Lord of the Hollow Dark

by Russell Kirk

  “What do you mean?” Marina stammered. “What are these cards?”

  Madame Sesostris riffled through the pack, giving Marina glimpses of a host of marvelous symbolic figures, a Comus’ rout of fantastics. “These, my dear, are called inaccurately the tarocchi of Mantegna. They are said to have been created by Parrasio Michele of Ferrara, about 1470. I have here copies of the originals, of course. In Haggat, on the eve of coming here to the Lodging, I trained myself to tell fortunes by them-recklessly tampering with magical things, perhaps. But there’s no time just now to tell you the history of these cards, or what their function may have been originally. There’s some reason to suspect that the Warlock Laird of Balgrummo, or the Bohemian alchemist he kept with him, may have possessed a set of these, and used them: there’s a mention of ‘evil cards from Mantegna’ in Morton’s denunciation of the Third Laird. Another piece of chance, this, or part of a pattern covering four centuries?”

  Marina clutched at Madame Sesostris’ arm. “The old man with that poor baby-who is he?”

  “The card itself, my dear, identifies him as Saturn. But actually Kronos is meant: Kronos, or Cronus, or Zurvan-Ahriman-he’s had many names in many lands and ages. He is Time, Time the Destroyer, Time the Devourer of Life. He has been called the Lord of Destiny, and the Lord of This World. The other day, Marina, I hinted that you might do well to read the Gnostics, and Luther. They say that the Prince of This World is the Evil One.”

  Marina shuddered all over, staring at the naked baby in the clutch of Kronos. “Why did you draw that card?”

  “Because Melchiora said that we know who Apollinax is.”

  “No, Apollinax is a man,” said Melchiora, “whatever he thinks he is.” But she did not say this with any force.

  “We’re going to have to dine with them again tonight,” Marina said aloud. Could she endure it? Perhaps for Michael’s sake, on the chance that the Archvicar might have another card than this one up his sleeve. She was the General’s daughter: she must keep telling herself that.

  The February dark was descending upon them rapidly. Already, away there below them, Balgrummo Lodging had begun to fade into shadows, as if made of smoke. Marina left Michael to the insistent Fresca-Melchiora-she must trust her, if anyone-and followed Grizel in the descent toward the Lodging. Facilis descensus Averno.

  “I sorry for you,” said Mr. Hakagawa.

  At these dinners, she and the others were expected to sit next to different people every night: the Master had said that all should know one another well now, because they would be joined forever in the Timeless Moment. Tonight Marina found herself placed between Mr. Hakagawa and Mr. Bleistein.

  At Mr. Hakagawa’s commiseration, Marina—who had been silently turning over the unpalatable food on her plate, in the faint hope of discovering some edible morsel-sat up straight and paid attention to this dinner companion. Was he about to become indiscreet and hint at her part in the “liturgy” tomorrow night?

  “Why do you say that?” She spoke softly, inviting confidences.

  “Because you have baby.”

  This wasn’t what she had expected. “Oh, but my Michael is all I have, and without him I wouldn’t want to live.”

  Mr. Hakagawa smiled politely. “No baby, you free. Babies for foolish people. You pretty, you smart, have fun.”

  This was the pidgin-English version of Harry’s moral philosophy. Marina felt like crying, but she said, coldly, “I’m not looking for fun.”

  “I own many clinic,” Mr. Hakagawa went on, unrepulsed. “You in trouble two time, I fix: all lawful now in civilized time. In my country, old time, if not want baby, get rid, like kitty or puppy. Maybe soon some time, law change more, everywhere any girl not want keep baby after born, change her mind, then send new-type clinic, baby finished-like no want kitty, send to vet. Then girl like you free to choose.” Marina turned away in horror from this liberator. Was the man joking? No, he wasn’t. He still was talking, although to the back of her head: “Most baby turn out no good anyway when grow up.”

  She found herself looking into the heavy face of Mr. Bleistein, with whom she had not spoken before.

