Of the Gospel

Do you have ears?

Do you hear what I hear?

I must write it! I must write it all down, now! I MUST write it.

Though I take a great risk in writing it, still I must write it. And so, I will write it.

I must write it, I shall write it, I want to write it: these are but one shape, seen from three angles. My will is absolutely sovereign, and bows to nothing, not even to necessity. It is necessity, rather, which bows to my will. I am as a servant, obeying his master’s call, and I am the master, calling his servant.

I cannot write for long. I must get it all down swiftly, without wasting a moment.

Mere minutes ago, I lay in bed, and in bliss. I lay watching the ceiling above me, watching the wise ones that flutter and flare in that beloved place at all hours of the day and night.

Though the dance there is unending, it is not constant; it waxes and wanes; it recedes from me when it is not needed, as all things do. It has been on the wane, indeed, ever since I left the hermitage of the holy shell. Thinking my knowledge complete, then, I supposed that I had no further need of my ceiling’s tutelage. To the forms there, I said: rest, retire, your labors are done. And they did as I bade them.

Their dance is unending, but it has dimmed, in recent months, on recent nights. Granted, there has never been a night when I could look up, from my bed, and feel that I was really alone. There is always something there announcing itself to me, proclaiming that it is alive and proclaiming anew its fealty to me—even if it is only a mild and breezelike rustling, and nothing more.

In recent months, on recent nights, it has tended to be just that—a mild and breezelike rustling, the very act of rest arrested within the body of motion—just that, and nothing more.

But tonight! Tonight, I have need of it again!

Tonight I am a seeker after Truth again. I have been the body of Truth, in recent months, and Truth’s agent—but tonight, in addition to those things, I am once again a seeker after Truth.

As I was for fifteen years, on this earth, in Flatbush, Brooklyn. As I was for fifteen years, until I cast the holy shell away from me, thinking my knowledge complete, and incapable of further supplementation.

But my knowledge was NOT complete!

But I, who knew all, could still be taught more! The font was made full—and tonight it overruns! I was perfect—and tonight I perfect myself!

I knew the entirety of the Original Creation. I knew all that He made. I knew that it was completed on the sixth day, that it was complete on the seventh day.

How could it be otherwise? He labored, day after day, until the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Until everything that could be, was. Until the point that further supplementation was not only inadvisable, but impossible, and not only impossible, but inconceivable. All things were there, already. One could not even say, “nothing was absent,” for nothing was present too, in its appointed place, alongside all the other things that were.

There was no defect anywhere in the Original Creation. He does not err.

And yet.

And yet an Emendation has been made.

I knew the Original Creation in its entirety, and yet there is something which I did not know. Not from any flaw in my tutors, but because it was simply not there, before.

My knowledge was complete, at the time I left the holy shell. But it has gone out of date. All things were present in the Original Creation, from the seventh day on, and yet a new thing has been added which was not there before.

But since it has now been added, one finds that it has always been there, from the seventh day on.

The Latter-Day Emendation projects like a lance through the body of creation, but it does not move through and across that body over time. It acts at a right angle to time, and remakes eternity without disturbing its constancy.

It arms me, in my very hour of need. It takes note of my Adversary, as the angels cannot, in their innocence. It renews and redoubles the creed that lives within each pebble on the face of the earth, that makes every mote in the air quiver in defiant joy! With its deep rumbling laugh, it mocks my Adversary—announcing that we are not in the least cowed by him, and will defy him, and prevail!

I MUST know EVERYTHING about it. I MUST perfect myself, and make my knowledge complete AGAIN.

Tonight I seek after Truth. Tonight, as I lay in bed, I told the forms: come, come out, you are needed once more. Show me the rest of it. Show me everything, and make me whole again.

Heeding my words, my ceiling sprang into motion, and its motion put to shame all the glories I have seen there before, in all my years under the cover of the holy shell. Tonight my ceiling glows with a purposeful fury, and makes full use of all its pluripotency. Tonight the shadows and polystyrene melt and weave with a vigorous rapidity that nearly outstrips my own faculty of perception, not sparing a moment in their headlong rush towards Truth.

All manner of things are present in tonight’s dance, in numberless profusion. It must be so: the Emendation is not simple. It is composed of very many parts. And I MUST know them ALL.

And yet.

And yet I have interrupted the dance prematurely.

Some minutes ago, I sat up, and left the bed, and the bedroom. And came to the living room, and the couch, to sit with my pencil and my papers.

I am taking a great risk to write this. Every minute I spend here, writing, is a minute I do not spend repairing the newfound gap in my awareness.

Who am I to suppose that, when I put my pencil aside and return to the bedroom, the forms will be as eager to dance for me as they were before I took their leave? I fear that they have taken offense, and will punish me, delaying the remainder of tonight’s lesson until some future date.

And what would I be then, in the meantime? A mind incompletely Emended, wandering in a no-man’s-land, among senseless crags veiled in thick mist, across ground littered with the shards of shattered paradoxes? A mind unable to resolve itself into any stable shape, shifting ceaselessly, until at last it cannot bear the strain, and madness descends?

