Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Egan patted Tabor’s forearm.

“Inconceivable,” he said. “ Credo quia absurdum .”

Pablo was tired of anger. His anxiety was dissolving into a gloom like that of the grave. He would have to take more speed and suffer the loss of rest, risk the terrors at the bottom of the pill bottle. There was rum and that might help. He felt as though he were cringing behind his own eyes.

“Shining,” Egan said. “Shook foil.”

Pablo put the pill in his mouth and tried to swallow it. His mouth seemed to be stuffed with dry straw; the stalks hurt his throat. When he closed his eyes there were small whirling lights. The Place of the Skull. I am the drug, he thought.

“Why are You so unavailable?” Egan sang to the forest. “Why must it be so?”

“Who you talking to?” Pablo demanded.

Egan gave him a sad, reassuring smile. Both of them waited, as though for an answer.

“Pity the Weitlings of the world, Pablo. They’re victims of things as they are. Some chemical in the blood, a shortage of sugar in the brain cells and they get the process whole. What they see is real enough, it’s so overwhelming it must seem like God to them. You can’t look on what they see and not run mad.” He turned in the direction Weitling had gone, watched for a moment and then faced the fire again. “They’ve been elected. Priests, because they’ve seen it, poor bastards. That’s what Satan is, Pablo. Satan is the way things are. Remember Mephistopheles, eh? ‘Why this is hell nor are we out of it.’ ”

Pablo closed his eyes and shivered.

“We say they’re deluded but reality’s their problem. Unlike you and me, they see it plain — no breakdown, no story material to go with it, so they have to make up their own story. It burns out their minds and they have to call it revelation. Primitive association, sympathetic magic — whatever comes to hand. You know how it is, boy, everybody has to make suffering mean something. The other guy’s firstborn, paschal lambs, sacrifice. But that’s not revelation — not by a long shot. Revelation is something else.” Egan was silent for a moment, then he opened his mouth as though he were about to speak.

Pablo was at the point of screaming. “What is it, for Christ’s sake?”

“It’s all right, Pablo, do you see? That’s what it comes to. Everything is all right. In spite of appearances. There’s no other conclusion.”

“I don’t know who you people are,” Pablo said despairingly, “but you all are crazy. I thought you could help me out. I got no business in this freak show.”

“Pablo, listen, it’s all right. It’s all right for you too. We’ll take care of you. You’re among friends.”

The old man’s eyes gave him no peace. He searched the field of vision for escape, a token of reason, a clue, the light of dawn. Things overcame him.

“Hey,” he asked the priest, “what did you say this was a temple of?”

Egan looked blank for a moment.

“Oh. Oh, the demiurge. A kind of metaphor. At least I think so but who knows, eh? Another theological system.” He laughed to himself.

Pablo felt the hairs on his neck rise.

“You said … about Satan. Didn’t you say about Satan?”

“Same sort of thing.”

“Jesus,” Pablo said. His heart beat faster.

“These systems, Pablo … words for the process. It’s what it comes down to that matters.”

Pablo Tabor looked hard into the shadows. A numbing excitement thickened his blood.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I’m in this. Me. I am.”

“Of course,” Egan said.

“Something is going on here,” Pablo said breathlessly. “You’re right, old man. Something far out and special. Things are going on here.”

“Yes indeed,” the priest told him. “You can feel it now, can’t you?”

Pablo trembled, fixed between elation and terror.

“I do feel it,” he declared, nodding furiously. “Fuckin’-A.”

“It’s the world moving in time,” Father Egan explained to him. “One gets these little epiphenomenal jolts. Petty spookery in a way. But underneath it all — there is something.” He clapped Pablo lightly on the shoulder. “It’s in the moment. Take it in your hands, my boy.”

Tabor stared wide-eyed into the fire. In the dancing flames he saw dragons, winged horses, a choir of demiurges and such things.

“It was meant to be,” he said in a choked voice. “It was all meant to be like this.” He put his hand to his face and shook his head. He felt happy.

“This is what I came down here for,” Pablo told Father Egan. “This is how come I went over the hill. It was all leading up to this, see? There was a goddamn planned purpose to everything.” He thought of the diamond in his pocket and touched it.

“Surely,” Father Egan said.

“When I shot those dogs,” Pablo explained raptly, “I started this whole thing going. I was headed here from that time.”

“You were trying to get back, Pablo. Like everyone.”

“Then I came down, see. I got to the Cloud . I was learning all the time but I didn’t know it then.”

Father Egan nodded.

Dizzy with recognition, Pablo stared at him in wonder.

“St. Joost, I met this old Jew. He was dying right in front of me. He was telling me stuff I couldn’t understand, but I understand it now. He gave me something.” Pablo reached into his pocket and took out the diamond. “I wouldn’t show this to nobody down here unless I thought they were all right and I think you’re all right and I’m showing it to you. That old Jew gave me this here.” Egan looked at the diamond. “I ain’t giving this to you, understand? The old man gave it to me for my boy. It’s worth a whole lot of money — you can tell that just by looking — but it means something, I think. It’s got a meaning, like.”

“Let’s see,” Egan said, “what would it mean?” He took hold of Pablo’s hand cupping the stone and held his own hand under it. “The jewel is in the lotus,’ perhaps that’s what it means. The eternal in the temporal. The Boddhisattva declining nirvana out of compassion. Contemplating the ignorance of you and me, eh? That’s a metaphor of our Buddhist friends.”

Pablo’s eyes glazed over. “Holy shit,” he said. “Santa Maria.” He stared at the diamond in his palm with passion.

“Hey,” he said to the priest, “diamonds are forever! You heard of that, right? That means something, don’t it?”

“I have heard it,” Egan said. “Perhaps it has a religious meaning.”

“Listen,” Pablo said, and swallowed. “Can you tell me about my past lives? That’s what I’d really like to know about.”

“Well,” Egan said, “I’m afraid not. I don’t know anything about past lives, or even if we have them.”

“You kidding me?” Pablo said. “I thought you knew about this kind of stuff.”

“Not about past lives. One life at a time with me.”

“Somebody’s gonna tell me someday,” Pablo said. “I’m gonna find it all out, man, because I’m meant to. People gonna be coming to me to find it out.” He yawned. The fever of revelation was a drug of its own, stronger than the Callahans’ pills. It made him feel strong and calm, peaceful, as though he could not be turned around.

“Maybe so, Pablo. Maybe you’re the one with the talent and energy to know about it. We hold our treasure in earthen vessels.”

“Fuckin’-A,” Pablo said.

The fatigue he felt was no longer threatening. He spread himself out on the coarse grass beside the fire and closed his eyes.

Egan put a hand on Pablo’s forehead and saw the youth shiver. For the first time he saw the wound on Tabor’s leg, and though he could not determine its gravity in the firelight, it was obviously dirty and untended.