The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century Read online

  Paul and his guards walked through the portal, to shocked looks from the priests collecting the offerings. One began to protest, but one of the four soldiers ran up and began an animated conversation with him. After a few sentences, the man stopped staring at Paul and instead fell silent, his face to the ground. The soldier rejoined the group.

  They walked into a huge room, the walls and ceiling decorated with gold, polished woods, and colorful stone mosaics. The floor was polished and oiled light-gray granite, and the soft murmur of voices echoed through the building. A man in a yellow robe with detailed and intricate embroidery in reds and greens sat on a wooden bench next to a door into the innermost room, and the lead soldier spoke with him briefly. Statues of what looked like dogs were on either end of the bench, carved of stone, each about three feet tall. Smaller dog-statues were scattered around the edges of the room, each painted to look more life-like, with red gums, green eyes, and various spots, stripes, and blotches of ochre, tan, black, and straw-yellow. The priest looked Paul up and down carefully, shivered, and nodded with his head in a gesture Paul took as permission to enter. He followed two soldiers into the next room, the other two staying with the priest who guarded the door.

  The ceiling stretched forty feet up, the walls made of large, light-brown stones, decorated with elaborate paintings and drawings of bulls and men, metal figures of birds and dogs, and what looked like maps. One large panel had what looked like hieroglyphs carved into its top, and more recently carved alphabetic letters in vertical rows below. All around the room were dozens of pottery and stone-carved statues of dogs and men, many of the men looking like they were holding their necks in pain. The air smelled of cedar smoke, frankincense, and body odor.

  A pyramid-shaped stone structure, which Paul recognized from his history classes in college as being called a ziggurat, rose in the center of the room twenty feet or more. It was made of a yellow stone, finely polished with foot-high and foot-deep steps leading from the wide base to the top, reminding him in structure of the small pyramid north of Cancun, Mexico he’d climbed once on a vacation trip. On the three-foot-square top of it stood a ten-foot-tall stone statue of a man holding a purple fabric robe in one hand; a gleaming gold spear in the other. Wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, reaching two feet out behind his shoulders. Fresh fruit and flowers lay all around the statue’s feet.

  From the way everybody was acting, Paul guessed the statue was Enlil, and so he nodded toward it in a gesture of respectful familiarity. This was the test, and he knew his life depended on how he played out the next few minutes.

  Two men dressed in yellow robes sat on elaborately woven mats of red and yellow and gold, facing the statue of Enlil. Before them were opened scrolls of what looked to Paul like either a thick paper or thin white animal skin, and each had a small cup of black ink and a thin brush next to his respective scroll. Both men had long black hair and beards, their dark skin and black eyes proclaiming their Middle Eastern ancestry, their fingernails painted purple, their fingers covered with rings of silver and gold. One was large and stocky, the other thin with the air of an aesthete.

  In a single and smooth gesture, both stood and walked toward Paul and his guards.

  The thin man spoke first, addressing himself to the soldier in command. “Who is this man you bring into the most holy sanctuary?”

  The guard said, “He says he is Nusku, that he now serves Anu. His companion was belligerent, so I killed him. But this man called on the name of Enlil to decide his fate, so we brought him here.”

  The man nodded. “A wise choice. He is indeed odd of appearance and dress.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” the soldier said. “These are dangerous times. He may be what he says he is, or he may be a spy.”

  The stocky priest walked up to Paul, putting his face so close Paul could smell the garlic on his breath. “And who do you say you are?” he said, his voice thick with contempt.

  “I am Paul, also known as Nusku, and I bring a question from Anu for Enlil.”

  “We have had no signs, there has been no prophecy. Enlil has made no mention of such a visit.”

  Paul shrugged. “I am here. Is that not proof enough?”

  The thin priest stepped forward. “No. You are a spy.”

  The soldiers stepped forward, and Paul felt a spear-point touch his left kidney, another sword-point resting on his neck. He remembered how Noah had shook his fist and it had led to his death, and so put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. There, his left hand encountered the Bic lighter Mack had tossed to him earlier in the day.

  “No, I am the representative of a god, and have been given my own powers,” Paul said, taking his hands from his pockets slowly, keeping the lighter hidden in his left fist. “I am he who controls the elemental forces.”

  Both guards laughed and the priests looked baffled. “Say the word and we will take him outside and kill him,” said the larger soldier.

  “Or kill him here, if it will please Enlil,” added the man whose spear was poking Paul’s back.

  “May I demonstrate?” Paul said to the thin priest, who he’d decided was the one of the four with the greatest authority.

  “Demonstrate what?” the priest said, one eyebrow arched.

  “I will illuminate this soldier, if it is your will,” Paul said.

  The priest glanced to the soldier, who said, “I do not trust him.”

  “What would you do?” the priest said to Paul.

  “It’s really very simple,” Paul said, slowly bringing his left hand up and around so it was just below the beard of the soldier. He flicked the Bic lighter, and the man’s beard burst into flame.

  The soldier shrieked and his spear clattered to the floor as he grabbed at his burning beard. He hopped around the room, putting the flames out, making an angry keening sound like a wounded animal.

