Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow Page B

door.
    The path curved east, bringing him directly over the left eye. God’s tear duct was as big as a barrage balloon. Staring into the luminous pupil, Martin suddenly experienced a tingling in his toes. A divine emanation, he wondered, or the mere result of standing on ice-cold Lucite? An actual intervention, or the efflux of his wishfully thinking mind?
    â€œHelp me, God,” he muttered.
    The tingling sinuated upward, making his knees tremble.
    â€œPlease, God! Yes, God!”
    Still migrating, the tingling reached his loins—stomach—lungs—brain.
    â€œI’m yours, God!”
    His whole body quivered with epiphany.
    â€œI’m cured!” he shouted, jogging back down the path.
    Corinne was sitting in a lotus position, spine against the
Pietà.
Hearing Martin’s cries, she disentangled her legs and rose. They threw themselves into each other’s arms, embracing in the Madonna’s sharp black shadow.
    â€œI’m cured!”
    â€œOh, Martin!”
    â€œCured!”
    â€œOh, yes, Martin! Oh, yes, Martin—yes, yes!”
    â€œI love you!”
    They kissed: their most passionate such connection since her lips had melted the snowflakes from his face.
    Other tourists arrived, gathering around the Madonna, hugging her robes, pressing their faces against her feet.
    â€œJesus has healed me!” cried the Chinese dialysis patient.
    â€œPraise the Lord!” shouted the black dialysis patient.
    â€œI’m signing up for dance lessons!” sang the pudgy woman.
    â€œI’m going to Barcelona!” whooped the man with Kaposi’s sarcoma, though his brow remained dotted with lesions.
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    On the Friday after his return from Orlando, Martin took the train to New York for his biweekly checkup at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As soon as Benjamin Blumenberg entered the examination room, Martin began prattling about his pilgrimage.
    â€œYou saw the corpse?” asked Blumenberg. “What’s it like?”
    â€œIt’s not a
corpse.
It’s the Godform. I stood over His left eye, directly on top.”
    â€œI think we might go—the kids’ve been asking about it, Mrs. Blumenberg too. They let Jews in, right?”
    â€œNo problem.”
    â€œAnd you really believe the trip put you in remission?”
    â€œI’m sure of it.”
    â€œI want to draw some blood today, so we can check your acid phosphatase.”
    At four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Blumenberg phoned the Abaddon Municipal Building, reaching Martin shortly after he’d gotten a Glendale teenager named Todd Weatherwax to promise that his rock band, the Elementals, would stop rehearsing after ten P.M. If no cancer is present in a person’s body, the urologist explained, his acid-phosphatase level will be somewhere between 2.5 and 4.0.
    Martin’s level, he was sorry to report, stood at 11.6.
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    Of all the pests and parasites the Almighty has commissioned over the years, the termite continues to do me proud. As you will see, termites figure as objects of philosophical discourse throughout this tale. At the moment, however, it is termite teeth, not termite teleology, that concern us.
    An unutterable despair racked Corinne Rosewood as she drove home from work that evening. Right before she’d left, her husband had phoned with his blood-test results. Tears spilled down her face. Mucus dribbled from her nose. Eleven point six. She hadn’t felt so wretched since the death of her girlhood Welsh corgi, Gwyneth.
    Carefully she guided her Ford Ranger onto the Henry Avenue Bridge, an aging span of oak and iron that crossed the Algonquin River three miles above the point where it met Abaddon Township’s beloved Waupelani Creek to form the muddy Schuylkill. The mammoth wooden guardrails were riddled with 27,489 holes, each wrought by one of my termites.
    Eleven point six, she brooded. Eleven point six. And yet they’d been so