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                   *       *       *       *       *


                                MESSIAH


                       THE NOVELS OF GORE VIDAL


        WILLIWAW 1946 · IN A YELLOW WOOD 1947 · THE CITY AND THE
        PILLAR 1948 · THE SEASON OF COMFORT 1949 · A SEARCH FOR THE
        KING 1950 · DARK GREEN, BRIGHT RED 1950 · THE JUDGMENT OF
        PARIS 1952 · MESSIAH 1954.




                                MESSIAH

                                  BY
                              GORE VIDAL


                       E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.
                       NEW YORK           1954


             _Copyright, 1954, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
              All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A._


                             FIRST EDITION

            _No part of this book may be reproduced
            in any form without permission in writing
            from the publisher, except by a reviewer
            who wishes to quote brief passages in connection
            with a review written for inclusion in
            magazine or newspaper or radio broadcast._


           Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-5053


                                 _For_
                          TENNESSEE WILLIAMS




    I sometimes think the day will come when all the modern nations
    will adore a sort of American god, a god who will have been a man
    that lived on earth and about whom much will have been written in
    the popular press; and images of this god will be set up in the
    churches, not as the imagination of each painter may fancy him,
    not floating on a Veronica kerchief, but established, fixed once
    and for all by photography. Yes, I foresee a photographed god,
    wearing spectacles.

    On that day civilization will have reached its peak and there
    will be steam-propelled gondolas in Venice.

                                November, 1861: _The Goncourt Journals_


                                MESSIAH

                                   1

_I envy those chroniclers who assert with reckless but sincere
abandon: “I was there. I saw it happen. It happened thus.”
Now I too, in every sense, was there, yet I cannot trust myself
to identify with any accuracy the various events of my own life,
no matter how vividly they may seem to survive in recollection
... if only because we are all, I think, betrayed by those eyes
of memory which are as mutable and particular as the ones with
which we regard the material world, the vision altering, as it so
often does, from near in youth to far in age. And that I am by
a devious and unexpected route arrived at a great old age is to
me a source of some complacency, even on those bleak occasions
when I find myself attending inadvertently the body’s dissolution,
a process as imperceptible yet sure as one of those
faint, persistent winds which shift the dunes of sand in that
desert of dry Libya which burns, white and desolate, beyond
the mountains I see from the window of my room, a window
facing, aptly enough, the west where all the kings lie buried in
their pride._

_I am also conscious that I lack the passion for the business of
familiar life which is the central preoccupation of our race while,
worse still, I have never acquired the habit of judging the usual deeds
of men ... two inconvenient characteristics which render me uncertain
whenever I attempt to recall the past, confounding me sadly with the
knowledge that my recollections are, after all, tentative and private
and only true in part._

_Then, finally, I have never found it easy to tell the truth, a
temperamental infirmity due not so much to any wish or compulsion to
distort reality that I might be reckoned virtuous but, rather, to a
conception of the inconsequence of human activity which is ever in
conflict with a profound love of those essential powers which result
in human action, a paradox certainly, a dual vision which restrains me
from easy judgments._

_I am tempted to affirm that historic truth is quite impossible,
although I am willing to accept the philosophic notion that it may
exist abstractly, perfect and remote in the imagination. A windy attic
filled with lovely objects has always been my personal image of those
absolutes Aristotle conceived with such mellifluous optimism ... and I
have always liked the conceits of philosophy, the more extravagant the
better. I am especially devoted to Parmenides who was so strenuously
obsessed with the idea of totality that he was capable, finally, of
declaring that nothing ever changed, that what has been must still
exist if it is yet remembered and named, a metaphysical conception
which will, I suspect, be of some use to me as I journey in memory back
to that original crisis from which I have for so long traveled and to
which, despite the peril, I must return._

_I do not say, then, that what I remember is all true but I can
declare that what I shall recall is a relative truth as opposed to
that monstrous testament the one-half world believes, entrenching deep
thereby a mission at whose birth I officiated and one whose polished
legend has since become the substantial illusion of a desperate
race. That both mission and illusion were false, I alone can say
with certainty, with sorrow, such being the unsuspected and terrible
resolution of brave days. Only the crisis, which I shall record, was
real._

_I have said I am not given to making judgments. That is not precise.
It is true that in most “wicked” acts I have been able, with a little
effort, to perceive the possibilities for good either in actual
intention or (and to me more important) in uncalculated result; yet,
ultimately, problems in ethics have never much concerned me: possibly
because they have been the vital interest of so many others who,
through custom, rule society, more agreeably than not. On that useful
moral level I have been seldom, if ever, seriously engaged but once on
another, more arduous plane I was forced to make a choice, to judge,
to act: and act I did in such a way that I am still startled by the
implications of my choice, of my life’s one judgment._

_I chose the light in preference to the dreamless dark, destroying
my own place in the world, and then, more painful still, I chose
the light in preference to that twilight region of indeterminate
visions and ambiguities which most suited my nature, a realm where
decision was impossible and where the potentialities of choice were
endless and exquisite to contemplate. To desert these beloved ghosts
and incalculable powers was the greater pain, but I have lived on,
observing with ever-increasing intensity that blazing disk of fire
which is the symbol as well as material source of the reality I have
accepted entirely, despite the sure dominion in eternity of the dark
other._

_But now, as my private day begins to fade, as the wind in the desert
gathers in intensity, smoothing out the patterns in the sand, I shall
attempt to evoke the true image of one who assumed with plausibility in
an age of science the long-discarded robes of prophecy, prevailing at
last through ritual death and becoming, to those who see the universe
in man, that solemn idea which is yet called by its resonant and
antique name, god._


                                   2

_Stars fell to earth in a blaze of light and, where they fell, monsters
were born, hideous and blind._

_The first dozen years after the second of the modern wars were
indeed “a time of divination,” as one religious writer unctuously
described them. Not a day passed but that some omen or portent was
remarked by an anxious race, suspecting war. At first, the newspapers
delightedly reported these marvels, getting the details all wrong but
communicating that sense of awfulness which was to increase as the
years of peace uneasily lengthened until a frightened people demanded
government action, the ultimate recourse in those innocent times._

_Yet these omens, obsessive and ubiquitous as they were, would not
yield their secret order to any known system. For instance, much of
the luminous crockery which was seen in the sky was never entirely
explained. And explanation, in the end, was all that the people
required. It made no difference how extraordinary the explanation was,
if only they could know what was happening: that the shining globes
which raced in formation over Sioux Falls, South Dakota, were mere
residents of the Andromeda Galaxy, at home in space, omnipotent and
eternal in design, on a cultural visit to our planet ... if only this
much could definitely be stated, the readers of newspapers would have
felt secure, able in a few weeks’ time to turn their attention to other
problems, the visitors from farther space forgotten. It made little
difference whether these mysterious blobs of light were hallucinations,
inter-galactic visitors or military weapons, the important thing was to
explain them._

_To behold the inexplicable was perhaps the most unpleasant experience
a human being of that age could know, and during that gaudy decade many
wild phenomena were sighted and recorded._

_In daylight, glittering objects of bright silver maneuvered at
unearthly speed over Washington, D. C., observed by hundreds, some
few reliable. The government, with an air of spurious calm, mentioned
weather balloons, atmospheric reflections, tricks-of-eye, hinting,
to, as broadly as it dared, that a sizable minority of its citizens
were probably subject to delusions and mass hysteria. This cynical
view was prevalent inside the administration though it could not of
course propound such a theory publicly since its own tenure was based,
more or less solidly, on the franchise of those same hysterics and
irresponsibles._

_Shortly after the mid-point of the century, the wonders increased,
becoming daily more bizarre. The recent advance in atomic research
and in jet-propulsion had made the Western world disagreeably aware
of other planets and galaxies and the thought that we would soon be
making expeditions into space was disquieting, if splendid, giving rise
to the not illogical thought that life might be developing on other
worlds somewhat more brilliantly than here at home and, further, that
it was quite conceivable that we ourselves might receive visitors long
before our own adventuring had begun in the starry blackness which
contains our life, like a speck of phosphorus in a quiet sea. And since
our people were (and no doubt still are) barbarous and drenched in
superstition, like the dripping “Saved” at an old-time Texas baptism,
it was generally felt that these odd creatures whose shining cars
flashed through our poor heavens at such speed must, of necessity, be
hostile and cruel and bent on world dominion, just like ourselves or at
least our geographic neighbors._

_The evidence was horrific and plentiful:_

_In Berlin a flying object of unfamiliar design was seen to land by
an old farmer who was so close to it that he could make out several
little men twinkling behind an arc of windows. He fled, however, before
they could eat him. Shortly after his breathless announcement to the
newspapers, he was absorbed by an Asiatic government whose destiny it
was at that time to regularize the part of humanity fortunate enough
to live within its curiously elastic boundaries, both temporal and
spiritual._

_In West Virginia, a creature ten feet tall, green with a red face and
exuding a ghastly odor, was seen to stagger out of a luminous globe,
temporarily grounded. He was observed by a woman and four boys, all
of unquestionable probity; they fled before he could eat them. Later,
in the company of sheriff and well-armed posse, they returned to the
scene of horror only to find both monster and conveyance gone: but
even the skeptical sheriff and his men could detect, quite plainly, an
unfamiliar odor, sharp and sickening among the clean pines._

_This particular story was unique because it was the first to describe
a visitor as being larger instead of smaller than a man, a significant
proof of the growing anxiety: we could handle even the cleverest
little creature but something huge, and green, with an awful odor ...
it was too much._

_I myself, late one night in July of the mid-century, saw quite plainly
from the eastern bank of the Hudson River where I lived, two red globes
flickering in a cloudless sky. As I watched, one moved to a higher
point at a forty-five-degree angle above the original plane which had
contained them both. For several nights I watched these eccentric twins
but then, carried away by enthusiasm, I began to confuse Mars and
Saturn with my magic lights until at last I thought it wise to remain
indoors, except for those brief days at summer’s end when I watched,
as I always used to do, the lovely sudden silver arcs meteors plunging
make._

_In later years, I learned that, concurrently with the celestial
marvels, farm communities were reporting an unusual number of calves
born two-headed, chickens hatched three-legged, and lambs born with
human faces; but since the somewhat vague laws of mutation were more
or less well understood by the farmers these curiosities did not alarm
them: an earlier generation, however, would have known, instinctively,
that so many irregularities forecast an ill future, full of spite._

_Eventually, all was satisfactorily explained or, quite as good,
forgotten. Yet the real significance of these portents was not so much
in the fact of their mysterious reality as in the profound effect they
had upon a people who, despite their emphatic materialism, were as
easily shattered by the unexpected as their ancestors who had, on other
occasions, beheld eagles circling Capitoline Hill, observed the sky
grow leaden on Golgotha, shivered in loud storms when the rain was red
as blood and the wind full of toads, while in our own century, attended
by a statesman-Pope, the sun did a dance over Portugal._

_Considering the unmistakable nature of these signs, it is curious
how few suspected the truth: that a new mission had been conceived
out of the race’s need, the hour of its birth already determined by a
conjunction of terrible new stars._

_It is true of course that the established churches duly noted these
spectacular happenings and, rather slyly, used them to enhance that
abstract power from which their own mystical but vigorous authority
was descended. The more secular, if no less mystical, dogmas ...
descended variously from an ill-tempered social philosopher of the
nineteenth century and an energetic, unreasonably confident mental
therapist, also a product of that century’s decline ... maintained, in
the one case, that fireworks had been set off by vindictive employers
to bedazzle the poor workers for undefined but patently wicked ends,
and, in the other case, that the fiery objects represented a kind of
atavistic recessional to the childish world of marvels; a theory which
was developed even further in a widely quoted paper by an ingenious
disciple of the dead therapist. According to this worthy, the universe
was the womb in symbol and the blazing lights which many people thought
they saw were only a form of hallucination, hearking back to some
prenatal memory of ovaries bursting with a hostile potential life which
would, in time, become sibling rivals. The writer demanded that the
government place all who had seen flying objects under three years’
close observation to determine to what extent sibling rivalry, or the
absence of it (the proposition worked equally well either way) had
affected them in life. Although this bold synthesis was universally
admired and subsequently read into the Congressional Record by a lady
Representative who had herself undergone nine years’ analysis with
striking results, the government refused to act._


                                   3

_But although nearly every human institution took cognizance of these
signs and auguries, none guessed the truth, and those few individuals
who had begun to suspect what might be happening preferred not
to speak out; if only because, despite much private analysis and
self-questioning, it was not a time in which to circulate ideas which
might prove disagreeable to any minority, no matter how lunatic. The
body politic was more than usually upset by signs of non-conformity.
The atmosphere was not unlike that of Britain during the mad hour of
Titus Oates._

_Precisely why my countrymen behaved so frantically is a problem for
those historians used to the grand, eternal view of human events. I
have often thought, though, that much of our national irritability was
closely related to the unexpected and reluctant custody of the world
the second war had pressed upon the confused grandchildren of a proud,
agrarian, isolated people, both indifferent and strange to the ways of
other cultures._

_More to the point, however, was the attitude of our intellectuals who
constituted at this time a small, militantly undistinguished minority,
directly descended in spirit if not in fact from that rhetorical
eighteenth-century Swiss whose romantic and mystical love for humanity
was magically achieved through a somewhat obsessive preoccupation with
himself. His passion for self-analysis flourished in our mid-century,
at least among the articulate few who were capable of analysis and who,
in time, like their great ancestor, chose the ear of the world for
their confessional._

_Men of letters lugubriously described their own deviations (usually
apolitical or sexual, seldom aesthetic), while painters worked
devotedly at depicting unique inner worlds which were not accessible
to others except in a state of purest empathy hardly to be achieved
without a little fakery in a selfish world. It was, finally, the
accepted criterion that art’s single function was the fullest
expression of a private vision ... which was true enough though the
visions of men lacking genius are not without a certain gloom. Genius,
in this time, was quite as rare as in any other and, to its credit, it
was not a self-admiring age ... critics found merit only in criticism,
a singular approach which was to amuse the serious for several decades._

_Led by artists, the intellectuals voiced their guilt at innumerable
cocktail parties where it was accepted as an article of faith that
each had a burden of guilt which could, once recognized, be exorcised;
the means of recognition were expensive but rewarding: a trained
and sympathetic listener would give the malaise a name and reveal
its genesis; then, through confession (and occasionally “reliving”)
the guilt would vanish along with asthma, impotence and eczema. The
process, of course, was not easy. To facilitate therapy, it became
the custom among the cleverer people to set aside all the traditional
artifices of society so that both friends and strangers could confess
to one another their worst deeds, their most squalid fantasies in a
series of competitive monologues conducted with arduous sincerity and
surprisingly successful on every level but that of communication._

_I am sure that this sort of catharsis was not entirely valueless: many
of the self-obsessed undoubtedly experienced relief when dispensing
secrets ... it was certainly an instructive shock for them to find that
even their most repellent aberrations were accepted quite perfunctorily
by strangers too intent on their own problems to be outraged, or even
very interested. This discovery was not always cheering. There is a
certain dignity and excitement in possessing a dangerous secret life.
To lose it in maturity is hard ... and once promiscuously shared, it
does become ordinary, no more troublesome than obvious dentures._

_Many cherished private hells were forever lost in those garrulous
years and the vacuum each left was invariably filled with a boredom
which, in its turn, could only be dispelled by faith. As a result,
the pursuit of the absolute, in one guise or another, became the
main preoccupation of these romanticists who professed with some
pride a mistrust of the reason, derived quite legitimately from their
own stunning incapacity to assimilate the social changes created by
machinery, their particular Lucifer. They rejected the idea of the
reflective mind, arguing that since both logic and science had failed
to establish the first cause of the universe or (more important)
humanity’s significance, only the emotions could reveal to us the
nature of reality, the key to meaning. That it was actually no real
concern of this race why or when or how the universe came into being
was an attitude never, so far as I can recall, expressed by the
serious-minded of the day. Their searching, however, was not simply
the result of curiosity; it was more than that: it was an emotional,
senseless plunging into the void, into the unknowable and the
irrelevant. It became, finally, the burden of life, the blight among
the flowers: the mystery which must be revealed, even at the expense of
life. It was a terrible crisis, made doubly hard since the eschewal of
logic left only one path clear to the heart of the dilemma: the way of
the mystic, and even to the least sensible it was sadly apparent that,
lacking a superior and dedicated organization, one man’s revelation is
not apt to be of much use to another._

_Quantities of venerable attitudes were abandoned and much of the
preceding century’s “eternal truths and verities” which had cast,
rock-like, so formidable and dense a shadow, were found, upon
examination, to be so much sand, suitable for the construction of
fantastic edifices but not durable, nor safe from the sea’s tide._

_But the issue was joined: dubious art was fashioned, authorities
were invoked, dreams given countenance and systems constructed on the
evidence of private illumination._

_For a time, political and social action seemed to offer a way out,
or in. Foreign civil wars, foreign social experiments were served
with a ferocity difficult to comprehend; but later, when the wars
and experiments went wrong, revealing, after such high hopes, the
perennial human inability to order society, a disillusion resulted,
bitterly resolved in numerous cases by the assumption of some mystical
dogma, preferably one so quaintly rich with history, so sweeping and
unreasonable in its claims as to be thoroughly acceptable to the
saddened romanticist who wanted, above all else, to feel, to know
without reasoning._

_So in these portentous times, only the scientists were content as
they constructed ever more fabulous machines with which to split the
invisible kernels of life while the anti-scientifics leaped nervously
from one absolute to another ... now rushing to the old for grace, now
to the new for salvation, no two of them really agreeing on anything
except the need for agreement, for the last knowledge ... and that,
finally, was the prevailing note of the age; since reason had been
declared insufficient, only a mystic could provide the answer, only he
could mark the boundaries of life with a final authority, inscrutably
revealed. It was so perfectly clear. All that was lacking was the man._




                                  ONE


                                   1

The garden was at its best that first week in the month of June. The
peonies were more opulent than usual and I walked slowly through the
green light on the terrace above the white river, enjoying the heavy
odor of peonies and of new roses rambling in hedges.

The Hudson was calm, no ripple revealed that slow tide which even
here, miles to the north of the sea, rises brackishly at the moon’s
disposition. Across the river the Catskills, water-blue, emerged
sharply from the summer’s green as though the earth in one vivid thrust
had attempted sky, fusing the two elements into yet another, richer
blue ... but the sky was only framed, not really touched, and the blue
of hills was darker than the pale sky with its protean clouds all
shaped by wind, like the stuff of auguries and human dreaming.

The sky that day was like an idiot’s mind, wild with odd clouds, but
lovely too, guileless, natural, allusive.

I did not want to go in to lunch, although there was no choice in the
matter. I had arrived at one o’clock; I was expected at one-thirty.
Meanwhile, avoiding the house until the last possible moment, I had
taken a neighbor’s privilege of strolling alone about the garden;
the house behind me was gray and austere, granitic, more English than
Hudson Valley. The grounds swept softly down toward the river nearly
a mile away. A vista had been cleared from the central terrace, a
little like the one at Versailles but more rustic, less royal. Dark
green trees covered the hills to left and right of the sweep of lawn
and meadow. No other house could be seen. Even the railroad between
the terrace and the water was invisible, hidden by a bluff ... only
its sound and an occasional blur of smoke upon the blue marked that
machine’s essential passage.

I breathed the air of early summer gladly, voluptuously. I lived my
life in seasonal concert with this river and, after grim March and
confusing sharp April, the knowledge that at last the leaves were
foliaged and the days warm was quite enough to create in me a mood
of euphoria, of marvelous serenity. I contemplated love affairs. I
prepared to meet strangers. The summer and I would celebrate our
triumph soon; but, until the proper moment, I was a spectator: the
summer love as yet unknown to me, the last dark blooming of peonies
amid the wreckage of white lilacs still some weeks away, held in
the future with my love. I could only anticipate; I savored my
disengagement in this garden.

But then it was time to go in and I turned my back resolutely on the
river and ascended the wide stone steps to the brick terrace which
fronted the house on the river side, pausing only to break the stem
of a white and pink peony, regretting immediately what I had done:
brutally, I had wished to possess the summer, to fix the instant, to
bear with me into the house a fragment of the day. It was wrong; and
I stood for a moment at the French door holding the great peony in my
hand, its odor like a dozen roses, like all the summers I had ever
known. But it was impractical. I could not stuff it into my buttonhole
for it was as large as a baby’s head while I was fairly certain that
my hostess would be less than pleased to receive at my hands one of
her best peonies, cut too short even to place in water. Obscurely
displeased with myself and the day, I plunged the flower deep into a
hedge of boxwood until not even a glimmer of white showed through the
dense dark green to betray me: then, like a murderer, the assaulted day
part-spoiling, I went inside.


                                   2

“You have been malingering in the garden,” she said, offering me her
face like a painted plate to kiss. “I saw you from the window.”

“Saw me ravage the flowers?”

“They all do,” she said obscurely, and led me after her into the
drawing room, an oblong full of light from French windows opening upon
the terrace. I was surprised to see that she was alone.

“She’ll be along presently. She’s upstairs changing.”

“Who?”

“Iris Mortimer ... didn’t I tell you? It’s the whole reason.”

Clarissa nodded slyly from the chair opposite me. A warm wind crossed
the room and the white curtains billowed like spinnakers in a regatta.
I breathed the warm odor of flowers, of burned ash remnants from the
fireplace: the room shone with silver and porcelain. Clarissa was rich
despite the wars and crises that had marked our days, leaving the
usual scars upon us, like trees whose cross-sections bear a familial
resemblance of concentric rings, recalling in detail the weather
of past years ... at least those few rings we shared in common, or
Clarissa, by her own admission, was twenty-two hundred years old with
an uncommonly good memory. None of us had ever questioned her too
closely about her past. There is no reason to suspect, however, that
she was insincere. Since she felt she had lived that great length
of time and since her recollections were remarkably interesting and
plausible she was much in demand as a conversationalist and adviser,
especially useful in those plots which require great shrewdness and
daring. It was perfectly apparent that she was involved in some such
plot at the moment.

I looked at her thoughtfully before I casually rose to take the bait
of mystery she had trailed so perfunctorily before me. She knew her
man. She knew I would not be difficult in the early stages of any
adventure.

“Whole reason?” I repeated.

“I can say no more!” said Clarissa with a melodramatic emphasis which
my deliberately casual tone did not entirely justify. “You’ll love
Iris, though.”

I wondered whether loving Iris, or pretending to love Iris, was to be
the summer’s game. But before I could inquire further, Clarissa, secure
in her mystery, asked me idly about my work and, as idly, I answered
her, the exchange perfunctory yet easy, for we were used to one another.

“I am tracking him down,” I said. “There is so little to go on, but
what there is is quite fascinating, especially Ammianus.”

“Fairly reliable, as military men go,” said Clarissa, suddenly emerging
from her polite indifference: any reference to the past she had known
always interested her, only the present seemed to bore her, at least
that ordinary unusable present which did not contain promising material
for one of her elaborate human games.

“Did you know him?” I never accepted, literally, Clarissa’s unique
age: two thousand years is an unlikely span of life even for a woman
of her sturdy unimaginativeness; yet there was no ignoring the fact
that she _seemed_ to have lived that long, and that her references to
obscure episodes, where ascertainable, were nearly always right and,
more convincing still, where they differed from history’s records,
differed on the side of plausibility ... the work of a memory or a mind
completely unsuperstitious and unenthusiastic: (she _was_ literal; she
was, excepting always her central fantasy, matter-of-fact. To her the
death or Caesar was the logical outcome of a system of taxation which
has not been preserved for us except in quaintly obscure references;
while the virtue of the Roman republic and the ambitions of celebrated
politicians, she set aside as being of only minor importance: currency
and taxation were her forte and she managed to reduce all the martial
splendor of ancient days to an economic level).

She had one other obsession, however, and my reference to Ammianus
reminded her of it.

“The Christians!” she exclaimed significantly; then she paused; I
waited. Her conversation at times resembled chapter-headings chosen
haphazardly from an assortment of Victorial novels. “_They_ hated him.”

“Ammianus?”

“No, your man Julian. It _is_ the Emperor Julian you are writing about.”

“Reading about.”

“Ah, you _will_ write about him,” she said with an abstracted pythoness
stare which suggested that I was indefatigable in my eccentric purpose
which, for some years, had been the study of history in a minor key.

“Of course they hated him. As well they should have ... that’s the
whole point to my work.”

“Unreliable, the lot of them. There is no decent history from the time
they came to Rome up until that fat little Englishman ... you know, the
one who lived in Switzerland ... with rather _staring_ eyes.”

“Gibbon.”

“Yes, that one. Of course he got all the facts wrong, poor man, but at
least he tried. The facts of course were all gone by then. They saw to
that ... burning things, rewriting things ... not that I really ever
_read_ them ... you know how I am about reading: I prefer a mystery
novel any day. But at least Gibbon got the tone right.”

“Yet....”

“Of course Julian was something of a prig, you know. He _posed_
continually and he wasn’t ... what do they call him now? an apostate.
He _never_ renounced Christianity.”

“He what ...”

Clarissa in her queer way took pleasure in rearranging all accepted
information. I shall never know whether she did it deliberately to
mystify or whether her versions were, in fact, the forgotten reality.

“He was a perfectly good Christian _au fond_ despite his peculiar
diet. He was a vegetarian for some years but wouldn’t eat beans, as I
recall, because he thought they contained the souls of the dead, an old
orphic notion.”

“Which is hardly Christian.”

“Isn’t that part of it? No? Well in any case the first proclamation of
Paris was intended ...” but I was never to hear Julian’s intent for
Iris was in the doorway, slender, dressed in white, her hair dark and
drawn back in a classical line from her calm face: she was handsome
and not at all what I had expected, but then Clarissa had, as usual,
not given me much lead. Iris Mortimer was my own age, I guessed, about
thirty, and although hardly a beauty she moved with such ease, spoke
with such softness, created such an air of serenity that one gave her
perhaps more credit for the possession of beauty than an American
devoted to regular features ought, in all accuracy, to have done: the
impression was one of lightness, of this month of June in fact ...
I linger over her description a little worriedly, conscious that I
am not really getting her right (at least as she appeared to me that
afternoon) for the simple reason that our lives were to become so
desperately involved in the next few years and my memories of her are
now encrusted with so much emotion that any attempt to evoke her as she
actually was when I first saw her in that drawing room some fifty years
ago is not unlike the work of a restorer of paintings removing layers
of glaze and grime in an attempt to reveal an original pattern in all
its freshness somewhere beneath ... except that a restorer of course is
a workman who has presumably no prejudice and, too, he did not create
the original image only to attend its subsequent distortion, as the
passionate do in life; for the Iris of that day was, I suppose, no less
and no more than what she was to become; it was merely that I could not
suspect the bizarre course our future was to take. I had no premonition
of our mythic roles, though the temptation is almost overpowering to
assert, darkly, that even on the occasion of our first meeting _I
knew_. The truth is that we met; we became friends; we lunched amiably
and the future cast not one shadow across the mahogany table around
which we sat, listening to Clarissa and eating fresh shad caught in the
river that morning.

“Eugene here is interested in Julian,” said our hostess, lifting a
spring asparagus to her mouth with her fingers.

“Julian who?”

“The Emperor of Rome. I forget his family name but he was a nephew, I
think, of Constantius, who was dreary too though not such a bore as
Julian. Iris, try the asparagus. We get them from the garden.”

Iris tried an asparagus and Clarissa recalled that the Emperor
Augustus’s favorite saying was: “Quick as boiled asparagus.” It
developed that _he_ had been something of a bore, too. “Hopelessly
involved in office work. Of course it’s all terribly important, no
doubt of that ... after all the entire Empire was based on a first-rate
filing system; yet, all in all, it’s hardly _glamorous_.”

“Whom _did_ you prefer?” asked Iris, smiling at me: she too was aware
of our hostess’s obsession; whether or not she believed is a different
matter. I assumed not; yet the assumption of truth is perhaps, for
human purposes, the same as truth itself, at least to the obsessed.

“None of the obvious ones,” said Clarissa, squinting near-sightedly
at the window through which a pair of yellow-spangled birds were
mating on the wing like eccentric comets against the green of box.
“But of course, I didn’t know everyone, darling. Only a few. Not all
of them were accessible. Some never dined out. Some that did go out
were impossible and then of course I traveled a good deal. I loved
Alexandria and wintered there for over two hundred years, missing a
great deal of the unpleasantness at Rome, the _unstability_ of those
tiresome generals ... although Vitellius was great fun, at least as
a young man. I never saw him when he was Emperor that time, for five
minutes wasn’t it? Died of greed. Such an appetite! On one occasion as
a young man he ate an entire side of beef at my place in Baiae. Ah,
Baiae, I do miss it. Much nicer than Bath or Biarritz and certainly
more interesting than Newport was. I had several houses there over
the years. Once when Senator Tullius Cicero was traveling with that
poisonous daughter of his, they stopped....”

We listened attentively as one always did to Clarissa ... does? I
wonder if she is still alive: if she is, then perhaps the miracle has
indeed taken place and one human being has finally avoided the usual
fate. It is an amiable miracle to contemplate.

Lunch ended without any signs of that revelation which Clarissa had led
me to expect. Nothing was said which seemed to possess even a secret
significance. Wondering idly whether or not Clarissa might, after
all, be entirely mad, I followed the two women back into the drawing
room where we had our coffee in a warm mood of satiety made only
faintly disagreeable for me by that mild nausea which I always used to
experience when I drank too much wine at lunch: now of course I never
see wine, only the Arabs’ mint tea and their sandy bitter coffee which
I have come to like.

A warm breeze fluttered the curtains: the noise of insects responding
to the sun’s increasing heat droned all upon the same note, dry and
insistent, a bass to the coloratura of birds, while the scent of
flowers filled the airy room and I detected lilies as well as peonies,
their odor almost too sweet, quite drowning the more delicate rose, the
pale Hudson lilac.

Clarissa reminisced idly. She possessed a passion for minor detail
which was often a good deal more interesting than her usual talks on
currency devaluation.

Neither Iris nor I spoke much; it was as if we were both awaiting
some word from Clarissa which would throw into immediate relief this
luncheon, this day, this meeting of strangers. But Clarissa only
gossiped on; at last, when I was beginning to go over in my mind the
various formulae which make departure easy, our hostess, as though
aware that she had drawn out too long the overture, said abruptly,
“Eugene, show Iris the garden. She has never seen it before.” And then,
heartily firing fragments of sentences at us as though in explanation
of this move of hers, she left the room, indicating that the rest was
up to us.

Puzzled, we both went onto the terrace and into the yellow afternoon.
We walked slowly down the steps towards the rose arbors, a long series
of trellis arches forming a tunnel of green, bright with new flowers
and ending in a cement fountain of ugly tile with a bench beside it,
shaded by elms.

We got to facts. By the time we had burrowed through the roses to the
bench, we had exchanged those basic bits of information which usually
make the rest fall (often incorrectly) into some pattern, a foundation
for those various architectures people together are pleased to build to
celebrate friendship or enmity or love or, on very special occasions,
in the case of a grand affair, one of those fine palaces with rooms for
all three, and much else besides.

Iris was from the Middle West, from a rich suburb of Detroit. This
interested me in many ways, for there still existed in those days
a real disaffection between East and Midwest and Far West which is
hard to conceive nowadays in that gray homogeneity which currently
passes for a civilized nation. I was an Easterner, a New Yorker from
the valley with Southern roots, and I felt instinctively that the
outlanders were perhaps not entirely civilized. Needless to say, at
the time, I would indignantly have denied this prejudice had someone
attributed it to me, for those were the days of tolerance in which all
prejudice had been banished, from conversation at least ... though
of course to banish prejudice is a contradiction in terms since, by
definition, prejudice means prejudgment, and though time and experience
usually explode for us all the prejudgments of our first years, they
exist, nevertheless, as part of our subconscious, a sabotaging,
irrational force, causing us to commit strange crimes indeed, made so
much worse because they are often secret even to ourselves. I was,
then, prejudiced against the Midwesterner ... against the Californians
too. I felt that the former especially was curiously hostile to
freedom, to the interplay of that rational Western culture which I
had so lovingly embraced in my boyhood and grown up with, always
conscious of my citizenship in the world, of my role as a humble but
appreciative voice in the long conversation. I resented the automobile
manufacturers who thought only of manufacturing objects, who distrusted
ideas, who feared the fine with the primitive intensity of implacable
ignorance. Could this cool girl be from Detroit? From that same rich
suburb which had provided me with a number of handsome vital classmates
at school? Boys who had combined physical vigor with a resistance to
all ideas but those of their suburb which could only be described as
heroic considering the power of New England schools to crack even the
toughest prejudices, at least on the rational level. That these boys
did not possess a rational level had often occurred to me, though I
did, grudgingly, admire, even in my scorn, their grace and strength
as well as their confidence in that assembly line which had provided
their parents with large suburban homes and themselves with a classical
New England education which, unlike the rest of us, they’d managed
to resist ... the whole main current of Western civilization eddying
helplessly about these youths who stood, pleasantly firm, like so many
rocks in a desperate channel.

Iris Mortimer was one of them. Having learned this there was nothing to
do but find sufficient names between us to establish the beginnings of
the rapport of class which, even in that late year of the mid-century,
still existed: the dowdy aristocracy to which we belonged by virtue of
financial security, at least in childhood, of education, of self-esteem
and of houses where servants had been in some quantity before the
second of the wars; all this we shared and of course those names in
common of schoolmates, some from her region, others from mine, names
which established us as being of an age. We avoided for some time any
comment upon the names, withholding our true selves during the period
of identification. I discovered too that she, like me, had remained
unmarried, an exceptional state of affairs, for all the names we had
mentioned represented two people now instead of one. Ours had been a
reactionary generation which had attempted to combat the time of wars
and disasters by a scrupulous observance of its grandparents’ customs,
a direct reaction to the linking generation whose lives had been
so entertainingly ornamented with self-conscious, untidy alliances,
well-fortified by suspect gin. The result was no doubt classic but, at
the same time; it was a little shocking: their children were decorous,
subdued; they married early, conceived glumly, surrendered to the will
of their own children in the interests of enlightened psychology; their
lives enriched by the best gin in the better suburbs, safe among their
own kind. Yet, miraculously, I had escaped and so apparently had Iris.
Both, simultaneously, were aware of this: that sort of swift, unstated
communication which briefly makes human relationships seem more
potential, more meaningful than actually they are: it is the promise
perhaps of a perfect harmony never to be achieved in life’s estate.

“You live here alone?” She indicated the wrong direction though taking
in, correctly, the river on whose east bank I did live, a few miles to
the north of Clarissa.

I nodded. “Entirely alone ... in an old house.”

She sighed. “No family?”

“None here. Not much anywhere else. A few in New Orleans, my family’s
original base.” I waited for her to ask if I never got lonely living
in a house on the river, remote from others; but she saw nothing
extraordinary in this.

“It must be fine,” she said slowly. She broke a leaf off a flowering
bush whose branch, heavy with blooming, quivered above our heads as we
sat on the garden bench and watched the dim flash of goldfish in the
muddy waters of the pond.

“I like it,” I said, a little disappointed that there was now no
opportunity for me to construct one of my familiar defenses of a life
alone: I had, in the five years since my days of travel had temporarily
ended, many occasions on which to defend and glorify the solitary life
I had chosen for myself beside this river. I had an ever-changing
repertoire of feints and thrusts: for instance, with the hearty, I
invariably questioned, gently of course, the virtue of a life in
the city, confined to a small apartment with uninhibited babies and
breathing daily large quantities of soot; or then I sometimes enjoyed
assuming the prince of darkness pose, alone with his crimes in an
ancient house, a figure which could, if necessary, be quickly altered
to the more engaging one of remote observer of the ways of men, a stoic
among his books, sustained by the recorded fragments of forgotten
bloody days, evoking solemnly the pure essences of nobler times a
chaste intelligence beyond the combat, a priest celebrating the cool
memory of his race. My theater was extensive and I almost regretted
that with Iris there was no need for even a brief curtain raiser, much
less one of my exuberant galas.

Not accustomed to the neutral response, I stammered something about
the pleasures of gardens; Iris’s calm indifference saved me from
what might have been a truly mawkish outburst calculated to interest
her at any cost (mawkish because, I am confident, that none of our
deepest wishes or deeds is, finally, when honestly declared, very
wonderful or mysterious: simplicity not complexity is at the center
of our being; fortunately the trembling “I” is seldom revealed, even
to paid listeners, for, conscious of the appalling directness of our
needs, we wisely disguise their nature with a legerdemain of peculiar
cunning). Much of Iris’s attraction for me ... and at the beginning
that attraction did exist ... was that one did not need to discuss so
many things: of course the better charades were not called into being
which, creatively speaking, was a pity; but then it was a relief _not_
to pretend and, better still, a relief not to begin the business of
plumbing shallows under the illusion that a treasure chest of truth
might be found on the mind’s sea floor ... a grim ritual which was
popular in those years, especially in the suburbs and housing projects
where the mental therapists were ubiquitous and busy.

With Iris, one did not suspend, even at a cocktail party, the usual
artifices of society. All was understood, or seemed to be, which is
exactly the same thing. We talked about ourselves as though of absent
strangers. Then: “Have you known Clarissa long?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I met her only last winter.”

“Then this is your first visit here? to the valley?”

“The first,” she smiled, “but it’s a little like home, you know. I
don’t mean Detroit, but a memory of home, got from books.”