  The other soldier stepped back to the doorway, holding his spear with both hands, his eyes wide. The priests both stepped back a few feet from Paul, but watched him carefully. Their faces danced with curiosity and awe.

  “You carry fire in your hand?” the thin and elder priest said as the lead soldier picked back up his sword.

  “I will kill him now!” the burned soldier said, but his eyes betrayed a deep fear.

  “I carry only my magic talisman, given me by Anu,” Paul said, displaying the red Bic lighter. “It controls a wide variety of elemental forces. If you would like, I can demonstrate its power to create an earthquake, or a mighty storm with lightning that strikes men dead.”

  “That is not necessary,” the elder priest said, with a quick nod of assent from his companion. He turned to the soldier. “You may leave, and take your companion with you.”

  “But they killed my friend,” Paul said. Now that he was in control, he felt the anger at their casual murder of Noah fill him. It mingled with his fear that he may never return to his own time and place.

  “What was the value of your servant?” the younger priest said. “They shall reimburse you.”

  Paul waved the Bic at the soldier nearest him, making the man flinch and cringe, and then waved it at the other soldier. “My friend was beyond value, so I curse these men. They shall see their own punishment soon enough.”

  The two men blanched, aghast and bug-eyed, and then turned and ran from the room as if a lion were chasing them.

  “So,” the elder priest said, eyeing the Bic possessively. “What is your message for Enlil?”

  “It is a question, really,” Paul said.

  “And that question is?” The two priests were staring curiously at Paul, glancing furtively at his blue jeans, white pinpoint Oxford-cloth cotton shirt, and cordovan penny loafers. He realized that he had not seen a single other person wearing pants or shoes.

  Paul took a deep breath. “If a man travels through time, how is he to return to his own time?”

  “Travels through time?” said the older priest. “Do you mean how does an old man become young again?”
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  “No,” Paul said. “I mean if I were to travel from this moment back to the days when your fathers’ fathers were first born, how would I then return to this moment here-and-now?”

  “Such travel is impossible,” the stocky priest said. “There is no horse which can travel in such a way.”

  “Perhaps there is a door through which one can step into another time?” Paul said.

  “Then walk back through the doorway,” the older priest said.

  “But the doorway has closed,” Paul said.

  “And it was first created or opened by Anu?” the older priest said. “He needs help to find it again?”

  “It may have been created by a man,” Paul said. “Anu is uncertain.”

  “So the question,” the younger priest said, “is how to move through different lifetimes, and whether this doorway you mention is made by the gods or the men, and where or how to find it. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct,” Paul said.

  “We shall consult Enlil,” the older man said. “In the meantime, please refrain from further demonstrations of the power of your talisman.”

  “I will,” Paul said, putting the Bic lighter back into his pocket. “Thank you.”

  The two men went to their rugs and each opened a small wooden box, removing a pinch of a dried green herb, what looked like oregano to Paul. Each put the herb into his mouth, positioning it between cheek and gums, and stood for a moment as they moistened it with saliva. The thin one took what looked like small bits of amber and walked over to a square brick box built out of the far wall. Looking carefully, Paul could see the slight shimmer of air above it indicating heat; it was the source of the smell of cedar smoke. The priest threw the bits of gum onto the coals, and a cloud of frankincense filled the air. He and his compatriot sniffed deeply of it, holding their heads over the coals.

  Slowly, as if in a trance, the two men approached the front of the ziggurat, separated by a space of five feet. Marching to a sound beyond Paul’s hearing, they slowly climbed the ziggurat, each man’s foot lifting from the stones and landing on the stones at the exact same moment, as if their nervous systems were one. They slowly climbed to the top of the ziggurat where they moved together, holding hands now as they stood before the Sumerian god Enlil. The thin one sang something, and then the stocky one, and the song went back and forth for three or four minutes. They bowed low. Then the thin one said something directly to the face of the statue, using tonality that clearly was questioning.

  The two men at the top step of the ziggurat held their posture, as if frozen, for several long minutes. Outside the building, Paul could hear the sound of people talking, of dogs barking, of a baby screaming. The coals sizzled softly. The smell of frankincense tickled his nose and left a thick, bitter taste in the back of his throat.

  One of the priests began to nod and make a soft noise through his nose, a grunt of assent. Soon the other man was also nodding and grunting. Both raised their arms, the hands between them still held tightly, and sang a short chant, bowed, and backed slowly down the ziggurat together.

  They approached Paul and the thin one, a bit of greenish spittle drooling from the left comer of his mouth into his beard, hummed a soft tune.

  Paul hummed back at him, the first few bars of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

  The men nodded together, as if Paul had uttered a profound statement. Their motions seemed oddly slow motion, and Paul wondered if the herb they’d put into their mouths was a psychoactive drug. Frankincense, he remembered from his friends in Catholic school, was also something that, when inhaled in sufficient quantities, could produce a mild high.

  “Did you hear the voice of Enlil?” Paul said.

  “Yes.”

  “And it said?”

  The old priest spoke with a soft and awe-filled voice. “Enlil said, ‘The Creator of the Universe brought forth humans so humans could create the gods.’”

  “That’s all?”

