22 The Paragraph of the Sphinx
Now upon the outskirts of Turoine, after Gerald had ridden through this city, Gerald paused to talk with the Sphinx who lay there writing with a black pen in a large black-covered book like a ledger. The monster had so long couched in this place as to be half-imbedded in the red earth.
“This partially buried condition, ma’am,” Gerald began,—“or perhaps one ought to say ’sir’—”
“Either form of address,” replied the Sphinx, “may be applicable, according to which half of me you are considering.”
“—This semi-interment, then, madam and sir, is untidy looking, and cannot be especially comfortable.”
“Yet I may not move,” replied the Sphinx, “in part because I have my writing to complete, in part because I know all movement and all action of every kind to be equally fruitless. So do I retain eternal bodily as well as mental poise.”
“Such acumen borders upon paralysis,” Gerald said: “and paralysis is ugly.”
“Do you not despise ugliness!” the Sphinx exhorted, “who have traveled thus far upon the road of gods and myths. For what things have you found stable upon this road save only Koleos Koleros and the Holy Nose of Lytreia? and what is there more ugly than these two?”
Gerald replied: “That nose I found it my Christian duty to describe as a tongue; and the lady whom they call Koleos Koleros I have not yet seen. But, in any case, you, ma’am—for, after all, it is not quite nice for me to have your loins upon my mind—No, really, it does seem more becoming for me to treat you as a lady—”
“So, and do you find me ugly?”
“You mistake my meaning. I was about to observe that you, ma’am, also appear tolerably stable. And the Mirror of Caer Omn, that likewise remains in worship.”
“Dreams pass eternally varying through that golden mirror. Thoughts pass eternally varying through my wise head. But all these dreams and thoughts stay barren, as barren as they are irresolute. For we create nothing. We control no material thing. And we aspire toward no goal. That is why we are permitted to endure powerlessly in realms wherein two powers alone are never barren; wherein they control all; and wherein neither may ever be uncertain of its goal so long as the other survives.”
Gerald found this wholly incomprehensible and of no striking interest. So he only shrugged.
“Nevertheless, in my worlds,” Gerald said, “there shall not be any ugliness.”
“Do you, then, possess many worlds?”
“Not as yet, ma’am. I allude to the worlds I shall create by and by, when I have come into my kingdom yonder, in the place beyond good and evil, and have regained my proper station as the Lord of the Third Truth in the Dirghic mythology.”
Now the Sphinx frowned. “I perceive you are only another downfallen god upon your journey to the Master Philologist. I might have guessed it, for Thor and Typhon and Rudra and the Maruts and all the other storm gods who have gone blustering downward into Antan, all had red hair.”
Gerald slapped his thigh.
“Upon my word, ma’am, but that is a real clue! The storm gods did, in every mythology known to me, have red hair. I incline to believe that the wisdom of the Sphinx has solved the mystery of my being. I am no doubt a storm god also; I am rapidly becoming a complete pantheon upon two legs; and at this rate my waistcoat will end by embracing pure monotheism. Meanwhile I really do wonder, ma’am, at your offhand way of speaking about the gods, and I wonder, too, what grudge you can have against us gods?”
“For one thing, it is said that the gods created those men who interrupt me in my writing to plague me with just such silly questions.”
“Men naturally seek wisdom from you, ma’am, to whom the whole story of human life is familiar.”
“But the story of human life is not one story. There are three stories of human life.”
“Ah, ah! And what are they?”
“Why, there was once a traveling man who came one night to an inn—”
“I believe I have heard of his indecorous adventures there. So do you spare my blushes, ma’am, and tell me the second story!”
“It seems, then, there were once two Irishmen—”
“That anecdote also, in all conceivable variants, I am quite certain I have heard. So what is the third story?”
“There was once a young married couple. And it seems that on the first night—”
“Yet that story, in a great number of versions, is equally familiar to me. And really, ma’am, I question if these intolerably hackneyed tales sum up all human wisdom.”
