by Gore Vidal
"I told you it would be. The Moslems are very obstinate."
"I'll say! and the old devil of a mayor practically told me point-blank that if he caught me proselyting he'd send me back to Cairo. Imagine the nerve!"
"Well, it is their country," I said, reasonably, experiencing my first real hope: might the Cavites not get themselves expelled from Islam: I knew the mayor of Luxor, a genial merchant who still enjoyed the obsolete title of Pasha. The possibilities of a daring plot occurred to me. All I needed was another year or two by which time nature would have done its work in any case and the conquest of humanity by the Cavites could then continue its progress without my bitter presence.
I looked at Butler speculatively. He was such a fool. I could, I was sure, undo him, for a time at least; unless of course he was, as I first expected, an agent come to finish me in fact as absolutely as I have been finished in effect by those revisionists who have taken my place among the Cavites, arranging history. . . . I'd experienced, briefly, while studying Butler's copy of the Testament, the unnerving sense of having never lived, of having dreamed the past entire.
"Maybe it is their country but we got the truth, and like Paul Himmell said: 'A truth known to only half the world is but half a truth.'"
"Did he say that?"
"Of course he did. Don't you. . . ." he paused. His eye taking in at last the book in my hand. His expression softened somewhat, like a parent in anger noticing suddenly an endearing resemblance to himself in the offending child. "But I forget how isolated you've been up here. If I've interrupted your studies, I'll go away."
"Oh no. I was finished when you came. I've been studying for several hours which is too long for an old man."
"If a contemplation of Cavesword can ever be too long," said Butler reverently. "Yes, Himmell wrote that even before Cavesword, in the month of March, I believe, though we'll have to ask my colleague when he comes. He knows all the dates, all the facts. Remarkable guy. He has the brains of the team." And Butler laughed to show that he was not entirely serious.
"I think they might respond to pressure," I said, treacherously. "One thing the Arabs respect is force."
"You may be right. But our instructions are to go slow. Still, I didn't think it would be as slow as this. Why we haven't been able to get a building yet. They've all been told by the Pasha fellow not to rent to us."
"Perhaps I could talk to him."
"Do you know him well?"
"We used to play cards quite regularly. I haven't seen much of him in the past few years but, if you'd like, I'll go and pay him a call."
"He's known all along you're a Cavite, hasn't he?"
"We have kept off the subject of religion entirely. As you probably discovered, since the division of the world, there's been little communication between East and West. I don't think he knows much about the Cavites except that they're undesirable."
"Poor creature," said Butler, compassionately.
"Outer darkness," I agreed.
"But mark my words before ten years have passed they will have the truth."
"I have no doubt of that, Communicator, none at all. If the others who come out have even a tenth of your devotion the work will go fast." The easy words of praise came back to me mechanically from those decades when a large part of my work was organizational, spurring the mediocre on to great deeds . . . and the truth of the matter has been, traditionally, that the unimaginative are the stuff from which heroes and martyrs are invariably made.
"Thanks for those kind words," said Butler, flushed now with pleasure as well as heat. "Which reminds me, I was going to ask you if you'd like to help us with our work once we get going?"
"I'd like nothing better but I'm afraid my years of useful service are over. Any advice, however, or perhaps influence that I may have in Luxor. . . ." There was a warm moment of mutual esteem and amiability, broken only by a reference to the Squad of Belief.
"Of course we'll have one here in time; though we can say, thankfully, that the need for them in the Atlantic states is nearly over. Naturally, there are always a few malcontents but we have worked out a statistical ratio of nonconformists in the population which is surprisingly accurate. Knowing their incidence, we are able to check them early. In general, however, the truth is happily ascendant everywhere in the really civilized world."
"What are their methods now?"
"The Squad of Belief's? Psychological indoctrination. We now have methods of converting even the most obstinate lutherist. Of course where usual methods fail (and once in every fifteen hundred they do), the Squad is authorized to remove a section of brain which effectively does the trick of making the lutherist conform, though his usefulness in a number of other spheres is somewhat impaired: I'm told he has to learn all over again how to talk and to move around."
"Lutherist? I don't recognize the word."
"You certainly have been cut off from the world." Butler looked at me curiously, almost suspiciously. "I thought even in your day that was a common expression. It means anybody who refuses willfully to know the truth."
"What does it come from?"
"Come from?" Semantics were either no longer taught or else Butler had never been interested in them. "Why it just means, well, a lutherist."
"I wonder, though, what the derivation of it was." I was excited: this was the only sign that I had ever existed, a word of obscure origin connoting nonconformist.
"I'm afraid we'll have to ask my side-kick when he comes. I don't suppose it came from one of those Christian sects . . . you know the German one which broke with Rome."
"That must be it," I said. "I don't suppose in recent years there have been as many lutherists as there once were."
"Very, very few. As I say, we've got it down to a calculable minority and our psychologists are trying to work out some method whereby we can spot potential lutherists in childhood and indoctrinate them before it's too late . . . but of course the problem is a negligible one in the Atlantic states. We've had no serious trouble for forty years."
