CHAPTER FIVE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

In Farchrist Year twenty-five, the son of the Peasant King founded the Knights of Farchrist. The King dubbed his son a Knight, and Sir Gregorovich Farchrist II began to teach three other young men the knightly virtues he had mastered. First and foremost, essential to the knightly way of life, was an undying faith in Grecolus, the creator of the universe and most holy god. One of the three young men—called Squires—was found to own a small magic book that contained pictures that moved as if they were alive. It was called a grave sacrilege and he was expelled from the Order immediately.

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The small party left Queensburg early the next morning. They were dressed and ready for battle. Shortwhiskers wore his chainmail under his dwarven cloak. In his left hand was a small unadorned shield and his right hand firmly gripped his belt, from which hung his jeweled-scabbarded sword. He wore his broad-brimmed hat and led his pack mule laden with supplies and spare weapons. Brisbane was garbed simply in his studded leather jerkin, tan pants, and boots. He walked with his blonde hair untethered and it fell loose past his shoulders. He held a short sword that the dwarf had lent him. Roystnof was, as always, dressed in red and black, his attire changing little for combat. He needed no blade to kill an opponent and no armor to protect himself.

They followed the shoreline of the Darkmarine until they reached the Mystic River. There, they turned southward and into the Windcrest Hills. The August sun was hot and soon the march became tiring and tedious. To pass the time they made conversation among themselves, but all seemed to avoid the topic of what lay ahead for them and for Ignatius Roundtower.

“What did Stargazer mean about your ribs?” Brisbane asked the dwarf at one point, referring to the night before.

Shortwhiskers grunted. “I took a nasty fall once and broke a few of them. She patched me up.”

Brisbane nodded. “Have you known her long?”

Shortwhiskers paused before he answered. “Yes.”

“How did you meet?”

“Listen, Gil,” Shortwhiskers said. “The tale of Allison Stargazer and myself ties in with the tale of your forefathers that I promised to tell you. I can begin that tale today if you like.”

Brisbane nodded. “I wish you would.”

The dwarf looked at Roystnof who was walking on the other side of him. The wizard nodded his head once as if granting permission. Shortwhiskers then turned back to Brisbane.

“It is a long tale, Gil,” he said. “And parts of it are painful for me to tell. I will begin today and stop when I choose, and I do not want to hear you begging me for more. You will hear it all, but only when I am ready to tell it. Agreed?”

“I think I can discipline myself,” Brisbane said.

“Very well then,” Shortwhiskers said. “Your grandfather, Gildegarde Brisbane, became a Knight of Farchrist in what you would call Farchrist Year fifty-four. He was the first of the Risers, select boys taken from the lower classes and trained to be a Knight from youth.”

That reminded Brisbane of his own boyhood. Had his father remained a Knight and lawfully married his mother before his conception—but no, wait a minute, his mother was of the lower class and Knights were in the upper class, whether they started as Risers or not. Their union was and would be forbidden regardless. Brisbane had often found this restriction silly, but it seemed that social standing was more important to members of the upper class.

“I know little of your grandfather’s history before this time,” Shortwhiskers said. “He was born and raised in Raveltown, and was chosen as a Riser because of his service to the temple of Grecolus. He was a bit of a prodigy student there, and the priests looked favorably upon him. He served his squireship under Gregorovich the Second, the then heir to the Farchrist throne and the traditional Captain of the Knights.”

Brisbane understood this. Since the conception of the Knights of Farchrist, it had always been the heir to the throne who acted as Captain, leader of the Knights. His knighthood was usually granted at birth, but still had to serve a token squireship at the proper age. At the current time, Gregorovich IV sat on the throne and his son, Gregorovich V, was Captain of the Knights.

The dwarf continued. “Now, although the Knights formally consider themselves a happy brotherhood, there were and still are personal conflicts and rivalries among them. Throughout his squireship and knighthood, your grandfather carried on a rivalry with Gregorovich the Third. They competed with one another in all their duties, but unlike some others in the Order, their competition was born out of the purest friendship and love between the two men. They felt that constantly challenging each other only increased their skill and bettered their values. When the Peasant King died in Farchrist Year fifty-eight, Gregorovich the Second became King and it was Gregorovich the Third’s turn to assume the position of Captain. His first official act in that office was to name Brisbane his second-in-command, Commander of the Knights of Farchrist.”

Brisbane knew that his grandfather had held this rank, but he did not know of his close friendship with the then heir to the throne. It explained much of how his grandfather could rise from a small peasant boy to perhaps the most famous Knight of the realm.

“It was at this time,” Shortwhiskers said, “that I entered the picture. The Kingdom of Farchrist began formal relations with the dwarven nation to which my clan belonged in the mountains not far from the plateau on which Farchrist Castle stood. I was chosen as an ambassador of my people and journeyed to the castle to meet with the King and his court. The reception my aides and I received was gracious, and we began to discuss what our people could do for each other. We spoke of trading goods—our metals for their agriculture, for example—and mostly of things my clan had anticipated and were ready to comply with. But the King surprised us with one request for which we were completely unprepared.”

Brisbane took a moment to look at Roystnof. The wizard seemed to be staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. Brisbane returned his attention to the dwarf.

“You see,” Shortwhiskers said, “Gregorovich the Second grew up in the aftermath of Dalanmire’s attack in Farchrist Year four. His young and impressionable eyes had seen the years of feeble harvests that the dragon-burned fields produced. He had seen the rubble-filled streets of Raveltown and the slow rebuilding done by the over-worked peasants. He had seen the poverty, hunger, disease, and despair that followed Dalanmire’s attack. But most of all, he had seen how the dragon tax took a gigantic bite out of what little his people managed to collect from year to year. He had made an oath to himself at a very young age; an oath that, when he had the power to do so, he would see the evil lizard who had cause so much pain skinned alive.”

Brisbane looked again at Roystnof. He was still staring off into the distance.

“The King wanted the dwarves,” Shortwhiskers continued in a quiet voice, “to guide an armed party through the Crimson Mountains and across the Desert of Despair to Dragon’s Peak, where the party would destroy Dalanmire.”

“Nog,” Roystnof interrupted, pointing into the distance. “Look. Atop that hill at ten o’clock.”

Shortwhiskers and Brisbane looked in the direction Roystnof had indicated. Brisbane saw two fuzzy figures standing atop a hill ahead of them. He could make out no finer details.”

“Ogres,” Shortwhiskers said. “And we’re upwind of them. If we can see them…”

“…they can smell us,” Roystnof finished for him.

Roystnof put down his pack and his staff. He brought out his red book and began flipping through it. Shortwhiskers drew his sword and tightened his grip on his shield. Brisbane looked off into the distance and saw the two figures quickly descend the hill in their direction.

