1
I have had in the last few days some difficulty in avoiding the company
of Mr. Butler. Fortunately, he is now very much involved with the local
functionaries and I am again able to return to my narrative. I don’t
think Butler has been sent here to assassinate me but, on the other
hand, from certain things he has said and not said, I am by no means
secure in his ignorance; however, one must go on. At best, it will be
a race between him and those hardened arteries which span the lobes
of my brain. My only curiosity concerns the arrival next week of his
colleague who is, I gather, of the second generation and of a somewhat
bookish turn according to Butler who would not, I fear, be much of a
judge. Certain things, though, which I have learned during the last
few days about Iris Mortimer make me more than ever wish to recall our
common years as precisely as possible for what I feared might happen
has indeed, if Butler is to be believed, come to pass, and it is now
with a full burden of hindsight that I revisit the scenes of a half
century ago.
2
I had got almost nowhere with my life of Julian. I had become
discouraged with his personality though his actual writings continued
to delight me. As it so often happens in history I had found it
difficult really to get at him: the human attractive part of Julian
was undone for me by those bleak errors in deed and in judgment which
depressed me even though they derived most logically from the man and
his time: that fatal wedding which finally walls off figures of earlier
ages from the present, keeping them strange despite the most intense
and imaginative recreation. They are not we. We are not they. And I
refused to resort to the low trick of fashioning Julian in my own image
of him. I respected his integrity in time and deplored the division
of centuries. My work at last came to a halt and, somewhat relieved,
I closed my house in the autumn of the year and traveled west to
California.
I had a small income which made modest living and careful travel easy
for me ... a fortunate state of affairs since, in my youth, I was of an
intense disposition, capable of the passions and violence of a Rimbaud
without, fortunately, the will to translate them into reality; had I
had more money, or none, I might have died young, leaving behind the
brief memory of a minor romanticist. As it was, I had a different role
to play in the comedy; one for which I was, after some years of reading
beside my natal river, peculiarly fitted to play.
I journeyed to southern California where I had not been since my
service in one of the wars. I had never really explored that exotic
land and I was curious about it, more curious than I have ever been
before or since about any single part of the world. Egypt one knows
without visiting it, and China the same; but that one area of sandy
beaches and orange groves which circles the city of Los Angeles, an
artificial place created from desert and sure to lapse back again into
dust the moment some national disaster breaks its line of life and the
waters no longer flow, has always fascinated me.
I was of course interested in the movies, though they no longer had
the same hold over the public imagination that they had had in earlier
decades when a process of film before light could project, larger
than life, not only on vast screens but also upon the impressionable
minds of an enormous audience made homogeneous by a common passion,
shadowy figures which, like the filmy envelopes of the stoic deities,
floated to earth in public dreams, suggesting a braver more perfect
world where love reigned and only the wicked died. But then time
passed and the new deities lost their worshipers: there were too many
gods and the devotees got too used to them, realizing finally that
they were only mortals, involved not in magical rites but in a sordid
business. Television (the home altar) succeeded the movies and their
once populous and ornate temples, modeled tastefully on baroque and
Byzantine themes, fell empty, the old gods moving to join the new
hierarchies, becoming the domesticated godlings of television which,
although it held the attention of the majority of the population,
did not enrapture, did not possess dreams or shape days with longing
and with secret imaginings the way the classic figures of an earlier
time had. Though I was of an age to recall the gallant days of the
movies, the nearly mythical power which they had held for millions of
people, not all simple, I was not really interested in that aspect of
California. I was more intrigued by the manners, by the cults, by the
works of this coastal people so unlike the older world of the East and
so antipathetic to our race’s first home in Europe. Needless to say, I
found them much like everyone else, except for minor differences of no
real consequence.
I stayed at a large hotel not too happily balanced in design between
the marble-and-potted-palm décor of the Continental Hotel in Paris and
the chrome and glass of an observation car on a newer train.
