A Creed for the Third Millennium (45 page)

Dr Joshua Christian had probably the
least idea of anyone as to what was happening; how big his march was, how
colossal an undertaking, how terrifying it might be if things went wrong. He was
going to walk from New York City to Washington, D.C., and further than that he
couldn't think Wouldn't think. Dr Carriol had told him that he would be expected
to make a speech at the end of the march on the banks of the Potomac, but he
wasn't dismayed or fearful. Words came so easily to his tongue, now as before.
If they wanted him to speak, he would speak Such a little, little thing to do.
Why did these little things he did mean so much? To walk — what was that except
the most natural activity of all? To talk — how easy. To hold out his hands in
comfort — a nothing. He could offer no real solace. That they could only find
within themselves, among themselves. Yet wasn't that what they had been doing
all along? He was merely a sounding board, a catalyst of the mass mind, a
conductor of spiritual currents.

These days he felt ill all the time. He
walked in a most dreadful pit of physical and mental pain. Though he had told no
one, nor showed anyone, he was indeed disintegrating. The bones of his feet and
legs were beginning to flaw, jarred by the last months of walking without
caring, walking without inner warmth. He had learned to tuck his hands inside
his parka pockets when he walked, for in the first months when he had held them
down his sides, his shoulders had begun literally to give way in their sockets.
And his head was sinking into his neck, and his neck was sinking into his chest,
and his chest was sinking into his belly, and his belly and his chest and his
neck and his head were all sitting lumped on top of his creaking pelvis. When
the fire had gone out because the vital ichor was all drained away, he had
ceased to care for himself; too often he didn't bother to don the fresh
underwear Billy bought faithfully, too often he forgot his socks, or he donned
his trousers without noticing how the thermal layers beneath had rumpled and
crinkled into hard little tubes along his skinny legs, around his skinny
sides.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He
knew this great walk would be his last. And he had given up trying to think of
what he was going to do with himself when he could no longer walk. The future
had no future. When a man's work is done, when a man has burned himself out,
what is left to him? Peace, brother, his soul answered tranquilly. Peace in the
longest, soundest sleep of all. How beautiful! How eminently to be
desired!

Lying full length upon his bed in that
last night before the March of the Millennium was due to begin, he worked the
miracle of his mind upon his poor macerated body, softened to mush by the sweat
he generated inside his polar garments. But cease thy complaining, O bones,
leave off thy rawness, O skin, be gone from me with thy sharp pain, O spine,
unknot thy ropy sinews, O muscles. I will lie in sweet oblivion, I will taste no
more pain, I am not me, I am not anything, I am blankness, I am nonexistent.
Lead weights of coins for Cheiron be on my two eyelids in readiness, stick fast
my lashes, roll, O balls of my two eyes, within thy orbits, roll up and out of
this conscious living agony…

Just after the sun was risen on a chaste
cushion of sweet and cloudless air, and the tops of
the skyscrapers around Wall Street flashed golden and pink and copper, Dr Joshua
Christian commenced his last walk. With him were his two brothers, his sister,
his two sisters-in-law, and for the first few blocks his mother too, until her
fashionable shoes forced her sore little feet to tiptoe quietly into the back
seat of a car parked round the corner, under orders to trail the VIP walkers in
case of distress. An ambulance also trailed the VIP walkers, in case of extreme
distress.

Liam O'Connor the Mayor of New York was
walking and fully expected to finish the march, for he had been in training for
weeks and had been quite an athlete in his youth. Not to be outdone, Senator
David Sims Hillier VII was right in there beside the Mayor, also intending to
walk to Washington. Governor Hughlings Canfield of New York, Governor William
Griswold of Connecticut, and Governor Paul Kelly of Massachusetts were all
walking, so determined to finish that they had been training since Bob Smith
announced the March back in February. Every New York City councilman was
walking, so was the commissioner of police, the fire chief, and the city
comptroller. A large group of city firemen was walking in uniform, the American
Legion had gathered outside the Plaza Hotel to join the March, and the band of
the one remaining Manhattan high school was present, complete with cheerleaders
and every other student to boot. Black Harlem's remains were assembled around
125th Street, and what was left of the Puerto Rican West Side was gathered at
the entrance to the George Washington Bridge.

