“I’ve never said anything about the Trinity or about Christianity.”
“But you’ll have to say something about it sooner or later. If—or rather when—the people begin to accept you, the churches will fight back and the greater the impression you make the more fierce their attack.”
“I suspect John is the anti-Christ,” said Iris and I saw from her expression that she was perfectly serious. “He’s come to undo all the wickedness of the Christians.”
“Though not, I hope, of Christ,” I said. “There’s some virtue in his legend, even as corrupted at Nicea three centuries after the fact.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” said Cave. “I don’t know that I’ve ever given it much thought before. I’ve spoken always what I knew was true and there’s never been any opposition, at least that I’ve been aware of, to my face. It never occurred to me that people who like to think of themselves as Christians couldn’t accept both me and Christ at the same time. I know I don’t promise the kingdom of heaven but I do promise oblivion and the loss of self, of pain....”
“Gene is right,” said Iris. “They’ll fight you hard. You must get ready now while you still have time to think it out, before Paul puts you to work and you’ll never have a moment’s peace again.”
“As bad as that, you think?” Cave sighed wistfully. “But how to get ready? What shall I do? I never think things out, you know. Everything occurs to me on the spot. I can never tell what may occur to me next. It happens only when I speak to people. When I’m alone, I seldom think of the ... the main things; yet, when I’m in a group talking to them I hear ... no, not hear, I feel voices telling me what I should say. That’s why I never prepare a talk, why I don’t really like to have them taken down: they’re something which are meant only for the instant they are conceived ... a child, if you like, made for just a moment’s life by the people listening and myself speaking. I don’t mean to sound touched,” he added, with a sudden smile. “I’m not really hearing things but I do get something from those people, something besides the thing I tell them. I seem to become a part of them, as though what goes on in their minds also goes on in me, at the same time, two lobes to a single brain.”
“We know that, John,” said Iris softly. “We’ve felt it.”
“I suppose, then, that’s the key,” said Cave. “Though it isn’t much to write about; you can’t put it across without me to say it.”
“You may be wrong there,” I said. “Of course in the beginning you will say the word but I think in time, properly managed, everyone will accept it on the strength of evidence and statement, responding to the chain of forces you have set in motion.” Yet for all the glibness with which I spoke, I did not really believe that Cave would prove to be more than an interesting momentary phenomenon whose “truth” about death might, at best, contribute in a small way to the final abolition of those old warring superstitions which had mystified and troubled men for twenty dark centuries. A doubt which displayed my basic misunderstanding of our race’s will to death and, worse, to a death in life made radiant by false dreams, by desperate adjurations.