THE AFFLUENCE OF EDWIN LOLLARD

THOMAS M. DISCH

One of the most important duties of science fiction is to portray many of the ultimate possibilities of human actions. New American author, Thomas M. Disch, reflects (perhaps tongue in cheek) on one end product of the Welfare State.

THE Accused stood at the bar. The jury had been chosen— twelve irredoubtably solvent men. Both the Prosecution and the Defence had waived their openings. Somewhere in the folds of flesh that sheathed the soul of R. N. Neddie, State’s Attorney, was a particular crease in the sphincter muscles of his oral cavity: a smile of assurance.

There was also a smile on the lips of the Accused, but it would be difficult to say just what that smile represented. Assurance? Hardly. Bravado, then? Not likely, knowing the character of the Accused. Contempt of court? It was not a court to be contemptuous of. The period furnishings, the silver woven into the brocade hangings, the gilded mouldings, and the matched pearls in the Judge’s elaborate pompadour wig—these gleamed richly, affluently in the crystalline light of the Steuben chandeliers. The ermines and velvets of the officers of the court presented a dignified contrast to the ostentatious dress of the packed gallery, where the bookies were still taking bets. To the right of the Judge’s bench hung the flag of the United States of America; to the left, the flag of the sovereign State of Quebec.

The Prosecution called its first witness, Police-Sergeant Jay Gardner.

“You were the arresting officer?”

“Yuh.”

“Would you tell the court why you arrested the Accused?”

“He looked sorta suspicious to me, you know what I mean?”

“Suspicious—how ?”

“Oooh … sorta thin-” The jury confirmed Sergeant

Gardner’s testimony: the Accused looked very thin. Moreover, he was wearing a blue serge suit. “—an’ dirty, an’ he was just sitting on this park bench, not doing anything. Five minutes he sat there like that, not doing anything, so I figured why not arrest him? I mean, I didn’t have anything personal against him, like a crime …”

“Please allow the court to interpret evidence,” the Prosecution interrupted firmly.

“Anyhow, I guess I’ve got a sixth sense about these things. I brought him into the station and checked him out. He didn’t have any money, just some crazy sort of book.”

‘This book, Sergeant Gardner?” The Prosecution handed a leather-bound pocket-sized volume to the witness.

“Yuh.”

“This book, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, Your Honour, will be presented in evidence as Exhibit A. Now, Sergeant, to continue—at the time of his arrest, did the Accused have a timepiece on his person: a wristwatch, a pocketwatch of any sort ?”

“No, sir, he did not.”

“That will be all. You may leave the stand, Sergeant Gardner.”

“…so help you God?”

“I do.”

“Be seated.”

Mrs. Maude Duluth lowered herself into the witness box. There was a rustle and hissing of silk, a wobble of ostrich feathers, and a sigh of relief.

“Mrs. Duluth, would you recognize the Accused if you saw him in this assembly?”

“I should say so, Your Honour.”

“It will not be necessary to address me by that title. Would you point to the Accused, Edwin Lollard?” Maude pointed. Her jewel-crusted hand dazzled the eyes of the spectators. “And would you tell the court, please, what was the nature of your relations with the Accused?”

“He was my first husband. We got married fifteen years ago, and it was the dumbest thing I ever did. But I was only a kid then, no more than …” Maude did some mental arithmetic painfully and decided not to be too explicit. “No more than a kid. I met him at General College. I have a Master’s Degree in Household Administration Systems.”

No one in the jury seemed very impressed by this. After all, a Bachelor’s Degree was compulsory in the State of Quebec.

“Could you tell us something about your married life?”

“Well,” (blushing) “there isn’t much to tell. After the honeymoon—it was a fine honeymoon: Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand, a cruise through the Ross Sea—after the honeymoon, as I was saying, we never did too much. Like we never went anywhere, not even to the First Evangelical Bingo Casino on Sunday, although it was right down the block. Or to the races, or dancing—although I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t the dancer then that I used to be. I mean, I was only a kid, but-” Maude was lost for a moment in confusion and came to a limping halt. “Of course, he had his job and that took a lot of time.”

