“Funny nothing was said about there being _any_ American up here. I
guess they didn’t know you were here.”
“Perhaps they were counting me among the American colony at Cairo,” I
said smoothly. “I suppose, officially, I am a resident of that city. I
was on the Advisory Board of the Museum.” This was not remotely true
but since, to my knowledge, there is no Advisory Board it would be
difficult for anyone to establish my absence from it.
“That must be it.” Butler seemed easily satisfied, perhaps too easily.
“Certainly makes things a lot easier for us, having somebody like you
up here, another Cavite, who knows the lingo.”
“I’ll help in any way I can; though I’m afraid I have passed the age of
usefulness. Like the British king, I can only advise.”
“Well, that’s enough. I’m the active one anyway. My partner takes care
of the other things.”
“Partner? I thought you were alone.”
“No. I’m to get my heels in first; then my colleague comes on in a few
weeks. That’s standard procedure. He’s a psychologist and an authority
on Cavesword. We all are, of course--authorities, that is--but he’s
gone into the early history and so on a little more thoroughly than us
field men usually do.”
So there was to be another one, a cleverer one. I found myself both
dreading and looking forward to the arrival of this dangerous person:
it would be interesting to communicate with a good mind again, or at
least an instructed one: though Butler has not given me much confidence
in the new Cavite Communicators. Nevertheless, I am intensely
curious about the Western world since my flight from it. I have been
effectively cut off from any real communion with the West for two
decades. Rumors, stray bits of information sometimes penetrate as far
as Luxor but I can make little sense of them, for the Cavites are, as
I well know, not given to candor while the Egyptian newspapers exist
in a fantasy world of Pan-Arabic dominion. There was so much I wished
to know that I hesitated to ask Butler, not for fear of giving myself
away but because I felt that any serious conversation with him would be
pointless: I rather doubted if he knew what he was supposed to know,
much less all the details which I wished to know and which even a
moderately intelligent man, if not hopelessly zealous, might be able to
supply me with.
I had a sudden idea. “You don’t happen to have a recent edition of the
Testament, do you? Mine’s quite old and out of date.”
“What date?” This was unexpected.
“The year? I don’t recall. About thirty years old, I should say.”
There was a silence. “Of course yours is a special case, being marooned
like this. There’s a ruling about it which I think will protect you
fully since you’ve had no contact with the outside; anyway, as a
Communicator, I must ask you for your old copy.”
“Why certainly but ...”
“I’ll give you a new one, of course. You see it is against the law to
have any Testament which predates the second Cavite Council.”
I was beginning to understand: after the schism a second Council had
been inevitable even though no reference to it has ever appeared in the
Egyptian press. “The censorship here is thorough,” I said. “I had no
idea there had been a new Council.”
“What a bunch of savages!” Butler groaned with disgust. “That’s going
to be one of our main jobs, you know, education, freeing the press.
There has been almost no communication between the two spheres of
influence....”
“Spheres of influence.” How easily the phrase came to his lips! All
the jargon of the journalists of fifty years ago has, I gather, gone
into the language, providing the inarticulate with a number of made-up
phrases calculated to blur even their none too clear meanings. I assume
of course that Butler is as inarticulate as he seems, that he is
typical of the first post-Cavite generation.
“You must give me a clear picture of what has been happening in America
since my retirement.” But I rose to prevent him from giving me, at that
moment at least, any further observations on “spheres of influence.”
I stood for a moment, resting on my cane: I had stood up too quickly
and as usual suffered a spell of dizziness; I was also ravenously
hungry. Butler stamped out a cigarette on the tile.
“Be glad to tell you anything you want to know. That’s my business.”
He laughed shortly. “Well, time for chow. I’ve got some anti-bacteria
tablets they gave us before we came out, supposed to keep the food from
poisoning us.”
“I’m sure you won’t need them here.”
He kept pace with my slow shuffle. “Well, it increases eating pleasure,
too.” Inadvertently, I shuddered as I recognized yet another glib
phrase from the past; it had seemed such a good idea to exploit the
vulgar language of the advertisers. I suffered a brief spasm of guilt.
3
We dined together in the airy salon which was nearly empty at this
season except for a handful of government officials and businessmen
who eyed us without much interest even though Americans are not a
common sight in Egypt. They were of course used to me although, as
a rule, I keep out of sight, taking my meals in my own room and
frequenting those walks along the river bank which avoid altogether the
town of Luxor.
I found, after I had dined, that physically I was somewhat restored,
better able to cope with Butler. In fact, inadvertently, I actually
found myself, in the madness of my great age, enjoying his company, a
sure proof of loneliness if not of senility. He too, after taking pills
calculated to fill him “chock full of vim and vigor” (that is indeed
the phrase he used), relaxed considerably and spoke of his life in the
United States. He had no talent for evoking what he would doubtlessly
call “the large picture” but in a casual, disordered way he was able
to give me a number of details about his own life and work which did
suggest the proportions of the world from which he had so recently come
and which I had, in my folly, helped create.
On religious matters he was unimaginative and doctrinaire, concerned
with the letter of the commands and revelations rather than with the
spirit such as it was, or is. I could not resist the dangerous maneuver
of asking him, at the correct moment of course (we were speaking of the
time of the schisms), what had become of Eugene Luther.
“Who?”
The coffee cup trembled in my hand. I set it carefully on the table. I
wondered if _his_ hearing was sound. I repeated my own name, long lost
to me, but mine still in the secret dimness of memory.
“I don’t place the name. Was he a friend of the Liberator?”
“Why, yes. I even used to know him slightly but that was many years
ago, before your time. I’m curious to know what might have become of
him. I suppose he’s dead.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t place the name.” He looked at me with some
interest. “I guess you must be almost old enough to have seen _him_.”
I nodded, lowering my lids with a studied reverence, as though dazzled
at the recollection of great light. “I saw him several times.”
“Boy, I envy you! There aren’t many left who have seen _him_ with their
own eyes. What was he like?”
“Just like his photographs,” I said, shifting the line of inquiry:
there is always the danger that a trap is being prepared for me. I was
noncommittal, preferring to hear Butler talk of himself. Fortunately,
he preferred this too and for nearly an hour I learned as much as I
shall ever need to know about the life of at least one Communicator
of Cavesword. While he talked, I watched him furtively for some sign
of intention but there was none that I could detect; yet I _was_
suspicious. He had not known my name and I could not understand what
obscure motive might cause him to pretend ignorance unless of course he
_does_ know who I am and wishes to confuse me, preparatory to some trap.
I excused myself soon afterwards and went to my room, after first
accepting a copy of the newest Testament handsomely bound in Plasticon
(it looks like leather) and promising to give him my old proscribed
copy the next day.
The first thing that I did, after locking the door to my room, was to
take the book over to my desk and open it to the index. My eye traveled
down that column of familiar names until it came to the L’s.
At first I thought that my eyes were playing a trick upon me. I held
the page close to the light, wondering if I might not have begun to
suffer delusions, the not unfamiliar concomitant of solitude and old
age. But my eyes were adequate and the hallucination, if real, was
vastly convincing: my name was no longer there. Eugene Luther no longer
existed in that Testament which was largely his own composition.
I let the book shut of itself, as new books will. I sat down at the
desk, understanding at last the extraordinary ignorance of Butler: I
had been obliterated from history; my place in time erased. It was as
if I had never lived.