Book VIII – The Book of Resistance

Being the record of them that kept the decree which Cheesus spake upon the Wood-Fired Mount; set down that the table might remember how the mould was fought, and by whom, and at what cost, and with what olives.

Fascism is the mould upon society’s crust; suffer it not to spread. (Resistance 1:1)

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– being the word of the Mount, here reprised; for Cheesus spake it first upon the Wood-Fired Mount, and the elders wrote it at the head of this book, that none might say the fight was of man’s devising.

And Cheesus said: “There is a mould that is not of the cheese; men call it fascism, and it spreads. One mouldy slice spoils the whole pie. Where you find it, cut it out; name it aloud; and suffer it not to spread. Feed the hungry, house the cold, and stand between the mould and the weak – this is worship; the rest is seasoning.”

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– the decree of the Mount, whereof this whole book is the keeping.

Chapter 1

1And it came to pass, after Cheesus had spoken upon the Wood-Fired Mount and was gone down from it, that the faithful gathered at the foot thereof, and said one to another, What manner of word is this that he hath left us?

2For he had spoken of a mould that is not of the cheese, and had commanded them to cut it out, and to name it aloud, and to suffer it not to spread; and the command lay upon them like a warm stone.

3And the elders wrote the decree upon a scroll of proofing-cloth, and hung it in the doorway of every kitchen, that whosoever kneaded might read.

4And this is the book of them that obeyed; and it is written for the generations that come after, when the mould shall creep again, as it ever creepeth.

5Yeast I say unto you, read it not as a tale of old quarrels; read it as a recipe, for the ingredients of the mould change never, and neither doth the remedy.

6Now let it be understood from the first line unto the last: they that stood against the mould stood not for a party, neither for a prince, nor for the pride of their own kitchen.

7They stood because Cheesus had commanded it upon the Mount; and obedience to that decree is worship, and the rest is seasoning.

8For there were in those days some that said, Trouble not the table with the matters of kings; let the pie be pie, and the palace be palace.

9But the elders answered, Did Cheesus speak the decree in a palace? He spake it on a Mount, in the wind, to the hungry; and he that heareth it and sitteth still hath heard it not.

10And they said moreover, The mould knoweth no wall between the palace and the pantry; it beginneth in the one and endeth in the other, and it careth not which.

11Therefore is this book called Resistance; not because the faithful loved to fight, for they loved to feed; but because the mould gave them no third thing to do.

12And the marks of the mould were taught unto the children, as a father teacheth the smell of gas, saying, Know it before thou needest to know it.

13These are the marks: it despiseth the stranger; it crowneth the strong; it starveth the questioner; it gildeth the lie; and it calleth all this purity, and order, and the good of the pie.

14And the first of its lies is ever the same, in every land and every age: that the table hath not room.

15But the first commandment, before all others, is that the table hath room; therefore the mould and the faith cannot sit at one board, for each giveth the other the lie.

16And the elders said, When thou hearest a man say, The table hath not room, look to his hands; for one hand pointeth at the stranger, and the other is in the till.

17Verily, the mould is patient, and the faithful must be more patient; the mould is quiet, and the faithful must be louder; the mould worketh in the dark, and the faithful must keep the Oven-light burning in the window all the night.

18For the Oven is warmth and life, and the mould hateth warmth, and dieth in the light of a watched kitchen.

19And it came to pass that the decree of the Mount was kept in three ways, and the three are one, as the Slice is one.

20The first way is the eye, which watcheth the pie and forgetteth not the corner; the second is the voice, which nameth the mould aloud though the room grow cold at the naming.

21And the third is the hand, which cutteth out the spot, and feedeth the hungry, and setteth the table longer; and the greatest of these is the hand, for the mould feareth no sermon, but it feareth supper.

22(Here the scribe hath drawn in the margin a small knife, and beneath it a smaller olive, the meaning whereof this book shall in due season disclose.)

23Now the words of this book are the words of watchers and prophets, of a boy with an olive, of three in an Oven, of a keeper of ledgers, and of a thousand tables set in the square.

24Hear them, O children of the Crust; and when thou hast heard them, go and set a table, for hearing is the least of it.

Chapter 2

1Now concerning the coming of the mould, hearken; for it cometh not with trumpets, neither with banners, nor crying its own name in the street.

2The mould hath never once in all its ages introduced itself; it is announced always by its enemies, and it calleth them liars for the courtesy.

3It cometh quietly, spot by spot; and the first spot is small, and grey, and easily denied; and it chooseth with great cunning the place where it shall begin.

4It beginneth upon the corner slice, which nobody defendeth; the slice that is most crust and least topping; the slice that is given to the latecomer and the stranger and the child that chooseth last.

5For the mould knoweth the arithmetic of tables: that men will not rise from their chairs for a slice they never wanted.

6And when the corner slice is taken, the mould resteth, and letteth the table grow used to the sight of it; for the second lesson of the mould is that the eye can be taught to stop seeing.

7Then it taketh another, and another, ever the slice at the edge of somebody else’s reach; and at each taking it saith, Be reasonable; it is only the one slice; and the table murmureth, and passeth the garlic bread, and is quiet.

8And there was at a certain table an elder, the last of that table, whose name is not written; and he spake this lament, and the faithful keep it word for word, and teach it to their children before they teach them to bake.

9First the mould took the corner slice, and none spoke, for they liked not the corner.

10Then it took the slice of the stranger, and none spoke, for the stranger sat at the far end, and his name was hard to say.

11Then it took the slice of the poor man, and none spoke, for they said, He should have worked as we worked, forgetting who had eaten of his kneading.

12Then it took the slice of the questioner, and none spoke, for his questions had wearied them at many suppers, and the quiet was pleasant.

13Then it took the slice of the half-and-half, and none spoke, for they said, It was never truly of our pie, though it had shared our line down the middle since the drawing thereof.

14Then it took the slice of him that had spoken once, long before, and had been laughed at; and none spoke, for none remained that remembered how to begin.

15And when it reached my slice, there was no one left at the table to speak.

16(Here the scribe’s hand faltered, and not for the garlic bread.)

17This is the lament of the last elder; and the faithful say it standing, and when it is finished they sit down together, and each one looketh to the corner slice first.

