“Joseph, you know perfectly well I come here because I like you. So does Fred.”
Joseph smiled, his sly humorous smile. “I know it, Alfred. You saved my child, you are a very good man for a damned one, but I shall crow over you in the Last Day like the best cock in the yard—” Joseph stopped, looking a little confused.
“Why, what’s the matter? I won’t mind, Joseph. If you’re right, well you are right I shan’t blame you.”
“It’s not that. I was inadvertently speaking not of holy things, but rather near them.”
“Oh, dear,” said Alfred to himself, “now we shall never know about the cock. But I don’t suppose it is important. Joseph, what is there besides this world?”
“This world is a round ball with the shell of the sky outside it. The stars are all the other worlds.”
“And what is on them? Christians, Germans?”
“Angels and spirits and ministers of flaming fire.”
Joseph went to a box by the wall and drew from it a bottle, very black and dirty on the outside, and after a little searching among the litter of the untidy room he found four earthenware mugs. He poured the contents of the bottle into the four mugs and took one to his father. There was a low mumble of words Alfred could not catch, then Joseph came back to the table, made the sign of the cross on his breast and picked up his mug.
“Now drink, Alfred, and Alfred’s son.”
They drank. It was something very potent, and a very little of it made Fred’s head swim. He had never drunk anything but water. Even Alfred who occasionally had beer did not want more than half the contents of the mug.
“What is it ?” Alfred asked. “It’s very powerful, Joseph.”
“It is a wine we make out of sloes and wild honey, but the strength comes with keeping it in the cask. Is it good?”
“Very good.”
“All the fruits and beasts of the earth are for man’s use,” said Joseph, taking a good sip of the wine. “The Lord Christ came eating and drinking, not like the fiend Hitler upon whom the rich and blessed viands of this world had such a retching effect that he could keep none of them in his foul stomach. Now, because he was so unnaturally wicked that even the dead flesh of beasts and the wine of grain or fruit had to shrink from him and eject themselves from his company, the heathen say that if a man would please God he must eat little or no meat and drink nothing but watery beer. It is not those questions the Lord will ask in the Last Day.”
“But surely the Germans would be worse if they were drunken?” Alfred suggested.
Joseph took another sip.
“Nothing could make them any worse,” he said. “Neither can anything ever make them any better. The Lord’s mercy is not extended to them. Now if you, Alfred, were convinced of sin and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I could receive you into the fold of Christianity and in the Last Day you would be saved.” Joseph looked across the table a little wistfully. “But I am not at all hopeful, because I am not a fool. But as to the Germans and the Japanese they are damned already. If their highest Knight, the man whom they call der Fuehrer (though he leads them nowhere), if he were to come to me in sincerity and humility to be absolved and blessed and received into the arms of Christ, I could not do it. We have no power to turn back the judgments of God.”
“It is extraordinary, Joseph, you despise him, and he despises you. No, it isn’t extraordinary. It’s right.”
“It is right. His contempt for me is part of our Atonement, and is the will of God. Mine for him is because we are the Lord’s people, though suffering and sinful, while he is one of the damned.”
“Joseph, what happened before Jesus was killed? How did the world start?”
“God made it to be the habitation of the Jews. They lived a thousand years without sin. Then Cain killed Abel his brother.”
“Why?”
“Because they both wanted to be the King of the Jews. Then sin was there, the sin of pride and power, and all the other sins sprang from that one, and the Jews lived in sin for a thousand years.”
“How did they manage to think of the sin when there was no sin there before ?” asked Fred, deeply interested.
“It is a mystery,” said Joseph, shaking his head.
“You mean it’s a religious mystery and you can’t tell heathens.”
“No. I mean it’s just a thing no man can ever understand, why there should be sin when God is good. At the Last Day we shall understand that mystery, you of course will not. But that was how sin started, with a killing. With violence between man and man. Then they lived for a thousand years in sin, and then Jesus was born to save them from their sins and make the world as it had been before Cain and Abel. But the world was only half of it willing to forgo sin, which they had come to like. Half the Jews wanted to do without sin, and half of them wanted to go on with it. The half that was unwilling to part with it crucified Jesus, through their leader who was called the Pontifical Pilot—which is a name of a certain though not really holy mystery,” Joseph added, again looking a little worried. “But the others who accepted Jesus and wished sin to depart were called Christians. So the Second Great Sin was committed, and Jesus was killed. Then the Christians being enraged at the death of this just man——” Joseph paused. His eyes neither shone with fanaticism nor twinkled with slyness. His face was quiet and strangely ennobled. He was in a dream, and he saw something better than himself, and yet approachable. Alfred thought, “I’m sure Joseph has all this Christianity muddled up. I know he has. He’s a superstitious ignorant old Christian, and yet something of the real Jesus still reaches him. Ah, there was a Man.”