I unpacked, telephoned friends most of whom were not home. The one whom
at last I found in was the one I knew the least, a minor film writer
who had married money with great success and had, most altruistically,
given up the composition of films for which the remaining movie-goers
were no doubt thankful. He devoted his time to assisting his wife in
becoming the first hostess of Beverly Hills. She had, I recalled from
one earlier meeting, the mind of a child of twelve, but an extremely
active child and a good one.
Hastings, such was the writer’s name (her name was either Ethel or
Valerie, two names which I always confuse due to a particularly
revolutionary course I once took in mnemonics), invited me immediately
to a party. I went.
It seemed like spring though it was autumn, and it seemed like an
assortment of guests brought together in a ship’s dining room to
celebrate New Year’s Eve though, in fact, the gathering was largely
made up of close acquaintances. Since I knew almost no one, I had a
splendid time.
My hostess, beyond a brilliant greeting, a gold figure all in
green with gold dust in her hair, left me alone. Hastings was more
solicitous, a nervous gray man with a speech impediment which took the
form of a rather charming sign before any word which began with an
aspirate.
“We, ah, have a better place coming up. Farther up the mountains with
a marvelous view of the, ah, whole city. You will love it, Gene. Ah,
haven’t signed a lease yet, but soon.” While we talked he steered me
through the crowds of handsome and bizarre people (none of them was
from California I discovered: most were Central Europeans or British;
those who were not pretended to be one or the other; some sounded
like both). I was introduced to magnificent girls exactly like their
movie selves but since they all tended to look a great deal alike, the
effect was somehow spoiled. But I was a tourist and not critical. I
told a striking blonde that she would indeed be excellent in a musical
extravaganza based upon _The Sea Gull_. She thought so too and my host
and I moved on to the patio.
Beside a jade-green pool illuminated from beneath (and a little dirty,
I noticed, with leaves floating upon the water: the décor was becoming
tarnished, the sets had been used too long and needed striking.
Hollywood was becoming old without distinction), a few of the quieter
guests sat in white iron chairs while paper lanterns glowed prettily on
the palms and everywhere, untidily, grew roses, jasmine and lilac: it
was a fantastic garden, all out of season and out of place. The guests
beside the pool were much the same; except for one: Clarissa.
“You know each other?” Hastings’ voice, faintly pleased, was drowned by
our greetings and I was pulled into a chair by Clarissa who had elected
to dress herself like an odalisque which made her look, consequently,
more indigenous than any of the other guests; this was perhaps her
genius: her marvelous adaptiveness.
“We’ll be quite happy here,” said Clarissa, waving our host away. “Go
and abuse your other guests.”
Hastings trotted off; those who had been talking to Clarissa talked to
themselves and beneath a flickering lantern the lights of Los Angeles,
revealed in a wedge between two hills, added the proper note of lunacy,
for at the angle from which I viewed those lights they seemed to form a
monster Christmas tree, poised crazily in the darkness.
Clarissa and I exchanged notes on the months that had intervened since
our luncheon.
“And you gave up Julian, too?”
“Yes ... but why 'too’?” I was irritated by the implication that I gave
up all things before they were properly done.
“I feel you don’t finish things, Eugene. Not that you should; but I
_do_ worry about you.”
“It’s good of you,” I said, discovering that at a certain angle the
Christmas tree could be made to resemble a rocket’s flare arrested in
space.
“Now don’t take that tone with me. I have your interest at heart.” She
expressed herself with every sign of sincerity in that curious flat
language which she spoke so fluently yet which struck upon the ear
untruly, as though it were, in its homeliness, the highest artifice.
“But I’ve taken care of everything, you know. Wait and see. If you
hadn’t come out here on your own I should have sent for you....”
“And I would have come?”
“Naturally.” She smiled.
“But for what?”
“For ... _she’s_ here. In Los Angeles.”
“You mean that girl who came to lunch?” I disguised my interest,
but Clarissa, ignoring me, went on talking as energetically and as
obliquely as ever.
