"Dick, Philip K - 1982 - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Thousands of young people kill themselves in America each year, but it remains the custom, by and large, to list their deaths as accidental. This is to spare the family the shame attached to suicide. There is, indeed, something shameful about a young man or woman, maybe an adolescent, wanting to die and achieving that goal, dead before in a certain sense they ever lived, ever were born. Wives get beaten by their husbands; cops kill blacks and Latinos; old people rummage in garbage cans or eat dog food-shame rules, calling the shots. Suicide is only one shameful event out of a plethora. There are black teenagers who will never get a job as long as they live, not because they are lazy but because there are no jobs-because, too, these ghetto kids possess no skills they can sell. Children run away, find the strip in New York or Hollywood; they become prostitutes and wind up with their bodies hacked apart. If the impulse to slay the Spartan runners reporting the battle results, the outcome at Thermopylae, rises in you, by all means slay them. I am those runners and I report what you do not want, most likely, to hear. Personally, I report only three deaths, but three more than were necessary. This is the day John Lennon died; you wish to slay those who report that, too? As Sri Krishna says when he assumes his true form, his universal form, that of time:

"All these hosts must die; strike, stay
your hand-no matter.
Seem to slay. By me these men are slain already."

It is an awful sight. Arjuna has seen what he cannot believe exists.

"Licking with your burning tongues,
Devouring all the worlds,
You probe the heights of heaven
With intolerable beams, O Vishnu."

What Arjuna sees was once his friend and charioteer. A man like himself. That was only an aspect, a kindly disguise. Sri Krishna wished to spare him, to hide the truth. Arjuna asked to see Sri Krishna's true form and he got to see it. He will not now be as he was. The spectacle has changed him, changed him forever. This is the true forbidden fruit, this kind of knowledge. Sri Krishna waited a long time before he showed Arjuna his actual shape. He wanted to spare him. The true shape, that of the universal destroyer, emerged at last.
I would not want to make you unhappy by detailing pain, but there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk.

