Vittorini, much pleased, sat.
"And the rest of us will sit by the Lachryma Christi, I take it?" said the pastor.
"An Italian drink, Pastor."
"I think I"ve heard of it," said the pastor, and sat.
"Here." Father Brian hurried over and, without looking at Vittorini, poured his gla.s.s a good way up with the Moss. "An Irish transfusion."
"Allow me." Vittorini nodded his thanks and arose, in turn, to pour the others" drinks. "The tears of Christ and the sunlight of Italy," he said. "And now, before we drink, I have something to say."
The others waited, looking at him.
"The papal encyclical on s.p.a.ce travel," he said at last, "does not exist."
"We discovered that," said Kelly, "a few hours ago."
"Forgive me, Fathers," said Vittorini. "I am like the fisherman on the bank who, seeing fish, throws out more bait. I suspected, all along, there was no encyclical. But every time it was brought up, about town, I heard so many priests from Dublin deny it existed, I came to think it must! They would not go check the item, for they feared it existed. I would not, in my pride, do research, for I feared it did not exist. So Roman pride or Cork pride, it"s all the same. I shall go on retreat soon and be silent for a week, Pastor, and do penance."
"Good, Father, good." Pastor Sheldon rose. "Now I"ve a small announcement. A new priest arrives here next month. I"ve thought long on it. The man is Italian, born and raised in Montreal."
Vittorini closed one eye and tried to picture this man to himself.
"If the Church must be all things to all people," said the pastor, "I am intrigued with the thought of hot blood raised in a cold climate, as this new Italian was, even as I find it fascinating to consider myself, cold blood raised in California. We"ve needed another Italian here to shake things up, and this Latin looks to be the sort will shake even Father Vittorini. Now will someone offer a toast?"
"May I, Pastor?" Father Vittorini rose again, smiling gently, his eyes darkly aglow, looking at this one and now that of the three. He raised his gla.s.s. "Somewhere did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not G.o.d promote environments, then intimidate those Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not G.o.d"s Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that," said Father Brian, "I take it all back. He never lived in Dublin!"
All laughed together.
Vittorini drank the Irish Moss and was duly speechless.
The others drank the Italian wine and grew mellow, and in his mellowness Father Brian cried softly, "Vittorini, now, will you, unholy as it is, tune on the ghost?"
"Channel Nine?"
"Nine it is!"
And while Vittorini dialed the k.n.o.bs Father Brian mused over his drink, "Did Blake really say that?"
"The fact is, Father," said Vittorini, bent to the phantoms coming and going on the screen, "he might have, if he"d lived today. I wrote it down myself tonight."
All watched the Italian with some awe. Then the TV gave a hum and came clear, showing a rocket, a long way off, getting ready.
"The machineries of joy," said Father Brian. "Is that one of them you"re tuning in? And is that another sitting there, the rocket on its stand?"
"It could be, tonight," murmured Vittorini. "If the thing goes up, and a man in it, all around the world, and him still alive, and us with him, though we just sit here. That would be joyful indeed."
The rocket was getting ready, and Father Brian shut his eyes for a moment. Forgive me, Jesus, he thought, forgive an old man his prides, and forgive Vittorini his spites, and help me to understand what I see here tonight, and let me stay awake if need be, in good humor, until dawn, and let the thing go well, going up and coming down, and think of the man in that contraption, Jesus, think of and be with him. And help me, G.o.d, when the summer is young, for, sure as fate on Fourth of July evening there will be Vittorini and the kids from around the block, on the rectory lawn, lighting skyrockets. All them there watching the sky, like the morn of the Redemption, and help me, O Lord, to be as those children before the great night of time and void where you abide. And help me to walk forward, Lord, to light the next rocket Independence Night, and stand with the Latin father, my face suffused with that same look of the delighted child in the face of the burning glories you put near our hand and bid us savor.
He opened his eyes.
Voices from far Canaveral were crying in a wind of time. Strange phantom powers loomed upon the screen. He was drinking the last of the wine when someone touched his elbow gently.
"Father," said Vittorini, near. "Fasten your seat belt."
"I will," said Father Brian. "I will. And many thanks."
He sat back in his chair. He closed his eyes. He waited for the thunder. He waited for the fire. He waited for the concussion and the voice that would teach a silly, a strange, a wild and miraculous thing: How to count back, ever backward . . . to zero.
BRIGHT PHOENIX.
ONE DAY IN APRIL 2022 the great library door slammed flat shut. Thunder.
Hullo, I thought.
At the bottom step glowering up at my desk, in a United Legion uniform which no longer hung as neatly upon him as it had twenty years before, stood Jonathan Barnes.
Seeing his bravado momentarily in pause, I recalled ten thousand Veterans" speeches sprayed from his mouth, the endless wind-whipped flag parades he had hustled, panted through, the grease-cold chicken and green-pea patriot banquets he had practically cooked himself; the civic drives stillborn in his hat.
Now Jonathan Barnes stomped up the creaking main library steps, giving each the full downthrust of his power, weight, and new authority. His echoes, rushed back from the vast ceilings, must have shocked even him into better manners, for when he reached my desk, I felt his warmly liquored breath stir mere whispers on my face.
"I"m here for the books, Tom."
I turned casually to check some index cards. "When they"re ready, we"ll call you."
"Hold on," he said. "Wait-"
"You"re here to pick up the Veterans" Salvage books for hospital distribution?"
"No, no," he cried. "I"m here for all the books."
I gazed at him.
"Well," he said, "most of them."
"Most?" I blinked once, then bent to riffle the files. "Only ten volumes to a person at a time. Let"s see. Here! Why, you let your card expire when you were twenty years old, thirty years ago. See?" I held it up.