“She’s asked for you several times, which is a good sign. I told her I
suspected you’d be along but that one never could tell, especially if
you were still tied up with Julian, unlikely as that prospect was.”
“But I do finish some things.”
“I’m sure you do. In any case, the girl has been here over a month and
you must see her as soon as possible.”
“I’d like to.”
“Of course you would. I still have my plot, you know. Oh, you may think
I forget things but I don’t: my mind is a perfect filing system.”
“Could you tell me just _what_ you are talking about?”
She chuckled and wagged a finger at me. “Soon you’ll know. I know I
meddle a good deal, more than I should, but after all this time it
would be simply impossible for me _not_ to interfere. I see it coming,
one of those really exciting moments and I want just to give it a
tickle here, a push there to set it rolling. Oh, what fun it will be!”
Hastings crept back among us, diffidently pushing a star and a
producer in our direction. “I think you all ought to know each other,
Clarissa ... and, ah, Gene too. This is Miss ... and Mr ... and here
in Hollywood ... when you get to New York ... house on the river,
wonderful, old ... new film to cost five million ... runner-up for the
Academy Award.” He did it all very well, I thought. Smiles gleamed in
the patio’s half-light. The star’s paste jewels, borrowed from her
studio, glimmered like an airliner’s lighted windows. I moved toward
the house, but Clarissa’s high voice restrained me at the door: “You’ll
call Iris tomorrow, won’t you?” and she shouted an exchange and a
number. I waved to show that I’d heard her then, vowing I would never
telephone Iris, I rejoined the party and watched with fascination
as the various performers performed in the living room to the
accompaniment of a grand piano just barely out of tune.
3
I waited several days before I telephoned Iris. Days of considerable
activity, of visiting friends and acquaintances, of attending parties
where the guests were precisely the same as the ones I had met at
Hastings’ house: every one of them bent upon combating boredom with
boredom, creating a desert in a dry land. But I was capable of evoking
mirages which decorated for me _their_ desert, made unusual (for myself
at least) what, with familiarity, might become impossible.
I met Iris at the house where she was staying near the main beach of
Santa Monica: a fairly decorous Spanish house, quiet among palms and
close to the sea. The day was vivid; the sea made noise; the wind was
gentle, smelling of salt and far countries.
I parked my rented car and walked around to the sea side of the house.
Iris came forward to meet me, smiling, hand outstretched, her face
which I had remembered as being remarkably pale was flushed with
sunlight.
“I hoped you’d come,” she said, and she slipped her arm in mine as
though we’d been old friends and led me to a deck chair adjoining the
one where she’d been seated, reading. We sat down. “Friends let me have
this place. They went to Mexico for two months and lent me the house.”
“Useful friends.”
“Aren’t they? I’ve already put down roots here in the sand and I’ll
hate to give it back.”
“Don’t.”
“Ah, wouldn’t it be wonderful.” She smiled vaguely and looked beyond me
at the flash of sea in the flat distance. An automobile horn sounded
through the palms; a mother called her child: we were a part of the
world, even here.
“Clarissa told me you’ve been out several months.”
Iris nodded. “I came back. I think I told you I was going to.”
“To see the man?”
“Would you like something to drink?” She changed the subject with a
disconcerting shift of her gaze from the ocean to me, her eyes still
dazzled with the brilliance of light on water. I looked away and shook
my head.
“Too early in the day. But I want to take you to dinner tonight, if I
may. Somewhere along the coast.”
“I’d like it very much.”
“Do you know of a place?”
She suggested several. Then we went inside and she showed me a room
where I might change into my bathing suit; we were to swim.
We walked through the trees to the main road on the other side of
which the beach glowed white in the sun. It was deserted at this point
although, in the distance, other bathers could be seen, tiny figures
black against the startling white, moving about like insects on a white
cloth.
