It happens the next day after After the Long Day (on the Barbers’ farm) and develops some themes of that. The priest’s words is something I heard somewhere.
O’Malley sat on the sill and looked out the window now and then. Ben wrote something in his notebook. Suddenly he got stopped by some sudden thought and glanced at O’Malley. He noticed it and turned his head to Ben.
“Yes, about yesterday. If you don’t mind?”
“I wonder what Lust’s ultimate goal was. It wanted power to seize the Anchor, but what then? Did it explain that to you?”
“It did. Said people’s feelings’re chaos, a total mess. When it got th’ Anchor, they’d have only Lust, nothin’ else. Dunno what’s gonna happen t’ those like me. Mebbe, it coulda forced us to feel?..”
“Hardly. It wasn’t able to seduce or overpower you in Space-Between. I suppose it’d just control people like you, as it did with us in the Anchor. Or like Envy controlled Wolfe, even though there was no drop of envy in him. Other people would be used as food.”
O’Malley sneered, “I coulda been th’ Resistance leader.”
Ben looked down into his notebook not to let O’Malley read in his eyes “It would kill you as soon as it got what it wanted, along with us.”
“Dunno, mebbe, it’d not so bad fer others?” he said flippantly. “Most people enjoy th’t thing, ey? Kinda like an everyday ice-cream festival.”
Past reason hunted and past reason hated...
“I’ve seen people succumbed by Gluttony. Disgusting sight, but it’s not the matter. They didn’t enjoy food, they just couldn’t help eating. I suppose it’s the way Sins deal with us: they take our natural need, the gratification of which gives pleasure, and switch the focus onto the process till that becomes an unquenchable need. You just can’t stop it, overcame by the passion... and the words pain and pleasure lose their meanings at that point.”
“Lucky me not t’ see th’t.”
“You were where you should be,” said Ben. He recalled the Anchor, Lust and the woman whose true name they didn’t know. Of course, he wasn’t aware then that it was she who shot Henry Barber... and had made something to O’Malley in the past. He didn’t want to ask what. But still...
It doesn’t love you. It can’t.
“It’s not the worst,” he went on. “The worst thing is what Lust makes of love.”
“Love ain’t snoggin’ and smoochin’,” he said defiantly.
“Of course not,” Ben agreed in surprise. “Who says otherwise? Love has a lot of kinds and forms.”
Caritas, amiticia, amor, ludus... Learned by heart Latin names ran through his mind.
He stood up and approached O’Malley. There were the girls making fun with puppies outside the window. Sidney Malik played with them though not as eagerly as he could two days ago. Florrie watched them and Wolfe talked with her about something.
“Love for the parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours — all this is love. And everyone knows that. Only Lust would want to make us all forget that, to reduce all loves to eros and eros to...” Ben stopped to find the right word, “to mating. Actually, it’s exactly what it wanted.”
O’Malley clasped his knees and put his forehead against them.
“It said ‘ough it can’t seduce me, I still cling t’ love. Said th’ word like it’s filthy.”
“The devil can speak true, too,” Ben smiled with irony. “It can’t comprehend what love is but knows that it is its worst enemy. One of it and other sins.”
He recalled an exchange between some girl and priest he had heard during one family Christmas dinner.
“Do you really think that physical intimacy without love is sinful?”
“I think that everything without love is sinful.”
“Maybe love is the only barrier between us and them.” Ben seemed to think aloud. “Of course, Sins can taint and distort it with selfishness, envy, lust... But if you really love someone, not just use them as a source of pleasure or comfort or a device of your own ambitions... if you love them for their sake, then...” He didn't say what then. He thought about Wolfe’s hand on his shoulder, dispersing Wrath’s mist, Vee supporting him through Sloth’s fog and O’Malley whose power released him from Lust’s capture.
“How could we win the day, without love?” he asked himself quietly.
