The Spire by William Golding
‘That’s how it was. You can still see the pinnacle, if you turn your head.’
‘“If this seemed strange to my ignorance, my children, how shall I describe the wonder of what happened next? For as I looked, my understanding spread. It was as if the pinnacle had been a key to unlock a vast book. It was as if I had acquired a new ear for hearing, a new eye to look with. For the whole building — and I, in my youthful folly, had made mouths at it! — the whole building revealed itself to me. The whole building spoke. ‘We are labour’ said the walls. The ogival windows clasped their hands and sang; ‘We are prayer.’ And the trinity of the triangular roof — but how shall I say it? I had tried to give away my house; and it had returned to me a thousand-fold.”’
‘Even so.’
‘“I rushed across to the west door and bounded inside. Now let me be precise. I had seen the whole building as an image of living, praying man. But inside it was a richly written book to instruct that man. It was a winter’s evening, I remember, and by then, the nave was darkling. Those patriarchs up there glowed in the windows and the saints below them; and at every altar in the side aisles there were nests of the candles you had given. There was a memory of incense and a mutter of mass priests from the chantries — but you have seen! I went forward, nay, was carried forward by a spiritual delight that grew with every step I took, in certainty and abnegation. By the time I was here, at the crossways, there was nothing for it but to cast myself headlong on these stones —”’
‘Those same crossways. And I’ve done it since.’
‘“For in some way I was made one with the wise, the saintly — no, the saintly and wise builders — ”’
‘The pillars are bending.’
‘“I was initiated into their secret language, so plain, so visible for all men who can see, to see. His manual of heaven and hell lay open before me, and I could perceive my nothingness in this scheme. A new movement of my heart seemed to be building the church in me, walls, pinnacles, sloping roof, with a complete naturalness and inevitability of consent; so that in my newfound humility and newfound knowledge, a fountain burst up from me, up, out, through, up with flame and light, up through a notspace, filling with ultimate urgency and not to be denied (but who could deny — who would?) an implacable, unstoppable, glorious fountain of the spirit, a wild burning of me for Thee —”’
‘Oh God!’
“‘— and at the top, if top is the word, some mode, some gift that brought no pride of having. My body lay on the soft stones, changed in a moment, the twinkling of an eye, resurrected from daily life. The vision left me at last; and the memory of it, which I savoured as manna, shaped itself to the spire, fitted into a shape, the centre of the book, the crown, the ultimate prayer!”’
‘It’s an ungainly, crumbling thing. Nothing like. Nothing at all.’
‘“So at last I got to my feet. The candles still burned, not a whit shorter, and the mass priests muttered; for this had been nothing but an instant as the world measures. I carried the image of the temple down the nave, in my eye. Do you know, my children? The spiritual is to the material, three times real! It was only when I was halfway to my house that I understood the true nature of the vision. As I turned to look once more, and bless, I saw there was something missing. The church was there; but the ultimate prayer, spiring upward from the centre — physically speaking, did not exist at all. And from that moment I knew why God had brought me here, his unworthy servant —”’
The scratchy voice ceased. He heard Father Adam flicking over the unused pages. Then there was silence. He shut his eyes and laid a hand wearily on his forehead.
‘I spoke like that once. When I threw myself down and offered myself to the work, I thought that to offer myself was the same as to offer everything. It was my stupidity.’
Father Adam spoke. There was a new note in his voice, astonishment and perturbation.
‘But was this all?’
‘I thought I was chosen; a spiritual man, loving above all; and given specific work to do.’
‘And from this, the rest followed, the debts, the deserted church, discord?’
‘More, much more. More than you can ever know. Because I don’t really know myself. Reservations, connivances. The work before everything. And woven through it, a golden thread — No. Growth of a plant with strange flowers and fruit, complex, twining, engulfing, destroying, strangling.’
And immediately the plant was visible to him, a riot of foliage and flowers and overripe, bursting fruit. There was no tracing its complications back to the root, no disentangling the anguished faces that cried out from among it; so he cried out himself, and then was silent. He lay, cautious of his back, and avoiding the ache that had started in his forehead, looking only at the stone rib of the vaulting. His one thought was a peculiar one.
I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.
When Father Adam spoke again, his words were no longer scratched. They dropped rather, like little stones.
‘So this was all.’
More light came from the window, as Father Adam moved away from it. Now he was close and his next question made no sense.
‘When you hear things, do you see them?’
He lay in his nowhere, turning his headache from side to side as though he could shake it off. Footsteps walked past the window, and the looped line of cheerful whistling. Drearily in his head, he watched the whistling disappear round a corner.
‘What does it matter?’
‘They taught you nothing? All those years ago?’
What did I learn? The eagle stooped on me by the sea. It was enough. And after that —
‘You heard her. You know how it was.’
Father Adam whispered passionately.
‘It were better a millstone were tied about their necks —’
Oh no, he thought. That’s too simple, like every other explanation. That gets nowhere near the root.