  “Well, hello there!” said Mr. Bleistein. He sounded as if he came from New York, but the Master had told them not to ask such questions. “Say, if the Master puts this show on the road, he might have the biggest thing going in the religion line, moneywise. It all depends on the thrills we get tomorrow night: if it’s the real stuff, there’s a market, a hell of a big market. Religion plus thrills, first-class thrills, that’s unbeatable, and you got the First Amendment on your side against the cops. I understand you’re going to be our superstar, honey. Had much practice with these kinds of things?”

  She was saved from answering by the sound of the Master’s silver bell.

  Tonight, for the first time, Marina looked at Mr. Apollinax with a critical eye. She did not understand what Madame Sesostris had meant by suggesting that the Master somehow was like Kronos. But she understood now that the Master was no redeemer.

  Except for the eyes, Apollinax’s face was very ugly, what with the narrow line of the mouth, the pinched nose, the retreating chin. And those eyes, which only yesterday she would have called glowing, now seemed different. They burned, indeed, but not with compassion-rather, as if they might set fire to everything, any moment.

  The Master was speaking. “I commence this night in the words of an unconventional sage of many centuries ago, in Egypt, concerning one who separated himself from the Law: ‘He put on darkness as a garment, and it entered into him as water, and it entered into all his powers as oil.’

  “That is what we here shall do tomorrow night. We shall put on darkness as a garment, far beneath this house, far from the Law and the laws, and there shall be conferred upon us powers, as water, as oil, that never we have known before. In the twinkling of an eye, we shall invert the conventional wisdom of this present age, and know the true wisdom of the unconventional ancients, and more than their wisdom. So I say unto each of you, again in the words of the same learned ancient, ‘Let him wrap himself in the chaos as into a garment, and gird himself with the darkness as with a leathern girdle forever.’

  “We shall set aside the Old Dispensation and the New. The laws, of men or of nature, are tyranny, put upon us by the enemies of freedom. I say unto you all, I have not come to fulfill the Law, but to annul it.

  “For it is our duty to the Lord to be wholly free. We are of the spirit, not of the flesh. The earthly element cannot be elevated; it must perish, and it is well that it should perish.

  “But the spirit may rejoice forever if it obeys the commandments of the Lord of This World, knowing throughout eternity such pleasures as the tyrannous Law forbids in our present state. The spirit is not corrupted by acts in this low, petty, present life of ours. To show our trust in the immunity of the spirit, it is our obligation, if we would be perfect in the spirit, to do unabashed whatever the Old Dispensation or the New has forbidden.

  “We render the flesh to the flesh and the spirit to the spirit. As Julian of Norwich instructs us, ‘Sin is behoovely.’

  “In the natural realm, mark me, all is permitted to us believers. Nay, we are enjoined by the Lord to indulge the flesh in all ways, if we would know the Timeless Moment. To the pure spirit, nothing that is flesh endures; therefore nothing is unnatural to the flesh. Give everything to the flesh, so exhausting the flesh’s powers, and then shall you be pure spirit.

  “In the first century of this era, Bartholomew said unto one teacher, ‘A man who hath intercourse with a male, what is his vengeance?’ And the teacher answered that his vengeance is the same as that of the blasphemer. But the Lord of This World declared mercifully, ‘If the soul be pure, this and all actions are of no account.’

  “And at that same time, Thomas asked that teacher, ‘We have heard that there are some on the earth who take the male seed and the female monthly blood, and make it into a lentil porridge and eat it, saying: “We have faith in Esau
and Jacob. Is this seemly or not?’

  “Now the narrow teacher was wroth with the world in that hour and Said unto Thomas: ‘Amen, I say: This is more heinous than all sins and iniquities. Such men will straightaway be taken into the outer darkness and will not be cast back anew into the outer sphere, but they shall perish, be destroyed in the outer darkness in a region where there is neither pity nor light, but howling and grinding of teeth.’ “Yet when this question was put to the Lord of This World, he said out of his generosity, ‘Lo, if some do this sin for my sake, then shall I reward them richly after my fashion.’

  “For ere it depart from the prison of this world, brothers and sisters, the spirit which would be free and happy must have made use of every mode of life and must have left no remainder of any sort to be performed. Why, Jesus of Nazareth so declared, as Luke instructed us: ‘I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite.’ Our spirits are in bliss once they have paid their debt and rendered their due.

