To Rouse Leviathan

by Matt Cardin

  Darby returned a moment later and headed for the bar yet again. “More, anyone?” he called.

  “None for me,” I replied, as did the other two. Then, suddenly, Mike was rising from his perch on the hearth and saying it was probably time for him to go as well. I shook his hand, and he shook Mr. Snyder’s hand, and then Darby saw him out, leaving me alone with the old librarian for the first time. The gray-haired man sat quietly in his plush chair by the window and held up his wine glass to examine it by the light of the fire. The blood-colored liquid cast a murky red glow across the contours of his face, and I blinked. His body seemed to fade in my vision, while the image of his face still hung in the air. For an instant I had the impression that I was looking at a red mask, which hovered in mid-air before the black double panes holding the night at bay behind it. A shadow of a smile seemed to flicker across its lips.

  Then Darby re-entered the room and the illusion passed. Definitely too much to drink, and also too much delay in my departure. I rose again and began muttering my excuses for leaving so early. What time was it anyway? A glance at the grandfather clock showed it to be ten o’clock, straight up. The chimes started to sound even as I looked.

  “Do you think you can stay a bit longer?” Darby asked me. He had stepped up to the fire and was gazing into its glowing depths. Something in his manner suggested he might have a sincere desire for my company, and sincerity being an uncommon attitude for him, I had to wonder what he might be wanting to tell me.

  “I may not be able to drive home at all if I don’t do it now,” I said.

  “Then stay the night.” He said it without looking away from the fire. “You know I have the space.” He sat down on the hearth and sank into himself. His shoulders wilted, and he looked like nothing so much as a forlorn little boy.

  I hesitated. I told myself to be reasonable and leave while I still could. Then I took a breath, opened my mouth, and acquiesced—not to my own better judgment, but to his request. It had been a bizarre evening already. Why not go for broke?

  “Thank you,” he said in a quiet voice.

  4

  And we sat there. At first I thought we might have our own relaxed conversation now that the others were gone; that we might catch up on old times, laugh about old college antics; that I might berate him for manipulating and humiliating me earlier. But we simply sat there, I in my stuffed chair and he on the brick hearth, while the clock ticked away the seconds.

  Seconds became minutes. Soon the clock chimed the Westminster first quarter, and still we sat in silence. The clock chimed the half hour. And then the third quarter. If I had been sitting there sober, I would have long since been fidgeting and trying to make conversation. But with the aid of my wine, I was uncommonly able to sink into a semi-trance state of temporal flow. My eyes drooped, the orange glow of the fire filled my head, and time glided by like steel blades on ice.

  When the clock chimed eleven, I awoke and realized Darby had said something. I asked him to repeat himself, and my voice came out as a croak.

  “Do you want to know the real story of my uncle’s acquaintance with that old preacher, and with the Egyptian?” he asked. For a moment I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but then the memory resurfaced, and I nodded, still in a daze.

  He started to speak, and it was in a solemn tone, with no trace of his former jovial mood. “It was in 1944, during the war. My uncle’s business interests in the Middle East were threatened. He was my great-uncle, actually, my grandmother’s brother. He was very young and very stupid, and he managed to arrange an illegal passage for himself to Cairo for the purpose of meeting with one of his business associates and discussing how best to protect their investments. As fate would have it, he made the trip from the United States with a stranger, a young American preacher who was traveling to the Middle East for his own reasons. This preacher eventually fathered a daughter, who went on to give birth to two of my guests this evening.”

  He would have gone on, but the significance of this last statement suddenly struck me. “Wait. Wait a minute. Do you mean to say that Barbara and Jim are siblings?”

  “Of course.” He gave me a quizzical look. “When did I say otherwise?”

  I just shook my head and indicated for him to go on. The fact that I had so badly misinterpreted that portion of the evening’s social dynamic truly bothered me for some reason.

  “My uncle,” he said, “and their grandfather talked a lot during the steamship voyage. It seems that Richard—that was their grandfather—had some very peculiar theological ideas that piqued my uncle’s interest. He was always ragingly curious about such matters. They became friends, of a sort, and when Richard met Anwar, my uncle was present.

  “I think the meeting with Anwar wasn’t accidental. I think it was the purpose of Richard’s trip. He was a queer bird, from what my uncle told me about him. However strange he may have sounded from Barbara’s description tonight, I think the reality of his company must have surpassed it. My uncle said he was always talking about something he called ‘the truth hidden in flesh.’”

  “What in the world could that mean?” I mumbled. My voice sounded like it issued from the hollow bottom of a bucket, and the bucket was my head.

