And how of those of us who offer to change places with the damndest of those poor damned souls would suffer in their places. Is it rational to make such offers when these persons can come out of their tortures at any time? It is not rational, no. But it is a greater sacrifice to trade places with one who is too proud to accept release on compromise terms. And the Greatest Sacrifice is beyond reason.
SONNET TO OBDURATE GOD
Defiances are yet such petty things
From smallish minds to other minds too small.
Oh may we let all dim distinctions fall
And thou and we will equally be kings.
A commoner should treat with thee sublime,
But how the better treat if he should kneel?
Irreverence, they say, sets stars to reel;
They surely must be dizzy by this time.
A few demands for very minimum;
A clutch of questions straightly to be faced;
A list of things that we to thee allow:
Thou'lt haste and clarify thy Kingdom Come,
Else, failing this, thou'lt find thyself replaced;
We want it stringless, and we want it now!
FROM THE COMMENTARY OF MELCHISEDECH DUFFEY
We have to examine the person Kasmir Szymansky in the Argo context, in the Medieval context, in the secular context (of the last or the next to last seculum), and in the Eschatological context. His identity is slippery through all of these, but I will try to nail it down.
As to the last of these four contexts, we tend to forget that each of us has a part to play in this end-of-time drama. It does not matter whether we are dead eighty thousand years and are a distantly-related sort of interglacial man, we will be brought back to play a role. It does not matter whether we were a high or low person on the antediluvian scene, we will be brought back for the last drama. It does not matter if we died only a century ago and are in Heaven or Purgatory or Hell, we will come back to do a turn upon the boards. It does not matter whether we are alive in another place, we will come to the final place for the final show.
There will be quite a few persons in that eschatological extravaganza, but each one will be heard, as is each piece in an orchestra, and the absence of even one of them would be noticed. But it will not seem as if there are too many characters; and those billions will not be too many. A part was written for every one of them before the worlds began. Each of us will have a clear part, and each of us will recognize and know and understand the import of every other.
But a very few persons, and I believe that Casey is among them, will receive a script of their parts ahead of time. Some of these parts will require special study, either because of slight defects or retardation in the person or because of the intricacy of the roles themselves.
In his primordial role (the Argo role for the group to which he belongs) we have Casey as Peleus.
In the Medieval role, he is split into two aspects. He is Kasmir Gorshok (Casey the Crock) a ninth century scholar and necromancer in the Low Middle Ages part of this role. He is Prince Casimir in the High Middle Ages part of this role, but there is not really a serious split here.
In the secular context he is Kasmir (Casey) Szymansky of Chicago.
In the eschatological context, he is either the Antichrist, or (much more likely) one of the false and premature antichrists who will buzz about as flies of the Lord of the Flies. But Casey must not pass under the final dominion of that lord.
In all of the roles there is a certain consistency of character.
As Peleus, he is the great hero of Thessaly only because it is stated that he is that great hero. This is the sign placed upon him and it must be credited. He does nothing heroic, but he does little that is cowardly either. He is indecisive, and he is buffeted by accidents. He kills his half-brother Phocus by accident. He kills his father-in-law Eurytion by accident. He is badger-gamed by Acastus of Iolcus and his wife.
I remember him as a good and brave, but not heroic, crewman on the Argo. Everybody knew Peleus as a good man. Aye, as a good man that evil things happened to. He was the father of Achilles, and the hidden heroism of Peleus went openly into that son.
In the Lower Middle Ages, Casey was Kasmir Gorshok (the Crock). This man was a sorcerer and a person of great compassion for all small and unfortunate creatures. He wept so much over the misfortunes of helpless things that he wore out three pair of eyes. Being a sorcerer, he was able to make new eyes for himself. His own original eyes had been a deep brown-black. Those he made for himself after these were worn out were first blue, then grey, then green. (The secular Casey also had blue eyes as a youth, then grey eyes, and now green eyes; I cannot find out what color of eyes he was born with.)
Kasmir Gorshok in particular had compassion on the body louse, a creature that lived a dangerous and short life always sought after by murderous fingers. It was because of this particular compassion that Kasmir the Crock called on all his sorcery and invented and manufactured a race of artificial persons. He made them with warm and blood-filled bodies and gave them a fragrance that attracted the body louse strongly. Thereupon, the body lice left their human hosts (it had always been an angry and uncomfortable relationship) and went to live upon the artificial people that Kasmir Gorshok had made. Descendants of these artificial people are still living in the world.
The Animated Marvels that I myself made in this the twentieth century (and Casey in his secular manifestation is one of them) were constructed to much the same purpose. This, at least, is what I have told them all. But these hulking animations of mine just grin and doubt me. They say that I must have had some other purpose in making them, even if I have forgotten it. Well, if I had another purpose, I have forgotten it.
In the High Middle Ages, Casey was Prince Casimir of Poland, and he also became Saint Casimir. He was called the “father and defender of the poor and unfortunate”, but he thwarted the rich and mighty sometimes. He thwarted his own father King Casimir IV by taking a life-long vow of chastity and so refusing the succession. One can still hear the bellowing of the outraged old king on a clear night.
