A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [96]
It was during the brief visit of a party of shepherds that the Poet vanished from the abbey. Thon Taddeo was the first to notice the Poet’s absence from the guesthouse and to inquire about the versifying vagrant.
Dom Paulo’s face wrinkled in surprise. “Are you certain he’s moved out?” he asked. “He often spends a few days in the village, or goes over to the mesa for an argument with Benjamin.”
“His belongings are missing,” said the thon “Everything’s gone from his room.”
The abbot made a wry mouth. “When the Poet leaves, that’s a bad sign. By the way, of he’s really missing, then I would advise you to take an immediate inventory of your own belongings.”
The thon looked thoughtful “So that’s where my boots-”
“No doubt.”
“I set them out to be polished. They weren’t returned. That was the same day be tried to batter down my door.”
“Batter down-who the Poet?”
Thon Taddeo chuckled. “I’m afraid I’ve been having a little sport with him. I have his glass eye. You remember the night he left it on the refectory table?”
“Yes.”
“I picked it up.”
The thon opened his pouch, groped in it for a moment, then laid the Poet’s eyeball on the abbot’s desk. “He knew I had it, but I kept denying it. But we’ve had sport with him ever since, even to creating rumors that it was really the long-lost eyeball of the Bayring idol and ought to be returned to the museum. He became quite frantic after a time. Of course I had meant to return it before we go home. Do you suppose he’ll return after we leave?”
“I doubt it,” said the abbot, shuddering slightly as he glanced at the orb. “But I’ll keep it for him, if you like. Although it’s just as probable that he’d turn up in Texarkana looking for it there. He claims it’s a potent talisman.”
“How so?”
Dom Paulo smiled. “He says he can see much better when he’s wearing it.”
“What nonsense!” The thon paused; ever ready, apparently, to give any sort of outlandish premise at least a moment’s consideration, he added: “Isn’t it nonsense-unless filling the empty socket somehow affects the muscles of both sockets. Is that what he claims?”
“He just swears he can’t see as well without it. He claims he has to have it for the perception of ‘true meanings’-although it gives him blinding headaches when he wears it. But one never knows whether the Poet is speaking fact, fancy, or allegory. If fancy is clever enough, I doubt that the Poet would admit a difference between fancy and fact.”
The thon smiled quizzically. “Outside my door the other day, he yelled that I needed it more than he did. That seems to suggest that he thinks of it as being, in itself, a potent fetish-good for anyone. I wonder why.”
“He said you needed it? Oh ho!”
“What amuses you?”
“I’m sorry. He probably meant it as an insult. I’d better not try to explain the Poet’s insult; it might make me seem a party to them.”
“Not at all. I’m curious.”
The abbot glanced at the image of Saint Leibowitz in the corner of the room. “The Poet used the eyeball as a running joke,” he explained. “When he wanted to make a decision, or to think something over, or to debate a point, he’d put the glass eye in the socket. He’d take it out again when he saw something that displeased him, when he was pretending to overlook something, or when he wanted to play stupid. When he wore it, his manner changed. The brothers began calling it ‘the Poet’s conscience,’ and he went along with the joke. He gave little lectures end demonstrations on the advantages of a removable conscience. He’d pretend some frantic compulsion possessed him-something trivial, usually-like a compulsion aimed at a bottle of wine.
“Wearing his eye, he’d stroke the wine bottle, lick his lips, pant and moan, then jerk his hand away. Finally it would possess him again. He’d grab the bottle, pour about a thimbleful in a cup