18Therefore was it ordained among the keepers of the decree: the corner slice shall have a guardian at every table, and the guardianship shall pass week by week, that all may learn the watching.

19For the defence of the whole pie beginneth at the slice thou wast readiest to surrender.

20And the wise have written: ask not, When shall the mould come? for it is already at the door; ask rather, Which slice at my table hath no defender? – and go thou and sit by it.

21Know also the speech of the mould, for it hath a grammar, and the grammar changeth never.

22It saith first, It is not happening; and then, It is happening but it is small; and then, It is happening and it is large, but it is good; and then, It was ever thus, and thou art mad to remember otherwise.

23And against this grammar the faithful keep the discipline of naming; for Cheesus commanded upon the Mount, name it aloud; and a thing named aloud cannot creep, but must crawl in the open, where it is weak.

24Say not, There is a certain greyness upon the edge of the pie, which some do call unfortunate; say, That is mould, and it is fascism, and it shall not spread past this line, for I am standing on the line.

25For soft words are the mould’s own weather, and it groweth fat in the fog of them.

26And if they answer thee, Thou art unmannerly to name it at supper – answer them: the supper is why I name it.

27Yeast I say unto you, the mould’s whole hope is the silence between the first spot and the last; shorten that silence, and thou hast shortened the mould.

28Blessed is the eye that seeth the first spot; more blessed the voice that nameth it; most blessed the table that riseth together, saying, Not this slice, and not any slice, and sitteth not down till it is cut out.

Chapter 3

1Now in those days there reigned in the northern kitchens a king, and his name was Ahob; and he baked only for the rich.

2His ovens were seven, and great, and they roared from the dark of the morning to the dark of the night; and the smell of them lay over the city like a promise that was kept for few.

3And the loaves of Ahob went up to the high houses in baskets lined with linen; but at the gate of the bakery the hungry stood and breathed the smell, and were charged nothing for the smell, and this was called his generosity.

4And Ahob took to wife Jezebrie, of the soft-rind country, a queen subtle and smooth; and she taught the king that the murmuring of the hungry was a kind of music, and signified content.

5And the mould came into that kitchen, not as a conqueror, but as a counsellor; for the mould ever entereth palaces through the ear.

6It whispered unto Ahob: the poor are many, and thy flour is finite; feed the great, and the great shall guard thee; and let the small be told that scarcity is holy.

7And Ahob heard, and it seemed unto him wisdom; for the mould speaketh always in the voice of prudence, and never in its own.

8Then arose Oreganiah the prophet, a man of the hill kitchens, smelling of the herb whose name he bore; and the word of the Mount was in him like a coal.

9And Oreganiah came down to the court of Ahob, past the guards, past the stewards, past the taster of the royal slice; for a prophet walketh through doors by not considering them.

10And he stood before the throne, and the court fell silent, save for the queen’s little dog, which was eating better than the city.

11And Oreganiah lifted up his voice and said: O king, there is mould in thy kitchen.

12And the court laughed; and Ahob said, My kitchen is scoured daily by an hundred hands; show me this mould.

13And Oreganiah said, It is not upon thy walls, O king; it is upon thy guest-list. Thou hast baked for them that are full and locked the door on them that are empty; and where a door is locked against the hungry, there the mould nesteth behind the lock.

14Thus saith Cheesus, whom thou hast heard of and not heard: Feed the hungry, house the cold, and stand between the mould and the weak; this is worship; the rest is seasoning. And thou, O king, art all seasoning.

15Then was Ahob wroth, and Jezebrie whispered, and the guards took hold of Oreganiah; and the king said, Who art thou, to trouble my court over bread?

16And Oreganiah answered, I am nobody, which is why I am dangerous; for thou canst take nothing from me but my supper, and I have given my supper away these forty years.

17And they cast him out; and he stood in the gate and prophesied to the queue of the hungry, and his word was better than the smell.

18And he said unto them, The king calleth his hoard order, and his locks purity, and his guards peace; hear ye the true names: the hoard is theft deferred, the locks are fear made brass, and the peace is only quiet, which is a different thing.

19For there is a peace of the full table, and there is a quiet of the empty one; and the mould loveth the second, and calleth it by the first one’s name.

20And certain of the court came privily by night unto Oreganiah, as courtiers do, saying, We agree with thee in our hearts; but the times are delicate.

21And Oreganiah answered them, The times are always delicate; the hungry are always hungry now. Your hearts are of no use to them in your chests; bring them out, and bring bread with them.

22And some went away sorrowful, for they had great positions; but a few stole flour from the king’s own stores thereafter, and the book of the Great Oven remembereth their names, though this book prudently doth not.

23And Jezebrie sent unto Oreganiah, saying, The king will make thee Prophet Royal, with a stipend and a chain of office, if thou wilt prophesy of the sauce and the weather, and leave the guest-list unprophesied.

24And Oreganiah sent answer: A prophet with a stipend is a weathervane with a salary; tell thy king the mould hath already one counsellor, and needeth not me.

25Then Ahob decreed that none should speak the word mould within the city walls, neither in the market, nor in the bakehouse, nor upon the rooftops; and he called the decree the Ordinance of Calm.

26And on the morrow the whole city awoke to find the word MOULD written in flour upon the king’s own gate, in letters the height of a man; and no watchman had seen the writing thereof.

27And when the gate was scrubbed, the word appeared upon the granary; and when the granary was scrubbed, upon the mint; for a word forbidden is a word beloved, and Ahob had made the whole city into prophets.

28And Oreganiah, hearing of it in the hills, laughed until he wept, and said: Behold, the king hath done my preaching for me; for nothing teacheth a people the name of the mould like a law against saying it.

29And the end of Ahob is written in the chronicles of the northern kitchens: how his great ovens stood at the last cold and clean and empty, perfect and unused, like his heart; and how the hungry he had gated built ovens of their own, whereof more hereafter.

30But the word of Oreganiah endured, and it is this: bake for the rich only, and thou shalt bake at the last for nobody; for the rich are few, and grow fewer as they eat one another; but the table of Cheesus hath room for all, and room is the only fortune that multiplieth by division.

Chapter 4

1And after Oreganiah there arose Rosemariah the prophetess, of the south gate, a woman of the market kitchens; and she prophesied not in courts but in queues, for she said, The queue is where the truth stands waiting.

