The Rising: Antichrist is Born / Before They Were Left Behind Read online

  “All of it is craziness. That’s what you think?”

  He looked at his watch. “Really, Marilena, I don’t have time in my life for this. You have your meeting tonight with the zevzec, and Baduna and I—”

  “Don’t call her a nincompoop, Sorin. That’s beneath you. Disagree with her if you must, but—”

  “Marilena! I was being kind! Don’t you see? I called her a zevzec because that’s what I believe you have become!”

  Marilena stood and paced. This was no good. She was going to have to leave Sorin, depend upon the state, have a child, and raise it on her own.

  “Can we please go now, dear?” he said.

  “Don’t call me dear again,” she said. “Not anymore. I know what you really think of me.”

  “Oh, Marilena! What’s become of you? We both know I am not a soft person. I have none of the social graces that should accompany my profession. I don’t speak forthrightly to cause pain, and I get no joy from it. But I would not otherwise be true to myself nor constructive to you. What is it now? Tell me what’s on your mind. I’ll try to be sensitive, though I make no guarantees.”

  “You’ll hear me out?”

  “I promise.”

  He always kept his word; she had to give him that.

  She took a deep breath. “I want a child.”

  Sorin covered his eyes, then let his hands slide to cover his mouth, as if to keep from blurting out something injurious.

  Before he could change his mind, Marilena sped through what had happened to her, how the urge had come over her long before the Tuesday night meetings, and yet how those meetings and that woman, Viviana, had spoken so specifically to her.

  When Sorin took his hands from his mouth, she plunged on, not wanting to hear him. “Just last week we talked after class, and she assured me she knew what was weighing on me. She said she had my answer. Tonight I will make her tell me what she meant. Oh, I know what you think of her and the whole idea of hearing from spirits in a world beyond us. But I can ignore it no longer. Discount the messages, discount the spiritual plane, but don’t you dare deprive me of the right to feel what I did not choose to feel. I want a child. I need a child. I will have a child.”

  “Well,” he said at last, “good for you.”

  “Good for me?”

  “And not so good for me.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “As well you should have been,” he said. “Have I ever given you the impression that I changed my stance on this subject? I don’t want to be a father again. And the last thing I want is my life and routine interrupted.”

  “Fine.”

  “I am clear then?”

  “You have always been clear, Sorin. Do you think so little of me that this is all you can express? No sympathy, no interest, no joy in what I have come to realize about myself? Are you not happy for me?”

  “If this makes you happy, I am happy for you. Naturally, myriad questions arise. Where will you get this child? Where will you raise it? How—?”

  “So it was nebunie for me to even dream that you might—?”

  “Folly to think this would happen in my apartment, in the midst of my papers and books and work? Of course.”

  “Will you miss me?” she said.

  Finally she detected a glimmer of compassion. “That I can say in all truthfulness, Marilena. I will miss you.”

  “Not all of me.”

  “No, not all of you. Not this current obsession and how it seems to have affected your intellect. But there is much engaging about you, and we have been together a long time.”

  “And we have had our good days, haven’t we, Sorin?”

  “We have indeed. I shall have many lifetime memories.”

  “That makes me bold enough to make one request.”

  “Just to save you any grief, let me warn you that this request should be something I might conceivably be able to fulfill. In other words, it must not include inter—”

  “Interrupting your life, yes, I understand. Sorin, I would appreciate it more than I can express if you would—in light of what we have had together—find it within yourself not to divorce me until after I have had my child.”

  “But you don’t even know where you might go to be impregnated.”

  “That is my problem. I want the child to have a legitimate name. Your name.”

  “I have no interest in impregnating you, conventionally or otherwise.”

  “I know. I will pay to have that done, but I want my son or daughter to be a Carpathia.”

  Sorin stood and she sat. He was not a big man, but he seemed to tower over her. “Should I agree to that condiţe, it would not obligate me to—”

  She looked up at him. “Any duties or responsibilities as a father, no.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Perhaps I should draft a document that requires you to abandon my name should the child ever do anything to embarrass me.”

  “Are we not getting way ahead of ourselves, Sorin?”

  “Perhaps. But I must consider my reputation.”

  __

  That night at the meeting, Viviana Ivinisova seemed in a hurry. She went through her usual litany of telling the past, the future, communicating with cooperative spirits, lighting the candle, and praying to the angel of light, and she even threw in some tarot reading and interpretation.

  And this time it was not Marilena’s imagination that the woman continually looked her way. In fact, Marilena changed seats after a midsession break, and clearly Viviana kept catching her eye, regardless of where she sat. As if there would have been another option, and apparently to be sure nothing was misunderstood, at the end of the meeting Viviana pointed at Marilena and said, “Dear, could you see me after?”

  This time they didn’t walk to the bus, didn’t visit a bistro, didn’t engage in small talk. Rather, Ms. Ivinisova took Marilena by the arm and led her into a remote, dark corner of the library downstairs. “I have critically important messages to you from the spirit world that would have been inappropriate to share with the others.”