“But the young married couple in the outcome got pleasure for their bodies in the service of those two powers which I was just talking about. The Irishmen found an unlooked-for drollness in the mechanics of those two powers, which they preserved in a neat and nicely memorable phrase, getting pleasure for their minds. So, by the way, did the two Jews and the two Scotchmen. And the traveling man, upon the next morning, after those same two powers had obtained their will of him, went away from that inn, traveling nobody knows whither; and so got, through a darker night, unbroken and uncompanioned sleep, unbothered any longer by those powers. Thus these three stories really do sum up all the gains which it is possible for a man to acquire through human living and all the wisdom that it is salutary for any man to know about.”
“Well, that is as it may be! I am persuaded that in the goal of all the gods there is a more august power than any which men know of hereabouts assuredly. For I note the sympathy and compassion and love and self-denial which human beings display toward one another, after all, rather copiously. I reflect that every art is a form of self-expression. And I deduce that the artist who created human beings was prompted in his embodiment of all these qualities by sheer egotism. He observed these qualities in his own nature: he approved of them: and so he embodied them. No actually reflective person, therefore, will ever imagine that human life does not go forward toward some kindly winding-up, since none who finds philanthropy in his own heart can doubt that philanthropy exists in the heart of his creator.”
“And does that stuff which you are now talking really seem to you,” the Sphinx asked, “sensible?”
“My dear lady, it seems to me something far better: it seems to me a rather beautiful idea. So I play with it sometimes. Now I dismiss that idea, out of deference to your proverbial wisdom: and I ask what far more gratifying and uplifting wisdom, ma’am, you may be writing in your black-covered book?”
“Oh, yes, my book!” said the Sphinx, with the livelier interest natural to an author. “You find me just now in some difficulty with my book. You conceive there has to be an opening paragraph. It would not be possible to leave out the first paragraph—”
“I can see that. I can recall no book in which there was not a first paragraph.”
“—And this paragraph ought to sum up all things, so to speak—”
“That likewise is a familiar rhetorical principle—”
“—And it is with the composition of this paragraph that I am just now having trouble.”
“Well, you could not possibly have consulted a more suitable person. I, too, used to dabble in the little art of letters before I became a god with four aspects. I am familiar with all rhetorical devices. I am a past master of zeugma and syllepsis; at hypallage, and chiasmus also, I excel; and my handling of meiosis and persiflage and oxymoron has been quite generally admired. So do you read me your rough draft: and I have no doubt I can arrange all difficulties for you.”
The Sphinx for a moment considered this suggestion, and, before the prospect of a connoisseur’s efficient criticism, the monster seemed rather shy.
“Do not be vexed unduly,” the Sphinx then said, “if you can find no meaning in this paragraph—”
“I shall not be excessively censorious, I assure you. No beginner is expected to excel in any art.”
“—For this paragraph was placed here simply because there happened to be a vacancy which needed filling—”
“I quite understand that. So let us get on!”
But there was no hurrying the diffident Sphinx. “The foolish, therefore,” the Sphinx continued in shy explanation, “will find in it foolishness, and will say ‘Bother!’ The wise, as wisdom goes, will reflect that this paragraph was placed here without its consent being asked; that no wit nor large significance was loaned it by its creator; and that it will be forgotten with the turning of the one page wherein it figures unimportantly—”
“No doubt it will be!” said Gerald, now speaking a little impatiently, “but let us get on to this famous paragraph!”
“—So do you turn the page forthwith, in just the care-free fashion of old nodding Time as he skims over the long book of life: and do you say either ‘Bother!’ or ‘Brother!’ as your wits prompt.”
“I will, I assure you, the moment your book is published. But why do you keep talking about your paragraph? why do you not read me what you have written?”
“I have just done so,” replied the Sphinx. “I have not been talking. I have been reading ever since I said, ‘Do you not be vexed’ and now I have read you the whole paragraph.”
Gerald said, “Oh!” He scratched his long chin a bit blankly. He approached the monster, and leaning over one forepaw, he read for himself in that black ledger the paragraph of the Sphinx.
Then Gerald said, “But what comes next?”
“Were I to answer that question you would be wiser than I. And of course nobody can ever be wiser than the Sphinx.”
“But is that as far as you have yet written?”
“It is as far as anybody has written,” said the Sphinx, “as yet.”