I thought so too. Then she added that she did not read any longer and I
was a little relieved; somehow with Iris one wanted not to talk about
books or the past. So much of her charm was that she was entirely in
the present. It was her gift, perhaps her finest quality, to invest
the moment with a significance which in recollection did not exist
except as a blurred impression of excitement. She created this merely
by existing. I was never to learn the trick, for her conversation was
not, in itself, interesting and her actions were usually calculable in
advance, making all the more unusual her peculiar effect. She asked
me politely about my work, giving me then the useful knowledge that,
though she was interested in what _I_ was doing, she was not much
interested in the life of the Emperor Julian.

I made it short. “I want to do a biography of him. I’ve always liked
history and so, when I settled down in the house, I chose Julian as my
work.”

“A life’s work?”

“Hardly. But another few years. It’s the reading which I most enjoy,
and that’s treacherous. There is so much of interest to read that it
seems a waste of time and energy to write anything ... especially if
it’s to be only a reflection of reflections.”

“Then why do it?”

“Something to say, I suppose; or at least the desire to define and
illuminate ... from one’s own point of view, of course.”

“Then why ... Julian?”

Something in the way she said the name convinced me she had forgotten
who he was if she had ever known.

“The apostasy; the last stand of paganism against Christianity.”

She looked truly interested, for the first time. “They killed him,
didn’t they?”

“No, he died in battle. Had he lived longer he might at least have
kept the Empire divided between the old gods and the new messiah.
Unfortunately his early death was their death, the end of the gods.”

“Except they returned as saints.”

“Yes, a few found a place in Christianity, assuming new names.”

“Mother of God,” she murmured thoughtfully.

“An unchristian concept, one would have thought,” I added, though
the beautiful illogic had been explained to me again and again by
Catholics: how God could and could not at the same time possess a
mother, that gleaming queen of heaven, entirely regnant in those days.

“I have often thought about these things,” she said, diffidently.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a student but it fascinates me. I’ve
been out in California for the past few years, working. I was on a
fashion magazine.” The note was exactly right: she knew precisely
what that world meant and she was neither apologetic nor pleased. We
both resisted the impulse to begin the names again, threading our
way through the maze of fashion, through that frantic world of the
peripheral arts.

“You kept away from Vedanta?” A group of transplanted English writers
at this time had taken to oriental mysticism with great eagerness,
an atonement no doubt for their careers as movie writers. Swamis and
temples abounded among the billboards and orange trees; but since it
was _the_ way for some it was, for those few at least, honorable.

“I came close.” She laughed. “But there was too much to read and even
then I always felt that it didn’t work for us, for Americans, I mean.
It’s probably quite logical and familiar to Asiatics, but we come from
a different line, with a different history; their responses aren’t
ours. But I did feel it was possible for others, which is a great deal.”

“Because so much is really _not_ possible?”

“Exactly. But then I know very little about these things.” She was
direct: no implication that what she did not know either did not
exist or was not worth the knowing, the traditional response in the
fashionable world.

“Are you working now?”

She shook her head. “No, I gave it up. The magazine sent somebody to
take my place out there (I didn’t have the 'personality’ they wanted)
and so I came on to New York where I’ve never really been, except for
week ends from school. The magazine had some idea that I might work
into the New York office, but I was through. I have worked.”

“And had enough?”

“For that sort of thing, yes. So I’ve gone out a lot in New York, met
many people; thought a little....” She twisted the leaf that she still
held in her fingers, her eyes vague as though focused on the leaf’s
faint shadow which fell in depth upon her dress, part upon her dress
and more on a tree’s branch ending finally in a tiny fragment of shadow
on the ground, like the bottom step of a frail staircase of air.

“And here you are, at Clarissa’s.”

“What an extraordinary woman she is!” The eyes were turned upon me,
hazel eyes, very clear, the whites luminous with youth.

“She collects people, but not according to any of the usual criteria.
She makes them all fit, somehow, but what it is they fit, what design,
no one knows. I don’t know, that is.”

“I suppose I was collected. Though it might have been the other way
around, since I am sure she interests me more than I do her.”

“There is no way of telling.”

“Anyway, I’m pleased she asked me here.”

We talked of Clarissa with some interest, getting nowhere. Clarissa was
truly enigmatic. She had lived for twenty years on the Hudson. She was
not married but it was thought she had been. She entertained with great
skill. She was in demand in New York and also in Europe where she often
traveled. But no one knew anything of her origin or of the source of
her wealth and, oddly enough, although everyone observed her remarkable
_idée fixe_, no one ever discussed it, as though in tactful obedience
to some obscure sense of form. In the half-dozen years that I had known
her not once had I discussed with anyone her eccentricity. We accepted
in her presence the reality of her mania, and there it ended. Some
were more interested by it than others. I was fascinated, and having
suspended both belief and doubt found her richly knowing in matters
which interested me. Her accounts of various meetings with Labianus in
Antioch were quite brilliant, all told most literally, as though she
had no faculty for invention which perhaps, terrifying thought, she
truly lacked, in which case ... but we chose not to speculate. Iris
spoke of plans.

“I’m going back to California.”

“Tired of New York?”

“No, hardly. But I met someone quite extraordinary out there, someone I
think I should like to see again.” Her candor made it perfectly clear
that her interest was not romantic. “It’s rather in line too with what
we were talking about. I mean your Julian and all that. He’s a kind of
preacher.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.” A goldfish made a popping sound as it
captured a dragonfly on the pond’s surface.

“But he isn’t the usual sort of thing at all. He’s completely different
but I’m not sure just how.”

“An evangelist?” In those days loud men and women were still able to
collect enormous crowds by ranging up and down the country roaring
about that salvation which might be found in the bosom of the Lamb.

“No, his own sort of thing entirely. A little like the Vedanta
teachers, only he’s American, and young.”

“What does he teach?”

“I ... I’m not sure. No, don’t laugh. I only met him once. At a
friend’s house in Santa Monica. He talked very little but one had the
feeling that, well, that it was something unusual.”

“It must have been if you can’t recall what he said.” I revised my
first estimate: it was romantic after all; a man who was young,
fascinating ... I was almost jealous as a matter of principle.

“I’m afraid I don’t make much sense.” She gestured and the leaf fell
into its own shadow on the grass. “Perhaps it was the effect he had on
the others that impressed me. They were clever people, worldly people
yet they listened to him like children.”

“What does he do? does he preach? work?”

“I don’t know that either. I met him the night before I left California
and I haven’t seen anyone who was there that evening since.”

“But now you think you want to go back to find out?”

“Yes. I’ve thought about him a great deal these last few weeks. You’d
think one would forget such a thing, but I haven’t.”

“What was his name?”

“Cave, I think. John Cave.”

“A pair of initials calculated to amaze the innocent.” Yet even while I
invoked irony, I felt with a certain chill in the heat that _this_ was
to be Clarissa’s plot, and for many days afterwards that name echoed
in my memory, long after I had temporarily forgotten Iris’s own name,
had forgotten, as one does, the whole day, the peony in the boxwood,
the leaf’s fall and the catch of the goldfish; instants which now
live again in the act of recreation, details which were to fade into
a yellow-green blur of June and of the girl beside me in a garden and
of that name spoken in my hearing for the first time, becoming in my
imagination like some bare monolith awaiting the sculptor’s chisel.




                                  TWO


                                   1

I did not see Iris again for some months. Nor, for that matter, did I
see Clarissa who, the day after our lunch, disappeared on one of her
mysterious trips ... this time to London, I think, since she usually
got there for the season. Clarissa’s comings and goings doubtless
followed some pattern though I could never make much sense of them.
I was very disappointed not to see her before she left because I had
wanted to ask her about Iris and also ...

                   *       *       *       *       *

It has been a difficult day. Shortly after I wrote the lines above,
this morning, I heard the sound of an American voice on the street-side
of the hotel; the first American voice I’ve heard in some years for,
excepting me, none has been allowed in Upper Egypt for twenty years.
The division of the world has been quite thorough, religiously and
politically, and had not some official long ago guessed my identity it
is doubtful that I should have been granted asylum even in this remote
region.

I tried to continue with my writing but it was impossible: I could
recall nothing. My attention would not focus on the past, on those
wraiths which have lately begun to assume again such startling reality
as I go about the work of memory ... but the past was lost to me this
morning. The doors shut and I was marooned in the meager present.

Who was this American who had come to Luxor? and why?

For a moment the serenity which I have so long practiced failed me and
I feared for my life. The long-awaited assassins had finally come. But
then that animal within who undoes us all with his fierce will to live,
grew quiet, accepting again the discipline I have so long maintained
over him, his obedience due less perhaps to my strong will than to
his fatigue, for he is no longer given to those rages and terrors and
exultations which once dominated me as the moon does the tide: his
defeat being my old age’s single victory, and a bitter one.

I took the pages that I had written and hid them in a wide crack in
the marble-topped Victorian washstand. I then put on a tie and linen
jacket and, cane in hand, my most bemused and guileless expression upon
my face, I left the room and walked down the tall dim corridor to the
lobby, limping perhaps a little more than was necessary, exaggerating
my quiet genuine debility to suggest, if possible, an even greater
helplessness. If they had come at last to kill me, I thought it best
to go to them while I still held in check the creature terror. As I
approached the lobby, I recalled Cicero’s death and took courage from
his example. He too had been old and tired, too exasperated at the last
even to flee.

My assassin (if such he is and I still do not know) looks perfectly
harmless: a red-faced American in a white suit crumpled from heat
and travel. In atrocious Arabic he was addressing the manager who,
though he speaks no English, is competent in French, is accustomed to
speaking French to Occidentals. My compatriot, however, was obstinate
and smothered with a loud voice the polite European cadences of the
manager.

I moved slowly to the desk, tapping emphatically with my cane on
the tile floor. Both turned; it was the moment which I have so long
dreaded: the eyes of an American were turned upon me once again. Would
he know? _Does_ he know? I felt all the blood leave my head. With a
great effort, I remained on my feet; steadying my voice which has
nowadays a tendency to quaver even when I am at ease, I said to the
American, in our own language, the language I had not once spoken in
nearly twenty years, “Can I be of assistance, sir?” The words sounded
strange on my lips and I was aware that I had given them an ornateness
which was quite unlike my usual speech. His look of surprise was, I
think, perfectly genuine. I felt a cowardly relief: not yet, not yet.

“Oh!” the American stared at me stupidly for a moment (his face is
able to suggest a marvelous range of incomprehension, as I have since
discovered).

“My name is Richard Hudson,” I said, pronouncing carefully the name by
which I am known in Egypt, the name with which I have lived so long
that it sometimes seems as if all my life before was only a dream,
a fantasy of a time which never was except in reveries, in those
curious waking-dreams which I often have these days when I am tired,
at sundown usually, when my mind often loses all control over itself
and the memory grows confused with imaginings, and I behold worlds and
splendors which I have never known yet which are vivid enough to haunt
me even in the lucid mornings: I am dying, of course, and my brain is
only letting up, releasing its images with a royal abandon, confusing
everything like those surrealist works of art which had some vogue in
my youth.

“Oh,” said the American again and then, having accepted my reality, he
pushed a fat red hand toward me. “The name is Butler, Bill Butler. Glad
to meet you. Didn’t expect to find another white ... didn’t expect to
meet up with an American in these parts.” I shook the hand.

“Let me help you,” I said, letting go the hand quickly. “The manager
speaks no English.”

“I been studying Arabic,” said Butler with a certain sullenness. “Just
finished a year’s course at Ottawa Center for this job. They don’t
speak it here like _we_ studied it.”

“It takes time,” I said soothingly. “You’ll catch the tone.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. Tell them I got a reservation.” Butler mopped
his full glistening cheeks with a handkerchief.

“You have a reservation for William Butler?” I asked the manager in
French.

He shook his head, looking at the register in front of him. “Is he an
American?” He looked surprised when I said that he was. “But it didn’t
sound like English.”

“He was trying to speak Arabic.”

The manager sighed. “Would you ask him to show me his passport and
authorizations?”

I communicated this to Butler who pulled a bulky envelope from his
pocket and handed it to the manager. As well as I could, without
appearing inquisitive, I looked at the papers. I could tell nothing.
The passport was evidently in order. The numerous authorizations from
the Egyptian Government in the Pan-Arabic League, however, seemed to
interest the manager intensely.

“Perhaps ...” I began, but he was already telephoning the police.
Though I speak Arabic with difficulty, I can understand it easily.
The manager was inquiring at length about Mr. Butler and about his
status in Egypt. The police chief evidently knew all about him and the
conversation was short.

“Would you ask him to sign the register?” The manager’s expression was
puzzled. I wondered what on earth it was all about.

“Don’t know why,” said Butler, carving his name into the register with
the ancient pen, “there’s all this confusion. I wired for a room last
week from Cairo.”

“Communications have not been perfected in the Arab countries,” I said
(fortunately for me, I thought to myself).

When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and the key
to his room.

“Much obliged to you, Mr. Hudson.”

“Not at all.”

“Like to see something of you, if you don’t mind. Wonder if you could
give me an idea of the lay of the land.”

I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in the
cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace.

When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend
that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to me
as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived there
longer), merely shrugged and said, “It’s too much for me, sir.” And I
could get no more out of him.


                                   2

The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o’clock, at the hour
when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a
scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which,
at this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its
usual size, diminished by heat.

“Don’t suppose we could order a drink ... not that I’m much of a
drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like this.”

I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had
been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use alcohol.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Studied all about them, even read the
Koran. Frightful stuff, too.”

“No worse than most documents revealed by heaven,” I said gently, not
wanting to get on to that subject. “But tell me what brings you to
these parts?”

“I was going to ask _you_ the same thing,” said Butler genially, taking
the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river
a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. “The manager
tells me you’ve been up here for twenty years.”

“You must have found a language in common.”

Butler chuckled. “These devils understand you well enough if they want
to. But you....”

“I was an archaeologist at one time,” I said and I told him the
familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have
almost come to believe it. “I was from Boston originally. Do you know
Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing.
Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago,
I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs.” This was a new,
plausible touch, “Egypt was always my single passion and so I came
to Luxor, to this hotel where I’ve been quite content, though hardly
industrious.”

“How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along
around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization.”

“I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world
of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special dispensation.”

“Old hand, then, with the natives?”

“But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to
die and I live now as though I were already dead myself.”

This had the desired effect of chilling him. Though he was still young,
hardly fifty, the immediacy of death, even when manifested in the
person of a chance acquaintance, did inspire a certain gravity.

He mumbled something which I did not catch. I think my hearing has
begun to go: not that I am deaf but I have, at times, a monotonous
buzzing in my ears which makes conversation difficult, though not
impossible. According to the local doctor my arteries have hardened
and at any moment one is apt to burst among the convolutions of the
brain, drowning my life. But I do not dwell on this, at least not in
conversation.

“There’s been a big shake-up in the Atlantic community. Don’t suppose
you’d hear much about it around here since from the newspapers I’ve
seen in Egypt they have a pretty tight censorship.”

I said I knew nothing about recent activities in the Atlantic community
or anywhere else, other than Egypt.

“Well they’ve worked out an alliance with Pan-Arabia which will open
the whole area to us. Of course no oil exploitation is allowed but
there’ll still be a lot of legitimate business between our sphere and
these people.”

I listened to him patiently while he explained the state of the world
to me; it seemed unchanged: the only difference was that there were now
new and unfamiliar names in high places. He finished with a patriotic
harangue about the necessity of the civilized to work in harmony
together for the good of mankind: “And this opening up of Egypt has
given us the chance we’ve been waiting for for years, and we mean to
take it.”

“You mean to extend trade?”

“No, I mean the Word.”

“The Word?” I repeated numbly, the old fear returning.

“Why sure; I’m a Cavite Communicator.” He rapped perfunctorily on
the table twice. I tapped feebly with my cane on the tile: in the
days of the Spanish persecution such signals were a means of secret
communication (not that the persecution had really been so great but
it had been our decision to dramatize it in order that our people
might become more conscious of their splendid if temporary isolation
and high destiny); it had not occurred to me that, triumphant, the
Cavites should still cling to those bits of fraternal ritual which
I’d conceived with a certain levity in the early days. But of course
the love of ritual, of symbol is peculiar to our race and I reflected
bleakly on this as I returned the solemn signal which identified us as
brother Cavites.

“The world must have changed indeed,” I said at last. “It was a Moslem
law that no foreign missionaries be allowed in the Arab League.”

“Pressure!” Butler looked very pleased. “Nothing obvious of course; had
to be done though.”

“For economic reasons?”

“No, for Cavesword. That’s what we’re selling because that’s the one
thing we’ve got.” And he blinked seriously at the remnant of scarlet
sun; his voice had grown husky, like a man selling some commodity
on television in the old days. Yet the note of sincerity, whether
simulated or genuine, was unmistakably resolute.

“You may have a difficult time,” I said, not wanting to go on with
this conversation but unable to direct it short of walking away. “The
Moslems are very stubborn in their faith.”

Butler laughed confidently. “We’ll change all that. It may not be easy
at first because we’ve got to go slow, feel our way, but once we know
the lay of the land, you might say, we’ll be able to produce some big
backing, some real backing.”

His meaning was unmistakable. Already I could imagine those Squads of
the Word in action throughout this last terrestrial refuge. Long ago
they had begun as eager instruction teams; after the first victories,
however, they had become adept at demoralization, at brain-washing and
auto-hypnosis, using all the psychological weapons which our race in
its ingenuity had fashioned in the mid-century, becoming so perfect
with the passage of time that imprisonment or execution for unorthodoxy
was no longer necessary: even the most recalcitrant, the most virtuous
man, could be reduced to a sincere and useful orthodoxy, no different
in quality from his former antagonists, his moment of rebellion
forgotten, his reason anchored securely at last in the general truth. I
was also quite confident that their methods had improved even since my
enlightened time.

“I hope you’ll be able to save these poor people,” I said, detesting
myself for this hypocrisy.

“Not a doubt in the world,” he clapped his hands. “They don’t know
what happiness we’ll bring them.” Difficult as it was to accept such
hyperbole, I believed in his sincerity: he is one of those zealots
without whose offices no large work in the world can be successfully
propagated. I did not feel more than a passing pity for the Moslems:
they were doomed but their fate would not unduly distress them for my
companion was perfectly right when he spoke of the happiness which
would be theirs: a blithe mindlessness which would in no way affect
their usefulness as citizens. We had long since determined that for the
mass this was the only humane way of ridding them of superstition in
the interest of Cavesword and the better life.

“It’s strange, though, that they should let you in,” I said, quite
aware that he might be my assassin after all, permitted by the Egyptian
government to destroy me and, with me, the last true memory of the
mission. I had not completely got over my first impression that Butler
was an accomplished actor, sounding me out before the final victory of
the Cavites, the necessary death and total obliteration of the person
and the memory of Eugene Luther, now grown old with a false name in a
burning land.

If he was an actor, he was a master. He thumped on interminably about
America, John Cave and the necessity of spreading his word throughout
the world. I listened patiently as the sun went abruptly behind the
hills and all the stars appeared in the moonless waste of sky. Fires
appeared in the hovels on the far shore of the Nile, yellow points of
light like fireflies hovering by that other river which I shall never
see again.

“Must be nearly suppertime.”

“Not quite,” I said, relieved that Butler’s face was now invisible. I
was not used to great red faces after my years in Luxor among the lean,
the delicate and the dark. Now only his voice was a dissonance in the
evening.

“Hope the food’s edible.”

“It isn’t bad, though it may take some getting used to.”

“Well, I’ve a strong stomach. Guess that’s why they chose me for this
job.”

This job? could it mean...? but I refused to let myself be panicked.
I have lived too long with terror to be much moved now; especially
since my life of its own generation has brought me to dissolution’s
edge. “Are there many of you?” I asked politely. The day was ending
and I was growing weary, all senses blunted and some confused. “Many
Communicators?”

“Quite a few,” said Butler. “They’ve been training us for the last year
in Canada for the big job of opening up Pan-Arabia. Of course we’ve
known for years that it was just a matter of time before the government
got us in here.”

“Then you’ve been thoroughly grounded in the Arab culture? and
disposition?”

“Oh, sure. May have to come to you every now and then, though, if you
don’t mind.” He chuckled to show that his patronage would be genial.

“I should be honored to assist.”

“We anticipate trouble at first. We have to go slow. Pretend we’re just
available for instruction while we get to know the local big shots.
Then, when the time comes....” He left the ominous sentence unfinished.
I could imagine the rest, however. Fortunately, nature by then, with or
without Mr. Butler’s assistance, would have removed me as a witness.

Inside the hotel the noise of plates being moved provided a familiar
reference. I was conscious of being hungry: as the body’s mechanism
jolts to a halt, it wants more fuel than it ever did at its optimum. I
wanted to go in but before I could gracefully extricate myself Butler
asked me a question. “You the only American in these parts?”

I said that I was.

“Funny nothing was said about there being _any_ American up here. I
guess they didn’t know you were here.”

“Perhaps they were counting me among the American colony at Cairo,” I
said smoothly. “I suppose, officially, I am a resident of that city. I
was on the Advisory Board of the Museum.” This was not remotely true
but since, to my knowledge, there is no Advisory Board it would be
difficult for anyone to establish my absence from it.

“That must be it.” Butler seemed easily satisfied, perhaps too easily.
“Certainly makes things a lot easier for us, having somebody like you
up here, another Cavite, who knows the lingo.”

“I’ll help in any way I can; though I’m afraid I have passed the age of
usefulness. Like the British king, I can only advise.”

“Well, that’s enough. I’m the active one anyway. My partner takes care
of the other things.”

“Partner? I thought you were alone.”

“No. I’m to get my heels in first; then my colleague comes on in a few
weeks. That’s standard procedure. He’s a psychologist and an authority
on Cavesword. We all are, of course--authorities, that is--but he’s
gone into the early history and so on a little more thoroughly than us
field men usually do.”

So there was to be another one, a cleverer one. I found myself both
dreading and looking forward to the arrival of this dangerous person:
it would be interesting to communicate with a good mind again, or at
least an instructed one: though Butler has not given me much confidence
in the new Cavite Communicators. Nevertheless, I am intensely
curious about the Western world since my flight from it. I have been
effectively cut off from any real communion with the West for two
decades. Rumors, stray bits of information sometimes penetrate as far
as Luxor but I can make little sense of them, for the Cavites are, as
I well know, not given to candor while the Egyptian newspapers exist
in a fantasy world of Pan-Arabic dominion. There was so much I wished
to know that I hesitated to ask Butler, not for fear of giving myself
away but because I felt that any serious conversation with him would be
pointless: I rather doubted if he knew what he was supposed to know,
much less all the details which I wished to know and which even a
moderately intelligent man, if not hopelessly zealous, might be able to
supply me with.

I had a sudden idea. “You don’t happen to have a recent edition of the
Testament, do you? Mine’s quite old and out of date.”

“What date?” This was unexpected.

“The year? I don’t recall. About thirty years old, I should say.”

There was a silence. “Of course yours is a special case, being marooned
like this. There’s a ruling about it which I think will protect you
fully since you’ve had no contact with the outside; anyway, as a
Communicator, I must ask you for your old copy.”

“Why certainly but ...”

“I’ll give you a new one, of course. You see it is against the law to
have any Testament which predates the second Cavite Council.”

I was beginning to understand: after the schism a second Council had
been inevitable even though no reference to it has ever appeared in the
Egyptian press. “The censorship here is thorough,” I said. “I had no
idea there had been a new Council.”

“What a bunch of savages!” Butler groaned with disgust. “That’s going
to be one of our main jobs, you know, education, freeing the press.
There has been almost no communication between the two spheres of
influence....”

“Spheres of influence.” How easily the phrase came to his lips! All
the jargon of the journalists of fifty years ago has, I gather, gone
into the language, providing the inarticulate with a number of made-up
phrases calculated to blur even their none too clear meanings. I assume
of course that Butler is as inarticulate as he seems, that he is
typical of the first post-Cavite generation.

“You must give me a clear picture of what has been happening in America
since my retirement.” But I rose to prevent him from giving me, at that
moment at least, any further observations on “spheres of influence.”

I stood for a moment, resting on my cane: I had stood up too quickly
and as usual suffered a spell of dizziness; I was also ravenously
hungry. Butler stamped out a cigarette on the tile.

“Be glad to tell you anything you want to know. That’s my business.”
He laughed shortly. “Well, time for chow. I’ve got some anti-bacteria
tablets they gave us before we came out, supposed to keep the food from
poisoning us.”

“I’m sure you won’t need them here.”

He kept pace with my slow shuffle. “Well, it increases eating pleasure,
too.” Inadvertently, I shuddered as I recognized yet another glib
phrase from the past; it had seemed such a good idea to exploit the
vulgar language of the advertisers. I suffered a brief spasm of guilt.


                                   3

We dined together in the airy salon which was nearly empty at this
season except for a handful of government officials and businessmen
who eyed us without much interest even though Americans are not a
common sight in Egypt. They were of course used to me although, as
a rule, I keep out of sight, taking my meals in my own room and
frequenting those walks along the river bank which avoid altogether the
town of Luxor.

I found, after I had dined, that physically I was somewhat restored,
better able to cope with Butler. In fact, inadvertently, I actually
found myself, in the madness of my great age, enjoying his company, a
sure proof of loneliness if not of senility. He too, after taking pills
calculated to fill him “chock full of vim and vigor” (that is indeed
the phrase he used), relaxed considerably and spoke of his life in the
United States. He had no talent for evoking what he would doubtlessly
call “the large picture” but in a casual, disordered way he was able
to give me a number of details about his own life and work which did
suggest the proportions of the world from which he had so recently come
and which I had, in my folly, helped create.

On religious matters he was unimaginative and doctrinaire, concerned
with the letter of the commands and revelations rather than with the
spirit such as it was, or is. I could not resist the dangerous maneuver
of asking him, at the correct moment of course (we were speaking of the
time of the schisms), what had become of Eugene Luther.

“Who?”

The coffee cup trembled in my hand. I set it carefully on the table. I
wondered if _his_ hearing was sound. I repeated my own name, long lost
to me, but mine still in the secret dimness of memory.

“I don’t place the name. Was he a friend of the Liberator?”

“Why, yes. I even used to know him slightly but that was many years
ago, before your time. I’m curious to know what might have become of
him. I suppose he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t place the name.” He looked at me with some
interest. “I guess you must be almost old enough to have seen _him_.”

I nodded, lowering my lids with a studied reverence, as though dazzled
at the recollection of great light. “I saw him several times.”

“Boy, I envy you! There aren’t many left who have seen _him_ with their
own eyes. What was he like?”

“Just like his photographs,” I said, shifting the line of inquiry:
there is always the danger that a trap is being prepared for me. I was
noncommittal, preferring to hear Butler talk of himself. Fortunately,
he preferred this too and for nearly an hour I learned as much as I
shall ever need to know about the life of at least one Communicator
of Cavesword. While he talked, I watched him furtively for some sign
of intention but there was none that I could detect; yet I _was_
suspicious. He had not known my name and I could not understand what
obscure motive might cause him to pretend ignorance unless of course he
_does_ know who I am and wishes to confuse me, preparatory to some trap.

I excused myself soon afterwards and went to my room, after first
accepting a copy of the newest Testament handsomely bound in Plasticon
(it looks like leather) and promising to give him my old proscribed
copy the next day.

The first thing that I did, after locking the door to my room, was to
take the book over to my desk and open it to the index. My eye traveled
down that column of familiar names until it came to the L’s.

At first I thought that my eyes were playing a trick upon me. I held
the page close to the light, wondering if I might not have begun to
suffer delusions, the not unfamiliar concomitant of solitude and old
age. But my eyes were adequate and the hallucination, if real, was
vastly convincing: my name was no longer there. Eugene Luther no longer
existed in that Testament which was largely his own composition.

I let the book shut of itself, as new books will. I sat down at the
desk, understanding at last the extraordinary ignorance of Butler: I
had been obliterated from history; my place in time erased. It was as
if I had never lived.




                                 THREE


                                   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.”




                                 FOUR


                                   1

This morning I reread the last section, trying to see it objectively,
to match what I have put down with the memory I still bear of that
first encounter with John Cave. I have not, I fear, got it. But this is
as close as I can come to recalling long-vanished emotions and events.

I was impressed by the man and I was shaken by his purpose. My first
impression was, I think, correct: he was a born hypnotist and the text
of that extraordinary message was, in the early days at least, thin,
illogical and depressing if one had not heard it spoken. Later of
course I, among others, composed the words which bear his name and we
gave them, I fancy, a polish and an authority which, with his limited
education and disregard for the works of the past, he could not have
accomplished on his own, even had he wanted to.

I spent the intervening days between my first and second encounters
with this strange man in a state of extreme tension and irritability.
Clarissa called me several times but I refused to see her, excusing
myself from proposed entertainments and hinted tête-à-têtes, with an
abruptness which anyone but the iron-cast Clarissa would have found
appallingly rude. She said she understood, however, and she let me off
without explaining what it was she understood, or thought she did. I
avoided a number of parties and all acquaintances, keeping to my hotel
room where I contemplated a quick return to the Hudson and to the
darkening autumn.

Iris telephoned me twice and, when she fixed a day at last for me to
meet John Cave, I accepted her invitation, a little to my own surprise.

We met in the late afternoon at her house. Only the three of us were
present on that occasion. In the set of dialogues which I composed and
published in later years I took considerable liberties with our actual
conversations, especially this first one: in fact, as hostile critics
were quick to suggest, the dialogues were created by me with very
little of Cave in them and a good deal of Plato, rearranged to fit the
occasion. In time, though, my version was accepted implicitly, if only
because there were no longer any hostile critics.

Iris served us tea in the patio. She spoke seldom and, when she did,
her voice was low and curiously diffident as she asked Cave some
question or instructed me.

Cave himself was relaxed, quite different from my first view of him.
In fact, I might not even have recognized his face had I seen him in a
group.

He rose promptly when I came out onto the patio; he shook my hand
vigorously but briefly and sat down again, indicating that I sit next
to him while Iris went for tea. He was smaller and more compact than
I’d thought measuring him against myself as one does, unconsciously,
with an interesting stranger. He wore a plain brown suit and a white
shirt open at the collar, a modified Lord Byron collar which became
him. The eyes, which at first I did not dare look at, were, I soon
noticed, sheathed ... an odd word which was always to occur to me
when I saw him at his ease, his eyes half-shut, ordinary, not in the
least unusual. Except for a restless folding and unfolding of his
hands (suggesting a recently reformed cigarette smoker) he was without
physical idiosyncrasy.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you” were the first words, I fear, John
Cave ever spoke to me; so unlike the dialogue on the spirit which I
later composed to celebrate this initial encounter between master and
disciple-to-be. “Iris has told me a lot about you.” His voice was
light, without resonance now. He sat far back in his deck chair. Inside
the house I could hear Iris moving plates. The late afternoon sun had
just that moment gone behind trees and the remaining light was warmly
gold.

“And I have followed your ... career with interest too,” I said,
knowing that “career” was precisely the word he would not care to hear
used but, at that moment, neither of us had got the range of the other.
We fired at random.

“Iris told me you write history.”

I shook my head. “No, I only read it. I think it’s all been written
anyway.” I was allowed to develop this novel conceit for some moments,
attended by a respectful silence from my companion who finally
dispatched my faintly hysterical proposition with a vague “Maybe so”;
and then we got to him.

“I haven’t been East you know,” he frowned at the palm trees. “I
was born up in Washington state and I’ve spent all my life in the
Northwest, until last year.” He paused as though he expected me to ask
him about _that_ year. I did not. I waited for him to do it in his
own way. He suddenly turned about in his chair and faced me; those
disconcerting eyes suddenly trained upon my own. “You were there the
other night, weren’t you?”

“Why, yes.”

“Did you feel it too? Am I right?”

The quick passion with which he said this, exploding all at once the
afternoon’s serenity, took me off guard. I stammered, “I don’t think I
know what you mean. I ...”

“You know exactly what I mean, what I meant.” He leaned closer to me
and I wondered insanely if his deck chair might not collapse under him.
It teetered dangerously. My mind went blank, absorbed by the image
of deck chair and prophet together collapsing at my feet. Then, as
suddenly, satisfied perhaps with my confusion, he settled back, resumed
his earlier ease, exactly as if I had answered him, as though we had
come to a crisis and together fashioned an agreement: it was most
alarming.

“I want to see New York especially. I’ve always thought it must
look like a cemetery with all those tall gray buildings you see in
photographs.” He sighed conventionally: “So many interesting places in
the world. Do you like the West?”

Nervously, I said that I did. I still feared a possible repetition of
that brief outburst.

“I like the openness,” said Cave, as though he had thought long about
this problem. “I don’t think I’d like confinement I couldn’t live in
Seattle because of those fogs they used to have; San Francisco’s the
same. I don’t like too many walls, too much fog.” If he’d intended to
speak allegorically he could not have found a better audience for I
was, even at this early stage, completely receptive to the most obscure
histrionics but, in conversation, Cave was perfectly literal. Except
when he spoke before a large group, he was quite simple and prosaic
and, though conscious always of his dignity and singular destiny, not
in the least portentous.

I probably did not put him at his ease for I stammered a good deal and
made no sense, but he was gracious, supporting me with his own poise
and equanimity.

He talked mostly of places until Iris came back with tea. Then, as the
sky became florid with evening and the teacups gradually grew cold, he
talked of his work and I listened intently.

“I can talk to you straight,” he said. “This just happened to me. I
didn’t start out to do this. No sir, I never would have believed ten
years ago that I’d be traveling about, talking to people like one of
those crackpot fanatics you’ve got so many in California.” I took a
sip of the black, fast-cooling tea, hoping he was not sufficiently
intuitive to guess that I had originally put him down, provisionally of
course, as precisely that.

“I don’t know how much Iris may have told you or how much you might
have heard but it’s pretty easy to pass the whole thing off as another
joke: a guy coming out of the backwoods with a message.” He cracked
his knuckles hard and I winced at the sound. “Well, I didn’t quite
come out of the woods. I had a year back at State University and I had
a pretty good job in my field with the best firm of funeral directors
in Washington state. Then I started on this. I just _knew_ one day and
so I began to talk to people and they knew too and I quit my job and
started talking to bigger and bigger crowds all along the coast. There
wasn’t any of this revelation stuff. I just knew one day, that was
all; and when I told other people _what_ I knew they seemed to get it.
And that’s the strange part. Everybody gets ideas about things which
he thinks are wonderful but usually nothing happens to the people he
tries to tell them to. With me, it’s been different from the beginning.
People have all listened, and agreed: what I know _they_ know. Isn’t
that a funny thing? Though most of them probably would never have
thought it out until they heard me and it was all clear.” His eyes
dropped to his hands; he added softly: “So since it’s been like this,
I’ve gone on. I’ve made this my life. This is it. I shall come to the
people.”

There was silence. The sentence had been spoken which I was later to
construct the first dialogue upon: “I shall come to the people,” the
six words which were to change our lives were spoken softly over tea.

Iris looked at me challengingly over Cave’s bowed head.

I remember little else about that evening. We dined, I think, in the
house and Cave was most agreeable, most undemanding. There was no more
talk of the mission. He asked me many questions about New York, about
Harvard where I had gone to school, about Roman history. He appeared
to be interested in paganism and my own somewhat ambiguous approach
to Julian. I was to learn later that though he seldom read he had a
startling memory for any fact which seemed relevant. I am neither
immodest nor inaccurate when I say that he listened to me attentively
for some years and many of his later views were a result of our
conversations.

I should mention, though, one significant omission in his conversation
during those first crucial years: he never discussed ethical questions;
that was to come much later. At the beginning he had but one vision
and it was, in its terrible truth, quite inhuman and anarchic: man
dies, consciousness dies with him: it is good to die, good not to be.
On this the Cavite system was constructed and what came after in the
moral and ethical spheres was largely the work of others in his name.
Much of this I anticipated in that first conversation with him, so
unlike, actually, the dialogue which I composed ending, I still think
complacently despite the irony with which time has tarnished all those
bright toys for me, with the essential line: “Death is neither hard nor
bad; only the dying hurts.” With that firmly postulated the rest was
inevitable.

Cave talked that evening about California and Oregon and Washington
(geography, places were always to fascinate and engage him while
people, especially after the early years, ceased to be remarkable to
him; he tended to get confused those myriad faces which passed before
him like successive ripples in a huge sea). He talked of the cities
he had visited on the seaboard, new cities to him, all of them. He
compared their climates and various attractions like a truly devoted
tourist, eager to get the best of each place, to encounter the _genius
loci_ and possess it.

“But I don’t like staying in any place long.” He looked at me then and
again I felt that sense of a power being focused on me ... it was not
unlike what one experiences during an X-ray treatment when the humming
noise indicates that potent rays are penetrating one’s tissue and,
though there is actually no sensation, _something_ is experienced,
power is felt. And so it invariably was that, right until the end,
Cave, whenever he chose, could turn those wide bleak eyes upon me and I
would experience his force anew.

“I want to keep moving, new places, that’s what I like. You get a kind
or charge traveling. At least I do. I always thought I’d travel but
I never figured it would be like this; but then of course I never
thought of all this until just awhile ago.

“Can you remember when it was? how it was exactly you got ... started?”
I wanted a sign obviously: Constantine’s _labarum_ occurred to me: _in
hoc signo vinces_. Already ambition was stirring, and the little beast
fed ravenously on every scrap that came its way for I was, in that
patio, experiencing my own revelation, the compass needle no longer
spinning wildly but coming to settle at last, with many hesitancies and
demurs, upon a direction, drawn to a far pole’s attraction.

