1
Last night the noise of my heart’s beating kept me awake until nearly
dawn. Then, as the gray warm light of the morning patterned the floor,
I fell asleep and dreamed uneasily of disaster, my dreams disturbed by
the noise of jackals, by that jackal-headed god who hovers over me as
these last days unfold confusedly before my eyes: it will end in heat
and terror, alone beside a muddy river, all time as one and that soon
gone. I awakened, breathless and cold, with a terror of the dying still
ahead.
After coffee and pills, those assorted pellets which seem to restore me
for moments at a time to a false serenity, I put aside the nightmare
world of the previous restless hours and idly examined the pages which
I had written with an eye to rereading them straight through, to
relive again for a time the old drama which is already, as I write,
separating itself from my memory and becoming real only in the prose:
I think now of these events as I have told them and not as they occur
to me in memory. For the memory now is of pages and not of scenes or of
actual human beings still existing in that baleful, tenebrous region
of the imagination where fancy and fact together confuse even the most
confident of narrators. I have, thus far at least, exorcised demons,
and to have lost certain memories to my narrative relieves my system,
like a cancer cut whole from a failing organism.
The boy brought me my morning coffee and the local newspaper whose
Arabic text pleases my eye though the sense, when I do translate it, is
less than strange. I asked the boy if Mr. Butler was awake and he said
he had gone out already: these last few days I have kept to my room
even for the evening meal, delaying the inevitable revelation as long
as possible.
After the boy left and while I drank coffee and looked out upon the
river and the western hills, I was conscious of a sense of well-being
which I have not often experienced in recent years. Perhaps the work
of evoking the past has, in a sense, enhanced the present for me. I
thought of the work done as life preserved, as part of me which will
remain.
Then, idly, I riffled the pages of John Cave’s Testament for the first
time since I had discovered my name had been expunged.
The opening was the familiar one which I had composed so many years
before in Cave’s name. The time of divination: a straightforward
account of the apparent wonders which had preceded the mission. No
credence was given the supernatural but a good case was made (borrowed
a little from the mental therapists) for the race’s need of phenomena
as a symptom of unease and boredom and anticipation. I flicked through
the pages. An entire new part had been added which I did not recognize:
still written as though by Cave but, obviously, it could not have been
composed until at least a decade after his death.
I read the new section carefully. Whoever had written it had been
strongly under the influence of the pragmatic philosophers, though
the style was somewhat inspirational: a combination of a guide to
popularity crossed with the Koran. A whole system of ideal behavior was
sketched broadly for the devout, so broadly as to be fairly useless
though the commentary and the interpretive analysis of such lines as:
“Property really belongs to the world though individuals may have
temporary liens on certain sections,” must be already prodigious.
I was well into the metaphysics of the Cavites when there was a knock
on my door. It was Butler, looking red and uncomfortable from the heat,
a spotted red bandana tied, for some inscrutable reason, about his head
in place of a hat.
“Hope you don’t mind my barging in like this but I finished a visit
with the mayor earlier than I thought.” He crumpled, on invitation,
into a chair opposite me. He sighed gloomily. “This is going to be
tough, tougher than I ever imagined back home.”
“I told you it would be. The Moslems are very obstinate.”
“I’ll say! and the old devil of a mayor practically told me point-blank
that if he caught me proselyting he’d send me back to Cairo. Imagine
the nerve!”
“Well, it _is_ their country,” I said, reasonably, experiencing
my first real hope: might the Cavites not get themselves expelled
from Islam? I knew the mayor of Luxor, a genial merchant who still
enjoyed the obsolete title of Pasha. The possibilities of a daring
plot occurred to me. All I needed was another year or two by which
time nature would have done its work in any case and the conquest of
humanity by the Cavites could then continue its progress without my
bitter presence.
I looked at Butler speculatively. He was such a fool. I could, I was
sure, undo him, for a time at least; unless of course he was, as I
first expected, an agent come to finish me in fact as absolutely as
I have been finished in effect by those revisionists who have taken
my place among the Cavites, arranging history.... I’d experienced,
briefly, while studying Butler’s copy of the Testament, the unnerving
sense of having never lived, of having dreamed the past entire.
“Maybe it is their country but we got the truth, and like Paul Himmell
said: 'A truth known to only half the world is but half a truth.’”
“Did he say that?”
“Of course he did. Don’t you....” he paused. His eye taking in at last
the book in my hand. His expression softened somewhat, like a parent
in anger noticing suddenly an endearing resemblance to himself in the
offending child. “But I forget how isolated you’ve been up here. If
I’ve interrupted your studies, I’ll go away.”
“Oh no. I was finished when you came. I’ve been studying for several
hours which is too long for an old man.”
“If a contemplation of Cavesword can ever be too long,” said Butler
reverently. “Yes, Himmell wrote that even before Cavesword, in the
month of March, I believe, though we’ll have to ask my colleague when
he comes. He knows all the dates, all the facts. Remarkable guy. He has
the brains of the team.” And Butler laughed to show that he was not
entirely serious.
“I think they might respond to pressure,” I said, treacherously. “One
thing the Arabs respect is force.”
“You may be right. But our instructions are to go slow. Still, I didn’t
think it would be as slow as this. Why we haven’t been able to get a
building yet. They’ve all been told by the Pasha fellow not to rent to
us.”
“Perhaps I could talk to him.”
“Do you know him well?”
“We used to play cards quite regularly. I haven’t seen much of him in
the past few years but, if you’d like, I’ll go and pay him a call.”
“He’s known all along you’re a Cavite, hasn’t he?”
“We have kept off the subject of religion entirely. As you probably
discovered, since the division of the world, there’s been little
communication between East and West. I don’t think he knows much about
the Cavites except that they’re undesirable.”
