A Fable

‘Then I’ll cite for you, plead for you,’ the priest said. ‘It wasn’t He with His humility and pity and sacrifice that converted the world, it was pagan and bloody Rome which did it with His martyrdom; furious and intractable dreamers had been bringing that same dream out of Asia Minor for three hundred years until at last one found a caesar foolish enough to crucify him. And you are right. But then so is he (I dont mean Him now, I mean the old man in that white room yonder onto whose shoulders you are trying to slough and shirk your right and duty for free will and decision). Because only Rome could have done it, accomplished it, and even He (I do mean Him now) knew it, felt and sensed this, furious and intractable dreamer though He was. Because He even said it Himself: On this rock I found My church, even while He didn’t—and never would—realise the true significance of what He was saying, believing still that He was speaking poetic metaphor, synonym, parable—that rock meant unstable inconstant heart, and church meant airy faith. It wasn’t even His first and favorite sycophant who read that significance, who was also ignorant and intractable like Him and even in the end got himself also electrocuted by the dream’s intractable fire, like Him. It was Paul, who was a Roman first and then a man and only then a dreamer and so of all of them was able to read the dream correctly and to realise that, to endure, it could not be a nebulous and airy faith but instead it must be a church, an establishment, a morality of behavior inside which man could exercise his right and duty for free will and decision, not for a reward resembling the bed-time tale which soothes the child into darkness, but the reward of being able to cope peacefully, hold his own, with the hard durable world in which (whether he would ever know why or not wouldn’t matter either because now he could cope with that too) he found himself. Not snared in that frail web of hopes and fears and aspirations which man calls his heart, but fixed, established, to endure, on that rock whose synonym was the seeded capital of that hard durable enduring earth which man must cope with somehow, by some means, or perish. So you see, he is right. It wasn’t He nor Peter, but Paul who, being only one-third dreamer, was two-thirds man and half of that a Roman, could cope with Rome. Who did more; who, rendering unto caesar, conquered Rome. More: destroyed it, because where is that Rome now? until what remains but that rock, that citadel. Render unto Chaulnesmont. Why should you die?’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘To save another life, which your dream will electrocute,’ the priest said.

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Remember—’ the priest said. ‘No, you cant remember, you dont know it, you cant read. So I’ll have to be both again: defender and advocate. Change these stones to bread, and all men will follow Thee. And He answered, Man cannot live by bread alone. Because He knew that too, intractable and furious dreamer though He was: that He was tempted to tempt and lead man not with the bread, but with the miracle of that bread, the deception, the illusion, the delusion of that bread; tempted to believe that man was not only capable and willing but even eager for that deception, that even when the illusion of that miracle had led him to the point where the bread would revert once more to stone in his very belly and destroy him, his own children would be panting for the opportunity to grasp into their hands in their turn the delusion of that miracle which would destroy them. No no, listen to Paul, who needed no miracle, required no martyrdom. Save that life. Thou shalt not kill.’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

‘Take your own tomorrow, if you must,’ the priest said. ‘But save his now.’

‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.