  Darby smiled faintly and looked at me askance. “I thought you might be interested. Let me show you something.” He left the room for a moment, and then returned carrying a book. As he approached my chair, I glanced toward the window and experienced a jolt of surprise to see Mr. Snyder still seated in his chair. I had completely forgotten about him. With head drooped forward and chin resting peacefully on his breast, he appeared to be sleeping.

  Darby followed my eyes, and gave a dismissive wave. “Never mind him. He’s been out for a long time.” He set the book in my lap, and I saw that it was a huge, black, leather-bound Bible with gold letters impressed into the cover. They said simply “Holy Bible.”

  He retook his seat on the hearth. “That belonged to my uncle. He marked several passages that he remembered from conversations with Richard. Look up Leviticus, chapter ten, verses one and two.”

  The binding of the ancient tome creaked as I opened the cover. The title page predictably announced it as the Authorized Version. I flipped to the named passage and found it underlined in trembling black ink. “Read it aloud,” Darby said, and I opened my mouth, but then hesitated, feeling an inexplicable reluctance to speak the words with Mr. Snyder present, even in his somnolent condition. After a moment, I simply stuffed this feeling to the back of my mind and did as Darby had requested.

  “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD which he had commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.” I looked up at him and waited for him to explain his interest in this passage. It was obscure, yes, hardly the usual pulpit fodder for your typical Sunday morning worship service. But other than that I saw nothing particularly compelling about it.

  “Fire from the Lord,” he said softly. “For nothing more than a bungled offering. Look up Numbers, chapter eleven, verse one.” I dutifully did so and read it aloud.

  “And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.”

  I had barely finished with this passage when he named another for me to read, and then another, and still another. The stately Elizabethan phrases began to roll off my tongue more easily the more I read, their dignified cadences contrasting strangely with the grotesque subject matter.

  “Numbers 16:31–35. And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to th
em, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, lest the earth swallow us up also. And there came out fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.

  “First Kings 18:38. Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

  “Exodus 3:2. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”

  By this time my head was humming with death and flames and burnt flesh. I looked up at Darby and saw him watching me closely.

  “How do you think it would feel to be that bush?” he asked. I stared back at him without comprehending. “To be burned by fire and yet not consumed,” he explained. I reflected for a moment and then shrugged, having no idea what he wanted from me.

  “From his new preacherly acquaintance,” he said, resuming his former storyline, “my uncle learned a deep secret of the Jewish God. Or at least, what Richard himself took to be a deep secret. The God who created the world, who created life and flesh in Genesis, also implanted within that life the possibility of corruption. He made the possibility of decay, dissolution, putrefaction. As a matter of fact, that is the truth found in flesh. This phenomenon we call ‘life’ is merely negative entropy, a rottenness held temporarily in abeyance by the power or principle known to the ancient Jews as Yahweh, and known to us simply as God. Death, the grave, the riddling of these soft bodies by gnawing worms, is simply the inevitable transition between things as they are now and things as they are in reality. Life and health are themselves unnatural.”

  He paused, slightly out of breath, and looked to me for a response. I passed a hand across my face and sucked in air sharply, as if waking from a dream. “And you really believe this?”

  After an almost imperceptible pause, he laughed a bit too loudly. “Well, Richard certainly believed it. And so did my uncle, eventually. You see, when the two of them encountered the Egyptian Anwar in old Cairo, my uncle thought it was mere chance, and he was greatly impressed at the way Richard’s occult theology corresponded to Anwar’s ideas. As I said earlier, I now suspect that Richard and Anwar had been carrying on a long correspondence, and that their meeting was hardly accidental. But they must have deliberately kept this from my uncle. Whatever the case, my uncle was sucked into this strange world of occult Christianity, and when he died a short time later, he had bequeathed a huge portion of his fortune to Richard for the advancement of the newly formed Temple of Jehovah.”

  “Darby.” I said his name with gravity, cutting him off. He stopped and looked at me.

  “Darby—what does this have to do with anything? Why are you telling me all of this?”

  He shut his mouth and studied my face for a moment. Then he turned to look into the fire again. After a few minutes of silence, I began to fear that I had upset or offended him.

  “We’ve been friends for a long time,” I said in a softer tone. “When you fell into that depression, or whatever it was, and fell out of contact for all those years, I was truly worried about you. I didn’t even know where you were. I did try to keep in contact, you know.”

  He remained silent, as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Where were you?” I finally asked.

  After a moment he spoke. “Would it matter if I told you I was overseas trying to save the family fortune?” His voice was like deadwood. He turned to look at me, and I couldn’t understand the anger in his eyes. “Would it matter at all?”

  “Where were you?” I repeated.

  “Egypt,” he replied, with eyes as hard as Barbara’s.