“In all these centuries you have not got beyond that one paragraph?”
“Now, do you not see my difficulty? I needed an opening paragraph which would sum up all things, so to speak, and all the human living which men keep pestering me to explain. And when I had written it there was not anything left over to put in the second paragraph.”
“But, oh, dear me! This is materialism! this is flat sacrilege committed in the actual presence of a god! I am embarrassed, ma’am. I hardly know which way to look before the spectacle of such conduct. For you fill your page, with your ambiguous paragraph—”
“Do you not be vexed unduly if you can find no meaning in this paragraph—”
“—Which has not anything to do with my exalted duties in this world—”
“This paragraph was placed here simply because there happened to be a vacancy which needed filling—”
“But I am not a paragraph, ma’am! I am no less a person, I may tell you in confidence, than Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, upon a journey,—quite incognito, and therefore unattended by my customary retinue,—toward my appointed kingdom. And I confess that to my divine mind your writing has not any valid significance—”
“The foolish, therefore, will find in it foolishness, and will say ‘Bother!’—”
“—And conveys no valuable lesson—”
“The wise, as wisdom goes, will reflect that this paragraph was placed here without its consent being asked; that no wit nor large significance was loaned it by its creator; and that it will be forgotten with the turning of the one page wherein it figures unimportantly—”
“Quite honestly, ma’am, I am not a paragraph! No, I assure you that I really am the Lord of the Third Truth, upon my way to rule over Antan. I am the predestined conqueror who will force that irreligious Master Philologist to refrain from any further evil-doing, and to turn over a new leaf—”
“Do you turn the page forthwith, in just the care-free fashion of old nodding Time as he skims over the long book of life—”
“Yes, yes!” said Gerald, smiling, “I was thinking you could bring in that bit, neatly enough, if I gave you the simile to start on. And I know, of course, how all you authoresses love to quote your own works. So now, ma’am, if I were to remark, in a half puzzled way, that I hardly know what to say about your irrational paragraph—”
“Do you say either ‘Bother!’ or ‘Brother!’ as your wits prompt.”
“Quite so! And that finishes it. You have now had the privilege of quoting in the course of one conversation your complete collected works, from cover to cover: and that ought to leave any authoress in a fairly amiable frame of mind. My complaint, then, ma’am, is that you have exhausted my time rather than your subject. There should be by all means a second paragraph. You see, dear lady,—and I am speaking now from the professional knowledge of a god,—it is the gist of every religion that—still to pursue your bibliomaniacal metaphor,—one has but to turn over that page in order to begin upon the most splendid of romances.”
“What kind of romance can any dead man be getting pleasure out of in his dark grave?” the Sphinx asked, in frank surprise.
“Well, I must not speak over-hastily. I cannot supply offhand your second paragraph until I have learned what the Dirghic religion states to be the nature of this second paragraph.... For, you conceive, ma’am, in the opinion of many wise and virtuous persons that paragraph deals with a voyaging in the great sun boat, to a hidden land very far down in the west, after the heart of each passenger has been weighed against a feather, and forty-two judges have passed favorably upon his claims to free transportation. But dissenters, just as wise and virtuous, and just as numerous, declare the subject of that paragraph to be a pleasure garden in which properly behaved persons will recline in continuous tipsiness upon golden couches covered with green cushions, cosily shaded by lotus- and banana-trees, and will have no other occupation than perpetually to remove the virginity of large-eyed celestial ladies. Yet, other sages declare that paragraph to deal with the crossing of a bridge—in which transit a peculiarly obliging dog will serve as the guide,—into the presence of the bright Amshaspands. Whereas, still other estimable people contend that your second paragraph should treat of a four-square city builded of gold and jasper, upon a twelve-fold foundation of various precious stones, and irrigated by its own private crystal sea.... For, I repeat, ma’am, the best-thought-of religions vary quite noticeably as to the nature of this second paragraph: and it would be wholly a sad thing if by speaking over-hastily I were to run counter to my own mythology. But, in any case, I have no sympathy whatever with the mental morbidity of such materialism as would deny the existence of any kind of second paragraph.”
Then Gerald frowned, and he rode on.