Ellery’s weariness kept him from uttering the Why not? in his thoughts. Probably the old man himself could not give a reason. It was the Rule, the Law; all ritual hardened into that.
Ellery’s glance wandered to the far end of the long hall, where stood the closed door with its overhanging kerosene lamp, the door to the room the youngster with the angelic face had called the “sanquetum.” At Ellery’s glance, the Teacher said softly, “And the sanquetum. Yes.
The forbidden room, as the Successor and the community commonly name it…”
Concerning this forbidden room, the old man went on to say, the rule was even stricter. Only one person in the community, the Teacher, might ever set foot in that room; not even the Successor might enter there. It was kept always locked, and the only key to the lock was held by the Teacher. (This was by contrast with the scriptorium, the Successor’s official workroom; the door to the scriptorium might be locked, but it need not be, and to this door the Successor usually kept the only key.)
“Thus you see,” the Teacher summed up, “our governance is by the fifteen elect: the Crownsil of the Twelve, and the Superintendent, and the Successor, and he who is the leader and the guide and the healer of his flock ― thy servant, called the Teacher.”
In Ellery’s dream it came to him in an enormous waxing of light, like a sunburst, that he was not listening to a recital from some old and forgotten romance, but to the description of an actual community existing in the United States of America in the year 1944, apparently to the complete ignorance of county, state, and federal officials and to some 135,000,000 other Americans.
Searching his memory for a parallel, he could find only one: that tiny community, on its Appalachian mountaintop, which ― isolated by a land-slide that destroyed its only road to the outside world ― remained forgotten for almost a generation, until communication was re-established.
But that had come about through an act of nature, and it had lasted only a short time in the scheme of things. On the other hand, no act of nature could explain Quenan; and from what Ellery had seen and heard, it had been here ― isolated by choice ― for a very long time. Storicai, the Storesman, had been awed by an automobile; he had apparently never seen nor even heard of a wrist watch.
How long? Ellery wondered.
And, quite mechanically, it became in his thoughts: How long, O Lord?
“Then nobody here owns anything?” Ellery asked. He had lost track of time; inside the hall of the Holy Congregation House, the flickering yellow light; outside, from time to time a voice ― the soft moan of a cow, the two-note bray of a donkey ― all without urgency or clamor.
“No,” said the patriarch, “all belongs to the community.” Someone far inside Ellery’s head remarked, But that’s communism. Not the savage, specious communism of Stalinist Russia, but the freely willing way of the early Christians, and of… He struggled with the name; it was a pre-Christian group he had read about years before in Josephus. But he could not recapture it.
It was not really necessary to go back so far in time, he thought, or so far away in space. The American continent had a long history of such experiments. The eighteenth-century Ephrata Cloisters ― ”The Woman in the Wilderness,” in Pennsylvania; the Zoarite community of east-central Ohio, which lasted forty-five years; the Amana Society ― ”The Community of True Inspiration” ― founded near Buffalo in 1843, and still flourishing in Iowa in seven incorporated villages; the Shaker communal societies, remnants of which remained after more than a century and a half; the Oneida Community of “Perfectionists.” These groups shared at least two common denominators: they were nearly all founded on a religious base, and in them all possessions were owned by all.
So, apparently, in Quenan. Its religious origin and nature, although they eluded Ellery, were evident; and ― ”all belongs to the community,” as the Teacher said. As individuals its people owned nothing; whatever they grew or made, whatever service they performed, was contributed to and shared by and done for the benefit of all. In return, every Quenanite, young or old, strong or weak, received the portion of his need.
But what was “need”? And how draw the line between need and wish?
