Because they were afraid of the dark.
Because they were Bronze Age bullies and nitwits who worshipped the sun.
The Devil lives in darkness because he hates the light? Demons crouch in dark corners? He begged to differ: the Devil lived in merciless light, light that showed through bodies, that exposed everything to everybody, that extended into space, a line, a bit of geometry that winked out once it left a man’s weak and suffering mind and entered the super-abundant emptiness of the heaven he could not imagine, could not perceive, but which he would come into, be born into, just as he had been born into life and light.
He had seen this light at work: it had destroyed Little Joe. He was crouching in the dark and he was not a demon and the light had destroyed him.
He could quote Tennyson, if anybody wanted to get tough with him:
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
Forever and ever when I move.”
Heaven was dark.
Heaven was a dark theater.
A dark theater, the lights of which picked out Evil.
The mounted policemen began cantering toward the little platform stage that the antiwar people had erected. The crowd, entirely pro-war as far as Charles could tell, was either unwilling or unable to disperse. People, mostly young men and boys, ran here and there and shouted. Charles thought he heard screaming as well. Distant screaming, which was hard to be sure of. In all likelihood it was feigned screaming, coming from behind and below him in the brand-new theater that Mother and Father had built for him — it was nearly impossible for them not to, if you understood that it was simply a consequence of rebuilding the city — exactly where the old theater had stood. He stayed with his arms spread and his hands on the handles of the French windows as if he had just flung them open and was going address the nation, until the crowds, dispersing and gathering and dispersing, were gone. Everybody seemed to be laughing, no matter what they were doing: getting smacked with a baton across the back of the head, watching someone else get smacked with a baton across the back of the head, smacking someone with a baton across the back of the head. It made no sense. Mounted policemen had made their way through group after group, but it had seemed like a carnival. He had heard screaming, he was sure of it, but had seen no one lying in a pool of blood, within a circle of strangers. The sun was setting, and in the deep clear twilight some fireworks were being discharged somewhere near; they rose and shone as if they were not only on fire but gave off a kind of glossy, lacquered light — everything looked that way, buildings, people, earth, sky — but he could not tell if they were the fireworks of patriots or of radicals. It was a carnival, and its theme had been the war in Europe. No. It made no sense. People would not be celebrating carnage and horror. Perhaps it was not supposed to make sense.? Why did he wish anything to make sense? He of all people! He went back down the stairs and into the theater and stood at the railing of the little balcony. The stage was now full of people. His people. “Friends.” They were arranged in small groups and engaged in discussions. Some of these conversations were calculated, their subjects free of apparent context or even forthrightly nonsensical, their objectives contrived and variable, delivered with courtly animation from angelically bright faces — this was a vision of hell. The other conversations were conducted in dusty darkness, or at least away from the pools of light, by nearly immobile and featureless figures, and this was heaven.
Charles breathed evenly and slowly though he could feel his heart pounding in his fingertips and teeth, and he smiled faintly as these visions appeared and disappeared before and below him. The feverish light did indeed seem to determine the quality of life, as he had always suspected. He had read, in an account of the Indian wars, that one great and defeated chief had weighed his options and declared that heaven was no place for a man and he wanted nothing to do with it — and yet his place, Charles thought, was so clearly here on the border of heaven and hell that he could not help but feel some relief at the sight of it.
An actress he hoped might prove suitable for the big roles sat wrapped in mummy-like winding sheets approximately in the center of the little theater, under its chandelier, which hung from the underside of a shallow dome painted with peacocks, owls, a buck deer and doe, vines with berries and flowers, and a wizard with a flask out of which streamed a banner with the words eamus quesitum quattuor elementorum naturas.
Her name was Vera.
Vera K., born of Russian parents in Muscatine, Iowa, where she had worked in a button factory.
Muscatine was the Button Capital of the World.
He picked up a sheaf of papers from the seat next to him, riffled through them until he found the page he was looking for, then read it aloud but not loudly, looking down at her. She probably couldn’t hear him, but would she turn round, look up?
“What is for you the greatest unhappiness?”
“I sometimes, too often, think I am no longer competent to live in the world.”
“In what place would you like to live?”
“The world.”
“What is your ideal of earthly happiness?”
“Forgoing happiness.”
“For what faults do you have the greatest indulgence?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘fault.’”
“What is your principal fault?”
“Ah: my recurring inability to believe I can live in the world.”
“What would you like to be?”
“Oh! What all the young women have said to you goes double for me: the star of your shows!”
“What is your favorite quality in a man?”
“A fine critical apparatus focused on whether or not I am kidding.”
“What is your favorite quality in a woman?”
“A fine critical apparatus focused on whether or not I am kidding.”
“What is your favorite occupation?”
“Acting truly.”
“What is your present state of mind?”
“A nearly overwhelming feeling of joy that I can live in the world after all.”
Vera, alone in all of histrionic San Francisco, had been worthy of the Polite Parlor Questionnaire. In her presence, as she answered the questions slowly and eloquently, he had not been able to feel like anything but a prince in a fairy tale.