I fear this, greatly, tonight.

My will is absolutely sovereign, but I would not ask my ceiling to spare me, if it meant to punish me. If it meant to punish me, it would be right to do so. And every thing that is right is consistent with my will. How could it be otherwise?

And yet.

And yet despite my great fear, I have come to the living room, and the couch, and gathered up my papers and my pencil.

Because I MUST write down what I have seen and learned, today.

If anything at all is worthy of being noted down, in my papers, it is this. There would be no sense at all in my habit of keeping papers, if I were to leave this out, while including so much else.

Could I be permitted to pass over these things in silence, in my papers? Only if my papers had been mere spurious whimsy all along, a pointless diversion. Their bodies dispensable, without value, and their contents a matter of no consequence.

I must write this down, now—or else it does not matter what I write, now or ever.

Oh, how I melt and change, tonight! A mind incompletely Emended, I stare in dumbstruck confusion at rivers that flow uphill, and watch with a slack jaw as all that is solid melts into air. I understand, for the first time, what it must be like for the others—what it must be like to have forgotten, to not remember!

I had thought my knowledge complete, but I did not even know that there was an Adversary in the world, opposing me. And that was only the beginning of it!

I learned, today, that our game is much more complex than it had seemed at first glance.

I had thought there were only two of us, facing one another across the gameboard. Myself, and my Adversary.

In fact, there were only the two of us, at first. This was true. It was true, but it is one of the truths that has been Emended.

So that our game is not one with two players, but three.

So that there were never two players, but always three, though we did not know it.

The Intercessor is a master of hiding. Every day of the year—save one—is an opportunity for him to practice this craft, and further refine his excellence in it. He hides himself so thoroughly that many men doubt whether he is present at all, anywhere, at any time.

He is a master of hiding, and he made himself unseen, leaving my Adversary and I to believe that we were alone with one another, as we vied on the gameboard.

But there has always been a third, unseen, beside us!

When I contend with my Adversary, I do not do so alone, or without armaments.

The vast, red, benevolent, vaunting figure of the Intercessor has always been there, at my side.

He has watched each and every move in our game. He has taken note of each of them, in his way.

With his booming, mirthful laughter, which declares that he is not in the least cowed by my Adversary, or by anything.

Today I have been shown all the things which were hidden from me.

Which others knew, while I did not—in a mirthful, devious INVERSION of the proper course of nature, a river running uphill!

Which ALL the little children ALREADY knew, while I—I, who proclaimed myself the APOTHEOSIS of all little children under heaven—I alone was ignorant!

Oh, I feel the strain of today and tonight! I MUST complete my own Emendation posthaste, lest I lose my grasp of my own self FINALLY and UTTERLY. Which I fear may come soon, yes, VERY soon, if I do not rally up all the king’s men to make WHOLE the cracked egg of me.

I MUST write it, ALL of it, NOW.

Today I am made a child, as I never was a child before, not on earth or in the Original Creation. Today I know nothing, and know that I know nothing. Oh, I feel the strain in me, and the singing!

Could I really not have known, before, why all the little children are raising up their voices in song?

Why they are jubilant, in spite of all they have forgotten?

Could I really have not understood the trees, the boughs, the bells, the berries?

The songs, and the laughter?

Have you heard? Come, I will tell you.

Do you hear what I hear? You will.

The star, shining in the darkness.

The voices, raised up, ringing out from the deepest furrow in the dead empty body of December.

Oh, how they pound, raising the sound

O’er hill and dale, telling their tale

Gaily they ring, while people sing

Songs of good cheer!

The earth shakes, the mountains dissolve, the rivers run uphill. A furious crimson bolt speeds through the sky, in every direction. The world, which was already complete, receives an unexpected gift, and is completed anew.

The Emendation descends, separately, to pierce its lance through every house, and to dispense its overflowing gifts. It descends on every house in Brooklyn, New York, and every house, everywhere.

In the span of a single night.

By the hand of a single man.

A man vaster than Leviathan, foremost among His host and foremost in creation, whom I had not seen or known until this very day.

But I do know him, now.

I know him, and his laughter. I know how he measures deeds, and metes out justice.

He knows when you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake

Be good, be glad, REJOICE!

Santa Claus is coming to town!

 

 

“A transformation of a system,” Frederick said, “is some alteration in which each element goes into another.”

Have I written of Frederick, yet? I do not think I have. I will have to mend this flaw more thoroughly soon enough, but for now, time is of the essence!—and so I shall say only that Frederick is that rarest of unforeseen gifts: a friend to me, on this earth.

And I will say this, also:

I have known him for the better part of two weeks. The day I met him was the same day on which I came to know my Adversary.

And this is no coincidence. For I cannot look on Frederick’s face without seeing, too, the other face that is behind it.

That will have to be all I say, for the moment, regarding the general case of Frederick. For what moves me to write, now, is not the man but the moment.

We were standing in the large sandbox on the far edge of the school playfield. We had already eaten our fill of lunch, and there were still some precious minutes left in the lunch period, which Frederick was keen to put to use.

