“Go on.” Drake was unsmiling but undisturbed.
“The King of Swords and the Knight of Wands are both very active. You could do all this harmlessly, by becoming an artist and showing this vision of the jungle. You don’t have to create it literally and inflict it on your fellow human beings.”
“Stop preaching. Just read the cards. You’re better at it than I am, but I can see enough to know that there is no such alternative for me. The other wand and the other sword are reversed. I can’t be satisfied to do it in symbolic form. I must do it so that everybody is affected by it, not just the few who read books or go to concerts. Tell me what I don’t know. Why is the line from the Fool to the Tower completed in the Lovers reversed? I know that I can’t love anyone, and I don’t believe that anybody else ever does, either—that’s more sentiment and hypocrisy. People use each other as masturbating machines and crying towels, and they call it love. But there’s a deeper meaning. What is it?”
“Start from the top: Death reversed. You reject Death, so the Fool cannot undergo rebirth and enter the right-hand path when he crosses the Abyss. Therefore: the left-hand path, the destruction of the Tower. There is only one end to that chain of karma, my son. The Lovers means Death, just as Death means Life. You are rejecting natural death, and therefore refusing natural life. Your path will be an unnatural life leading to a death that is against nature. You will die as a man before your body dies. The fire is still self-destructive, even if you turn it outward and use the whole world as a stage for your private Gotterdammerung. Your primary victim will still be yourself.”
“You have the talent,” Drake said coldly, “but you are still basically a fraud, like everyone in this business. Your worst victim, madam, is yourself. You deceive yourself with the lies that you have so often told others. It’s the occupational disease of mystics. The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether I destroy myself alone or destroy this planet—or turn around and try to find my way to the right-hand path in some dreary monastery. The universe will roll blindly along, not caring, not even knowing. There’s no Granddaddy in the clouds to pass a last judgment—there’s only a few airplanes up there, learning more and more about how to carry bombs. They court-martialed General Mitchell for saying it, but it’s the truth. The next time around they’ll really bomb the hell out of civilian populations. And the universe won’t know or care about that either. Don’t tell me that my flight from Death leads back to Death; I’m not a child, and I know that all paths lead back to Death eventually. The only question is: Do you cower before him all your life or do you spit in his eye?”
“You can transcend abject fear and rebellious hatred both. You can see that he is only part of the Great Wheel and, like all other parts, necessary to the whole. Then you can accept him.”
“Next you’ll be telling me to love him.”
“That too.”
“Yes, and I can learn to see the great and glorious Whole Picture. I can see all the men defecating and urinating in their trousers before they died at Château-Thierry, watching their own guts fall out into their laps and screaming out of a hole that isn’t even a mouth any more, as manifestations of that sublime harmony and balance which is ineffable and holy and beyond all speech and reason. Sure. I can see that, if I knock half of my brain out of commission and hypnotize myself into thinking that the view from that weird perspective is deeper and wider and more truly true than the view from an unclouded mind. Go to the quadruple-amputee ward and try to tell them that. You speak of death as a personified being. Very well: Then I must regard him as any other entity that gets in my way. Love is a myth invented by poets and other people who couldn’t face the world and crept off into corners to create fantasies to console themselves. The fact is that when you meet another entity, either it makes way for you or you make way for it. Either it dominates and you submit, or you dominate and it submits. Take me into any club in Boston and I’ll tell you which millionaire has the most millions, by the way the others treat him. Take me into any workingman’s bar and I’ll tell you who has the best punch in a fistfight, by the way the others treat him. Take me into any house and I’ll tell you in a minute whether the husband or the wife is dominant. Love? Equality? Reconciliation? Acceptance? Those are the excuses of the losers, to persuade themselves that they choose their condition and weren’t beaten down into it. Find a dutiful wife, who truly loves her husband. I’ll have her in my bed in three days, maximum. Because I’m so damned attractive? No, because I understand men and women. I’ll make her understand, without saying it aloud and shocking her, that the adultery will, one way or another, hurt her husband, whether he knows about it or not. Show me the most servile colored waiter in the best restaurant in town, and after he’s through explaining Christianity and humility and all the rest of it, count how many times a day he steps into the kitchen to spit in his handerchief. The other employees will tell you he has a ‘chest condition.’ The condition he has is chronic rage. The mother and the child? An endless power struggle. Listen to the infant’s cry change in pitch when Mother doesn’t come at once. Is that fear you hear? It’s rage—insane fury at not having total dominance. As for the mother herself, I’d wager that ninety percent of the married women in the psychiatrists’ care are there because they can’t admit to themselves, can’t escape the lie of love long enough to admit to themselves, how often they want to strangle that monster in the nursery. Love of country? Another lie; the truth is fear of cops and prisons. Love of art? Another lie; the truth is fear of the naked truth without ornaments and false faces on it. Love of truth itself? The biggest lie of all: fear of the unknown. People learn acceptance of all this and achieve wisdom? They surrender to superior force and call their cowardice maturity. It still comes down to one question: Are you kneeling at the altar, or are you on the altar watching the others kneel to you?”
