OPUS 21 (46 page)

A great age to be alive in

while it lasts.

And that is how I began to laugh again.

For God is in His Heaven and all is well with Him.

Now the sun thrust a raffish beam through the clouds and gave to the room a curious, amber glow. All of us sitting there shared this discrete cube of light as fish share the water in an aquarium. And all of us, or nearly all, failed like the fish to penetrate the dimensions of our environs. Whichever way we looked we saw, not the great world outside, but only the image of ourselves. It was the nature of the place, we said; we never noticed that it was our failure to look anywhere save at our side of the glass walls.

This extra light also disclosed a fresh secret of the Knight's Bar. I had thought that the mural horsemen were on their way to Elaine's tower in Astolat. It seems not. Over the weekend the artist had fixed to the wall his final composition, a painting of the Grail, silk-muffled and centered in a rosy halo. It occupied a circular place directly over the bar.

How apt!

The very effort of questing leads most but to a deeper unconsciousness.

This is the moral of Faith-so far.

And the moral of Research--so far.

Why is that so?

Because they go in conceited search of salvation for themselves, or in search of knowledge for what is pompously called its own sake.

Now the Musak took up a suitable accompaniment for my mirth.

Ja-da

Ja-da

Ja-da, ja-da, jing, jing, jing!

Segue into silence, fade-out, and fast iron curtain.

THE END