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“A majority of earthlings are absorbed by this game,” began Father Hernio. “But why? All have become players and participants, without ever leaving their living rooms. As we rush toward the end of the millennium, a time that we endow with great significance, we seem to be less and less capable of any activity other than following the spinning of Fortuna's wheel. When people do move, it is only to play other games of chance. Gambling is widespread and pernicious. Fortuna, the goddess of luck, rules people with abandon. It is a bad time. False messiahs of every flavor clutter every street corner with cheap boom boxes. You couldn't hear the voice of the Lord if your ears were made of gold. If I had the power of the Turks I would build a new Golden Gate over Jerusalem to keep out both the messiahs and the broadcast of
Gal Gal Hamazal
.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.” The priest excused his outburst.

The good father had gotten himself quite worked up and looked in danger of choking on a piece of date cake. Dr. Luna patted his back vigorously, saying calmly: “In the United States, where the show originated, Vanna White has been made into a goddess as important as the Statue of Liberty. Every country on earth has its own
Wheel of Fortune
now, and many of the foreign hostesses, with the exception of Gala, are even more Vanna-like than the original. It may be true, as the tabloids tell us, that the American Vanna has been replaced by an impostor. There would be a certain logic in this.”

Mother Superior, seated ceremonially at the head of the table, had kept her peace as long as she could. “What logic, dear friend? I have listened to this nonsense for far too long. This is a day we should rejoice in the Lord, and what do we speak of?
Television!
” She said this word with as much contempt as she could muster. “Does television have a heart? Is it made of flesh, blood, and spirit? Is it an altar for faith?” She put down her fork, on which a piece of roast duck was still impaled, and answered her own question. “No, it is not. It is only a foolish glass eye, like a vain young woman's mirror! All we see in it is a picture of our faithless souls. Forgive them, Mother of God, for their viewing habit!”

“But Mother,” Father Hernio said, trying to hide his amusement, “there is even a saint of television, officially blessed by the pope—Saint Cecily of television and multimedia.”

“The pope,” Mother Superior said curtly, “is a politician. Christ our Lord is not. When he returns he will throw away much of the pope's wardrobe.”

“Where do you suppose he will return?” asked Father Hernio.

“
Where?
To Jerusalem, of course.”

Mother Superior was sure of this; it was why the sisters of the order lived here.

“Oh, I don't think so,” said Father Hernio gravely.

“And where do
you
think that Christ will go when he returns to this vale of tears?” Mother Superior spoke sharply.

“CNN headquarters in Atlanta,” replied the father.

Amid the laughter that followed, Andrea noticed that Sister Rodica was crying. Two tears, one on each cheek, were making their way to the corners of her mouth. Andrea reached under the table and found the nun's hands folded tightly in her lap. She pried a hand loose and held it clumsily, squeezing her fingers. But Sister Rodica tore her hand away and bolted from the table, making some excuse of checking on the coffee. No one seemed to notice, but Sister Maria looked quizzically at Andrea and shrugged.

Quite oblivious to Mother Superior's injunction to change the subject, Mr. Rabindranath said that he had seen an interesting interview with a good friend of poor Gala.

This young woman claimed that she and Gala had discussed many times the disappearance of Kashmir Birani, the Indian hostess of
Kismet Chakkar
. Gala had feared that a similar fate might befall her. She'd even had a premonition. The interviewer asked the woman what Gala's reaction had been to the rumor that Vanna White herself had been abducted by aliens and replaced by an alien-controlled clone. Gala had laughed at this, the friend reported, and lectured her at length about the propensity of people to endow their manufactured gods with miraculous powers. Gala was some kind of Marxist, the woman had explained.

“Mr. Rabindranath,” Mother Superior said severely, “what are you waiting for? I mean, what are the Hindus waiting for?”

“An avatar.”

“Is he very much like our returning Christ?”

“I believe so,” Mr. Rabindranath said, not quite sure.

“I would like to ask this question of everyone here. I believe that it matters very much. Who are you—or more precisely, your tradition—waiting for?”

The question startled no one, but it was serious. The table fell silent.

