A Fable

The door opened. It was the same sergeant again. He did not enter, saying to the corporal: ‘Once more’ and then stood and held the door until the corporal had passed him. Then he closed and locked it. This time it was the office of the prison commandant himself and what he—the corporal—assumed to be just another N.C.O. until he saw, arranged on the cleared desk, the utensils for the Last Sacrament—urn ewer stole candles and crucifix—and only then remarked the small embroidered cross on the coat of the man standing beside them, the other sergeant closing that door too between them so that he and the priest were alone, the priest lifting his hand to inscribe into the invisible air the invisible Passion while the corporal paused for a moment just inside the door, not surprised yet either: just once more alert, looking at him: at which moment a third person in the room would have remarked that they were almost of an age.

‘Come in, my son,’ the priest said.

‘Good evening, Sergeant,’ the corporal said.

‘Cant you say Father?’ the priest said.

‘Of course,’ the corporal said.

‘Then say it,’ the priest said.

‘Of course, Father,’ the corporal said. He came on into the room, looking quietly and rapidly again at the sacred implements on the desk while the priest watched him.

‘Not that,’ the priest said. ‘Not yet. I came to offer you life.’

‘So he sent you,’ the corporal said.

‘He?’ the priest said. ‘What he can you mean, except the Giver of all life? Why should He send me here to offer you what He has already entrusted you with? Because the man you imply, for all his rank and power, can only take it from you. Your life was never his to give you because for all his stars and braid he too before God is just one more pinch of rotten and ephemeral dust. It was neither of them which sent me here: not the One who has already given you life, nor the other who never had yours nor any other life within his gift. It was duty which sent me here. Not this—’ for an instant his hand touched the small embroidered cross on his collar ‘—not my cloth, but my belief in Him; not even as His mouthpiece but as a man——’

‘A French man?’ the corporal said.

‘All right,’ the priest said. ‘Yes, a Frenchman if you like.—commanded me here to command—not ask, offer: command—you to keep the life which you never had and never will have the refusal of, to save another one.’

‘To save another one?’ the corporal said.

‘The commander of your regiment’s division,’ the priest said. ‘He will die too, for what all the world he knows—the only world he does know because it was the one he dedicated his life to—will call his failure, where you will die for what you anyway will call a victory.’

‘So he did send you,’ the corporal said. ‘For blackmail.’

‘Beware,’ the priest said.

‘Then dont tell me this,’ the corporal said. ‘Tell him. If I can save Gragnon’s life only by not doing something you tell me I already cant and never could do anyway. Tell him then. I dont want to die either.’

‘Beware,’ the priest said.

‘That wasn’t who I meant,’ the corporal said. ‘I meant——’

‘I know whom you meant,’ the priest said. ‘That’s why I said Beware. Beware Whom you mock by reading your own mortal’s pride into Him Who died two thousand years ago in the postulate that man shall never never never, need never never never, hold suzerainty over another’s life and death—absolved you and the man you mean both of that terrible burden: you of the right to and he of the need for, suzerainty over your life; absolved poor mortal man forever of the fear of the oppression, and the anguish of the responsibility, which suzerainty over human fate and destiny would have entailed on him and cursed him with, when He refused in man’s name the temptation of that mastery, refused the terrible temptation of that limitless and curbless power when He answered the Temptor: Render unto caesar the things which are caesar’s.—I know,’ he said quickly, before the corporal could have spoken: ‘To Chaulnesmont the things which are Chaulnesmont’s. Oh yes, you’re right; I’m a Frenchman first. And so now you can even cite the record at me, cant you? All right. Do it.’

‘The record?’ the corporal said.

‘The Book,’ the priest said. The corporal looked at him. ‘You mean you dont even know it?’

‘I cant read,’ the corporal said.