“Poor creature,” said Butler, compassionately.
“Outer darkness,” I agreed.
“But mark my words before ten years have passed they will have the
truth.”
“I have no doubt of that, Communicator, none at all. If the others who
come out have even a tenth of your devotion the work will go fast.”
The easy words of praise came back to me mechanically from those
decades when a large part of my work was organizational, spurring the
mediocre on to great deeds ... and the truth of the matter has been,
traditionally, that the unimaginative are the stuff from which heroes
and martyrs are invariably made.
“Thanks for those kind words,” said Butler, flushed now with pleasure
as well as heat. “Which reminds me, I was going to ask you if you’d
like to help us with our work once we get going?”
“I’d like nothing better but I’m afraid my years of useful service are
over. Any advice, however, or perhaps influence that I may have in
Luxor....” There was a warm moment of mutual esteem and amiability,
broken only by a reference to the Squad of Belief.
“Of course we’ll have one here in time; though we can say, thankfully,
that the need for them in the Atlantic states is nearly over.
Naturally, there are always a few malcontents but we have worked
out a statistical ratio of nonconformists in the population which
is surprisingly accurate. Knowing their incidence, we are able to
check them early. In general, however, the truth is happily ascendant
everywhere in the really civilized world.”
“What are their methods now?”
“The Squad of Belief’s? Psychological indoctrination. We now have
methods of converting even the most obstinate lutherist. Of course
where usual methods fail (and once in every fifteen hundred they do),
the Squad is authorized to remove a section of brain which effectively
does the trick of making the lutherist conform, though his usefulness
in a number of other spheres is somewhat impaired: I’m told he has to
learn all over again how to talk and to move around.”
“Lutherist? I don’t recognize the word.”
“You certainly have been cut off from the world.” Butler looked at me
curiously, almost suspiciously. “I thought even in your day that was a
common expression. It means anybody who refuses willfully to know the
truth.”
“What does it come from?”
“Come from?” Semantics were either no longer taught or else Butler had
never been interested in them. “Why it just means, well, a lutherist.”
“I wonder, though, what the derivation of it was.” I was excited: this
was the only sign that I had ever existed, a word of obscure origin
connoting nonconformist.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to ask my side-kick when he comes. I don’t
suppose it came from one of those Christian sects ... you know the
German one which broke with Rome.”
“That must be it,” I said. “I don’t suppose in recent years there have
been as many lutherists as there once were.”
“Very, very few. As I say, we’ve got it down to a calculable minority
and our psychologists are trying to work out some method whereby we can
spot potential lutherists in childhood and indoctrinate them before
it’s too late ... but of course the problem is a negligible one in the
Atlantic states. We’ve had no serious trouble for forty years.”
“Forty years ... that was the time of all the trouble,” I said.
“Not so _much_ trouble,” said Butler, undoing the bandana and mopping
his face with it. “The last flare-up, I gather, of the old Christians
... history makes very little of it though I suppose at the time it
must have seemed important. Now that we have more perspective we can
view things in their proper light. I was only a kid in those days and,
frankly, I don’t think I paid any attention to the papers. Of course
_you_ remember it.” He looked at me suddenly, his great vacuous eyes
focused. My heart missed one of its precarious beats: was this the
beginning? had the inquisition begun?
“Not well,” I said. “I was seldom in the United States. I’d been
digging in Central America, in and around the Peten. I missed most of
the trouble.”
“You seem to have missed a good deal.” His voice was equable, without a
trace of secondary meaning.
“I’ve had a quiet life. I’m grateful though for your coming here;
otherwise. I should have died without any contact with America, without
ever knowing what was happening outside the Arab League.”
“Well, we’ll shake things up around here.”
“Shake well before using,” I quoted absently.
“What did you say?”
“I said I hoped all would be well.”
“I’m sure it will. By the way, I brought you the new edition of Cave’s
prison dialogues.” He pulled a small booklet from his back pocket and
handed it to me.
“Thank you.” I took the booklet: dialogues between Cave and Iris
Mortimer. I had never before heard of this particular work. “Is this a
recent discovery?” I asked.
“Recent? Why no. It’s the newest edition but of course the text goes
right back to the early days when Cave was in prison.”
“Oh, yes, in California.”
“Sure; it was the beginning of the persecutions. Well, I’ve got to be
on my way.” He got heavily to his feet and arranged the bandana about
his head. “Somebody stole my hat. Persecuting _me_, I’ll bet my bottom
dollar ... little ways. Well, I’m prepared for them. They can’t stop
us. Sooner or later the whole world will be Cavite.”
“Amen,” I said.
“What?” He looked at me with shock.
“I’m an old man,” I said hastily. “You must recall I was brought up in
the old Christianity. Such expressions still linger on, you know.”
“It’s a good thing there’s no Squad of Belief in Luxor,” said Butler
cheerily. “They’d have you up for indoctrination in a second.”
“I doubt if it’d be worth their trouble. Soon I shall be withdrawing
from the world altogether.”
“I suppose so. You haven’t thought of taking Cavesway have you?”
“Of course, many times, but since my health has been good I’ve been
in no great hurry to leave my contemplation of those hills.” I pointed
to the western window. “Now I should hesitate to die until the very
last moment, out of curiosity. I’m eager to learn, to help as much as
possible in your work here.”
“Well, that of course is good news but should you ever want to take
his way let me know. We have some marvellous methods now, extremely
pleasant to take and, as he said, 'It’s not death which is hard but
dying.’ We’ve finally made dying simply swell.”
“Will wonders never cease?”
“In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I
must be off.”
“Is your colleague due here soon?”