“What’ll we do?” Brisbane said.

“Stay put,” Shortwhiskers said.

“What?!” Brisbane realized he was more than a little scared.

“Gil,” Roystnof said. “We cannot escape them. This is their country and they are much better at chasing than we are at running. We will stand atop this hill and wait for them to arrive. They will tire themselves running to us and, when they are within range, I will let one of them have it. The other I trust to Nog’s skill with his blade.”

Brisbane looked at Shortwhiskers.

“No problem,” the dwarf said.

“You just stay behind us,” Roystnof told Brisbane. “Now don't interrupt. I have to prepare this spell.”

Brisbane took his place behind his companions like a frustrated child. He stared out over the dwarf’s head and saw the approaching ogres top a nearer hill and rush down its other side. Now he could see that they were big creatures, much taller than he and burly as well. Dressed in tattered skins and furs, they were covered in yellowish-brown hair. Roystnof had put his book down and now had his eyes closed and was mumbling to himself. The dwarf was standing still.

“Don’t you have a crossbow or something?” Brisbane asked Shortwhiskers.

“No,” he said curtly.

The ogres were closing the distance rapidly. They crested the hill directly adjacent to the one Brisbane stood upon. Their hair covered their heads and backs while their chests were bare with dull yellow warty bumps covering them. Each carried a massive wooden club in its hand and their features were twisted and grotesque.

Suddenly, Roystnof flipped open his eyes and threw his arms into the air. Red lightning crackled out of his fingertips, shooting through the warm air and striking one of the ogres in the center of its warty chest. There, the lightning exploded with a flash that knocked the ogre off its feet. When the smoke cleared, one ogre stood over the crumpled form of its comrade. The remaining ogre let out a roar and rushed its attackers.

It seemed like the ogre was upon them in an instant. It charged at the dwarf with ferocity, and Brisbane saw just how large the creature actually was. It made him look like a child and Shortwhiskers like an infant. Brisbane did not see how the dwarf could stop it.

The ogre charged up the hill impossibly fast. Shortwhiskers set himself against the charge, swung his blade at the proper time, and cut deeply into the abdomen of the monster. The ogre, however, did not stop. It had its club held high as it ran over the dwarf, trampling Shortwhiskers under its feet. It was upon Roystnof in a second, who quickly bent down to pick up his staff. The ogre brought its club down on the back of the wizard and Roystnof crumbled flat under the blow.

Brisbane’s short sword was in his hand as if by its own volition. Brisbane did not have any time to think. He knew only two short and sudden things. One: if he did not stop this ogre, all three of them were going to die and, two: the short sword Shortwhiskers had lent him felt good in his hand. Brisbane leapt into battle with shocking grasp the last thing on his mind.

The ogre lifted its club and swung it sideways at Brisbane’s head. Brisbane ducked under the heavy wood, and then sprang up, burying his sword right below the protruding chin of the ogre. Blackish-red ogre blood rained down upon him. The creature had swung too hard, expecting to connect with Brisbane’s head, and was now losing its balance. It began to fall over as Brisbane pulled his weapon out and took another swing at the ogre’s neck.

Roystnof, although hurt, was still wise and able enough to scramble out of the way of the falling ogre. Shortwhiskers was shaken, and was just regaining his feet as Brisbane chopped into the side of the ogre’s neck. The ogre crashed to the ground and Brisbane brought his blade down a third and final time on the creature’s neck, this time severing its head. Brisbane kicked the grotesque thing and it bounced and thumped down the hill.

Brisbane stood at the crest of the hill with the short sword clenched in a white-knuckled fist. His arms and the front of his leather jerkin were soaked rich in ogre blood. Shortwhiskers stood on one side and Roystnof sat in the sparse grass on the other, both silently watching him.

Brisbane shook off a chill and crouched down beside Roystnof. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the only reply the mage could manage.

Brisbane helped him off with his shirt and he laid the wizard face down on the grass. His back was already black and blue, and by poking and pressing Brisbane judged that no bones had been broken. Shortwhiskers was scratched and sore, but no worse for the trampling he had received. His biggest injury may have been to his pride. He rummaged through the bags on his mule and, when he returned, he had a small jar of ointment with him.

“Something Allison gave me some time ago,” the dwarf explained as he rubbed the salve on Roystnof’s bruises. “It’ll ease the pain and quicken the healing.”

“What happened, Gil?” Roystnof’s voice was muffled by a face full of grass.

“What do you mean?” Brisbane said.

“I think he means,” Shortwhiskers said, “that not only did you forget to use the spell he taught you, but you used my short sword like you and it were old friends.”

Confronted with it, Brisbane thought about what he had done for the first time. It puzzled him even more than it did his friends. He had never used such a weapon before. Thinking back, he saw that the use of arms was the only part of his knightly raising to have been left out. But he had used the short sword like he had been trained in its use. The hilt of the blade had felt not only good in his hand, it had felt reassuring. Like it was all he needed to make sense out of things and separate right from wrong.

These thoughts made him shudder a little, and then he remembered Roystnof and Shortwhiskers waiting for his reply. Brisbane lamely shrugged it off as a heat-of-the-moment thing and quickly excused himself to wash the gore off himself in the river.

Brisbane went down to the Mystic, removed his leather jerkin, and began washing it and himself in the cool water. Most of the ogre blood was washing off his armor, but it was going to leave a stain between the metal plates. Brisbane started to reflect on his actions again. He had murdered. Regardless of whether he had done it by sword or by spell, he had taken a life. His knightly disciplines told him this was wrong except in self-defense or against inherently evil creatures. Brisbane knew his situation was a case of both of these conditions, but these rationalizations were not enough to account for how unremorseful he actually felt. If, at any time in the past, someone had given him the hypothetical kill or be killed situation, and had wanted to know what Brisbane would do in such a circumstance, Brisbane would have said that he would protect himself the best he could and, if the death of his opponent resulted, he would feel strong pity but a wavering justification about it. But now that the hypothetical case had occurred, Brisbane was shocked to find himself feeling no pity at all—only strong justification. What he had achieved with his blade had been right. The ogre had deserved its fate and Brisbane was forced to admit that he had only been too glad to deal the cards.

Shortwhiskers called to him from atop the hill. Brisbane threw on his dripping jerkin and scrambled back up the hill. Roystnof was now clothed and stood stiffly next to the dwarf, leaning heavily on his staff. The three looked each other over for several silent moments.

Finally, Shortwhiskers spoke. “Well, Gil. I don’t know what it was that possessed you to fight like you did, but if I had any doubts to your heritage before, you and this ogre have helped me to overcome them.”

