A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr

Author:Walter M. Miller, Jr. [Jr., Walter M. Miller,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-08T09:10:50.718000+00:00

“Do you ever turn the rock around?”

“Turn it around? You think I’m crazy? In times like these?”

“What does it say back there?”

“Hmmm-hnnnn!” the hermit singsonged, refusing to answer. “But come on in, you who can’t read from the backside.”

“There’s a wall slightly in the way.”

“There always was, wasn’t there?”

The priest sighed. “All right, Benjamin, I know what it was that you were commanded to write “in the entry and on the door” of your house. But only you would think of turning it face down.”

“Face inward,” corrected the hermit. “As long as there are tents to be mended in Israel–but let’s not begin teasing each other until you’ve rested. I’ll get you some milk, and you tell me about this visitor that’s worrying you.

“There’s wine in my bag if you’d like some,” said the abbot, falling with relief onto a mound of skins. “But I’d rather not talk about Thon Taddeo.”

“Oh? That one.”

“You’ve heard of Thon Taddeo? Tell me, how is it you’ve always managed to know everything and everybody without stirring from this hill?”

“One hears, one sees,” the hermit said cryptically.

“Tell me, what do you think of him?,”

“I haven’t see him. But I suppose he will be a pain. A birth-pain, perhaps, but a pain.”

“Birth-pain? You really believe we’re going to have a new Renaissance, as some say?”

“Hmmm-hnnn.”

“Stop smirking mysteriously, Old Jew, and tell me your opinion. You’re bound to have one. You always do. Why is your confidence so hard to get? Aren’t we friends?”

“On some grounds, on some grounds. But we have our differences, you and I.”

“What have our differences got to do with Thon Taddeo and a Renaissance we’d both like to see? Thon Taddeo is a secular scholar, and rather remote from our differences.”

Benjamin shrugged eloquently. “Difference, secular scholars,” he echoed, tossing out the words like discarded apple pits. “I have been called a ‘secular scholar’ at various times by certain people, and sometimes I’ve been staked, stoned, and burned for it.”

“Why, you never–” The priest stopped, frowning sharply. That madness again. Benjamin was peering at him suspiciously, and his smile had gone cold. Now, thought the abbot, he’s looking at me as if I were one of Them–whatever formless “Them” it was that drove him here to solitude. Staked, stoned, and burned? Or did his “I” mean “We” as in “I, my people”?

“Benjamin–I am Paulo. Torquemada is dead. I was born seventy-odd years ago, and pretty soon I’ll die. I have loved you, old man, and when you look at me, I wish you would see Paulo of Pecos and no other.”

Benjamin wavered for a moment. His eyes became moist.

“I sometimes–forget–”

“And sometimes you forget that Benjamin is only Benjamin and not all of Israel.”

“Never!” snapped the hermit, eyes blazing again. “For thirty-two centuries, I–” He stopped and closed his mouth tightly.

“Why?” the abbot whispered almost in awe. “Why do you take the burden of a people and its past upon yourself alone?”

The hermit’s eyes flared a brief warning, but he swallowed a throaty sound and lowered his face into his hands.

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