The Serpent (20 page)

‘Do I need to tell you?' inquired William.

‘Certainly,' answered Alec. ‘How are we to know if we're not told? That surely would be a miracle.'

The word miracle came through the surface talk, stood out with all its biblical implications. William's face, with its short dark-brown beard, concentrated on Alec's. ‘And do you not believe in miracles?'

‘That's not the point. The point is you expected me to perform a miracle.'

‘I?
You
to perform a miracle?'

‘Yes. You said I should know a thing without being told.'

‘Young man,' said William solemnly, ‘this is not a matter for trifling, not a matter for the use of slyness and deceit. You think I do not see what is going on in your mind. I see it, and it is not a pleasant thing.'

‘I won't take that,' said Alec, ‘from you or from anyone. I have said nothing that anyone could object to. I did not say one word against you or against anything. I don't mind a fair thing, but –' Alec's voice was rising. He half turned away, restless on his feet.

‘You have said nothing, have you? To how many men and young men have you said nothing? Do you think I have not been told of your impious questionings and blasphemy? Do you think the whole countryside is not aware of the kind of talk that goes on here? Do you not think it is my duty as an elder of God's church to search out the evil and destroy it from our midst by showing you the perilous errors of your ways? Will you tell me all that is nothing?'

‘That's not the point,' mumbled Alec.

‘The point! Young man, I know your father, and your mother. I know the parents of you all. They are respectable and godly folk. Have you not even concern for their good name, if you have none for your own immortal souls? Would you not only take the road to hell, but also at the same time bring grief and shame and sorrow upon
them
?'

Alec still managed a small toss to his head, but he had no words. His face was flushed, his body awkward.

Tom had gone back to the drawer from which he had taken the bolt and now, having checked its contents, he closed it. He opened and examined the next two drawers. The clinking sound of the small bits of metal as he raked them over thoughtfully with his fingers became an extreme annoyance to William, whose voice hardened in anger, and rose, and pointedly included Tom in its denunciation. But not until William had wheeled and addressed him personally did Tom face round.

‘What are you talking about?' he asked coolly.

‘Do you deny it?' cried William.

‘Deny what?'

‘Do you deny that you make a mock of God's holy Word in this shop? Do you deny it?'

‘Certainly,' answered Tom. ‘But if you mean do I question the logic of certain matters as related in the Bible, then I do.'

‘You! You stand there and say you do? You!'

‘Yes, me,' said Tom.

‘
You
question the logic? The
logic
!
You
set yourself up to question the logic of the inspired word of God?'

‘I doubt if it's the inspired word of God.'

‘You
doubt
?'

‘Well, perhaps not. In certain respects I feel sure it's not.'

William glared upon him as upon a strange and ominous viper. His voice had already gone husky in consternation. As he glared, his head nodded slowly, the eyes hardened, and a faint ‘Yes' hissed in his mouth.

The other four lads were stiff as ramrods.

‘In certain respects,' echoed William, the meaningless
words sounding like a preliminary to some dark and devastating rite.

‘Yes,' answered Tom. ‘In certain respects I consider the whole account of the creation, the whole Pentateuch, as a Jewish tribal story, self-contradictory in parts and in other parts fairly foul.'

‘Foul!' William, who was normally a voluble man and distinguished as a fluent elder in prayer, could do little more than breathe the word. Clearly he had never anticipated anything so terrible, so terrifying, as this, and even yet could hardly believe his ears.

‘By the Scriptures, nearly all the Kings of Judah were a lecherous blood-thirsty lot, and if they were living now you wouldn't allow them inside your church door. And that's the truth,' said Tom, in whom the quiver of excitement was now rising, for he knew why William had come and it angered him bitterly.

‘Are you speaking of Solomon and David and –'

‘Yes, the whole lot,' cried Tom. ‘Butchery and treachery and idolatry wherever you look. Even Solomon, who had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, murdered his brother Adonias because he asked for one of them. Or Ehud, who hid his sword under his cloak and went into the king, saying God had given him an urgent message for him. And when the king stood up to receive the message, Ehud drove his sword into his belly and God approved the act. Or David, who ravished the wife of Uriah and then had her husband slain, this David whom the Scriptures praise!'

‘David!'

