Bernard, meanwhile, had begun to recite poetry. It was all that stood between him and the mouth of madness.
His progressive schoolmasters, in their enlightened kindliness, had never forced him to commit much verse to memory. You can always look it up, they told him—which shows how little they knew.
Harper, on the other hand, had drilled him with the stuff from his youngest years. “These are fragments,” she had intoned, “which you may one day shore against your ruins.” He had not really understood what she was telling him—till now.
Because in ruins he surely was. Convulsing in the blackness. Shivering against the confines of his stone enclosure. Vomit- and piss-covered. Feverish. Blind. Hour after hour after hour. Babbling insanely when his mind drifted. And when his mind cleared, inhabited by a horror that made him feel as if a bomb were going off inside him and he had no room to explode. Hour after hour.
Dying. He was sure he was dying now. He could not breathe. He felt as if his organs were mired in sludge. He was fading almost willfully from a consciousness that had become abhorrent to him. The invisible death’s head beside him stared and grinned. Hour after hour.
And so, at last, with all the courage he had left, he began to recite.
It was one of those situations—it’s remarkable how many of them there are, really—when only William Blake would do.
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
Yes, yes, that was a good one. You could work out the mysterious couplets of that one for hours. Weakly, Bernard licked his lips. He tasted something like decay. He went on.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
Oh, he knew a thing or two, did Crazy Bill.
He lay with his eyes closed, with his jaw slack, his mouth open. Every breath that left him came back again rancid. He was strangling on his own exhalations.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
He hugged himself, but not tightly. He hadn’t the strength for that anymore. He simply held himself, cradled himself, rocked himself in clouds of debilitating nausea.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Some are red and some are blue,
And some are filled with sticky goo.
“I can’t breathe,” he whispered. And for he did not know how long, he was lost to himself. In a sunlit territory of emerald grass and rapeseed of a brilliant yellow. Of music and a river dappled with sunshine. And there, ranged everywhere along the lea, naked bodies, sweet, round, white, reclining. A vision of the sons and daughters of Albion …
And then the coffin lid clapped down over him and he was in the blackness again, with the smell of himself rotting alive. And he shook and cried, and whispered, “Mother.”
And her voice answered him clearly: We are led to believe a lie …
Yes, yes, he thought, crushed under the sudden return of reality. Yes …
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
Which doesn’t scan,
But there it am,
Which doesn’t rhyme,
But dying I’m,
So who gives a sod,
Which brings us to God,
And God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display,
To those who dwell in realms of day.
For mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face …
But no, that was something else. Still Blake, but another poem.
Oh, what’s the difference, Harper, he thought. Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake. Let me go.
For Mercy has a human heart, she insisted to him,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
He hugged himself, rocked himself in the blackness. Don’t tell me that, he thought. Don’t tell me that, you pedantic bitch, and leave me here. I’m dying. And I’m scared.
Mercy has a human heart, Bernard. A human heart. And Pity, a human face. And Love, the human form divine. Trust me on this.
He raised his bloody fingers to his bloody brow. Dragged them down over his cheeks, smearing the blood. He groaned out, “Cruelty!”
And a spasm of nausea racked him. He clutched his stomach. Turned his head. Tried to retch, but couldn’t. Sobbed.
Cruelty, he thought, has a human heart,
And Jealousy, a human face;
Terror, the human form divine,
And Secrecy, the human dress.
Well, yes, that too, Harper said.
“Secrecy,” Bernard whispered.
Yes.
He lay back again, trying to breathe, trying to support the weight of darkness. All right, all right, he thought. Where was I? Secrecy …?
Mercy, she said.
Right, right.
For Mercy has a human heart … Didn’t we do this already?
No, no. It’s still good. It’s still right, Bernard.
And Pity—Pity, Pity—a human face. Pity.
And Love, she said. Love has the human …
“The human form divine,” Bernard whispered, hugging himself, inhaling the stench of his offal, choking on the stench. And Mercy …
And Peace, she said.
Mercy, mercy.
These fragments …
These fragments you shall shore against your ruins.
“God!” Bernard screamed. Or tried to scream—it came out a rasping gasp.
These fragments … These fragments …
“God, father, father in Heaven. Help me!”
And then—as if in answer to his call—there came those sounds again. Did they? Did they come? He clutched himself. Opened his eyes—tried to—couldn’t tell if they were open or not. Lay with his jaw dangling. Listened.
Yes. The clank of a lock. The rattle of a latch. The creak—oh, the creak of a door opening. The thud as it swung shut.
And footsteps. Footsteps on stone. Approaching.
Bernard peered up into nothingness. His entire body was a prayer.
There was a pause. And then the voice—the voice like smoke—swirled down coolly over him.
“Are you ready to listen now, Bernard?”
Pity has a human heart, a human heart, a human heart …
“Yes,” he said, shuddering, crying. “Yes. Please. Please. I’m ready.”