But Father Adam was speaking now in open astonishment.
‘They never taught you to pray!’
Hair blown back by the wind of the spirit. Mouth open, not for uttering rainwater, but for hosannahs. He smiled wryly at his chaplain.
‘It’s late days now.’
But Father Adam was not smiling. He was standing sideways, his hands clenched by his chest. He was looking sideways and down out of sufficient face under the wispy hair. This time there was terror in his voice as if he had glimpsed the plant and felt the swift touch of a tendril on his cheek.
‘Your confessor —’
‘Anselm?’
Always Anselm, he thought. In it, yet not in it; and there is the seal. He spoke to the rib of the vaulting.
‘Shall I tell you something, Father Adam? I suspect much and I loved them all; which is perhaps why she haunts me. You are immeasurably better than they are — indeed there may be no people so black, so damned — yet you are not with me, close, caught in the branches. Witchcraft. It must be witchcraft; otherwise how could she and he come so flatly between me and heaven?’
But then he heard breathing close to him. He refocused his eyes from the rib and the past, and saw that Father Adam was kneeling by the bed. His face was covered by his hands and his whole body was shaking. The words were shaken too as they jerked out between the hands, in a sudden mutter.
‘God have mercy on us all!’
He took his hands down quickly and crossed himself. He clasped his hands on the bed, bowed his head and muttered again. The muttering slowed, stopped.
Father Adam raised his head. He smiled. Jocelin saw at once how mistaken they were who thought of him as faceless. It was just that what was written there, had been written small in a delicate calligraphy that might easily be overlooked unless one engaged oneself to it deliberately, or looked perforce, as a sick man must look from his bed.
He cried out to the face before he knew he was going to.
‘Help me!’
It was as if these words were a key. He felt them shake him as Fa
After a while the shaking stopped and the water ceased to flow. A voice, delicate as the face, began to murmur by him.
‘Now we shall start at the beginning. Once you knew about prayer in all its stages; but you have forgotten. That’s good. Most of them are not for ordinary, sinful men. It was a kind of virtue in you. At the lowest level is vocal prayer. It is where we shall start because we are both children, and that is where children start —’
‘And my prayer, Father? My — vision?’
Then there was a pause. My dark angel will come back, he thought. I know it, I feel the signs in me! Hurry while there’s time!
‘My prayer? My spire of prayer? What you read?’
There was a different wetness, starting this time out of his skin. He felt a hand smoothing the hair from his forehead; but the terror of the angel’s approach was on him.
‘Quickly!’
‘Just above vocal prayer is another stage, very low, and therefore very close. It is where we are given an encouragement, a feeling, an emotion. Just so, you might give a child a spoonful of honey for being good; or just because you loved it. Your prayer was a good prayer certainly; but not very.’
He was turning on the pallet, trying to escape. Only something so deep, it must lie close to the root of the plant, made him cry out to the stone rib and the delicate anxious face.
‘My spire pierced every stage, from the bottom to the top!’
Then the dark angel struck him.
Chapter Eleven
The pain left him sometimes so that he could think. Always his first words were a question to Father Adam.
‘Has it fallen yet?’
And the answer was always the same.
‘Not yet, my son.’
He was building in his head, examining what foundations should be laid before he could know what he wanted.
‘I shall never know the truth until they take the cathedral apart stone by stone like a puzzle.’
But Father Adam must have thought he wandered, for he said nothing. So Jocelin, going his own interior road, came to a second thought.
‘And not even then.’
One day he sent for Anselm and waited endlessly under the shadowy vaulting, until he remembered what his new rank was. So he sent again, begging Anselm in charity. So Anselm came stiffly. It was afternoon, and the place already in deep shadow because it faced the east and the cathedral through one window. He heard Father Adam going away down the stairs to leave them together, heard the chair creak as Anselm sank in it. Then he looked towards him, and examined the noble head with its silver fringe of hair above the empty forehead. But Anselm would not look back. He watched the window steadfastly and said nothing.
‘Anselm. I’ve come to a desolate place at last.’
Anselm glanced sideways quickly, then withdrew his eyes as if the sight were improper. His words were what might be expected; but they were dry, stiff as his posture.
‘All men at some time or other —’
No, thought Jocelin. That’s not how we speak to real men. He doesn’t see me. I’m not real; but I’m learning.
‘I’ve been back, so painfully, right back to those days by the sea when you had charge of me.’
Anselm looked his way. There was a kind of stony embarrassment about him; and the words went with them.
‘In the midst of life —’
‘Life!’
He shut his eyes and thought about it.
‘I know of course. My life has been nothing like I thought. But I did walk on the headland once; and I came to you, master of the novices, because I thought the Holy Spirit had chosen us.’
He looked up at the vaulting again. There were stretches of sand and a blinding sea beyond it.
‘I ran to you.’
Anselm stirred. There was a slight smile on his face; but it was not a smile of humour.
‘You were all over my knees like a dog.’