“Haven’t heard recently. I don’t suppose the plans have been changed,
though. You’ll like him.”
“I’m sure I shall.”
2
And so John Cave’s period in jail was now known as the time of
persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I
returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose
style was enough like Iris’s to have been her work. But of course her
style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since
it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising
techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those
anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of
publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.
The conversation with Cave in prison was lofty in tone and seemed
to deal with moral problems. It was apparent that since the task
of governing is largely one of keeping order, it had become, with
the passage of time, necessary for the Cavite rulers to compose in
Cave’s name different works of ethical instruction to be used for the
guidance and control of the population. I assume that since they now
control all records, all original sources, it is an easy matter for
them to “discover” some relevant text which gives clear answer to any
moral or political problem which has not been anticipated in previous
commentaries. The work of falsifying records, expunging names is, I
should think, somewhat more tricky but they seem to have accomplished
it in Cave’s Testament, brazenly assuming that those who recall the
earlier versions will die off in time, leaving a generation which knows
only what they wish it to know, excepting of course the “calculable
minority” of nonconformists, of base Lutherists.
Cave’s term in prison was far less dramatic than official legend,
though more serious. He was jailed for hit-and-run driving on the
highway from Santa Monica into Los Angeles.
I went to see him that evening with Paul. When we arrived at the jail,
we were not allowed near him though Paul’s lawyers had been permitted
to go inside a few minutes before our arrival.
Iris was sitting in the outer office, pale and shaken. A bored
policeman in uniform sat fatly at a desk at the other end of the
office, ignoring us.
“They’re the best lawyers in L.A.,” said Paul quickly. “They’ll get him
out in no time.”
Iris looked at him bleakly.
“What happened?” I asked, sitting down beside her on the bench. “How
did it happen?”
“I wasn’t with him.” She shook her head several times as though to
dispel a profound daydream. “He called me and I called you. They _are_
the best, Paul?”
“I can vouch that....”
“Did he kill anybody?”
“We ... we don’t know yet. He hit an old man and went on driving. I
don’t know why; I mean why he didn’t stop. He just went on and the
police car caught him. The man’s in the hospital now. They say it’s
bad; he’s unconscious, an old man ...”
“Any reporters here?” asked Paul. “Anybody else know besides us?”
“Nobody. You’re the only person I called.”
“This could wreck everything.” Paul was frightened.
But Cave was rescued, at considerable expense to the company. The
old man chose not to die immediately while the police and the courts
of Los Angeles, at that time well known for their accessibility to
free-spending reason, proved more than obliging. After a day and a
night in prison. Cave was released on bail and when the case came to
court, it was handled discreetly by the magistrate.
The newspapers, however, had discovered John Cave at last and there
were photographs of “Present-Day Messiah in Court.” As ill luck would
have it, the undertakers of Laguna had come to the aid of their prophet
with banners which proclaimed his message. This picketing of the court
was photographed and exhibited in the tabloids. Paul was in a frenzy.
Publicist though he was, in his first rage he expressed to me the novel
sentiment that not all publicity was good.
“But we’ll get back at those bastards,” he said grimly, not identifying
which ones he meant but waving toward the city hidden by the Venetian
blinds of his office window.
* * * * *
I asked for instructions. Cave had, the day before, gone back to
Washington to lie low until the time was right for a triumphant
reappearance. Iris had gone with him; on a separate plane, however,
to avoid scandal. Clarissa had sent various heartening if confused
messages from New York while Paul and I were left alone to gather
up the pieces and begin again. Our close association during those
difficult days impressed me with his talents and though, fundamentally,
I still found him appalling, I couldn’t help but admire his superb
operativeness.
“I’m going ahead with the original plan ... just like none of this
happened. The stockholders are willing and we’ve got enough money,
though not as much as I’d like, for the publicity build-up. I expect
Cave’ll pick up some more cash in Seattle. He always does, wherever he
goes.”
“Millionaires just flock to him?”
“Strange to tell, yes. But then nearly everybody does.”
“It’s funny since the truth he offers is all there is to it.
Once experienced, there’s no longer much need for Cave or for an
organization.” This of course was the paradox which time and the
unscrupulous were bloodily to resolve.
Paul’s answer was reasonable. “That’s true but there’s the problem of
sharing it. If millions felt the same way about death the whole world
would be happier and, if it’s happier, why, it’ll be a better place to
live in.”
“Do you really believe this?”
“Still think of me as a hundred percent phony?” Paul chuckled
good-naturedly. “Well, it so happens, I _do_ believe that. It also so
happens that if this thing clicks we’ll have a world organization and
if we have that there’ll be a big place for number one in it. It’s all
mixed up, Gene. I’d like to hear _your_ motives, straight from the
shoulder.”
I was not prepared to answer him, or myself. In fact, to this day,
my own motives are a puzzle to which there is no single key, no easy
definition. One is not, after all, like those classic or neo-classic
figures who wore with such splendid mono-maniacal consistency the
scarlet of lust or the purple of dominion, or the bright yellow of
madness, existing not at all beneath their identifying robes. Power
appealed to me in my youth but only as a minor pleasure and not as
an end in itself or even as a means to any private or public end.
I enjoyed the idea of guiding and dominating others, preferably in
the mass; yet, at the same time, I did not like the boredom of power
achieved, or the silly publicness of a great life. But there was
something which, often against my will and judgment, precipitated me
into deeds and attitudes where the logic of the moment controlled me to
such an extent that I could not lessen, if I chose, the momentum of my
own wild passage, or chart its course.