‘Yes, David. Look at his life. Mixed up with evil men and burdened with debt. Didn't he sack the house of Nabal, the king's servant, and a week later marry the widow? Didn't he offer himself to Achish, the king's enemy, and then spread fire and blood over the land of those who were the allies of Achish, sparing neither sex nor age? No sooner is he on the throne than he gets himself new concubines. And these concubines are not enough, but he must also take Bathsheba from her husband and then foully slay the husband. And it's from this Bathsheba, this adulterous
woman, that, according to the biblical account, Christ himself is descended. That was David – a man we are told, after God's own heart –'

‘Silence!' roared William. ‘Silence! – you blasphemer. Have you no fear that the Almighty will strike you dead where you stand, stiffen you to one of your own boards, as He stiffened Lot's wife on the plain before the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which He destroyed with fire and brimstone?'

‘Why did God turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, merely because she looked back? Why did the two daughters of Lot then make their own father drunk and commit incest with him, when they had the whole town of Zoar to take men from? And the way the two angels behaved before the town was destroyed, and the way Lot offered to make prostitutes of his own daughters –'

‘Silence, I say!'

‘It's all very well shouting 'Silence'. But can you answer?'

William answered. William thundered. But no sooner had he made one of his biblical allusions – and it was impossible for him to proceed far without doing so – than Tom took him up. Tom's voice was louder than he knew. It rose piercing and intolerant. Now that the issue was joined beyond redemption, he hit out, not blindly, but with the will, the desire, to pierce and destroy.

They went through the Old Testament like a furious whirlwind, Tom picking up Abraham and his wife Sarah in Egypt, Moses married to an idolater's daughter and writing his books (‘how? on what? – and beyond the Jordan when we are told he never crossed the Jordan!'), the just man Jacob (‘who deceived his father Isaac and robbed Laban, his father-in-law!'), the Hebrews and the Midianites, the harlot Rahab (‘ay, but who is descended from her through incest and adultery?'), Joshua and the sun and moon that stood still in the middle of the day (‘why the moon in the middle of the day?'), Jonah and the belly of the whale (‘do you know how far it was from Joppa to Nineveh? – four hundred miles!
four hundred!
').

They shouted together, Tom trying to pin William to
that which he had already overleapt and proceeded beyond in his righteous wrath, one now with his human wrath.

Alec stood in a hypnotic bliss transcending anything he had hitherto experienced.

Boys came down the green and gathered gaping round the door. Elderly passers-by paused and drew near.

Backwards, in loops and circles, whirled the combatants, the thundering Goliath, and the pale-faced piercing David, until they landed in the garden of Eden.

‘The tree of the knowledge of good and evil!' cried Tom. ‘Why should God want to keep knowledge from man? Why? …'

‘… of good and evil, so that man would know good from evil, and choose the good and repel the evil – repel the evil. Do you hear me? Repel the evil – repel the evil from your evil heart, you …'

‘But He didn't! He didn't want to give them the chance! And without …'

‘… and not nurse it like a viper. But you have chosen the evil, and I say unto you that God's hand will come in its wrath and smite you, as it smote …'

‘And without the knowledge of good and evil, what would man be? He would be no higher than the brute beast. Why is it a brute beast? – because it still cannot tell good from evil. If God …'

‘… And the Devil took the shape of a serpent, for the Devil can take any shape, even your shape – even your shape, you impious blasphemer, and the Devil spoke to them saying, ‘Ye shall not surely die', but we know that at that moment not only did evil enter their hearts, but death,
death
…'

‘But it doesn't say it was the Devil. The account says it was a serpent, a ‘beast of the field', and who ever heard a serpent speak? Did you? Did you ever hear a serpent speak?' cried Tom in shrill mockery.

But William was now not listening to Tom. He was preaching the wrath of God and damnation upon the sinner. Approaching his climax, he rose to visionary and prophetic heights: ‘For I see the serpent within you, I see its evil coils twisting in your body and in your brain, and
I see that you have delivered yourself to the serpent, and I say unto you that if you do not repent, and cast yourself down into the ashes of abasement and humility, and pray to the Almighty to be delivered of the slime and horror of the serpent, I say unto you,
and it will come to pass
, that you will be devoured of the serpent and your final end will be the eternal torment and punishment of the damned.'

Folk knew William, and sometimes one or other might smile behind his back, for they felt in their hearts that William wanted to be an important man yet had not within him that sure authority of body and spirit which is recognised in silence by all men. But now William had risen to the height of prophecy which moved them in the secret and fearful places, and they were silent in a deep stillness. Through this stillness went a sudden shiver of movement.

Tom, apprehending the effect that had been created, with eyes blazing on William, shouted: ‘I can look after myself. I'm not afraid of your Jewish tribal God or of any mythical serpent. “Almighty!” you cry. You do not even know the meaning of the word. If you did, you would know that there are things even the Almighty cannot do.'

