Perelandra (16 page)

‘And will you teach us Death?’ said the Lady to Weston’s shape, where it stood above her.

‘Yes,’ it said, ‘it is for this that I came here, that you may have Death in abundance. But you must be very courageous.’

‘Courageous
. What is that?’

‘It is what makes you to swim on a day when the waves are so great and swift that something inside you bids you to stay on land.’

‘I know. And those are the best days of all for swimming.’

‘Yes. But to find Death, and with Death the real oldness and the strong beauty and the uttermost branching out, you must plunge into things greater than waves.’

‘Go on. Your words are like no other words that I have ever heard. They are like the bubble breaking on the tree. They make me think of – of – I do not know what they make me think of.’

‘I will speak greater words than these; but I must wait till you are older.’

‘Make me older.’

‘Lady, Lady,’ broke in Ransom, ‘will not Maleldil make you older in His own time and His own way, and will not that be far better?’

Weston’s face did not turn in his direction either at this point or at any other time during the conversation, but his voice, addressed wholly to the Lady, answered Ransom’s interruption.

‘You see?’ it said. ‘He himself, though he did not mean nor wish to do so, made you see a few days ago that Maleldil is beginning to teach you to walk by yourself, without holding you by the hand. That was the first branching out. When you came to know that, you were becoming really old. And since then Maleldil has let you learn much – not from His own voice, but from mine. You are becoming your own. That is what Maleldil wants
you to do. That is why He has let you be separated from the King and even, in a way, from Himself. His way of making you older is to make you make yourself older. And yet this Piebald would have you sit still and wait for Maleldil to do it all.’

‘What must we do to Piebald to make him older?’ said the Lady.

‘I do not think you can help him till you are older yourself,’ said the voice of Weston. ‘You cannot help anyone yet. You are as a tree without fruit.’

‘It is very true,’ said the Lady. ‘Go on.’

‘Then listen,’ said Weston’s body. ‘Have you understood that to wait for Maleldil’s voice when Maleldil wishes you to walk on your own is a kind of disobedience?’

‘I think I have.’

‘The wrong kind of obeying itself can be a disobeying.’

The Lady thought for a few moments and then clapped her hands. ‘I see,’ she said, ‘I see! Oh, how old you make me. Before now I have chased a beast for mirth. And it has understood and run away from me. If it had stood still and let me catch it, that would have been a sort of obeying – but not the best sort.’

‘You understand very well. When you are fully grown you will be even wiser and more beautiful than the women of my own world. And you see that it might be so with Maleldil’s biddings.’

‘I think I do not see quite clearly.’

‘Are you certain that He really wishes to be always obeyed?’

‘How can we not obey what we love?’

‘The beast that ran away loved you.’

‘I wonder,’ said the Lady, ‘if that is the same. The beast knows very well when I mean it to run away and when I want it to come to me. But Maleldil has never said to us that any word or work of His was a jest. How could our Beloved need to jest or frolic as we do? He is all a burning joy and a strength. It is like thinking that He needed sleep or food.’

‘No, it would not be a jest. That is only a thing like it, not the thing itself. But could the taking away of your hand from His – the full growing up – the walking in your own way – could that ever be perfect unless you had, if only once,
seemed
to disobey Him?’

‘How could one
seem
to disobey?’

‘By doing what He only
seemed
to forbid. There might be a commanding which He wished you to break.’

‘But if He told us we were to break it, then it would be no command. And if He did not, how should we know?’

‘How wise you are growing, beautiful one,’ said Weston’s mouth. ‘No. If He told you to break what He commanded, it would be no true command, as you have seen. For you are right, He makes no jests. A real disobeying, a real branching out, this is what He secretly longs for: secretly, because to tell you would spoil all.’

‘I begin to wonder,’ said the Lady after a pause, ‘whether you are so much older than I. Surely what you are saying is like fruit with no taste! How can I step out of His will save into something that cannot be wished? Shall I start trying not to love Him – or the King – or the beasts? It would be like trying to walk on water or swim through islands. Shall I try not to sleep or to drink or to laugh? I thought your words had a meaning. But now it
seems they have none. To walk out of His will is to walk into nowhere.’