He smiled for the first time. I suppose, if I wanted, I could recall
each occasion over the years when, in my presence at least, John
Cave smiled. His usual expression was one of calm resolve, of that
authority which feels secure in itself, a fortunate expression which
lent dignity even to his casual conversation: the fact that this serene
mask hid a nearly total intellectual vacuity, I suspected as early in
my dealings with him as this first meeting; yet I did not mind for I
had experienced his unique magic and already I saw the possibilities
of channeling that power, of using that force, or turning it like a
flame here, there, creating and destroying, shaping and shattering
... so much for the spontaneous nature of my ambition at its least
responsible, and at its most exquisite! I could have set the one-half
world aflame for the sheer splendor and glory of the deed. For this
my expiation has been long and my once exuberant pride is now only an
ashen phoenix consumed by flames but not yet tumbled to dust, not yet
recreated in the millennial egg ... only a gray shadow in the heart
which the touch of a finger of windy fear will turn to air and dust.

Yet the creature was aborning that day: one seed had touched another
and a monster began to live.

“The first day? The first time?” The smile faded. “Sure, I remember it.
I’d just finished painting the face of a big dead fellow killed in an
automobile accident. I didn’t usually do make-up but I like to help out
and I used to do odd jobs when somebody had too much to do and asked me
to help; the painting isn’t hard either and I always like it, though
the faces are cold like ... like....” He thought of no simile; he went
on: “Anyway I looked at this guy’s face and I remembered I’d seen him
play basketball in high school. He was in a class or two behind me.
Big athlete. Ringer, we called them ... full of life ... and here he
was, with me powdering his face and combing his eyebrows. Usually you
don’t think much about the stiff (that’s our professional word) one way
or the other: it’s just a job. But I thought about this one suddenly.
I started to feel sorry for him, dead like that, so sudden, so young,
so good-looking with all sorts of prospects; then I felt it.” The
voice grew low and precise. Iris and I listened intently, even the sun
froze in the wild sky above the sea; the young night stumbled in the
darkening east.

His eyes on the sun, he described his sudden knowledge that it was the
dead man who was right, who was a part of the whole, that the living
were the sufferers from whom, temporarily, the beautiful darkness and
nonbeing had been withdrawn and, in his crude way, Cave struck chord
after chord of meaning and, though the notes were not in themselves
new, the effect was all its own ... and not entirely because of the
voice, the cogency of this magician. No, the effect was achieved only
in part through his ability to make one experience with him an occasion
of light, of absolute knowing.

“And I knew it was the dying which was the better part,” he finished.
The sun, released, drowned in the Pacific.

In the darkness I asked, “But you, you still live?”

“Not because I want to,” came the voice, soft as the night “I must tell
the others first. There’ll be time for myself.”

I shuddered in the warmth of the patio. My companions were only dim
presences in the failing light. “Who told you to tell this to everyone?”

The answer came back, strong and unexpected: “I told myself. The
responsibility is mine.”

That was the sign for me. He had broken with his predecessors. He was
on his own. He knew ... and so did we.


                                   2

I have lingered over that first meeting for, in it, was finally all
that there was to come. Later details were the work of others, the
exotic periphery to a simple but powerful center. Not until late that
night did I leave the house near the beach. When I left, Cave stayed on
and I wondered again, idly, if perhaps he was living there with Iris,
if perhaps her interest in him might not be more complex than I had
suspected.

We parted casually and Iris walked me to the door while Cave remained
inside, gazing in his intent way at nothing at all: daydreaming,
doubtless, of what was to come.

“You’ll help?” Iris stood by the car’s open door, her features
indistinct in the moonless night.

“I think so. I’m not sure, though, about the scale.”

“What do you mean?”

“Must _everyone_ know? Can’t it just be kept to ourselves? for the few
who do know him?”

“No. We must let them all hear him. Everyone.” And her voice assumed
that zealous tone which I was to hear so often again and again upon her
lips and on those of others.

I made my first and last objection: “I don’t see that quantity has much
to do with it. If this thing spreads it will become organized. If it
becomes organized, secondary considerations will obscure the point. The
truth is no truer because only a few have experienced it.”

“You’re wrong. Even for purely selfish reasons, ruling out all
altruistic considerations, there’s an excellent reason for allowing
this to spread: a society which knows what we know, which believes in
Cave and what he says, will be a pleasanter place in which to live,
less anxious, more tolerant.” And she spoke of the new Jerusalem in our
sallow land and I was nearly convinced.

The next day I went to Hastings’ house for lunch. He was there alone;
his wife apparently had a life of her own which required his company
only occasionally. Clarissa, sensible in tweed and dark glasses,
was the only other guest. We lunched on an iron-wrought table beside
the gloomy pool in which, among the occasional leaves, I saw, quite
clearly, a cigarette butt delicately unfolding like an ocean flower.

“Good to, ah, have you, Eugene. Just a bit of potluck. Clarissa’s going
back to civilization today and wanted to see you ... I did too, of
course. The bride’s gone out. Told me to convey her....”

Clarissa turned her bright eyes on me and, without acknowledging the
presence of our host, said right off: “You’ve met him at last.”

I nodded. The plot was finally clear to me: the main design at least.
“We had dinner together last night.”

“I know. Iris told me. You’re going to help out of course.”

“I’d like to but I don’t know what there is I might do. I don’t think
I’d be much use with a tambourine on street corners, preaching the
word.”

“Don’t be silly!” Clarissa chuckled. “We’re going to handle this quite,
_quite_ differently.”

“We?”

“Oh, I’ve been involved for over a year now. It’s going to be the
greatest fun ... you wait and see.”

“But....”

“_I_ was the one who got Iris herself involved. I thought she looked
a little peaked, a little bored. I had no idea of course she’d get in
so deep, but it will probably turn out all right I think she’s in love
with him.”

“Don’t be such a gossip,” said Hastings sharply. “You always reduce
everything to ... to biology. Cave isn’t that sort of man.”

“You know him too?” How fast it was growing, I thought.

“Certainly. Biggest thing I’ve done since....”

“Since you married that brassy blonde,” said Clarissa with her
irrepressible rudeness. “Anyway, my dear, Iris took to the whole thing
like a born proselyte, if that’s the word I mean ... the other’s a
little boy, isn’t it? and it seems, from what she’s told me, that you
have too.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I was a little put out at both Iris and Clarissa
taking me so much for granted.

“Say anything you like. It’s still the best thing that’s ever happened
to you. Oh God, _not_ avocado again!” The offending salad was waved
away while Hastings muttered apologies. “Nasty, pointless things, all
texture and no taste.” She made a face. “But I suppose that we must
live off the fruits of the country and this is the only thing which
will grow in California.” She moved without pause from Western flora
to the problem of John Cave. “As for your own contribution, Eugene,
it will depend largely upon what you choose to do. As I said, I never
suspected that Iris would get in so deep and you may prove to be
quite as surprising. This is the ground floor of course ... wonderful
expression, isn’t it? the spirit of America: the slogan which broke
the plains ... in any case, the way is clear. Cave liked you. You can
write things for them, rather solid articles based on your inimitable
misreadings of history. You can educate Cave, though this might be
unwise since so much of his force derives from his eloquent ignorance;
or you might become a part of the organization which is getting
under way. I suppose Iris will explain that to you: it’s rather her
department at the moment. All those years in the Junior League gave
her a touching faith in the power of committees, which is just as well
when handling Americans. As for the tambourines and cries of 'Come and
Be Saved’ you are some twenty years behind the times. We ... or to be
exact I ought to say 'they’ ... have more up-to-date plans.”

“Committees? What committees?”

Clarissa unfolded her mushroom omelet with a secret smile. “You’ll
meet our number-one committee member after lunch. He’s coming, isn’t
he?” She looked at Hastings as though suspecting him of a treacherous
ineptitude.

“Certainly, certainly, at least he _said_ he was.” Hastings motioned
for the serving-woman to clean away the luncheon dishes and we moved to
other chairs beside the pool for coffee.

Clarissa was in fine form, aggressive, positive, serenely indifferent
to the effect she was having on Hastings and me. “Of course I’m just
meddling,” she said in answer to an inquiry of mine. “I don’t really
give two cents for Mr Cave and his message.”

“Clarissa!” Hastings was genuinely shocked.

“I mean it. Not that I don’t find him fascinating and of course the
whole situation is delicious ... what we shall do! or _you_ shall do!”
she looked at me maliciously. “I can foresee no limits to this.”

“It no doubt reminds you of the period shortly after Mohammed married
Khadija.” My own malice, however, could not pierce Clarissa’s mad
equanimity.

“Vile man, sweet woman. But no, this is all going to be different
although the intellectual climate (I think _intellectual_ is perhaps
optimistic but you know what I mean) is quite similar. I can’t wait for
the first public response.”

“There’s already been some,” said Hastings, crossing his legs which
were encased in pale multicolor slacks with rawhide sandals on his
feet. “There was a piece yesterday in the _News_ about the meetings
they’ve been having up near Laguna or wherever it is he’s been speaking
this time.”

“What did they say?” Clarissa scattered tiny saccharine tablets into
her coffee like a grain goddess preparing harvest.

“Oh, just one of those short suburban notes about how a Mr Joseph Cave,
they got the name wrong, was giving a series of lectures at a funeral
parlor which have been surprisingly well attended.”

“They didn’t mention what the lectures were about?”

“No, just a comment: the first one so far in Los Angeles.”

“There’ll be others soon but I shouldn’t think it’s such a good idea to
have too many items like that before things are really under way.”

“And the gentleman who is coming here will be responsible for getting
them under way?” I asked.

“Pretty much, yes. It’s been decided that the practical details are to
be left to him. Cave will continue to speak in and around Los Angeles
until the way has been prepared. Then, when the publicity begins, he
will be booked all over the country, all over the world!” Clarissa
rocked silently for a moment in her chair, creating a disagreeable
effect of noiseless laughter which disconcerted both Hastings and me.

“I don’t like your attitude,” said Hastings, looking at her gloomily.
“You aren’t _serious_.”

“Oh I am, my darling, I am. You’ll never know how serious.” And on
that high note of Clarissa’s, Paul Himmell stepped out onto the patio,
blinking in the light of noon.

He was a slender man in his fortieth and most successful year, with
hair only just begun to gray and a lined but firmly modeled face,
bright with ambition. The initial impression was one of neatly
contained energy, of a passionate temperament beautifully, usefully
channeled. The twist to his bow tie was the work of a master craftsman.

The handshake was agreeable; the smile was quick and engaging; the
effect on me was alarming: I had detested this sort of man all my life
and here at last, wearing a repellently distinguished sports coat was
the archetype of all such creatures, loading with a steady hand that
cigarette holder without which he might at least have seemed to me
still human. He was identified by Hastings who, with a few excited
snorts and gasps, told me beneath the conversation that this was the
most successful young publicist in Hollywood, which meant the world.

“I’m happy to meet you, Gene,” he said as soon as Hastings had
introduced us. He was perfectly aware that he had been identified while
the first greetings with Clarissa had been exchanged: he had the common
gift of the busy worldling of being able to attend two conversations
simultaneously, profiting from both. I hate of course being called
by my first name by strangers but in his world there were of course
no strangers: the freemasonry of self-interest made all men equal in
their desperation. He treated me like a buddy. He knew (he was, after
all, clever) that I detested him on sight and on principle and that
presented him with a challenge to which he rose with confidence ...
and continued to rise through the years, despite the enduring nature
of my disaffection. But then to be liked was his business and I
suspect that his attentions had less to do with me, with a sense of
failure in himself for not having won me, than with a kind of automatic
charm, a response to a situation which was produced quite inhumanly,
mechanically: the smile, the warm voice, the delicate flattery ... or
not so delicate, depending on the case.

“Iris and Cave both told me about you and I’m particularly glad to
get a chance to meet you ... to see you too, Clarissa ... will you be
long in the East?” Conscious perhaps that I would need more work than
a perfunctory prelude, he shifted his attention to Clarissa, saving me
for later.

“I never have plans, Paul, but I’ve got one or two chores I’ve got
to do. Anyway I’ve decided that Eugene is just the one to give the
enterprise its tone ... a quality concerning which you, dear Paul, so
often have so much to say.”

“Why yes,” said the publicist genially, obviously not understanding.
“Always use more tone. You’re quite right.”

Clarissa’s eyes met mine for a brief amused instant. She was on to
everything ... doubtless on to me too in that way one can never be
about oneself; I always felt at a disadvantage with her.

“What we’re going to need for the big New York opening is a firm
historical and intellectual base. Cave hasn’t got it and of course
doesn’t need it. We are going to need commentary and explanation and
though you happen to be a genius in publicity you must admit that that
group which has been characterized as intellectual, the literate few
who, in their weakness, often exert enormous influence, are not apt to
be much moved by your publicity: in fact, they will be put off by it.”

“Well, now I’m not so sure my methods are _that_ crude. Of course I
never....”

“They are superbly, triumphantly, providentially crude and you know
it. Eugene must lend dignity to the enterprise. He has a solemn and
highly respectable misunderstanding of philosophy which will appeal
to his fellow intellectuals. He and they are quite alike: liberal,
ineffectual, scrupulous, unsuperstitious, irresolute and lonely.
When he addresses them they will get immediately his range, you might
say, pick up his frequency, realizing he is one of them, a man to be
trusted. Once they are reached the game is over, or begun.” Clarissa
paused and looked at me expectantly, the exuberant malice veiled by
excitement.

I didn’t answer immediately. Hastings, as a former writer, felt that he
too had been addressed and he worried the subject of “tone” while Paul
gravely added a comment or two. Clarissa watched me, however, conscious
perhaps of the wound she had dealt.

Was it all really so simple? was _I_ so simple? so typical? Vanity said
not, but self-doubt, the shadow which darkens even those triumphs held
at noon, prevailed for a sick moment or two: I was no different from
the others, from the little pedagogues and analysts, the self-obsessed
and spiritless company who endured shame and a sense of alienation
without even that conviction of virtue which can dispel guilt and
apathy for the simple, for all those who have accepted without question
one of the systems of absolutes which it has amused both mystics and
tyrants to construct for man’s guidance.

I had less baggage to rid myself of than the others: I was confident of
that. Neither Christianity nor Marxism nor the ugly certainties of the
mental therapists had ever engaged my loyalty or suspended my judgment.
I had looked at them all, deploring their admirers and servants,
interested though by their separate views of society and of the
potentialities of a heaven on earth (the medieval conception of a world
beyond life was always interesting to contemplate even if the evidence
in its favor was whimsical at best ... conceived either as a system of
rewards and punishments to control living man or else as lovely visions
of what might be were man indeed consubstantial with a creation which
so often resembled the personal aspirations of gifted divines rather
more closely than that universe the rest of us can only observe with
mortal eyes). No, I had had to dispose of relatively little baggage
and, I like to think, less than my more thoughtful contemporaries who
were forever analyzing themselves, offering their psyches to doctors
for analysis or, worse, giving their immortal souls into the hands of
priests who would then assume much of their _weltschmerz_, providing
them with a set of grown-up games every bit as appealing as the ones of
childhood which had involved make-believe or, finally, worst of all,
the soft acceptance of the idea of man the mass, of man the citizen, of
society the organic whole for whose greater good all individuality must
be surrendered.

My sense then of all that I had _not_ been, negative as it was, saved
my self-esteem: I was, in this, unlike my contemporaries. I had, in
youth, lost all respect for the authority of men and since there is
no other discernible (the “laws” of nature are only relative and one
cannot say for certain that there is a beautiful logic to everything in
the universe as long as first principles remain unrevealed ... except
of course to the religious who know everything, having faith), I was
unencumbered by belief, by reverence for any man or groups of men,
living or dead, though their wit and genius often made my days bearable
since my capacity for admiration, for aesthetic response was, I think,
highly developed even though with Terence I did not know, did not
_need_ to know through what wild centuries roves the rose.

Yet Clarissa’s including me among the little Hamlets was irritating,
and when I joined in the discussion again I was careful to give her no
satisfaction; it would have been a partial victory for her if I had
denied my generic similarity to my own contemporaries.

Paul spoke of practical matters, explaining to us the way he intended
to operate in the coming months; and I was given a glimpse of the
organization which had spontaneously come into being only a few weeks
before.

“Hope we can have lunch tomorrow, Gene. I’ll give you a better picture
then, the overall picture: and your part in it. Briefly, for now, the
organization has been set up as a company under California law with
Cave as president and myself, Iris and Clarissa as directors. I’m also
secretary-treasurer but only for now. We’re going to need a first-rate
financial man to head our campaign fund and I’m working on several
possibilities right now.”

“What’s the ... company called?” I asked.

“Cavites, Inc. We didn’t want to call it anything but that’s the law
here and since we intended to raise money we had to have a legal setup.”

“Got a nice sound, ah, Cavite,” said Hastings, nodding.

“What on earth should we have done if he’d had _your_ name, Paul?”
exclaimed Clarissa, to the indignation of both Hastings and Paul. They
shut her up quickly.

Paul went on in his smooth deep voice, “I’ve had a lot of experience,
of course, but this is something completely new for me, a real
challenge and one which I’m glad to meet head-on.”

“How did you get into it?” I asked.

Paul pointed dramatically to Hastings. “Him! He took me to a meeting in
Laguna last year. I was sold the first time. _I got the message._”

There was a hush as we were allowed to contemplate this awesome
information. Then, smiling in a fashion which he doubtless would have
called “wry,” the publicist continued: “I knew this was it. I contacted
Cave immediately and found we talked the same language. He was all for
the idea and so we incorporated. He said he wasn’t interested in the
organizational end and left that to us with Iris sort of representing
him, though of course we all do since we’re all Cavites. This thing
is big and we’re part of it.” He almost smacked his lips. I listened,
fascinated. “Anyway he’s going to do the preaching part and we’re
going to handle the sales end, if you get what I mean. We’re selling
something which nobody else ever sold before and you know what that
is?” He paused dramatically and we stared at him, a little stupidly.
“Truth!” His voice was triumphant. “We’re selling the truth about life
and that’s something that nobody, but nobody, has got.”

Clarissa broke the silence which had absorbed his last words. “You’re
simply out of this world, Paul! If I hadn’t heard you, I’d never have
believed it. But you don’t have to sell _us_, dear; we’re in on it too.
Besides, I have to catch a plane.” She looked at her watch. She stood
up and we did too. She thanked Hastings for lunch and then, before she
left the patio on his arm, she said: “Now you boys get on together and
remember what I’ve told you. Gene must be used, and right away. Get
him to write something dignified, for a magazine.” We murmured assent.
Clarissa said good-by and left the patio with Hastings. Her voice,
shrill and hard, could be heard even after she left. “The truth about
life! Oh, it’s going to be priceless!”

I looked quickly at Paul to see if he had heard but, if he had, he
didn’t betray the fact. He was looking at me intently, speculatively.
“I think we’re going to get along fine, Gene, just fine.” Leaving
me only a fumbled word or two of polite corroboration with which to
express my sincere antipathy; then we went our separate ways.


                                   3

I met Paul the next day at his office for a drink and not for lunch
since, at the last minute, his secretary called me to say he was tied
up and could I possibly come at five. I said that I could. I did.

His offices occupied an entire floor of a small sky-scraper on the edge
of Beverly Hills. I was shown through a series of rooms done in natural
wood and beige with indirect lighting and the soft sound of Strauss
waltzes piped in from all directions: the employees responded best to
three-four time according to the current efficiency reports.

Beneath an expensive but standard mobile, Paul stood, waiting for me
in his office. His desk, a tiny affair of white marble on slender iron
legs had been rolled off to one side and the office gave, as had been
intended, the impression of being a small drawing room rather than a
place of intense business. I was greeted warmly. My hand was shaken
firmly. My eyes were met squarely for the regulation-length of time.
Then we sat down on a couch which was like the open furry mouth of
some great soft beast and his secretary rolled a portable bar toward us.

“Name your poison,” said the publicist genially. We agreed on a
cocktail which he mixed with the usual comments one expects from a
regular fellow.

Lulled by the alcohol, by the room, disarmed by the familiar patter
in which one made all the correct responses, our conversation as
ritualistic as that of a French dinner party, I was not prepared for
the abrupt: “You don’t like me, do you, Gene?”

Only once or twice before had anyone ever said this to me and each time
that it happened I had vowed grimly that the _next_ time, no matter
where or with whom, I should answer with perfect candor, with merciless
accuracy: “No, I don’t.” But since I am neither quick nor courageous, I
murmured a pale denial.

“It’s all right, Gene. I know how you probably feel.” And the monster
was magnanimous; he treated me with pity. “We’ve got two different
points of view. That’s all. I have to make my way in this rat-race
and you don’t. You don’t have to do anything, so you can afford to
patronize us poor hustlers.”

“Patronize isn’t quite the word.” I was beginning to recover from the
first shock. A crushing phrase or two occurred to me but the publicist
knew his business and he changed course before I could begin my work of
demolition.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings. In my
business you get used to this sort of thing: occupational hazard, you
might say. I’ve had to fight my way every inch and I know that a lot of
people are going to be jostled in the process, which is just too bad
for them.” He smiled suddenly, drawing the sting. “But I have a hunch
we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other so we ought to start on a
perfectly plain basis of understanding. You’re on to me and I’m on to
you.” The man was diabolic in the way he could enrage yet not allow his
adversary sufficient grounds for even a perfunctory defense. He moved
rapidly, with a show of spurious reason which quite dazzled me. His
was what, presently, he called “the common-sense view.”

I told him I had no objection to working with him; that everything I
had heard about him impressed me; that he was wrong to suspect me of
disdaining methods whose efficacy was so well-known. I perjured myself
for several impassioned minutes and, on a rising note of coziness, we
passed on to the problem in hand, congenial enemies for all time: the
first round clearly his.

“Clarissa got you into this?” He looked at me over his glass.

“More or less. Clarissa to Iris to Cave was the precise play.”

“She got me to Cave last summer, or rather to Hastings first. I was
sold right off. I think I told you that yesterday. This guy’s got
everything. Even aside from the message, he’s the most remarkable
salesman I’ve ever seen and believe me when I tell you there isn’t
_anything_ I don’t know about salesmen.”

I agreed that he was doubtless expert in these matters.

“I went to about a dozen of those early meetings and I could see he
was having the same effect on everyone, even on Catholics, people like
that. Of course I don’t know what happens when they get home but while
they’re there they’re sold and that’s all that matters because, in the
next year, we’re going to have him _there_, everywhere, and all the
time.”

I told him I didn’t exactly follow this metaphysic flight.

“I mean we’re going to have him on television, on movie screens, in the
papers, so that everybody can feel the effect of his personality, just
like he was there in person. This prayer-meeting stuff he’s been doing
is just a warming up. That’s all. That kind of thing is outmoded: can’t
reach enough people even if you spoke at Madison Square every night
for a year, but it’s good practice, and it’s got him started. Now the
next move is a TV half-hour show once a week and when that gets started
we’re in.”

“Who’s going to pay for all this?”

“We’ve got more money than you can shake a stick at.” He smiled briefly
and refilled our glasses with a flourish. “I haven’t been resting on
my laurels and neither has Clarissa. We’ve got three of the richest men
in L.A. drooling at the mouth for an opportunity to come in with us.
They’re sold; they’ve talked to him; they’ve heard him. That’s been
enough.”

“Will you sell soap on television at the same time?”

“Come off it, Gene. _Cave_ is the product.”

“Then in what way will you, or his sponsors, profit from selling him?”

“In the first place what he says is the truth and it’s meant a lot to
me and also to them, to the tycoons: they’re willing to do anything to
put him across.”

“I should think that the possession of the truth and its attendant
sense of virtue is in itself enough, easily spoiled by popularization,”
I said with chilling pomp.

“Now that’s a mighty selfish attitude to take. Sure it makes me happy
to know at last nothing matters a hell of a lot since I’m apt to die
any time and that’s the end of yours truly; a nice quiet nothing, like
sleeping pills after a busy day: all that’s swell but it means a lot
more to me to see the truth belong to everybody and also, let’s face
it, I’m ambitious. I like my work. I want to see this thing get big,
and with me part of it. Life doesn’t mean a thing and death is the only
reality, like he says, but while we’re living we’ve got to keep busy
and get ahead and the best thing for me, I figured about six months
ago, was to put Cave over on the public, which is just what I’m going
to do. Anything wrong with that?”

Since right and wrong had not yet been reformulated and codified, I
gave him the comfort he hardly needed. “I see what you mean. I suppose
you’re right. Perhaps the motive is the same in every case, mine as
well as yours: yet we’ve all experienced Cave and that should be
enough.”

“No, we should all get behind it and push, bring it to the world.”

“That, of course, is where we’re different: not that I don’t intend
to 'propagate the truth,’ rather I shall do it for something to do,
knowing that nothing matters, not even _this_ knowledge matters.” In my
unction, I had stumbled upon the first of a series of paradoxes which
were to amuse and obsess our philosophers for a generation. Paul gave
me no opportunity to elaborate, however; his was the practical way and
I followed. We spoke of means and ends.

“Cave likes the idea of the half-hour show and as soon as we get all
the wrinkles ironed out, buying good time, not just dead air, we’ll
make the first big announcement, along around January, I think. Until
then we’re trying to keep this out of the papers. Slow but sure; then
fast and hard.”

“What sort of man is Cave?” I wanted very much to hear Paul’s reaction
to him: this was the practical man, the unobsessed.

He was candid; he did not know. “How can you figure a guy like that
out? At times he seems a little feeble-minded, this is between us by
the way, and other times when he’s talking to people, giving with the
message, there’s nothing like him.”

“What about his early life?”

“Nobody knows very much. I’ve had a detective agency prepare a dossier
on him. Does that surprise you? Well, I’m going far out on a limb for
him and so are our rich friends. We had to be sure we weren’t buying an
ax-murderer or a bigamist or something.”

“Would that have made any difference to the message?”

“No, _I_ don’t think so but it sure would have made it impossible for
us to sell him on a big scale.”

“And what did they find?”

“Not much. I’ll let you read it. Take it home with you. Confidential of
course and, as an officer of the company, I must ask you not to use any
of it without clearing first with me.”

I agreed and his secretary was sent for. The dossier was a thin bound
manuscript.

“It’s a carbon but I want it back. You won’t find anything very
striking but you ought to read it for the background. Never been
married, no girl friends that anybody remembers ... no boy friends
either (what a headache _that_ problem is in Hollywood, for a firm
like ours). No police record. No tickets for double parking, even. A
beautiful, beautiful record on which to build.”

“Perhaps a little negative.”

“That’s what we like. As for the guy’s character, his I.Q., your guess
is as good as mine, probably better. When I’m with him alone, we talk
about the campaign and he’s very relaxed, very sensible, businesslike:
doesn’t preach or carry on. He seems to understand all the problems of
our end. He’s cooperative.”

“Can you look him straight in the eye?”

Paul laughed. “Gives you the creeps, doesn’t it? No, I guess I don’t
look at him very much. I’m glad you mentioned that because I’ve a hunch
he’s a hypnotist of some kind though there’s no record of his ever
having studied it. I think I’ll get a psychologist to take a look at
him.”

“Do you think he’ll like that?”

“Oh, he’ll never know unless he’s a mind reader. Somebody to sort of
observe him at work. I’ve already had him checked out physically.”

“You’re very thorough.”

“Have to be. He’s got a duodenal ulcer and there’s a danger of high
blood pressure when he’s older; otherwise he’s in fine shape.”

“What do you want me to do first?”

He became serious. “A pamphlet. You might make a highbrow magazine
article out of it for the _Readers’ Digest_ or something first. We’ll
want a clear, simple statement of the Cavite philosophy.”

“Why don’t you get him to write it?”

“I’ve tried. He says he can’t write anything. In fact he even hates to
have his sermons taken down by a recorder. God knows why. But, in a
way, it’s all to the good because it means we can get all the talent
we like to do the writing for us and that way, sooner or later, we can
appeal to just about everybody.”

“Whom am I supposed to appeal to in this first pamphlet?”

“The ordinary person, but make it as foolproof as you can; leave plenty
of doors open so you can get out fast in case we switch the party line
along the way.”

I laughed. “You’re extraordinarily cynical.”

“Just practical. I had to learn everything the hard way. I was kicked
around by some mighty expert kickers in my day.”

I checked his flow of reminiscence. “Tell me about Cave and Iris.”
This was the secondary mystery which had occupied my mind for several
days. But Paul did not know or, if he did, would not say. “I think
they’re just good friends, like we say in these parts. Except that I
doubt if anything is going on ... they don’t seem the type and she’s so
completely gone on what he has to say....”

A long-legged girl secretary in discreet black entered the room
unbidden and whispered something to the publicist Paul started as
though she had given him an electric shock from the thick carpeting. He
spoke quickly: “Get Furlow. Tell him to stand bail. Also get a writ.
I’ll be right down there.”

She ran from the room. He pushed the bar away from him and it rolled
aimlessly across the floor, its bottles and glasses chattering. Paul
looked at me distractedly. “He’s in jail. Cave’s in jail.”




                                 FIVE


                                   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.




                                  SIX


                                   1

“The tone, dear Gene, has all the unction, all the earnest turgidity
of a theologian. You are perfect.” Clarissa beamed at me wickedly over
lunch in the Plaza Hotel. We sat at a table beside a great plate-glass
window through which we could see the frosted bleak expanse of Central
Park, dingy in city snow, ringed by buildings like so many mountain
peaks, monotonous in their sharp symmetry. The sky was sullen, gray
with more snow to fall. The year was nearly over.

“I thought it really quite to the point,” I said loftily but with an
anxious look at the thin black volume between us which was that day to
be published. The hasty work of one hectic month released in record
time by a connection of Paul Himmell’s.

“It’s pure nonsense, your historical part. _I_ know, though I confess
I was never one for the philosophers in those days ... dreary
_egotistical_ men, worse than the actors and not half so lovely.
Waiter, I will have a melon: out of season I hope. I suggest you have
it too. It’s light.”

I ordered _pot-de-crême_, the heaviest dessert on the menu.

“I’ve made you angry,” Clarissa pretended contrition. “I was only
trying to compliment you. What I meant was that the sort of thing
you’re doing I think is nonsense only because action is what counts,
action on any level ... not theorizing.”

“There’s a certain action to _thinking_, you know, even to writing
about the thoughts of others.”

“Oh, darling, don’t sound so stuffy. Your dessert, by the way, poisons
the liver. Oh, isn’t that Bishop Winston over there by the door, in
tweed? In mufti, eh, Bishop?”

The Bishop, who was passing our table in the company of a handsomely
pale youth whose contemplation of orders shone in his face like some
cherished sin, stopped and, with a smile, shook Clarissa’s hand.

“Ah, how are you? I missed you the other night at Agnes’s. She told me
you’ve been engaged in social work.”

“A euphemism, Bishop.” Clarissa introduced me and the prelate moved on
to his table, a robust gray-haired man with good coloring and a look of
ease.

“Catholic?”

“No, Episcopal. I like them the best, I think. They adore society
and good works ... spiritual Whigs you might call them, a civilizing
influence. Best of all, so few of them believe in God, unlike the
Catholics or those terrible Calvinist peasants who are forever saving
themselves and damning others.”

“I think, Clarissa, you’re much too hard on the Episcopalians. I’m sure
they must believe what they preach. At least the clergy do.”

“Well, we shall probably never know. Social work! I knew Agnes would
come up with something altogether wrong. Still, I’m just as glad it’s
not out yet. Not until the big debut tomorrow afternoon. I hope you’ve
made arrangements to be near a television set. No? Then come to my
place and we’ll see it together. Cave’s asked us both to the station,
by the way, but I think it better if we not distract him.”

“Iris came East with him?”

“Indeed she did. They both arrived last night. I thought you’d talked
to her.”

“No. I haven’t been in touch with either of them since I got back to
New York. Paul’s the only one I ever see.”

“He keeps the whole thing going, I must say. One of those born
organizers. Now! what about you and Iris?”

This came so suddenly, without preparation, that it took me a
suspiciously long time to answer, weakly: “I don’t know what you mean.
What about Iris and me?”

“Darling, I know _everything_.” She looked at me in her eager,
predatory way: I was secretly pleased that, in this particular case at
least, she knew nothing.

“Then tell _me_.”

“You’re in love with her and she’s classically involved with Cave.”

“Classical seems to be the wrong word. Nothing has happened and nothing
_will_ happen.”

“I suppose she told you this herself.”

I was trapped for a moment. Clarissa, even in error, was shrewd and if
one was not on guard she would quickly cease to be in error, at one’s
expense.

“No, not exactly; but Paul who does, I think, know everything about
our affairs assures me that nothing has happened, that Cave is not
interested in women.”

“In men?”

“I thought you were all-knowing. No, not in men nor in wild animals
nor, does it seem, from the evidence Paul’s collected, in anything
except John Cave. Sex does not happen for him.”

“Oh,” said Clarissa, exhaling slowly, significantly, inscrutably. She
abandoned her first line of attack to ask: “But _you_ are crazy about
Iris, aren’t you? That’s what I’d intended, you know, when I brought
you two together.”

“I thought it was to bring me into Cave’s orbit.”

“That, too, but somehow I saw you and Iris ... well, you’re obviously
going to give me no satisfaction so I shall be forced to investigate on
my own.”

“Not to sound too auctorial, too worried, do you think it will get Cave
across? the introduction here?”

“I see no reason why not. Look at the enormous success of those
books with tides like 'Eternal Bliss Can Be Yours for the Asking’ or
'Happiness at Your Beck-and-Call.’”

“I’m a little more ambitious.”

“Not in the least. But the end served is the same. You got down the
main line of Cave’s thinking, if it can be called thinking. And your
book, along with his presence, should have an extraordinary effect.”

“Do you really think so? I’ve begun to doubt.”

“Indeed I do. They are waiting ... all those sad millions who want
to believe will find him exactly right for their purposes. He exists
only to be believed in. He’s a natural idol ... did you know that when
Constantine moved his court to the East, his heirs were trained by
Eastern courtiers to behave like idols and when his son came in triumph
back to Rome (what a day that was! hot, but exciting) he rode for hours
through the crowded streets without once moving a finger or changing
expression, a perfectly trained god. We were all so impressed ...”

I cut this short. “Has it occurred to you that they might not want to
believe anything, just like you and me.”

“Nonsense ... and it’s rude to interrupt, dear, even a garrulous relic
like myself ... yet after all, in a way, we _do_ believe what Cave
says. Death is there and he makes it seem perfectly all right, oblivion
and the rest of it. And dying does rather upset a lot of people.
Have you noticed one thing that the devoutly superstitious can never
understand is the fact that though we do not accept the fairy tale of
reward or punishment beyond the grave we still are reluctant to 'pass
on,’ as the nuts say? As though the prospect of nothing isn’t really,
in a way, without friend Cave to push one into acceptance, perfectly
ghastly, _much_ worse than toasting on a grid like that poor saint up
north. But now I must fly. Come to the apartment at seven and I’ll give
you dinner. He’s on at eight. Afterwards they’ll all join us.” Clarissa
flew.

I spent the afternoon gloomily walking up and down Fifth Avenue filled
with doubt and foreboding, wishing now that I had never lent myself to
the conspiracy, confident of its failure and of the rude laughter or,
worse, the tactful silence of friends who would be astonished to find
that after so many years of promise and reflection my first book should
prove to be an apologia for an obscure evangelist whose only eminence
was that of having mesmerized myself and an energetic publicist, among
a number of others more likely perhaps than we, to take to a crank.

The day did nothing to improve my mood and it was in a most depressed
state that I went finally to Clarissa’s baroque apartment on one of the
better streets and dined with her quietly, infecting her, I was darkly
pleased to note, with my own grim mood. By the time Cave was announced
on the vast television screen, I had reduced Clarissa, for one of the
few times in our acquaintance, to silence.

Yet as the lights in the room mechanically dimmed, as the screen grew
bright with color and an announcer came into focus, I was conscious of
a quickening of my pulse, of a certain excitement. Here it was at last,
the result of nearly a year’s careful planning. Soon, in a matter of
minutes, we would know.

To my surprise Paul Himmell was introduced by the announcer who
identified him perfunctorily, saying that the following half hour had
been bought by Cavite, Inc.

Paul spoke briefly, earnestly. He was nervous, I could see, and
his eyes moved from left to right disconcertingly as he read his
introduction from cards out of view of the camera. He described Cave
briefly as a teacher, as a highly regarded figure in the West. He
implied it was as a public service, the rarest of philanthrophies, that
a group of industrialists and businessmen were sponsoring Cave this
evening.

Then Paul walked out of range of the camera leaving, briefly, a view of
a chair and a table behind which a handsome blue velvet curtain fell in
rich graceful folds from the invisible ceiling to an imitation marble
floor. An instant later, Cave walked into view.

Both Clarissa and I leaned forward in our chairs tensely, eagerly,
anxiously: we were there as well as he. This was our moment too. My
hands grew cold and my throat dry.

Cave was equal to the moment. He looked tall: the scale of the table,
the chair was exactly right. He wore a dark suit and a dark unfigured
tie with a white shirt that gave him an austereness which, in person,
he lacked. I saw Paul’s stage-managing in this.

He moved easily into range, his eyes cast down. Not until he had placed
himself in front of the table and the camera had squarely centered him,
did he look up, look directly into the lens. Clarissa gasped and I felt
suddenly pierced: the camera, the lights had magnified rather than
diminished his power. It made no difference now what he said. The magic
was working.

