by Harold Bloom
Perscors felt a rush of fury, an ancient call to battle, and cried out: “No! Man cannot be defeated!”
“It was wholly a defeat, but as a sacrifice it began our salvation. For the Primal Man, in defeat, gave himself and his five kinds as food to the five kinds of the Archdevil, just as a man who has an enemy mixes a deadly poison into a cake and gives it to him. When the Sons of Darkness had devoured them, the five luminous kinds were devoid of understanding, and the Primal Man became like someone who has been bitten by a mad dog or serpent. Thus the five parts of Light became mixed with the five parts of Darkness.”
Herakleides ended in great sadness, his face dead pale against the twilight. Perscors realized that except for the soldiers, women, and children, the Manichees were unusually pale. A drawn face always identified the True or Elect among them.
Herakleides stared at Perscors’s black armor, and then spoke very slowly: “I have seen no such armor on Lucifer. Where did you steal the armor of the Sons of Darkness?”
“I took it when I found it,” Perscors said shortly. “Armor means so much to you because of the first man’s five lost kinds; is that it?”
Herakleides nodded. “The five kinds were both armor and escort to the Primal Man, and they are held captive now. The Archdevil took man’s armor and gave it to the Archons of Darkness. They ate of his armor, which means that they devoured man’s soul.”
Perscors looked down at his armor. Its origins no longer interested him; it was his. And it was not his fire as gorged by demons and then returned to him. It was his fire.,
Herakleides broke in upon him, as though able to divine his thoughts: “You do not know, despite all your calamities, that you are numb and scarcely conscious, poisoned by having been given as poison. What are you, warrior, except sin, guilt, and error?”
Perscors held back his fury. Very quietly he returned to an earlier question: “What are your own warriors?”
A hostile silence ensued. Wearily, Herakleides renewed explanations: “It is best to do nothing. But that is for the true group, for our Elect. Our believers are hearers or soldiers, who acquire merit by making it possible for the Elect to survive. There are only these three: Elect, soldiers, and sinners. It is for you to choose whether you are soldier or sinner.”
Perscors was not much impressed. “I have learned that the three were those of the spark, those of the soul, and those of the flesh, and that I was in the second. But I begin to think that these divisions do not matter.”
“From what wisdom do you assert you speak?” Herakleides demanded.
“I have found nothing on this world yet that I can trust. Olam came here for his own purposes, to thwart or baffle the Demiurge. Valentinus came to remember who and what he had been. I came, I now understand, to rebeget myself, to become man. But I become only more bewildered. Yet you offer me only a second-best, to be a soldier defending a wholly passive good. I did not come here for that.”
Both men were silent. Herakleides felt again a profound uneasiness at the continued presence of Perscors. He spoke decisively: “We will give you shelter tonight. But you must decide by dawn. If you will not serve the Word, then go from us in peace.”
Perscors shook his head. “I will depart now.”
The Manichees: Dreams before Battle
Perscors, very late that night, fell asleep in the woods, several hours’ march from the camp of the Manichees. Two dreams called to him in the course of the night.
Nekbael, her red hair shining in the darkness, came to him, but on earth, rather than on Lucifer. It was night in the town where he had been born and raised, a summer night on the town green. The lights were out in all the houses when the sorceress approached Perscors. As she came close, he saw only the one face: symmetrical, at peace, almost innocent. She took him by the hands and spoke urgently to him, but in words he could not understand. He cried out in the dream, in the same unknown language, and she faded from him. In her place stood Ruha, mocking and desirable, chanting a litany:
“The son of the King of Darkness spoke to the daughters of Darkness.
“He cried: ‘Give me your sons and daughters and I shall make for you the figure of your desire.’
“They brought them and gave them to him.
“He ate the female ones and handed over the males to Nekbael, his companion.
“He entered Nekbael.
“Nekbael became pregnant and bore a son named Adam and a daughter named Havva.
“When Adam woke, he found himself mingled with and imprisoned in everything that exists, shackled in the stench of darkness.
