A Canticle for Leibowitz (26 page)

The abbot gave him a brief glare and began reading. The silence was awkward. “You found this over in the ‘Unclassified’ section, I believe?” he asked after a few seconds.

“Yes, but-”

The abbot went on reading.

“Well, I suppose I should finish packing,” muttered the scholar, and resumed his sorting of papers. Monks shifted restlessly, as if wishing to slink quietly away. Kornhoer brooded alone.

Satisfied after a few minutes of reading, Dom Paulo handed the notes abruptly to his prior.
“Lege!”
he commanded gruffly.

“But what-?”

“A fragment of a play, or a dialogue, it seems. I’ve seen it before. It’s something about some people creating some artificial people as slaves. And the slaves revolt against their makers. If Thon Taddeo had read the Venerable Boedullus’
De Inanibus,
he would have found that one classified as ‘probable fable or allegory.’ But perhaps the thon would care little for the evaluations of the Venerable Boedullus, when he can make his own.”

“But what sort of-”

“Lege!”

Gault moved aside with the notes. Paulo turned toward the scholar again and spoke politely, informatively, emphatically: “ ‘To the image of God He created them: male and female He created them.’ “

“My remarks were only conjecture,” said Thon Taddeo.

“Freedom to speculate is necessary-”

“‘And the Lord God took Man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. And-’“

“-to the advancement of science. If you would have us hampered by blind adherence, unreasoned dogma, then you would prefer-”

“‘God commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good end evil, thou shalt-’ “

“-to leave the world in the same black ignorance and superstition that you say your Order has struggled-”

“‘-not eat For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.”“

“-against. Nor could we ever overcome famine, disease, or misbirth, or make the world one bit better than it has been for-”

“‘And the serpent said to the woman: God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.’ “

“-twelve centuries, if every direction of speculation is to he closed off and every new thought denounced-”

“It never
was
any better, it never
will
be any better. It will only be richer or poorer, sadder but not wiser, until the very last day.”

The scholar shrugged helplessly. “You see? I knew you would be offended, but you told me-Oh, What’s the use? You have your account of it.”

“The ‘account’ that I was quoting, Sir Philosopher, was not an account of the manner of creation, but an account of the manner of the temptation that led to the Fall. Did that escape you? “And the serpent said to the woman-’ “

“Yes, yes, but the freedom to speculate is essential-”

“No one has tried to deprive you of that. Nor is anyone offended. But to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.”

“You question the honor of my motives?” asked the thon, darkening.

“At times I question my own. I accuse you of nothing. But ask yourself this: Why do you take delight in leaping to such a wild conjecture from so fragile a springboard? Why do you wish to discredit the past, even to dehumanizing the last civilization? So that you need not learn from their mistakes? Or can it be that you can’t bear being only a ‘rediscoverer,’ and must feel that you are a “creator’ as well?”

The thon hissed an oath. “These records should be placed in the hands of competent people,” he said angrily. “What irony this is!”

The light sputtered and went out. The failure was not mechanical. The novices at the drive-mill had stopped work.

“Bring candles,” called the abbot.

Candles were brought.

“Come down,” Dom Paulo said to the novice atop the ladder. “And bring that thing with you. Brother Kornhoer? Brother Korn-”

“He stepped into the storeroom a moment ago, Domne.”

“Well, call him.” Dom Paulo turned to the scholar again, handing him the documents which had been found among Brother Claret’s effects. “Read, if you can make it out by candlelight, Sir Philosopher!”

“A mayoral edict?”

“Read it and rejoice in your cherished freedom.”

Brother Kornhoer slipped into the room again. He was carrying the heavy crucifix which had been displaced from the head of the archway to make room for the novel lamp, He handed the cross to Dom Paulo.

“How did you know I wanted this?”

“I just decided it was about time, Domne.” He shrugged.

The old man climbed the ladder and replaced the rood on its iron hook. The corpus glittered with gold by candlelight The abbot turned and called down to his monks.

“Who reads in this alcove henceforth, let him read
ad Lumina Christi!”

