The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “Lie still. You know it alway stops hurting if you lie still.”

  “Ah, you’re kind.”

  “Why, John, you’re mine in the sight of God. And you not even able to believe!—well, there, I made my peace with that too, long ago, for a’n’t it what makes the world go ’round, a’n’t I alway said so? Nay, love, never mind how I chatter. Try now if you can’t get some sleep.”

  Chapter Seven

  If the present alone is real, one might as well eat the damn’ porridge. On Tuesday morning Reuben did so, admitting at once that the porridge was good as always, that the fault lay with his own jumpy stomach, his sandy-eyed weariness from a bad night. Ben also seemed depressed, or at least without the glow and buoyancy he had shown since his last return from Boston. Reuben had intended to offer a few not too classical flights concerning Aphrodite Anadyomene the sea-born, partly in the hope of learning whether love totally obliterated the sense of humor. He left them unsaid.

  It might be abstraction, not depression, that ailed Ben. Experimentally, while his brother gazed moodily out the window, Reuben stole a sliver of bacon from his trencher; Ben never noticed. When Reuben replaced it, Ben did observe the action, vaguely startled, smiling and saying: “Thanks.”

  “Well, damn,” said Reuben. Kate had watched the operation—vacantly and without chuckling.

  “Uh? A’n’t you hungry, Ru?”

  “Damn again,” said Reuben. “I am alway hungry. I own a tapeworm of the soul.” He recaptured the bacon and popped it in his mouth. Ben was still merely looking puzzled. “’Twould appear that this morning I am penned up with mooncalves—even Kate won’t laugh. And yet it’s a fair day, a red sky last night.” Kate turned her back with odd abruptness. And in his own dark privacy, it seemed to Reuben that he was like one who can behold the gathering of the crimson banners for Armageddon where others see only a flaming translation of natural clouds.

  Something spoke then within him, so vividly that Reuben imagined at first he was recalling some remark of Mr. Welland’s; but casting back, he felt certain that in their few meetings of the last weeks, the doctor had said no such thing: Learning begins now. Simply his own thought, taking on a verbalized form of uncommon clearness, of imperative power: LEARNING BEGINS NOW.

  Ben had drifted back into his country of dream. Kate was, abnormally, not talking. Having breakfasted early as usual with Mr. Kenny, who had left for Boston, Mr. Hibbs was waiting in the schoolroom—perhaps not too impatiently, since work could always be done in odd moments on the immortality of the soul. The kitchen, not oppressed by dining-room demands of dignity, was rich with pleasant smells and the warmth of May. Reuben refilled his coffee cup.

  If learning begins (ever) it must somehow begin with premises that will not betray. All men are mortal; Ben and I are men.…

  Death is the conclusion of known life. I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I believed, that a knowable life continues in a heaven or hell; therefore I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I did believe, that Ben (or I, or Mother, or honest Jan Dyckman) can continue beyond the conclusion we call death.

  Knowledge (Mr. Welland said last Saturday) pertains to what can be proven by the carnal senses.

  Faith is belief in a proposition that cannot be established by the carnal senses—(“My faith is like that of a man on a cloudy day.…”) Faith cannot be supported by knowledge, for if proof is found the proposition becomes knowledge and faith is no longer relevant; if it be not found, the proposition comes not within the region of knowledge.

  Hope and desire—(must you rattle those pots, Kate, at this especial mortal moment?)—hope and desire may derive partly from knowledge, but cannot possess the force of it, for they are directed to the future, which does not exist. Therefore faith, hope and desire are all in the same class: to say that once upon a time I had faith in a heaven is no more than to say that I desired it, or hoped for it, or was told I ought to desire it—all without knowledge.

  They say: “Help thou mine unbelief!” But belief and unbelief are no more to be helped or hindered than the eyes’ perception of a cloud. If the eyes carry out their function and if the cloud be there, I shall see it. Why, so far as belief and unbelief are concerned, will, desire, hope, fear, pain have no part to play at all, let them be cruel as flame or powerful as time.

  The mind, he understood, would continue proposing premises for all its life: some false, to be rejected; some (so far as the senses themselves can be trusted) true; every one of them to be examined in the atmosphere of doubt. Since without faith there is no other atmosphere.

  A few strange years ago I walked on a quicksand, in a fog. Then it never occurred to me that the seeming certainties were a quicksand, the visions of Heaven a fog of fantasy. Am I any more likely to sink or stray, now that I know it? Proposition concluded pro tem.

  As for Hell—Open up, old rat-hole! I may wish to spit.

  “Ben,” said Reuben, “do be a good boy and eat your bacon.”

  “Mm,” said Ben, and smiled, and ate it.

  Kate’s unnatural silence was like a crying. Reuben made a private note to find out, if possible, what ailed her. The dregs of his coffee were still good for a bit more lingering.

  You could not—in simple nature you could not listen to all the surrounding voices explaining and re-explaining, accusing, justifying, probing, forever contradicting one another and seldom pausing for an answer. You could heed only a few. Which ones? How to choose?

