Elijah sat quietly, sorting order out of these references.
“Are you trying to convince me that you are a bad man?”
“Not at all!” protested Smokrev. “I am proud of these accomplishments! I’m merely setting the stage. It’s all theatrics.”
“Go on. I anticipate the comedy or the tragedy with great expectations.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, that borders on sarcasm—so unbecoming in a minister of God.”
“It was a weak attempt at irony, Count.”
“I like you. I like your mind. You are honest. Deluded, but honest.”
“You were going to tell me your arguments against God.”
“That is precisely what I have been doing. And there is more—much, much more. I haven’t even begun to test your resistance to shock.”
“I will listen, but only on one condition. I do not want you to embellish your tales. I want you to tell me in clear language what you wish to say. Please do not make yourself out to be a monster. You cannot shock me. You cannot make me despise you.”
“Really? How very extraordinary. You will be the first to survive that test.”
“I am a priest of Christ. There is no need for me to pass your tests. Whether or not I pass or fail is beside the point. God is not on trial.”
“Ah, but He is.”
“No. Man is on trial.”
Smokrev cackled: “I have the indictment prepared. He cannot get off that easily.”
“I must go, then”, said Elijah rising. “You are playing games. You cannot toy with God.”
“All right, all right”, said Smokrev, condescending, waving Elijah back into the chair. “You are so touchy. I was having a little fun.”
“Life is short. My time is short as well. I give you what I have, but I ask you not to waste it.”
“You are so gravissimo! All right, I agree.”
“Then proceed. What do you wish to tell me?”
“I am undecided about my approach. Should I state the philosophical problem first and illustrate it with certain pungent details from my life? Or, alternatively, should we just slog through the chronology of my wasted years, recounting every single one of my unmentionable crimes? Which would best suit your temperament?”
“The first approach.”
“You don’t enjoy cheap opera?”
“No. It is self-indulgence.”
“But in a sacramental confession I am forced to submit an itemized list? Isn’t there a contradiction here?”
“No. In a sacramental confession, the penitent names his offense because it is a way of taking responsibility for them before God and before man. He says, I am a sinner. This is what I have done. I blame no one but myself. I ask to be pardoned and healed. I need a Savior.”
“Hmmm. I have always suspected that it was intended more to shame the penitent into never repeating his folly.”
Elijah shook his head. “That is what so many misunderstand. A priest of Christ knows that he is a man like other men. He too could commit the sins told to him through that screen. He stands there as a sign of contradiction set down in creation. A sign of mercy and truth. The truth sets us free, and mercy heals us. He stands as a living presence of Christ before men, and in the place of men before Christ.”
“I have confessed countless times. It did no good in my case. A half-century ago I gave up.”
“What might you have become if you had persisted!”
“Such a dreary custom! It became too humiliating.”
“Why?”
“Some of those things I had to tell were unthinkable. Ludmilla was the first of many, you see, nor was she the only species. During the War, there were human victims as well.”
Elijah’s heart began to beat faster. He prayed silently for detachment from his emotions.
“Places like Treblinka, Oświęcim, Belzec—they were an inexhaustible treasure house.”
Clearing his throat, Elijah interjected, “You have underlined my point. If you had persisted in the sacraments as a young man, would you not have been strengthened to resist such temptations?”
“That is academic now. It happened”, he shrugged. “That is the way it was in those days. Hundreds of thousands of people destined for burning. Trash. Human waste, already erased by the State. No future, no hope. No rescue. No savior. No God. No nothing. They were already dead, even though they continued to walk around for a few miserable weeks or months or years. There were so many, many beautiful young people. I kept a stable-full.”
Elijah looked down at his hands.
“Ah, the preliminary symptoms of distress. Some revulsion, perhaps? A certain loathing? Perhaps a note of hatred creeping into the heart of this priest of Christ?”
“I feel grief. Does that surprise you?”
“Entirely predictable. But do tell me, why shouldn’t I have seized what was my passion, the very things that had been denied me and were spread out before me like a banquet?”
“Because you didn’t own them. Because they were human beings. A man’s body is his own.”
“Dead souls. Characters from Gogol. Statistics. Geopolitical pawns.”
“And there, Count, is the crux of our problem—precisely there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every sin is a choice to turn a miraculous being into an object for consumption. It flattens the human person, one’s self and one’s victim, into a one-dimensional universe.”
“No, priest, that is not where the crux of the problem lies. The crux is this: Why, when man crushes his victim, is there only silence from heaven? Why did God not save me from myself, and my victims from me? Answer!”
“He will never negate your free will.”
“Not even to stop me negating the free will of millions? But that is absurd.”
“You are free. That is the fundamental structure of the universe.”
“Ah, the problem of freedom.”
“Are we equipped for this discussion? Do you undertake it seriously?”
“I will try”, he said, waving his hand.
“Heaven is not silent.”