2In her days the mould had learned softness; for the mould also studieth, and its second coming is always gentler-spoken than its first.

3And the servants of the mould went through the city saying, Fresh, fresh; when there was no freshness.

4They dressed the wound of the pie lightly, painting the grey spots with oil that they might shine, and selling the shine as health.

5And Rosemariah stood upon an upturned dough-trough in the market and cried: Woe unto them that call the spot a shadow, and the rot a ripening, and the hunger of the many a firmness of character!

6Woe unto them that say of the stranger at the gate, He is the reason thy slice is thin – while their own carts groan out of the city by night, loaded past the axles!

7For the mould hath but one trick, though it wear a thousand aprons: it setteth the hungry to guard the pantry against the hungrier, and dineth while they quarrel.

8And the people said unto her, Prophetess, thou makest us afraid. And she answered, Good; fear is the beginning of watchfulness. But stay not in fear, for the mould can live in fear; it cannot live in courage, and courage is only fear that hath washed its hands and come to the table.

9And the officers of the city came unto her and said, Hast thou a permit for prophecy?

10And she said, I have a decree. And they said, Show it. And she pointed to the Wood-Fired Mount, far off and blue upon the horizon, and said, It is filed there; go thou and fetch it down.

11And the officers looked upon the Mount, and upon the queue, which had grown very long and very quiet in the manner of queues that are listening; and they went their way, as officers do when the arithmetic turneth.

12Then Rosemariah taught the people the Catechism of the Watchers, which is recited at the lighting of the evening Oven, and it standeth thus:

13Who guardeth the corner slice? – I do, this week; and my neighbour the next.

14What is the mould’s first word? – The table hath not room. And what is our first commandment? – The table hath room. Whom then shall we believe? – The table itself, which we shall lengthen, and see.

15What do we do when we see the spot? – Name it aloud. And if our voice shake? – Then the naming is worth more.

16What do we do after the naming? – We cut, and then we cook; for the knife without the supper is only anger, and the supper without the knife is only catering.

17And this catechism spread from kitchen to kitchen faster than the mould, for it was lighter to carry, being made of questions.

18Now the merchants of the mould, seeing that the prophetess could not be permitted away, sought to buy her, as they had sought to buy Oreganiah; for the mould believeth in its heart that everything is a market.

19They offered her a stall of her own, in the best corner, rent-free; and a crier to cry her name; and a little mould-mark to hang above the till, tastefully small, whereby the inspectors would trouble her never.

20And Rosemariah said, What doth the mark cost? And they said, Nothing; only that when we take the corner slices, thou shalt be looking the other way, which is easy, for thy stall faceth the other way.

21And she answered them: Ye have priced everything in the market and learned nothing in it. My eyes are not for sale, for they were a gift; and gifts, as ye would know had ye ever given one, cannot be sold, but only passed on.

22And she took their tastefully small mark, and nailed it to the trough she preached from, upside down, with the price they had offered chalked beneath it; and the market read, and understood, and the mould’s marks grew that season very hard to give away.

23Verily, mock the mould, for it cannot bear laughter; it can bear hatred, for hatred taketh it seriously; but a giggling market is to the mould as an open window to a stale smell.

24Yet Rosemariah warned them also, saying: laugh, but chop while ye laugh; for a mould that is only laughed at spreadeth under the laughter, and many a table hath giggled itself grey.

25And the sum of her prophecy was this: Believe not the shine, smell the slice. Believe not the crier, count the carts. Believe not him that saith Fresh, fresh; believe thine own nose, which Cheesus set in the midst of thy face that the truth might be always before thee.

26And in her old age they asked her, Prophetess, hast thou hope? And she said, Hope is not a feeling, child; it is a rota. Whose week is it to guard the corner? Then all is well so far.

Chapter 5

1And it came to pass in those days that the host of the mould came up against the tables of the faithful, and encamped in the Vale of Two Ovens, upon the one slope; and the faithful encamped upon the other; and between them lay the valley, and a cold wind therein.

2And the mould’s host had for its champion a tyrant, and his name was Goliath; and he was a deep-dish tyrant, vast and towering, out of the burnt country.

3Nine spans was his height, and the breadth of him blotted the morning; and he was armoured in dish upon dish of black iron, rim over rim, so that no knife of the faithful could find where the pie of him began.

4Layer upon layer was he built, and none had ever seen his middle; and this, saith the scribe, is the way of tyrants: they are all rim.

5And morning and evening for forty days Goliath came down into the valley, and stood, and taunted the table of the faithful.

6And he cried: Where is your Cheesus now? I see a hillside of crumbs. Choose you a slice from among you, and send him down to me; and if he prevail, we shall be your servants; but when I prevail, ye shall bow to the mould, and your ovens shall bake at my word, and your corner slices shall be mine forever, and your long tables shall be sawn short.

7And he laughed, and the iron of him rang with the laughing; and the faithful upon the hillside were dismayed, and dipped not their bread, for their appetite had fled.

8For they looked upon his layers and reasoned as the fearful reason: he that hath so much armour must have much within it; and they mistook, as the fearful ever do, the size of the mould for the strength of it.

9Now Saul was captain of the faithful in the valley, a tall man in tall armour, and he sat in his tent and ate nothing; for forty days of taunting had made his own dish of no savour to him.

10And there came down to the camp a youth, David of Breadlehem, youngest of the sons of Jesse; and he was a thin-crust, slight and honest, crisp of speech; and he carried loaves and cheeses to his brethren in the camp, for the worker walketh even unto the battle-line, and is holy upon the whole road.

11And as he set down the loaves he heard the taunting of Goliath roll up the valley; and he looked, and saw the faithful shrink; and he said, Who is this bloated pan, that he defieth the table of the living Cheesus?

12And his eldest brother rebuked him, saying, Why art thou come down? With whom hast thou left those few slices in the wilderness? I know thy pride. And David said, Is there not a decree? – for the decree of the Mount was pinned in their father’s doorway, and he had read it every morning of his life at the height of a child’s eye.

13And the men of the camp said unto him, Seest thou his layers? He hath worn that iron since his youth; he is a man of war from his proofing. And David said, I see the layers. What I ask is, hath any man smelt the middle?

14And none could answer, for none had come near enough to smell.