  “Oh, Viviana, I’m not sure how much stock I put in such—”

  “Nonsense, Mrs. Carpathia. I have sensed a psychic energy in you from the first moment I saw you. I see an aura about you in class. I have been given clear messages for you that seem to resonate deeply within you. You’re not telling me, are you, that you need to be further persuaded?”

  Marilena was convinced, but she couldn’t force back that rational, black-and-white mind of hers. “Perhaps more proof wouldn’t be all bad.”

  Viviana sighed. “I must tell you, skepticism risks offending even the most positive spirits.”

  “If they are for real, and if they have genuinely given you what you call critically important messages for me, I can’t imagine they will abandon me if I require convincing.”

  “What will it take?”

  This was new. Viviana actually appeared perturbed. Strangely, this somehow empowered Marilena. Despite the fact that she had been rocked by the truth of everything Ms. Ivinisova had said in the previous twelve weeks, still Marilena felt like a sheep, being led into areas of belief she had never before countenanced. At least now she would apply some academic protocol, if only insisting on some evidence.

  “I want you to be more specific,” she said. “I want you to tell me something for me alone that could not be applied to anyone else’s situation.”

  “All right,” Viviana said, as if backed into a corner. “Come.”

  Marilena followed her out of the stacks of disks, past vast shelves of books, and past a field of long, wide, shiny tables sparsely populated with people mostly reading newspapers. Finally they found a bevy of study carrels everyone else seemed to have abandoned. Viviana grabbed an extra chair so they could both crowd into one nook. She took Marilena’s hands in hers, bowed her head, and closed her eyes.

  “Listen to me carefully,” she said, as Marilena felt her chest tighten. “A spirit of high rank tells me that you
r need for a child will cause a permanent break in your relationship with your husband.”

  Marilena’s breathing became labored, her mouth dry. “True,” she said.

  “True? Already?”

  “Yes.”

  “The spirit says you should continue to push for your husband to stay with you until the child is born so he may bear your husband’s name.”

  “He? It will be a son?”

  “That is the way it was rendered. The fact that the spirit used the phrase ‘continue to push’ indicates you have already broached this with your husband.”

  “I have.”

  “Do you need more?”

  “Is there more?”

  “If there was, would you need it?”

  “I would certainly want to hear it,” Marilena said.

  “Of course, but if you require it still to be convinced, I sincerely fear we will try the patience of the spirits.”

  “No. It is fair to say I am thoroughly convinced.”

  “I would be too, dear.”

  “But if there is more to hear, may I hear it?”

  SEVEN

  THERE WAS MORE to hear all right. In fact, Viviana Ivinisova requested a meeting with Marilena and her husband at their apartment.

  “Whatever for?” Marilena said. She told Viviana where Sorin stood on the issue.

  The older woman sat silent for a moment. “Well,” she said finally, “it does sound as if you need to prepare him. Naturally, I have run into my share of skepticism over the years. I am not intimidated by it or by higher IQs than my own. It’s all right with me if he receives me with a distractie, but—”

  “Amusement would be the least of it,” Marilena said. “He might want to debate you all day and night.”

  “I don’t mind that either. What I would not want is for him to feel impatient, invaded, anything that makes him angry.”

  Marilena agreed to try to prepare Sorin, to nudge him toward agreeing to at least meet with Ms. Ivinisova some evening.

  “My greatest fear,” Marilena said, “is whether I can manage this on my own. Where will I live? Will I have enough to support myself and my child? Sorin has said he will force me to absolve him of any financial responsibility, even if the child bears his name.”

  Ms. Ivinisova seemed to suppress a smile, and Marilena couldn’t decide whether the woman had a delicious secret or simply found her entertaining. “What will I do, ma’am?”

  Viviana leaned forward and embraced her. “Must you hurry off, or do you have a few minutes?”

  “Nothing is more important than this,” Marilena said.

  “Let me tell you how I assess your spiritual journey so far,” Viviana said. “Correct me where I am mistaken. You came to my classes for diversion, something to take your mind off your longing for a child. Your intellect made you a skeptic, yet you couldn’t deny the truths that reached to your core.”

  Marilena nodded after every assertion.

  “During the days between meetings you tried to poke holes in everything you heard and experienced, but eventually you could deny it no longer. There was something to this and something specifically for you.”

  Marilena shrugged and nodded again.

  “By now you are convinced. There is personal interest in you from the spirit world, and it is quickly becoming clear that this will benefit you. Your dream will come true. You will have a child.”

  “And yet my life may grow more complicated, much more difficult.”

  “That is where you are wrong, so wrong.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “So far,” Ms. Ivinisova said, “you have still come at this new vista in your life from an academic point of view. Oh, it has made you emotional, opened your eyes to a new world, excited you. But largely you are still clinical about it. You’re a believer, but you are focusing on the cause and effect. ‘If it’s true, what will happen?’ ”

  “I see. Yes. How should I be viewing it?”

  “I would hope, Marilena, that you would soon deduce from all this that the interest shown in you from the other side feels personal because it is. The spirits care for you, want the best for you. You should feel loved.”

