The Religionist
By: Aletheia Sansrespite
“Talk [Abraham] cannot, he speaks no human language.
Though he himself understood all the tongues of the world,
though the loved ones understood them too-he still could not talk-
he speaks a divine tongue-he ‘speaks with tongues’.”
-Johannes de silencio
I am waiting for a thunderstorm. I haven’t left my apartment for close to three weeks, or however long it takes to deplete one’s food pantry. As I’ve just thrown one more cigarette pack sized tin of sardines into the pile of rotting garbage in the corner of my living room, I believe that it may be close to three weeks. And yet I wait.
What will be the effect of this thunderstorm?
That remains to be seen entirely, but I have clearly seen the streets washed clean in a dream and that is enough.
I live on the South side of the City, where the forgotten go to make tenements so that they can pile their forgottenness on top of each other so as to drown out the crushing roar of their vacuous lives, and the ignored cries of unwanted children in the stairwells.
I had always thought that I was the only one who imagined that life could be better. After the fire that swept the City after the Eupsuche Riot, I was momentarily hopeful that change would come. It was like the corner Punch and Judy show where the laughter rises quickly and surprisingly-so much so that you find yourself laughing too-and then it ends abruptly and after the show you realize that it was not funny at all. You realize the puppeteers were horrible, you couldn’t hear a single word of it because of the coughing and muttering in the crowd, and the sidewalk smelled of urine. And yet you laughed. At show’s end, all you have is urine smell and the shame for having fallen into laughing.
And then I found it.
I had been travelling past the orphanage on Rue Montaigne when I spied behind a rubbish bin a small black book that spelled for me the answer and gave me hope that I was not alone in the world. I was not a solitary and lone voice in the wilderness screaming only to myself. There was another, who like me knew that change could come. The change would be not only momentary change that would be forgotten in a flash, or remembered faintly in dreams, or be made to exist only in the drunken imaginations of pub-dwelling philosophers. The change we sought would be real, lasting, revolutionary, necessary, can I even say divine?
Not only did the book tell me there was another, but it told me how the change was to come.
I looked on the first page and in the small and faint type of a local printing shop was the title: The Religionist.
I was on my way to work, so I slipped it in my purse and during break I went and sat on the dock and flipped through the pages ravenously as I nursed absently on my pipe.
It was written in the style of a diary at times, a story at others.
April 17th –I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.[1] I had a dream last night where I saw a child dying in the stairwell. This is not an uncommon sight in waking hours, but for some reason, in the dream this one struck me particularly as sad. I took its light body into my arms and began to run to the hospital. (This is especially dreamy, for there is no hospital at all in the South side.) As I went hurriedly, the streets became so clogged with debris and dead bodies that I couldn’t move at all and soon I was being swept under by a tide of death and filth. I was so scared that I crushed the child in my arms like an empty plaster mold.
I never did go back to work that afternoon and I’ve never gone back. A few days ago someone slipped an envelope under my door that contained my last paycheck that had large deductions in it to cover my shipyard uniform that I hadn’t returned and my sail mending kit that was on loan from the company. All told there wasn’t much money left in the check for me so I ripped it up. I didn’t want to benefit from that work anyway.
Sept 8th –I met with my last remaining friend today at the market. She is a neophyte in one of the City’s two great sects.[2] This being the case, she is under the belief that she knows everything. This is the great bane of everyone who learns something. All the world seems now opened to them and they are just at their wits end holding back their great new theory. I told her of some of my thoughts towards the End which I had been devising in my mind and she placed her coffee cup down politely and stroked at her chin.
“Well,” she said. “That certainly would seem to work, but it wouldn’t.”
I leaned back in my chair and said, “Good. That’s what I wanted you to say.”
She looked a bit puzzled and continued to give her reasons why my approach wouldn’t work. She kept a list of reasons tallied on her fingers as she counted. It is a dangerous mind that wants to count things.
