Youth Without God (7 page)

He smiled.

“Only very seldom,” he went on, “does a man become a saint if he has never been wicked. Only very seldom do we find wisdom in one who has never been foolish. And if it weren’t for the little stupidities of life, we shouldn’t find ourselves in the world at all.”

He laughed, with these last words—a very soft, gentle laugh, in which I couldn’t bring myself to join him.

He emptied his glass once more.

“If the structure of the state is willed by God—” I began suddenly.

“Wrong. The state is a necessity of nature, and willed by God. But not the structure of the state.”

“But it’s the same thing!”

“No, it isn’t the same thing. God created nature: what is a necessity of nature must therefore be part of the will of God. But the consequences which follow upon that creation—and here we’re referring to one of them, the form of the state—is a product of man’s free will. So that the state is part of the will of God, but not the structure of the state.”

“And if a state collapses?”

“A state never collapses. It loses its social structure, but that only yields before another. The state itself remains, even though the people that built it may die. Another people succeeds them.”

“So that the collapse of a state’s structure is not a necessity of nature?”

My observation was greeted with a smile.

“Very often such a collapse is the will of God.”

“Then why does the Church, when the social structure of a state is collapsing—why does the Church always take the side of the rich? To-day, for example—why is the Church always to be found supporting the share-holders in the saw-mills and not the children painting dolls in the windows?”

“Because the rich always win.”

I couldn’t control myself.

“A fine teaching!” I cried.

The priest went on as quietly as ever.

“Right thinking is the principle of all morality.” Then, after draining his glass once again: “Yes, the rich will always win, you see they’re more brutal, they’re a lower type, they’re more unscrupulous. We read in the Bible that a camel may pass more easily through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.”

“And the Church? What about the Church? Will the Church pass through the eye of a needle?”

“No,” came the answer—and again the smile. “That wouldn’t be quite possible. For the Church is the eye of the needle.”

Devilish clever, this priest, I thought to myself. But he isn’t right. He isn’t right.

“So the Church serves the rich, and doesn’t think of fighting for the poor.”

“She fights for the poor, but on another front.”

“A secret front, perhaps?”

“A man may fall there too.”

“Who has fallen there?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“But He was God! And after Him?”

He filled my glass, pensive for a moment.

“It’s a good thing,” he said, “that things today in many countries, aren’t going too well for the Church. It’s a good thing for the Church!”

“Possibly it is,” I answered abruptly, noticing how excited I had grown. “And so we come back to the children in the windows again. Didn’t you say, as we were going through those streets, ‘They never greet me, they hate me?’ Well, you’re a clever man, you ought to know that those children don’t hate you at all—it’s just that they’ve got nothing to eat.”

“I think they hate me,” he told me, slowly, “because they’ve abandoned their belief in God.”

“How can you ask that of them—to believe in God?”

“God goes through every street.”

“How can God go through every street—seeing those children, and doing nothing to help?”

Silently he put his glass to his lips. Then,
with a grave look, he turned to me.

“God is the most terrible thing in the world.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t believe my ears. The most terrible?

He rose, went across to the window and looked down into the graveyard. I heard his voice again.

“God punishes,” he said.

He strode up and down the room.

“We should not forget God. Even though we may not know why he is punishing us. If only we had never had our free will!”

“You mean—the doctrine of original sin?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He stopped in front of me.

“Then you can’t believe in God.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe in God.”

A pause followed. I broke it, feeling I had to speak.

“Listen, I teach history, and I know that before the birth of our Lord, another world existed, the antique world—Hellas—a world without original sin—”

“I think you’re in error,” he murmured, going up to his book-case. He took a volume down and turned over the pages. “You’re a teacher of history, so that I needn’t recall to you the name of the first Greek philosopher—I mean the eldest—”

“Thales of Miletus.”

