A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Jr. Miller

  Hongan Os ignored the eulogies and accepted a cup of blood from the old woman who served the council fire. It was fresh from a butchered steer and still warm. He drained it before turning to nod at the Easterners who watched the brief wassail with apparent disquiet..

  “Aaaah!” said the clans chief.

  “Aaaah!’ replied the three old people, together with one grass-eater who dared to chime in. The people stared at the grass-eater for a moment in disgust.

  The insane one tried to cover his companion’s blunder.

  “Tell me,” said the madman when the chieftain was seated. “How is it that your people drink no water? Do your gods object?”

  “Who knows what the gods drink?” rumbled Mad Bear. “It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men. Should it he otherwise?”

  The insane one was not insulted. He studied the chief for a moment with searching gray eyes, then nodded at one of his fellows. “That ‘water for the cattle’ explains it,” he said. “The everlasting drought out here. A herdsman people would conserve what little water there is for the animals. I was wondering if they backed it by a religious taboo.”

  His companion grimaced and spoke in the Texarkanan tongue. “Water! Ye gods, why can’t we drink water, Thon Taddeo? There’s such a thing as too much conformity!” He spat dryly. “Blood! Blah! It sticks in the throat. Why can’t we have one little sip of–”

  “Not until we leave”

  “But, Thon–”

  *No,” snapped the scholar; then, noticing that the clans people were glowering at them, he spoke to Mad Bear in tongue of the Plains again. “My comrade here was speaking of the manliness and health of your people,” he said. “Perhaps your diet is responsible.”

  “Ha!” barked the chief, but then called almost cheerfully to the old woman: “Give that outlander a cup of red.”

  Thon Taddeo’s companion shuddered, but made no protest.

  “I have, O Chief, a request to make of your greatness,” said the scholar. “Tomorrow we shall continue our journey to the west. If some of your warriors could accompany our party, we would be honored.”

  “Why?”

  Thon Taddeo paused. “Why–as guides ...” He stopped, and suddenly smiled. “No, I’ll be quite truthful. Some of your people disapprove of our presence here. While your hospitality has been–”

  Hongan Os threw back his head and roared with laughter. “They are afraid of the lesser clans,” he said to the old ones. “They fear being ambushed as soon as they leave my tents. They eat grass and are afraid of a fight.”

  The scholar flushed slightly.

  “Fear nothing, outlander!” chortled the clans chief. “Real men shall accompany you.”

  Thon Taddeo inclined his head in mock gratitude.

  “Tell us,” said Mad Bear, “what is it you go to seek in the western Dry Land? New places for planting fields? I can tell you there are none. Except near a few water holes, nothing grows that even cattle will eat.”

  “We seek no new land,” the visitor answered. “We are not all of us farmers, you know. We are going to look for–” He paused. In the nomad speech, there was no way to explain the purpose of the journey to the Abbey of St. Leibowitz “–for the skills of an ancient sorcery.”

  One of the old ones, a shaman, seemed to prick up his ears. “An ancient sorcery in the west? I know of no magicians there. Unless you mean the dark-robed ones?”

  “They are the ones.”

  “Ha! What magic do they have that’s worth looking after? Their messengers can be captured so easily that it is no real sport–although they do endure torture well. What sorcery can you learn from them?”

  “Well, for my part, I agree with you,” said Thon Taddeo. “But it is said that writings, uh, incantations of great power are hoarded at one of their abodes. If it is true, then obviously the dark-robed ones don’t know how to use them, but we hope to master them for ourselves.”

  “Will the dark-robes permit you to observe their secrets?”

  Thon Taddeo smiled. “I think so. They don’t dare hide them any longer. We could take them, if we had to.”

  “A brave saying,” scoffed Mad Bear. “Evidently the farmers are braver among their own kind–although they are meek enough among real people.”

  The scholar, who had stomached his fill of the nomad’s insults, chose to retire early.

  The soldiers remained at the council fire to discuss with Hongan Os the war that was certain to come; but the war, after all, was none of Thon Taddeo’s affair. The political aspirations of his ignorant cousin were far from his own interest in a revival of learning in a dark world, except when that monarch’s patronage proved useful, as it already had upon several occasions.

