Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Somehow or other you have made me feel that I can wipe out what I’ve done. I’ll die tomorrow feeling pretty good, because that balances the score. The public that’s going to hang me has done me more cruelty than ever I did to those three, and I suppose the public’ll have to pay, the same as I’m paying for my outbreak. Come to think of it, I’m sorry for the public. They’ll have to pay dear, and they won’t know what they’re paying for! Well: do you know what I believe?”

  He stood up, squared himself, and seemed to throw off the last dregs of the depression that had overwhelmed him.

  “I’ve only thought of it this minute, but I’m going to stick to it and die thinking of it! I believe I’ve been in the world before, and I’ve been suffering this time for past offenses. And I believe I’m coming back.”

  “Supposing that’s true,” said I, “what will you do when you come back?”

  He was rather slow with his answer and by the peculiar smile on his face I judged that he was thinking of revenge. However, he surprised me:

  “Next time,” he said, “I won’t be fooled by things. I’ll take my medicine. I’ll know more. Say: it seems like a pity doesn’t it, that I can’t stay on and get some practise this time!”

  I agreed with him, and I still agree with him. I saw him die, and he was unresentful — occupied, I thought, with the new glimpse of the meaning of life, that had dawned on him in his last hours. There was a dignity about him that impressed all those who saw him at the end.

  And it appears to me, that there would be more dignity about ourselves, if we should isolate our murderers and spend the necessary money, time and energy required to educate them to that point of view, instead of cheapening ourselves by wreaking a disgraceful vengeance. Actually, criminals present us with an opportunity to learn how to rehabilitate them. But do we try? I think not. We vacillate between a nauseating sentimentalism that permits the criminal to take advantage of us, and a brutal sentimentalism that induces us to act as criminally as the criminal we hang. Why not accept responsibility and face it, and begin to challenge crime by showing criminals how they can — nay, must — like all of us, offset the past by building for the countless lives to come?

  APOLOGY

  UNLESS one should be what the Australians so aptly describe as a ‘wowser;’* or a propagandist for some crazy brand of politics; or a dyspeptic; or one of those unfortunates who crave for ‘self-expression’; I suppose the most difficult question to answer is: Why do you write? But the question is perfectly fair — particularly if the writer has not made the answer obvious in every single story he has written. The enormous cost of ham and eggs in the United States is no excuse for posing in the limelight; the ‘ham’ might all too justly appear in the form of a sobriquet — the eggs out of the cases invoiced to the trade as ‘rots and spots.’ Since Caesar wrote his ‘Commentaries’ and President Wilson penned his ‘Fourteen Points’ there has always been ample excuse for putting any writer through a third degree.

  He may be posing as our superior; in which case he should be made to prove it or be still. He may be, tongue in cheek, too skillfully and much too greedily outreaching for our pocket-book; if so, then caveat emptor.* But he is possibly a fellow human being, tolerant of others’ weaknesses since he is conscious of his own; a rather happy man because he likes things, thoughts, and people; a man who finds life fabulously interesting and who makes up tales about what he has seen and heard (and thinks he has understood), for the excellent reason that no other course provides him such a satisfying outlet for his energy. That man is worth considering on his merits. If his books provide the reader with a hundredth part of the enjoyment he himself had, writing them, then fellow human beings may share his entertainment without grudging him a good seat at the show.

  Or so it seems to me. And life is entertaining. Also, it is splendidly worth while. Nor am I one of those unfortunates who never knew the seamy side of it, or felt the desperate emotions of the under-dog. Though I have written ten books and, I suppose, ten times as many stories for the magazines, I have never yet succeeded in inventing for the vilest villain situations more embarrassing than some that have occurred to me; although, except in The Ivory Trail, I have written nothing in the nature of autobiography. However, I must make that statement with a reservation.

  I suppose that, first and last, at least five hundred people have asked me: How is a story written? There are three unanswered letters on my desk now, in each of which that question is put; but I believe that whoever could answer it truthfully, could also tell what holds the stars in place. Repeatedly I have put that problem to myself and other writers, but I have never heard or read an explanation that explained.

