Edgar Doctorow - All the Time in the World

After lunch, the musicians retired and everyone gathered before the Tabernacle. The Seven Elders arranged themselves on wooden chairs facing the assemblage. One by one, they rose to speak. Their pronouncement was along the following lines: The prophet had all but warned us this would come to pass. He said he would not be among the blessed who would reside in the Holy City. That he has gone so soon is a stunning blow to those of us who loved him, as we all loved him, but we must love him more now that he has done this thing. That is our Imperative. We cannot question what he has done, for it is nothing else but his final sacrifice. He has taken into himself all the sins of the world that we had accumulated and returned with them to the world that we might be made righteous in the eyes of God. Nor should we mourn him: if we live as we have lived, and learn as we have learned, wherever he is will he not still be in our midst? For this reason, from this day forward we Elders will speak in his voice. We will say his saying and think his thinking. And the prophecy that was is the prophecy that is. For he has cast the stone down and the key is here on the table that will open up the door to the Kingdom of God. And when the four horsemen come riding over the land and the plagues rise like a miasma from the earth and the sun turns black and the moon blood red, and when firestorms engulf whole cities and the nuclear warriors of the world consume one another, the prophet shall be with us and in the carnage and devastation we will be untouched. For God came to earth one day as a tornado, as a whirlwind that spun around this humble man, whose goodness and moral stature only God could see to be His prophet. And we who are your Elders saw it with our own eyes. And we tell you when God comes down again, He will not be a whirlwind, He will be the resplendent self-illuminating city of His glory and His peace, and we who have lived to the prophecy of Walter John Harmon will walk down these pastures and reside there forever.

The Elders were effective. I could see resolution firming up in the postures and facial expressions of the members. Many glances were sent my way. I found myself basking in the reflected glory of my faithless wife, who had been chosen by Walter John Harmon to join him in the ultimate sin, his betrayal of the Community.

A DAY OR TWO LATER, when one of the women went into the prophet’s house to clean it up, she noticed something under a chair that had been overlooked in the excitement: a pencil.

Our prophet had never wanted anything written.

The Elder who was summoned discovered something else: in the fireplace, half buried in the ashes, were three sheets of paper that had curled and were slightly charred on the edges but were still, miraculously, intact.

On these pages Walter John Harmon had laid out plans for a wall to be built around our Community. He’d provided sketches and measurements. The Gate down by the highway was to be drawn back to just one hundred and ten yards from our buildings. The wall was to be of stone, three cubits thick and four cubits high. The stones were to be gathered from the pasture and from brooks and streams. They were to be bonded with a cement mixture whose proportions he had carefully indicated. And then, a cryptic sentence written at the bottom of the last page of instructions added to the mystery: This wall for when the time comes, is what it said.

Clearly, this was a discovery of unsettling magnitude. It brought forth only questions. A wall of stone did not accord with the Ideal of impermanence that had guided all our previous construction. What did that mean? Did it amount to a new Ideal? And when would what time come? But he had thrown the plans into the fire. Why?

We simply didn’t know what to do about these plans. Had they not been discarded, almost certainly they would constitute a Demand.

The pages were preserved in a clear plastic folder and put in the safe of the business office pending further study.

In the meantime, we had to sort out our overall situation. We had been left with very little operating capital. All surrendered estates of members were made liquid through a succession of trusts and routinely placed in the prophet’s name in several numbered Swiss bank accounts to protect against legal incursion. He had personally dispensed sums as they were applied for by our financial Elder, Rafael Altman. We grew our own food and clothed ourselves humbly, but we were in arrears for the material costs of our building program, which had gone on more or less continuously as new members arrived. Perhaps we would not have that many more new members for a while. But several of our parcels of valley land for the descent of the Holy City were heavily mortgaged. And were we to lose even one of the standing civil suits against us, we would be terribly vulnerable.

As the weeks went by, it became apparent we faced a long cold winter of untold hardship. Our infirmary, with its one doctor and two nurses, tended to a host of ailing children. There were a number of cases of flu. Elder Al Samuels succumbed to pneumonia and we buried him in the rise behind the orchard. The little bent-over man with the piping voice was well loved and the fact that he was almost ninety when he passed was no consolation to the Community. My own sadness was only slightly appeased when the surviving Elders elevated me to their company. We need younger blood, Elder Sanders said to me as he gripped my arm. Our witness is passed to you by decree.

IT IS NOW JANUARY of the New Year and I write secretly at night in the privacy of my house. Perhaps, as the prophet says, the time for documentation comes only when the world overtakes us. So be it. This has not to do with a loss of faith — mine is strong and does not give way. My belief in Walter John Harmon and the truth of his prophecy does not falter. Yes, I say to the skeptics: It is entirely unlikely that someone as uneducated and hapless and imperfect as this simple garage mechanic can have designed such an inspired worship. And only the sacred touch of God upon his brow can explain it.

The Community as it huddles on these snowy plains is smaller, but by that fact tighter and more resolute, and we gather each morning to thank God for our joyous discovery of Him. But the world is overwhelming, and if we do not survive, at least this testimony, and others that may be written, will guide future generations to our faith.

Given the general age and infirmity of the Elders, I now function as the managing partner functions in a law office. And Walter John Harmon has come to live through me and will speak in my voice. I have studied the three pages of his plans and I have made the decision that in the first days of thaw we will send our people out to the holy pastures to collect the rocks and boulders for our wall. And one of the newer members, a retired army colonel to whom I’ve given the plans, has gone out and paced the land. He says it is amazing that our prophet has no military experience. For, as designed, these breastworks take every advantage of the terrain and give us positions for a devastating enfilade.

We are assured of a clear and unimpeded field of fire.

MAMA SAID I WAS THENCEFORTH TO BE HER NEPHEW, AND TO call her Aunt Dora. She said our fortune depended on her not having a son as old as eighteen who looked more like twenty. Say Aunt Dora, she said. I said it. She was not satisfied. She made me say it several times. She said I must say it believing she had taken me in since the death of her widowed brother, Horace. I said, I didn’t know you had a brother named Horace. Of course I don’t, she said with an amused glance at me. But it must be a good story if I could fool his son with it.

I was not offended as I watched her primp in the mirror, touching her hair as women do, although you can never see what afterward is different.