Plot summary
Mr. Parham is a university don with solid right-wing convictions who dreams of finding a rich benefactor to finance a review he can edit. He thinks he has found such a man in Sir Bussy Woodcock, a "crude plutocrat" who makes money at anything to which he puts his hand.
BOOK I. — THE HOPEFUL FRIENDSHIPI. — INTRODUCES MR. PARHAM AND SIR BUSSY WOODCOCKFor a time Mr. Parham was extremely coy about Sir Bussy Woodcock's invitation to assist at a séance. Mr. Parham did not want to be drawn into this séance business. At the same time he did not want to fall out of touch with Sir Bussy Woodcock. Sir Bussy Woodcock was one of those crude plutocrats with whom men of commanding intelligence, if they have the slightest ambition to be more than lookers-on at the spectacle of life, are obliged to associate nowadays. These rich adventurers are, under modern conditions, the necessary interpreters between high thought and low reality. It is regrettable that such difficult and debasing intervention should be unavoidable, but it seems to be so in this inexplicable world. Man of thought and man of action are mutually necessary —or, at any rate, the cooperation seems to be necessary to the man of thought. Plato, Confucius, Machiavelli had all to seek their princes. Nowadays, when the stuffing is out of princes, men of thought must do their best to use rich men. Rich men amenable to use are hard to find and often very intractable when found. There was much in Sir Bussy, for example, that a fine intelligence, were it not equipped with a magnificent self-restraint, might easily have found insupportable. He was a short ruddy freckled man with a nose sculptured in the abrupt modern style and a mouth like a careless gash; he was thickset, a thing irritating in itself to an associate of long slender lines, and he moved with an impulsive rapidity of movement that was startling often and testified always to a total lack of such inhibitions as are inseparable from a cultivated mind. His manners were—voracious. When you talked to him he would jump suddenly into your pauses, and Mr. Parham, having long been accustomed to talk to muted undergraduates, had, if anything, developed his pauses. Half the good had gone from Mr. Parham if you robbed him of these significant silences. But Sir Bussy had no sense of significant silences. When you came to a significant silence, he would ask, "Meantersay?" in an entirely devastating manner. And he was always saying, "Gaw." Continually he said it with a variety of intonations, and it never seemed to be addressed to anyone in particular. It meant nothing, or, what was more annoying, it might mean anything. The fellow was of lowly extraction. His father had driven a hansom cab in London, while his mother was a nurse in a consumption hospital at Hampstead —the "Bussy" came from one of her more interesting patients—and their son, already ambitious at fourteen, had given up a strenuous course of Extension Lectures for an all-time job with a garrulous advertisement contractor, because, said he, there was "no GO in the other stuff." The other "stuff," if you please, was Wordsworth, the Reformation, Vegetable Morphology, and Economic History as interpreted by fastidious-minded and obscurely satirical young gentlemen from the elder universities. Mr. Parham, tolerant, broad-minded, and deliberately quite modern, was always trying to forget these things. He never really forgot them, but whenever he and Sir Bussy were together he was always trying very hard to do so. Sir Bussy's rise to wealth and power from such beginnings was one of the endless romances of modern business. Mr. Parham made a point of knowing as little about it as possible. There the man was. In a little less than a quarter of a century, while Mr. Parham had been occupied chiefly with imperishable things—and marking examination papers upon them—Sir Bussy had become the master of a vast quantity of transitory but tangible phenomena which included a great advertising organization, an important part of the retail provision trade, a group of hotels, plantations in the tropics, cinema theatres, and many other things felt rather than known by Mr. Parham. Over these ephemerons Sir Bussy presided during those parts of his days that were withdrawn from social life, and occasionally even when he was existing socially he was summoned to telephones or indulged in inaudible asides to mysterious young men who sprang from nowhere on their account. As a consequence of these activities, always rather obscure to Mr. Parham, Sir Bussy lived in the midst of a quite terrific comfort and splendour surrounded by an obedience and a dignified obsequiousness that might have overawed a weaker or a vulgarer mind than Mr. Parham's altogether. He appeared in a doorway at night, and marvellous chauffeurs sprang out of the darkness to the salute at his appearance; he said "Gaw," and great butlers were ashamed. In a more luminous world things might have been different, but in this one Sir Bussy's chauffeurs plainly regarded Mr. Parham as a rather unaccountable parcel which Sir Bussy was pleased to send about, and though the household manservants at Buntincombe, Carfex House, Marmion House, and the Hangar treated Mr. Parham as a gentleman, manifestly they did so rather through training than perception. A continual miracle, Sir Bussy was. He had acquired a colossal power of ordering people about, and it was evident to Mr. Parham that he had not the slightest idea what on the whole he wanted them to do. Meanwhile he just ordered them about. It was natural for Mr. Parham to think, "If I had the power he has, what wonderful things I could achieve." For instance, Sir Bussy might make history. Mr. Parham was a lifelong student and exponent of history and philosophy. He had produced several studies—mainly round and about Richelieu and going more deeply into the mind of Richelieu than anyone has ever done before —and given short special courses upon historical themes; he had written a small volume of essays; he was general editor of Fosdyke's popular "Philosophy of History" series, and he would sometimes write reviews upon works of scholarly distinction, reviews that appeared (often shockingly cut and mutilated) in the Empire, the Weekly Philosopher, and the Georgian Review. No one could deal with a new idea struggling to take form and wave it out of existence again more neatly and smilingly than Mr. Parham. And loving history and philosophy as he did, it was a trouble to his mind to feel how completely out of tune was the confusion of current events with anything that one could properly call fine history or fine philosophy. The Great War he realized was History, though very lumpish, brutalized, and unmanageable, and the Conference of Versailles was history also—in further declination. One could still put that Conference as a drama between this Power and that, talk of the conflict for "ascendency," explain the "policy" of this or that man or this or that foreign office subtly and logically. But from about 1919 onward everything had gone from bad to worse. Persons, events, had been deprived of more and more significance. Discordance, a disarray of values, invaded the flow of occurrence. Take Mr. Lloyd George, for example. How was one to treat a man like that? After a climax of the Versailles type the proper way was to culminate and let the historians get to work, as Woodrow Wilson indeed had done, and as Lincoln or Sulla or Cæsar or Alexander did before him. They culminated and rounded off, inconvenient facts fell off them bit by bit, and more and more surely could they be treated HISTORICALLY. The reality of history broke through superficial appearance; the logic of events was made visible. But now, where were the Powers and what were the forces? In the face of such things as happen to-day this trained historian felt like a skilled carver who was asked to cut up soup. Where were the bones?—any bones? A man like Sir Bussy ought to be playing a part in a great struggle between the New Rich and the Older Oligarchy; he ought to be an Equestrian pitted against the Patricians. He ought to round off the Close of Electoral Democracy. He ought to embody the New Phase in British affairs—the New Empire. But did he? Did he stand for anything at all? There were times when Mr. Parham felt that if he could not make Sir Bussy stand for something, something definitely, formally and historically significant, his mind would give way altogether. Surely the ancient and time-honoured processes of history were going on still—surely they were going on. Or what could be going on? Security and predominance—in Europe, in Asia, in finance—were gravely discussed by Mr. Parham and his kindred souls in the more serious weekly and monthly reviews. There were still governments and foreign offices everywhere, and they went through the motions of a struggle for world ascendency according to the rules, decently and in order. Nothing of the slightest importance occurred now between the Powers that was not strictly confidential. Espionage had never been so universal, conscientious, and respected, and the double cross of Christian diplomacy ruled the skies from Washington to Tokio. Britain and France, America, Germany, Moscow cultivated navies and armies and carried on high dignified diplomacies and made secret agreements with and against each other just as though there had never been that stupid talk about "a war to end war." Bolshevik Moscow, after an alarming opening phase, had settled down into the best tradition of the Czar's Foreign Office. If Mr. Parham had been privileged to enjoy the intimacy of statesmen like Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr. Winston Churchill or M. Poincaré, and if he could have dined with some of them, he felt sure that after dinner, with the curtains drawn and the port and the cigars moving with a pensive irregularity like chess pieces upon the reflective mahogany, things would be said, a tone would be established that would bring him back warmly and comfortably again into his complete belief in history as he had learnt it and taught it. But somehow, in spite of his vivid illuminating books and able and sometimes quite important articles, such social occasions did not come to his assistance. Failing such reassurances, a strange persuasion in his mind arose and gathered strength, that round and about the present appearances of historical continuity something else quite different and novel and not so much menacing as dematerializing these appearances was happening. It is hard to define what this something else was. Essentially it was a vast and increasing inattention. It was the way everybody was going on, as if all the serious things in life were no longer serious. And as if other things were. And in the more recent years of Mr. Parham's life it had been, in particular, Sir Bussy. One night Mr. Parham asked himself a heart-searching question. It was doubtful to him afterwards whether he had had a meditation or a nightmare, whether he had thought or dreamt he thought. Suppose, so it was put to him, that statesmen, diplomatists, princes, professors of economics, military and naval experts, and in fact all the present heirs of history, were to bring about a situation, complex, difficult, dangerous, with notes, counter notes, utterances—and even ultimatums—rising towards a declaration of war about some "question." And suppose—oh, horror!