Messiah

asked me many questions about New York, about Harvard where I had gone to school, about Roman history. He appeared to be interested in paganism and my own somewhat ambiguous approach to Julian. I was to learn later that though he seldom read he had a startling memory for any fact which seemed relevant. I am neither immodest nor inaccurate when I say that he listened to me attentively for some years and many of his later views were a result of our conversations.

I should mention, though, one significant omission in his conversation during those first crucial years: he never discussed ethical questions; that was to come much later. At the beginning he had but one vision and it was, in its terrible truth, quite inhuman and anarchic: man dies, consciousness dies with him: it is good to die, good not to be. On this the Cavite system was constructed and what came after in the moral and ethical spheres was largely the work of others in his name. Much of this I anticipated in that first conversation with him, so unlike, actually, the dialogue which I composed ending, I still think complacently despite the irony with which time has tarnished all those bright toys for me, with the essential line: 'Death is neither hard nor bad; only the dying hurts.' With that firmly postulated the rest was inevitable.

Cave talked that evening about California and Oregon and Washington (geography, places were always to fascinate and engage him while people, especially after the early years, ceased to be remarkable to him; he tended to get confused those myriad faces which passed before him like successive ripples in a huge sea). He talked of the cities he had visited on the seaboard, new cities to him, all of them. He compared their climates and various attractions like a truly devoted tourist, eager to get the best of each place, to encounter the genius loci and possess it.

'But I don't like staying in any place long.' He looked at me then and again I felt that sense of a power being focused on me… it was not unlike what one experiences during an X-ray treatment when the humming noise indicates that potent rays are penetrating one's tissue and, though there is actually no sensation, something is experienced, power is felt. And so it invariably was that, right until the end, Cave, whenever he chose, could turn those wide bleak eyes upon me and I would experience his force anew.

'I want to keep moving, new places, that's what I like. You get a kind of charge traveling. At least I do. I always thought I'd travel but I never figured it would be like this; but then of course I never thought of all this until just awhile ago.'

'Can you remember when it was? how it was exactly you got… started?' I wanted a sign obviously: Constantine's labarum occurred to me: in hoc signo vinces. Already ambition was stirring, and the little beast fed ravenously on every scrap that came its way for I was, in that patio, experiencing my own revelation, the compass needle no longer spinning wildly but coming to settle at last, with many hesitancies and demurs, upon a direction, drawn to a far pole's attraction. He smiled for the first time. I suppose, if I wanted, I could recall each occasion over the years when, in my presence at least, John Cave smiled. His usual expression was one of calm resolve, of that authority which feels secure in itself, a fortunate expression which lent dignity even to his casual conversation: the fact that this serene mask hid a nearly total intellectual vacuity, I suspected as early in my dealings with him as this first meeting; yet I did not mind for I had experienced his unique magic and already I saw the possibilities of channeling that power, of using that force, of turning it like a flame here, there, creating and destroying, shaping and shattering… so much for the spontaneous nature of my ambition at its least responsible, and at its most exquisite! I could have set the one-half world aflame for the sheer splendor and glory of the deed. For this my expiation has been long and my once exuberant pride is now only an ashen phoenix consumed by flames but not yet tumbled to dust, not yet recreated in the millennial egg… only a gray shadow in the heart which the touch of a finger of windy fear will turn to air and dust.

Yet the creature was aborning that day: one seed had touched another and a monster began to live.

'The first day? The first time?' The smile faded. 'Sure, I remember it. I'd just finished painting the face of a big dead fellow killed in an automobile accident. I didn't usually do make-up but I like to help out and I used to do odd jobs when somebody had too much to do and asked me to help; the painting isn't hard either and I always like it, though the faces are cold like… like…' He thought of no simile; he went on: 'Anyway I looked at this guy's face and I remembered I'd seen him play basketball in high school. He was in a class or two behind me. Big athlete. Ringer, we called them… full of life… and here he was, with me powdering his face and combing his eyebrows. Usually you don't think much about the stiff (that's our professional word) one way or the other: it's just a job. But I thought about this one suddenly. I started to feel sorry for him, dead like that, so sudden, so young, so good-looking with all sorts of prospects; then I felt it.' The voice grew low and precise. Iris and I listened intently, even the sun froze in the wild sky above the sea; the young night stumbled in the darkening east. His eyes on the sun, he described his sudden knowledge that it was the dead man who was right, who was a part of the whole, that the living were the sufferers from whom, temporarily, the beautiful darkness and non-being had been withdrawn and, in his crude way, Cave struck chord after chord of meaning and, though the notes were not in themselves new, the effect was all its own… and not entirely because of the voice, the cogency of this magician. No, the effect was achieved only in part through his ability to make one experience with him an occasion of light, of absolute knowing.

'And I knew it was the dying which was the better part,' he finished. The sun, released, drowned in the Pacific.

In the darkness I asked, 'But you, you still live?'

'Not because I want to,' came the voice, soft as the night. 'I must tell the others first. There'll be time for myself.'

I shuddered in the warmth of the patio. My companions were only dim presences in the failing light. 'Who told you to tell this to everyone?'

The answer came back, strong and unexpected: 'I told myself. The responsibility is mine.'

That was the sign for me. He had broken with his predecessors. He was on his own. He knew… and so did we.

2

I have lingered over that first meeting for, in it, was finally all that there was to come. Later details were the work of others, the exotic periphery to a simple but powerful center. Not until late that night did I leave the house near the beach. When I left, Cave stayed on and I wondered again, idly, if perhaps he was living there with Iris, if perhaps her interest in him might not be more complex than I had suspected. We parted casually and Iris walked me to the door while Cave remained inside, gazing in his intent way at nothing at all: daydreaming, doubtless, of what was to come.

'You'll help?' Iris stood by the car's open door, her features indistinct in the moonless night.

'I think so. I'm not sure, though, about the scale.'

'What do you mean?'

'Must everyone know? Can't it just be kept to ourselves? for the few who do know him?'

'No. We must let them all hear him. Everyone.' And her voice assumed that zealous tone which I was to hear so often again and again upon her lips and on those of others.

I made my first and last objection: 'I don't see that quantity has much to do with it. If this thing spreads it will become organized. If it becomes organized, secondary considerations will obscure the point. The truth is no truer because only a few have experienced it.'

'You're wrong. Even for purely selfish reasons, ruling out all altruistic considerations, there's an excellent reason for allowing this to spread: a society which knows what we know, which believes in Cave and what he says, will be a pleasanter place in which to live, less anxious, more tolerant.' And she spoke of the new Jerusalem in our sallow land and I was nearly convinced.

The next day I went to Hastings' house for lunch. He was there alone; his wife apparently had a life of her own which required his company only occasionally. Clarissa, sensible in tweed and dark glasses, was the only other guest. We lunched on an iron-wrought table beside the gloomy pool in which, among the occasional leaves, I saw, quite clearly, a cigarette butt delicately unfolding like an ocean flower.

'Good to, ah, have you, Eugene. Just a bit of potluck. Clarissa's going back to civilization today and wanted to see you… I did too, of course. The bride's gone out. Told me to convey her…'