“What was his job, Mrs. Duluth ?”

“Advertising. At the Realright Agency. It was Edwin’s idea to start using sandwichmen again—you know, men out on the sidewalks with signs on their backs. It was a total flop sales-wise. I mean, if a person is a pedestrian he isn’t going to be buying very much, is he? And if you’re jetting by in a car, then you can’t read a little bitty sign. A total flop, but it did cost millions of dollars in salaries. A big boost to the economy, everyone said. Yes, Edwin was going places.”

“How much time would you say he spent at work?”

“Oh … twenty hours a week?”

The Prosecution lifted one sceptical eyebrow out of its wreaths of flesh.

“Well, ten hours anyhow,” Maude declared firmly.

“And yet he had no time left over to spend with you at, shall we say, normal activities?”

“He had the time. I was always telling him different things we could do instead of all the time staying at home and watching teevee. He didn’t even do that. He just sat down in his chair and read books.” She looked out to the gallery for sympathy. A flashbulb popped. “Or wrote things.”

“Advertisements ?”

“No, just… things.”

The Prosecution allowed Mrs. Duluth a moment to recover from her ordeal.

“And then, to top it all, he quit his job. One hundred thousand a year—and he was still a young man. Do you know what he wanted to do instead ? He wanted to move to the country and … and use the money he’d saved! All that time he’d been putting money away, saving it, while we sat at home and starved! So that’s why I had to get a divorce.”

“Did it seem to you, at that time, Mrs. Duluth, that your husband might be ‘poor in spirit’ as the saying goes?”

“A party pooper? I should say so! And he came from a good solid middle-class family too: two hundred thousand dollars a year. Civil Service. His poor parents still can’t understand where they went wrong. It’s such a tragedy I could cry.” In witness to this a tear squeezed out of the corner of Maude’s face and dropped to the plateau of her bodice.

“That will be all, Mrs. Duluth.”

The next witness spoke so incoherently that the clerk was able only to make a summary of her testimony. Miss Nausicaa Hotchkiss was Professor Emeritus in the English Department of Quebec University College, where the Accused had taken his Bachelor’s degree fifteen years earlier. Miss Hotchkiss testified that the Accused had been able to read without moving his lips, write in script and recite long poems from memory; further, that he had been argumentative in class and taciturn during the Fellowship Sings afterwards. The Defence objected that, since the Accused was not on trial for literacy, Miss Hotchkiss’ testimony was immaterial and served only to prejudice the jury against the Accused. The Prosecution countered that, far from being immaterial, the behaviour of the Accused showed a consistently anti-social pattern, a pattern that had led him inalterably to the crime for which he was being tried. The objection of the Defence was overruled, but Miss Hotchkiss had been so shaken that the next half-hour of her testimony was utterly incomprehensible. While everyone in the courtroom politely ignored Miss Hotchkiss’ pathetic babblings and conversed quietly among themselves, the defendant could be seen to grow more and more agitated. Finally he exclaimed: “This … this moron, an English teacher! An English teacher—hah!” A doctor was called from the gallery to administer a sedative to the delirious defendant.

“Would you spell out your name, please, for the benefit of the clerk?”

“Anderson. A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. Jack Anderson.”

“Your occupation, Mr. Anderson?”

“Loan consultant and junior partner for the Maple Leaf Protective Loan Corporation. Our motto is: Ready Cash— Easy Terms. Twenty-two years in the business, and this is the first time-”

“Thank you,” the Prosecution said, raising the appendage that depended from its right shoulder. “Just tell the court briefly how you came to know the Accused.”

“I handled his application. That was two years ago.”

“What amount was the loan approved for?”

“Well, he applied for an even million, but we finally persuaded him to take three. I guess that was a mistake on our part. We’re a small company, although we’ve been in the business twenty-two years. Did I mention that? We don’t have the resources to investigate every applicant as thoroughly as we might like to. The economy, as you may recall, needed a shot in the arm at that time, and the Federal Reserve interest rates favoured us. We would have realized a neat seventeen per cent on that loan. And you know the old saying: ‘Haste is the better part of discretion.’”

