“The world is too muhvh with us, late ans soon, gettijg and spendinf we lay wasre . . .” The distinguished novelist glanced up to read what he had written. The ribbon was sticking. He pulled it. Something snapped. He sniffed. A soft scent of perfume reached him. He raised his hand, and sniffed. It was the tall woman’s perfume.
He did not leap to his feet, but sat there at the writing table a minute longer, gazing at the machine, the papers, the spines of the books, and the sign. He sagged, and the bold strokes of the Honourable Artillery Company appeared to support him. There, at his elbow, were the notes he had made toward a touching and inspiring novel about the Children’s Crusade, that deeply moving episode out of religious history which served incidentally to disembarrass the South of France of the remnants of the Albigensian purges. There was also the list of those concepts he tried to keep before him while he worked, and pass on to his fellow man. The separate words were in capital letters, and included: FAITH HOPE CHARITY CONSCIENCE FAIR PLAY COURAGE and HUMBLE.
Both hands braced on the table, he rose, poured cold water into the basin, washed his hands, and pulled out the stopper. The water fell loudly into the pail below. Then he lay down on the bed and pulled the soft cover over him, noting it had begun to rain lightly outside. His foot twitched once or twice, and then nothing moved in the room for some time.
Dull patches of the olive trees tempered the deep green mountainsides. Columns of smoke rose straight up. And everywhere were those blue tones which Leonardo observed in nature, and warned the painter against as an optical illusion.
The muddy plaza was as busy as any local at the end of a work day. Mules and burros arrived, singly and in pairs, horses appeared at a trot, shied, threw up their heads, illustriously horned cattle sauntered up, some for a quick drink at the fountain and they were off home, some hung around for another. A sow and three pigs went up the street and in at a doorway. Goats climbed to the porch of the church, butted each other through the balustrade, and left pebble-droppings on the steps. Smoke from the pitch-top chimneys of the village carried the kindred discord of their bells over the tiled roofs. For a minute or so, there was not a human being in sight.
The distinguished novelist waked with a start, as though someone had yanked his foot. The room was dark. He huddled there for a minute with his eyes wide open, and pulled the soft wool blanket over his shoulder protectively. Then he turned his head slowly, to see who had roused him. There was no one there. He sat up, sniffed, licked his lips, and then threw off the blanket and hurried across the uneven floor to the windows, which he pulled open. At first all he saw was the moon, a sharp shape in the clear sky waiting in continent ambush. Then he made out the jagged black rim of the mountains, and he smelled the smoke loitering in the valley. From somewhere, he thought he heard music. And then, from the very doors beneath him, figures appeared, to form a procession. Led off by a boy in white, two lines of women in black came adjusting their veils. Between them, two boys with candles enclosed the tall white-figured priest. He watched them down the steps, past the dark fountain, singing softly into a narrow street where lights appeared at windows on their way. He watched them out of sight, and then hurriedly closed the windows, pulled on the light, sat down at the writing table and cleared his throat, trying to clear his head of all he had seen and heard during the day, from the worldly pastimes to those which he could, at this distance, be assured had never happened.
“As the brilliant spring day drew to its peaceful close, I stepped forth from the cell to which I had been assigned by the spare yet virile old prior, and where I had come to know unwonted pangs of loneliness, sleepless nights and Spartan fare . . .” He had to type with one hand, for he was pulling the ribbon along with the other, so he worked with reverent slowness. Through some vent in that vast stone pile, exhalations of the organ reached him, and the overhanging light, dim at its best, went dimmer each time the organ rose. Beside him on the floor where he’d thrown it, lay the crumpled writing of a day before, the delicately telling description of the preparations in the sacristy before a high Mass, which, upon rereading it after overhearing the tall woman’s remark, appeared too delicate and too telling, and he realized it might be misunderstood. (It was that sniff of her perfume that did it.)
“Beneath the clear star-studded canopy of the spring night, the darkness was transfigured by the voices of these men raised on high in a shining message of faith to all men mankind. At this moment I recalled the simple candor in the face of Saint Dominic Francis Dom a saint painted by the great Spanish artist El an unknown Spanish artist of long ago, and it was this same glowing faith that showed in the figures cowled figures before me, moving into the shadows without a faltering step. One felt, at that glorious moment, that their faith lit the way before them, escorting the Eucherist to their beloved Superior, who lay now hovering between life and death. The same Gregorian chant, perhaps, that rose to these very walls some thousand centuries agone, rose came gently forth once more yet once more, too soft to echo from the stones. Rather, there was the inspiring suggestion that the simple and beautiful melody lived on in the stones which had witnessed and overheard devotions from time immemorial, and the diving divine errand passing before them now drew it forth. Their pace did not hasten, despite the crucial nature of their divine er purpose, but moved at once inexorable and resigned to the will of Him who drew them forth on this divine, carrying the Eucharest to that beloved humble man figure even now being delivered from the life that bound them together, even as did their singing in this darkness on the earth they trod. So it was that late that night, when the beloved old venerable man had passed across the veil to his Heavenly Reward, I lay back upon my hard pallet and considered the world whose sounds still rang in my ears, and where I must, perforce, so soon return, the world he had voluntarily shut out so long before, the world of vanity and selfishness, of lies and deceit, of wars and rumors of wars, of men devoting themselves to the service of both God and Mammon . . .”
He stopped, to gaze at the wall showing blank between the machine and the reproving sign hung above the table. The light dimmed almost to a mere color, and rose again, at which the bird outside struck the glass, and fluttered against the pane; but he saw nothing and heard nothing, preparing himself for the leap:
“And then of a sudden, my heart started sprang up in my breast, as I understood found the true meaning in of in the message brought held forth for to all mankind, of all faiths, and creeds, and color, in this symbol of life eternal. My bones no longer seemed to cut through the flesh into the hard pallet where I lay, the night air engulfed me but it was a night in spring, and it raised me up. For as the lights of their tapers shown so small against the gigantic darkness of the night, still they shown from afar off, as they lives they led lead shine in atonement before Him wh Who created all, in atone, ent for the dark deeds of the world they today. No, I thought, such lives as these cannot be in vain. And as the fresh life of in the air rose everywhere about me, the symbol which these good men bore to one of their number soon to be taken from them among them amongst them became a part of it the it. The deep thrill of the Spring, and of all life reviving, paralyzed me for that instant as, w even now, Easter week approached, and with it, the message of life beyond the grave, and to all mankind humanity, that hope which springs eternal in the human breast every human breast that opens its portals to its fellow the service of its fellow man., and in this expression of His the divine will, no longer fears death no longer, but procures acquires secures insures obtains nears draws nearer to Resurrection.”
He sat back, and drew his fingertips across his forehead. Then he stood abruptly, and turned away from his achievement. His chest, which had caved during this exercise, filled with a deep breath, and the bold strokes of the Honourable Artillery Company stood forth, as he strode across the room to the windows. He had had faith, but he realized, looking down now on the drift of roofs below, broken in genuflection, from the facade pitted by five centuries, it had simply been a quest
ion of time. At that moment the bird fluttered against the glass. Its wings beat the panes, and it clung with its delicate talons to the leading which separated them. It struck at the glass, at the same time turned its head from one side to the other so that its beak did not strike, its tail spread in balance. If it was the light that attracted it, that was soon turned off; for the bird was gone when he took the blanket over near the windows, and lay down to sleep on the floor. He felt he owed it to them.
Nor was it difficult, waking next morning in the sensual shelter of the bed, to believe he’d slept on the hard bricks. He had spent a numb quarter-hour there and now, hurrying over to stand before the windows, the inspiring hardness of the uneven floor beneath his feet erased the night in bed (for if he’d dreamt there, he could not remember), and he looked out at the dawn with eyes as clear as the early sky itself, and features as reasonably detailed and separate as the illuminated composure of the landscape before him, where the world had emerged from that dangerously throbbing undelineated mass of the unconscious, to where everything was satisfactorily separated, out where it could all be treated reasonably.
