Revelation
The curator had long since given up reading the orthodox version. The room was as hushed as a tomb. Only T’Fees trumpeted on, “You see, you see, you damned interfering blobs of worthless guts! You had no right! You have no right! Pistach peace is based on a lie!”
Hethrew open the bronze door and stormed out into the light of a bloody sunset, his minions behind him, leaving the observers among the guttering candles.
“I’m hungry,” said Carlos.
Vess rose, saying in a toneless voice, “I’ll take you back to the guest house. There’ll be food there.” They went out, soundlessly.
Benita stood wearily and turned, looking upward at the gallery. Many of the old Pistach still leaned upon the railing, their normally bright green, yellow, and red-colored bodies pale.
“They had no idea, did they?” Benita asked, almost whispering.
Chiddy did the little rotation of the upper body that passed for a negative headshake. “We thought . . . we knew some things would be different. We thought they would be matters of interpretation. A wine jar versus another kind of vessel. A springtime symbol versus an autumnal one. But not this. None of us thought this.” He made the sound of Pistach laughter, harshly rasping.
“Benita, athyci give sermon cycles at the great festivals, seventeen sermons on seventeen days, to accord with the number of panels, one sermon on each panel subject. I have done it myself. I have quoted Glumshalak’s Commentaries to explain why we do what we do. And now . . . now, what can I base my beliefs upon?”
He turned and walked sadly toward the door. She started to follow him, but then detoured to her left, toward panel thirteen. Something had been bothering her about the panel in which Mengantowhai was reprimanded by his athyci. The counselors were gathered beneath a tree that had a few bare branches but was mostly leafy, with both blossoms and fruit. There were words along the bottom of the panel. She took out her little notepad and copied the words down, being thankful Pistach lettering was phonetic, not ideographic.
She noticed there was a similar tree in the panel to the left,The Rescue, in which Mengantowhai was rescued from the Pokoti. It was the same tree, same number of branches, same shape of trunk, but this tree was completely dead. She turned to the right, to panel fourteen,The Fearful Faithless. The same tree was there as well, partly alive.
“Chad,” she called. “Come look.”
He came over and they walked back, counterclockwise, around the House of the Fresco. Every single panel had the same tree in it, either dead or leafing out, or in flower or fruit.
“The two growing trees are in panels where Pistach people disdained Mengantowhai,” she said.
Chad murmured, “And they were painted after the rest of the Fresco. See, the overlap here? You can see what was painted underneath. That’s why most of the trees are small, they’re fitted into whatever vacant space was left.”
They had come to the first panel, and even there they found a tree. Chad shrugged and she returned the gesture. It was interesting, but they didn’t know what it meant, if anything. They went out onto the terrace where Chiddy waited in morose silence.
“What does a fruiting tree symbolize?” she asked.
Chiddy looked at her, sighing. “Well, it’s a sign of fruition, of course. Of something long in growth that has ripened. Like a head of grain. Or a pomego, like the ones you had for breakfast.”
“Is that an accepted meaning among Pistach?”
“Oh, yes. The Pistach revere edible fruit. They regard it as a great gift. The fruiting tree is carved on some of our most ancient monuments, some that go back long before the House of the Fresco was built.”
They went back to the guest house, to an evening meal that none of them tasted, and then to another restless night. Sometime in the dark house, Benita got up to find Chad wandering about, at loose ends, as she was. They went out into the dark drenched garden, following the firefly glow of tiny lanterns to a bench that had been put there for them, one of the Pistach leaning boards laid across two stones to make it flat and low enough to sit on.