I would not have confided this to Paul even had I in those days
thought any of it out, which I had not. Though I was conscious of some
fundamental ambivalence in myself, I always felt that should I pause
for a few moments and question myself, I could easily find answers
to these problems. But I did not pause. I never asked myself a single
question concerning motive. I acted like a man sleeping who was only
barely made conscious by certain odd incongruities that he dreams. The
secret which later I was to discover was still unrevealed to me as I
faced the efficient vulgarity of Paul Himmell across the portable bar
which reflected so brightly in its crystal his competence.
“My motives are perfectly simple,” I said, half-believing what I said.
In those days the more sweeping the statement the more apt I was to
give it my fickle allegiance: motives are simple, splendid! simple they
are. “I want something to do. I’m fascinated by Cave and I believe
what he says ... not that it is so supremely earthshaking. It’s been
advanced as a theory off and on for two thousand years. Kant wrote that
he anticipated with delight the luxurious sleep of the grave and the
Gnostics came close to saying the same thing when they promised a glad
liberation from life. The Eastern religions, about which I know very
little, maintain ...”
“That’s it!” Paul interrupted me eagerly. “That’s what we want. You
just keep on like that. We’ll call it 'An Introduction to John Cave.’
Make a small book out of it. Get it published in New York; then the
company will buy up copies and we’ll pass it out free.”
“I’m not so sure that I know enough formal philosophy to ...”
“To hell with that stuff. You just root around and show how the old
writers were really Cavites at heart and then you come to him and put
down what he says. Why we’ll be half-there even before he’s on TV!”
Paul lapsed for a moment into a reverie of promotion. I had another
drink and felt quite good myself although I had serious doubts about my
competence to compose philosophy in the popular key. But Paul’s faith
was infectious and I felt that, all in all, with a bit of judicious
hedging and recourse to various explicit summaries and definitions,
I might put together a respectable ancestry for Cave whose message,
essentially, ignored _all_ philosophy, empiric and orphic, moving
with hypnotic effectiveness to the main proposition: death and man’s
acceptance of it. The problems of life were always quite secondary to
Cave, if not to the rest of us.
“When will you want this piece done?”
“The sooner the better. Here,” he scribbled an address on a pad of
paper. “This is Cave’s address. He’s on a farm outside Spokane. It
belongs to one of his undertaker friends.”
“Iris is with him?”
“Yes. Now you ...”
“I wonder if that’s wise, Iris seeing so much of him. You know he’s
going to have a good many enemies before very long and they’ll dig
around for any scandal they can find.”
“Oh, it’s perfectly innocent, I’m sure. Even if it isn’t, I can’t see
how it can do much harm.”
“For a public relations man you don’t seem to grasp the possibilities
for bad publicity in this situation.”
“All pub ...”
“Is good. But Cave, it appears is a genuine ascetic.” And the word
“genuine” as I spoke it was like a knife-blade in my heart. “And, since
he is, you have a tremendous advantage in building him up. There’s no
use in allowing him, quite innocently, to appear to philander.”
Paul looked at me curiously. “You wouldn’t by chance be interested in
Iris yourself?”
And of course that was it. I had become attached to Iris in precisely
the same sort of way a complete man might have been but of course for
me there was no hope, nothing. The enormity of that nothing shook me,
despite the alcohol we had drunk. I was sufficiently collected, though,
not to make the mistake of vehemence. “I like her very much but I’m
more attached to the idea of Cave than I am to her. I don’t want to see
the business get out of hand. That’s all. I’m surprised you, of all
people involved, aren’t more concerned.”
“You may have a point. I suppose I’ve got to adjust my views to this
thing ... it’s different from my usual work building up crooners and
movie stars. In that line the romance angle is swell, just as long as
there’re no bigamies or abortions involved. I see your point, though.
With Cave we have to think in sort of Legion of Decency terms. No rough
stuff. No nightclub pictures or posing with blondes. You’re absolutely
right. Put that in your piece: doesn’t drink, doesn’t go out with
dames....”
I laughed at this seriousness. “Maybe we won’t have to go that far. The
negative virtues usually shine through all on their own. The minute
you draw attention to them you create suspicion: people are generally
pleased to suspect the opposite of every avowal.”
“You talk just like my analyst.” And I felt that I had won, briefly,
Paul’s admiration. “Anyway, you go to Spokane; talk to Iris; tell her
to lay off ... in a tactful way of course. I wouldn’t mention it to
him: you never can tell how he’ll react. She’ll be reasonable even
though I suspect she’s stuck on the man. Try and get your piece done by
the first of December. I’d like to have it in print for the first of
the New Year, Cave’s year.”
“I’ll try.”
“By the way, we’re getting an office ... same building as this. The
directors okayed it and we’ll take over as soon as there’s some
furniture in it.”
“Cavites, Inc.?”
“We could hardly call it the Church of the Golden Rule,” said Paul
with one of the few shows of irritability I was ever to observe in his
equable disposition. “Now, on behalf of the directors, I’m authorized
to advance you whatever money you might feel you need for this project;
that is, within ...”
“I won’t need anything except, perhaps, a directorship in the company.”
My own boldness startled me. Paul laughed.
“That’s a good boy. Eye on the main chance. Well, we’ll see what we can
do about that. There aren’t any more shares available right now but
that doesn’t mean.... I’ll let you know when you get back from Spokane.”
Our meeting was ended by the appearance of his secretary who called
him away to other business. As we parted in the outer office, he said,
quite seriously, “I don’t think Iris likes him the way you think but
if she does be careful. We can’t upset Cave now. This is a tricky time
for everyone. Don’t show that you suspect anything when you’re with
him. Later, when we’re under way, and there’s less pressure, I’ll
handle it. Agreed?”