“Did you know that the Accused had already filed for bankruptcy the year before?”

“No. That would have made us more cautious, but like I said, it was a rush job. Priority A, I call it. A three million dollar loan is nothing to sneeze at. He sure looked respectable, and he had good references. I pride myself that I’m a good judge of people. Nobody can pull the wool over my eyes. This is the first time-”

“Mr. Anderson, were you aware of the intended destination of that three million dollars?”

Mr. Anderson looked about nervously, removed a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed at a speck of dust on his polished baby-kangaroo street-slippers, replaced the handkerchief in his pocket and (the question not having vanished with the speck of dust) replied: “I understood him to say that he was a publisher. Of books.”

The Prosecution waited for the witness to continue.

“There’s nothing illegal about publishing books, is there? Personally, I’m against books, but seventeen per cent is seventeen per cent. And they weren’t pornography—they were picture books. I saw one of them. It cost twenty-five dollars—The Wonderful World of St. Francis of Assisi. Religion! You wouldn’t expect a religious man to be dishonest—now would you ?”

Mr. Anderson stepped down from the witness box, smoothed out the wrinkles from his gold lamé suit and with a friendly but dignified wink at the Judge, walked out of the courtroom.

“Your name?”

“Brother Francis Simeon.”

“That’s all there is to it?” the Judge enquired.

“We of the Brotherhood renounce all earthly names. When I received my vocation, I adopted the names of St. Francis and of Simeon the Stylite.” Brother Simeon clasped his hands together, prayerfully, and bowed his head.

“You are,” the Prosecution continued, “an Assisist?”

“Praise the Lord!”

“How is the court to interpret that?” the Judge asked.

“If I may interpret, your Honour—he means ‘yes’,” the Prosecution explained. “I must beg the court’s indulgence for calling up such a singular witness—a man who is almost a self-confessed criminal—but his testimony is essential to the Prosecution’s case.”

The Judge nodded gravely, with indulgence.

“Would you explain to the court, Brother Simeon, the nature and purpose of your organization?”

“We are a religious group. The Fioretti, as we call ourselves, were incorporated over a century ago. In this country alone there are ten thousand of us. We practice austerity and live by the charity of others.”

“Do you advocate the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence?”

“Praise the Lord—no!”

“But you do preach austerity? You are a self-declared enemy of affluence?”

“We realize that austerity is not everybody’s cup of tea. We do, however, advocate moderation. Three meals a day, for instance, at two thousand calories each, would not be detrimental to health.”

A few ladies in the galleries gasped; some—more blasé— tittered; still others, munching popcorn, didn’t hear Brother Simeon’s testimony.

“There will be no need to scandalize the court with details of obscene and disgusting practices,” the Prosecution warned.

“Praise the Lord!”

“How much do you weigh?”

“Objection!”

“Objection sustained.”

But the Prosecution had already made his point. Brother Simeon, who stood five feet eight inches in his hand-sewn sandals, weighed no more than one hundred and eighty pounds. The Prosecution followed up its advantage: “You are a friend of the Accused, Edwin Lollard ?”

“Praise the Lord! I was.”

“He was also a Sissy … pardon me … an Assisist?”

“Not in the formal sense. He was what you might call a fellow traveller. Since we cannot own property, he handled certain of our business affairs. He held many properties in his name for the Fioretti—including a publishing house, which he also managed. Strictly speaking, they were not our ‘property’, but we were allowed the free use of them, and the profits maintained our community. Legally, however, they belonged to Lollard.”

“Would you tell us what some of those properties were?”