  Love will choose some of the few, the nearest and surely the most important (including Kate). (The most important, why? Query noted, for future consideration.) Caution will select a few that must be heard, for reasons of safety and self-defense. And some will be chosen by native curiosity, which Mr. Welland described last Saturday as one of the rarest of all virtues.

  Other voices speak outside the region of individual contact, some of them urgent. Micrographia; the old voice of Hakluyt if only because Ben loves it; Scripture, if only because the world is so obsessed with its thunderings; many others—even Ovid. Mr. Welland spoke of the dramatist Shakespeare; Uncle John has one volume of him—note: find and percontate, immed. These voices are not altogether unlike the near ones—more methodical, because the pen, unlike the voice, need not move in dizzy haste to get everything said before someone interrupts; more methodical and not so much given to hemming and hawing and conversational fluff; but these voices too are engaged in explaining and re-explaining, commanding, blurred sometimes in flurries of contradiction. Sometimes (Michael Wigglesworth for example) they sound downright embarrassed and peevish, when the stubborn universe they speak of is so plainly not as they describe it.

  Since not all voices may be attended, since some of them lie and many more speak loudly in the absence of knowledge, one must wait, Reuben guessed, for the sudden inner waking, the unsought recognition, the mind’s clear declaration: This voice—(Why did you say to me, “Run, boy! Run!”—why?)—this voice is speaking not merely out of some other’s need to assert, but speaking to me, and I understand what it says—some of it.…

  If we create the present by living it, then right and wrong are man-made. I will accept the verdicts of others in this matter if they seem reasonable to me, and just—not otherwise.

  It was once proposed to me on excellent authority that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. It seems to be necessary to hear much nonsense while waiting for the sound that rings true. I may be deceived again, many times, but I say it shall not be from any scared wish to believe.

  Am I correct, Mr. Welland, in supposing that if doctrines of right and wrong are man-made, learning begins now?

  * * * *

  Ben struggled through Tuesday morning’s Greek and logic without serious discredit, and picked up only a few minor fresh scratches from the thorns of Latin grammar. He could not quite win clear o
f a mental shadow that had haunted him since waking after a dream not plainly remembered—a foreboding uneasiness something like that of a child who has wandered into a strange and exciting room: he has not been specifically forbidden to enter here, but knows he has not been granted permission either; presently someone may arrive and with the cool finality of adults chivy him back to the nursery where the toys have lost all magic.

  In the afternoon Ben achieved brief glory, encountering an area of De Finibus in which Reuben had drilled him so briskly that error was nearly impossible. After this victory the deadly hour hand, the slightly less cruel minute hand, appeared to be creeping with better speed toward the beautiful moment of three o’clock, when Mr. Hibbs would snap his books shut, blow from the tops of them a little imaginary dust, and go away. Ru said once (a dreamy voice coming out of the dark of the bedroom when Ben thought he was asleep): “If I live to be old, I shall alway consider that the immortality of the soul sets in at three o’clock post meridian.”

  A resolution to go once more into Boston had grown today, less like a rational decision than like the climbing of a fever. With the lessons concluded, he would not, like a schoolboy, ask permission: he would simply go, as casually as Ru had been strolling over to Mr. Welland’s cottage lately; if there should be consequences of disapproval from Mr. Hibbs or Uncle John himself, Ben supposed they would not be serious—in any case he could meet them with a man’s calm, surely?

  He tried (from two o’clock on) to lay it out serenely as a plan of campaign. One: he must speak with Faith again—briefly, soberly, a man of affairs saying a temporary good-bye. Two: he must interview Uncle John at the warehouse, in the cool atmosphere of business affairs, and pray for a definite answer, on the grounds that the time of Artemis’ departure must be quite near. At this point the plan hazed up a little—Uncle John seldom stayed at the warehouse later than five o’clock. Well, Molly could make fair time into the city, and he would not remain long with Faith—he spent some effort here, defining a few poignant answers he would make to what she would say. Still, he had better prepare a second line of approach: if Uncle John had already left for Roxbury, he would seek out Captain Jenks himself, no less, beat down the devils of fear and self-consciousness so to put the matter plainly to the iron mountain and get an answer. After all, Jenks wasn’t so bad. Honest and human. In fantasy Ben saw a gleam of rugged friendliness (respect?) in the little blue eyes.…

  Better have a third line. If Uncle John had left and Jenks could not be reached, lost in liquor or otherwise unavailable, then he could—oh, hell, ask around at the wharf anyway, find out when Artemis was expected to sail, since it seemed that Uncle John was unwilling to tell him. Tom Ball ought to know. Maybe he would run into Daniel Shawn again, and could, at the very least, learn whether Shawn was to sail as mate. On Sunday, Uncle John had been immune to approach, shut up in his study the better part of the day; yesterday evening he had displayed an impossible mood, his manner testy and faraway, his foot tormenting him. But with a plan of campaign you could always accomplish something. Couldn’t you?…

  He found it infuriating that as three o’clock drew very near the whole thing seemed more and more like a fever. His breath was difficult; he looked into damp palms and thought: What the devil am I contemplating? Running away? From what? Good God, not from Uncle John Kenny, the soul of generosity! From what?… He watched the inexorable dwindling of the pie-slice made by the hour-hand and the minute-hand as ten minutes of three became five minutes of three. At three minutes of three he felt downright sick, and then jumped like a fool when the dry uncomprehended monologue of Mr. Hibbs ended with a quite familiar snap of a closed volume. He sat still, demoralized, watching Mr. Hibbs stride away; waited for inner quiet and was again grotesquely startled when Reuben, in one of those warm moods which Ben nowadays found almost as strange as his moods of withdrawal, came behind his desk and leaned over to lock thin arms under Ben’s chin and murmur: “What’s the matter, Mooncalf?”