I agreed, secretly pleased at being thought in love ... “in love,” to
this moment the phrase has a strangely foreign sound to me, like a
classical allusion not entirely understood in some decorous, scholarly
text. “In love,” I whispered to myself in the elevator as I left Paul
that evening: in love with Iris.
3
We met at the Spokane railroad station and Iris drove me through the
wide, clear, characterless streets to a country road which wound east
into the hills, in the direction of a town with the lovely name of
Coeur d’Alene.
She was relaxed. Her ordinarily pale face was faintly burned from the
sun while her hair, which I recalled as darkly waving, was now streaked
with light and worn loosely bound at the nape of her neck. She wore no
cosmetics and her dress was simple cotton beneath the sweater she wore
against the autumn’s chill. She looked young, younger than either of us
actually was.
At first we talked of Spokane. She identified mountains and indicated
hidden villages with an emphasis on places which sharply recalled Cave.
Not until we had turned off the main highway into a country road, dark
with fir and spruce, did she ask me about Paul.
“He’s very busy getting the New Year’s debut ready. He’s also got a set
of offices for the company in Los Angeles and he’s engaged me to write
an introduction to Cave ... but I suppose you knew that when he wired
you I was coming.”
“It was my idea.”
“My coming? or the introduction?”
“Both. I talked to him about it just before we came up here.”
“And I thought he picked it out of the air while listening to me
majestically place Cave among the philosophers.”
Iris smiled. “Paul’s not obvious. He enjoys laying traps and, as long
as they’re for one’s own good, he’s very useful.”
“Implying he could be destructive?”
“Immensely. So be on your guard even though I don’t think he’ll harm
any of us.”
“How is Cave?”
“I’m worried, Gene. He hasn’t got over that accident. He talks about it
continually.”
“But the man didn’t die.”
“It would be better if he did ... as it is there’s a chance of a
lawsuit against Cave for damages.”
“But he has no money.”
“That doesn’t prevent them from suing. Worst of all, though, would be
the publicity. The whole thing has depressed John terribly. It was all
I could do to keep him from announcing to the press that he had almost
done the old man a favor.”
“You mean by killing him?”
Iris nodded, quite seriously. “That’s actually what he believes and the
reason why he drove on.”
“I’m glad he said nothing like that to the papers.”
“But it’s true; his point of view _is_ exactly right.”
“Except that the old man might regard the situation in a different
light and, in any case, he was badly hurt and did not receive Cave’s
gift of death.”
“Now you’re making fun of John.” She frowned and drove fast on the
empty road.
“I’m doing no such thing. I’m absolutely serious. There’s a moral
problem involved which is extremely important and if a precedent is set
too early, a bad one like this, there’s no predicting how things will
turn out.”
“You mean the ... the gift as you call it should only be given
voluntarily?”
“Exactly ... _if_ then, and only in extreme cases. Think what might
happen if those who listened to Cave decided to make all their friends
and enemies content by killing them.”
“Well, I wish you’d talk to him.” She smiled sadly. “I’m afraid I don’t
always see things clearly when I’m with him. You know how he is ... how
he convinces.”
“I’ll talk to him tactfully. I’ve also got to get a statement of belief
from him.”
“But you have it already. We all have it.”
“Then I’ll want some moral application of it. We have so much ground to
cover yet.”
“There’s the farm, up there on the hill.” A white frame building stood
shining among elms on a low hill at the foot of blue sharp mountains.
She turned up a dirt road and, in silence, we arrived at the house.
An old woman, the cook, greeted us familiarly and told Iris that _he_
could be found in the study.
In a small warm room, sitting beside a stone fireplace empty of fire,
Cave sat, a scrapbook on his knees, his expression vague, unfocused.
Our arrival recalled him from some dense reverie. He got to his feet
quickly and shook hands; “I’m glad you came,” he said.
“I wanted to see you,” I said awkwardly: it was Cave’s particular gift
to strike a note of penetrating sincerity at all times, even in his
greetings which became, as a result, disconcertingly like benedictions.
Iris excused herself and I sat beside him in front of the fireplace.
“Have you seen these?” he asked, pushing the scrapbook toward me.
I took it and nodded when I saw, neatly pasted and labeled, the various
newspaper stories concerning the accident. It had got a surprisingly
large amount of space as though, instinctively, the editors had
anticipated a coming celebrity for “Hit-and-Run Prophet.”
“Look what they say about me.”
“I’ve read them all,” I said, handing the scrapbook back to him, a
little surprised that, considering his unworldliness, he had bothered
to keep such careful track of his appearance in the press. It showed
a new, rather touching side to him: he was like an actor hoarding his
notices, good and bad. “I don’t think it’s serious: after all you were
let off by the court, and the man didn’t die.”
“It was an accident of course yet that old man nearly received the
greatest gift a man can have, a quick death. I wanted to tell the court
that. I could’ve convinced them, I’m sure, but Paul said no. It was the
first time I’ve ever gone against my own instinct and I don’t like it.”
Emphatically, he shut the book.
We watched the cook who came into the room and lit the fire. When the
first crackling filled the room and the pine had caught, she left,
observing that we were to eat in an hour.
“You want to wash up?” asked Cave mechanically, his eyes on the fire,
his hands clasped in his lap like those dingy marble replicas of hands
which decorate medieval tombs: that night there was an unhuman look to
Cave: pale, withdrawn, inert ... his lips barely moving when he spoke,
as though another’s voice spoke through senseless flesh.
“No thanks,” I said, a little chilled by his tone, by his remoteness.
I got him off the subject of the accident as quickly as possible and
we talked until dinner of the introduction I was to write. It was most
enlightening. As I suspected, Cave had read only the Bible and that
superficially, just enough to be able, at crucial moments, to affect
the seventeenth-century prose of the translators and to confound
thereby simple listeners with the familiar authority of his manner.
