In any case, the blind man humbly noted, men tend to become fables and fables tend to become men, so in the end it probably didn't matter whether he was dealing with the past or the future. In the end it must all be the same.
And wasn't it also possible that all prophecies were really histories misplaced by tricks of time?
Memories in disguise? Pains and torments spilled out in weariness when memory no longer could bear its heavy burdens? When it lightened itself by taking a part of the past and putting it in the future?
He thought so, but even if he was confused he had still taken care not to cheat his listeners, by varying his accounts so there would always be new matters for them to consider. Occasionally he chanted about mighty wars and migrations and who begat whom, and although he sometimes presented the solemn side of life he also included the sensuous and sacrificing, all the while enlivening his chants with anecdotes and sayings and reports, curious inventions, every manner of adventure and experience that might come to mind.
And so the entertainment had gone on for years in dusty waysides, the blind man giving his recitals and his imbecile son recording them word for word.
Until with increasing age a time had come when they had both grown stiff in the joints. Then they had sought a warm place to assuage their aches and gone south into the desert, to the foot of a mountain called Sinai, where they were sitting at the very moment this last chapter was being dictated.
Having already been in the desert for some time, the blind man could not be sure what era was current in Canaan. But not too long ago a traveler had passed their way and he had asked him what news there was in Canaan, and the man had replied that a great temple was being built on a great mountain by a great king called Solomon, which of course meant little enough to the blind man since as long as he could remember great temples were always being built in Canaan on great mountains by great kings who all had one name or another.
So here the dictation was coming to an end. Unfortunately he couldn't add his own name to these recitations because in his blindness and poverty, being no one of importance, he quite simply had never had a name.
And finally, in conclusion, he advised that the verses had their best effect when chanted to the accompaniment of a lyre and a flute and a ram's horn, these pleasing sounds tending to alert passersby that something of interest was taking place beside the road.
But gentle blind man doth not will not shalt not knowing [it was written after that, the lines indented to set them apart from the previous text, the words formed in a particularly proud and elegant script], saith imbecile of imbeciles adding few some several own thoughts first Abraham last Jesus last Isaiah first Mohammed thought of thoughts adding over years of years saith wanting hoping hope of hopes here Matthew Mark Luke John sharing work here Prophet love of loves here Lord never adding much Gabriel doth not will not shalt not adding much adding little Ruth little Mary little Fatima here Elijah there Kings here Judges there Melchizedek word of words Lord of Lords saith soon doth not will not shalt not winter summer day night ending imbecile of imbeciles ending desert end gentle end blind end no name man end doth not will not shalt not too cold too hot too hungry tired saith sleepless saith starving saith holding hands ending father of fathers son of sons no name ending kingdom come ending amen ending be with you ending saith end ending of endings end.
Brother Anthony closed the book and groaned. He had read the last pages in horror. The mere thought of it paralyzed him.
A nameless blind beggar chanting whatever came into his head? His mutterings recorded by an imbecile who saw fit to insert a few shadowy thoughts of his own? The two of them moving their shabby act from wayside to wayside with no other purpose than to make a meager living?
Drifting away to the desert while Solomon was building his temple? Coming to rest at the foot of Moses'
mountain for no other reason than to ease their arthritis? Lunatic prophecy and moronic fancy collaborating to produce original Holy Scripture fully seven hundred years before the first appearance of the Old Testament? More than eleven hundred years before the first tiny fragments of the New Testament?
Chants by dusty waysides varied to vary the entertainment? Lyres and flutes and ram's horns squeaking and rumbling to attract attention? Roadside gossip overheard and repeated? Men begatting in Canaan?
Curious inventions in Canaan? These and other odd bits of rumors twisted and retold for a copper coin?
Then on to another dusty wayside? Eventually to retirement in a warm place good for the joints? The divine source of inspired religion, these whimsies concocted by two rambling anonymous tramps in 930
B.C.?
Brother Anthony went down on his knees and prayed for enlightenment Night came. He wrapped the manuscript in its swaddling cloth and reburied it in the storeroom cellar. On the way to his cell he made signs that God had instructed him to remain in seclusion until he found the solution to a personal problem.
For the next week he fasted in his cell, drinking one small cup of water at sunrise and another at sunset, and at the end of those seven days he decided what had to be done.
Melchizedek must have his City of Peace, men must have their Jerusalem. There had to be faith in the world and if the cause for it wasn't there, he would provide it. If the Father of the real Bible was an aging blind beggar and the Son was an imbecilic scribe, then Wallenstein would become the Holy Ghost and rewrite Scripture the way it ought to be written.
The decision he had made in his cell was to forge the original Bible.
Of course he couldn't place his forgery in the tenth century B.C., when the imbecile had recorded the blind man's recitations. His Bible had to be a genuine work of revealed history, not a jumble of capricious tales assembled by two stray tramps. Thus it had to come sometime well after Christ, which meant writing it in Greek.
But when?
In prayer he turned to his namesake for guidance and at once the question was answered. The great St Anthony had gone into the desert in the fourth century, so that would be the date of his forgery. Time enough after Christ for all the truths to have been gathered, yet still earlier than any complete Bible in existence.
Secretly he revisited the storeroom cellar and buried the real Sinai Bible more deeply in the clay so that it would not be discovered in his absence. Then without warning he left the monastery and returned to Jerusalem, to the quarters of his order, where his unauthorized arrival during the morning meal caused worried looks from his brothers.
Immediately he shattered the silence by announcing he had learned something at St Catherine's that transcended his vows of obedience, silence and poverty. He must be allowed to go his own way for a number of years or he would be forced to abandon the Trappists.
The monks in the refectory were stupefied. When his shocked superior warned in a quavering voice that merely suggesting such blasphemy constituted a fatal nakedness before God, the former Brother Anthony at once removed not only his cassock but his loincloth, exposing even his genitals, and left the room without an explanation of any kind. Behind him his weeping former brothers stayed on their knees for hours praying beside their bowls of gruel.
Wallenstein meanwhile, penniless and naked and shivering violently in the cold winter wind, limped through the narrow alleys of Jerusalem abjectly begging coins. And although soon starving and frostbitten, his first coins went not for a crust of bread or a loincloth but for a stamp and an envelope. In this letter to Albania he directed that a huge sum of family money, his by right as the Skanderbeg of his generation, be sent to him.