The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [75]
The most detailed of his elaborations concerned his new wife. On March 29, Leon stated that when he was fourteen years old he had lost his heart and had not recovered it until November 1959, when he married the Yeti woman. When he leaves for work, he said, his wife takes his heart away and puts a scroll of the Ten Commandments in its place.
Two days later, when asked why he had written his meeting report on toilet paper, he replied that he needed the other paper for a letter to his wife. His wife’s name was Ruth of Boaz (he pronounced it “Booze”). She had “light brown hair, not combed— it’s natural as it grows. She’s about seven feet tall and more than 200 pounds in weight.” (This was a considerable change from an earlier description of his wife—“four feet ten or eleven, with long hair, pretty and old fashioned.”) When we drew his attention to the fact that Ruth seemed to be quite a bit bigger than he, he replied: “It doesn’t bother me, sir. There’s a difference in age; she’s about fifteen years older, so she’s fifty-three or fifty-four. She’s a stern, strict and lovable woman.”
It had taken quite a while, Leon went on, to get adjusted to being without a heart. “But it has avoided me from getting attached to individuals and it’s best for my case. Yes, sir, that’s true. It would be a temptation to attachment.”
Once when we had a visitor from India, Leon responded to a question about his family by saying that the Yeti people had originated through the mating of an Indian woman with a jerboa rat. They had a boy and a girl, who, because they ate too much and were too big, were banished. This boy and girl went up into the mountains, and there began the Yeti tribe.
Leon reported in June that he had two main foster fathers, a white dove and a jerboa rat. This was a slight change from what he had told us the previous November: then his main foster father was a white dove, and the jerboa rat was an assistant foster father.
He also said that he was the father of Joseph Gabor, who a few months before had emerged as his light brother, married to the Virgin Mary. This Joseph Gabor used the name Rex rexarum et Domino dominorum, but his reincarnation name was Maximilian. He added that Joseph Gabor “came into the world through my seed.” This latter remark seems to have a double meaning. On the one hand it meant that Leon created Joseph Gabor as his fictitious light brother, as a device which enabled him to get rid of his name Rex rexarum et Domino dominorum and of his delusion that he was married to the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, it meant that Leon’s father, whose name was also Leon, sired Joseph —who is himself.
I commented to Leon that I had great difficulty understanding all these relationships, and Leon agreed that it was quite complicated. “Fairly deep matter,” he added.
On June 23, Leon announced a change of attitude toward his mother. “I said before that the Old Witch died through negativism, but this was through duping. It’s possible that she repented, therefore she went to purgatory and later to heaven—possibly. She died from a broken heart, and there’s a possibility she did repent.” He was glad she had repented, and that her past misdemeanors would be burned away in purgatory. She might, through her own free will, have made the choice to repent, and it was a relief to accept things as they are.
Two days later he added that if the Old Witch had repented she was no longer the Old Witch but Woman Eve. She was also Mary Gabor, and Leon was her foster son, but no blood relation. From this day on, Leon very seldom referred to his mother as the Old Witch, but rather as Woman Eve or Mary Gabor.
On June 27 I noticed that Leon had not shaved. When I asked him about this, he informed me that he was growing a beard. He was going to prove he had