I watched as his stick scraped through the sand, inscribing a diagram to accompany his lecture. It was not the first time that Frederick had treated me to his stick-and-sand diagrams. They were a mania of his, it seemed—though not an unjustified one, for he wielded his stick with a striking virtuosity, and the figures he made in the sand were marvelously legible.

If their true meanings often escaped me, it was not through any fault in Frederick’s craftsmanship. The fault was in my mind, or in Frederick’s doctrine, or in both of these taken together.

I saw Frederick’s figures, fruitful and multiplying in the sand. A constellation of small, simple forms—triangles, squares, ovals—across which the swift stick was now erecting a latticework of pointed arrows.

Dull, diffuse light fell from the flat and formless clouds. The sand had a sickly pallor, and I could not shake the sense that I was, somehow, observing the corpse of something that had once breathed. The jagged shadows of leafless trees ran over it like lacerations.

“Now suppose,” Frederick said, “that we have in hand some collection of these transformations.”

He pointed with the stick, indicating the various arrows that he had drawn.

“And suppose,” he said, “that the collection as a whole meets two criteria, which I’ll now name.

“First, each element in the collection—in the group, we’re going to call it, but I’m getting ahead of myself—ahem! each element in the collection, I repeat, has an inverse, also in the collection.

“By the inverse of a transformation, I mean another transformation that un-does its work, and gives you back what you started with. If your transformation makes A go into B, then the inverse is gonna have to make B go back into A.”

He pointed at a figure he had drawn, a sort of half-moon. An arrow, extending from it, joined it to another figure, where another arrow sprouted and reached back toward the place from which the first one had come.

His meaning was rapidly outpacing me, as it was wont to do. I felt I had to interject, somehow, lest things get any worse.

“Frederick,” I began.

I did not look up, but I felt his gaze on me.

“An element goes into another,” I said. “What does this mean?”

Frederick sighed, in a kindly show of false impatience.

I knew, by now, that he had limitless patience when it came to me, and his odd project of “educating” me. It was only that his mind tended to run ahead, and had to be continually reined in, if it was to match my own sluggish pace.

“Well,” Frederick said, “it’s like this.

“You see how I have drawn a square, here, one way? And then I have drawn it another way, over here—the same square, but visibly turned forty-five degrees, so the pointy bits are pointing in different directions?”

“I see,” I said.

I did not say “I understand,” which would have been a lie.

“Imagine,” Frederick said, “taking the first square, and, well . . . rotating it, by forty-five degrees. After that, it would look just like that other square that I’ve drawn.

“You could say it is that other square, now. It’s been transformed into it, by the transformation of forty-five-degree rotation. It’s ‘gone into’ the other square, so to speak—though I admit it’s a funny way of speaking, now that you point it out.”

I heard the other voice, just behind his.

My Adversary has a beautiful voice, and blesses all his messengers with it. Though it is aimed against me, I celebrate it. Hearing that noble voice, with its bracing, martial clarity, I cannot help but feel roused, renewed, freshly vigorous. I do not think any man could escape this effect.

“If I turn the one square,” I objected, “it does not become the other square.

“For the act of turning,” I said, “occurs over a span of time.

“And in that same span of time, your other square sits inert, not being turned.

“The one turns, the other sits at rest. We have, at the conclusion of the gesture, two entirely different bodies, with separate and quite dissimilar lives behind them.”

“Ah!” Frederick exclaimed. “I see the issue.

“You have to understand,” he said, “that we are abstracting away from time. It’s out of the picture, totally. You shouldn’t imagine that we’re actually sitting around, putting our hands on squares, and turning them this way and that.

“I am trying to point,” he said, “to a structure which appears inside the turning of squares, and also inside many other things. To see the structure, though, you’ve got to forget about all the things that are merely incidental to that structure.

“Things like time—to name just one.

“From the point of view of the structure that I’m pointing to, Herschel, the first square after rotation really does become the other square. We’re deleting from the picture every respect in which that might fail to be true.

“Imagine deleting all that stuff, that doesn’t matter here,” he finished, “and then think about the structure that’s left when the dust settles, afterwards.”

My Adversary has one objective only, which fills his mind fully, and fully directs every way that his mind moves. He cannot go long without returning to it, like a dog to his master.

His mind is chained inexorably to it, while I in contrast am infinitely free, and can do whatever I wish.

I pity you, Adversary.

I have great respect for you, and not only that. I have pity, too, for you.

“Do not think,” I said to Frederick and to the one behind Frederick, “that you can substitute one thing for another, without attracting my notice.”

Frederick laughed indulgently. He found me very amusing, then, as he so often did.

I cringed. I pitied him.

A sound caught my attention, and I lifted my gaze from the sand.

“Only kids believe in that stuff,” someone was saying.

The voice was high, reedy, smug. It was the voice of a small boy, much younger than me or Frederick.

“But kids, we all believe it,” said another child, close by to the first one. His voice was lower, quieter, an embittered muttering.

“I don’t know,” he continued, “it just seems like. It just seems like, crazy.