“Yes,” said Joseph, coming to himself, “they chased the Jews to the ends of the earth, wherever they stayed, wherever they had their houses and set their snares, the Christians chased them out of it, and spat on them and killed them and tortured them. All in Disobedience, for they had been told to forgive the Jews. And that was for a thousand years. Then came the Punishment. The Christians had persecuted the less stalwart Jews into the extreme filthiness of becoming Germans or Japanese, and the more courageous among them became French or English or Russians or what you will. But because a snake is more dangerous in its bite than a dog, these very low Jews became our chief persecutors, while the more bravely born among you, that is the descendants of slightly less cowardly Jews—you, Alfred—have never been so apt at rubbing in our transgression as the Germans. Not that that will save you in the Last Day.”
“And that will be when you have been despised for a thousand years.”
“Yes,” said Joseph. “There are three hundred and five more years of the Punishment.”
“But we say it is now 721 years after Hitler.”
“Your times are wrong. There are three hundred and five years and some months still to go.”
“Then the world altogether only lasts four thousand years?”
“Yes. And the third thousand was by far the most evil and unhappy. For besides the Disobedience, the Christians in those days were given over utterly to terrible sins, worse than the sins of the old Jews, to witchcraft and magic and idolatry and dissensions among themselves so that they tore each other limb from limb.”
“But you sell charms now, Joseph?”
“We do not. We sell herbal remedies which you could very well make for yourselves if you were not all so ignorant, and if they sometimes work like magic it is either that the heathen really has the disease he thinks he has, and so the remedy fits it, or else he has such faith in the remedy that it will cure any illness that springs from a disordered mind. That is a thing you cannot understand, but half your heathen ailments are caused by the deep wretchedness of being cut off from God, and by your sins. Faith in a Christian remedy has in itself a healing power, and some of you will overcome partially your contempt for us, being driven by distress, and take our physics with a sturdy faith worthy of a better object. But the Lord will not ask, Did you believe in Christian medicines ?’ any more than He wil
l ask, ‘Did you have a hare or only potatoes in the pot?’”
“What was the idolatry the Christians went in for?” Alfred asked.
“They worshipped images, and idols of unworthy substance in exactly the same way as the Hitlerians do. It is hard to believe it,” said Joseph meditatively. “It seems impossible that they should have fallen so low as to crawl on their bellies in front of idols. But they did.”
“And what was their magic?”
“It was worse still. For it was only a pretence. Now when I say I could receive you into Christianity, Alfred, I do not mean that only I in this Amesbury Settlement could do it. I am head of the settlement because in practical matters there must be one man who in any discussion has the final word. But any man who is beyond childish age, and who is not afflicted like poor young William Whibblefuss, can celebrate the mysteries and receive you among us. The power is the power of Jesus, and no mere man is more holy than another. Such a thing is heathenish, as when Germans conceit themselves to be more sacred than the English, or when the Knights in their vanity and blindness think themselves of different clay from the common Nazis. But in the thousand years of Error some Christians were set high above others in the mysteries and dared to say, ‘Ours alone is the power, the Lord Jesus Christ will come to you only through us.’ Which error was the end of all brotherhood and love between Christians, and led to the most bloody and cruel dissensions among them.”
“So that as well as killing the Jews they killed each other?”
“In the thousand years of Error, yes. Since then no Christian has ever killed another.”
“Not even in personal private fights?”
“We never have fights,” Joseph said.
“But how do you manage not to?”
“We never have fights because we love each other. Why, see, Alfred, if you have some kind of dispute with Fred, do you fight him? You argue, you finally agree, or you leave the matter unsettled, each holding to his own opinion. You do not rush at each other like two cats and tear each other’s eyes out. All Christians are like father and son, brother and brother, because they are purified, not in Error, and though under Punishment and with no hope that their chastisement will be abated by a single day they have now nothing to cause anger one with another. Killing men, like reading and writing, is a heathen activity, and that it was once a Christian pursuit is our constant shame.”
“I wish I could bring you acquainted with an old German I know,” said Alfred. “You have so much in common.”
“Impossible,” said Joseph, without resentment but inexorably. “Unless of course he is a Christian you met in Germany. But then you should not call him a German.”
“No, he is a real German. But if you should meet a Christian who had been born and brought up in Germany, would he be as much your brother as the Amesbury people?”
“Of course. Every man who wears the cross is my brother, and until he could speak English or I German we should exchange in love the holy words we both know.”
“Are they in a language you both know?”
“Yes.”
“And do any of us know it?”
“God forbid! It is the language of Christ Himself. No one knows the holy words but Christians.”
“Could you say some?” Alfred asked tentatively.
“No. It is blasphemous to say any of them before heathens.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Joseph. I didn’t mean to be offensive. But where is the rest of the language gone to? Why are there only a few words left?”
“It was lost,” said Joseph sadly. “For our great Sin the most part of the blessed language of Jesus is lost. Not till the release and glorious enlightenment of the Last Day shall we recover the rest of it. Then these heathenish tongues which we have to use will disappear like the women, and we shall great each other and praise God in His own speech. Ah!” cried Joseph, quite carried away by enthusiasm, “O death, where is thy sting, O grave, thy victory? Then we shall sing Laus Deo and many many other things besides. Er—h’m.” He coughed as he realised his blasphemy.
Alfred hastily passed on to something else.
