“I think I see. It’s the same set-up as the political world—a leader and a slogan and you’re set. But what are his doctrines?”
“Briefly, they run something like this: That modern Christianity results from a conspiracy of Paul and Luke, who twisted the true facts of Christ’s life to suit their own purposes. That the only true Gospel is the Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea, which Ahasver claims to have found in Tibet and himself translated from the ancient manuscripts. That Christ, Joseph of Arimathea, and Ahasver were all members of the ascetic Jewish order known as the Essenes. And that Ahasver’s immortality—for he does lay literal claim to being the Wandering Jew—was imposed on him by Christ, not as a punishment, but so that he could carry the spark of truth on through all the ages when the false Christianity of Paul and Luke would be in the ascendant.
“He asserts—and makes out a fair case for it—that Paul-Luke Christianity is in a bad way today. The time has come at last, after these nineteen centuries, for him to step forward and teach the truth. The old order is on the way out—
et antiquum documentum
novo cedat ritui,
as we sing at Benediction. So Ahasver is giving people The Truth, and making a very good thing of it.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” said Matt.
Wolfe snorted. “Watch him tonight. Listen to him, and watch his audience. Watch the collection baskets, too. Listen to the people on their way out. Then tell me if you think this man in the yellow robe is harmless.”
Ten blocks away they could see the neon sign, clear white against the sky:
LIGHT
it flashed—first the whole word, then each letter separately, then the whole word again.
Six blocks away they began to notice the traffic. Three blocks away Wolfe Harrigan turned off into a parking lot.
“That goes to Ahasver, too,” he said to Matt, as he paid the attendant.
The Temple of Light was a plain white frame building on a once quiet side street, a structure rather reminiscent of the old style of country courthouse. Apart from its size it would have been inconspicuous, if it were not for the patterns of neon tubing which writhed glowingly over all the façade.
“Light,” Wolfe explained. “Sometimes I think Ahasver has himself a bit mixed up with Ahura Mazda. Every possible color, you’ll notice. If it can’t be obtained from gas he uses tinted glass. All but one—yellow. He himself wears yellow as a symbol of his past degradation, but none of his followers is allowed to. Can’t even read a book bound in it, or eat yellow food. They love it.”
There was nothing spectacular or picturesque about the followers entering the building. They looked like any random group at a revival meeting or a municipal band concert or a neighborhood movie house. There was only one unusual feature about the crowd—the absence of youth. Matt saw no one else under forty, and a good half of those present seemed to be at least sixty.
In each of the three large doorways to the auditorium stood two greeters—a woman in flowing white and a man dressed, despite the weather, in a white summer suit. Each wore a badge of white ribbon and a fixed but neighborly smile. The man who greeted Wolfe Harrigan was surprisingly young, not long past his twenty-first birthday, but the other two were elderly, sedate, and on the paunchy side. The women looked like officers of the Sawyers Corners Sewing Guild and Literary Society.
The young man beamed—Wolfe’s was evidently a familiar face. “Glad you’re here tonight. We have something very special.” He sounded a little like a floorwalker; you expected him to add, “On aisle three.”
“Special?”
“Oh, yes. We’re going to give the Nine Times Nine.” His smile became intensified. Cherubic was the word, Matt decided. It was more of a beam than a smile, and it lit up the round face until automatically you looked down at the shoulders to watch the wings sprout. “You’ll find the best seats in the balcony,” he added.
“And what,” said Matt as they climbed the stairs, “may the Nine Times Nine be?”
“So I said to Bessie,” a voice drifted past them, “‘It’s no wonder,’ I said. ‘You can’t have curiosity and good dumplings, too.’”
“You’ll see,” Wolfe replied. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if … Well, we’ll see.”
“Keep us out of it, that’s all I say. If they want to raise ned over in Europe, let ’em raise ned, but keep us out of it.”
“I’ve voted the straight Democratic ticket for forty years now, but if two terms was enough for George Washington, it’s enough for any man.”