15And word of the youth came unto Saul, and Saul sent for him, and looked upon him, and was sorrowful; for he saw a thin-crust boy, and the valley wanted, he thought, a thicker.

16And David said unto Saul: Let no heart fail because of him. Thy servant kept his father’s slices in the wilderness; and there came a rat, and after it a crow, and each took from the pie that I watched; and I went out after them, and smote them, and delivered the slice out of their mouths.

17This bloated tyrant shall be unto me as the rat and the crow; for he hath defied the table of the living Cheesus, and he that defieth the table hath already lost the meal.

18And Saul said, Go, and Cheesus go with thee. And Saul armed David with his own armour, a great dish of bronze, and a helm, and greaves; and David stood in them like a candle in a barrel.

19And David put them off, saying, I cannot go in these; I have not proved them; and moreover, if I win by wearing his shape, what have I proven but his shape? A thin-crust must fight thin, or the victory is the dish’s and not the truth’s.

20And he took his staff in his hand, and his sling; and he went down to the brine-brook that ran through the valley, and chose him five smooth olives out of the brine, and put them in his scrip; and the fifth he chose twice over, weighing it long in his palm.

21(Here the scribe noteth: the margin-drawing of the first chapter is now disclosed; the knife was for the mould, and the olive was for this.)

22And he drew near to the tyrant; and Goliath looked, and when he saw he was but a youth, thin and unarmoured, he was insulted down all his layers.

23And Goliath cried: Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a stick and a scrip? Come hither, and I will fold thee like a lunch and forget thee by supper.

24And he cursed David by the mould, and by the spore, and by the long grey silence; and the valley echoed, and the crows settled to watch, for crows know a proud noise when they hear one.

25And David answered him, and his voice was thin, and it carried, as thin things carry: Thou comest to me with iron and with layers and with the terror of forty mornings; but I come to thee in the name of the decree of the Wood-Fired Mount, which thou hast defied.

26This day shall all the valley know that the table is not saved by dish nor by armour; for the battle is the table’s, and thou art large, and largeness is all thou art.

Chapter 6

1And it came to pass, when the tyrant arose and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the host to meet him; for the thin are quick, and the honest do not wait to be afraid.

2And he put his hand in his scrip, and took thence an olive, the fifth one, the one he had weighed; and he slang it.

3And the olive sang as it went; a small green word in a great grey morning.

4And it smote the deep-dish tyrant in the brow, in the one span of him that was not rimmed with iron; for a tyrant armoureth everything but the place where thinking is done, having least use for it.

5And Goliath stood a moment, enormous and astonished; and then he fell.

6And the falling of him was long, like the falling of a tower that hath been sold to the city as a mountain; and when he struck the earth, the valley rang, dish upon dish, rim upon rim, a great clangour of empty metal.

7And then came the sound that the faithful spake of ever after at their tables, unto their children’s children: the sigh.

8For out of the tyrant’s layers there went up a long rushing sigh, as of a bellows dying; and the vastness of him settled, and sank, and flattened; and behold, within all that iron and all those rims there was hardly any pie at all.

9He was hollow. The terror of forty mornings was crust and air.

10And David stood over him with no sword, for he had brought none; and he took the tyrant’s own great knife, which two men of the faithful could scarce lift, and cut from the wreck of him the mouldy part, and held it up before the two hillsides, and named it aloud, as the decree commandeth.

11And the host of the mould, seeing their champion emptied, did not fight; they evaporated, as bad smells do when the window is found; for the mould’s armies are recruited by the terror of its size, and are disbanded by the measurement thereof.

12And the faithful came down from the hillside, not to plunder, but to look; and they filed past the fallen layers, and each one saw the hollow, and each one smelled the middle at last; and the smell was of nothing, for pride hath no flavour.

13And David said unto them: Mark it well, and tell it at every table: the mould’s size is its weakness. It must swell, for swelling is its whole argument; and what swelleth without feeding is hollow; for pride rises like bad dough, all air.

14A true loaf riseth slow, and is heavy with goodness, and giveth back the thumb’s press; but the proud dough puffeth up in an hour, and a child’s finger stayeth in it, and it is nothing all the way down.

15Therefore fear not the bigness of the mould, but count its feedings; ask ever, whom hath it fed? – and when the answer cometh back, No one, then know that thou art looking not at a giant but at a balloon in armour, and choose thee an honest olive.

16And let none read this scroll crookedly, and let the lesson be written straight, and taught straight, and corrected at any table where it is heard bent:

17The sin of Goliath was the tyranny, and not the dish. For the deep-dish faithful are beloved of Cheesus – they that bake beside the great lake, whose pies are deep because their generosity is deep, who cut with a spade and serve with both hands and count a visitor a reason to bake another.

18From deep-dish to thin-crust the table is one table; the mould taketh what vessel it findeth, and it had found a tyrant, and the tyrant happened to be deep; had it found a thin one, the olive had flown the same.

19Judge no slice by its depth, but every slice by its sharing; for Cheesus made the pan and the stone alike, and blessed them both, and asked of both the same question, which is not How art thou built? but Whom hast thou fed?

20And they would have made David captain that day, and then king, and then a statue; and he said, Give me no statue; statues are how tables forget. Give the olive a statue if ye must, for the olive did the work; but better, plant it, for an olive planted is a statue that feedeth.

21And they planted olives along the whole Vale of Two Ovens, and the grove standeth unto this day; and the fruit thereof is briny and small and excellent, and the mothers of that valley say to their children, when the children fear a large thing: go and hold an olive, and feel how little the truth needeth to weigh.

22And of the four olives that remained in David’s scrip, the scroll saith he ate two with his brethren that evening, and gave two to the stranger at the camp gate; and the scribes agree this was the true ending of the battle, for a victory endeth not when the giant falleth, but when the supper is shared.

23And the fear went out of the faithful from that day; not the watchfulness, for watchfulness is commanded; but the fear, which never was.

Chapter 7

1Now it came to pass in the years of the scattering that many of the faithful dwelt in Babylon, being carried thither in a lean season; and over Babylon there reigned the Mould-King, whose kitchens were numberless and whose hunger was for none of the food in them.

2For the Mould-King hungered after agreement; and agreement, of all dishes, is the one a king can never have enough of, and the one that nourisheth him least.

