Messiah (28 page)

4

There's not much time left and I must proceed as swiftly as possible to the death of Cave and my own exile.

The year of Cave's death was not only a year of triumph but one of terror as well. The counter-offensive reached its peak in those busy months, and we were all in danger of our lives.

In the South, groups of Baptists stormed the new Centers, demolishing them and killing, in several instances, the Residents. Despite our protests and threats of reprisal, many state governments refused to protect the Cavite Centers and Paul was forced to enlist a small army to defend our establishments in those areas which were still dominated by the old religions. Several attempts were made to destroy our New York headquarters; fortunately, they were all apprehended before any damage could be done though one fanatic, a Catholic, got as far as Paul's office where he threw a grenade into a wastebasket, killing himself and slightly scratching Paul who had, in his usual fashion, been traveling nervously about the room, getting out of range at the proper moment. The election of a Cavite-dominated Congress eased things for us considerably, though it made our enemies all the more desperate.

Paul fought back. Bishop Winston, the most eloquent of the Christian prelates and the most dangerous to us, had died, giving rise to the rumor, soon afterwards confirmed by Cavite authority to be a fact, that he had killed himself and that, therefore, he had finally renounced Christ and taken to himself Cavesword.

Many of the clergy of the Protestant sects, aware that their parishioners and authority were falling away, became, quietly, without gloating on our part, Cavite Residents and Communicators.

The bloodiest persecutions, however, did not occur in North America. The Latin countries, the seat of the old Catholic power which was itself the shadow of the Roman Empire, provided the world with a series of massacres remarkable even in that murderous century. Yet it was a fact that in the year of Cave's death, Italy was half-Cavite while France, England and Germany were nearly all Cavite while only Spain and parts of Latin America held out, imprisoning, executing, deporting Cavites against the inevitable day when our Communicators, undismayed, proud in their martyrdom, would succeed in their assaults upon these last citadels of paganism.

On a hot day in August, our third and last autumn in the yellow tower, we dined on the terrace of Cave's penthouse overlooking the city. The bright sky shuddered with heat. Clarissa, who had just come from abroad where she had been enjoying several seasons under the guise of an official tour of reconnaissance, was entirely the guest of honor. She sat wearing a large picture hat beneath the striped awning which sheltered our glass-topped table from the sun's rays. Cave insisted on eating out-of-doors as often as possible even though the rest of us preferred the cool interior where we were not disturbed by either heat or by the clouds of soot which floated above the imperial city, impartially lighting upon all who ventured out into the open.

It was our first "family dinner" in some months (Paul insisted on regarding us as a family and the metaphors which he derived from this one conceit used even to irritate the imperturbable Cave). At one end of the table sat Clarissa, with Paul and me on either side of her; at the other end sat Cave, with Iris and Stokharin on either side of him; Iris was on his left and on my right and, early in the dinner, when the conversation was particular, we talked.

"I suppose we'll be leaving soon," she said. A sea gull missed the awning by inches.

"I haven't heard anything about it. Who's leaving . . . and why?"

"John thinks we've all been here too long; he thinks we're too remote."

"He's quite right about that." I blew soot off my plate. "But where are we to go? After all, there's a good chance that if any of us shows his head to the grateful populace someone is apt to blow it off."

"That's a risk we have to take. But John is right. We must get out and see the people . . . talk to them direct." Her voice was urgent. I looked at her thoughtfully, seeing the change that three years of extraordinary activity had wrought: she was overweight and her face, as sometimes happens in the first access of weight, was smooth, without lines, younger-looking but also without much character or expression . . . I kept thinking irrelevantly of a marshmallow for, in the light of day, her casually made-up face did resemble a pale smoothly powdered confection. Her wonderful sharpness, her old fineness was entirely gone and the new Iris, the busy, efficient Iris had become like . . . like . . . I groped for the comparison, the memory of someone similar I had known in the past, but the ghost did not materialize; and so haunted, faintly distrait, I talked to the new Iris I did not really know, to the visible half of a like-pair whose twin was lost somewhere in my memory.