  However, I am almost sure of this: as fishermen develop ‘fish sense’; horsemen achieve ‘horse sense’ (some, of course, are born with it); musicians develop ability to listen to the music of the spheres; and painters educate their eyes until they see what other men cannot distinguish until it has been selected for them, and interpreted in paint, and framed; so writers, who are not too densely wrapped in dogmatisms of their own or (worse yet!) dogmatisms learned at second-hand, inflicted on them by the pundits of mediocrity, learn how to use what I must call a sense for lack of any other word in English that suggests it.

  Oskar A. H. Schmitz, in a recent essay in the Kölnische Zeitung, asks: Does a writer need to know anything? But the answer is, that a writer does know. If he does not know, he cannot write. He knows as the musician hears, and as the painter sees; although I don’t know how he knows, and I certainly can’t explain it.

  But to know is not nearly the whole of the problem. There remains the technical, extremely difficult, accomplishment of differentiating, of selecting, of interpreting into literary form, and of convincing the reader. A man may know where fish are, but it is another thing to catch them, and still another thing to get them, fresh and pleasant to the eye, to market. It is possible to fish for mackerel and catch dog-fish. There are also jellyfish, and some sorts that are poisonous.

  One other thing seems obvious to me: we humans are as composite as any other thing in nature. We are capable of unplumbed depths of infamy, and of unreached heights of godliness. In each of us are all the elements, both spiritual and material, that go to make up what is human nature in the aggregate. We are microcosms of the macrocosm. Consequently, what a man writes in his books (though incidents and details may be all imaginary, and though nothing in the book is therefore true, in one sense of the word) essentially is a picture of his own mind, of his own life, of his own (latent though they may be) possibilities.

  Shakespeare was not Falstaff. He was capable of being Falstaff. He was capable of being Hamlet. He knew all about both those characters and all the others because their essences were in himself. What made him the greatest dramatist since Aeschylus was his (divine, I like to think) ability to read his own rich human nature, to select from it, and to write down what he knew in an appealing way.

  The intellect, I think, is a machine that can be constantly improved, and that only wears out when allowed to lie idle or bury itself into pits of its own digging. As the intellect improves with use a writer (or any other individual) should find new phases of humanity to wonder at, and ponder over, and admire; he should discern new aspects (new to him, at any rate), and by abandoning old views incur the obloquy of inconsistency. The obloquy is very good for him, because it will reveal to him a wealth of unexplored intolerances in himself.

  The only thoroughly consistent people are the dead ones. Let them bury their own dead. Our business is living, and life is a perpetual ascent from peak to higher peak of comprehension.

  So what is a tale, after all, but a picture of any man’s mind? And does it make the slightest difference, when you have read the book, or before you have read it, that you should know its author stands seventy-three inches in his boots, weighs one hundred and eighty-five pounds, has a wife and an Airedale dog, and once walked all the length of Africa? The important question is, w
hat thinking has he done? And is he a ‘wowser’ or a ‘muckrake’? Are his villains human, and his heroes and his heroines not too immaculate? Can you read his book without wishing you had not? And does he make you feel that there are wide horizons, unfenced and not marked ‘No Trespassers,’ toward which any one may go adventuring without incurring self-contempt?

  The latest of my own books, OM, has brought such floods of correspondence that, although that makes me feel acquainted with all manner of agreeable folk in many lands, there is some difficulty in reserving time enough in which to write another book! How much of it is true? Is Tsiang Samdup a real Lama? Where is the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup published? Who is Ommony in real life? How did I learn my Indian lore?

  To answer the last first, I don’t know. That it is lore, is apparent to me from the sparks that fly wherever its flint strikes steel; I have no other means of determining. Ommony, in ‘real’ life, is myself or any other man who, if only for an hour or two, sees a vista of events from his particular point of view. So is the villain, Dawa Tsering, who is, after all, more villainous than vile (like most of us). The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup probably was published at the time when the Stars of the Morning danced and sang. As I was fortunate enough to glimpse a page of it, I have been generous enough to share it. What more can I do?

