Chapter Seventeen

Goodge, Tottenham, Leicester; Charing Cross, his station to get off.

Father Will had drawn him up a rough map, and Todd had his Oyster card in his pocket. He'd wanted a walk in London, and the plan was for him to stroll up the Strand, around the edge of Ludgate Hill, and to St. Paul's.

"The Cross and Orb atop the dome will guide you."

Getting off the train, the routine of looking for escalators and exits was similar if no less baffling than Washington's Metro system. Up on the surface, he was no more guided by a cross and orb than he was the pencilled map crumpled in his hand (Todd feared the first time someone would turn and ask him "are you lost?"); his furtive glances at the lines and letters on it were uninstructive at first, but then he rounded a corner on a multi-branched intersection, and then he saw it.

A dome, hovering above the cityscape, two lower towers to the front, closer to him but of course equally distant. In the grey milky light the bulk of the cathedral looker further off than a mile, but not forbiddingly distant. Turning left, he walked east, still feeling odd about the traffic nearest him on the street flowing with him, and not coming at him.

Now the jottings on the torn sheet from the pub's placemat started to make a regular, progressive, advancing sort of sense. Street by street (Strand, Fleet, Newgate), landmark after landmark (St. Bride's, Old Bailey, Paternoster Square), he made his way along first the Strand's broad path and then into a brief tangle of streets that weren't quite alleys, but didn't feel like what Todd was accustomed to call a street.

The age of the buildings was steadily older, with the occasional burst of modernity and glass erupting into the rows across the way, or along his left hand. Glancing up, which he tried to do as infrequently as possible ("are you lost?"), he saw a mix of three and four story frontages with a looming bulk of taller buildings peering over their shoulders from the block behind.

At a last marked turn on his sheet, he came out into an open area, a last street crossing, and then the two towers were high above him, with broad stairs before him. The dome loomed beyond, impossibly wide and curving into invisibility, the curves pointing his eyes up to the Cross and Orb that Father Will had promised him.

Up the stairs, through the door already open just to the right of a wide rank of vast doors, and inside to find he needed to pay to go beyond a chapel open to the public on his left. The cost was just enough to make him pause a moment. He pulled out his international Visa, tapped it on his left knuckle twice, then handed it to the brisk looking lady at the register.

A brochure in hand he already knew he wouldn't look at until back in his room tonight, if then, he wandered up the center aisle, and hesitated on seeing a phalanx of children in grey skirts or slacks and maroon sweaters or jackets moving towards him at what couldn't quite be accurately described as a run. He turned right, and saw two elderly tourists moving his way, and swiveled back to the left, and slid along the rows of chairs to the left-hand aisle.

Here, the ceiling was lower, which meant it was only amazingly high and not incredibly so. The windows were, to him, surprisingly lacking in stained glass. He'd imagined they would be rich and full of image and color. Instead they were mostly clear, or at least translucent with light coming through directly. The color was in the gold and grey and dark contrasts all along the ornate carvings and reliefs and ornamentation from the floor to the vaults above.

It was still early enough in the morning that most light was angling across above his head, and on the ground level shadow and dimness were the rule. The high arches framed his views, and occasionally were themselves blocked, a huge monument with a man on horseback atop one such, the statue in clear illumination even as the floor around it was still dark. Todd found himself walking along towards the heart of the cathedral, towards the emptiness under the great dome, but with only occasional glimpses of just how large and open the central space was, let alone forward beyond the center of the church.  Just as he came even with that area, and thought about turning back to the main aisle, there was a shuffling of feet or something like that off to his left, and so he thought to take a look into this arm of the church, before heading on into the main course.

Around a stately pillar, he saw before him another cluster of chairs in neat and regimented rows, a table or altar just beyond them, and behind it, a sort of tall, towering cabinet. The giant doors were open, and from somewhere behind him just enough light shone to illuminate was was a tall, life-size painting, the portrait itself enclosed in an even larger gold frame.

The man, who was obviously Jesus, was looking directly at him. Todd could not recall ever having had such a sensation of being observed when looking at a picture ever before. Not like one of those movie gags where holes behind the eyes had a person looking through, but this whole painting, right down to the eyes as depicted, was looking at him, considering him.

He stood at a door, his hand up to knock, and all around grasses and weeds grew up as a dark, tangled background was behind him. In his other hand, Jesus held a lantern, almost lifting it up towards Todd more than he was using it to shine on the door. There was an evening light behind his crowned head, and the lamp's glow shone off of a simple robe with a more ornate, jeweled piece of drapery around his shoulders and hung down behind him. And he was looking at him as if to say "will you help me knock?"

The point of the painting, Todd knew, was not just the knocking on the door; he remembered his grandmother having a painting, less decorated, more simple in outline, of Jesus knocking on an old-fashioned door not unlike this one, but gazing closely at the window in the timbers waiting for someone to slide the peep-hole and look back at him. This version of Christ knocking at the door drew him into the action, with Jesus wanting someone to answer, but also wanting you, the viewer, to join in the conversation somehow.

Todd stepped over, without looking down, and sat down in one of the first row of chairs. He had to look at this picture a little bit longer. He ended up sitting there for the next few hours, walking away as a group entered with a guide, and then coming back for a bit longer after they left. As he sat there, he thought about many things, and about what he needed to do next. It wasn't clear, but he knew his thoughts, at least, were clearer about the future than they'd been in some time.

http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Files/downloads/Light_of_the_world.jpg [To see the painting Todd is looking at, click the link.]