"I'll be only too happy to leave," I said, helping myself to the salad which was being served us by one of the Eurasian servants Paul, in an exotic mood, had engaged to look after the penthouse and the person of Cave. "I don't think I've been away from here half a dozen times in two years."

"It's been awfully hard," Iris agreed. Her eyes shifted regularly to Cave, like an anxious parent. "Of course I've had more chance than anyone to get out but I haven't seen nearly as much as I ought. It's my job, really, to look at all the Centers, to supervise in person all the schools but of course I can't if Paul insists on turning every trip I take into a kind of pageant."

"It's for your own protection."

"I think we're much safer than Paul thinks. The country's almost entirely Cavite."

"All the more reason to be careful. The die-hards are on their last legs; they're maniacal, some of them."

"Well, we must take our chances. John says he won't stay here another autumn. September is his best month, you know. I think he's a little superstitious about it: it was September when he first spoke Cavesword."

"What does Paul say?" I looked down the table at our ringmaster who was telling Clarissa what she had seen in Europe.

Iris frowned. "He's doing everything he can to keep us here . . . I can't think why. John's greatest work has been done face to face with people yet Paul acts as if he didn't dare let him out in public. We have quarreled about this for over a year, Paul and I."

"He's quite right, I know. I'd be nervous to go about in public without some sort of protection. You should see the murderous letters I get at the
Journal
."

"We've nothing to fear," said Iris flatly. "And we have everything to gain by mixing with people. We could easily grow out of touch, marooned in this tower."

"Oh, it's not that bad." To my surprise, I found myself defending our monastic life. "Everyone comes here. Cave speaks to groups of the faithful every day. I sit like some disheveled hen over a large newspaper and I couldn't be more instructed, more engaged in life, while you dash around the country almost as much as Paul does."

"But only seeing the Centers, only meeting the Cavites. I have no other life any more." I looked at her curiously. There was no bitterness in her voice yet there was a certain wistfulness which I'd never noticed before.

"Do you regret all this, Iris?" I asked. It had been some time, three years, since I had spoken to her of ourselves, of personal matters: we had become, in a sense, the offices which we held; our symbolic selves paralyzing all else within, true precedent achieved at a great cost. Now a fissure had suddenly appeared in that monument which Iris had become and, through the flaw, I heard again, briefly, the voice of the girl I had met on the bank of the Hudson in the spring of a lost year.

"I never knew it would be like this," she said, almost whispering, her eyes on Cave while she spoke to me. "I never thought my life would be as alone as this, all work."

"Yet you wanted it: you do want it. Direction, meaning, you wanted all that and now you have it. The magic worked, Iris. Your magician was real."

"But I sometimes wonder if I am real anymore." The words, though softly spoken, fell upon my ear like rounded stones, smooth and hard.

"It's too late," I said, mercilessly. "You are what you wanted to be. Live it out, Iris. There is nothing else."

"You're dead too," she said at last, her voice regaining its usual authority.

"Speaking of dead," said Cave suddenly turning toward us (I hoped he had not heard all our conversation), "Stokharin here has come up with a wonderful scheme."

Even Clarissa fell silent. We all did whenever Cave spoke which was seldom on social occasions. Cave looked cheerfully about the table for a moment. Stokharin beamed with pleasure at the accolade.

"You've probably all heard about the suicides as a result of Cavesword." Cave had very early got into the habit of speaking of himself in the third person whenever a point of doctrine was involved. "Paul's been collecting the monthly figures and each month they double. Of course they're not accurate since there are a good many deaths due to Cavesword which we don't hear about. Anyway, Stokharin has perfected a painless death by poison, a new compound which kills within an hour and is delightful to take."

"I have combined certain narcotics which together insure a highly exhilarated state before the end, as well as most pleasant fantasies." Stokharin smiled complacently.

