A Canticle For Leibowitz l-1

by Walter M. Miller

  Internal cramping again. It seemed to come whenever unpleasantness threatened, and sometimes went away again when unpleasantness exploded into the open where he could wrestle with it. But now it was not going away.

  He was being warned, and he knew it. Whether the warning came from an angel, from a demon, or from his own conscience, it told him to beware of himself and of some reality not yet faced.

  What now? he wondered, permitting himself a silent belch and a silent Beg pardon toward the statue of Saint Leibowitz in the shrinelike niche in the corner of his study.

  A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned down at one corner; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood. Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not; sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and — by spending tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions — had tormented the growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the work followed the natural grain.

  Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved resistant to several centuries of his predecessors — marveled, because of the saint’s most peculiar smile. That little grin will ruin you someday, he warned the image… Surely, the saints must laugh in Heaven; the Psalmist says that God Himself shall chortle, but Abbot Malmeddy must have disapproved — God rest his soul. That solemn ass. How did you get by him, I wonder? You’re not sanctimonious enough for some. That smile — Who do I know that grins that way? I like it, but… Someday, another grim dog will sit in this chair. Cave canem. He’ll replace you with a plaster Leibowitz. Long-suffering. One who doesn’t look crosseyed at flies. Then you’ll be eaten by termites down in the storage room. To survive the Church’s slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then — when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and mutters, “Some of this garbage has got to go.” The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.

  The abbot fanned himself with a fan of buzzard feathers, but the breeze was not cooling. The air from the window was like an oven’s breath off the scorched desert, adding to the discomfort caused him by whatever devil or ruthless angel was fiddling around with his belly. It was the kind of heat that hints of lurking danger from sun-crazed rattlers and brooding thunderstorms over the mountains, or rabid dogs and tempers made vicious by the scorch. It made the cramping worse.

  “Please?” he murmured aloud to the saint, meaning a nonverbal prayer for cooler weather, sharper wits, and more insight into his vague sense of something wrong. Maybe it’s that cheese that does it, he thought. Gummy stuff this season, and green. I could dispense myself — and take a more digestible diet.

  But no, there we go again. Face it, Paulo: it’s not the food for the belly that does it; it’s the food for the brain. Something up there is not digesting.

  “But what?”

  The wooden saint gave him no ready answer. Pap. Sifting out chaff. Sometimes his mind worked in snatches. It was better to let it work that way when the cramps came and the world weighed heavily upon him. What did the world weigh? It weighs, but is not weighed. Sometimes its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That’ll never balance. But fast and ruthless, it keeps on weighing. It spills a lot of life that way, and some times a little gold. And blindfolded, a king comes riding across the desert, with a set of crooked scales, a pair of loaded dice. .And upon the flags emblazoned — Vexilla regis…

  “No!” the abbot grunted, suppressing the vision.

  But of course! the saint’s wooden smile seemed to insist.

  Dom Paulo averted his eyes from the image with a slight shudder. Sometimes he felt that the saint was laughing at him. Do they laugh at us in Heaven? he wondered. Saint Maisie of York herself — remember her, old man — she died of a laughing fit. That’s different. She died laughing at herself.

  No, that’s at s not so different either. Ulp! The silent belch again. Tuesday’s Saint Maisie’s feast day, forsooth. Choir laughs reverently at the Alleluia of her Mass. “Alleluia ha ha! Alleluia ho ho!”

  “Sancta Maisie, interride pro me.”

  And the king was coming to weigh books in the basement with his pair of crooked scales. How “crooked,” Paulo? And what makes you think the Memorabilia is completely free of pap? Even the gifted and Venerable Boedullus once remarked scornfully that about half of it should be called the Inscrutabilia. Treasured fragments of a dead civilization there were indeed — but how much of it has been reduced to gibberish, embellished with olive leaves and cherubims, by forty generations of us monastic ignoramuses, children of dark centuries, many, entrusted by adults with an incomprehensible message, to be memorized and delivered to other adults.

  I made him travel all the way from Texarkana through dangerous country, thought Paulo. Now I’m just worrying that what we’ve got may prove worthless to him, that’s all.

