The Apocalypse Reader Part 6

A thousand hands, that, nevertheless, loathed the touch, now lent their a.s.sistance, and thrust the ominous burden far, far, into the centre of the raging furnace. There its fatal and abhorred image was beheld, first black, then a red coal, then ashes.

"That was well done!" exclaimed I.

"Yes, it was well done," replied-but with less enthusiasm than I expected-the thoughtful observer who was still at my side; "well done, if the world be good enough for the measure. Death, however, is an idea that cannot easily be dispensed with, in any condition between the primal innocence and that other purity and perfection, which, perchance, we are destined to attain after travelling round the full circle. But, at all events, it is well that the experiment should now be tried."

"Too cold! too cold!" impatiently exclaimed the young and ardent leader in this triumph. "Let the heart have its voice here, as well as the intellect. And as for ripeness, and as for progress, let mankind always do the highest, kindest, n.o.blest thing, that, at any given period, it has attained to the perception of; and surely that thing cannot be wrong, nor wrongly timed!"

I know not whether it were the excitement of the scene, or whether the good people around the bonfire were really growing more enlightened, every instant, but they now proceeded to measures in the full length of which I was hardly prepared to keep them company. For instance, some threw their marriage certificates into the flames, and declared themselves candidates for a higher, holier, and more comprehensive union than that which had subsisted from the birth of time, under the form of the connubial tie. Others hastened to the vaults of banks, and to the coffers of the rich-all of which were open to the first comer, on this fated occasion-and brought entire bales of paper money to enliven the blaze, and tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the world. At this intelligence, the bankers, and speculators in the stocks, grew pale, and a pickpocket, who had reaped a rich harvest among the crowd, fell down in a deadly fainting fit. A few men of business burned their day-books and ledgers, the notes and obligations of their creditors, and all other evidences of debts due to themselves; while perhaps a somewhat larger number satisfied their zeal for reform with the sacrifice of any uncomfortable recollection of their own indebtment. There was then a cry, that the period was arrived when the t.i.tle-deeds of landed property should be given to the flames, and the whole soil of the earth revert to the public, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted, and most unequally distributed among individuals. Another party demanded that all written const.i.tutions, set forms of government, legislative acts, statute books, and everything else on which human invention had endeavored to stamp its arbitrary laws, should at once be destroyed, leaving the consummated world as free as the man first created.

Whether any ultimate action was taken with regard to these propositions, is beyond my knowledge; for, just then, some matters were in progress that concerned my sympathies more nearly.

"See! see! what heaps of books and pamphlets!" cried a fellow, who did not seem to be a lover of literature. "Now we shall have a glorious blaze!"

"That's just the thing!" said a modern philosopher. "Now we shall get rid of the weight of dead men's thought, which has. .h.i.therto pressed so heavily on the living intellect that it has been incompetent to any effectual self-exertion. Well done, my lads! Into the fire with them! Now you are enlightening the world, indeed!"

"But what is to become of the trade?" cried a frantic bookseller.

"Oh, by all means, let them accompany their merchandise," coolly observed an author. "It will be a n.o.ble funeral pile!"

The truth was that the human race had now reached a stage of progress so far beyond what the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had ever dreamed of that it would have been a manifest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer enc.u.mbered with their poor achievements in the literary line. Accordingly, a thorough and searching investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, hawkers' stands, public and private libraries, and even the little bookshelf by the country fireside, and had brought the world's entire ma.s.s of printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the already mountain-bulk of our ill.u.s.trious bonfire. Thick, heavy folios, containing the labors of lexicographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, were flung in, and, falling among the embers with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes, like rotten wood. The small, richly gilt French tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant shower of sparkles and little jets of flame; while the current literature of the same nation burned red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the visages of the spectators, converting them all to the aspect of particolored fiends. A collection of German stories emitted a scent of brimstone. The English standard authors made excellent fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound oak logs. Milton's works, in particular, sent up a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, which promised to endure longer than almost any other material of the pile. From Shakespeare there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendor that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's meridian glory; nor even when the works of his own elucidators were flung upon him, did he cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from beneath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that he is still blazing as fervidly as ever.

"Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame," remarked I, "he might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose."