His knowledge of philosophy did not even encompass the names of the
principals. Plato and Aristotle rang faint, unrelated bells and with
them the meager carillon ended.
“I don’t know why you want to drag in those people,” he said, after I
had suggested Zoroaster as a possible point of beginning. “Most people
have never heard of them either. And what I have to say is all my own.
It doesn’t tie in with any of them or, if it does, it’s a coincidence
because I never picked it up anywhere.”
“I think, though, that it would help matters if we did provide a sort
of family tree for you, to show....”
“I don’t.” He gestured with his effigy-hands. “Let them argue about
it later. For now, act like this is a new beginning, which it is. I
have only one thing to give people and that is the way to die without
fear, gladly ... to accept nothing for what it is, a long and dreamless
sleep.”
I had to fight against that voice, those eyes which as always, when he
chose, could dominate any listener. Despite my close association with
him, despite the thousands of times I heard him speak, I was never,
even in moments of lucid disenchantment, quite able to resist his
power. He was a magician in the great line of Simon Magus and the Faust
of legend. That much, even now, I will acknowledge ... his divinity,
however, was and is the work of others, shaped and directed by the
race’s recurrent need.
I surrendered in the name of philosophy with a certain relief, and he
spoke in specific terms of what he believed and what I should write in
his name.
It was not until after dinner that we got around, all three of us, to a
problem which was soon to absorb us all, with near-disastrous results.
We had been talking amiably of neutral things and Cave had emerged
somewhat from his earlier despondency. He got on to the subject of the
farm where we were, of its attractiveness and remoteness, of its owner
who lived in Spokane.
“I always liked old Smathers. You’d like him too. He’s got one of the
biggest funeral parlors in the state. I used to work for him and then,
when I started on all this, he backed me up to the hilt. Lent me money
to get as far as San Francisco. After that of course it was easy. I
paid him back every cent.”
“Does he get here often?”
Cave shook his head. “No, he lets me use the farm but he keeps away. He
says he doesn’t approve of what I’m doing. You see he’s Catholic.”
“But he still likes John,” said Iris who had been stroking a
particularly ugly yellow cat beside the fire. So it was John now, I
thought. Iris was the only person ever to call him by his first name.
“Yes. He’s a good friend.”
“There’ll be a lot of trouble, you know,” I said.
“From Smathers?”
“No, from the Catholics, from the Christians.”
“You really think so?” Cave looked at me curiously. I believe that
until that moment he had never realized the inevitable collision of his
point of view with that of the established religions.
“Of course I do. They’ve constructed an entire ethical system upon
a supernatural foundation whose main strength is the promise of a
continuation of human personality after death. You are rejecting grace,
heaven, hell, the Trinity ...”
“I’ve never said anything about the Trinity or about Christianity.”
“But you’ll _have_ to say something about it sooner or later. If--or
rather when--the people begin to accept you, the churches will fight
back and the greater the impression you make the more fierce their
attack.”
“I suspect John _is_ the anti-Christ,” said Iris and I saw from her
expression that she was perfectly serious. “He’s come to undo all the
wickedness of the Christians.”
“Though not, I hope, of Christ,” I said. “There’s some virtue in his
legend, even as corrupted at Nicea three centuries after the fact.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” said Cave. “I don’t know that I’ve ever
given it much thought before. I’ve spoken always what I knew was true
and there’s never been any opposition, at least that I’ve been aware
of, to my face. It never occurred to me that people who like to think
of themselves as Christians couldn’t accept both me and Christ at the
same time. I know I don’t promise the kingdom of heaven but I _do_
promise oblivion and the loss of self, of pain....”
“Gene is right,” said Iris. “They’ll fight you hard. You must get ready
now while you still have time to think it out, before Paul puts you to
work and you’ll never have a moment’s peace again.”
“As bad as that, you think?” Cave sighed wistfully. “But how to get
ready? What shall I do? I never think things out, you know. Everything
occurs to me on the spot. I can never tell what may occur to me next.
It happens only when I speak to people. When I’m alone, I seldom think
of the ... the main things; yet, when I’m in a group talking to them I
hear ... no, not hear, I _feel_ voices telling me what I should say.
That’s why I never prepare a talk, why I don’t really like to have them
taken down: they’re something which are meant only for the instant they
are conceived ... a child, if you like, made for just a moment’s life
by the people listening and myself speaking. I don’t mean to sound
touched,” he added, with a sudden smile. “I’m not really hearing things
but I do get something from those people, something besides the thing I
tell them. I seem to become a part of them, as though what goes on in
their minds also goes on in me, at the same time, two lobes to a single
brain.”
“We know that, John,” said Iris softly. “We’ve felt it.”
“I suppose, then, that’s the key,” said Cave. “Though it isn’t much to
write about; you can’t put it across without me to say it.”
“You may be wrong there,” I said. “Of course in the beginning you will
say the word but I think in time, properly managed, everyone will
accept it on the strength of evidence and statement, responding to
the chain of forces you have set in motion.” Yet for all the glibness
with which I spoke, I did not really believe that Cave would prove to
be more than an interesting momentary phenomenon whose “truth” about
death might, at best, contribute in a small way to the final abolition
of those old warring superstitions which had mystified and troubled
men for twenty dark centuries. A doubt which displayed my basic
misunderstanding of our race’s will to death and, worse, to a death in
life made radiant by false dreams, by desperate adjurations.
But that evening we spoke only of a bright future: “To begin again
is the important thing,” I said. “Christianity, though strong as an
organization in this country, is weak as a force because, finally, the
essential doctrine is not accepted by most of the people: the idea of a
man-like God dispensing merits and demerits at time’s exotic end.”