A movement went through those at the door.

‘What things?' asked William, almost in a small voice now, waiting for the final blasphemy as a man might wait at an execution.

But Tom was far beyond metaphysical consideration of absolute opposites and cried, ‘He couldn't do what even you could do. You can commit suicide. God the all-mighty can't.'

There was a shuffling of feet in the doorway. Tom turned and saw his father before him.

The grey face, the grey beard, the blazing eyes, the silent pursuing face – it had come at last. The power of the father created in the image of God. The tribal power, the unearthly power. Each felt it, and Tom could not move.

The father gazed upon his son with a fixity of expression more terrible than all words. In silence he groped for William's staff. He took a slow step nearer to his son, and, in the short pause that followed, the intention
of chastisement gathered in a concentration horrible to behold. Then the hand with the staff went up, not quickly, but with deliberation. It rose, until it rose high above his head, then all in a moment the stiffness of the arm slackened, the stick fell, bouncing off Tom's chest, the arm wavered down, the body sagged, and with a deep soft grunt it collapsed upon itself, pitching forward slightly before Tom's feet.

No-one moved for what appeared a long time. Then William was on his knees. ‘Adam?' But Adam did not answer. William stretched him out. The unwinking eyes stared upward, glittering. There was no breath in the mouth. No movement in the heart.

Through the door came Tom's mother. She gave a wild look at her son and saw the outstretched body. In a moment she knew her husband was dead and, crouching by his side, her head falling low over him and lifting, she let out a high keening cry.

‘We'll carry him down,' said William gravely to those about him.

‘Will I go – for the doctor?' muttered Alec in a low desperate voice.

‘Go,' commanded William.

They carried the body out, and the mother, weeping and keening, ran before them. It was growing dark. Alec took one of the two bicycles which were now leaning against the outside wall. Those who had hired them did not venture in to pay, and Tom was left standing alone in the shop.

The Philosopher withdrew his eyes from that far distant scene to the world about him, and in his sight were the bushes, the tumbling curves of the close-cropped grass, glittering specks of mica in a grey boulder, the yellow broom and the wild roses below him, and, lifting to the blue skies, the wide uninhabited spaces of the air.

The shepherd had probably seen him for he was coming slowly along the hillside. They would have a talk together in the freedom of the day and that would be pleasant. The Philosopher's eyes fell on his home and steadied thereunder the compulsion of the past now upon him like a dream.

And those days leading up to and immediately following the burial of his father had now a dreamlike quality about them, as if lifted out of an older age, wherein folk moved under the hand of destiny.

His father's body was laid out and coffined in ‘the room', where he himself had slept. There was a small place, a closet, between the two main rooms, which his mother now cleaned up for a shake-down bed. But he did not sleep there, and when he withdrew it was to a bed of shavings in the shop.

In accordance with custom, folk came and kept watch through the night. William Bulbreac was like one who had a special mission laid upon him, and prayed fervently, and read in the Bible, and read aloud the metrical version of one of the Psalms of David before leading in its singing. There was food and drink for all, and to this his mother attended with hospitality, rising through the sadness and the sorrow, the keening memories of the dead, of a just and a kind and an upright man, remembered now by the poor widow whom he had helped, rising through the hidden good deeds to offer
food and drink to those who watched with her through the dark hours of death, to press food and drink upon them.

And because of the way in which death had come, there was an added fervour in devotion, a deeper feeling amongst them, a warmth of sorrow, an apprehension of God's grace with the terror of God's grace around it, like a strong hand around a fragile cup, a hand that had only to close in imperceptible motion for the cup to be shattered.

Outside this community of worship what was there in the world, the world of strife and vainglory and fleeting material things? Outside was the unreality that passed like a dream, like a coloured bubble that floated and burst upon the thin air, like a tale that was told and died in the mind. And there – there – stalking through that outside world, seeking whom he may devour, subtil as the serpent, crashing like a dark beast through forests, the Devil, the destroyer, the blasphemer.

They greeted Tom quietly, not looking at his face, on a gentle even tone, expressing their sorrow, one by one, at the first meeting. When he tried to avoid them, they made no effort to meet him. They came and they went, and he knew that they thought him cold and unrelenting, stone-faced and hard-hearted.

The burial service was held at the house in the usual way. Some of the old friends of the dead, like Sandy and Norman, gathered in the room around the coffin, while the bulk of the mourners, all men, crowded around the door outside, their hats in their hands as the minister's great voice rose so that God would hear and look down upon them and into their hearts.