“Since I have the dubious benefit of having been born within one faith and ended up dedicated to another, let me begin,” said Lama Cohen. “As a Buddhist I believe in the cessation of the cycle of incarnation and reincarnation. I believe in the return of the world to the source of light, not in the return of a light-being to the source of pain.”

“In other words,” Mother Superior said shrewdly, “you believe in the End of the World but not in its redemption.”

“The End is the redemption,” the Lama said flatly. “Why increase suffering, even if it's the suffering of the Messiah?”

Father Zahan said that the Yuin also believed in the arrival at the End of Time of an avatar. His name, even his shape, was unknown, as was the date of his return.

“I must admit, however, that I am here in Jerusalem as a result of signs pointing to the return of our avatar.”

Pressed to explain, he would say only that a dream had guided him.

Magh Tuiredh, who was as taciturn as his name was hard to pronounce, nodded in agreement.

“I am also here as the result of a dream. I was told by Lugh, the Celt god, to come to Jerusalem. He showed me a scroll I couldn't read. The End Times are near.”

The pronouncement of the gloomy Celt dampened the party's spirits. A gust of wind tore at the convent's roof. The nearness of the End Times was a feeling that everyone shared.

“We Hopi believe that there are nine worlds,” Earl Smith explained. “Three have already been destroyed. We live in the fourth world, which will be destroyed by fire in a war started by China or Israel. That time is soon. It will come when Saquasohuh, the Blue Star kachina, will dance in the plaza and take off his mask. He represents a blue star, far off, which will appear soon. The time is foretold by a song sung during a ceremony that was performed three times in this century: in 1914, before World War One; in 1940, before World War Two; and two weeks ago, in Oraibi, on the Second Mesa.” Earl Smith paused and passed a calloused farmer's hand over his deeply lined forehead. There were blue lights in his deeply black eyes.

“Then why are you in Jerusalem and not in Oraibi with your people, Mr. Smith?” Mother Superior asked—more respectfully, Andrea noticed, than when she had questioned Mr. Rabindranath.

“I was sent by my people to guide the Blue Star back to the Second Mesa. I am to welcome him,” concluded Mr. Smith.

Dr. Luna hurried to begin his turn. “The Mayan cycle is at an end also. Kukulkan, the Plumed Serpent, the one the Aztecs call Quetzalcoatl, is going to return. I am here on a scholarly mission, however. I have heard that an unknown Mayan codex may be languishing in the library of a monastery here in Jerusalem. I hope to find it before the return of Kukulkan.”

Dr. Luna impaled a roasted chestnut as if it were a stubborn obstacle to his quest. He had been frustrated in his scholarly work by bureaucrats who did not understand the urgency. The codex contained the protocol that his people had forgotten but now needed to follow if the world was going to survive.

“We wish you all the best luck, Dr. Luna,” said Mother Superior. “And how about you, Professor Li?”

During the explanations proffered by his colleagues, Dr. Li had folded quietly within himself. To Lama Cohen, who was familiar with meditation poses, he resembled a closed lotus blossom. The others noticed only his deep quiet. Addressed directly, he replied slowly, barely above a whisper.

“I confess that I am at a disadvantage here, my friends. The only return that the Chinese might fear is the return of Chairman Mao. So far we have been fortunate in that the great man has confined his return to postcards, pins, and collectors' editions of his books. My waiting here in Jerusalem has to do with the practical whims of Rabbi Golden, the great translator from the Chinese, who has promised to let me study a lost Confucian manuscript. Dr. Luna and I are engaged, I believe, in a similar quest.”

“That's only fitting,” said Lama Cohen, “in the City of the Book.”

Mention of books led naturally to consideration of language and letters, and the discussion returned, quite unexpectedly, to Gala Keria. To tell the truth, Andrea had been rather bored by the clerics' and scholars' religious discussion. She much prefered the living mystery of Gala.

