Omensetter’s Luck

5

The Reverend Jethro Furber rose that Sunday to the pulpit with excitement blazing from him. There was a stirring in the church at late arrivals, and the broken hum and stutter of interrupted whispers filled it. He omitted the customary rites and spoke at once.

Our Heavenly Father, we speak within Your Hearing. May we speak with Your Truthful Voice. May we listen to Your Voice in us. May we harken to Your Thunder.

He'd spent a sleepless night. More than once, in complete darkness — it was better for the darkness — he had parted the curtain and shuffled to the stand and recited his piece, saying seven different things, believing each. There was no way to call back the words as they rushed out, he'd never remember them, and he was using, in these private sideshows, all his energy: yet before the pale geometry of the windows and in the presence of his own voice, he felt he had been moved to poetry. His flesh had prickled, tears had formed in his eyes, and he thought that at last he'd opened his heart out honestly. But he'd opened it to no one, really — to an audience of ghosts and churchmice. It was possible, of course, that in some corner, Flack, invisible in such surroundings, nigger like himself, was listening; and one pretended always that God, too, took an interest; but in this case — God, mice, Negro, weeping preacher — they came to nothing. He was exhausted, all nerves, disorganized; yet he meant, nevertheless, to try to fill their ears with fire. It was futile to hope that he could bring these creatures up, yet — yet he meant to try. Now he examined the space he intended to preach to. It lay just above an irregular terrain of heads and extended to the gray crossbeams of the nave with their pale dark ax marks and black spots of iron. Beginning at a point in front of him as far as he could leap, it reached through crisscrossing blades of light to the opposite wall where his melting sight composed the space's outer edge. He could imagine, looking at it, how chaos was before the first word. It was a striped waste, a visibly starless night. Dust, chambered in rods, lazily settled in no direction. Indistinctly he could see the tops of those fleshy cabinets which would compartment hell, while above, spanning the peak, were the long bars of heaven and the perching choirs of love. He thought of his voice passing into it, dust dancing to its tune. There'd be land in the shape of his syllables, a sea singing, sky like an echo, plants in bloom burning with speech, animals with yellow answering eyes, and finally men taking form from the chant of their names and gathering in crowds to enlarge their reply to the laments which had created them.

He didn't dare drop his eyes beyond their hair-capped foreheads. He'd slide off a nose or suffer a chin slip. Skid more than plummet — no posturing could mask it — he'd tip, dump! into shoes at the end. To find and utter the proper words, the logoi spermatakoi… that was Plato's game, poor John's jest. Pimber was the word these creatures wanted. Pimm-burr. He had at least one better word than that. The magic words, if he could utter them, would free them from every earthly thing. The steeple-tip of wise Plotinus. Alone like a bird. Farewell.

Nevertheless his eyes buzzed in their ears and bit their ankles. One, then two… one, two, one two — the usual line of shoes — a pair, a pair, another pair.. So farewell to faces. For god's sake, Mrs. Spink, be silent. Wait wait wait: screw. Gnawing at his nerves. Do not think of old ties — the desert loves the naked. One last look at faces. God. My God. Nose, cheek, chin, hair foresting the brow, ears at the edges, eyes like wells, the wrinkles running off, the raw lips, flaking skin… farewell. Christ, what an improbable design. Screw them down. "What are you doing in the world, brother, you who are more than the universe?" Tight. Tight. First — sweet gentle John: "he that loveth not knoweth not God." Then— full furious Jerome: "I am prepared to cut a foul-smelling nose." Tight down. Furber's right arm sailed. He watched it (n surprise. His voice when it began, was calm and light, smooth and precise.

I've intended for some time to tell you that I understand.

He paused, his eyes closed.

None of us wanted this world to begin with. We were orphaned into it. And we were never fooled. Not fundamentally. We've always known we had no place. I'm not speaking simply of our common Christian view. Anyone, however far from us in custom or in country he otherwise may be, so long as he is human, has a soul, and through that soul can sense, the same as we, his strangeness to the life that he's been sent to.

Confidently, Furber strode through the dark.

How I wept and shrieked, the saintly Greek, Empedocles, has written, when I was born into this world, my grave. And fallen in flesh, all infants howl. Empedocles believed that his soul, for its sins, must pass from body into body as water passes many sieves; that it must live through every form of dying and suffer every kind of end. It was his opinion that he had been a boy already, a girl, a plant in the woods, an eagle hunting in the mountains, and had spent, in the ocean, the glancing life of a fish. All the elements, he says, were united in rejecting him. The air had chased him to the sea, and the sea had spat him out on the earth's edge, and the earth had Rung him toward the sun.