  “Nothing, Ru—nothing. I think I’ll go into Boston.”

  “Oh.” Reuben broke the contact; Ben had found it vaguely comforting as well as disturbing. Reuben came around the desk, and re-established nearness by placing his hands over Ben’s, hands thinner and smaller, but harder, sometimes even stronger. “Would you,” said Reuben presently, “care to take a creeping crawling student of medicine into your confidence, not that the ancient creature wishes to intrude, but—?”

  It was not always possible to look directly at Reuben. He saw too much, or if he did not, his quiet intentness made it seem that he did. The faces of others were apt to make it plain enough that they were not so much concerned with you as with themselves; Reuben (who surely thought about himself as much as anyone) somehow could put that preoccupation aside, and make you believe that nothing mattered to him at the moment except that jumble of thought and image and desire which you had grown accustomed to calling your Self. And it was, Ben thought, no illusion: the boy did search, and he did care for what he found. Ben fumbled for an evasion: “Student of medicine for sure?”

  This proved to be no evasion after all, for Reuben smiled, and used the question itself as a part of the effort to illuminate the self of Ben Cory. “Yes, truly, and I wish you could find the same kind of certainty, Ben, because it’s good. Why, I almost think, Ben, that anything could happen to me now—anything, no matter what—and though I might be hurt as much as I would have been, say a year ago, I could defend myself against my trouble, whatever it was: I could go and study another page of Vesalius’ Anatomy. Or the books you bought for me. They wouldn’t fade, I think. They wouldn’t betray me.… Find something like that, Ben. Suppose you did change your mind about it after a while, at least you’d have it for now.”

  “But when I search myself I don’t find it. I only.…”

  “Only what?” Reuben tightened his hands, relentless.

  “I only wish—oh, I wish to God Uncle John would allow me to sail with Artemis.”

  Reuben let go his hands, and perched on Mr. Hibbs’ sacred desk, swinging his feet, drooping a little, boyish and old, perhaps no longer searching. “You put it to him a few days ago, did you not?”

  “Mm—he wouldn’t say ay or no.”

  “You know Uncle John would find it difficult to disappoint thee.”

  “I am not a child.”

  “No,” said Reuben, and with nothing in his voice to contradict the word. “What about this afternoon, that is what’s left of it?”

  “I thought I might see Uncle John at the warehouse. Ride home with him maybe.”

  “Ay, might be easier—he’s a rather different man there at the office.”

  “It—seems not wrong to you, that I wish to sail?”

  Reuben was long silent, drooping, looking into his empty hands. “Ben—’d I ever recount to thee the story of the woodcutter’s stupid son who tamed a lion?”

  “Woodcutter’s son—I don’t think so. Is it from Aesop?”

  “No. Well, that’s nearly the whole tale already. He found it as a cub. They grew up together, played together, the lion learning not to unsheath his claws, the woodcutter’s son trying to roar like a lion, but ’tis said he made only some poor squeaking sounds that carried no great distance. They were yet friends when the lion was full grown, but then the poor brute in some manner sickened, fretted, vanishing at whiles and returning unwillingly, until at length the woodcutter’s stupid son did arrive at one moment of wisdom, and took his friend into the forest and said to him, ‘Go thy way.’”

  “I am no lion.”

  “Marry come up, I am a shade more learned than that woodcutter’s son. Ben, I’m only trying to say I don’t think anyone should try to possess you, as I suppose Uncle John does, as maybe I’ve done—but if you wish to sail, if it’s your decision and your heart in it, d’you think I’d impede you? Supposing I could?”

 
“No, I don’t think you would.”

  “And I will not,” said Reuben, and jumped off the desk. “I’m for Mr. Welland’s, by the back fields. Best change thy jacket, Ben—that one beareth the slight saffron memory of an egg which hath gone before. I’ll saddle Molly for thee, meanwhile.”

  When Ben rejoined him in the stable, Reuben had nothing more to say, except the light random murmuring that Molly enjoyed. Ben led her out into the yard—not in sight of Mr. Hibbs’ window. Reuben said again, unnecessarily: “I’ll go by the fields, you by the road.”

  As Reuben held the bridle, Ben was bewildered at his reluctance to set his foot in the stirrup. “Ru, what ails thee? It’s not as if we were saying a good-bye.”

  “No. Why, man, if you sail, I also—well, I hope it turns out as you wish. I believe Uncle John heeds what you say, more than you suppose. Why the knife, little Benjamin?”