Reflections on a Recursive Faustus

by William J. Piovano

conclusion

For as I snapped the donkeys into rolling us forward once again, the trees around us bowed and whispered praise in Old Norse, and above us the clouds parted to reveal a starlit sky where the stars themselves had shifted to etch the words of praise in my ancestor’s runic tongue. Even the usually soft sapphire glow had hardened to fashion properly the crude corners and edges of writing carved in stone.

“Infinity,” Aaron breathed the words off the firmament. I knew he could read Old Norse, else I would have resorted to a less glamorous Latin.

“Yes,” I said. Surely God was regarding my obsidian sky with admiration. “Do you ever think of infinity, Aaron?”

“Of course, it is the quintessence of God, the ultimate representation of his power. That which we cannot even begin to understand and which he has mastery over.”

“The greatest thing, indeed!” I pointed to the infinity which separated us from the stars. “As you said, the quintessence of his power. He who can create infinity is in fact a God. By assigning the writing of this tale to you, Aaron, I forge one link in an infinite chain; and I am one myself, one of a never-ending reflected reflection of mirrors where the mirrors mirror the reflections of our lives.”

“I see, a creation of infinity by mortal hands,” Aaron mused, nodding. “And I am to provide the next drop in the ocean...”

“And not without sense! For I have the sense myself to provide something more than pure serendipity. In exchange for love and success, I say — not by forcing your hand as a brute would attempt. Love and success, I offer you that; the coming true of your desires. It shall all be yours once the tale is written, once the link is forged.”

Aaron scratched his head. “But the chain will never be complete, there is always someone else who must convince his character to write the same tale...”

“Luckily, good Aaron, God’s time does not govern the folded patterns of the written word. For every new tale forged is but an instant to the author, and so the character will have infinite time within the instant moment of the verbal fold.”

Aaron bit his lip, ruminating over the revelations and their repercussions. Overhead, the clouds floated back into each other and the trees straightened to their rigid ranks, silent and vigilant. The flaunt was over, enough to convince Aaron the Writer that the pact, on my side, could be followed up. I did have the power I advertised, as he would if he signed on his will to me.

We proceeded south from the village to the southern tip of the English kingdom, to the channel where the sea rages cold and stormy to hold apart the ever-quarrelling kingdoms of England and France. Where man’s lust of material things is concerned, however, there are no barriers, and war had long spread into the south.

Our passing as such was ill-received on the French shores, but they waited for us on the beaches and accepted us as pilgrims nonetheless, granting us the protection of divine neutrality; a peculiar idea, seeing as to how both sides claimed to slaughter the other in His name. I digress, however.

During our crossing, I had done away with the rather non-inconspicuous wings and left myself hooded and concealed. Why, you might ask? Well, if Dante could not look directly at his God, then why should Aaron be able to look at me? A whim, for all divinity consists in acquiring greater greatness than the greatest being one is aware of; Lucifer, bringer of light, is the foremost pioneer.

On our way through dark forests — ever in conflicting tow of our black donkey which appeared to sap the strength from his whitened companion with every passing league — I pointed out to Aaron the small but highly peculiar things of the world which one rarely cares to notice.

A dead bird fallen on the corpse of two rotting logs piled on each other in the form of a cross; thirty-three leaves floating in a pond; and upon our way, and on three successive rivers, our path blocked by three beasts: a leopard, stalking a spotted partner; a lion, roaring us away from its grounds to find another route; and a wolf stealing from us even the quarries she needed not.

While the latter encounters certainly did not rank as ‘small’ to Aaron the Monk, who had spent his remembered life scrawling away within the dank cells of Glasfarne dreaming of the earth-shattering event of a single visitor, the recurring numbers — by all merits the more important details — did not stimulate his notice until I pointed them out to him myself. This I did to demonstrate the flukiness of that which we call ‘random’, and its inherent paradox, for it is a key element in the pursuit of Godliness.

“Fate,” I was saying, “is something decided in detail from the very beginning to the very end. But I, as your author, cannot have every detail of this tale spelled out. I can foresee a great deal, but not everything. Mark my words, Aaron! This does not lead to randomness! On the contrary, everything that occurs here and in every other place of this world is something I have chosen to place as carefully as any piece of furniture in my home.”

“Ah,” Aaron said with a finger of insight, “but what if you, the author, flip a coin to, say, determine whether the preference of my heritage lies with the Spaniards or the Turks? It is as random in my tale, in that case, as it is in yours.”

“Why, but you are thinking one-dimensionally, dear Aaron,” I said, smiling at the infinite picture which formed in my mind, a reflection of mirrors inside mirrors, each a tale within its own so vast I could not possibly begin to understand its entirety. But there was no need to understand it, when I had the power to create it.

“That which you tag as random in my world,” I continued, “is what I am accusing of false chance, right now, in your world; that is, my own author thought it fitting that the coin should fall one way or another. And should he have decided that his decision too should fall into fate, then that fate like every other decision of his would fall into the pen of that man or woman crafting that tale.”

What I truly wanted him to understand was the power of the written word, the ability that an author has to make and unmake at will as only God does. Thus I spoke to Aaron throughout that day of voyage; I lectured him on the theology of authorship, the ability of each of our kind to create at will, to change and command every thing living and inanimate. It boiled down to one fact: all writers are God for they borrow the power of the Allmighty.

