The Day on Fire by James Ramsey Ullman

Author:James Ramsey Ullman [Ullman, James Ramsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Claude did not speak, and Satan’s laughter rose. “For you are yourself wolf and hyena,” he shrieked. “Remember? Do you remember? You are not a man but a hyena, and now at last you have returned to your beginnings, and your own kind has come to claim you.”

Then the laughter faded. The devil was gone. Claude waited—alone.

And he thought: “Yes, of course—alone. As you have always been.

In the sea, the desert, the forest, the towns and cities. On the roads you have traveled so long and so far, and now at last at roads’ end in the shrine in the garden. Alone, you have made your journey; alone, you have reached its end; and in the end you know the end—know what it is you have been seeking.”

He looked up. He saw the eyes of death. He saw the eyes move closer. . . . But he did not flinch. He was not afraid. . . .

Fever had long since drained from him: the fever of blood and flesh, and of dream, and of life. Hope and despair, anger and fear were gone from him, and he was calm, he was at peace; he put out his hand to death and welcomed it; he spoke to death, saying,

“I am ready. Take me. Accept me.”

He touched death; seized it, clung to it—as if to a hand. And the hand seemed to be drawing him onward. It drew him through darkness, through the forest, through the sea, through fire—into the yellow eyes of fire—and the eyes were upon him, above him

. . . a face was above him: the face of death . . . and then not of death: another face . . . the face of Hippolyte Lutz, broad and bearded, bent above him, and beside it the face of Egal, the face of Vayu.

“His eyes are open,” a voice said. “He is waking. He is better.”

“Yes, he is better,” said another voice. “The fever is broken.”

Claude watched the faces. He watched them for a long time in silence. Then a third voice spoke—faint, remote—and it was his own.

“Vayu is crying,” he said. “What is the matter? Why is he crying?”

“He is crying because he loves you,” said Father Lutz, “and now he knows that you will live.”

Vayu was there through the nights and the days. Egal came and went. The priest came in the evenings and sat by the cot.

“I suppose it’s all owing to your prayers,” Claude said to him.

“No.” Lutz smiled. “Oh, I prayed a bit, I admit; you couldn’t very well stop me. But no, it was not prayer that saved you.”

“What then? One of your saints, perhaps? It wasn’t the devil, I know that.”

“It was God’s will.” The priest paused for a moment. “And your own,” he added. “I have never seen a man with so strong a will to live.”

On his next visit he brought fruit and soup. He had prepared the soup himself, and, while Vayu heated it, described in detail its compounding from sundry admirable ingredients.

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