“The Ritz Hotel, where many of the Fioretti reside; the Racquet Club; the Lo-Cal Gourmet Eateria on Diefenbaker Drive; The Thrift Emporium of Fine Furs—and the Fioretti Press. I might add that some of the wealthiest men in the State of Quebec—and in our southern states as well—are sympathetic to the aims of the Assisists. Largely it is these men who provide our daily bread. I might also add that our daily bread costs them a pretty penny. Austerity isn’t cheap. We don’t eat any hydroponic foods, and many of our members are vegetarians—although that is not an article of faith. Everything we eat must be grown without chemical fertilizers. We use pewter dishes and handcrafted furniture. It all adds up. You’d be amazed.”

“When did the Accused begin to work for your organization?”

“Ten years ago; perhaps longer than that. He had been recently divorced when he read The Little Flowers of St. Francis. That little book has brought in converts by the droves—and, naturally, their money. A brother in the order, of course, gives up his private property. Mr. Lollard went to see the Brother-Superior at the Ritz. That is how I came to meet him: I am the Brother-Superior’s assistant, in charge of our financial operations. Mr. Lollard told us that he had fallen in love with Lady Poverty. He said, and I can remember it very clearly—’I want to give all that I have to the poor.’ The Brother-Superior can tell it much more humorously than I.”

There was an awkward silence. Brother Simeon giggled.

“But don’t you see the point? There are no more poor. They are no longer with us, as the saying goes.” Brother Simeon cinched up his drooping paunch with a lovely handcrafted silver rope. “Well, of course, we couldn’t take a maniac like that into the order, but the Brother-Superior put him to good use.”

“Running the Fioretti Press?”

“Yes. I mean, praise the Lord! He seemed to enjoy it in his own odd way. A bookish sort, you know. Personally, well…” Brother Simeon smiled appealingly at the jurors. “… books aren’t my failing. In fact I’m proud to say I never learned to read. But we do sell a lot of them, and every penny counts.”

“You sell a lot of books?” the Judge asked incredulously.

“Praise the Lord! Libraries are becoming fashionable these days in the better sort of home. And you can imagine what it costs to furnish one full room, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, with books at twenty-five dollars apiece.”

“How big is a book ?” the Judge asked.

“No more than an inch thick, usually. That’s one of our books there on the table.” Brother Simeon pointed to Exhibit A, The Little Flowers of St. Francis.

“Then how in hell did the defendant go broke?”

“Our next witness will explain that, Your Honour,” the Prosecution said, pacifically. “If you please, Brother Simeon?”

Brother Francis Simeon left the witness box, cast a look of considered hatred at the Accused, and, sotto voce, intoned a short prayer for vengeance.

“Would you spell that again, please, for the benefit of the clerk?”

“C-O-L-T.” She pronounced each letter carefully. “Any idiot should be able to spell Colt.”

Jillian Colt didn’t give a damn—not for the court, not for public opinion, not for the twelve solvent jurors, not for the flashbulbs popping, not for the deadly glances of the ladies in the gallery nor for the more kindly looks of the ladies’ escorts.

“How long have you been acquainted with the

Accused?”

“Two years or so. I don’t keep a diary. I wouldn’t dare.”

“You met him …?”

“At the Lo-Cal Gourmet Eateria. I usually have lunch there when I’m in town. That’s how I keep my figure. I think it’s disgusting to be fat—don’t you?”

“If you please! I shall ask the questions.”

Jillian regarded the Prosecution’s massive dignity with astonished innocence. “To be sure. I was only joking.”

“Are you an Assisist, Miss Colt?”

“Don’t be silly. Me? By the way, you can call me Jillian, I won’t mind.”

“But you diet?”

“I explained that. I said I think it’s disgust-”

“Did you know the Accused had been a member of that organization?”

“Eddie—a Sissy? No, he couldn’t have been. He thought they were all phonies. Me, I couldn’t care less. After all, just about everybody is phony when you come down to it. What the hell, I say.”

“Miss Jillian!”

“H’m?”

“Miss Colt, please answer the questions directly and to the point.” The Prosecution retired to his bench, where he pretended to consult an empty notebook. “You became good friends with the Accused at that time?”

Jillian smiled enigmatically.

“That is to say—you saw the Accused frequently after that first meeting?”