“Yes. But he’s a half-mythical figure, we know nothing definite about him. The first evidence of Greek philosophy that has come down to us in writing is from the hand of Anaximander—he too came from Miletus. Born 610, died 547
B.C
. It amounts to only a sentence …”

He crossed to the window again to read it, for the room was growing dark.

“ ‘To that from which things arise must they return in the end. In pain and penance must they make good their debt for their existence, according to the universal law.’ ”

WE’D BEEN FOUR DAYS IN CAMP. THE SERGEANT had given the boys instruction in the mechanism of firearms, and explained how to keep them in good working order. To-day they spent oiling and polishing the guns ready for target practice to-morrow.

The wooden soldiers stood ready to be hit.

The boys were in the highest spirits, though the sergeant wasn’t quite so exuberant. These four days had put ten years on his age. Another four, and he would look more aged still. Moreover, he strained his foot, and perhaps pulled a tendon, for he limped. However, he could grin and bear it. I was the only one to see another side of him—before we went to sleep the other night, he told me he’d like to see a skittle-alley again or have a game of cards—he’d like to be lying down in a decent bed, he’d like to hold a buxom barmaid by the hand, he’d like—well, to be back home. Then he went off to sleep, snoring.

He dreamed he’d become a general and won a battle. The King had taken off all his own orders and pinned them on his chest. And on his back. And the Queen had kissed his feet.

“What can that mean?” he asked me next morning.

“Perhaps it was a wish-fulfilment dream.” I laughed.

He told me that never in his life had he wished to have his feet kissed by the Queen.

“I’ll write to my old woman,” he mused. “She’s got a dream-book. She can look ’em up—General, King, Decorations, Battle, Chest, and Back. We’ll find out!”

While he was writing his letter, outside the tent, up came one of the boys. It was L, and he was highly excited.

“Well, what is it?” I asked.

“I’ve had something stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“My camera, sir—somebody’s taken it.”

He was quite beside himself.

The sergeant glanced up at me. He seemed to be wondering what course to take.

“Assemble everybody,” I suggested. I couldn’t think of anything else.

He nodded, limped to the foot of the flagpole in the centre of the camp, and bellowed the order like an old bull.

I turned to L.

“D’you suspect anybody?”

“No.”

The regiment lined up. I questioned them. No one had anything to say. The sergeant and I had a look at the tent where L slept. His sleeping-bag lay just to the left of the tent flaps. We found nothing to help here.

“It seems to be out of the question,” I reassured the sergeant, “that one of our own boys is the thief—in that case, we’d already have had something like this happen at school. It seems to me that the watch we’ve set up hasn’t been too vigilant and some of that robber band have slipped through.”

The sergeant thought I might be right. We decided to spend the next night supervising the sentries ourselves.

About a hundred yards away from the camp stood a
haystack. We intended to spend the night there and make it our point of vantage. The sergeant was to watch from nine till one, and I from one till six.

We slipped off after supper, escaping the notice of any of the boys. I made myself quite comfortable in the hay.

At one o’clock or thereabouts, the sergeant woke me.

“All in order so far,” he whispered.

I clambered out of the hay and posted myself at the side of the rick.

The full moon cast deep shadows.

A wonderful night.

I could see the tents and distinguish the sentries. They were just changing.

To and fro, to and fro, they went; they covered the four points of the compass. Guarding their cameras!

As I sat there, I saw before me the picture in the priest’s study—and in my own home.

The hours went by …

My school subjects are history and geography. The form of the earth, and the story of the earth—these are my province. The earth is round, but history—it struck me then—history has become a four-cornered affair …

I daren’t smoke, for I was keeping a secret watch over the sentries …

My profession doesn’t interest me any longer, I thought.

Why was that picture still before my mind? Was I haunted by the Crucified One? No. Or by the face of His mother? No. It was the warrior, the armed and helmeted warrior, the Roman Captain, whose face haunted me.

Why?

He conducted the execution of a Jew. And as the Jew died, he must have murmured: “There dies no man.”

