The Great Weaver From Kashmir (14 page)

“But
allegro ma non troppo,
sir, and so I turn to the truth, for that is the one thing about which I still long to ask: namely, what in the name of the Devil himself do we have, generally speaking, to do with truth?

“It has been asserted that the truth sets men free. It has likewise been proven that a piece of chalk the size of your fingertip contains enough power to propel a huge ship across the Atlantic Ocean. Still, in the real world people use coal and oil; and thus the difference between the validity of the truth and a lie vanishes, sir. A lie makes you scarcely less free than the truth. A lie is at least as secure a path to one's goal as the truth: that is to say, a poorly preached lie will naturally turn out to be a fool's mate before a well-preached truth, but the truth can't even begin to resemble smoke from burning hay leavings before a well-preached lie. And a lie is scarcely less suited to making a man happy than the truth. It has, for example, been shown that the truth about Jesus Christ and Almighty God has never been
enough to free Christians from such a ridiculous thing as war. After Christians had prided themselves on this truth for two thousand years, boasted of it in front of extraordinarily learned mandarins in China, foolish Moors in Africa, and apish aborigines in Australia, they made a complete mockery of it and went to war. And they would go to war again tomorrow if they had the money for it. The entire Christian world rewrote the Lord's Prayer as the Devil's with their deeds, sir. The Catholic Church admits the legality of a defensive war, but since this is so, it admits the legality of all wars, in defiance of the commandment about the right and left cheeks, because war is best waged when one defends oneself against the encroachment of another; all wars are defensive wars. Yes, it is common knowledge that Catholic priests sprinkled holy water on cannons and made the sign of the cross over them in the last war, which is no less incredible than the pope in the old days making the sign of the cross over the swords that he gave to his minions. In general I don't understand how God could have come up with the idea of entrusting his Church to such ragamuffins as Europeans, when in the Orient there exist races of people of much nobler descent, with culture so incredibly old that European culture can't even begin to compare with it.

“The only ones who fought against this universal disgrace of the Christians, the world war, were several contemptible proletarians of the likes of Jaurès and Liebknecht, men who floundered in heresy and confusion and, while the continent was consumed by fire and sword over property, preached the barefaced lie that proprietary rights were not rights at all and that individuals should not be allowed to own anything. Of course patriotism and Machiavellianism shouted all such voices into silence, because if their lies
and heresies had been heeded, we would of course have avoided a whole deluge of blood and tears and half of God's Ten Commandments would have been invalidated; and what would those of us here west of the Suez Canal preach if God's Ten Commandments were gone?

“Is it any wonder that I am of the opinion that a truth which after two thousand years of tautology is no more fit than this to better mankind is extraordinarily inconsequential? It may well be that Jesus Christ is the true God, and everything true that is taught about him, whether in the Church or in the Bible, but when the nations set out to destroy each other in the name of Jesus Christ, and when year after year they continue to slaughter the fathers of innocent children in the name of Jesus Christ and wreck the world from pole to pole with crime and sabotage, all in the same name, one begins to feel somewhat indifferent as to whether Christianity is true or a lie. I must admit that since people feel no shame about holding another such feast for the Devil as the world war was, after two thousand years of Christianity, and since they become worse children of Hell the more boisterously they profess their faith in the one true God before the mandarins and aborigines, then I find that the question becomes quite moot. Wouldn't you also agree that it might be advisable to bring something more wholesome to mankind's table, some sort of healthier chicken?”

There was a hint of something in the smile on the canon's face that made it resemble that of an uneducated girl who is prohibited from understanding what is being discussed around her and therefore decides that it is best to smile rather than appear dumbfounded. And this exceptionally pleasant, problematic smile tempted Steinn
to pitch even more of the dialectic of truth out over the soul of the saint.

“Since I have made bold to mention politics, sir,” he continued, “then I cannot refrain from dredging the truth up before you as it must appear to any man who has eyes in his head: it is a blind man who does not see that communism is the social polity of the future. These are mournful tidings, sir, in the first place because of how many prophets will surely be stoned before it is accomplished, and in the second place because of how many stupid old wives' tales will be spread in order to put it to shame. The Church in its role as a worldly institution most resembles a monarchy, and holds that monarchy has its foundation in the will of God, among other things because Christ considered it just to pay taxes to Caesar. The Church has been an untiring advocate of knightly riffraff and tribes of berserks, the so-called noble classes that in the old days sprang up like mushrooms on manure heaps after every war, convinced themselves that they owned the Earth and looked upon themselves as some sort of supermen whom the masses ought to bear upon golden chairs. It certainly was deft of the Church to take sides with the nobility in order to secure itself souls. But now it has had to watch as the will of God concerning monarchy and the nobility has gone the same way as the twenty-four royal dynasties of Egypt. First the bourgeoisie devoured the will of God, and then the plutocracy devoured the bourgeoisie. Society in our time is subservient to the despotism of adventurists! Society in our time is camouflaged anarchy: every hand is raised against the next; everyone fights and hates everyone else, and it's sheer coincidence that grants the victory! Coincidence creates kings like Rothschild and Stinnes, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller
and Morgan, Field and Astor; but human reason and human virtue are trampled down beneath the feet of dogs and men.

“Reality is what has happened and we must look it straight in the eye. No matter what the will of God might be according to the theological sciences, God has let everything happen as it has. It is too late to speak for kings nowadays, when the noblemen have become dancers in coffeehouses, streetcar attendants, and shoeshine boys. Anarchy joins in a game of blindman's bluff with a gullible public under the mask of parliamentary democracy, which is an illusion, freedom of speech, which is cant, and philanthropy, which is venality. In other words, the time has come for human reason to stand up on its own two feet and change the course of the game.

