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PARTISAN REVIEW
must commit some bloody act of expiation, suicide for instance, or assas–
sination of some high police officer; when all of a sudden I found myself
face to face with Don Benedetto. "You here!" I exclaimed in surprise;
but he had every reason to be amazed at my bewilderment, because
without noticing it I had reached a point far up above Rocca and there
I was standing right at the entrance to his garden. I wanted to run
away, but he held me back and took me into his house. And there he
kept me till today. Pietro, you know Don Benedetto because you were a
pupil of his for several years, and you know he's not the sort of man to
lend himself to the parody of a religious ceremony such as you described
a little while ago. And as for me, since the distant days of my confirma–
tion I've never darkened a church door.
If
you only knew how much
easier I would have found a sacramental confession. Instead, these days
I've spent in Don Benedetto's house are going to remain in my life like
a painful visit to a hospital, like a very serious radical surgical operation.
Maybe, Pietro, you have never known the real bitterness of evil, nor the
dark despairing prison of the irreparableness of evil. . . .
DoN PAOLO
(in an undertone, and as though talking to himself).
The
little I know, I too have learned through pain.
MuRICA. You know, Pietro, you mustn't think I've come here to act
the part of the magdalen contrite, redeemed and satisfied. My soul is still
too full of misery. And although Don Benedetto explained and proved to
me that no matter how loathsome and detestable evil always is, it's
sometimes needed in order that good may spring from it; even though
he went so far as to say that, without this almost deathly crisis that I've
just been through, I should most likely never have matured nor grown
to manhood; nevertheless, this good that I've bought and that I now
should settle down to enjoy, this deepened awareness, this belated moral
sentiment, all leave a bitter disgusting true sense of the word, "prope
humo," close to the earth, and therefore conveying a repugnant putrid
taste of worms. Ah, as long as I live I think I shall never lose my horror
at this tragic dependence of good on evil: and if I'm speaking of it now
it's only in order to add that, compared to this sense of mournful inti–
mate lasting bitterness, all my other cares shrink into futility; even, for
instance, my curiosity to know what you intend doing with me.
DoN PAoLo. To be frank , Murica, if you're being sincere-and I'm try–
ing hard to believe that you are- then I simply don't understand you.
What on earth made you come?
MurucA. When you've been through hell and you come back to the
land of the living, it's your absolute duty to tell the others what you've
seen.
If
you go through hell the flames scorch your hair and it stays
scorched forever afterwards, but that mustn't stop you from telling what
you've seen. You know, Pietro, the movement of which you are a leader
has some alarming aspects that you may not
be
aware of. Do you remem-