He looked relieved, and got the windows open. The voices he heard came from directly below, where he saw Stephen and the old man arguing on the porch of the church. What it was he could not make out, since it was all going on in Spanish. They would come nearer the doors of the church and then the old man would back him away, waving the keys he had there on the end of the stick. Once or twice it looked as though Stephen were going to seize them, but the old man got them up out of his reach, and then, the third or fourth time that happened, the old man closed with him. From above, they looked about to grapple, but the porter had an arm round the younger man’s shoulders, and as he talked led him over to the steps, where he went on talking to Stephen in lower tones, gesturing now and then with the rod away toward the mountains.
In the window, the distinguished novelist turned away once or twice himself, as though caught, or fearful of being caught, eavesdropping, but he kept looking back down at them. Finally he did go over to the writing table, and turned papers up there for a minute distractedly. And when he got back to the open windows, he saw the old man standing down there alone. He looked where that one appeared to be staring, saw nothing but an empty street ascending out of sight behind the walls of houses, where, a few minutes later, he was climbing himself.
He’d looked over the seat of the Irish thorn-proof trousers, found it in need of no more than a brushing for the gray matter dried there, put on the suit and come out for what he’d have called a meditative walk, by which he seemed to mean aimless wandering amid unfamiliar scenery, qualified now by the consciously exerted realization that he was now, after his period of enclosure, outside the walls.
Like everything else, the road was flat stones turned up on edge for footing, and he was soon up behind the town. The only sound to reach him where he’d stopped was the regular tinkle of a bell, resting up against the jaw of a burro chewing somewhere near. He stood there as though this betrayal of rural tranquillity had engaged his whole attention, as though some innocent line from the Eclogues had turned up for the first time since he’d left Vergil behind in a dusty schoolroom and never read Latin again anywhere but on public buildings. It was an expression of rapt, almost beatified innocence, one seldom seen but on the faces of men carrying on some vile commission underhand, or something which they, for childhood’s shame, consider vile. Then he realized that he was being watched.
An encounter with a lunatic in the wilds of Portugal is described somewhere by George Borrow, the figure discovered sitting alone, on a stone, and staring, as the most vivid interview with desolation that that intrepid spreader of the Gospel ever suffered: something like this froze the distinguished novelist now, looking up from the small cloud of steam he’d raised before him, to the figure seated motionless up the hill, outside the arch of a four-door square gothic ruin. It might once have been a tower, or a chapel, at this remove from the monastery below, or nothing at all to do with it. And sitting there staring down was Stephen. He hastened to button up the Irish thorn-proof trousers and approach with a greeting to belie his embarrassment.
—Look!
Startled, Ludy turned to look. Seeing nothing, he asked, —What?
—The sky. If no one ever painted it until El Greco did? Look at it, the Spanish sky.
And glad of an opportunity to escape the strained face and the eyes, Ludy stared out at the sky. He stared; and found himself trying to find something to fix his eyes upon, but every line led him to another, every shape gave way to some even more transient possibility. And he stood there trapped, between the vast spaces before him and the intricate response behind to which he almost turned, seeking some detail for refuge, when the voice in strained calm over his shoulder stopped him, gave him, at any rate, separate fragments to hang one sense upon while he suspended the torment of loss through the other.
—The Pleiades are rising, now, now is the time. The Greeks put to sea now, in their system of navigation this was the time they put to sea, with the Pleiades rising, and I have to go on. It wasn’t so simple.
—I see, you’re . . . going away somewhere?
—My father was a king. Did you know?
—Oh? ahm, yes and . . . Ludy fumbled. —Ahm, and where is he?