Ellery saw vaguely that to hold this line it would be necessary to maintain absolute isolation from the world outside. A man could not covet something the very existence of which was unknown to him. And to guard against the nomadic nature of the human mind, which knew no boundaries, a system of indoctrination had to be basic to the community’s way of life.Pursuing this thought with the Teacher, Ellery learned that membership in the community came automatically with birth into it. There were no proselytes in Quenan, to spread the taint of civilization. Nor was there a period of probation, for if a probationer were to fail, what would become of him? ― he could not be permitted to leave Quenan even under an oath of silence; suppose he were to break his oath and bring the world down upon them? So it was better not to admit the possibility of exclusion to begin with. As soon as the child in Quenan was old enough to enter the school, the Teacher exacted in the most solemn ceremony the child’s vow of utter consent to the ways and laws of the community, with its primitive life, its isolation, its customs and hard labor and equal opportunities ― and the sharing of all by all.
But this was merely the ritual that sealed the practice. “Give us the child for eight years,” Lenin had said to the Commissars of Education in Moscow, “and it will be a Bolshevist forever.” Hitler was proving the same thing with his parent-spying youth organizations. Train up a child in the way he should go ― the scribes of Proverbs had noted twenty-three hundred years ago ― and when he is old he will not depart from it. A Quenanite would no more question the nature of the community in which he had been rigidly reared and indoctrinated than a fish would question the nature of the sea in which it swam.
And it was of corollary interest to note that while there was the Weaver in this council, and the Herdsman, and the Carpentersmith, and the rest, there was no minister of war or defense, there were no police…
“I beg your pardon,” Ellery said, “I’m afraid I did not quite catch that.
How many did you say was the number of your people?”
“There are two hundred and three,” the Teacher said. “The Potter’s father ceased a week ago, but an elder sister of the Successor gave light to a girl-child three days since, so the number stands.” The sun sets, but the sun also rises.
In Quenan the sun rose on a communal dining hall, on even a communal bath, open at different hours for men and for women. Bathing, it appeared, was of more than mere hygienic importance here, although bodily cleanliness was a strict rule. In Quenan, as in primitive societies throughout time, bathing was also a ritual act, since what was bathed was the divine image which is man. When the Quenanites washed, they prayed; when they prayed, they washed. The washing of the body was an act of worship; worship, an act of cleansing.
“You prayed, too, I noticed, while we were eating,” Ellery said.
“So do we all. For from our bread and wine we draw the strength to do the will of the Wor’d, and it is fitting that we bless the Wor’d as we eat. And we bless the Wor’d also for holy days and fast days, for festal days and for work days, for sunrise and sunset, for the phases of the moon and the seasons, for the rain and for the dry, for the sowing of the seed and the harvest of the crops ― for all beginnings, for all endings. Blessed is the Wor’d.”
Each male Quenanite was expected to marry by the age of twenty. If he failed to do so, the Crownsil, with the consent of all concerned, chose a wife for him; and the system seemed to work. Dr. Johnson, Ellery reflected, would have been pleased. The Great Cham had remarked once that he thought marriages would work out just as well if they were made by the Lord Chancellor.
One fact of life in Quenan, said the Teacher, made necessary a departure from the marriage-at-twenty rule. Because there was a slight preponderance of women in the community, females were granted an extra four years. If they were not mar
ried by the age of twenty-four, they became the wives of the Teacher. The Teacher explained this calmly.
“Men may sometimes be ill content if another man has more than they,” he observed. “But in Quenan the Teacher is not as other men. This all believe, so all are content.”
• Ellery nodded. The Teacher, he supposed, was primarily a spiritual authority; the sacred office would transcend the man. As for the women who became his wives, they would be held in special esteem by the community, and probably they considered themselves fortunate ― wasn’t it Bernard Shaw who said that any intelligent woman would rather have a share in a superior man than the whole of an inferior one?
Ellery could not help wondering if, at his advanced age, the Teacher was still virile, like Abraham. Or did his young wives serve as mere bed-warmers against the chill of the night, as in the case of old King David?
For that matter, how was it that so healthy a community remained so small in numbers? Continence? Control? Contraception? He wanted to ask, but he did not.
“You teach,” he said instead. “What kind of textbooks do you use?”