—suppose people in general, and Sir Bussy in particular, just looked at it and said, "Gaw," or "Meantersay?" and turned away. Turned away and went on with the things they were doing, the silly things unfit for history! What would the heirs of history do? Would the soldiers dare to hold a pistol at Sir Bussy, or the statesmen push him aside? Suppose he refused to be pushed aside and resisted in some queer circumventing way of his own. Suppose he were to say, "Cut all this right out—now." And suppose they found they had to cut it out! Well, what would become then of our historical inheritance? Where would the Empire be, the Powers, our national traditions and policies? It was an alien idea, this idea that the sawdust was running out of the historical tradition, so alien indeed that it surely never entered Mr. Parham's mind when it was fully awake. There was really nothing to support it there, no group of concepts to which it could attach itself congenially, and yet, once it had secured its footing, it kept worrying at Mr. Parham's serenity like a silly tune that has established itself in one's brain. "They won't obey—when the time comes they won't obey"; that was the refrain. The generals would say, "Haw," but the people would say, "Gaw!" And Gaw would win! In the nightmare, anyhow, Gaw won. Life after that became inconceivable to Mr. Parham. Chaos! In which somehow, he felt, Sir Bussy might still survive, transfigured, perhaps, but surviving. Horribly. Triumphantly. Mr. Parham came vividly and certainly awake and lay awake until dawn. The muse of History might tell of the rise of dynasties, the ascendency of this power or that, of the onset of nationalism with Macedonia, of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of the age-long struggles of Islam and Christendom and of Latin and Greek Christianity, of the marvellous careers of Alexander and Cæsar and Napoleon, unfolding the magic scroll of their records, seeking to stir up Sir Bussy to play his part, his important if subservient part in this continuing drama of hers, and Sir Bussy would reflect almost sleepily over the narrative, would seem to think nothing of the narrative, would follow some train of thought of his own into regions inaccessible to Mr. Parham, and would say, "Gaw." Gaw! Mr. Parham was becoming neurasthenic... And then, to add to his troubles, there was this damned nonsense now about going to a séance and taking mediums seriously, them and their nasty, disreputable, and irritatingly inexplicable phenomena. About dawn Mr. Parham was thinking very seriously of giving up Sir Bussy. But he had thought of that several times before and always with a similar result. Finally he went to a séance, he went to a series of séances with Sir Bussy, as this narrative will in due course relate. II. — TELLS HOW SIR BUSSY AND MR. PARHAM BECAME ASSOCIATEDWhen five years or more ago Mr. Parham had met Sir Bussy for the first time, the great financier had seemed to be really interested in the things of the mind, modestly but seriously interested. Mr. Parham had talked of Michael Angelo and Botticelli at a man's dinner given by Sebright Smith at the Rialto. It was what Mr. Parham called one of Sebright Smith's marvellous feats of mixing and what Sebright Smith, less openly, called a "massacre." Sebright Smith was always promising and incurring the liability for hospitality in a most careless manner, and when he had accumulated a sufficiency of obligations to bother him he gave ruthless dinners and lunches, machine-gun dinners and lunches, to work them off. Hence his secret name for these gatherings. He did not care whom he asked to meet whom, he trusted to champagne as a universal solvent, and Mr. Parham, with that liberal modern and yet cultivated mind of his, found these feasts delightfully catholic. There is nothing like men who are not at their ease, for listening, and Mr. Parham, who was born well-informed, just let himself go. He said things about Botticelli that a more mercenary man might have made into a little book and got forty or fifty pounds for. Sir Bussy listened with an expression that anyone who did not know him might have considered malignant. But it was merely that when he was interested or when he was occupied with an idea for action he used to let the left-hand corner of his mouth hang down. When there came a shift with the cigars and Negro singers sang Negro spirituals, Sir Bussy seized an opportunity and slipped into one of the two chairs that had become vacant on either side of Mr. Parham. "You know about those things?" he asked, regardless of the abounding emotional richness of "Let my people go-o." Mr. Parham conveyed interrogation. "Old masters, Art and all that." "They interest me," said Mr. Parham, smiling with kindly friendliness, for he did not yet know the name or the power of the man to whom he was talking. "They might have interested ME—but I cut it out. D'you ever lunch in the city?" "Not often." "Well, if ever you are that way—next week, for example—ring me up at Marmion House." The name conveyed nothing to Mr. Parham. "I'll be delighted," he said politely. Sir Bussy, it seemed, was on his way to depart. He paused for a moment. "For all I know," he said, "there may be a lot in Art. Do come. I was really interested." He smiled, with a curious gleam of charm, turned off the charm, and departed briskly, in an interlude while Sebright Smith and the singers decided noisily about the next song. Later Mr. Parham sought his host. "Who is the sturdy little man with a flushed face and wiry hair who went early?" "Think I know everybody here?" said Sebright Smith. "But he sat next to you!" "Oh, THAT chap! That's one of our conq-conquerors," said Sebright Smith, who was drunk. "Has he a name?" "Has he not?" said Sebright Smith. "Sir Blasted Busy Bussy Buy-up-the- Universe Woodcock. He's the sort of man who buys up everything. Shops and houses and factories. Estates and pot houses. Quarries. Whole trades. Buys things on the way to you. Fiddles about with them a bit before you get 'em. You can't eat a pat of butter now in London before he's bought and sold it. Railways he buys, hotels, cinemas and suburbs, men and women, soul and body. Mind he doesn't buy you." "I'm not on the market." "Private treaty, I suppose," said Sebright Smith, and realizing from Mr. Parham's startled interrogative face that he had been guilty of some indelicacy, tried to tone it down with, "Have some more champagne?" Mr. Parham caught the eye of an old friend and did not answer his host's last remark. Indeed, he hardly saw any point to it, and the man was plainly drunk. He lifted a vertical hand to his friend as one might hail a cab and shouldered his way towards him. In the course of the next few days Mr. Parham made a number of discreet inquiries about Sir Bussy, he looked him up in Who's Who, where he found a very frank and rather self-conscious half column, and decided to accept that invitation to Marmion House in a decisive manner. If the man wanted tutoring in Art he should have tutoring in Art. Wasn't it Lord Rosebery who said, "We must educate our masters"? They would have a broad-minded, friendly tête-à-tête, Mr. Parham would open the golden world of Art to his host and incidentally introduce a long-cherished dream that it would cost Sir Bussy scarcely anything to make into a fine and delightful reality. This dream, which was destined to hold Mr. Parham in resentful vassalage to Sir Bussy through long, long years of hope deferred, was the vision of a distinguished and authoritative weekly paper, with double columns and a restrained title heading, of which Mr. Parham would be the editor. It was to be one of those papers, not vulgarly gross in their circulation, but which influence opinion and direct current history throughout the civilized world. It was to be all that the Spectator, the Saturday Review, the Nation, and the New Statesman have ever been and more. It was to be largely the writing of Mr. Parham and of young men influenced and discovered by him. It was to arraign the whole spectacle of life, its public affairs, its "questions," its science, art, and literature. It was to be understanding, advisory but always a little aloof. It was to be bold at times, stern at times, outspoken at times, but never shouting, never vulgar. As an editor one partakes of the nature of God; you are God with only one drawback, a Proprietor. But also, if you have played your cards well, you are God with a definite Agreement. And without God's responsibility for the defects and errors of the universe you survey. You can smile and barb your wit as He cannot do. For He would be under suspicion of having led up to his own jokes. Writing "Notes of the Week" is perhaps one of the purest pleasures life offers an intelligent, cultivated man. You encourage or you rebuke nations. You point out how Russia has erred and Germany taken your hint of the week before last. You discuss the motives of statesmen and warn bankers and colossal business adventurers. You judge judges. You have a word of kindly praise or mild contempt for the foolish multitude of writers. You compliment artists, sometimes left-handedly. The little brawling Correspondents play about your feet, writing their squabbling, protesting letters, needing sometimes your reproving pat. Every week you make or mar reputations. Criticizing everyone, you go uncriticized. You speak out of a cloud, glorious powerful and obscure. Few men are worthy of this great trust, but Mr. Parham had long felt himself among that elect minority. With difficulty he had guarded his secret, waiting for his paper as the cloistered virgin of the past waited for her lover. And here at last was Sir Bussy, Sir Bussy who could give this precious apotheosis to Mr. Parham with scarcely an effort. He had only to say "Go" to the thing. Mr. Parham knew just where to go and just what to do. It was Sir Bussy's great opportunity. He might evoke a God. He had neither the education nor the abilities to be a God, but he could bring a God into being. Sir Bussy had bought all sorts of things but apparently he had never yet come into the splash and excitement of newspaper properties. It was time he did. It was time he tasted Power, Influence, and Knowledge brimming fresh from the source. His own source. With such thoughts already pullulating in his mind Mr. Parham had gone to his first lunch at Marmion House. Marmion House he found a busy place. It had been built by Sir Bussy. Eight and thirty companies had their offices there, and in the big archway of the Victoria Street entrance Mr. Parham was jostled by a great coming and going of swift-tripping clerks and stenographers seeking their midday refreshment. A populous lift shed passengers at every floor and left Mr. Parham alone with the lift boy for the top. It was not to be the pleasant little tête-à-tête Mr. Parham had expected when he had telephoned in the morning. He found Sir Bussy in a large dining room with a long table surrounded by quite a number of people who Mr. Parham felt from the very outset were hangers-on and parasites of the worst description. Later he was to realize that a few of them were in a sense reputable and connected with this or that of the eight and thirty companies Sir Bussy had grouped about him, but that was not the first impression. There was a gravely alert stenographer on Sir Bussy's left-hand side whom Mr. Parham considered much too dignified in her manner and much too graceful and well dressed for her position, and there were two very young women with grossly familiar manners who called Sir Bussy "Bussy dear" and stared at Mr. Parham as though he were some kind of foreigner. Later on in the acquaintanceship Mr. Parham was to realize that these girls were Sir Bussy's pet nieces by marriage —he had no children of his own—but at the time Mr. Parham thought the very worst of them. They were painted. There was a very, very convex, buoyant man wearing light tweeds and with an insinuating voice who asked Mr. Parham suddenly whether he didn't think something ought to be done about Westernhanger and then slipped off into an obscure joke with one of the nieces while Mr. Parham was still wondering who or what Westernhanger might be. And there was a small, preoccupied-looking man with that sort of cylinder forehead one really ought to take off before sitting down to lunch, who Mr. Parham learnt was Sir Titus Knowles of Harley Street. There was no serious conversation at lunch but only a throwing about of remarks. A quiet man sitting between Mr. Parham and Sir Bussy asked Mr. Parham whether he did not find the architecture of the city abominable. "Consider New York," he said. Mr. Parham weighed it. "New York is different." The quiet man after a pause for reflection said that was true but still... Sir Bussy had greeted Mr. Parham's arrival with his flash of charm and had told him to "sit down anywhere." Then after a little obscure badinage across the table with one of the pretty painted girls about the possibility of her playing "real tennis" in London, the host subsided into his own thoughts. Once he said, "Gaw!"