“Oh, but, Carrie, just wait till you see her in this! Like I said to Aunt Mabel, that’s just what my Lillian …”
Matt was feeling disappointed. This was all too ordinary. This was what he heard every day in his ramshackle hotel up on Bunker Hill. Even the astounding play of lighting over the large auditorium could not make this assemblage anything but a good solid lot of transplanted Middle-Westerners, honest and plain and American.
The organist was quietly improvising around Trees and At Dawning. Matt was enjoying the beatific smile on the face of a two-hundred-pound woman with bleached hair and a faded housedress when he felt a hand on his arm and turned.
“Thought I recognized you, young feller,” said the thin old man on his right.
Matt grinned and shook hands. Fred Simmons was one of the oldest permanent residents of the Angels’ Flight Hotel, and Matt had often passed the time of day with him in the lobby. A retired grocer from Sioux City, Iowa, he had about him a certain Abe Martin mixture of kindliness and hoss sense.
“Glad to see you here,” Simmons went on. “We don’t get enough of the young people. Too busy jittering, I guess—and them that don’t jitter go organizing Youth Congresses. But it’s good to see young folk taking an interest in something like this. You come here often?”
“This is my first time.”
“You picked a good one, son. I hear He’s going to have us give the Nine Times Nine. That’ll show ’em.”
“What is this—?”
“Hush,” Simmons warned him. The organist was now playing Sweet Mystery of Life—apparently a cue that things were starting, for relative quiet began to spread over the audience. Then behind the curtain a high tenor voice joined in the tune.
On the last note the rainbow curtains parted. The stage was bare, but, from the flies, shifting and varicolored lights were projected onto its whitewashed walls. Downstage left was a small table, with a chair and the usual water pitcher. Here sat a plump elderly man who looked like the retired head of a small bank. And upstage center sat Ahasver.
“That’s Him,” Fred Simmons whispered needlessly. There was no mistaking him, even for Matt who had never seen him before. He dominated the stage and the whole auditorium. But it was even harder to guess what he actually looked like than it had been with Sister Ursula. His face was obscured by a black, spade-shaped beard, along the Assyrian style. And his body was completely enveloped by the famous Yellow Robe.
There was nothing of gold or saffron or lemon or chrome about the robe. It was absolutely and blatantly yellow, a pure, simple, and hideous declaration of a primary color. It displayed no embroidery, no cabalistic signs, no sense of style in its designing. It was just that—a yellow robe.
The sleeves were full length, and yellow gloves made them seem to extend even over the fingers. The shoulders were sloping and unpadded, and there was no gathering at the waist to hamper the robe in its full cascade to the ground. Above the shoulders it continued into a hood which completed the concealment of Ahasver’s body. All that you could see of him for beard and robe was the nose, which certainly substantiated at least his racial claim, and the deep-set eyes with the black hollows beneath them.
The man by the water pitcher rose. “Dear followers of the Ancients,” he addressed the audience. “As some of you may have heard, this is to be a very special night in the Temple of Light, and I know you don’t want to waste time listening to me talk. So I won’t take up any of your t
ime beyond stopping to greet the many new faces that I see here tonight. I tell you, friends, you don’t know how right you were to come here. And I want all of you who are new to turn around and shake hands with your brother or sister on the right because we’re all Children of Light, aren’t we, and so we’re all bretheren and sisteren.”
Dutifully Matt turned and again shook hands with Fred Simmons. This was enough to dispel the momentary excitement he had felt at the sight of the man in the yellow robe with his dominating personality. The proceedings here might be strange, grotesque, ludicrous; but there could be nothing dangerous about them when they rested on a congregation of ordinary, wholesome, salt-of-the-earth Fred Simmonses.
“And now,” the ex-banker announced, “before we hear from the man from whom you’re all waiting to hear from, I know he’d like us to sing one verse of Old Christianity. Come on now, everybody. Let’s make this good.”