“Oh yes. He was crazy—kept calling me his Lady Poverty. But he had style, if you know what I mean. Like, some women have to wear dresses that would have made Queen Elizabeth look like a pauper. The first Queen Elizabeth, that is. Me, I think simplicity is more elegant. Once I even joined a nudist camp, but they were mostly old retired couples. Cranks. Well, Eddie was no crank, and he had style. Yes, we saw a lot of each other after that.”

“Were you acquainted with his financial affairs?”

“Not really. Money’s such a bore, don’t you think? I’m an heiress, myself. Talk about money! But it’s entailed, which means that I only get it in dribs and drabs. Eddie had this funny deal with the Sissies. He’d gone bankrupt right before he went to them. Actually, he’d quit his job and just been loafing around, living on what he had saved. Then his wife insists on a divorce, which was a good thing really, except that it cleaned him out. He called his first bankruptcy a purification, or, sometimes, an enema.” Jillian tittered.

“Miss-”

“As I was saying. They would have arrested him then and there, but the Sissies made him take all this property. They just gave it to him outright, although I guess there was some arrangement so that they got all the profits. All of a sudden Eddie was a millionaire. I think everybody should be a millionaire. They’re nicer. But he could only think of giving it all away to someone else. I thought it was a wild idea. I mean, after all, most people wouldn’t take a printing press if you offered it to them. It has dirty connotations.

“But Eddie wouldn’t give it to just anybody. He wanted to give it to poor people. Imagine that! He was always looking around for poor people. In fact, that’s how he struck up with me—he thought I looked poor! I was never so flattered in my whole life.

“Of course he never found any. But he was determined to unload all his stuff just to play a trick on the Sissies. He sold the hotel and the other things and borrowed a pile of money and started printing books. He was crazy about books. Strangest man I ever met.

“Millions of books. You wouldn’t believe it. Tons of books with fancy leather bindings and crinkly paper and gold-leaf illustrations. He was filling warehouses with these books. And they were all the same story—The Little Flowers of St. Francis. He was always quoting from that book, and to tell the truth, this St. Francis was every bit as crazy as Eddie was.

“Then one day he sold the publishing company and bought this fleet of ships. Twenty of them, all freighters. He loaded the books on and we set sail. North.

“You know what he wanted to do? He was going to give those books to the Eskimoes. He said only an Eskimo could understand St. Francis nowadays. He must have thought they were poor, I guess. Insane! So, naturally, I went along for the ride. There aren’t many Eskimoes left on Baffin Island—not real Eskimoes—but at last he found one. He became awfully upset, because this Eskimo already had a copy of The Little Flowers and wouldn’t take another. The two of them, Eddie and the Eskimo, talked up a storm all night, and the next morning Eddie takes his fleet with all its books twenty miles out into Hudson Bay and, one by one, he sinks each ship. What a sight! For miles, you couldn’t see anything but The Little Flowers bobbing in the water, and then they all sank. It was sort of sad.

“We still had a little money left—it was mine—so we rented this shack-”

“Miss Colt, please watch your language.”

“Well, that’s all it was, a shack. We stayed there the whole summer, until those men my uncle had hired came around and brought me back home. I can’t imagine how Eddie made it back, because he didn’t have any money. While it lasted it was the best summer. During the day, Eddie would go out in his garden or fishing, and I’d stay inside and cook and wash clothes and even sew up holes in his old clothes….”

“Miss Colt, if you continue to speak in this manner, you will be held in contempt of court.”

“Sorry, Your Honour. But really—it was fun. And at night, before we went to bed, he taught me to read. I can still do it. He had brought along some books of his, and he’d read them by the hour. It’s funny, you know, but I think he actually loved those books.”

“You may leave the stand, Miss Colt.”

A man in a white coat rose from the gallery and walked to the side of the witness. Carefully he led her from the stand and out of the courtroom to the limousine waiting to take her back to the Golden Rest Mental Hospital, to which her family had had her committed.

