§ 2
One who seeks to tell about events in words comes occasionally upon a
fundamental difficulty. An event of colossal and overwhelming
significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it
have to come one by one in a long chain. The event may reveal itself
without a moment's warning; but if one is to give a sense of it in
words, one must prepare for it, build up to it, awaken anticipation,
establish a climax. If the description of this event which fate sprung
upon Peter Gudge as he was crossing the street were limited to the one
word "BANG" in letters a couple of inches high across the page, the
impression would hardly be adequate.
The end of the world, it seemed to Peter, when he was
able to collect enough of his terrified wits to think about
it. But at first there was no thinking; there was only
sensation — a terrific roar, as if the whole universe had suddenly
turned to sound; a blinding white glare, as of all the
lightnings of the heavens; a blow that picked him up as if
he had been a piece of thistledown, and flung him across
the street and against the side of a building. Peter fell
upon the sidewalk in a heap, deafened, blinded, stunned;
and there he lay — he had no idea how long-until gradually
his senses began to return to him, and from the confusion
certain factors began to stand out: a faint gray
smoke that seemed to lie upon the ground, a bitter odor
that stung the nostrils and tongue, and screams of people,
moaning and sobbing and general uproar. Something lay
across Peter's chest, and he felt that he was suffocating,
and struggled convulsively to push it away; the hands with
which he pushed felt something hot and wet and slimy.
and the horrified Peter realized that it was half the body
of a mangled human being.
Yes, it was the end of the world. Only a couple of days
previously Peter Gudge had been a devout member of the
First Apostolic Church, otherwise known as the Holy
Rollers, and had listened at prayer-meetings to soul-shaking
imaginings out of the Book of Revelations. So Peter knew
that this was it; and having many sins upon his conscience,
and being in no way eager to confront his God, he looked
out over the bodies of the dead and the writhing wounded,
and saw a row of boxes standing against the building, having
been placed there by people who wished to see over the
heads of the crowd. Peter started to crawl, and found that
he was able to do so, and wormed his way behind one of
these packing-boxes, and got inside and lay hidden from his
God.
There was blood on him, and he did not know whether
it was his own or other peoples'. He was trembling with
fright, his crooked teeth were hammering together like those
of an angry woodchuck. But the effects of the shock continued
to pass away, and his wits to come back to him, and
at last Peter realized that he never had taken seriously
the ideas of the First Apostolic Church of American City.
He listened to the moans of the wounded, and to the shouts and uproar of
the crowd, and began seriously figuring out what could have happened.
There had once been an earthquake in American City; could this be
another one? Or had a volcano opened up in the midst of Main Street? Or
could it have been a gas-main? And was this the end, or would it explode
some more? Would the volcano go on erupting, and blow Peter and his
frail packing-box thru the walls of Guggenheim's Department-store?
So Peter waited, and listened to the horrible sounds of people in
agony, and pleading with others to put them out of it. Peter heard
voices of men giving orders, and realized that these must be policemen,
and that no doubt there would be ambulances coming. Maybe there was
something the matter with him, and he ought to crawl out and get himself
taken care of. All of a sudden Peter remembered his stomach; and his
wits, which had been sharpened by twenty years' struggle against a
hostile world, realized in a flash the opportunity which fate had
brought to him. He must pretend to be wounded, badly wounded; he must be
unconscious, suffering from shock and shattered nerves; then they would
take him to the hospital and put him in a soft bed and give him things
to eat — maybe he might stay there for weeks, and they might give him
money when he came out.
Or perhaps he might get a job in the hospital, something
that was easy, and required only alert intelligence. Perhaps
the head doctor in the hospital might want somebody to
watch the other doctors, to see if they were neglecting the
patients, or perhaps flirting with some of the nurses — there
was sure to be something like that going on. It had been
that way in the orphans' home where Peter had spent a part of his
childhood till he ran away. It had been that way again in the great
Temple of Jimjambo, conducted by Pashtian el Kalandra, Chief Magistrian
of Eleutherinian Exoticism. Peter had worked as scullion in the kitchen
in that mystic institution, and had worked his way upward until he
possessed the confidence of Tushbar Akrogas, major-domo and right hand
man of the Prophet himself.
Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be
administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing
and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were "all there." It
might seem strange that Peter should think about such things, just then
when the earth had opened up in front of him and the air had turned to
roaring noise and blinding white flame, and had hurled him against the
side of a building and dropped the bleeding half of a woman's body
across his chest; but Peter had lived from earliest childhood by his
wits and by nothing else, and such a fellow has to learn to use his wits
under any and all circumstances, no matter how bewildering. Peter's
training covered almost every emergency one could think of; he had even
at times occupied himself by imagining what he would do if the Holy
Rollers should turn out to be right, and if suddenly Gabriel's trumpet
were to blow, and be were to find himself confronting Jesus in a long
white night-gown.
