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I waited on tenterhooks for Memnoch to begin again. My uneasi-ness was growing. He slowed his pace until we stood well over astone's throw from this little gathering of rocks.
"Closer and closer I came," he said, "to those markers there thatyou see, and with my angelic eyes, powerful as are yours, I spied froma long way off a single human man. But my eyes told me this was nohuman, that on the contrary this man was filled with the fire of God.
"I didn't believe it, and yet I walked on, closer and closer, unableto stop myself, and then stopped where we are now, staring at thefigure who sat on that rock before me, looking up at me here.
"It was God! There was no question. He was sheathed in flesh,dark-skinned from the sun, dark-haired, and had the dark eyes of thedesert people, but it was God! My God!
"And there he sat in this fleshly body, looking at me with humaneyes, and the eyes of God, and I could see the Light totally fillingHim and contained within Him and concealed from the outsideworld by His flesh as if it were the strongest membrane betwixtHeaven and Earth.
"If there was anything more terrible than this revelation, it wasthat He was looking at me and that He knew me and had beenwaiting for me, and that all I felt for Him, as I looked at Him, was love.
"We sing over and over again the songs of love. Is that the onesong intended for all Creation?
"I looked at Him in terror for His mortal parts, His sunburntflesh, His thirst, the emptiness of His stomach and the suffering ofHis eyes in the heat, for the presence of Almighty God inside Him,and I felt overwhelming love.
" 'So, Memnoch,' He said in a man's tongue and with a man'svoice. 'I have come.'
"I fell on my face before Him. This was instinctive. I just laythere, reaching out and touching the very tip of the latchet of Hissandal. I sighed and my body shook with the relief of loneliness, theattraction to God and the satisfaction of it, and I began a giddyweeping just to be'near Him and see Him and I marveled at what this mustmean.
" 'Stand up, come sit near me,' He said. 'I am a man now and I amGod, but I am afraid.' His voice was indescribably moving to me,human yet filled with the wisdom of the divine. He spoke with thelanguage and accents of Jerusalem.
" 'Oh, Lord, what can I do to ease your pain?' I said, for the painwas obvious. I stood up. 'What have you done and why?'
" 'I have done exactly what you tempted me to do, Memnoch,' Heanswered, and His face wore the most dreamlike and engaging smile.
'I have come into the flesh. Only I have done you one better. I wasborn of a mortal woman, planting the seed myself in her, and forthirty years, I have lived on this Earth as a child and as a man, and forlong periods doubting梟o, even forgetting and ceasing to believealtogether梩hat I was really God!'
" 'I see you, I know you. You are the Lord my God,' I said. I wasso struck by His face; by the recognition of Him in the mask of skinthat covered the bones of His skull. In a shivering instant I recoveredthe exact feeling of when I'd glimpsed His countenance in the light,and I saw now the same expression in this human face. I went downon my knees. 'You are my God,' I said.
" 'I know that now, Memnoch, but you understand that I allowedmyself to be submerged in the flesh utterly, to forget it, so that Icould know what it means, as you said, to be human, and whathumans suffer, and what they fear and what they long for, and what theyare capable of learning either here or above. I did what you told me todo, and I did it better than you ever did it, Memnoch, I did it as Godmust do it, to the very extremity!'
" 'Lord, I can scarcely bear the sight of you suffering,' I saidquickly, unable to rip my eyes off Him and yet dreaming of water andfood for Him. 'Let me wipe the sweat from you. Let me get youwater. Let me take you to it in an angelic instant. Let me comfort youand wash you and clothe you in a finery fit for God on Earth.'
" 'No,' He said. 'In those days when I thought myself mad, when Icould scarce remember that I was God, when I knew I had yielded myomniscience deliberately in order to suffer and to know limitations,you might have persuaded me that that was the path. I might haveseized upon your offer. Yes, make me a King. Let that be my way ofrevealing myself to them. But not now. I know Who I am and What Iam, and I know What Will Happen. And you are right, Memnoch,there are souls in Sheol ready for Heaven and I myself will take themthere. I have learnt what you tempted me to learn.'
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