"That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to door, at least, to attempt," answered a critic. "The chief benefit to be expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly is that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps at the sun or stars."

"If they can reach so high," said I. "But that task requires a giant, who may afterward distribute the light among inferior men. It is not everyone that can steal the fire from Heaven, like Prometheus; but when once he had done the deed, a thousand hearths were kindled by it."

It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was the proportion between the physical ma.s.s of any given author and the property of brilliant and long-continued combustion. For instance, there was not a quarto volume of the last century-nor, indeed, of the present-that could compete, in that particular, with a child's little gilt-covered book, containing Mother Goose's Melodies. The Life and Death of Tom Thumb outlasted the biography of Marlborough. An epic-indeed, a dozen of them-was converted to white ashes, before the single sheet of an old ballad was half consumed. In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling smoke, an unregarded ditty of some nameless bard-perchance, in the corner of a newspaper-soared up among the stars, with a flame as brilliant as their own. Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Sh.e.l.ley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day; contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams, and gushes of black vapor, that flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron. As for Tom Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor like a burning pastille.

I felt particular interest in watching the combustion of American authors, and scrupulously noted, by my watch, the precise number of moments that changed most of them from shabbily printed books to indistinguishable ashes. It would be invidious, however, if not perilous, to betray these awful secrets; so that I shall content myself with observing that it was not invariably the writer most frequent in the public mouth that made the most splendid appearance in the bonfire. I especially remember that a great deal of excellent inflammability was exhibited in a thin volume of poems by Ellery Charming; although, to speak the truth, there were certain portions that hissed and spluttered in a very disagreeable fas.h.i.+on. A curious phenomenon occurred, in reference to several writers, native as well as foreign. Their books, though of highly respectable figure, instead of bursting into a blaze, or even smouldering out their substance in smoke, suddenly melted away, in a manner that proved them to be ice.

If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own works, it must here be confessed that I looked for them with fatherly interest, but in vain. Too probably, they were changed to vapor by the first action of the heat; at best, I can only hope that, in their quiet way, they contributed a glimmering spark or two to the splendor of the evening.

"Alas! and woe is me!" thus bemoaned himself a heavy-looking gentleman in green spectacles. "The world is utterly ruined, and there is nothing to live for any longer! The business of my life is s.n.a.t.c.hed from me. Not a volume to be had for love or money!"

"This," remarked the sedate observer beside me, "is a bookworm-one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see what is to become of the poor fellow. Have you no word of comfort for him?"

"My dear sir," said I, to the desperate bookworm, "is not Nature better than a book? Is not the human heart deeper than any system of philosophy? Is not life replete with more instruction than past observers have found it possible to write down in maxims? Be of good cheer! The great book of Time is still spread wide open before us; and, if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal Truth."

"Oh, my books, my books, my precious printed books!" reiterated the forlorn bookworm. "My only reality was a bound volume; and now they will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!"

In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all the ages was now descending upon the blazing heap, in the shape of a cloud of pamphlets from the press of the New World. These, likewise, were consumed in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the earth, for the first time since the days of Cadmus, free from the plague of letters-an enviable field for the authors of the next generation!

"Well!-and does anything remain to be done?" inquired I, somewhat anxiously. "Unless we set fire to the earth itself, and then leap boldly off into infinite s.p.a.ce, I know not that we can carry reform to any further point."

"You are vastly mistaken, my good friend," said the observer. "Believe me, the fire will not be allowed to settle down without the addition of fuel that will startle many persons who have lent a willing hand thus far."

Nevertheless, there appeared to be a relaxation of effort for a little time, during which, probably, the leaders of the movement were considering what should be done next. In the interval, a philosopher threw his theory into the flames; a sacrifice which, by those who knew how to estimate it, was p.r.o.nounced the most remarkable that had yet been made. The combustion, however, was by no means brilliant. Some indefatigable people, scorning to take a moment's ease, now employed themselves in collecting all the withered leaves and fallen boughs of the forest, and thereby recruited the bonfire to a greater height than ever. But this was mere by-play.

"Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of," said my companion.

