Wall—Love, Sex and Immortality

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, titles, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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CONTENTS

PART ONE   THE ANKLE

Chapter 1. The Ankle

Chapter 2. The Lecture

Chapter 3. Autohypnosis

Chapter 4. More Lectures

Chapter 5. Ambrosia

Chapter 6. End of a Season

Chapter 7. Tunneling

Chapter 8. Psychokinesis

Chapter 9. Open Forum

Chapter 10. The Micro and the Macro

PART TWO  AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Chapter 11. The Nectar

Chapter 12. At Thirty Thousand Feet

Chapter 13. Milos

Chapter 14. The Wedding

Chapter 15. Mitera 

Chapter 16.  Echoes

Chapter 17. The Lost Secret 

Chapter 18. The Wall 

Chapter 19. Devolution

Chapter 20. Goodbyes

PART THREE  THE ESCAPE

Chapter 21. Little Girl

Chapter 22. Home

Chapter 23. More Walls?

Chapter 24. Prisons

Chapter 25. I Did It My Way

Chapter 26. More on Devolution

Chapter 27. The Carousel

Chapter 28.  More about Mama

Chapter 29. More Tunneling

Chapter 30. Lazy 

EPILOGUE

PART ONE  THE ANKLE

You don’t go to heaven. You grow to heaven.

Edgar Cayce

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Chapter 1.

The Ankle

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In the Wild, Wild West men were men and women were what men wanted them to be. We all know that. What most of us don’t know is that in English Jesuit Colleges there were no women. Men in order to become men had to fight other men. They did so by playing rugby. Rugby, or rugger, is a game wherein men try to kill each other. The game is not unlike the American or Canadian Professional Football, but it is played without the benefit or protection of pads, helmets, or the game stopping every few seconds to collect the wounded.

In a Jesuit College, everybody was forced to play rugby. There were dozens of teams, but only one team represented the College. That was the First Sixteen. The best. The elite.

I’d managed to get into the First Sixteen. And that is how the story began. Almost. Actually it began a few thousand years ago, but, well, hear me out.

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My ankle has been bothering me longer than I can remember. Even at school, Mt. Saint Ignatius College, in the Old Country where, as already mentioned, by sheer accident I’d made it into the First Sixteen Rugby team, my ankle would seize up, on occasion, quite unpredictably, without any apparent reason. Just, now and again, for a few seconds at a time.

Imagine, First Sixteen! That was as good as one could get. Prefects’ table in the Refectory, right-of-way down the long, cold, dank corridors; exemption from AROTC—the boy soldiers organization in the UK...

It made you something special.

Those were the days...

And then, within about three weeks, the stupid ankle went on the blink in earnest. Still only sporadically but, within a few months, the stiffness would last for minutes at a time. By the time it seized up for the third time in the middle of a game—that last time when I was about to score a try—my days of fame and glory were over. The SJs—that’s the Jesuits as in Society of Jesus for the uninitiated—sent me to the hospital in Sheffield. I’ve been examined within an inch of my life. Nothing at all.

NOTHING!? I could scream. I very nearly did.

It must have been just one of those things, said a frazzled looking intern. He’d sent for a resident.

There is nothing wrong with your ankle, Mr. ah, Jones, repeated the intern’s elder colleague, looking studiously at a series of X-rays. I was six-one, by then, weighing 220 pounds. In Canada, and just about everywhere in the world except for the States, that’s about 185 centimeters, and almost 84 kilos. The attending resident physician called me Mister. Then he glanced at my First Sixteen blazer and called in the Chief of Staff.

We waited a while until the illustrious orthopedic surgeon rolled into the examination room. At least he could have rolled in—he was fat enough. I wished then, as I do now, that physicians would set an example.

Never mind.

The solon confirmed both previous diagnoses. I was, he announced pontifically: perfectly healthy, with, possibly a mild predisposition towards attacks of hysteria.

I was big enough to slog the pompous jackass. I didn’t. To this day I wonder why.

Some years later, there have been times, months at a time, when I would walk normally and then, when crossing the street, or raising my foot to the break pedal on my old Chevy, my ankle would seize up. It wouldn’t bend. Solid as a rock. Minute of two later, little cold ants would crawl down from just below my knee... they would descend, lethargically, effortlessly, to restore the flexibility in my lower joint. 

I was glad when finally, on arrival in Canada, I could drive an automatic, thus treating my left foot as an appendage dedicated to walking only. Even if, occasionally, with a limp. Sometimes. However, no break pedal (or had it been the clutch, I don’t remember), and certainly, no rugby exacerbated my condition.

Year after year I’d visited orthopedic surgeons, later physiotherapists. They x-rayed my foot more often than any man in the history of the Montreal General Hospital.

Sorry, Mr. Jones, ah, Professor, but as I told you before, there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with your foot. Nothing at all, Mr. Jones.

Yes. Professor. I think that did it—my becoming a professor, I mean. Specifically, professor associated with comparative religion, hence Associate Professor. Just kidding. Since three years ago, I have been appointed Associate Professor at the Department of Religious Studies. The day after my appointment, my ankle seized up for a week. Yes, I had to walk with a cane. There was little pain, but the discomfort made up for it. Try walking without bending your ankle.

I suppose I have the SJs to thank for that. Not for the stiff ankle only for the professorship. I matriculated with distinction in religion. No other distinctions—just religion. The other distinguished marks were mostly passes, some with credits. To this day I have no idea why I found religion so... absorbing?

Actually, I do. It must have been to avoid the strap. In those days, the Jesuits were strong advocates of corporal punishment, a method of persuasion I was never enamoured with. By being a scholar of religious subjects, I must have been assumed to be a practitioner of them. By excelling in religion they, the SJs, practically left me alone.

Actually, I only got down to religion, in earnest, after I got kicked out of the First 16. The ankle, remember? Before then, the ‘colours’, as they were called, gave me sufficient protection.

They must have hammered the history of the Church, Apologetics, and all the peripheral religious subjects, well into my youthful head. Daily Mass—attendance compulsory—with occasional Vespers, Confirmations, a funeral or two, took care of the liturgy. The moment I left college, I checked out other religions to see if any of the stuff I’d learned made any sense to other people. The pagan lot. The unbelievers. To the sheep from other stables.

Other folds?

After a little while, I found it quite fascinating to learn that people will believe anything if you repeat it to them a sufficient number of times. When civil authorities do so, it’s called brainwashing. Solzhenitsyn explained that. When a Church, any church, does it... well, you know the answer. Obey or you’re on a one-way ticket to hell.

My reasons notwithstanding, I now had a good base for Comparative Religion. After only three years of post-grad, that is Canada already, I became accredited at the McGill University of Montreal.

That only left me with my hysterical ankle. I wondered if I should test myself for excessive female hormones. No offence, but hysteria is supposed to be a woman’s prerogative. Men should have prostraria, or something like that. Really.

Still as a student, I decided to take my ankle into my own hands. No pun intended. I tried massages, salt baths, soaks, compresses, eastern teas, effusions and other concoctions, powdered Chinese extracts, and a dozen of more esoteric cures. I got pretty serious.

They all worked—until the next time. Until the next time I raised my leg to step down from anything and landed flat on my face. And that wasn’t the half of it.

I’ve also lost a lot of weight since my Rugby days. Once a solid 215-220 lbs., now a slim 185—mostly to take the weight off my ankle. It didn’t help. The fair sex must have preferred my previous macho contours, or...  it could have been my ankle, but my social life was somewhere between dismal and none. My dating was limited to one dinner per month or two, no dancing, no romantic walks in the park, and a lot of prayer that I might make it to my car without tripping over my own legs. Actually it never happened, yet, but I developed an acute case of cold feet. Ankles. One ankle.

The very thought of what might happen if the stupid joint would seize up was enough to keep me glued to my TV set when others, my colleagues, were scoring with the chicks. I must have been the most frustrated senior student in the history of McGill.

I remember, on one occasion, I got as far as the girl’s bedroom. Actually my bedroom, but with a girl in it. She in her late teens, cute, slim, well equipped, looking experienced (probably was)—I desperately trying to lose my virginity.

It was a case of now or never.

I was doing all right. We finished our drinks, together. I offered another, she declined. I slipped next to her, on the sofa, my hand finding its way along her slim leg, upwards, slowly, very slowly, insinuating itself where it oughtn’t. She responded by leaning back, tilting her head backwards, her lips parted, inviting.

This was in the days when I still lived in a bed-sitter. I still had muscles from my Rugby days. I lifted her in my arms to deposit her on the bed. I didn’t quite make it. At least, my ankle didn’t. We both landed on the sideboard. Don’t laugh. She twisted her... ankle!

A message from the gods?

If there were any justice in the world, she would have twisted something else. On top of it all, by the time I picked her off the floor, my ankle was perfectly all right. My ankle, not hers. That was the last time I’d invited a girl, a woman, to my digs.

For the next three weeks my ankle behaved itself. I almost forgot I had a problem. Then, must have been a month or so later, I repeated my performance in a different girl’s bedroom. Yes, this time I actually got to her digs. It was great fun until I tried my macho lifting trick. At least his time it was her elbow, not her ankle. Things got quiet after that. Quiet for quite a while. In fact, more or less, until I finished my post-grads.

Two years later, after I got, what I’d hoped would have become, my tenure, I met Ambrosia. Yes, I know what it means: nectar of the Gods. I only caught a glimpse of her, but right there and then, I’d be willing to drink anything she’d deign to offer me, a mere mortal. Anything.