We are here — yes — yet we do not belong. This, my friends, is the source of all religious feeling. On this truth everything depends. We are here, yet we do not belong; and though we need comfort and hope and strength to sustain us, anything that draws us nearer to this life and puts us in desire of it is deeply wrong and greatly deceives us.

I ask you now to ask yourselves one simple foolish question — to say: was I born for this? — and I ask you please to face it honestly and answer yea if you can or nay if you must.

For this?

You rise in the morning, you stretch, you scratch your chest.

For this?

All night, while you snored, the moon burned as it burned for Jesus or for Caesar.

You wash, you dress.

For this?

At breakfast there are pancakes with dollops of butter and you drip syrup on your vest.

So it's for this.

You lick your lips.

Ah, then it's this.

You slide your pants to your knees and you grunt in the jakes.

It's for this?

Light's leaving a star while you stare at the weeds centipedes live in the cracks of the floor; and the sun, the says, shines on good and evil equally.

So you were meant for this? You've your eyes, your human consciousness, for this?

Well you're not entirely easy in your mind. The weather's been poor. There are the crops to get in, payments to make on the farm, ailing calves to tend. Friends have promised to help with the haying, but they haven't, and you've got to keep your eldest son somehow away from that bargeman's daughter-a bitch with cow's teats.

The mind's for this?

We yourself now. Hang your pants from your shoulders. There are glaciers growing. But you wish your wife weren't so fat and given to malice, and your thoughts are angry and troubled by this.

This?

Very well — you can complain that I've chosen trivialities in order to embarrass you.

Eat, sleep, love, dress — of course you were born for something better than this.

Furber's eyes drew slowly to a smile. The church sprang into being, unrelated colors first, sparks of light, the world seen from a mountain; the delineations, corridors, retreats… solidities and meanings. Marvels, they were, all of them, a moment, before they became what they were. He had got off on the wrong foot. Wrong foot — feet made him laugh. His laughter, which was loud and gay, he closed by^, coughing. Our life is one long stream of piss, he shouted, were we born for this? Shaking, he sank on his heels. How long had he been a-tiptoe? Fine beginning. Empedocles indeed.Had he said or had he only thought the name? In Gilean. Empedocles. As strange as Jesus. Perhaps he should have them stand and sing, then after the singing start all over. He smiled, showing his palms, but he was stuttering and could not utter a number. He drew his hands behind him where they flew at one another.

I'm not a man of many convictions…

No no no jesus. There were people leaving. But he kited his eyes. In the balconies — choirs. How many? who? one, two… He felt the richness of his robes and the weight of his responsibilities. Light rained through the windows.

In the be- In the be-

He signaled Mrs. Spink to play and cushioned his head on the Bible. A desperate gesture, it would crick his neck, but perhaps it would impress them.

Rattle of notes — she'd begun. He must husband his resources. Husband. What a word. For the sense of our flesh Is slow — how did it go, the old sing-song of St. Augustine? — even because it is the sense of our flesh. He must gain control. The sense of our flesh is slow. Tardus est enim sensus carnis, quoniam sensus carnis est… yes,… its own measure… ipse est modus eius… oh sufficient enough — claws, halls, prick — for the end it was made for… sufficit ad alius, ad quod factus est… yet insufficient — jaw, cunt, lip—ad illud autem non sufficit, ut teneat transcurrentia… lovely… transcurrentia ab initio debito usque ad finem debitum. Me sign is in the word. Is Mrs. Spink the signal? The finger's lascivious tip… whore's hip… In verbo enim tuo, per quod creantur, ibi audiunt: "hinc et huc usque." No, no farther… abuse, abuse… my god.

The number of the noise… so numerous… numberless numbering… numb… numb… what was the numb…?

There was the faint smell of print and paper. The pages felt cool to his cheek. He cuddled his head in his arms. It would be good to remain here and sleep. But in a moment he would have to straighten and face them. He couldn't very well confess then that he had no convictions himself and cared nothing for what they believed, for how they adored confessions. Go home, go home, I have nothing to tell you. J'adore… j'adore… That would nail them in.

