The Guardian is silent. And Anathema shouts now with an air of real triumph, breathing malice.
The name! Call the name of him who has ruined David and thousands of people! I, Anathema, have no heart, my eyes have dried up from the fire of Hell, and there are no tears in them, but if the tears were there I would have given them all to David. I have no heart, but there was an instant when something five trembled in my chest, and I was frightened: I wondered whether a heart could be born. I saw how David was perishing and thousands of people with him, I saw how his spirit, grown dark, curled up piteously like a dead worm in the sun, was hurled down into the abyss of non-existence, into my abode of darkness and death.... Tell me, are you not the one who has ruined David?
GUARDIAN OF THE ENTRANCES.
David has attained immortality, and he lives forever in the deathlessness of fire. David has attained immortality, and he fives forever in the deathlessness of fight, which is fife.
Dumfounded, Anathema falls to the ground and lies motionless for an instant. Then he lifts his head, which is as angry as that of a serpent. He rises and speaks with the calm of boundless wrath.
ANATHEMA.
You fie! Forgive me my daring, but you fie. Surely your power is immense—and you can give immortality to a dead worm that has turned black from the sun. But would that be just? Or do the numbers fie to which you, too, must submit? Or do all the scales fie, and is all your world nothing but one fie,—a cruel and mad game of laws, a malicious laugh of a despot at the dumbness and submissiveness of the slave?
He speaks gloomily, in the grief of deathless blindness.
ANATHEMA.
I am tired of searching. I have grown tired of life, of aimless tortures—of the quest after the ever elusive. Give me death, but do not torment me with ignorance; answer me honestly, even as I am honest in my uprising as a slave. Did not David love? Answer. Did not David give his soul away? Answer. And did they not stone David, who had given his soul away? Answer.