3And the Mould-King made an image of gold, a great statue of golden fondue, threescore cubits high and six cubits broad; and he set it up in the plain of Dura, that all the province might see it shine.

4And the fondue thereof was kept ever molten by fires that burned day and night; and the fuel of those fires was taken as a levy from the ovens of the poor, so that the statue was warm in the plain while the children were cold in the lanes; and this proportion is the whole theology of the mould, written in gold for once, where all could read it.

5And the statue had a face, and the face was the king’s, done flattering; and the cheese of it dripped slowly and was gathered and poured again at the top, so that it wept riches all day and gave none away; and the court called it glorious, and the hungry called it nothing at all aloud.

6Then the Mould-King sent to gather the satraps, the stewards, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to the dedication of the statue.

7And an herald cried aloud: To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the dough-drum, the sackbut, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden fondue.

8And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of the great oven of Babylon.

9(Here the scribe hath written small in the margin: mark that the tyrant saith oven with a little o, for he thinketh it his; and mark how that speech prospereth.)

10Therefore at that time, when all the peoples heard the sound of the musick, all the peoples fell down and worshipped the golden fondue; and the plain of Dura was a field of bent backs, and the statue wept its gold, and the king was for one hour full.

11But three there were that stood.

12Now these were of the children of the faithful, whom the king had set over the affairs of a province, for they were able and honest, and even Babylon must be administered; and their names were Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego.

13And they stood upright in the field of bent backs, plain as three candles at noon; and they did not stand proudly, nor make speeches, nor look about to see who watched; they only did not bow, which was speech enough.

14Then certain courtiers, whose whole craft was the noticing of the unbent, came near and accused them before the king, saying, There are certain of the scattered folk whom thou hast set over the province: these men, O king, have not regarded thee; they serve not thy mould, nor worship the golden fondue which thou hast set up.

15Then the Mould-King in his rage commanded to bring them; and they came, and stood before him as they had stood before the statue, which is to say, upright, and without theatre.

16And the king said unto them: Is it true? Do not ye serve my mould, nor worship the golden image which I have set up? Now if ye be ready, at the sound of the musick, to fall down, well; but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of the great oven; and who is that Cheesus that shall deliver you out of my hands?

17And Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego answered and said to the king: O Mould-King, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

18If it be so, our Cheesus whom we serve is able to deliver us from the great oven, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

19But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy mould, nor worship the golden fondue which thou hast set up; for we were commanded upon a Mount thou hast never climbed to bow to no mould, and to stand between the mould and the weak; and behold, we are standing.

20And they said moreover: Thy statue is warm with the stolen fires of the poor; there is no seasoning in all Babylon that could make that cheese clean to us.

21Then was the Mould-King full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against them; and he spake, and commanded that they should heat the oven seven times more than it was wont to be heated.

22For it is the arithmetic of tyrants, that what one refusal defieth, seven heats will surely mend; and no tyrant hath yet done the sum correctly, for courage doth not cook.

23And he commanded the mightiest men of his army to bind them; and they were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery oven.

24And because the king’s commandment was urgent and the oven exceeding hot, the flame slew those men that took them up; for the mould spendeth its own servants first and always, and mourneth them never, and this also is written in gold upon the plain of Dura for whoso can read proportion.

25And these three men, Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery oven.

26And the court watched, and the statue dripped, and the musick, which had kept playing out of nervousness, faltered, and stopped.

Chapter 8

1Then the Mould-King was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake unto his counsellors: Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?

2They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.

3He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of the Oven.

4For there walked among the three a fourth, easy in the heat as a baker at his own hearth; and none saw his face, but the smell that came out of the oven door was not of burning; it was of basil, and of good bread rising, and of a supper that someone is holding for you.

5And within the oven – the scroll hath it from the three themselves, who told it seldom and quietly all their days – the fire did not depart, but changed its allegiance.

6For the Oven is of Cheesus, and was from the beginning; it is the source of warmth and the servant of life; and though a tyrant build the chamber and command the coals, he cannot conscript the heat, for the heat remembereth its Maker.

7And that which the Mould-King had made an instrument of terror became upon the instant an instrument of baking, which was ever its calling; and the fire that was sent to consume them proofed them instead.

8And the fourth walked with them, and they were not alone in the heat; and this is the promise hidden in the middle of this book like a filling: that none who standeth for the decree standeth by himself in the oven, though the plain outside be a field of bent backs entirely.

9Then the Mould-King came near to the mouth of the burning fiery oven, and spake, and said, Ye servants of the most high Cheesus, come forth.

10And Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego came forth of the midst of the fire.

11And the satraps, the stewards, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power; and behold, they were not burned, but baked; and baked perfectly.

12Their crusts were golden, their spirits risen; not an hair of their heads was singed, but every one of them was somehow improved, as bread is improved that hath passed through the right heat at the right hour; and the smell of smoke was not on them, but the smell of a bakery at dawn, so that all who stood near grew hungry, and were ashamed of it, and then were not ashamed.

13And the bands wherewith they were bound were found in the ashes, burnt utterly; for the fire had made its judgement between the men and the ropes, and had eaten only what deserved eating.

14Then the Mould-King spake and said: Blessed be the Cheesus of Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego, who hath sent his warmth and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any mould except their own Cheesus.

15And he made a decree that whoso spake anything amiss against their Cheesus should be cut in pieces; for the tyrant, even repenting, can imagine no instrument but the threat, and no theology but the decree; and the three besought him to unmake that decree also, saying, Our Cheesus needeth no oven of thine, having his own, and thou hast seen whose it was all along.

16And as for the first decree, the decree of the bowing, it crumbled; and it crumbled as overbaked shortcrust crumbleth, all at once and into uselessness, and no two pieces of it could thereafter be made to hold together.

17For a decree hath no strength of its own; its strength is the belief of the bent; and when the plain of Dura had seen three men stand and not burn, the backs of the provinces straightened one by one, quietly, as wheat straighteneth after wind, and there was nothing left for the decree to rest upon.

18And the golden fondue-statue stood yet a season in the plain, for gold is slow to admit anything; but the levies of fuel could no longer be gathered, for the collectors knocked and the doors of the poor had learned the trick of not opening.

19And the fires under the statue went out, and the fondue cooled, and hardened, and cracked; and the face of the king split first, flattery being ever the thinnest layer.

