In vain did the bookstores of Stockholm and Lund offer readers this revelation. The incredulous considered it, a priori, a vapid and tedious theological game; theologians disdained it. Runeberg sensed in that ecumenical indifference an almost miraculous confirmation. God had ordered that indifference; God did not want His terrible secret spread throughout the earth. Runeberg realized that the hour was not yet come. He felt that ancient, divine curses were met in him. He recalled Elijah and Moses, who covered their faces upon the mountain so as not to look upon God; Isaiah, who was terrified when his eyes beheld the One whose glory fills the earth; Saul, whose eyes were blinded on the road to Damascus; the rabbi Simeon ben Azai, who saw the Garden and died; the famous wizard John of Viterbo, who went mad when the Trinity was revealed to him; the Midrashim, who abominate those who speak the Shem Hamephorash, the Secret Name of God. Was it not that dark sin that he, Runeberg, was guilty of? Might not that be the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (Matthew 12:31) which shall not be forgiven? Valerius Soranus died for revealing the hidden name of Rome; what infinite punishment would be Runeberg's for having discovered and revealed the terrible name of God?
Drunk with sleeplessness and his dizzying dialectic, Nils Runeberg wandered the streets of Mälmo, crying out for a blessing—that he be allowed to share the Inferno with the Redeemer.
He died of a ruptured aneurysm on March 1, 1912. Heresiologists will perhaps remember him; he added to the concept of the Son, which might have been thought long spent, the complexities of misery and evil.
1944
[1] Borelius sarcastically asks: Why did he not renounce renunciation? Why not renounce the renunciation of renunciation?
[2] In a book unknown to Runeberg, Euclides da Cunha* notes that in the view of the Canudos heresiarch Antonio Conselheiro,* virtue "is a near impiety." The Argentine reader will recall analogous passages in the work of the poet Almafuerte.* In the symbolist journal Sju insegel, Runeberg published an assiduous descriptive poem titled "The Secret Lake"; the first verses narrate the events of a tumultuous day, while the last record the discovery of a glacial "tarn." The poet suggests that the eternity of those silent waters puts right our useless violence and—somehow—both allows it and absolves it. The poem ends with these words: "The water of the forest is happy; we can be evil and in pain."
[3] Maurice Abramowicz observes: "Jésus, d'après cescandinave, atoujours le beau rôle; ses déboires, grâce à la science des typographes, jouissent d'une réputation polyglotte; sa résidence de trente-trois ans parmi les humains ne fut, en somme, qu'une villégiature." In Appendix III to his Christelige Dogmatik, Erfjord rebuts this passage. He notes that the crucifixion of God has not ended, because that which happened once in time is repeated endlessly in eternity. Judas, now, continues to hold out his hand for the silver, continues to kiss Jesus' cheek, continues to scatter the pieces of silver in the temple, continues to knot the noose on the field of blood. (In order to justify this statement, Erfjord cites the last chapter of the first volume of Jaromir Hladik's Vindication of Eternity.)
The End
Lying on his back, Recabarren opened his eyes a bit and saw the sloping ceiling of thick cane. From the other room there came the strumming of a guitar, like some inconsequential labyrinth, infinitely tangling and untangling.... Little by little, reality came back to him, the ordinary things that now would always be just these ordinary things. He looked down without pity at his great useless body, the plain wool poncho that wrapped his legs. Outside, beyond the thick bars at his window, spread the flatland and the evening; he had slept, but the sky was still filled with light. He groped with his left arm until he found the brass cowbell that hung at the foot of the cot. He shook it once or twice; outside his door, the unassuming chords continued.
The guitar was being played by a black man who had shown up one night flattering himself that he was a singer; he had challenged another stranger to a song contest, the way traveling singers did. Beaten, he went on showing up at the general-store-and-bar night after night, as though he were waiting for someone. He spent hours with the guitar, but he never sang again; it could be that the defeat had turned him bitter. People had grown used to the inoffensive man. Recabarren, the owner of the bar, would never forget that contest; the next day, as he was trying to straighten some bales of yerba, his right side had suddenly gone dead on him, and he discovered that he couldn't talk. From learning to pity the misfortunes of the heroes of our novels, we wind up feeling too much pity for our own; but not Recabarren, who accepted his paralysis as he had earlier accepted the severity and the solitudes of the Americas. A man in the habit of living in the present, as animals do, he now looked up at the sky and reflected that the red ring around the moon was a sign of rain.
A boy with Indian-like features (Recabarren's son, perhaps) opened the door a crack. Recabarren asked him with his eyes whether anybody was around; the boy, not one to talk much, made a motion with his hand to say there wasn't—the black man didn't count. Then the prostrate man was left alone; his left hand played awhile with the bell, as though exercising some power.
The plains, in the last rays of the sun, were almost abstract, as though seen in a dream. A dot wavered on the horizon, then grew until it became a horseman riding, or so it seemed, toward the house.
Recabarren could make out the broad-brimmed hat, the dark poncho, the piebald horse, but not the face of the rider, who finally reined in the horse and came toward the house at an easy trot. Some two hundred yards out, he veered off to the side. At that, the man was out of Recabarren's line of sight, but Recabarren heard him speak, get down off his horse, tie it to the post, and with a firm step enter the bar.
Without raising his eyes from the guitar, where he seemed to be looking for something, the black man spoke.
"I knew I could count on you, sir," he softly said.
"And I knew I could count on you, old nigger," the other man replied, his voice harsh. "A heap of days I've made you wait, but here I am."
There was a silence. Then the black man spoke again.
"I'm getting used to waiting. I've been waiting now for seven years."
Unhurried, the other man explained:
"It'd been longer than seven years that I'd gone without seeing my children. I found them that day, and I wouldn't have it so's I looked to them like a man on his way to a knife fight."*
"I understood that," the black man said. "I hope they were all in good health."
The stranger, who had sat down at the bar, gave a hearty laugh at that. He ordered a drink and took a sip or two, but didn't finish it.