Well, all right.

I hadn’t actually met her. I’d fallen down the stairs at her feet. She hadn’t said anything. At least, I don’t think she had. I wasn’t quite myself.

As an associate professor, I now rent a one-bedroom apartment, on the 26th floor, overlooking Mount Royal. A beautiful view. A view specifically designed for seduction. For making love without having to draw curtains.

High up, among the gods...

Only the gods I’ve studied all my life weren’t on my side. Perhaps they didn’t like anyone peeking into their private business. The SJs hadn’t told me that. The apartment is still waiting to lose its virginity.

For weeks after the Ambrosia incident, I’d lie staring at the ceiling, trying to recall the goddess I’d fallen into. Onto? She was tiny, a Dresden Figurine, dark long hair, dark complexion, as though she’d just descended from Olympus where she was basking in close proximity of the sun. Icarus, eat your heart out.

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Some months later I ventured into hypnosis. Self-hypnosis was the last hope for my ankle. If that didn’t work, I’d be destined to remain a virgin for life. I’m sure no goddess would tolerate such grievous prostrarical imperfections in mortals. Prostraria, remember? Masculine hysteria.

I bought a book in a second-hand shop on St-Catherine. Judging by its cover, it’s been used by a number of men. People? I suppose women may well have had psychosomatic problems as well as men. Although no physician, other than the rotund surgeon, ever said so, I now firmly believed that my ankle’s misbehaviour had been in some form psychosomatic. I looked it up in the dictionary:

1. of or pertaining to a physical disorder that is caused by, or notably influenced by, emotional factors.

2. pertaining to, or involving, both the mind and the body.

As by now it was obvious, even to me, that my ankle problem did not have physiological origins, I was either mad or there was some kind of psychosomatic base to my problems.

I once read about a case of man who walked with a limp. Like in the case of my ankle, he had been examined a number of times by professionals, and nothing could be uncovered that could in any way cause him to limp.

Finally he went to a hypnotist.

After a few sessions under expert hypnotic regression, the doctor discovered that once, during an operation—while under anesthetic—which his patient had some 12 years ago, one of the residents assisting in the operation mentioned that the patient might have to learn to live with a limp. The poor fellow had learned to limp in order to stay alive. He continued limping until a skilled hypnotist cleaned up his memory of the event. After that, he never limped again.

It appeared that while his body, and presumably his conscious mind, were subject of anesthetic, his subconscious remained receptive. Perhaps it never slept. Perhaps at some level we have inner bodies that do not need sleep. I wondered if Dr. Steiger knew about that. He could put the subconscious body on his divan and pretend that it’s asleep.

It seemed that the self-hypnosis I’ve been practicing was intended to teach me how to program my subconscious to act in accordance with its dictates even when fully awake. Like the man with the limp had.

The problem was that I never had an operation on any of my extremities. Yet my ankle liked to act up. On occasion. When I least expected it.

Ah, yes. Dr. Steiger was the resident psychiatrist at the McGill. You haven’t met him yet? Perhaps you’re lucky.

Chapter 2

The Lecture

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The amphitheater was filled to the brim. Usually religion was not a subject to fill all the seats, but, for some reason, I appeared to have been recognized as a lecturer of repute, and in the opinion of my colleagues, endowed with a good sense of humour. Others gave me other reasons.

C’mon, Sy, anyone with your looks could fill anything to the brim. I bet your bed is never empty.

Little did they know?

Nevertheless, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, I was referred to as a ‘looker’. Whether it was my six-one, my shoulders, which must have developed during my Rugby days, or generally my sporty appearance, I have no idea. I didn’t dress in any natty clothes, didn’t even attempt to make eye contact with the fair sex, nor did I even remember to comb my hair properly. I was dabbed a ‘looker’, and that was that. Some 80% of the amphitheatre attendees were women. Young, many beautiful, blonds, brunettes, redheads, (is there any other?); fresh looking women. I wondered how many would remain if they knew that I was a, you know... a virgin. Well, they were not about to find out from yours truly. The few men who expressed interest in my lectures have relegated themselves to the back row. They seemed as shy as I was. Or appeared to be.

The subject of today’s lecture was the four-fold nature of man. Man being, of course, a generic term, though in this company it made me vaguely uncomfortable.

Did you ever try to deliver a lecture when some hundred and fifty young, attractive women are staring at you? Once, still at St. Ignatius, when I had to play my violin in front of an audience of parents at the annual concert, my professor told me to imagine the whole public being naked. It was funny, at the time. Now, the idea filled me with panic. One hundred and fifty naked women. In front of me. Staring.

HELP!