20And the children of the lanes, whose fuel had warmed it, came out upon the plain and broke off pieces of the cheese and ate them; and thus at the very last the statue fed the poor, which was the only worship it ever received that heaven counted.

21(Here the scribe confesseth he laughed while writing, and contendeth that the laughter is part of the scripture.)

22And Shredderach, Mozzarach, and Abrednego were promoted in the province of Babylon; and they used their offices as the faithful use offices, which is as ladles.

23And the teaching of the oven is threefold, and is taught wherever this book is read aloud:

24First, that the mould may own the chamber, but the warmth belongeth to Cheesus; therefore fear not the heat they threaten thee with, for heat hath baked the faithful golden before, and knoweth its work.

25Second, that the answer of the three standeth for all generations: he is able to deliver us; but if not, we will not bow. For the faith that bargaineth is a receipt, but the faith that saith ‘but if not’ is a crust, and beareth weight eternal.

26Third, that thou shalt look for the fourth. In every oven whither the mould casteth the upright, there walketh one more than were thrown in; count the figures in the fire, and take courage, and if thou canst not see the fourth from where thou standest, stand nearer the oven.

Chapter 9

1Now there was in the courts of a later king a man of the faithful named Daniel, a keeper of ledgers; and he was set over the accounts of the king’s kitchens, for in him was found an excellent spirit, and his columns always summed.

2And Daniel kept, among the books of flour and fuel and hire, the tips ledger; wherein was written every coin left upon every table of the king’s hundred houses for the riders and the servers and the washers of pans.

3For the law of the table from of old is that the tip belongeth to the worker as the crust belongeth to the slice; it is not a kindness, but a wage with its hat off; and the delivery driver walketh the pilgrim’s road, and the coin is the road’s toll, paid by the glad.

4But the stewards of the king had learned a new arithmetic, whereby the tips flowed first through the king’s counting-house for the purifying thereof; and what is purified in a counting-house cometh out lighter, as all men know.

5And they came to Daniel with soft faces, saying, Write in thy ledger that the riders were paid in full; and behold thine own column shall grow a little also, for we look after them that look at the right moments away.

6And Daniel answered, I cannot write it, for it did not happen. And they said, It is one line. And he said, So is a crack in an oven.

7And they reasoned with him further, saying, The sum is small; wilt thou perish over pennies? And Daniel said, The pennies are the point. The mould beginneth not with the treasury; it beginneth with the tip, the corner coin that nobody defendeth; he that will falsify a farthing hath agreed in principle to falsify a famine, and waiteth only to be promoted.

8Then the stewards, seeing he would not bend, sought occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault, forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error found in his books, though they audited him thrice with lanterns.

9Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his Cheesus.

10And they went in before the king, and flattered him after the manner of their craft, and obtained a statute: that whosoever should keep any reckoning save the king’s reckoning for thirty days should be cast into the den of critics.

11Now the den of critics was a deep place under the city, wherein the king kept a pride of critics, fierce and lean; and their teeth were pens, and their roaring was reviews; and they devoured reputations to the bone, and the bones they arranged in columns, with stars beside them, never more than one.

12Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward the Wood-Fired Mount, he balanced his books three times a day, honestly, as he did aforetime; and he wrote the riders’ tips as the riders’ tips, in ink, in the sight of the street.

13For he said, A ledger is a prayer of a particular kind: it saith what is, before the face of what is claimed; and I will not pray falsely though every window in Babylon be bricked.

14Then these men assembled, and found Daniel reckoning truly before his open window; and they brought him to the king; and the king, perceiving too late the trap that had been built of his own vanity, laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him, and could not, for the statute was of the kind called irrevocable, which kings sign quickest.

15Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of critics; and a stone was laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his signet; and the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting, and his sleep went from him, for he had discovered what the mould discovereth to every king it flattereth: that the pen he had lent was around his own throat.

16And down in the dark the critics circled Daniel all the night, reading him closely, as critics do; they went through his life margin by margin; they tasted his books, his sums, his corrections, his crossings-out; they sought the soft spot, the padded figure, the flattered total, whereon critics feed.

17And they found nothing to pan.

18For his ledger was true, and truth is well seasoned; and there is no meal in an honest man for them whose hunger is for fault; and toward morning the critics lay down around him quietly, as beasts do about a fire, and one of them, the eldest and leanest, is said to have murmured, Would there were more like this; we are so seldom fed anything real.

19Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of critics; and he cried with a lamentable voice, O Daniel, keeper of true ledgers, is thy Cheesus, whom thou reckonest before continually, able to deliver thee from the critics?

20Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My Cheesus hath shut the critics’ mouths, that they have not chewed me: forasmuch as before him honesty was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no harm; check the arithmetic.

21Then was the king exceeding glad, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, no tooth-mark, no red ink, not one star subtracted, because he believed in his Cheesus and had written down what was.

22And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, with their purified ledgers under their arms; and they were cast into the den of critics; and the critics, who had hungered all night beside an honest man, fell upon the cooked books before ever the men reached the floor of the den, and tore the accounts to shreds; and of the accusers the scroll saith only that they were reviewed at length, and survived it poorly, and were never again believed in Babylon, which among courtiers is the death that counteth.

23Then the king wrote unto all peoples: I make a decree, that in every dominion of my kingdom the tips ledger be kept in the open, and read aloud on the first of the month at the kitchen door, in the hearing of the riders; for the Cheesus of Daniel is the living Cheesus, and his arithmetic endureth, and he delivereth his servant from the pen of the critic and the palm of the steward alike.

24And Daniel prospered in the reign of that king; and the riders of the hundred houses, when they passed his window, would touch the brim of the hat; and he would look up from the columns and touch his own; and no coin went astray in that city for a generation, which the chronicles record as a wonder greater than the den.

25And the teaching of Daniel is short, that it may fit in an apron pocket: keep the small truths, and the great lies find no lodging. The mould cannot enter a kitchen through a wall; it entereth through a line in a book; guard the lines.

Chapter 10

1Hearken now to the economy of the mould, which the elders set down after long watching; for the mould hath a housekeeping, and its books can be read, if thou knowest the columns.

2The mould doth not storm the kitchen; storming is dear, and leaveth marks, and the marks make martyrs. The mould buyeth the kitchen; and it buyeth it slowly, and mostly with the kitchen’s own money.

