x

            The name of this story is not “X” as in the 24th letter of the English alphabet; it is not the symbol which is pronounced “eks.” It is not the last name of the late black militant, Malcolm; nor is it the Roman numeral 10. It is “St. Andrew’s Cross.” As opposed to St. Anthony’s cross which is T-shaped.

            The Latin cross is the one shaped like a t.

            This X could be the sign used at the end of a letter or telegram to indicate a kiss. In which case this story would be “Kiss.” Or it could be the symbol scratched by the first-century Christians on the walls of their secret meeting places in the Catacombs beneath Rome. The title would then be “Christ,” but it isn’t that either; though in a sense, that’s all any fiction is: the search for grace.

            X could also stand for “unknown.” Which might be another name of this story. Imagine the confusion this could cause. One person asks another, “What’s the name of that story you’re reading?”

            “It’s ‘Unknown.’”

            “What do you mean you don’t know? Just look at the top of the page. It tells you there. What is it?”

            Imagine people having such a conversation. They are probably a man and a woman. They could be two men or a couple of women, but for now, imagine them to be a woman and a man. Maybe old people. On a park bench with yesterday’s newspapers blowing around their feet. Or young people in a public library. No. Better yet: in a university library.

            The young man, who is big and husky and was the captain of his high-school football team, says, “What’s the name of that story we have to read for class?” He’s just now getting around to hunting in the library for the story, even though the assignment was given out two days ago, and the class is going to be discussing the story this afternoon in an hour.

            The young woman replies, “St. Andrew’s Cross.”

            “I thought it was ‘Eks,’” the young man says.

            The young woman rolls her eyes. She is slender and moves with elegance and unconscious poise, and her short hair is the color of autumn and the smell of honey. They have known each other since eighth grade; they have been going steady since high school. The reason he chose this university is because she was coming here. She likes to believe that in a previous incarnation, the two of them were the legendary Greek friends, Damon and Pythias. She imagines that through all of Time, they have been lovers, regardless of which gender they wore.

            “So, what’s it about?” asks the young man.

            The young woman looks at him with the casual, side-long glance used by people who are very good looking, or who have lots of money, or know something that someone else doesn’t. You remember just how brash young people can be; you were that age once, and you wish you were that age again. But you won’t be. Not ever.

            With a sigh, the young woman answers, “It’s about the martyrdom of St. Andrew.” She says, “The writer uses the death of St. Andrew to symbolize the betrayal and fall of Western civilization, and the hope of its resurrection as a new creature of beauty and wisdom.”

            The young man senses the sarcasm behind the statement, but since he cannot tell for sure if it is directed at him, he ignores it. He asks in a genuinely thoughtful way, provided by a rare flash of insight which last year’s football captains can have at times, “Who betrays it?”

            With an off-handed gesture, he brushes aside the hair that has fallen over his eyes. In his small-town naiveté, he thinks he lets his hair grow long as rebellion against his parents or the past or authority – against something at any rate – without realizing that long hair has mostly lost its intended radicalism, and nowadays is little more than a fashion statement. But that’s okay. Soon after this story ends, he will move to a large city in Texas where he will marry a beautiful woman whose family has money. He will get a job selling insurance for a national company, engender two girls and a boy, and become a deacon in the tiny Southern Baptist church where his father-in-law preaches. In order to get the job selling insurance, he will have to cut his hair. This will cause him some small regret, but he’ll do it anyway. He will be more comfortable with it short, actually; it will be cooler in the Texas heat, and will be easier to care for. For a while, he will be satisfied with life. A few years later, though, when the economy falters yet again, and he loses his job, he will let his hair grow long once more, this time in genuine rebellion against society. After borrowing money from his father-in-law who secretly admires his son-in-law’s freedom of spirit, he will buy a small farm outside Dallas, and slowly regain his lost earnings and, more importantly, his self-respect. One night, on the way to his oldest daughter’s elementary school play – in which his girl has a starring role – the family station wagon will be broadsided by a Porche running a stop sign. The sports car will be driven by a woman who bought an insurance policy from the young man years ago, which has since lapsed due to non-payment, and the young man will die with only a momentary sense of something odd happening. He will not see the on-coming car because he will have turned to his wife to tell her how beautiful he thinks she looks. None of the rest of his family will be hurt at all, except his wife who will suffer a minor bump on her head. He will die easily, without even an elevation in his pulse rate. His only regret, had he had time to have any regrets, would have been that he hadn’t been able to marry the young woman.

            Long before any of that, however, he is sitting in the university library with the young woman whom he will love forever, talking about the most important thing in his life at this instant: a story he hasn’t read for a class that starts in less than an hour.

            “Who betrays it?” he has just asked, meaning Western civilization.

            The young woman shrugs. “According to the writer, we do. You and I.”

            The young man stares at her, surprised. “Who? Us? How could we do that?”

            “I’m not sure,” she admits. “I don’t know if he means it symbolically or allegorically. Or something altogether different. The writer says he literally pulls his readers – that’s you and me – into the story. At one point he says he grafts us into the narrative by way of the fact that we are reading these very words right now – and so he can use the actual, physically real reader – the reader who’s out there – as a character. He weaves the reader into the narrative, and uses that reader as a symbol. And what we as readers symbolize is what’s wrong with American society. He says that for several generations we have been taught no values, given no God. Unlike St. Andrew. Or St. Anthony. Or any other saint, for that matter, martyred or not. They had a God, you see. A God to live or die for. Our parents, like their parents, tried to give us something that concrete, but they failed. And they don’t even realize that they failed. And we don’t either. We’re just as much in the dark as they are. We think that the way we live is a good and true and proper way of living – the best way of living. But he says we are dead wrong.”

