Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [73]
He had never tried to think of their trouble before; rather, he had never before confronted it in such a narrow place. It had always been there, at his back perhaps, all these years, but he had never turned to face it. Now it stood before him, staring, nevermore to be escaped, and its mouth was enlarged without any limit. It was ready to swallow him up. Only the hand of God could deliver him. Yet, in a moment, he somehow knew from the sound of that storm which rose so painfully in him now, which laid waste—for ever?— the strange, yet comforting landscape of his mind, that the hand of God would surely lead him into this staring, waiting mouth, these distended jaws, this hot breath as of fire. He would be led into darkness, and in darkness would remain; until in some incalculable time to come the hand of God would reach down and raise him up; he, John, who having lain in darkness would no longer be himself but some other man. He would have been changed, as they said, for ever; sown in dishonor, he would be raised in honor: he would have been born again.
Then he would no longer be the son of his father, but the son of his Heavenly Father, the King. Then he need no longer fear his father, for he could take, as it were, their quarrel over his father’s head to Heaven—to the Father who loved him, who had come down in the flesh to die for him. Then he and his father would be equals, in the sight, and the sound, and the love of God. Then his father could not beat him any more, or despise him any more, or mock him any more—he, John, the Lord’s anointed. He could speak to his father then as men spoke to one another—as sons spoke to their fathers, not in trembling but in sweet confidence, not in hatred but in love. His father could not cast him out, whom God had gathered in.
Yet, trembling, he knew that this was not what he wanted. He did not want to love his father; he wanted to hate him, to cherish that hatred, and give his hatred words one day. He did not want his father’s kiss—not any more, he who had received so many blows. He could not imagine, on any day to come and no matter how greatly he might be changed, wanting to take his father’s hand. The storm that raged in him to-night could not uproot this hatred, the mightiest tree in all John’s country, all that remained to-night, in this, John’s floodtime.
And he bowed his head yet lower before the altar in weariness and confusion. Oh, that his father would die!—and the road before John be open, as it must be open for others. Yet in the very grave he would hate him; his father would but have changed conditions, he would be John’s father still. The grave was not enough for punishment, for justice, for revenge. Hell, everlasting, unceasing, perpetual, unquenched for ever, should be his father’s portion; with John there to watch, to linger, to smile, to laugh aloud, hearing, at last, his father’s cries of torment.
And, even then, it would not be finished. The everlasting father.
Oh, but his thought were evil—but to-night he did not care. Somewhere, in all this whirlwind, in the darkness of his heart, in the storm—was something—something he must find. He could not pray. His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man’s descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eyes to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom—bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the air too thick to breathe. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, licked with fearful anger against