“Human reason, sir, is the most vicious power under the sun. When human reason takes to its feet, it shovels the masses like cast-iron rods into enormous crucibles and lights an engulfing fire beneath; then it forges from them a sharp-edged weapon, which it whets quite diligently, sir, because it will not cease from killing until the blood drips from the bleeding trunks of the last enemies of mankind. This is what has been done in Russia, and is what will be done throughout the world. In each and every country wise men are sharpening their weapons for the decisive battle, and the weapons are the masses; the battle is the revolution.

“When I read in the world newspapers about the fear of communism as a reactionary response propagated by members of the Catholic Church, it seems to me that between the lines one can read the pope's fear concerning whether the Church will stand or fall because of the backwardness or imperfection of the social order; in other words, the fear that Christ will break his promise,
which the Church is constantly shouting, that he will keep watch over it until the end of the world. Am I in the wrong, sir? Or does the Church fear that its teachings concerning charity will become invalid in communist society? If so, why did your father, Benedict of Nursia, found a communist society? When Christian monks founded a society in Paraguay it was communist, not unlike what is happening in Russia now. In your rule the greatest care is taken to ensure that the individual is not a passive witness to an imperfect social order; each individual stands in a legally binding position to the whole; everyone is given work according to his own abilities; every single individual is a limb on the societal body, he exists for the sake of the community, the community for his sake; if anyone becomes sick he is nursed without a word; those whom old age bends are allowed to live their days without care or worry; no one is allowed to suffer need; all receive their daily bread, but nothing beyond that. The abbot is not superior to the brothers except in his gift for organization and his abilities as a leader, which he has received from God, in addition to the cross upon his chest, as a sign of the one in whose name he governs. Very fine, sir: in this collective state of yours, Christian love of one's neighbor and God's Ten Commandments are put into practice in a simple manner, not with lotteries, collections, and vaudeville shows, nor with cobbled rags to be distributed to the poor at Christmas, but rather with simple government, organization founded on human reason. And it is the same kind of government, the same kind of system, founded on the same kind of human reason, that is described in Marxist doctrine: cooperation in place of endless war, collective ownership of the Earth's endowments in place of matches of tug-of-war over them,
the legally binding position of the individual in relation to the whole, in place of armed despotism in which the most brazen adventurist tyrannizes the masses; in other words, Benedict of Nursia in place of Alexander Borgia.

“Doesn't the Church have two thousand years of experience of this: that in a social order in which people are denied everything except for the fight for the necessities of life, the doctrine of love for mankind is nothing other than seed strewn about for the birds of the air? Will it not learn any lessons from current events? Does it turn a deaf ear to the Great World War, which speaks the clearest language about the sterility of the doctrine of confraternity in a society founded on conflict between men? Does it not see that it has been playing the fiddle for two thousand years while Rome has been burning? Or does it intend to wait for the Christian world to rewrite the Lord's Prayer for the Devil with an even more appalling war than the Great World War?”

At home Steinn was accustomed to needing only five minutes to win over those who listened to him, and he would have found nothing more natural here than for the monk to rise to his feet, throw off his cowl, renounce the one true faith, and shout:
“Eviva la bandiera rossa!”
²⁸
But this did not happen. This man must have been living in a hideout of firmly rational thought. He smiled the entire time that Steinn rambled on.

“I find it a true pleasure to listen to you speak,” he replied finally. “I admire your elocution. And I sincerely rejoice to meet a strong young soul who not only finds himself compelled to take a stand and reproach men for their errors, but also to carry a clean slate.”

And although the monk did not take any steps to expound the excellence of the true faith or make excuses for Christian culture to this elated Scandinavian, it was far from it that he considered him worthless: instead he looked him over long and carefully, while Steinn let his blazing eyes rest on the man who slept under the continental edition of the
Daily Mail.

Why didn't the monk answer? Why didn't he try to defend Christianity? Does he think that it's sufficient proof of the pope's infallibility to let all of the criticism rush past his ears like wind and pay me some empty compliments? Steinn thought it reasonable that a Benedictine monk should be ready and willing to haggle about his faith no less than someone sitting in a café in Reykjavík.

But the monk seemed not to give any thought to approaching the field where Steinn had wanted to force their conversation into pitched battle, and instead finally asked, courteously, and yet perhaps not entirely unsarcastically:

“Would it be too importunate if your fellow traveler, whom you might never see again, were to be so bold as to reveal that he is slightly curious to know what such a brilliant thinker has in mind to do?”

Steinn looked straight at the man and answered without hesitation:

“I am in search of perfection, like you. And I will not stop until I find it. I have no waking interest in anything but perfection. This is
why my face is savage when I turn it toward others. You think that I am a communist? No, sir, I am a much greater revolutionary than that. The communist movement is worthless, per se. The communist movement is only an inside-out capitalist movement, per se. I despise those who think that mankind would be happy if the masses were to take over the Kremlin, Buckingham Palace, or the Vatican, or were to get honey to eat instead of horse fat. On the other hand, it is a person with cataracts who does not see that the communist system is the social order of the future.

“But in my eyes everything is worthless but God. I find him so remarkable that I have decided to write fifty poems about him in English. It is another matter whether he exists. My soul is like Kashmir, the valley of roses; I have been given glorious talents, and what's more, the calling to put them to use. I have a friend in England, a professor at an Indian university, a man who is able to appreciate my talent, and I am now on my way to him to learn the English language thoroughly. He will be staying at home in England for three years. I intend to use the British Empire as a receiving set. Would you like to hear the headings? I have them all written here in my notebook. The world has never suspected that such poems could be slumbering in the harp of any poet. I plan to spend the next three years in seclusion.”