  If Tsiang Samdup is not real, how could it be possible to write a book about him? If I had known more about him, would I not have written it? And all of it is true, except the bad part, and the weak part, and the artless, dull, uninteresting part. It is as true as you are in your interesting moments.

  What next? I have filed away eight hundred letters asking for a sequel to Om — The Secret of Ahbor Valley. I am keeping them to remind me not to write it! I would rather try to put a pair of arms on the Venus of Milo, or invent an ending for Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’

  There is a beach near San Diego where the gulls make music, to a swelling and descending obbligato of surf thundering on sand. It is a usually lonely beach, but there is something in its harmonies that stirs imagination and establishes remoteness from the jazz of ‘realism’ by lifting, now and then, the curtain that obscures reality. I go there, maybe as the ancients once went to Eleusis;* that is, not invariably with success because it is a difficult trick to leave opinions behind, and incredulity, and zeal, and all that other rubbish with which we stop our ears and clog our understandings. (The Gods are not exactly lazy, but they are self-respecting and refuse to waste good mystery on work that we should do ourselves.) But once in a while, as at Eleusis in the ancient days, the veil is lifted; so, if I can only overcome the bewildering difficulty, experienced by every musician, painter, and writer, of translating into definiteness the elusive visions seen (and almost understood), there will be a much better story than OM before long. Be good enough to wait, and I will do my utmost not to disappoint you.

  I HAVE RISEN

  VOLUMES that are marvels of research and detailed facts concerning Easter have been published. Wonderful works are available in which the esoteric meaning of the Easter-celebrations is explained. Sermons, some of them so full of inspiration that they shake the battlements of sorrow, have been written, spoken, thundered — and remain, a few of them, as indestructible as THAT of which they vibrate in the hearts of men. The simpler are the better, and the Gospel-story, stripped of comment, stands as luminous and stirring as on the day when it was written. And yet no man needs another volume than his own, his inward heart, in which his own divinity responds to inspiration from the ONE, by whom, in whom, he lives, has lived, and is to live forever. “I have risen” is the thought — and then the murmur — then the song of triumph of the Soul that learns, within itself, what Easter means.

  There are as many Easters in the universe as there are conscious beings. Easter is not limited to time or place; it knows no season other than the mainspring of all seasons and the changeless change forever burgeoning all buds until the blossoms scatter pollen on the rain-wet face of Nature. Easter is within you, as the power is within that puts forth poems — as the harvest is within the seed, the end in the beginning. Easter’s “I have Risen” is the answer to the challenge of the Lords of Life, on watch, who demand, through the dark of the Valley of Death: “Who comes?” That valley is the very Gates of Glory, and the password “I have Risen” rips the veil of misery and shows what none may see, save only those whose tested courage gave them title to the Word long lost, and only to be found where it was lost, within the heart of him who lost it.

  There is a dewy-wet, warm wonder of delight that only Easter morning knows. But it is always Easter morning when the heart remembers it is young. It is darkness that is old and dying. Youth lives on forever, though its face be hidden for a while by creeping shadow. As old as Truth is and as young as Love, is the Life that sings because the Light within can — does — and everlastingly will conquer, shadow and all dreams of darkness. Grief is no more than a shadow of the inward pilot-light that leads through Silence to the dimless Sun.

  And it is written, Fear not. That was uttered when the new-created shapes first loomed in Chaos, limiting idea within form and line, illusion gilding glory until glory seemed to vanish in the veil of finite cause and fearful consequence. The dawn of Easter is a reinterpretation, which is resurrection; and the gloaming that retreats before it and the darkness, is the death of fear. And there is neither sin nor sorrow where no fear is.