“The wheel of the Tarot is the wheel of Dharma,” Mama Sutra said softly when he had concluded. “It is also the wheel of the galaxy, which you see as a blind machine. It rolls on, as you say, no matter what we think or do. Knowing that, I accept Death as part of the wheel, and I accept your nonacceptance as another part. I can control neither. I can only repeat my warning, which is not a lie but a fact about the structure of the Wheel: By denying death, you guarantee that you will meet him finally in his most hideous form.”
Drake finished his coffee and smiled whimsically. “You know,” he said, “my contempt for lies has an element of the very sentimentality and foolish idealism that I have been rejecting. Perhaps I will be most effective if I never speak so honestly again. When you hear of me next, I might be known as a philanthropist and benefactor of mankind.” He lit a cigar thoughtfully. “And that would even be true if your Tarot mysticism is correct after all. If Death is necessary to the Wheel, along with all the other parts, then I am necessary also. The Wheel would collapse, perhaps, if my spirit of rebellion were not there to balance your spirit of acceptance. Imagine that.”
“It is true. That is why I have warned you but not judged you.”
“So I am, as Goethe says, ‘part of that force which aims at evil and only achieves good’?”
“That is a thought which you should try to remember when the Dark Night of Sammael descends upon you at the end.”
“More cant,” Drake said, with a return to his previous cynicism. “I aim at evil and I will achieve evil. The Wheel and all its harmonious balances and all-healing paradoxes is just another myth of the weak and defeated. One strong man can stop the Wheel or tear it to shreds if he dares enough.”
“Perhaps. We who study the Wheel do not know all of its secrets. Some believe that your spirit reappears constantly in history, because it is fated, eventually, to triumph. Maybe this is the last century of terrestrial mortals, and the next century will be the time of the cosmic immortals. What will happen then, when the Wheel is stopped, none of us can predict. It may be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or even—to quote your favorite philosopher—beyond good and evil. We cannot
say. That is another reason I do not judge you.”
“Listen,” Drake said with sudden emotion. “We’re both lying. It’s not all this philosophical or cosmic. The simple fact is that I couldn’t sleep nights, and nothing I tried in conventional ‘cures’ could help me, until I began to help myself by systematically rebelling against everything that seemed stronger than me.”
“I know. I didn’t know it was insomnia. It might have been nightmares or dizzy spells or sexual impotence. But there was some way that the scenes you saw in Chateau-Thierry lived on and goaded you to wake out of the dream of the sleepwalkers on the streets. You are waking: You stand on the abyss.” She pointed to the Fool and the dog who barks at his heels. “And I am the noisy little bitch barking to warn you that you can still choose the right-hand path. The decision is not final until you cross the abyss.”
“But the cards show that I really have very little choice. Especially in the world that is going to emerge from this depression.”
Mama Sutra smiled without forgiveness or final condemnation. “This is no age for saints,” she agreed softly. “Two dollars please.”
George, don’t make no bull moves. The Dutchman saw it all clearly now. Capone and Luciano and Maldonado and Lepke and all the rest of them were afraid of Winifred and the Washington crowd. They were planning a deal, and his death was part of the bargain. The fools didn’t know that you can never negotiate from fear. They thought of the Order only as a handy gimmick for international communications and illicit trade; they were too dumb to really study the Teachings. Especially, they had never understood the third Teaching: Fear is Failure. Once you’re afraid of the bulls, you’re lost. But the bull was gone. “What have you done with him?” he shouted at the hospital wall.
(Smiling Jim had seen the eagle only the day before. Its nest was definitely on one of these peaks. He would get it: He knew it in his bones, a hunch so strong it couldn’t be doubted. Panting, sweating, every muscle aching, he climbed onward…The coffee leaped out of the paper cup and slurped onto the pages of Carnal Orgy. Igor Beaver, the graduate student, looked up in astonishment: The seismograph stood at grade 5. A mile away, Dillinger woke as the bedroom door slammed shut and his favorite statue, King Kong atop the Empire State Building, fell off the bureau.)
NO REMISSION, NO REMISSION, NO REMISSION WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. NO REMISSION WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD.
Mama Sutra looked down through the window at Boston Common. Robert Putney Drake had stopped, and was listening to one of the preachers again; even at this distance she could recognize the cool, closed smile on his face.
The Dealy Lama sat down across from her. “Well?” he asked.
“Definitely. The Order will have to intervene.” Mama shook her head sadly. “He’s a menace to the whole world.”
“Slowness is beauty,” the Dealy Lama said. “Let the Lower Order contact him first. If they decide he’s worth the effort, then we’ll act. I think I shall persuade Hagbard to attend Harvard, so he can be in his neighborhood and keep an eye on him, so to speak.”
IT’S THE WORD OF THE BIBLE AND THE WORD OF GOD AND IT SAYS IT PLAIN AND CLEAR SO NO HIGHBROW PROFESSOR CAN SAY IT MEANS SOMETHING ELSE.