“Then Adam glanced upward and wept, raising his voice powerfully like a lion roaring.
“Woe unto you, Perscors, son of Adam, with your soul shackled, and enslaved to the Archons.”
She finished her mockery and embraced him, falling with him onto the green. With Ruha’s lips biting cruelly into his left cheek, Perscors roared himself awake, to find himself alone in the forest, the stars above him shining down in their mockery. He would have struck them with his swords if he could. He turned upon his side, away from their insulting glare, and instantly fell into a deeper dream.
He wandered in the waste places, in the void of the Kenoma, seeking Valentinus. Stumbling upon a height, he mounted it and observed a large force of foot soldiers marching east. Their banner was a cross, their armor blue and shining in the dull sun of Lucifer. Climbing down from the height, Perscors confronted a being masked as Olam, carrying a large red hammer. With both swords ready, Perscors cried out against the masked figure, who backed away, laughing and chanting:
“They go to massacre your Manichee friends, ill luck to both sides!
“Let the two serpents sting one another to death!
“Or go back if you will, in your darkness, and be cut down by either side!
“By the sons of Darkness calling themselves the Light, or the sons of the Light which is only another Darkness!”
Perscors charged at the masked taunter, both swords poised, but could not wholly dodge the hammer, which swung, huge and bloody, near his forehead. He woke this time shouting his defiance, crouched on his knees, a sword in each hand. But he ceased abruptly and sank his ear against the ground. The floor of the forest seemed to shake. Perscors rose, in the conviction that an enemy force was close by, marching toward the Manichees. However it came, the second dream was a call of warning, and his own outcry upon waking might have been heard. Whoever the approaching force might be, Perscors felt just enough sympathy for the Manichees to want to warn them.
Despite his efforts, it was well past dawn when he reached the boundary of the Manichee camp. On his march, he had discovered that his left cheek was bloody, and that his forehead was bruised. Escorted to Herakleides, he told enough of the second dream to convince the headman that an attack was indeed imminent.
“Do you come only to warn us or to fight with us against the Darkness that usurps the cross?”
“Precisely who is it that comes against you?” Perscors asked.
“These are the Marcionites, Knowing Ones who follow Marcion as we follow Mani. Our enemies always, and enemies to Olam also. Though what you are to Olam, your dream confuses utterly.”
“But who is the aggressor?” Perscors asked. “Have you provoked this attack?”
“You know only the little of us that I have told you,” Herakleides said heavily, “but even that should teach you that we fight only defensively. The World of Light loves only peace. We are a pitiful few on Lucifer. If you live to go into the West, you will be surrounded by many thousands of the Marcionites.”
Perscors pondered his situation. He felt real though limited sympathy for the Manichees, and he knew nothing of the sect marching against them. He did not trust either of his dreams. His desire again was to find Valentinus, and the Marcionites lay between him and his one true friend on this star. Was this
coming battle his battle?
He closed his eyes, hoping to hear a call. But he was alone.
“I am for the battle,” he heard himself saying.
“Why?” Herakleides asked.
“I cannot know why. But I have been assaulted too often here, on this world. And in more than one realm. I will not wait to see if these cross-bearers will assault me also. I am for your battle, and when together we have beaten these off, then I will go west. If any man or demon or godling comes against me, henceforward, on this planet, he will learn that Primal Man is not always to be defeated.”
The Manichees: Battle; Return of Nekbael
At noon, the Marcionites attacked. Perscors had declined both shield and javelins. He took up his stance in the center of the first of the Manichees’ three battle lines. The two short swords he had brought back from the netherworld now seemed to him extensions of his own arms. Serenely self-possessed, he longed for the battle, his battle, rather than that of the Manichees.