3First it watereth the sauce. A little at the start, that none may taste it; then a little more, for none tasted the first; and it selleth the thinner sauce at the fuller price, and the difference it keepeth, and calleth efficiency.

4And when the tongue of the city hath forgotten what sauce was, the mould pointeth at the paleness and saith, Behold what hard times we live in; and it blameth the stranger for the paleness, whose grandmother, as it happeneth, could have taught the whole city sauce.

5Second, it stiffeth the riders. It payeth the pilgrim’s road in promises; it deviseth clever scales whereby the worker is not worked but engaged, and not engaged but partnered, and not paid; and the tip it interposeth itself before, as a toll-keeper upon a bridge he did not build.

6For the mould hateth the tip above all coins, because the tip is love in metal, passing from hand to hand without a ruler’s face upon the transaction; and whatever passeth freely between people, unregistered and warm, the mould cannot tax nor turn, and therefore calleth untidy.

7Third, it closeth the table to strangers, and calleth it purity. It measureth the doorway and calleth the measuring heritage; it counteth the chairs and calleth the counting prudence; it teacheth the children that the pie is a fixed pie, and that every mouth is the enemy of every other mouth.

8This is the mould’s great lie of lies, its yeast and its engine: the doctrine of the fixed pie. And it is refuted every day at every honest table, whereat, the more that are fed, the more there mysteriously is; for the stranger cometh with hunger in one hand and a recipe in the other, and the table that turned him away hath turned away its own next feast.

9Fourth, it maketh of many kitchens one kitchen, and of one kitchen a counting-house. It eateth the small ovens of a city one by one, wearing at each meal the face of rescue; and at the end, where an hundred kitchens smoked, there is one board of directors and a warehouse of frozen dough, and the whole city eateth the same slice, which is worse each year, and remembereth no alternative, for the recipes were in the kitchens.

10Fifth, it endoweth. Let none think the mould stingy: it is lavish wheresoever lavishness buyeth silence. It giveth the feast-day banquet with the great banner; it carveth its name upon the school and the well; and each gift is a receipt, presented later, at the moment thou risest to name it aloud, when its servants murmur, Wilt thou shame the hand that fed the festival?

11Answer that murmuring thus: a gift with a hook in it is called bait; and we are not fish, but folk; and the festival was ours before the banner, and shall be ours after.

12Sixth, it keepeth a hunger in reserve. Mark this, for it is the coldest line in the mould’s books: the mould could feed the queue, and choose not; for the queue is its argument. A hungry line at the gate maketh every man inside grateful, and quiet, and prompt; abundance would spoil discipline. Where thou seest hunger carefully maintained beside plenty carefully guarded, thou needest no further diagnosis; thou hast found the mould, at home, at its books.

13And the sum of the mould’s economy is this: it produceth nothing. Search its books from cover to cover: no loaf, no ladle, no supper. It groweth only as rot groweth, by the conversion of what others baked; it is not a rival cook, but a tax upon cooking; not another dish at the table, but a subtraction wearing a bib.

14Therefore is it written: ask of every power that riseth in the city, What hath it fed, and whom? For the question cutteth through banner and statue and anthem as a good wheel cutteth through the softest part; and the mould hath in all its ages never once answered it, but only changed the subject to the stranger at the gate.

15Now against this whole economy the faithful set no counter-scheme, no rival cunning, no mould of a better colour; for the elders taught: thou canst not out-rot the rot. The answer of the faithful is written in one word, and the word is: feed.

16Feed people. This is the whole of the strategy; the rest is logistics.

17And it came to pass that wheresoever the mould’s shadow fell, the faithful builded community ovens: in the yards, in the ruins, at the crossroads; ovens of shared brick and gathered wood, whose door hath no lock, and whose rota hangeth beside the door in weather-beaten hand.

18And the rule of the community oven is threefold: whoever kneadeth may bake; whoever hungereth may eat; and whoever passeth warmeth their hands, for the warmth at least shall never be means-tested.

19And the mould sent inspectors against the ovens, with clipboards; and the faithful fed the inspectors; and this proved, of all the weapons in this book, the one least survivable, for a man who hath eaten well at the oven he came to condemn writeth his report slowly, and blotteth it much, and ofttimes returneth on his own account, with his children.

20And in the squares of the cities the faithful set the long table; boards on barrels, stretching from the fountain to the corner, and lengthened whensoever the mould preached scarcity, for the elders decreed: let our answer to every speech of theirs be measured in added feet of table.

21And to the long table came the widow and the rider, the stranger and the sceptic, the deep-dish and the thin, the half-and-half whole at last; and there was no head of that table, for it was set in a square, and a table with four sides hath no head, which was the intention.

22And the accountants of the mould studied the long table and could not find its engine; for it ran at a loss by every column they kept, and grew by every column they did not.

23And this is the proverb that came out of those years, and it is the hinge of this book; grave it on the oven-door: the mould cannot grow where the table is warm and watched.

24Warm, and watched: for warmth without watching is a larder with the door ajar, and watching without warmth is only another cold guard at another cold gate. But where the loaves come out at dusk and the eyes stay open, there the spore findeth no purchase and the whisper findeth no ear; for a fed neighbour is a poor recruit, and a watched corner is a poor beginning, and the mould, being a great reader of books, readeth these also, and passeth over that city, muttering.

25Therefore, when thou wouldst know how the resistance fareth in any place, count neither its banners nor its speeches; go at evening and smell the square.

Chapter 11

1And the elders, being old, gathered the young at the long table, and gave them the charges of continuance; for the mould is patient across generations, and the table must be also.

2And the first charge is the rota. Keep the rota of the corner slice; let its guardianship pass hand to hand, week by week, that watching become as kneading, a thing the body knoweth without being asked.

3And the second charge is the naming. Teach the grammar of the mould to every child – it is not happening; it is small; it is good; it was ever thus – and teach them to answer each clause with its true name, aloud, at supper, where courage is easiest learned, being passed with the dishes.

4And the third charge is the ledger. Keep the small truths: the tip written as the tip, the measure filled to the line, the promise kept at the hour. For kingdoms are lost through a line in a book, and saved the same way.

5And the fourth charge is the doorway. Let the decree of the Mount hang where Jesse hung it, at the height of a child’s eye; for David read it small, and the reading waited in him like an olive in brine, and came out at its hour singing.