Brisbane smiled, feeling oddly proud of his true family name. He looked at the wizard with caring eyes.

“Yes,” Roystnof said murkily. “You have certainly shown what color blood runs in your veins.”

Brisbane looked pleadingly at Roystnof, like a scolded pup.

Roystnof shook his head and placed a hand on Brisbane’s shoulder. “No, Gil. You did what you had to do. You can do no less.”

They resumed their march south after the dwarf searched the bodies of the ogres, first the headless one at their feet and then the charred form on the next hill. He turned up a handful of gold pieces and a small opal gem. Shortwhiskers put them all in a sack on his pack mule, saying that he would keep them safe.

As they walked, Brisbane tried to get Shortwhiskers to continue his story about Brisbane’s family history, but the dwarf gruffly said that he had told enough of it for one day. He reminded Brisbane not to pester him about it and walked on in silence.

Brisbane spent most of the rest of the day wondering if ogres had a god to whom they prayed.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins

Another old book I picked up completely on a whim at one of my favorite used book stores. It was another one of those blank covers, but something about the spine spoke to me -- the title and the author’s name (both unfamiliar to my eyes and tongue) and a simple sketch of an Eskimo standing in profile.

Turns out it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection from 1941, a true story, a kind of travel narrative, about a Frenchman who goes to live with Canadian Eskimos for a year.

Even in the most sophisticated of us there is a deposit of human naivete that is ineradicable. “To think,” a man will say to himself as he lies on a sub-tropical beach in February, “to think that three days ago I was fighting my way against a snowstorm at home!” My own reflections were often of this simpleminded order, but with a higher degree of intensity. I, a child of civilization, had wandered in the course of a few weeks into the stone age. This was I who squatted beside a stone vessel in which seal-oil burned and gave off its warmth and light. I who had so lately been surrounded by Paris, by all that Paris means, sat here clad in the skins and furs of animals in a shelter built of snow, in a land and season where a temperature of forty degrees below zero was the normal thing -- and I was relaxed, content, happy. I was at peace with myself; and surely of all things in the world the rarest is a civilized man at peace with himself. Grant that it was simple. Say it was as simple as getting from Boston to Nassau, or from London to Cannes, in February (which it was not). Still, it was no less strange for that. If this was I, where was that other I that belonged to France, loved ease and warmth, read and argued and was the prey of intellectual restlessness? And if that other was I, who was this that sat chatting and laughing with the Eskimos in the igloo?

For him, for de Poncins, this travel takes place not only in physical space, but, as reflected in this passage from his foreword, in mind and spirit as well. And that is what makes Kabloona such an interesting read, as through his adventures we see some small fraction of the universal truths that our narrator must have experienced, must have been both surprised by but, then, slowly, been able to grow comfortable and equanimous with.

A good part of this book, therefore, becomes of itself the story of the encounter of two mentalities, and of the gradual substitution of the Eskimo mentality for the European mentality within myself.

And through these reflections, it is a delight to find such philosophical and observational wonders as:

I had not even made plans, for I had long ago discovered -- in India, in China, in the South Seas -- that Life abhors our plans and knows better ones than we can imagine.

And this, about the lonely radio operator that lived at the last outpost before the snowy wastes of the Arctic:

Sturrock had accomplished marvels with his toy, feats proper to rouse the jealousy of a power station. For the ether is like a woman: it is not enough to have instruments of price and power: you must amuse it, cajole it, invoke it in your dreams. Anyone who has seen an amateur radio-operator retire to a corner of a room and dream for hours with that shy preoccupied air they all have, knows how true this is. Living in the solitude of the Post, Sturrock had prayed to the goddess of the radio tenderly and with respect, and she had come to him and stayed with him. Elsewhere she had come and fled, or had not come at all; but she had never deserted Sturrock. Thus the young man had grown famous in the Arctic, and it was to him that the whole of the North had sent forth its appeals. With his sensitive hands -- there are hands in the world that confer grace, and he had them -- Sturrock would rescue messages that were dying in the air; he would revive them and relay them to their destination.

It was such a delight to find these rhetorical gems, hidden from my eyes for eighty years or more between the covers of this forgotten book!

The contrast between the Eskimo mentality and the European mentality is a primary focus of de Poncins’s writing.

Everything about the Eskimo astonishes the white man, and everything about the white man is a subject of bewilderment for the Eskimo. Our least gesture seems to him pure madness, and our most casual and insignificant act may have incalculable results for him. Let but a Post Manager say to an Eskimo, “Here is a package of needles for your wife,” and he will have started in that obscure consciousness which I hesitate to call a mind, a train of questions and ruminations that may lead anywhere. The free gift is unknown among the Eskimos: better yet, it is incomprehensible to them. Had the white man said, “Lend me your wife in exchange,” the Eskimo would have understood. An exchange is normal; a gift passes his understanding. It sets his thoughts going. It is amoral. He will not thank the white man. He will go back to his igloo and ruminate. “Since the white man has given me these needles,” he will in effect say to himself, “it must be that he does not want them; and if he does not want his treasures, why should not I have them?” From that day forth, this Eskimo will be a different man. He will begin by despising the white man, and soon he will plan cunningly to exploit him. Since the white man has proved himself a fool, why not? So the Eskimo becomes a liar and a cheat. A single generous impulse on the part of the white man has started the moral disintegration of a native.

This strikes me very much as the prompt for a possible story -- a kind of morality play -- in which the unintended actions of one corrupts the mind of another and causes ruin for both.

But more to the point for Kabloona -- which is the name the Eskimos give de Poncins, meaning “white man” in their language -- as we hear more and more stories about the Eskimos, as we meet them as individuals through de Poncins’s expert pen, we come to understand that they, like us, come in all the fabrics that make of the temperamental tapestry of man, replete with quirks, sure, but always imbued with universal drives and universal stories.

To wit:

One day, for example, Utak brought another Eskimo into the Post, a slack and shiftless ne’er-do-well, a man perpetually destitute. He had arrived from ten days off to trade -- a single fox. We were in mid-December and the man had not yet got round to mudding his rudders, so that his wretched sled was next to useless. One mile out from the Post he had dropped a caribou-skin, had not missed it (proving he could not count up to four); and when, later, I told him that I had picked it up, he forgot to come to my quarters to fetch it. Each year this man and his wife had a child; and as his wretched wife had no milk, each year without fail the child died. But they, the man and his wife, did not die. There was always an Eskimo to lend them a snow-knife, another to repair their sled for them on the trail, a third to house them because the man could not build a possible igloo. And never -- it was this that was so admirable -- never would you have heard a single impatient or angry word spoken about these two. Of course they were teased a bit at night in the igloo, and great tales were told of the man’s comical futility; but they were unfailingly taken care of. The others would say, “He couldn’t get here because of his sled”: they would never say, “The man doesn’t know how to get over a trail.” When tools were lent to him and he broke them, nobody complained. He spent a couple of days at the Post and was about to start out again when, at the last minute, Utak arrived running. Could the Post Manager “lend” Utak a snow-knife? The ne’er-do-well had just broken the one Utak had let him have. And this was said without bitterness, indeed with a laugh that showed all Utak’s teeth. It was too bad! Of course he hadn’t done it on purpose, so no one could hold it against him.