  I was at a loss for words to mollify him. “Look,” I finally said, “regardless of what differences we’ve had over the years, you were my closest friend. And you still are, as far as I’m concerned.”

  He turned his face to the side, and the fire behind him made his profile a silhouette tinged with burning gold. “Are you saying you forgive me?”

  “I’m saying I missed you.”

  Then he turned toward me again, and the room seemed to darken. “Don’t say that.” His voice was a whisper, almost a hiss. “Sincerity sets it free. Insincerity is a wall of protection.”

  “Sets what free?” I asked. A throbbing pinpoint of fear began to make its presence known at the base of my neck.

  “Don’t you understand?” He rose to his feet and took a step forward. “In Anwar’s theology, God is actually kept out of the world by the artifice of religious practice. God created this world from chaos, created life from slime, and now He has to be kept separate from His creation in order for anything at all to survive. God, Yahweh, whatever you want to call it, is the Truth with a capital T. And when absolute Truth breaks through into this world of lies. . . .” He left this thought unfinished.

  “Now wait,” I said, struggling to speak reason to him. “It’s only a myth. Your uncle was foolish for believing it, remember?” Mr. Snyder suddenly emitted a loud snore, and I nearly sprang from my chair in fright.

  “There’s a lot more to it than what you just read,” Darby said. “Throughout the Bible. Wars. Plagues. Bloodshed on a scale that can still horrify even here in the aftermath of the bloodiest of all centuries. The tale of Truth breaking through into the world of flesh. Fire from the Lord, the cleansing fire that burns away the false to reveal the true nature of all it touches. And when it touches flesh itself. . . .” Another thought gripped him before the current one could finish. “It’s described as a plague, too. Surely you know that? Look up Numbers, chapter sixteen, verses forty-six and forty-nine.”

  “Darby—” I tried to find words to calm him, but the attempt only excited him more.

  “Look it up!” he snarled. When I still hesitated, he sprang forward, snatched the book from my grasp, and ripped open the pages. Bits of gilt-edged paper fluttered to the floor as he read.

  “For there is wrath gone out from the LORD. The plague is begun. . . . Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven hundred.” He began turning and ripping pages faster and faster, whipping himself into a frenzy as he found passage after passage to support his delusion.

  “And the first angel went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem: their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched: and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”

  This last phrase struck a strange chord in me, as if I had recently heard it: “an abhorring unto all flesh.” A cold rumble of nausea washed through my gut as I struggled to recall why the speaking of those words should affect me so strongly.

  As I wavered helplessly in my confusion, Darby began to calm down. His feverish tirade of quotations stopped, and he looked strangely at the Bible he was clutching with white-knuckled fingers. For an instant I thought he was making to fling it into the fire. But then he simply laid it on the hearth and stepped away.

  “What really scares me,” he said after a moment’s silence, “what really gets under my skin on long nights in this damned house, is that the ancient Jews saw no division between the body and the soul. It’s all so easy to read these plagues and sufferings as metaphors of spiritual corruption. But to the Jews, a corruption of the soul and a corruption of the body were the same thing. It’s such a carnal religion, all blood and bones and sweat and semen.” He looked at me. “You don’t know how
my uncle died. How he was when we found him.” I thought he would go on, but he simply stared at me with eyes that gleamed.

  “Do you believe in family curses?” he asked. I had no answer. “I do,” he said. Then he turned to look out the window, with Mr. Snyder still napping in front of it, and I had a sudden insight into him that almost brought tears to my eyes. There he stood, in the middle of the great room of his mansion, in the midst of the collective possessions of at least three generations. He had no surviving family, no parents or siblings, just servants and so-called friends like the ones at tonight’s party. (Like me?) Also, he had the memory of a religion-crazed uncle to torment him on lonely nights. For the first time in our many years of friendship, I realized that he was probably the loneliest person I had ever known.

  The clock clicked, whirred, and began to play the full hour. Twelve chimes. We looked at each other.

  “The guest room is fully made up,” he said. “Upstairs and to the left. You remember.”

  “What about Mr. Snyder?” I asked. We both regarded him still sleeping peacefully with his wine glass resting between his legs.

  “He’ll sleep until morning,” Darby said.

  Out of nowhere, a question surfaced in my mind, a question that seemed unaccountably important. “Where did you meet him?” Darby, who had been heading for the hallway, stopped.

  “At the library. He stepped up and asked if I needed assistance. I still don’t know why I invited him to the party.” He paused and his brow furrowed as he recalled the incident. “Come to think of it, he sort of invited himself. Now, how did he know that I was having a party?”

  Another question came to me, and once again it seemed of burning importance, even though I could think of no significance to it. “Darby, what position did the Egyptian man hold in his church? What did he actually do for them?”