‘That is true of all His commands except one.’

‘But can that one be different?’

‘Nay, you see of yourself that it is different. These other commands of His – to love, to sleep, to fill this world with your children – you see for yourself that they are good. And they are the same in all worlds. But the command against living on the Fixed Island is not so. You have already learned that He gave no such command to my world. And you cannot see where the goodness of it is. No wonder. If it were really good, must He not have commanded it to all worlds alike? For how could Maleldil not command what was good? There is
no
good in it. Maleldil Himself is showing you that, this moment, through your own reason. It is mere command. It is forbidding for the mere sake of forbidding.’

‘But why …?’

‘In order that you may break it. What other reason can there be? It is not good. It is not the same for other worlds. It stands between you and all settled life, all command of your own days. Is not Maleldil showing you as plainly as He can that it was set up as a test – as a great wave you have to go over, that you may become really old, really separate from Him.’

‘But if this concerns me so deeply, why does He put none of this into my mind? It is all coming from you, Stranger. There is no whisper, even, of the Voice saying Yes to your words.’

‘But do you not see that there cannot be? He longs – oh, how greatly He longs – to see His creature become fully itself, to stand up in its own reason and its own
courage even against Him. But how can He tell it to do this? That would spoil all. Whatever it did after that would only be one more step taken with Him. This is the one thing of all the things He desires in which He must have no finger. Do you think He is not weary of seeing nothing but Himself in all that He has made? If that contented Him, why should He create at all? To find the Other – the thing whose will is no longer His – that is Maleldil’s desire.’

‘If I could but know this –’

‘He must not tell you. He cannot tell you. The nearest He can come to telling you is to let some other creature tell it for Him. And behold, He has done so. Is it for nothing, or without His will, that I have journeyed through Deep Heaven to teach you what He would have you know but must not teach you Himself?’

‘Lady,’ said Ransom, ‘if I speak, will you hear me?’

‘Gladly, Piebald.’

‘This man has said that the law against living on the Fixed Island is different from the other Laws, because it is not the same for all worlds and because we cannot see the goodness in it. And so far he says well. But then he says that it is thus different in order that you may disobey it. But there might be another reason.’

‘Say it, Piebald.’

‘I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His
bidding is the
only
reason? When we spoke last you said that if you told the beasts to walk on their heads, they would delight to do so. So I know that you understand well what I am saying.’

‘Oh, brave Piebald,’ said the Green Lady, ‘this is the best you have said yet. This makes me older far: yet it does not feel like the oldness this other is giving me. Oh, how well I see it! We cannot walk out of Maleldil’s will: but He has given us a way to walk out of
our
will. And there could be no such way except a command like this. Out of our own will. It is like passing out through the world’s roof into Deep Heaven. All beyond is Love Himself. I knew there was joy in looking upon the Fixed Island and laying down all thought of ever living there, but I did not till now understand.’ Her face was radiant as she spoke, but then a shade of bewilderment crossed it. ‘Piebald,’ she said, ‘if you are so young, as this other says, how do you know these things?’

‘He says I am young, but I say not.’

The voice of Weston’s face spoke suddenly, and it was louder and deeper than before and less like Weston’s voice.

‘I am older than he,’ it said, ‘and he dare not deny it. Before the mothers of the mothers of his mother were conceived, I was already older than he could reckon. I have been with Maleldil in Deep Heaven where he never came and heard the eternal councils. And in the order of creation I am greater than he, and before me he is of no account. Is it not so?’ The corpse-like face did not even now turn towards him, but the speaker and the Lady both seemed to wait for Ransom to reply. The falsehood which sprang to his mind died on his lips. In that air, even
when truth seemed fatal, only truth would serve. Licking his lips and choking down a feeling of nausea, he answered:

‘In our world to be older is not always to be wiser.’