—about nothing. The lunch had none of the quiet orderliness of a West-End lunch party. Three or four young men, brisk but not dignified, in white linen jackets did the service. There were steak-and-kidney pudding and roast beef, celery for everyone in the American fashion, and a sideboard with all manner of cold meat, cold fruit tarts, and bottles of drink thereon. On the table were jugs of some sort of cup. Mr. Parham thought it best became a simple scholar and a gentleman to disdain the plutocrat's wines and drink plain beer from a tankard. When the eating was over half the party melted away, including the graceful secretary whose face Mr. Parham was beginning to find interesting, and the rest moved with Sir Bussy into a large low lounge where there were cigars and cigarettes, coffee and liqueurs. "We're going to this tennis place with Tremayne," the pretty girls announced together. "Not Lord Tremayne!" thought Mr. Parham and regarded the abdominal case with a new interest. The fellow had been at C. C. C. "If he tries to play tennis with clubs and solid balls after the lunch he's eaten, he'll drop dead," said Sir Bussy. "You don't know my powers of assimilation," said the very convex gentleman. "Have some brandy, Tremayne, and make a job of it," said Sir Bussy. "Brandy," said Tremayne to a passing servitor. "A double brandy." "Get his lordship some old brandy," said Sir Bussy. So it really was Lord Tremayne! But how inflated! Mr. Parham was already a tutor when Lord Tremayne had come up, a beautifully slender youth. He came up and he was sent down. But in the interval he had been greatly admired. The three departed, and Sir Bussy came to Mr. Parham. "Got anything to do this afternoon?" he asked. Mr. Parham had nothing of a compelling nature. "Let's go and look at some pictures," said Sir Bussy. "I want to. D'you mind? You seem to have ideas about them." "There's so MANY pictures," said Mr. Parham in rather a jolly tone and smiling. "National Gallery, I mean. And the Tate, perhaps. Academy's still open. Dealers' shows if necessary. We ought to get round as much as we need to in the afternoon. It's a general idea I want. And how it looks to you." As Sir Bussy's Rolls-Royce went its slick, swift way westward through the afternoon traffic he made their objective clearer. "I want to LOOK at this painting," he said, with his voice going up at the 'look.' "What's it all ABOUT? What's it all FOR? How did it get there? What does it all amount to?" The corner of his mouth went down and he searched his companion's face with an extraordinary mixture of hostility and appeal in his eyes. Mr. Parham would have liked to have had notice of the question. He gave Sir Bussy his profile. "What is Art?" questioned Mr. Parham, playing for time. "A big question." "Not Art—just this painting," corrected Sir Bussy. "It's Art," said Mr. Parham. "Art in its nature. One and Indivisible." "Gaw," said Sir Bussy softly and became still more earnestly expectant. "A sort of QUINTESSENCE, I suppose," Mr. Parham tried. He waved a hand with a gesture that had earned him the unjust and unpleasant nickname of "Bunch of Fingers" among his undergraduates. For his hands were really very beautifully proportioned. "A kind of getting the concentrated quality of loveliness, of beauty, out of common experience." "That we certainly got to look for," injected Sir Bussy. "And fixing it. Making it permanent." Sir Bussy spoke again after a pause for reflection. He spoke with an air of confiding thoughts long suppressed. "Sure these painters haven't been putting it over us a bit? I thought—the other night—while you were talking... Just an idea..." Mr. Parham regarded his host slantingly. "No," he said slowly and judiciously, "I don't think they've been PUTTING IT OVER US." Just the least little stress on the last four words—imperceptible to Sir Bussy. "Well, that's what we got to see." A queer beginning for a queer afternoon—an afternoon with a Barbarian. But indisputably, as Sebright Smith had said, "one of our conquerors." He wasn't a Barbarian to be sniffed away. He fought for his barbarism like a bulldog. Mr. Parham had been taken by surprise. He wished more and more that he had had notice of the question that was pressed upon him as the afternoon wore on. Then he could have chosen his pictures and made an orderly course of it. As it was he got to work haphazard, and instead of fighting a set battle for Art and the wonder and sublimity of it, Mr. Parham found himself in the position of a commander who is called upon with the enemy already in his camp. It was a piecemeal discussion. Sir Bussy's attitude so far as Mr. Parham could make it out from his fragmentary and illiterate method of expressing himself, was one of skeptical inquiry. The man was uncultivated—indeed, he was glaringly uncultivated —but there was much natural intelligence in his make-up. He had evidently been impressed profoundly by the honour paid to the names of the great Princes of pictorial art by all men of taste and intelligence, and he could not see why they were exalted to such heights. So he wanted it explained to him. He had evidently vast curiosities. To-day it was Michael Angelo and Titian he questioned. To-morrow it might be Beethoven or Shakespeare. He wasn't to be fobbed off by authority. He didn't admit authority. He had to be met as though the acquiescence and approval of generations to these forms of greatness had never been given. He went up the steps from the entrance to the National Gallery with such a swift assurance that the thought occurred to Mr. Parham that he had already paid a visit there. He made at once for the Italians. "Now, here's pictures," he said, sweeping on through one room to another and only slowing down in the largest gallery of all. "They're fairly interesting and amoosing. The most part. A lot of them are bright. They might be brighter, but I suppose none of them are exactly fast colour. You can see the fun the chaps have had painting them. I grant all that. I wouldn't object to having quite a lot of them about in Carfex House. I'd like to swipe about with a brush myself a bit. But when it comes to making out they're something more than that and speaking of them in a sort of hushed religious way as though those chaps knew something special about heaven and just let it out, I don't get you. I don't for the life of me get you." "But here, for instance," said Mr. Parham, "this Francesca—the sweetness and delicacy—surely DIVINE isn't too much for it." "Sweetness and delicacy. Divine! Well, take a spring day in England, take the little feathers on a pheasant's breast, or bits of a sunset, or the morning light through a tumbler of flowers on a window sill. Surely things of that sort are no end sweeter and more delicate and more divine and all the rest of it than this—this PICKLED stuff." "Pickled!" For a moment Mr. Parham was overcome. "Pickled prettiness," said Sir Bussy defiantly. "Pickled loveliness, if you like... And a lot of it not very lovely and not so marvellously well pickled." Sir Bussy continued hitting Mr. Parham while he was down. "All these Madonnas. Did they WANT to paint them or were they obliged? Who ever thought a woman sitting up on a throne like that was any catch?" "Pickled!" Mr. Parham clung to the main theme. "NO!" Sir Bussy, abruptly expectant, dropped the corner of his mouth and brought his face sideways towards Mr. Parham. Mr. Parham waved his hand about and found the word he wanted. "Selected." He got it still better. "Selected and fixed. These men went about the world seeing—seeing with all their might. Seeing with gifts. Born to see. And they tried—and I think succeeded—in seizing something of their most intense impressions. For us. The Madonna was often—was usually—no more than an excuse..." Sir Bussy's mouth resumed its more normal condition, and he turned with an appearance of greater respect towards the pictures again. He would give them a chance under that plea. But his scrutiny did not last for long. "That thing," he said, returning to the object of their original remarks. "Francesca's Baptism," breathed Mr. Parham. "To my mind it's not a selection: it's an assembly. Things he liked painting. The background is jolly, but only because it reminds you of things you've seen. I'm not going to lie down in front of it and worship. And most of this—" He seemed to indicate the entire national collection. "—is just painting." "I must contest," said Mr. Parham. "I must contest." He pleaded the subtle colouring of Filippo Lippi, the elation and grace and classic loveliness of Botticelli; he spoke of richness, anatomical dexterity, virtuosity, and culminated at last in the infinite solemnity of Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks. "The mystery, the serene mystery of that shadowed woman's face; the sweet wisdom of the Angel's self-content," said Mr. Parham. "Painting! It's Revelation." "Gaw," said Sir Bussy, head on one side. He was led from picture to picture like an obstinate child. "I'm not saying the stuff's BAD," he repeated; "I'm not saying it isn't interesting; but I don't see the call for superlatives. It's being reminded of things, and it's you really that has the things. Taking it altogether," and he surveyed the collection, "I'll admit it's clever, sensitive work, but I'm damned if I see anything divine." Also he made a curiously ungracious concession to culture. "After a bit," he said, "one certainly gets one's eye in. Like being in the dark in a cinema." But it would be tedious to record all his crude reactions to loveliness that have become the dearest heritage of our minds. He said Raphael was "dam' genteel." He rebelled at El Greco. "Byzantine solemnity," he repeated after Mr. Parham, "it's more like faces seen in the back of a spoon." But he came near cheering Tintoretto's Origin of the Milky Way. "Gaw," he said warmly. "Now THAT! It isn't decent but it's damn fine." He went back to it. It was in vain that Mr. Parham tried to beguile him past the Rokeby Venus. "Who did that?" he asked, as if he suspected Mr. Parham. "Velasquez." "Well, what's the essential difference between that and a good big photograph of a naked woman tinted and posed to excite you?" Mr. Parham was a little ashamed to find himself arguing an issue so crude in a public place and audibly, but Sir Bussy was regarding him with that unconscious menace of his which compelled replies. "The two things aren't in the same world. The photograph is material, factual, personal, individual. Here the beauty, the long delightful lines of a slender human body, are merely the theme of a perfect composition. The body becomes transcendental. It is sublimated. It is robbed of all individual defect and individual coarseness." "Nonsense! that girl's individualized enough for—anybody." "I do NOT agree. Profoundly I do NOT agree." "Gaw! I'm not quarrelling with the picture, only I don't see the force of all this transcending and sublimating. I like it—just as I like that Tintoretto. But a pretty naked young woman is beautiful anywhere and anyhow, especially if you're in the mood, and I don't see why a poor little smut seller in the street should be run in for selling just exactly what anyone in the world can come here to see—and buy photographs of in the vestibule. It isn't Art I'm objecting to, but the Airs Art gives itself. It's just as if Art had been asked to dinner at Buckingham Palace and didn't want to be seen about with its poor relations. Who got just as much right to live." Mr. Parham moved on with an expression of face—as if the discussion had decayed unpleasantly. "I wonder if there is time to get on to the Tate," he considered. "There you'll find the British school and the wild uncharted young." He could not refrain from a delicate, almost imperceptible sneer. "Their pictures are newer. You may find them brighter and more pleasing on that account." They did go on to the Tate Gallery. But Sir Bussy found no further objections to art there nor any reconciliation. His chief judgment was to ascribe "cheek" to Mr. Augustus John. As he and Mr. Parham left the building he seemed to reflect, and then he delivered himself of what was evidently his matured answer to his self-posed question for that afternoon. "I don't see that this Painting gets you out to anything. I don't see that it gets you out of anything. It's not discovery and it's not escape. People talk as if it was a door out of this damned world. Well—IS it?" "It has given colour and interest to thousands—myriads—of quietly observant lives." "Cricket can do that," said Sir Bussy. Mr. Parham had no answer to such a remark. For some brief moments it seemed to him that the afternoon had been a failure. He had done his best, but this was an obdurate mind, difficult to dominate, and he had, he felt, failed completely to put the idea of Art over to it. They stood side by side in silence in the evening glow, waiting for Sir Bussy's chauffeur to realize that they had emerged. This plutocrat, thought Mr. Parham, will never understand me, never understand the objectives of a true civilization, never endow the paper I need. I must keep polite and smiling as a gentleman should, but I have wasted time and hope on him. In the car, however, Sir Bussy displayed an unexpected gratitude, and Mr. Parham realized his pessimism had been premature. "Well," said Sir Bussy, "I got a lot out of this afternoon. It's been a Great Time. You've interested me. I shall remember all sorts of things you've said about this Art. We held on fine. We looked and we looked. I think I got your point of view; I really think I have. That other evening I said, 'I must get that chap's point of view. He's amazing.' I hope this is only the first of quite a lot of times when I'm going to have the pleasure of meeting you and getting your point of view... Like pretty women?" "Eh?" said Mr. Parham. "Like pretty women?" "Man is mortal," said Mr. Parham with the air of a confession. "I'd love to see you at a party I'm giving at the Savoy. Thursday next. Supper and keep on with it. Everything fit to look at on the London stage and most of it showing. Dancing." "I'm not a dancing man, you know." "Nor me. But YOU ought to take lessons. You've got the sort of long leg to do it. Anyhow, we might sit in a corner together and you tell me something about Women. Like you've been telling me about Art. I been so busy, but I've always wanted to know. And you can take people down to supper whenever you feel dullish. Any number of them ready to be taken down to supper. Again and again and again and again, as the poem says. We don't stint the