It was cold and there was a fairly sharp
wind blowing from around the corners to pounce on the marchers, but on this
occasion Dr Christian elected to walk with his head unhooded and his hands
ungloved. He made no ceremonious start; he simply appeared from out of the
hallowed portals of the bank where he had waited since well before dawn, strode out into
the middle of the street without seeming to notice anyone, and kept on walking.
His family moved in a group just behind him, the waving smiling dignitaries came
next with the high school band to give them a tune, and then the thousands who
had cheered Dr Christian's appearance tacked on obediently as the waiting police
gave them leave to begin.

Dr Christian was quiet and a little
stern, looking neither left nor right; he lifted his chin and aimed his eyes at
a point somewhere between the CBS and ABC camera vans as they cruised along in
front of him, having outmanoeuvred NBC for the crown of the road. The media were
under strict orders not to get in Dr Christian's way at any time, nor to attempt
to interview him as he walked. No one broke the taboo, especially after the
first four blocks, when no walking journalist had the breath left for questions.
Dr Christian was walking very fast, as if the only way he could finish was to
commence with a winding up that would allow him to coast later.

Ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty
thousand, ninety thousand… Ever growing, the crowd came out of every side street
as he passed to latch on behind, fed into the back ranks of the walkers by the
soldiers and police who lined the way shoulder to shoulder, saluting Dr
Christian very gravely as he came abreast of them, a continuous undulation of
moving arms that went for miles. Their buttons and buckles and badges gleamed,
their uniforms were freshly cleaned and pressed, they looked and felt
wonderful.

From SoHo and the Village issued a great
stream of colourful people dancing to every musical instrument they could find,
feathers in their caps, scarves floating in divers hues, beads and sequins and
ribbons and fringes and braids glittering. A few precious helicopters hovered
vibrating like dragonflies around the south end of Central Park, the cameras
they contained picking up Dr Christian as he emerged from
the canyon of Fifth Avenue with half a million people behind him spreading east
and west along Madison and Park, Sixth and Seventh, moving two hundred abreast
with eyes shining and teeth braving the Manhattan spring wind.

And they tumbled out of Central Park in
his wake, the out-of-towners who had camped and talked and laughed all night,
pouring along and singing as they went. Those within hearing of the jazz bands
strutted and cavorted, those near guitar-playing and lute-playing minstrels
tried to follow their lays, whole hundreds dipped and rose like gangling birds
in a ritual dance, while others marched militantly left-right left-right in time
to brass bands, and some in the vicinity of flutes and pipes seemed to float.
They walked on stilts. They hopped on pogo sticks. Some balanced on their hands.
Many many just walked and enjoyed those who preferred more unusual locomotion.
There were Harlequins and Pierrots, Bozos and Ronald McDonalds, Cleopatras and
Marie Antoinettes, King Kongs and Captain Hooks. A group of over five hundred
came dressed in togas and had a Roman general in full triumphal regalia perched
atop a sedan chair they carried on their shoulders. Martial arts clubs came in
their white baggy gear with various colours of belts. Horses and bicycles were
outlawed, but there were wheelchairs galore with fox tails fluttering from the
ends of makeshift wands and tinsel streamers bedizening their chrome utility. An
organ grinder strolled tunefully along with his monkey on his shoulder, the
monkey squealing and grimacing, the organ grinder singing in a cracked tenor
voice. Three frock-coated gentlemen with stovepipe hats flaunting moth-eaten
peacock feathers skittered along on unicycles because no one had thought
specifically about unicycles and the frock-coated gentlemen won their argument
with the police. A fakir on a bed of nails was carried by a saffron-wrapped, shaven-headed band of
disciples, his hollow belly filled with water lilies. Several Chinese dragons a
hundred people long weaved and caterwauled amid rattles and drums, cymbals and
firecrackers. A black man seven feet tall clad in all the feathered beaded glory
of a Zulu prince stalked through the crowd bearing his assegai, its tip rendered
impotent by a block of cork painted and feathered to seem the skull of an enemy
killed in battle.