For a time we swam contentedly, not speaking, not thinking, our various
urgencies (or their lack) no longer imposed upon the moment. At such
times, in those days, I was able through the body’s strenuous use to
reduce the miserable demands of the yearning self to a complacent
harmony, with all things in proper proportion: a part of the whole and
not the whole itself, though, metaphorically speaking, perhaps that
which conceives reality is reality itself. But such nice divisions
and distinctions were of no concern to me that afternoon in the sun,
swimming with Iris, the mechanism which spoils time with questioning
switched off by the body’s euphoria.
And yet, for all this, no closer to one another, no wiser about one
another in any precise sense, we drove that evening in silence to a
restaurant of her choosing on the beach to the north: a ramshackle
place filled with candlelight, the smell of tar, old nets: “atmosphere”
which was nearly authentic. After wine and fish and coffee, we talked.
“Clarissa is bringing us together.”
I nodded, accepting the plain statement as a fact. “The matchmaking
instinct is, I suppose....”
“Not that at all.” Her face was in a half-light and looked as it had
when we first met: pale, withdrawn, all the day’s color drained out of
it. Above the sea, Orion’s belt dipped in the deep sky. The evening
star all silver set. We were early and had this place to ourselves.
“Then what? Clarissa’s motives are always clear, at least to herself.
She never does anything that doesn’t contribute to some private design
... though what she’s up to half the time I don’t dare guess.”
Iris smiled. “Nor I. But she is at least up to something which concerns
us both and I’m not sure that she may not be right, about the two of
us, I mean ... though of course it’s too soon to say.”
I was conventional enough at first to assume that Iris was speaking of
ourselves, most boldly, in terms of some emotional attachment and I
wondered nervously how I might indicate without embarrassment to her
that I was effectively withdrawn from all sexuality and that, while
my emotions were in no way impaired, I had been forced to accept a
physical limitation to any act of affection which I might direct at
another; consequently, I avoided as well as I could those situations
which might betray me, and distress another. Though I have never been
unduly grieved by this incompletion, I had come to realize only too
well from several disquieting episodes in my youth that this flaw in me
possessed the unanticipated power of shattering others who, unwarily,
had moved to join with me in the traditional duet only to find an
implacable surface where they had anticipated a creature of flesh like
themselves, as eager as they, as governed by the blood’s solemn tide: I
had caused pain against my will and I did not want Iris hurt.
Fortunately, Iris had begun to move into a different, an unexpected
conjunction with me, one which had in it nothing of the familiar or
even of the human: it was in that hour beneath Orion’s glitter that
we were, without warning, together volatilized onto that archetypal
plane where we were to play with such ferocity at being gods, a flawed
Mercury and a dark queen of heaven, met at the sea’s edge, disguised
as human beings but conscious of one another’s true identity for
though our speeches, our arias were all prose, beneath the usual talk
recognition had occurred, sounding with the deep resonance of a major
chord struck among dissonances.
We crossed the first division easily. She was, in her way, as removed
as I from the flesh’s wild need to repeat itself in pleasure. There
was no need for us ever to discuss my first apprehension. We were able
to forget ourselves, to ignore the mortal carriage. The ritual began
simply enough.
“Clarissa knows what is happening here. That’s why she has come West,
though she can’t bear California. She wants to be in on it the way
she’s in on everything else, or thinks she is.”
“You mean John Cave, your _magus_?” It was the first time I had ever
said that name: the sword was between us now, both edges sharp.
“You guessed? or did she tell you that was why I came back?”
“I assumed it. I remembered what you said to me last spring.”
“He is more than ... _magus_, Eugene.” And this was the first time
she had said _my_ name: closer, closer. I waited. “You will see him.”
I could not tell if this was intended as a question or a prophecy. I
nodded. She continued to talk, her eyes on mine, intense and shining.
Over her shoulder the night was black and all the stars flared twice,
once in the sky and again upon the whispering smooth ocean at our feet,
one real and one illusion: both light.
“It is really happening,” she said and then, deliberately, she
lightened her voice. “You’ll see when you meet him. I know of course
that there have been thousands of these prophets, these saviors in
every country and in every time. I also know that this part of America
is particularly known for religious maniacs. I started with every
prejudice, just like you.”