  16

  The old hermit stood at the edge of the mesa and watched the approach of the dust speck across the desert. The hermit munched, muttered words and chuckled silently into the wind. His withered hide was burned the color of old leather by the sun, and his brushy beard was stained yellow about the chin. He wore a basket hat and a loincloth of rough homespun that resembled burlap–his only clothing except for sandals and a goat-skin water bag.

  He watched the dust speck until it passed through the village of Sanly Bowitts and departed again by way of the road leading past the mesa.

  “Ah!” snorted the hermit, his eyes beginning to burn.

  “His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of his peace: he shall sit upon his kingdom.”

  Suddenly he went down the arroyo like a cat with three legs, using his staff, bounding from stone to stone and sliding most of the way. The dust from his rapid descent plumed high on the wind and wandered away.

  At the foot of the mesa he vanished into the mesquite and settled down to wait. Soon he heard the rider approaching at a lazy trot, and he began slinking toward the road to peer out through the brush. The pony appeared from around the bend, wrapped in a thin dust shroud. The hermit darted into the trail and threw up his arms.

  “Olla allay!” he shouted; and as the rider halted, he darted forward to seize the reins and frown anxiously up at the man in the saddle.

  His eyes blazed for a moment. “For a Child is born to us, and a Son is given us ...” But then the anxious frown melted away into sadness. “It’s not Him!” he grumbled irritably at the sky.

  The rider had thrown back his hood and was laughing. The hermit blinked angrily at him for a moment. Recognition dawned.

  “Oh,” he grunted. “You! I thought you’d be dead by now. What are you doing out here?”

  “I brought back your prodigal, Benjamin,” said Dom Paulo. He tugged at a leash and the blue-headed goat trotted up from behind the pony. It bleated and strained at the rope upon seeing the hermit. “And ... I thought I’d pay you a visit.”

  “The animal is the Poet’s,” the hermit grunted. “He won it fairly in a game of chance–although he cheated miserably. Take it back to him, and let me counsel you against meddling in worldly swindles that don’t concern you. Good day.” He turned toward the arroyo.

  “Wait, Benjamin. Take your goat, or I’ll give it to a peasant. I won’t have it wandering around the abbey and bleating into the church.”

  “It’s not a goat,” the hermit said crossly. “It’s the beast which your prophet saw, and it was made for a woman to ride. I suggest you curse it and drive it into the desert. You notice, however, that it divideth the hoof and cheweth the cud.” He started away again.

  The abbot’s smile faded. “Benjamin, are you really going back up that hill without even a ‘hello’ for an old friend?”

  “Hello,” the Old Jew called back, and marched indignantly on. After a few steps he stopped to glance over his shoulder. “You needn’t look so hurt,” he said. “It’s been five years since you’ve troubled to come this way, ‘old friend.’ Hah!”

  “So that’s it!” muttered the abbot. He dismounted and hurried after the Old Jew. “Benjamin, Benjamin, I would
have come–I have not been free.”

  The hermit stopped. “Well, Paulo, since you’re here ...”

  Suddenly they laughed and embraced.

  “It’s good, you old grump,” said the hermit.

  “I a grump?”

  “Well, I’m getting cranky too, I guess. The last century has been a trying one for me.”

  “I hear you’ve been throwing rocks at the novices who come hereabouts for their Lenten fast in the desert. Can this be true?” He eyed the hermit with mock reproof.

  “Only pebbles.”

  “Miserable old pretzel!”

  “Now, now, Paulo. One of them once mistook me for a distant relative of mine–name of Leibowitz. He thought I had been sent to deliver him a message–or some of your other scalawags thought so. I don’t want it to happen again, so I throw pebbles at them sometimes. Hah! I’ll not be mistaken for that kinsman again, for he stopped being any kin of mine.”

  The priest looked puzzled. “Mistook you for whom? Saint Leibowitz? Now, Benjamin! You’re going too far.”