  Marilena squinted. Feel loved. “To be honest, I’m still scared.”

  “Naturally. People have misconceptions about spirit-world beings. They can’t imagine them loving those of us on this side of the veil.”

  “But who is it, then? Who cares for me? loves me? Unnamed, unseen spirits? And why?”

  Viviana stood and reached for Marilena. She rose, and the older woman said, “Let’s walk.”

  The evening was cool, and Viviana strolled with her arm gently around Marilena’s shoulder. “Let me tell you my story,” she said. “Perhaps it will shed some light on yours.”

  Viviana explained that when she was growing up in Russia, her parents had for decades considered themselves holdovers from the past when atheistic Communism had been the accepted order. “A form of democracy swept the Soviet Union, but religion flagged. There may have been pockets of Christians and devout Jews, Muslims certainly, who practiced their faiths as minuscule minorities. But there was no real uprising of people of faith, despite the new freedoms. My parents reviled religion, but they were also contrarians to the state. They despised Communism and had never been card-carrying atheists. They allowed that there might be supernatural beings and worlds beyond knowing. This manifested itself when they dabbled in what some called the occult sciences.”

  “Demons and such?”

  “Well, that’s complicated. My parents did not believe in heaven and hell and God versus Satan. They believed in the powers of good and evil. But their foray into spiritualism began as recreation. My mother as much as admitted to me that she began speaking positively of clairvoyance and the like merely to offend the sensibilities of her scholarly friends.”

  “Friends like my husband.”

  “Much like him, yes. But like you too.”

  “But I have become convinced,” Marilena said.

  “To a point.”

  “No, I believe.”

  “You may believe, but you don’t take it personally.”

  “In many ways I do,” Marilena said. “I don’t mean to be contentious, but I’m not following you. Clearly something or someone has communicated to you my innermost thoughts and longings, and you’re prophesying that they will be fulfilled. I want to believe that with all that’s within me, but—”

  “But you are not yet at a place intellectually where you can accept that just because the clairvoyance is clearly legitimate the eventual reality will bear it out.”

  “I’ll believe it when I am pregnant.”

  “Of course. And until then, though it all seems real, you hold back from loving whomever it is who loves you.”

  Marilena stopped. “What are you saying?”

  Viviana let her arm slide from the younger woman’s shoulder. “Oh, dear one, someone in the other realm loves you and has chosen to honor you, and you remain so atent, so sceptic. . . .”

  “Wouldn’t you be cautious and skeptical if you were me?”

  “But I was you, dear! My parents had fun with tarot and clairvoyance and even Ouija at first. And then they discovered the truth of it all. By the time I was six years old, they had me communicating with spirits through the Ouija board every day. It took me a few years, but eventually I realized that the spirits on the other side of the messages knew me, cared for me, loved me. I had been chosen to be a channel, a communicator, an advocate to the mortal world of the skeptics and the cautious.”

  “You believe I have been similarly chosen?”

  “No! You have been chosen to bear a child! Why would they care whether you became a mother unless that child was destined for greatness? Yes, they love and care about you and want you fulfilled, but that would be easy. They could help you bear a child. But they care so much, it goes deeper. And I sense you’re not getting it.”

  Marilena found a park bench and sat, looki
ng up at Viviana. “And if and when I get it, as you say, what will that mean to me?”

  “That is the question I was waiting for,” Viviana said. “First, you will be the mother of a special child, one close to the hearts and minds of the spirits. And second—and this is my deepest desire for you—it should make you love the spirits as much as they love you.”

  “Love the spirits?”

  “It hits you as foreign, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” Marilena said. “They have not struck me as personal beings to this point.”

  “I know. I can tell. That’s what I am driving at.”

  “But they aren’t human, are they? Are they ghosts, the departed?”

  Viviana sat next to Marilena, and the younger woman could see her breath. “No. No, they are not. They are angels.”

  “Angels.”

  “Angels. And they love you.”

  “But if I am to believe in angels, I must also believe in God.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t say that I do.”

  “Perhaps it is not the God you think,” Viviana said.

  “Then who?”

  “This is not the God of the Christians. Not the God of the Jews. Not Allah. But he loves you and has chosen you and longs for you to love him.”

  Marilena shook her head. “Whoever he is, he remains too remote. I want to see him, touch him, communicate with him.”

  “If you could see him, you would no longer need faith. But, Marilena, you should require little faith, because he has communicated so directly to you through me. Can you so quickly forget that he has given me the power to know your history, read your thoughts, predict your future?”

  “I know. I know. But he seems too impersonal for me to love.”

  “He’s telling me that this is what he wants.”

  “Fair enough, but I must be honest. I will not express love I don’t feel.”

  “He demands allegiance.”

  “I suppose that is fair too. Perhaps I am unworthy.”

  “Of course you are, dear. That’s what should make you love him all the more.”

  “And if I don’t find it within myself?”

  Viviana stood and stepped away, briefly turning her back. When she spun to face Marilena, her jaw was set, her eyes cold in the faint light from a distant streetlamp. “I shouldn’t speak for him unless he tells me something specific.”