  But we are in fear; we exist in it. Then fear is like the feathers of the flame that hatch the Phoenix’s egg. Its agony shall change into the alchemy of rebirth. That Phoenix who is hatched in flame knows better than to linger in the restless nest; he flies forth sunward and he needs no brooding; he is born full-pinioned, knowing that the flame which hatched him might, if he should linger, scorch his flying feathers. Jesus was not twice crucified. He let fear wreak its havoc on the only thing that fear could touch, which was illusion. When illusion left him, burned up in that agony, he went forth free. That was Easter morning. I is written that he gave thanks.

  Fear not! We become destroyers when we let fear fight out battles. We identify ourselves with fear and wear its livery, its coat of arms and crest. We emblazon its motto— “What is Truth?” — on helm and breastplate. We become not only front-rank fight-men against the very Truth we seek, but we are also foragers, recruiting agents, pick and-shovel men, and propagandists for the tyrant — Fear, the origin, the instigator and the owner of all anguish and its fruits. To be afraid of fear and of its phantoms is to be in bondage. It is Easter morning when we recognise the nothingness of fear.

  And when we see that void — that emptiness — and know that it is void, there fills it on the instant THAT which neither fear can find nor darkness dim. There floods in on the consciousness a rhythm such as no inharmony can silence and no limits touch. It is the balanced peace that passeth physics and all logic and the desires, and from the Tyranny of Things. And who shall speak of that, when that dawn breaks. Who needs? An empty nest — dark cells are visited — old gloom forgotten, and old foolishness unraveled and undone — dead ashes of desire, wind-scattered, fertilizing someone’s birth — the tale has told itself.

  Is Easter then abandonment? Are things a sacrifice that should be thrown into a Moloch’s jaws, that we may burn our way into a real and thingless bliss? It is not written that the Lords of Life require the waste or loss of one single[?] concept. Reinterpretation is not ruin. Made and unmade, known or unknown, everything has its use and has its place in the eternal plan; if we are guardians, not owners of the things we say that we possess. We build on blasphemy and limit life — we close against ourselves the real gates of affluence, by craving too much ourselves[?] and the selfish ownership of things. By desire[?] we undo all effort. It is Easter morning and we know all affluence is ours — all beauty and all goodness. It is Easter when the heart is bursting with the vibrance of the Spirit and owns all universes and denies no wanderer a home, no traveler a right of way.

/>   And shall we get, then, out of Easter more than we put into it? The very shadows of our own dreams mock such melancholy unwisdom. Unto him who hath the dawning knowledge of what Easter means, more knowledge shall be given, until Easter morning wakens him at last with music that the Silence sings above, beneath, without, within the chattering inharmony of matter. We get nothing out of Easter. What need? We put nothing into it! Why should we? What does the All-giving need? And what does the All-having lack? It is Easter morning when we know within our hearts that all’s hear — all’s well with the universe — and when the password rings within the inward consciousness — the answering, spontaneous, inevitable: “I have risen! I lack nothing! I have all endowments of all values; and forever all the gates of affluence, in all the spheres, are open wide! I give. Forever I forgive. For I have risen!”

  SPIRITUAL MAN IS ETERNAL: THERE ARE NO DEAD!

  THE APOSTLE Paul wrote: “I die daily”; and he meant exactly what he wrote, without reserve or equivocation. But Paul had the advantage over us moderns in that he wrote for people thoroughly familiar with theories of life and death that have become submerged since his day — submerged in part by the after-wave of Paul’s own huge enthusiasm. Deathless and indestructible in essence, insofar as they were based on truth and rooted in absolute being, they were doomed as theories to die awhile, as men die too, and, like men, destined to be reborn in after time.

  Theories are, after all, not more nor less than bodies of ideas, even as our bodies are the temporary clothing of our souls. True ideas reincarnate into theories on the cyclic tides of time, as our bodies do also[?]; the temporary clothing of our souls. True ideas reincarnate into theories on the cyclic tides of time as certainly as do all other forms of the Eternal — forms so infinite that he who seeks to limit them or number their incalculable changes is as silly as the savage trying to put sunlight in a bottle. Every atom in the whole created universe ‘dies daily,’ if we mean what Paul meant by the words.