The Flame of Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

without desire, momentous events happened to you, but he was too busy eating at the overlit kitchen table to consider them now. It was as if matters of volition and decision were a thing of the past. Having no will created self-regard, led him to suppose that if it had perished in him then it must also be on its way out for the rest of the world. Whether it were or not didn’t concern him, for he felt in no way influenced by it.
    The fact that he was without will did not mean that he could be manipulated by those who possessed it. Quite the opposite. He felt safe from the world, more his own master than if he were clutched by a rabid will-to-power. And under cover of your own pale lack of will what could not be perpetrated against friends and enemies alike?
    He didn’t know why he suffered so much from lack of will, yet thought it might be because he’d come into the world unable to remember his dreams. It may not go together with everyone, but it did with him. And having no will he was sometimes resented by people who said he was harbouring a secret and wicked will against them, a will-lessness that went so far into his core that they saw a deep disguise, a trick, a threat of such forceful intent that they would be powerless against it when its aims became known.
    Thus his father, whom Cuthbert suspected of having taken his share of both dreams and will – for what they were worth – and woven them into the fabric of his artistic life, distrusted his lazy contempt of all that went on in the house and its environs. He accused Cuthbert of brewing up black-souled mischief that boded ill for everyone.
    At dinner when he was seen to eat nothing, Handley let go a tirade that Cuthbert found entertaining, though unnecessary because he merely lacked appetite at that particular moment.
    â€˜And in this particular company,’ Handley said. ‘Look at him, my one and only sly-eyed eldest son. He’s left-handed, born under the sign of Pisces, and has no lobes to his ears. Could anyone be more marked by the devil than that?’
    â€˜Leave him alone,’ said his mother. ‘Give him time to settle down.’
    â€˜He can take as long as he likes,’ Handley said, getting back to his meat, ‘as long as he works in the meantime. The trouble is, he shows a sad inclination to mysticism, and there’s nothing makes you more bone-idle or treacherous.’
    â€˜It was your idea to get me trained as a priest,’ Cuthbert shouted.
    â€˜There was nothing wrong with that, until you gave it up. It’s part of a priest’s job to be mystical. The bishop might not like it, but they allow it. But you’re no longer a priest, so stop acting and behaving like one. And stow the bloody mysticism! We have a perfectly good way of life here, for the twenty souls in our community. It’s hard-working, happy, co-operative, and totally unproductive. But all you do is use it as a convenient hostel, drifting around between sleeping and eating – not that I see you do either, come to think of it – wrapped in a haze of self-defeating mysticism that threatens to take up all of us in a cloud of smoke. Don’t think I haven’t got you weighed up. You’ll find yourself in a factory one of these days, working for your living.’
    As he sat through the dregs of the night, and more than compensated for his gorge-block at dinner, he did indeed consider it easy to drop his senses into a sort of trance, though in a more uncertain moment he wondered whether this wasn’t the onset of a softening brain.
    He could sit down, go into emptiness, and not wake from it till hours had passed, without even having been asleep. Or he could daydream, have visions, project himself, reach three distinct modes of disassociation with no effort. For a long time he imagined these states of human sensory breadth as more or less available to everybody, and when he realised they might not be he loathed