“We are small,” said Cave. “In space, on this tiny planet, we are
nothing. Death brings us back to the whole. We lose this instant of
awareness, of suffering, like spray in the ocean: there it forms ...
there it goes, back to the sea.”
“I think people will listen to you because they realize now that order,
if there is any, has never been revealed, that death is the end of
personality even for those passionate, self-important 'I’s’ who insist
upon a universal deity like themselves, carefully presented backwards
in order not to give the game away.”
“How dark, how fine the grave must be! only sleep and an end of days,
an end of fear: the end of fear in the grave as the 'I’ goes back to
nothing....”
“How wonderful life will be when men no longer fear dying! When the
last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same
equanimity that we have met life. No longer will children’s minds be
twisted by evil, demanding, moralizing gods whose fantastic origin is
in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared
life. That’s it: life is the villain to those maniacs who preach reward
in death: grace and eternal bliss ... or dark revenge....”
“Neither revenge nor reward, only the not-knowing in the grave which is
the same for all....”
“And without those inhuman laws, what societies we might build! Take
the morality of Christ. Begin there, or even earlier with Plato or
earlier yet with Zoroaster ... take the best ideas of the best men and
should there be any disagreement as to what is best, use life as the
definition, life as the measure: what contributes most to the living is
the best.”
“But the living is soon done and the sooner done the better. I envy
those who have already gone....”
“If they listen to you, Cave, it will be like the unlocking of a
prison. At first they may go wild but then, on their own, they will
find ways to life. Fear and punishment in death has seldom stopped
the murderer’s hand. The only two things which hold him from his
purpose are, at the worst, fear of reprisal from society and, at the
best, a feeling for life, a love for all that lives ... and not the
wide-smiling idiot’s love but a sense of the community of the living,
of life’s marvelous regency ... even the most ignorant has felt this.
Life is all while death is only the irrelevant shadow at the end, the
counterpart to that instant before the seed lives.”
Yes, I believed all that, all that and more too, and I felt Cave was
the same as I; by removing fear with that magic of his, he would
fulfill certain hopes of my own and (I flatter myself perhaps) of the
long line of others, nobler than I, who had been equally engaged in
attempting to use life more fully. And so that evening it welled up
suddenly: the hidden conviction behind a desultory life broke through
that chill hard surface of disappointment and disgust which had formed
a brittle carapace about my heart. I had, after all, my truth too, and
Cave had got to it, broken the shell ... and for that I shall remain
grateful ... until we are at last the same, both taken by dust.
Excitedly, we talked ... I talked mostly, I think. Cave was the theme
and I the counterpoint or so I thought. He had stated it and I built
on it, built outward from what I conceived to be the luminosity of
his vision. Our dialogue was one of communion, I believed and he
believed too. Only Iris guessed, even then, that it was not. She saw
the difference; she was conscious of the division which that moment
had, unknown to either of us, separated me from Cave. _Each time I said
“life,” he said “death.”_ In true amity but false concord war began.
Iris, more practical than we, deflated our visions by pulling the
dialogue gently back to reality, to ways and dull means.
It was agreed that we had agreed on fundamentals, that the end of
fear was desirable; that superstition should be exorcised from human
affairs; that the ethical systems expressed by the major religious
figures from Zoroaster to Mohammed all contained useful and applicable
ideas of societal behavior which need not be entirely discarded.
At Iris’s suggestion, we left the problem of Christianity itself
completely alone. Cave’s truth was sufficient cause for battle. There
was no reason, she felt, for antagonizing the ultimate enemy at the
very beginning.
“Let them attack _you_, John. You must be above quarreling; you must
act as if they are too much in error even to notice.”
“I reckon I _am_ above it,” said Cave and he sounded almost cheerful
for the first time since my arrival. “I want no trouble, but if trouble
comes I don’t intend to back down. I’ll just go on saying what I know.”
At midnight, Cave excused himself and went to bed.
Iris and I sat silently before the last red embers on the hearth. I
sensed that something had gone wrong but I could not tell then what it
was.
When she spoke, her manner was abrupt: “Do you really want to go on
with this?”
“What an odd time to ask me that. Of course I do. Tonight’s the first
time I really saw what it was Cave meant, what it was I’d always felt
but never before known, consciously, that is. I couldn’t be more
enthusiastic.”
“I hope you don’t change.”
“Why so glum? What are you trying to say? After all you got me into
this.”
“I know I did and I think I was right. It’s only that this evening
I felt ... well, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m getting a bit on edge.”
She smiled and, through all the youth and health, I saw that she was
anxious and ill-at-ease.
“That business about the accident?”
“Mainly, yes. The lawyers say that now that the old man’s all right
he’ll try to collect damages. He’ll sue Cave.”
“Nasty publicity.”
“The worst. It’s upset John terribly ... he almost feels it’s an omen.”
“I thought we were dispensing with all that, with miracles and omens.”
I smiled but she did not.
“Speak for yourself.” She got up and pushed at the coals with the fire
shovel. “Paul says he’ll handle everything but I don’t see how. There’s
no way he can stop a lawsuit.”
But I was tired of this one problem which was, all things considered,
out of our hands in any case. I asked her about herself and Cave.
“Is it wise my being up here with John, alone? No, I’m afraid not but
that’s the way it is.” Her voice was hard and her back which was turned
to me grew stiff, her movements with the fire shovel angry and abrupt.
“People will use it against both of you. It may hurt him, and all of
us.”
She turned suddenly, her face flushed. “I can’t help it, Gene. I swear
I can’t. I’ve tried to keep away. I almost flew East with Clarissa but
when he asked me to join him here, I did. I couldn’t leave him.”
