The moon is falling near. Here are the deserts and the mountains. There I am, the raisin-eyed, cross-legged on a stone. Is that a lion feeding from my lap? My spirit dines on salt and water. I don't suppose you know the desert fathers, Pike, you were never a scholar. Well listen, you've much to learn. A monk who lived in one of those Egyptian monasteries found himself set upon by thoughts of distant places, and the desire to leave the dry hole where he was and visit them began to torment him severely as you might expect, for he was put together in the same way as the rest of us — weak eyes and hairless knees. He told the abbot of his troubles, much as I am telling you of mine, Pike, and the abbot said: go to your cell and give your body in pledge to its walls; let your thoughts roam as they will but forbid your body to stir. So the monk did as his abbot suggested and apparently his desires were quelled: Now do you see how wrong that was? Dear me. Satan had that abbot by the heels. He had them all by the heels, even Macarius and Paul and Anthony. He swung them like a storm through the desert.
Pike speaks: pounding the pipe won't punish the plumber.
By god Pike you're quick. I preached in Cleveland once upon that theme. You can't feel the spirit through the body, it's far too thick and woolly. That monk should have fastened his mind to the wall and let his body go hang. There's a better story, though, about the saintly Arsenius who was willed some property by a kinsman of his, a senator. Pay attention, Pike, you've a good deal to learn. When the magistrate brought him the will, ceremoniously phrased and piously laced as our wills invariably are, he indignantly refused it, sending the magistrate away. I died before he did, Arsenius said, and now he's dead, how can he make me his heir? Yes sir, that was the ticket. He slipped the Devil there, and got scot-free. And so it was I saw the fall of my Aunt Janet from the Shaker chair. She died, poor soul, in the jump. Not however like a saint but like a suicide. What did it matter if her body bloomed for thirty years and her face dried? Age made trenches for her eyes. It might have been the source of some annoyance as the years went by, this sapling body and this withered face, but I think she saw what was coming. You have to peek under the covers, Pike; then by the holy rood of Moses what you see! It was only surfaces, before, that frightened me. I pledged my body to the fence but my love fell beyond it. And when I read of war in Israel, it was the banners and dust in that Egyptian desert that moved me, the misshapen trees in which the kings were hung. All wrong. Then afterward, when the armies moved and the warriors grimaced at one another and shouting struck their swords together, I did not linger among the shields and weapon edges like a coward in the camp, but my eyes rode in with the spear.
Pike speaks: o hemulous blarsh! cole shemly kitch! rah poffomouse twild!
Don't mock me, Pike. After I've furnished you with life, it isn't fair. Besides I'm being bitten by these insects for your sake. What's that? Is someone speaking? I'll ask Samantha Tott to teach a Sunday school — now there's a move — a charming thought that's just this minute come to me. Oh I'm ill, I'm ill, I've chipped my nose, and nothing will restore me. Then make a clean breast, eh? Throw myself, you know, like the bride's bouquet, into their arms. My father prints a paper, Pike. All those words. Ah, I'll heel them home and make myself loved like a stray. A miracle, Pike — life out of ink. Why, it frees me. Feeesh? Who's wise? Who is it who keeps buffohoing me? Is it you Flack, or these bloody fever bees? Well, He's a great comedian — the King of the High Wire, and He's surely made a fool of me. Ill. Ill. I no longer feel, I only remember. Look: He's lost His trousers. Say, fatty Ruth had a face on both her knees. Merciful heaven, He's wearing red-hot BVD's. Cherubic windpuffers, they looked like, wrought of hinge-wrinks by a genius: little mump-cheeked North, cruel smiling West. Thus appear the parts. What a howl by all that's holy. Luff? Who said so? Oh breathe your spirit into me! Pike? Don't leave me. Ill. Ill. Ill. Don't leave. Listen. I'm in your debt for six sentences of wisdom, but seven is the sacred number. Yield another and I'll have no other ghosts before me. Be Lombardy Peter, Pike. Seven metals, seven wonders, seven ages… That sentence of Paul's — I'd almost forgot how it transformed me when I was nearly twelve and picked up Janet's hair shirt from the floor. Tomorrow I'm going to dig up the sundial and beat the body from that plaster St. Francis.
Pike speaks: the way the world is, you have to look down to see up.
You do by god. The thought turned him topsy-turvy. It seemed to summarize the whole worthless way of the world — if there was one. And versions of it began to flutter wildly through his head. You have to look round to see straight. Good enough. Useful. And the rough places plain. But all that's geometry. But it measures the earth. You have to go slow to catch up. Eat to get thin? no, but fast to grow fat, that was a fine one. Then lose to win? fail to succeed? Risky. Stop to begin. The form made noiseless music — lumly lum lum or lum-lee-lee lum — like fill to empty, every physical extreme. Die to live was a bit old hat. But default to repay. And lie to be honest. He liked the ring of that. Flack! I'm white in order to be black. Sin first and saint later. Cruel to be kind, of course, and the hurt's in the hurter — that's what they say — a lot of blap. That's my name, my nomination: Saint Later. Now then: humble to be proud; poor to be rich. Enslave to make free? That moved naturally. Also multiply to subtract. Dee dee dee. Young Saint Later. A list of them, as old Pythagoras had. Even engenders odd. How would that be? Eight is five and three. There were no middle-aged saints — they were old men or babies. Ah, god — the wise fool. The simpleton sublime. Babe in the woods, roach in the pudding, prince in the pauper, enchanted beauty in the toad. This was the wisdom of the folk and the philosopher alike — the disorder of the lyre, or the drawn-out bow of that sane madman, the holy Heraclitus. The poet Zeno. The logician Keats. Discovery after discovery: the more the mice eat, the fatter the cats. There were tears and laughter, for instance — how they shook and ran together into one gay grief. Dumb eloquence, swift still waters, shallow deeps. Let's see: impenitent remorse, careless anxiety, heedless worry, tense repose. So true of tigers. Then there was the friendly enmity of sun and snow, and the sweet disharmony of every union, the greasy mate of cock and cunt, the cosmic poles, the war that's peace, the stumble that's an everlasting poise and balance, spring and fall, love, strife, health, disease, and the cold duplicity of Number One and all its warm divisions. The sameness that's in difference. The limit that's limitless. The permanence that's change. The distance of the near at home. So — to roam, stay home. Then pursue to be caught, submit to conquer. Method — ancient — of Chinese. To pacify, inflame. Love, hate. Kiss, kill. In, out, up, down, start, stop. Ah… from pleasure, pain. Like circumcision of the heart. Judgment and mercy. Sin and grace. It little mattered; everything seemed to Furber to be magically right, and his heart grew fat with satisfaction. Therefore there is good in every evil; one must lower away to raise; seek what's found to mourn its loss; conceive in stone and execute in water; turn profound and obvious, miraculous and commonplace, around; sin to save; destroy in order to create; live in the sun, though underground. Yes. Doubt in order to believe — that was an old one — for thus the square is in the circle. O Phaedo, Phaedo. O endless ending. Soul is immortal after all — at last it's proved. Between dead and living there's no difference but the one has whiter bones. Furber rose, the mosquitoes swarming around him, and ran inside.