the far end of the basilica. In this sacrosanct world, all people were equal under God, and part of the larger hierarchy of the heavens, whose structure was replicated in the Holy Roman Order, from Pope to Cardinal, to Bishop to Priest; to monks and acolytes; right down to the rank and file of the congregation itself. Yet Di Cambio could find no place to articulate the mystery suggested by the stone, except in the evocation of a higher calculus that was innate, but not central, to the basilica’s design. It was as if, he was too uncomfortable with the pagan aspect of this miraculous and mysterious humming obelisk, to give it even a peripheral status in the symmetrically circumscribed world evoked by the church’s architectural structure. In their stoic silence, the stone and masonry support columns implied that ‘otherworldliness,’ was subordinate to the restrictive dictates of order. To me, this somehow seemed to be more of an Imperial Roman decree, than a living Church dictum; but, I knew my place and kept such speculation only to myself.

The gathering storm seamlessly melded into the aura of the Mass. The winds began to pick up, vibrating the votive candles, whose insulating, gold-embroidered holders budged barely enough to animate their tiny flower-buds of lapis-lazuli, flame, whispering like breeze-tousled milkweeds on the banks of a country river. The choir began to sing, as the organ provided a backdrop, giving muscle to the high-tones that the front-row, falsettos tended to favor. A deep thrum shot through the congregation like the wake of a large vessel, and was quickly followed by a loud crackling, which sounded more like an object hitting the eaves of the campanile than it did a thunderclap. Suddenly, the entire church fell silent. There was only the sound of the wind, the creaking of wooden support beams, girding the clerestory repair area, and one other sound, that I could not identify at first. It was the humming from the stone.

I quickly raised my arms in exaggerated genuflection, and began singing in Latin. The choir joined in, followed by the entire congregation, but the humming did not recede, and within moments was joined by a pulsating thrum that seemed to emanate from the campanile tower itself. Again, the congregation fell silent, and I was compelled to commence an explanation of some sort to reassure them that the Lord was in the basilica with us; and, that we would continue to sing through whatever mysteries the stone—a specter I still avoided mentioning directly—might reveal to all present, in the course of its dark, mystical allegro. I was now sure that many already knew about or suspected its existence, and probably had raised such questions long before I was ever acquainted with them. However, in the interest of forestalling panic, I decided to instruct the choir to repeat the opening of the Mass, telling the leader, in a hushed tone, only that I was excusing myself to get a change of vestments.

I exited the apse through a rarely used side-entrance, and hastily made my way to the campanile tower. Climbing up its spiraling rows of stairs, with my hands holding my clerical garments at ankle level to avoid tripping, I could more clearly decipher the pulsing thrum as it resonated louder with each successive step forward. By the time I reached the top-level, I could hear additional clattering on the walkway that led to the roof eaves. They weren’t wind noises, but more like a purposeful rustling that reminded me of how a small animal might dig through the insulating hay-layers inside a masonry wall. But these were more organized, with rhythmic cadences familiar to anyone who had ever heard the jangling of a ships-hand tying a rope to a mast. In fact, it was the same sound, only heavier, as if the materials being used were constructed from an unfamiliar substance, whose texture and origins could not be inferred solely by ear.

Then on the roof-walkway, with the wind cutting a swath through my hair, like the staff of Moses slicing an ellipse across the shallows of the Red Sea, I saw something unbelievable off to the side. At first, I took it to be the body of a glowing blue-whale, like some unfathomed leviathan of the deep waters, hovering at eye level; and next to it, a hairless ram with sheared horns, wearing vestments reminiscent of ancient Hebrew ceremonial rites. But even in a world of mystery, such a scene was impossible to reconcile, and I forced myself, through a tightening miasma of fear, to look again. This time, it was unmistakable! I was face to face with a two-legged demon, whose countenance reminded me of descriptions of ancient pagan harvest deities, and whose expression acknowledged no fear, but did evince a strange and sudden comprehension as to what I was thinking. It emitted a sound like the mellifluous bleating of a freshly sheared lamb, and I sensed an anxiety that was familiar and yet not of this world.

I called out to it to vacate the area, saying, in a translated, ancient dialect: “Harken unto my words oh sublime demon, with whale-shaped vessel in tow,  whose presence tests the waters of God’s patience, and leave this place now, for this is God’s realm, and you are unclean and have no place in this world.” At first it didn’t react, and then it began to gesticulate, as if in some devious parody of an acolyte genuflecting before reciting a prayer. Its hands, whose elongated, bulbous, digits seemed uncharacteristically delicate for such an otherwise rough-looking creature, were moving so quickly and in such a complex fashion, that I found myself becoming dizzy, as if I were about to lose my balance.

I caught myself, noticing, with some surprise, that the demon was balanced behind one of the masonry gargoyles arrayed at separate corners of the roof. His considerable musculature was supported only by a narrow line, whose tendrils connected both to his glowing whale-shaped vessel, and to the jutting spike atop the campanile tower. It was unlike any rope or bailing wire that I had ever seen before. It did not resemble hemp, or fabric, but was more like the material from a snake’s flesh, sinewy, almost palpably alive, of a dark green hue, and also glowing to the resonating thrum and humming that were now so loud as to be ubiquitous. The demon continued his mesmerizing hand gesturing, as I began making my way to the stairwell to retrieve the one implement that was necessary in order to more assertively confront this leviathan.

