“Of course not.” Jessup was surprised at my suggestion. “One just
doesn’t call the Chief Resident like that. Only the senior Residents
_ever_ talk to him personally. No, I talked to an old friend of mine
who is one or the five principal assistants to the Historian General.
We were in school together and his specialty is the deviationists of
the early days.”
“And what did you learn from this scholar?”
Jessup gave me a most charming smile. “Nothing at all. There was no
such person as I thought existed, as a number of people thought
existed. It was all a legend ... a perfectly natural one for gossip to
invent. There was a good deal of trouble at the beginning, especially
over Cavesway. There was even a minority at Dallas which refused to
accept the principle of Cavesway without which of course there could
be no Establishment. According to the stories one heard as recently
as my university days, ten years ago, the original lutherist had led
the opposition to Iris, in the Council and out. For a time it looked
as though the Establishment might be broken in two (this, you must
remember since you were contemporary to it; fortunately, our Historical
Office has tended more and more to view it in the long perspective and
popular works on Cave now make no reference to it); in any case, there
was an open break and the minority was soon absorbed by the majority.”
“Painlessly?” I mocked him. Could he be telling the truth? or was this
a trap?
Jessup shrugged. “These things are never without pain. It is said that
an attempt was made on our mother Iris’s life during the ceremony of
Cave’s ashes. We still continue it, you know.”
“Continue what?”
“The symbolic gathering of the ashes. But of course you know the origin
of all that. There was a grave misinterpretation of Cave’s last wishes.
His ashes were scattered over the United States when it was his wish
to be embalmed and preserved. Iris, each year, traveled to the four
cities over which the ashes had been distributed and she collected a
bit of dust in each city to symbolize her obedience to Cavesword in all
things. At Seattle, during this annual ceremony, a group of lutherists
tried to assassinate her.”
“I remember,” I said. I had had no hand in that dark episode but it
provided the Establishment with the excuse they needed. My partisans
were thrown in prison all over the country. The government, which by
then was entirely Cavite, handed several thousand over to the Centers
where they were indoctrinated, ending the heresy for good. Iris
herself had secretly arranged for my escape ... but Jessup could know
nothing of this.
“Of course you know these things, perhaps even better than I since
you were alive then. Forgive me. I have got into the bad Residential
habit of explaining the obvious. An occupational disease.” He was
disarming. “The point I’m trying to make is that my suspicions of you
were unworthy and unfounded since there was no leader of the lutherists
to escape; all involved responded nicely to indoctrination and that
was the end of it. The story I heard in school was a popular one. The
sort that often evolves ... like Lucifer and the old Christian God, for
instance ... for white there must be black, that kind of thing. Except
that Cave never had a major antagonist, other than in legend.”
“I see. Tell me, then, if there was no real leader to the lutherists,
how did they come by their name?”
His answer was prompt. “Martin Luther. My friend in the H.O. told me
this morning over the telephone. Someone tried to make an analogy,
that’s all, and the name stuck though, as a rule, the use of any words
or concepts derived from the dead religions is frowned upon. You know
the story of Martin Luther? It seems that he....”
“I know the story of Martin Luther,” I answered, more sharply than I
intended.
“Now I’ve tired you.” Jessup was sympathetic. He got to his feet. “I
just wanted to tell you about my suspicions, that’s all; I thought it
might amuse you and perhaps bring us closer together for I’d very much
like to be your friend, not only for the help you can give me up here
but also because of your memories of the old days when Cave and Iris,
his mother, still lived.”
“Iris was at least five years younger than Cave.”
“Everyone knows that, my friend. She was his _spiritual_ mother, as she
is ours. 'From the dark womb of unbeing we emerge in the awful light
of consciousness from which the only virtuous escape is Cavesway.’ I
quote from Iris’s last testament. It was found among her papers after
her death.”
“Did _she_ take Cavesway?”
Jessup frowned. “It is said that she died of pneumonia but had death
_not_ come upon her unexpectedly it was well known that she would have
taken Cavesway. There has been considerable debate over this at Dallas.
I hear from highly placed people that before many years have passed
they will promulgate a new interpretation, applying only to Iris, which
will establish that intent and fact are the same, that though she died
of pneumonia she _intended_ to take Cavesway and, therefore, took
Cavesway in spirit and therefore in fact.”