I drank three glasses of water before I could utter a word. For the rest of the lecture I desperately tried to keep my bladder under control.

For the umpteenth time, I cleared my throat.

Most of us are aware of the four aspects of the nature of man.

At last I said it, glancing judiciously at the carafe, which my assistant filled with fresh water. He must have thought I was seriously dehydrated. The very sight of more water made me a bit uncomfortable.

The silence stretched.

There are four Kalpas;

Four horses of the apocalypse;

Four man in the fiery pit of Nebuchadnezzar;

There are four aspects of the Egyptian Sphinx;

There are echoes elsewhere in the Old Testament, including the Genesis;

There are others.

This was too much for one lecture. I’ve spent years studying this. I wondered how many of my listeners would notice that two references concern the whole human race, and all others just the individuals. I also wondered if I remembered them all myself.

The Kalpas originate in Esoteric Buddhism. A Kalpa is a day, or a night, of Brahma. It also means an eon, or age. A thousand yuga cycles of 4,320,000 year each is called a Kalpa. Thus a Kalpa is 4,320,000,000 years, which is pretty close to the 4.5 billion years stipulated by our scientists for the age of our planet.

Puranas, however, had been completed between 400 to 1500 CE, ah... Era Vulgaris (I allowed myself a slight smirk, with SJs I had a grounding in Latin), ah... Common Era, some little time before our present day cosmologists came to the same, or at least a very similar, conclusion.

I looked around. I had their attention.

There are minor distinctions between Hindu, Jain and Buddhist cosmology. The Buddhists also divide their existence into four periods of time corresponding to the four stages; into the cycle of formation, continuance, decline, and disintegration.

The Hindus call those periods the golden age, which is followed by the silver, the bronze and the iron. As in the Bible, in the Torah or the Pentateuch, better known as the Old Testament, we start with the spiritual age, in Eden, and then, slowly descend to our present, materialistic level. That’s right. We devolve. The age of Kali, the last and the most materialistic age, is followed by the dissolution of the universe.

Before I realized the dangers inherent in my action, I sipped—no drank—another glass of water. Well, half a glass. For some reason my throat was parched. Can the mere presence of 150 women parch your throat?

It bloody-well can, if you’re a virgin.

This thesis is backed up in Jainism and, of course, the Christian religion accepts the concept of the end of the world. At least in Jainism there is also a concept of renewal, allowing for rotational progression of various stages. So don’t worry. Both the Hindus and the Jains think of the creation and the dissolution of the universe as a cyclic process.

I glanced at my audience. They seemed spellbound. Almost scared. I couldn’t help smiling. I was beginning to gain some confidence. Some. On the other hand, it’s just possible that they haven’t understood a single word. I was well aware that the info I was presenting sounded disjointed. For some reason, I just  couldn’t concentrate.

We might be well advised to think of the universe as a state of consciousness. From the material point of view, it is already essentially empty space. It’s not there, really.

Not really.

A hand went up.

Yes? I might as well ask what bothered the listener, I mused.

And then I froze. The hand belonged to the young lady who acted as my cushion on my stair-fall. It belonged to Ambrosia. I swallowed hard. I suddenly realized that I didn’t even know her surname. She had been addressed as Ambrosia by the man who’d helped her up. I remembered her name because of the drink. The drink of the Gods on Olympus? At the time, I had been too busy trying to extricate myself from an embarrassing situation and make a quick getaway.

Yes? I repeated. I was going to mention her name but thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was to make this personal.

Professor Jones, Sir, are you referring to interstellar space as being empty?

Well, I, ah... why do you ask? I was going to say innocently and you are...? but I didn’t dare. She might have replied with a question haven’t we already met?

Because, Sir, I thought you might be referring to the void at the nuclear level where the atoms themselves are well in excess of 99% empty space.

And you are...? I couldn’t resist it.

My name is Milos. Ambrosia Milos. I am a post-grad at the physics department. Just visiting...

Her voice trailed off. Could it be that she didn’t remember me? Not recognize me? Suddenly, solid or void, the universe was more inviting. My mind was working overtime. Ernest Rutherford Physics Building at McGill University on, ah... 3600 rue University... Department of Physics... McGill University... I walked past it every day on my way home.

Of course, you are. I mean... My mouth was dry again. I was really referring to it in, ah, more metaphysical terms. I raised one eyebrow. I had no idea what I had been referring to.

Thank you, Professor, the young lady replied.

"Thank you, Miss Milos," I offered, accenting the ‘you’.

Actually, questions were always welcome. They made otherwise dry lectures more alive.

Milos. Wasn’t there a Milosz? A Polish Nobel Prize recipient for literature? Or was he Czech? Or Russian? Was she Greek or Slav?

I dabbed my forehead with my handkerchief. People who only use paper tissues had never given a lecture. Not to one hundred