‘No more warnings?’

Martin cringes.

‘No, we’re not going to waste any more time on you. You must come as you are, this very minute, if you want to save what’s left of you. So come. If you wish.’

The man goes towards the door.

Martin does not move. The man leaves without turning round. If Martin wishes to follow him, he must do so quickly. The man walks out through the door, leaving it open behind him. He goes on down the corridor, without a backward glance, just walking on wearily.

Martin is staring at the man’s feet. They must have been walking for a long time without rest. Then he closes the door and turns the key in the lock as far as he can. What business is it of mine out there? They don’t understand me, that’s the trouble. They have no sympathy for my work. But I won’t have this again. They’re crazy.

A cracking sound somewhere makes him start.

Another place to live, he thinks, the idea taking hold. He will find it.

10

The Austere Face

The clergyman with the quiet austere countenance is staring hopelessly into space. Not this stifled space, this space that seems to be breathing in the bewitched house in which everyone is now enclosed, and where this lonely man is sitting working – a little closet that he is chased into by the darkness against which he is struggling so courageously. He is not sitting staring out into that space – but into the vast eternal space that he senses beyond it.

God help me, says a voice inside him with simple honesty.

He listens. The house is cracking in this exhausting, silent storm. He listens more intently and hears more plainly – even if he does not hear in the normal way he hears it just the same – the despairing cries of people struck down, now in one way, now in another.

It pierces him through and through, for that is what he is here for, that is what he was ordained for once.

But now the house is bewitched.

What is this? he thinks, listening.

Why did it come?

He has no answer to that. Most likely many answers can be found. As easily as anything. They consult books and find smooth answers to why everything is here, and what it is for, and that it serves the kingdom of heaven.

Does it?

He himself has been ordained as a servant of this kingdom.

God help me, says the voice inside him at the thought of what he is. He stops looking at the vast space into which he has been staring long and absent-mindedly, and bends over his papers, over the thick volumes, over everything he meditates on and which tears at him and clouds his face.

There is a knock at the door. It happens so often. Weary people come to him for advice, and for comfort. He gives them all he has to give. But he is afraid of their questions. It seems to him that they go on asking one question only: the same question he himself is continually asking.