In the kitchen, with the widow of the dead man, were gathered a few women of her own age, her nearest friends, to keep her company and sustain her in this last trial. They were apart from the men, in their own world of women and women's ways and thoughts.

Tom bore up, expressionless, under the long prayer and under the minister's spoken thoughts that came at him like spears. For he was not spared. Not that the minister spoke at him directly. In the house of death the minister spoke to God, interceding for His servant, who had borne his
trial with a patience and long suffering, a belief in God's goodness and in His inscrutable wisdom, that was as an example set before them, even unto the last moment of his mortal life when, his powers failing and the darkening upon him, he yet strove to counter the ways of evil and the tongue of blasphemy. For the tongue was deceitful above all things and most desperately wicked. Yet behind all was the saving power of God's grace, the promise of redemption, even for the most abandoned and depraved, through the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When the body was buried, Norman and Sandy and one or two others came and shook hands with Tom. But not many came, for Tom did not want them and they sensed this.

By the time he had come back into the middle of the village he was alone. Most of the blinds were still drawn, and he walked past the silent houses like one in a nightmare, visible to the unseen, so that he had difficulty in keeping his feet to an even pace on the deserted way.

When he came by the shop and house where dark-clad figures had so recently gathered and slowly moved away in the black river of death, silence lay on roof and ground. The sky was overcast and from the stillness of the autumn day descended a sadness that pressed against the eyeballs. He stopped at his shop door and looked about him. No life moved. Entering, he locked the door quietly and stood for a moment before the window. But the blinded light hurt as though his eyeballs had got distended. The sadness was of uncountable Sabbaths, and the silence was the silence of the head that is bowed after the last whisper.

Turning from the window, he went and sat behind a kitchen dresser not yet finished, and leaned his back and head against the wall. His body slumped in a weak quivering and a faint moan passed his lips. He sank into a slumberous state, his mouth fallen open, his breathing heavy. Down in the depths, his mind slowly thinned to a clarity so fine that all was seen.

The outcast moving apart from his own people, wandering in desolate ways through the horror of silence. The communal warmth in life and death. Cast out, bitterness in
his soul, not giving in, cast out. And this he comprehended not in thought but in visual picture, seeing faces and eyes and the massed movement of bodies going away, seeing them with his own eyes – and seeing himself going from them, cut adrift like a criminal, white-faced upon his own empty road.

Voices coming up from the house. The women going home.

‘… Poor woman. She's had a hard struggle.'

‘Ay, she was not helped much. There was a hard heart in him and a flinty face. I don't know how he could have done it.'

‘What could you expect – thinking as he thinks? The like of it has never been known in this place.'

‘He was bold. I don't know how he could have done it. A judgement will come on him …'

They spoke mournfully, awe in their voices, but with a core of hardness, of anger.

They had described his face exactly as he felt it: gone thin and hard, the air whitening it. He knew the women well – decent kindly mothers of grown-up families.

His face creased of itself in a furtive humour. Then he groaned. God, he was tired.

Soft footsteps, heavy, padding round the shop. The knob rattled. ‘Are you in, Tom?' His mother's hushed voice.

He did not answer. No women ever accompanied a funeral to the cemetery. She would be wondering where he had gone, wondering and fearing.

When he thought she would be back in the house he got to his feet, dusted his Sunday clothes, cautiously unlocked the door. Then he walked down to the house.

She was not in the kitchen, and through the silence he lifted his voice: ‘Are you there?' The table was spread for guests. The iron soup pot steamed above the fire. To invite relatives, close friends, the old men who had to go a long way, to partake of a meal after the funeral was the honourable custom. He should have spoken to the men and taken them home. Sandy had a long distance to walk, nearly three miles, and half of it was a steep hill. Round the meal elements of the community gathered, and where death
had been, life started again. ‘Are you there?' he shouted. Going to the door, he met her coming in, breathless as if she had been running. She gazed at him. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘Where were you?'

‘Nowhere,' he answered, turning back into the kitchen.

She followed him and they both stood at a loss.

‘You have brought – no-one?' she asked, turning her eyes on him.

‘No,' he answered, breaking out of his stance.

Her eyes wandered over the soup plates in a dumb stupid way. She could not realise the emptiness that had come upon the house, its desertion.

They were forsaken.

‘Why – didn't you?'

‘I didn't get much chance,' he replied.

It was no excuse, not even a lie; the bitterness of truth was in it. Yet not the whole truth, for, had they been asked, in duty they would have come. But how could he have asked? Couldn't she see?