The play of light faded on the white wall back of the stage, and in its stead appeared the lines of the song flashed from a projection machine above the stage. The organist began to play John Brown’s Body, and the audience joined in piecemeal:
The Ancients teach us truly how to be at one with them,
How to win the star-crowned garland and the royal diadem,
And ascend in joy eternal to the New Jerusalem,
As we go marching on.
So far only about half the audience was singing. Some of them—including Fred Simmons, who made a sort of humming grunt—looked as though the words were hard. But now the whole auditorium shook with happy and tuneless bellows as the familiar refrain appeared:
Old Christianity is mold’ring in the grave,
Old Christianity is mold’ring in the grave,
Old Christianity is mold’ring in the grave,
While we go marching on.
Matt had doubted that the singing could grow louder, but now it did. Fred Simmons’ face grew red with exultant puffing, and Matt found himself joining in with a vigor which rarely characterized his sober vocalism. He could even hear Wolfe Harrigan’s voice raised in the chorus. For these were words that everybody had known forever, long before they had heard of Ahasver and the Ancients—words that are a part of the American race:
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
WHILE WE GO MARCH ING ON!!!
At that final, tremendous ON!!! Ahasver rose from his seat and advanced to center stage. The vast sound perished in instant silence, like one of those trick effects in Russian choirs. At an almost invisible gesture from one yellow arm, a white-suited attendant wheeled a sturdy lectern out from the wings. On it a heavy leather-bound book lay open. From the balcony you could see that its pages were blank.
Matt glanced at the men on either side of him. Wolfe Harrigan sat tense and curious, like a surgeon about to watch the film of an unusual operation. Fred Simmons was leaning forward, the tip of his tongue protruding between his thin lips. His breath was rapid, and there was a glint in his eyes which Matt had never seen before.
Ahasver wasted no time on polite greetings. That was the business of the man with the water pitcher. Instead he plunged straight into his discourse. “You all do know this book,” he said. It was a good voice: deep and vibrant, rich and well-trained, yet somehow avoiding any suggestion of staginess. There was a slight accent, but not that of any living tongue. “You all do know how I have recourse to it in times of tribulation—yea, and of lamentation. For is it not written in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Joseph:
And Jesus said unto his disciples: Seek and ye shall find. Open and ye shall read. For unto them that know the Ancients shall be given the power that they may read where to other eyes is parchment only.
Thus have I opened, and thus now do I read.”
And thus Ahasver went on, in his quasi-Biblical style. What he said, Matt concluded, was equal parts Christianity and Theosophy, with liberal dashes of Dale Carnegie and the Republican National Committee. It was a platitudinous sermon on knowing one’s self and fusing one’s self with some nebulous higher powers known as the Ancients. But the rewards it held out were no vague promises of future bliss; they were pointed and documented assurances that the man who knew the Ancients could win friends and influence people no end.
As he spoke, Ahasver constantly scanned the blank pages before him as though he were reading from a teletype machine. Suddenly he paused, seemed to reread a message, and resumed: “I have just received a communication of great interest to us all.” (Fred Simmons shifted eagerly.) “The new long-range Communist bombing plane left Siberia yesterday on a test flight to Alaska. Its real intention was not a test, but a bombing raid upon the city of Nome.” (Matt heard a sharp gasp of horror from Simmons.) “But fear not. I have received intelligence from Joseph himself that he perceived the approach of this danger and destroyed the plane in mid-ocean. You will not read of this in your newspapers; the Tass agency of the Red Government has resolved to suppress the fact. But remember this when you hear Communistic doctrines preached abroad, and learn to recognize these devils for what they are. By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Fred Simmons nodded fervid agreement.)
“Some there are who think to make friends and allies of these enemies. To them I can only say, as the Ancient Jesus said before me, and as it is written in the seventh chapter of the Gospel according to Joseph: ‘Make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, but see that ye realize the price of that friendship.’”
Suddenly Wolfe Harrigan seized Matt’s arm. His face glistened with excitement. “Remember that!” he said. “It doesn’t settle things, but it helps. I don’t know how I missed it when I read the Gospel. But remember!”