“How old are you actually?” Mama asked curiously.
The Dealy Lama looked at her levelly. “Would you believe thirty thousand years?”
She laughed. “I should have known better than to ask. You can always tell the higher members by their sense of humor.”
AND THIS IS WHAT IT SAYS: NO REMISSION, NO REMISSION, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, NO REMISSION WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD, WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. NO REMISSION. NO REMISSION WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD.
Hagbard’s mouth fell open in completely genuine surprise. “Well, sink me,” he said, beginning to laugh.
Behind him on a wall, Joe noticed dizzily, was a brand-new graffito, probably scrawled by somebody out of his skull on the acid: THE PIGEONS IN B. F. SKINNER’S CAGES ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
“We both pass,” Hagbard went on happily. “We’ve been judged and found innocent by the great god Acid.”
Joe took a deep breath. “And when do you start to explain in monosyllables or sign language or semaphore or something a non-Illuminated moron like me can understand?”
“You read all the clues. It was right out in the open. It was plain as a barn door. It was as conspicuous as my nose and twice as homely—in every sense of that word.”
“Hagbard, for Christ’s sake and for my sake and for all our sakes, will you stop gloating and give me the answer?”
“I’m sorry.” Hagbard pocketed the gun carelessly. “I’m a bit giddy. I’ve been waging a kind of war all night, high on acid. It was a strain, especially since I was at least ninety percent sure you’d kill me before it was over.” He lit one of his abominable cigars. “Briefly, then, the Illuminati is benevolent, compassionate, kindly, generous, et cetera, et cetera. Add all the other complimentary adjectives you can think of. In short, we’re the good guys.”
“But—but—it can’t be.”
“It can be and it is.” Hagbard motioned him toward the Bugatti. “Let’s Sit Down, if I may permit myself one more acrostic before the codes and puzzles are all resolved.” They climbed into the front seat, and Joe accepted the brandy decanter Hagbard offered. “Of course,” Hagbard went on, “when I say ‘good,’ you’ve got to understand that all terms are relative. We’re as good as is possible in this fucked-up section of the galaxy. We’re not perfect Certainly, I’m not, and I haven’t observed anything approaching immaculate perfection in any of the other Masters of the Temple either. But we are, in human terms and by ordinary standards, decent chaps. There’s a reason for that. It’s the basic law of magic, and it’s in every textbook. You must have read it somewhere. Do you know what I mean?”
Joe took a stiff snort of the brandy. It was peach—his favorite. “Yes, I think. ‘As ye give, so shall ye get.’”
“Precisely.” Hagbard took back the bottle and had a snort himself. “Mind you, Joe, that’s a scientific law, not a moral commandment. There are no commandments, because there is no commander anywhere. All authority is a delusion, whether in theology or in sociology. Everything is radically, even sickeningly, free. The first law of magic is as neutral as Newton’s first law of motion. It says that the equation balances, and that’s all it says. You are still free to give evil and pain, if you decide you must. Once done, however, you never escape the consequences. It always comes back. No prayers, sacrifices, mortifications, or supplications will change it, any more than they’ll change Newton’s laws or Einstein’s. So we’re ‘good,’ as moralists would say, because we know enough to have a bloody strong reason to be good. In the last week things went too fast, and I became ‘evil’—I deliberately ordered and paid for the deaths of various people, and set in motion processes that had to lead to still other deaths. I knew what I was doing, and I knew—and still know—that I’ll pay for it. Such decisions are extremely rare in the history of the Order, and my superior, the Dealy Lama, tried to persuade me it was unnecessary this time too. I disagreed; I take the responsibility. No man or god or goddess can change it. I will pay, and I’m ready to pay, whenever and however the bill is presented.”
“Hagbard, what are you?”
“A mehum, the Saure family would say,” Hagbard grinned. “A mere human. No more. Not one jot more.”
“How much blood?” Robert Putney Drake asked. He was astonished at his own words; in all his experiments at breaking through the walls, he had never lowered himself to heckling an ignorant street preacher.
ALL THE BLOOD IN THE WORLD ISN’T ENOUGH. EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD ISN’T ENOUGH. EVEN ALL THE ANIMALS IF YOU ADDED THEM IN LINE IN SOME PAGAN OR VOODOO SACRIFICE. IT WOULDN’T BE ENOUGH. IT WOULDN’T BE ENOUGH, BROTHERS. THE GOOD BOOK SAYS SO.
“There were five of us,” John-John Dillinger was explaining to George as they trudged back toward Ingolstadt, having lost Hagbard and the Bugatti in
the crowd. “My folks kept it a secret. German people, very superstitious and secretive. They didn’t want reporters all over the place and headlines about the first quintuplets to live. The Dionne family got all that, much later.”
BECAUSE ALL THE BLOOD IN THE WORLD ISN’T EQUAL TO ONE DROP. NOT ONE DROP
The illuminatus! trilogy Page 75