Deus Irae (8 page)

“Like what?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Love, faith, hope,” said Tibor.

“Yet you’re taking their money,” Dr. Abernathy said.

“Yes,” said Tibor. “I’ve already made an agreement with them.”

“One which requires a Pilg?” Dr. Abernathy asked.

“Yes,” said Tibor.

“If you convert today, what will you do about this commission?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Give it up,” said Tibor.

“Why?” Dr. Abernathy inquired.

“Because I don’t want to make the Pilg,” said Tibor.

They both sipped their coffee.

Finally, “You think you’re being an honest man,” said Dr. Abernathy. “One who meets all his commitments. Yet you want to come over to us in order to break faith with them.”

Tibor looked away. “I could give them back the money,” he said.

“True,” said Dr. Abernathy, “as it is commanded, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ This applies to the SOWs, as well as anyone else—so it is only just that either you give it back or keep your promise and paint the mural. On the other hand, what is it they have really asked you to do?”

“A mural involving the God of Wrath,” said Tibor.

“Just so,” said Dr. Abernathy. “And where does God live?”

“I do not understand,” said Tibor, sipping his coffee.

“Is it not true that He dwells in all places and all times, as eternity is His home?” asked Dr. Abernathy. “I think the SOWs and the Christians both agree on this point.”

“I believe so,” said Tibor. “Only, as God of This World—”

“Well, He might be found anywhere,” said Dr. Abernathy.

“Father, I fail to follow you,” said Tibor.

“What if you do not succeed in locating Him?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Then I should be unable to complete the mural,” said Tibor.

“And what would you do then?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Continue with what I’ve been doing,” said Tibor, “painting signs, painting houses. I’d give back the money, of course—”

“Why need you resort to this extreme? Since God—if
he
be God—may be found anywhere, this being his world, it would seem you might properly seek him there,” said Dr. Abernathy.

With a certain uneasiness, and yet a glimmer of fascination, Tibor said, “I’m afraid I still don’t see what you mean, sir.”

“What if you saw his face in a cloud?” said Dr. Abernathy. “Or in the shiftings of the Great Salt Lake, at night, under the stars? Or in a fine mist descending just as the heat of day departed?”

“Then it would only be a guess,” said Tibor, “a—a fake.”

“Why?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Because I’m only mortal,” said Tibor, “and therefore liable to error. If I were to guess, I might guess wrong.”

“Yet if it be his will that this thing be done, would he allow this error?” asked Dr. Abernathy in a strong, measured voice. “Would he allow you to paint the wrong face?”

“I don’t know,” said Tibor. “I don’t think so. But—”

“Then why don’t you save yourself much time, effort, and grief,” said Dr. Abernathy, “and proceed in this manner?”

After a pause, Tibor murmured, “I don’t feel it would be right.”

“Why not?” said Dr. Abernathy. “He could really be anyone, you know. Chances are, you’ll never find the real Carl Lufteufel.”

“Why not?” said Tibor. “Because it wouldn’t be right, that’s why. I’ve been commissioned to paint the God of Wrath in the center of the mural—in appropriate lifelike authentic colors—so it is therefore important to know him as he really is.”

“
Is
it all that important?” said Dr. Abernathy. “How many people knew his appearance in the old days? And if they are living, how many of them would recognize him today—
if
he be still living, that is?”

“It’s not that,” said Tibor. “I know I could fake it, that I could manufacture a face—just from the repro I’ve seen. The thing of it is, though, it wouldn’t be true.”

“True?” said Dr. Abernathy. “True? What’s truth? Would it detract from a single SOW’s devotion were he to look upon the
wrong
face, so long as his feeling were proper in terms of his faith? Of course not. I’m not trying to denigrate those you may consider my competitors. Far from it. It is you that I value. A Pilg is a risky thing at best. What would be gained by losing you? Nothing. What would be lost by losing you? A soul and a good painter, perhaps. I should hate to lose you on a matter of such small consequence.”

“It is
not
a matter of small consequence, Father,” said Tibor. “It is a matter of honesty. I have been paid to do a thing, and by God!—yours or theirs—I must do it properly. This is the way that I work.”