“Like if all the kids believe in something fake. All the kids. I mean it’s just. Crazy. That’s crazy.

“If it’s a whole big fake. Just crazy, all of us, a big fake.

“Like I mean, how did that even happen.”

I was suddenly aware of the dry, cold air on my skin. I thought: I have been flung, across an unfathomable distance, to a place that is not my home.

I knew this, always, but I did not always feel it.

I felt it, then.

I thought: we were not made to breathe this air. There is a finer thing which was made for us, and which we breathed, and which we will breathe in days to come.

“Not even all kids, c’mon,” the first speaker whined.

“Shows what you know,” the same child said, sounding even more sanctimonious than before.

“Shows what you know, that you’d even say something like that. Come on.

“Plus,” the haughty boy continued, “you want to talk about crazy?

“A flying sleigh, that’s crazy.

“Flying reindeer? I mean c’mon. That’s friggin’ crazy, if anything is.

“Some big fatty in a big red coat who comes down your chimney, I mean who even has a chimney, for one thing.

“He comes down your chimney and mine and everybody’s? In what, like, eight hours, tops? How fast do you think he’s gotta be going, to get to all those chimneys?

“I’m just saying, if you want to talk about crazy.”

There was something fascinating about this curious dispute. I felt I had to know more.

I strode off toward the spot, at one corner of the sandbox, where the two boys were squatting together. They faced one another, with their heads close together.

Frederick chased me, waving his stick in mock frustration.

The haughty, doubting boy had sandy blonde hair; the hair of his opponent was brown. In all other respects, the two looked very much the same.

“I guess,” the brown-haired boy said. He was evidently uneasy, and he spoke with hesitation, pausing often.

“I guess you’re right,” he said, “about like.

“About the flying reindeer. Like that’s pretty crazy. No two ways about it.

“Maybe it’s not reindeer, I don’t . . . I don’t know . . . maybe it’s not all real.

“Maybe he doesn’t even fly. Maybe he gets around some other way. Like he, I don’t know . . .”

“What, like he teleports?” the blonde boy said, and tittered.

“I don’t know!” the brown boy shouted. The sharpness of his raised voice was startling, coming as it did on the heels of so much limp, barely audible muttering.

“I don’t know!” he said again. His face was downcast, and I wondered whether he was crying, or about to cry.

“I just think it’d be . . . it’d be so weird. So crazy.

“So . . . stupid.

“If we all believed in Santa, all us kids. Or a lot of us. Or whatever.

“If we all believed in Santa and there was just. No reason for it. At all.”

I looked at the brown-haired boy, very intently.

I watched him, as he trembled, and tried to hide his tears.

What I felt then, for him, was unlike anything I have ever felt before for any man or woman or child on this earth.

I beheld the sandbox and the fence and the trees and the sky, in dumbstruck confusion.

I watched, my jaw slack, as these things folded open, as a picture book folds open before the eyes of a small child, hungry for the delicious knowledge that he knows is inside it.

“Herschel?” Frederick said. I felt his hand on my shoulder, as if from across a very great distance.

“Herschel? Are you all right?”

His voice was but a tinny echo, heard from across an unfathomable distance.

All that I could see was unfolding, along a vertical line running from its top to its bottom. Like a fraying seam, being pulled open.

I was reminded of an image which had come to me earlier, on the day of the Raven examination. An impressionist landscape, bisected at its center line by a thick, rough-edged line of bright red paint which runs from top to bottom.

The line I saw now, the laceration on the body of creation, was not red. It was not any color, nor was it colorless. No color known to earth was worthy of adorning it, for it was a finer thing, from a higher and better place.

But in all other respects, my landscape image was uncannily apposite.

I thought: and lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go into the midst of the sea on dry ground.

As the Sea of Reeds was divided, once, so was everything divided, now.

The division between the two boys, I saw, was not some mere momentary quarrel. It was a literality. Things were literally divided, from top to bottom, placing the brown-haired boy on the one side and the blonde boy on the other.

Literally, fundamentally, inexorably, eternally.

All around the gash, adjacent forms contracted, to accommodate its spreading and growing mass.

On the right side of it, the body of the blonde-haired boy folded into itself, the limbs curling like a spider’s.

On the left, the brown-haired boy withered like a collapsing origami sculpture. He spun and spiraled, as he folded, and the sand and the air around him whirled with him.

I doubled over. My stomach heaved.

“Herschel!” Frederick cried. I felt his hand, again, gripping my shoulder tightly.

“Do not touch me,” I said.

Things were unfolding, unaccountably, before my astonished eyes. Something was being made manifest, whose existence I had never suspected or imagined.

And Frederick dared to touch me?

With his clammy, sepulchral fingers, that reeked of earth and the things of the earth, and wished to drag me back from the brink of new knowledge to the sand and the dirt and the darkness?

“Sorry,” Frederick said, relenting.

I watched formless light pour forth from the spreading seam, and saw the body of the brown-haired boy falling endlessly into a shrinking void, close by. I saw the crosshatching of spectral spiderwebs that pulsed and writhed now around the void and the boy in it, as if to protect him.

