“They never said you were like this—When I heard about you, they said you were a terrible person; it scared me; they said you were the Judge. I only heard about you a few times, so long ago I don’t remember, but I thought you’d hate me—all the lies and everything. They said you hated liars and hypocrites, and I guess I’ve been that all my life, and maybe it don’t mean anything to you that it was the only way I could live, lying like that to myself and everybody else, and pretending. After all, you are the Judge, and you’re terrible. That’s what they said, all those years ago, and it scared me.”
She opened her eyes and the man was still regarding her with gentle suffering and love, and she began to weep again, but softly. “I see! You don’t hate me for what I did, do you? And all that I went through in my life—it wasn’t even all that as bad as one day of yours, was it? And you didn’t have anybody to talk to, either, did you? Oh, they listened to you, they sure did, but what good did it do? They didn’t believe you, but people believed me a little, and that’s something. They don’t even believe you now.
“You didn’t have anyone to talk to except yourself. And God.”
Her eyes suddenly shone with wonder and she sat upright. “That’s it, you had God to talk to! And so do I! That’s what you mean, isn’t it? I can talk to you, any time I want to, anywhere! If only I’d known a little more about you in the beginning. That’s what the real depriv—the real not-having—not having you in all those years.
“But now I have you!” The wonder brightened on her face and the years left her and she was a child again, hoping. But this time the hope had verity and truth. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it, that I have you, and that if I have you you’ll always listen and help me, and that I mustn’t be afraid any longer.”
She struck her palms together like a child who has suddenly come upon a delightful and incredible truth that swept its heart with joy.
“I know it’s true, I know it’s true, like nothing else in my life, real or a dream! And I know, somehow, that what I dreamed about, all the wonderful things, you’ll save for me, someplace. Won’t you? People to care about me, but mostly you. Lovely things to look at, and some beautiful place to walk. How do I know all that? I just know!
“And it’s all the world to me, and now I’m not tired, and I can face what’s to come, because always you’ll be with me, and listening to me, won’t you?”
She lumbered to her feet and went to the man and timidly touched his knee. It seemed to her that strength came to her weary flesh and a lightness to her spirit. “I’m just remembering something I heard when I was a kid, when once I heard a minister in the orphan asylum: ‘Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ With you, and that’s all that I care about now.”
SOUL TWELVE
The Adversary and The Man who Listens
“—The least of these”
SOUL TWELVE
The waiting room was almost filled when he entered, but no one seemed to see him except for a very young girl with mad eyes. He became aware that she saw him and he stopped, and it was as if a dark shadow had fallen over her distraught face. She most certainly saw him and he half-smiled. He knew at once what troubled her and what had caused that dilated appearance in her pupils, and the long, fixed stare. He knew her very well. There was no pity in him, no regret, but only contempt. Weakling. Wretch. Contemptible animal. She was only eighteen, he recalled, but her soul was shriveled within her like a bud that had withered before it had opened. Anathema, anathema, he thought. It was no triumph to him that he had brought down that meager soul so easily. She had needed little tempting! “Emily?” he said, very softly.
The girl’s gray mouth puckered drily and the faintest whimper came from her, so faint that no one heard but himself. It was a mewling sound, like a stricken puppy. “But you did it to yourself, Emily,” he said in that soft voice which did not disturb others or even make them look up. “You knew what you were about; you had no innocence, did you? You cannot even claim ignorance; it was everywhere. What! Are you going to complain it was all the fault of your environment? That cheap excuse, that mean excuse, that lying excuse? Emily, go home. The Man cannot help you. Go home—and forget.”
He was full of hate for her. It was her kind, her countless kind, who had made him what he was, who had reduced him to what he was so long ago that it sometimes seemed incredible to him. He could see their heaped faces, their heaped bodies. Not even he could count them or even know them all.
“What? Are you not leaving?” he asked her. The others in the room moved restlessly, disturbed. The girl stared at him, the big black eyes like glass. But she did not move. This was intolerable to him. He wanted to take her by one of her desperately thin arms and drag her from this abominable place and throw her into the gutter. She saw his furious desire. Her eyes fled from him and fastened themselves on the tablet in the wall: “I can do all things in Him Who strengthens me.”
“No,” he said, “not even He can help you now, Emily. You are sweating and trembling. See how you yawn! In a little while it will be unbearable. I know. Poor Emily. I really pity you. Do you remember what you read in your school, Emily? ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars—But in ourselves that we are underlings.’ You were born an underling, Emily, and you will die one. You are wasting your time here. He—He has nothing but disgust for you. Go home.”
The girl did not move. She was still staring at the tablet. Great drops of water were falling from her forehead. Her lips stirred. He laughed silently. So, she prayed, did she, the little monster? Let her attempt to escape; he had her fast. She had corrupted two other girls, younger than herself, to satisfy her vile appetite, her craving appetite, her deadening appetite. He tried to force her to look at him again, but her lips were still drily stirring in her incoherent prayer.
