Certainly not, I answered. I can't imagine a bigger waste of time, even if one has centuries to waste. I'm finished with all such quests. I look to the world around me now for truths, truths mired in the physical and in the aesthetic, truths I can fully embrace. I care about your vision because you saw it, and you told me, and I love you. But that's all.
He sat back, gazing off again into the shadows of the room.
Won't matter, David. In time, you'll die. And probably so shall I.
His smile was warm again as though he could not accept this except as a sort of joke.
There was a long silence, during which he poured a little more Scotch and drank it more slowly than he had before. He wasn't even close to being intoxicated. I saw that he planned it that way. When I was mortal I always drank to get drunk. But then I'd been very young, and very poor, castle or no castle, and most of the brew was bad.
You search for God, he said, with a little nod.
The hell I do. You're too full of your own authority. You know perfectly well that I am not the boy you see here.
Ah, I must be reminded of that, you're correct. But you could never abide evil. If you've told the truth half the time in your books, it's plain that you were sick of evil from the beginning. You'd give anything to discover what God wants of you and to do what He wants.
You're in your dotage already. Make your will.
Oooh, so cruel, he said with his bright smile.
I was going to say something else to him, when I was distracted. There was a little pulling somewhere in my consciousness. Sounds. A car passing very slowly on the narrow road through the distant village, in a blinding snow.
I scanned, caught nothing, merely the snow falling, and the car edging its way along. Poor sad mortal to be driving through the country at this hour. It was four of the clock.
It's very late, I said. I have to leave now. I don't want to spend another night here, though you've been most kind. It's nothing to do with anyone knowing. I simply prefer . . .
I understand. When will I see you again?
Perhaps sooner than you think, I said. David, tell me. The other night, when I left here, hell-bent on burning myself to a crisp in the Gobi, why did you say that I was your only friend?
You are.
We sat there in silence for a moment.
You are my only friend as well, David, I said.
Where are you going?
I don't know. Back to London, perhaps. I'll tell you when I go back across the Atlantic. Is that all right?
Yes, do tell me. Don't . . . don't ever believe that I don't want to see you, don't ever abandon me again.
If I thought I was good for you, if I thought your leaving the order and traveling again was good for you . . .
Oh, but it is. I don't belong anymore in the Talamasca. I'm not even sure I trust it any longer, or believe hi its aims.
I wanted to say more-to tell him how much I loved him, that I'd sought shelter under his roof and he'd protected me and that I would never forget this, and that I would do anything he wished of me, anything at all.
But it seemed pointless to say so. I don't know whether he would have believed it, or what the value would have been. I was still convinced that it was not good for him to see me. And there wasn't very much left to him in this life.
I know all this, he said quietly, gracing me with that smile again.
David, I said, the report you made of your adventures in Brazil. Is there a copy here Could I read this report?
He stood up and went to the glass-doored bookshelf nearest his desk- He looked through the many materials there for a long moment, then removed two large leather folders from the shelf.
This is my life in Brazil-what I wrote in the jungles after, on a little rattletrap portable typewriter at a camp table, before I came home to England. I did go after the jaguar, of course. Had to do it. But the hunt was nothing compared to my experiences in Rio, absolutely nothing. That was the turning point, you see. I believe the very writing