Fable, A - William Faulkner [174]
before returning to their gloomy deserts to wrest more of the one or face at home the hired knives of their immediate underlings thirsting to cure them of the need for both; no Cathay: chimera of poets bearing the same relation to the reality of attainment as the Mahometan's paradise-a symbol of his escape and a justification of its need, from the stinking alleys or fierce sand of his inescapable cradle; nor Kubla's Xanadu which was not even a poet's rounded and completed dream but a drug-sodden English one's lightning-bolt which electrocuted him with the splendor he could not even face long enough to get it down-none of these which were but random and momentary constellations in the empyrean of the world's history; but Paris, which is the world as empyrean is the sum of its constellations-not that Paris in which any man can have all of these-Rome, Cathay and Xanadu-provided he is connected a little and does not need to count his money, because you do not want these: have I not said twice now that I have not misread you? But that Paris which only my son can inherit from me-that Paris which I did not at all reject at seventeen but simply held in abeyance Thursday Night for compounding against the day when I should be a father to bequeath it to an heir worthy of that vast and that terrible heritage. A fate, a destiny in it: mine and yours, one and inextricable. Power, matchless and immeasurable; oh no, I have not misread you-I, already born heir to that power as it stood then, holding that inheritance in escrow to become unchallenged and unchallengeable chief of that confederation which would defeat and sub-jugate and so destroy the only factor on earth which threatened it; you with the power and gift to persuade three thousand men to accept a sure and immediate death in preference to a prob-lematical one based on tried mathematical percentage, when you had at most only a division of fifteen thousand to work on and your empty hands to work with. What can you not-will you not-do with all the world to work on and the heritage I can give you to work with? A king, an emperor, retaining his light and untensile hold on mankind only until another appears capable of giving them more and bloodier circuses and more and sweeter bread? You will be God, holding him forever through a far, far stronger ingredient than his simple lusts and appetites: by his triumphant and ineradicable folly, his deathless passion for being led, mysti-fied, and deceived,'
'So we ally-confederate,' the corporal said. 'Are you that afraid of me?'
'I already respect you; I dont need to fear you. I can do without you. I shall; I intend to. Of course, in that case you will not see it-and how sad that commentary: that one last bitterest pill of martyrdom, without which the martyrdom itself could not be, since then it would not be martyrdom: even if by some incredible chance you shall have been right, you will not even know it---and paradox: only the act of voluntarily relinquishing the privilege of ever knowing you were right, can possibly make you right.-I know, dont say it: if I can do without you, then so can you yourself; to me, your death is but an ace to be finessed, while to you it is the actual ace of trumps. Nor this either: I mentioned the word bribe once; now I have offered it: I am an old man, you a young one; I will be dead in a few years and you can use your inheritance to win the trick tomorrow which today my deuce finessed you of. Because I will take that risk too. Dont even say-' and stopped and raised the hand quickly this time from inside the cloak and said: Wait. Dont say it yet.-Then take life. And think well before you answer that. Because the purse is empty now; only one thing else remains in it. Take life. You are young; even after four years of war, the young can still believe in their own invulnerability: that all else may die, but not they. So they dont need to treasure life too highly since they cannot conceive, accept, the possible end of it. But in time you become old, you see death then. Then you realise that nothing-nothing-nothing-not