  “I tell you all, not otherwise can one be saved in the eyes of the Lord of This World than by passing through every action, through all conceivable actions that the Law calls vile and criminal. We must be purged: and how may stains be wiped away if one has not touched pitch and been defiled? The sinless baby thus is an abomination in the sight of the Lord of This World.

  “Listen, brothers and sisters in the spirit: when little, you were told that angels exist. Many of you may have rejected that teaching, as you grew older. Yet the teaching is true enough; and angels, beings of pure spirit, come unto us often, although we do not perceive them always with the eye of flesh.

  “Now hear this: at every action which the world calls sinful and infamous, an angel is present, watching the actors. And those who commit the act should say unto the invisible angel, ‘O thou angel, I use thy work! O thou power, I perform thy deed!’ And then the angel rejoices, knowing that a believer has grown aware of the worthlessness of fleshly acts and of the flesh itself, except that those acts and that flesh are indulged in all license that the spirit may show its independence of the flesh.

  “I assure you, this is the perfection of knowledge, when we are bold enough to take such actions whose very names are unmentionable to the slaves of the Law. ‘The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’

  “Fools say that such acts are sin. But what they call ‘sinning’ is in truth fulfillment, the glad divorce of spirit from flesh. What fools call ‘sin’ is a due rendered as the price of ultimate freedom. ‘Sin,’ my brothers and my sisters, is the path to salvation, which is perfect freedom.”

  Marina glanced at the faces of the twelve disciples. They were alight with approval of this teaching; several of them, Mrs. Equitone in particular, were nodding vigorously at every sentence.

  Marina wished that the Archvicar were here to whisper his running commentary; but he must be down below, possibly opening the door to the Weem at this moment. Yet did she need a gloss upon this preaching? She had heard it all before, in other language-from Harry, who had deserted her, taking everything except her baby. Harry had left out the Scriptural passages, if that was what Apollinax had quoted; but the substance had been the same.

  The Master, who had been speaking with passion, was pausing to draw breath. Now he resumed:

  “Tomorrow night, after having denied the flesh these several days as disciplined preparation to make our total liberation the more splendid, we go down into the darkness where the Law cannot behold and inhibit us. Just so did believers in another age enter the catacombs; but we know far more than they did. We shall witness the union of the quick and the dead; we shall look upon what no one here has seen before, a perfect sacrifice like that of Isaac; we shall consummate the Ceremony of Innocence, knowing ourselves above the Law and purged of all guilt.

  “Others before us, in that same place of our liturgy, have sought the Timeless Moment which is the gift of the Lord of This World. But they were fainthearted and imperfect, restraining the flesh in some degree. Four centuries ago, a band went down to that darksome place, having defied the law of that day; but they had not cleansed themselves of the flesh by indulging all sins, and therefore they perished. Half a century ago, in this house, one man who had made much progress in the way of our salvation drew back at the last moment; and although later he penetrated to the maze below us, he too perished, being as much flesh as spirit: a coward.

  “We shall not fail in this ceremony. You twelve elect, my brothers and my sisters, have renounced wholly, in thought and in deed, the inhibitions of the tyrannical Law. This have you proved in your lives. Even so, some among you may shiver or draw back at some point in our liturgy. I warn you now, be not withheld by inhibitions; modern science sustains our truths. Enter with joy into all that we shall do below, and you shall experience that perfect moment of freedom forever.”

  He paused, covered his eyes with his hands, and then spread his arms wide, as if in revelation.

  “Know this! What we call Time has three aspects. One you shall see upon the door of the place beneath us: it is represented by the head of a lion, which signifies Time Present: he devours the ephemeral moment. There is also Time Past, of which the symbol is a wolf, tearing and gnawing our foolish memories. Then there is Time Future, of which the symbol is a dog, fawning and begging.