He had come to know God. What followed his discovery? What was his next act? He stood quiet beneath the cross. Lightning pierced the night, the curtain in the Temple was rent, the earth shuddered—the Roman Captain stood on, acknowledging the new God as the man died upon the cross—knowing that the world—his world—was condemned to death.

And then—perhaps he fell in some war. Did he know that he perished for nothing? Or perhaps he lived on into old age. Pensioned off, maybe. Was his home in Rome, or away on the frontier where living was cheaper?

A villa he might have had. A villa with a garden, and a stone dwarf. Perhaps one morning his cook told him that a new horde of barbarians was moving, beyond the frontier. Lucca, from over the way, had seen them with her own eyes.

New hordes, new peoples. Arming, arming, waiting.

That Roman Captain knew they would destroy everything. But he went on undisturbed. For him, everything had been destroyed.

And he lived on with his pension.

The mighty Roman Empire!

He had seen its frailty.

THE MOON HAD RISEN HIGH OVER THE CAMP.

It must have been about two o’clock. In the city, the cafés would be crowded now. The thought of Julius Caesar passed through my mind—Julius Caesar, who’ll go on flashing his death’s head till the devil gets him. Funny, that—I believe in the Devil, but not in a loving God! Though I’m not sure. I think, rather, that I refuse Him my belief. With my free will.

For that’s all that’s left to me now, where freedom is concerned. Within myself, I can believe or refuse to believe. Before others, I must keep my views to myself. What was it the priest told me?

“It is a priest’s task to prepare man for death: if a man has no fear of death, life is a less anxious thing for him.”

Again:

“From this life of misery and strife, we are rescued only by the divine mercy of God, and by our belief in the Revelation.”

An evasive way of putting things!

“We are punished and we do not know the reasons for our punishment.”

Ask those in authority—those who rule!

But what were those last words that the priest spoke to me?

“God is the most terrible thing in the world.”

Yes!

Charming were the thoughts that pierced my heart. My mind had bred them. Apparelled so becomingly, they danced along and scarcely touched the ground. A ball, a fashionable ball. In pairs they went gliding through the moonlight. Cowardice with Courage, Lies with Uprightness, Wretchedness with Strength, Malice with Valour. Only Reason and Understanding did not join in the dance. Reason and Understanding were wretchedly drunk. They had lost their virtue. But the dance went on, and I listened to the music.

A song of the streets—the song of filth.

According to language, race, or nation, we set ourselves apart, and each pile up our filth to overtower the other’s.

Filth—for manure—for the earth, so that something may grow. Not flowers, but rather bread. Yes! But do not worship it—the filth of which you’ve eaten.

MY JOB WAS TO SIT SILENTLY IN THE SHADOW of the haystack, and keep an eye on the sentries. I was forgetting it.

I glanced round at them.

Everything in order, on all sides. But wait—something there—

The North sentry. He was talking to some one. The North sentry—Z. But I must have imagined it—the shadow of a fir-tree, nothing more.

I looked again. No shadow stood there, but a figure. At that moment the moon sailed out of a cloud. I saw a youngster—some one strange to the camp. He seemed to be giving something to Z—and then he disappeared again.

Z stood motionless for a second or two. Listening?

Cautiously he looked round before taking the letter out of his pocket. So it was a letter!

He pulled it open and read it by the moon-light. Then put it into his pocket again.

Who could be writing to Z …?

Next morning, the sergeant asked me if I had seen anything worth noting. Nothing, I told him. The sentries had done their jobs properly. That was all. I didn’t say a word about the letter, for I wasn’t sure yet whether it had anything to do with the theft of the camera. That would come
out later: I wouldn’t bring Z under suspicion before anything was proved.

If only I could have read that letter!

The youngsters were quite taken aback to see us returning to camp. When had we left it?

“At midnight,” lied the sergeant. “We just strolled out, but none of your sentries saw us. You want sharper eyes. With such a poor night-watch as you boys provide, anybody could sneak off with the whole camp, flags, guns, and everything that matters to us.”