“There is ― ” The old man paused. Then he resumed: “There is among us in common use one book only. It is our text in the school, it is our every family’s prayerbook. The manual of understanding, some call it.
The manual of knowledge, others say. Or the book of light, or the book of purity ― of unity ― of wisdom. Many are the names, one is the Book. It is the Book copied by the Successor in his scriptorium and kept repaired by the Chronicler in his library. It is the Book I have always with me.” He reached into his robe.
“Why, it’s a scroll!” Ellery exclaimed.
“It is the Book.” Carefully the Teacher unrolled a section of it.
Ellery recognized the Successor’s handwriting. It was an odd script ― odd as the local accent was odd. It was unlike any standard American penmanship ― assuming such a thing to exist ― that Ellery had ever seen. Was there a resemblance to the obsolete “Chancery hand” once used in certain English legal documents? He could not be sure. He also thought he detected the influence of some non-Western alphabet. Like so much else in Quenan, it was half revealed, half concealed. for the pasture and for the sunlight on the pasture, we bless the Wor’d. may our hands work well and our feet walk well, in the pasture, and in coming, and in going, let us not lift up our voices in anger when we work or when we walk, not against brother, not against beast or bird, think on the Wor’d which keeps our voices from anger.
“I see,” Ellery murmured. “I see…”
The prayers were written on small lengths of paper, each sewn with thread to the next until a considerable scroll was formed, and the whole rolled up and tied with a soft cord. There were no capital letters in the written text ― this caught his attention at once ― except the W of Wor’d…
Yes, definitely a W. Did this mean that he had been wrong in thinking
“Wor’d” was a corruption of “Lord”? Or had a simple pronunciation change come to reflect itself in the spelling? Or did the break in the word ― indicated in the written form by an apostrophe, in the oral form by a just perceptible pause ― trace to a missing or dropped letter? And if so, did “Wor’d” stand for “World”?
Language, accents, attitudes, forms… So many things in Quenan (the name itself) tantalized with their almost-differences. It was… yes, it was exactly like a dream, in which the powerless dreamer never quite grasped (while wholly grasping) the phantom realities of the experience.
Ellery looked up from the scroll. When he and the Teacher had sat down, what sunlight penetrated to the interior of the Holy Congregation House had come through the eastern windows. Now it was slanting through the western windows.
“It is no longer my custom to eat the midday meal,” the Teacher said presently. “The people have finished theirs, but there is always enough for one more. Will you come now and eat? I will remain with you.”
“I’m sorry that I’ve missed joining with the people.” Ellery rose, feeling hunger. And, as always these days, weariness.
“There will be a time.” The Teacher rose, too, and smiled. It seemed to Ellery a sad smile.
They paused outside the door. Ellery blinked and sneezed in the bright afternoon.
“This is the bell?” he asked. “The bell which must be rung and answered before entering the holy house?”
The Teacher nodded. The bell was perhaps a foot high. It was discolored with age, its surface scarred inside as well as out; the rim, where the clapper touched it, was worn very thin. It hung about chest-high; and by peering closely Ellery could see that two legends ran along its lip. One read:
17 The Foundary Bell Lane Whitechapel 21 and the other: From Earth’s gross ores my Tongue’s set free To sound the Hours upon the Sea An English-made ship’s bell dating from the reign of Queen Anne! When this bell had been cast, the King James Bible was a mere century old; Shakespeare had walked the crooked streets of London during the childhood of some very old man; George Washington’s birth was twenty years in the future. Through what perilous seas forlorn had the bell sounded its note through the centuries? And how (most marvelous of all) had it come here, to Quenan, in the American desert?
Ellery asked the Teacher, but the patriarch shook his head. As it was, so had it been. He did not know.
And, duly, Ellery marveled and went on to feed his stomach. The communal dining hall was like a barn with many windows, full of light and air and hearty smells. The food was simple and filling ― a vegetable soup, chili and pinto beans, steamed corn with butter, stewed fruit, and another variety of herb tea. A young married couple waited on them; apparently this was a rotational duty. Wide-eyed, reserved, yet shyly expectant, with proper deference toward the Teacher, they gave most of their attention to the guest, the outsider. The only outsider they had ever seen.