“A most inspiring definition.”
“It is beautifully clear, though perhaps difficult for an untrained
mind. Can I read your memoir?” His eyes strayed curiously to the table.
“When it’s finished,” I said. “It’s almost done now. In a few days
perhaps; I should be most curious to see how it strikes you.”
“Well, I won’t take up any more of your time. I hope you’ll let me come
to see you.”
“Nothing could give me more pleasure.” And then, with a pat on my
shoulder and a kind suggestion that should I choose Cavesway he would
be willing to administer the latest drug, Jessup departed.
I remained very still for some minutes, holding my breath for long
intervals, trying to die. Then, in a sudden rage, I hurled my pillow
across the room and beat the mattress with my fists: it was over. All
was at an end except my own miserable life which will soon enough be
gone. My name erased; my work subverted; all that I most detested
regnant in the world. I could have wept had there been one tear left
in me. Now there is nothing I can do but finish this narrative ... for
its own sake since it will be thought, I know, the ravings of a mad man
when Jessup reads it, as he surely will after I am dead.
I have tried now for several hours to describe my last meeting with
Iris but I find that my memory is at last seriously impaired, the
result, no doubt, of that tiny vein which broke this morning in my
brain. It all seems a jumble. I think there were several years in which
I was in opposition. I think that I had considerable support and I am
almost sure that, until the attempted assassination of Iris at Seattle,
I was close to dominating the Council of Residents. The idiotic attempt
on her life, however, ruined everything. She knew of course that I had
had nothing to do with it but she was a resolute leader and she took
this opportunity to annihilate my party. I believe we met for the last
time in a garden. A garden very like the one where we first met in
California. No, on the banks of the Hudson ... I must reread what I
have written to refresh my memory. It is all beginning to fade rapidly.
In any case, we met in a garden in the late autumn when all the trees
were bare. She was white-haired then, though neither of us was much
over forty.
I believe that she wept a little: for we were the last who had been
close to Cave, heirs both though now adversaries, she victrix and I
vanquished. I never loved her more than at that last moment; of this I
am sure. We talked of possible places of exile. She had arranged for my
passage on a ship to Alexandria under the name of Richard Hudson (yes,
she who erased my name, in her compassion, gave me a new one). She did
not want, however, to know where I intended to go from there.
“It would be a temptation to the others,” she said. I remember that
one sentence and I do remember the appearance of the garden though its
location I have quite forgotten: there was a high wall all around it
and the smell of moldering leaves was acrid. From the mouth of a satyr
no water fell in a mossy pool.
Ah yes! the question and the answer. That’s it of course. The key.
I had nearly lost it. Before I left, I asked her what it was that
Cave had said to her when he was dying, the words the rest of us had
not heard. At first she hesitated but then, secure in her power and
confident of her own course, she told me: “He said: 'Gene was right.’”
I remember looking at her with shock, waiting for her to continue, to
make some apology for the monstrousness of her deeds, for her reckless
falsification of Cave’s life and death. But she said no more: there
was, I suppose, no explanation she might have made. We parted without
farewells, without more words.
I left the gray garden which had become bitter cold during our
conversation. I left America that same day and my real life ended.
There’s more to it than this but I cannot get it straight in my mind.
Something has happened to my memory. I wonder if perhaps I have not
dreamed all this: a long nightmare drawing to its bitter close in this
dry ruin of an older world.
It is late now. I still live though I am exhausted and indifferent to
everything except that violent living sun whose morning light has just
this moment begun to strike upon the western hills across the river:
all that is left, all that ever was, the red fire.
I shall not take Cavesway even though I die in pain and confusion.
Anubis must wait for me in the valley until the last and, even then, I
shall struggle in his arms for I know now that life, _my_ life was more
valuable than I knew, more significant and virtuous than the other’s
was in her bleak victory.
Though my memory is going from me rapidly, the meaning is clear and
unmistakable and I see the pattern whole at last, marked in giant
strokes upon the air: I was he whom the world awaited. I was that
figure, that messiah whose work might have been the world’s delight,
and liberation. But the villain death once more undid me and to _him_
belongs the moment’s triumph. Yet life continues, though I do not. Time
bends upon itself. The morning breaks. Now I will stop for it is day.
1947 to November, 1953: Barrytown, N. Y.