“Heaven is not silent? Do you know that millions of victims were pleading with Heaven as they fell into the flames? What was the cry on their tongues, I ask you? It was this: Where are you? Where are you, Savior of the world? And we the powerful, we the killers and the despoilers and corrupters of the innocent? What cry was on our lips? I will tell you: Where are you? Where are you, Savior of the world? That taunt was on my lips as I did the things which are too unthinkable to tell even you, extraordinary priest that you are.”
“Heaven was not silent.”
“Ha!”
“What did you want God to do? Did you want Him to tear open the sky like a theatrical backdrop and step through? Did you want Him to send an army of angels into creation, with orders from headquarters; Kill the bad ones! Save the good ones! Did you expect a voice to come booming out of the clouds saying, Stop that! Did you expect Him to press a button and the entire cosmos would grind to a halt while the master mechanic stepped into the innards of His machine and tinkered with a broken part? Is that what you think the universe is?”
Smokrev suppressed a chuckle of glee.
“It’s wonderful to see you so worked up.”
“Do not sidestep this question. It is central. Heaven was not silent.”
“I will never accept that. I heard no voices.”
“Where were you when the papal encyclicals condemning National Socialism were read from every pulpit? Where were you when many mystics and visionaries were crying warnings? For a hundred years the people of Europe were warned. They were continuously called to repentance in preparation for a terrible outrage that was approaching. Did you heed the passages in the Scriptures which speak of our times? Did you read the words of the wise? What literature were you reading in the thirties? Many great Christian and Jewish writers saw it coming. But who listened?”
“If few listened, why didn’t God speak louder?”
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“What could be louder than the fact that His own Son died in agony beneath a silent sky?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Was it so long ago? We are old, Count. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you walked with your friend Piotr in the forest? Wasn’t it just yesterday that you destroyed the beloved creature that he held in his arms? How swiftly the years have passed.”
“You are evading the central problem: Why, in the first place, does God permit it?”
“The answer to that question is another: Why has He created a universe in which there is freedom?”
“I don’t know. It seems an inefficient way to run a universe.”
“You are right, if the universe is just a mechanism running down. What if it is something else?”
“Like what?”
“A creative universe. A place where beauty was made to increase and multiply unceasingly, where unique beings love one another and create ever more life. Always different, ever revealing new vistas of joy.”
“He could have had that without the dark part.”
“Could he have prevented the possibility of evil without turning every living thing into a puppet, a mere part in a clockwork?”
“You are evading again.”
“No. I am focusing on the core of the problem. You refuse to see it, because you cannot admit that it is the core. You want the darkness to be the core.”
“And if I do, isn’t that an argument in my favor? Doesn’t it tell you that if one soul like me dwells in darkness, it negates this glorious fantasy of a lovely creation that you cling to so obstinately in your imagination?”
“Beware of that theological nuance. It is a powerful deception. Should a soul who has chosen to reject the light be permitted to annihilate the laws sustaining those who have chosen to follow the light? If so, that would be like handing everything over to a terrorist. Should he be permitted to hold the entire universe hostage? One act of evil, and he forces the laws of creation to crumble into dust? I ask you, is that an efficient way to run a universe?”
“Touché”
“The problem is not only one act of evil, but many such acts. Let us say, six million Jews and six million Gentile Poles, and tens of millions of others. That is just the Second World War. Let us say that our cosmic terrorist pushes harder and harder against the integrity of God. Let us say he uses a Stalin—now we are considering perhaps fifty million, some say sixty million people, dead at the hands of this one tyrant. Should God destroy the moral structure of the universe in order to save the physical universe? That would be a superficial defense and an ultimate self-defeat. Should He give in because of the quantity of the victims?”
“You are overstating the situation. I don’t see what you mean.”
“It is something like this. Satan holds the chosen people hostage. He holds a gun to their heads and he says to God, Well, aren’t you going to do something! Aren’t you going stop me! Aren’t you going to break one of your own insignificant laws to save your darlings? God replies, I will not break the laws I have written into creation, for that would bring about a different kind of destruction for my beloved ones. Satan answers, All right, watch this! He squeezes and crushes and rips with his jaws until the chosen ones begin to cry out to their Creator, Save us! Where are You? Why do You not come? Satan looks at God and says, Well? But God is silent. He is so silent that a darkness seems to spread over the world. Satan believes he has forced God to back up. He has argued Him into helplessness. He thinks that God has nothing left to say. He thinks he has won the cosmic debate and has obtained power over God. He thinks himself above God. But all the while a tremendous thing is happening within the heart of God. A Word begins to form. A Word that is so immense, so much larger than the entire created universe, which rests like a golden apple in His hand. This word is so vast, yet so simple, that none can hear it. Satan will not hear it. Man can not, for he has been deafened with the screams of his own agony. Matter itself can only feel it without knowing it.
“I will go down into my own creation as once I did so long ago, when I walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. As I did when I came to Jerusalem as a man. I will go down into my creation and I will suffer in it. I will suffer with it. And this shall be My Word, as once it was My Word on Calvary.”