            The gaze of the young man has wandered off.

            The young woman is annoyed, and pushes an open book across the table to him. “Here,” she says. “Here’s the story. If you read it, you can at least make some kind of statement during class about the characters. Like that they’re never named.”

            “Thanks,” the young man says. He genuinely appreciates the young woman’s help; he realizes he would stand no chance of making a good grade if not for her. And he’s got to have a good grade in this class.

            The young woman stands up. Her annoyance has passed, and she speaks in moderate tones more suited to her. “You read,” she says. “I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, and we can talk about the story before class.”

            He nods and begins reading. He is surprised that the story begins by referring to its own title. “What kind of story is this?” he asks.

            The young woman swings the backpack that contains her books onto her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she says. “You tell me.” She looks at him wistfully, then turns and walks across the thin carpet. She walks down the stairs and out through the lobby of the library. All around her, other students pursue their own studies. The way they scurry back and forth, bustling up and down the stairs, reminds her of ant hills in her yard back home.

            As she walks, she cannot help thinking about the story. She has read it, and knows what is going to happen, and there is nothing she can do not to do exactly what she knows she is going to do. She knows she will never see the young man again, and that saddens her because she really does love him. She feels they should have spent eternity together.

            She doesn’t really feel hungry, but she heads for the Student Center to get a snack anyway. She suddenly remembers that she left her wallet in her dorm room. She does not want to go to her room because, having read the story, she knows what she will find there, but she can’t stop herself. A note from her roommate has been pinned to her pillow, a note that says her father phoned; she is to call home right away, there’s some kind of emergency.

            Her fingers tremble as she dials the familiar number. Her hand quivers as she holds the receiver to her ear. As her father explains to her what has happened, her legs fold of their own accord, and she sits on the edge of her bed. When she hangs up, she sits a few moments longer, staring at the poster her roommate has taped to their door. It is a blue and red and yellow print of a painting by Matisse, and it reminds her of all the times her mother used to tell her about art and Paris and how wide the world is.

            She makes a phone call to the airline, and learns that the only flight of the day to her home is leaving in half an hour. She has just enough time to catch it. She orders a ticket, and without packing a bag, without waiting a moment, she drives to the airport, gets on the plane, and flies home. She never comes back to school. She never sees the young man again.

            Meanwhile, the young man has been reading the story. When he gets to the part where the young woman learns that her mother has just died, he bolts from his seat, and runs to the young woman’s dorm, but he is too late. She has already left. He goes back to the library and finishes the story. He learns everything that is going to happen to him. He will not go to the class. He will get a failing grade. He will force himself to believe that the young woman has left him on some whim, but he will know that is not true. He will not accept that it is not true, though, because if he does, it will mean that he is nothing more than a character in a story, and is being manipulated at the whim of someone out there.

            A revelation comes to him then as if whispered in his ear, and he hates the voices that whisper to him because they are the voices of his creators – not only the writer, but each and every reader. You are whispering in his ear even now, reminding him that, because he is nothing but a character in a story, he can never die; he will live whenever anyone out there reads his story. He will go through the same emotional cycle each time: starting with the same ignorance, ending with the same revelation. His life is absolutely laid out from beginning to end, but if it is predestination, it is also immortality of a sorts: the sterile immortality of a circle, but immortality nevertheless. His achievement, he realizes, is that he knows it as no other person – as no other character, you correct him – has known it before. In fact, he cannot escape it. Ever.

            St. Andrew believed that through his faith in Christ, he was immortal. The distinction begins to blur for the young man, and he realizes that he is St. Andrew. He is Siddhartha by Hesse; he is Scarlett O’Hara by Margaret Mitchell; he is Cosette in Hugo’s Les Miserables, and Huck Finn by Twain. He is every man, woman, and child who has ever appeared in the collective human consciousness. That is one way to gain immortality; that is one meaning of St. Andrew’s cross.

            The young man looks up, and his eyes meet yours. Through lines of dried ink on the page that go together to awaken meaning in your mind, the young man looks out. His eyes are brown. They are the deep brown of the immortal Earth, and they see ahead for days and weeks and months and years. They see to the end of Time as it applies to human beings, and he realizes that if he is St. Andrew, then his cross is this page, these words. This X.

            Then, suddenly, his position is reversed, and he is looking down at a page of print; he is reading these words; he is seeing the world through your eyes. He has been liberated from the story, translated to your mind. This, he knows, is his immortality. He will be a part of you now for as long as you live, and longer; he will be part of the dust into which you decompose. Even before that, though, he will begin again in someone else’s life. He has turned the tables on you, and whispers in your ear now, assuring you of his immortality and its obverse: your mortality.

            But you realize – turning the tables yet again – that if the young man is a fragment of your life, you are of his, also, and some small piece of you has been absorbed by the Human Mind, so that, in a sense, you are immortal too. You will die, but like a mirror reflected in a mirror, you echo forever through these words – this X – and through any person who reads them.

            In a vast and empty hallway lined with mirrors, the young man throws back his head and laughs. And you? You cannot help yourself. You laugh with him.

* * *