Messiah (15 page)

"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 shot 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 musn'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.