But she couldn't see anything. Her small eyes were round and stared as if they were blind. She leaned with her left hand on the table, overcome it seemed by the sudden weight of her body. Her head bowed and she drew in a shuddering breath. Standing there she wept in harsh whining sounds.

As he was going out the door, she called to him: ‘Tom, don't leave me.'

He muttered that he would be back in a minute.

When he came back, she was composed and spoke in a quiet voice. ‘Sit in to your food.'

She pretended to eat to keep him company. He forced the food down his throat. They never spoke. At night his bed was ready in the room where his father's body had been laid out.

The humiliation of that night, the moments of ugly abject fear, when the mind became as the mind of a child, acquired knowledge of no avail, futile and swept away. At twenty-three youth can be more positive than age, but there is a sensitiveness, a capacity for pain and horror, for sheer formless apprehension, that age forgets.

Next day was Sunday, for the father had died on the Wednesday and been buried on Saturday.

Tom was not going to church. When his mother realised it, she sat down. So this, too, had come upon her.

‘I don't want to go to church – to be preached at,' he said in a cold voice.

She did not speak. But presently she asked in a quiet pleading way, ‘Will you not go, Tom?'

‘No, I'm not going,' he answered and walked out.

He saw her set off alone.

The sermon preached that Sunday was of extraordinary power. It had a whelming effect on the people. Even the young men who had heard Tom's arguments were overborne and glad to be able to withdraw in silence into the old ways, secretly recognising the luck by which they had not been found out. Clearly William Bulbreac had reported the matter of his argument with Tom, and the minister, awakened to the profound need of denunciation, had prepared himself for battle and no mercy. Even years afterwards, when a man might speak of that sermon in composure, he found it difficult to remember with any precision what had been said. But the incommunicable effect was remembered powerfully, as of a spear of light stirring the dark ancient sinful roots of being. Each man in the congregation, each woman, knew in the secrecy of the heart how he and she had sinned. And God knew all. God had known the sins of men mentioned in the Old Testament. That was not hidden. That was made clear. At each moment man was on the brink of eternity. At each moment, at this moment now, he could draw back – as the men of old, who had sinned, had drawn back, and been forgiven, and had even found favour in the sight of God, whose mercy was infinite. At this moment, now. But for the one who did not draw back, stiff-necked in his pride, treacherous as the serpent in his blasphemy, for that one – Satan waited in the abyss.

As the preacher warmed, he did not merely argue. He spoke in parables and drew pictures, pictures of gargantuan myth that came from inside them and lived upon the air.

They saw the coils of the serpent.

In all ages, men of all creeds had seen the serpent, had used the serpent as a sign. Why?

The devil had only needed to speak once through the mouth of the serpent. Never again. Once was enough, because from that speaking and man's disobedience, sin had come upon us and death. The coils of the serpent – the coils of sin – the glistening constricting coils of living death.

To fulfil his further purpose, the Devil had to speak only through the mouths of men. Many say they have seen the Devil. Many have described him, in all tongues, in great poems, in terrible tragedies. Great and learned men, Christian and heathen alike. But you may not have seen him, and I may not have seen him, but – we have heard him speak. We have heard him speak – and we have seen what has befallen.

Mounting, step by step, the preacher came at last to his climax of denunciation, each terrible strophe beginning, ‘Woe unto ye' … And because of one metaphor which he used, it was to the secret mind thinking of Tom – and which mind was not, even while also thinking of himself? – as if the serpent had uncoiled itself inside Tom and had sunk its invisible jaws in his throat.

When his mother returned from the sermon Tom saw that she was defeated at last, and broken. The small lids of her eyes were red. She had been weeping in church. They would all have heard her weeping. The smothered sound of her weeping amid the awful silence of the congregation.

He had attended to the soup pot – yesterday's plethora of broth heated up – but his mother sat down, she was so weary.

Tom dished two plates of broth.

‘Won't you take something?' he asked.

‘No,' she answered, gazing at the fire. She sighed, and suddenly began weeping. ‘I did my best,' she cried, to no-one. ‘I could do no more.' She wept, and with the quivering breaths her stout body twisted and shook. The thin sounds she made were sounds of pure anguish.

Tom deliberately ate through his soup, got up, and went out.

When he came back in the evening, she was sitting where he had left her. In the deep gloom of the kitchen, she had the forsaken look of the dead. But she stirred when she heard him, and got up, and went silently about her household tasks.

That night he heard her from his bed, to which he had retired early, making strange broken speaking sounds. By a queer intuition he knew she would not take it upon herself to speak to God. And the Bible was not for her. She was speaking to the invisible No-one.