  But no, that wasn’t all. He glanced at the smiling saint again. And again: Vexilla regis inferni prodeunt… Forth come the banners of the King of Hell, whispered a memory of that perverted line from an ancient commedia. It nagged like an unwanted tune in his thought.

  The fist clenched tighter. He dropped the fan and breathed through his teeth. He avoided looking at the saint again. The ruthless angel ambushed him with a hot burst at his corporeal core. He leaned over the desk. That one had felt like a hot wire breaking. His hard breathing swept a clean spot in the film of desert dust on the desktop. The smell of the dust was choking. The room went pink, swarmed with black gnats. I don’t dare belch, might shake something loose — but Holy Saint and Patron I’ve got to. Pain is. Ergo sum. Lord Christ God accept this token.

  He belched, tasted salt, let his head fall onto the desk.

  Does the chalice have to be now right this very minute Lord or can I wait awhile? But crucifixion is always now. Now ever since before Abraham even is always now. Before Pfardentrott even, now. Always for everybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and then to hang on it and if you drop off they beat you to death with a shovel so do it with dignity old man. If you can belch with dignity you may get to Heaven if you re sorry enough about messing up the rug…He felt very apologetic.

  He waited a long time. Some of the gnats died and the room lost its blush but went hazy and gray.

  Well, Paulo, are we going to hemorrhage now, or are we just going to fool around about it?

  He probed the haze and found the face of the saint again. It was such a small grin — sad, understanding and, something else. Laughing at the hangman? No, laughing for the hangman. Laughing at the Stultus Maximus, at Satan himself. It was the first time he had seen it dearly. In the last chalice, there could be a chuckle of triumph. Haec commixtio…

  He
was suddenly very sleepy; the saint’s face grayed over, but the abbot continued to grin weakly in response.

  Prior Gault found him slumped over the desk shortly before None. Blood showed between his teeth. The young priest quickly felt for a pulse. Dom Paulo awakened at once, straightened in his chair, and, as if still in a dream, he pontificated imperiously: “I tell you, it’s all supremely ridiculous. It’s absolutely idiotic. Nothing could be more absurd,”

  “What’s absurd, Domne?”

  The abbot shook his head, blinked several times. “What?”

  “I’ll get Brother Andrew at once.”

  “Oh? That’s absurd. Come back here. What did you want?”

  “Nothing, Father Abbot. I’ll be back as soon as I get Brother—”

  “Oh, bother the medic! You didn’t come in here for nothing. My door was closed. Close it again, sit down, say what you wanted.”

  “The test was successful. Brother Kornhoer’s lamp, Imean.”

  “All right, let’s hear about it. Sit down, start talking, tell me all lll about it.” He straightened his habit and blotted his mouth with a bit of linen. He was still dizzy, but the fist in his belly had come unclenched. He could not have cared lass about the prior’s account of the test, but he tried his best to appear attentive. Got to keep him here until I’m awake enough to think. Can’t let him go for the medic — not yet; the news would get out: The old man is finished. Got to decide whether it’s a safe time to be finished or not.

  15

  Hongan Os was essentially a just and kindly man. When he saw a party of his warriors making sport of the Laredan captives, he paused to watch; but when they tied three Laredans by their ankles between horses and whipped the horses into frenzied flight, Hongan Os decided to intervene. He ordered that the warriors be flogged on the spot, for Hongan Os — Mad Bear — was known to be a merciful chieftain. He had never mistreated a horse.

  “Killing captives is woman’s work,” he growled scornfully at the whipped culprits. “Cleanse yourselves lest you be squawmarked, and withdraw from camp until the New Moon, for you are banished twelve days.” And, answering their moans of protest: “Suppose the horses had dragged one of them through camp? The grass-eater chieflings are our guests, and it is known that they are easily frightened by blood. Especially the blood of their own kind. Take heed.”

  “But these are grass-eaters from the South,” a warrior objected, gesturing toward the mutilated captives. “Our guests are grass-eaters from the East. Is there not a pact between us real people and the East to make war upon the South.”

  “If you speak of it again, your tongue shall be cut out and fed to the dogs!” Mad Bear warned. “Forget that you heard such things.”

  “Will the herb-men be among us for many days, O Son of the Mighty?”