  “We are shocked by this,” the young priest said. “It must be transcribed.”

  “It is a profundity beyond understanding,” the thin, elder priest said. “A new revelation. It must contain the answer to your quest. It is the word of Enlil.”

  Chapter Four

  The Taste of Salt

  Paul sat on the bank of the canal that carried the waters of the Euphrates River into Nippur and its surrounding fields. A hundred yards across, it flowed with a sluggish current, and smelled of vegetation and sewage. The surface was thick with brown scum and green algae, blue and brown water spiders danced across the water’s skin, and under the surface Paul could see black beetles swimming with rowing-like motions of long jointed hind legs. The sun was close to the horizon, an ancient reddening disk, and the earth cooling into the empty blue-black sky made Paul feel chilly. Behind them, the city was shifting into evening gear, and the smell of wood smoke drifted out over the windless plains.

  He had walked here in silence, after the audience with Enlil and his priests. It was a few hundred feet from where he’d fruitlessly searched for the now-missing portal back to twenty–first century New York. On the way all the soldiers and citizens of Nippur had given him wide berth; apparently word traveled fast here. He’d checked out the empty house, but there was no trace of Noah’s body. Only the bloodstained floor gave a clue to the events of the afternoon.

  Paul was still trying to understand the words of Enlil. So he wouldn’t forget, he took out the little spiral–note-pad from his shirt pocket and wrote, The Creator of the Universe brought forth humans so humans could create the gods. He wondered what it meant; it couldn’t be a literal truth, but had to be a metaphor for something deeper. And, more important, he wanted to know why this was something new, a revelation, to the two priests. They acted as if they’d actually heard the statue say something new, something they’d never before considered, something radical and startling. A deep and ancient truth, an unknowable paradox. Was it a shared hallucination? The recital of some well-worn teaching and they were only performing in their amazement? And how would it help him get home, in any case?

  Paul thought about New York, how far away it was both in time and distance. In a way it was as if it had never existed; in another way it was as if this were all a bizarre dream. He looked over at a swarm of gnats that extended from a foot above the water to about three feet up. There were probably a thousand insects in the egg-shaped airborne community, each flying about as if randomly, few ever breaking the perimeter of the swarm. Each was an individual, yet they moved as one.

  Humans create the gods, he thought, recalling the man-made statues. Noah had said that the Greeks and Romans would have called him a god. Was it possible?

  Paul stood up on the riverbank and turned around to look back to where the portal had once been open. “Noah!” he shouted. “I create you!”

  The landscape didn’t change.

  “I command the portal to open!”

  The only motion was the slow, slight movement of a distant man on camelback.

  “Now!” he screamed. “Please!”

  A voice from behind him said, “Why all the noise?”

  Paul spun around, and Noah was sitting on the riverbank next to where Paul had been sitting moments earlier.

  “Noah! You’re back!”

  “I was never gone,” Noah said, gesturing to Paul to sit back down.

  “But I created you,” Paul said, sitting cross-legged next to Noah. “Just now. I willed you into existence, just like Enlil said I could.”

  Noah chuckled. “I’m sorry, Paul, but it’s not quite that simple. You still have much to learn.”

  “But you’re here!”

  “I’ve always been here. You just didn’t see me.”

  “You mean you didn’t die on the floor?”

  “No,” Noah said. “Of course not. But I sure put on a good show, didn’t I?” His eyes crinkled into a broad smile. “Those guys are still looking for my body so they can give it a proper burial. They’re convi
nced that maybe, if they throw enough goodies into my casket, it’ll reverse the curse of your Bic lighter.” He chuckled. “Five thousand years from now somebody will find a hieroglyph about it. It’ll hopelessly confuse the archeologists of the twenty-first century.”

  “Do you mean that what Enlil said was wrong?” Paul said.

  “No, but it wasn’t entirely right, either. It was an understanding expressed in the way people of this time can comprehend.”

  “Well, I’m supposedly five thousand years more advanced than these folks, and I’m confused by it. What did it mean?”

  Noah ran the fingers of his left hand, the skin leathery and cracking, through his beard, then pointed to the canal. “Where did this water come from?”

  “You said the Euphrates River.”

  “And where did the water in the Euphrates come from?”

  Paul thought for a moment, then said, “Runoff from rains, collecting in small streams and springs?”

  “And where did that water come from?”

  “The sky, as rain.”

  “And where did that water come from?”

  “Evaporation.”

  “Evaporation from what?”

  “Well, four-fifths of the world is ocean, so I’d guess that while some of it came as evaporation from land, most of it was evaporation from the oceans.”

  “So,” Noah said, lifting a finger into the air. “We could say that the water in that canal in front of us came from the ocean?”

  “Sure,” said Paul. “And it’s going back to the ocean, too, eventually.”

  Noah nodded. “And if I were to get a cup of that water, or any water, and proclaim it to be the ocean, what would you say?”

  Paul laughed. “I’d say you were wrong!”

  “But it’s part of the ocean.”

  “Yes, but it’s not the ocean itself.”

  Noah nodded again, and ran his right hand over his beard, pulling it together in his hand, as if to nod his head with his hand via his beard. “Yes.”