  Benjamin repeated it in a mocking singsong: “Mistook me for a distant relative of mine–name of Leibowitz, so I throw pebbles at them.”

  Dom Paulo looked thoroughly perplexed. “Saint Leibowitz has been dead a dozen centuries. How could–” He broke off and peered warily at the old hermit. “Now, Benjamin, let’s don’t start that tale wagging again. You haven’t lived twelve cent–”

  “Nonsense!” interrupted the Old Jew. “I didn’t say it happened twelve centuries ago. It was only six centuries ago. Long after your Saint was dead; that’s why it was so preposterous. Of course, your novices were more devout in those days, and more credulous. I think Francis was that one’s name. Poor fellow. I buried him later. Told them in New Rome where to dig for him. That’s how you got his carcass back.”

  The abbot gaped at the old man as they walked through the mesquite toward the water hole, leading the horse and the goat. Francis? he wondered. Francis. That could be the Venerable Francis Gerard of Utah, perhaps?–to whom a pilgrim had once revealed the location of the old shelter in the village, so that story went–but that was before the village was there. And about six centuries ago, yes, and–now this old gaffer was claiming to have been that pilgrim? He sometimes wondered where Benjamin had picked up enough knowledge of the abbey’s history to invent such tales. From the Poet, perhaps.

  “That was during my earlier career, of course,” the Old Jew went on, “and perhaps such a mistake was understandable.”

  “Earlier career?”

  “Wanderer.”

  “How do you expect me to believe such nonsense?”

  “Hmm-hnnn! The Poet believes me.”

  “Undoubtedly! The Poet certainly would never believe that the Venerable Francis met a saint. That would be superstition. The Poet would rather believe he met you–six centuries ago. A purely natural explanation, eh?”

  Benjamin chuckled wryly. Paulo watched him lower a leaky bark cup into the well, empty it into his water skin, and lower it again for more. The water was cloudy and alive with creeping uncertainties as was the Old Jew’s stream of memory. Or was his memory uncertain? Playing games with us all? wondered the priest. Except for his delusion of being older than Methuselah, old Benjamin Eleazar seemed sane enough, in his own wry way.

  “Drink?” the hermit offered, extending the cup.

  The abbot suppressed a shudder, but accepted the cup so as not to offend; be drained the murky liquid at a gulp.

  “Not very particular, are you?” said Benjamin, watching him critically. “Wouldn’t touch it myself.” He patted the water skin. “For the animals.”

  The abbot gagged slightly.

  “You’ve changed,” said Benjamin, still watching him.

  “You’ve grown pale as cheese and wasted.”

  “I’ve been ill.”

  “You look ill. Come up in my shack, if the climb won’t tire you out.”

  “I’ll be all right. I had a little trouble the other day, and our physician told me to rest. Fah! If an important guest weren’t coming soon, I’d pay no attention. But he’s coming, so I’m resting. It’s quite tiresome.”

  Benjamin glanced back at him with a grin as they climbed the arroyo. He waggled his grizzly head. “Riding ten miles across the desert is resting?”

  “For me it’s rest. And, I’ve been wanting to see you, Benjamin.”

  “What will the villagers say?” the Old Jew asked mockingly.

  “They’ll think we’ve become reconciled, and that will spoil both our reputations.”

  “Our reputations never have amounted to much in the market place, have they?”

  “True,” he admitted but added cryptically: “for the present.”

  “Still waiting, Old Jew?”

  “Certainly!” the hermit snapped.

  The abbot found the climb tiring. Twice they stopped to rest. By the time they reached the tableland, he had become dizzy and was leaning on the spindly hermit for support. A dull fire burned in his chest, warning against further exertion, but there was none of the angry clenching that had come before.

  A flock of the blue-headed goat-mutants scattered at the approach of a stranger and fled into straggly mesquite. Oddly, the mesa seemed more verdant than the surrounding desert, although there was no visible supply of moisture.

  “This way, Paulo. To my mansion.”

