“It needed someone to come in and … straighten it out. Someone to put it in order.”
“And what sort of person is it who straightens things out? What sort of person takes anarchy in hand and puts it in order?”
“Well … a ruler. A king.”
“Of course. The world needed a ruler. It needed man.”
“Yes.”
“So now we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.”
“Yes. That’s very obvious now. Everyone understands that.”
“And this is what?”
“What?”
“Is this fact?”
“No.”
“T
hen what is it?”
“It’s mythology,” I said.
“Of which no trace is to be found in your culture.”
“That’s right.”
Once again Ishmael stared at me glumly through the glass.
“Look,” I said after a bit. “The things you’re showing me, the things you’re doing, are … almost beyond belief. I know that. But it’s just not in me to leap up out of my chair while striking my brow and crying, ‘My God, this is incredible!’”
He wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully for a moment before saying: “What’s wrong with you then?”
He seemed so genuinely concerned that I had to smile.
“All frozen inside,” I told him. “An iceberg.”
He shook his head, sorry for me.
4
“To return to our subject…. As you say, it took man a long, long time to tumble to the fact that he was meant for greater things than he could achieve living like a lion or a wombat. For some three million years he was just part of the anarchy, was just one more creature rolling around in the slime.”
“Right.”
“It was only about ten thousand years ago that he finally realized that his place was not in the slime. He had to lift himself out of the slime and take this place in hand and straighten it out.”
“Right.”
“But the world didn’t meekly submit to human rule, did it?”
“No.”
“No, the world defied him. What man built up, the wind and rain tore down. The fields he cleared for his crops and his villages, the jungle fought to reclaim. The seeds he sowed, the birds snatched away. The shoots he nurtured, the insects nibbled. The harvest he stored, the mice plundered. The animals he bred and fed, the wolves and foxes stole away. The mountains, the rivers, and the oceans stood in their places and would not make way for him. The earthquake, the flood, the hurricane, the blizzard, and the drought would not disappear at his command.”