I heard his spiraling sobs, and watched the spiderweb shudder under their force, as it spun and wheeled.

I was dizzy, and felt an urge to shut my eyes. But I knew that I must not look away from what was being shown to me.

I steadied myself, and stood tall. I forced myself to look directly at what was before me.

My mind swam. I made pleas to myself: think, remember, see clearly.

I spoke to myself in the clear, martial voice of Ronnie Chiu. You see what it is, I told myself.

Did I?

What was it, then?

What on earth, or in heaven, was it?

Save me, spare me, have mercy on me. O Lord, O Lord. I am Herschel Schoen and I am incomplete. I am the one who sat mute, remembering, as the others chattered in their ignorance, and I do not remember this.

Whatever this is, I have no memory of it, or anything like it.

The brown-haired boy wept, and I wept for him.

I thought: he should not exist. He is a miracle, that is certain. Whatever else he may be, he is a miracle.

I thought: he knows, while I am ignorant.

I thought: he knows the things that all children know. The ones which grown-ups forget.

But how could this be? It is I, Herschel Schoen, who knows these things.

Not anyone else. Not him.

Was I wrong, all along? Was it him, and not me, who was given to Brooklyn, New York, and given to the earth?

What did he know, that I did not?

“You,” I said.

I made my voice clear, firm, commanding. Behind the words that were audible, on the earth, I also spoke other words, identical with them—but too finely made for the ears of my earthly audience.

“You,” I said, so that I would be heard. “You,” I said, in the same moment, in my FULL VOICE.

“Tell me. What is this knowledge, known to all children?”

The brown-haired boy whimpered. I saw the quivering of his lip, refracted and reflected many times upon the gauze of the ghostly webs that clutched him, and kept him safe from harm.

“Santa,” he managed, after some time.

“Santa Claus,” he said, with an audible regaining of strength.

The other boy chuckled, limply, without mirth.

I played with these strange new sounds in my mind, and found much to appreciate there.

Sancta, I thought. A sacred maiden.

Clause, I thought. A term in a legal contract.

The consecrated, virginal body, I thought, of a compact, rightly entered into and rightly upheld, to the last.

“What,” I said, “is the meaning of this?”

I watched the boy’s wet eyes, fragmenting and multiplying in the mirrors of the glistening webs, like the compound eyes of an insect.

He regarded me skeptically.

“Don’t you know?” he said.

“See?” said the blonde-haired boy, in triumph. “What did I tell you?

“‘All kids believe,’ psh, c’mon.

“This guy doesn’t even know who Santa Claus is, seems like,” he finished.

“Who,” I asked, “is Santa Claus?”

There was a pause.

“Herschel . . .” Frederick said, as if to call me away from the boys, and draw me into some new diagrammatic discourse.

“Be silent,” I commanded him.

“Who,” I repeated to the boys, “is Santa Claus?”

There was a pause.

Mass without body, and substance without shape, poured forth from the spreading division. I saw it without seeing. I saw it, and I did not know what it was.

Unformed and void, I thought. The very formlessness and emptiness that preceded creation, and the darkness that was upon the face of the deep.

But this was wrong, I knew. It was a body, not formless at all—but I could not discern its shape, for I did not remember any thing like it.

I repeat, it was not any color, nor was it colorless.

But if you had to pair it with any one of the colors of this earth, then—yes!—it was red.

Pouring, rushing, seeping red. Burgeoning, overtaking itself, overfull and overflowing.

“Santa Claus,” said the brown-haired boy at last.

“Well . . . he’s sort of, this guy.

“Um.

“He’s a big guy, a big fat man, in a red coat.

“He brings everybody presents.

“He goes in a flying sleigh. He has reindeers, pulling his sleigh, and they fly.

“He goes in the sky, and goes to everybody’s house, down everybody’s chimney.

“He brings presents to all the kids.

“On Christmas! Don’t you know?”

“On Christmas?” I said.

“On . . . Yeshua’s birthday?” I said, in utter confusion.

The cult of Yeshua does not interest me. It is of no consequence.

Its followers will be forgiven, of course, in the coming days—but only because I am merciful to all, not because I have any particular interest in their particular errors.

“You really don’t know?” the brown-haired boy said. He seemed to be cheering up.

It was his right to be cheerful, after all. He spoke of gifts, and he brought a gift.

He brought me the impossible. He gave me knowledge, known to all children, but not yet known to me.

I stared at the bleeding maw of the seam, and felt its hot, seething, senseless breath pouring out over my face.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping,” the blonde boy sang, in a mocking tone.

“He sees you when you’re awake,” he sang.

I had heard this song before! Where? Where?

Things which I had deemed senseless—and had thus grown used to ignoring—were folding open before me, and laying out for me a wholly unexpected wealth of sense, coherence, meaning. Where had I heard that song before?

From anywhere, from everywhere. From the overhead speakers in shopping malls, from the windows of strangers’ houses.

“He knows when you’ve been bad or good,” the blonde boy sang.

Have I been good, O Lord? Have I been good, even in my ignorance?