supper." III. — MR. PARHAM AMONG THE GAYER RICHIt was not clear to Mr. Parham that he would get his newspaper, but it was quite clear that he had a reasonable prospect of becoming a sort of Mentor to Sir Bussy. Just what sort of Mentor it was still too early to guess. If you will imagine Socrates as tall and formally good-looking and Alcibiades as short and energetic, and if you will suppose that unfortunate expedition to Syracuse replaced under sound advice by a masterful consolidation of Greece; if indeed you will flatten that parallel to the verge of extinction without actually obliterating it, you will get something of the flavour of Mr. Parham's anticipations. Or perhaps Aristotle and Alexander will better serve our purpose. It is one of the endless advantages of a sound classical education that you need never see, you can never see, a human relationship in its vulgar simplicity; there is always the enrichment of these regurgitated factors. You lose all sense of current events; you simply get such history as you have swallowed repeating itself. In this party at the Savoy Mr. Parham saw Sir Bussy seriously engaged in expenditure for the first time. A common mind would have been mightily impressed by the evident height, width, depth, and velocity of the flow, and even Mr. Parham found himself doing little sums and estimates to get an idea of what this one evening must be costing his new acquaintance. It would, Mr. Parham reckoned, have maintained a weekly of the very highest class for three years or more. Mr. Parham made it his rule to dress correctly and well for every social occasion. He did not believe in that benefit of clergy which is used as an excuse by men of learning and intellectual distinction for low collars on high occasions and antiquated smoking jackets at dances. He thought it better to let people understand that on occasion a philosopher is fully equal to being a man of the world. His tallness permitted a drooping urbanity, a little suggestive of Lord Balfour, and on the whole he knew himself with his fine and fastidious features to be anything but ill-looking. His Gibus hat, a trifle old-fashioned in these slovenly times, kept his bunch of fingers within bounds, and his fine gold chain was plainly ancestral. The entire Savoy had placed itself at the disposal of Sir Bussy. Its servants were his servants. In their gray plush breeches and yellow waistcoats they looked like inherited family servitors. In the cloakroom he found Sir Titus Knowles of the stupendous brow divesting himself of an extremely small black hat and a huge cloak. "Hullo!" said Sir Titus. "YOU here!" "Apparently," said Mr. Parham taking it in good part. "Ah," said Sir Titus. "No need for a ticket, Sir Titus," said the receiver of cloaks. "Too well known, sir." Sir Titus disappeared, smiling faintly. But Mr. Parham received a ticket for his overcoat. He drifted past the men waiting for their womankind towards a dazzling crowd of lovely and extremely expensive-looking ladies with shining arms and shoulders and backs and a considerable variety of men. There was talk like a great and greatly fluctuating wind blowing through tin leaved trees. A sort of reception was in progress. Sir Bussy appeared abruptly. "Good," he said with gusto. "We must have a talk. You know Pomander Poole? She's dying to meet you." He vanished, and that evening Mr. Parham never had opportunity to exchange more than two or three missile sentences with him, though he had endless glimpses of him at a distance, moodily active or artificially gay. Miss Pomander Poole began very seriously by asking Mr. Parham his name, which Sir Bussy, through inadvertency or a momentary forgetfulness, had never mentioned. "Parham is the name of the man you are dying to meet," said Mr. Parham, and did a dazzling smile with all his excellent teeth, except, of course, the molars at the back. "Bussy's more like a flea than ever to-night," said Miss Pomander Poole. "He ought to be called the Quest. Or the little wee Grail. I've seen six people trying to catch him." She was a dark, handsome lady with tormented-looking eyes and more breadth than is fashionable. Her voice was rich and fine. She surveyed the long room before them. "Why in heaven he gives these parties I can't imagine," she said, and sighed and became still, to show she had finished her part in the conversation. Mr. Parham hung fire. The name of Pomander Poole was very familiar to him, but for the life of him at that moment he could not connect it with books, articles, plays, pictures, scandals, society gossip, or the music-hall stage with any of the precision necessary if he was to talk in the easy, helpful, rather amused way becoming to a philosopher in his man-of-the-world mood. So he had to resort to what was almost questioning. "I've known our host only very recently," said Mr. Parham, plainly inviting comment. "He doesn't exist," she said. Apparently we were going to be brilliant, and if so Mr. Parham was not the man to miss his cues. "We've met a sort of simulacrum," he protested. She disregarded Mr. Parham's words altogether. "He doesn't exist," she sighed. "So not only can no-one else catch him, he can't catch himself. He's always turning back the bedclothes and having a good look for himself, but it's never any good." The lady certainly had breadth. "He acquires wealth," said Mr. Parham. "Nature abhors a vacuum," she said with the weariness of one who answers a familiar catechism. She was looking about her with her sombre, appealing eyes as she spoke, as if she were looking for someone to relieve her of Mr. Parham. "To-night the vacuum is full of interesting people." "I don't know a tithe of them." "I'm sufficiently unworldly to find their appearances interesting." "I'm sufficiently worldly to build no hopes on that." A second phase of awkwardness hung between Mr. Parham and his companion. He wished she could be just wiped out of existence and somebody easier put in her place. But she it was who saved the situation. "I suppose it's too early to begin going down to supper," she said; "down or up or wherever it is. These vacuum parties provoke feelings of extraordinary emptiness in me." "Well, let's explore," said Mr. Parham, doing his smile again and taking the lady in tow. "I'm sure I've heard you lecture at the Royal Institution," she opened. "Never been there," said Mr. Parham. "I've seen you there. Usually two or three of you. You're a man of science." "Classical, dear lady. Academic. With a few old and tested ideas like favourite pipes that I brood over again and again—and an inky forefinger." Now that wasn't so bad. Miss Poole looked at him as though she had just observed his existence for the first time. A ray of interest shone and then dissolved into other preoccupations. When we say that Mr. Parham took the lady in tow and found the supper room we defer rather to the way in which he would have liked to have it put. But in fact, as they made their way through the brilliant multitude, she was usually leading in a distraught yet purposive manner by anything between two yards and six. Supper had indeed begun noisily and vigorously, and Miss Poole, still leading, was hailed by a group of people who seemed to be not so much supping as laying in provisions. "What are you saying to-night, Pomander?" cried a handsome young man, and she melted into the centre of the group without any attempt to introduce Mr. Parham. "I'm doubting Bussy's real existence," answered Miss Poole, "and craving for his food." "Like a modern Christian and his God," said someone. Mr. Parham travelled round the outskirts of the group and came to the glittering tablecloth. The board was bountiful, and the only drink, it seemed to Mr. Parham, was champagne, poured from glass jugs. He tried to get drink for Miss Poole, but she was already supplied, so he drank himself, pretended to participate in the conversation of the backs that were turned towards him, looked amused, and ate a couple of chicken sandwiches with an air of careless ease. Miss Poole had brightened considerably. She smacked a large ham-faced Jew on the cheek with a pâté de foie gras sandwich—for no apparent reason. Perhaps she liked him. Or perhaps it was just playfulness. She led up to and repeated her picture of Sir Bussy looking for himself in the bedclothes, and it was hailed with wild delight. Amidst the applause a small blonde youth turned round with every appearance of extreme caution, repeated the delightful invention carefully to Mr. Parham, and then forgot him again instantly. Mr. Parham tried not to feel that the group had—as Mr. Aldous Huxley, in that physiological manner of his, might say—excreted him, but that was very much his feeling, and he was bearing up against it with a second glass of champagne when he discovered Sir Titus Knowles close beside him and evidently also undergoing elimination from an adjacent group of bright young things. "Hullo," he said. "YOU here?" "Rather fun," said Sir Titus insincerely, and then out of nowhere came the most ravishing of youthful blondes, all warmth and loveliness, pretending to be out of breath and addressing herself particularly to the great consultant. "Gentleman of the name of Parham, Sir Titus," she said in a warm husky voice. "Meanwhile something to eat, please." Her immediate need was supplied. "When I asked Bussy what's he like, he said, 'Oh, you'll know him when you see him.' I got to find him, take him, and make him dance. He bet me. Parham. Shall I go round singing it? I suppose there's about a million people here. I'll be thrown out for accosting." She glanced at Sir Titus, detected a directive grimace, became alert to the situation, and faced Mr. Parham. "Of course!" she said with her mouth full. "Right in one. My name's Gaby Greuze. You're the handsomest man here. I might have known Bussy wouldn't put me off with anything cheap." Mr. Parham's expression mingled delight and candid disavowal. "You'll never make me dance," he said. The accidental pressures of the crowd about them brought her extremely close to him. What a lovely face it was, seen so nearly! Impudent, blue eyed! The modelling of the eyelids was exquisite. The little soft corner of the drooping mouth! "I'll make you dance. I c'd make you do no end of things. Cause why?" She took a healthy mouthful of ham and munched. "I like you." She nodded confirmation. Mr. Parham's brilliant smile came unbidden. "I'm not going to resist for a moment, I can assure you," he said and added with the air of a redoubtable character, "Trust me." Like her! He could have eaten her. Yes, this was something better than the apparently premeditated brilliance of Miss Pomander Poole. He forgot that disconcerting person ostentatiously there and then. She might hit them all with sandwiches and dig everybody in the ribs with chocolate éclairs for all he cared. Miss Gaby Greuze addressed herself to her task with deliberation and intelligence. There is nothing so private and intimate in the world as a duologue in a crowd engaged in eating and talking. The sounds of Sir Bussy's party have already been compared to a wind in a forest of metallic leaves. Plates, knives, and dishes were added now to the orchestra. These woven sounds, this metallic tissue in the air seemed to make an arbour, a hiding place for Mr. Parham and his lovely companion. From this secret bower he had but to thrust an arm and get more champagne, salads of diverse sorts in little dishes, everything nice in aspic and fruits in their season and out of it. Then he held out his winnings to her and she smiled her thanks at him with those incredibly lovely eyes and partook. Afterwards they went off with arms entwined, roguishly seeking a "quiet corner" where she could teach him his elements before he made his début on the dancing floor. They got on together wonderfully. His fine classical face bending down to say airy nothings was caressed by the natural silk of her hair. There was something in this experience that reminded Mr. Parham of Horace and the naughtier side of the Latin poets, and anything that reminded him of Horace and the naughtier side of the Latin poets could not, he felt, be altogether vulgar or bad. And there was a moment or so when nothing but his classical training, his high literary and university standing, his sense of the extraordinary number of unexpected corners, casual mirrors, and observant attendants in the Savoy, and also, we must add, something stern and purposeful in himself, restrained him from seizing this most provocative young woman and showing her what a man of learning and spirit could do in the way of passionate pressure with his lips. He was flushed now and none the worse looking for that. "Don't forget what I've told you," said Miss Gaby Greuze, guiding him back towards the more frequented regions of the party; "keep your head—best keep it in your heels—and the next dance is ours. Let's go and sit and look at them, and I'll have a lemonade." Mr. Parham smiled to think what some of his undergraduates would make of it if they could see him now. He