“Theology again?”
“This is His reply, but it is so powerful that ears cannot hear it. Only the soul can hear it.”
“I don’t hear it”, said Smokrev moodily.
“You are deafened by screams of agony.”
“You are wrong. You may have noticed that I evaded every form of incarceration that Europe has offered since the turn of the century. I deserved all of them, mind you. But I am not a victim.”
“You are a victimizer. And a victim.”
“I hear no screams.”
“You are deaf.”
“I hear no word spoken within creation, no messengers from your silent God.”
“You don’t see them? You don’t hear them?”
“No. Nothing. Come, come, we are bandying words here. Let us get back to my original question. The objective reality here is that there was no rescue.”
“What do you mean by rescue? Escape from a concentration camp? A long life? In the larger scheme of things, it may be that the victim who goes to his death uncorrupted by hatred is the one truly rescued.”
“So you just let the bad go on doing bad? You won’t fight evil? You don’t stop me?”
“We must do whatever is possible without going beyond the boundaries of the divine principles. We cannot take up the weapons of evil in order to defeat evil. To do so, even in the defense of good, would be to be doubly defeated. I believe that is Satan’s ultimate objective. Why would a fallen angel want to kill six million, or sixty or a hundred million or even the whole human race? What would that prove? That he is bad? He already knows that, and God knows it too. No, the prize he is after is no less than to seduce all mankind into his rebellion. And to do it in the name of the good. That would be his masterstroke.”
“Well, well, well, you do attribute a great deal of perspicacity to this cosmic bogeyman. It saves a lot of soul-searching, doesn’t it? Blame him. The devil made me do it.”
“In a sense he did. He tempted. You chose. You believed his interpretation of the universe.”
“Frankly, considering the state of humanity, I think his version is the more accurate one. You Catholics build castles in the air—then you try to live in them. As if you were all aristocrats.”
“Count Smokrev, we are all sons and daughters of a King. Each one of us.”
“You cannot have it both ways. You are mixing metaphors. You said this God has come into creation and suffers with us, and in us. Now you say he is a king. Kings rule. Kings live in castles. Kings establish order in their kingdoms. You are deluded. There is no king.”
“Our King suffers with us. He suffers in us. When His Kingdom is established in its fullness, our love for Him will surpass that for any earthly king, because He has suffered everything that His poorest children have suffered. And suffered by choice, where we have suffered unwillingly.”
“Let’s have a break. I feel suffocated. Theology, literature, myth, metaphor! It’s too much for this old brain. All I have is what I have seen and what I have done. It’s not pretty. But it’s my universe.”
He rang for the manservant, who brought a tray of coffee and small cakes.
They drank and ate in silence.
After consumption of a cigarette and more coughing, Smokrev lay back and smiled to himself.
“I am really enjoying this. The thrill of the courtroom, the clash of swords, the sting of minor philosophical setbacks, that special gloating feeling when I push you into a corner.”
“I don’t think you have done that as yet.”
“I shall.”
“You mentioned the clash of swords. I think you will agree, then, that we are in a war zone.”
“But of course!”
“Good. You admit that.”
“Yes!” Smokrev replied with irritation.
“Why does man insist on trying to make his Utopia in the midst of a battleground?”
Smokrev shrugged: “The battle ebbs and flows. Some die. Some survive. I want to survive.”
“You would do anything to survive?”
“I have already done everything and anything to survive. I have survived.”
“Do you agree that a battlefield is a poor place to make a Utopia?”
“All right, for the sake of argument, I agree. It’s not the greatest place.”
“Would you follow Someone who has died in your place on the battlefield, has been mysteriously brought back to life, and now offers you a real Paradise?”
“It depends on the cost. A temporary Utopia in the hand is better than a fairy-tale paradise in the clouds.”
“That is the crux of our problem.”
“So? We are agreed on that.”
“Suppose this Man who has come back from the dead is the most good and beautiful person you have ever met. He has given His life for you.”
“I haven’t met him.”
“You have met Him. As a child. In the night.”
“Childhood! Ha!”
“He reaches out His hand and He says, come with me. I know the way back from the dead. And I know another thing, the greatest thing. I know the way to the land where there is no more death.”
“I would say he is a fool and a dreamer, and however attractive he may be personally, I would not risk my life following him.”
“You would prefer to risk your life dodging bullets and missiles.”
“Listen, listen, listen,” said Smokrev waving the image away, “this is theoretical. The validity of your argument is founded upon the presumption that this man exists and he is what he says he is. I tell you, in my entire life I have never met a man who is what he says he is or what he appears to be.”
“I have met many.”
“Then you are a fool and a dreamer.”
“No. This Man has been tested. Countless souls have followed Him to Paradise.”
“An illusion produced by fevered brains searching desperately for hope. Everything is illusion.”
Father Elijah Page 28