The School in Athens
I should have been with aunt May by dinner time, but the cab driver insisted he knew a shortcut, and being unfamiliar with the area and in a hurry, I foolishly agreed.
This brought us into the ghetto – which ghetto and in what city is irrelevant, since these villages scattered in orbit around the centers of our grand metropolises all look the same.
Driving along a poorly paved road my eyes caught sight of a grotesque apparition: Standing beside a bonfire built in an oil canister, surrounded by a crowd of crouching homeless people in rags, a tall lean man with long blond hair and beard was gesticulating eagerly, which suggested to me he was engaged in a speech.
On top of it, he was cloaked in a white toga.
“Stop the cab”, I yelled.
“Bejeezus”, the cab driver muttered, but he did as I had ordered him.
“Wait for me here, please.”
“Are you sure you want to go out there?”
“Yes, why not…?”
“This is not the neighborhood, really. And I’m not comfortable parking the car here.”
“You are not parking. You can stay in the car. I want to take some photographs of this scene.”
“It’s your funeral. But if there is any trouble, I am taking off”, the cab driver said. Seeing I did not protest to his terms, he continued: “And I will require some extra payment. The risk, you know, to the car and to my own person…”
As I opened the door I could hear the words coming out of the mouth of the poor soul, who had transformed himself into a near perfect rendition of the ever popular Christian icons of Jesus.
“Your problem”, the blond man yelled, “is entitlement. Look at the mangy cats over there. They don’t build machines or genetically engineer food products, and yet they are content. God provides. He who has ears can see, and he who has eyes can hear, but he who has none of those, is like a beggar without hands. What can he hope to achieve? If someone throws him a coin, he must pick it up with his teeth, but he cannot eat it.”
This will be a perfect Easter update for my Facebook profile, I thought as I removed the lens cap from my camera. The prophet had noticed me and turned towards me and said:
“You, Paul, come over here. I have seen your faith.”
How does he know my Christian name?
My mind was racing through all possible options allowed by positivism, without finding a reasonable explanation. I had never been in this part of the city before, and I knew none of the people in front of me.
I could rule out candid camera, since the lighting was too poor for television.
Friends, or my obnoxious cousins, might enjoy pulling a prank on me, but then the cab driver had to be in on it, and the suggestion to stop the cab had been entirely mine.
“You know me, friend?”
“God knows you”, said the stranger. “What the Father knows, he conveys to the Son, and the Son grants his wisdom to the stars.”
“How did you know my name?”
“You are the one who travels in the past, where men have forgotten virtue”, he replied.
“Archaeology,” I exclaimed. “Of course. You have read about me in an archaeological journal. Acta Archaeologica, is that it? Have you worked in this field, before… this happened to you?”
“No, but I was in a sitcom about middle-aged suburbians. It was called The Lives That Were Young. Perhaps this is where you know me from.”
“But I don’t know you. You are the one who appears to know me. Have we met?”
The man scratched his hair and his beard simultaneously in a most ape-like manner.
“Damn, I thought you knew me. I had hoped you did. These philistines…”
He pointed at the homeless men, who were grinning jovially at me, while at the same time making sure not to miss a single pearl of wisdom from the lips of the guru.
“…they merely humor me. They do not understand yet. That is why I must speak in parables. You, however, could be the lost apostle. I lost an apostle, and I had to replace him. He was stealing from me, so I killed him. Okay, I did not kill him, but I spoke harshly to him, and they threw me out of the shelter.”
“Okay friend, whatever. I just want a photograph for my Facebook profile, because… you here, dressed like that, speaking to these men… it somehow resembled The Last Supper, and with it being Easter, I thought…”
“Is it Easter?”
The man’s eyes went panicky.
“Then they are coming for me soon. Take your pictures and get out of here. You too…”
He waved at the men gathered around the bonfire, but none of them signaled any readiness to leave.
“This is terrible. Then it is the end.”
Sorry to be the bringer of bad tidings, even if they were only imaginary in the mind of a schizophrenic, I said:
“I misspoke. It’s not Easter. It’s Pentecost. Silly me…”
“That’s better”, the man said. “Then the Holy Ghost will soon fall upon you, and your true purpose will be revealed to the world.”
I took my photos, while he was still reasonably calm, and he willingly posed for me, preferring a posture in which he pointed to the skies with one hand and kept his other hand out flat at about the height of his hips. It reminded me of the scene in the painting Scoula di Atene by Rafaello Sanz, where Plato and Aristotle are debating the nature of reality.
In his divine madness this mental patient had combined both visages into one.
“Give my regards to May”, he said, as I left him behind.
I nearly turned around to confront him once more, but quickly realized the futility of further investigation.