“I also heard an interesting comment about Vanna White on the radio. It was an American radio program,” said Father Hernio. “The commentator claimed, not at all jokingly, that Vanna White represents the world's last hope for
meaning
, and that she soothes the anxieties of millions by showing them that behind the jumble of senseless letters there is in fact meaning: phrases, things, foreign expressions, places.” Hernio waved his arms, indicating everything. “By simply calling out a single letter, one can then fill out the terrifying spaces between letters and return meaning—like light—to the world. In the opinion of the commentator, Vanna is the giver of light, as her name—White—implies. She is the very opposite, he claimed, of those Dada artists, at the beginning of the twentieth century, who saw no meaning, no hope, no salvation behind the jumble of letters they had maliciously torn out of perfectly reasonable words. Vanna, it seems, has restored to humanity what these Dadaists stole from it, namely, sense and reason. If the Dadaists were already anxious at the beginning of the century, before the two world wars, genocides, and atomic bombs, you can imagine how anxious people are now, at the end of it! Ergo, all they have is Vanna! A devilish argument, I must admit!”

“What this man is saying is that Vanna White is the Western Messiah,” Professor Li concluded logically.

This proposition shocked everyone except Lama Cohen and Mother Superior. The lama was not surprised because in the Buddhist view only the unexpected made sense. Mother Superior was not surprised because her faith in Christ did not allow her even to consider such an absurdity. She said so.

“Do you not believe it possible that Christ could be, this time around, a woman?” Father Hernio teased the old nun.

“Christ is Christ, the
Son
of God,” Mother Superior said curtly, indicating that the discussion was at an end.

But it wasn't. There were still two pies left and a full carafe of Mount Hebron wine.

“What if Vanna White
is
the avatar? What is Gala Keria, then? Or Kashmir Birani?” Mr. Rabindranath fired these questions directly at the remains of the roasted ducks.

“Then each one of them is the avatar also. They are emanations of the Divine One,” said Lama Cohen. “And if Andrea took the job, then she too would become the avatar. Perhaps it is Andrea that everyone's been waiting for all along!”

Andrea felt again that cattle-prod-skull-of-Adam-Unction-Stone tingle. Everyone stared at her as if they had just seen her for the first time.

“What's the matter?” she said in English. “Were you expecting someone else?”

No one laughed at her little joke. For an uncomfortably long time, during which the thought sank in, Andrea felt as if she stood naked before a bunch of portrait painters. Their eyes weighed her features, trying to fit them to those of the Messiahs in their minds. Andrea rose from the table, bowed her head, and asked to be excused. Mother Superior gave her leave. Andrea went up the stairs to look for Sister Rodica.

“See what you've done? You upset the child!” said Mother Superior, ending the awkward silence. She hated to admit it, but for a moment, she had actually entertained the idea herself. How foolish we are, dear Lord.

“Let us pray!”

The company fell to prayer, each in the silence of his or her own self. It didn't take a sleuth to know what each was praying for. Written in luminous letters over their heads like banners inscribed with light were requests for the end of each of their weary quests. Most of those present actually
hoped
that the young Bosnian orphan was the Messiah. Or an emanation of her, anyway.

Lama Cohen, who didn't pray (and didn't feel like meditating) remembered a visit to the Marcel Janco Museum near Tel Aviv, the first time she came to Israel with her family. Her father was a great fan of the Dadaists, and of Marcel Janco, who had been the second or third original Dadaist. The first was Tristan Tzara, a Romanian Jew whose original name had been Sami Rosenstock. According to her father, one day this Tzara took a pair of scissors to the world's best literature, including the Bible, and cut everything up and then mixed words from the newspapers right in with the holy words.

It's a wonder that the world didn't end right then and there, thought Lama Cohen. There are many ways to piss off the God of the Hebrews, but messing with his Word is the surest! Which is why the hostess of
Gal Gal Hamazal
couldn't very well be the Messiah, even if she restores the order. She still messes with his words and letters, scrambling and mixing them and hiding them. Her father had said that there was another Jew, named Isidore Isou, who was twice as bad as this man Tzara. He had gone to war against every letter, God forgive him! He actually claimed he was
looking
for God in the alphabet. Lama Cohen grinned to herself. For his sake, I hope he didn't find him!

Ultimately, the explanation for Gala's disappearance was an anticlimax to the days of morbid speculation. In the most God-crazy place on earth, Gala had joined a religious cult. It seemed to Israelis terribly pedestrian, not at all what they had imagined while Gala was missing.