He lost interest in her. She was nothing. He moved to the door of the other room and bent his handsome head and listened acutely. Then before any chime could sound he opened the door and entered. He moved quickly; the closing door was only a shadow behind him and no one in the waiting room, except Emily, had seen it open and close.
The white walls and ceiling, and the light, were very still. It was as if someone in the room had caught a breath, and held it. The young man smiled. He nodded at the blue curtain which covered the alcove. And, after a moment it silently moved apart and he saw the Man who waited there, and who listened endlessly.
They looked at each other in silence. The young man inclined his head with gravity. No man before who had entered this room had ever been half so beautiful as he. No one could ever match his vibrancy, his electric energy, and the power of his spirit.
“Are you not very tired now?” asked the young man.
“No,” said the Man who Listened. “I am never tired.”
“Once you were,” said the young man, courteously.
“No. I am incapable of weariness, just as you are incapable. Or, could it be that you are weary at last?”
The young man considered, or he affected to consider. His eyes were merry and amused. Then he shook his head. The eyes of the Man who Listened were full of sadness. He sighed. Hearing that sigh the young man moved as if struck by a pain of his own. “May I sit down?” he asked.
“The chair is waiting for you,” said the Man who Listened.
“But not the one I wanted.” The young man sat down and folded his white hands on his darkly glistening knee. “I have my own,” he added. “It is uniquely my own. I made it with my own hands. You had no part in it.”
“No,” said the Man, and his gaze at the stranger was heavy with sorrow. “I did not make it for you.”
“I am still His son,” said the stranger.
“That is true,” said the Man. “Forever.”
The stranger was silent for a while. The light in the room dimmed as if with his thoughts. Then anger took his face like a convulsion, and it was an anger
touched with suffering.
“It is some time since we had one of our endless discussions,” said the stranger. “Now that everything here seems to be totally in my hands I thought to visit you again.”
“It is not all in your hands,” said the Man. “You know that, of a certainty. But speak. I confess that I have never forgotten your voice and that once you loved Him.”
“Do you think I do not love Him now?”
The Man was quiet for a moment. At last he said, “You love Him, and that is the worst of your punishment. You cannot refrain from the loving. But you and I know how closely love and hatred are entwined. But never has He hated you.”
“I know that. But men hate Him with all their black hearts, and that is our mutual knowledge.”
“Not all,” said the Man, and he smiled with tenderness. “Listen! Can you not hear those who speak to Him?”
They listened together. Now a confused yet harmonious sound emanated from the walls, from the room, from everywhere, beseeching, praising, loving, piteous, brave—but faithful. Music flowed and twined through the voices like threads of gold and scarlet and silver, palpitating, rising and falling. There were the voices of children, piping simply; there were the voices of young men and women, of holy souls in cloisters, of lonely souls in private wildernesses and in private anguish, of old people, of people in sorrow—but faithful. The voices rose and fell like an advancing and then retreating sea which advanced again and broke on invisible rock in invisible rainbows. But rock and rainbow were not invisible to the Man who Listened, and to the stranger. They saw them clearly.
“Not a multitude,” said the stranger.
“But His own,” said the Man. “Not ever yours.”
“They will soon be silenced,” said the stranger. “You and I—we know the future. These innocent voices will be silenced by the silencers, who in their turn will be forever silenced. How peaceful will be the orbit of this world, then! Fragments, catching the light of the moon and the sun, but only fragments, deathful and dark and lifeless.”
The Man did not speak. The stranger waited politely, then when there was no sound at all in the room he said, “I did not choose it. They chose it themselves. I did not plan it; they planned it themselves. Are you not proud of your part in it?”
The Man smiled a very little and with grave pain. “That is a question you have always asked me, and you have desired the answer with a desire greater than all else. You do not see the future as I see it, but only as you imagine I see it. You can never know my mind and my thoughts. In that, you are no wiser than any of the tormented you have seduced and destroyed. My brothers.”
“They chose not to be your brothers.” The stranger rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and he shaded his dark and beautiful face with his hand. “I did not take them from you. The came to me, eagerly. They solicited my help. They poured themselves like vehement snowflakes into my hands. They never came to you like that; they come, the few who do, one by one, almost reluctantly. But my own stormed my very battlements; they storm it hourly. I am deafened by their urgent voices, their demands, their adulation. What they offer me is loathsome.”
“I do not find them loathsome,” said the Man. “I bled for them, and I bleed for them.”
“And sometimes—but not often—in the very midst of their urging, their desire for me, they hear your voice. And sometimes—but so few that they are not worth the counting—they turn from me and fall at your feet.”
“One is one, and one is all,” said the Man. “What you despise I love. What you would destroy I would save. My ear is never turned aside, never closed.”
“But it is closed to me.”
The Man did not reply. The tortured eyes gazed at the stranger long and deeply.