—Yes, where is he? “Kings should disdain to die, but only disappear” somebody said. He took me up like this once, and he showed me the world like this. Yes once, remember “I was that king, and all these things were mine! See, Ananda, how all these things are past, are ended, have vanished away . . .”
And with this, Ludy was suspended, doubly bereft: the silence, untroubling a minute before, became as empty as the sky; and as he’d sought the sky with his eyes for something to fix them on, now he did that and listened too, for something to break through the fearful vacancy which was tolling his senses one by one until, in this absurd anxiety mounted in him from the consciousness at his back, he abruptly saw himself darting his eyes’ attention everywhere, sniffing, clutching at anything, even grass, to taste, speaking to hear. —And where was that? he brought out listening. —Yes, where did you live? he waited, for any answer and getting none twisted about, ready to repeat the question with no reason but to rescue them both from silence, as a sound broke in his throat, to be swallowed, and he listened.
—I? in a world of shapes and smells. The things that were real to other people weren’t real to me, but the things that were real to me, they . . . yes they still are.
And listening, the strain in the voice was there but it was different, an extreme concern but without anxiety, intent, but without those shocks of frenzy which had backed him against the stones yesterday, in that cold cell where the eyes turned up from the canvas struck him back into the arms of the old man in the door. —I saw you this morning, looking out my window, what happened down there?
—I woke up and I thought it was evening, Stephen answered immediately, but then he paused, as though still uncertain and trying to remember. —And there was a sound of clanking and scraping, it sounded like the port of a ship swinging open and closed. It was strange, a strange feeling, I could almost feel the room roll and go. Then I reached out my right arm to straighten the shade on the floorlamp, it was crooked, but half the arm was asleep. Right along its length, and the tingling made me drop it, but I got it up again and I straightened the shade. But the shade kept quivering. When I let it go it kept quivering and that made me nervous, so I reached out to stop it again. But it kept quivering. I watched it, and I began to realize that it was quivering with a regular rhythm, a regular beat, and beat, and beat running through it, and I felt my heart pounding in the back of my head with that same beat. And then the whole table began to throb. When I looked at it it stopped, and when I looked away it began again. I closed my eyes. The only thing I knew was my heart beating as though it would break through my collarbones. And then I came out. I came out and the sky wasn’t getting darker, it was
getting light. I’d slept the night through there.
—Yes, you . . . look rested. Ludy said that looking up at him intending, with the look confirming the word, to escape both; but the word —Rested! repeated, closed on him and he stared lost darting among the contrivances of the face before him, until it turned away, and released him on a hoarse whispered, —Rested?
—Yes, you were going into the church this morning? and then, the old man . . .
—He wouldn’t let me in.
—Yes but. I shouldn’t think he could tell you . . .
—Standing out there on the porch with his keys, he was looking at the dawn himself, and he wouldn’t let me in. Rested? when I thought I’d found a place to stop. But he wouldn’t let me in. What did you think we were doing, arguing, if he wouldn’t let me in.
—Well to tell the truth . . .
—All right, that’s a way of putting it. “To tell the truth.” All right but, finally if the things that were real to other people, weren’t real to me? and if . . . never mind. But it almost ended that way. If he’d let me in it might have, ended that way.
—Why wouldn’t he let you in?
—No, you don’t understand? being real just like that? It wasn’t so simple. “To tell the truth,” I like that though. “To tell the truth . . .” Listen, here’s part of it: He sent me on. Go where you’re wanted, he said.
—Yes, if you’ve . . . killed a man . . . Ludy withdrew slightly, —to give yourself up . . .
—Killed a man! that? That, that, there’s no fruit of that. Killing a man, no that’s got nothing to do, it ends right there. Stephen was looking down into the palms of his hands, trembling opened before him, the thumbs crooked in and the skin drawn tight bringing color to the lines: he looked, as though searching evidence for acquittal in hands which like the heart, knew their own reasons.