When she had finished I said again, “Good. That’s what I wanted you to say.”
More flustered now, she asked what I meant by that.
Says I, “If I had constructed a plan so that you would have believed it, I would have surely wasted my time. Do you imagine that I spend sleepless nights organizing my thoughts in such a way so that a young untrained and easy excitable mind might appreciate it? If you were to have in any way understood or had faith what I was saying, I would have had to start from scratch. As it stands, I know my way is correct.”
She finished her coffee in deep thought. The young and beautiful looking waiter came and collected our cups and gave us the nonverbal impression that he wanted us to leave his table so that waiting customers could take their turns and swill the café’s horrible cappuccino. We did those in the queue a favor and sat for another half hour in silence until she finally said: “Okay. I think I understand it and it just might work.”
I left her then alone at the table with the bill to pay and only one last remark,
“You’re a liar and I don’t ever wish to speak to you again.”
I decided to leave my apartment. My time of confinement was over and I was ready again to face the world. But it was not the same world that I had left those many weeks ago. Or I should say that it was the same but I was seeing it with new eyes. It was not the cesspool that I remembered. It now was a cesspool with the shadow of a thunderhead, or falling comet, darkening it.
I went to see my analyst at her office at my scheduled time. She was quite surprised to see me, but happy I am sure, since I am her last remaining patient.
“Come in! I thought that you had died! No word from you for over three weeks!”
“Why would you imagine that I was dead just because-?”
“The last time I saw you, you’d said that you’d ‘rather be dead than live in a world like this’.”
“Oh. I don’t remember that.”
“Surprising.” She said sardonically.
She had me lay down on the couch and I told her my conception, my plan, my direction of life. As I spoke, I joyfully heard her scribbling notes on her pad. I saw the hands of the clock pointing near the end of our session and I concluded my thoughts with the flourish of throwing the bust of the Respected Psychiatrist on her mantle against the wall.
“Well, when would you like to schedule your next appointment?” She asked.
I told her, “I refuse to be analyzed by any shrink that will accept me as a client!”
“You say that every week.” My analyst said.
“I do? Well, that exactly proves my point! What am I paying you for anyway? You wouldn’t know madness if it looked you in the face!”
“Please! Tell me about madness.”
“The first type is that of the Madness That Enjoys Madness. This is where everything presents itself as completely ridiculous and the Madman revels in it. They imagine themselves quite the life of the party but their Madness interesting in that it is interesting, which is quite boring actually. You will find them at all the best parties in mismatched clothes drinking absinthe from a shoe and scratching at their waxed mustaches with mirror shards. The second type is the Madness That Is Purely Mad. This is the sort represented in the dirty insane that pluck lice from their scalp, show it to the world and eat it on the street corner. You can spot them in the hills howling at the moon. They draw crowds and exorcists and no chains can hold them. They have Madness so in control and wholly explored that to watch them is like looking up “Madness” in the dictionary. This type of Madness is sure to catch the eye of the Charitable Sisters, whose ethical laws demand that they care for Madness. I pity them both-the Madman of this type and the pious who seek them. The last type I hardly dare mention because of the high esteem in which I hold them! This is the Madness Which No One Knows Of. You hear of them typically only after they are dead or imprisoned. ‘She seemed like such a nice young woman. So quiet!’ The neighbors will say. ‘We never suspected them capable of such horror!’ the family says. Oh! What artistry this Madness is! This last type of Madman is so hyperaware of the beauty of Madness that they never question the Sanity or Insanity of any individual because they know the dark inwardness that the best kind of Madness brings. Many have been married to these specimens without the slightest idea that inside them whirs the gears of paradox, insanity, and a mute madness that if screamed would either wrench the world from its orbit or be so totally bonkers that it would be mistaken for a belch or sneeze.” I concluded this with the flourish of gathering the broken pieces of the bust and throwing them against the opposite wall.