The Marcionites came on in three lines also, but Perscors estimated the lines to be much more fully manned than the stretched-out ranks of the Manichees. As the attack was launched, the Marcionites united in a war cry, spurred on by trumpets and drums. Wave after wave of javelins were hurled against the Manichee lines, two falling just short of Perscors. Elated, Perscors did not wait for the enemy to come up to him, but charged alone into their midst. Within moments he had cut down the three men in the Marcionite front line that he could reach. His onslaught broke the second line and carried him on against a circle of men from the third line that formed around him. From then on, his battle proceeded wholly independently of the larger conflict, which rapidly turned into a rout, with the Manichees fleeing. But in the center the Marcionites became convinced that they confronted a demon, not a man. Javelins and arrows grazed Perscors, swords nicked him, but the dead piled up so thickly that he stood at last bulwarked by a mound of enemy corpses. The Marcionites fell back on all sides of him, unwilling to press another assault, but equally reluctant to permit the escape of so murderous a demon.
Rather than be a standing target for javelins and arrows, Perscors unhesitatingly charged west against the ring encircling him. The Marcionites broke before him; their fear of demonic force overcame their desire to revenge the many men Perscors had hacked down. Instinctively, he compelled himself to keep running until deep in the woods, but the pursuit was ill-organized and dissolved rapidly, except for two warriors fiercer or more courageous than the others. They maintained pace with Perscors and kept him in sight. When he was deep enough within the forest, Perscors swung around and waited for them to come up to him. They loosed their javelins almost simultaneously only a few yards away, but by then Perscors had begun to charge again and both lances passed harmlessly, one on each side of him as he came forward. Perscors cried out his joy in the strong pleasure of the double kill, as he chopped down both men. Falling to his knees in exhaustion and in release of tension, he realized with a curious detachment that only the delight of slaughter was keeping him in some state of reality. Except when he killed, he seemed to be living in a vivid phantasmagoria. If the price of reality was to be the death of others, then he could not hope for indefinite survival on this religion-mad world to which he had voyaged.
After he had rested, he sensed some presence near him in the woods. With increasing dread, he looked up to the treetop level and saw there the phantasmal figure of Nekbael floating by very rapidly, her red hair streaming out in the wind. Perscors fought back against panic. To confront again that Medusa stare was beyond his strength. But he remembered the effect of the call. What if it did not come again? Was there only his own name to free him from her spell? What was in his name? The knowledge of what he had become. Had he any other knowledge? Of what he had been?
“In any case, I have not long to wait,” he said aloud. Brooding on his dilemma, with the demonic danger ahead of him and human foes in his line of retreat, he resolved to go farther west, deeper into the forest. Somewhere up ahead, Nekbael doubtless awaited him in a meadow or clearing, but his heimarmene was there also, to the west, and he refused to identify Nekbael with his cosmic fate, however oppressive that might turn out to be.
It was late afternoon when he reached another clearing. The wind had been rising to gale force, but the meadow he entered was uncannily still. Nekbael was there, unveiled and unsmiling, but she turned away as he approached. With relief and some puzzlement, he took this for a sign that the ordeal of the earlier enchantment was not to be repeated. Was he to walk right by her? Her averted face gave him that choice. He hesitated and reflected on the three she-devils, if so they were, that he had encountered on Lucifer. Toward Achamoth, he felt fear and hatred and the wish for vengeance, but he sensed a more disturbing desire as well. Toward Ruha, her daughter, he felt both bewilderment and a positive passion, perhaps even an absurd hope of affection, but tempered by the horror that had overtaken his reflected self. The female in his presence moved him the most subtly, though the least inwardly of the three. She was, somehow, more his kind, less of an otherness. More swiftly than he could realize, he went up to her and gently turned her toward him, by a very slight touch upon her left shoulder. Their glances met, and this time he was not frozen in a spell.
“Shall we not at least speak?” Perscors murmured, his wariness overcome by his astonishment at her beauty when her face was turned fully upon him.
“Am I to tell you old stories?” she replied, with a dry bitterness.
“It is an oddity of this world I have come to that no one tells me more than a few shreds of a story. I would welcome a fuller account from anyone’s lips.”