sat by his partner with his hand just a little familiarly on the back of her chair and talked like an intimate. "I find Sir Bussy a marvel," he said, blinking at the throng. "He's a very Teasing Marvel," she said. "One of these days he'll get his little face smacked." "I hope not." "It won't get that damned grin of his off. He ought to find something better in life than pulling people's legs—all the money he's got." "I've only just been drawn into the vortex." But something missed fire in that remark, because she said, "It's one of the selectest clubs in London, I believe," and seemed to respect him more. "And NOW," she said, standing up, and prepared to carry Mr. Parham into the dance so soon as sufficient couples had accumulated to veil the naked bareness of the floor. She had strong arms, Mr. Parham realized with amazement, a strong will, and her instructions had been explicit. Mr. Parham had got as near as he was ever likely to get to modern dancing. "Bussy's over there," she said and cut a corner towards their host. He was standing quite alone near the gesticulating black and brown band, concentrated, it would seem, upon their elusive transitions. His hands were deep in his pockets and his head swayed dreamily. Mr. Parham and his partner circled smiling about him twice before he became aware of them. "Gaw!" said Sir Bussy, looking up at last. "It hasn't taken you an hour!" "This him?" she demanded triumphantly. "That's him," said Sir Bussy. "You've lost." "No. It's you have won. I'm quite content. I congratulate you on your dancing, Parham. I knew you'd make a dancer directly I saw you. Given a proper dancing mistress. Life's full of lessons for all of us. How d'you like her? Puts old Velasquez in his place. A young mistress is better than an old master, eh?" "After that insult I'll go and eat you out of house and home," Miss Greuze retorted, missing the point of a remark for the second time that night, and she made Mr. Parham take her down to supper again without completing the dance. He would have liked to go on dancing with her forever, but apparently the dance had served her purpose. She became curiously angry. "Bussy never leaves you with the feel of winning," she said, "even when you've won. I'll do him down one of these days —if I have to bust everything to do it. He puts ideas into one's head." "What ideas?" asked Mr. Parham. "I wonder if I told you..." she speculated with a strange sudden expression in her eyes, and she seemed to measure Mr. Parham. "You can tell me anything," said he. "Sometimes telling means a lot. No—not just yet, anyhow. Very likely never." "I can hope," said Mr. Parham, feeling that might mean anything or nothing. At supper Mr. Parham lost her. He lost her while he was thinking over this queer little passage. He was not to learn what this idea of hers was for quite a long time. A sudden tide of young things like herself, but not so perfectly beautiful, poured round and over her and submerged and took possession of her, caressing her most intimately and calling her pet names: Gaby Sweet! Gaby Perfect! Gaby Darling! some sort of professional sisterhood of dancers or young actresses. He drifted off and was almost entangled again with Miss Pomander Poole, before he realized his danger. For a time he was lonely, seeking but failing to restore contact with his all too popular Gaby. By some fatality during this period he seemed always to be drifting towards Pomander Poole, and an equal fatality drove her towards him. An unconscious dramatic urge in her, a mechanical trick of thinking in gestures, made it all too plain to him how little she wanted to resume their conversation. It looked as if she talked to herself also, but happily he was never quite close enough to hear. Then Lord Tremayne turned up, bright and hearty, with "You never told me what you thought about Westernhanger." Mr. Parham's momentary tension was relieved when the young man added, "It's too late now, so don't let's bother about it. I call it a Disgrace... I doubt if you know many people in this shallow, glittering world. Eh? Ask me for anyone you fancy. I know the blessed lot." He then proceeded to introduce Mr. Parham to two countesses and his sister-in-law, Lady Judy Percival, who happened to be handy, and so departed upon some quest of his own. The introductions, as people say of vaccinations, didn't "take" very well, the three ladies fell into a talk among themselves, and Mr. Parham had a quiet, thoughtful time for a while, surveying the multitude. The elation of his success with Gabrielle Greuze had a little abated. Later on perhaps he would be able to detach her again and resume their talk. He noted Sir Titus in the distance wearing his forehead, he thought, just a trifle too much over one eye and with his arm manifestly about the waist of a slender, dark lady in green. It helped to remind Mr. Parham of his own dignity. He leant against a wall and became observantly still. Strange to reflect that physically this night party given by a London plutocrat in a smart hotel was probably ten times as luminous, multitudinous, healthy, and lovely as any court pageant of Elizabethan or Jacobean days. Twenty times. How small and dusky such an occasion would seem if it could be trailed across this evening's stirring spectacle! Brocades and wired dresses, none of them too fresh and clean, lit by candles and torches. Astounding, the material exuberance of our times. Yet that dim little assembly had its Shakespeare, its Bacon, its Burleigh, and its Essex. It had become history through and through. It was an everlasting fount of book writing, "studies," comments, allusions. The lightest caresses of the Virgin queen were matters now for the gravest of scholars. Narrow rooms, perhaps, but spacious times. But all this present thrust and gaiety!—where did it lead? Could it ever become history in any sense of the word? In the court of Queen Elizabeth they moulded the beginnings of America, they laid the foundations of modern science, they forged the English language which these people here with their slang and curt knowingness of phrase were rapidly turning to dust. A few artists there might be here, a stripling maker of modern comedies. Mr. Parham would grant something for the people who might be unknown to him, and still the balance against this parade was terrible. The jazz music came out of the background and began to pound and massage his nerves. It beat about the gathering monstrously, as though it were looking for him, and then it would seem to discover him and come and rock him. It smote suddenly into his heart with jungle cries of infinite melancholy and then took refuge in dithering trivialities and a pretence of never having been anything but trivial. It became intimate; it became suggestively obscene. Drums and bone clappers and buzzers. He realized how necessary it was to keep on dancing or talking here, talking fast and loud, to sustain one's self against that black cluster of musicians. How alien they were, almost of another species, with their shining exultant faces, their urgent gestures! What would the Virgin Queen, what would her dear and most faithful Burleigh have made of that bronze-faced conductor? Queer to think it was she who had, so to speak, sown the seed of that Virginia from which in all probability he came. He seemed now to be hounding on these whites to some mysterious self-effacement and self-destruction. They moved like marionettes to his exertions... Such exercises of an observant, thoughtful, well stored mind were interrupted by the reappearance of Lord Tremayne, encumbered with one of the countesses he had already once introduced to Mr. Parham. "Here's the very man," he cried joyously. "You know my cousin Lady Glassglade! If anyone can tell you all about Westernhanger, HE can. He talked about it MARVELLOUSLY the other day. Marvellously!" Mr. Parham was left with Lady Glassglade. The Glassglades had a place in Worcestershire and were decidedly people to know. Though what the lady could be doing here was perplexing. Sir Bussy's social range was astonishing. She was a little smiling lady with slightly bleached hair and infinite self-possession. Mr. Parham bowed gracefully. "We are too near the band for talking," he said. "Would you care to go down to the supper room?" "There was such a crowd. I couldn't get anything," said the lady. Mr. Parham intimated that all that could be changed. "And I came on here because I was hungry!" Charming! They got on very well together, and he saw that she had all she needed. He was quietly firm about it. They talked of the place in Worcestershire and of the peculiar ENGLISH charm of Oxfordshire, and then they talked of their host. Lady Glassglade thought Sir Bussy was "simply wonderful." His judgments in business, she was told, were instinctive, so swift he was able to seize on things while other men were just going about and asking questions. He must be worth eight or ten millions. "And yet he strikes me as a LONELY figure," said Mr. Parham. "Lonely and detached." Lady Glassglade agreed that he was detached. "We haven't assimilated him," said Mr. Parham, using his face to express a finely constituted social system suffering from indigestion. "We have not," said Lady Glassglade. "I've met him quite recently," said Mr. Parham. "He seems strangely typical of the times. All this new wealth, so sure, so bold and so incomparably lacking in noblesse oblige." "It IS rather like that," said Lady Glassglade. They both replenished their glasses with more of Sir Bussy's champagne. "When one considers the sense of obligation our old territorial families displayed..." "Exactly," said Lady Glassglade sadly. And then recovering her spirits, "All the same, he's rather fun." Mr. Parham looked wider and further. He glanced down the corridors of history and faced the dark menace of the future. "I wonder," he said. It was quite a time before he and Lady Glassglade got dissociated. Mr. Parham was wistfully humorous about a project of Oxford offering "post graduate courses" for the nouveau riche. Lady Glassglade seemed to be greatly amused by the idea. "With tennis, table manners, grouse shooting and professional golf." Lady Glassglade laughed that well known merry laugh of hers. Mr. Parham was encouraged to elaborate the idea. He invented a Ritz College and a Claridge's College and a Majestic all competing against each other. Loud speakers from the lecture rooms by each bedside. As the night drew on Mr. Parham's memories of Sir Bussy's party lost the sharp distinctness of his earlier impressions. In some way he must have lost Lady Glassglade, because when he was talking of the duty under which even a nominal aristocracy lay to provide leadership for the masses, he looked round to see if she appreciated his point, and she had evidently been gone some time. A sort of golden gloom, a massive and yet humorous solemnity, had slowly but surely replaced the rhythmic glittering of his earlier mental state. He talked to strange people about their host. "He is," said Mr. Parham, "a lonely and leaderless soul. Why? Because he has no tradition." He remembered standing quite quite still for a very long time, admiring and pitying a very beautiful tall and slender woman with a quiet face, who was alone and who seemed to be watching for someone who did not come. He was moved to go up to her and say very softly and clearly to her, "Why so pensive?" Then, as startled and surprised she turned those lovely violet eyes to him, he would overwhelm her with a torrent of brilliant conversation. He would weave fact and fancy together. He would compare Sir Bussy to Trimalchio. He would give a brief but vivid account of the work of Petronius. He would go on to relate all sorts of curious impish facts about Queen Elizabeth and Cleopatra and people like that, and she would be fascinated. "Tell me," he said to a young man with an eye-glass who had drifted near him, and repeated, "Tell me." He found something queer and interesting had happened to his fingers as he gesticulated, and for a time this held his attention to the exclusion of other matters. The young man's expression changed from impatience to interest and sympathy. "Tell you WHAT?" he asked, getting first Mr. Parham's almost autonomous hand and then Mr. Parham himself well into the focus of the eye- glass. "Who is that perfect lovely lady in black and—I think they are called sequins, over there?" "That, sir, is the Duchess of Hichester." "Your servant," said Mr. Parham. His mood had changed. He was weary of this foolish, noisy, shallow, nocturnal, glittering great party. Monstrous party. Party outside history, beginning nowhere, going nowhere. All mixed up. Duchesses and dancers. Professors, plutocrats, and parasites. He wanted to go. Only one thing delayed him for a time; he had completely lost his Gibus hat. He patted his pockets; he surveyed the circumjacent floor. It had gone. Queer! Far off he saw a man carrying a Gibus hat, an unmistakable Gibus. Should he whip it out of his hand with a stern "Excuse