AZOTUSLAND Chapter NInety-Nine

Ted was down in his new "office that Tuesday afternoon and doing a lot of work on the Internet with a new site, and experimental one of Jim's devising called "Spoke" which was very difficult for him to wrap his mind around.

"How am I supposed to do serious theology with real depth on Christ while also publishing, alongside Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Athiests and God knows who else?" was the question he kept coming back to.

Jim had kept telling him that "Depth Pluralism" would advance the quest for truth more than any polemic that shut down real dialogue, but Ted just was not sure. "Should we be open to everything and anything? Was this the same old crap about all roads leading to God when in fact they most often lead to whoever was currently the Roman Empire or wanted to overthrow them?"

Jim had warned Ted that he would largely be on his own but that Jim would help where he could. To begin with he had suggested Ted review C.S. Lewis' views on the pursuit of truth and its many variations and also the poetry of T.S. Eliot (with a few suggested poems) and also the writings of the Dalai Lama.

Jim confessed he did not know much about Islam and that he lamented that since it was a faith which also has common roots with what he and Ted shared.

"Why do you not come out with what you believe in your deepest places?" Ted had asked.

"Because it is just my personal experience and belief. I have often been largely mistaken and this is a place for real community and dialogue, not the imposition of my ideas or ideals," Jim said.

"But you impose your idealism of dialogue and community," Ted answered.

"True enough. What's the alternative? Alienation and quiet hatred and suspicion?"

"You are a Pragmatist," Ted said.

"And you are a very smart and bright young man to say so," Jim said. "But whether you choose to believe it or not, I also have faith that God can take care of God's own self and that despite all appearances often, God is love and love prevails."

"Does love prevail for you?"

"In some cases, yes, often no," Jim answered. "But we have been handed freedom to an almost terrifying extent. Often when love does not prevail it is because of that terrifying freedom we all possess."

"So God is just the Grand Watchmaker who winds it all up and leaves," Ted said.

"Maybe exactly the opposite my friend," Jim said quietly. "Sometimes what is reality is just the most opposite thing we could ever believe. We just do not have eyes to see or ears to hear it"

***************

Martine and Maugham made a point to wolfing down their gorgeous breakfast, then Maugham sent Martine up ahead to the room with the rest of the champagne and orange juice and two fresh glass as he tore into the dishes in the kitchen.

It was not thirty minutes, it was forty but no one had shown up except Jack and he seemed to be please with the progress in the kitchen and said nothing more.

Maugham finished and was tired and a bit woozy. It had been an uncanny series of events, like something a farcical novelist would make up. Just too much in too many days.

He slugged upstairs and hit the bathroom on the second floor and splashed his face with cold water and then turned up the thin stairs to the top room. When he got there Martine had lighted three small candles and she was sitting on the floor right where she had been earlier before leaving.

As he sat down she poured him another drink and he said "You trying to get me drunk?"

"It's my truth serum," she said not unkindly.

"I told you the truth," he said directly.

"Yes, I know," she replied. "Now tell me more."

"What else is there to tell. I'm a scumbag and a violent man," he said.

"No, you are not," she said. "I've seen you in twenty situation at the cafe and you handled each one with a calm firm care. So it's not that."

Maugham took another drink.

"Do you love me?" she asked.

"I adore you," Maugham said. "And in my book that is beyond love."

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes, I trust you."

"Well I spent a lot of time in that marsh thinking it through and I have some questions," she said.

"Okay baby," he said, feeling a bit more tipsy.

"You said it was the dark that set you off, right?"

"Yes...definitely the dark and her damned rustling in there."

"When have you been most scared in your life?"

He thought about it and kept going backwards until it hit him like a bomb and he would have reacted with anger to anyone but her, even Jim.

He started to weep and she reached out her hand and placed it on his leg and let him cry.

********

That afternoon, with Jim's permission, Roo made reservations for herself and Telia to Boston.

"We have reservations this friday and will land at Logan International at 8 p.m. their time," she told Telia. "We'll stay the first night at the Bulfinch Clarion, and I've setup a rental car for the next day to drive down from Boston. We'll stop in Plymouth and Barnsdale before reaching Provincetown."

"Don't we want to stop in Sandwich and Orleans?" Telia teased, batting her eyes.

"Sure Baby," Roo cooed back, "we got four days and nights and plenty of ground to cover. I'll take ya to Orleans anytime."

*********

Ted was reading Eliot's Choruses From the Rock when he came across this:

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.
In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.

He did not know what to do with this except it matched his own dissatisfaction and also his desire.

He kept reading, and wondering how this man of the twenties and thirties could forsee the modern world and the Church?

He kept reading.

*********

"I know what it is," Maugham said slowly in a quiet agony.

"What is it honey?"

"I told you my mother was abused by my stepfather."

"Yes."

"Well it always happened at night when it was dark in the house, or at least dark in my room," he said quietly, his face still a smear in his large hands. "I felt so utterly helpless in the dark hearing him beat her and call her "whore" and "bitch" and I wished to God, I prayed to God to become a man so I could stand that man down and kill him, man to man, face to face. But it was like everytime I heard him assault her it mingled with the darkness."

Then he broke down again.

She listened and did not try to make it better for him.

"Worst was when he would assault her sexually. It was a small house and I would hear him wrestle with her in the bed to have his way," he said. Then he looked up at her with tears down his rugged face and said "have I ever mistreated you in any way?"

"No," she said. "That's why I am still here. You are a very kind man and yet strong. It's why I trust you."

"Trusted right?"

"No, trust.," she sighed.

"Have some more champagne," she said.

***********

That evening Sabine dropped Matisse off with Jim and they went down to their room. Jim had long noted Matisse's supurb artistic eye as he had none whatsoever. He had bought her an easel and some acylic paints and had asked Hans to come down and explain how to use and mix them as well as what brushes to use. This happened, of course, after she and Hans had done the drawer game in the gallery and he had taken her around to show off new paintings.

"I like this one Hans," she said.

"Vie?"

"The colors make it pop in my head!" she said looking up and smiled.

Hans smiled and then the three of them walked into Silo 1 and Hans gave instruction and Matisse set to work while Jim ordered some Thai food to be delivered to the Gallery and this time he insisted Hans join them for dinner. Jim left twenty minutes later and went and sat at Hans' desk and waited looking at the paintings and marveling at the gift of human imagination added to true skill.

As he waited he also thought about the dreams from the night before, He had been feeling for some time like he needed a new venue, like things were both collapsing and also opening up at the same time and he could not make rational sense of it. He remembered Kierkegaard's saying "Life can only be understood looking back, but must be lived forward."

"Ain't that the truth." Jim said to himself as the food was delivered.

Jim paid for the food and tipped the young man and then walked down through the darkroom and to the left and down the stairs. He could her Hans fawning over Matisse's work and knew it was no act.

Jim set the table and pulled around three chairs then jumped over the trough and peaked his head in Matisse's room and she and Hans turned and said "Out!" He closed the door and yelled out "dinner in ten minutes!"