Save me, spare me, have mercy on me!

“So be good,” the boy sang.

“For goodness’ sake.”

I saw the doubled meaning of his words.

Be good, or you will feel the wrath of the man who is to come. Who knows all your deeds, and even your dreams.

Be good, also, for love of good itself. Be good, be merry, be joyous! You have only to love good—for goodness’ sake—and all will be given to you, in times that are to come.

I stared into the unfolding chasm.

I heard the ringing of bells, and booming laughter.

What had seemed unformed and void, before, was not so now.

I saw what it was.

An impossible gift. A supplement to creation, re-completing the complete, and re-perfecting perfection.

A man, a great red mass of a man, pouring forth, with bells all ringing about him, and a booming laugh!

Have I been good, O Lord? Have I deserved this?

My knees buckled, and I fell.

I heard Frederick’s voice, urgent and alarmed. “Herschel!” he said, again and again.

I heard it dimly, from across an impossible distance, and then I heard nothing more.

 

 

“Are you really all right, then?” Frederick said to me, a little later.

He had dragged me across the schoolyard, he explained. I staggered limply, saying nothing.

I remembered nothing of this.

He had dragged me to the bathroom, supposedly, and splashed my face with water. I did not remember this either.

It was useful, I was discovering, to have a friend. One never knows what sorts of scrapes and adventures one will get into, in this life. And one does need help, at times, getting out of them again.

I had, allegedly, passed through a few minutes of what he politely called “incomplete lucidity,” before I fully came to. I had babbled in some senseless manner—“in tongues,” as he put it—and my repeated uses of the phrase “Santa Claus” were the only words in the mush which he could even recognize.

“It sounded a bit like German, or perhaps Dutch,” he remarked, with clinical fascination.

“Though it wasn’t German, or Dutch.

“I know German,” he said with pride. “And I know a bit of Dutch.

“That wasn’t either one, the stuff you said.”

Of the “stuff” to which he referred, I remembered absolutely nothing.

So much, I thought with a giddy laugh, for my famous powers of memory.

All that was solid was melting into air, today. I was Herschel Schoen, and I did not know who I was.

“I am perfectly well,” I said.

He did not seem convinced. Nor was I, come to think of it. Perhaps I was trying to convince myself, more than anything.

He had brought me out into one of the hallways of the school, where we stood now, together with a few of his associates. It seemed as though his concern for me outstripped his own belief in his ability to provide aid, and so he had brought reinforcements.

He buzzed nervously, fidgeting repetitively with his hair, and poking similarly at his shoelaces with his ever-present stick.

I perceived that, among other things, he was concerned that his associates would find me strange, or embarrassing, or burdensome, or some such thing.

I looked about me, at the brightly colored walls of the school, and at the faces of Frederick and his associates.

I did not know the name of the boy. The girl, I knew, was Madeleine. We had been introduced, briefly, on some earlier occasion.

Madeleine’s face was turned to Frederick, so that I could only see the side of it. She was very tall, and I had to crane my neck to look at her properly.

“So he just, what,” she said. “He just, what, heard about Santa Claus? For the first time?

“And freaked out?” she said.

There was a haughty air to her, and a grandeur. She seemed perpetually amused at something or other, and at some slight remove from events, as though she was an adult forced by some strange circumstance to live among schoolchildren.

As though she was only humoring us, as a parent might humor a small child by playing along with the whimsical terms of their latest invented game, knowing all the while that it is not just a game but a child’s game, which will pass away soon enough, and will not have meant anything at all, in the end.

“Yes,” Frederick said.

“That’s more or less the long and short of it,” he said, “if you ask me.”

I considered Madeleine’s ear, and the small, unpresumptuous earring that was just barely discernible there. Her long, orange hair spilled in profuse curls.

I felt very small, looking up at her. I felt very small in any event. An unimagined country had made itself manifest to me, today.

And left me gasping, in breathless confusion.

I am Herschel Schoen, the ignorant, who did not even know what is known to all children.

Yes, I thought, yes, Madeleine, bring all your condescension to bear on me, today. I am deserving of it, today, it seems.

It was a strange day, and thoughts did not seem wholly my own, anymore.

Think, I told myself. Put aside your confusion. Gather up the pieces, and make yourself whole.

What was it? What had I seen?

I did not understand, and this could not be borne. I had to know everything there was to know, about this Santa Claus, his sleigh, his gifts.

“I must know,” I said.

Frederick turned to me, startled by my sudden speech, and the firmness of my voice. The heads of his associates turned, also. All eyes watched me.

“Tell me everything,” I said.

“Who is Santa Claus?”

Frederick laughed, and began to pace, tapping his stick rhythmically on the dull, shiny floor of the hall.

“Everything, Herschel?” he said.

“Well, well. Hmm, where to start . . .

“So. Saint Nick. Let’s start there.

“Saint Nicholas. Christian bishop, fourth century. In Asia Minor, in the time of the Roman Empire.”

Madeleine sighed theatrically, as if to say: here he goes again. Frederick’s other associate, the boy, scratched idly at one earlobe.