Stories like these are building to something -- both intentionally in the pacing of the author and unintentionally in the mind of the reader. As the narrative progresses, de Poncins not only finds himself slipping more and more into the Eskimo mindset with regard to comforts and material expectations:

It wants very little to return to the primitive. Already I had ceased to feel the need of the appurtenances of our civilization; and yet I had been reared in a fair degree of comfort, I was rather more than less sensitive than the average, and I was even, in a manner of speaking, an “intellectual.” After a brief few weeks, all this had dropped away from me. I do not mean that I had stopped yearning for telephones and motor cars, things I should always be able to live without. I mean that the thought of a daily change of linen was gone from my mind; that a joint of beef would not have made my mouth water, and I loved the tastes of frozen fish, particularly if it had frozen instantaneously and retained its pristine savour all through the winter. As a matter of fact, I do not remember being served anything in France as much to my taste.

And also with regard to the simple, universal delights of home and hearth, mediated in an almost Melvillian way through the life-giving seal and its oil:

Evening came. Three of Ittimangnerk’s seals were still whole, standing against the wall like gods about to be overthrown, but gods still, blood-covered and fantastic. The ice glittered in the light of the lamp, and heat and cold dwelt here together in their familiar contrast. I shall never cease to chant the beauty of the seal-oil lamp; and here again I asked myself, How can a length of cotton wick, fashioned into a saw-toothed strip and floating on melted blubber, spread such an astonishing measure of friendliness and companionship? From this glow there emanates the warmth and the security that constitute the true and inner meaning of the word home. Here among these shadows, in these mysterious recesses, the almost incomprehensible Eskimos eat and laugh, live a material existence of inconceivable brutality and at the same time a spiritual life of infinite subtlety, full of shades and gradations, of things senses and unexpressed.

But also with regard to the sense of necessary community on which Eskimo society -- and, indeed human society -- is essentially based:

Poor L. was lost. He was a landlubber on a ship, a dead weight, in everybody’s way. Not only was he no help, he was a hindrance because he had no notion what to do and would have done better to do nothing. In a space so small, every false move creates trouble for some one else. But, like the Ma-i-ke of last autumn, there was another thing wrong, and that was that he thought only of himself. Watching him I discovered once again that Eskimo life strips a man of egoism. L. was a white man, therefore an egoist. “My tea … my tin … my sleep.” But no, Mr. L.! Our tea, our tin, our sleep. Human life in the Arctic would vanish without this solidarity among men. It is the community that remains alive here, not the men; it is the community that has had a poor hunting season or a good one, that is hungry or well-fed, that has reason to rejoice or to despair.

It is this, I think, that really transforms de Poncins, and which has a chance of transforming the reader, as well. The Eskimos teach him something profound -- often, not by speaking, but by being silent.

Together we spend hours like this, reading in the great Book of Silence. He learnt its lessons in childhood; I have come from afar to spell them out with extreme difficulty. They have taught me, above all, to discard things -- haste, worry, rebelliousness, selfishness. It has taken me a year to learn these lessons, and I see suddenly that my year in the north has not been, as I thought it, a year of conquest of the elements, but of conquest of myself. And because of the peculiarity of my conquest, the Arctic is for me no longer a source of suffering but of joy. It is the crucible in which, slowly and patiently, the dross in my nature has to some extent been melted away. In this Arctic have I found my peace, the peace I was never able to find Outside. Except one were a monk, or such extraordinary circumstances as war and danger intervened, there was no way in which one could find this peace Outside, this sense of the brotherhood of man. Yet this sense, the Arctic had given me simply and directly. That which, elsewhere, would demand a sublime degree of abnegation, had been effected here by simple necessity. How was I going to say this sort of thing to the men of my soft world, who sat in offices during the day and played bridge at night?

Like all the best travel narratives, Kabloona is not just about a journey across distances, but also across perceptions and the very sense of knowing that makes us all human. 

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER FOUR

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

A son was born to Gregorovich Farchrist on the same night that Dalanmire reminded the new regime of the reason for the dragon tax. On that night, the shrieks of labor were drowned out by the shrieks of lightning fire that burned from the mouth of that ancient lizard. The cries of the newborn were overwhelmed by the cries of the dying in the city below. The castle was spared, but the City Below the Castle was destroyed, and the loss of life was horrendous. The Peasant King first named his son Gregorovich Farchrist II, and then reluctantly reinstituted the dragon tax on his unfortunate kingdom.

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They decided to spend another day in Queensburg. Roystnof roused the others early and, as Shortwhiskers went out to buy supplies, Roystnof and Brisbane sat down with the wizard’s slim red book.

Roystnof told his pupil that each spell required an exact sequence of either vocal sounds or hand movements—and that some needed material components as well—to spark the magic into the proper channel. Brisbane had already had some experience with this idea through the few cantrips he could cast, but Roystnof said the restrictions on the parameters were much more stringent with more powerful spells. The sounds had to be perfect and exact, and the movements had to be done the same each time.

The spell Brisbane would spend the rest of the morning trying to master was called shocking grasp, and when performed correctly, was designed to send a large amount of electrical energy through its victim’s body at the touch of the spell caster. Roystnof said it was a good offensive spell, and a good one to learn first, for it had the power to kill most humanoids at a single touch.

Shocking grasp required no material components, but had rigorous verbal and somatic components. Brisbane’s throat quickly went dry from trying to copy the crackling noise of lightning Roystnof modeled for him time and time again. For the hand movements, Brisbane had to start with his fists together and his index fingers extended, touching only at the tips. He was to concentrate on the spot where his fingers met and start his crackling noise. Slowly bringing his fingers apart should cause a bright blue spark to hang thread-like between them. After that, the next thing he touched would have a jolt of electricity sent though it powerful enough to stop a human heart.

Shortwhiskers returned with the provisions and equipment when Brisbane was starting to get a small jumping spark between his fingers. The dwarf unloaded himself and, seeing that the others were still busy, discreetly left.

It was well past noon when Brisbane finally got it. He gave a wooden chair enough juice to turn it black. He sat down on his bed and wiped his brow.