"Forty years . . . that was the time of all the trouble," I said.
"Not so much trouble," said Butler, undoing the bandana and mopping his face with it. "The last flare-up, I gather, of the old Christians . . . history makes very little of it though I suppose at the time it must have seemed important. Now that we have more perspective we can view things in their proper light. I was only a kid in those days and, frankly, I don't think I paid any attention to the papers. Of course you remember it." He looked at me suddenly, his great vacuous eyes focused. My heart missed one of its precarious beats: was this the beginning? had the inquisition begun?
"Not well," I said. "I was seldom in the United States. I'd been digging in Central America, in and around the Peten. I missed most of the trouble."
"You seem to have missed a good deal." His voice was equable, without a trace of secondary meaning.
"I've had a quiet life. I'm grateful though for your coming here; otherwise, I should have died without any contact with America, without ever knowing what was happening outside the Arab League."
"Well, we'll shake things up around here."
"Shake well before using," I quoted absently.
"What did you say?"
"I said I hoped all would be well."
"I'm sure it will. By the way, I brought you the new edition of Cave's prison dialogues." He pulled a small booklet from his back pocket and handed it to me.
"Thank you." I took the booklet: dialogues between Cave and Iris Mortimer. I had never before heard of this particular work. "Is this a recent discovery?" I asked.
"Recent? Why no. It's the newest edition but of course the text goes right back to the early days when Cave was in prison."
"Oh, yes, in California."
"Sure; it was the beginning of the persecutions. Well, I've got to be on my way." He got heavily to his feet and arranged the bandana about his head. "Somebody stole my hat. Persecuting me, I'll bet my bottom dollar . . . little ways.
Well, I'm prepared for them. They can't stop us. Sooner or later the whole world will be Cavite."
"Amen," I said.
"What?" He looked at me with shock.
"I'm an old man," I said hastily. "You must recall I was brought up in the old Christianity. Such expressions still linger on, you know."
"It's a good thing there's no Squad of Belief in Luxor," said Butler cheerily. "They'd have you up for indoctrination in a second."
"I doubt if it'd be worth their trouble. Soon I shall be withdrawing from the world altogether."
"I suppose so. You haven't thought of taking Cavesway have you?"
"Of course, many times, but since my health has been good I've been in no great hurry to leave my contemplation of those hills." I pointed to the western window. "Now I should hesitate to die until the very last moment, out of curiosity. I'm eager to learn, to help as much as possible in your work here."
"Well, that of course is good news but should you ever want to take his way let me know. We have some marvelous methods now, extremely pleasant to take and, as he said, 'It's not death which is hard but dying.' We've finally made dying simply swell."
"Will wonders never cease?"
"In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I must be off."
"Is your colleague due here soon?"
"Haven't heard recently. I don't suppose the plans have been changed, though. You'll like him."
"I'm sure I shall."
2
And so John Cave's period in jail was now known as the time of persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose style was enough like Iris's to have been her work. But of course her style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.
The conversation with Cave in prison was lofty in tone and seemed to deal with moral problems. It was apparent that since the task of governing is largely one of keeping order it had become, with the passage of time, necessary for the Cavite rulers to compose in Cave's name different works of ethical instruction to be used for the guidance and control of the population. I assume that since they now control all records, all original sources, it is an easy matter for them to "discover" some relevant text which gives clear answer to any moral or political problem which has not been anticipated in previous commentaries. The work of falsifying records, expunging names is, I should think, somewhat more tricky but they seem to have accomplished it in Cave's Testament, brazenly assuming that those who recall the earlier versions will die off in time, leaving a generation which knows only what they wish it to know, excepting of course the "calculable minority" of nonconformists, of base lutherists. Cave's term in prison was far less dramatic than official legend, though more serious. He was jailed for hit-and-run driving on the highway from Santa Monica into Los Angeles.
I went to see him that evening with Paul. When we arrived at the jail, we were not allowed near him though Paul's lawyers had been permitted to go inside a few minutes before our arrival.
Iris was sitting in the outer office, pale and shaken. A bored policeman in uniform sat fatly at a desk at the other end of the office, ignoring us.
"They're the best lawyers in L.A.," said Paul quickly.
"They'll get him out in no time."
Iris looked at him bleakly.
"What happened?" I asked, sitting down beside her on the bench. "How did it happen?"
"I wasn't with him." She shook her head several times as though to dispel a profound daydream. "He called me and I called you. They are the best, Paul?"
"I can vouch that . . ."
"Did he kill anybody?"
"We . . . we don't know yet. He hit an old man and went on driving. I don't know why; I mean why he didn't stop. He just went on and the police car caught him. The man's in the hospital now. They say it's bad; he's unconscious, an old man . . ."
"Any reporters here?" asked Paul. "Anybody else know besides us?"
"Nobody. You're the only person I called."