Prince Casimir died at the age of twenty-three. (‘Died’ in the case of one like Casey indicated a peculiar withdrawal out of the world for some centuries; but the people thought that he had died.) It would be best if all good and compassionate persons should die at age twenty-three, before being trapped into something awkward by the backlash of their own virtues.
The present (though presently absent) Casey, the Casey of the twentieth century secularity, is, like his old person of Peleus, a hero only because the sign on him says that he is a hero. Once again he is indecisive, and he is buffeted by accidents. Hilary Hilton and his wife Mary Jean are the Acastus-and-the-wife to Casey in the present case, but the badger game that they play on him is in reverse. Casey may really have sought death at Hilary's hands (Hilary claims, and has never been disputed in it, that he can whip any man in the world), but he found derision instead, and it hurt more. I don't know what Hilary wanted out of Casey, and I sure don't know what Mary Jean wanted.
The original badger-game, by Acastus and his wife, may also have been in reverse, now that I think of it.
Hilary Hilton is one of those who has mocked at the long-lived ones of us, particularly those who claim to have been notables in their pasts. But he does this to disguise the case that he himself is a long-lived one, that he has been a notable in his own past, that he was used in anecdote and fact by our Lord Himself. For Hilary was the certain rich man (St. Jerome in his letters gives Hilarius as the traditional name) who was not able to lay down his riches and so went away sorrowing, and now he will come hardly into the Kingdom.
In his secular person in the approximately present world, Casey has been a very good person again. He has estranged himself from his natural companions with his double talk and double-dealing on the Church. He has even spoken that wormiest of chestnuts, that he has ‘outgrown’ the Church. As is always the case, he has not been able to gro
w up with it. In many ways Casey hasn't been able to grow up, and he often stands like a man in child's clothes that fit him badly. Casey lacks the adult form in every one of his manifestations. He is only a boy, a child, an unsufferably precocious child. Remember that about him, God. He is a child, and he should be tried in childrens' court.
As to the Casey of the becoming, of the future, or the eschatological scene, well my way and his intersect again in that future. I will dispute him, and I will give him transport against my will. But there's an inhibition against my telling this.
I have been to the future and have come back. I have been to the other side of death and have come back. And I have seen the fierce creature that eats the tongues out of the mouths of those persons who tell what they are forbidden to tell.
Oh Lord, let me keep my tongue this while.
FROM THE COMMENTARY OF ABSALOM STEIN
There is a legend long current in our several circles of acquaintances that Casey Szymansky and myself have traded souls, and that by this I have become the fine and upstanding person that he had been, and he has become the sleazy individual that I had been. I had known Casey pretty well before the so called soul-trading had taken place, and we had about an equal amount of sleaze. We also had about the same amount of upstandingness. These qualities may have been arranged a bit in each of us, but I do not believe that the proportions have been greatly changed.
What we did trade was one each of our kabouters. A kabouter an interior goblin, or a crankiness, or a complex, or a fixation, or a psychological stumbling-stool. Everyone has several of these manifest goblins or kabouters in his personality. Well, they are crankinesses, or perhaps they are discrete people of a trivial species. Either case can be proved easily enough. The proof to me that these kabouters-goblins are objective, though immaterial persons is that we did trade them with rather explosive effect, and that they impressed me as persons at the transaction moment and since.
A kabouter will know a great amount of secret stuff that goes on inside a man, having lived there. So now I am forever privy to certain unkempt secrets of Casey Szymansky, and he is privy to certain of mine. This seems to bother him more than it bothers me. But to the question “What's going on in there?” I can answer pretty well, as respects Casey. The answer is “Not quite as much as you would think.”
Casey believes, or affects to believe, that he must go to Hell in my place, although I hadn't intended to go there and hadn't any place reserved there. But it is one piece of a problem that has plagued him from his boyhood. Casey wants (or at least he had an attraction-repulsion for the idea) to go to Hell for someone. Several of his old friends have set it down as a piece of extravagant comedy on his part, but the kabouter I have from him tells me that the largest element in this urge is real compassion for any damned person and the desire to free that person.
He began, I believe, to play this as a very dangerous game, and he made up very dangerous rules for it. Then he discovered that someone else was making rules for the game that he thought he had invented, and he became very scared. Casey's announced aim is to trade souls with the Devil and release him from Hell, a Lord-Byronish type of phoniness that speaks for itself.
Casey now considers his trading souls with me to have been a sort of practice for trading souls with the Devil. Hey, what does that make me then? What does it make Casey?
I like Casey, in spite of his tiresome ‘nobody likes me’ attitude. I should be able to do something for him. About the only exceptional talent I have is the talent of getting in to see the really big people, using nothing but brashness. Well, I will see some very big people in the various worlds if I have to do so to help him. We really are blood-brothers now, whether he likes it or not. In a showdown, I would come closer to going to Hell for him than he would to going to Hell for me, or the Devil, or anyone.
