Pandora’s Bust
An Early Christian said to Ben Canaan, “What can we do?”
The leader said, “As humble sinners, nothing. The Holy Mother will find a way.”
They’re all looking at me, thought Mary, they know it all depends on me. And yet, she didn’t want to bother. She wished she could lie flat on the floor, she wished she could surrender to cool vibrations rippling her skin since they’d entered the building. She knew the mission’s importance, yet she could hardly see or hear, let alone take any action. Stand still and close my eyes, she thought. Send them all away. As the world vanished she discovered she could sink the vibrations into her toes, shoot them up her legs, through the calves, thighs, deep inside her—flower petals—lotuses—unfolding—ancient faces smiling—explosions—her breasts exploded—under the skin—explosions feeding back upon themselves—silent thunder—
The Virgin Mary pointed down her hands. Lightning shot from her fingertips and burned a hole in the stone.
“A miracle!” the angels shouted.
“Look!” cried the Early Christians, “The Beast! The Beast!”
Mary tried to look but the more she stared through the hole the more everything shimmered in a purpIe light. She could make out a large head, a steel (!) horn, two bright yellow eyes. Beneath the head a bulky mass squatted some twenty feet below her in a vast cavern. The enemy. She knew she must lead the attack, yet nothing worked right, her ears no better than her eyes. She could hear, as over roaring winds, shouts—Ben Canaan, most likely—but she couldn’t pierce the words together. If she tried looking away, she thought the walls alive, shaking and wheezing like lecherous old men.
Calm. The Blessed Mother closed her eyes. She discovered her hands on her breasts, her elbows tight against her ribs, her knees locked together. Calm. “For maintenance of calm recite a poem…” something Pandora’s mother used to say. But Mary didn’t know any poems; neither she nor Pandora liked poetry, so another desperate moment passed before she thought to mumble, “Hail Mary Mistress of God.”
Whether the prayer, the memory, or something else calmed her Mary couldn’t tell, but her legs spread apart, her arms fell, her hands released her breasts. Suns—explosions—inside her belly spread outwards to the skin. She could see clearly now. She stood all alone above the battle site. The angels, probably directed by Ben Canaan, were flying through the hole while the Early Christians held tight to the holy robes. When they touched bottom, the Angels began to circle the Beast, as if they prepared a complicated offense. The Beast took no notice. Nor did he notice the Early Christians who got down on one knee and then, to Michelangelo’s horror, drew laser guns from inside their rags. While their leader raved of sacrilege the Early Christians maintained a steady fire. Without even a glance at them the Beast lifted up its yellow eyes to Mary.
“Holy Mother of God,” she whispered. Now she understood. The dizziness, the shimmering walls, exploding flesh, aromatic winds. Memories. The long hard steel horn stuck up at her. “You again,” she thought. Then, just the same as two thousand years ago, the universe crumbled—like a sand castle in a hurricane. Oh blessed blessed ecstasy.
Mary leaped through the hole. When the angels saw her float towards them they backed away from the Beast. “The Holy Mother joins the fight.” Ben Canaan knew better; from his Pandora memories he recognized the look on Mary’s face.
As she floated down Mary spread her legs wide apart. The Beast lifted his head. And finally—after two thousand lonely years, twenty frustrated centuries—Mary’s hallowed vagina, with a soft slurp, slid down the steel horn of the Holy Ghost.
The angels tried to scream and failed, tried to shut their eyes and failed, tried to fly away and failed. Forced to watch the wild gyrations the angels disintegrated into heaps of black dust. Their wings somehow remained, flapping wildly of their own accord. When the Early Christians saw the wings they grabbed them—instinctively, for they’d all relieved themselves of sanity—arid flew back through the hole to the sub-cellar. From there they all found their way to the street, and eventually retrieved their sanity in government desk jobs.
Only Michelangelo Ben Canaan stayed behind to witness the Holy Coitus. For two hours he watched them pound and pulse, listened to them groan and scream, until at last the Beast reared up and slouched off, with Mary rising and falling, rising and falling, into the darkness. Where they went Ben Canaan never found out though he suspected the cave tunnel somehow led to Bethlehem. Two more hours passed while darkness watered Michelangelo’s burnt-out brain. Then he stood up, sighed, and began to grope with his hands for a way to get home.
This story first appeared in New Worlds Quarterly 2 (1971), edited by Michael Moorcock.
Copyright © 1971 by Rachel Pollack.