Clarissa and I sat in the twilight of her drawing room, entirely
concentrated on that vivid screen, on the dark figure upon rich blue,
on the pale eyes and the hands which seldom moved. It was like some
fascinating scene in a skillful play which, quite against one’s wish
and aesthetic judgment, pulled one to it, became, at least for that
short time beyond real time, a part of one’s own private drama of
existence, all sharpened by artifice, by calculated magic.

Not until Cave was nearly finished did those first words of his, spoken
so easily, so quietly, begin to come back to me as he repeated them
in his coda. His voice increasing a little in volume, yet still not
hurrying, not forcing, not breaking the mood which his first glance
had created and which voice and eyes together maintained without once
letting go. The burden of his words was, as always, the same. Yet this
time it seemed more awesome, more final, undeniable ... in short, the
truth. Though I’d always accepted his first premise, I had never been
much impressed by the ways he found of stating it, even though I always
responded to his particular power. This night, before the camera and in
the sight of millions, he perfected his singular art of communication
and the world was his.

When he finished, Clarissa and I sat for a moment in complete silence,
the chirping of a commercial the only sound in the room. At last she
said: “The brandy is over there on the console. Get me some.” Then
she switched off the screen from her chair and the lights of the room
brightened again.

“I feel dragged through a wringer,” she said after her first mouthful
of brandy.

“I had no idea it would work so well, like this, on television.” I felt
strangely empty, let down. There was hardly any doubt now of Cave’s
effectiveness yet I felt joyless and depleted, as though part of my
life had gone, leaving an ache.

“What a time we’re going to have.” Clarissa was beginning to recover.
“I’ll bet there are a million letters by morning and Paul will be doing
a jig.”

“I hope this is the right thing, Clarissa. It would be terrible if it
weren’t.”

“Of course it’s right ... whatever _that_ means: if it works it’s right
... perfectly simple. Such conceptions are all a matter of fashion
anyway. One year women expose only their ankle; the next year their
_derrière_. What’s right one year is wrong the next. If Cave captures
the popular imagination, he’ll be right until someone better comes
along.”

“A little cynical.” But Clarissa was only repeating my own usual line.
I was, or had been until that night on the Washington farm, a contented
relativist. Cave, however, had jolted me into new ways and I was
bewildered by the change, by the prospect ahead.


                                   2

That evening was a time of triumph, at least for Cave’s companions.
They arrived noisily. Paul seemed drunk, manically exhilarated,
while Iris glowed in a formal gown of green shot with gold. Two men
accompanied them, one a doctor whose name I didn’t catch at first and
the other a man from the television network who looked wonderfully
sleek and pleased and kept patting Cave on the arm every now and then,
as if to assure himself he’d not vanished in smoke and fire.

Cave, still dressed in his dark suit, was mute. He sat answering
questions and replying to compliments with grave nods of his head.
He sat in a high brocaded chair beside the fire and drank tea which
Clarissa, knowing his habits, had ordered in advance for him.

After our first burst of greetings at the door I did not speak to Cave
again and soon the others left him alone and talked around him, about
him yet through him, as though he had become invisible ... which seemed
the case when he was not speaking, when those extraordinary eyes were
veiled or cast down, as they were now, moodily studying the teacup, the
pattern in the Aubusson rug at his feet.

I crossed the room to where Iris sat on the wide couch. The doctor, in
the chair close to her, snuffled brandy and said, as I joined them:
“Your little book, sir, is written in a complete ignorance of Jung and
all those who have come after him.”

This was sudden but I answered, as graciously as possible, that I had
not intended a treatise on psychoanalysis.

“Not the point, sir, if you’ll excuse me.... I am a psychiatrist,
a friend of Mr Himmell’s” (so this was the analyst to whom Paul so
often referred) “and I think it impossible for anyone today to write
about the big things without a complete understanding of post-Jungian
development....”

Iris interrupted as politely as possible. “Doctor Stokharin is a
zealot, Gene. You must listen to him but, first, did you see John
tonight?”

“I did, here with Clarissa: he was remarkable, even more so than in
person.”

“It is the isolation,” said Stokharin, nodding. Dandruff fell lightly
like dry snow from his thick brows to his dark blue lapels. “The camera
separates him from everyone else. He is projected like a dream into....”

“He was so afraid at first,” said Iris, glancing across the room at
the silent Cave who sat, very small and still in the brocaded chair,
the teacup still balanced on one knee. “I’ve never seen him disturbed
by anything before. They tried to get him to do a rehearsal but he
refused. He can’t do rehearsals ... only the actual thing.”

“Fear is natural when ...” but Stokharin was in the presence of a
master drawing-room tactician: Iris was, I saw at that moment, a born
hostess. For all her ease and simplicity she was ruthlessly concerned
with keeping order, establishing a rightness of tone which Doctor
Stokharin, in his professional madness, would have completely undone,
reducing the drawing room to a seminar in mental therapy, receiving
public confessions judiciously, and generalizing to a captive audience.
I admired Iris’s firmness, her devotion to the civilized.

“At first we hardly knew what to do.” Iris’s voice rose serenely over
the East European rumblings of the doctor. “He’d always made such a
point of the audience. He needed actual people to excite him. Paul
wanted to fill the studio with a friendly audience but John said no.
He’d try it without. When the talk began there were only a half dozen
of us there: Paul, myself, and the technicians. No one else.”

“How did he manage?”

“It was the camera. He said when he walked out there he had no idea if
anything would happen or not, if he could speak. Paul was nearly out
of his mind with terror; we all were. Then John saw the lens of the
camera. He said looking into it gave him a sudden shock, like a current
of electricity passing through him, for there, in front of him, was the
eye of the world and the microphone above his head was the ear into
which at last he could speak. When he finished, he was transfigured.
I’ve never seen him so excited. He couldn’t recall what he had said but
the elation remained until....”

“Until he got here.”

“Well, nearly.” Iris smiled. “He’s been under a terrible strain these
last two weeks.”

“It’ll be nothing like the traumatizing shocks in store for him during
the next few days,” said Stokharin, rubbing the bole of a rich dark
pipe against his nose to bring out its luster (the pipe’s luster, for
the nose, straight, thick, proud, already shone like a gross baroque
pearl). “Mark my words, everyone will be eager to see this phenomenon.
When Paul first told me about him, I said, ah, my friend, you have
found that father image for which you’ve searched since your own father
was run over by a bus in your ninth (the crucial) year. Poor Paul, I
said, you will be doomed to disappointment. The wish for the father
is the sign of your immaturity. For a time you find him here, there
... in analysis you transfer to me. Now you meet a spellbinder and
you turn to him, but it will not last. Exactly like that I talked to
him. Believe me, I hold back nothing. Then I met this Cave. I watched
him. Ah, what an analyst he would have made! What a manner, what power
of communication: a natural healer. If only we could train him. Miss
Mortimer, to you I appeal. Get him to study. The best people, the
post-Jungians are all here in New York. They will train him. He would
become only a lay analyst but, even so, what miracles he could perform,
what therapy! We must not waste this native genius.”

“I’m afraid, Doctor, that he’s going to be too busy wasting himself to
study your ... procedures,” Iris smiled, engagingly, dislike apparent
in her radiant eyes. Stokharin, however, was not sensitive to hostility
... no doubt attributing such emotions to some sad deficiency in the
other’s adjustment.

Iris turned to me. “Will you be in the city the whole time?”

“The whole time Cave’s here? Yes. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“I’m glad. I’ve so much I want to talk to you about. So many things are
beginning to happen. Call me tomorrow. I’ll be staying at my old place.
It’s in the book.”

“Cave?”

“Is staying with Paul, out on Long Island at someone’s house. We want
to keep him away from pests as much as possible.”

“Manic depression, I should say,” said Stokharin thoughtfully, his
pipe now clenched between his teeth and his attention on Cave’s still
figure. “With latent schizoid tendencies which ... Miss Mortimer, you
must have an affair with him. You must marry him if necessary. Have
children. Let him see what it is to give life to others, to live in a
balanced....”

“Doctor, you are quite mad,” said Iris and she crossed the room, cool
in her anger. I too got away from the doctor as quickly as I could:
“False modesty, inhibited behavior, too early bowel training,” and
similar phrases ringing in my ears.

Paul caught me at the door. I’d intended to slip away without saying
good night, confident that Clarissa would understand, that the others
would not notice. “Not going so soon, are you?” He was a little
drunk, his face scarlet with excitement. “But you ought to stay and
celebrate.” I murmured something about having an early appointment the
next day.

“Well, see me tomorrow. We’ve taken temporary offices in the Empire
State Building. The money has begun to roll in. If this thing tonight
turns out the way I think it has, I’m going to be able to quit my other
racket for good and devote all my time to Cave.” Already the name Cave
had begun to sound more like that of an institution than of a man.

“By the way, I want to tell you what I think of the Introduction:
superior piece of work. Tried it out on several highbrow friends of
mine and they liked it.”

“I’m afraid....”

“That, together with the talks on television, should put this thing
over with the biggest bang in years. We’ll probably need some more
stuff from you, historical background, rules and regulations, that kind
of thing, but Cave will tell you what he wants. We’ve hired a dozen
people already to take care of the mail and inquiries. There’s also a
lecture tour being prepared, all the main cities, while....”

“Paul, you’re not trying to make a religion of this, are you?” I could
hold it back no longer even though both time and occasion were all
wrong for such an outburst.

“Religion? Hell, no ... but we’ve got to organize. We’ve got to get
this to as many people as we can. People have started looking to us (to
him, that is) for guidance. We can’t let them down.”

Clarissa’s maid ushered in a Western Union messenger, laden with
telegrams. “Over three hundred,” said the boy. “The station said to
send them here.”

Paul paid him jubilantly and, in the excitement, I slipped away.


                                   3

The results of the broadcast were formidable. My small book which
until then had enjoyed the obscurity of being briefly noted among the
recent books was taken up by excited editors who used it as a basis for
hurried but exuberant accounts of the new marvel.

One night a week for the rest of that winter Cave appeared before the
shining glass eye of the world and on each occasion new millions in
all parts of the country listened and saw and pondered this unexpected
phenomenon, the creation of their own secret anxieties and doubts, a
central man.

The reactions were too numerous for me to recollect in any order or
with any precise detail; but I do recall the first few months vividly:
after that of course the work moved swiftly of its own and one lost
track of events which tended to blur, the way casualties late in a
large war do, not wringing the wearied heart as the death of one or a
particular few might earlier have done.

A few days after the first broadcast, I went to see Paul at the offices
which he had taken in the Empire State Building ... as high up as
possible, I noted with amusement: always the maximum, the optimum.

Halfway down a corridor, between lawyers and exporters, Cavite, Inc.
was discreetly identified in black upon a frosted-glass door. I went
inside.

It appeared to me the way I’d always thought a newspaper office during
a crisis might look. Four rooms opening in a row off one another,
all with doors open, all crowded with harassed secretaries and
clean-looking young men in blue serge suits carrying papers, talking in
loud voices which together made the room sound like a hive at swarming
time.

Though none of them knew me, no one made any attempt to ask my
business or to stop me as I moved from room to room in search of Paul.
Everywhere there were placards with Cave’s picture on them, calm
and gloomy-looking, dressed in what was to be his official costume:
a dark suit, an unfigured tie, a white shirt. I tried to overhear
conversations as I passed the busy desks and groups of excited
debaters, but their noise was too loud. Only one word was identifiable,
sounding regularly, richly emphatic like a cello note: Cave, Cave, Cave.

In each room I saw piles of my Introduction which pleased me even
though I had come already to dislike it.

The last room contained Paul, seated behind a desk with a dictaphone
in one hand, three telephones on his desk (none fortunately ringing at
this moment) and four male and female attendants with notebooks and
pencils eagerly poised. Paul sprang from his chair when he saw me. The
attendants fell back. “Here he is!” He grabbed my hand and clung to it
vise-like: I could almost feel the energy pulsing in his fingertips,
vibrating through his body ... his heartbeat was obviously two to my
every one.

“Team, this is Eugene Luther.”

The team was properly impressed and one of the girls, slovenly but
intelligent-looking, said: “It was you who brought me here. First you I
mean ... and then of course Cave.”

I murmured vaguely and the others told me how clear I had made all
philosophy in the light of Cavesword. (I believe it was that day,
certainly that week, Cavesword was coined by Paul to denote the entire
message of John Cave to the world).

Paul then shooed the team out with instructions he was not to be
bothered. The door, however, was left open.

“Well, what do you think of them?” He leaned back, beaming at me from
his chair.

“They seem very ... earnest,” I said, wondering not only what I was
supposed to think but, more to the point, what I _did_ think of the
whole business.

“I’ll say they are! I tell you, Gene, I’ve never seen anything like it.
The thing’s bigger even than that damned crooner I handled ... you may
remember the one. Everyone has been calling up and, look!” He pointed
to several bushel baskets containing telegrams and letters. “This is
only a fraction of the response since the telecast. From all over the
world. I tell you, Gene, we’re in.”

“What about Cave? Where is he?”

“He’s out on Long Island. The press is on my tail trying to interview
him but I say no, no go, fellows, not yet; and does that excite them!
We’ve had to hire guards at the place on Long Island just to keep them
away.”

“How is Cave taking it all?”

“In his stride, absolute model of coolness which is more than I am. He
agrees that it’s better to keep him under wraps while the telecasts are
going on. It means that curiosity about him will increase like nobody’s
business. Look at this.” He showed me a proof sheet of a tabloid story:
“Mystery Prophet Wows TV Audience,” with a photograph of Cave taken
from the telecast and another one showing Cave ducking into a taxi, his
face turned away from the camera. The story seemed most provocative
and, for that complacent tabloid, a little bewildered.

“Coming out Sunday,” said Paul with satisfaction. “There’s also going
to be coverage from the big circulation media. They’re going to cover
the next broadcast even though we said nobody’d be allowed on the set
while Cave was speaking.” He handed me a bundle of manuscript pages
bearing the title “Who Is Cave?” “That’s the story I planted in one of
the slick magazines. Hired a name-writer, as you can see, to do it.”
The name-writer’s name was not known to me but, presumably, it would be
familiar to the mass audience.

“And, biggest of all, we got a sponsor. We had eleven offers already
and we’ve taken Dumaine Chemicals. They’re paying us enough money to
underwrite this whole setup here, and pay for Cave and me as well. It’s
terrific but dignified. Just a simple 'through the courtesy of’ at the
beginning and another at the end of each telecast. What do you think of
that?”

“Unprecedented!” I had chosen my word some minutes before ... one which
would have a cooling effect.

“I’ll say. By the way, we’re getting a lot of stuff on that book of
yours.” He reached in a drawer and pulled out a manila folder which he
pushed toward me. “Take them home if you like. Go over them carefully
... might give you some ideas for the next one; you know: ground which
needs covering.”

“Is there to be a next one?”

“Man, a flock of next ones! We’ve got a lot to do, to explain. People
want to know all kinds of things. I’m having the kids out in the front
office do a breakdown on all the letters we’ve got: to get the general
reaction ... what it is people most want to hear, and, believe me,
we’ve been getting more damned questions, and not just the main thing
but family problems too, things like that: 'Please, Mr. Cave, I’m
married to two men and feel maybe it’s a mistake since I have to work
nights anyway.’ Lord, some of them are crazier than that.”

“Are you answering all of them?”

“Oh, yes, but in my name. All except a few of the most interesting
which go to Cave for personal attention. I’ve been toying with the idea
of setting up a counselor-service for people with problems.”

“But what can _you_ tell them?” I was more and more appalled.

“Everything in the light of Cavesword. You have no idea how many
questions that does answer. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean.
But of course we follow standard psychiatric procedure only it’s
speeded up so that after a couple of visits there can be a practical
and inspirational answer to their problems. Stokharin said he’d be
happy to give it a try, but we haven’t yet worked out all the details.”

I didn’t want to hear anything more about this; I changed the subject.
“What did you have in mind for me to do?”

“Cavesword applied to everyday life.” He spoke without hesitation; he
had thought of everything. “We’ll know more what people want to hear
after a few more telecasts, after more letters and so on. Then supply
Cavesword where you can and, where you can’t, just use common sense and
standard psychiatric procedure.”

“Even when they don’t always coincide?”

Paul roared with laughter. “Always the big knocker, Gene. That’s what
I like about you ... the disapproving air ... it’s wonderful and I’m
quite serious. People like myself ... visionaries, you might say,
continually get their feet off the ground and it’s people like you who
pull us back ... make us think. Anyway, I hope you’ll be able to get to
it soon. We’ll have our end taken care of by the time the telecasts are
over.”

“Will you show Cave to the world then? I mean in person?”

“I don’t know. By the way, we’re having a directors’ meeting Friday
morning. You’ll get a notice in the mail. One of the things we’re
going to take up is just that problem, so you be thinking about it in
the meantime. I have a hunch it may be smart to keep him away from
interviewers for good.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’m not so sure. He’s pretty retiring except when he speaks. I don’t
think he’d mind the isolation one bit. You see how dull he gets in
company when he’s not performing.”

“Would he consent, do you think?”

“I think so. We could persuade him, I’m sure. Anyway, for now he’s a
mystery man. Millions see him once a week but no one knows him except
ourselves. A perfect state of affairs, if you ask me.”

“You mean there’s always a chance he might make a fool of himself if a
tough interviewer got hold of him?”

“Exactly, and believe me there’s going to be a lot of them after his
scalp.”

“Have they begun already?”

“Not yet. We have you to thank for that, too, making it so clear that
though what we said certainly conflicts with all the churches we’re
really not competing with them, that people listening to Cavesword can
go right on being Baptists and so on.”

“I don’t see how, if they accept Cave.”

“Neither do I, but for the time being that’s our line.”

“Then there’s to be a fight with the churches?”

Paul nodded grimly. “And it’s going to be a honey. People don’t take
all the supernatural junk seriously these days but they do go for the
social idea of the church, the uplift kind of thing: that’s where we’ll
have to meet them, where we’ll have to lick them at their own game.”

I looked at him for one long moment: I had of course anticipated
something like this from the moment that Cave had become an
organization and not merely one man talking. I had realized that
expansion was inevitable: the rule of life is more life and of
organization more organization, increased dominion. Yet I had not
suspected Paul of having grasped this so clearly, using it so promptly
to his, to our advantage. The thought that not only was he cleverer
than I had suspected but that he might, indeed, despite his unfortunate
approach, be even cleverer than myself, disagreeably occurred to me.
I had until then regarded myself as the unique intellectual of the
Cavites, the one sane man among maniacs and opportunists: it seemed
now that there were two of us with open eyes and, of the two, he alone
possessed ambition and energy, qualities neither of which I possessed
to any useful degree.

“You mean this to be a religion, Paul?”

He smiled, “Maybe, yes ... something on that order perhaps. Something
workable, though, for now: I’ve thought about what you said the other
night.”

“Does Cave want this?”

Paul shrugged. “Who can tell. I should think so but this is not really
a problem for him to decide. He has happened. Now _we_ respond.
Stokharin feels that a practical faith, a belief in ways of behavior
which the best modern analysts are agreed on as being closest to
ideal, might perform absolute miracles. No more guilt-feeling about sex
if Cave were to teach that all is proper when it does no harm to others
... and the desire to do harm to others might even be partly removed
if there were no false mysteries, no terrible warnings in childhood
and so on. Just in that one area of behavior we could work wonders! Of
course there would still be problems but the main ones could be solved
if people take to Cave and to us. Cavesword is already known and it’s
a revelation to millions ... we know that. Now they are looking to him
for guidance in other fields. They know about death at last. Now we
must tell them about living and we are lucky to have available so much
first-rate scientific research in the human psyche. I suspect we can
even strike on an ideal behavior pattern by which people can measure
themselves.”

“And to which they will be made to conform?” Direction was becoming
clear already.

“How can we force anyone to do anything? Our whole power is that people
come to us, to Cave voluntarily because they feel here, at last, is the
answer.” Paul might very well have been sincere: there is no way of
determining, even now.

“Well, remember, Paul, that you will do more good than harm by
attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will
be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less
dangerous than a new law imposed by enthusiasts.”

“Don’t say 'you.’ Say 'we.’ You’re as much a part of this as I am.
After all you’re a director. You’ve got a say-so in these matters. Just
speak up Friday.” Paul was suddenly genial and placating. “I don’t
pretend I’ve got all the answers. I’m just talking off the top of my
head, like they say.”

A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop
Winston was outside.

“Now it starts,” said Paul with a grimace.

The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office.
He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb.

“He’s too late,” said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman’s back.

“Professional con-men,” said his companion with disgust. “They’ve had
their day.”

And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street,
into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave’s year.

I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I
heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people
talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that
it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a
wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed
with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them.

Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I’d taken refuge from the cold,
I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets.
The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared,
short, puzzled ... the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than
I, tended to question my proposition that Caveswood was anything more
than a single speculation in rather a large field. I’d obviously not
communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of
miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed
Cave himself.

“What do you think about the guy?” the waiter, a fragile sensitive
Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table
(he’d seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).

“It’s hard to say,” I said. “How did he strike you?”

“Boy, like lightning!” The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken
teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. “Of course I’m Catholic
but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can’t be a
good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got
Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see
the crowd we get here to see the TV when he’s on. It’s wild.”

It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the
folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my
directorship, my place in the structure ... well, I would show them
what should be done or, rather, _not_ done.

Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the
way to Iris’s apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when
next we met. “Leave them alone,” I said aloud. “It is enough to open
the windows.”

“Open the windows!” The driver snorted. “It’s damn near forty in the
street.”


                                   4

Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in
a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I
entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting crosslegged
on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with
strain. “It just doesn’t work for me!” she said and stood up without
embarrassment for, since I’d found the main door unlocked, I’d opened
this one too, without knocking.

“I’m sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was....”

“Don’t be silly.” She rolled up the mat efficiently. “I was expecting
you but I lost track of time ... which means it must be working a
little. I’ll be right back.” She went into the bedroom and I sat down,
amused by this unexpected side to Iris: I wondered if perhaps she was a
devotee of wheat germ and mint tea as well. She claimed not. “It’s the
only real exercise I get,” she said, changed now to a heavy robe which
completely swathed her figure as she sat curled up in a great armchair,
drinking Scotch, as did I, the winter outside hid by drawn curtains, by
warmth and light.

“Have you done it long?”

“Oh, off and on for years. I never get anywhere but it’s very restful
and I’ve felt so jittery lately that anything which relaxes me ...” her
voice trailed off idly. She seemed relaxed now.

“I’ve been to see Paul,” I began importantly.

“Ah.”

But I could not, suddenly, generate sufficient anger to speak out with
eloquence. I went around my anger stealthily, a murderer stalking his
victim. “We disagreed.”

“In what?”

“In everything, I should say.”

“That’s so easy with Paul.” Iris stretched lazily; ice chattered in her
glass; a car’s horn melodious and foreign sounded in the street below.
“We need him. If it wasn’t Paul, it might be someone a great deal
worse. At least he’s intelligent and devoted. That makes up for a lot.”

“I don’t think so; Iris, he’s establishing a sort of supermarket,
short-order church for the masses.”

She laughed delightedly. “I like that ... and, in a way, you’re right:
that’s what he _would_ do left to himself.”

“He seems in complete control.”

“Only of the office. John makes all the decisions.”

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

“You’ll see on Friday. You’ll be at the meeting, won’t you?”

I nodded. “I have a feeling that between Paul and Stokharin this thing
is going to turn into a world-wide clinic for mental health.”

“I expect worse things _could_ happen, but Paul must still contend with
me and you and of course the final word is with John.”

“How is Cave, by the way? I haven’t seen him since the night of the
first telecast.”

“Quite relaxed, unlike the rest of us. You should come out with me one
day to Long Island and see him. I go nearly every day for a few hours.
He’s kept completely removed from everyone except the servants and Paul
and me.”

“Does he like that?”

“He doesn’t seem to mind. He walks a good deal ... it’s a big place
and he’s used to the cold. He reads a little, mostly detective stories
... and then of course there’s the mail that Paul sends on. He works
at that off and on all day. I help him and when we’re stuck (you
should see the questions!) we consult Stokharin who’s very good on some
things, on problems....”

“And a bore the rest of the time.”

“That’s right,” Iris giggled. “I couldn’t have been more furious the
other night, but, since then, I’ve seen a good deal of him and he’s not
half bad. We’ve got him over the idea that John should become a lay
analyst: the response to the telecast finally convinced Stokharin that
here was a racial 'folk-father-figure’ ... his very own words. Now he’s
out to educate the father so that he will fulfill his children’s needs
on the best post-Jungian lines.”

“Does Cave take him seriously?”

“He’s bored to death with him. Stokharin’s the only man who’s ever had
the bad sense to lecture John ... who absolutely hates it; but he does
feel that Stokharin’s answers to some of the problems we’re confronted
with are ingenious. All that ... hints to the lovelorn is too much for
John, so we need the Stokharins to take care of details.”

“I hope he’s careful not to get too involved.”

“John’s incorruptible. Not because he is so noble or constant but
because he can only think a certain way and other opinions, other
evidence, can’t touch him.”

I paused, wondering if this was true; then: “I’m going to make a scene
on Friday. I’m going to suggest that Paul is moving in a dangerous
direction, toward organization and dogma and that if something is not
done soon we’ll all be ruined by that which we most detest: a militant
absolutist doctrine.”

Iris looked at me curiously. “Tell me, Gene, what _do_ you want? Why
are you still with Cave, with all of us when you so apparently suspect
the general direction? You’ve always been perfectly clear about what
you did _not_ want (I can recall, I think, every word you said at the
farm that night) but, to be specific, what would you like all this to
become? How would you direct things if you could?”

I’d been preparing myself for such a question for several months yet I
still had no single answer to make which would sharply express my own
doubts and wishes. But I made an attempt. “I would not organize, for
one thing. I’d have Cave speak regularly, all he likes, but there would
be no Cavite, Inc., no Paul planting articles and propagandizing. I’d
keep just Cave, nothing more. Let him do his work. Then, gradually,
there will be effects, a gradual end to superstition....”

Iris looked at me intently. “_If_ it were possible, I would say we
should do what you suggest, even though it would be ruinous not only
for us but for everyone....”

“Why ruinous? A freedom to come to a decision on one’s own without....”

“That’s it. No one can be allowed that freedom. One doesn’t need much
scholarship or even experience to see that. Everywhere people are held
in check by stifling but familiar powers. People are used to tyranny:
they expect governments to demand their souls, and they have given up
decisions on many levels for love of security. What you suggest is
impossible with this race at this time.”

“You’re talking nonsense. After all, obeisance to established religions
is the order of the day, yet look at the response to Cave who is
undermining the whole Christian structure.”

“And wait until you see the fight they’re going to put up!” said Iris
grimly. “Fortunately, Cave’s word is the mortal blow though Cave
himself would be their certain victim if he was protected, if there was
no organization to guard him, and the Word.”

“So Paul and his--his team, his proselytes are to become merely an
equivalent power, combating the old superstitions with their own
weapons.”

“More or less, yes. That’s what it has come to.”

“Even though his talking to the people would be enough? Let them use
him, not he them.”

“A good slogan,” Iris smiled. “But I think I’m right. No one would
have a chance to see or hear him if it weren’t for Paul; you should
read the threatening letters we’ve been getting.”

“I thought all the mail was most admiring?”

“All that came from people who’ve actually _heard_ him but there’s a
lot coming in now from religious fanatics. They are very extreme. And
of course the churches, one by one, are starting to take notice.”

“I saw Bishop Winston in Paul’s office today.”

“He’s been trying to see John all week. He finally settled for Paul,
I gather. In any case, after the next telecast there will really be a
storm.”

“The next? What’s going to happen then?”

“John will tell them that there’s no need for the churches, that their
power derives from superstition and bloody deeds.”

I was startled. “When did this hit him? I thought he intended to go on
as he was, without ever coming out openly against them.”

“I was surprised too. He told me yesterday; he’d been brooding all day
and, suddenly, he started to attack them. It’s going to be murderous.”

“I hope not for him.”

“Oh, he’ll convince, I’m sure of that: but their revenge....” She gave
a troubled sigh. “Anyway, Gene, you do see why we can’t, for our own
safety, dispense with Paul and his financiers and press agents and all
the squalid but necessary crew.”

“It may be too late,” I agreed. “But I fear the end.”

“No one can tell; besides, as long as you and I are there with John it
will be all right.”

I felt her confidence was not entirely justified but I determined, for
the moment, to defer my attack on Paul’s methods until a safer time.

We argued about the wisdom of the coming telecast: was it really
necessary to confront the enemy explicitly? and in his own country, so
to speak? Iris was not sure, but she felt Cave’s instinct was right
even though he had, perhaps, been goaded into action sooner than we’d
anticipated by the harsh letters of Christian zealots.

And then by slow degrees, by careful circling, the conversation grew
personal.

“I’ve never told anyone else,” said Iris, looking at me speculatively.

“Don’t worry; I haven’t repeated any of it.” And, as always at such
times, I felt a warm flood of guilt: any direct statement of personal
innocence has always made me feel completely criminal.

“But since I’ve told you, I ... it’s a relief to have someone I can
talk to about John. I don’t dare mention his name to my family, to my
old friends ... I don’t think they even know yet that I’ve met him.”

“I thought it has all been in the papers.”

“I haven’t been mentioned but, after Friday, everyone will know. Paul
says there’s no way for us to duck inquiries. After the directors’
meeting he’ll issue a statement naming directors, stockholders and so
on.”

“But even then, why should anyone suspect you were interested in Cave
or he in you? It’s possible merely to be a director, isn’t it?”

Iris shrugged. “You know how people are. Clarissa keeps wanting to have
what she calls a comfy chat about _everything_ and I keep putting her
off. Stokharin now takes it for granted that John and I sleep together,
that he is the father-image to me and I the mother to him.”

It had an odd ring to it and I laughed. “Do you think that’s a sound
post-Jungian analysis?”

Iris smiled faintly. “Whatever it is, the feeling, such as it is, is
all on my side.”

“And he shows no sign of returning your affection?”

“None at all. He’s devoted to me, I think. He relies on my judgment. He
trusts me, which is more than he does anyone else I know of....”

“Even me?” Always the “I” coming between me and what I wished to know:
that insatiable, distressing “I.”

“Yes, even you, dear, and Paul too. He’s on guard against everyone, but
not in a nasty or suspicious way. He ... what is the phrase? he keeps
his own counsel.”

“And you are the counsel?”

“In a sense, and nothing more.”

“Perhaps you should give up. It would seem that ... love was not
possible for him. If so, it’s unwise for you to put yourself in such a
position ... harmful, too.”

“But there’s still the other Cave. I love him as well and the two are,
finally, the same.”

“A _metaphysique_?”

“No, or at least I don’t see a paradox. It’s something else; it’s like
coming out of an illness with no past at all, only a memory of pain and
dullness which soon goes in the wonderful present.”

“It?”

“My love is _it_.” Her voice grew strong. “I’ve learned that in loving
him I love life, which I never did before. Why, I can even value others
now, value all those faceless creatures whom I knew without ever
bothering to _see_, to bring in focus the dim blurs of all _that_ world
alive. I lived asleep. Now I am awake.”

“He does not love you.”

“Why should he? It’s gone beyond that. I’m no longer the scales most
lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered
against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring
into fatal balance two separate imponderables. I give myself and what I
take is life, the knowledge that there is another creature in the world
whose wonder, to me at least, is all-satisfying by merely being.”

“Is it so terrible to be alive?”

“Beyond all expectation, my poor friend.” And then I left her to return
to winter, to the snow-filled streets and my old pain.


                                   5

The second telecast had the anticipated effect. The day after, Friday,
nearly a hundred thousand letters and telegrams had been received, and
Cave’s life had been threatened four times over the telephone.

I was awakened at five o’clock on Friday morning by a newspaper man
begging an interview. Half-asleep, irritably, I told him to go to hell
and hung up though not before I’d heard the jeer: “Thought you fellows
did away with hell.” This woke me up and I made coffee, still keeping
my eyes half-shut in the dim winter light, hoping sleep might return to
its accustomed perch; but more telephone calls demoralized my fragile
ally and I was left wide awake, unshaven, with fast-beating heart
beside the telephone, drinking coffee.

Every few minutes there was a call from some newspaper man or editor
requesting information: they had all been shocked by the telecast.
When I told them they should get in touch with Cave himself, or at
least with Paul’s office, they only laughed: thousands were trying to
get to speak to Paul, tens of thousands to Cave; the result was chaos.
Shakily, I took the phone off its hook and got dressed. When I opened
my door to get the morning paper, a thin young man leaped past me into
my living room and anchored himself to a heavy chair.

“What....” I began; he was only too eager to explain the what and the
why.

“And so,” he ended, breathlessly, “the _Star_ has authorized me to
advance you not only _that_ money but expenses, too, for an exclusive
feature on Cave and the Cavites.”

“I wish,” I said, very gentle in the presence of such enthusiasm, “that
you would go away. It’s five in the morning....”

“You’re our only hope,” the boy wailed. “Every paper and news service
has been trying to get past the gate out on Long Island for three weeks
and failed. They couldn’t even shoot him at long range.”

“Shoot him.”

“Get a picture. Now please....”

“Paul Himmell is your man. He’s authorized to speak for Cave. He has an
office in the Empire State Building and he keeps respectable hours; so
why don’t you....”

“We haven’t been able to get even a release out of him for three days
now. It’s censorship, that’s what it is.”

I had to smile. “We’re not the government. Cave is a private citizen
and this is a private organization. If we choose not to give interviews
you have no right to pester us.”

“Oh, come off it.” The young man was at an age where the needs of
ambition were often less strong than the desire for true expression;
for a moment he forgot that he needed my forbearance and I liked him
better. “This is the biggest news that’s hit town since the war. You
guys have got the whole country asking questions and the big one is:
who is Cave?”

“There’ll be an announcement today, I think, about the company. As for
Cave, I suggest you read a little book called 'An Introduction to....’”

“Of course I’ve read it. That’s why I’m here. Now, please, Mr. Luther,
give me an exclusive even if you won’t take the _Star’s_ generous
offer. At least tell me something I can use.”

I sat down heavily; a bit of coffee splattered from cup to saucer to
the back of my hand: it dried stickily. I felt worn-out already, the
day only just begun. “What do you want me to tell you? What would you
most like to hear? What do you expect me to say since, being a good
journalist, that is what you’ll write no matter what I tell you?”

“Oh, that’s not true. I want to know what Cave’s all about as a person,
as a teacher.”

“Well, what do _you_ think he’s up to?”

“Me? Why ... I don’t know. I never heard him on the air until last
night. It was strong stuff.”

“Were you convinced?”

“In a way, yes. He said a lot of things I agreed with but I was a
little surprised at his going after the churches. Not that I like
anything about _them_, but still it’s some stunt to get up and talk
like that in front of millions of people. I mean you just don’t say
those things any more, even if you do think them ... can’t offend
minorities; that’s what we learn first in journalism school.”

“There’s part of your answer then: Cave is a man who, unlike others,
says what he thinks is true even if it makes him unpopular. There’s
some virtue in that.”

“I guess he can afford to in his position,” said the boy vaguely. “You
know we got Bishop Winston to answer him for the _Star_. Signed him
last night after Cave went off the air. I’m sure he’ll do a good job.
Now....”

We wrestled across the room; since I was the stronger, I won my privacy
though muffled threats of exposure were hurled at me from behind the
now-bolted door.

Acting on an impulse, I left the apartment as soon as I was sure my
recent visitor had gone. I was afraid that others would try to find me
if I stayed home; fears which were justified: according to the elevator
man, he had turned away several men already. The one who did get
through had come up the fire escape.

I walked quickly out into the quiet street, the snow now gone to slush
as dingy as the morning sky. Fortunately, the day was neither windy nor
cold and I walked to a Times Square automat for an early breakfast.

I was reassured by anonymity. All around me sleepy men and women
clutching newspapers, briefcases and lunch pails sat sullenly chewing
their breakfast, sleep not yet departed.

I bought a roll, more coffee, hominy grits which I detested in the
North but occasionally tried in the hope that, by accident, I might
stumble upon the real thing. These were not the real thing and I left
them untouched while I read my paper.

Cave was on the front page. Not prominent, but still he was there.
The now-standard photograph looked darkly from the page. The headline
announced that: “Prophet Flays Churches as Millions Listen.” There
followed a paraphrase of the telecast which began with those fateful
and soon to be famous words: “Our quarrel is not with Christ but with
his keepers.” I wondered, as I read, if anyone had ever taken one
of the telecasts down in shorthand and made a transcript of it. I,
for one, should have been curious to see in cold print one of those
sermons. Cave himself knew that without his presence they would not
stand up and, consequently, he allowed none of then to be transcribed;
the result was that whenever there was a report of one of his talks
it was, necessarily, paraphrased which gave a curious protean flavor
to his doctrine, since the recorded style was never consistent,
changing always with each paraphraser just as the original meaning
was invariably altered by each separate listener as he adapted the
incantation to his private needs.

A fat yellow-faced woman sat down with a groan beside me and began to
ravish a plate of assorted cakes. Her jaws grinding, the only visible
sign of life, for her eyes were glazed from sleep and her body,
incorrectly buttoned into a cigarette-ash-dusted dress, was as still as
a mountain, even the work of lungs was obscured by the torpid flesh.

I watched her above the newspaper, fascinated by the regularity with
which her jaws ground the bits of cake. Her eyes looked past me into
some invisible world of pastry.