Cave nodded and continued. "I've already worked out some of the practical details for putting this into action. There are still a lot of wrinkles, but we can iron them out in time. One of the big problems of present-day
unorganized
suicide is the mess it causes for the people unfortunate enough to be left behind. There are legal complications; there is occasionally grief in old-fashioned family groups; there is also a general disturbance which, though only social, still tends to leave a bad taste, giving suicide, at least among the reactionaries, a bad name.

"Our plan is simple. We will provide at each Center full facilities for those who have listened to Cavesword and have responded to it by taking the better way. There will be a number of comfortable rooms where the suicidalist may receive his friends for a last visit. We'll provide legal assistance to put his affairs in order. Not everyone of course will be worthy of us. Those who choose death merely to evade responsibility will be censured and restrained. But the deserving, those whose lives have been devoted and orderly, may come to us and receive the gift."

I was appalled; before I could control myself I had said: "But the law! You just can't let people kill themselves . . ."

"Why not?" Cave looked at me coldly and I saw, in the eyes of the others, concern and hostility. I had anticipated something like this ever since my talk with Paul but I had not thought it would come so swiftly or so boldly.

Paul spoke for Cave. "We've got the Congress and the Congress will make a law for us. For the time being, though, it is against the present statutes; however, we've been assured by our lawyers that there isn't much chance of their being invoked except perhaps in the remaining pockets of Christianity where we'll go slow until we do have the necessary laws to protect us."

At that moment the line which had, from the very beginning, been visibly drawn between me and them, became a wall apparent to everyone. Even Clarissa, my usual ally, fearless and sharp, did not speak out. They looked at me, all of them awaiting a sign; even Cave regarded me with curiosity. My hand shook and I was forced to seize the edge of the table to steady myself. The sensation of cold glass and iron gave me a sudden courage. I brought Cave's life to its end. I turned to him and said, quietly, with all the firmness I could summon: "Then you'll have to die as well as they, and soon."

There was a shocked silence. Iris shut her eyes. Paul gasped and sat back abruptly in his chair. Cave turned white but he did not flinch. His eyes did not waver. They seized on mine, terrible and remote, full of power; with an effort, I looked past him. I still feared his gaze.

"What did you say?" The voice was curiously mild yet it increased rather than diminished the tension. We had reached the crisis, without a plan.

"You have removed the fear of death for which future generations will thank you, as I do. But you have gone too far  . . . all of you." I looked about me at the pale faces; a faint wisp of new moon curled in the pale sky above. "Life is to be lived until the flesh no longer supports the life within. The meaning of life, Cave, is more life, not death. The enemy of life is death, an enemy not to be feared but no less hostile for all that, no less dangerous, no less wrong when the living choose it instead of life, either for themselves or for others. You've been able to dispel our fear of the common adversary; that was your great work in the world . . . now you want to go further, to make love to this enemy we no longer fear, to mate with death . . . and it is here that you, all of you, become the enemies of life."

"Stop it!" Iris's voice was high and clear. I did not look at her. All that I could do now was to force the climax.

"But sooner or later every act of human folly creates its own opposition. This will too, more soon than late, for if one can make any generality about human beings it is that they want not to die. You cannot stampede them into death for long. They are enthusiastic now. They may not be soon  . . . unless of course there is some supreme example before them, one which you, Cave, can alone supply. You will have to die by your own hand to show the virtue and the truth of all that you have said."

I had gone as far as I could. I glanced at Iris while I spoke; she had grown white and old-looking and, while I watched her, I realized whom it was she resembled, the obscure nagging memory which had disturbed me all through dinner: she was like my mother, a woman long dead, one whose gentle blurred features had been strikingly similar to that frightened face which now stared at me as though I were a murderer.

Paul was the one who answered me. "You're out of your mind, Gene," he said, when my meaning had at least penetrated to them all. "It doesn't follow in the least that Cave must die because others want to. The main work is still ahead of him. This country is only a corner of the world. There's some of Europe and most of Asia and Africa still ahead of us. How can you even suggest he quit now and die?"