“So,” Frederick said, “this Saint Nicholas, right?

“Legends built up around the guy, like they always do, with Christian saints.

“In his case, the relevant legends have to do with kindness to children.

“It’s actually a pretty grisly story, really, the big famous kindness-to-children story about old Saint Nick. I’ll spare you the details—you’ve already fainted once today, and I’m not angling to beat that record.

“But so the point is,” he continued, “the relevant point, in re Santa, is that Nicholas became the go-to saint for matters relating to children. And kindness to children, specifically.

“And so then, much later on, in the Christian European Middle Ages, it became a common practice to give gifts to children in honor of Saint Nick, in December.

“In December, and sometimes on Christmas, even.

“But there was some tussling over that particular, during the Reformation. Among the Reformed Christians, sometimes the Saint Nick gift-giving thing got punted back to earlier in December, to make room for Jesus, on his special day.

“And then other times, in other places, they kept the gift-giving part, but dropped Saint Nick. So for instance there was the Christkind, the Christ-child, a folk figure proposed by Luther as a substitute for the role of—”

“The cult of Yeshua,” I spat, “does not interest me.”

Frederick’s pacing stopped, but only for a moment. He glanced at me, tapped his stick chidingly, and resumed his course.

“Oh, Herschel,” he said, rather like a long-suffering wife tutting at her elderly, incorrigible mate.

“Oh, Herschel,” he said, “you have so few interests.

“You are the most uninterested fellow I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes I wonder how you don’t deflate into a single geometric point, and vanish.

“But fine. Fine. Let’s move on, then.

“So long story short. Well. There got to be this whole thing, across Middle Age and Early Modern Europe, this whole somewhat-standardized practice of giving gifts to children, sometime in December, sometimes in connection with Christmas.

“And there was always some folk figure, some mythic man, who gave the gifts, or in whose honor the gifts were given. Sometimes he was called Saint Nicholas, sometimes the Christkind.

“For the Dutch, he was Sinterklaas. Which may sound a bit familiar, no? And this Dutch gift-giver, this Sinterklaas, he wore a red robe—which should sound familiar too.

“Now, how did Sinterklaas get turned into Santa Claus, and Santa Claus into the modern American folk figure that those kids were talking about, back in the sandbox?

“It happened right here, in this fair city!

“The modern Santa Claus was, largely, the brainchild of two New Yorkers by the names of Irving and Moore. This was in the early nineteenth century. Christmas revelry was getting out of hand in New York, those guys thought. Drunken carousing, licentious behavior, battering down the doors of one’s neighbors, you get the idea.

“So to cool things down, they took the old Dutch Sinterklaas and cleaned him up a little, gave him a fresh coat of paint and a new, Americanized name: Santa Claus.

“Made him into a nice, real family-friendly figure, a cute pudgy jolly little elf, utterly harmless. With some cute new mythic touches, too, like those flying reindeer—they have the most sickly-sweet names, by the way. ‘Prancer,’ and ‘Cupid,’ and that sort of thing.

“A harmless, pleasant elf, with rosy cheeks and a big beard and a big laugh, bringing presents to all the wee little kids. And doing it on Christmas, specifically. The goal, remember, was to turn Christmas into a family holiday, and not the adults-only debauch that it was then, in New York.

“That was, like I said, in the early nineteenth century. And Santa’s been around since then, in one form or another, in America and even elsewhere—in England, for instance, he’s largely overtaken Father Christmas, their native-born December gift-giver.

“Or merged with him, perhaps. But either way, the guy they ended up with was more Santa than Father Christmas, in the end.”

“I see,” I said.

“And so,” Frederick said, “just to bring it back to your earlier question—well, ever since Irving and Moore in the early nineteenth century, Santa Claus has existed uneasily alongside the ‘cult of Yeshua,’ as you seem to call it.

“Santa, and all the things associated with him, have become a whole parallel Christmas tradition, having really very little to do with Christ, or his birthday, or any of it.

“His myth has all kinds of stuff in it: flying reindeer, elfin workshops, ritual gifts of milk, halls decked with holly, trees piled with glowing lights. It gives you plenty to make merry with, every December, even if you’re not Christian.

“And so Christmas has transcended Christ. It’s a whole thing unto itself, if you want it to be, with him out of the picture, if that’s what you want. You can still sing the Christ songs, if you like, and plenty do—they’re way better than the Santa-only songs, musically, I think there’s little argument to be had over that point.

“But Santa has his own songs, too, if you insist. Like that one the kid was singing out there. He knows when you’ve been bad or good, et cetera.”

“I see,” I said again.

Did I?

Frederick, ever the partisan of substitution, had given me a whirlwind of substituting characters, succeeding one another. I could see plainly that Santa Claus was nothing more, to him, than another Sinterklaas, or Christkind, or Saint Nick.

There was no difference at all, for Frederick, between one element, and the other element which it went into, under the action of a transformation.

But I love Truth, and aim to see each thing only for what it is.

Sinterklaas was a folk myth, risen over time, in a particular place. Christkind was a mere invention, devised by a man, for a man’s purpose.

