A Fable

‘The commander of your regiment’s division,’ the priest said. ‘He will die too, for what all the world he knows— the only world he does know because it was the one he dedicated his life to—will call his failure, where you will die for what you anyway will call a victory.’

‘So he did send you,’ the corporal said. ‘For blackmail.’

‘Beware,’ the priest said.

‘Then dont tell me this,’ the corporal said. ‘Tell him. If I can save Gragnon’s life only by not doing something you tell me I already cant and never could do anyway. Tell him then. I dont want to die either.’

‘Beware,’ the priest said.

‘That wasn’t who I meant,’ the corporal said. ‘I meant——’

‘I know whom you meant,’ the priest said. ‘That’s why I said Beware. Beware Whom you mock by reading your own mortal’s pride into Him Who died two thousand years ago in the postulate that man shall never never never, need never never never, hold suzerainty over another’s life and death—absolved you and the man you mean both of that terrible burden: you of the right to and he of the need for, suzerainty over your life; absolved poor mortal man forever of the fear of the oppression, and the anguish of the responsibility, which suzerainty over human fate and destiny would have entailed on him and cursed him with, when He refused in man’s name the temptation of that mastery, refused the terrible temptation of that limitless and curbless power when He answered the Temptor: Render unto caesar the things which are caesar’s.—I know,’ he said quickly, before the corporal could have spoken: ‘To Chaulnesmont the things which are Chaulnesmont’s. Oh yes, you’re right; I’m a Frenchman first. And so now you can even cite the record at me, cant you? All right. Do it.’

‘The record?’ the corporal said.

‘The Book,’ the priest said. The corporal looked at him. ‘You mean you dont even know it?’

‘I cant read,’ the corporal said.

‘Then I’ll cite for you, plead for you,’ the priest said. ‘It wasn’t He with His humility and pity and sacrifice that converted the world, it was pagan and bloody Rome which did it with His martyrdom; furious and intractable dreamers had been bringing that same dream out of Asia Minor for three hundred years until at last one found a caesar foolish enough to crucify him. And you are right. But then so is he (I dont mean Him now, I mean the old man in that white room yonder onto whose shoulders you are trying to slough and shirk your right and duty for free will and decision). Because only Rome could have done it, accomplished it, and even He (I do mean Him now) knew it, felt and sensed this, furious and intractable dreamer though He was. Because He even said it Himself: On this rock I found My church, even while He didn’t—and never would—realise the true significance of what He was saying, believing still that He was speaking poetic metaphor, synonym, parable—that rock meant unstable inconstant heart, and church meant airy faith. It wasn’t even His first and favorite sycophant who read that significance, who was also ignorant and intractable like Him and even in the end got himself also electrocuted by the dream’s intractable fire, like Him. It was Paul, who was a Roman first and then a man and only then a dreamer and so of all of them was able to read the dream correctly and to realise that, to endure, it could not be a nebulous and airy faith but instead it must be a church, an establishment, a morality of behavior inside which man could exercise his right and duty for free will and decision, not for a reward resembling the bed-time tale which soothes the child into darkness, but the reward of being able to cope peacefully, hold his own, with the hard durable world in which (whether he would ever know why or not wouldn’t matter either because now he could cope with that too) he found himself. Not snared in that frail web of hopes and fears and aspirations which man calls his heart, but fixed, established, to endure, on that rock whose synonym was the seeded capital of that hard durable enduring earth which man must cope with somehow, by some means, or perish. So you see, he is right. It wasn’t He nor Peter, but Paul who, being only one-third dreamer, was two-thirds man and half of that a Roman, could cope with Rome. Who did more; who, rendering unto caesar, conquered Rome. More: destroyed it, because where is that Rome now? until what remains but that rock, that citadel. Render unto Chaulnesmont. Why should you die?’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘To save another life, which your dream will electrocute,’ the priest said.

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Remember—’ the priest said. ‘No, you cant remember, you dont know it, you cant read. So I’ll have to be both again: defender and advocate. Change these stones to bread, and all men will follow Thee. And He answered, Man cannot live by bread alone. Because He knew that too, intractable and furious dreamer though He was: that He was tempted to tempt and lead man not with the bread, but with the miracle of that bread, the deception, the illusion, the delusion of that bread; tempted to believe that man was not only capable and willing but even eager for that deception, that even when the illusion of that miracle had led him to the point where the bread would revert once more to stone in his very belly and destroy him, his own children would be panting for the opportunity to grasp into their hands in their turn the delusion of that miracle which would destroy them. No no, listen to Paul, who needed no miracle, required no martyrdom. Save that life. Thou shalt not kill.’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Take your own tomorrow, if you must,’ the priest said. ‘But save his now.’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Power,’ the priest said. ‘Not just power over the mere earth offered by that temptation of simple miracle, but that more terrible one over the universe itself—that terrible power over the whole universe which that mastery over man’s mortal fate and destiny would have given Him had He not cast back into the Temptor’s very teeth that third and most terrible temptation of immortality: which if He had faltered or succumbed would have destroyed His Father’s kingdom not only on the earth but in heaven too because that would have destroyed heaven since what value in the scale of man’s hope and aspiration or what tensile hold or claim on man himself could that heaven own which could be gained by that base means—blackmail: man in his turn by no more warrant than one single precedent casting himself from the nearest precipice the moment he wearied of the burden of his free will and decision, the right to the one and the duty of the other, saying to, challenging his Creator: Let me fall— if You dare?’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Save that other life. Grant that the right of free will is in your own death. But your duty to choose is not yours. It’s his. It’s General Gragnon’s death.’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said. They looked at one another. Then the priest seemed to make a terrible faint