“In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I must be off.”
“Is your colleague due here soon?”
“Haven’t heard recently. I don’t suppose the plans have been changed, though. You’ll like him.”
“I’m sure I shall.”
2
And so John Cave’s period in jail was now known as the time of persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose style was enough like Iris’s to have been her work. But of course her style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.
The conversation with Cave in prison was lofty in tone and seemed to deal with moral problems. It was apparent that since the task of governing is largely one of keeping order, it had become, with the passage of time, necessary for the Cavite rulers to compose in Cave’s name different works of ethical instruction to be used for the guidance and control of the population. I assume that since they now control all records, all original sources, it is an easy matter for them to “discover” some relevant text which gives clear answer to any moral or political problem which has not been anticipated in previous commentaries. The work of falsifying records, expunging names is, I should think, somewhat more tricky but they seem to have accomplished it in Cave’s Testament, brazenly assuming that those who recall the earlier versions will die off in time, leaving a generation which knows only what they wish it to know, excepting of course the “calculable minority” of nonconformists, of base Lutherists.
Cave’s term in prison was far less dramatic than official legend, though more serious. He was jailed for hit-and-run driving on the highway from Santa Monica into Los Angeles.
I went to see him that evening with Paul. When we arrived at the jail, we were not allowed near him though Paul’s lawyers had been permitted to go inside a few minutes before our arrival.
Iris was sitting in the outer office, pale and shaken. A bored policeman in uniform sat fatly at a desk at the other end of the office, ignoring us.