“But—” Matt started.
“Explain later.”
So Matt fished out pencil and paper, jotted down the quotation from the Gospel according to Joseph as best he could remember it, and tried to follow the rest of the sermon.
There wasn’t much more. Almost abruptly Ahasver stopped his imaginary reading and announced, “The Ancients have concluded. Now I must rest a moment to regain strength. Then I have a most important request to make of you.”
As the man in the yellow robe resumed his seat, the organ began the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. Fred Simmons turned to Matt. “Isn’t he great? He sure wakes you up. Makes you see what’s going on all around you.”
With the first notes of the organ, white-suited men started along the aisles with baskets. There had been no ardent exhortations to Give; but the people gave none the less freely. As a basket passed along their row, Matt (dropping in a dime; the show was worth it) noticed that it was filled mostly with paper money, and not all ones by a long shot. Fred Simmons contributed two dollars, which Matt was certain he could not possibly afford.
The organ stopped at last, and there was only the rustle of the collection. Even that ceased as Ahasver came forward again.
“You have heard me speak,” he said, “of the Nine Times Nine.” He paused. All through the house ran that wordless noise of expectation which a concert audience gives on recognizing the opening bars of a song. Fred Simmons’ lips were parted, and his bony old hands trembled.
“You have heard,” Ahasver went on, “how a lama refused to permit me to transcribe the Gospel according to Joseph, and how the Nine Times Nine was set upon him, and how lo! he was no more. And other stories likewise have you heard of the Nine Times Nine, but never have you been called upon to set the Nine Times Nine. Tonight …” He let the resonance of his voice die softly away in the death-still auditorium. “Tonight ye shall do so.”
Only the faintest hushed murmurs sounded as the lights in the auditorium dimmed. Then the colors on the stage died, too. For an instant there was absolute darkness. Then from above came a spot of the forbidden yellow, bathing Ahasver.
“By the strength of this hated color,” he half chanted, “by the yellow gabardine which I wore in th
e ghetto, by the yellow priests who sought to keep truth from the world, by all sereness and rot, by all hatred and death that is embodied in this color, I call upon the Ancients. Do ye call also. Say after me: O Ancients!”
The sound arose, hesitant, muffled, twanging, and tumultuous: “O ANCIENTS!”
“Ye know, O Ancients, him who would destroy us. Ye know how he denies our truth, scorns our ideals, ridicules our heritage, mocks at our beliefs, and undermines our teachings. Ye know the plans that ripen within his evil brain and the disaster that those plans would bring upon us. Yea, and upon you as well, O Masters of Light!
“Therefore I call upon the Nine! Upon Jesus, upon Gautama, upon Confucius. Upon Elijah, upon Daniel, upon Saint Germain. Upon Joseph, upon Plato, upon Krishna. All of you say after me: I call upon the Nine!”
“I CALL UPON THE NINE!”
“Now call I upon the Nine who serve the Nine: Upon Cherubim, upon Seraphim, upon Thrones. Upon Dominions, upon Virtues, upon Powers. Upon Principalities, upon Archangels, upon Angels! I call upon the Nine Times Nine! Say ye after me: I call upon the Nine Times Nine!”
“I CALL UPON THE NINE TIMES NINE!”
“Hearken unto us as we cry for deliverance. Free us from this evil man, O Nine Times Nine! Destroy him utterly! Now do ye all lift your voices with mine and cry to the Nine Times Nine: Destroy him!”
“DESTROY HIM!”
Matt was drowning in vast billows of sound that hurtled from wall to wall of the auditorium. His eyes at last accustomed to the darkness, he looked at his neighbors. They were no ordinary Southern Californians now. They were participants in a mystery of hate—eyes burning, lips parted, teeth gleaming. The placid fat woman with the bleached hair was a Midwest Maenad, ready to render her enemies. Even the homely face of Fred Simmons was a distorted mask of mean fury. Matt could no longer smile at the ritual, no matter how absurd, that could transform plain and good people into the vessels of mad hatred.
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