“Peace,” said Dr. Abernathy, raising his hand. He took another sip of coffee, then said, “Pride, too, is a sin. For by this, Lucifer fell from heaven. Of all the Deadly Seven, Pride is the worst. Anger, Avarice, Envy, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony—these represent man’s relationships to others and the world. Pride, however, is absolute. It represents the subjective relationship of a person to himself. Therefore, it is the most mortal of them all. Pride requires nothing of which to be proud. It is the ultimate in narcissism. I feel, perhaps, that you are a victim of such sentiments.”

Tibor laughed. Then he gulped coffee.

“I fear you have the wrong man,” he said. “I’ve precious little of which to be proud.” He placed the coffee cup before him and raised his metal hand. “You would call
me
proud—of anything? Hell! I’m half machine, sir! Of all the sins you’ve named, it’s probably the one with least application.”

“I wouldn’t bet money on it,” said Dr. Abernathy.

“I came to discuss religion with you,” said Tibor.

“That’s true,” said Dr. Abernathy, “that’s true. I think that that is what we are discussing. I am trying to place your task in proper perspective before you. More coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Tibor.

Dr. Abernathy poured and Tibor looked out the window. Eleven o’clock, that moment of truth, was passing over the world, he knew. For something had just gone out of it. What it was, he would never know.

He sipped and thought back upon the previous evening.

“Father,” he said, finally, “I don’t know who’s right or wrong—you or them—and maybe I’ll never know. But I can’t cheat somebody when I tell them I’m going to do a thing. If it had been the other way around, I’d give you the same consideration.”

Dr. Abernathy stirred and sipped. “And maybe we wouldn’t really have cared if you could not have found us the Christ for our
Last Supper
,” he said, “so long as you did a good job. I am not trying to dissuade you from doing what you think is right. It is just that I think that you are wrong, and you could make things a lot easier on yourself.”

“I’m not asking for easy things, Father.”

“You are making me sound like something I am not trying to be,” said Dr. Abernathy. “It is only, I repeat, that I think there is a way in which you could make things easier on yourself.”

“In other words, you want me to go away for a time, pretend to have seen the face I should see, paint it, and be done with it,” said Tibor.

“To be quite frank about it,” said Dr. Abernathy, “yes. You would be cheating no one—”

“Not even myself?” asked Tibor.

“Pride,” said Dr. Abernathy, “pride.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Tibor, lowering his coffee cup. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

“Why not?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“Because it wouldn’t be right,” said Tibor. “I’m not that sort of man. As a matter of fact, your suggestions have given me second thoughts about your religion. I believe I’d like to postpone my decision with respect to converting.”

“As you would,” said Dr. Abernathy. “Of course, by our teachings, your immortal soul will be in constant jeopardy.”

“Yet,” said Tibor, “you may consider no man damned, isn’t that right?”

“That is true,” said Dr. Abernathy. “Who gave you that Jesuitical bit of knowledge?”

“Fay Blaine,” said Tibor.

“Oh,” Dr. Abernathy said.

“Thank you for your coffee, sir,” said Tibor. “I believe I’d better be going….”

“May I give you a catechism?—something to read along the way?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“You don’t like me or respect me, do you, Tibor?”

“Let me reserve my opinion, Father.”

“Reserve it, then, but take this,” said Dr. Abernathy.

“Thank you,” said Tibor, accepting the pamphlet.

Dr. Abernathy said, “I will disclose something more to you which you should know. I came across it in a textbook about the religions of the ancient Greeks. Their god Apollo was a god of constancy, and when tested he always was found to be the same. This was a major quality in him; he was what he was … always. In fact, one could define Apollo by this, and the Apollonian personality in humans.” He coughed and went on rapidly, “But Dionysos, the god of unreason, was the god of metamorphosis.”

“What is ‘metamorphosis’?” Tibor asked.

“Change. From one form to another. Thus you see, the God of Wrath, also being a god of unreason, like Dionysos, can be expected to hide, to camouflage himself, to conceal,
to be what he is not
; can you imagine worshiping a god who, rather than is, is what he is not?”

Tibor gazed at him in perplexity. Perplexity, the efforts of two ordinary men, filled the room: perplexity, not understanding.

“These sayings are hard,” Dr. Abernathy said, at last. He rose to his feet. “I’ll see you again on your return?”