“Not prejudice ... skepticism: perhaps indifference. Even if he should
be an effective one, one of the chosen gods and wonder-workers, should
I care? I must warn you, Iris, that I’m not a believer. And though I’m
sure that the revelations of other men must be a source of infinite
satisfaction to them, individually, I shouldn’t for one second be so
presumptuous as to make a choice among the many thousands of recorded
revelations of truth, accepting one at the expense of all the others: I
might so easily choose wrong and get into eternal trouble. And you must
admit that the selection is wide, and dangerous to the amateur.”
“You’re making fun of me,” said Iris, but she seemed to realize that I
was approaching the object in my own way. “He’s not like that at all.”
“But obviously if he is to be useful he must be accepted and he can’t
be accepted without extending his revelation or whatever he calls it
and I fail to see how he can communicate, short of hypnotism or drugs,
the sense of his vision to someone like myself who, in a sloppy but
devoted way, has wandered through history and religion, acquiring with
a collector’s delight the more colorful and obscure manifestations
of divine guidance, revealed to us through the inspired systems of
philosophers and divines, not to mention such certified prophets as the
custodians of the Sibylline books. '_Illo die hostem Romanorum esse
periturum_’ was the instruction given poor Maxentius when he marched
against Constantine: needless to say he perished and consequently
fulfilled the prophecy by _himself_ becoming the enemy of Rome, to his
surprise I suspect. My point, though, in honoring you with the only
complete Latin sentence which I can ever recall is that at no time
can we escape the relativity of our judgments. Truth for us, whether
inspired by messianic frenzy or merely illuminated by reason, is, after
all, inconstant and subject to change with the hour. You believe now
whatever it is this man says. Splendid. But will the belief be true to
you at another hour of your life? I wonder. For even if you wish to
remain consistent and choose to ignore inconvenient evidence in the
style of the truly devoted, the truly pious, will not your prophet
_himself_ have changed with time’s passage? for no human being can
remain the same, despite the repetition of....”
“Enough, enough!” she laughed aloud and put her hand between us as
though to stop the words in air. “You’re talking such nonsense.”
“Perhaps. It’s not at all easy to say what one thinks when it
comes to these problems or, for that matter, to any problem which
demands articulation. Sometimes one is undone by the flow of words
assuming its own direction, carrying one, protesting, away from the
anticipated shore to _terra incognita_. Other times, at the climax of
a particularly telling analogy, one is aware that in the success of
words the meaning has got lost. Put it this way, finally, _accurately_:
I accept no man’s authority in that realm where we are all equally
ignorant. The beginning and the end of creation are not our concern.
The eventual disposition of the human personality which we treasure in
our conceit as being among the more poignant ornaments of an envious
universe is unknown to us and shall so remain until we learn the
trick of raising the dead. God, or what have you, will not be found
at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased and
conceived. We are prisoners in our flesh, dullards in divinity as the
Greeks would say. No man can alter this though of course human beings
can be made to _believe_ anything. You can teach that fire is cold
and ice is hot but nothing changes except the words. So what can your
_magus_ do? What can he celebrate except that which is visible and
apparent to all eyes? What can he offer me that I should accept his
authority, and its source?”
She sighed, “I’m not sure he wants anything for himself; acceptance,
authority ... one doesn’t think of such things, at least not now. As
for his speaking with the voice of some new or old deity, he denies the
reality of any power other than the human....”
“A strange sort of messiah.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you this.” She smiled. “He sounds at times
not unlike you just now ... not so glib perhaps.”
“Now you mock _me_.”
“No more than you deserve for assuming facts without evidence.”
“If he throws over all the mystical baggage what is left? an ethical
system?”
“In time, I suppose, that will come. So far there is no system. You’ll
see for yourself soon enough.”
“You’ve yet to answer any direct question I have put to you.”
She laughed. “Perhaps there is a significance in that; perhaps you ask
the wrong questions....”