To my astonishment, the persons who now advanced into the vacant s.p.a.ce around the mountain fire bore surplices and other priestly garments, mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of popish and Protestant emblems, with which it seemed their purpose to consummate this great Act of Faith. Crosses from the spires of old cathedrals, were cast upon the heap, with as little remorse as if the reverence of centuries, pa.s.sing in long array beneath the lofty towers, had not looked up to them as the holiest of symbols. The font, in which infants were consecrated to G.o.d, the sacramental vessels, whence Piety received the hallowed draught, were given to the same destruction. Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart to see, among these devoted relics, fragments of the humble communion tables and undecorated pulpits which I recognized as having been torn from the meeting-houses of New England. Those simple edifices might have been permitted to retain all of sacred embellishment that their Puritan founders had bestowed, even though the mighty structure of St. Peter's had sent its spoils to the fire of this terrible sacrifice. Yet I felt that these were but the externals of religion, and might most safely be relinquished by spirits that best knew their deep significance.

"All is well," said I cheerfully. "The wood paths shall be the aisles of our cathedral-the firmament itself shall be its ceiling! What needs an earthly roof between the Deity and his wors.h.i.+ppers? Our faith can well afford to lose all the drapery that even the holiest men have thrown around it, and be only the more sublime in its simplicity."

"True," said my companion. "But will they pause here?"

The doubt implied in his question was well founded. In the general destruction of books, already described, a holy volume that stood apart from the catalogue of human literature, and yet, in one sense, was at its head had been spared. But the t.i.tan of innovation-angel or fiend, double in his nature, and capable of deeds befitting both characters-at first shaking down only the old and rotten shapes of things, had now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon the main pillars, which supported the whole edifice of our moral and spiritual state. The inhabitants of the earth had grown too enlightened to define their faith within a form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any a.n.a.logy to our material existence. Truths, which the Heavens trembled at, were now but a fable of the world's infancy. Therefore, as the final sacrifice of human error, what else remained to be thrown upon the embers of that awful pile, except the book, which, though a celestial revelation to past ages, was but a voice from a lower sphere, as regarded the present race of man? It was done! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood and worn-out truth-things that the earth had never needed, or had ceased to need, or had grown childishly weary of-fell the ponderous church Bible, the great old volume, that had lain so long on the cus.h.i.+on of the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice had given holy utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, likewise, fell the family Bible, which the long-buried patriarch had read to his children-in prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in the summer shade of trees-and had bequeathed downward, as the heirloom of generations. There fell the bosom Bible, the little volume that had been the soul's friend of some sorely tried child of dust, who thence took courage, whether his trial were for life or death, steadfastly confronting both, in the strong a.s.surance of immortality.

All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze; and then a mighty wind came roaring across the plain, with a desolate howl, as if it were the angry lamentations of the Earth for the loss of Heaven's suns.h.i.+ne, and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame, and scattered the cinders of half-consumed abominations around upon the spectators.

"This is terrible!" said I, feeling that my cheek grew pale, and seeing a like change in the visages about me.

"Be of good courage yet," answered the man with whom I had so often spoken. He continued to gaze steadily at the spectacle, with a singular calmness, as if it concerned him merely as an observer. "Be of good courage, nor yet exult too much; for there is far less both of good and evil, in the effect of this bonfire, than the world might be willing to believe."

"How can that be?" exclaimed I impatiently. "Has it not consumed everything? Has it not swallowed up, or melted down, every human or divine appendage of our mortal state that had substance enough to be acted on by fire? Will there be anything left us tomorrow morning, better or worse than a heap of embers and ashes?"

"a.s.suredly there will," said my grave friend. "Come hither tomorrow morning-or whenever the combustible portion of the pile shall be quite burned out-and you will find among the ashes everything really valuable that you have seen cast into the flames. Trust me, the world of tomorrow will again enrich itself with the gold and diamonds, which have been cast off by the world of today. Not a truth is destroyed-nor buried so deep among the ashes, but it will be raked up at last."

This was a strange a.s.surance. Yet I felt inclined to credit it; the more especially as I beheld among the wallowing flames a copy of the Holy Scriptures, the pages of which, instead of being blackened into tinder, only a.s.sumed a more dazzling whiteness, as the finger-marks of human imperfection were purified away. Certain marginal notes and commentaries, it is true, yielded to the intensity of the fiery test, but without detriment to the smallest syllable that had flamed from the pen of inspiration.