“Perhaps,” said Tibor, activating his cart.

“The Christian God—” Dr. Abernathy hesitated, seeing how worn Tibor looked, worn by perplexity. “He is the God of unchange. ‘I am what I am,’ as God puts it to Moses, in the Bible. That is our God.”

Outside, all magic had fled from the noonday world, the sun had hidden its face behind a brief cloud, and Darlin’ Corey had eaten a bumblebee and was ill.

He returned to the digs the following afternoon. The door grumbled when he inserted his finger, but it recognized the loops and whorls and slid halfway to the right. He sidled through and kicked it, and it closed behind him.

Adjusting his side-pack, which contained a new supply of herbicides, he paused for a moment to touch the lump which had grown between his left temple and forehead. It throbbed, it drove a shaft of pain through his head, as he knew it would. But he could not keep his hands away from it. The sore-tooth reaction, he decided.

He gulped another tablet from his new supply, knowing that it would have less than the desired effect.

Turning, then, he moved down the perpetually lit, perpetually poorly lit tunnel that led to the bunkers. Before he reached the one in which he was currently sleeping, his foot came down atop a small red truck and he was pitched forward to land upon his shoulder. As he fell, he shielded his aching head with an upflung arm. Activated by the push of his foot, the truck blew its horn and raced back up the tunnel.

After a moment, a short, heavyset figure raced past him, making sobbing noises.

“Tuck! Tuck!” it cried, pursuing the sound of the horn.

He raised himself to his knees, then to his feet. Staggering through the doorway, he noted that, as he had suspected, the room was now a shambles. Tomorrow I’ll move into the next one, he decided. It’s easier than cleaning the damned things out.

He dropped his pack upon the nearest table and collapsed onto the bed, pressing the back of his right wrist to his forehead.

A shadow across his eyelids told him that he was no longer
alone. Without opening his eyes or changing his position, he snarled, “Alice, I told you to keep your toys out of the hall! I gave you a nice box for them! If you don’t start keeping them there, I’m going to take them all away from you.”

“No!” said the high-pitched voice. “Tuck …”

Then he heard the slap of her bare feet upon the floor, and the lid of the toy box creaked. It was too late to cry out, and knowing what was coming next, he gritted his teeth as she let it fall shut with a crash that bounced from all the walls of his sparse cell and converged upon his head.

The fact that she doesn’t know any better doesn’t alter the difficulty, he decided. Three weeks before, he had brought Alice home to the digs—an idiot girl whom the inhabitants of Stuttgart had expelled from their midst. Whether out of sympathy for her condition or the desire for companionship, he could not say. Probably something of both had entered into his choice. He could see now why they had done what they had done. She was impossible—maddening—to live with. As soon as he felt better, he would return her to the place where he had found her, crying beside the river with her dress caught in a thorn bush.

“Sorry,” he heard her say. “Sorry, Daddy.”

“I’m not your daddy,” he said. “Eat some chocolate and go to sleep—please….”

He felt like a glass of ice water. Crazy thought! The perspiration appeared like condensation now, while inside he was cold, cold, cold! He crossed his arms and began shaking. Finally, his fingers picked at the blanket, caught it, drew it over him.

He heard Alice singing to herself across the room, and for some reason this soothed him slightly.

Then, and the horrible part was that he knew he was not yet fully delirious, he was back in his office and his secretary had just rushed in with a sheaf of papers like a flower in her pinknailed hand and she was talking and talking and talking, excitedly, and he was answering and nodding, shaking his head and gesturing, pushing Hold buttons on his telephones, stroking his nose, tugging his earlobe, and talking and not hearing or understanding a word that either of them was saying, not even hearing the ringing of the telephones, under whose buttons the little lights kept winking on and off, and there was a sense of urgency
and a strange feeling of separation, removal, futility, while Dolly Reiber—that was her name—talked until suddenly he noted, quite academically, that she had the head of a dog and was beginning to howl (this he was able to hear, though faintly), and he smiled and reached out to stroke her muzzle and she became Alice-at-his-bedside.

“I told you to go to sleep!” he said.

“Sorry, Daddy,” she told him.

“It’s all right! Go to sleep, like I told you.”