Throughout Ellery’s meal the Teacher prayed silently.
When Ellery was finished, the Teacher led him outside; and for the remainder of the afternoon ― until the shadows inundated the land and the windows began to sprout candles ― the old man conducted him about the Valley, answering Ellery’s questions. Up and down the inner rim of Crucible Hill they went, surveying the cultivated fields, greeting the people at their toil. Ellery was fascinated. He had never seen so many different shades of green in a state of nature. And everything was aromatic with growing things and sagebrush smoke ― the wood of the sagebrush was brought in from the desert hills, the Teacher told him, to feed the fires of Quenan…
The dream quality intensified; in one day the world outside had become invisible in the mists, and the mists themselves had almost been forgotten. It was as if Quenan and all that it contained, including himself, were the world. (Had Adam and Eve known the nature of their Garden until they were cast out of it?)
On his curious sublevel the old Ellery kept musing. Where were art, and music, and literature, and science in this capsule in space-time? They were not here. But also not here ― so far as he could tell ― were discontent, and hatred, and vice, and greed, and war. The truth, it seemed to him, was that here in the lost valley, under the leadership of the all-wise patriarch, existed an earthly Eden whose simple guides were love of neighbors, obedience to the law, humility, mercy, and kindness.
And, above all, faith in the Wor’d.
It was late that night when Ellery finally voiced the question he had struggled with from the beginning.
They stood in the open doorway of the Holy Congregation House, with the soft uproar of the night in their ears. A sweet odor rose from the damp earth, resting from the day. The small glow of the lamp over the sanquetum door shone behind them in the quiet building.
“You are troubled, Elroi,” the Teacher said.
“Yes,” said Ellery. “Yes… It seems so long ago that we met. But it was only yesterday, at sunset, on the crest of the hill.” The Teacher nodded. His remarkable eyes pierced the darkness as if it were not there.
“You spoke
then as if you had been expecting me, Teacher.”
“That is so.”
“But how could you have known I was coming? I didn’t know it myself. I had no idea I was going to take the wrong turn ― ” The Teacher said, “It was written.”
So might a priest of the Toltec have answered Cortes, thought Ellery; and instantly wondered why the thought had come to him. Cortes, whose armor glittered like the sun god whose return had been predicted. Cortes, who had brought to the faithful of Quetzalcoatl only death and destruction. Ellery stirred.
“You spoke, Teacher,” he said cautiously (was it out of some atavistic fear that he might unleash evil merely by speaking of it?), you spoke of a great trouble that would befall your Valley and your people. And you said that I was sent to prepare ― ’’
“To prepare the way. Yes. And to glorify the Wor’d.”
“But what trouble, Teacher? And where is it written?” The patriarch’s eyes rested on him. “In the Book of Mk’h.”
“I beg your pardon?” Ellery said. “The Book of what?”
“The Book of Mk’h,” the Teacher said. “The Book which was lost.” A little drawer opened somewhere in Ellery’s head: the fact that the Book was lost and not is lost was noted and filed away. “Mk’h…”he said.
“May I ask how that word is spelled, Teacher?”
The old man spelled it, having some difficulty with the hesitation sign.
“Mk’h,” he said again, stressing the hesitation.
“Mk’h.” Ellery repeated. “What does it mean, Teacher?” The patriarch said simply, “I do not know.”
“I see.” How could the old man not know? “In what language is it, Teacher?”
The old man said, “Neither do I know that.”
This was awkward. And Ellery bent to the task, examining the mystery. Mk’h… Could it be, he thought suddenly, some pristine or even aborted form of Micah? The Book of Micah! Sixth of the books of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament… Micah, who had prophesied that out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old… And this man shall be the peace…!
And on the Eighth Day Page 5