Spink'll soon tinkle her tune to a stop

end in a jiffy her jiggery hop

Here — here — look — in this trouser pocket I've greed like a tree toad. But he really wasn't mean or greedy. He wasn't lazy or lustful, ambitious or lordly. He wasn't gluttonous or covetous or swollen with vanity. And where were envy and anger and cruelty in the manner of his life? Wasn't it wonderful how easily the words came. Just lies upon lies on the cooling paper, the faint, faint odor of leather, the darkened heart behind his eyes… envy and envy and envy and anger… envy and anger and aching desire… here — here — I shall raffle off my penis as a prize… no, let me tell you what I've heard: tree roots have been known to vessel the grimmest granite — that's virtue versus vice in one brief homily… oh go home, go home and strike at one another — each so well deserving… I don't know, myself, what to do, where to go… I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort. . it's what the world offers… please leave me alone to dream as I fancy. Then bend to your homes. To dream as I fancy: a lady plump and charming, light through lemon leaves, honorable and distinguished wounds. Ah well now, Mrs. Spink, so you've chewed up your sour little hymn. Furber tugged at his shirt sleeves and pressed his coat smooth.

Let me — like children — as though you were children-let me tell you about it again.

Now then — thank you, thank you all, yes, thank you — as you will remember, in the beginning, you remember, God — God—What had God done?

God had labored five days when He created man. God had sent His presence through the darkness which was lying softly on the surface of the water fast asleep, there to take part, cleaving night from night to make day. Then God had sent His presence down into the middle of the sea, when the sea was asleep, separating the sweet half and lifting it like a canopy above the rest. And then again He'd sent Himself to the sea to gather it, and He'd caught up the remaining water like fish in a net, so that land appeared where the water had been carried away. Thus He labored till the third day.

It would be wise to remember what it was of living things God made on the third day, for He favored the fruits first. He made all seeds — seeds of tender grass and trees of gracious shade. Then He made the moving sun, the alternating moon and brilliant stars, and He appointed some to regulate the night, and others to design and rule the day. Finally, on the fifth, God fastened life in the water and at the water's edge and in the air — whales and seals and salamanders, darting birds. Then as the sea had formed fish after its own, and the air had fashioned even eagles and wild gulls on the model of the wind, so the earth was let to bring forth animals in the living likeness of itself-cattle and snakes and bears, each and every kind.

As you remember… you surely remember…

When this was done, and the first five days had passed beneath the earth forever, and when God saw what He had made was good, only then did He consider creating man, who was to have, as the sun had in the brilliant heavens, and as the moon had among the stars, dominion over life.

So He prepared. He formed dust about His own breath like a chrysalis. He prepared — blowing in His fist, making man a hollow vessel and shaping earth about His breath with His own hands. He prepared — pouring His breath like a precious liquid through the nostrils of the human jar. Consequently man had a likeness in him that was great and holy from the first, sacred and terrible. Just as God in the beginning had divided the darkness to make light, stealing on it while it lay asleep, and just as God had taken the sweetness from the sea as it rested to vault the sky, so mankind was also divided in slumber, and the darkness taken, and a portion of the divine breath too, to make a wife.

It was only right that these divided halves should come together, part and come together, so that what had once been mixed might mix again, so that what had once been sundered might be sundered again, just as God had done these things during the six days of His labor. Everlastingly now, the sea yields up its heaven. What was earth, soon enough again, is earth. Men and women mingle, and are lonely after.

Yet there was already enmity between the dark and the darkness, between salt and fresh, the sea and its fishes, the air and its eagles, the unmoving earth and its teeming kinds, man and his woman; for night had lost half of itself to day, as the sea had to the heavens, and the earth to its millions. Man could not endure alone, without a likeness of himself, and some say, though I believe they are mistaken, that Adam beseeched God for his mate. Yet when Eve was lifted from his side and the skin tied at the navel, he was not completely happy. Adam yearned, without knowing why, and felt envy, since beside him now lay man perfected, his poorest part ennobled, glorified.

I defy you to find where in Holy Writ it says he was satisfied.

Adam wished the return of his softer half. He wished to be whole again as he was in the beginning. Alas. The earth also wished him back. The sea wished to swallow the land again, and deep night groaned against the light.

Such is the lesson — listen carefully to it — of this remarkable creation.

Now there was in heaven, as you know, an angel, prince among them, the Prince of Darkness. And he felt his wife drawn painfully from him, out of his holy body, fully half of himself, and given a place of dazzling splendor. How he hated it, and suffered his loss loudly.

Then at the end of the sixth day, after God had created man and driven his beauty from him like a specter; when at the end of the sixth day man's beauty was driven from him as the day had been driven from sleeping night and the sky looped over the slumberous sea and life drawn from the nodding earth, God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel to this wondrous pair, so to signify their admiration of them.