“And perhaps you have no answers.”
“Wait.”
“For how long?”
She looked at her watch by the candles’ uncertain light. “For an hour.”
“You mean we’re to see him tonight?”
“Unless you’d rather not.”
“Oh, I want to see him, very much.”
“He’ll want to see you too, I think.” She looked at me thoughtfully
but I could not guess her intention; it was enough that two lines had
crossed, both moving inexorably toward a third, toward a temporary
terminus at the progression’s heart.
4
It is difficult now to recall just what I expected. Iris deliberately
chose not to give me any clear idea of either the man or of his
teachings or even of the meeting which we were to attend; we talked of
other things as we drove in the starlight north along the ocean road,
the sound of waves striking sand loud in our ears.
It was nearly an hour’s drive from the restaurant to the place where
the meeting was to be held. Iris directed me accurately and we soon
turned from the main highway into a neon-lighted street; then off
into a suburban area of comfortable-looking middle-class houses with
gardens. Trees lined the streets; dogs barked; yellow light gleamed
at downstairs windows. Silent families were gathered in after-dinner
solemnity before television sets, absorbed by the spectacle of figures
singing, dancing and telling jokes.
As we drove down the empty streets, I saw ruins and dust where houses
were and, among the powdery debris of stucco all in mounds, the rusted
antennae of television sets like the bones of awful beasts whose
vague but terrible proportions will alone survive to attract the
unborn stranger’s eye. But the loathing of one’s own time is a sign of
innocence, of faith. I have come since to realize the wholeness of man
in time. That year, perhaps that ride down a deserted evening street
of a California suburb, was my last conscious moment of particular
disgust: television, the Blues and the Greens, the perfidy of Carthage,
the efficacy of rites to the moon ... all were at last the same.
“That house over there, with the light in front, with the clock.”
The house, to my surprise, was a large neo-Georgian funeral parlor
with a lighted clock in front crowned by a legend discreetly fashioned
in Gothic gold on black: _Whittaker and Dormer, Funeral Directors_. A
dozen cars had been parked closely together in the street and I was
forced to park nearly a block away.
We walked along the sidewalk, street lamps behind trees cast shadows
thick and intricate upon the pavement. “Is there any particular
significance?” I asked. “I mean in the choice of meeting place?”
She shook her head. “Not really, no. We meet wherever it’s convenient.
Mr Dormer is one of us and has kindly offered his chapel for the
meetings.”
“Is there any sort of ritual I should observe?”
She laughed. “Of course not. This isn’t at all what you think.”
“I think nothing.”
“Then you are prepared. I should tell you, though, that until this year
when a number of patrons made it possible for him” (already I could
identify the “him” whenever it fell from her lips, round with reverence
and implication) “to devote all his time to teaching, he was for ten
years an undertaker’s assistant in Oregon and Washington.”
I said nothing. It was just as well to get past this first obstacle
all at once. There was no reason of course to scorn that necessary if
overwrought profession; yet somehow the thought of a savior emerging
from those unctuous formaldehyde-smelling ranks seemed ludicrous. I
reminded myself that one of the more successful messiahs had been a
carpenter and that another had been a politician ... but an embalmer!
My anticipation of great news was chilled; I prepared myself for grim
comedy.
Iris would tell me nothing more about the meeting or about _him_ as we
crossed the lawn. She opened the door to the house and we stepped into
a softly lighted anteroom. A policeman and a civilian, the one gloomy
and the other cheerful, greeted us.
“Ah, Miss Mortimer!” said the civilian, a gray, plump pigeon of a man.
“And a friend, how good to see you both.” No this was not _he_. I was
introduced to Mr. Dormer who chirped on until he was interrupted by the
policeman.
“Come on, you two, in here. Got to get the prints and the oath.”
Iris motioned me to follow the policeman into a sideroom, an office.
