John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

All the city’s made of mud — bricks of mud stamped to astonishing density — coated over with white and colored plaster and decorated with enormous murals or with mosaics. As for the towers, they’re strange, multistaged buildings wound around with steep outside stairways, and they rise terrifyingly above the whitewashed temples. At times the sanctuary extended into the core of the tower so that the niche with the image was located within the base of the temple tower.

All right. Enough. You get the picture. What were they for? What did the towers mean? Can you make it out?

CLUMLY: What do you think?

SUNLIGHT: I don’t know. It’s a mystery. To the ancient Jews their height suggested a wish in man to become like to God — Babel, for instance. Mad human pride. But it’s not in the top of the tower that the god has his place. It’s true, Herodotus tells the story that the priestess of Bel passed a night at the top of the temple tower to wait for the deity to alight — but there’s no reference to any such business in the cuneiform texts. Sounds like a tale told by a dragoman. Fact is, the god is in the base, a kind of inner mystery from which the towers ascend. Could it mean this: (a little wildly) from man’s own inner mystery, the destructive principle in his blood — his knowledge that he’s born for death — his achievements ascend — his godly will, his desire to become at one with the universe, total reality, either by merging with it or by controlling it?

CLUMLY (dubiously): Mmm.

SUNLIGHT: It might, yes. A reasonable hypothesis, at least.

CLUMLY: Reasonable.

SUNLIGHT: Very well, then I say this. It’s a matter of fact that we can never control the secret powers of the universe or even match their force. Sexually, socially, politically — any way you care to name — our civilization is doomed, in the same way all civilizations have been doomed. And so I cannot join you. It’s not that I mind doom, you understand. It’s because I have a vision of what would be possible in a better culture — one I do not expect ever to arise in the world. And yet I’m torn, I confess it. How can I openly turn against the culture I was born to? I have ties. And something else. I was right to set him free, hold out new life. But you see what has resulted.

Let me tell you a vision.

The age that is coming will be the last age of man, the destruction of everything. I see coming an age of sexual catastrophe — a violent increase of bondage, increased violence and guilt, increased disgust and ennui. In society, shame and hatred and boredom. In the political sphere, total chaos. The capitalistic basis of the great values of Western culture will preclude solution of the world’s problems. Vietnam is the beginning. No matter how long it takes, the end is upon us, not only in the East but in Africa too, and South America, Civilizations fall because of the errors inherent in them, and our error will kill us.

CLUMLY: But what is the error? Excuse me.

SUNLIGHT: It’s man, Clumly! Man!

You want to know the future? I’ll tell it to you! I see towers of magnificent beauty and awesome height — towers of white and gold and blue — towers stretching from hill to hill and valley to valley as far as the eye can see — the towers not of men but of gods, you would swear: but the sky is dark behind them, and the earth at their foundations trembles and cracks. The people of the city are blinded and they speak in a babble of tongues, and around the towers there are luminous clouds full of dazzling colors, and the air stinks of brimstone. There is no Zoar to run to, and if there are five good men living they have no more chance than a Jew’s fat wife. Hell’s jaws will yawn and the cities will sink, and there will not be a trace. I promise you all this. I give you my word as an official wizard to the king.

CLUMLY: You can’t believe that.

SUNLIGHT: I’ve seen it.

Abruptly, full of a confused sense of pity and anger, Chief Clumly stood up. He went to the low door and stood there, bent down, looking out, his hands in the pockets of his coat. At last he turned and said, “I saw your wife today.”

The Sunlight Man’s face showed no sign of changed emotion. “So you know.” He laughed, ironic.

Clumly nodded.

“And so tonight you will try to arrest me.” Again he laughed.

Clumly thought about it. “I knew all along that—” He paused to think again. “I knew from the beginning that you were … an irregular outlaw. I sometimes foolishly imagined …”

The Sunlight Man reached out suddenly and took from the empty air a nickel-plated pistol. He cocked it. “Perhaps I’m more regular than you think.”

Clumly cocked his head, squinting. “Perhaps,” he said.

“You were stupid to come.”

He nodded.

“I of course realized how things stood when I found you’d come unarmed tonight.”

“Of course. Unarmed. Yes.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No.”

“And yet you know I may kill you.”

Clumly looked at him.

He saw the mistake at once. “You know I will kill you.”

But it was too late. Clumly sighed. “I know it’s possible. I don’t mind. A mood I’m in.”

The Sunlight Man’s hand shook. “I’d like not to have been forced … to make a choice.”

“It’s up to you.”

The Sunlight Man wiped his forehead with the back of his glove. “You’re still alive, yes.” Then, getting himself in control: “All right, we have to go now.”

“We.”

“Both of us. No grand disappearance. You force me.”

Clumly nodded and turned to step through the door. When he looked back the Sunlight Man was looking at the pistol, scowling. At last he came out and closed the door behind him. The thought of the suspended chair inside, the oil lamp still burning, was vaguely unsettling to Clumly.

“To your car,” the Sunlight Man said.

Clumly went to the driver’s side and put his hand on the doorhandle, then waited. The Sunlight Man said nothing. They both looked back at the silo, and at last the Sunlight Man said, “I could destroy all that with a wave of my hand, you know. As easily as I could destroy you.”

“I believe you.”

“Perhaps you don’t,” the Sunlight Man said. He frowned, wrestling with some problem, then abruptly laughed a little wildly. He stopped as suddenly as he’d started. “Well, get in.”

Clumly opened the door, and the Sunlight Man went around to the far side, aiming the gun at Clumly as he went around the hood. When he’d gotten in, he said, “But I think I’ll let you destroy it. Look at the silo again.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Clumly said. And yet — idiotically, he would tell himself later — he looked. The instant his eyes struck the place it seemed to explode into flame. It was as if all the walls had been bathed in gasoline. And yet Clumly had smelled nothing, inside it — or nothing but the Sunlight Man’s stench. “There was no need,” he said.

The Sunlight Man smiled, looking at the fire, and that instant, responding to an instinct he had forgotten he had, Clumly shot out his hand and closed it on the gun. It came free easily, and though the Sunlight Man started, the wild look that came over his face seemed as much one of pleasure as of alarm. A second later, as if nothing had happened, he was looking again at the fire. Everything in the car or around it was yellow-red, reflecting the glow. “My wife and I climbed that silo once,” he said. Then: “My move, isn’t it,” the Sunlight Man said. “I move the horsebarn next.”

This time Clumly did not turn, but he heard the explosion. The glow was more intense now. He said, “Why?”

The Sunlight Man looked at his gloved hands. “A demonstration,” he said. “You see, your next move is to let me go. Otherwise, I move the house. And there are people inside.”