Then, having finished the report on Cave’s telecast, I put the
newspaper down and ate with deliberate finesse my own biscuit. The
rustling of the newspaper as it was folded and placed on the table
disturbed my companion and, beneath the fat, her will slowly sent out
instructions to the extremities. She cleared her throat. Her head
lowered. Her chewing stopped; a bit of cake was temporarily lodged in
one cheek, held firmly in place by a gaudy plate. Her eyes squinted at
the newspaper. She spoke: “Something about that preacher fellow last
night?”

“Yes. Would you like to see it?” I pushed the paper toward her.

She looked at the picture, carefully spelling out the words of the
headlines with heavy lips and deep irregular breaths. “Did you see him
last night?” she asked when her eye finally got to the small print
where it stopped, as though halted by a dense jungle.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did.”

“He sure gave it to them bastards, didn’t he?” Her face lit up
joyously; I thought of _ça ira_.

“You mean the clergy?”

“That’s just what I mean. They had it too good, too long. People afraid
to say anything. Takes somebody like him to tell us what we know and
tell _them_ where to head-in.”

“Do you like what he said about dying?”

“About there being nothing? Why, hell, mister, I knew it all along.”

“But it’s good to hear someone else say it?”

“Don’t do no harm.” She belched softly. “I expect they’re going to be
on his tail,” she added with gloomy pleasure, spearing a fragment of
eclair which she had missed on her first circuit of her crowded dish.

I spent that morning in the street buying newspapers, eavesdropping.
I heard several arguments about Cave: the religiously orthodox were
outraged but clearly interested; the others were triumphant though all
seemed to feel that _they_, as the automat woman had said, would soon
be on his tail. Ours was no longer a country where the nonconformist
could escape disaster if he unwisely showed a strange face to the
multitude.

I tried to telephone Iris and then Clarissa but both telephones were
reported busy; I called the office but was told by a mechanical voice
that if I left my name and address and business Mr. Himmell would call
me as soon as possible. The siege had begun.

I arrived at the Empire State Building half an hour before the meeting
was to begin, hoping to find out in advance from Paul what was
happening and what we were supposed to do about it.

A picket line marched up and down before the entrance, waving banners,
denouncing Cave and all his works in the names of various religious
groups. A crowd was beginning to gather and the police, at least a
score, moved frantically about, not knowing how to keep the mob out of
the building. When I stepped off the elevator at Cave’s floor, I found
myself a part of a loud and confused mass of men and women all shoving
toward the door which was marked Cavite, Inc. Policemen barred their
way.

Long before I’d got to the door, a woman’s shoe went hurtling through
the air, smashing a hole in the frosted glass. One policeman cocked his
revolver menacingly. Another shouted, “Get the riot squad!” But still
the crowd raved and shouted and quarreled. Some wanted to lynch Cave in
the name of the Lamb, while others begged to be allowed to touch him,
just once. I got to the door at last, thanks to a sudden shove which
landed me with a crash into a policeman. He gasped and then, snarling,
raised his club. “Business!” I shouted with what breath was left me.
“Got business here. Director.”

I was not believed but, after some talk with a pale secretary through
the shattered glass door, I was admitted. The crowd roared when they
saw this and moved in closer. The door slammed shut behind me.

“It’s been like this since nine o’clock,” said the secretary, looking
at me with frightened eyes.

“You mean after two hours the police still can’t do anything?”

“We didn’t call them right away. When we did it was too late. We’re
barricaded in here.”

The team sat about at their desks pretending to work, pretending not to
notice the noise from the corridor.

Paul, however, was not in the least disturbed. He was standing by
the window in his office looking out. Clarissa, her hat and her hair
together awry: a confusion of straw and veil and bolts of reddish hair
apparently not all her own, was making-up in a pocket mirror.

“Ravenous, wild beasts!” she hailed me. “I’ve seen _their_ likes
before.”

“Gene, good fellow! Got through the mob all right? Here, have a bit of
brandy. No? Perhaps some Scotch?”

I said it was too early for me to drink. Shakily, I sat down. Paul
laughed at the sight of us. “You both look like the end of the world
has come.”

“I’d always pictured the end as being quite orderly....” I began
stuffily but Doctor Stokharin’s loud entrance interrupted me. His
spectacles were dangling from one ear and his tie had been pulled
around from front to back quite neatly. “No authority!” he bellowed,
ignoring all of us. “The absence of a traditional patriarch, the center
of the tribe, has made them insecure. Only together do they feel warmth
in great _swarming_ hives!” His voice rose sharply and broke on the
word “hives” into a squeak. He took the proffered brandy and sat down,
his clothes still disarranged.

“My hair,” said Clarissa grimly, “may never come out right again
today.” She put the mirror back into her purse which she closed with
a loud snap. “I don’t see, Paul, why you didn’t have the foresight to
call the police in advance and demand protection.”

“I had no idea it would be like this. Believe me, Clarissa, it’s not
deliberate.” But from his excited chuckling, I could see that he was
delighted with the confusion. The triumph of the publicist’s dark art.
I wondered if he might not have had a hand in it: it was a little
reminiscent of the crowds of screaming women which in earlier decades,
goaded by publicists, had howled and, as Stokharin would say, _swarmed_
about singers and other theatrical idols.

Paul anticipated my suspicions. “Didn’t have a thing to do with it, I
swear. Doctor, your tie is hanging down your back.”

“I don’t mind,” said Stokharin disagreeably, but he did adjust his
glasses.

“I’d a feeling we’d have a few people in to see us but no idea it would
be like this.” He turned to me as the quietest, the least dangerous of
the three. “You wouldn’t believe the response to last night’s telecast
if I told you.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” The comic aspects were becoming apparent:
Stokharin’s assaulted dignity and the ruin of Clarissa’s ingenious hair
both seemed to me suddenly funny; I cleared my throat to obscure the
tickling of a smile. Paul named some stupendous figures with an air of
triumph. “And there are more coming all the time. Think of that!”

“Are they favorable?”

“Favorable? Who cares?” Paul was pacing the floor quickly, keyed to the
breaking-point had he possessed the metabolism of a normal man. “We’ll
have a breakdown over the weekend. Hired more people already. Whole lot
working all the time. By the way, we’re moving.”

“Not a moment too soon,” said Clarissa balefully. “I suggest, in fact,
we move now while there are even these few police to protect us. When
they go home for lunch (they all eat enormous lunches, one can tell),
that crowd is going to come in here and throw us out the window.”

“Or suffocate us with love,” said Paul.

Stokharin looked at Clarissa thoughtfully; with his turned-around
necktie he had a sacerdotal look. “Do you often think of falling from
high places? of being pushed from windows or perhaps high trees?”

“Only when I’m on the top floor of the world’s highest building
surrounded by raving maniacs do such forebodings occur to me, doctor.
Had you a greater sense of reality you might be experiencing the same
apprehension.”

Stokharin clapped his hands happily. “Classic, classic. To believe she
alone knows reality. Madam, I suggest that you....”

There was a roar of sound from the hallway; a noise of glass
shattering; a revolver went off with a sharp report and, frozen with
alarm, I waited for its echo: there was none; only shouts of: Cave!
Cave! Cave!

Surrounded by police, Cave and Iris were escorted into the office. More
police held the door, aided by the office crew who, suddenly inspired,
were throwing paper cups full of water into the crowd. Flash bulbs
like an electric storm flared in all directions as the newspaper men
invaded the office, let in by the police who could not hold them back.

Iris looked frightened and even Cave seemed alarmed by the rioting.

Once the police lieutenant had got Cave and Iris into the office,
he sent his men back to hold the corridor. Before he joined them he
said sternly, breathing hard from the struggle, “We’re going to clear
the hall in the next hour. When we do we’ll come and get you people
out of here. You got to leave whether you want to or not. This is an
emergency.”

“An hour is all we need, officer.” Paul was smooth. “And may I tell you
that my old friend, the Commissioner, is going to hear some extremely
nice things about the efficiency and good sense of his men.” Before the
lieutenant had got around to framing a suitably warm answer, Paul had
maneuvered him out of the inner office; he locked the door behind him.

“There,” he said, turning to us, very businesslike. “It was a mistake
meeting here after last night. I’m sorry, John.”

“It’s not your fault.” Cave, having found himself an uncomfortable
straight chair in a corner of the room, sat very erect, like a child
in serious attendance upon adults. “I had a hunch we should hold the
meeting out on Long Island.”

Paul scowled. “I hate the idea of the press getting a look at you.
Spoils the mystery effect; guess it was bound to happen, though. You
won’t have to talk to them.”

“Oh, but I will,” said Cave easily, showing who was master here, this
day.

“But ... well, after what we decided, the initial strategy being....”

“No. It’s all changed now, Paul. I’ll have to face them, at least this
once. I’ll talk to them the way I always talk. They’ll listen.” His
voice grew dreamy. He was indifferent to Paul’s discomfiture.

“Did you get a new place?” asked Iris, suddenly, to divert the
conversation.

“What? Oh yes. A whole house, five stories on East Sixty-first Street.
Should be big enough. At least for now.” The inter-office communicator
sounded. Paul spoke quickly into it: “Tell the newspaper people to wait
out there. We’ll have a statement in exactly an hour and they’ll be
able ...,” he paused and looked at Cave for some reprieve; then, seeing
none, he finished: “They’ll be able to interview Cave.” He flipped the
machine off. Through the locked door, we heard a noise of triumph from
the gathered journalists and photographers.

“Well, come along,” said Clarissa, “I thought this was to be a board of
directors meeting. Cave, dear, you’ve got to preside.”

But, though he said he’d rather not, Clarissa, in a sudden storm of
legality, insisted that he must: she also maliciously demanded a
complete reading of the last meeting’s minutes by Paul, the secretary.
We were able to save him by a move to waive the reading which was
proposed, recorded and passed by a show of hands, only Clarissa
dissenting. Cave conducted the meeting solemnly. Then Clarissa demanded
a report from the treasurer and this time Paul was not let off.

For the first time I had a clear picture of the company of which I was
a director. Shares had been sold. Control was in the hands of Clarissa,
while Paul and several West Coast industrialists whose names were not
familiar to me, also had shares. The main revenue of the company now
came from the sponsor of Cave’s television show. There was also a
trickle of contributions which, in the last few weeks, had increased
considerably.

Then Paul read from a list of expenses, his voice hurrying a little
over his own salary which was, I thought, a bit large. Cave’s expenses
were recorded and, with Clarissa goading from time to time, Paul gave
an accounting of all that had been spent since the arrival in New York.
John Cave was a big business.

“The books are audited at standard intervals,” said Paul, looking at
Clarissa as he finished, some of his good humor returning. “We will
not declare dividends unless Mrs. Lessing insists the company become a
profit-making enterprise.”

“It might not be a bad idea,” said Clarissa evenly. “Why not get a
little return....”

But Paul had launched into policy. We listened attentively. From time
to time, Cave made a suggestion. Iris and I made no comment. Stokharin
occasionally chose to illuminate certain human problems as they arose
and Paul, at least, heard him out respectfully. Clarissa wanted to know
all about costs and her interruptions were always brief and shrewd.

Several decisions were made at that meeting. It was decided that a
Center be established and headed by Dr. Stokharin to take care of those
Cavites whose problems might be helped by therapy. “We just apply
classical concepts to their little troubles,” he said.

“But it shouldn’t _seem_ like a clinic,” said Iris suddenly. “It’s all
part of John, of what John says.”

“We’ll make that perfectly clear,” said Paul quickly.

Stokharin nodded agreeably. “After all it is in his name they come to
us. We take it from there. No more problems ... all is contentment.” He
smacked his lips.

It was then decided that Cave would spend the summer quietly and,
in the autumn, begin a tour of the country to be followed by more
telecasts in the following winter. “The summer is to think a little
in,” were Cave’s words.

Next, I was assigned the task of writing a defense of Cave for certain
vast syndicates; I was also requested to compose a set of dialogues
which would record Cave’s views on such problems as marriage, the
family, world government and various other problems all in urgent need
of answering. I suggested, diffidently, that it would be very useful if
Cave were to tell me what he thought about such things before I wrote
my dialogues. Cave said, quite seriously, that we would have the summer
in which to handle all these subjects.

Paul then told us the bad news; there was a good deal of it. “The
Cardinal, in the name of all the Diocesan Bishops, has declared that
any Catholic who observes the telecasts of John Cave or attends in
person his blasphemous lectures commits a grave and mortal sin. Bishop
Winston came to tell me that not only is he attacking Cave in the
press but that he is quite sure, if we continue, the government will
intervene. It was a hint, and not too subtle.”

“On what grounds intervene?” asked Cave. “What have I done that breaks
one of their laws?”

“They’ll trump up something,” said Clarissa.

“I’m afraid you’re right. They can always find something to get us on.
So far, that is about the worst that can happen.”

“But do you think it will?” I asked. “Free speech is still on the
books.”

Paul chuckled grimly. “That’s just where it stays, too.” And he quoted
the national credo: In a true democracy there is no place for a serious
difference of opinion on truly great issues. “Sooner or later they’ll
try to stop Cave.”

“But they can’t!” said Iris. “The people won’t stand for it.”

“He’s the father of too many now,” said Stokharin sagely. “No son will
rise to dispute him, yet.”

“No use to get excited in advance.” Paul was reasonable. “Now let’s get
a statement ready for the press.”

While Paul and Cave worked over the statement, the rest of us chatted
quietly about other problems. Stokharin was just about to explain
the origin of alcoholism in terms of the new Cavite pragmatism, when
Iris said: “Look!” and pointed to the window where, bobbing against
the glass, was a bright red child’s balloon on which had been crudely
painted: “Jesus Saves.”

Stokharin chuckled when he saw it. “Very ingenious. Someone gets on the
floor beneath and tries to shake us with his miracle. Now we produce
the counter-miracle.” He slid the window open. The cold air chilled
us all. He took his glowing pipe and jabbed it into the balloon which
exploded loudly; then he shut the window beaming. “It will be that
easy,” he said. “I promise you. A little fire and: pop! they disappear
like bad dreams.”




                                 SEVEN


                                   1

The next six months after the directors’ meeting were full of activity,
and danger. Paul was forced to hire bodyguards to protect Cave from
disciples as well as from enemies while the rest of us who were now
known publicly as Cave’s associates were obliged to protect our privacy
with unlisted telephone numbers and numerous other precautions none of
which did much good for we were continually harassed by maniacs and
interviewers.

The effect Cave had made on the world was larger than even Paul, our
one optimist, had anticipated. I believe even Cave himself was startled
by the vastness and the variety of the response.

As I recall, seldom did a day pass without some new exposé or
interpretation of this phenomenon. Bishop Winston attacked after nearly
every telecast. The Catholic Church invoked its entire repertory of
anathemas and soon it was whispered in devout Christian circles that
the anti-Christ had come at last, sent to test the faith. Yet, despite
the barrage of attacks, the majority of those who heard Cave became
his partisans and Paul, to my regret but to the delight of everyone
else, established a number of Cavite Centers in the major cities of
the United States, each provided with a trained staff of analysts who
had also undergone an intensive indoctrination in Cavesword. Stokharin
headed these clinics with great energy. At Cave’s suggestion, one
evening a week, the same evening, Cavites would gather to discuss
Cavesword, to meditate on the beauty of death, led in their discussions
and meditations by a disciple of Cave who was, in the opinion of the
directors, equal to the task of representing Cave himself and his word
before vast congregations.

Iris was placed in charge of recruiting and training the proselytizers,
while Paul handled the business end; obtaining property in different
cities and managing the large sums of money which poured in from all
over the world. Except for Cave’s one encounter with the press that
day in the Empire State Building (an occasion which, despite its
ominous beginning, became a rare triumph: Cave’s magic had worked even
with the hostile), he was seen by no one except his intimates and the
technicians of the television studio. Ways were found to disguise him
so that he would not be noticed in the lobbies or elevators of the
television network building. Later he spoke only from his Long Island
retreat, his speeches being recorded on film in advance.

By the time summer had arrived, there were over three million
registered Cavites in the United States as well as numerous,
unorganized believers abroad. Paul was everywhere at once, flying
from city to city (accompanied by two guards and a secretary); he
personally broke ground in Dallas for what was to be the largest Cavite
Center in the United States and although the inaugural ceremonies
were nearly stopped by a group of Baptist ladies carrying banners and
shouting “Onward Christian Soldiers,” no one was hurt and the two oil
millionaires who had financed the Center gave a great barbecue on the
foundation site which was attended by many distinguished guests.

Iris was entirely changed by her responsibilities. She had become,
in the space of a few months, brisk, energetic, as deeply involved in
details as a housewife with a new home. I saw very little of her that
spring. Her days were mostly spent in a rented loft in the Chelsea
district where she lectured the candidates for field work and organized
a makeshift system of indoctrination for these potential Residents, as
the heads of the various centers were known.

She was extraordinarily well fitted for this work, to my surprise, and
before the year ended she had what was in fact a kind of university
where as many as three hundred men and women at a time were regularly
transformed into Residents and Deputy Residents and so on down through
an ever proliferating hierarchy. For the most part, the first men and
women we sent out to the country were highly educated, thoughtful
people, entirely devoted to Cavesword. They were, I think, the best of
all, for later, when it became lucrative to be a Resident, the work
was largely taken over by energetic careerists whose very activity and
competence diminished their moral effectiveness.

Iris used me unmercifully those first months. I lectured her students;
I taught philosophy until, in exasperation at the absurdity of _that_,
I told her to hire a professional teacher of philosophy which she did.

Yet I enjoyed these men and women. Their sincerity, their excitement
communicated itself to me and I became aware of something I had only
known before from reading, from hearsay: the religious sense which I
so clearly lacked, as did both Paul and Stokharin. I don’t think Cave
really possessed it either because, although he believed entirely in
himself and in the miraculous truth of his word, he did not possess
that curious power to identify himself with creation, to transcend the
self in contemplation of an abstraction, to sacrifice the personality
to a mystical authority; none of us, save Iris in love, possessed this
power which, as nearly as I can get at it, is the religious sense in
man. I learned about it only from those who came to learn from us in
that Chelsea loft. In a sense, I pitied them for I knew that much of
what they evidently believed with such passion was wrong but, at the
same time, I was invigorated by their enthusiasm, by the hunger with
which they devoured Cavesword, by the dignity which their passion lent
an enterprise that in Paul’s busy hands resembled more often than not,
a cynical commercial venture. And I recognized in them (oh, very early,
perhaps in the first weeks of talking to them) that, in their goodness
and their love they would, with Cavesword, smudge as it turned each
bright new page of life; yet, suspecting this, I did not object nor did
I withdraw. Instead, fascinated, I was borne by the tide to the shore
ahead whose every rock I could imagine, sharp with disaster.

Once a week the directors met on Long Island in the walled estate
where Cave now lived with his guards (his host had thoughtfully moved
elsewhere until Cave chose for him to return).

The meetings soon demonstrated a division in our ranks between Paul
and Stokharin on the one side and Iris, Clarissa and Cave on the other
with myself as partisan, more often than not, to Cave. The division was
amiable but significant. Paul and Stokharin wanted to place the Centers
directly under the supervision of the analysts while the rest of us,
led by Iris (Cave seldom intervened, but we had accepted already the
fact that Iris spoke for him), preferred that the Centers be governed
by the Residents. “It is certainly true that the therapists are an
important part of each Center,” said Iris briskly, at the end of a
long wrangle with Stokharin. “But these are _Cavite_ Centers and not
clinics for the advancement of post-Jungian analysis. It is Cavesword
which draws people to the Centers, not mental illness. Those who have
problems are of course helped by Stokharin’s people but, finally, it
is Cave who has made it possible for them to face death. Something no
one has done before.” And thus the point was won in our council though
Stokharin and Paul were still able at times, slyly, to insinuate their
own creatures into important Residencies.

My own work went on fitfully. I composed an answer to Bishop Winston
which brought down on my head a series of ecclesiastical thunderbolts,
each louder than the one before. I wrote a short life of Cave in
simple declarative sentences which enjoyed a considerable success
for many years and, finally, seriously, my first attempt at a real
counterattack, I began the several dialogues in which Cave and I
purportedly traversed the entire field of moral action.

I felt that in these dialogues I could quietly combat those absolutist
tendencies which I detected in the disciples. Cave himself made
no pretense of being final on any subject other than death where,
even without his particular persuasiveness, he stood on firm, even
traditional ground. The attacks he received he no longer noticed. It
was as simple as that. He’d never enjoyed reading and to watch others
make telecasts bored him, even when they spoke of him. After the
fateful Empire State Building conference he ceased to attend the world;
except for a few letters which Paul forwarded to him and his relations
with us, he was completely cut off from ordinary life, and perfectly
happy. For though human contacts had been reduced to a minimum, he
still possessed the polished glass eye of the world before whose level
gaze he appeared once a week and experienced what he called: “Everyone:
all of them, listening and watching everywhere.”

In one year he had come a long way from the ex-embalmer who had studied
a book of newspaper clippings on a Washington farm and brooded about
an old man in a hospital. Though Paul was never to refer again to the
victim of Cave’s driving, I was quite sure that he expected, sooner or
later, it would return to haunt us all.

By midsummer, however, Cave had grown restless and bored and since the
telecasts had been discontinued until the following November, he was
eager to travel. He was never to lose his passion for places. It was
finally decided that he spend the summer on one of the Florida keys, a
tiny island owned by a Cavite who offered to place everything at Cave’s
disposal. And, though warned that the heat might be uncomfortable, Cave
and his retinue left secretly one night by chartered seaplane from
Long Island Sound and for at least a month the press did not know what
had happened to him.

I declined to accompany Cave and Iris. Paul remained in New York while
Iris’s work was temporarily turned over to various young enthusiasts,
trained by her. I went back to the Hudson Valley, to my house and....


                                   2

I’ve not been able to write for several days. According to the doctor,
it is a touch of heat but I suspect that this is only his kind
euphemism.

I had broken off in my narrative to take a walk in the garden last
Friday afternoon when I was joined by Butler whose attentions lately
have been more numerous than I should like.

“He’ll be here Sunday, Hudson. Why don’t we all three have dinner
together that night and celebrate.”

I said nothing could give me more pleasure, as I inched along the
garden path, moving toward the hot shaded center where, beneath fruit
trees, a fine statue of Osiris stood, looted in earlier days by the
hotel management from one of the temples. I thought, however, with more
longing of the bench beside the statue than of the figure itself whose
every serene detail I’d long since memorized. Butler adjusted his loose
long stride to my own uneven pace. I walked as I always do now with my
eyes upon the ground, nervously avoiding anything which might make me
stumble for I have fallen down a number of times in the last few years
and I have a terror of broken bones, the particular scourge of old
bodies.

I was as glad as not that I didn’t have to watch my companion while we
chatted, for his red honest face, forever dripping sweat, annoyed me
more than was reasonable.

“And he’ll be pleased to know I’ve got us a Center. Not much of one but
good enough for a start.”

I paused before a formidable rock which lay directly in my path. It
would take some doing to step over it, I thought, as I remarked, “I’m
sure the Pasha doesn’t know about this.”

“Not really.” Butler laughed happily. “He thinks we’re just taking a
house for ourselves to study the local culture. Later, after we get
going, he can find out.”

“I should be very careful,” I said and, very careful myself, I stepped
over the rock: my legs detested the extra exertion; one nearly buckled
as it touched the ground. I threw my weight on my cane and was saved a
fall. Butler had not noticed.

“Jessup is going to bring in the literature. We’ll say it’s our
library. All printed in Arabic, too. The Dallas Center thinks of
everything.”

“Are they ... equipped for such things?”

“Oh yes. That’s where the main university is now. Biggest one in the
world. I didn’t go there myself. Marks weren’t good enough, but Jessup
did. He’ll tell you all about it. Quite a crew they turn out: best in
the business but then they get the cream of the crop to begin with.”

“Tell me, are the Residents still in charge of the Centers or do they
share the administration with the therapists?”

“Therapists?” Butler seemed bewildered.

“In the old days there used to be the Resident and his staff and then a
clinic attached where....”

“You really are behind the times.” Butler looked at me as though I’d
betrayed a firsthand knowledge of earth’s creation. “All Residents and
their staffs, including the Communicators like myself, get the same
training; part of it is in mental therapy. Others who show particular
aptitude for it are assigned clinical work just as I do communication
work in foreign countries. People who get to be Residents are usually
teachers and administrators. Sometimes a Communicator gets a Residency
in his old age as a reward for the highest services.” He then explained
to me the official, somewhat Byzantine structure of the Cavites. There
were many new tides, indicating a swollen organization under the
direction of a Counsel of Residents which, in turn, was responsible for
the election from among their number of a unique Chief Resident whose
reign lasted for the remainder of his lifetime.

With relief, I sat down on the bench beside Osiris. Butler joined me.
“Dallas of course is the main Residency,” he said.

“It used to be in New York, years ago,” I said, thinking of the
brownstone house, of the loft on Twenty-third Street.

“Around twenty years ago it was moved to Dallas by the Chief Resident.
Not only did they have the best-equipped Center there but the Texans
make just about the best Cavites in the country. What they won’t do for
Cavesword isn’t worth mentioning. They burned the old churches, you
know ... every one in the state.”

“And one or two Baptist Ministers as well?”

“You can’t break eggs without making an omelet,” said Butler
sententiously.

“I see what you mean. Still, Cave was against persecution. He always
felt it was enough for people to hear Cavesword....”

“You got a lot of reading to do,” said Butler sharply. “Looks like
you’ve forgotten your text: 'And, if they persist in superstition,
strike them, for one idolator is like a spoiled apple in the barrel,
contaminating the others.’” Butler’s voice, as he quoted, was round
and booming, rich in vowel-sounds while his protruding eyes gazed
without blinking into the invisible radiance of truth which hovered,
apparently, above a diseased hibiscus bush.

“I’ve forgotten that particular quotation,” I said.

“Seems funny you should since it’s just about the most famous of the
texts.” But, though my ignorance continued to startle Butler, I could
see that he was beginning to attribute it to senility rather than to
laxity or potential idolatry.

“I was a close follower in the first few years,” I said, currying
favor. “But I’ve been out of touch since and I suppose that, after
Cave’s death, there was a whole mass of new doctrine with which I am
unfamiliar, to my regret.”

“Doctrine!” Butler was shocked. “We have no doctrine. We are not one of
those heathen churches with claims to 'divine’ guidance. We’re simply
listeners to Cavesword. That’s all. He was the first to tell the plain
truth and, naturally, we honor him but there is no doctrine even
though he guides us the way a good father does his children.”

“I am very old,” I said in my best dying-fall voice. “You must remember
that when you are with me you are in the company of a man who was
brought up in the old ways, who uses Christian terms from time to time.
I was thirty when Cave began his mission. I am, as a matter of fact,
nearly the same age as Cave himself if he were still alive.”

This had its calculated effect. Butler looked at me with some awe.
“Golly!” he said. “It doesn’t really seem possible, does it? Of course
there’re still a few people around who were alive in those days but I
don’t know of anybody who actually _saw_ Cave. You did tell me you saw
him?”

“Once only.”

“Was he like the telecasts?”

“Oh yes. Even more effective, I think.”

“He was big of course, six feet one inch tall.”

“No, he was only about five feet eight inches, a little shorter than
I....”

“You must be mistaken because, according to all the texts, he was six
feet one.”

“I saw him at a distance of course. I was only guessing.” I was amused
that they should have seen fit to change even Cave’s stature.

“You can tell he was a tall man from the telecasts.”

“Do they still show them?”

“Still show them! They’re the main part of our weekly Get-togethers.
Each Residency has a complete library of Cave’s telecasts, one hundred
eight including the last. Each week, a different one is shown by the
Resident’s staff and the Resident himself, or someone assigned by him,
discusses the message.”

“And they still hold up after fifty years?”

“Hold up? We learn more from them each year. You should see all the
books and lectures on Cavesword ... several hundred important ones
which we have to read as part of our communication duties, though
they’re not for the laymen. We discourage nonprofessionals from going
into such problems, much too complicated for the untrained mind.”

“I should think so. Tell me, is there any more trouble with the
idolators?”

Butler shook his head. “Just about none. They were licked when the
parochial schools were shut down. That took care of Catholicism. Of
course there were some bad times. I guess you know all about them.”

I nodded. Even in Egypt I had heard of massacres and persecutions. I
could still recall the morning when I opened the Cairo paper and saw
a large photograph of St Peter’s Cathedral smoldering in its ruins,
a fitting tomb for the last Pope and martyr who had perished there
when a mob of Cavites had fired the Vatican. The Cairo paper took an
obvious delight in these barbarities and I had not the heart to read
of the wanton destruction of Michelangelo’s and Bernini’s works, the
looting of the art galleries, the bonfire which was made in the Papal
gardens of the entire Vatican library. Later, word came of a certain
assistant-Resident of Topeka who, with a group of demolition experts
and Cavite enthusiasts, ranged across France and Italy destroying
the cathedrals with the approval of the local governments, and to
the cheers of Cavite crowds who gathered in great numbers to watch,
delightedly, the crumbling of these last monuments to superstition.
Fortunately, the tourist bureaus were able to save a few of the lesser
churches.

“The edict of Washington which outlawed idolatrous schools did the
trick. The Atlantic government has always believed in toleration: even
to this day it is possible for a man to be a Christian, though unlikely
since the truth is so well known.”

“But he has no churches left and no clergy.”

“True, and if that discourages him he’s not likely to remain too long
in error. As I’ve told you, though, we have our ways of making people
see the truth.”

“The calculable percentage.”

“Exactly.”

I looked at Osiris in the green shade. His diorite face smiled secretly
back at me. “Did you have much trouble in the Latin countries?”

“Less than you might think. The ignorant were the big problem because,
since they didn’t know English, we weren’t able to use the telecasts.
Fortunately, we had some able Residents and after a little showmanship,
a few miracles (or what they took to be miracles) they came around,
especially when many of their ex-priests told them about Cavesword.
Nearly all of the older Residents in the Mediterranean countries were
once Catholic priests.”

“Renegades?”

“They saw the truth; not without some indoctrination, I suspect.
We’ve had to adapt a good many of our procedural methods to fit local
customs. The old Christmas has become Cavesday and what was Easter is
now Irisday.”

“Iris Mortimer?”

“Of course; who else? And then certain festivals which....”

“I suppose she’s dead now.”

“Why, yes. She died six years ago. She was the last of the original
five.”

“Ah, yes, the five: Paul Himmell, Iris Mortimer, Ivan Stokharin,
Clarissa Lessing and....”

“And Edward Hastings. We still use his introduction even though it’s
been largely obsoleted by later tests. His dialogues will of course be
the basis for that final book of Cave which our best scholars have been
at work on for over twenty years.”

Hastings, of all people! I nearly laughed aloud. Poor feckless Hastings
was now the author of _my_ dialogues with Cave: I marveled at the ease
with which the innumerable references to myself had been deleted. I
began to doubt of my own existence. I asked if Hastings were still
alive and was told that he too was long dead.

I then asked again about Iris.

“Some very exciting things have come to light,” said Butler. “Certain
historians at the Dallas Center feel that there is some proof that she
was Cave’s sister.”

I was startled by this. “How could that be? Wasn’t she from Detroit?
and wasn’t he from Seattle? and didn’t they meet for the first time in
southern California at the beginning of his mission?”

“I see you know more Cavite history than you pretend,” said Butler
amiably. “That of course has been the traditional point of view. Yet as
her influence increased in the world (in Italy, you know, one sees her
picture nearly as often as Cave’s) our historians became suspicious. It
was all perfectly simple, really: if she could exert nearly the same
power as Cave himself then she must, in some way, be related to him. I
suppose you know about the Miami business. No? Well, their Resident,
some years ago, openly promulgated the theory that Cave and Iris
Mortimer were man and wife. A great many people believed him and though
the Chief Resident at Dallas issued a statement denying the truth of
all this, Miami continued in error and it took our indoctrination
team several years to get the situation back to normal. But the whole
business _did_ get everyone to thinking and, with the concurrence of
Dallas himself, investigations have been made. I don’t know many of the
details but my colleague probably will. He keeps track of that kind of
thing.”

“If she is proven to be Cave’s sister will she have equal rank with
him?”

“Certainly not. Cavesword is everything; but she will be equal to him
on the human level though his inferior in truth: at least that appears
to be the Dallas interpretation.”

“She was very active, I suppose?”

“Right until the end. She traveled all over the world with Cavesword
and, when she grew too old to travel, she took over the Residency of
New York City which she held until she died. As a matter of fact, I
have a picture of her which I always carry. It was taken in the last
years.” He pulled out a steel-mesh wallet in which, protected by
cellophane, was a photograph of Iris: the first I had seen in many many
years. My hand shook as I held the picture up to the light.

For a split second I felt her presence, saw in the saddened face,
framed by white hair, my summer love which had never been except in my
own dreaming where I was whole and loved this creature whose luminous
eyes had not altered with age, their expression the same as that night
beside the western sea ... but then my fingers froze; the wallet fell
to the ground; I fainted into what I supposed with my last vestiges of
consciousness to be death, to be nothing.


                                   3

I awakened in my own bed with my old friend Doctor Hussein beside me.
He looked much concerned while, at the foot of the bed, stood Butler,
very solemn and still. I resolved not to die with him in the room.

“My apologies, Mr Butler,” I said, surprised that I could speak at all.
“I’m afraid I dropped your picture.” I had no difficulty in remembering
what had happened. It was as if I had suddenly shut my eyes and opened
them again, several hours having passed instead of as many seconds.
Time, I decided, was all nonsense.

“Think nothing of it; I’m only....”

“You must not strain yourself, Mr. Hudson,” said the doctor: a touch
of sun, a few days in bed, plenty of liquids, a pill or two, and I was
left alone with a buzzer beside my bed which would summon the houseboy
if I should have a coherent moment before taking a last turn for the
worse. The next time, I think, _will_ be the final one and though I
detest the thought, these little rehearsals over the last few years,
the brief strokes, the sudden flooding of parts of the brain with the
blood of capillaries in preparation for that last arterial deluge,
have got me used to the idea. My only complaint is that odd things are
done to my memory by these strokes which, light as they have been,
tend to alter parts of the brain, those parts which hold the secrets
of the past. I have found this week, while convalescing from Tuesday’s
collapse, that most of my childhood has been washed clean out of my
memory. I knew of course that I was born on the banks of the Hudson
but I cannot for the life of me recall what schools I attended; yet
my memories from my college days on seem unimpaired though I have had
to reread this memoir attentively to resume my train of thought, to
refresh a dying memory. It is strange indeed to have lost some twenty
years as though they’d never been and, worse still, to be unable to
find out about oneself in any case, since the will of others has
effectively abolished one. I do not exist to the world and very soon
(how soon I wonder?), I shall not exist even to myself, only this
record a fragile proof that I once lived.

Now I am able to work again. Butler pays me a daily visit, as does the
doctor. Both are very kind but both tend to treat me as a thing which
no longer matters. I have been written-off in their minds: I’m no
longer really human since soon, perhaps in a few days, I shall not be
one of them but one of the dead whose dust motes the air they breathe.
Well, let it come. The fraternity of the dead, though nothing, is the
larger kingdom.

I’m able to sit up in bed (actually I can get around as well or as
badly as before but it tires me too much to walk so I remain abed).
Sunday is here at last and from the excited bustle in the air which I
feel rather than hear, Butler’s colleague must have arrived. I am not
ready for him yet and I have hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door,
composed emphatically in four languages. It should keep them out for a
few days.

I have a premonition of disaster which, though it is no doubt perfectly
natural at my age with the last catastrophe almost upon me, seems to be
of a penultimate nature, a final _human_ crisis. All that I have heard
from Butler about this young man, this colleague of his, disposes me
to fear him. For although my existence has been kept a secret from the
newer generations, the others, the older ones, the chief counselors
are well aware of me and though I have so far evaded their agents and
though they undoubtedly assume that I am long since dead it is still
possible that a shrewd young man with a career in the making might grow
suspicious and one word to the older members of the hierarchy would
be enough to start an inquisition which could end in assassination
(ironic that I should fear _that_ at this point!) or, more terrible, in
a course of indoctrination where my apostasy would be reduced by drugs
to conformity. It would be the most splendid triumph for Cave if, in my
last days, I should recant: the best victory of all, the surrender of
the original lutherist upon his deathbed.

Yet I have a trick or two up my sleeve and the game’s not yet over.
Should the new arrival prove to be the one I have so long awaited, I
shall know how to act: I have planned for this day. My adversary will
find me armed.

But now old days draw me back; the crisis approaches in my narrative.


                                   4

The first summer was my last on the Hudson, at peace. Iris wrote me
regularly from the Florida keys: short, brisk letters completely
impersonal and devoted largely to what “he” was doing and saying. It
seems that “he” was enchanted by the strangeness of the keys, yet was
anxious to begin traveling again. With some difficulty, I gathered
between the lines, Iris had restrained him from starting out on a world
tour: “He says he wants to see Saigon and Samarkand and so forth soon
because he likes the names. I don’t see how he can get away yet, though
maybe in the fall after his tour. They say now he can make his talks on
film all at once which will mean of course he won’t have to go through
anything like last winter again.” There followed more news, an inquiry
into my health (in those days I was confident I should die early of
a liver ailment: my liver of course now seems the one firm organ in
my body; in any case, I enjoyed my hypochondria) and a reference to
the various things I was writing for the instruction of converts and
detractors both. I pushed the letter away and looked out across the
river.

