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By Root 2823 0

out the so abruptly present and gigantic legend adorning the cross: Jesus Saves. He had stared to this, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to curse—and the Spirit spoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there was Elisha, speaking from the floor, and his father, silent, at his back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak in tongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not been the moment; it was as far back as he could go, but the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was farther back, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved Elisha, he had, even then, been weeping; he had already passed his moment, was already under the power, had been struck, and was going down

Ah, down!—and to what purpose, where? To the bottom of the sea, the bowels of the earth, to the heart of the fiery furnace? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into a madness louder than the grave? What trumpet sound would awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he knew, as he was struck again, and screamed again, his throat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, his body hanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting carcass, that if he were not lifted he would never rise.

His father, his mother, his aunt, Elisha—all were far above him, waiting, watching his torment in the pit. They hung over the golden barrier, singing behind them, light around their heads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck down so early. And, no, they could not help him any more—nothing could help him any more. He struggled, struggle to rise up, and meet them—he wanted wings to fly upward and meet them in that morning, that morning where they were. But his struggles only thrust him downward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his own skull.

Yet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that they were there. He felt them move, every movement causing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the heart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if they wished him to come to them as passionately as he wished to rise. Perhaps they did not help him because they did not care—because they did not love him.

Then his father returned to him, in John’s changed and low condition; and John thought, but for a moment only, that his father had come to help him. In the silence, then, that filled the void, John looked on his father. His father’s face was black—like a sad, eternal night, yet in his father’s face there burned a fire—a fire eternal in an eternal night. John trembled where he lay, feeling no warmth from him from this fire, tremble, and could not take his eyes away. A wind blew over him, saying: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’ Only: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’ And he knew that he had been thrust out of the holy, the joyful, the blood-washed community, that his father had thrust him out. His father’s will was stronger than John’s own. His power was greater because he belonged to God. Now, John felt no hatred, nothing, only a bitter, unbelieving despair: all prophecies were true, salvation was finished, damnation was real!

Then Death is real, John’s soul said, and Death will have his moment.

‘Set thine house in order,’ said his father, ‘for thou shalt die and not live.’

And then the ironic voice spoke again, saying: ‘Get up, John. Get up, boy. Don’t let him keep you here. You got everything your daddy got.’

John tried to laugh—John thought that he was laughing—but found, instead, that his mouth was filled with salt, his ears were full of burning water. Whatever was happening in his distant body now, he could not change or stop; his cheat heaved, his laugher rose and bubbled at his mouth, like blood.

And his father looked on him. His father’s eyes looked down on him, and John began to scream. His father’s eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he turned, screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his father’s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all