“Will marriage be a part of the new order?”
“Don’t joke.” She sat down angrily in a noise of skirts crumpling.
“Cave must never marry. Besides it’s ... it isn’t like that.”
“Really? I must confess I ...”
“Thought we were having an affair? Well, it’s not true.” The rigidity
left her as suddenly as it had possessed her. She grew visibly passive,
even helpless, in the worn upholstered chair, her eyes on me, the
anger gone and only weakness left. “What can I do?” It was a cry from
the heart ... all the more touching because, obviously, she had not
intended to tell me this. She’d turned to me because there was no one
else to whom she could talk.
“You ... love him?” That word which whenever I spoke it in those days
always stuck in my throat like a diminutive sob.
“More, more,” she said distractedly. “But I can’t _do_ anything or
_be_ anything. He’s complete. He doesn’t need anyone. He doesn’t want
me except as ... a companion, and advisor like you or Paul ... it’s all
the same to him.”
“I don’t see that it’s hopeless.”
“Hopeless!” The word snot from her like a desperate deed. She
buried her face in her hands but she did not weep. I sat awkwardly,
inadequately watching her. The noise of a clock alone separated us: its
dry ticking kept the silence from falling in about our heads.
Finally, she dropped her hands and turned toward me with her usual
grace, “You mustn’t take me too seriously,” she said. “Or I mustn’t
take myself too seriously which is more to the point. Cave doesn’t
really need me or anyone and we ... I, perhaps you, certainly others,
need him. It’s best no one try to claim him all as a woman would do, as
I might, given the chance.” She rose. “It’s late and you must be tired.
Don’t ever mention to anyone what I’ve told you tonight ... especially
to John. If he knew the way I felt....” She left it at that. I gave my
promise and we went to our rooms.
I stayed two days at the farm, listening to Cave who continually
referred to the accident: he was almost petulant, as though the whole
business were an irrelevant, gratuitous trick played on him by a
malicious old man.
His days were spent reading his mail (there was quite a bit of it even
then), composing answers which Iris typed out for him, and walking in
the wooded hills which surrounded the farm on two sides.
The weather was sharp and bright and the wind, when it blew, tasted of
ice from the glaciers in the vivid mountains: winter was nearly with us
and red leaves decorated the wind, so many ribbons for so much summer
color. Only the firs remained unchanged, warm and dark in the bright
chill days.
Cave and I would walk together while Iris remained indoors, working. He
was a good walker, calm, unhurried, sure-footed, and he knew all the
trails beneath the yellow and red leaves fallen.
Cave agreed with me on most of my ideas concerning the introduction;
and I promised to send him my first draft as soon as I’d got it done.
He was genuinely indifferent to the philosophic aspect of what he
preached. He acted almost as if he did not want to hear of those others
who had approached the great matter in a similar way. When I talked to
him of the fourth-century Donatists who detested life and loved heaven
so much that they would request strangers to kill them, magistrates to
execute them for no crime, he stopped me: “I don’t want to hear all
that. That’s finished. All that’s over. We want new things now.”
Iris, too, seemed uninterested in any formalizing of Cave’s thought
though she saw its necessity and wished me well, suggesting that I not
ever intimate derivation since, in fact, there had been none: what he
was, he had become on his own, uninstructed.
During our walks, I got to know Cave as well as I was ever to know
him. He was indifferent, I think, to everyone. He gave one his private
time in precise ratio to one’s belief in him and importance to his
work. With groups, with the masses, he was another creature: warm,
intoxicating, human, yet transcendent ... a part of each human being
who beheld him at such times, the longed-for complement to the common
soul.
Yet though I found him, as a human being, without much warmth or
intellectual interest I nevertheless identified him with the release
I’d known in his presence and, for this new certainty of life’s value
and of death’s irrelevance, I loved him.
On the third day I made up my mind to go back East and do the necessary
writing in New York, away from Paul’s hectic influence and Cave’s
advice. Cave asked me to stay with him for the rest of the week but I
could see that Iris regarded me now as a potential danger, a keeper of
secrets who might, despite promises, prove to be disloyal; and so, to
set her mind at ease as well as to suit my own new plans, I told her
after lunch on the third day, when we were for a moment alone in the
study, that I had said nothing to Cave, that I was ready to go back
that evening if she would drive me to Spokane.
“You’re a good friend,” she said. “I made a fool of myself the other
night. I wish you’d forget it ... forget everything I said.”
“I’ll never mention it. Now, the problem is how I can leave here
gracefully. Cave just asked me this morning to stay on and ...”
But I was given a perfect means of escape. Cave came running into the
room, his eyes shining. “Paul! I’ve just talked to Paul in L.A. It’s
all over! No heirs, nothing, no lawsuit. No damages to pay.”
“What’s happened?” Iris stopped him in his excitement.
“The old man’s dead!”
“Oh Lord!” Iris went gray. “That means a manslaughter charge!”
“No, no ... not because of the accident. He was in _another_ accident.
A truck hit him the day after he left the hospital. Yesterday. He was
killed instantly ... lucky devil: and of course we’re in luck too.”
“Did they find who hit him?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. Iris looked
at me fiercely. She had got it too.
“No. Paul said it was a hit-and-run. He said this time the police
didn’t find who did it. Paul said his analyst calls it 'a will to
disaster’ ... he _wanted_ to be run over. Of course that’s hardly a
disaster but the analyst thinks the old way.”
I left that afternoon for New York, leaving Cave jubilantly making
plans for the New Year: everything was again possible. Neither Iris nor
I mentioned what we both knew ... each of us, in our different way,
accommodating the first of many crimes, as we drove across the smoky
hills to Spokane.