me?" But how was Mr. Parham to prove it was his Gibus hat? IV. — NOCTURNEMr. Parham woke up with a start. He remembered now quite clearly that he had put down his Gibus hat on the table in the supper room. Some officious attendant had no doubt whisked it aside. He must write to the Savoy people about it in the morning. "Sir" or "Dear Sirs" or "Mr. Parham presents his compliments." Not too austere. Not too familiar... Ta ra ra—ink a-poo poo. If he had left his Gibus he seemed to have brought home the greater part of the jazz band. He had got it now in his head, and there, with all the irrepressible vigour of the Negro musician, it was still energetically at work. It had a large circular brassy headache for a band stand. Since it rendered sleep impossible and reading for some reason undesirable, Mr. Parham thought it best to lie still in the dark—or rather the faint dawn—abandoning himself to the train of thought it trailed after it. It had been a SILLY evening. Oh! a silly evening! Mr. Parham found himself filled with a sense of missed opportunities, of distractions foolishly pursued, of a lack of continuity and self-control. That girl Gaby Greuze—she had been laughing at him. Anyhow, she might have been laughing at him. HAD she been laughing at him? The endocranial orchestra had evoked the figure of Sir Bussy, alone and unprotected, standing, waving his head to its subtropical exuberances. Moody he had seemed, mentally vacant for the moment. It would of course have been perfectly easy to catch him in that phase, caught him and got hold of him. Mr. Parham could have gone up to him and said something pregnant to him, quietly but clearly. "Vanitas vanitatum," he could have said, for example, and, since one never knows where one may not strike upon virgin ignorance in these new men, a translation might have been added tactfully and at once: "Vanity of vanities." And why? Because he had no past. Because he had lost touch with the past. A man who has no past has no future. And so on to the forward-looking attitude —and the influential weekly. But instead of telling this to Sir Bussy himself, straight and plain, Mr. Parham had just wandered about telling it to Gaby Greuze, to Lady Glassglade, to casual strangers, any old people. "I am not used to action," groaned Mr. Parham to his God. "I am not direct. And opportunity passes me by." For a time he lay and wondered if it would not be good for all scholars and men of thought to be OBLIGED to take decisive action of some sort at least once a day. Then their wills would become nervous and muscular. But then —? Would they lose critical acuteness? Would they become crude? After a time he was back arguing in imagination with Sir Bussy. "You think this life is pleasure," he would say. "It is not. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is efflorescence." "Efflorescence." A good word. This was an Age of Efflorescence. If a parallel was wanted one must read Petronius. When Rome was still devouring the world. That too was an Age of Efflorescence. Everywhere a hastening from one meretricious pleasure to another. Old fashions abandoned for the mere love of novelty. These ridiculous little black evening hats, for instance, instead of the stately Gibus. (Come to think of it, it was hardly worth while to recover that Gibus. He would have to get one of these evening slouches.) No precedence. No restriction. Duchesses, countesses, diplomatists, fashionable physicians, rubbing shoulders with pretty chorus girls, inky adventuresses, artists, tradesmen, actors, movie stars, coloured singers, Casanovas and Cagliostros —PLEASED to mingle with them—no order, no sense of function. One had to say to fellows like Sir Bussy, "Through some strange dance of accident power has come to you. But beware of power that does not carry on and develop tradition. Think of the grave high figures of the past: Cæsar, Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth, Richelieu (you should read my little book), Napoleon, Washington, Garibaldi, Lincoln, William Ewart Gladstone, kings, priests and prophets, statesmen and thinkers, builders of Powers; the increasing purpose, the onward march! Think of great armoured angels and beautiful intent symbolic faces! Our Imperial Destinies! The Destiny of France! Our Glorious Navy! Embattled flags! Here now is the sword of power in your hands! Is it to do nothing more than cut innumerable sandwiches for supper?" Again Mr. Parham spoke aloud in the night. "Nay!" he said. He was suddenly reminded of the champagne. Efflorescence was really a very good word. No, NOT effervescence, efflorescence. If only one had a weekly, what a scathing series of articles reviewing modern tendencies might there not be under that general title! People would ask, "Have you seen 'Efflorescence' again in the Paramount Weekly? Pitiless!" It was a bother that the band inside his headache did not know when to leave off. It went so and it went so... What a lot of champagne there had been! Efflorescence and effervescence. He saw himself giving a little book to Sir Bussy almost sacramentally. "Here," he would say, "is a book to set you thinking. I know it is too much to ask you to read it through, short though it is, but at least read the title, The Undying Past. Does that convey nothing to you?" He saw himself standing gravely while Sir Bussy tried uneasily to get past him. After all efflorescence, as the chemists had taught us to use the word nowadays, implies a considerable amount of original stuff still undecayed. Beneath this glittering froth, this levity, this champagne drinking and jazz dancing, this careless mixing of incompatible social elements, far beneath was the old enduring matter of human life, the toil, the sustained purpose, the precedences, the loyalties, the controls. On the surface the artist of life might seem to be a slightly negroid Fragonard, but below stern spirits were planning the outline of stupendous destinies. Governments and foreign offices were still at their immemorial work; the soldiers gathered in their barracks and the great battleships ploughed remorselessly the vainly slapping waves. Religious teachers inculcated loyalty and obedience; the business men ordered their argosies across the oceans, and the social conflicts muttered about the factories. There was likely to be grave economic trouble this winter. "The grim spectre of want." Sir Bussy indeed lived in a dream world of uninterrupted indulgence. But all dreams come to an end. The spirit of Carlyle, the spirit of the Hebrew prophets entered into Mr. Parham. It was like some obscure stern sect coming to a meeting in a back- street chapel. One by one they came. High above the severe lines of that little back-street facade, the red planet Mars ruled his sky. The band in his headache played wilder, more threatening airs. "Verily," he whispered and, "Repent... Yesss." The real stern things of life gathered unobtrusively but surely, prepared when the time came to blow their clarions, prepared to rouse this trivial world again to fresh effort and grim resolve, to unbend the fluttering flag, to exalt and test the souls of men, to ennoble them by sacrifice and suffering. The wailing multitude would call for guidance. What could men like Sir Bussy give it? "And yet I would have stood by your side," Mr. Parham would say. "I would have stood by your side." For a time Mr. Parham's mind seemed to be full of marching troops, host by host, corps by corps, regiment after regiment, company upon company. They marched to the rhythm of the Negro band, and as they marched they receded. Down a long vista they receded and the music receded. The face of Mr. Parham became firm and hard and calm in the darkness. Stern resolve brooded over the troubled frothing of his thoughts and subdued them. The champagne made one last faint protest. Presently his lips relaxed. His mouth fell a little open... A deep, regular, increasing sawing of his breath told the mouse behind the skirting that Mr. Parham was asleep. V. — THE DEVIOUS PURSUITSuch were the opening phases of the friendship of Mr. Parham and Sir Bussy Woodcock. It was destined to last nearly six years. The two men attracted and repelled each other in about equal measure, and in that perhaps lay the sustaining interest of their association. In its more general form in Mr. Parham's mind, the relationship was a struggle to subdue this mysteriously able, lucky adventurer to the Parham conception of the universe, to involve him in political affairs and advise and direct him when these affairs became perplexing, to build him up into a great and central figure (with a twin star) in the story of the Empire and the world. In its more special aspect the relationship was to be one of financial support for Mr. Parham and the group of writers and university teachers he would gather round him, to steer the world —as it had always been steered. When the history of the next half century came to be written people would say, "There was the finger of Parham," or, "He was one of Parham's Young Men." But how difficult it was to lead this financial rhinoceros, as Mr. Parham, in the secrecy of his own thoughts, would sometimes style his friend, towards any definite conception of a rôle and a policy outside the now almost automatic process of buying up everything and selling it for more. At times the creature seemed quite haphazard, a reckless spendthrift who could gain more than he spent. He would say, "Gaw! I'm going to have a lark," and one had either to drop out of the world about him or hang on to him into the oddest and strangest of places. There were phases of passionate resentment in Mr. Parham's experience, but then again there were phases of clear and reasonable hope. Sir Bussy would suddenly talk about political parties with a knowledge, a shrewdness that amazed his friend. "Fun to push 'em all over," he would say. And once or twice he talked of Rothermere, Beaverbrook, Burnham, Riddel, with curiosity and something like envy. Late at night on each occasion it was, other people, people one suspected, were present, and Mr. Parham could not bring him to the point of a proposal. Then off went everything like dead leaves before a gale, a vast hired yacht to the Baltic, to Maine, Newfoundland, and the Saint Lawrence River, and the strangest people packed aboard. Or Mr. Parham found himself surveying the Mediterranean from a Nice hotel of which Sir Bussy had taken a floor for Christmas. Once or twice he would come most unexpectedly to his Mentor, so full of purpose in his eyes, that Mr. Parham felt the moment had come. Once he took him suddenly just they two, to see Stravinsky's Noces at Monte Carlo and once in London a similar humility of approach preluded a visit to hear the Lener Quartette. "Pleasant," said Sir Bussy, coming away. "Pleasant sounds. It cleans and soothes. And more. It's—" his poor untrained mind, all destitute of classical precedents, sought for an image—"it's like putting your head down a rabbit hole and hearing a fairy world going on. A world neither here nor there. Is there anything more to it than that?" "Oh!" said Mr. Parham, as though he cried to God; "windows upon heaven!" "Gaw!" "We went there—we went there SAILCLOTH. It turned us to silk." "Well—DID it? It sounds as if it was telling you something, but does it tell you anything? This music. It gets excited and joyous, for no reason, just as you get excited and joyous in dreams; it's sad and tender —about nothing. They're burying a dead beetle in fairyland. It stirs up appropriate memories. Your mind runs along according to the rhythm. But all to no effect. It doesn't give you anything real. It doesn't let you out. Just a finer sort of smoking," said Sir Bussy. Mr. Parham shrugged his shoulders. No good to get this savage books on "How to Listen to Music." He did listen, and this was what he made of it. But one sentence lingered in Mr. Parham's mind: "It doesn't," said Sir Bussy, "LET YOU OUT." Did he want to be let out of this gracious splendid world of ours, built foursquare on the pillars of history, with its honours, its precedences, its mighty traditions? Could he mean that? Mr. Parham was reminded of another scene when Sir Bussy had betrayed very much that same thought. They were recrossing the Atlantic to the Azores after visiting Newfoundland. The night was gloriously calm and warm. Before turning in Mr. Parham, who had been flirting rather audaciously with one of the pretty young women who adorned Sir Bussy's parties so abundantly, came out on the promenade deck to cool his nerves and recall some lines of Horace that had somehow got bent in his memory and would return to him only in a queerly distorted form. He had had a moment of daring, and the young thing had pretended fright and gone to bed. Fun—and essentially innocent. At the rail Mr. Parham discovered his host, black and exceedingly little against the enormous deep-blue sky. "Phosphorescence?" asked Mr. Parham in an encouraging tenor. Sir Bussy did not seem to hear. His hands were deep in his trouser- pockets. "Gaw," he said. "Look at all this wet—under that GHASTLY moon!" At times his attitudes took Mr. Parham's breath away. One might think the moon had just appeared, that it had no established position, that it was not Diana and Astarte, Isis and a thousand sweet and lovely things. "Curious," this strange creature went on. "We're half outside the world here. We are. We're actually on a bulge, Parham. That way you go down a curve to America, and THAT way you go down a curve to your old Europe—and all that frowsty old art and history of yours." "It was 'frowsty old Europe,' as you call it, sent this yacht up here." "No fear! it got away." "It can't stay here. It has to go back." "This time," said Sir Bussy after a pause. He stared for a moment or so at the moon with, if anything, an increasing distaste, made a gesture of his hand as if to dismiss it, and then, slowly and meditatively, went below, taking no further notice of Mr. Parham. But Mr. Parham remained. What was it this extravagant little monster wanted, in this quite admirable world? Why trouble one's mind about a man who could show ingratitude for that gracious orb of pale caressing light? It fell upon the world like the silver and gossamer robes of an Indian harem. It caressed and provoked the luminosities that flashed and flickered in the water. It stirred with an infinite gentleness. It incited to delicately sensuous adventure. Mr. Parham pushed his yachting cap back from his forehead in a very doggish manner, thrust his hands into the pockets of his immaculate ducks and paced the deck, half hoping to hear a rustle or a giggle that would have confessed that earlier retreat insincere. But she really had turned in, and it was only when Mr. Parham had done likewise that he began to think over Sir Bussy and his ocean of "wet—under that GHASTLY moon."