"This could wreck everything." Paul was frightened. But Cave was rescued, at considerable expense to the company. The old man chose not to die immediately while the police and the courts of Los Angeles, at that time well known for their accessibility to free-spending reason, proved more than obliging. After a day and a night in prison, Cave was released on bail and when the case came to court, it was handled discreetly by the magistrate.
The newspapers, however, had discovered John Cave at last and there were photographs of "Present-Day Messiah in Court." As ill luck would have it, the undertakers of Laguna had come to the aid of their prophet with banners which proclaimed his message. This picketing of the court was photographed and exhibited in the tabloids. Paul was in a frenzy. Publicist though he was, in his first rage he expressed to me the novel sentiment that not all publicity was good.
"But we'll get back at those bastards," he said grimly, not identifying which ones he meant but waving toward the city hidden by the Venetian blinds of his office window.
I asked for instructions. Cave had, the day before, gone back to Washington to lie low until the time was right for a triumphant reappearance. Iris had gone with him; on a separate plane, however, to avoid scandal. Clarissa had sent various heartening if confused messages from New York while Paul and I were left alone to gather up the pieces and begin again. Our close association during those difficult days impressed me with his talents and though, fundamentally, I still found him appalling, I couldn't help but admire his superb operativeness.
"I'm going ahead with the original plan . . . just like none of this happened. The stockholders are willing and we've got enough money, though not as much as I'd like, for the publicity build-up. I expect Cave'll pick up some more cash in Seattle. He always does, wherever he goes."
"Millionaires just flock to him?"
"Strange to tell, yes. But then nearly everybody does."
"It's funny since the truth he offers is all there is to it. Once experienced, there's no longer much need for Cave or for an organization." This of course was the paradox which time and the unscrupulous were bloodily to resolve.
Paul's answer was reasonable. "That's true but there's the problem of sharing it. If millions felt the same way about death the whole world would be happier and, if it's happier, why, it'll be a better place to live in."
"Do you really believe this?"
"Still think of me as a hundred percent phony?" Paul chuckled good-naturedly. "Well, it so happens, I do believe that. It also so happens that if this thing clicks we'll have a world organization and if we have that there'll be a big place for number one in it. It's all mixed up, Gene. I'd like to hear your motives, straight from the shoulder."
I was not prepared to answer him, or myself. In fact, to this day, my own motives are a puzzle to which there is no single key, no easy definition. One is not, after all, like those classic or neo-classic figures who wore with such splendid monomaniacal consistency the scarlet of lust or the purple of dominion, or the bright yellow of madness, existing not at all beneath their identifying robes. Power appealed to me in my youth but only as a minor pleasure and not as an end in itself or even as a means to any private or public end. I enjoyed the idea of guiding and dominating others, preferably in the mass; yet, at the same time, I did not like the boredom of power achieved, or the silly publicness of a great life. But there was something which, often against my will and judgment, precipitated me into deeds and attitudes where the logic of the moment controlled me to such an extent that I could not lessen, if I chose, the momentum of my own wild passage, or chart its course.
I would not have confided this to Paul even had I in those days thought any of it out, which I had not. Though I
was conscious of some fundamental ambivalence in myself, I always felt that should I pause for a few moments and question myself, I could easily find answers to these problems.
But I did not pause. I never asked myself a single question concerning motive. I acted like a man sleeping who was only barely made conscious by certain odd incongruities that he dreams. The secret which later I was to discover was still unrevealed to me as I faced the efficient vulgarity of Paul Himmell across the portable bar which reflected so brightly in its crystal his competence.
"My motives are perfectly simple," I said, half-believing what I said. In those days the more sweeping the statement the more apt I was to give it my fickle allegiance: motives are simple, splendid! simple they are. "I want something to do. I'm fascinated by Cave and I believe what he says . . . not that it is so supremely earthshaking. It's been advanced as a theory off and on for two thousand years. Kant wrote that he anticipated with delight the luxurious sleep of the grave and the Gnostics came close to saying the same thing when they promised a glad liberation from life. The Eastern religions, about which I know very little, maintain . . ."
"That's it!" Paul interrupted me eagerly. "That's what we want. You just keep on like that. We'll call it 'An Introduction to John Cave.' Make a small book out of it. Get it published in New York; then the company will buy up copies and we'll pass it out free."
"I'm not so sure that I know enough formal philosophy to . . ."
"To hell with that stuff. You just root around and show how the old writers were really Cavites at heart and then you come to him and put down what he says. Why we'll be half-there even before he's on TV!" Paul lapsed for a moment into a reverie of promotion. I had another drink and felt quite good myself although I had serious doubts about my competence to compose philosophy in the popular key. But Paul's faith was infectious and I felt that, all in all, with a bit of judicious hedging and recourse to various explicit summaries and definitions, I might put together a respectable ancestry for Cave whose message, essentially, ignored all philosophy, empiric and Orphic, moving with hypnotic effectiveness to the main proposition: death and man's acceptance of it. The problems of life were always quite secondary to Cave, if not to the rest of us.