Blacktooth himself took notes occasionally, but the old man rambled on and on. He misquoted Scripture. He belched. He improved on Scripture. He broke wind. He apologized for his frailties. He talked about his boyhood in the Northwest. He talked about barnyard matters. He talked about the wisdom of a mindless God. One passage which was faithfully recorded, and later used against him, was this:
“All this talk about the Church, the State, and the causes of schism reminds me of a story. When the priests asked Jesus whether they should pay taxes to the Hannegan of that time, Jesus borrowed a coin from them, asked them whose head was on it. ‘Hannegan’s,’ they said. So he told them, ‘Render unto Hannegan what is Hannegan’s, and to God what is God’s.’ Then he put the coin in his pocket and smiled. When the priest wanted his coin back, Jesus asked, ‘Who do you think Hannegan belongs to?’ When there was no answer, he reminded them, ‘The Earth is the Father’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.’ Of course that’s just another way of saying, ‘The foxes have their dens, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’
“So he gave the priest his coin back and slept under one of Hannegan’s bridges that night, along with Peter and Judas. The priest went home and paid his taxes and drew up an indictment.”
Here, Specklebird began to wander wide of his topic of New Rome and Valana.
“Why, you may ask, did Judas and Peter and Jesus sleep under a bridge,” he said, pursuing a tangent. “Judas had a good reason, you see: someone had stolen his horse, and he was too tired to walk to the inn. Peter also had a good reason: he had no money to stay at the inn. Jesus had no reason, no reason at all. Jesus was free to sleep under a bridge. Such is freedom. Such is reason. Such is rumination.”
Another tormentation of Scripture that was later bound to be used against him was this:
“‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?’ I spoke earlier about this world, and him to whom it belongs, but what, one might ask, is one’s own soul, which can be lost? The soul, insofar as it exists or not-exists, is the seat of suffering, when Jesus was born, he looked around at the world and said to his mother, ‘From the outermost to the innermost I alone am the suffering one.’ Cardinal Ri, whose conclavist I am, told me that. And this is the first fact of religion: I am means ‘I hurt.’ Why is it that I hurt? Is it God’s revenge on a son? No, I hurt because I, my soul, keep grasping at the world to gain it, and the world has sharp teeth. And thorns.
That is the second fact of religion. The world is slippery too, and it wiggles. Just when I think I have a grip on it, it stings me, and slips away, or part of it dies on me, and I am overcome with grief and a sense of loss—the consequence of sin. But there is a way to stop grasping at this slithery world, a way to stop hurting and hungering. That is the third fact of religion. That third fact, Venerable Fathers, can be called the ‘way of the Cross.’ It leads to Golgotha. For you among you who will be Pope, it leads to New Rome.”
His return to the topic came with brutal abruptness.
“These are elemental things. The fourth elemental fact of religion is called the ‘Stations of the Way of the Cross.’” He waved toward the paintings on the Cathedral walls.
“This, Venerable Lords, is what I say of New Rome: that the way of the Cross ends there. The last station. The Pope must go back to New Rome as to Golgotha, and be crucified. The Hannegan will have his coin of tribute, which belongs to God if you correctly understand the Lord’s irony, and Peter will have his crucifixion. When Benedict fled from New Rome in the last century, Jesus appeared to him and asked ‘Quo Vadis,’ but Benedict mistook him for a Nomad, and said ‘Ad Valanam’ and did not turn around. This I heard from one of you.” He smiled at the conclavists from Texark, whose expressions had changed throughout the speech from initial hostility, to astonishment, through outrage, to suspicious approval, for, although the premises by which he arrived at his conclusions were not flattering to their monarch, and his theology was outrageous, the conclusions were the same as their own. The papacy should go home without any concession of power from the Imperial Mayor of Texark.
Usually so silent, this bewildering man was now talking through the afternoon, and when the lamps were lit in the evening, he talked on by lamplight. Once, when Blacktooth himself nodded off, he reawakened to see a cougar in aragged cassock change to a dark brown old man with wild white hair again.
Amen Specklebird made a speech that was to become famous in the history of the Church, as written by its severest critics. Such are the quotations and misquotations as written down by the scribes.
Amen on the Fall and its aftermath: “The fruit of the tree, Eminent Lords, was rumination. Out of rumination came good and evil. The devil is a cud-chewing animal with cloven hooves. The serpent Satan ate souls and chewed the cud, and he taught rumination to the female, who taught it to the male. Whatever you do, do not ruminate. The anointed one never ruminates. He marches straight on to Hell from the tomb—and ascends to Heaven if it befall him.
“But if you should ruminate, and thus sin through fornication or rage or greed, never be ashamed of your guilt. Shame is none other than pride, pride is none other than shame. Your pride is your shame, your shame is your pride. They look in opposite directions, shame and pride, because when pride looks directly into the eye of shame and shame looks directly into the eye of pride, both instantly die. They die to the accompaniment of laughter, the laughter of the man who has foolishly kept them in his heart and kept them apart. When he feels his shame as pride and his pride as shame, he is free of them, free forever from the sin of both. Guilt, however, is not a feeling.
“When you see that you have sinned, and you repent the sin, do not wish you had not sinned. Wish instead that God in His mysterious way will turn your sin to a good end, for your sin is now already a part of the history of His ongoing creation of the world. To wish it away is to resist His will.”
Amen on truth: “The truth is God’s subtle, abominable word, Eminent Lords, subtile et enfandum is His word.”
Amen, repeating himself, on man’s place in God’s world: “Don’t you know that Jesus Christ is alone and friendless in the universe? Don’t you know that the Earth is the Creator’s, and the fullness thereof? What does that mean, Eminent Lords, except that the foxes have their dens, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head? He often sleeps under bridges.
“What is God that thou art mindful of Him, and the Son of God that thou shouldst visit Him?
“He who is close to God is in danger. It’s possible to be so enlightened that blindness follows. The light was too bright for your eyes and you never see God again.”
Amen on man, woman, and the Trinity, going on in a kind of rapture: “God lives at the center of the Son. Or Daughter.” He nodded toward the Cardinal Abbess. “His throne—it’s hotter than Hell there, you know. Even the Devil couldn’t sit down in that throne. But you can. I can. We’re in His lap, and we know what the Godhead’s like—from inside. God-at-the-center-of-the-sun-I am bigger than I am. Jesus too, am. Saint Spirit also, am. And, oh my yes, the Virgin, am. One should be embarrassed to speak of God in the third person.”