... But this work, it is well to remind ourselves and the reader, is the story of a metapsychic séance and its stupendous consequences, and our interest in these two contrasted characters must not let it become a chronicle of the travels and excursions of Sir Bussy and Mr. Parham. They went once in a multitudinous party to Henley, and twice they visited Oxford together to get the flavour. How Mr. Parham's fellow dons fell over each other to get on good terms with Sir Bussy, and how Mr. Parham despised them! But bringing Sir Bussy down made a real difference to Mr. Parham's standing at Oxford. For a time Sir Bussy trifled with the Turf. The large strange parties he assembled at the Hangar and at Buntingcombe and Carfex House perpetually renewed Mr. Parham's amazement that he should know so many different sorts of people and such queer people and be at such pains to entertain them and so tolerant of some of the things they did. They got up to all sorts of things, and he let them. It seemed to Mr. Parham he was chiefly curious to know what they got out of what they got up to. Several times they discussed it together. "Not a horse on the Turf," said Sir Bussy, "is being run absolutely straight." "But surely—!" "Honourable men there, certainly. They keep the rules because there'd be no fun in it if they didn't. It would just go to pieces, and nobody wants it to go to pieces. But do you think they run a horse all out to win every time? Nobody dreams of such a thing." "You mean that every horse is pulled?" "No. No. NO. But it isn't allowed to strain itself unduly at the beginning. That's quite a different thing." Mr. Parham's face expressed his comprehension of the point. Poor human nature! "Why do you bother about it?" "My father the cab driver used to drive broken-down race horses he said, and was always backing Certs. It interfered with my education. I've always wanted to see this end of it. And I inherit an immense instinct for human weakness from my mother." "But it's costly?" "Not a bit of it," said Sir Bussy, with a sigh. "I seem always to see what they are up to. Before they see I see it. I make money on the Turf. I ALWAYS make money." His face seemed to accuse the universe, and Mr. Parham made a sympathetic noise. When Mr. Parham went to Newmarket or a race meeting with Sir Bussy he saw to it that his own costume was exactly right. At Ascot he would be in a silky gray morning coat and white spatterdashes and a gray top hat with a black band; the most sporting figure there he was; and when they went to Henley he was in perfect flannels and an Old Arvonian blazer, not a new one but one a little faded and grubby and with one patch of tar. He was a perfect yachtsman on yachts, and at Cannes he never failed to have that just-left-the- tennis-round-the-corner touch, which is the proper touch for Cannes. His was one of those rare figures that could wear plus-fours with distinction. His sweaters were chosen with care, for even a chameleon can be correct. Never did he disfigure a party; often, indeed, he would pull one together and define its place and purpose. The yachtsman ensemble was the hardest to preserve because Mr. Parham had more than an average disposition towards seasickness. There he differed from Sir Bussy, who was the better pleased the rougher the water and the smaller the boat. "I can't help it," said Sir Bussy. "It's the law of my nature. What I get I keep." But if Mr. Parham's reactions were prompt they were cheerful. "Nelson," he would say, after his time of crisis. "He would be sick for two or three days every time he went to sea. That consoles me. The spirit indeed is unwilling but the flesh is weak." Sir Bussy seemed to appreciate that. By thus falling into line with things, by refusing to be that social misfit, the intractable and untidy don, Mr. Parham avoided any appearance of parasitism in his relations with Sir Bussy and kept his own self-respect unimpaired. He was "RIGHT THERE"; he was not an intrusion. He had never dressed well before, though he had often wanted to do so, and this care for his costume made rather serious inroads upon his modest capital, but he kept his aim steadily in view. If one is to edit a weekly that will sway the world one must surely look man of the world enough to do it. And there came a phase in his relations with Sir Bussy when he had to play the rôle of a man of the world all he knew how. It has to be told, though for some reasons it would be pleasanter to omit it. But it is necessary to illuminate the factors of antagonism and strife within this strange association with its mutual scrutiny, its masked and hidden criticisms. Perhaps—if the reader is young... Yet even the young reader may want to know. Let us admit that this next section, though illuminating, is not absolutely essential to the understanding of the story. It is not improper, it is not coarse, but frankly—it envisages something—shall we call it "Eighteenth Century"?—in Mr. Parham's morals. If it is not an essential part of the story it is at any rate very necessary to our portrait of Mr. Parham. VI. — AN INDISCRETIONHappily we need not enter into details. The method and manner of the affair are quite secondary. We can draw a veil directly the latchkey of Miss Gaby Greuze clicks against the latch of Miss Gaby Greuze's sumptuous flat, and it need not be withdrawn again until Mr. Parham re-emerges from that same flat looking as respectable as a suburban embezzler going to church. As respectable? Except for a certain glory. An exaltation. Such as no mere thief of money ever knew. Fragments of a conversation follow, a conversation it is undesirable to locate. "I've always liked you since first we met," said Gaby... "It was a sort of promise."... "How quick you were to understand. You ARE quick! I see you watching people—summing them up."... "It must be wonderful to know all you know," said Gaby, "and think all you think. You make me feel—so shallow!" "What need have YOU for the helm of Athene?" Mr. Parham exclaimed. "Well, a woman likes to feel at the helm now and then," said Gaby, with her usual infelicity of apprehension, and for a time she seemed moody. But she said Mr. Parham was very beautifully made. His smile when she said it lit the flat. And so strong. Did he take much exercise? Tennis. She would play tennis if she wasn't afraid of muscle in the wrong place. Exercise, she said, was ever so much better than taking exercises except for that. Of course, there WERE exercises one took. Some that made one supple and were good for one's carriage and figure. Had Mr. Parham ever seen her sort of exercises? Well... They were lovely exercises. She patted his cheek and said, "NICE man!" She said that several times. And she said, "You are what I should call simple." "Delicate," she added, noting a question in his face, "but not complex." She said this with a distant, pensive look in her eyes. She was admiring the sheen on her beautiful arm and wrist, and then she said, "And when one is being as lovely as one can be to you, whatever else you do or say, anyhow, you don't say, 'Gaw!'" She compressed her lips and nodded. "Gaw!" she repeated; "as though he had found you out in something that not for a minute you had ever felt or intended. "Making you feel—like some insect." She began to weep unrestrainedly, and suddenly she threw herself once more into Mr. Parham's arms. Poor, poor little woman, sensitive, ardent, generous, and so misunderstood!... When Mr. Parham met the unsuspecting Sir Bussy again after this adventure a great pride and elation filled him. Touched with a not unpleasant remorse. He had to put an extra restraint upon his disposition towards condescension. But afterwards he found Sir Bussy looking at him curiously, and feelings of a less agreeable kind, a faint apprehension, mingled with his glory. When Mr. Parham encountered Gaby Greuze once more, and it is notable how difficult it became to meet her again except in the most transitory way, this glory of his glowed with a passionate warmth that called for the utmost self- control. But always a man of honour respects a modest woman's innate craving for secrecy. Not even the roses in her bosom must suspect. She was evasive; she wished to be evasive. Delicately and subtly Mr. Parham came to realize that for him and his fellow sinner it was best that it should be as if this bright delicious outbreak of passion had never occurred. Nevertheless, there it was; he was one up on Sir Bussy.
BOOK II. — HOW THE MASTER SPIRIT ENTERED THE WORLDI. — DISPUTES AND TENSION OVER SIR BUSSY'S DINNER TABLEThis mutual frequentation of Sir Bussy and Mr. Parham necessarily had intermissions, because of Mr. Parham's duty to his university and his influence upon the rising generation, and because also of perceptible fluctuations in Sir Bussy's need of him. And as time went on and the two men came to understand each other more acutely, clashes of opinion had to be recognized. Imperceptibly Sir Bussy passed from a monosyllabic reception of Mr. Parham's expositions of the state of the world and the life of man to more definitely skeptical comments. And at times Mr. Parham, because he had so strong a sense of the necessity of dominating Sir Bussy and subduing his untrained ignorance to intelligible purposes, became, it may be, a little authoritative in his argument and a trifle overbearing in his manner. And then Sir Bussy would seem almost not to like him for a time and would say, "Gaw," and turn away. For a few weeks, or even it might be for a month or so, Mr. Parham would have no more abnormal social adventures, and then quite abruptly and apropos of any old thing Sir Bussy would manifest a disposition to scrutinize Mr. Parham's point of view again, and the excursions and expeditions would be renewed. A hopeful friendship it was throughout on Mr. Parham's side, but at no time was it a completely harmonious one. He found Sir Bussy's choice of associates generally bad and often lamentable. He was constantly meeting people who crossed and irritated him beyond measure. With them he would dispute, even acrimoniously. Through them it was possible to say all sorts of things at Sir Bussy that it might have been undesirable to say directly to him. There were times when it seemed almost as if Sir Bussy invited people merely to annoy Mr. Parham, underbred contradictory people with accents and the most preposterous views. There was a crazy eclecticism about his hospitality. He would bring in strange Americans with notions rather than ideas about subjects like currency and instalment buying, subjects really more impossible than indecency, wrong sorts of Americans, carping and aggressive, or he would invite Scandinavian ideologists, or people in a state of fresh disillusionment or fresh enthusiasm from Russia, even actual Bolsheviks, Mr. Bernard Shaw and worse, self-made authors, a most unpleasant type, wild talkers like Mr. J. B. S. Haldane, saying the most extravagant things. Once there was a Chinaman who said at the end of a patient, clear exposition of the British conception of self-government and the part played by social and intellectual influence in our affairs, "I see England at least is still looled by mandolins," whatever that might mean. He