Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

It has been said, I forget by whom, that you can’t throw a stone in the City of Montreal without hitting either a church or a whore house. I would soon enough find out for myself the truth of that statement, for it was announced at noon mess that our regiment was to be allowed a supervised leave, and we would be escorted to the city for Easter services in one of the grand ancient Dominion churches there.

“Do Jews celebrate Easter?” I asked Sam as we marched to the outskirts of Montreal. “I don’t suppose they do.”

“It would be surprising if they did,” Sam agreed, “though we have our own holiday about this time of year, which is called Pass-Over.”

“What event does it mark, if not the Crucifixion and Resurrection?”

“The fact that the Jews were exempted from the plagues that fell upon Egypt.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s something to be grateful for,” recalling my Bible studies under Ben Kreel. “Those were unpleasant plagues, and not to be taken lightly.”

“More than unpleasant,” Julian chimed in, and I was glad that the sound of tramping feet, though muffled by the damp ground, was loud enough to prevent anyone eavesdropping while Julian dilated on this delicate subject. “ Inventive, I would say, almost to the point of madness. Insects―boils―the butchery of children―such work by any other agency would be considered an example of unexcelled sadism rather than celestial justice.”

I was quietly shocked (though hardly surprised) by this fresh apostasy. “God is jealous by nature, Julian,” I reminded him. “It says so in the text.”

“Oh yes,” Julian agreed, “ jealous, certainly, but also forgiving ; merciful, but vengeful ; wrathful, but loving ―in fact just about anything we can imagine Him to be. That’s the Paradox of Monotheism, as I call it. Contrast a Christian with a nature-worshipping pagan: if the pagan’s cornfield is ravaged by a wind-storm he can blame the bad manners of the Cyclone-God; and if the weather is kind he addresses his thanks to Mother Sunshine, or some such; and all this, though not sensible, has a kind of rude logic to it. But with the invention of monotheism a single Deity is forced to take responsibility for every contradictory joy and tragedy that comes down the turnpike. He is obliged to be the God of the hurricane and the gentle breeze together, present in every act of love or violence, in every welcome birth or untimely death.”

“I could do with a little less Mother Sunshine at the moment,” remarked Sam, applying a handkerchief to his brow, for the day had grown warm, and the march was tiring.

“But you can’t blame the Jews for celebrating their exemption from His wrath,” I protested.

“No,” Julian said, “no more than I can blame the sole survivor of a train wreck for crying out a heartfelt, ‘Thank God I was allowed to live!’―though the same God who spared him must therefore have abstained from preventing the wreck, or rescuing any other person from it. The impulse to gratitude on the part of the survivor is understandable, but shortsighted.”

“I don’t see how monotheism makes it any worse, though. It seems to me, once you start multiplying your gods, you might not know just where to stop. A crowd of gods so numerous you can’t recognize most of them seems hardly better than no god at all. Especially once they begin to bicker among themselves. Don’t you often tell me to seek out the simplest explanation for a thing?”

“One is a simpler number than a dozen,” Julian admitted. “But none is simpler than one. ”

“That’s enough of this, thank you,” said Sam.

“Why Sam,” said Julian, grinning mischievously, “are you afraid of a little Philosophical Conversation?”

“This is Theology, not Philosophy―an altogether more dangerous subject, Julian; and I’m not so much afraid of the loose talk as I am of the loose tongue behind it.”

“Where is the Dominion that we should censor ourselves?”

“Where is the Dominion? The Dominion is everywhere―you know that! The Dominion is at the head of this very march,” referring to our newly-installed Dominion Officer, one Major Lampret, who strode before us, a handsome man in a handsome uniform. [A Dominion Officer, who is by definition a commissioned officer trained at the Dominion Academy in Colorado Springs, wears the standard uniform of an Infantryman of his rank, but adorned with red-and-purple pipings and blazons, and a pair of silver Angel’s Wings pinned to the chest, and the soft wide-brimmed hat sometimes called a “chaplain’s crown.”]

Julian might have insisted on continuing the conversation, if only for the purpose of aggravating Sam, but by this time we had come upon a great iron bridge, by which we crossed a body of water so immense that I could hardly credit its christening as a River. Vessels from many nations moved beneath that bridge, some with immense white sails and some powered by boilers, some warping toward the Port of Montreal and others bound for the inland Great Lakes trade or for the wide ocean far to the east; and beyond this bridge lay the astonishing City of Montreal, and it was the City that finally drew all of our attention―all of mine, at least.

I would see bigger cities in my life, and travel farther from home; but as Montreal was the first true City I had seen I could not help but contrast it with Williams Ford. By that measure, it was immense. And it had once been even larger, Julian reminded me, for we had all morning passed through a landscape that was essentially one vast Tip, played-out and burned-over, with scrub brush and low trees overlying what must once have been zones of industry or sprawling suburbs. What remained was only the core of the city as it was known to the Secular Ancients, all its rind and peelings having been stripped away.

But that central core preserved many wonderful antique structures. “The buildings are so tall!” I could not help exclaiming, and Julian said, “Though once much taller. Even these buildings have been scavenged, Adam.” He drew my attention from the stark concrete walls, complexly chambered, to the crude peaked roofs above them with their fluted red-clay tiles and slumping chimneys: “You see how the roof is less sturdy than the building under it, though considerably newer? There’s nothing much over four or five stories tall here (yes, yes, ‘tall enough,’ and stop gawking, Adam, you’ll embarrass yourself), but some of these buildings were once almost ten times higher, the greater part of them having been taken down by inches for their wood, wire, and aluminum. Even their steel frames were eventually whittled down and sent to the re-rolling mills, leaving only the subdivided stumps for people to inhabit. If you think this city is magnificent, Adam, conjure up in your mind’s eye the city it once was. Run the decades back and you’d see marvels of steel and glass―man-made mountains―a city halfway to infiltrating the sky itself. New York City is the same,” he added with evident pride, “only larger.”

I was not daunted by his comparisons, however, for modern-day Montreal seemed quite astonishing enough, with its bricked or cobbled streets and busy occupants. Let Julian dwell on the glories of the past―there was enough here to occupy the inquisitive mind.

The people were almost as surprising as the city in which they resided. Because we marched in a unit our regiment made a kind of martial parade, and the inhabitants of the city stood back (not always graciously) to accommodate our passage, while horses and wagons took alternative routes at the sound of our approach. The women of the city wore colorful clothes, dyed all the colors of the rainbow, and seemed both aloof and alluring as they strolled through the vernal sunshine and passed in and out of the innumerable shops and markets. The men dressed more conservatively―more peahen than peacock ―but their trousers and shirts and coats were clean and pressed. Even the children were well-dressed, and only a few of them went barefoot. I asked Julian, “Are these folks Aristos?”