“I’m exhausted,” Brisbane said.

“Magic does that,” Roystnof nodded. “It draws from the body. That’s where all your power comes from. Eventually, you’ll learn to tap the power of your mind. That kind of magic is much more powerful, but much harder to control.”

“You can cast spells with the power of your mind,” Brisbane said. “Can’t you?”

Roystnof smiled. “How about some lunch?”

Roystnof fixed them a small meal as Brisbane rested. They ate in the silence that exists between two friends who can talk to each other without speaking. When they had finished their repast, Brisbane took off his boots and lay on his bed, hands folded beneath his head. Roystnof began to study more of his red book in a chair near the window.

“Tell me about Roundtower,” Brisbane said as he closed his eyes.

“What would you like to know?”

Brisbane watched the colors roll around on the insides of his eyelids. “Well, I don’t know. What’s he like?”

Roystnof paused for only a moment. “Ignatius Roundtower is a very proud man whose skill with his sword is better than anyone else I have ever seen.”

“Proud?” Brisbane asked. “What do you mean?”

“He hopes to become a Knight of Farchrist one day. The reason he started traveling with Nog and later myself was to gain experience in combat and to test himself.”

“Test himself?”

“Yes,” Roystnof said. “To test his courage and the strength of his convictions, I suppose.”

“That seems unusual,” Brisbane said, his eyes still closed.

“Why?” Roystnof asked.

“Well, to become a Knight of Farchrist, you have to be of the right social standing and you have to be chosen by an existing Knight to serve as his Squire for a period of at least three years. It’s my understanding that they frown upon outsiders and mercenary types. No offense Roy, but the knighthood won’t look too well upon him if they discover he’s had dealings with wizards. Knights are sworn to serve the King and the will of Grecolus. You know how they must feel about magic and those who practice it.”

That started Brisbane thinking. He had just learned a magic spell. He hated to think of what he might have just done to this mother’s dream of him one day becoming a Knight. By those standards, he was now a servant of Damaleous. He had performed simple cantrips before, but Brisbane had considered those just tricks, little more than sleight-of-hand. Shocking grasp, however, was magic. There was no rationalizing around that. Even now, he could hear Otis lecturing him in his head.

“I suspect,” Roystnof replied, “that Ignatius realizes these facts, but is unwilling to admit their consequences to himself. Although, I have known him for some time now, and it is clear to me that his faith in his god is very strong and very pure. Ideally, that should be all one needs.”

“But you haven’t seen him in six years,” Brisbane said.

“This is true.”

Brisbane lay quietly for a while and Roystnof went back to his book. Brisbane began pondering his beliefs and he found them much more eroded than he would have thought possible. He could still remember his younger years when he had accepted all he had been told as the truth and had held it dear to his heart. But now he looked over all those wonderful truths and found them lacking. Even if it were all true, it was somehow not enough for him now. He felt that there was still something missing, that that could not possibly be all there was. That a timeless, ageless being named Grecolus created the entire universe in which he placed a wholly imperfect world where evil tortured good. Or perhaps, from the dwarven perspective, where philanthropy was conquered by greed. That in this bitter and ugly world, where only the strongest survived, one was expected to adhere to the ethical considerations and moral obligations of a creator who did not make himself visible, in order to secure a place in the heavens for an eternal life of bliss—while those who bested, spurned, and beat you in your short earthly life burned before your vindicated eyes in the fiery hells of Damaleous. Brisbane had been afraid to say it aloud earlier in his life, but to him, it all seemed so vengeful, and just a little bit childish.

Brisbane must have drifted off with these thoughts, for when he awoke the room was dark. In one corner, Roystnof and Shortwhiskers sat playing cards around a small candle. The dwarf was grumbling. He was obviously losing.

“Serves me right. Playing cards with a master of sleight-of-hand.”

Roystnof noticed that Brisbane had awoken. He motioned to Shortwhiskers and the dwarf turned in his chair to look at the young man.

“Put your boots on, Gil,” Shortwhiskers said. “We’ve got an errand to run before sundown.”

Brisbane noticed that the shades were drawn, but they were aglow with sunlight. He nodded to the dwarf, sat up on the edge of the bed, and began lacing his boots.

“What kind of errand?” Brisbane asked.

“Well,” Shortwhiskers said, “unlike your sorcerer friend here, I don’t think one little spell is going to be enough to protect you. We’re going to the armory.”

Brisbane finished tying his bootstrings. He looked up at Roystnof as if to get his permission to go with the dwarf. He had seen Shortwhiskers’ suit of chainmail tied to his pack mule, but he knew Roystnof had no such protection. It somehow seemed that he, as Roystnof’s would-be apprentice, shouldn’t wear any armor either.

Roystnof only nodded his bearded face.

Brisbane got up and left with the dwarf. They quickly found themselves on the busy streets of Queensburg. The day-long festival of Whiteshine was still going strong, and Brisbane could not help but think with some shame that he had just spent Grecolus’ holiest day studying magic and learning how to cast a spell. On the streets, Brisbane saw large groups of people enjoying the entertainment provided by jugglers and traveling acrobatic groups. The sun was nearing the eastern horizon and, within an hour, it would be gone for another night and the festival would be over. It seemed odd to Brisbane that a festival held in honor of the moon Grecolum would start and end with the sun, but that was the way it had always been done. Brisbane had never been to Queensburg before, but Shortwhiskers seemed to know where they were going.

They soon arrived at a small building that had a faded and weatherbeaten sign hung over the door. ‘Royale Armory,’ it declared with flaking paint. Brisbane was surprised it was open on the day of the festival, but he supposed some were worse off than others. The pair went inside and were greeted by a large man with a curly red beard and bulging forearms. He showed them all types of armor, but seemed disappointed when the dwarf said they needed something his young friend could walk out with.

“I usually make the armor custom-made to fit,” the man said. “Takes about a week, but practically eliminates chaffing.”

“Sorry,” Shortwhiskers said. “But we’re leaving town tomorrow.”

“Shame,” the man said. “It’ll be hard to find something laying around that’ll fit a lad as big as him.”

Less than an hour later Brisbane left the shop wearing a leather smock that gathered at the waist and was studded with dozens of metal plates. Shortwhiskers had paid fifteen pieces of gold for it. Brisbane promised he would pay the dwarf back when he came into some money, but Shortwhiskers curtly told him to forget it. They began to walk back to the inn.

“You’ll need a weapon, too,” the dwarf said. “You can use one of mine. Ignatius always said I was a walking arsenal anyway.”

Shortwhiskers went suddenly silent and stared at his feet. Brisbane suspected the dwarf felt uncertain of what lay ahead for his friend. He felt he should change the subject if he could.