The Prosecution rose to deliver its closing speech amid a whirlwind of renewed speculation in the gallery. Miss Colt’s appearance on the stand had raised the odds for acquittal, and the Accused’s refusal to testify in his own defence had left the bookies in a buzz of uncertainty. They didn’t know which way to change the odds.

The Judge called for order.

Like periscopes rising from deep waters the eyes of the Prosecution lifted out of their burrows of pink flesh to stare morosely at the jury.

“Gentlemen of the Jury,” the Prosecution began:

“The Accused, Edwin Lollard, is guilty of many crimes. Today you will be asked to judge only one of them. You may think the crime for which he is being tried is not the gravest of those of which he is guilty. But the Law, gentlemen, is strict, and under the Law, Edwin Lollard is guilty of only one crime.

“He is not guilty of literacy, for literacy is not a crime. Some of the noblest figures in the history of this nation have been literate: the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower—to name only a few. Books are not necessarily a corrupting influence, and I would like to say, for the sake of the record, that personally I approve of books. I have read many—often with appreciation—and I do not look down on the man who has read more than I.

“Of course, like many good things, the reading of books may be carried to excess, and anything done to excess becomes an evil. It is likely that, in the case of the Accused, literacy had become a vice. But it is not a vice punishable under the Law. I must ask you to bear this in mind, gentlemen, when you are arriving at your verdict.

“The Accused is not guilty of bankruptcy. If he were, there would be a redeeming feature in this sordid case, for it would reveal some scrap of dignity. But dignity is a feature that the Accused has never evidenced. You are all probably familiar with the story of Billie Sol Estes, one of the leading spirits of the twentieth century. At his moment of glory, Estes owned nothing, but he owed millions. The Accused, however, owes no more than he owns. He is nothing more nor less than a pauper.

“The Accused is not guilty, under the Law, of robbery or malfeasance. The money he squandered so wildly was not in a sense his own—it belonged to the Brotherhood of St. Francis. But by a legal fiction the Brotherhood can own no property. The Accused committed a gross breach of trust when he sold their properties and sank his ships, but he did not commit a crime. How can I ask you, gentlemen, to ignore this most ignoble act when you are deliberating his fate? Yet I must. The Law is strict and sometimes, gentlemen, it is powerless.

“Will Edwin Lollard escape the penalty of the Law— because of the casuistry of the courts, the inelasticity of the Law and the foibles of logic? Can he be saved through loopholes? No, gentlemen—happily he cannot. For Edwin Lollard is guilty of a most despicable crime, and the Law recognizes his guilt. So, gentlemen, will you.

“The Accused is guilty, most culpably guilty, of criminal poverty.

“It is incredible to think that in an age such as ours—an age of enlightenment—that in a society such as ours—a society of affluence and ever-increasing prosperity—that any man, however mean of spirit, could be poor! Centuries ago there was such a thing as unemployment. Poverty was so common that no one dared recognize its essentially criminal nature. But no man today need be poor. Modern science and the wonders of automation have eliminated not only the poor but the merely well-off. Today all men are rich—or they are poor by a premeditated and criminal action. An action, gentlemen, such as that of Edwin Lollard.

“Gentlemen of the Jury, consider the evidence before you: a man is raised by wealthy parents, in a home very much like your own. No want is unsatisfied and no request denied him. An average childhood—an ideal childhood. He attends college where already his criminal nature begins to reveal itself. He is aggressive, competitive, surly. You have seen for yourselves how he respects the woman who devoted a year of her life to his education. Like all the good things that have been given him he rejects this goodness too.

“He marries and finds a good job. But he cannot long endure goodness. He leaves his job and forces his wife to leave him. He is bankrupt. Except for a strange and fateful coincidence, that would have been the end of his exploits. As we have heard, it was only the beginning. He joins a society which—again we see an evidence of the leniency of the Law—is allowed to spread its corrupting gospel in a democratic society. A religion, it is called! Yet even this notorious fellowship is not corrupt enough for the tastes of this man. He must betray it.

“This society has provided him with greater wealth than he had ever dreamed of possessing. Accompanied by a woman of certified insanity and certain viciousness, the Accused commits his final incredible action. He converts his new-found wealth into shiploads of worthless trash and then jettisons the whole mass of his folly into Hudson Bay, where I would suggest it is better off.