  “These three aspects of Time you shall transcend. Brothers and sisters mine, you shall be granted a moment of Eternity, that eternity which you have chosen freely. In the realm to which we shall penetrate, Time the Devourer has swept everything clean for us. You shall be emancipated from past, from present, from future. Everything there is vacant of spirit; make your minds vacant in preparation for the Event. In that Timeless Moment, to paraphrase Plotinus, ‘You shall never stay, yet never vanish.’ So be of good cheer.”

  The Master raised his arms in a curious benediction, crossing them to represent a St. Andrew’s cross. He bowed slightly, smiled his peculiar smile; they were dismissed.

  Mrs. Equitone caught at Marina’s arm as she walked pallid toward the door. “Oh, my dear, wasn’t it all so comforting? Why, it was as grand as the King James Version, wasn’t it? Did you understand everything?”

  “I didn’t before, but I think I do now,” said Marina. There was burnt into her awareness one sentence of Apollinax’s sermon: “The sinless baby thus is an abomination in the sight of the Lord of This World.” Now she recollected what the Archvicar had said about Mrs. Equitone’s child, and she fled from Mrs. Equitone’s mothering.

  14

  Into the Abyss

  “To JUDGE FROM Balgrummo’s cryptic jottings,” the Archvicar was saying, “there’s an intricate hollow darkness behind this door: first biggish caves, then a labyrinth, with a center to it. The labyrinths of legend have two difficulties about them: first, once in, the adventurer can’t get out; and second, a guardian of the mysteries hangs about. We are about to penetrate, gentlemen, the womb of Time.”

  Coriolan was working the great key in the lock of the little bronze door: this was cramped labor, and although they had oiled lock and key, bolts would not yield. Held by Phlebas, a big electric torch shone on the affrighting bronze face of Kronos the Devourer, with the serpent pendent alongside his nose and touching his open lips. Sweeney and the Archvicar waited in the vestibule itself, necessarily idle for the moment; had it not been for their own miners’ lamps, neither could have guessed the presence of the other, though there they stood face to face, such was the blackness of this chamber. Sweeney kept running his torch beam over the walls and ceiling of the vestibule, as if to reassure himself that they had more space about them than a coffin would afford.

  “Do you know Hadrian’s villa, near Tivoli, Sweeney?” the Archvicar asked conversationally. “No? One might spend weeks happily there, mooning about the ruins, especially if one were to obtain special permission to linger after sunset. Well, Hadrian’s villa has its souterrain, too, altogether artificial, acres upon acres of it, just underground, Hadrian’
s imperial creation; and that complex represents Hell. One could enter Hell from any part of the villa. But here at the Lodging we have only this strait gate. I hope you take yourself to be the captain of your soul, my dear Sweeney, so that to you ‘It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.’”

  Sweeney was quaking, but here in this tophet, “black as the Pit from pole to pole,” probably nobody could detect the physical symptoms of his terror.

  He was hoping against hope that Coriolan might not, after all, succeed in turning that big key in the wards of that intricate ancient lock. Perhaps some slight slippage in the mass of rock, during recent years, had sufficed to fix the bolts hard in their holes: a crack or two could be discerned in the masonry near the doorway, suggesting that possibility.

  Sweeney focused his light on some supplies piled at the far side of the vestibule. There were heavy timbers, planks, a goodly supply of old-fashioned torches of pitch or tallow, four miners’ picks, several more large electric torches, a coil of rope, and a picnic hamper. He must keep talking, even if he didn’t make much sense: should he keep silent in this darkness, he might find himself shrieking convulsively. “Why those primitive torches, when we’ve got electric ones?” Sweeney asked.

  “The Master desires that tomorrow night’s ceremonies be in the old manner,” the Archvicar answered, “with antique flambeaux, no mod cons.”

  Only the four of them were engaged in this nocturnal exercise in speleology, the dull-witted acolytes having been sent back to their quarters. Sweeney was a trifle surprised that Apollinax hadn’t headed their pioneering party; but the Archvicar had remarked, “The Master runs no unnecessary chances with his mortal envelope, and the opening of this long-shut place has its perils. Then actually he doesn’t seem vastly interested in the Weem, archaeologically or historically: all he wants is the precincts for tomorrow night’s Ceremony of Innocence.”