“Gesundheit.” Said the analyst.
I left her in a hurry vowing to never see her again. “You hack!” I yelled up the stairs.
June 2nd –I’ve left my apartment. What a world. I overheard a street preacher say on the corner that “this world is a love letter to you,” and I stopped in my tracks.
“From whom is it addressed?” I asked. “I may only guess, because it’s written in my blood. The very blood produced by the paper cut it gave me!”
He only looked puzzled. Funny how preachers always seem surprised when someone listens to them.
I’ve got four red strings tied around fingers. I forget when I tied them there, and what they were to remind me to do, but I do know for a fact that they were supposed to remind me to do something so they’ve served their purpose.
These strings are the clearest picture of what I strive for my life to be.
My way to perfection is clear and now comes to the doing of it.
There are those who are happy with loving themselves and they become great to a certain extent. There are others who love of others and they too become great. I am not satisfied with this sort of greatness and I reject both of these loves.
I have met those who say a better life, a better world is possible. I may have at one time entertained this as wisdom. I also have heard from those who look into all things at once and absorb all eternity and stare longingly into the infinite. This perspective is to me now too limited. I seek only the impossible and that which is either forgotten or reviled by all others.
I see the lines of kings and conquerors, generals and heroes, who have fought with and dominated the world. Let them rot with the world! Their end is no different than that which is eventually rejected even by termites. To say that they will burn with the world is to suggest that they bring light or warmth and I will not ascribe to them such value.
I see those who have through great adversity come to control and subjugate themselves. I pass by the hunger artist in the Market only to ignore him and allow him to see my upturned nose. I see the monk atop his Stylite and I laugh to myself.
I got to where the others would never dream. The altar is ashamed of itself as I pass. The temple wishes it could crumble and destroy itself as my shadow graces its steps. I am alone in this perfection perfectly.
Or so I thought until I found the book.
Its appearance in my life assured me that there was at least one other who went beyond mere heroism.
I set to the work. For doing is all there is. Thinking is the work of the philosopher and is really no work at all. I bought a long knife at the Market and concealed it in my dress.
No one expects a religionist to be a woman it seems, and I was allowed into the Temple of Dror without hassle. There I came to a chamber where there were a number of adherents quietly praying. My knife and I did our work and again, the knife was hidden and I repeated this process in a number of annexes and chambers.
I then made my way to where the Family of Aelia hold their rites and rituals and again, the true religionist apparently is not assumed to be a quiet and calm looking woman for they greeted me warmly. Their greeting became crimson as my vocation realized itself. As I made my way unto the boulevard, my stained blade became veiled under my dress’s many folds.
I was as I passed behind the orphanage that I was stopped by a young woman.
“Miss,” she said “You dropped this book behind the rubbish bin there.”
She said, pointing.
“I did?”
“Yes. Just now.”
“Oh! I don’t remember that.” I took the book from her and read the first page.
‘The Religionist’ it read. Had I seen this before?
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember this book. I don’t think it’s mine.”
“Oh, you always say that!” said the young girl, handing it to me before returning to the orphanage’s steps.
Editor’s Note:
I found this story at the bottom of a rubbish bin this past fall. I included it in this current edition again because of the appreciation it received from our female readership. Our mailroom was almost flooded with thank you letters saying ‘How nice it is to see woman’s literature!’ and ‘Finally! A story that isn’t all from a man’s perspective!’ I commended Mr. Sansrespite on his daughter’s work when I saw him in passing on the street and he incontrovertibly denied that his daughter Aletheia could be the true author.
“She has no interest in religion at all. It must be someone else.” He said.
[1] Harry Jaffa wrote this into Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican nominee acceptance speech. –The Seminarian
[2] That is, either ‘The Family of Aelia’ or the ‘Fellowship of Dror’. One commentator hints that neither of these Sects proper are alluded, but individual teachers, either The Historian or The Self-ist. –The Editor