“I lie, as always,” said the stranger. “Your ear is not closed to me. But how could it be possible for me to repent when I know what I know, when righteous hate is in my heart though you would not call it righteous?” He laughed abruptly, and his laughter was echoed by a thin turmoil of far but tumultuous mockery. “—‘All the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy!’ Do you remember that hour?”
“I have never forgotten.”
“It was the hour when He bestowed free will on all His worlds, when angels and men—in all His worlds—were crowned with their kingly responsibility to live or to die, to stand at His side or to retreat from Him. Was that not too terrible a gift?”
“You are all His children. Do you think He wished unreasoning beasts who obeyed because they had no desire to disobey, no choice? The free offering of a soul is more to Him than mechanical creatures who sacrifice at an altar they do not know exists and offer a sacrifice of which they are not aware. Obedience is not desirable when disobedience is impossible. Love is not love if there is not an alternative, hate. Worship is not worship if possibility of denial is not present. What is His essence is the essence of His children; He would that His children be as the angels, who are my brothers also, capable of disobedience and pride but also capable of obedience and humility. As He is Spirit, so are His children spirit also, and shall one be divided from the other as cruel master is divided by slaves who have no choice? But we have spoken of this before through all the centuries.”
“It was still the most terrible of gifts. I am what I am because of that offering.”
“Would you prefer that you had had no choice?”
The stranger shook his head. “No, for then I should have had no existence.”
“True. Then this dialogue was unnecessary.”
“Without free will there is no true existence?”
“There is no true existence. You have said it.”
“But it should not have been given to humanity. It should have been the prerogative of the angels.”
The Man moved his head painfully. “Consider yourself. It was your prerogative. Consider how you have used it. Yet you despise men, who are lesser by nature than yourself, who are lesser in resistance to evil. Detest them if you must. But remember that many repent and come to Him. Those who departed with you do not return to Him and do not say, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”
“What we chose is our choice,” said the stranger, lifting his grand head high.
“And what you chose was your pride. You accepted His gift, but consider it your own alone, and would deny it to the least of His children. Are you greater than He?”
“I never believed that, nor in truth did I truly desire it. I was at His hand and He loved me. I protected His grandeur and His awful majesty, not out of hatred but out of love. I was jealous for Him. I would have none approach Him with unclean hands nor call Him ‘Father’ as I called Him Father, nor look upon Him with my own eyes. If I was proud, I was proud for Him, and detested those who dared, in their arrogance, to know Him also. But you have known this for a long time.”
“Yes, for a very long time,” said the Man with a sigh.
The stranger contemplated the hands and the brow and the side of the Man. “Did I inflict that agony on you? Was it I who spat upon you and jeered at you? Was it I who mocked your torture?”
“You have forgotten. I chose it for myself.”
“Still, it was man who consummated it, and not I. They choose for themselves; I do not make the choice for them.”
“But you have heard the voices of those who have come to me at last. They choose for themselves; I do not make the choice for them.”
“You have lost. Have you not lost?”
“Ah, you would like to know! But I shall not tell you, little one.”
There was silence again in the room. Then slowly the stranger began to beat his clenched fists on the arms of the chair. As his anger rose the light from the walls darkened, but the light in the alcove increased until it almost blinded him.
“I shall conquer!” said the stranger. “Am I not prince of this world? He shall repent, again, that He made it! As He has repented other worlds which became but bloody holocausts and dr
ifted away with the suns.”
“If you are so certain, why are there tears on your face?”
“It is because I am certain that I weep.”
“Ah,” said the Man, very gently. “It does not please you, then.”
“It pleases me when I prove that He was wrong in the beginning.”
“Your pleasure could be mistaken for anguish. Would that men felt such pain in their hearts!”
The stranger stood up, trembling and darkly radiant, a frightful but magnificent presence. “The whimperers, yours, Lord, await you. I regret that I have delayed you for an hour. Shall I leave?”
The Man considered. Then he said, “Call whom you will. And let us see what will come about, in our presence.”
The stranger smiled. “There is a woman-creature, young in years, in that room. She is past all redemption. She is mine. I will call her.”
He lifted his hand and pointed with a threatening and commanding gesture at the door. Immediately the chime sounded. The door opened a moment later and Emily, the girl with the mad eyes and the dampened face entered, breathing with a ragged and audible sound.
“Come, Emily,” said the stranger in a voice of mock kindness. “You see me, do you not?”
“Yes, I see you,” she said. She seemed fascinated by his appearance, by his forbidding splendor, for neither angel nor man had ever possessed his beauty. He was fire and marble midnight, flashing and burning and darkening—and his shadow flowed and ebbed on the white walls, and struck the ceiling in alternating bands of flame and blackness.
“Who am I, Emily?”
She pressed her trembling hands along her cheeks, then slowly pushed back her disordered brown hair. She licked her dry lips. The sweat shone on her forehead, on her upper lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think I know your voice.” Her own had become weak and uncertain.