ONE

And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.

That was a hot night, so hot that the sweat rolled off me when I walked the dark streets homeward, but for all the heat and for all my belly growled because I hadn’t eat or drunk the whole time I talked with Samuel Fisher, I came to the room full of glory and the peace that passeth understanding.

Then I saw she wasn’t in the room and the bed not slept in, so the peace and the glory departed. I went down the hall to the man’s room and called him out, but he wasn’t there, so I knew. And I went downstairs and rousted out the fat bitch who ran the place, and no matter all the money I paid her every week she cursed me for an old fool, and said, yes, my woman was off with him somewhere and whose fault was it when a dirty old man married a young girl? And said Egan was a fine man, the best boarder she ever had, and not to blame if the girl kept wiggling her ass at him.

So I went back to the room, and all I felt was confusion and evil rising in me. And knew if I died then I would be cast into the Pit and the evil would be turned into molten lead and fed to me until the Coming. Then I kneeled down and prayed for understanding of what was happening and what was written for me. I prayed on my knees, beating my forehead and my chest with my fists, until suddenly there was a great light like rockets and flares going off, and in the middle of it was the angel Ithuriel. He came to me like he had come before, and like he had come to my father, because I was the seventh son of a seventh son and sometimes possessed of the Devil that Ithuriel had to seek out.

Then he said, “Do you believe?” and I said, “I believe,” and put my hand into his light so that the heat of it burned me. And he said, “It is written in the Book which is the book with your sins in it,” and then he was gone and there was only the sunrise in the window.

So I took the Bible which was my father’s before me with his name written in it with his own hand, and I read the Book of Revelation. So I could see what was meant and could wrestle with the confusion and evil in me.

It said, Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Because I who had murdered and fornicated and stolen had not rightly repented. The money for Samuel Fisher was gone to buy the woman, and the woman tempted me.

Yet it said, Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.

So the gate was not closed. Samuel Fisher had forgiven me for taking the money. I had been led to him so that I could cast myself at his feet and be forgiven. And I had not taken the woman in lust. For all my flesh swelled and stood erect when I looked at her, I had not covered her body with mine. She had been sent to test me, but I overcometh.

And it said, Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, so I knew the sin was hers and that of the man with her and none of mine.

And the tribulation of the man was written down, too, because it said, He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.

That was his tribulation, to be my killer, and there was no turning away from it for him or for me, because that was the way to my salvation. For want of the woman he would kill me, and so the words of the Book would be fulfilled and I would be saved.

In the Pit below lay the sinners. Naked they lay for eternity on white-hot flames like the flames firing a ship’s boilers. The flame is around them and in them. Their hair smolders. Their breasts are like torches. Their bellies split open and their guts fall out and shrivel in the heat. Their mouths are open for water but suck in flame.

That is the flame I shall be saved from. For it said, And to them it was given that they should not be killed, but that they should be tormented five months. From the time I met the woman to the time I got understanding was near five months, so the end of the torment was at hand.

And it said, In those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And then I understood all the workings of the Almighty. The woman was my torment and temptation, and the man would kill me for her, and so I would be a brand snatched from the burning. For I was accursed, but I would be saved when he killed me.

That is what was written in the Book of Revelation, which is the book with my sins in it.