(For Life is Motion toward Knowledge. If God is Complete Knowledge then He is Complete Non-Motion, which is Non-Life, which is death. Therefore, if there is such a God of Fullness of being, we worship Death, the Father. That was what I said to the old man, who had looked at me across the papers and fouled dishes, and his red-streaked eyes had blinked above the metal-rimmed spectacles, which had hung down on the end of his nose. He had shaken his head and a flake or two of dandruff had sifted down from the spare white hair ends which fringed the skull within which the words had been taking shape from the electric twitches in the tangled and spongy and blood-soaked darkness. He had said then, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." And I had said, "You've got the wrong end of the stick."
(For Life is a fire burning along a piece of string–or is it a fuse to a power keg which we call God?–and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a power keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away. So I had said to the old man.
(But he had replied, "You think in Finite terms." And I had said, "I'm not thinking at all, I'm just drawing a picture." He had said, "Ha!" The way I remembered he had done a long time back when he played chess with Judge Irwin in the long room in the white house toward the sea. I had said, "I'll draw you another picture. It is a picture of a man trying to paint a picture of a sunset. But before he can dip his brush the color always changes and the shape. Let us give a name to the picture which is trying to paint: Knowledge. Therefore if the object which a man looks at changes constantly so that Knowledge of it is constantly untrue and is therefore Non-Knowledge, the Eternal Motion is possible. And Eternal Life. Therefore we can believe in Eternal Life only if we deny God, Who is Complete Knowledge."
(The old man had said, "I will pray for your soul.")
But even if I didn't believe in the old man's God, that morning as I stood at the window of the Capitol and looked down on the crowd, I felt like God, because I had the knowledge of what was to come. I felt like God brooding on History, for as I stood there I could see a little chunk of History right there in front. There were the bronze statues on their pedestals, on the lawn, in frock coats, with the right hand inserted under the coat, just over the heart, in military uniforms with a hand on the sword hilt, even one in buckskin with the right hand grasping a barrel of grounded long rifle. They were already History, and the grass around their pedestals was shaved close and the flowers were planted in stars and circles and crescents. Then over beyond the statues, there were the people who weren't History yet. Not quite. But to me they looked like History, because I knew the end of the event of which they were part. Or thought I knew the end.
I knew, too, how the newspapers would regard that crowd of people, as soon as they knew the end of the event. They would regard that crowd as cause, "A shameful display of cowardice on the part of the Legislature …" You could look at the crowd out there and hear that undertone in its cry, hoarse like surf, and think that the crowd there could cause the event. But no, it could be said, Willie Stark caused the event by corrupting and blackmailing the Legislature. But no, in turn it could be replied that Willie Stark merely gave the Legislature the opportunity to behave in the way appropriate to its nature and that MacMurfee, who sponsored the election of those men, thinking to use their fear and greed for his own ends, was truly responsible. But no, to that it could be replied that the responsibility belonged, after all, to that crowd of people, indirectly in so far as it had, despite MacMurfee, elected Willie Stark. But why had they elected Willie Stark? Because of a complex of forces which had made them what they were, or because Willie Stark could lean toward them with bulging eyes and right arm raised to Heaven?
One thing was certain: The sound of that chant hoarsely rising and falling was to be the cause of nothing, nothing at all. I stood in the window of the Capitol and hugged that knowledge like a precious and thorny secret, and did not think anything.
I watched the fat man get out of the black limousine and mount the bandstand. I saw the crowd shift and curdle and thin and dissolve. I looked across beyond the now lonely and occupationless policemen, beyond the statues–frock coats, uniforms, buckskin–to the great lawn, which was empty and bright in the spring sunshine. I spewed out the last smoke from my cigarette and flicked the butt out the open window and watched it spin over and over to the stone steps far below.
Willie Stark was to stand on those steps at eight o'clock that night, in a flood of light, looking small at the top of the great steps with the mountainous heave of the building behind him.
That night the people pressed up to the very steps, filling all the shadow beyond the sharply defined area of light. (Lighting apparatus had been mounted on the pedestals of two statues, one buckskin, one frock coat.) They called and chanted, "Willie–Willie–Willie," pressing at the cordon of police at the foot of the steps. Then, after a while, out of the tall doorway of the Capitol, he appeared. Then, as he stood there, blinking in the light, the words of the chant disappeared, and there was a moment of stillness, and then there was only the roar. It seemed a long time before he lifted his hand to stop it. Then the roar seemed to die away, slowly, under the downward pressure of his hand.
I stood in the crowd with Adam Stanton and Anne Stanton and watched him come out on the steps of the Capitol. When it was over–when he had said what he had to say to the crowd and had gone back inside leaving the new, unchecked roar of voices behind him–I told Anne and Adam good night and went to meet the Boss.
I rode with him back to the Mansion. He hadn't said a word when I joined him at the car. Sugar-Boy worked through the back streets, while behind us we could still hear the roaring and shouting and the protracted blatting of automobile horns. Then Sugar-Boy shook himself free into a quiet little street where the houses sat back from the pavement, lights on inside them now and people in the lighted rooms, and where the budding boughs interlaced above us. At the corners where the street lamps were you could catch the hint of actual green on the boughs. Sugar-Boy drove up to the rear entrance of the Mansion. The Boss got out and went into the door. I followed him. He walked down the back hall, where we met nobody, and then into the big hall. He paced right across the hall, under the chandeliers and mirrors, past the sweep of the stairway, looked into the drawing room, crossed the hall again to look into the back sitting room, then again to look into the library. I caught on, and quit following him. I just stood in the middle of the big hall and waited. He hadn't said he wanted me, but he hadn't said he didn't. In fact he hadn't said anything. Not a word.
When he turned from the library into the hall again, a white-coated Negro boy came out of the dining room. "Boy," the Boss asked, "you seen Mrs. Stark?"
"Yassuh."
"Where, dammit?" the Boss snapped. "You think I'm asking for my health?"
"Naw, suh, I didn't think nuthin, I–"
"Where?" the Boss demanded in a tone to set the chandelier tingling.
After the first paralysis, the lips began to work in the black face. In the beginning without effect. Then a sound was detectable. "Upstairs–she done gone upstairs–I reckin she done gone to bed–she–"