  “Who can know what the farmer-things plan?” Mad Bear asked crossly. “Their thought is not as our thought. They say that some of their numbers will depart from here to pass on across the Dry Lands — to a place of the grass-eater priests, a place of the dark-robed ones. The others will stay here to talk — but that is not for your ears. Now go, and be ashamed twelve days.”

  He turned his back that they might slink away without feeling his gaze pour upon them. Discipline was becoming lax of late. The clans were restless. It had become known among the people of the Plains that he, Hongan Os, had clasped arms across a treaty-fire with a messenger from Texarkana, and that a shaman had clipped hair and fingernails from each of them to make a good-faith doll as a defense against treachery by either party. It was known that an agreement had been made, and any agreement between people and grass-eaters was regarded by the tribes as a cause for shame. Mad Bear had felt the veiled scorn of the younger warriors, but there was no explaining to them until the right time came.

  Mad Bear himself was willing to listen to good thought, even if it came from a dog. The thought of grass-eaters was seldom good, but he had been impressed by the messages of the grass-eater king in the east, who had expounded the value of secrecy and deplored the idle boast. If the Laredans learned that the tribes were being armed by Hannegan, the plan would surely fail. Mad Bear had brooded on this thought; it repelled him — for certainly it was more satisfying and more manly to tell an enemy what one intended to do to him before doing it; and yet, the more he brooded on it, the more he saw its wisdom. Either the grass-eater king was a craven coward, or else he was almost as wise as a man: Mad Bear had not decided which — but he judged the thought itself as wise. Secrecy was essential even if it seemed womanly for a time. If Mad Bear’s own people knew that the arms which came to them were gifts from Hannegan, and not really the spoils of border raids, then there would arise the possibility of Laredo’s learning of the scheme from captives caught on raids. It was therefore necessary to let the tribes grumble about the shame of talking peace with the farmers of the east.

  But the talk was not of peace. The talk was good, and it promised loot.

  A few weeks ago, Mad Bear himself had led a “war party” to the east and had returned with a hundred head of horses, four dozen long rifles, several kegs of black powder, ample shot, and one prisoner. But not even the warriors who had accompanied him knew that the cache of arms had been planted there for him by Hannegan’s men, or that the prisoner was in reality a Texarkanan cavalry officer who would in the future advise Mad Bear about probable Laredan tactics during the fighting to come. All grass-eater thought was shameless, but the officer’s thought could probe that of the grass-eaters to the south. It could not probe that of Hongan Os.

  Mad Bear was justifiably proud of himself as a bargainer. He had pledged nothing but to refrain from making war upon Texarkana and to stop stealing cattle from the eastern borders, but only as long as Hannegan furnished him with arms and supplies. The agreement to war against Laredo was an unspoken pledge of the fire, but it fitted Mad Bear’s natural inclinations and there was no need for a formal pact. Alliance with one of his enemies would permit him to deal with one foe at a time, and eventually he might regain the grazing lands that had been encroached upon and settled by the farmer-people during the previous century.

  Night had fallen by the time the clans chief rode into camp, and a chill had come over the Plains. His guests from the east sat huddled in their blankets around the council fire with three of the old people while the usual ring of curious children gaped from surrounding shadows and peeped under tent skirts at the strangers. There were twelve strangers in all, but they separated themselves into two distinct parties which had traveled together but apparently cared little for each other’s company. The leader of one party was obviously a madman. While Mad Bear did not object to insanity (indeed, it was prized by his shamans as the most intense of supernatural visitations), he had not known that the farmers likewise regarded madness as a virtue in a leader. But this one spent half of his time digging in the earth down by the dry riverbed and the other half jotting mysteriously in a small book. Obviously a witch, and probably not to be trusted

  Mad Bear stopped only long enough to don his ceremonial wolf robes and have a shaman paint the totem mark on his forehead before he joined the group at the fire.

  “Be afraid!” an old warrior ceremonially wailed as the clans chief stepped into the firelight. “Be afraid, for the Mighty One walks among his children. Grovel, O clans, for his name is Mad Bear — a name well won, for as a youth he did overcome without weapons a bear run mad, with his naked hands did he strangle her, verily in the Northlands…”

  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 drainedit 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—”