In the basilica basement, I found the axe—recently sharpened only days before, by Renaldo, in anticipation of trimming several overhanging branches from a Sycamore tree next the monastery vineyard. I had always loved that tree, but its size was an affront to the dignity of the vineyard, and I deemed, that something looming so large needed to be brought back into balance with the rest of the basilica grounds, even though I knew that many of the monks had grown quite attached to climbing it and indulging in horseplay, amidst the leaves and branches.

Once back upon the campanile-tower roof, I immediately commenced to start chopping at the tendrils that tied the demon’s whale-ship to the spire, and by extension the church itself. Whatever demonic, serpentine, substance the tendrils were made from, however, proved resilient, but not indestructible. I could hear fibers loosening, with some of them unraveling, coming apart, and giving off an odor like burning pitch in a flaming creosote pond, as I began to hammer away at the lines with more force. The demon was now panicked, but made no attempt to interfere. His reticence, however, gave me a glimmer of doubt, one which I soon extinguished with thoughts of God, Abraham and Isaac, and how the Lord tested the very mettle of the Hebrew patriarch by demanding that he sacrifice the body of his own son. Surely, if Abraham could prepare to offer his already circumcised progeny to God, then I could easily detach a demonic alien from the alter of the campanile rooftop, and dispatch the evil presence without incurring undue guilt.

As I began to sweat and ache from the strain of hurling the axe-blade into the gradually loosening fibers of the demon’s whale-ship line, I could distantly make out a sound reminiscent of a Crusader’s description of an Arab woman bemoaning the death of her heathen husband in battle. It was plaintive at first, and then began to increase in volume until, my ears, and then my entire body, seemed to vibrate within its harsh spell like the larvae of a small moth pupating within the tight cocoon spun by an unseen parent. Again, I felt that, now familiar, twinge of doubt, but knew that this was God’s way of testing the mettle of my resolve, and the piety of my flock, who I could hear below, in the body of the cathedral, engaged in the vigorous singing of hymnals. With one final stroke, I severed the demon’s mast-line, as a crackling explosion of thunder masked the creature’s panicked scream for a split-second. The lightning blast seemed to make a direct hit on his whale-ship, which I was reticent to interpret as confirmation of God’s will in testing my resolve to repel this invading alien presence. The demon and his vessel hovered for a moment, as if trying to defy the elemental forces of attraction and repulsion, but was soon hurtling towards the ground, as the scream became louder in volume until I could hear the very curtains that surrounded the apparatus of my auditory-parts becoming rent and begin fissuring into two distinct pieces. At that moment, the whale-ship hit the ground with a loud resounding thud that I could feel in the undergirding of my bones, like a cold hand caressing the interior of my body. A series of bright light-flashes, in colors that I had never seen before, were emitted in rapid succession; and, I took this as truly confirming the reaffirmation of God’s covenant with the church, in a line of succession stemming all the way back to Noah, in the wake of my successful passage through the flood-waters of true piety.

Soon, the entire congregation was outside in the rain, looking at the wreckage that had once been the demon’s whale-vessel. Adjacent to the remains, of his now-sunken otherworldly ship, was the body of the demon itself, broken and without the breath of life. I instructed the congregation to commence burial of this body, but to leave the grave unmarked, so as to prevent outsiders from digging up the remnants in an attempt to retrieve whatever black-magic residue still clung to the corpse of the demon that had terrorized us on this stormy evening. We had come through a difficult test of our resolve, and proven worthy of our pious faith. It would now be up to God to insure that the break between worlds would be sutured so that other demons like this one would not plague us further with their uninvited presence.

The storm gradually abated, and through the silence I gave pause for a brief moment, and wondered to myself if I would ever hear the humming of the Glow-Stone of Verona again; or, if the demon had taken its mystery with him to the grave. I still didn’t know if there was any connection between the two, and that small doubt momentarily caused a tiny crevasse of regret to open up inside my mind like a volcanic break in the center of a cold-icy glacier. Had I defended my flock against an invading evil, or had I killed a desperate creature, temporarily stranded on a foreign world, trying to find safe haven from a storm? God had surely never spoken of such presences as belonging to the same universe as that of the church, but there was always room for the unknown, or was there? As the questions began filtering down the undergrowth and leaves of my mind, forming small rivulets and fountains, I thought of the Sycamore, and how it looked bereft of those low-hanging branches so beloved by the monks at the adjacent monastery. The clouds had abated, and the sun was out, but I could see the moon, blue as the ocean, hanging in the sky, like a vibrating sapphire. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with its intrusion, until another cloud came by cloaking it from view. Some things had no place in the day-light, I sighed; and then genuflected, before retiring back to the warm comfort of the basilica.

JZRothstein  11/18/2013