I was alone, awaiting Clarissa for tea. I had actually prepared tea
since she never drank alcohol and I myself was a light drinker at best
... a non-drinker that summer when my liver rested (so powerful is
imagination) like a brazen cannonball against the cage of bones.

I sat on my porch which overlooked the lawn and the water; unlike the
other houses on that river, mine had the railroad behind it instead of
in front of it, an agreeable state of affairs; I don’t mind the sound
of trains though the sight of them on their squalid tracks depresses me.

Beside me, among the careful tray of tea things, the manuscript of my
dialogue lay neglected. I had not yet made up my mind whether to read
it to Clarissa or not. Such things tended to bore her; yet, if she
could be enticed into attention, her opinion would be useful: such a
long memory of old customs would be invaluable to me as I composed,
with diligence rather than inspiration, an ethical system whose single
virtue was that it tended to satisfy the needs of human beings as
much as was possible without inviting chaos. I had, that morning over
coffee, abolished marriage. During lunch, served me by my genteel but
impoverished housekeeper (although servants still existed in those days
in a few great houses, people like myself were obliged to engage the
casual services of the haughty poor), I decided to leave marriage the
way it was but make divorce much simpler. After lunch, suffering from
a digestive-inspired headache, I not only abolished marriage again but
resolutely handed the children over to the impersonal mercies of the
state.

Now, bemused, relaxed, my eyes upon the pale blue Catskills and the
summer green, the noise of motorboats like great waterbugs in my ears,
I brooded upon the implications of what I was doing and, though I was
secretly amused at my own confidence, I realized, too, that what I felt
and did and wrote, though doubtless unorthodox to many, was, finally,
not really the work of my own inspiration but a logical result of
all that was in the world: a statement of the dreams of others which
I could formulate only because I shared them. Cave regarded his own
words as revelation when, actually, they only echoed the collective
mind, a plausible articulation of what most men felt even though
their conscious minds were antipathetic, corseted and constricted by
stereotyped ways of thinking, the opposite of what they truly believed.

Yet at this step I, for one, hesitated. There was no doubt but that the
children and the society would be the better for such an arrangement
... and there was little doubt that our civilization _was_ moving
toward such a resolution. But there were parents who would want to
retain their children and children who might be better cared for by
their progenitors than by even the best-intentioned functionaries of
the state. Would the state allow parents to keep their children if they
wanted them? If not, it was tyrannous; if so, difficult in the extreme,
for how could even the most enlightened board of analysts determine who
should be allowed their children and who not? The answer, of course,
was in the retraining of future generations. Let them grow up accepting
as inevitable and right the surrender of babies to the state. Other
cultures had done it and ours could too. But I was able, vividly, to
imagine the numerous cruelties which would be perpetrated in the name
of the whole, while the opportunity for tyranny in a civilization where
all children were at the disposal of a government brought sharply to
mind the image of the anthill society which has haunted the imagination
of the thoughtful for at least a century.

I had got myself into a most gloomy state by the time Clarissa arrived,
trailing across the lawn in an exotic ankle-length gown of gray
which floated in yards behind her, like the diaphanous flags of some
forgotten army.

“Your lawn is full of moles!” she shouted to me, pausing in her
progress and scowling at a patch of turf. “And it needs cutting and
more clover. _Always_ more clover, remember that.” She turned her back
on me to stare at the river which was as gray as her gown, but, in its
soft tidal motion, spangled with light, like sequins on a vast train.

She had no criticism of the river when she at last turned and climbed
the steps to the porch; she sat down with a gasp. “I’m boiling! Tea?
Hot tea to combat the heat.”

I poured her a cup. “Not a hot day at all.” Actually it was very warm.
“If you didn’t get yourself up as a Marie Corelli heroine, you’d be
much cooler.”

“Not very gallant, are we today?” Clarissa looked at me over her cup.
“I’ve had this gown for five hundred years. There used to be a wimple
which went with it but I lost it somewhere.”

“The material seems to be holding up quite well,” and now that she had
mentioned it, there _was_ an archaic look to the texture of the gown,
like those bits of cloth preserved under glass in museums.

“Silk lasts indefinitely, if one is tidy. I also don’t wear this much,
as you can see, but with the devalued state of the dollar (an ominous
sign, my dear, the beginning of the end!) I’ve been forced to redo a
lot of old odds-and-ends I’ve kept for sentimental reasons. This is
one of them and I’m very fond of it.” She spoke this last slowly, to
forestall any further ungallantry.

“I just wondered if it was cool.”

“It is cool. Ah, a letter from Iris.” Like a magpie she had seen the
letter beside my chair and, without asking permission, had seized it
and read it through quickly. “I admire a girl who types,” she said,
letting fall the letter. “I suppose they all do now though it seems
like only yesterday that, next to opening a tearoom, one typed, working
for men, all of whom made advances. That was when we had to wear
corsets and hatpins. One discouraged while the other quite protected.”
Clarissa chuckled at some obscene memory.

“I wonder if Paul can keep Cave from wandering off to some impossible
place.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.” She picked at the tea sandwiches
suspiciously, curling back the top slices of bread to see what was
underneath: tentatively, she bit into deviled ham; she chewed; she
swallowed; she was not disappointed; she wolfed another sandwich,
talking all the while. “Poor Cave is a captive now. His disciples are
in full command. Even Mohammed, as strong-headed as he was, finally
ended up a perfect pawn in the hands of Abu Bekr and the women,
especially the women.”

“I’m not so sure about Cave. He....”

“Does what they tell him, especially Iris.”

“Iris? But I should have said she was the only one who _never_ tried to
influence him.”

Clarissa laughed unpleasantly. A moth flew into her artificial auburn
hair; unerringly, she found it with one capable hand and quickly
snuffed out its life in a puff of gray dust from broken wings. She
wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. The day was full of moths but,
fortunately, none came near us again, preferring lawn and trees to us.
“You are naive, Eugene,” she said, her little murder done. “It’s your
nicest quality. In theory you are remarkably aware of human character;
yet, when you’re confronted with the most implausible appearance, you
promptly take it for the reality.”

I was irritated by this and also by the business of the sandwich, not
to mention the murder of the moth; I looked at Clarissa with momentary
dislike. “I was not aware....” I began in a chilled voice but she
interrupted me with an airy wave of her hand.

“I forget no one likes to be called naive ... calculating, dishonest,
treacherous, people rather revel in those designations, but to be
thought trusting....” She clapped her hands as though to punctuate her
meaning; then, after a full stop, she went on more soberly. “Iris is
the one to look out for. Our own sweet, self-effacing, dedicated Iris.
I adore her; I always have, but she’s up to no good.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will. You would if you weren’t entirely blind to what they used to
call human nature. Iris is _acquiring_ Cave.”

“Acquiring?”

“Exactly the word. She loves him for all sorts of reasons but she
cannot have him in the usual sense (I found out all about that, by
the way). Therefore, the only thing left her to do is acquire him, to
take his life in hers. You may think _she_ may think that her slavish
adoration is only humble love but actually it’s something far more
significant, and dangerous.”

“I don’t see the danger, even accepting your hypothesis.”

“It’s no hypothesis and the danger is real. Iris will have him and,
through him, she’ll have you all.”

I did not begin to understand that day and Clarissa, in her pythoness
way, was no help, muttering vague threats and imprecations with her
mouth full of bread.

After my first jealousy at Iris’s preference of Cave to me, a jealousy
which I knew, even at the time, was unjustified and a little ludicrous,
I had come to accept her devotion to Cave as a perfectly natural state
of affairs; he was an extraordinary man and though he did not fulfill
her in the usual sense, he gave her more than mere lover might: he gave
her a whole life and I envied her for having been able to seize so
shrewdly upon this unique way _out_ of ordinary life and into something
more grand, more strange, more engaging. Though I could not follow her,
I was able to appreciate her choice and admire the completeness of her
days. That she was obscurely using Cave for her own ends, subverting
him, did not seem to me possible and I was annoyed by Clarissa’s dark
warnings. I directed the conversation into the other waters.

“The children. I haven’t decided what to do with them.”

Clarissa came to a full halt. For a moment she forgot to chew. Then,
with a look of pain, she swallowed. “_Your_ children?”

“Any children, all children,” I pointed to the manuscript on the table.

She began to understand. “I’m quite sure you have abolished marriage.”

“As a matter of fact, yes, this morning.”

“And now you don’t know what to do about the children.”

“Precisely. I....”

“Perfectly simple.” Clarissa was brisk: this, apparently, was a problem
she had already solved. “The next step is controlled breeding. Only
those whose blood lines seem promising should be allowed to procreate.
Now that oral contraceptives are so popular no one will make babies by
accident ... in fact, it should be a serious crime if someone does.”

“Quite neat, but I wonder whether, psychologically, it’s simple.
There’s the whole business of instinct, of the natural desire of a
woman to want her own child after bearing it.”

“All habit ... not innate. Children have been subordinate woman’s ace
in the hole for generations. They have had to develop certain traits
which, in other circumstances, they would not have entertained. Rats,
whom we closely resemble, though they suckle their young will, in
moments of mild hunger or even exasperation, think nothing of eating an
entire litter. You can condition human beings to accept _any_ state of
affairs as being perfectly natural.”

“I don’t doubt that. But how to break the habits of several thousand
years.”

“I suppose there _are_ ways. Look what Cave is doing. Of course making
death popular is not so difficult since, finally, people _want_ it to
be nice: they do the real work or, rather, their terror does. In place
of superstition, which they’ve nearly outgrown, he offers them madness.”

“Now really, Clarissa....”

“I don’t disapprove. I’m all for him, as you know. To make death
preferable to life is of course utter folly though a perfectly logical
reaction for these poor bewildered savages who, having lost their old
superstitions, are absolutely terrified at the prospect of nothing.
They want to perpetuate their little personalities forever into space
and time and now they’ve begun to realize the folly of that (who, after
all, are they? are _we_? in creation?) they will follow desperately the
first man who pulls the sting of death and Cave is that man, as I knew
he would be.”

“And after Cave?”

“I will not say what I see. I’m on the side of change, however, which
makes me in perfect harmony with life.” Clarissa chuckled. A fish
leaped gayly in the still river; out in the channel a barge glided by,
the muffled noise of its engines like slow heartbeats.

“But you think it good for people to follow Cave? you think what he
says is right?”

“Nothing is good. Nothing is right. But though Cave is wrong, it is
a _new_ wrong and so it is better than the old; in any case, he will
keep the people amused and boredom, finally, is the one monster the
race will never conquer ... the monster which will devour us in time.
But now we’re off the track. Mother love exists because we believe it
exists. Believe it does not exist and it won’t. That, I fear, is the
general condition of 'the unchanging human heart.’ Make these young
girls feel that having babies is a patriotic duty as well as healthful
therapy and they’ll go through it blithely enough, without ever giving
a second thought to the child they leave behind in the government
nursery.”

“But to get them to that state of acceptance....”

“Is the problem. I’m sure it will be solved in a few generations.”

“You think I’m right to propose it?”

“Of course. It will happen anyway.”

“Yet I’m disturbed at the thought of all that power in the hands of the
state: they can make the children believe anything; they can impose the
most terrible tyranny; they can blind at birth so that none might ever
see anything again but what a few rulers, as ignorant as they, finally,
will want them to see. There’ll be a time when all people are nearly
alike.”

“Which is precisely the ideal society. No mysteries, no romantics, no
discussions, no persecutions because there’s no one to persecute. When
all have received the same conditioning, it will be like....”

“Insects.”

“Who have existed longer than ourselves and will outlast our race by
many comfortable millennia.”

“Is existence everything?”

“There is nothing else.”

“Then likeness is the aim of human society?”

“Call it harmony. You think of yourself only as you are now dropped
into the midst of a society of dull conformists. That’s where you make
your mistake. You’ll not live to see it for, if you did, you would be
someone else, a part of it. No one of your disposition could possibly
happen in such a society. There would be no rebellion against sameness
because difference would not, in any important sense, exist, even as
a proposition. You think: how terrible! but think again how wonderful
it would be to belong to the pack, to the tribe, to the race, without
guilt or anxiety or division.”

“I cannot imagine it.”

“No more can they imagine you.”

“This will happen?”

“Yes, and you will have been a part of it.”

“Through Cave?”

“Partly, yes. There will be others after him. His work in the future
will be distorted by others, but that’s to be expected.”

“I don’t like your future, Clarissa.”

“Nor does it like you, my dear. The idea of someone who is gloomy
and at odds with society, bitter and angry, separate from others ...
I shouldn’t wonder but that you yourself might really be used as a
perfect example of the old evil days.”

“Virtue dies?”

“Virtue becomes the property of the race.”

“Imagination is forbidden?”

“No, only channeled for the good of all.”

“And this is a desirable world? the future you describe?”

“Desirable for whom? For you, no. For me, not really. For the people
in it? Well, yes and no. They will not question their estate but they
will suffer from a collective boredom which ... but my lips are sealed.
Your tea was delicious though the bread was not quite fresh; but then
bachelors never keep house properly. I’ve gone on much too long; do
forget everything I’ve said. I’m indiscreet. I can’t help it.” She
rose, a cloud of gray suspended above the porch. I walked her across
the lawn to the driveway where her car was parked. The breeze had,
for the moment, died and the heat prickled me unpleasantly; my temples
itched as the sweat started.

“Go on with it,” she said as she got into her car. “You may as well
be on the side of the future as against it. Not that it much matters
anyway. When your adorable President Jefferson was in Paris he
said....” But the noise of the car starting drowned the body of her
anecdote. I caught only the end: “That harmony was preferable. We were
all amused; I was the only one who realized that he was serious.” Dust
swirled and Clarissa was gone down the drive at a great speed, keeping,
I noticed, to the wrong side of the road. I hoped this was an omen.


                                   5

I got through an unusually sultry July without much interference
from either Cave or the world. Paul paid me a quick visit to get the
manuscript of the dialogues and I was reminded of those accounts of
the progresses made by monarchs in other days, or rather of great
ministers, for his party occupied four large cars which gleamed side
by side in my driveway like glossy beasts while their contents, Paul
and fourteen assistants, all strange to me save Stokharin, wandered
disconsolately about the lawn until their departure.

Paul, though brisk, was cordial. “Trouble all over the map but b-i-g
t-r-o-u-b-l-e,” he spelled it out with relish, size was important, I
knew, to a publicist, even to one turned evangelist.

“Is Cave disturbed by it?”

“Doesn’t pay any attention. Haven’t seen him but Iris keeps me posted.
By the way, we’re hiring a plane the first week in August to go see
him, Stokharin and me. Want to come along?”

I didn’t but I said I would. I had no intention of being left out of
anything: there was _my_ work still to do.

“I’ll let you know details. This is hot stuff?” He waved the sheaf of
papers I’d given him.

“Real hot,” I said but my irony was too pale, only primary colors
caught Paul’s eye.

“I hope so. Got any new stunts?”

I told him, briefly, about my thoughts on marriage or rather Cave’s
thoughts. The literary device was for me to ask him certain questions
and for him to answer them or, at least, to ask pointed questions in
his turn. Cheerfully, I had committed Cave to my own point of view and
I was somewhat nervous about his reaction, not to mention the others.
So far, only Clarissa knew and her approval was pleasant but perhaps
frivolous: it carried little weight, I knew, with the rest.

Paul whistled. “You got us a tall order. I’m not sure we’ll be able to
handle that problem yet, if ever.”

“I’ve done it carefully,” I began.

Stokharin, who had been listening with interest, came to my aid. “In
the Centers we, how you say, Paul? soft-pedal the family. We advise
young boys to make love to the young girls without marrying or having
babies. We speak of the family as a social unit, and society changes. I
am most eager to study Mr Luther’s approach. Perhaps a little aid from
those of us in clinical work....”

But then the dark sedans began to purr; nervous attendants whispered
to Paul and I was soon left alone with the fragments of our brief
conversation to examine and interpret at my leisure. I was surprised
and pleased at Stokharin’s unexpected alliance. I had thought of him
as my chief antagonist. But then, my work finished, I tended roses and
read Cassius Dio until the summons in August came.


                                   6

The plane landed on a glare of blue water, more blinding even than the
vivid sky about the sun itself which made _both_ elements seem to be
a quivering blue fire in which was destroyed all of earth save a tiny
smear of dusty faded green, the island of our destination.

The pilot maneuvered the plane against a bone-gray dock where, all
alone, Iris stood, her hair tangled from the propellers’ wind and her
eyes hidden by dark glasses. Like explorers in a new country, Paul,
Stokharin and I scrambled onto the dock, the heat closing in about us
like blue canvas, stifling, palpable. I gasped and dropped my suitcase.
Iris laughed and ran forward to greet us; she came first to me which,
even in my dazzled, shocked state, I realized and valued.

“Gene, you must get out of that suit this minute! and get some dark
glasses or you’ll go blind. Paul, how are you? It’s good to see you,
Doctor.” And, in the chatter of greetings, she escorted us off the dock
and across a narrow white beach to a grove of palm trees where the
cottage stood.

To our delight, the interior was cooled by machinery. I sank into a
wicker chair even while Cave was pumping my hand. Iris laughed, “Leave
him alone, John. He’s smothered by the heat.”

“No hat,” said Cave solemnly after the first greeting which, in my
relief, I’d not heard. “You’ll get sunstroke.”

Paul was now in charge. The heat which had enervated both Stokharin
and me filled him with manic energy, like one of those reptiles which
absorb vitality from the sun.

“What a great little place, John! Had no idea there were all the
comforts of home down here, none at all. Don’t suppose you go out much?”

Cave, unlike Iris, was not tanned though he had, for him, a good color,
a ruddiness of tone unlike his usual sallowness. “I don’t get too much
sun,” he admitted. “We go fishing sometimes, early in the morning. Most
of the time I just hang around the house and look at the letters, and
read some.”

I noticed on the table beside me an enormous pile of travel magazines,
tourist folders and atlases: this had obviously been Cave’s reading. I
anticipated trouble.

Paul prowled restlessly about the modern living room with its shuttered
sealed windows. Stokharin and I, like fish back in their own element
after a brief excursion on land, gasped softly in our chairs while
Iris told us of the keys, of their fishing trips. She was at her best
here as she had been that other time in Spokane ... being out of doors,
in Cave’s exclusive company, brought her to life in a way the exciting
busyness of New York did not. In New York she seemed like an object
through which an electric current passed; here on this island, in the
sun’s glare, she had unfolded, petal after petal until the secret
interior seemed almost exposed. I was conscious of her as a lovely
woman and, without warning, I experienced desire: that sharp rare
longing which, in me, can reach no climax. Always before she had been a
friend, a companion whose company I had jealously valued: her attention
alone had been enough to satisfy me, but on this day I saw her as a man
entire might and I plummeted into despair while talking of Plato.

“The Symposium was the model, yes. There are other ways of casting
dialogues such as introducing the celebrated dead brought together for
a chat in Limbo. I thought, though, that I should keep the talk to
only two. Cave and myself ... Socrates and Alcibiades.” Alcibiades was
precisely the wrong parallel but I left it uncorrected, noticing how
delicately the hollow at the base of her throat quivered with life’s
blood and although I attempted, as I often had before with bitter
success, to think of her as so much mortal flesh, the body and its
beauty only pulp and bone, only beautiful to a human eye ... hideous,
no doubt, to the eye of a geometric progression ... that afternoon
I was lost and I could not become, even for a moment, an abstract
intelligence again: I saw the bone; I saw the dust, yet I saw her
existing, despite her nature and her fate, triumphant in the present. I
cursed the flaw in my own flesh and hated life.

“We liked it very much,” she said, not divining my mood, unaware of my
sudden passion and its attendant despair.

“You don’t think it’s too strong, do you? All morality, not to mention
the churches, will be aligned against us.”

“John was worried at first ... not that opposition frightens him and
it is _his_ idea; I mean you wrote the dialogue but it reflects
exactly what he’s always thought.” Though in love’s agony, I looked at
her sharply to make certain she was perfectly serious: she was; this
helped soothe the pain. She had been hypnotized by Cave. I wondered how
Clarissa could ever have thought it was the other way around.

“In a way we’re already on record,” Iris looked thoughtfully across the
room at Cave who was showing Paul and Stokharin a large map of some
strange country. “The Centers have helped a good many couples to adjust
to one another without marriage and without guilt.”

“But then there’s the problem of what to do with the children when the
family breaks up.”

Iris sighed. “I’m afraid that’s already a problem. Our Centers are
taking care of a good many children already. A number, of course, go
out for adoption to bored couples who need something to amuse them.
I suppose we’ll have to establish nurseries as a part of each Center
until, finally, the government assumes the responsibility.”

“_If_ it becomes Cavite.”

“When it becomes Cavite.” She was powerful in her casualness.

“Meanwhile there are laws of adoption which vary from state to state
and, if we’re not careful, we’re apt to come up against the law.”

“Paul looks after us,” she smiled. “Did you know that he has nearly a
hundred lawyers on our pay roll? All protecting us.”

“From what?” I had not kept track of this.

“Lawsuits ... mostly attempts by state legislatures to outlaw the
Centers on the grounds of immorality and so on. The lawyers are kept
busy all the time.”

“Why haven’t I read about any of this in the papers?”

“We’ve been able to keep things fairly quiet. Paul is marvelous with
the editors ... several have even joined us, by the way ... secretly,
of course.”

“What’s the membership now?”

Iris gestured. “No one knows. We have thirty Centers in the United
States and each day they receive hundreds of new Cavites. I suspect
there are at least four million by now.”

I gasped, beginning to recover at last from the heat, from my
unexpected crisis of love. “I had no idea things were going so fast.”

“Too fast. We haven’t enough trained people to look after the Centers
and on top of that we’ve got to set up new Centers. Paul has broken the
country up into districts, all very methodical: so many Centers per
district each with a Resident in charge. Stokharin is taking care of
the clinical work.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“In bushels from heaven,” Iris smiled. “We leave all that up to Paul. I
shouldn’t be surprised if he counterfeits it. One thing I know, though,
I _must_ get back to New York soon, to the school. I shouldn’t really
have gone off in the middle of everything but I was tired and John
wanted company so I came.”

“How is he?”

“As you see: calm. I don’t believe he ever thinks of any of our
problems. He never talks about them; never reads the reports Paul sends
him. He seldom reads the attacks from the churches and we get several a
day, not to mention threatening mail. It’s got so bad that we now have
full-time bodyguards.”

“You think people are _seriously_ threatening him?”

“I don’t know how serious they are but we can’t take chances.
Fortunately, almost no one knows we’re here and, so far, no cranks have
got through from the mainland. We get our groceries and mail brought in
by boat every other day from Key Largo. Otherwise, we’re marooned here.”

I looked about me for some sign of the guards but they were elsewhere:
a Cuban woman glumly vacuuming in the next room was the only visible
stranger.

Cave abandoned his maps and atlases long enough to tell me how much the
dialogues pleased him.

“I wish I could put it down like you do. I can only say it when people
listen.”

“You feel I’ve been accurate?”

He nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes ... it’s just as I’ve always said it, only
written down.” I realized that he’d already assumed full responsibility
(and credit, should there be any) for my composition; I accepted his
presumption with amusement. Only Stokharin seemed aware of the humor of
the situation. I caught him staring at me with a shrewd expression; he
looked quickly away and his mouth was rigid as he tried not to smile. I
liked him at that moment: we were the only two, evidently, who had not
been possessed by Cave. I felt like a conspirator.

For several days we talked, or rather Paul talked. He had brought
with him charts and statements and statistics and, though Cave did
not bother to disguise his boredom, he listened most of the time and
his questions, when they did occur, were apposite. The rest of us
were fascinated by the extent of what Paul referred to as the “first
operational phase.”

Various projects had already been undertaken; others were put up to
the directors for discussion. The mood was, due to Paul’s emphatic
personality, more like that of a meeting of account-executives in an
advertising firm than the pious foregathering of a messiah’s apostles
... and already that word had been used in the press by the curious
as well as by the devout. Cave was the messiah to several million
Americans, one not come with fire to judge the world, nor one armed
with the instruction of a supernatural being whose presence was
elsewhere but whose secret word had been given this favorite son ...
no, Cave was of another line: that of the prophets, of the instructors
like Jesus before he became Christ, like Mohammed before he became
Islam. Cave was the one in our age whose single task it was to speak
out, to say the words all men waited for yet dared not speak nor
even attend without the overpowering authority of another who had,
plausibly, assumed the guise of master. I could not help but wonder as
I watched Cave in those hectic conferences if the past had been like
this.

Cave certainly had one advantage over his predecessors: modern
communications. It took three centuries for Christianity to infest the
world. It was to take Cave only three years to conquer Europe and the
Americas.

But I did not have this foreknowledge in Florida. I only knew that Paul
was handling an extraordinary business in a remarkable way. There was
no plan so vast that he could not contemplate its execution with ease.
He was exhausting in his energy and, though he did not possess much
imagination, he was a splendid improviser, using whatever themes were
at hand to create his own dazzling contrapuntal effects with.

We decided upon a weekly magazine to be distributed gratis to the
Cavites (I was appointed editor though the real work, of which I was
entirely ignorant, was to be done by a crew already at work on the
first issue); we determined to send abroad certain films to be shown
by Cavite lecturers; we approved the itinerary of Cave’s national tour
in the fall (Cave was most alive during this discussion; suggesting
cities he wanted particularly to see, reveling in the euphony of such
names as Tallahassee); we planned several dinners to be held in New
York with newspaper editors and political figures and we discussed
the advisability of Cave’s accepting an invitation to be questioned
by the Committee on National Morals and Americanism of the House of
Representatives, a remarkably powerful Committee which had begun to
show an interest in the progress of our Centers. It was decided that
Cave delay meeting them until the time was propitious, or until he
had received a subpoena. Paul, with his instinctive sense of the
theatrical, did not want to have this crucial meeting take place
without a most careful build-up.

We discussed the various steps taken or about to be taken by certain
state legislatures against the Centers. The states involved were
those with either a predominantly Catholic or predominantly Baptist
population. Since the Centers had been organized to conform with
existing state and federal laws (the lawyers were earning their fees),
Paul thought they would have a difficult time in closing any of them.
The several laws which had been passed were all being appealed and
he was confident of our vindication by the higher courts. Though the
established churches were now fighting us with every possible weapon of
law and propaganda, we were fully protected, Paul felt, by the Bill of
Rights even in its currently abrogated state.

Late in the afternoon after one of the day’s conferences had ended,
Iris and I swam in the Gulf, the water as warm as blood and the sky
soft with evening. We stayed in the water for an hour, not talking, not
really swimming, merely a part of the sea and the sky, two lives on a
curved horizon, quite alone (for the others never ventured out), only
the bored bodyguard on the dock reminded us that the usual world had
not slipped away in a sunny dream, leaving us isolated and content in
that sea from which our life had come so long ago ... water to water,
I thought comfortably as we crawled up on the beach like new-lunged
creatures.

Iris undid her bathing cap and her hair, streaked blonde by the sun
(and a little gray as well), fell about her shoulders. She sighed
voluptuously. “If it would always be like this.”

“If what?”

“Everything.”

“Ah,” I ran my hand along my legs and crystals of salt glittered and
fell; we were both dusted with light. “You have your work,” I added ...
with some malice though I was now under control ... my crisis resolved
after one sleepless night. I could now look at her without longing,
without pain; regret was another matter but regret was only a distant
relative to anguish.

“I have that, too,” she said. “The work uses everything while this ...
is a narcotic. I float without a thought or a desire like ... like an
anemone.”

“You don’t know what an anemone is, do you?”

She laughed like a child. “How do you know I don’t?”

“You said it like somebody reading a Latin inscription.”

“What is it?”

I laughed, too. “I don’t know. Perhaps something like a jellyfish. It
has a lovely sound: sea anemone.”

We were interrupted by a motorboat pulling into the dock. “It’s the
mail,” said Iris. “We’d better go back to the house now.”

While we collected towels, the guard on the dock helped the boatman
carry two large boxes of groceries and mail to the house.

Between a pair of palm trees, a yard from the door of the house, the
bomb went off in a flash of light and gray smoke. A stinging spray of
sand blinded Iris and me. The blast knocked me off balance and I fell
backward onto the beach. For several minutes, my eyes filled with tears
and burning from the coral sand, I was quite blind. When I was finally
able to see again, Iris was already at the house trying to force open
the door.

One of the palm trees looked as if it had been struck by lightning,
all its fronds gone and its base smoldering. The windows of the house
were broken and I recall wondering, foolishly, how the air-conditioning
could possibly work if the house was not sealed. The door was
splintered and most of its paint had been burned off: it was also
jammed for Iris could not open it. Meanwhile, from a side door, the
occupants of the house had begun to appear, pale and shaken.

I limped toward the house, rubbing my eyes, aware that my left knee
had been hurt. I was careful not to look at either the boatman or the
guard. Their remains inextricably strewn among tin cans and letters in
the bushes.

Paul was the first to speak: a torrent of rage which jolted us all out
of fear and shock. Iris, after one look at the dead men, fled into the
house. I stood stupidly beside the door, rolling my eyes to dislodge
the sand and listening to Paul.

Then the other guards came with blankets and gathered up the pieces
of the two men. I turned away, aware for the first time that Cave was
standing slightly apart, nearest the house. He was very pale. He spoke
only once, half to himself for Paul was still ranting: “Let it begin,”
said Cave softly. “Now, now.”




                                 EIGHT


                                   1

It began indeed, like the first recorded shot of a war. The day after
the explosion, we left the island and Cave was flown to another
retreat, this time in the center of New York City where, unique in all
the world, there can exist true privacy, even invisibility.

The Cavite history of the next two years is publicly known and the
private aspects of it do not particularly reveal. It was a time of
expansion and of battle.

The opposition closed its ranks. Several attempts were made on all
our lives and, six months after our return from Florida, we were all,
except the indomitable Clarissa, forced to move into the brand-new
Cavite Center, a quickly built but handsome building of yellow glass on
Park Avenue. Here on the top floor, in the penthouse which was itself
a mansion surrounded by Babylonian gardens and a wall of glass through
which the encompassing city rose like stalagmites, Cave and Paul,
Stokharin and Iris and I all lived with our bodyguards, never venturing
out of the building which resembled, during that time, a military
headquarters with guards and adjutants and a maze of officials through
whom both strangers and familiars were forced to pass before they could
meet even myself, much less Cave.

In spite of the unnaturalness of the life, it was, I think, the
happiest time of my life. Except for brief excursions to the Hudson,
I spent the entire two years in that one building, knowing at last
the sort of security and serenity which monks must have known in
their monasteries, in their retreats. I think the others were also
content, except for Cave who eventually grew so morose and bored by his
confinement that Paul not only had to promise him a world tour but,
for his vicarious pleasure, played, night after night in the Center’s
auditorium, travel films which Cave devoured with eager eyes, asking
for certain films to be halted at various interesting parts so that
he might examine some landscape or building (never a human being, no
matter how quaint); favorite movies were played over and over again,
long after the rest of us had gone off to bed, leaving Cave and the
projectionist alone with the bright shadows of distant places ... alone
save for the ubiquitous guards.

There were a number of attacks upon the building itself but since all
incoming mail and visitors were checked by machinery for hidden weapons
there was never a repetition of that island disaster which had had
such a chilling effect on all of us. Pickets of course marched daily
for two years in front of the Center’s door and, on four separate
occasions, mobs attempted to storm the building: they were repulsed
easily by our guards (the police, for the most Catholic, did not unduly
exert themselves in our defense; fortunately, the building had been
constructed with the idea of defense in mind).

The life in the Center was busy. In the penthouse each of us had an
office and Cave had a large suite where he spent his days watching
television and pondering journeys. He did not follow with much interest
the doings of the organization though he had begun to enjoy reading the
attacks which regularly appeared against him and us in the newspapers.
Bishop Winston was the leader of the non-Catholic opposition and his
apologias and anathemas inspired us with admiration. He was, I think,
conscious of being the last great spokesman of the Protestant churches
and he fulfilled his historic function with wit and dignity and we
admired him tremendously. By this time, of course, our victory was in
sight and we could show magnanimity to those who remained loyal to
ancient systems.

I was the one most concerned with answering the attacks since I was
now an editor with an entire floor devoted to the _Cavite Journal_ (we
were not able to think up a better name). At first it was published
weekly and given away free but after the first year it became a daily
newspaper, fat with advertising, and sold on newsstands.

Besides my duties as editor, I was also the official apologist and I
was kept busy composing dialogues on various ethical matters, ranging
from the virtues of cremation to fair business practices. Needless to
say, I had a good deal of help and some of my most resounding effects
were contrived by others, by anonymous specialists. Each installment,
however, of Cavite doctrine (or rationalization as I preferred to think
of my work) was received as eagerly by the expanding ranks of the
faithful as it was denounced by the Catholic Church and the new league
of Protestant Churches under Bishop Winston’s guidance.

We received our first serious setback when, in the autumn of our first
year in the new building, we were banned from the television networks
through a series of technicalities created by Congress for our benefit
and invoked without warning. It took Paul’s lawyers a year to get the
case through the courts which finally reversed the government’s ruling.
Meanwhile, we counterattacked by creating hundreds of new Centers
where films of Cave were shown regularly. Once a week he was televised
for the Centers where huge crowds gathered to see and hear him and it
was always Paul’s claim that the government’s spiteful action had,
paradoxically, been responsible for the sudden victory of Cavesword:
not being able to listen to their idol in their own homes the Cavites,
and even the merely curious, were forced to visit the Centers where,
in the general mood of camaraderie and delight in the same word, they
were organized quite ruthlessly. Stokharin’s clinics handled their
personal problems. Other departments assumed the guidance and even
the support, if necessary, of their children while free medical and
educational facilities were made available to all who applied.

At the end of the second year, there were more enrolled Cavites than
any other single religious denomination including the Roman Catholic.
I published this fact and the accompanying statistics with a certain
guilt which, needless to say, my fellow directors did not share. The
result of this revelation was a special Congressional hearing.

In spite of the usual confusion attendant upon any of the vigorous
old Congress’s hearteningly incompetent investigations, this event
was well-staged, preparing the way politically, to draw the obvious
parallel, for a new Constantine.

It took place in March and it was the only official journey any of
us, excepting Paul, had made from our yellow citadel for two years.
The entire proceedings were televised, a bit of unwisdom on the part
of the hostile Congressmen who, in their understandable eagerness for
publicity, overlooked their intended victim’s complete mastery of that
medium. I did not go to Washington but I saw Cave and Paul and Iris off
from the roof of the Center. Because of the crowds which had formed in
the streets, hoping for a glimpse of Cave, the original plan to fly to
Washington aboard a chartered airplane was discarded at the last minute
and two helicopters were ordered instead to pick up Cave and his party
on the terrace in front of the penthouse, a mode of travel not then
popular.

Paul saw to it that the departure was filmed. A dozen of us who were
not going stood about among the trees and bushes while the helicopters
hovered a few feet above the roof, their ladders dangling. Then Cave
appeared with Paul and Iris while a camera crew recorded their farewell
and departure. Cave looked as serene as ever, quite pale in his dark
blue suit and white shirt ... a small austere figure with downcast
eyes. Iris was bright-faced from the excitement and cold; there was a
sharp wind on the roof which tangled her hair.

“I’m terrified,” she whispered fiercely in my ear as we shook hands
formally for the camera.

“Paul seems in full command,” I said, comfortingly. And Paul, not Cave,
was making a short speech to the camera while Cave stood alone and
still; then, in a gust of wind, they were gone and I went to my office
to watch the hearings.

The official reason for the investigation was based upon certain
charges made by the various churches that the Cavites were subverting
Christian morality by championing free love and publicly descrying the
eternal institution of marriage. This was the burden of that complaint
against Cave which the Committee most wished to contemplate since it
was the strongest of the numerous allegations and, in their eyes, the
most dangerous to the state, the one most likely to get the largest
amount of publicity. For some years the realm of public morals had been
a favorite excursion grounds for the Congress and their tournaments at
public expense were attended delightedly by everyone. This particular
one, affecting as it did the head of the largest single religious
establishment in the country would, the Congressmen were quite sure,
prove an irresistible spectacle. It was.

At first there was a good deal of confusion. Newspaper men stumbled
over one another; flash bulbs were dropped; Congressmen could not
get through the crowd to take their seats. To fill in, while these
preliminaries were got over, the camera was trained upon the crowd
which was beginning to gather in front of the Capitol; a crowd which
grew, as one watched, to Inaugural size. Though it was orderly, a troop
of soldiers in trucks soon arrived, as though by previous design, and
they got out, forming a cordon of fixed bayonets before the various
entrances to the Capitol.

Here and there, against the gusty blue sky, banners with the single
word “Cave,” gold on blue, snapped: _In hoc signo_ indeed!

Then the commentators who had been exclaiming at some length on the
size of the crowd, excitedly announced the arrival of Cave. A roar of
sound filled the plaza. The banners were waved back and forth against
the sky and I saw everywhere the theatrical hand of Paul Himmell.

The scene shifted to the House of Representatives entrance to the
Capitol. Cave wearing an overcoat but bareheaded, stepped out of the
limousine. He was alone. Neither Paul nor Iris was in sight. It was
most effective that he should come like this, without equerries or
counselors. He stood for a moment in the pillared entrance, aware of
the crowd outside; even through the commentator’s narrative one could
hear, like the surf falling: Cave! Cave! Cave! For a moment it seemed
that he might turn and go, not into the Capitol, but out onto the steps
to the crowd; but then the chief of the Capitol guard, sensing perhaps
that this might happen, gently steered him up the stairs.

