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Reflection for July 17, 2005

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The kingdom of heaven is like yeast . . .

Raymond Chandler, the detective storywriter of the 1930's, may have subscribed to the above parable of Jesus. He's the fellow who gave us Philip Marlowe (whom you will forever visualize as Humphrey Bogart) and titles like The Big Sleep. And if you pay attention to his stories you can't help but notice an undercurrent of symbolism, a subtle commentary on modern times. They present us with a window upon the nature and consequences of a world where true religion has taken a back seat to an unethical quest for money as our only guarantee of salvation. And since his stories take place in Los Angeles, the capital of the film industry, they also place us within a world that prefers play-acting over honesty and a casino approach to this brief opportunity we call life.

Take his short story "Red Wind". It begins: "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight . . . Anything can happen." What an apocalyptic way to begin a story! And periodically throughout the story he refers to this hot wind. The Santa Ana winds become symbolic of our modern environment, swept up by something demonic that breeds crankiness and greed to an extreme - as illustrated by the events of the story itself.

It begins with a guy named Coates (alias Waldo Ratigan) entering a cocktail lounge to exchange a pearl necklace for money from a woman he's blackmailing. The woman's name is Lola Barsaly (also known as Mrs. Leroy). But before Coates can meet with Lola he's shot by another fellow whom Coates squealed on after a long ago robbery in Detroit. So already we're introduced to a world where people hide their real identity, engage in blackmail, betray one another and in some cases wind up dead.

As you meander through the labyrinth of such a world (the hot wind prevailing in the background) you find out that Lola and her rich husband have been hiding their affairs from each other and are both being blackmailed by Coates. You also meet a detective named Copernik, a racist and brutal fellow who will make threats to get credit for an arrest made by Marlowe. He has a sidekick named Ybarra who is the butt of his racial slurs. All in all it's a world of two-timing, cold-blooded, petty people who care about no one but themselves. It's also a world of blind self-indulgence as illustrated in an all night party where people "come out and smash bottles on the sidewalk with a whoop . . ." and where "a mixed quartet tore up what was left of the night into small strips and did what they could to make the strips miserable."

It's therefore a world bleak enough to make Marlowe appear cynical. And yet Chandler seems to make of Marlowe a symbol of hope. For while the world bred by the Santa Ana wind is hopeless, this private detective in all his loneliness remains a seeker of truth, the one guy who confronts the demonic wind if only to retain one small toehold for justice. He is like yeast in the sodden lump of modern society - as are others like the quiet detective Ybarra of whom Marlowe says, "Ybarra spoke in the soft quiet modulated voice of a man for whom sounds had a meaning."

The story ends with a melancholy Marlowe driving down to Malibu to view the "cool and languid" ocean - as a symbol of a fresher realm beyond whose horizon the kingdom of God might be found. And there as a kind of acknowledgement of that kingdom he tosses the loose fake pearls of Lola's "valued" necklace into the surf - where they don't fool the seagulls. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast even as this private eye and you and I may be the yeast that may one day make of our world a wholesome place to be.

-- Geoff Wood