“An act of insanity? So absolute an evil must always appear insane to persons of moral discernment. Edwin Lollard was aware, however, of the consequences of his action. He knew that he had made himself a pauper.

“It is probably unnecessary to explain to any of you the enormity of Lollard’s crime. It strikes at the heart of social order. It invokes an age of nightmarish Need. St. Francis of Assisi is the apt symbol of such an age: a thin man, dressed in rags, kissing the hand of a leper. Strong language, gentlemen, but nothing less will express the meaning of poverty.

“Its essential evilness has been expressed most aptly by that prophetic spirit of the twentieth century—who had seen poverty at first hand—George Bernard Shaw. Shaw spoke of, ‘the irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the greatest of our evils, and the worst of our crimes is poverty, and that our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor. Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone’s head.’

“Society cannot tolerate a pauper! The Holy Bible says— Thou shalt burn a witch, by which is certainly meant a pauper.

“Society cannot say—’If a man so wills, let him be poor.’ Shaw exposed the fallacy of such ill-founded toleration, and, in conclusion, I cannot improve upon his words: ‘Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have rickety children. Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous congeries of slums. Let the undeserving become less deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth.’

“Gentlemen of the Jury, as you value the country in which you have your homes, as you value affluence and as you value truth, you must find Edwin Lollard guilty of criminal poverty.”

*

Edwin Lollard was found guilty of criminal poverty and sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment in the Blue Forest Prison Colony on the outskirts of Quebec City. For two years he had striven to this one goal and at last he had obtained it.

It isn’t easy to break into prison. Murderers receive the death penalty; thieves and other criminals motivated by avarice are seldom prosecuted; the few felons that do not fit these categories are usually judged insane and lobotomized. Except for paupers. Paupers are transported to the Quebec City prison. Poverty, however, is hard to achieve in a truly affluent society and still harder to prove. Edwin Lollard had achieved it.

Now, he thought with quiet joy as he rode in the back of the prison van—now at last he would be able to live the life he’d always dreamed of: free from affluence, free from the soul-deadening bondage of the consumer; free to do as he pleased—to read, to relax, to be poor. Blessed are the poor, he thought (somewhat inaccurately), for they shall be comfortable.

He felt a moment’s passing tenderness for Jillian. A shame that he would never see her again. He hoped she would be as happy at Golden Rest as he expected to be at Blue Forest.

He didn’t expect much, and precisely for that reason he expected to be happy. A spare diet, hard work through the day and, at night, his bare cell. A wooden cot, a lamp, a book and utter solitude. In twenty-five years he could read all the books he had never had time for: Gibbon and Toynbee, Virgil and Dante, Tolstoi, Joyce and Gaddis, Firboth and McCallum.

He felt like a newlywed and he imagined rapturously all the delights awaiting his tender explorations beneath the rags of his Lady Poverty, his bride.

Like most men of that time, he knew virtually nothing about penology. Blue Forest was going to be a great surprise.

A prison has two functions: to detain and to punish. Blue Forest detained admirably: escape was impossible from its system of walls, fences and minefields. But the Warden, an enlightened man, with an enormous annual budget to get rid of, saw no reason to inflict senseless and degrading punishments upon the criminals under his charge. His prisoners ate well—five satisfying meals a day during the week and a special twelve-hour banquet on Sundays; they slept in rooms that could have graced the pages of Modern Living; they watched teevee in an enormous stadium and their robo-sports arena was second to none. The Warden was proud of the Blue Forest Choral Society, in which all the convicts participated. The Choral Society had recorded three successful albums: Songs of Good Cheer, What Do You Want for Xmas? and Music to Go to Sleep By. A new Physical Therapy and Massage wing was under construction.

All the convicts were happy and uncomplaining. They lived every bit as well as they had on the outside. They were especially happy, however, because the food they ate gave them no choice. It contained Deleriomycin.

There was no library.

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