"Yes-there is the proof of what you say," answered I, turning to the observer. "But, if only what is evil can feel the action of the fire, then, surely, the conflagration has been of inestimable utility. Yet if I understand aright, you intimate a doubt whether the world's expectation of benefit would be realized by it."

"Listen to the talk of these worthies," said he, pointing to a group in front of the blazing pile. "Possibly, they may teach you something useful, without intending it."

The persons whom he indicated consisted of that brutal and most earthy figure who had stood forth so furiously in defence of the gallows-the hangman, in short-together with the Last Thief and the Last Murderer; all three of whom were cl.u.s.tered about the Last Toper. The latter was liberally pa.s.sing the brandy bottle, which he had rescued from the general destruction of wines and spirits. The little convivial party seemed at the lowest pitch of despondency, as considering that the purified world must needs be utterly unlike the sphere that they had hitherto known, and therefore but a strange and desolate abode for gentlemen of their kidney.

"The best counsel for all of us is," remarked the hangman, "that-as soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor-I help you, my three friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest tree, and then hang myself on the same bough. This is no world for us any longer."

"Poh, poh, my good fellows!" said a dark-complexioned personage, who now joined the group-his complexion was indeed fearfully dark, and his eyes glowed with a redder light than that of the bonfire. "Be not so cast down, my dear friends; you shall see good days yet. There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; yes, though they had burned the earth itself to a cinder!"

"And what may that be?" eagerly demanded the Last Murderer.

"What but the human heart itself!" said the dark-visaged stranger, with a portentous grin. "And, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery-the same old shapes, or worse ones-which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I have stood by, this livelong night, and laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. Oh, take my word for it, it will be the old world yet!"

This brief conversation supplied me with a theme for lengthened thought. How sad a truth-if true it were-that Man's age-long endeavor for perfection had served only to render him the mockery of the Evil Principle, from the fatal circ.u.mstance of an error at the very root of the matter! The Heart-the Heart-there was the little yet boundless sphere, wherein existed the original wrong of which the crime and misery of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inner sphere, and the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward-and which now seem almost our only-realities will turn to shadowy phantoms, and vanish of their own accord. But, if we go no deeper than the intellect, and strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify what is wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a dream, so unsubstantial that it matters little whether the bonfire, which I have so faithfully described, were what we choose to call a real event, and a flame that would scorch the finger, or only a phosphoric radiance, and a parable of my own brain!

I ALWAYS GO.

TO PARTICULAR PLACES.

Gary Lutz and Deb Olin Unferth.

"YOU THINK THAT'S gonna fall?"

"It's got some give in it yet."

The lower surrounds look patched together now, stapled over, squared in spots. He and she wade coastways. Overhead, a slummy sky, heaped up somehow, junked.

"Thing's gonna hold for us?"

"It doesn't look directed."

A plate of sea. Broken stems, s.h.i.+ngles. She s.h.i.+mmies a smithereen from the cave-in, throws it back, says, "A commotion like this might have once been to her liking."

"Perhaps."

"Last I'd seen of her, she'd had it with any misprints, retractions, bashful second thoughts, any thinking better of. She looked ready to tear down the whole a.s.sembly. Drive me or I call a taxi, she said. But could I? I stood stock-still where the earth was at its widest."

A straight lace of cement. Many empty perfect houses, scarred over. A few dogs mocking the totter of the turrets. He bends his hair half back.

"Think there's any off chance that there's some instability in the fundamental structural integrity of that outcropping?"

"It's humped. It won't."

"So there's no tumble in that wall of rock?"

"Nature is rarely that frank."

She shoves a body out of the way.

"This would be her idea of a collapse worth a once-over. Any last words? she'd say. That one, she'll talk to anyone when she has to talk. She'll kneel."

"You drove her?"

"She just gave me that panned-gold glare of hers. She'd gotten herself spruced up for somebody, all right. That was no shopping frock. And there was one man definitely glad of her. The cuss could scarcely keep those hands in his pockets. He looked strapped and lacking. Must have gone defect years before. The eyes were the thing about him, though. I scanned the yellowed windows of them for any ameliorating sense. You can't stop wondering how paths come to cross like that."