“Joseph, is even the mother of Jesus to disappear?”
“She has disappeared, one thousand six hundred and fifty years ago. Women,” Joseph stated firmly, “are nothing but birds’ nests. What use is an old bird’s nest? Does anyone value it, would anyone preserve it? Does the bird even care about it? And what can you say even of Mary except that in her nest was laid an exceptionally divine egg? How could Mary be alone in heaven ? If she were there all the other women would have to go too.”
“Yes, I see. But what do you mean when you say they’re birds’ nests? You think they contribute nothing towards the physical child?”
“Nothing at all. The whole child, whether male or female, is complete in the seed of man. The woman merely nurtures it in her body until it is large enough to be born.”
Alfred was very much interested, as von Hess had mentioned this very ancient biological error as one of the causes of the lower patterns of behaviour which had been imposed on women.
“We don’t believe that,” he said. “Whether we believe in Hitler or not. The mother contributes part of the child.”
“None of the child,” said Joseph stolidly. “You are in error, but why should you not be? If the child is to be male, it has its soul from the father in the moment of conception, but if it is to be female it has none. It is born nothing, like all other women, even Mary. In Christian families we call our eldest girl Mary, in remembrance of her, but no Mary is presumptuous enough to think she is any more something than any other woman.”
“Why should sons sometimes grow up to look like their mothers?”
“Because the food the mother gives him affects his physical shape.”
“Oh.”
“And why,” asked Joseph, carrying the attack into the disputant’s country, “if you hold such a fantastic belief as that women actually help to form the child, do you treat your women so badly? Keeping them shut up in pens and robbing them of their little sons, which is the most ghastly cruelty that any man can do to a woman?”
“I think it is wrong, Joseph. I like the way you treat your nothings better than our way. Before you turn the women out of here to go to one of the other huts I’ve seen them laughing and talking with you. And not only the little girls. Our grown women never laugh.”
“Our women are treated as if they were good and well-loved dogs. We are fond of them, they play with us and are happy with us. If we have food they never go short while we are filled, they obey us and they love us. Our hands are never lifted against them unless they transgress, and like all decent and trustworthy dogs they are free to come and go where they will when they are not working. And they repay us for our care of them, in picking all our herbs and making our medicines and our wine, in getting wood for the fires and cooking our food, and even the preparing of the wood for whistles is not beyond one or two of the cleverest. Whereas your women are like ill-bred weakly and half-witted puppies which any sensible man would drown.”
“But you’ve never seen any, have you, Joseph?”
“I have seen them in Bulfort driven to your heathen temple like cattle from one field to another. And I know they can do nothing, and that they are not happy. The Christian way of treating women is the only possible way. It was laid down once and for all by the blessed Paul, brother of our Lord, and even in the thousand years of Error Christians did not depart from it.”
“Didn’t they?”
“Never.”
“That’s rather curious.”
“Why, Alfred? The Error and the Disobedience were among men. Such matters are too high for women, who can only err as a dog does against his master, but not against God. So, as the Error was not their fault, why should they be punished for it? God cannot be unjust.”
“But then why should our women be unhappy for what is not their fault, either?”
Joseph was rather gravelled for once.
Then he said, “They suffer as a dog does with a bad master, but you cannot say that it is God Who plagues and beats and starves the dog. It is the man. Your women are plagued because you are all filthy heathens, but the time of their suffering has an end. It ends with their death, and even for those who are alive at the Last Day the Dispersal is painless. Your suffering has no end, for at the Last Day all of you must come up out of your graves to be judged.”
“Well, it is late,” said Alfred with a sigh. “We must go, Joseph. I should like to talk to you for hours.”
“And when will you come again?”
“Not for a little while, I think. Perhaps in another three months.”
Joseph nodded, his eyes intelligent and sly, without any gleam of fanaticism.
“You must come and go as you will, Alfred. My house is always open to you, day or night, but of course night is best for you, as you are ashamed to be seen coming.”
“I’m sorry, Joseph. If I could do what I like I’d come in broad daylight and march straight up to the Settlement under the eyes of Englishmen and Nazis.”
“I understand.”
Joseph let them both out and then called Fred to come back.
“Fred,” he said, “your father is doing something dangerous.”
“How did you guess that, Joseph?”
“I am a man of God, but besides that I am a man of perception, and I never cloud my natural abilities of mind with reading and writing. A Christian child of any intelligence would know it from his manner. And I want to tell you, Fred, that I love Alfred as much as it is possible for me to love a heathen. He saved my son, he has long ceased to despise us, neither has he ever gone to the other extreme and cast lustful eyes on our girls. He has eaten our bread and meat and drunk our wine, and I would put my body between him and his enemies, and between them and anyone who was dear to him, or anything which he wanted to keep safe, even weapons of war. If he wants a refuge it is here, with me or with my sons, or my sons’ sons to the twentieth generation. There is friendship between my family and his family, I swear it before God. Ingratitude is not a Christian sin, Fred, but if I tell your father all this he is likely to laugh, as he is in a way modest, and not take it seriously. Now you understand.”
Swastika Night Page 22