“You said you know where this Stargazer woman lives?” Brisbane said.

Shortwhiskers stopped and looked up at Brisbane. “Yes…”

“I would very much like to go there and see her practice this art of hers. I’ve heard about mystics who claim they can heal by divine power. I’d like to see it for myself.”

“Allison is no mystic,” Shortwhiskers said.

Brisbane did not allow the dwarf’s tone to sidetrack him. “Would you take me there?”

Shortwhiskers searched Brisbane’s face. “Want to see her practice her art, huh?”

Brisbane nodded.

Shortwhiskers shrugged. “Follow me,” he said.

The dwarf led Brisbane out of town towards the Shadowhorn Forest. They went about a mile out of town, and there, nestled under the outer trees of the Shadowhorn, was a pair of small cabins. One was dark, but from the other came the powerful glow of lamplight. Both cabins were made of felled timber, were single-storied, and had thatched roofs. Shortwhiskers said Stargazer would be in the lighted cabin, tending the sick, and he led Brisbane to the doorway.

Inside the cabin it was all one room, with a dozen cots lining the walls. All were empty except for one at the far end of the cabin. In it lay the figure of an old man and, sitting on a small stool next to the cot with her back to the door, was the honey-haired Allison Stargazer.

“Allison.” Shortwhiskers’ voice sounded hoarse.

She turned and when she saw the dwarf she jumped up. She bent down and said a few quick words to her patient and ran down to the door.

Brisbane watched as she called out Shortwhiskers’ first name, and as she crouched down to give the dwarf a warm hug. She stood a little under five and a half feet and had a slight frame. She wore a simple blue and white dress that dropped to the middle of her calves and her golden honey hair was pinned behind her ears, falling to her shoulders. She was thin but had a full bosom and sturdy hips. Her face was an angel’s dream. Bright, wide, emerald eyes dominated her sharp features and her complexion was pink and full of health.

Brisbane had never seen anyone so lovely.

“Nog Shortwhiskers,” she said as she broke the embrace and stood up. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“This and that,” Shortwhiskers said, obviously embarrassed over Stargazer’s show of affection. “I was just passing through town and thought, well, you know.”

She smiled. “How are your ribs?”

Shortwhiskers patted his flank. “Good as new.”

Her smile broadened. “Good, good,” she said, catching Brisbane out of the corner of her eye and turning towards him. “And who’s your young friend, Nog?”

“His name is Gilbert Parkinson,” Shortwhiskers said. “He’s from the village of Scalt.”

“Parkinson?” Stargazer said disbelievingly, her eyes studying Brisbane up and down. “He reminds me of someone else.”

“Yes,” Shortwhiskers said quickly. “I thought so too, at first but—”

“Who?” Brisbane said abruptly, cutting off his friend’s comments. “Who do I remind you of?” He had caught the look in Stargazer’s face and, having seen it, he suddenly wanted to know who she was comparing him to. At one time in his life, Brisbane would have felt no such urgency. Once, he would have done everything he could to convince people him name truly was Gilbert Parkinson. But the look on Stargazer’s face, and its similarity to the look Shortwhiskers had worn before naming him a Brisbane in Roystnof’s study, had suddenly transformed his thinking on the subject.

Before answering, however, Stargazer turned to Shortwhiskers, seeking some kind of approval which the dwarf gave with a nod of his head.

“Brisbane,” Stargazer said simply. “You remind me of the Knights named Brisbane. You have a very strong resemblance, almost as if you were part of that family.”

“That’s because I am,” Brisbane said, his impromptu confession sending tingles of excitement rushing up and down his spinal column. “I am the bastard son of Sir Gildegarde Brisbane the Second and am named for him. But how did you recognize me? I have lived my life in Scalt and no one there has ever expected I was anyone but Otis Parkinson’s adopted son.”

Again, before answering Stargazer checked for some silent guidance from Shortwhiskers. This time, the dwarf gave her a slight shake of his head. Brisbane noticed her looking at the dwarf, but he did not see Shortwhiskers’ covert signals.

“I grew up in Raveltown,” Stargazer said, seeming to collect herself. “One does not grow up there and grow easy with your family name. One either respects it or abhors it.”

“And you?” Brisbane said.

This time, Stargazer did not take her eyes off Brisbane. “I respect it.”

A groan came from the elderly man in the last bunk. Stargazer quickly turned and went down to the man. Brisbane and Shortwhiskers slowly followed. The pair stood at the foot of the cot while the woman crouched beside the man. He was thin and frail and soaked with sweat. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be in a world of his own, with pain as his only companion.

Stargazer brushed the man’s hair off his slick forehead. “His name is Skinner. Joseph Skinner. All his life he has been torturing his weak body with the drink. Alcohol.” She said the word with much distaste. “He comes in here when the festering sore he has for a liver hurts him badly enough. I do what I can to take away his pain, but he had damaged himself too much for me to truly heal him. I will help him get through tonight and next week he will stumble in here again, holding his side and coughing up blood.”

Skinner groaned louder this time and his legs jerked beneath the blanket. Stargazer gently put a hand over his eyes and began to sing quietly. She slowly pulled the blanket down to reveal Skinner’s thin body. She placed her other hand on his abdomen and began to sing louder.

Brisbane did not recognize the language, but the tune was soft and sad and her voice was that of a songbird. Brisbane looked at the man laid out before him while listening. Skinner’s ribs clearly showed through his pasty skin, his chest was a sunken valley filled with bracken-like hair, and his hips jutted out impossibly far. He looked skeletal, a shape from the grave. Brisbane began to feel very warm in the leather jerkin he still wore.

Stargazer sung on and began to rub Skinner’s concave belly. Slowly, he stopped jerking about and groaning. Her singing died down and she took her hands from him. A small amount of color had returned to his flesh and he lay still with his eyes closed.

Stargazer covered him again with the blanket. “He will sleep now. Come.”

She led them from that cabin to the next one. They entered a small living room with carpeting and overstuffed easy chairs.

“We really can’t stay,” Shortwhiskers said. “We have to get an early start in the morning.”

“Off again, Nog?” Stargazer said. “Aren’t you ever going to settle down?”

“Tried that once already,” the dwarf said, somewhat sullenly. “It didn’t work out.”

She smiled, a bit painfully, Brisbane thought.

“Are you going with him?” she suddenly asked Brisbane. “You’re already dressed for it.”

“Yes,” Brisbane said.

She shook her head. “Running off seeking your fortunes. You’d be wiser to follow your forefathers and seek to become a Knight. The right family is more than half the battle, and you’ve got the right family.”

