46.
Kerin Rises in the World
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THEN old Sclaug said to Kerin, who now seemed so much older than Sclaug seemed: “It is time for you and me to cry quits with studying: for you have worked your way as a worm goes through every alcove in this place, you have read every book that was ever written; and I have seen that vigor which destroyed me destroyed. I go into another Naraka: and you must now return, omniscient Kerin, into the world of men.”
“That is well,” said Kerin, “because, after all, I have been away from home a long while. Yes, that is well enough, although I shall regret to leave the books of that god of whom you told me,—and whom, by the way, I have not yet seen.”
“I said, of a sort of god. He is not worshiped, I must tell you, by the very learned nor by the dull. However!” Sclaug said, after a tiny silence, “however, I was wondering if you have found in these books the knowledge you were looking for?”
“I suppose so,” Kerin answered, “because I have acquired all knowledge.”
“And have you found out also the truth?”
“Oh, yes!” said Kerin, speaking now without hesitancy.
Kerin took down from its place the very first book which Sclaug had given him to read, when Kerin was yet young, the book which had been written—upon leaves of tree bark, with the assistance of a divine collaborator,—by the patriarch Abraham when an horror of great darkness fell upon him in the plain of Mamrê. This book explained the wisdom of the temple, the various master-words of chance, the seven ways of thwarting destiny, and one thing which is wholly true. And Kerin half opened this book, at the picture of an old naked eunuch who with a scythe was hacking off the feet of a naked youth gashed everywhere with many small wounds; then turned to a picture of a serpent crucified; and, shrugging, put by the book.
“—For it appears,” said Kerin, “that, after all, only one thing is wholly true. I have found nowhere any other truth: and this one truth, revealed to us here, is a truth which nobody will blame the patriarch for omitting from his more widely circulated works. Nevertheless, I have copied out every word of it, upon this bit of paper, to show to and make glad the dear bright eyes of my young wife.”
But Sclaug replied, without looking at the proffered paper, “The truth does not matter to the dead, who have done with all endeavor, and who can change nothing.”
Then he told Kerin good-by; and Kerin opened the door out of which Sclaug was used to go in search of Sclaug’s little amusements. When Kerin had passed through this door he drew it to behind him: and in that instant the door vanished, and Kerin stood alone in a dim winter-wasted field, fingering no longer a copper door-knob but only the chill air.
Leafless elder-trees rose about him, not twenty paces before Kerin was the Well of Ogde: and beyond its dilapidated curbing, a good half of which somebody had heaved down into the well, he saw, through wintry twilight, the gray eight-sided house in which he had been used to live with the young Saraïde whom many called a witch.