The next shot was of the Committee Room where the hearings had at last
begun. A somewhat phlegmatic Jesuit was testifying. His words were
difficult to hear because of the noise in the committee room, and the
impotent shouts of the chairman. The commentator gave a brief analysis
of the Jesuit’s attack on Cave and then, in the midst of a particularly
loud exchange between the chairman and the crowd, the clerk of the
court proclaimed: John Cave.

There was silence. The crowd parted to make way for him. Even the
members of the committee craned to get a good look at him as he moved
quietly, almost demurely, to the witness chair. The only movement in
the room was that of the Papal Nuncio who, in his robes, sat in the
front rank of the audience. He crossed himself as Cave passed and shut
his eyes.

Cave was respectful, almost inaudible. Several times he was asked
to repeat his answers even though the room was remarkably still.
At first Cave would answer only in monosyllables, not looking up,
not meeting the gaze of his interrogators who took heart at this,
professionals themselves: their voices which had almost matched his
for inaudibility, began to boom with confidence.

I waited for the lightning. The first intimation came when Cave looked
up. For nearly five minutes he had not raised his eyes once during the
questioning. Suddenly he looked up and I saw that he was trying to
locate the camera; he did, and it was like a revelation: a sudden shock
went through me and as well as I knew him, as few illusions as I had
about him, I was arrested by his gaze ... it was as though only he and
I existed, as though he _were_ I; all of those who watched responded in
the same fashion to that unique gaze.

The Committee, however, was not aware of what had happened, that
their intended victim had with one glance appropriated the eye of the
world. The subsequent catechism is too well known to record here; we
used it as the main exposition of Cavesword, the one testament which
contained the entire thing. It was almost as if the Congressmen had
been given the necessary questions to ask, like those supporting
actors whose minor roles are designed to illuminate the genius of the
star. Two of the seven members of the Committee were Cavites. This was
soon apparent. The other five were violently in opposition. One as a
Catholic, another as a Protestant, and two as materialistic lovers of
the old order. Only one of the attackers, a quiet scholarly-looking
Jew, made any real point. He argued the perniciousness of an
organization which, if allowed to prosper, would replace the state and
force all dissenters to conform; it was his contention that the state
prospered most when no one system was sufficiently strong to dominate.
I wanted to hear more of him but his Catholic colleague, a bull-voiced
Irishman, drowned him out, winning the day for the Cavites.

Cave, to my astonishment, had memorized most of the dialogues I’d
written and he said my words with the same power that he said his own.
I was startled by this. There had been no hint that such a thing might
happen and I couldn’t, for some time, determine the motive until I
recalled Cave’s reluctance to being quoted in print; he had apparently
realized that now there would be a complete record of his testimony and
so, for the sake of both literacy and consistency, he had committed to
memory those words of mine which were thought to be his. At the great
moment, however, the peroration (by which time there were no more
questions and Cave’s voice alone was heard) he became himself, and
spoke Cavesword.

Then, without the Committee’s leave, in the dazzled silence which
followed upon his last words, he got up abruptly and left the room. I
switched off the television set. That week established Cavesword in the
country and, except for various priests and ministers of the deserted
gods, the United States was Cavite.


                                   2

The desertion of the old establishments for the new resembled, at
uneasy moments, revolution.

The Congressional Committee, though anti-Cavite, did not dare even
to censure him ... partly from the fear of the vast crowd which
waited in the Capitol plaza and partly from the larger, more cogent
awareness that it was politically suicidal for any popularly elected
Representative to outrage a minority of such strength.

The hearing fizzled out after Cave’s appearance and though there were a
few denunciatory speeches on the floor of Congress, no official action
was taken; shortly afterwards the ban on Cave’s television appearances
was lifted but by then it was too late and millions of people had got
permanently into the habit of attending weekly meetings at the various
Centers to listen to Cave, to discuss with the Residents and their
staffs the points of doctrine ... and doctrine it had become.

The second year in our yellow citadel was more active than the first.
It was decided that Cave make no personal appearances anywhere.
According to Paul, the mystery would be kept intact and the legend
would grow under the most auspicious circumstances. He did not reveal
his actual motive in Cave’s presence but I was aware, from private
conversations we had, just the two of us, of the wisdom of his plan.

He explained himself to me late one afternoon in my office.

“Get him in front of a really hostile crowd and there’d be no telling
what might happen.” Paul was restlessly marching about the room in his
shirtsleeves ... a blunt cigar in his mouth gave him the appearance of
a lower-echelon politician.

“There’s never been a hostile audience yet,” I reminded him. “Except
for the Congressional hearings and I thought he handled himself quite
well with them.”

“With your script in his head,” Paul chuckled and stopped his march
to the filing cabinet by way of that huge television screen which
dominated every office and home. “What I mean is, he’s never been in
a debate. He’s never had a tough opponent, a heckler. The Congressmen
were pretty mild and even though they weren’t friendly they stuck to
easy issues. But what would happen if Bishop Winston got him up before
an audience? Winston’s a lot smarter and he’s nearly as good in public.”

“I suppose Cave would hypnotize him, too.”

“Not on your life.” Paul threw himself into a chair of flimsy chrome
and plastic. “Winston’s been trying to arrange a debate for over two
years. He issues challenges every Sunday on his program (got a big
audience, too ... though not close to ours; I keep checking it).”

“Does Cave want to give it a try?”

“He’s oblivious to such things. I suppose he would if he thought about
it. Anyway it’s to our advantage to keep him out of sight. Let them see
only a television image, hear only his recorded voice. It’s wonderful
copy! Big time.” He was out of the chair and playing with the knob of
the television set: the screen was suddenly filled with a romantic
scene, a pulsating green grotto with water falling in a thin white
line ... so perfected had the machine become that it was actually like
looking through a window, the illusion of depth quite perfect and the
colors true. A warm deep voice off-screen suggested the virtues of a
well-known carbonated drink. Paul turned the switch off. I was relieved
since I, alone in America, was unable to think or work or even relax
while the screen was bright with some other place.

“He won’t like it. He expects next year, at the latest, to start his
world tour.”

“Perhaps then,” said Paul thinly. “Anyway, the longer we put it off the
better. Did you know we turn away a thousand people a day who come here
just to get a glimpse of him?”

“They see him at the Center meetings.”

“Only our own people ... the ones in training to be Residents. I keep
those sessions carefully screened. Every now and then some outsider
gets in but it’s rare.”

I glanced at the tear-sheet of my next day’s editorial; it contained,
among other useful statistics, the quite incredible figures of Cavite
membership in the world. Dubiously, I read off the figure which Paul
had given me at a directors’ meeting.

“It’s about right,” he said complacently, coming to a full stop at the
files. “We don’t actually know the figures of places without proper
Centers like the Latin countries where we are undergoing a bit of
persecution. But the statistics for this country are exact.”

“It’s hard to believe.” I looked at the figure which represented so
many human beings, so much diversity, all touched by one man. “Less
than three years....”

“Three more years and we’ll have most of Europe too.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“Why?” He slammed shut the cabinet drawer which he’d been examining. He
looked at me sharply. “You of all people ask why? Cavesword ... and all
your words too, did the trick. That’s what. We’ve said what they wanted
to hear ... just the opposite of my old game of publicity where we said
what _we_ wanted them to hear. This time it’s just the other way around
and it’s big, ah, it’s big.”

I could agree with that but I pressed him further. “I know what’s
happened, of course, and your theory is certainly correct if only
because had we said the opposite of what they wanted to hear nothing
would have happened. But the question in my mind, the real 'why,’ is
Cave and us. Why we of all the people in the world? Cavesword, between
us and any school of philosophy, is not new. Others have said it more
eloquently. In the past it was a reasonably popular heresy which the
early popes stamped out....”

“Timing! The right man at the right time saying the right thing.
Remember the piece you did on Mohammed....”

“I stole most of it.”

“So what? Most effective. You figured how only at that one moment in
Arabian political history could such a man have appeared.”

I smiled. “That is always the folly of the 'one unique moment.’ For all
I know such a man could have appeared in any of a hundred other Arab
generations.”

“But he never did except that one time ... which proves the point.”

I let it go. Paul was at best not the ideal partner in the perennial
conversation. “There is no doubt but that Cave’s the man,” I said,
neutrally. “Not the last of the line but at least the most effective,
considering the shortness of the mission so far.”

“We have the means. The old people didn’t. Every man, woman, and child
in this country can see Cave for themselves, and at the same moment. I
don’t suppose ten thousand people saw Christ in action ... it took a
generation for news of him to travel from one country to the next.”

“Parallels break down,” I agreed. “It’s the reason I wonder so
continually about Cave and ourselves and what we are doing in the
world.”

“We’re doing good. The people are losing their fear of death. Last
month there were twelve hundred suicides in this country directly
attributable to Cavesword. And these people didn’t kill themselves just
because they were unhappy, they killed themselves because he had made
it easy, even desirable. Now you know there’s never been anybody like
that before in history, anywhere.”

“I’ll say not.” I was startled by the figure he had quoted. In our
_Journal_ we were always reporting various prominent suicides and,
though I had given orders to minimize these voluntary deaths, I had
been forced every now and then to record the details of one or another
of them. But I’d had no idea there had been so many. I asked Paul if he
was quite sure of the number.

“Oh yes.” He was blithe. “At least that many we know of.”

“I wonder if it’s wise.”

“Wise? What’s that got to do with it? It’s logical. It’s the proof of
Cavesword. Death is fine so why not die?”

“Why not live?”

“It’s the same thing.”

“I would say not.”

“Well, you ought to play it up a little more anyway. I meant to talk
about it at the last directors’ meeting but there wasn’t time.”

“Does Cave know about this? About the extent....”

“Sure does.” Paul headed for the door. “He thinks it’s fine. Proves
what he says and it gives other people nerve. This thing is working.”

There was no doubt about that of course. It is hard, precisely, to give
the sense of those two years when the main work got done in a series of
toppling waves which swept into history the remaining edifices of other
faiths and institutions. I had no real firsthand impressions of the
country for I seldom stirred from our headquarters.

I’d sold the house on the river. I had cut off all contacts with old
friends and my life, simply, was Cave. I edited the _Journal_, or
rather presided over the editors. I discussed points of doctrine with
the various Residents who came to see me in the yellow tower. They
were devoted men and their enthusiasm was heartening, if not always
communicable to me. Each week was published further commentaries on
Cavesword and I found my time grew short if I tried to read them all.
I contented myself, finally, with synopses prepared for me by the
_Journal’s_ staff and I felt like a television emperor keeping abreast
of contemporary letters, but there was not enough time, as it was, in
which to contemplate the great things.

Once a week we all dined with Cave. Except for that informal occasion
we seldom saw him; though he complained continually about his captivity
(and it was exactly that; we were all captives to some degree), he
was cheerful enough. Paul saw to it that he was kept busy all day
addressing Residents and Communicators, answering their questions,
firing them by the mere fact of his presence. It was quite common
for strangers to faint upon seeing him for the first time, as a man
and not as a figure on a bit of film. He was good-natured, though
occasionally embarrassed by the chosen groups which were admitted to
him. He seldom talked privately to any of them, however, and he showed
not the faintest interest in their problems, not even bothering to
learn their names. He was only interested in where they were from and
Paul, aware of this, as an added inducement to keep Cave amenable, took
to including each group at least one Cavite from some far place like
Malaya or Ceylon.

Iris was busiest of all. She had become, without design or preparation,
the head of all the Cavite schools throughout the country where
the various Communicators of Cavesword were trained, thousands of
them each year, in a course which included not only Cavesword but
history and psychology as well. There were also special classes in
television-producing and acting. Television, finally, was the key. It
was the primary instrument of communication. Later, with a subservient
government and the aid of mental therapists and new drugs, television
became less necessary but, in the beginning, it was everything.

Clarissa’s role was, as always, enigmatic. She appeared when she
pleased and she disappeared when she pleased. I discovered that her
position among the directors was due to her possession of the largest
single block of stock, dating back to the first days. During the
crucial two or three years, however, she was often with us merely for
protection since all our lives had been proscribed by the last remnants
of the old churches who, as their dominion shrank, fought more and more
recklessly to destroy us.

Stokharin spent his days much like Iris, instructing the Communicators
and Center-therapists in psychology. His power over Paul had
fortunately waned and he was far more likeable: Paul was “freed,”
Stokharin would say with some satisfaction, due to therapy ... and a
new father-image.

Less than two years after the Congressional hearings, Paul, in his
devious way, entered politics and in the following Congressional
elections, without much overt campaigning on our part, the majority
of those elected to both Houses of the Congress were either Cavite or
sympathetic.


                                   3

At last I have met him. Early this evening I went downstairs to see
the manager about an item on my bill which was incorrect. I had
thought that I should be safe for this was the time when most of the
hotel guests are bathing and preparing for dinner. Unfortunately, I
encountered Butler and his newly arrived colleague in the center of the
lobby. I suddenly found myself attempting, by an effort of will, very
simply to vanish into smoke like one of those magicians in a child’s
book. But I remained all too visible. I stopped halfway across the
lobby and waited for them.

They came toward me. Butler murmuring greetings and introductions
to Communicator Jessup (soon to be Resident of Luxor “when we get
underway”): “And this, Jack, is the Mr Hudson I told you about.”

The Resident-to-be shook my hand firmly. He was not more than thirty,
a lean, dark-eyed mulatto whose features and coloring appealed to me,
used as I now am to the Arabs; beside him, Butler looked more red and
gross than ever.

“Butler has told me how useful you’ve been to us,” said Jessup.
His voice was a little high but he did not have the trick of
over-articulation which used to be so common among educated Negroes in
earlier times, a peculiarity they shared with Baptist clergymen and
professional poets.

“I’ve done what I could, little as it is,” I said ceremoniously. Then,
without protest, I allowed them to lead me out onto the terrace which
overlooked the setting sun and the muddy river.

“We planned to see you when Jack, here, arrived,” said Butler
expansively when we were seated, a tray of gin and ice and tonic water
set before us by a waiter who was used now to American ways. “But you
had the sign on your door so I told Jack we’d better wait, till Mr
Hudson is feeling better. You _are_ okay now, aren’t you?”

“Somewhat better,” I said, enjoying the British gin: I’d had none since
I left Cairo. “At my age one is either dead or all right. I seem not to
be dead.”

“How I envy you!” said Jessup solemnly. His voice though high was
strong.

“Envy me?” For a moment I did not quite understand.

“To be so near the blessed state! Not to see the sun again and feel the
body quivering with corrupt life ... oh, what I should give to be as
old as you!”

“You could always commit suicide,” I said irritably, forgetting my role
as an amiable soft-headed old cretin.

This stopped him for only the space of a single surprised breath.
“Cavesway is not possible for his servants,” he said at last,
patiently. “You have not perhaps followed his logic as carefully as you
might had you been living in the civilized world.” He looked at me with
his bright dark eyes inscrutably focused.

Why are you here? I wanted to ask furiously, _finally_, but I only
nodded my head meekly and said, “So much has changed since I came out
here. I do recall, though, that Cavesway was considered desirable for
all.”

“It is ... but not for his servants who must, through living, sacrifice
their comfort ... it is our humiliation, our martyrdom in his behalf.
Even the humblest man or woman can avail themselves of Cavesway
unlike us, his servants, who must live, disgusting as the prospect
is, made bearable only by the knowledge that we are doing his work,
communicating his word.”

“What courage it must take to give up Cavesway!” I intoned with
reverent awe.

“It is the least we can do for him.”

The bright sun resembled that red-gold disk which sits on the brow of
Horus. A hot wind of Numidia stirred the dry foliage about us. I could
smell the metallic odor of the Nile’s water. A muezzin called, high and
toneless in the evening.

“Before I slip off into the better state,” I said at last, emboldened
by gin, “I should like to know as much as possible about the new world
the Cavites have made. I left the United States shortly after Cave took
his way. I have never been back.”

“How soon after?” The question came too fast. I gripped the arms of my
chair tightly.

“Two years after, I think,” I said. “I came to Cairo for the digging
out in El Abul.”

“How could you have missed those exciting years?” Jessup’s voice became
zealous. I remained on guard. “I was not even born then ... and I’ve
always cursed my bad luck. I used to go about talking to complete
strangers who had been alive in those great years. Of course most were
laymen and knew little about the things I had studied but they could
tell me how the sky looked the day he took his way. And, every now and
then, it was possible to meet someone who had seen him.”

“Not many laymen ever saw him,” I said. “I remember with what secrecy
all his movements were enveloped. I was in New York much of the time
when he was there.”

“In New York!” Jessup sighed voluptuously.

“You saw him too, didn’t you, Mr Hudson?” Butler was obviously eager
that I make a good impression.

“Oh yes, I saw him the day he was in Washington. One of his few public
appearances! I was very devout in those days. I am now too, of course,”
I added hastily. “But in those days when it was all new one was, well,
exalted by Cavesword. I made a special trip to Washington just to
get a glimpse of him.” I played as resolutely as possible upon their
passionate faith.

“Did you really see him?”

I shook my head sadly. “Only a quick blur as he drove away. The crowd
was too big and the police were all around him.”

“I have of course relived that moment in the library, watching the
films, but actually to have been there that day....” Jessup’s voice
trailed off as he contemplated the extent of my good fortune.

“Then afterwards, after his death, I left for Egypt and I’ve never been
back.”

“You missed great days.”

“I’m sure of that. Yet I feel the best days were before, when I was in
New York and each week there would be a new revelation of his wisdom.”

“You are quite right,” said Jessup, pouring himself more gin. “Yours
was the finer time even though those of us who feel drawn to the mother
must declare that later days possessed some virtue too, on her account.”

“Mother?” I knew of course before he answered what had happened.

“As Cave was the father of our knowledge, so Iris is its mother,” said
Jessup. He looked at Butler with a half-smile. “Of course there are
some, the majority in fact, of the Communicators who deprecate our
allegiance to the mother, not realizing that it enhances rather than
detracts from Cave. After all, the Word and the Way are entirely his.”

Butler chuckled. “There’s been a little family dispute,” he said.
“We keep it out of the press because it really isn’t the concern of
anybody but us, Cave’s servants. Don’t mind talking to you about it
since you’ll be dead soon anyway and up here we’re all in the same
boat, all Cavites. Anyway, some of the younger fellows, the bright ones
like Jessup, have got attached to Iris ... not that we don’t all love
her equally. It’s just that they’ve got in the habit of talking about
death being the womb again, all that kind of stuff without any real
basis in Cave.”

“It runs all through his work, Bill. It’s implicit in all that he
said.” Jessup was amiable but I sensed a hardness in his tone. It had
come to this, I thought.

“Well, we won’t argue about it,” said Butler, turning to me with a
smile. “You should see what these Irisians can do with a Cavite text.
By the time they finish you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”

“Were you at all active in the Mission?” asked Jessup, abruptly
changing the subject.

I shook my head. “I was one of the early admirers of Cave but I’m
afraid I had very little contact with any of his people. I tried once
or twice to get in to see him ... when they were in the yellow tower,
but it was impossible. Only the Residents and people like that ever got
to see him personally.”

“He was busy those days,” said Jessup, nodding. “He must have dictated
nearly two million words in the last three years of his life.”

“You think he wrote all those books and dialogues himself?”

“Of course he did.” Jessup sounded surprised. “Haven’t you read Iris’s
accounts of the way he worked? The way he would dictate for hours at a
time, oblivious of everything but Cavesword.”

“I suppose I missed all that,” I mumbled. “In those days it was always
assumed that he had a staff who did the work for him.”

“The lutherists,” said Jessup, nodding. “They were extremely subtle in
their methods but of course they couldn’t distort the truth for very
long....”

“Oh,” said Butler. “Mr Hudson asked me the other day if I knew what
the word lutherist came from and I said I didn’t know. I must have
forgotten for I have a feeling it _was_ taught us, back in the old days
when we primitives were turned out, before you bright young fellows
came along to show us how to do Caveswork.”

Jessup smiled. “We’re not that bumptious,” he said. “As for lutherist,
it’s a word based on the name of one of the first followers of Cave.
I don’t know his other name or even much about him. All that I know
I’ve been told ... as far as I remember, the episode was never even
recorded. Much too disagreeable ... and of course we don’t like to
dwell on our failures.”

“I wonder what it was that he did,” I asked, my voice trembling despite
all efforts to control it.

“He was a nonconformist of some kind. He quarreled with Iris, they say.”

“Wonder what happened to him?” asked Butler. “Did they send him through
indoctrination?”

“No, as far as I know.” Jessup paused. When he spoke again his voice
was thoughtful. “According to the story I heard ... legend really ...
he disappeared. They never found him and though we’ve wisely removed
all record of him, his name is still used to describe our failures:
those among us, that is, who refuse Cavesword without indoctrination.
Somewhere, they say, he is living, in hiding, waiting to undo
Caveswork. As Cave was the anti-Christ so he, or rather another like
him, will attempt to destroy us.”

“Not much chance of that.” Butler’s voice was confident. “Anyway, if he
was a contemporary of Cave he must be dead by now.”

“Not necessarily. After all Mr Hudson was a contemporary and _he_
is still alive.” Jessup looked at me then; his eyes, in a burst of
obsidian light, caught the sun’s last rays. I think he knows.


                                   4

There’s not much time left and I must proceed as swiftly as possible to
the death of Cave and my own exile.

The year of Cave’s death was not only a year of triumph but one of
terror as well. The counteroffensive reached its peak in those busy
months, and we were all in danger of our lives.

In the South, groups of Baptists stormed the new Centers, demolishing
them and killing, in several instances, the Residents. Despite our
protests and threats of reprisal, many state governments refused to
protect the Cavite Centers and Paul was forced to enlist a small army
to defend our establishments in those areas which were still dominated
by the old religions. Several attempts were made to destroy our New
York headquarters; fortunately, they were all apprehended before any
damage could be done though one fanatic, a Catholic, got as far as
Paul’s office where he threw a grenade into a waste-basket, killing
himself and slightly scratching Paul who had, in his usual fashion,
been traveling nervously about the room, getting out of range at the
proper moment.

The election of a Cavite-dominated Congress eased things for us
considerably, though it made our enemies all the more desperate.

Paul fought back. Bishop Winston, the most eloquent of the Christian
prelates and the most dangerous to us, had died, giving rise to the
rumor, soon afterwards confirmed by Cavite authority to be a fact, that
he had killed himself and that, therefore, he had finally renounced
Christ and taken to himself Cavesword.

Many of the clergy of the Protestant sects, aware that their
parishioners and authority were falling away, became, quietly, without
gloating on our part, Cavite Residents and Communicators.

The bloodiest persecutions, however, did not occur in North America.
The Latin countries, the seat of the old Catholic power which was
itself the shadow of the Roman Empire, provided the world with a series
of massacres remarkable even in that murderous century. Yet it was a
fact that in the year of Cave’s death, Italy was half-Cavite while
France, England and Germany were nearly all Cavite while only Spain
and parts of Latin America held out, imprisoning, executing, deporting
Cavites against the inevitable day when our Communicators, undismayed,
proud in their martyrdom, would succeed in their assaults upon these
last citadels of paganism.

On a hot day in August, our third and last autumn in the yellow tower,
we dined on the terrace of Cave’s penthouse overlooking the city. The
bright sky shuddered with heat.

Clarissa, who had just come from abroad where she had been enjoying
several seasons under the guise of an official tour of reconnaissance,
was entirely the guest of honor. She sat wearing a large picture hat
beneath the striped awning which sheltered our glass-topped table
from the sun’s rays. Cave insisted on eating out-of-doors as often as
possible even though the rest of us preferred the cool interior where
we were not disturbed by either heat or by the clouds of soot which
floated above the imperial city, impartially lighting upon all who
ventured out into the open.

It was our first “family dinner” in some months (Paul insisted on
regarding us as a family and the metaphors which he derived from this
one conceit used even to irritate the imperturbable Cave). At one end
of the table sat Clarissa, with Paul and me on either side of her; at
the other end sat Cave, with Iris and Stokharin on either side of him;
Iris was on his left and on my right and, early in the dinner, when the
conversation was particular, we talked.

“I suppose we’ll be leaving soon,” she said. A sea gull missed the
awning by inches.

“I haven’t heard anything about it. Who’s leaving ... and why?”

“John thinks we’ve all been here too long; he thinks we’re too remote.”

“He’s quite right about that.” I blew soot off my plate. “But where are
we to go? After all, there’s a good chance that if any of us shows his
head to the grateful populace someone is apt to blow it off.”

“That’s a risk we have to take. But John is right. We must get out
and see the people ... talk to them direct.” Her voice was urgent.
I looked at her thoughtfully, seeing the change that three years of
extraordinary activity had wrought: she was overweight and her face,
as sometimes happens in the first access of weight, was smooth, without
lines, younger-looking but also without much character or expression
... I kept thinking irrelevantly of a marshmallow for, in the light of
day, her casually made-up face did resemble a pale smoothly powdered
confection. Her wonderful sharpness, her old fineness was entirely gone
and the new Iris, the busy, efficient Iris had become like ... like ...
I groped for the comparison, the memory of someone similar I had known
in the past, but the ghost did not materialize; and so haunted, faintly
distrait, I talked to the new Iris I did not really know, to the
visible half of a like-pair whose twin was lost somewhere in my memory.

“I’ll be only too happy to leave,” I said, helping myself to the salad
which was being served us by one or the Eurasian servants Paul, in an
exotic mood, had engaged to look after the penthouse and the person of
Cave. “I don’t think I’ve been away from here half a dozen times in two
years.”

“It’s been awfully hard,” Iris agreed. Her eyes shifted regularly to
Cave, like an anxious parent. “Of course I’ve had more chance than
anyone to get out but I haven’t seen nearly as much as I ought. It’s my
job, really, to look at all the Centers, to supervise in person all the
schools but of course I can’t if Paul insists on turning every trip I
take into a kind of pageant.”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“I think we’re much safer than Paul thinks. The country’s almost
entirely Cavite.”

“All the more reason to be careful. The die-hards are on their last
legs; they’re maniacal, some of them.”

“Well, we must take our chances. John says he won’t stay here another
autumn. September is his best month, you know. I think he’s a little
superstitious about it: it was September when he first spoke Cavesword.”

“What does Paul say?” I looked down the table at our ringmaster who was
telling Clarissa what she had seen in Europe.

Iris frowned. “He’s doing everything he can to keep us here ... I
can’t think why. John’s greatest work has been done face to face with
people yet Paul acts as if he didn’t dare let him out in public. We
have quarreled about this for over a year. Paul and I.”

“He’s quite right. I know. I’d be nervous to go about in public without
some sort of protection. You should see the murderous letters I get at
the _Journal_.”

“We’ve nothing to fear,” said Iris flatly. “And we have everything to
gain by mixing with people. We could easily grow out of touch, marooned
in this tower.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” To my surprise, I found myself defending
our monastic life. “Everyone comes here. Cave speaks to groups of
the faithful every day. I sit like some disheveled hen over a large
newspaper and I couldn’t be more instructed, more engaged in life,
while you dash around the country almost as much as Paul does.”

“But only seeing the Centers, only meeting the Cavites. I have no other
life any more.” I looked at her curiously. There was no bitterness in
her voice yet there was a certain wistfulness which I’d never noticed
before.

“Do you regret all this, Iris?” I asked. It had been some time, three
years, since I had spoken to her of ourselves, of personal matters: we
had become, in a sense, the offices which we held; our symbolic selves
paralyzing all else within, true precedent achieved at a great cost.
Now a fissure had suddenly appeared in that monument which Iris had
become and, through the flaw, I heard again, briefly, the voice of the
girl I had met on the bank of the Hudson in the spring of a lost year.

“I never knew it would be like this,” she said, almost whispering, her
eyes on Cave while she spoke to me. “I never thought my life would be
as alone as this, all work.”

“Yet you wanted it: you _do_ want it. Direction, meaning, you wanted
all that and now you have it. The magic worked, Iris. Your magician was
real.”

“But I sometimes wonder if _I_ am real anymore.” The words, though
softly spoken, fell upon my ear like rounded stones, smooth and hard.

“It’s too late,” I said, mercilessly. “You are what you wanted to be.
Live it out, Iris. There is nothing else.”

“You’re dead too,” she said at last, her voice regaining its usual
authority.

“Speaking of dead,” said Cave suddenly turning toward us (I hoped he
had not heard all our conversation), “Stokharin here has come up with a
wonderful scheme.”

Even Clarissa fell silent. We all did whenever Cave spoke which was
seldom on social occasions. Cave looked cheerfully about the table for
a moment. Stokharin beamed with pleasure at the accolade.

“You’ve probably all heard about the suicides as a result of
Cavesword.” Cave had very early got into the habit of speaking of
himself in the third person whenever a point or doctrine was involved.
“Paul’s been collecting the monthly figures and each month they double.
Of course they’re not accurate since there are a good many deaths due
to Cavesword which we don’t hear about. Anyway, Stokharin has perfected
a painless death by poison, a new compound which kills within an hour
and is delightful to take.”

“I have combined certain narcotics which together insure a highly
exhilarated state before the end, as well as most pleasant fantasies.”
Stokharin smiled complacently.

Cave nodded and continued. “I’ve already worked out some of the
practical details for putting this into action. There are still a
lot of wrinkles, but we can iron them out in time. One of the big
problems of present-day _unorganized_ suicide is the mess it causes
for the people unfortunate enough to be left behind. There are legal
complications; there is occasionally grief in old-fashioned family
groups; there is also a general disturbance which, though only social,
still tends to leave a bad taste, giving suicide, at least among the
reactionaries, a bad name.

“Our plan is simple. We will provide at each Center full faculties
for those who have listened to Cavesword and have responded to it by
taking the better way. There will be a number of comfortable rooms
where the suicidalist may receive his friends for a last visit. We’ll
provide legal assistance to put his affairs in order. Not everyone of
course will be worthy of us. Those who choose death merely to evade
responsibility will be censured and restrained. But the deserving,
those whose lives have been devoted and orderly, may come to us and
receive the gift.”

I was appalled; before I could control myself I had said: “But the law!
You just can’t let people kill themselves....”

“Why not?” Cave looked at me coldly and I saw, in the eyes of the
others, concern and hostility. I had anticipated something like this
ever since my talk with Paul but I had not thought it would come so
swiftly or so boldly.

Paul spoke for Cave. “We’ve got the Congress and the Congress will make
a law for us. For the time being, though, it _is_ against the present
statutes; however, we’ve been assured by our lawyers that there isn’t
much chance of their being invoked except perhaps in the remaining
pockets of Christianity where we’ll go slow until we do have the
necessary laws to protect us.”

At that moment the line which had, from the very beginning, been
visibly drawn between me and them, became a wall apparent to everyone.
Even Clarissa, my usual ally, fearless and sharp, did not speak out.
They looked at me, all of them awaiting a sign; even Cave regarded me
with curiosity.

My hand shook and I was forced to seize the edge of the table to steady
myself. The sensation of cold glass and iron gave me a sudden courage.
I brought Cave’s life to its end.

I turned to him and said, quietly, with all the firmness I could
summon: “Then you’ll have to die as well as they, and soon.”

There was a shocked silence. Iris shut her eyes. Paul gasped and sat
back abruptly in his chair. Cave turned white but he did not flinch.
His eyes did not waver. They seized on mine, terrible and remote, full
of power; with an effort, I looked past him. I still feared his gaze.

“What did you say?” The voice was curiously mild yet it increased
rather than diminished the tension. We had reached the crisis, without
a plan.

“You have removed the fear of death for which future generations will
thank you, as I do. But you have gone too far ... all of you.” I looked
about me at the pale faces; a faint wisp of new moon curled in the pale
sky above. “Life is to be lived until the flesh no longer supports the
life within. The meaning of life, Cave, is more life, not death. The
enemy of life is death, an enemy not to be feared but no less hostile
for all that, no less dangerous, no less wrong when the living choose
it instead of life, either for themselves or for others. You’ve been
able to dispel our fear of the common adversary; that was your great
work in the world ... now you want to go further, to make love to this
enemy we no longer fear, to mate with death ... and it is here that
you, all of you, become the enemies of life.”

“Stop it!” Iris’s voice was high and clear. I did not look at her. All
that I could do now was to force the climax.

“But sooner or later every act of human folly creates its own
opposition. This will too, more soon than late, for if one can make any
generality about human beings it is that they want _not_ to die. You
cannot stampede them into death for long. They are enthusiastic now.
They may not be soon ... unless of course there is some supreme example
before them, one which you, Cave, can alone supply. _You_ will have to
die by your own hand to show the virtue and the truth of all that you
have said.”

I had gone as far as I could. I glanced at Iris while I spoke; she had
grown white and old-looking and, while I watched her, I realized whom
it was she resembled, the obscure nagging memory which had disturbed
me all through dinner: she was like my mother, a woman long dead, one
whose gentle blurred features had been strikingly similar to that
frightened face which now stared at me as though I were a murderer.

Paul was the one who answered me. “You’re out of your mind, Gene,” he
said, when my meaning had at least penetrated to them all. “It doesn’t
follow in the least that Cave must die because others want to. The main
work is still ahead of him. This country is only a corner of the world.
There’s some of Europe and most of Asia and Africa still ahead of us.
How can you even suggest he quit now and die?”

“The work will be done whether he lives or not, as you certainly know.
He’s given it the first impetus. The rest is up to the others, to the
ambitious, the inspired ... we’ve met enough of _them_ these last few
years: they’re quite capable of finishing the work without us.”

“But it’s nothing without Cave.”

I shrugged. I was suddenly relieved as the restraint of three furious
years went in a rush. “I am as devoted to Cave as anyone,” I said (and
I was, I think, honest). “I don’t want him to die but all of you in
your madness have made it impossible for him to live. He’s gone now to
the limit, to the last boundary: he is the son of death and each of you
supports him. I don’t, for it was only my wish to make life better, not
death desirable. I never really believed it would come to this: that
you, Cave, would speak out for death, against life.” I raised my eyes
to his. To my astonishment he had lowered his lids as though to hide
from me, to shut me out. His head was shaking oddly from left to right
and his lips were pressed tight together.

I struck again, without mercy. “But don’t stop now. You’ve got your
wish. By all means, build palaces if you like for those who choose to
die in your name. But remember that you will be their victim, too. The
victim of their passionate trust. They will force you to lead the way
and _you_ must be death’s lover, Cave.”

He opened his eyes and I was shocked to see them full of tears. “I’m
not afraid,” he said.




                                 NINE


                                   1

A few days after our disastrous dinner, Clarissa came to me in my
office. It was our first real meeting since her return from Europe. It
was also my first meeting with any one of the directors for, since the
scene on the penthouse terrace, none had come near me, not even Paul
whom I usually saw at least once a day.

Clarissa seemed tired but fashionable in summer lace. She sat
down heavily in the chair beside my desk and looked at me oddly.
“Recriminations?” I asked cheerfully: the recent outburst had restored
me to perfect health and equanimity. I was prepared for anything,
especially battle.

“You’re an absolute fool and you know it,” she said at last. “I suppose
there are wires in here, recording everything we say.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. Fortunately, I have no secrets.”

“There’s no doubt of that,” she glared at me. “There was no need to
rush things.”

“You mean you anticipated this?”

“What else? Where else could it lead? The same thing happened to
Christ, you know. They kept pushing him to claim the kingdom. Finally,
they pushed too hard and he was killed. It was the killing which
perpetuated the legend.”

“And a number of other things.”

“In any case, it’s all gone too far. Also, I don’t think you even begin
to see what you’ve done.”

“Done? I’ve merely brought the whole thing into the open ... as well
as put myself on record as being opposed to this ... this passion for
death.”

“That of course is nonsense. Just because a few nitwits....”

“A few? Have you seen the statistics? Every month there are a few
hundred more and as soon as Stokharin gets his damned roadhouses for
would-be suicides going we may find that....”

“I always assumed Paul made up the statistics. But even if they _are_
true, even if a few hundred thousand people decide to slip away every
year, I am in favor of it. There are too many people as it is and most
of them aren’t worth the room they take up. I suspect all this is
just one of nature’s little devices to reduce the population ... like
pederasty on those Greek islands.”

“You’re outrageous.”

“I’m perfectly rational which is more than I can say for you. Anyway,
the reason I’ve come to see you today is, first, to warn you and,
second, to say good-by.”

“Good-by? You’re not....”

“Going to kill myself?” she laughed. “Not in a hundred years ... though
I must say lately I’ve begun to feel old. No, I’m going away. I’ve told
Paul that I’ve had my fun, that you’re all on your own and that I want
no part of what’s to come.”

“Where will you go?”

“Who knows? Now for the warning: Paul of course is furious at you and
so is Iris.”

“Perfectly understandable. What did he say?”

“Nothing good. I talked to him this morning. I won’t enrage you by
repeating all the expletives; it’s enough to say he’s eager to get you
out of the way. He feels you’ve been a malcontent all along.”

“He’ll have trouble getting me to take Stokharin’s magic pill.”

“He may not leave it up to you,” said Clarissa significantly, and,
inadvertently, I shuddered. I had of course wondered if they would dare
go so far. I had doubted it but the matter-of-fact Clarissa enlightened
me. “Watch out for him, especially if he becomes friendly. You must
remember that with the country Cavite and with Paul in charge of the
organization you haven’t much chance.”

“I’ll take what I have.”