When he descended the ladder, Thon Taddeo was already cramming the last of his papers into a large case for later sorting. He glanced warily at the priest but said nothing.

“You read the edict?”

The scholar nodded.

“If, by some unlikely chance, you would like political asylum here-”

The scholar shook his head.

“Then may I ask you to clarify your remark about placing our records in competent hands?”

Thou Taddeo lowered his gaze. “It was said in the heat of the moment, Father. I retract it.”

“But you haven’t stopped meaning it. You’ve meant it all along.”

The thon did not deny it.

“Then it would be futile to repeat my plea for your intercession on our behalf-when your officers tell your cousin what a fine military garrison this abbey would make. But for his own sake, tell him that when our altars or the Memorabilia have been threatened, our predecessors did not hesitate to resist with the sword.” He paused. “Will you be leaving today or tomorrow?”

“Today I think would be better,” Thon Taddeo said softly.

“I’ll order provisions made ready.” The abbot turned to go, but paused to add gently: “But when you get back, deliver a message to your colleagues.”

“Of course. Have you written it?”

“No. Just say that anyone who wishes to study here will be welcome, in spite of the poor lighting. Thon Maho, especially. Or Thon Esser Shon with his six ingredients. Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think-as long as they don’t seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste. Tell them too, my son, that when the time comes, as it will surely come, that not only priests but philosophers are in need of sanctuary-tell them our walls are thick out here.”

He nodded a dismissal to the novices, then, and trudged up the stairs to be alone in his study. For the Fury was twisting his insides again, and he knew that torture was coming.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine…Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare…

Maybe it will twist clean loose this time, he thought almost hopefully. He wanted to summon Father Gault to hear his confession, but decided that it would be better to wait until the guests had gone. He stared at the edict again.

A knock at the door soon interrupted his agony.

“Can you come back later?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be here later,” answered a muffled voice from the corridor.

“Oh, Thon Taddeo-come in, then.” Dom Paulo straightened; he took a firm grip on pain, not trying to dismiss it but only to control it as he would an unruly servant.

The scholar entered and placed a folder of papers on the abbot’s desk. “I thought it only proper to leave you these,” he said.

“What do we have here?”

“The sketches of your fortifications. The ones the officers made. I suggest you burn them immediately.”

“Why have you done this?” Dom Paulo breathed. “After our words downstairs-”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Thon Taddeo interrupted. “I would have returned them in any event-as a matter of honor, not to let them take advantage of your hospitality for-but never mind. If I had returned the sketches any sooner, the officers would have had plenty of time and opportunity to draw up another set.”

The abbot arose slowly and reached for the scholar’s hand.

Thon Taddeo hesitated. “I promise no effort on your behalf-”

“I know.”

“-because I think what you have here should be open to the world.”

“It is, it was, it always will be.”

They shook hands gingerly, but Dom Paulo knew that it was no token of any truce but only of mutual respect between foes. Perhaps it would never be more.

But why must it all be acted again?

The answer was near at hand; there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Dom Paulo summoned the younger priest. It was very nearly time to go. And soon it would be a new year.

That was the year of the unprecedented torrent of rain on the desert, causing seed long dry to burst into bloom.

That was the year that a vestige of civilization came to the nomads of the Plains, and even the people of Laredo began to murmur that it was possibly all for the best. Rome did not agree.

In that year a temporary agreement was formalized and broken between the states of Denver and Texarkana. It was the year that the Old Jew returned to his former vocation of Physician and Wanderer, the year that the monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz buried an abbot and bowed to a new one. There were bright hopes for tomorrow.

It was the year a king came riding out of the east, to subdue the land and own it. It was a year of Men.

23

It was unpleasantly hot beside the sunny that skirted the wooded hillside, and the heat had aggravated the Poet’s thirst. After a long time he dizzily lifted his head from the ground and tried to look around. The melee had ended; things were fairly quiet now, except for the cavalry officer. The buzzards were even gliding down to land.