I’d heard of this national precaution but until now I had had no
direct experience of it. Since the attempt of the communists to
control our society had, with the collapse of Russian foreign policy,
quite failed, our government in its collective wisdom had decided
that never again would any sect or party, other than the traditional
ones, be allowed to interrupt the rich flow of the nation’s life. As
a result, all deviationist societies were carefully watched by the
police who fingerprinted and photographed those who attended meetings,
simultaneously exacting an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and
the Flag which ended with that powerful invocation which a recent
president’s speech writer had, in a moment of inspiration, struck
off to the delight of his employer and nation: “In a true democracy
there is no place for any disagreement on truly great issues.” It is
a comment on those years, now happily become history, that only a few
ever considered the meaning of this resolution, proving of course that
words are never a familiar province to the great mass which prefers
recognizable pictures to even the most apposite prose.
Iris and I repeated dutifully in the presence of the policeman and an
American flag, the various national sentiments. We were then allowed to
go back to the anteroom and to Mr. Dormer who himself led us into the
chapel.
Several dozen people were already there, perfectly ordinary-looking
men and women, better dressed perhaps than the average. The chapel was
a nonsectarian one which managed to combine a number of decorative
influences with a blandness quite remarkable in its success at not
really representing anything while suggesting, at the same time,
everything. The presence of a dead body, a man carefully painted and
wearing a blue serge suit, gently smiling in an ebony casket behind a
bank of flowers at the chapel’s end, did not detract as much as one
might have supposed from the occasion’s importance. After the first
uneasiness, it was quite possible to accept the anonymous dead man as a
part of the décor. There was even, in later years, an attempt made by a
group of Cavite enthusiasts to insist upon the presence of an embalmed
corpse at every service but fortunately the more practical elements
among the Cavites prevailed, though not without an ugly quarrel and
harsh words.
John Cave’s entrance followed our own by a few minutes and it is with
difficulty that I recall what it was that I felt on seeing him for the
first time. Though my recollections are well-known to all (at least
they _were_ well-known, although now I am less certain, having seen
Butler’s Testament so strangely altered), I must record here that I
cannot, after so many years, so much history, recall in any emotional
detail my first reaction to this man who was to be the world’s, as well
as my own, peculiar nemesis.
But, concentrating fiercely, emptying my mind of later knowledge, I can
still see him as he walked down the aisle of the chapel, a small man
who moved with some grace. He was younger than I’d expected or, rather,
younger-looking, with short straight hair, light brown in color, a
lean regular face which would not have been noticed in a crowd unless
one had got close enough to see the expression of the eyes: the large
diver eyes with black lashes like a thick line drawn on the pale skin,
focusing attention to them, to the congenitally small pupils which
glittered like the points of black needles, betraying the will and the
ambition which the impassive, gentle face belied ... but I am speaking
with future knowledge now: I did not that evening think of ambition
or will in terms of John Cave. I was merely curious, intrigued by the
situation, by the intensity of Iris, by the serene corpse behind the
banks of hothouse flowers, by the thirty or forty men and women who
sat close to the front of the chapel, listening intently to Cave as he
talked.
At first I paid little attention to what was being said, more
interested in observing the audience, the room and the appearance of
the speaker. Immediately after his undramatic entrance he had moved to
the front of the chapel and sat down on a gilt chair to the right of
the coffin; there was a faint whisper of interest at his appearance:
newcomers like myself were being given last-minute instruction by the
habitués who had brought them there. Cave sat easily on the gilt chair,
his eyes upon the floor, his small hands, bony and white, folded in
his lap, a smile on his narrow lips: he could not have looked more
ineffectual, more ordinary. His opening words by no means altered this
first impression.
The voice, as he spoke, was good, though he tended to mumble at
the beginning, his eyes still on the floor, his hands in his lap,
motionless. So quietly did he begin that he had spoken for several
seconds before many of the audience were aware that he had begun. His
accent was the national one, learned doubtless from the radio and the
movies: a neutral pronunciation without any strong regional overtone.
The popular if short-lived legend of the next decade that he had begun
his mission as a backwoods revivalist was certainly untrue.
