The big reveal

(Cont.)

Now the multitudes of workers awoke early the next morning and gathered on the hill, which the Volcano had made famous. And Moses and his prophet Bryan took their place on the crag opposite.

The sun had risen large and round over the hillside, and it was so bright that it caused the people to blink and squint.

How pleased everyone was, when the vortex descended in a cloud, and the wild man with the goat eyes, whose appearance remained hidden under bountiful hair, stepped out from the portal and onto the crag.

Now, Bryan, who, like all ex-Nazarites, kept a razor in his purse, was brave enough to draw near and begin trimming. Moses was daunted at first, and held back; but when he saw how merrily all was going, he plucked up his courage, and followed suit with a pair of shears.

The wild man, however, suddenly thrust out his arms, and drew the glittering sword which hung from his girdle; then looked round at his barbers. At first, they were terrified; but, after a tense moment, the wild man seized Bryan and pressed the sword into his free hand. Then, with the greatest speed, Bryan hacked the rest of the hair clean off, while Moses tremblingly watched. But his fear left him when, after Bryan had finished the work, the wild man clapped them both on the shoulder in a friendly manner, as much as to say, they had behaved well to follow through on such a task willingly.

Thus did they remove the hair which covered the face and body of the wild man.

The long strands, as they were being cut, fell on the crag in a mass that resembled an exquisite rug; then, as it accumulated, it became a heap, which looked almost golden in the high noon light, like one of Monet’s “Haystacks” (“Les Meules à Giverny”).

O! how the wild man was transformed: Such a change as was never seen before. Once the thick cocoon of hair was gone, the sight of his body broke forth like sunbeams; and his goat eyes twinkled as the stars of heaven. It was now manifest that Bryan’s intuition had been accurate, in that earlier episode when he fashioned the icon for the people: for the wild man indeed appeared indistinguishable from Michaelangelo’s David, down to every last detail.

With his abundant hair now shorn, he proved more beautiful than any man whom the multitudes had ever seen. The people could hardly find the courage to breathe, but some who were covering their eyes peeked through their fingers as much as they dared, and marveled at the sight.

Just then the wild man was obscured by a dark cloud, and either he bent over too far, or whatever the cause might be, the crag loudly cracked, and in an instant he slipped into the fiery vortex, whose portal snapped shut, and then it sprang off like a flying saucer. The sun suddenly turned blood-red; then the vortex shot back and went zigzagging up and down, and to and fro, through the gulf between the crag and the hill. As this occurred, a voice from within the vortex was heard crying: “Yahweh! Yahweh!”

And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

Then the vortex vanished, like a flame blown out by the wind.

Now the multitudes retired to their tabernacles. And on the morrow, the Volcano returned to the people on foot, to live among them. Yet, following the hillside-crag theophany, the wild man’s skin was so radiant that the people were loath to approach him. Therefore, Bryan sewed together goat pelts and fashioned an ankle-length apron and veil, which he nicknamed “the lampshade”: this the wild man wore over his face and body, during the next few weeks. For it took a full forty days for his hair to grow back.