There were several dead refugees, one dead horse, and the dying cavalry officer who was pinned under the horse. At intervals, the cavalryman awoke and faintly screamed. Now he screamed for Mother, and again he screamed for a priest. At times he awoke to scream for his horse. His screaming quieted the buzzards and further disgruntled the Poet, who was feeling peevish anyhow. He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all.

Even worse, he had not now the stupidity of the world to blame but only his own. The Poet himself had blundered. He had been minding his own business and bothering no one when he noticed the party of refugees galloping toward the hill from the east with a cavalry troop in close pursuit. To avoid the affray, he had hidden himself behind some scrub that grew from the lip of the embankment flanking the trail, a vantage point from which he could have seen the whole spectacle without being seen. It was not the Poet’s fight. He cared nothing whatever for the political and religious tastes of either the refugees or the cavalry troop. If slaughter had been fated, fate could have found no less disinterested a witness than the Poet. Whence, then, the blind impulse?

The impulse had sent him leaping from the embankment to tackle the cavalry officer in the saddle and stab the fellow three times with his own belt-knife before the two of them toppled to the ground. He could not understand why he had done it. Nothing had been accomplished. The officer’s men had shot him down before he ever climbed to his feet. The slaughter of refugees had continued. They had all ridden away then in pursuit of other fugitives, leaving the dead behind.

He could hear his abdomen growl. The futility, alas, of trying to digest a rifle ball. He had done the useless deed, he decided finally, because of the part with the dull saber. If the officer had merely hacked the woman out of the saddle with one clean stroke, and ridden on, the Poet would have overlooked the deed. But to keep hacking and hacking that way-

He refused to think about it again. He thought of water.

“O God-O God-” the officer kept complaining.

“Next time, sharpen your cutlery,” the Poet wheezed.

But there would be no next time.

The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away, Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had be anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: “
Oof
!”-his testament for posterity.
Ooof
!-a memorabile for you, Domnissime.

“Father? Father?” the officer moaned.

After a while the Poet mustered his strength and lifted his head again, blinked dirt out of his eye, and studied the officer for a few seconds. He was certain the officer was the same one he had tackled, even though the fellow by now had turned a chalky shade of green. His bleating for a priest that way began to annoy the Poet. At least three clergymen lay dead among the refugees, and yet the officer was not now being so particular about specifying his denominational persuasions. Maybe I’ll do, the Poet thought.

He began dragging himself slowly toward the cavalryman. The officer saw him coming and groped for a pistol. The Poet paused; he had not expected to be recognized. He prepared to roll for cover. The pistol was wavering in his direction He watched it waver for a moment, then decided to continue his advance. The officer pulled the trigger. The shot went wild by yards, worse luck.

The officer was trying to reload when the Poet took the gun away from him. He seemed delirious, and kept trying to cross himself.

“Go ahead,” the Poet grunted, finding the knife.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned-”

“Ego te absolvo,
son,” said the Poet, and plunged the knife into his throat.

Afterward, he found the officer’s canteen and drank a little. The water was hot from the sun, but it seemed delicious. He lay with his head pillowed on the officer’s horse and waited for the shadow of the hill to creep over the road. Jesus, how it hurt! That last bit isn’t going to be as easy to explain, he thought; and me without my eyeball too. If there’s really anything to explain. He looked at the dead cavalryman.

“Hot as hell down there, isn’t it’?” he whispered hoarsely.

The cavalrymen was not being informative. The Poet took another drink from the canteen, then another. Suddenly there was a very painful bowel movement. He was quite unhappy about it for a moment or two.

The buzzards strutted, preened, and quarreled over dinner; it was not yet properly cured. They waited a few days for the wolves. There was plenty for all. Finally they ate the Poet.

As always the wild black scavengers of the skies laid their eggs in season and lovingly fed their young. They soared high over prairies and mountains and plains, searching for the fulfillment of that share of life’s destiny which was theirs according to the plan of Nature. Their philosophers demonstrated by unaided reason alone that the Supreme
Cathartes aura regnans
had created the world especially for buzzards. They worshipped him with hearty appetites for many centuries.

Then, after the generations of the darkness came the generations of the light. And they called it the Year of Our Lord 3781-a year of His peace, they prayed.