Stargazer did not look much older than Brisbane, but as she said those words to Brisbane she sounded years his senior. Brisbane had no immediate response for her, just staring at her for some time and feeling empty inside for a reason he did not know, a reason he would not know for some time to come. Stargazer caught his pained look, and her brow lost all of the stern wrinkles it had worn as she had given her advice, and returned to a perfect smoothness. Her emerald eyes caught the fading sunlight from the windows and flashed it across Brisbane’s worried face.

“You look so sad,” she whispered too softly for Brisbane to hear.

“Well,” Shortwhiskers said, also not hearing Stargazer’s words. “It was really good to see you again, Allison.”

Brisbane and Stargazer locked eyes for a moment longer and then she stumbled away from his gaze when the pause after the dwarf’s words became embarrassingly long.

“Yes,” she said as she bent down to give Shortwhiskers another hug. “Don’t stay away so long this time.”

“I won’t,” Shortwhiskers promised.

She broke the embrace and stood up in front of Brisbane. She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. “I hope you return safely with Nog.”

Brisbane put his hand over hers, pressed it against his face, and then slowly drew it away. “I am glad we met, Allison Stargazer.”

“As am I, Gildegarde Brisbane.”

Shortwhiskers offered a final farewell and Brisbane left the cabin with him. Stargazer shut the door and they started back for Queensburg. They walked in silence for the entire trip.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Word Child by Iris Murdoch

This one is definitely worth a re-read. I think Murdoch is doing a couple of interesting things, but maybe they’re too far spread out among too many characters, or perhaps just not developed to the degree that I would’ve liked.

The Inner Circle

Here’s the interesting thing I stumbled across first.

After leaving the office I would travel either to Sloane Square or to Liverpool Street to have a drink in the station buffet. In the whole extension of the Underground system those two stations are, as far as I’ve been able to discover, the only ones which have bars actually upon the platform. The concept of the tube station platform bar excited me. In fact the whole Underground region moved me, I felt as if it were in some sense my natural home.

This is our narrator speaking -- a middle-aged professional with a dark past named Hilary Burde, the titular Word Child himself. See what he says here about these bars in the London Underground.

These two bars were not just a cosy after-the-office treat, they were the source of a dark excitement, places of profound communication with London, with the sources of life, with the caverns of resignation to grief and to mortality. Drinking there between six and seven in the shifting crowd of rush-hour travellers, one could feel on one’s shoulders as a curiously soothing yoke the weariness of toiling London, that blank released tiredness after work which can somehow console even the bored, even the frenzied. The coming and departing rattle of the trains, the drifting movement of the travellers, their arrival, their waiting, their vanishing forever presented a mesmeric and indeed symbolic fresco: so many little moments of decision, so many little finalities, the constant wrenching of texture, the constant destruction of cells which shifts and ages the lives of men and of universes.

It’s not just of life, it is life itself -- Hilary’s own mind pulsating and breathing with the options open to its will, to its unseen and unclaimed destiny.

The uncertainty of the order of the trains. The dangerousness of the platforms. (Trains as lethal weapons.) The resolution of a given moment (but which?) to lay down your glass and mount the next train. (But why? There will be another in two minutes.) Ah qu’ils sont beaux les trains manques! as I especially had cause to know. Then once upon the train that sense of its thrusting life, its intent and purposive turning which conveys itself so subtly to the traveller’s body, its leanings and veerings to points of irrevocable change and parting of the ways. The train of consciousness, the present moment, the little lighted tube moving in the long dark tunnel. The inevitability of it all and yet its endless variety: the awful daylight glimpses, the blessed plunges back into the dark; the stations, each unique, the sinister brightness of Charing Cross, the mysterious gloom of Regent’s Park, the dereliction of Mornington Crescent, the futuristic melancholy of Moorgate, the monumental ironwork of Liverpool Street, the twining art nouveau of Gloucester Road, the Barbican sunk in a baroque hole, fit subject for Piranesi. And in summer, like an excursion into the country, the flowering banks of the Westbound District Line.

It is an entire world of possibility -- this London Underground -- but even within that infinite abundance, Hilary has his favorite place, his favorite state-of-mind writ large against this huffing and pulsating metaphor of life.

I preferred the dark however. Emergence was like a worm pulled from its hole. I loved the Inner Circle best. Twenty-seven stations for fivepence. Indeed, for fivepence as many stations as you cared to achieve. Sometimes I rode the whole Circle (just under an hour) before deciding whether to have my evening drink at Liverpool Street or at Sloane Square. I was not the only Circle rider. There were others, especially in winter. Homeless people, lonely people, alcoholics, people on drugs, people in despair. We recognized each other. It was a fit place for me, I was indeed an Undergrounder. (I thought of calling this story ‘The Memoirs of an Underground Man’ or just simply ‘The Inner Circle’.)

The Inner Circle. In the Underground and in his mind. What things will happen while Hilary is ‘riding these rails’? Not as much, it turns out, as I would like, but the concept does lead us into the other interesting thing that Murdoch is trying to do with this novel.

No Never-Never Land

“Of course,” I said, “if you think the world is an illusion you don’t care what you do. A very convenient doctrine.”

“Doesn’t Christianity say---?”

“Naturally of course Christopher doesn’t really believe this, no one could. He announces that people don’t really exist! It doesn’t stop him laying about with his ego like the rest of us.”

“Well, I don’t think we exist all that much,” said Arthur.

“Speak for yourself.”

“I think we should just be kind to each other. It’s all a pretty good mess-up and if that’s what Christopher means---”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

“I mean one’s mind is just an accidental jumble of stuff. There’s nothing behind ordinary life. There isn’t anything complete. Life isn’t a play. It isn’t even a pantomime.”

“No Never-Never Land.”

“Certainly no Never-Never Land,” said Arthur. “That’s the point.”

“So you don’t see Peter Pan as reality breaking in?”

“No,” said Arthur. “On the contrary. What is real is the Darlings’ home life. Hook is just a fantasy of Mr. Darling.”

“What is Peter then?”

“Peter is--- Peter is--- Oh I don’t know -- spirit gone wrong, just turning up as an unnerving visitor who can’t really help and can’t get in either.”

“That’s rather fanciful.”

“I mean the spiritual urge is mad unless it’s embodied in some ordinary way of life. It’s destructive, it’s just a crazy sprite.”

“I think Smee is the real hero. Hook envies Smee. So Hook can be saved.”

“Only in the novel.”

“Novels explain. Plays don’t.”

“It’s better not to explain,” said Arthur. “Poetry is best of all. Who wouldn’t rather be a poet than anything else? Poetry is where words end.”

“Poetry is where words begin.”

“I think Nana is the hero.”

“Nana is the most conventional character in the whole thing. Now Smee---”

“You must remember that Smee serves Hook.”