I am a patsy set up by spirits I don't even know the name of. They prowl me and they take advantage of me. They read my mind—(no, of course they don't read my mind; that cannot be done; but they read the verbalizing of my brain)—, and they turn me into an instrument for unclean purpose. As to this mind-reading, there is scientific stuff to it, and there is “thus far and no farther” stuff. I have questioned my scientific friends about it, Mark McClatchy, Catherine Quick, Morris Poor, Silas Whiterice, and I have read up in the journals about it, and I've bounced it around in my head. I ask “To what extent can minds be read, by anyone, but particularly by invading and intelligent spirits?” I find that brains can be read but minds cannot, and hardly anyone is willing to draw a wide line between the two. Insofar as we think in words, those words can be lifted out of the brain. They can be taken from our verbalizing and its accompaniment in the movement of the vocal muscles. This can give very extensive readings. And there are subliminal readings once removed and twice removed. There are electrical patterns, both kymatic and akymatic, in the brain; there are instrumented inferences; there are chemical fix patterns and molecular congruencies. It might be said that any thought word can be interpreted.
Max Müller the German philologist said that all thought was verbal thought. It isn't, but most intentions and schemes and plans are thought in words and can be read in words. Could a remembered or evoked color, not accompanied by the name of a color, be read out of the brain? Certainly, there are brain wave patterns to correspond to any color or shape or smell or sound being received. Sophisticated investigators would be able to read them out, and sophisticated spirits.
Are no secret thoughts sacred then? Yes, a few are. From my investigations, I come to one conclusion. Ransacking spirits loose in a body or a brain are allowed to loot information by any physical means or indication. But these raiding spirits are not allowed to use any spirit or nonphysical or immaterial means.
Fair enough. We will play by those rules.
But I tell you this, ransacking spirits, I have not meant all the things I have said nor all the things that I have thought, and I fight being made a patsy in certain matters.
SONNET TO OBSOLETED GOD
For colored memory of early joys
You still do hold most brightly painted place,
Nor will I let you go without a trace,
You final one of all my childhood toys.
In aeoned Heaven in the Sign of Fish,
Bemused by your own memories, you nod.
When small I always wanted to be God;
I make my move now, reaching for that wish.
How feels it in the land named ‘obsolete’?
How tastes it on the further end of time,
To be so big a thing, and be forgot?
Your empty mansion should be cool and sweet.
Perhaps it needs renewing somewhat. I'm
A spirit of the time. And you are not.
But how does one get out of a really devouring situation? I am being eaten up. I am being swallowed alive. Is this myself going down those dark red gullets so smoothly? I am Casey, but I want out of the Casey Szymansky Movement. I want to be clear out of it. How did I get in it anyhow?
FROM THE COMMENTARY OF MARGARET STONE
“There is a valid and pious practice among certain Catholic children that is documented as going back more than one thousand years, yet its signatures and characteristics seem to be much older than that. The cultus seems to have its first setting in Rome of the Empire days, to be centered in the frame of Diocletian legalism. This cultus and practice consists of a child taking the place, for one hour usually, of the most forgotten soul in Purgatory. It is very painful, but it is not desolating. It is quite rewarding.
“To serve such an hour is to be washed with hopefulness and grace. One could offer to serve there longer, but not forever; for there is no ‘forever’ in Purgatory. Release is already guaranteed. I served such hours several times, but I am no longer able to serve them. The mechanism and the contacts for serving them are blotted out. It is a service that is not open to adults.
“I questioned Casey about this once, when I had h
eard that he was talking nonsense about trafficking with the Devil. He remembered the cultus from his childhood, but he had never entered into it. He had been afraid. He was afraid of one hour in Purgatory, but he big-mouths about an eternity in Hell.
“I think that Casey's mind has blown.”
Starved folks buried underfeet,
Give us dead-man's bread to eat.
FROM THE COMMENTARY OF JOHN SCHULTZ
“It is a philosophical as well as a mathematical necessity that the offer be made, unconditionally. The offer has been called “the very bottom cellar of silliness”; nevertheless, it must be made for the shape of the house above the cellar. I believe that the offer has been made, conditionally, many times by many different persons. I believe that it will be made by Prince Casimir several times conditionally, and that the conditions will have to be broken out of it one by one till finally it is made unconditionally. And then the final requirement of the offer is that it must fail.
But how is Holy Prince Casimir involved in such a thing as Ransom of the Devil? He always had a fine mind, but he almost always enlisted that mind in the service against reason. He always had a deep compassion — for anything except people. Dogs or cats or birds or bugs, or spirits clean or unclean, or half-way species real or imaginary, he had deep compassion for all these things, but not for people. “Let the people have compassion on one another,” he said, “but who will have compassion on suffering plants of the field if I do not?”
Such compassion as he had was a bullet and a bomb. It was a fuse to ignite the world and burn it down also. Such compassion is born insane, which some may find to be an objection against it.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 339