Clarissa looked at me without, I could see, much hope; it was
disagreeable. “What you don’t know, and this is my last good deed for
in a sense I’m responsible for getting you into this, is that you
accidentally gave the game away.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Paul has been planning for over a year to do away with
Cave. He feels that Cave’s usefulness is over; he’s also uneasy
about letting him loose in the world. Paul wants full control of the
establishment and he can’t have it while Cave lives. Paul also realizes
... he’s much cleverer than you’ve ever thought, by the way ... that
the Cavites need a symbol, some great sacrifice and obviously Cave’s
suicide is the answer. It is Paul’s intention either to get Cave to
kill himself or else to do it for him and then announce that Cave, of
his own free will, chose to die.”

I had the brief sensation of a man drowning. “How do you know all this?”

“I have two eyes; also, Iris told me.”

“She knows too?”

“Of course she knows! Why else do you think she’s so anxious to get
Cave away from this place? She knows Paul can have him killed at any
time and no one would be the wiser.”

I grunted with amazement: I understood now what it was that had
happened on the terrace. I felt a perfect fool. Of them all I alone had
been unaware of what was going on beneath the surface and, in my folly,
I had detonated the situation without knowing it. “_He_ knows too?” I
asked weakly.

“Of course he does; he’s on his guard every minute against Paul.”

“Why has no one ever told me this?”

Clarissa shrugged. “They had no idea which side you’d take. They still
don’t know. Paul believes that you are with him and though he curses
you for an impetuous fool, he’s decided that perhaps it’s a good idea
now to bring all this into the open, at least among ourselves. He hopes
for a majority vote in the directors’ meeting to force Cave to kill
himself.”

“And Cave?”

“Has no wish to die ... sensible man.”

“I am a fool.”

“What I’ve always told you, dear.” Clarissa smiled at me. “I will say,
though, that you are the only one of the lot who has acted for an
impersonal reason, and certainly none of them understands you except
me. I am on your side, in a way. Voluntary deaths don’t alarm me the
way they do you but this obsession which Cave has of death being
preferable to life may have ghastly consequences.”

“What can I do?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s enough that you were warned in
advance.”

“What would _you_ do?”

“Exactly what I’m going to do: pull out for good and take a long trip.”

“I mean if you were I.”

She sighed. “Save your life, if possible; that’s all you can do.”

“I have a few weapons, you know. I have the _Journal_ and I’m a
director. I have friends in every Center.” This was almost true. I had
made a point of knowing as many Residents as possible. “I also have
Iris and Cave on my side since I’m willing to do all I can to keep him
alive, that he _not_ become a supreme symbol.”

“I wish you luck,” Clarissa was most cynical. She rose. “Now that I’ve
done my bit of informing, I’m off.”

“Europe?”

“None of your business. But I _will_ tell you I won’t go back there:
they’ve gone quite mad too. In Madrid I pretended to be a Catholic
and I watched them put Cavites up before firing squads. Of course our
people, despite persecution, are having a wonderfully _exciting_ time
with passwords and peculiar college fraternity handclasps and so on.”
She collected her gloves and handbag from the floor where, as usual,
she had strewn them. “Well, now good-by.” She gave me a kiss; then she
was gone. I never saw her again.


                                   2

Events moved rapidly. I took to bolting my bedroom door at night and,
during the day, I was careful always to have one or another of my
assistants near me. It was a strange sensation to be living in a modern
city with all its police and courts and yet to fear that, in a crisis,
there would be no succor, no one to turn to for aid and protection. We
were a separate government within the nation and the laws did not reach
us.

The day after Clarissa had said good-by, Paul appeared in my office.
I was surrounded by editors but at a look from him and a gesture from
me they withdrew. We had each kept our secret, evidently, for none of
those close to us in that building suspected that there had been a
fatal division.

“I seem to be in disgrace,” I said, my forefinger delicately caressing
the buzzer which I had built into the arm of my chair so that I might
summon aid in the event that a visitor proved to be either a bore or a
maniac, two types curiously drawn to enterprises such as ours.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Paul sat in a chair close to my own; I recall
thinking, a little madly, that elephants are supposed to be at their
most dangerous when they are quite still. Paul was noticeably
controlled. Usually he managed to cross the room at least once for
every full sentence; now he sat looking at me, his face without
expression.

“I’ve seen no one since our dinner except Clarissa,” I explained; then
I added, earnestly: “I wonder where she plans to go. She didn’t....”

“You’ve almost wrecked everything,” he said, his voice tight,
unfamiliar in its tension.

“I didn’t want to,” I said, inaccurately. I was at the moment more
terrified than I’d ever been, either before or since. I could get no
real grip on him: the surface he presented me was as formidable, as
granitic as a prison wall.

“Who told you? Iris? Cave? or were you spying?” Each question was fired
at me like a bullet.

“Spying on whom?”

“On me, damn you!” Then it broke. The taut line of control which had
held in check his anger and his fear broke all at once and the torrent
flowed, reckless and overpowering: “You meddling idiot! You spied
on me; you found out; you thought you’d be able to stall things by
springing it like that. Well, you failed.” I recall thinking, quite
calmly, how much I preferred his face in the congested ugliness of rage
to its ordinary banality of expression. I was relieved, too, by the
storm. I could handle him when he was out of control. I considered my
counteroffensive while he shouted at me, accused me of hostility to
him, of deviationism from Cavesword and of numerous other crimes. He
stopped, finally, for lack of breath.

“I gather,” I said, my voice shaking a little from excitement, “that
at some point recently you decided that Cave should apply Cavesword to
himself and die, providing us with a splendid example, an undying (I
mean no pun) symbol.”

“You know you found out and decided to get in on the act, to force my
hand. Now he’ll never do it.”

That was it then. I was relieved to be no longer in the dark. “Cave has
refused to kill himself?”

“You bet your sweet life he has.” Paul was beginning to recover his
usual poise. “Your little scene gave him the excuse he needed: 'Gene’s
right.’” Paul imitated Cave’s voice with startling accuracy and malice.
“'Gene’s right. I never did mean for everybody to kill themselves off
... where’d the world be if _that_ happened? Just a few people. That’s
all.’ And he’s damned if he’s going to be one of them. 'Hate to set
that sort of example.’”

“Well, you’ll have to try something else then.”

“Why did you do it?” Paul’s voice became petulant. “Did Iris put you up
to it?”

“Nobody put me up to it.”

“You mean to sit there and try to make me believe that it just occurred
to you, like that, to suggest Cave would have to kill himself if he
encouraged suicide?”

“I mean that it occurred to me exactly like that.” I looked at
Paul with vivid loathing. “Can’t you understand even the obvious
relationship between cause and effect? With this plan of Stokharin’s
you’ll make it impossible for Cave _not_ to commit suicide and, when
he does, you will have an international death cult which I shall do my
best to combat.”

Paul’s hands began nervously to play with his tie, his lapels: I
wondered if he’d come armed. I placed my finger lightly upon the
buzzer. Implacably, we faced one another.

“You are not truly Cavesword” was all that he said.

“We won’t argue about that. I’m merely explaining to you why I said
what I did and why I intend to keep Cave alive as long as possible.
Alive and hostile to you, to your peculiar interpretation of his word.”

Paul looked suddenly disconsolate. “I’ve done what I thought best. I
feel Cave should show us all the way. I feel it’s both logical and
necessary to the Establishment that he give back his life publicly.”

“But he doesn’t want to.”

“That is the part I can’t understand. Cavesword is that death is not
to be feared but embraced yet he, the man who has really changed the
world, refuses to die.”

“Perhaps he feels he has more work to do. More places to see. Perhaps,
Paul, he doesn’t trust you ... doesn’t want to leave you in control of
the Establishment.”

“I’m willing to get out if that’s all that’s stopping him.” But the
insincerity of this protestation was too apparent for either of us to
contemplate for long.

“I don’t care what his motives are. I don’t care if he himself is
terrified of dying (and I have a hunch that that is the real reason for
his hesitancy) but I _do_ know that I don’t want him dead by his own
hand.”

“You’re quite sure of that?”

“Absolutely sure. I’m a director of the Establishment and don’t forget
it, Paul: it’s Iris, Cave and I against you and Stokharin. You may
control the organization but we have Cave himself.” I gathered courage
in my desperation. I purposely sounded as though I were in warm concert
with the others.

“I realize all that.” Paul was suddenly meek, conciliatory, sublimely
treacherous. “But you must allow me as much sincerity as you withhold
for yourself. I want to do what’s best. I think he should die and I’ve
done everything to persuade him. He was near agreement when you upset
everything.”

“For which I’m happy ... though it was something of an accident. Are
you sure that it is only for the sake of Cavesword you want him dead?”

“What other possible reason?” He looked at me indignantly. I could not
be sure whether he was telling the truth or not. I doubted it.

“Many other reasons. For one thing you would be his heir, in complete
control of the Establishment; and that of course is something worth
inheriting.”

Paul shrugged convincingly. “I’m as much in charge now as I would
be with him dead,” he said with a certain truth. “I’m interested in
Cavesword, not in Cave. If his death enhances and establishes the Word
more securely then I must do all I can to convince him to take that
course.”

“There is another way,” I said, smiling at the pleasant thought.

“Another way?”

“To convince us of your dedication and sincerity to Cavesword.”

“What’s that?”

“You kill _yourself_, Paul.”

There was a long silence. I pressed the buzzer and my secretary came
in. Without a word, Paul left.

Immediately afterwards, I took the private elevator to Cave’s
penthouse. Two guards stopped me while I was announced by a third.
After a short delay, I was admitted to Cave’s study, but not to Cave;
instead, Iris received me.

“I know what’s happening,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Obviously you do.” Her voice was cold. She did not ask me to sit down.
Awkwardly, I faced her at the room’s center.

“We must stop him.”

“John? Stop him from what?”

“Doing what Paul wants him to do.”

“And what you want as well.”

“You’re mistaken. I thought I made myself clear the other night. But
though my timing was apparently bad, under _no_ circumstances do I want
him to die.”

“You made your speech to force him.”

“And Paul thinks I made it to stop him.” I couldn’t help smiling. “I
am, it seems, everyone’s enemy.”

“Paul has told me everything. How you and he and Stokharin all decided,
without consulting us, that John should die.”

I was astonished at Paul’s boldness. Could he really be moving so
swiftly? How else explain such a prodigious lie? I told her quickly,
urgently what I felt, what I had said to Paul and he to me. She heard
me to the end without expressing either belief or disbelief. When I’d
finished she turned away from me and went to the window where, through
yellow glass, the city rose upon the band of horizon.

“It’s too late,” she said, evenly. “I hadn’t expected this. Perhaps
you’re telling me the truth ... if you are, you’ve made a terrible
mistake.” She turned about suddenly, with a precision which was almost
military. “He’s going to do it.”

The awful words fell like a weight upon a scale. I felt blindly for a
chair and sat down, all strength gone. “Stop him,” I said, all that I
could say. “Stop him.”

“It’s too late for that.” She took pity on me. “I think you’re telling
me the truth. Gene.” She came over to where I was sitting and looked
down at me gently. “I’m sorry I accused you. I should have realized
Paul was lying.”

“_You_ can stop him.”

“I can’t. I’ve tried but I can’t.” Her control was extraordinary. I did
not then guess the reason for her calm, her strength.

“Then I must try.” I stood up. She backed away at the expression on my
face.

“You can’t do anything. He won’t see you. He won’t see anyone but me.”

“I thought he told Paul he agreed with me, that he didn’t want to ...
to countenance all this, that he....”

“At first he took your side, if it is really what you yourself feel:
then he thought about it and ... this morning he decided to go ahead
with Paul’s plan.”

I was confused. “Does Paul know?”

Iris smiled wanly. “John is reserving for himself the pleasure of doing
what he must do without Paul’s assistance.”

“Or knowledge?”

Iris shrugged. “Paul will find out about it this evening, I suppose.
There will be an announcement. John’s secretary is getting it ready now
... one for the public and another for the Establishment.”

“When will it happen?”

“Tomorrow. I go with him, Gene.”

“You? You’re not going to die too?”

“I don’t see that it makes much difference what I do when John dies.”

“You can’t leave us now. You can’t leave Paul in charge of everything.
He’s a dangerous man. Why, if....”

“You’ll be able to handle him.” It was perfectly apparent to me that
she was no longer interested in me or in the others; not even in the
fate of the work we had begun.

“It’s finished, if you go too,” I said bleakly. “Together we could
control Paul; alone, I’d not last ten days. Iris, let me talk to him.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

I contemplated pushing by her and searching the penthouse but there
were guards everywhere and I had no wish to be shot myself on such an
errand.

She guessed my thought and said, quickly “There’s no possible way for
you or anyone to get through to him. Sometime tonight or tomorrow he
will leave and that’s the end.”

“He won’t do it here?” This surprised me.

She shook her head. “He wants to go off alone, away from everyone. I’m
to be with him until the end; then I’ll send the body back here for
burial ... but he’ll leave full instructions.”

“You mean I’m never to see either of you again? Just like that, you
both go?”

“Just like this.” For the first time she displayed some warmth. “I’ve
cared for you, Gene,” she said gently. “I even think that of us all you
were the one most nearly right in your approach to John. I think you
understood him better than he did himself. Try to hold on after we go.
Try to keep it away from Paul.”

“As if I could!” I turned from her bitterly, filled with unexpected
grief: I did not want to lose her presence even though I had lost her
or, rather, never possessed more of her than that one bright instant
years before on the California coast when we had both realized with the
unexpected clarity of the lovers we were not that our lives had come to
the same point at the same moment and the knowledge of this confluence
was the one splendor I had known, the single hope, the unique passion
of my life.

“Don’t miss me, Gene. I couldn’t bear that.” She put her hand on my
arm. I walked away, not able to bear her touch. Then they came.

Paul and Stokharin were in the study. Iris gasped and stepped back when
she saw them. I spun about just as Paul shouted: “It won’t work, Iris!
Give it up.”

“Get out of here, Paul.” Her voice was strong. “You have no right here.”

“I have as much right as you. Now tell me whose idea was it? yours? or
was it John’s? or Gene’s? since he seems to enjoy playing both sides.”

“Get out. All of you.” She moved to the old-fashioned bell cord which
hung beside Cave’s massive desk.

“Don’t bother,” said Paul. “No one will come.”

Iris, her eyes wide now with fear, tugged the cord twice: the second
time it broke off in her hand. There was no response.

Paul looked grim. “I’m sorry to have to do it this way but you’ve left
me no choice. You can’t leave, either of you.”

“You read....”

“I saw the release. It won’t work.”

“Why not? It’s what you’ve wanted all along. Everything will be yours.
There’ll be nobody to stop you. John will be dead and I’ll be gone for
good. You’ll never see me again ... why must you interfere?” She spoke
quickly, plausibly but the false proportion was evident now, even to
me: the plan was tumbling down at Paul’s assault.

“Iris, I’m not a complete fool. I know perfectly well that Cave has no
intention of killing himself and that....”

“Why do you think I’m going with him? to send you the body back for the
ceremony which you’ll perform right here, publicly....”

“Iris.” He looked at her for a long moment. Then: “If you two leave as
planned tonight (I’ve canceled the helicopter by the way) there will be
no body, no embalming, no ceremony, no point ... only a mystery which
might very well undo all our work. I can’t allow that. Cave must die
here, before morning. We might have put it off but your announcement
has already leaked out. There’ll be a million people out there in the
street tomorrow. We’ll have to show them Cave’s body.”

Iris swayed; I moved quickly to her side and held her arm. “It’s three
to two, Paul,” I said. “I assume we’re still directors. Three of us
have agreed that Cave and Iris leave. That’s final.” But my bluff was
humiliatingly weak; it was ignored.

“The penthouse,” said Paul softly, “is empty ... just the five of us
here. The Doctor and I are armed. Take us in to him.”

“No.” Iris moved instinctively, fatally, to the door which led to Cave,
as if to guard it with her body.

There was a brief scuffle which ended with Iris and myself,
considerably disheveled, facing two guns. With an apology, Stokharin
pushed us through the door.

In a small sunroom we found Cave sitting before a television screen,
watching the installation of a new Resident in Boston. He looked up
with surprise at our entrance. “I thought I said....” he began but Iris
interrupted him.

“They want to kill you, John.”

He got to his feet quickly, his face pale and his eyes glaring. Even
Paul was shaken by that glance. “You read my last statement?” Cave
spoke sharply, without apparent fear.

“That’s why we’ve come,” said Paul; he and Stokharin moved, as though
by previous accord, to opposite ends of the little room, leaving the
three of us together, vulnerable at its center. “You must do it here.”
Paul signaled Stokharin who, after some fumbling, produced a small
metal box which he tossed to Cave.

“Some of the new pills,” he said nervously. “Very nice. We use
peppermint in the outer layer and....”

“Take it, John.”

“I’ll get some water,” said Stokharin; but Paul waved to him to keep
his place.

Cave smiled whitely. “I will not take it. Now both of you get out of
here before I call the guards.”

“No more guards,” said Paul. “We’ve seen to that. Now, please, don’t
make it any more difficult than it is. Take the pill.”

“If you read my statement you know that....”

“You intend to take a pleasant trip around the world incognito with
Iris. Yes, I know. As your friend, I wish you could do it. But, for one
thing, sooner or later you’d be recognized and, for another, we must
have proof ... we must have a body.”

“Iris will bring the body back,” said Cave. He was still quite calm.
“I choose to do it this way and there’s nothing more to be said.
You’ll have the Establishment all to yourself and I will be a most
satisfactory figure upon which to build a world religion.” It was the
only time in my experience with Cave that I ever heard him strike the
ironic note.

“Leave us alone, Paul. You have what you want. Now let us go.” Iris
begged but Paul had no eyes for anyone but Cave.

“Take it, John,” he repeated softly. “Take Cavesway.”

“Not for you.” Cave hurled the metal box at Paul’s head and Stokharin
fired. There was one almost bland moment when we all stood, politely,
in a circle and watched Cave, a look of wonder on his face, touch his
shoulder where the blood had begun to flow through a hole in the jacket.

Then Iris turned fiercely on Paul, knocking him off balance, while
Cave ran to the door. Stokharin, his hand shaking and his face silver
with fear, fired three times, each time hitting Cave who quivered but
did not fall; instead, he got through the door and into the study. As
Stokharin hurried after him, I threw myself upon him, expecting death
at any moment; but it did not come for Stokharin had collapsed. He
dropped his gun and hid his face in his hands, rocking back and forth
on the floor, sobbing. Paul, free of Iris’s fierce grip, got to Cave
before I did. By then it was finished.

Cave lay in the corridor only a few feet from the elevator. He’d fallen
on his face and lay now in his own blood, his hands working at the
floor as though trying to dig himself a grave in the hard stone. I
turned him on his back and he opened his eyes. “Iris?” he asked. His
voice was ordinary though his breathing was harsh, uneven.

“Here I am.” She knelt down beside him, ignoring Paul who stood
looking down at them, his pistol held at an absurd angle in his
inexperienced hand.

Cave whispered something to Iris; then a flow of blood, like the full
moon’s tide, poured from his mouth and he was dead.

“Cavesway,” said Paul at last when the silence had been used up: the
phrase he had prepared for this moment, inadequate to the reality at
our feet.

“_Your_ way,” said Iris as she got to her feet. She looked at Paul
calmly, as though they’d met only at that moment. “_Your_ way,” she
repeated.

In the other room Stokharin moaned.




                                  TEN


                                   1

Now the work was complete. Cavesword and Cavesway formed a perfect
design and all the rest would greatly follow ... or so Paul assumed. I
believe if I had been he I should have killed both Iris and myself the
same day, removing at one stroke witnesses and opposition. But he did
not have the courage and, too, I think he underestimated us, to his own
future sorrow.

Iris and I were left alone in the penthouse. Paul, after shaking
Stokharin into a semblance of calm, bundled Cave’s body into a blanket
and then, with the doctor’s help, put it upon the private elevator.

The next twenty-four hours were a grim carnival. The body of Cave,
beautifully arranged and painted, lay in the central auditorium of the
center as thousands filed by to see him. Paul’s speech over the corpse
was telecast around the world.

Iris and I kept to our separate rooms, both by choice and from
necessity since gentle guards stood before our doors and refused,
apologetically, to let us out.

I watched the services over television while my chief editors visited
me one by one unaware of what had happened, ignoring the presence of
the guards. It was assumed that I was too shocked by grief to go to
the office. Needless to say, I did not mention to any of them what had
happened. At first I had thought it best to expose Paul as a murderer
and a fraud but, on second thought (the second thought which followed
all too swiftly upon the first, as Paul had no doubt assumed it would),
I did not want to risk the ruin of our work. Instead, I decided to
wait, to study Paul’s destruction, an event which I had grimly vowed
would take place as soon as possible. He could not now get rid of
either Iris or me in the near future and all we needed, I was sure, was
but a week or two. I was convinced of this though I had no specific
plan. Iris had more influence, more prestige in the Establishment than
Paul, and I figured, correctly as later events corroborated, that
Cave’s death would enhance her position. As for myself, I was not
without influence.

I kept my lines of communication clear the next few days during what
was, virtually, a house-arrest. The editors came to me regularly and I
continued to compose editorials. The explanation for my confinement to
my room was, according to a bulletin signed by Stokharin, a mild heart
condition. Everyone was most kind. I was amused when I first heard of
the diagnosis: one of Stokharin’s pellets in my food and death would be
ascribed to coronary occlusion, the result of the strain attendant upon
Cave’s death. I had less time than I thought. I made plans.

Paul’s funeral oration was competent though less than inspiring.
The Chief Resident of Dallas, one of the great new figures of the
Establishment, made an even finer speech over the corpse. I listened
attentively, judging from what was said and what was not said the
wind’s direction: it was quite obvious that Cavesway was to be the
heart of the doctrine. Death was to be embraced with passion; life
was the criminal; death the better reality; consciousness was an evil
which, in death’s oblivion, met its true fate ... man’s one perfect
virtuous act was the sacrifice of his own consciousness to the pure
nothing from which, by grim accident, it had come, a malignancy in
creation. The Chief Resident of Dallas was most eloquent, and chilling.

Even sequestered in my room, I caught some of the excitement which
circled the globe like a lightning storm. Thirty-five hundred
suicides were reported within forty-eight hours of Cave’s death. The
statisticians lost count of the number of people who fought to get
inside the building to see Cave in death. From my window, however,
I could see that Park Avenue had been roped off for a dozen blocks.
People, like ants, swarmed toward the gates of the tower.

I sent messages to Iris but received none, nor, for that matter, did I
have any assurance that she had got mine. Paul’s adventures I followed
on television and from the reports of my editors who visited me
regularly, despite Stokharin’s orders.

On the third day, I was allowed to go to my office: Paul having decided
that it would be thought odd if I were to die so soon after Cave and,
too, he was no doubt relieved to discover that I had not revealed to my
friends what actually had happened. Having established the fact of my
weak heart, my death could be engineered most plausibly at any time.

I did not see him face to face until the fourth day, when John Cave’s
ashes were to be distributed over the United States. Stokharin, Paul
and I sat in the back seat of a limousine at the head of a motorcade
which, beginning at the tower, terminated at the airport where the
jet-plane which would sprinkle the ashes over New York, Seattle,
Chicago and Los Angeles was waiting, along with a vast crowd and the
President of the United States, an official Christian but known to
incline, as Presidents do, toward the majority.... Cavites were the
majority and had been for almost two years.

I was startled to find Paul and Stokharin in the same automobile. It
had been my understanding that we were to travel separately in the
motorcade. They were most cordial.

“Sorry to hear you’ve been sick, Gene,” Paul grinned ingenuously.
“⁗Mustn’t strain the old ticker.”

“I’m sure the good doctor will be able to cure me,” I said cheerfully.

They both laughed loudly; then the car pulled away from the tower and
drove down Park Avenue at the head of a long procession. Crowds lined
the street as we drove slowly by. They were curiously still, as though
they hardly knew how to react: this was a funeral yet Cavesway was
glorious. Some cheered; most simply stared and pointed at our car,
recognizing Paul. I suddenly realized why they were so interested in
this particular car: on the floor, at Paul’s feet, was what looked like
a large flower pot covered with gold foil.

“Are those the ashes?”

Paul nodded. “Did an extra quick job, too, I’m glad to say. We didn’t
want any slip up.”

“Where’s Iris?”

“I was going to ask _you_ that.” Paul looked at me sharply. “She
disappeared yesterday and it’s very embarrassing for all of us, very
inconsiderate too: she knew I especially wanted her at the ceremony.
She knows that everyone will expect to see her.”

“I think she took the idea of Cavesway most illogically,” said
Stokharin, his usual sang-froid had returned, his breakdown forgotten.
“She should be grateful to us for making all this possible, despite
Cave’s weakness.”

I ignored Stokharin. I looked at Paul who was beaming at the crowd,
acknowledging their waves with nods of his head. “What will you do now?”

“You heard the ceremony?”

“Yes.”

“Well, just that. Cavesway has become universal. Even the economists
in Washington have privately thanked us for what we’re doing to reduce
the population. There’s a theory that by numerous voluntary deaths
wars might decrease since ... or so the proposition goes ... they are
nature’s way of checking population.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” I assumed a troubled expression as I made the
first move of my counteroffensive.

Paul looked away from the crowd to regard me briefly, shrewdly. “You
don’t think I trust you, do you?”

I shrugged, “Why not? I can’t change Cavesway now.”

Paul grunted. I could see that he did not believe this spurious
_volte-face_; nevertheless, an end to my active opposition would
force him to revise his plans; this would, I hoped, give me the time
I needed. I pressed on: “I think we can compromise. Short of rigging
my death which would cause suspicion, you must continue to put up with
me for a while. You’ve nothing to fear from me since you control the
Establishment and since the one weapon I have against you I will not
use.”

“You mean....”

“My having witnessed the murder of Cave. If I had wanted to I could
have revealed this before the cremation. An autopsy would certainly
have ruined everything for you.”

“Why didn’t you?” I could see that Paul was genuinely interested in my
motives.

“Because it would have meant the end of the work. I saw no reason to
avenge Cave at such a cost: you must remember he was not a god to me,
any more than you are.”

This twist of a blunt knife had the calculated effect: “What a cold
devil you are!” said Paul, almost admiringly. “I wish I could believe
you.”

“There’s no reason not to. I was opposed to the principle of suicide.
It is now firmly established. We must go on from there.”

“Then tell me where Iris is.”

“I haven’t any idea. As you know, I’ve been trying to get in touch with
her for days; your people intercepted everything. How _did_ she manage
to get away?”

“One of the guards let her out. I thought he was one of our boys but
it seems she worked on him and he left with her. I’ve alerted all the
Centers; so far no one’s seen her.”

Just before Grand Central Station, the crowd began to roar with
excitement and Paul held up the jar of ashes which glittered in his
hands; the crowd went wild and tried to break through the police lines.
The cortege drove a bit faster and Paul set the ashes down; he looked
triumphant but tired, as though he’d not slept in a month: one eyelid,
I saw, was twitching with fatigue.

“When are we to have a directors’ meeting?” I asked as we crossed the
bridge which spanned the Hudson. “We’re still legally a company. We
must elect a new board chairman.”

“As soon as we find Iris,” said Paul. “I think we should all be there,
don’t you? Two to two.”

“Perhaps three to one on the main things,” I said, allowing this to
penetrate, aware that his quick mind would study all the possibilities
and arrive at a position so subtle and unexpected as to be of use to me
if I, in turn, were quick enough to seize my opportunity.

At the airport, a detachment of airborne troops were drawn up before a
festooned reviewing stand. Near by the Marine Band played incongruous
marches while in the center of the stand, surrounded by cameras and
dignitaries, stood the smiling President of the United States.


                                   2

The next day while I was examining the various accounts of the last
ceremony, the chief editor came into my office, his face blazing with
excitement: “Iris Mortimer!” was all he could say.

“Iris? Where?”

“Dallas.” He exploded the name in exhalation; then he told me: word had
come from our office there that Iris had, a few hours before, denounced
Paul for having ignored Cave’s last wishes to be embalmed and that, as
a result of this and other infidelities to Cavesword, she, as ranking
director and with the full concurrence of the Chief Resident of Dallas,
was calling a Council of Residents to be held the following week at
Dallas to determine the future course of the Establishment.

I almost laughed aloud with pleasure. I had not believed she would
show such vigor and daring. I had feared that she might choose to
vanish into obscurity, her life ended with Cave ... even at my most
optimistic, I had not dreamed she would act with such realism,
exploiting a rivalry between Paul and the Chief Resident of Dallas, the
premier member of the Council of Residents, a group that, until now,
had existed for purely ceremonial reasons, exerting no influence upon
the administration of the Establishment which, while Cave lived, was by
Paul directed. Now with one stroke Iris had undermined Paul by going
directly to the Establishment.

I moved swiftly. The _Journal_ was at that moment going to
press. I scribbled a brief announcement of the coming Council of
Residents, naming Iris as Cave’s spiritual heir and custodian of the
Establishment. By telephone, I ordered a box to be cut out of the first
page. I had not acted a moment too soon for a few minutes after my
telephone call to the compositor, Paul came to my office, furious. He
slammed the door behind him. We were alone for the first time in weeks.

“You knew this was going to happen.”

“I wish I had.”

He paced the floor quickly, eyes shining. “I’ve sent out an order
countermanding Iris. I’ve also removed the Resident at Dallas. I’m
still in charge of the Establishment. I control the funds and I’ve told
every damned Resident in this country that if he goes to Dallas I’ll
cut off his Center without a penny.”

“It won’t work.” I smiled amiably at Paul. “Your only hold over the
Establishment is legal. You are the vice president of the corporation
and now, at least for the interim, you’re in charge. Fine. But since
you’ve become so devoted to the letter of the law you can’t act
without consulting your directors and two of them will be in Dallas,
reorganizing.”

He cursed me for some minutes: then abruptly he stopped. “You won’t go
to Dallas. You’re going to be here for the directors’ meeting which
cuts off every Resident who attends that circus without a penny. We own
the damned Centers; we can appoint whom we like. You’re going to help
ratify my new appointments.”

I pressed the buzzer in my chair: a secretary came in. I told her to
get me a reservation on the next plane to Dallas; then, before she had
closed the door behind her, I was halfway through it. I turned to look
back at Paul who stood now quite alone in the office. “You had better
come too,” I said. “It’s all over.”


                                   3

The new Establishment was many months in the making. The Council of
seven hundred Residents from all parts of the world sat in general
session once a week and in various committees the rest of the time.
Iris was everywhere at once, advising, encouraging, proposing. We had
adjoining suites in the huge white marble Center which had now become
(and was to remain) the capitol of the Cavite Establishment.

The Residents were an extraordinary crew, ranging from zealous maniacs
to urbane, thoughtful men. None had been in the least disturbed by
Paul’s threats and with Iris and myself as chief stockholders (Clarissa
had turned her voting shares over to Iris, I discovered), we dissolved
the old company and a new organization was fashioned, one governed by
the Council of Residents who, in turn, chose an heir to Cave and an
administrative assistant to direct the affairs of the Establishment.
Iris was unanimously appointed Guardian of Cavesword while the Chief
Resident of Dallas undertook Paul’s old administrative duties. From
a constitutional point of view the Council was in perfect agreement,
accepting Iris’s guidance without demur.

I, myself, was something of a hero for having committed the _Journal_
at a crucial moment to the Dallas synod. I was made an honorary
Resident (Dubuque, Iowa, was given me as a titular Center) and
appointed to the Executive Committee which was composed of Iris,
Dallas, two elected Residents and myself.

We worked harmoniously for some weeks. Each day we would issue
bulletins to the news-services which had congregated in the city,
reporting our progress zealously, devotedly.

Paul arrived in the second week. He came secretly and unannounced. I
have no idea what it was that he said to Iris or what she said to him;
all I know is that a few hours after their meeting in the Center, he
took Cavesway of his own free will and to my astonishment.

I hadn’t believed it possible, I said, when Iris told me, shortly
after the Center announced the presence of Paul Himmell among the dead
for that week (regular lists were published of those who had used the
Center’s facilities to take Cavesway); in fact, so quietly was it
handled that very little was made of it in the press which did not even
report the event until ten days after it had taken place.

“We may have misunderstood Paul,” Iris was serene. Her figure had
become in the last year thick and maternal while her hair was streaked
with premature white. We were alone in the Committee Room, waiting for
our fellow committeemen who were not due for another half hour. The
August sun shone gold upon the mahogany table, illuminating warmly,
like a Byzantine mosaic, the painting of Cave which hung behind her
chair.

“He really did do it himself?” I looked at her suspiciously. She smiled
softly, with amusement.

“He was persuaded,” she said. “But he did it himself, of his own free
will.”

“Not forced?”

“I swear not. He was more sincere than I’d ever thought. He believed
in Cavesway.” How naturally she said that word which she had so
desperately tried to keep from ever existing. We had not once alone
referred to the murder of Cave, both acting, for different reasons, as
though his death had been, as the world now thought, his own doing.

“You had really planned to go away?” I asked.

She looked at me, suddenly alert, impersonal: “That’s all finished,
Gene. We must keep on in the present. I never think now of anything but
Cavesword and Cavesway. It does no good to think of what might have
been.”

And that was the most we were ever to say to one another about the
crisis in our lives. We talked of the present; we made plans. Stokharin
had disappeared at the same time Paul flew to Dallas and we both
decided it was wisest to forget him: certainly he would not trouble us
again. There was no talk of vengeance.

The committee members, important and proud, joined us and we took up
the day’s problem which was, by some irony, the standardization of
facilities for Cavesway in the different Centers. Quietly, without
raising our voices, in a most good-humored way, we broke neatly in
half on Cavesway. I and one other Resident objected to the emphasis
on death. Dallas and the fourth member were in favor of expanding
the facilities, both physically and psychologically, until every
Cavite at the moment when he felt his social usefulness ebbing could
take Cavesway. We argued reasonably with one another until it became
apparent that there was no possible ground for compromise.

It was put to a vote and Iris broke the tie by endorsing Cavesway.


                                   4

This morning as I finished the above lines I suffered a mild stroke ...
a particularly unusual one since I did not become, as far as I know,
unconscious. I was rereading my somewhat telescoped account of the
Council of Dallas when, without warning, the blow fell; a capillary
burst in my brain and I felt as though I were losing my mind in one
last fantastic burst of images. The pain was negligible, no worse than
a headache, but the sensation of letting go one’s conscious mind, one’s
control was terrifying. I tried to move from my work-table, to call for
help, but I was too weak. For one long giddy moment I thought: I am
dying; this is the way it is and, even in my anguish, I was curious,
waiting for that approach of winged darkness which years ago I once
experienced when I fainted and which I have always since imagined to be
like death’s swift entrance.

But then my body recovered from the assault: the wall was breached, the
enemy is in the city but the citadel is still intact and yet I live.

Weakly I got up, poured myself a jigger of brandy and then, having
drunk it all at once, fell across my bed and slept and did not dream,
which is a rare blessing in these feverish last days.

I was awakened by the sensation of being watched. I opened my eyes and
saw above me, looking like a bronze figure of Anubis, Jessup who said,
“I’m sorry ... didn’t mean to disturb you. Your door was open and I....”

“Perfectly all right,” I said, as smoothly as I could, drugged with
sleep. I pulled myself up against the pillows. “Excuse me for not
getting up but I’m still a little weak from my illness.”

“I wanted to see you,” said Jessup, sitting down in the chair which I
indicated beside the bed. “I hope you don’t mind my barging in like
this.”

“Not at all. How do you find Luxor?” I wanted to delay as long as
possible the questions which I was quite sure he would want to ask me,
questions concerning my identity.

“The people are not so fixed in error as we’d been warned. There’s
a great curiosity about Cavesword.” His eyes had been taking in the
details of the room with some interest; to my horror I recalled that I
had left the manuscript of my work on the table instead of hiding it as
usual in the washstand. He saw it. “Your ... memoirs?” He looked at me
with a polite interest which I was sure disguised foreknowledge.

“A record of my excavations,” I said, in a voice which descended the
scale to a whisper. “I do it for my own amusement, to pass the time.”

“I should enjoy reading it.”

“You exaggerate, in your kindness,” I said, pushing myself higher on
the bed, preparing if necessary for a sudden spring.

“Not at all. If it is about Egypt, I should read it. There are no
contemporary accounts of this country ... by one of us.”

“I’m afraid the details of findings in the valley yonder,” I gestured
toward Libya and the last acres of the kings, “won’t be of much use to
you. I avoid all mention of people less than two millennia dead.”

“Even so.” But Jessup did not pursue the subject. I relaxed a little.

“I must tell you,” he said suddenly, “that I was suspicious of you.”

Now I thought, now it comes; then I was amused: right at the end they
arrive, when it was too late for them, or for me. “What form did your
suspicions take?” My fear left me in one last flurry, like a bird
departing in a cold wind for another latitude, leaving the branch which
held it all summer through to wither in the snow.

“I thought you might be the one we have so often heard of ... in
legend, that is: the enemy of Cave.”

“Which enemy?”

“The nameless one or at least we know a part of his name if lutherist
is derived from it.”

“What made you suspect me?”

“Because were I an enemy of Cave and were I forced to disappear, I
should come to just such a town in just such a country as this.”

“Perfectly logical,” I agreed. “But there are many towns in the Arab
League, in Asia too. Why suppose one old man to be this mythical
villain?”

Jessup smiled. “Intuition, I’m afraid. A terrible admission from one
who has been trained in the logic of Cavesword. It _seemed_ exactly
right. You’re the right age, the right nationality ... in any case, I
telephoned Dallas about you.”

I took this calmly. “You talked to the Chief Resident himself?”

“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.