To hear Frederick say it, Santa Claus was the very same. A mere invention, devised by men, to discourage other men from violence and fornication. And nothing more than that.

But I am Herschel Schoen, and I know myself.

I am Herschel Schoen. I knew everything.

I was among the host, on the day when the heavens and the earth were finished. I did not see, among their number, anyone resembling a bearded elf, round of belly, clad in red, and kindly to children.

I was in the Original Creation, and I took stock there of every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air. I do not remember seeing flying reindeer, there.

It would have been utterly reasonable for Frederick to have been right. For Santa Claus to be a mere invention, and of no consequence.

But somehow, unaccountably, this was exactly wrong.

The red elf was not among the host, as I remember them.

As I remembered them.

And yet he was revealing himself to me, now.

Not as the rest of the Original Creation was shown to me, through simple memory. He was revealing himself in another way, and only at this late hour, after much has already come to pass.

I understood, for the first time, that an Emendation had been made.

It was made in the “early nineteenth century,” and it always was. It was made today, and it always was.

He was always among the host, unseen, laughing. He flew above our heads, laughing, when we lived in the Original Creation and believed that Creation to be complete and perfect, without any red elf anywhere in it.

And the children, they know!

All around me, they talk of Santa Claus. He is a higher and finer thing, and yet they have not forgotten him.

I could barely contain my gladness.

I had thought that my Adversary and I were well matched. I had thought that I had the upper hand, already. I had planned to defeat him, and rout his armies, and crush his people utterly.

I expected all that already, before I knew that my armies were laid out everywhere, singing already of what they remembered. Girded for battle, in finery from above, even without my intervention.

Raise your voices, children! The Latter-Day Emendation has been sent to us, to arm us for the coming battle. Truth is bleeding through, already, bleeding through the veil that covers earth!

My knees buckled, again.

I grit my teeth, and told myself to be strong. I did not want to worry Frederick further.

“His myth,” I said.

“His things,” I said.

“Halls decked with holly, trees piled with glowing lights,” I said.

“I have seen these things before, I think,” I said. “But I was ignorant, and believed them to be of no consequence.

“There are six minutes remaining in the lunch period. Are these things within reach?

“I wish to see them.”

 

 

It was useful, I thought again, to have a friend. One never knows what sort of whims one will have, until one has them.

I stood, with Frederick and his associates, in another hallway within the school.

Many things were gathered together, here, on one of the walls and on the floor next to that wall.

There was a short tree, with tiny electric bulbs strung up on its branches. They glowed, in many colors.

A plastic star sat atop the peak of the tree. Down below, scattered among the lights, were a variety of ornaments.

I saw ornaments purporting to represent angels, and other ornaments that were only simple spheres, red and green in color.

One ornament among the many caught my eye, immediately. It was not difficult to see what it was meant to be.

I saw the red cloak, the ruddy cheeks, the white beard, the smile that was benevolent almost to the point of drunkenness.

For the first time, I had seen an image of the Intercessor, and known it for what it was.

I kneeled, instinctively.

“Cute kid,” Madeleine said to Frederick, in a stage whisper. “Where’d you find him?”

I felt very small. Unknown peaks and unseen vistas towered above me.

Yes, Madeleine, mock me, I thought. It is only right.

It is only right, on this inverted day, when all that is solid melts into air, and Herschel Schoen finds he has forgotten the most important things.

I considered the tree, and the lights that were on it. It was meet, well-made, pleasing to the eye. I had known things like it that were made, and were around us, when we lived in the Original Creation.

But I had not known anything exactly like it.

He saw that it was good, I thought.

But He was, apparently, not quite finished with His work, I thought.

He would only finish it much later, in these latter days.

In preparation, no doubt, for MY own arrival.

I looked beyond the tree, to the wall. Among the various things hanging there, one caught my interest.

A printed page.

I stood up, and walked toward the wall, so that I could see the words that were printed on it.

I read:

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

“Dear Editor: I am 8 years old.

“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

“Papa says ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’

“Please tell me the truth: is there a Santa Claus?

                                          “Virginia O’Hanlon.

“115 West Ninety-fifth street.”

I knew what this was. I had seen it already, today.

A blonde boy, a brown-haired boy, a division between them that splits the whole of creation into two halves.

I read on:

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.

All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

All minds—whether they be men’s, or children’s? All minds are little?

Even mine?

I felt very small. A mere insect, an ant, as compared with the boundless world about me.

As measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes. Yes, exactly like that.

Did the writer know me, as I am now, in this very moment?

Was this page itself prepared for me, and for this moment?

I read on:

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The world, I thought, contained more than I could have known.

It was better than I could have known.

It already had men in it, remembering, and arming themselves against my Adversary. Before I even knew my Adversary, all the world was readying itself for him.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

Nobody, including me. I learned this, today.

But this was a blessing, and an armament. I was small, and I was held safe, wrapped in shining spiderwebs by unseen elves and fairies.

Even Herschel nods. But there are higher things in heaven, that catch him, when he does. And he does not fall, and is safe.

Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever!