4.

There was nothing that was not made of stone. There were stone men, angry men with stone fists, stone houses, stone towers, stone beneath Joshua's feet--the sky above was a canopied stone, the sun was a burning rock just a few miles high. Everything was sand and stone, and everything was unbearably hot. The burning stone of the sun, so near, so hot, made all and everything filled with a heat that was internal and unendurable. Joshua wondered for a second on all the things that Man can endure, and wondered if there were a fatigue and weariness anywhere, in any laborer or marathon runner or soldier being tortured, that Man could not yet endure and exceed, that Man could not take, and take well. But everything went on with the heat and the stone--and just as stone gives off heat in summer, sometimes giving off more heat than comes to it, so too was there a heat within him and within everything, so that as hot as the air and sun were, it was nothing compared with the heat that came from his own stone body, the heat that came from the stone houses, stone men, stone ground.

And he wandered on, weary in his fear; and he knew these stone men were angry, furious, every one of them a potential murderer; and the anger came and settled down all around his environs like a fog, and the anger was agonizing, paralyzing. And yet each and every stone man gave the others a smile and a nod, all of them paralyzed into friendly inaction by such rage as boiled within their hearts. They were civil with one another, perfectly friendly; and each of their hearts burned itself through and ran itself into disintegration with the hot, hot anger in each. But none expressed so much as a hard word, and they moved and went by Joshua in straight lines, as they did what it is you do when you are alive and exist--they moved, spoke, worked, did always something, even if what they were doing was nothing. And the anger and rage built and built within their hearts; the heat came off of their stone bodies and burned and burned their hearts and stone skin. But they said not an unfriendly word, made no offensive gesture; though their anger was so obviously killing them, and each and every one of them could not conceive going a second more without murdering the world. And yet they did go on--they endured what it seemed impossible to endure a second longer--they went on doing what one must do, they went on moving by in straight and neat lines and rows, working, buying, eating, moving, seeing, thinking. And their hell was complete and incomprehensible, though each and every one of them, should you ask him, could only be grateful, believing as they did that they were in the very gardens in the stars, the highest heaven possible. But as they moved along in their neat and orderly columns through the stone and sand, Joshua knew this was hell--that each was blind to the fact that they suffered and suffered, and each was unknowing, believing every absurdity and holding every falsity as truth.

The anger built and built within them; none could conceive that he was not in the highest heaven there was; and all lived with unbearable anger, pain, in the agonies of helpless rage. The heat came off of them; the anger churned and churned their stone innards. These were the gardens in the stars; this was the pit and the darkness; the devil had given them their illusions of delight; and God had given them torture upon torture. This world, this scene, this life would never end. No creature of God could ever bear up under such agonies as were here; and here were pleasures and delights never tasted of by the most blest angel.