It was no ordinary "being alone." I stood before God without moving. I had some instantaneous flash of walking up a hillside on soft grass, and seeing ahead of me a robed figure, and the old ruminations came to me:That's the glory of it; thousands of years have passed, and yet you can follow Him so close!
"Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry," I whispered.For all my sins because of the fear of Hell, but most of all, most of all, most of all, because I have separated myself from You.
I sat back on the couch, and I felt myself drifting, dangerously close to losing consciousness, as if I'd been beaten by all I'd seen, deservedly so, but my body couldn't sustain the blows. How could I love God so much, and be so utterly sorry for what I had become, and yet not have faith?
I closed my eyes.
"My Toby," Malchiah whispered. "You know the extent of what you've done, but you can't comprehend the extent of what He knows." I felt Malchiah's arm around my shoulder. I felt the tightness of his fingers. And then I was aware that he'd risen, and softly I heard his footfall as he moved across the room.
I looked up to see him standing opposite me, and once again there was that sense of his vivid coloring, his distinct and beguiling shape. A subtle but certain light emanated from him. I wasn't sure, but I thought I'd seen this incandescent light when he first appeared to me at the Mission Inn. I hadn't had an explanation for it and so rejected it as fancy, out of hand.
Now I didn't reject it. I marveled. His face was stricken. He was happy. He seemed almost joyful. And something came back to me from the gospels, about the joy in Heaven when one penitent soul returns.
"Let's make swift work of it," he said eagerly. And this time no jarring images accompanied his softly spoken words.
"You know well enough how things went afterwards," he said. "You never told The Right Man your real name, no matter how he insisted, and in time, when the agencies named you Lucky, it became The Right Man's name for you as well. You took it to yourself with bitter irony, accomplishing one mission after another, and begging not to be idle when you knew what those words meant."
I said nothing. I realized I was looking at him through a thin veil of tears. How I had gloried in my despair. I had been a young man drowning, and fighting a sea beast as if it mattered, as the waves closed overhead.
"In those first years, you worked in Europe often. No matter what the disguise, your height and your high blond coloring served you well. You penetrated banks and fine restaurants, hospitals and fine hotels. You never used a gun again, because you didn't have to. `The Needle Sniper,' said the reports that detailed your obvious triumphs, and always well after the fact. They shuffled the dim conflicting video images of you in vain.
"Alone, you went to Rome and wandered St. Peter's Basilica. You traveled north through Assisi and Siena and Perugia, and on to Milan and Prague and Vienna. Once you went to England just to visit the barren landscape where the Bront sisters had lived and written their great books; alone you watched performances of Shakespeare's plays. You roamed the Tower of London, colorless and lost among the other tourists. You lived a life devoid of witnesses. You lived a life more perfectly alone than anyone could imagine, except perhaps for The Right Man.
"But soon enough you stopped your visits with him. You didn't care for his easy laughter or agreeable observations, or the casual way in which he discussed the things he wanted you to do. Over a phone you could tolerate it; at a dinner table you found it unbearable. The food was tasteless and dry in your mouth.
"And so you drifted far from that last witness who became instead a phantom at the end of a lifeline, and no longer a pretended friend."
He stopped. He turned and ran his fingers over the books on the shelves before him. He looked so solid, so perfect, so unimagined. I think I heard myself gasp, or perhaps it was a dull choking sound that might have meant tears.
"This became your life," he said in the same muted, unhurried voice, "these books of yours and safe trips within this country because it had become too dangerous for you to risk the borders, and you settled here, not nine months ago, drinking in the southern California light as if you'd lived your earlier days in a darkened room."
He turned around.
"I want you now," he said. "But your redemption lies with The Maker, with your faith in Him. The faith is stirring in you. You know that, don't you? You've already asked for forgiveness. You've already admitted the truth of all I revealed to you, and seventy times more. Do you know that God has forgiven you?"
I couldn't answer. How could anyone forgive the things I'd done?
"We're speaking here," he whispered, "of Almighty God."
"I want it," I whispered. "What can I do?" I asked. "What is it that you want of me that might make up for the smallest part of it?"
"Become my helper," he said. "Become my human instrument to help me do what I must do on Earth." He leaned against the book-lined wall, and brought his hands together, as any man might, to make a steeple of his fingers, just below his lips.
"Leave this empty life you've fashioned for yourself," he said, "and pledge to me your wits, your courage, your cunning, and your uncommon physical grace. You're remarkably brave where others might be timid. You're clever where others might be dull. All that you are, I can use."
I smiled at that. Because I knew what he meant. Actually I understood everything he was saying.
"You hear the speech of other humans with the ears of a musician," he continued. "And you love what is harmonious and what is beautiful. For all your sins, yours is an educated heart. All this I can put to work to answer the prayers that The Maker has told me to answer. I've asked for a human instrument to do His bidding. You are that instrument. Entrust yourself to Him and to me."
I felt the first inkling of true happiness I'd known in years. "I want to believe you," I whispered. "I want to be this instrument, but I think, for the first time in my life perhaps, I am genuinely afraid."
"No, you're not. You haven't accepted His forgiveness. You musttrust that He can forgive a man like you. And He has."
He didn't wait for me to respond.
"You cannot imagine the universe that surrounds you. You cannot see it as we see it from Heaven. You cannot hear the prayers rising everywhere, in every century, from every continent, from heart after heart.
"We're needed, you and I, in what for you will be a former era, but not for me, who can see those years as clearly as I see this moment now. From Natural Time to Natural Time you'll go. But I exist in Angel Time, and you'll travel with me through that as well."