Barnes put both hands on the desk and leaned his great bulk upon them. "I see you are interfering." His face began to color, his breath to husk and rattle. "I don"t need a card for my work!"
So loud was his whisper that a myriad of white pages stopped b.u.t.terflying under far green lamps in the big stone rooms. Faintly, a few books thudded shut.
Reading people lifted their serene faces. Their eyes, made antelope by the time and weather of this place, pleaded for silence to return, as it always must when a tiger has come and gone from a special fresh-water spring, as this surely was. Looking at these upturned, gentle faces I thought of my forty years of living, working, even sleeping here among hidden lives and vellumed, silent, and imaginary people. Now, as always, I considered my library as a cool cavern or fresh, ever-growing forest into which men pa.s.sed from the heat of the day and the fever of motion to refresh their limbs and bathe their minds an hour in the gra.s.s-shade illumination, in the sound of small breezes wandered out from the turning and turning of the pale soft book pages. Then, better focused, their ideas rehung upon their frames, their flesh made easy on their bones, men might walk forth into the blast furnace of reality, noon, mob-traffic, improbable senescence, inescapable death. I had seen thousands careen into my library starved, and leave well-fed. I had watched lost people find themselves. I had known realists to dream and dreamers to come awake in this marble sanctuary where silence was a marker in each book.
"Yes," I said at last. "But it will only take a moment to re-register you. Fill in this new card. Give two reliable references-"
"I don"t need references," said Jonathan Barnes, "to burn books!"
"Contrarily," said I. "You"ll need even more, to do that."
"My men are my references. They"re waiting outside for the books. They"re dangerous."
"Men like that always are."
"No no, I mean the books, idiot. The books are dangerous. Good G.o.d, no two agree. All the d.a.m.n double-talk. All the lousy babel and slaver and spit. So, we"re out to simplify, clarify, hew to the line. We need-"
"To talk this over," said I, taking up a copy of Demosthenes, tucking it under my arm. "It"s time for my dinner. Join me, please-"
I was halfway to the door when Barnes, wide-eyed, suddenly remembered the silver whistle hung from his blouse, jammed it to his wet lips, and gave it a piercing blast.
The library doors burst wide. A flood of black charcoal-burned uniformed men collided boisterously upstairs.
I called, softly.
They stopped, surprised.
"Quietly," I said.
Barnes seized my arm. "Are you opposing due process?"
"No," I said. "I won"t even ask to see your property invasion permit. I wish only silence as you work."
The readers at the tables had leaped up at the storm of feet. I patted the air. They sat back down and did not glance up again at these men crammed into their tight dark char-smeared suits who stared at my mouth now as if they disbelieved my cautions. Barnes nodded. The men moved softly, on tiptoe, through the big library rooms. With extra care, with proper stealth, they raised the windows. Soundlessly, whispering, they collected books from the shelves to toss down toward the evening yard below. Now and again they scowled at the readers who calmly went on leafing through their books, but made no move to seize these volumes, and continued emptying the shelves.
"Good," said I.
"Good?" asked Barnes.
"Your men can work without you. Take five."
And I was out in the twilight so quickly he could only follow, bursting with unvoiced questions. We crossed the green lawn where a huge portable h.e.l.l was drawn up hungrily, a fat black tar-daubed oven from which shot red-orange and gaseous blue flames into which men were shoveling the wild birds, the literary doves which soared crazily down to flop broken-winged, the precious flights poured from every window to thump the earth, to be kerosene-soaked and chucked in the gulping furnace. As we pa.s.sed this destructive if colorful industry, Barnes mused.
"Funny. Should be crowds, a thing like this. But . . .no crowd. How do you figure?"
I left him. He had to run to catch up.
In the small cafe across the street we took a table and Barnes, irritable for no reason he could say, called out, "Service! I"ve got to get back to work!"
Walter, the proprietor, strolled over, with some dog-eared menus. Walter looked at me. I winked.
Walter looked at Jonathan Barnes.
Walter said, ""Come live with me and be my love; and we will all the pleasures prove.""
"What?" Jonathan Barnes blinked.
""Call me Ishmael,"" said Walter.
"Ishmael," I said. "We"ll have coffee to start."
Walter came back with the coffee.
""Tiger! Tiger! burning bright,"" he said. ""In the forests of the night.""
Barnes stared after the man who walked away casually. "What"s eating him? Is he nuts?"
"No," I said. "But go on with what you were saying back at the library. Explain."
"Explain?" said Barnes. "My G.o.d, you"re all sweet reason. All right, I will explain. This is a tremendous experiment. A test town. If the burning works here, it"ll work anywhere. We don"t burn everything, no no. You noticed, my men cleaned only certain shelves and categories? We"ll eviscerate about forty-nine point two percent. Then we"ll report our success to the overall government committee-"
"Excellent," I said.
Barnes eyed me. "How can you be so cheerful?"
"Any library"s problem," I said, "is where to put the books. You"ve helped me solve it."
"I thought you"d be . . . afraid."
"I"ve been around Trash Men all my life."
"I beg pardon?"
"Burning is burning. Whoever does it is a Trash Man."
"Chief Censor, Green Town, Illinois, d.a.m.n it!"
A new man, a waiter, came with the coffee pot steaming.
"Hullo, Keats," I said.
""Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,"" said the waiter.
"Keats?" said the Chief Censor. "His name isn"t Keats."
"Silly of me," I said. "This is a Greek restaurant. Right, Plato?"
The waiter refilled my cup. ""The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness . . .This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.""
Barnes leaned forward to squint at the waiter, who did not move. Then Barnes busied himself blowing on his coffee: "As I see it, our plan is simple as one and one make two . . ."