Out a ways, another line of buildings sinking into the chunked earth.

"Goes to show," she says. "The devil drops nothing that rises, and falls down on nothing that is standing up straight."

He makes a clear, factual sound. He loads his left hand into the crevice, says, "Does it look as okay to you as it does, I imagine, to me?"

"It looks native enough."

He grasps his shorts. "Any reason to s.h.i.+ft our relations with respect to said geologic ma.s.sivity?"

"It's just fussing," she says. She swims up to a suitcase, fiddles with the fasten.

A few schools of clouds dismissing into the western districts of the sky. Things more clipped in the eastern parcels. His leg comes to the surface. She skims the topping of the water. One bobs up triumphantly. Another flees from them, holding its breath.

"Watch it!" Her hand goes down the air. "That was an especially gruesome one, that runner."

"Get up off your f.a.n.n.y and help me clear these customers," he says. "Come on, hold my dead."

He has them by the anatomy now. The cladding comes away.

Two are still gurgling. Sections of one's face relocate.

"Probably just need more push."

"That one caboodled with jewelry? Throw it a little closer. I like the doze on it."

She mixes her foot over it. The underwater darkens and relumes. Entrailia; a smooth panel of torso; a physiqued entirety of teenager; an arm unrelated; sw.a.n.k stretches of hair, barretted and ornamented; a t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e at large; a quantum of fingers, slenderly elderly. A mush of shut eyes. Unseamed insides.

She spools an arm thinnedly around. "Where were her others? I wondered. Who were they ferrying out of there with no thought of her?"

Above, the rock leans-a sideward view, a foreslide.

"She didn't miss him, if that's what you're wondering. The woman has a heart like a bare slat. She has some kind of wire arrangement over any big talk she comes out with. She showed me the leftovers she'd managed to push into her pull-to-the grooming agents, the getups. Getting out of a life isn't the sort of thing you line up for. Mostly we try to get in."

"So she'd been out of his life, onto the avenues. Got herself tossed about the terraces and foundations. More than two years by my count."

Traffic moving west in both the east and west lanes. An odd unhurriedness to the movement, a unifying lack of purposive dispersal. Slattery formations all about the two of them. The horizon looking s.n.a.t.c.hy, pivoted.

"I mean, it hadn't been working before any of this, either. It wasn't exactly a curtsy and a handshake farewell."

Personages appear on the outgrowth-tour groups, probably-shout mutely, wave, wane. Farther out, a town belittled by prying fires.

"How she got me to do it, I'll never know. So I drove, yes. I always go to particular places. I'm n.o.body's conscience now."

"You're never exactly lacking indecisions, are you?"

Beyond, a streak of storm stirring the rest, crus.h.i.+ng it.

"When I dropped her, finally, and saw her make off, I naturally thought of a jar opening, the ending of the thing being shut, and then the ending of the hand covering it, the hand lifting (the beginning of that) and the end of no-air over whatever's inside. Then I thought of the end of being in there, and the coming out of there and onto, say, a plate, or depending on what's in there, onto a car, etc., who knows. Then the end of it all getting together and staying like that, pushed up against each other and the beginning of the slow spread away, each one from each one, granule or drop or piece-part, the working oneself out from the center to where it will wind up (end up), to whatever ends, to the very ends, as they say, of the "She was a pa.s.sing one, all right," he says. "But to affect the quality of the day is no small achievement, no? I knew her mostly only from memory. She often had a little body. She was ever due a lullaby. But I panted after fiasco. I rooted up some rummage from her slumbers."

Trees abstracting themselves rankly from the palisades. She undoes the distance in her eyes, conserves her footing.

"When I came out to pump it, she, my pa.s.senger during all this, was nowhere I could see."

She takes a fresh, unprejudiced breath of it.

Then a curt quiet, then a peaceable one, then a swinging underneath, then tulippy plumes for an instant, then a dither to the trees, then, farther off, the forever it had coming, the land of a piece with the sky.

"And the next note about it is what?"

"She lived."