'You think people are
'I don't know how serious they are but we can't take chances. Fortunately, almost no one knows we're here and, so far, no cranks have got through from the mainland. We get our groceries and mail brought in by boat every other day from Key Largo. Otherwise, we're marooned here.'
I looked about me for some sign of the guards but they were elsewhere: a Cuban woman glumly vacuuming in the next room was the only visible stranger.
Cave abandoned his maps and atlases long enough to tell me how much the dialogues pleased him.
'I wish I could put it down like you do. I can only say it when people listen.'
'You feel I've been accurate?'
He nodded solemnly. 'Oh, yes… it's just as I've always said it, only written down.' I realized that he'd already assumed full responsibility (and credit, should there be any) for my composition; I accepted his presumption with amusement. Only Stokharin seemed aware of the humor of the situation. I caught him staring at me with a shrewd expression; he looked quickly away and his mouth was rigid as he tried not to smile. I liked him at that moment: we were the only two, evidently, who had not been possessed by Cave. I felt like a conspirator.
For several days we talked, or rather Paul talked. He had brought with him charts and statements and statistics and, though Cave did not bother to disguise his boredom, he listened most of the time and his questions, when they did occur, were apposite. The rest of us were fascinated by the extent of what Paul referred to as the 'first operational phase.'
Various projects had already been undertaken; others were put up to the directors for discussion. The mood was, due to Paul's emphatic personality, more like that of a meeting of account-executives in an advertising firm than the pious foregathering of a messiah's apostles… and already that word had been used in the press by the curious as well as by the devout. Cave was the messiah to several million Americans, one not come with fire to judge the world, nor one armed with the instruction of a supernatural being whose presence was elsewhere but whose secret word had been given this favorite son… no, Cave was of another line: that of the prophets, of the instructors like Jesus before he became Christ, like Mohammed before he became Islam. Cave was the one in our age whose single task it was to speak out, to say the words all men waited for yet dared not speak nor even attend without the overpowering authority of another who had, plausibly, assumed the guise of master. I could not help but wonder as I watched Cave in those hectic conferences if the past had been like this.
Cave certainly had one advantage over his predecessors: modern communications. It took three centuries for Christianity to infest the world. It was to take Cave only three years to conquer Europe and the Americas.
But I did not have this foreknowledge in Florida. I only knew that Paul was handling an extraordinary business in a remarkable way. There was no plan so vast that he could not contemplate its execution with ease. He was exhausting in his energy and, though he did not possess much imagination, he was a splendid improviser, using whatever themes were at hand to create his own dazzling contrapuntal effects with.
We decided upon a weekly magazine to be distributed gratis to the Cavites (I was appointed editor though the real work, of which I was entirely ignorant, was to be done by a crew already at work on the first issue); we determined to send abroad certain films to be shown by Cavite lecturers; we approved the itinerary of Cave's national tour in the fall (Cave was most alive during this discussion; suggesting cities he wanted particularly to see, reveling in the euphony of such names as Tallahassee); we planned several dinners to be held in New York with newspaper editors and political figures and we discussed the advisability of Cave's accepting an invitation to be questioned by the Committee on National Morals and Americanism of the House of Representatives, a remarkably powerful Committee which had begun to show an interest in the progress of our Centers. It was decided that Cave delay meeting them until the time was propitious, or until he had received a subpoena. Paul, with his instinctive sense of the theatrical, did not want to have this crucial meeting take place without a most careful build-up. We discussed the various steps taken or about to be taken by certain state legislatures against the Centers. The states involved were those with either a predominantly Catholic or predominantly Baptist population. Since the Centers had been organized to conform with existing state and federal laws (the lawyers were earning their fees), Paul thought they would have a difficult time in closing any of them. The several laws which had been passed were all being appealed and he was confident of our vindication by the higher courts. Though the established churches were now fighting us with every possible weapon of law and propaganda, we were fully protected, Paul felt, by the Bill of Rights even in its currently abrogated state.
Late in the afternoon after one of the day's conferences had ended, Iris and I swam in the Gulf, the water as warm as blood and the sky soft with evening. We stayed in the water for an hour, not talking, not really swimming, merely a part of the sea and the sky, two lives on a curved horizon, quite alone (for the others never ventured out), only the bored bodyguard on the dock reminded us that the usual world had not slipped away in a sunny dream, leaving us isolated and content in that sea from which our life had come so long ago… water to water, I thought comfortably as we crawled up on the beach like new-lunged creatures.
Iris undid her bathing cap and her hair, streaked blonde by the sun (and a little gray as well), fell about her shoulders.
She sighed voluptuously. 'If it would always be like this.'
'If what?'
'Everything.'
'Ah,' I ran my hand along my legs and crystals of salt glittered and fell; we were both dusted with light. 'You have your work,' I added… with some malice though I was now under control… my crisis resolved after one sleepless night. I could now look at her without longing, without pain; regret was another matter but regret was only a distant relative to anguish.
'I have that, too,' she said. 'The work uses everything while this… is a narcotic. I float without a thought or a desire like… like an anemone.'
'You don't know what an anemone is, do you?'
She laughed like a child. 'How do you know I don't?'
'You said it like somebody reading a Latin inscription.'
'What is it?'
I laughed, too. 'I don't know. Perhaps something like a jellyfish. It has a lovely sound: sea anemone.'
We were interrupted by a motorboat pulling into the dock.
'It's the mail,' said Iris. 'We'd better go back to the house now.'
While we collected towels, the guard on the dock helped the boatman carry two large boxes of groceries and mail to the house.
Between a pair of palm trees, a yard from the door of the house, the bomb went off in a flash of light and gray smoke. A stinging spray of sand blinded Iris and me. The blast knocked me off balance and I fell backward onto the beach. For several minutes, my eyes filled with tears and burning from the coral sand, I was quite blind. When I was finally able to see again, Iris was already at the house trying to force open the door.
One of the palm trees looked as if it had been struck by lightning, all its fronds gone and its base smoldering. The windows of the house were broken and I recall wondering, foolishly, how the air-conditioning could possibly work if the house was not sealed. The door was splintered and most of its paint had been burned off: it was also jammed for Iris could not open it. Meanwhile, from a side door, the occupants of the house had begun to appear, pale and shaken.
I limped toward the house, rubbing my eyes, aware that my left knee had been hurt. I was careful not to look at either the boatman or the guard. Their remains inextricably strewn among tin cans and letters in the bushes.
Paul was the first to speak: a torrent of rage which jolted us all out of fear and shock. Iris, after one look at the dead men, fled into the house. I stood stupidly beside the door, rolling my eyes to dislodge the sand and listening to Paul. Then the other guards came with blankets and gathered up the pieces of the two men. I turned away, aware for the first time that Cave was standing slightly apart, nearest the house. He was very pale. He spoke only once, half to himself for Paul was still ranting: 'Let it begin,' said Cave softly. 'Now, now.'
Eight