“You must remember that Nana is only a dog.”

“Exactly,” said Arthur. “There’s nothing bogus about Nana. Nana doesn’t talk. Even Mr. Darling fails, he wants to be Hook.”

“What about Wendy, does she fail?”

“Yes. Wendy is the human soul seeking the truth. She ends up with a compromise.”

“Living half in an unreal world?”

“Yes, like most of us do. It’s a defeat but a fairly honourable one. That’s the best we can hope for, I suppose. Now Nana. She’s the truth of the Darling home, its best part, its reality. Nana fears Peter. She’s the only one who really recognizes Peter.”

“I can’t think why you idolize the Darling home life. It seems to me to be pretty dreary.”

“Oh no -- what could be better -- a home with -- children and---”

“I think we’re drunk,” I said. “At any rate I must be. I thought for two minutes that you were saying something interesting.”

This is not the first mention of Peter Pan in the novel, but it is the most extensive -- a group of friends using it as the frame for a philosophical conversation over drinks. But mark what they are saying about it. It is unreal. It is not an idealized life. It is, in fact, not life at all -- because life, unlike Peter Pan, has no heroes and villains, no rising action and climax, no plot, no story line. Life just is. And in that dreary, static, secular, and inescapable crucible, there are (or are not?) people still with responsibilities to care for one another.

This concept will open the dark and depressing theme of the novel -- that in a world without magic -- without God -- what does it mean, what can it mean, to repent and to be forgiven?

Did I repent? That question troubled me as the years went by. Can something half crushed and bleeding repent? Can that fearfully complex theological concept stoop down into the real horrors of human nature? Can it, without God, do so? I doubt it. Can sheer suffering redeem? It did not redeem me, it just weakened me further. I, who had so long cried out for justice, would have been willing to pay, only I had nothing to pay with and there was no one to receive the payment.

Twenty years in the novel’s past, Hilary has done something dreadful. He has had an affair with another man’s wife, and through his actions, albeit accidently, caused her death. He has lived a life of biting obscurity since, removing himself from his old haunts and habits. In the novel’s now, the man he wronged has re-entered his life, and much of the novel is consumed with Hilary’s inability to reconcile his past actions.

“I’ve thought of nothing else ever since. That’s hardly an exaggeration. I have lived and breathed it all these years.”

“And you’ve felt guilt?”

“Yes.”

“And you feel it has ruined your life?”

“Yes.”

“Then you need help too.”

“Of course. But who can give it to me?”

That is really the crux of the novel. In a secular world -- a world without a Never-Never Land -- who can forgive sin? Can sins even be forgiven? Can anything ever be redeemed?

“Don’t you want to change your life?”

“I’m not sure. It could change for the worse. I can see that Gunnar might feel better after he’d talked to me. I doubt if I’d feel better after I’d talked to Gunnar. Gunnar can’t “forgive” me, I doubt if God could, what’s done is done. I don’t mean anything very dramatic by that. There just isn’t any psychological or spiritual machinery for removing my trouble. Gunnar feeling a bit better won’t help me, it won’t even, if you see what I mean, cheer me up. And seeing him will just bring it closer, drive it deeper. Death is my only solution. And I don’t mean suicide. Do you understand?”

No, I don’t think the person Hilary is talking to here does understand, and neither will your average reader, who will not likely understand or, if understand, not likely agree with the premise being laid and the question being asked.

Gunnar is the man wronged by Hilary -- and so it may be important to review what he thinks about Peter Pan.

Gunnar, who had either become pompous through being grand, or was so now out of nervousness, made a speech to Freddie to the effect that of course Peter Pan was about parents and being unwilling to grow up, but what made it sinister was that childishness had been invested with spirituality. “The fragmentation of spirit is the problem of our age,” Gunnar informed Freddie. “Peter personifies a spirituality which is irrevocably caught in childhood and which yet cannot surrender its pretensions. Peter is essentially a being from elsewhere, the apotheosis of an immature spirituality.

It’s difficult to see, but in a thematic understanding of the novel, I’m thinking that Murdoch is equating spirituality -- of any kind -- with a world in which forgiveness and redemption exists -- where bad things that a person does, or which they cause to come into existence, can be purged from their hearts and the hearts of everyone affected by them.

But that is not the world in which Hilary exists, as we see time and again as he cogitates in a kind of self-flagellating stream of consciousness while riding the metaphoric trains of his Inner Circle.

If God had existed and we could have stood together in His presence and looked together without falsity at what had been done, and then looked at each other, might not some miracle have occurred? “This is what I did.” “I know.” But there was no such scene, only two sodden semi-conscious psyches wrestling with each other in the dark. Could anything ever be clarified, could anything be really done here? Had not my feelings, whatever they were, for Kitty simply misled me with a momentary vision of a new heaven and a new earth? I had wrecked my life and Crystal’s by a guilt which was itself a kind of sin. Could that be cut away? The idea of forgiveness, pardon, reconciliation, seemed here too fuzzy, too soft for what was needed. If Gunnar and I could be even for a moment simple, sincere, together … But that was the way of hope, and there must be no hope, only a task, only the truth itself if one could but discern it and hang on.

But Murdoch isn’t just asking this question -- this question of whether or not forgiveness and redemption can exist in a secular world -- she quite decisively answers it.

“You speak of truth. Well this is a matter of science, and science is truth isn’t it? There are no miracles, no redemptions, no moments of healing, no transfiguring changes in one’s relation to the past. There is nothing but accepting the beastliness and defending oneself. When I was a little child I believed that Christ died for my sins. Only of course because he was God he didn’t really die. That was magic all right. He suffered and then somehow everything was made well. And nothing can be more consoling than that, to think that suffering can blot out sin, can really erase it completely, and that there is no death at the end of it all. Not only that, but there is no damage done on the way either, since every little thing can be changed and washed, everything can be saved, everything, what a marvellous myth, and they teach it to little defenceless children, and what a bloody awful lie, this denial of causation and death, this changing of death into a fairytale of constructive suffering! Who minds suffering if there's no death and the past can be altered? One might even want to suffer if it could automatically wipe out one’s crimes. Whoopee. Only it ain’t so.”

And, almost as if to drive this painful point home, Murdoch twists her plot in such a way that Hilary’s sin is not just not redeemed, it is in fact repeated. Gunnar has a new wife. Hilary falls in love with her and commences an affair. And she comes to a tragic end due to his own negligence and constant inaction. 

Repentance, penance, redemptive suffering? Nothing of the sort. … It was burning the orphanage down all over again, only now there was no one to stop the work of destruction.

In A World Child, sin repeats itself, and there is no Leviathan to step in, to change things, to make things better again.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.