‘What can you see, then, Anselm?’
Anselm was looking out of the window again. There was colour on his cheeks. His voice was stifled.
‘Why must you always have a very best friend, like an ignorant girl?’
‘I?’
‘Why was I the object of this — adolescent regard?’
There was a confusion in Jocelin’s head.
‘I? Like that?’
Anselm’s voice was very low, very bitter.
‘You don’t know. You’ve never known how impossible you are. Impossible.’
Jocelin licked his dry lips.
‘I am — I was — a man of strong affections. Clumsy.’
He waited for the grief of this to subside a little, then spoke to the vaulting.
‘You Anselm. On your side.’
Anselm stood up and began to pace round the room. At last he stopped, between Jocelin’s face and the vaulting. He turned his stiff neck, looked Jocelin in the eye, then flinched away again.
‘It’s so long ago. Perhaps it never meant much — and then, all the things that came after! No. I can’t say more. Amused and touched. And irritated. You were so — keen.’
‘Keen. Just keen. Nothing more. You saw nothing, you understood nothing.’
Anselm cried out.
‘And can’t you understand? You sat on our necks, on my neck, for a generation!’
‘There was our work to be done. I thought so — and now I don’t know what I think —’
‘That place was well enough for me; though perhaps not precisely what the founder intended. Then you had to come, flying like a great bird —’
‘— to the master of the novices.’
‘I am what I am. But to see you skipping up through purely nominal steps, acolyte, deacon, priest; to see you dean of this church when you could hardly read Our Father; and to be tempted, yes tempted — for where the horse goes, the wagon must follow — and one must admit that the great world is necessary since we’re none of us saints — tempted towards a sort of ruin. I admit it freely. I might have remained where I was and done some good. You tempted me and I did eat.’
‘Then?’
‘Then? Why you know the rest. The old king died; and you rose no further.’
‘I see.’
‘And after that, to have to hear your confessions, your partial, self-congratulatory confessions —’
Even in his weakness a vast astonishment fell on Jocelin.
‘What kind of a priest are you?’
‘You should know. The same sort as you, if you like. Minimal. I know it. What about Ivo, Jocelin? A boy canon. Just because his father gave timber for the building. You see? He’s got as much right in the church as you had. Or I have. Only he’ll do less harm. He spends his time hunting. You’ve lain on us like a blight. There have been times when the sight of you in your authority has squeezed this heart of mine small and made my breath come short. I’ll tell you another thing. For all that stone contraption which hangs out there over our deliberations, there’s a peace and amity in Chapter because you’re not there, as if balm had been spilt.’
‘Anselm!’
‘Do you remember what you said in Chapter when I spoke against the spire? Because I do. I shall never forget. There, before all of them. “Sit down, Anselm!” Do you remember that? “Sit down, Anselm —”’
‘Let’s leave it at that. There’s nothing to be said or done.’
‘And there’s the matter of the candles.’
‘I know.’
‘And finally, Jocelin, if you want every matter out in the open, there’s the business of the building.’
‘Can’t you go?’
‘You must admit it capped everything,
‘Well. Forgive me, then.’
‘Naturally I forgive you. I forgive you.’
‘I beg you. No forgiveness for this or that, for this candle or that insult. Forgive me for being what I am.’
‘I said so.’
‘Do you feel it Anselm? Tell me you feel it!’
There were steps going down the stair; and after that, a long silence.
It was many minutes before he felt a change; but then people came and danced before his eyes, a strange ducking and weaving. Among them he could see no one clearly but Father Adam; and he cried out again.
‘Help me, Father!’
Then Father Adam came close and began to unravel things. He pulled and unravelled but got nowhere because all things were so mixed and the evil plant grew among and over them all. So in the end Jocelin felt nothing but the pain of his back (and the sick fire when they turned him over to pack it with lamb’s wool) and apart from that, a dissolved grief from throat to navel. Father Adam could see nothing on his hands; but told him he was weak and deluded and that all that mattered was the will. Nor did Father Adam understand how necessary it was to have forgiveness from those who were not Christian souls; nor how for that it was necessary to understand them; nor how impossible understanding them was.
At this point Jocelin grew very cunning, for he saw that he would have to escape from Father Adam. He waited for a good day; for there were occasional good days, when the sun lay glossily on the floor and he knew exactly where he was. When one came, he pretended to sleep an exhausted sleep while he heard Father Adam rustling. He opened one eye secretly and watched the little man’s back as it went away down the stairs. He mustered his strength for the endeavour, and at last he got up, slewing his legs off the bed, and waiting for his faintness to go away. He felt along by the wall, placed his skullcap among his hair, and hung his cloak on his shoulders. He crawled down the stairs, with the hinges of his legs trembling for weakness, and the great hall was empty. There was no fire and no candles; but there was much light and shadows moving over the windows. Also there was a freshness about the air that stirred the grief in his chest. He got a stick from the mass on the hearth and pressed himself up by it.