Galilee by Clive Barker

Author:Clive Barker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Unknown, Horror, Fantasy, General, fiction
ISBN: 9780007355563
Publisher: B E Trice Pub
Published: 1999-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

"That face I just saw…"

"What about it?"

"Did Nicodemus ever see it?"

Despite her fatigue she was amused by this. There was a hint of a smile in her voice when she replied. "Are you asking me if I scared him off?" I nodded. "Then I'll tell you: that face, as you call it, is what he chiefly loved me for."

"Really?" I must have sounded astonished-as indeed I was-because she replied somewhat defensively:

"He had aspects that were just as terrible."

"Yes I know."

"Of course you know. You saw some of what he could do."

"But that wasn't all he was," I said.

"Just as what you saw a moment ago isn't all of me."

"But it's the truest part, isn't it?" I said. Under other circumstances I surely wouldn't have pressed her on this business so closely, but I knew the chances of my having the freedom to interrogate her like this again were nil. If I was to know who Cesaria Yaos was before the house of Barbarossa came crashing down, it was now or never.

"The truest part?" she said. "No. I don't think I have one face that's truer than any other. I used to be worshipped in dozens of temples, you know."

"I know."

"They're all heaps of rubble now. Nobody remembers how I was loved…" Her voice trailed off. She'd apparently lost her point. "What was I saying?"

"Nobody remembering."

"Before that."

"All the temples-"

"Oh yes. So many temples, with statues and embroideries, all depicting me. But not one of them resembled any other."

"How do you know?"

"Because I visited them," she said. "When your father and I had a spat we'd go our separate ways for a while.

He'd go find himself some poor woman to seduce, and I'd go touring my holy sites. It's comforting when you're feeling a little woebegone."

"Hard to imagine."

"What? Me, woebegone? Oh I can be self-pitying, just like anybody else."

"No. I meant it's hard to imagine how it must feel, going into a temple where you're being worshipped."

"Oh it can be wonderful. Wandering among your devotees."

"Were you ever tempted to tell them who you were?"

"I did it many, many times. I usually picked somebody who wasn't a particularly reliable witness. The very old. The very young. Somebody with a sanity problem, or a saint, which is often one and the same."

"Why do that? Why not show yourself to somebody literate, intelligent? Somebody who could spread your gospel?"

"Somebody like you?"

"If you like."

"Is that what your book's going to be: one last desperate attempt to put your father and me back up on our pedestals?" What did she want to hear from me? I wondered. And if I chose incorrectly, would I be subjected to her fury again? "Is that what you're up to, Maddox?"

I decided on the truth. "No," I said, "I'm simply telling the story as best I can."

"And this conversation? Will it be in your book?"

"I'll put it in if it seems relevant."

There was a silence. Finally, she said: "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether you do or you don't. Stories; temples.

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