Chapter XLVI. Kerin Rises In The World
Then old Sclaug said to Kerin, who now seemed so much older than Sclaug seemed: “It is time for you and me to cry quits with studying: for you have worked your way as a worm goes through every alcove in this place, you have read every book that was ever written; and I have seen that vigor which destroyed me destroyed. I go into another Naraka: and you must now return, omniscient Kerin, into the world of men.”
“That is well,” said Kerin, “because, after all, I have been away from home a long while. Yes, that is well enough, although I shall regret to leave the books of that god of whom you told me,—and whom, by the way, I have not yet seen.”
“I said, of a sort of god. He is not worshiped, I must tell you, by the very learned nor by the dull. However!” Sclaug said, after a tiny silence, “however, I was wondering if you have found in these books the knowledge you were looking for?”
“I suppose so,” Kerin answered, “because I have acquired all knowledge.”
“And have you found out also the truth?”
“Oh, yes!” said Kerin, speaking now without hesitancy.
Kerin took down from its place the very first book which Sclaug had given him to read, when Kerin was yet young, the book which had been written—upon leaves of tree bark, with the assistance of a divine collaborator,—by the patriarch Abraham when an horror of great darkness fell upon him in the plain of Mamre. This book explained the wisdom of the temple, the various master-words of chance, the seven ways of thwarting destiny, and one thing which is wholly true. And Kerin half opened this book, at the picture of an old naked eunuch who with a scythe was hacking off the feet of a naked youth gashed everywhere with many small wounds; then turned to a picture of a serpent crucified; and, shrugging, put by the book.
“—For it appears,” said Kerin, “that, after all, only one thing is wholly true. I have found nowhere any other truth: and this one truth, revealed to us here, is a truth which nobody will blame the patriarch for omitting from his more widely circulated works. Nevertheless, I have copied out every word of it, upon this bit of paper, to show to and make glad the dear bright eyes of my young wife.”
But Sclaug replied, without looking at the proffered paper, “The truth does not matter to the dead, who have done with all endeavor, and who can change nothing.”
Then he told Kerin good-by; and Kerin opened the door out of which Sclaug was used to go in search of Sclaug’s little amusements. When Kerin had passed through this door he drew it to behind him: and in that instant the door vanished, and Kerin stood alone in a dim winter-wasted field, fingering no longer a copper door-knob but only the chill air.
Leafless elder-trees rose about him, not twenty paces before Kerin was the Well of Ogde: and beyond its dilapidated curbing, a good half of which somebody had heaved down into the well, he saw, through wintry twilight, the gray eight-sided house in which he had been used to live with the young Saraide whom many called a witch.
Chapter XLVII. Economics of Saraide
Kerin went forward, beneath naked elder boughs, toward his dear home; and he saw coming out of the door of the gray house the appearance of a man who vaguely passed to the right hand of Kerin in the twilight. But a woman’s figure waited at the door; and Kerin, still going onward, came thus, in the November twilight, again to Saraide.
“Who is that man?” said Kerin, first of all. “And what is he doing here?”
“Does that matter?” Saraide answered him, without any outcry or other sign of surprise.
“Yes, I think it matters that a naked man with a red shining about his body should be seen leaving here at this hour, in the dead of winter, for it is a thing to provoke great scandal.”
“But nobody has seen him, Kerin, except my husband. And certainly my own husband would not stir up any scandal about me.”
Kerin scratched his white head. “Yes, that,” said Kerin, “that seems reasonable, according to the best of my knowledge. And the word knowledge reminds me, Saraide, that you sent me in search of knowledge as to why life is given to human beings, so that you might in the light of this knowledge appropriately dispose of your youth. Well, I have solved your problem, and the answer is, Nobody Knows. For I have acquired all knowledge. All that any man has ever known, I am now familiar with, from the medicinal properties of the bark aabec to the habits of the dragonfly called zyxomma: but no man, I find, has ever known for what purpose life was given him, nor what ends he may either help or hinder in any of his flounderings about earth and water.”
“I remember,” Saraide said now, as if in a faint wonder. “I wanted, once, when I was young and when the eye of no man went over me without lingering, then I wanted to know the truth about everything. Yet the truth does not really matter to the young, who are happy; and who in any case have not the shrewdness nor the power to change anything: and it all seems strange and unimportant now. For you have been a long time gone, my Kerin, and I have lived through many years, with many and many a companion, in the great while that you have been down yonder getting so much knowledge from the bird who has the true wisdom.”
“Of whatever bird can you be talking?” said Kerin, puzzled. “Oh, yes, now I also remember! But, no, there is nothing in that old story, my darling, and there is no Zhar-Ptitza in the Well of Ogde. Instead, there is a particularly fine historical and scientific library: and from it I have acquired all knowledge, and have thus happily solved your problem. Nor is that the end of the tale: for you wanted not merely knowledge but truth also, and in consequence I have found out for you the one thing which—according to Abraham’s divine collaborator, in a moment of remarkable and, I suppose, praiseworthy candor,—is wholly true. And that truth I have neatly copied out for you upon this bit of paper—”
But there was really no understanding these women who despatched you upon hazardous and quite lengthy quests. For Saraide had interrupted him without the least sign of such delight and satisfaction, or even of pride in her husband’s exploits, as would have seemed only natural. And Saraide said:
“The truth does not matter to the aged. Of what good is the truth to you or to me either, now that all the years of our youth are gone, and nothing in our living can be changed?”
“Well, well!” observed Kerin, comfortably, and passing over her defects in appreciation, “so the most of our lifetime has slipped by since I slipped over that well-curbing! But how time flies, to be sure! Did you say anything, my dear?”
“I groaned,” replied Saraide, “to have you back again with your frayed tags of speech and the desolation of your platitudes: but that does not matter either.”
“No, of course not: for all is well, as they say, that ends well. So out with your talisman, and let us quicken the golden shining which will attest the truth I have fetched back to you!”
She answered rather moodily: “I have not that talisman any longer. A man wanted it. And I gave it to him.”
“Since generosity is a virtue, I have no doubt that you did well. But to what man, Saraide, did you give the jewel that in youth you thought was priceless?”
“Does that matter, now? and, indeed, how should I remember? There have been so many men, my Kerin, in the tumultuous and merry years that are gone by forever. And all of them—” Here Saraide breathed deeply. “Oh, but I loved them, my Kerin!”
“It is our Christian duty to love our neighbors. So I do not doubt that, here again, you have done well. Still, one discriminates, one is guided, even in philanthropy, by instinctive preferences. And therefore I am wondering for what especial reason, Saraide, did you love these particular persons?”