As It Is in Heaven Read Online Free PDF

walked down the empty town with a pure and clear pride glistening inside himself; he was as clean-souled as after Communion,
     and turned to look back at the announcements with such a blaze of joy that they might have told of the coming of Christ Himself.
     Moses Mooney walked home and went to bed. He slept with the two cats at his feet and dreamed the town was waking up and seeing
     the notices, an infection of delight enveloping the people at the whimsical originality, the daring and wonder of the plan,
     and the queues spreading from Bank Place down to Clancy’s.
    When he awoke he was like a new man, and had the flushed rapture of those who know they are about to see their dreams realized.
     He imagined the money adding up, he totted the imaginary figures and was able to elaborate the plans for the opera house,
     extending the balcony and adding a small restaurant, where chamber music could be played in the summertime. He laughed at
     the miracle of it all, the simplicity of how things happen in the world, of how his seagoing days and nights, the endless
     blue journey towards the limit of all horizons, had arrived at this, the meaning of his life. He did not go out that day.
     Nor the next. He let the dreams bank up like snow. It was three days later when he at last allowed himself to go out, to walk
     down to the town and find out what had happened. He arrived at the bank just before closing and asked to check the balance
     in the account.
    It was exactly the same amount he had started with.
    He had to lean on the counter to keep from falling. The teller did not look at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the blue light
     of the terminal screen. Moses heard the water gurgling in his ears like laughter and kept staring at the figures on the docket
     until he could no longer hear or see anything. The vanity of hope and the mockery of all enterprise flooded through the sluice
     gates of his brain, bringing with them the hopeless realization that he was utterly alone and carrying away in a single instant
     any possibility of help. He gripped the counter he could no longer see, he felt his throat tighten and gag him, and then he
     fell to the floor with a soft thump.
    It was seven days and fourteen tests later before Dr. Maguane could confirm for certain that Moses Mooney was blind. The procedures
     had been complicated by the patient’s inability to tell whether he could see or not; he sat before charts without a word and
     kept his blue eyes fixed so perfectly on the letters that at first the doctor was certain he could see them. He sometimes
     called out the letters with such accuracy that Maguane himself had to walk up next to the board and peer at the smallest of
     them to be sure that Moses was right. The whole business was complicated even further by the blind man’s declaration that
     he could see them perfectly clearly in his mind. The examinations of his eyes were not conclusive either, and it was only
     when Dr. Maguane saw the patient reaching for his fallen stick that he agreed to give the diagnosis and shatter the town with
     splinters of shared guilt.
    When Moses Mooney was brought home to the cats on the first afternoon of his declared blindness, the balance in the opera
     house account rose by £600. The following week there were £400 more, and although it was still far short of the impossible
     goal, it was enough to send Moira Fitzgibbon of the Community Development Association to visit Moses Mooney by the fireside
     in his house and tell him the good news of how the people were responding.
    What nobody knew was that although Moses Mooney had lost his sight, he had gained omniscience and knew already. On the vast
     seas of his blindness he sailed now, guided by no stars and not daring to dream. He sat in his house, with few visitors, and
     retreated to the warm exotic landscapes of his imagination. The world had no place for vision, he told God.
    And yet something had lingered on. For, one year after Moses