Jared Carter Poetry

Epiphany

There had been no rain since the morning of our arrival. A few drops had pitted the dust while we climbed the long, barren road that led up through the ramparts and into the narrow streets of the town. But after that, nothing. By noon each day the sky was bleached and clear and empty of clouds.

On the third day, in the marketplace, I found a copy of an old guidebook that mentioned the place of the epiphany. That evening, in the café, as we leafed through the book's tattered pages, we decided to try to find the site, in order to determine if the building had survived the ravages of the recent civil wars.

The next morning we made our way through the passageways and along the whitewashed walls, searching until we came to a peculiar door set beneath a granite arch. Its thick iron hinges were shaped like outstretched wings. The cedar planks were deeply grooved and splintered. I knocked.

A wrinkled face appeared at the grate. An old woman opened the door and led us through a corridor into a courtyard enclosed by a gallery of sandstone columns. Their capitals had been effaced by sun and rain and by the corrosive fumes of motor-scooters. An ancient Vespa and half a dozen rusty bicycles leaned against the inner walls.

The old woman left us. Across from where we stood was the ruined edifice. It was at least twenty meters high and made of rose- colored sandstone. In the pitiless noon light the stone was porous and insubstantial, and in certain places it seemed to fade away altogether. At the ground level there was no porch, no visible door. All the entrances had been bricked up long ago.

We began to look around. The courtyard was swept clean. Plantain and chickweed sprang up here and there among the stones. A speckled rooster picked its way along the edge of a central fountain. No water flowed from the mouth of the gargoyle; the catch-basin was dusty and coated with scale. A little girl darted out into the sunlight but turned back when the old woman called to her.

On the far side of the courtyard, beneath the ruined façade, three wooden chairs with steep, hand-carved backs had been set out on a low platform. The middle chair, shaded by a tasseled yellow canopy, was empty. In the chair on the left an old man was sleeping. A black felt hat was pulled down over his eyes. He wore a sheepskin jacket, loose-fitting leather leggings, and scuffed, down-at-heel cowboy boots.

On the right sat a bearded man wearing a red caftan, a long string of polished ebony beads, and aviator sunglasses. His feet were bare. He drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. Metal bracelets jingled on his wrists. Occasionally he turned in the direction of the sounds made by those who were filing into the courtyard.

Behind us, others from the street had begun to pass through the shadows of the loggia and out into the light. They crossed the courtyard and stopped a few paces from the platform. Most were from the marketplace—girls who watched over plates of sweets, a silversmith's apprentice, a man who offered broken cell phones for sale. Two soldiers in ill-fitting khaki uniforms knelt down and drew lines in the dust. The four or five pilgrims, who were tanned and gaunt, wore plastic cockleshells on the sleeves of their gowns.

At one time the front of the building had been covered with figures carved in stone, but only fragments remained now—a headless torso, a portion of a sandaled foot, the severed fingers of a hand still grasping a lintel. Even these were streaked and stained by years of weathering. Were they classical or medieval? Had they been intentionally defaced? I could not tell. Above, blank ledges and empty niches converged on three small, arched windows beneath a high-peaked roof.

A bell tolled. Deep within the building a gong may have been struck. Somewhere behind the façade, machinery began to whir and crank. Rusty gears strained to reel in hidden cables. Up high, the shutters on the left window opened, but the interior was empty. The shutters on the right opened even more slowly. There was nothing behind them.

In the central window the shutters trembled, then swung apart, making no sound. A woman in the crowd called out. The people began to chant—a name, or perhaps a phrase, but in any case a series of monosyllables repeated in singsong fashion.

Shielding our eyes against the glare, we peered up at the window. It was filled entirely by a man's head and shoulders. He was hairless and moon-faced; his eyes were bloodshot, his skin uncreased and smooth. When he smiled, no teeth showed. He gazed about for a moment, then nodded. The singing stopped.

Something bright appeared in the darkness behind him—a pigeon, or a dove, beating frantically as it struggled to get past his body and out into the open air. A second creature squeezed by on his right, a third on his left, followed by another, and another. Dozens and then hundreds of pale, fluttering birds forced their way through the window and out into the space beyond. Their brightness condensed around the man's head like a halo, then swirled away and melted over the rooftops.

For a moment I was reminded of an incident in childhood when one of my playmates had plucked a dandelion and held it close to the skin of my forearm, where it cast a strange, tremulous glow. As the birds streamed and eddied around the man in the window, his face took on a dazzling, shimmering quality. The light was flickering and unstable; at any moment it seemed he might burst into flames.

He continued to look down on the people gathered below. They shouted and cried out and fell to their knees. Pilgrims threw themselves weeping to the ground; soldiers covered their eyes; women sobbed, clinging to one another. The bell tolled again, and the gong sounded. The shutters on all three windows banged shut.

The bald man was gone, the torrent of birds had been cut off in mid-stream. Everything was still. A cloud of dust, shaken loose from the shutters, drifted out over the heads of the faithful. A single bit of fluff spiraled down through the haze.

Still staring upward, the people in the crowd began to call and plead for more. They clapped their hands. When nothing happened, they looked at one another, shrugged, and glanced about the courtyard. Finally they began to move toward the entrance.

On the raised platform, the man in the sheepskin jacket had slept through it all, his felt hat still covering his face. The younger man with the sunglasses had risen halfway out of his chair, grasping its arms for balance—as though somewhere, high above the rooftops, he could still detect the faint beating of many wings.