‘Look on him,’ said Weston’s body to the Lady; ‘consider how white his cheeks have turned and how his forehead is wet. You have not seen such things before: you will see them more often hereafter. It is what happens – it is the beginning of what happens – to little creatures when they set themselves against great ones.’

An exquisite thrill of fear travelled along Ransom’s spine. What saved him was the face of the Lady. Untouched by the evil so close to her, removed as it were ten years’ journey deep within the region of her own innocence, and by that innocence at once so protected and so endangered, she looked up at the standing Death above her, puzzled indeed, but not beyond the bounds of cheerful curiosity, and said:

‘But he was right, Stranger, about this forbidding. It is you who need to be made older. Can you not see?’

‘I have always seen the whole whereof he sees but the half. It is most true that Maleldil has given you a way of walking out of your own will – but out of your deepest will.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Your deepest will, at present, is to obey Him – to be always as you are now, only His beast or His very young child. The way out of that is hard. It was made hard that only the very great, the very wise, the very courageous should dare to walk in it, to go on – on out of this smallness in which you now live – through the dark wave of His forbidding, into the real life, Deep Life, with all its joy and splendour and hardness.’

‘Listen, Lady,’ said Ransom. ‘There is something he is not telling you. All this that we are now talking has been talked before. The thing he wants you to try has been tried before. Long ago, when our world began, there was only one man and one woman in it, as you and the King are in this. And there once before he stood, as he stands now, talking to the woman. He had found her alone as he has found you alone. And she listened, and did the thing Maleldil had forbidden her to do. But no joy and splendour came of it. What came of it I cannot tell you because you have no image of it in your mind. But all love was troubled and made cold, and Maleldil’s voice became hard to hear so that wisdom grew little among them; and the woman was against the man and the mother against the child; and when they looked to eat there was no fruit on their trees, and hunting for food took all their time, so that their life became narrower, not wider.’

‘He has hidden the half of what happened,’ said Weston’s corpse-like mouth. ‘Hardness came out of it but also splendour. They made with their own hands mountains higher than your Fixed Island. They made for themselves Floating Islands greater than yours which they could move at will through the ocean faster than any bird can fly. Because there was not always food enough, a woman could give the only fruit to her child or her husband and eat death instead – could give them all, as you in your little narrow life of playing and kissing and riding fishes have never done, nor shall do till you break the commandment. Because knowledge was harder to find, those few who found it became beautiful and excelled their fellows as you excel the beasts; and thousands were striving for their love …’

‘I think I will go to sleep now,’ said the Lady quite suddenly. Up to this point she had been listening to Weston’s body with open mouth and wide eyes, but as he spoke of the women with the thousands of lovers she yawned, with the unconcealed and unpremeditated yawn of a young cat.

‘Not yet,’ said the other. ‘There is more. He has not told you that it was this breaking of the commandment which brought Maleldil to our world and because of which He was made man. He dare not deny it.’

‘Do you say this, Piebald?’ asked the Lady.

Ransom was sitting with his fingers locked so tightly that his knuckles were white. The unfairness of it all was wounding him like barbed wire. Unfair … unfair. How could Maleldil expect him to fight against this, to fight with every weapon taken from him, forbidden to lie and yet brought to places where truth seemed fatal? It was unfair! A sudden impulse of hot rebellion arose in him. A second later, doubt, like a huge wave, came breaking over him. How if the enemy were right after all?
Felix peccatum Adae.
Even the Church would tell him that good came of disobedience in the end. Yes, and it was true too that he, Ransom, was a timid creature, a man who shrank back from new and hard things. On which side, after all, did the temptation lie? Progress passed before his eyes in a great momentary vision: cities, armies, tall ships and libraries and fame, and the grandeur of poetry spurting like a fountain out of the labours and ambitions of men. Who could be certain that Creative Evolution was not the deepest truth? From all sorts of secret crannies in his own mind whose very existence he had never before suspected, something wild and heady
and delicious began to rise, to pour itself towards the shape of Weston. ‘It is a spirit, it is a spirit,’ said this inner voice, ‘and you are only a man. It goes on from century to century. You are only a man …’