When Kirsten and the bishop had returned to the Bay Area-not permanently but, rather, to deal with Jeff's death and the problems raised by it-I could upon seeing them again notice a change in both of them. Kirsten looked worn and wretched, and this did not seem to me to emanate from the shock of Jeff's death alone. Obviously she was in ill health in purely physical terms. On the other hand, Bishop Archer seemed even more animated than when I had last seen him. He took complete charge of the situation regarding Jeff; he selected the burial spot, the kind of gravestone; he delivered the eulogy and all other rites, wearing full robes, and he paid for everything. The inscription on the gravestone came as a result of his inspiration. He chose a phrase which I found quite acceptable; it is the motto or basic statement of the school of Heraclitus: NO SINGLE THING ABIDES; BUT ALL THINGS Flow. I had been taught in philosophy class that Heraclitus himself invented that, but Tim explained that this summation came after Heraclitus, by those of his school who followed him. They believed that only flux, which is to say change, is real. They may have been right.
The three of us joined together after the graveside service; we returned to the Tenderloin apartment and tried to make ourselves comfortable. It took a while for any of us to say anything.
Tim talked about Satan, for some reason. Tim had a new theory about Satan's rise and fall that he apparently wanted to try out on us, since we-Kirsten and I-were the closest people at hand. I presumed at the time that Tim intended to include his theory in the book he had begun working on.
"I see the legend of Satan in a new way. Satan desired to know God as fully as possible. The fullest knowledge would come if he became God, was himself God. He strove for this and achieved it, knowing that the punishment would be permanent exile from God. But he did it anyhow, because the memory of knowing God, really knowing him as no one else ever had or would, justified to him his eternal punishment. Now, who would you say truly loved God out of everyone who ever existed? Satan willingly accepted eternal punishment and exile just to know God-by becoming God-for an instant. Further, it occurs to me, Satan truly knew God, but perhaps God did not know or understand Satan; had He understood him, He would not have punished him. That is why it is said that Satan rebelled-which means Satan was outside of God's control, outside God's domain, as if in another universe. But Satan did I think welcome his punishment, for it was his proof to himself that he knew and loved God. Otherwise he might have done what he did for the reward ... had there been a reward. 'Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven' is an issue, here, but not the true one: which is the ultimate goal and search to know and be: fully and really to know God, in comparison to which all else is really very little."
"Prometheus," Kirsten said absently. She sat smoking and gazing.
Tim said, "Prometheus means 'Forethinker.' He was involved in the creating of man. He was also the supreme trickster among the gods. Pandora was sent down to Earth by Zeus as a punishment to Prometheus for stealing fire and bringing it to man. In addition, Pandora punished the whole human race. Epimetheus married her, he was Hindsight. Prometheus warned him not to marry Pandora, since Prometheus could foresee the consequences. This same kind of absolute foreknowledge is or was considered by the Zoroastrians to be an attribute of God, the Wise Mind."
"An eagle ate his liver," Kirsten said remotely.
Nodding, Tim said, "Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him and sending an eagle to eat his liver, which regenerated itself endlessly. However, Hercules released him. Prometheus was a friend to mankind beyond any doubt. He was a master craftsman. There is an affinity to the legend of Satan, certainly. As I see it, Satan could be said to have stolen-not fire-but true knowledge of God. However, he did not bring it to man, as Prometheus did with fire. Perhaps Satan's real sin was that upon acquiring that knowledge he kept it to himself; he did not share it with mankind. That's interesting ... by that line of reasoning, one could argue that we could acquire a knowledge of God by way of Satan. I've never heard that theory put forth before." He became silent, apparently pondering. "Would you write this down?" he said to Kirsten.
"I'll remember." Her tone was listless and drab.
"Man must assault Satan and seize this knowledge," Tim said, "and take it from him. Satan does not want to yield it up. For concealing it-not for taking it in the first place-he was punished. Then, in a sense, human beings can redeem Satan by wresting this knowledge from him."
I said, "And then go off and study astrology."
Glancing at me, Tim said, "Pardon?"
"Wallenstein," I said. "Off casting horoscopes."
"The Greek words which our word 'horoscope' is based on," Tim said, "are hora, which means 'hour,' and scopos, which means 'one who watches.' So 'horoscope' literally means 'one who watches the hours.' " He lit a cigarette; both he and Kirsten, since their return from England, seemed to smoke constantly. "Wallenstein was a fascinating person."
"So Jeff says," I said. "Said, I mean."
Cocking his head alertly, Tim said, "Was Jeff interested in Wallenstein? Because I have-"
"You didn't know?" I said.
Looking puzzled, Tim said, "I don't think so."
Kirsten regarded him steadily, with an inscrutable expression.
"I have a number of very good books on Wallenstein," Tim said. "You know, in many ways Wallenstein resembled Hitler."
Both Kirsten and I remained silent.
"Wallenstein contributed to the ruin of Germany," Tim said. "He was a great general. Friedrich von Schiller, as you may know, wrote three plays about Wallenstein, whose titles are: Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolominis and The Death of Wallenstein. They are profoundly moving plays. This brings up, of course, the role of Schiller himself in the development of Western thought. Let me read you something." Setting his cigarette down, Tim went over to the bookcase for a book; he found it after a few minutes of hunting. "This may shed some light on the subject. In writing to his friend-let me see; I have the name here-in writing to Wilhelm von Humboldt, this was toward the very end of Schiller's life, Schiller said, 'After all, we are both idealists, and should be ashamed to have it said that the material world formed us, instead of being formed by us.' The essence of Schiller's vision was, of course, freedom. He was naturally absorbed in the great drama of the revolt of the Lowlands-by that I mean Holland-and-" Tim paused, thinking, his lips moving; he gazed absently off into space. On the couch, Kirsten sat in silence, smoking and staring. "Well," Tim said finally, leafing through the book he held, "let me read you this. Schiller wrote this when he was thirty-four years old. Perhaps it sums up much of our aspirations, our most noble ones." Peering at the book, Tim read aloud. "'Now that I have begun to know and to employ my spiritual powers properly, an illness unfortunately threatens to undermine my physical ones. However, I shall do what I can, and when in the end the edifice comes crashing down, I shall have salvaged what was worth preserving.' " Tim shut the book and returned it to the shelf.
We said nothing. I did not even think; I merely sat.
"Schiller is very important to the twentieth century," Tim said; he returned to his cigarette, stubbed it out. For a long time, he stared down at the ashtray.
"I'm going to send out for a pizza," Kirsten said. "I'm not up to fixing dinner."
"That's fine," Tim said. "Ask them to put Canadian bacon on it. And if they have soft drinks-"
"I can fix dinner," I said.
Kirsten rose, made her way to the phone, leaving Tim and me alone together.
Earnestly, Tim said to me, "It is really a matter of great importance to know God, to discern the Absolute Essence, which is the way Heidegger puts it. Sein is his term: Being. What we have uncovered at the Zadokite Wadi simply beggars description."
I nodded.
"How are you fixed for money?" Tim said, reaching into his coat pocket.
"I'm fine," I said.
"You're working, still? At the real estate-" He corrected himself. "You're a legal secretary; you're still with them, then?"
"Yes," I said. "But I'm just a clerk-typist."