He had spoken with ironic intent but felt no irony in the silence following, during which he found himself staring at her lips. They were the startling crimson of her hair. Though he understood that he was about to become her lover, a hesitancy began to gather in him again. Even if she intended no harm this time (which seemed unlikely), he was only a few hours’ distance from the battlefield. If his enemies had decided to follow him, they could not be far away. Exhaustion, hunger, and thirst combined in him with the wish to embrace this dangerous glory that had come against him. But even as he encircled her waist and felt the fullness of her body’s movement toward him, another awareness began in him. His palpable pleasure in battle was near-allied to his expectations of joy and pain at the hands of Nekbael.
She disrobed as he removed his armor. The windless meadow had become unnaturally bright and intensely hot. Nekbael lay on the grass, urgently beckoning Perscors down, but the heat was now so intolerable that he stumbled in his faintness as he endeavored to join her. Belatedly, he remembered the Manichean fivefold evil: smoke, fire, wind, water, darkness. As he entered Nekbael, a smoky fog settled over the meadow. Burning was everywhere, the wind suddenly rose, there was a sound of ocean water in his eardrums, and the brightness now blinded him. He could not see her face when he raised his head, but only a hazy glare that was a darkness to him. She pulled his head back to hers and bit through his lips, as her fingertips slashed his back like so many carving knives. Her hold was far stronger than his. He could not pull away or raise his head again or still the endless circular movements of their lovemaking. Perscors knew death to be very close by, as the orgasm continued unrelentingly. The pain in his lips and back became unbearable, and a still more terrible pain spread out from his loins. Nekbael’s hands went from his back to his throat and started to strangle him. He lost his last sense of resistance and yielded to the overwhelmingly painful pleasure of what might be his end. Only a touch of chagrin, a hint of regret at an abandoned quest for knowing, hovered near him as he lost consciousness.
When the Marcionite search party found Perscors, he lay naked, doubled up as though in pain, but he had struggled back near his swords and armor. They turned him over and discovered that he still lived. Bound, still naked, and barely conscious, he was carried westward into the country of t
he Marcionites. They did not notice the ring with a black gem that had been thrust into his left gauntlet, when they gathered that up for spoils together with the rest of his armor and the two short, thick swords. For some hours after they had left, a bright haze enveloped the meadow.
Olam on the Road West: The Pearl
Further west, Olam followed his path through the lands of the Marcionites. One scouting party came upon him, but retreated rapidly at the sight of the ungainly, yellow-complexioned, hulking figure.
“They’ve been warned,” Olam grunted to himself as he hastened on. He assumed that Perscors was a prisoner of one people or another but dismissed the recognition as of no importance. If Perscors did not return from Lucifer, it would not be because of human violence, or so Olam believed himself to know.
Forested mountain valleys had yielded to prairies, with occasional clusters of hills. Passing through some particularly high hills, Olam peered down into a sudden valley and saw a solitary youth sitting by a fire. Olam descended and sat by the fire, returning the smile of the startled boy.
“Queer-looking creature you are, yellow man! Are you a man, or something else?”
“Something else,” Olam replied with high good humor. He stared shrewdly at the young man. “Have you a story to tell me?”
“Only my own story.”
“I was in a great hurry”—Olam laughed—“but for your story I have time enough. Let me hear it. I may have a gift for you in return.”
The youth stirred the fire and began to recite, in a high, steady, cheerful voice, the happiest voice that Olam had heard on Lucifer: “When I was only a small child, living in the house of the king my father, rejoicing in the splendor and wealth of those who educated me, my parents sent me away from our home, the East, with all I needed for my journey. Out of the wealth of our treasure house, they tied together a burden for me, weighty, yet light, so that I could carry it by myself. Five kinds of precious substance they packed together: gold, silver, chalcedony, agates, and diamonds. They took off my robe of glory, which in their love they had made for me, and removed my purple mantle, which was measured out and woven to my proportions, and they made a covenant with me and wrote it in my heart, beyond forgetfulness: ‘Should you go down into the land below us, and bring back the pearl now encircled by the hissing serpent, from the midst of the sea, then you may put on your robe of glory and your mantle over it, and with your brother, next to us in rank, you shall become heir to our kingdom.’