Dr Christian's pain-racked sobriety broke
as he came up Fifth Avenue towards the Metropolitan Museum, where a big group of
prospective walkers clustered. They began to pelt him with flowers — daffodils
and hyacinths, a few last crocuses plucked dying from the grass, roses and
cherry blossoms and gardenias. He turned aside from his determined onward plunge
and crossed the great wide avenue to where they stood behind police and
soldiers, and he reached his hands between crusty uniforms to take theirs,
laughing at their joy, stuffing the flowers he had managed to catch behind his
ears, in his pockets, between his fingers. Someone stuck a crown of big daisies
lopsided on his head, and someone else flung a garland of begonias around his
neck. He went on to the steps of the museum adorned the prince of spring, with
their flowers all dredging his brain his flaring brain in perfume. Mounting the
steps, he flung wide his arms, and his shouted words were picked up by the
vigilant loudspeaker microphones the March's high command had commissioned just
in case, his shouted words were relayed instantly to the walking masses and
stilled them in their tracks, and they listened raptly.

'People of this land, I love you!' he
cried, in tears. 'Walk with me into this beautiful world! Our tears will make it
paradise! Throw off your sorrows! Forget your griefs! The race of Man will long
outlast the coldest cold! Walk with me holding the hands of all your brothers
and sisters! For who can mourn the lack of brothers and sisters when every man is
every man's brother and every woman his sister? Walk with me! Walk with me into
our future!'

Then on he went amid a profound roar of
cheers, the flowers falling one by one on the road behind him, gathered up by
those who saw them tumble so, and pressed between the pages of Joshua's book for
all their browning tomorrows.

On he went, the grotesqueness of his body
disciplined into the long swinging rhythmic stride that ate up miles and
defeated those who meant to keep up with him.

He crossed the George Washington Bridge
at noon and led three million people into New Jersey, a vast walking singing
mass that had found a rhythmic cadence of its own, and squeezed itself across
the two levels of the bridge with tranquil ease. They were following this pied
piper of their dreams they cared not where, and worried not at all. Such a
beautiful unique momentous day, on which they knew no trouble, and no pain, and
no ache of the heart.

It was here in New Jersey that the true
genius of the March of the Millennium's high command displayed itself, for as Dr
Carriol had said, he would walk the whole length of I-95 from New York to
Washington atop a low-fenced elevated walkway that straddled the highway's
median divider and raised him far above the throngs who marched down both sides
of the road.

'Hosanna!' they shrieked. 'Hallelujah!
Bless you all of your days for loving us! God keep you and thank God for you,
Joshua Joshua Joshua christian!'

And they spread like a slow and sluggish
delta of hairy brassy ball bearings, an ocean of bobbing heads, through the slag
heaps and ancient industrial wastelands of dying New Jersey, through the old
boarded-up towns of Newark and Elizabeth, through the green dairy meadows and
the plaited strands of railroad yards, with Dr Christian at their head atop his
walkway and all their cares forgotten somewhere
behind them. They helped one another, they passed the exhausted out of their
ranks very tenderly, they slowed down and dwindled away and followed him no
more, passing the torch to those who waited to pick it up.

Five million people walked that first
day, never so many again, glad and free, lame and purged, happy and
together.

Dr Judith Carriol did not march. She
remained inside the Pierre suite to watch the start on television, chewing her
lips and feeling her purpose trickle away between her legs like a slow
haemorrhage. When the head of the vast procession passed by beneath the hotel
she leaned from a window and she watched it painfully, her eyes fixed on Dr
Christian's bare black brush of a head. The sight of those assembled moving
masses left her breathless; she had never before comprehended how many many
people the world contained. Unable to understand the nature of genuine
suffering, now she began to grope after it consciously, stimulated and annoyed
by her own bewilderment. Yet her kind of intellect would never be capable of
assessing quality; only quantity.