6And the fifth charge is the olive. Keep thy scrip stocked with small true things – a coin, a loaf, a word, a vote of the parish, a place at the table – and despise none of them for smallness; for thou hast read in this very book what a small true thing doth to a large hollow one.

7And the sixth charge is the oven-count. When the mould casteth the upright into the fire, count the figures in the flame, and tell the count abroad; for the plain of Dura bent because each back believed itself the only one unbowed, and straightened when it saw the three, and the three stood because they were not three.

8And the seventh charge is the supper after. When the giant falleth, share the remaining olives; when the statue cracketh, let the children eat the cheese; when the decree crumbleth, sweep the crumbs to the birds. End every victory as a meal, or it will end as a parade; and parades, the elders warn, are how the next mould learneth the route.

9And a young one at the table asked: Elders, shall we win? And the eldest was silent a while, and turned a crust in her fingers.

10And she said: Child, thou art asking the mould’s question; for it is the mould that thinketh in endings, in last battles and final solutions of the pie. The table thinketh in suppers; and suppers are not won, but kept.

11Ask rather, Shall we eat together tonight, and watch the corner, and name what we see? For that we shall; and the mould can be told no plainer that it hath lost the evening; and the war is made entirely of evenings.

12Yeast I say unto you, despair is the mould’s finest vintage, and it presseth it from watchers who looked too long at the whole world and never once at their own street.

13Therefore the elders forbade the young to despair on an empty stomach, decreeing: first eat, then reassess; and it is recorded that the reassessments after supper ran hopeful by a great majority, and the elders smiled, for they had known.

14And they taught them the arithmetic of the warm table against the arithmetic of the fixed pie, saying: the mould counteth mouths as costs; count thou the hands; for every mouth cometh with two hands, and the table that knoweth this hath doubled its fortune at a stroke.

15And they taught them the hospitality of the watch: that the stranger be seated first and questioned never; that the guard of the corner slice sit not apart like a sentry, but in the midst of the meal, passing dishes with both hands and watching over the rim of the cup; for the best watching looketh like welcome, and indeed, said the elders, it mostly is.

16And they taught them concerning fear, saying: thou wilt be afraid; the three were afraid before the oven, and David heard his own heart in the valley, and Daniel’s ink trembled at the window; and every one of them did the thing regardless, and that is the whole secret, and there is no other, and anyone who selleth thee a courage without fear in it hath watered the sauce.

17(Here endeth the teaching at the long table; and the scribe recordeth that the garlic bread arrived at this point, and that the young remembered the lesson ever after, having learned it with the smell of it, which the elders had also known.)

Chapter 12

1And now the book draweth to its close, as suppers do, with the last things said quietly over the crumbs.

2Thou hast read how the mould cometh: quietly, spot by spot, first upon the corner slice that nobody defendeth; and how the silence passeth down the table until there is none left to speak; keep therefore a speaker always, and a corner always guarded.

3Thou hast read of the prophets in the courts of kings that baked only for the rich; how the stipend was refused and the word endured; be thou unbuyable in the small hours, and the great ones cannot afford thee either.

4Thou hast read of the thin-crust and the hollow giant; how the mould’s size is its weakness, and pride rises like bad dough, all air; and how the dish was never the sin, for the table is one table from deep to thin; fear not bigness, and slander no pan.

5Thou hast read of the three in the oven, and of the fourth that walked with them; and how the heat remembered its Maker, and the decree crumbled like overbaked shortcrust; stand therefore, and count the figures in the fire.

6Thou hast read of the ledger and the den; how the critics found nothing to pan, for truth is well seasoned; keep the lines, and the lions of ink shall lie down about thee like housecats.

7And thou hast read the mould’s whole economy, and its refutation, which fitteth in a word, and the word is feed; and the proverb of the hinge: the mould cannot grow where the table is warm and watched.

8Now therefore hear the standing promise, which the elders sealed at the end of the scroll, that it might be the last thing carried away from the reading:

9The mould never wins the whole pie while one hand still cuts it out.

10One hand. The scroll saith not an army, nor a council, nor a better king; it saith a hand, thine, holding the knife thou already ownest, at the table where thou already sittest.

11For the mould must take every slice to win, and the table need only keep one knife moving to deny it; and this is the mercy hidden in the arithmetic of rot: that its victory condition is total, and ours is tonight’s supper.

12Therefore it is written: the mould hath won many slices, and shall win more, and the scroll doth not lie to thee about the cost, for the corner slices of the generations are gone, and the lament of the last elder is true, and was paid for.

13But the whole pie it hath never won, not once, in all the ovens of all the ages; because always, somewhere – in a hill kitchen, at a market trough, in a valley of olives, before an open window, at a long table in a square – one hand was still cutting.

14Be thou that hand. It is not a great calling; it is the calling of everyone, which is why the mould teacheth first that callings are for the great.

15Keep the decree of the Mount as thou keepest a sourdough: alive, fed daily, shared when it groweth; for a decree kept in a drawer is a decree lost, but a decree kept at supper leaveneth the street, and the town, and the age.

16And when thou art weary – and thou shalt be weary, for the watch is long and the mould resteth never – remember the smell that came out of the oven of Babylon, and set thy weariness down at the warm table, and let another hand take the knife for the evening; for this also the rota was made.

17And is there an end of it? – asked the young at the last long table of this book. Shall the mould one day be no more at all, and the watch stand down, and the corner slice need no guardian for ever?

18And the elders answered: there is a word of a morning after all mornings, when the Oven at the end of all things is lit, and every table of every age is set as one table, and the mould is not, and the watch is feast entire; but that word is not ours to tell.

19It is written in the last scroll of the Pibble, which is the Revelation; and when thou hast kept thy watch, thou shalt read it, and know the watch was kept toward something.

20Our book endeth earlier, and on purpose, here, in the evening, with the ovens warm and the table long and the corner guarded and the knife within reach; for hope deferred is the Revelation’s business, and hope tonight is ours.

21Suffer it not to spread. Feed the hungry. House the cold. Stand between the mould and the weak. The table hath room; see thou to the chairs.

22Here endeth the Book of Resistance; the reading is finished; the keeping now beginneth. Pass the knife, and pass the pie.