Not until he had talked for several minutes, did I begin to listen
to the sense rather than to the tone of his voice. I cannot
render precisely what he said but the message that night was not
much different from the subsequent ones which are known to all. It
was, finally, the manner which created the response, not the words
themselves, though the words were interesting enough, especially
when heard for the first time. His voice, as I have said, faltered
unsurely at the beginning and he left sentences unfinished, a trick
which I later discovered was deliberate for he had been born a
remarkable actor, an instinctive rhetorician. What most struck me
that first evening was the purest artifice of his performance. The
voice, especially when he came to his climax, was sharp and clear
while his hands stirred like separate living creatures and the eyes,
those splendid unique eyes, were abruptly revealed to us in the faint
light, displayed at that crucial moment which had been as carefully
constructed as any work of architecture or of music: the instant of
communication.
Against my will and judgment and inclination, I found myself absorbed
by the man, not able to move or to react. The same magic which was
always to affect me, even when later I knew him only too well, held me
fixed to my chair as the words, supported by the clear voice, came in a
resonant line from him to me alone, to each of us alone, separate from
the others ... and both restless mass and fast-breathing particular
were together his.
The moment itself lasted only a second in actual time; it came
suddenly, without warning: one was riven; then it was over and he left
the chapel, left us chilled and weak, staring foolishly at the gilt
chair where he had been.
It was some minutes before we were able to take up our usual selves
again.
Iris looked at me. I smiled weakly and cleared my throat: I was
conscious that I ached all over. I glanced at my watch and saw that
he had spoken to us for an hour and a half during which time I had
not moved. I stretched painfully and stood up. Others did the same:
we had shared an experience and it was the first time in my life that
I knew what it was like to be the same as others, my heart’s beat no
longer individual, erratic, but held for at least this one interval
of time in concert with those of strangers. It was a new, disquieting
experience: to be no longer an observer, a remote intelligence ... for
ninety minutes to have been a part of the whole.
Iris walked with me to the anteroom where we stood for a moment
watching the others who had also gathered here to talk in low voices,
their expressions bewildered.
She did not have to ask me what I thought. I told her immediately, in
my own way, impressed but less than reverent. “I see what you mean. I
see what it is that holds you, fascinates you but I still wonder what
it is really all about.”
“You saw. You heard.”
“I saw an ordinary man. I heard a sermon which was interesting,
although I might be less impressed if I read it to myself....”
Deliberately I tried to throw it all away, that instant of belief, that
paralysis of will, that sense of mysteries revealed in a dazzle of
light. But as I talked, I realized that I was not really dismissing it,
that I could not alter the experience even though I might dismiss the
man and mock the text: something _had_ happened and I told her what I
thought it was.
“It is not truth, Iris, but hypnosis.”
She nodded. “I’ve often thought that. Especially at first when I was
conscious of his mannerisms, when I could see, as only a woman can
perhaps, that this was just a man; yet something _does_ happen when you
listen to him, when you get to know him. You must find that out for
yourself; and you will. It may not prove to be anything which has to do
with him. There’s something in oneself which stirs and comes alive at
his touch, through his agency.” She spoke quickly, excitedly.
I felt the passion with which she was charged. But suddenly it was too
much for me. I was bewildered and annoyed; I wanted to get away.
“Don’t you want to meet him?”
I shook my head. “Another time maybe, but not now. Shall I take you
back?”
“No. I’ll get a ride in to Santa Monica. I may even stay over for the
night. He’ll be here a week.”
I wondered again if she might have a personal interest in Cave: though
I doubted it, anything was possible.
She walked me back to the car, past the lighted chapel, over the
summery lawn, down the dark street whose solid prosaicness helped to
dispel somewhat the madness of the hour before.
We made a date to meet later on in the week. She would tell Cave about
me and I would meet him. I interrupted her then. “What _did_ he say,
Iris? What did he say tonight?”
Her answer was as direct and as plain as my question. “That it is good
to die.”