Chapter 4

As a child, Fara had heard the legends about the world’s creation, the disobedience of Adam, the wickedness of his posterity, and the great flood that had drowned them all—except one family. But the ancient tales, as John recited them, seemed fresh and frightening. For now his voice was at storm! God’s patience was exhausted! He finally gave up hope of seeing His incorrigible children develop any beauty, any grace, any goodness, any peace. He determined to wash the world clean of them—thoroughly clean of them—and their filth and their spoor and the ravages of their hands until not a trace or a track or a trail of them remained! He told one peace-abiding old man to build a boat for his household; and the rain began to fall. The rain kept on coming—and coming—day after day after day. It poured as no rain had ever poured before!

Fara had listened, quite unmoved, when the wandering minstrels had sung of the fabled rain, but today the graphic picture of that appalling disaster made her draw her burnous tightly about her shoulders. The story made her flesh creep, as she heard the hoarse cries and strangled gasps of the doomed, clutching at one another in the swirl of rising waters, while the livid sky roared and the tempest screamed and the lightning stabbed relentlessly at the tossing debris.

And then—there was a sudden calm. The waters stilled and subsided. The sun was shining again; not upon a garden this time, but upon a stripped, deserted world of ruined cities levelled to the ground, and of empty thrones half-buried in the mud. Now men could begin anew and try to build a better world. But it was without any success—and without any promise.

John’s voice took on a tone of deep sadness—and of shame too—as he reported how these men, wading out of the ooze and slime, began again to plot against one another as before. Prophets came and went, reminding the people of the great calamity that had befallen their fathers and predicting more trouble if they did not now obey God’s command for peace. But the stronger ones ignored them and those who sought the favour of the stronger ones laughed at them, and even the weak, who were set upon daily and robbed of their very rags—they too mocked the prophets and threw stones.

Here John paused for a long time—and bowed his head. The awed multitude sat transfixed, far-eyed, holding its breath, though well it knew what was coming.

‘So—now—in these latter days,’ he went on sadly, measuring his phrases, ‘it is our fate to witness another outpouring of God’s wrath. It is not a flood this time, but a purge of the world’s wickedness. You will ask, “When is it coming?” And I shall answer, “It is not coming: it is here!”