  The Old Jew’s hovel proved to be a single room, windowless and stone-walled, its rocks stacked loosely as a fence, with wide chinks through which the wind could blow. The roof was a flimsy patchwork of poles, most of them crooked, covered by a heap of brush, thatch, and goatskins. On a large flat rock, set on a short pillar beside the door, was a sign painted in Hebrew:

  The size of the sign, and its apparent attempt to advertise, led Abbot Paulo to grin and ask: “What does it say, Benjamin? Does it attract much trade up here?”

  “Hah–what should it say? It says: Tents Mended Here.”

  The priest snorted his disbelief.

  “All right, doubt me. But if you don’t believe what’s written there, you can’t be expected to believe what’s written on the other side of the sign.”

  “Facing the wall?,”

  “Obviously facing the wall.”

  The pillar was set close to the threshold, so that only a few inches of clearance existed between the flat rock and the wall of the hovel. Paulo stooped low and squinted into the narrow space. It took him a while to make it out, but sure enough there was something written on the back of the rock, in smaller letters:

  “Do you ever turn the rock around?”

  “Turn it around? You think I’m crazy? In times like these?”

  “What does it say back there?”

  “Hmmm-hnnnn!” the hermit singsonged, refusing to answer. “But come on in, you who can’t read from the backside.”

  “There’s a wall slightly in the way.”

  “There always was, wasn’t there?”

  The priest sighed. “All right, Benjamin, I know what it was that you were commanded to write “in the entry and on the door” of your house. But only you would think of turning it face down.”

  “Face inward,” corrected the hermit. “As long as there are tents to be mended in Israel–but let’s not begin teasing each other until you’ve rested. I’ll get you some milk, and you tell me about this visitor that’s worrying you.

  “There’s wine in my bag if you’d like some,” said the abbot, falling with relief onto a mound of skins. “But I’d rather not talk about Thon Taddeo.”

  “Oh? That one.”

  “You’ve heard of Thon Taddeo? Tell me, how is it you’ve always managed to know everything and everybody without stirring from this hill?”

  “One hears, one sees,” the hermit said cryptically.

  “Tell me, what do you think of him?,”

  “I haven’t see him. But I suppose he will be a pain. A birth-pain, perhaps, but a pain.”

  “Birth-
pain? You really believe we’re going to have a new Renaissance, as some say?”

  “Hmmm-hnnn.”

  “Stop smirking mysteriously, Old Jew, and tell me your opinion. You’re bound to have one. You always do. Why is your confidence so hard to get? Aren’t we friends?”

  “On some grounds, on some grounds. But we have our differences, you and I.”

  “What have our differences got to do with Thon Taddeo and a Renaissance we’d both like to see? Thon Taddeo is a secular scholar, and rather remote from our differences.”

  Benjamin shrugged eloquently. “Difference, secular scholars,” he echoed, tossing out the words like discarded apple pits. “I have been called a ‘secular scholar’ at various times by certain people, and sometimes I’ve been staked, stoned, and burned for it.”

  “Why, you never–” The priest stopped, frowning sharply. That madness again. Benjamin was peering at him suspiciously, and his smile had gone cold. Now, thought the abbot, he’s looking at me as if I were one of Them–whatever formless “Them” it was that drove him here to solitude. Staked, stoned, and burned? Or did his “I” mean “We” as in “I, my people”?

  “Benjamin–I am Paulo. Torquemada is dead. I was born seventy-odd years ago, and pretty soon I’ll die. I have loved you, old man, and when you look at me, I wish you would see Paulo of Pecos and no other.”

  Benjamin wavered for a moment. His eyes became moist.

  “I sometimes–forget–”

  “And sometimes you forget that Benjamin is only Benjamin and not all of Israel.”

  “Never!” snapped the hermit, eyes blazing again. “For thirty-two centuries, I–” He stopped and closed his mouth tightly.

  “Why?” the abbot whispered almost in awe. “Why do you take the burden of a people and its past upon yourself alone?”

  The hermit’s eyes flared a brief warning, but he swallowed a throaty sound and lowered his face into his hands. “You fish in dark waters.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “The burden–it was pressed upon me by others.” He looked up slowly. “Should I refuse to take it?”