And what is God himself if not the first author with the most fantastic pen for description and theme but with no mindfulness of the consistency of plot? I rendered examples vocal and visual — always making sure of the grandeur of any magical displays — until our path intersected the second of my whimsical settings. A field, a show of power, a strengthening of fate, a divine bribe; it was all of these but most of all a fitting example of my next lesson.

A field of blood it was, and to be taken quite literally. Blood and gore and pieces of man strewn about to flatten the grass and dye its chlorophylled green with life of many men, innocent and sinners. Indeed I pictured a whole host of souls was dragging its chained feet up or down the mountain of Purgatory just as we rolled our way by. Some remained alive, groaning or standing, but none had the heart to attack us in the aftermath of such carnage. A battle between French and English, I told Aaron who watched on in horror, unaware that battles could ever open up a wound so horrid upon green virgin ground, like a burst boil of blood and pus.

“Suffering,” I swept a hand out. “Enough to fill the nine levels of Hell for the rest of eternity. It permeates this world, and to what end? Most of these men have lied, stolen, betrayed, murdered or raped. They live lives dirtier than swine, wallowing in their own smelly misery until a violent death casts them down to the Inferno where only worse can await. Tell me, Aaron, where is God’s mercy in that? Where is the grandeur of His plan when everyone hates His creation and feels shackled to its invisible walls?”

Aaron did not turn, still gazing stricken at the undug graveyard soon to rot into forgotten putrescence. “There must be some purpose... something.”

“What purpose is worth that?” I spat, gesturing with a nod towards the field of slaughter which Aaron already gawked at. “My point: we can be greater than God. We can create a world where everyone lives happily.”

The idea appealed to me, and I knew it did to Aaron now more than ever, presented with this incarnation of the greatest cruelty and brutality of man, the degeneration of madness into suffering. “With this one tale,” I continued, “we can be mightier than the writer-God for creating infinity, and more perfect than Him too, for in wielding Genesis we shall make that creation perfect!”

Tearing his eyes from the carnage, Aaron began to share my ambition, eased down by the belief that such reward — his literary success and ideal family — along with the power to surpass God himself, could in fact help the common man.

“Surpassing God,” Aaron whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “He whom I have worshipped all my life...”

The black donkey tugged us forward then, smelling ambition, and its white brethren could hardly do more than let itself be dragged along. Our journey south continued, and a fair sight-seeing it was for Aaron the Monk as every castle, town and village of southern France fueled the waking dreams that every Writer possesses, those fleeting moments of inspiration which sow the seeds of future settings and plotlines.

Even greater was the inspiration of the Alps, cotton-capped leviathans of brown and black stone which led Aaron to wonder if a man could in fact ever call himself a God. But I created those peaks; I told him so, lowered the giants down for a time so that every man in southern France could gaze across the flatlands of Piemonte. Almost I forgot to resurrect them.

Once we had fully entered the soothing lands of Toscana, the purpose of our quest dawned on Aaron, and he grew quiet in his brooding, watching more than observing the crop of fine landscapes I threw his way.

It might puzzle the reader how such props of my tale might exist if not dictated directly by my words. The world is only as I narrate it, you might say; if they are not here in words, they are not there in life. Is that not so? But the reader accepts Aaron’s consciousness as his own, living and breathing, as one individual much like me. Aaron the Writer is no less real than William the Author, and William the Author anticipates the reader’s thoughts.

I do believe that is enough proof of consciousness.

And yet I do not paint out every passing thought and question which floats through Aaron’s mind. With that said, he did enjoy many fine particulars of Italy — as he did with the French and English lands — which I do not deem worthy of description here. These treats, however, cast absently from my creating hand, were ever tainted by the vicinity of our goal, the Vatican.

At last one morning our cart rattled over cobblestoned holy grounds, hauled by a black donkey frothing at the mouth, rabid and red-eyed. Its fairer counterpart no longer remained to oppose it, having collapsed upon the crossing of the Tiber and abandoned itself to the current washing westward to sea. Before us, St. Peter’s square encircled the pagans, its silence demanding the meaning of our heresy.

Oh, I can see why God is hailed above other ancient gods, and the Writer-Gods contemporary and past! Who else was granted such great honor and praise? Who else was shaped in stone, paint, song and even the written word, again and again over so many centuries? Leading actor or parenthesized extra in so many tales! The authors themselves bend knee to Him even when they can play Him to the words of their will. Too many praises to count. It was going to take an infinity of my own to achieve more.

“Do we strike a deal, Aaron?” I asked, as we strode on foot into the great Church. Empty and still, it echoed our footfalls like the stride of titans. And as Aaron faced Him, looked up to Him with equal height, I took quill and pen and handed it to him, a parchment contract sealing our fates.

So elegant, I thought, as my avatar soared with open arms above the Jesus on the cross, my adoptive son. As Aaron scribbled furiously on his knees, the stone gargoyles flew in the arched entrance with the procession of singing saints, grey and wonderfully fluid, and the stained-glass figures in the windows too added the voices of their broken images to the chorus of song:

Hail our new lord!
His tale brings light!
Reflect the reflection,
Of his world set aright!

Watch us this instance,
Infinity is now,
The glory of our lord,
Ad infinitum renown!

Write the link!
Forge the tale!
Where there is light
Reflections do not fail!

Write! Write! Write!