But the Prince of Darkness said, lamenting: my Lord, You made the sun and moon to rule the halves of my former kingdom, and You grew plants to supervise the earth, and then You gave the animals these. Now finally You have made this frail potter's figure, man, to multiply and feed and fatten on the beasts.

But God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel to the images of Himself He had created, so to signify their admiration of them.

But the Prince of Darkness, grieving, said: my Lord, You did not mean the moon to play havoc with the daytime, or the sun to rise for the pale canary or set for the remorseless cat. Therefore it is not fitting that we, immortal lordships, should play the camel to man, who has no proper power or dominion over us.

But God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel, nevertheless, and to indicate thereby their admiration for the Lord, Himself, who had created man, this marvel among even the marvelous.

But the proud Prince of Darkness refused.

It was at the close of the sixth day then that Satan, for disobedience and a broken heart, was dismissed with his companions from the loyal Host of Heaven, and like a burning streak of vapor fell by the sun's face into his element.

Hush… hush… What's next? Like a waterstrider, Furber rode a thin film of sense.

Later God made Eden with its rivers and put Adam and Eve to paradise there, though some say He made Eden earlier, before Eve, as it appears in the Bible. The tree of life grew in the garden, and also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was this latter tree of which God forbade Adam and Eve to eat, but they ate of it all the same, as we know to our sorrow. The finer half fell first — the last and best of all creation — so now she brings forth her children in pain and labor, and serves the poorer portion as her punishment.

God created always by division, taking the lesser part, transforming it into its opposite, and raising it above the rest. So should we change our worst into our best.

Furber snapped his fingers. There was a good one. That was the kind of thing they liked. Should he say it again? But he was losing the thread.

There is everywhere in nature a partiality for the earlier condition, and an instinctive urge to return to it. To succumb to this urge is to succumb to the wish of the Prince of Darkness, whose aim is to defeat, if possible, the purposes of Cod's creation. We do on occasion forget, fo course, the clay we're made of. We do sometimes deny our animal nature and our origin in the earth. But the heroic life is like the thievery and punishment of Prometheus, both painful and lonely, and we do not pursue it long. For the most part men look upon their humanity as a burden, and call the knowledge of what they are a simple consequence of sin. Men, like all things, resist their essence, and seek the sweet oblivion of the animal — a rest from themselves that's but an easy counterfeit of death… Yet when Adam disobeyed, he lit this sun in our heads. Now, like the slowest worm, we sense; but like the mightiest god, we know.

Lovely lights and swooping swallows, carpeting the distance…

So we do not belong. We're here. Like the hunchback is here in his hump, the crow in his caw. Oh god, we're here. Yet we do not belong.

The eye of the animal opens. Think. He sees. What a strange thing seeing is to exist in this world. His eye opens — the ferret's eye, the tiger's eye, opens — and there are in that moment and for the first time… images… Imagine we open the eye of a man. Thought lies on the other side of that thin lid. He sees without blinking. Blind, he still sees-the pitiful creature. Of course. He's the wondrous watchman, isn't he? Watching… watching like a weasel in the weeds—

What's skittering?

It's this sun in my head. They are naked and exposed, I said. N-n-nay-kidd.

Where — let's see — yes. Who is honest in the dark?

Prometheus? Empedocles? Holy Jesus. He bent his head and saw print running down the pages. Text. He had a text. Who was still here? Space. Embroidered with light. The print was flowing.

Text. He had a text. Text to keep talking.

Inward — in a word — inwardly — in his innards — large guards, were they? — sourly — shards of heart — of pottery — of clay piercing people — in hollowware — in terror of spirit — to fall so inwardly…

"And the voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

… but fall down inwardly…

You then, the scripture says, are the people. You are the grass. You are the flesh, the grass.

Do you imagine that the grass, by growing, can become the cow?

Was there snickering?… was there tittering? snickering? Who was out there? Embroidered space.

This life—

This life passes like a day in fertile country all too soon.

Touch the book. Touch the book. His fingers skidded on the pages.

Pews were tipping empty.

We've slid to hell! the boards have broken! Are those the dancing ladies? Behold him with his eyes transported to his buttocks. Better there he may perceive the concourse of the anus.

And the fiend… He will appear with apple-rosy cheeks and friendly tousled hair… with candid eyes and openended speech.

Lead us out of this place, oh Lord, that we may have reason to praise your mercy.

Those who remain…

Let us pray.