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"Horrible, lurid flambeaux.""Yes, you said it." He stopped. The drink had come and he wasgazing at it.
"What is it?" I asked him. I was alarmed because he was alarmed.
"Look at me, Roger. Don't start fading, keep talking. What did thetranslation of the books reveal? Were they profane? Roger, talk tome!"He broke his frigid meditative stillness. He picked up the drink,tossed down half of it. "Disgusting and I adore it. Southern Comfortwas the first thing I ever drank when I was a boy."He looked at me, directly.
"I'm not fading," he assured me. "It's just I saw and smelled thehouse again. You know? The smell of old people's rooms, the roomsin which people die. But it was so lovely. What was I saying? Allright, it was during Proteus, one of the night parades, that FatherKevin made the incredible breakthrough that both these books hadbeen dedicated by Wynken de Wilde to Blanche De Wilde, hispatron, and that she was obviously the wife to his good brother,Damien; it was all embedded in the designs of the first few pages.
And that threw an entirely different light on the psalms. The psalmswere filled with lascivious invitations and suggestions and possiblyeven some sort of secret codes for clandestine meetings. Over andover again there appeared paintings of the same little garden?
understand we're talking miniatures here?
"I've seen many examples.""And in these little tiny pictures of the garden there would alwaysbe one naked man and five women dancing around a fountain withinthe walls of a medieval castle, or so it seemed. Magnify it five timesand it was just perfect. And Father Kevin began to laugh and laugh.
" 'No wonder there isn't a single saint or biblical scene in any ofthis,' Father Kevin said, laughing. 'Your Wynken de Wilde was araving heretic! He was a witch or a diabolist. And he was in love with thiswoman, Blanche.' He wasn't shocked so much as amused.
" 'You know, Roger,' he said, 'if you did get in touch with one ofthe auction houses, very likely these books could put you throughLoyola, or Tulane. Don't think of selling them down here. Thinkabout New York; Butterfield and Butterfield, or Sotheby's.'
"He had in the last two years copied out by hand about thirty-fivedifferent poems for me in English, the best sqrt of translation?
straight prose from the Latin梐nd now we went over them, tracingrepetitions and imagery, and a story began to emerge.
"First thing we realized was that there had been many booksoriginally, and what we possessed were the first and third. By the third,the psalms reflected not mere adoration for Blanche, who was againand again compared to the Virgin Mary in her purity and brightness,but also answers to some sort of correspondence about what the ladywas suffering at the hands of her spouse.
"It was clever. You have to read it. You have to go back to the flatwhere you killed me and get those books.""Which means you didn't sell them to go to Loyola or Tulane?""Of course not. Wynken, having orgies with Blanche and her fourfriends! I was fascinated. Wynken was my saint by virtue of his talent,and sexuality was my religion because it had been Wynken's and inevery philosophical word he wrote he encoded a love of the flesh!
You have to realize I didn't believe any orthodox creed really, I neverhad. I thought the Catholic Church was dying. And thatProtestantism was a joke. It was years before I understood that the Protestantapproach is fundamentally mystic, that it is aiming for the veryoneness with God that Meister Eckehart would have praised or thatWynken wrote about.""You are being generous to the Protestant approach. AndWynken did write about oneness with God?""Yes, through union with the women! It was cautious but clear;'In thine arms I have known the Trinity more truly than men canteach,' like that. Oh, this was the new way, I was sure. But then Iknew Protestantism only as materialism, sterility and Baptist touristswho got drunk on Bourbon Street because they could not dare do itin their hometowns.""When did you change your opinion?" I asked.
"I'm speaking in broad generalities. I mean, I saw no hope forreligions in existence in the West at our time. Dora feels very muchthe same, but we'll come to Dora.""Did you finish the entire translation?""Yes; just before Father Kevin was transferred. I never saw himagain. He did write to me later, but by that time I had run away fromhome.
"I was in San Francisco. I'd left without my mother's blessing, andtaken the Trailways Bus because it was a few cents cheaper than theGreyhound. I didn't have seventy-five dollars in my pocket. I'dsquandered everything Captain ever gave me. And when he died, didthose relatives of his from Jackson, Mississippi, ever clean out thoserooms!
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