a person fights nausea, and I was wondering, What if this is true, what if he is just what he says he is? What if somehow I, the man who's done all these things, can truly be redeemed?
We had pulled into the garage of my building before I said anything, and as I expected, he climbed out of the car as I did and went with me into the elevator and up to the fifth floor.
I never close the balcony doors to my apartment and I walked out now onto the concrete terrace and looked down at the blue jacarandas.
I was breathing rapidly, my body carrying the weight of all this, but my mind felt wondrously clear.
When I turned around and looked at him, he was as vivid and solid as the jacarandas and their tumbling blue blossoms. He was standing in the doorway merely regarding me, and again there was that promise in his face, that promise of comprehending, and of love. I felt the urge to cry, to dissolve into a state of weakness, a state of being charmed.
"Why? Why have you come here forme?" I asked. "I know I asked you before, but you have to tell me, tell me completely, why me and not someone else? I don't know if you're real. I'm banking on it that you are now. But how can someone like me be redeemed?"
He came up to the concrete railing beside me. He looked down on the blue-blossomed trees. He whispered, "So perfect, so lovely."
"They're why I live here," I answered, "because every year when they come into bloom--." My voice broke. I turned my back on the trees because I would start crying if I kept looking at them. I looked into my living room and saw its three walls covered with books from floor to ceiling. I saw the bit of hallway visible to me with its bookcases stacked just as high.
"Redemption is something one has to ask for," he said in my ear. "You know that."
"I can't ask!" I said. "I can't."
"Why? Simply because you don't believe?"
"That's an excellent reason," I said.
"Give me a chance to make you believe."
"Then you have to begin by explaining, why me?"
"I've come for you because I've been sent," he said in an even voice, "and because of who you are and what you've done and what you can do. It's no random choice, coming for you. It's for you, and you alone, that I've come. Every decision made by Heaven is like that.It's particular. That's how vast Heaven is, and you know how vast is the earth, and you must think of it, for just a moment, as a place existing with all of its centuries, all of its epochs, all of its many times.
"There isn't a soul in the world whom Heaven doesn't regard in particular fashion. There isn't a sigh or a word that Heaven fails to hear."
I heard him. I knew what he meant. I looked down at the spectacle of the trees. I wondered what it was like for a tree to lose its blossoms to the wind, when its blossoms were all that it had. The peculiarity of the thought startled me. I shuddered. The urge to weep was almost overwhelming me. But I fought it. I made myself look at him again.
"I know your whole life," he said. "If you like I'll show it to you. In fact, it seems that's exactly what I'll have to do before you really trust in me. I don't mind. You have to understand. You can't decide if you don't."
"Decide what? What are you talking about?" "I'm talking about an assignment, I told you." He paused, then continued very kindly. "It's a way to use you and who you are. It's a way to use every detail of who you are. It's an assignment to save life instead of taking it, to answer prayers instead of cutting them off. It's a chance to do something that matters terribly to others while doing only good for yourself. That's what it's like to do good, you know. It's like working for The Right Man except that you believe in it with your whole heart and your whole soul, so much so that it becomes your will and your purpose with love."
"I have a soul, that's what you want me to believe?" I asked.
"Of course you do. You have an immortal soul. You know that. You're twenty-eight years old and that is very young