— No, unfortunately! said the examiner. And believe you me, I’d give half my crown to see that animal Vaishya officiating at his rituals.
— It wouldn’t be so easy to see him, answered Schultz. Because Vaishya, as pontiff, reigns in a Vatican of cement; there, cigar in mouth, he is pleased to dictate financial encyclicals to stenographer priestesses as beautiful as the houris of paradise. Having envied the splendours of Brahmin and Kshatriya, the rascal hasn’t come up short when its comes to ostentation. But in his fundamental vulgarity, he makes profane use of everything. For example, he had his dining room chairs upholstered with the old and gilded chasubles of Brahman. Envying Kshatriya’s crowns and noble coats-of-arms, Vaishya now has them engraved as trademarks on his manufactured goods — bars of soap, toilet bowls, woollen goods, and other trinkets. On Vaishya’s desk can be seen two rare incunabula, luxuriously bound, but if you open them you will find that pages have been cut out to create hollows where Vaishya hides his cigars and bottle of whisky. With the parchment from a medieval antiphonary, Vaishya had lampshades made for his bedroom. And…
— Okay, enough! said Mr Midas at this point, laughing for the first time.
And Schultz later recounted that only after that moment did the crowned man put aside the stiff demeanour of the examiner. But he spoke again:
— It seems to me unlikely that Vaishya the bourgeois could have imposed his mysticism merely by deifying his gold, raising a temple in its honour, and giving it a liturgy.
— Don’t forget, retorted Schultz, that Vaishya is a born producer of material wealth, and that ever since he has risen to power, he has absolute discretion as to how wealth is distributed. It wasn’t long before courtiers and sycophants came crowding round him. And Vaishya, who has held his tongue for centuries, now gives it free rein: “Gentlemen, for my part, I confess I’ve never swallowed Brahmin’s metaphysical chatter. He’s been frightening us with that bogeyman of a God. But we’re grown men now, so enough of the smoke and mirrors. As for the immortal soul, the doctor who takes care of my stomach tells me he’s searched for it in vain, scalpel in hand. What are we left with, then? We’re left with one single world, one single existence, and one single body to make use of. Let us sit down, then, at the banquet of life. But remember, my god alone pays the bill, and I am the Supreme Pontiff of so amiable a god. And as for Kshatriya, don’t believe a word he says: his cult of living dangerously is unhealthy and goes against the principles the goddess Reason has recently dictated to us. But, if the military type obstinately persists, let’s leave him be: he may come in handy some day when our competitors challenge us for market advantage somewhere.” Thus speaks Vaishya, the bourgeois.
— I can just hear him! exclaimed the man with the crown.
— Afterward, Schultz concluded sadly, there will be philosophers, political theorists, and economists to give Vaishya’s ideas a literary style. And so will be spawned endless varieties of naive realism, historical materialism, hedonism, and so on and so forth.
— And what end lies in store for Vaishya? asked the examiner.
— I’m no prophet, answered the astrologer. But his end may come in two possible ways. Recall that Vaishya, when he needed Shudra, promised him the earth. Well, then, far from keeping his promise, Vaishya has subjected him to a regime of servitude such as Shudra had never experienced before. So it would be no surprise if Shudra were to rebel and bushwack Vaishya in turn. It’s also possible that Kshatriya, reformed through penitence, may remember his vocation and restore the primary order of things. However it may turn out, Brahma will decide, and that is well.
With this pious reflection, the astrologer Schultz concluded his examination. And, as he still tells anyone who will listen, Mr Midas warmly congratulated him. Then, again with great warmth, the man with the crown enjoined the two raving lunatics to give the gentleman awake (Schultz) and the entity asleep (me) an honourable exit from that circle of hell. The two raving lunatics obeyed the order no less warmly.
And if I’ve added this long examination to my account, it is because Schultz, in his infinite modesty, has assured me it sums up the greatest wisdom ever uttered in the philosophy of history.71
IX
Reader, my friend, if I had to justify the drowsiness that came over me in the fourth circle of Schultz’s inferno, I should remind you of a hundred illustrious precedents recorded in as many infernal excursions. Alighieri, being who he was, slept quite a bit in the descent he made. If the metaphysical character of his journey allows us to assign a symbolic value to that bard’s siestas, we can say that Alighieri slept in the proper place at the proper time. Less fortunate than he, I made an infernal descent without theological projections. I didn’t sleep when I should have, but rather when it was humanly possible to do so. How lucky are you, reader! For, having no metaphysical obligations or any cares whatsoever, you can cop a snooze on any page at all of this, my true story!
When Schultz finally shook me awake, and after I’d observed the ritual of yawns announcing our resurrection into this three-dimensional world, I found myself at what must have been the threshold or vestibule of the fifth circle of hell. I remembered then the enterprise in which Schultz had embroiled me, and I could not hide my dismay.
— What a pity! I said, turning to the astrologer. I dreamed Franky Amundsen and I were in the basement of the Royal Keller, drinking a nice big glass of Moselle. So vivid was my dream, I’m not sure which has more reality — this ludicrous Helicoid or that glass of wine I was savouring in the cellar.
— They’re two planes of one and the same reality, answered Schultz. And you, through one of the many manifest forms available to your being, really did drink that glass of wine in the cellar. Consider it drunk. Now let’s see what we can do about this doggone dragon.
Alerted by his last words, I stifled the objection already on the tip of my tongue, whose parched state was the strongest possible argument against the astrologer’s theory. And since the nap I’d just emerged from had restored my corporeal strength and refreshed my senses, I took a look around, determined to explore every nook and cranny of what remained to be seen in Schultz’s Helicoid. We were in front of a greyish wall, of uncertain height and bathed in a kind of watery light as in a wood or a grotto. The first thing that attracted my attention was a revolving door with three leaves, like the ones they use in big stores in wintertime. It was set into the wall and probably led from the hall where we were now to enter the fifth circle of hell. I must say that such a door, so extraordinarily situated, looked to me at the time to be out of place and even ridiculous. But I didn’t have time to voice this observation, for I was suddenly startled to discover an unusual animal standing beside the door and watching us closely. It was shaped like a dragon, but a dwarf dragon, pleasant to look at and without the trappings of terror we usually attribute to that species of beast. Its body was clean of the legendary sliminess and stench; instead it shimmered in cool, lustrous shades of majolica. Moreover, its body was covered with eyes all the way to the tip of its tail, not in some parodic imitation of Argos, but rather as the expression of some decorative penchant. The most noteworthy aspect of the monster, however, was its snout. It was enlightened by two little eyes quite without cruelty, though they sparkled mischievously, and by a large mouth smiling toothless and fang-free from ear to ear. All of which, in my judgment, showed this was a happy dragon, a decent sort. So, the animal was watching us and smiling at us; at the same time it was gently wagging its tail, not without jiggling a bunch of olive-green faecal marbles tinkling like glass beads as they bounced against one another. Now, one thing I knew for sure was that every good dragon is meant to guard some forbidden portal; and this dragon, I knew too, was Schultz’s totemic animal.72 In a state of indecision, I turned to the astrologer to ask him: