E. Doctorow - Sweet Land Stories

I could have told them all the prophet was gone when, the night before, I heard Betty rise from her bed, dress, and slip out the door. I listened, and in a while, in the darkness, I heard through the clear cold night the distant sound of an engine turning over, revving up.

WHEN IT WAS discovered that the prophet had left with my wife, I was called before the Elders. I was invited to join them in their councils. Perhaps they believed the cuckolded husband was enlightened as they were not. Perhaps they thought he was important in other ways. Surely the challenge to no member’s faith could have been greater than the challenge to mine, and if I could forbear and sing the praises of God, who would not sing with me?

Whatever their reasoning, I took solace in their dispensation. My personal grief was subsumed. For the sake of my sanity I wanted to find resolution and strength from this crisis. But I also understood quite clearly and unemotionally that were I to think of Betty’s betrayal with a forgiving spirit and concentrate on its larger meaning, I would both ease my heart and put myself forward in the minds of the Elders as an exemplar of our Ideals. In a community such as ours one’s moral currency might someday be exchanged for an executive role.

The discussion went on for three days. I spoke with increasing confidence and have to admit I had no small part in the deliberations. We came to the following consensus: Walter John Harmon had done what was both required and foreordained by the nature of his prophecy. Not only had he forsaken us who had loved him and depended upon him, but by running off with one of the purified wives, he had cast doubt upon the central tenet of his teaching. What further proof did we need of the truth of his prophecy than his total immersion in sin and disgrace? It was thrilling. Elder Al Samuels, a tiny, bent-over octogenarian with the piping, scratched voice of the very old, was also the most philosophically inclined. He said we were confronted with the beautiful paradox of a prophecy fulfilling itself by means of its negation. Elder Fred Sanders, known and loved for his ebullience, stood up and shouted, Glory be to God for our blessed prophet! We all stood and shouted, Hallelujah!

But while all of this was being worked out, the Community had languished. There was a good deal of crying and wandering about listlessly on the part of many. People could not do their work. Extra prayer sessions were called but went sparsely attended. And a few of the members, poor souls, even packed their meager belongings and walked down the road to the Gate, heedless of all pleas. I think that is how word got out about our situation — through our dispirited defectors. It did not help that a TV news broadcast showed a picture of the Community from a helicopter flying over us while an announcer spoke of us as collectively duped, robbed of our estates, and left humiliated and penniless in the middle of nowhere.

It was time to act. On the advice of Judson Berglund, who had so far managed our public relations effectively, a great celebration was prepared, with music from our string musicians and tables of good food and a goodly supply of our ceremonial wine. Work and school were suspended for the people of the Community to gather and be together. Thanks be to God, the weather softened into one of those October days when the sun, low in the sky, casts a golden patina over the land. Yet the sense of irresolution, of bewilderment, did not entirely lift. People wanted to hear the Elders. I noticed that some of the children had sought out their natural parents and now clung to them.

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.