nodded his gold spectacles towards Mr. Parham, so probably he imagined it did mean something. Most subtly and insidiously Sir Bussy would sow the seeds of a dispute amid such discordant mixtures and sit in a sort of intellectual rapture, mouth dropping, while Mr. Parham, sometimes cool but sometimes glowing, dealt with the fallacies, plain errors, misconceptions, and misinformation that had arisen. "Gaw!" Sir Bussy would whisper. No support, no real adhesion, no discipleship; only that colourless "Gaw." Even after a quite brilliant display. It was discouraging. Never the obvious suggestion to give this fount of sound conviction and intellectual power its legitimate periodic form. But the cumulative effect of these disputes upon Mr. Parham was not an agreeable one. He always managed to carry off these wrangles with his colours flying, for he had practised upon six generations of undergraduates; he knew exactly when to call authority to the aid of argument and, in the last resort, refer his antagonist back to his studies effectively and humiliatingly, but at bottom, in its essence, Mr. Parham's mental substance was delicate and fine, and this succession of unbelieving, interrogative, and sometimes even flatly contradictory people left their scars upon him—scars that rankled. It was not that they produced the slightest effect upon his essential ideas of the Empire and its Necessary Predominance in World Affairs, of the Historical Task and Destiny of the English, of the Rôles of Class and Law in the world and of his Loyalties and Institutions, but they gave him a sense of a vast, dangerous, gathering repudiation of these so carefully shaped and established verities. The Americans, particularly since the war, seemed to have slipped away, mysteriously and unawares, from the commanding ideas of his world. They brought a horrible tacit suggestion to Sir Bussy's table that these ideas were now queer and old-fashioned. Renegades! What on earth had they better? What in the names of Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Raleigh, the Mayflower, Tennyson, Nelson, and Queen Victoria had these people better? Nowadays more and more they seemed to be infected with an idea that they were off and away after some new and distinctive thing of their own. There they were, and there were a hundred and twenty million of them with most of the gold in the world—out of hand. It was not that they had any ideas worth considering to put in the place of Mr. Parham's well wrought and tested set. Positive suggestions he could deal with. One foolish visitor breathed the words "World State." Mr. Parham smiled all his teeth at him and waved his fingers. "My DEAR sir," said Mr. Parham, with a kind of deep richness in his tone. And it sufficed. Another said, "League of Nations." "Poor Wilson's decaying memorial," said Mr. Parham. All the time, behind his valiant front this gnawing away of Mr. Parham's confidence went on, his confidence that these ideas of his, right though they certainly were, would be honestly and properly endorsed and sustained, at home and abroad, when next they were put to the test. In 1914 they had been tested; had they been overstrained? Imperceptibly he drifted into that state of nervous uncertainty we have attempted to convey in our opening section. Was history keeping its grip? Would the game still be played? The world was going through a phase of moral and intellectual disintegration; its bonds relaxed; its definite lines crumbled. Suppose, for example, a crisis came in Europe and some strong man at Westminster flashed the sword of Britannia from the scabbard. Would the ties of Empire hold? Suppose the Dominions cabled "This is not our war. Tell us about it." They had already done something of the sort when the Turks had returned to Constantinople. They might do it again and more completely. Suppose the Irish Free State at our backs found our spirited gesture the occasion for ungracious conduct. Suppose instead of the brotherly applause and envious sympathy of 1914, a noise like the noise of skinners sharpening their knives came from America. Suppose once again in our still unconscripted land Royal Proclamations called for men and that this time, in stead of another beautiful carnival of devotion like that of 1914—how splendid that had been! —they preferred to remain interrogative. Suppose they asked, "Can't it be stopped?" or, "Is the whole thing worth while?" The Labour Movement had always had a left wing nefariously active, undermining the nation's forces, destroying confidence, destroying pride in service, willingness to do and die. Amazing how we tolerated it! Suppose, too, the business men proved even more wicked than they were in 1914. For Mr. Parham knew. They had been wicked; they had driven a bargain. They were not the patriots they seemed. An after-dinner conversation at Carfex House crystallized these floating doubts. When it took place Sir Bussy had already embarked upon those psychic experiments that were to revolutionize his relations to Mr. Parham. But this dinner was an interlude. The discussion centred upon and would not get away from the topic of the Next War. It was a man's dinner, and the most loquacious guest was an official from Geneva, Sir Walter Atterbury, a figure of importance in the League of Nations Secretariat, an apparently unassuming but really very set and opinionated person. But there was also an American banker, Mr. Hamp, a gray-faced, elderly spectacled man, who said strange things in a solemn manner, and there was Austin Camelford, the industrial chemist, who was associated with Sir Bussy in all sorts of business enterprises and who linked with him the big combinations of Romer Steinhart Crest & Co. He it was who recalled to Mr. Parham's mind the cynicism of the business men in 1914. He was a lank and lean creature with that modern trick of saying the wildest nonsense as though it was obvious and universally recognized fact. There was also a young American from one of these newfangled Western universities where they teach things like salesmanship and universal history. He was too young to say very much, but what he said was significant. At first it was Atterbury did most of the talking and, he talked evidently with the approval of the others. Then Mr. Parham was moved to intervene and correct some of the man's delusions—for delusions they plainly were. The talk became more general, and certain things that came from Camelford and Hamp brought home to Mr. Parham's mind the widening estrangement of industry and finance from the guiding concepts of history. Towards the end Sir Bussy by some fragmentary comments of an entirely hostile sort, set the seal to a thoroughly disconcerting evening. Sir Walter, trailing clouds of idealism from this Geneva of his, took it for granted that everyone present wanted to see war staved off forever from the world. Apparently he could conceive no other view as possible in intelligent company. And yet, oddly enough, he realized that the possibility of fresh wars was opening wider every year. He showed himself anxious and perplexed, as well he might, distressed by a newborn sense of the inadequacy of his blessed League to ward off the storms he saw gathering about it. He complained of the British government and the French government, of schools and colleges and literature, of armaments and experts, of a world-wide indifference to the accumulating stresses that made for war. The Anglo-American naval clash had distressed him particularly. It was the "worst thing that had happened for a long time." He was facty and explicit after the manner of his type. Four or five years ago one did not get these admissions of failure, these apprehensions and heart sinkings, from Geneva. Mr. Parham let him run on. He was all for facts from well informed sources, and so far from wanting to suppress Sir Walter, his disposition was to give him all the rope he wanted. If that weekly had been in existence he would have asked him to write a couple of articles for it. At the normal rates. And then flicked aside his pacificist implications with a bantering editorial paragraph or so. At this dinner he resorted to parallel tactics. For a time he posed as one under instruction, asking questions almost respectfully, and then his manner changed. His intelligent interrogations gave place to a note of rollicking common sense. He revealed that this official's admissions of the impotence of the League had been meat and drink to him. He recalled one or two of Sir Walter's phrases and laughed kindly with his head a little on one side. "But what did you EXPECT?" he said. "What DID you expect?" And after all was said and done, asked Mr. Parham, was it so bad? Admittedly the extravagant hopes of some sort of permanent world peace, some world Utopia, that had run about like an epidemic in 1918, were, we realized now, mere fatigue phenomena, with no force of will behind them. The French, the Italians, most lucid minded and realistic of peoples, had never entertained such dreams. Peace, now, as always, rested on an armed balance of power. Sir Walter attempted contradiction. The Canadian boundary? "The pressure in that case lies elsewhere," said Mr. Parham, with a confidence that excluded discussion of what these words might mean. "Your armed balance of power is steadily eating up every scrap of wealth industrial progress can produce," said Sir Walter. "The military force of France at present is colossal. All the European budgets show an increase in armaments, and people like Mussolini jeer at the Kellogg Pact even as they sign it. The very Americans make the clearest reservation that the Pact doesn't mean anything that matters. They won't fight for it. They won't let it interfere with the Monroe Doctrine. They sign the Pact and reserve their freedom of action and go on with the armament race. More and more the world drifts back to the state of affairs of 1913. "The most serious thing," Sir Walter went on, "is the increasing difficulty of keeping any counter movement going. It's the obstinate steadiness of the drive that dismays me. It's not only that the accumulation of wealth is being checked and any rise in the standard of living prevented by these immense preparations, but the intellectual and moral advance is also slowing down on account of it. Patriotism is killing mental freedom. France has ceased to think since 1919, and Italy is bound and gagged. Long before actual war returns, freedom of speech may be held up by the patriotic censorship in every country in Europe. What are we to do about it? What is there to do?" "I suggest that there is nothing to do," said Mr. Parham. "And I don't in the least mind. May I speak with the utmost frankness—as one man to another—as a realist in a world of human beings, very human beings? Frankly, I put it to you that we do not want this pacificist movement of yours. It is a dream. The stars in their courses fight against it. The armed man keepeth his house until a stronger cometh. Such is the course of history, my dear sir. So it has ever been. What is this free speech of yours but the liberty to talk nonsense and set mischief afoot? For my own part I would not hesitate for a moment in the choice between disorganizing babble and national necessity. Can you really mourn the return of discipline and order to countries that were in a fair way to complete social dissolution?" He recalled one of those striking facts that drive reality home to the most obdurate minds. "In 1919, when my niece went to Italy for her honeymoon, she had two handbags stolen from the train, and on her return her husband's valise went astray from the booked luggage and never turned up again. That was the state of affairs before the strong hand took hold. "NO," said Mr. Parham in a clear, commanding tone, so as to keep the rostrum while he returned to the general question. "As to the facts I see eye to eye with you. Yet not in the same spirit. We enter upon a phase of armament mightier than that which preceded the Great War. Granted. But the broad lines of the struggle shape themselves, they shape themselves—rationally and logically. They are in the nature of things. They cannot be evaded." Something almost confidential crept into his manner. He indicated regions of the tablecloth by gestures of his hands, and his voice sank. Sir Walter watched him, open eyed. His brows wrinkled with something like dismay. "Here," said Mr. Parham, "in the very centre of the Old World, illimitably vast, potentially more powerful than most of the rest of the world put together—" he paused as if fearing to be overheard—"is RUSSIA. It really does not matter in the least whether she is Czarist or Bolshevik. She is the final danger—the overwhelming enemy. Grow she must. She has space. She has immense resources. She strikes at us, through Turkey as always, through Afghanistan as always, and now through China. Instinctively she does that; necessarily. I do not blame her. But preserve ourselves we must. What will Germany do? Cleave to the East? Cleave to the West? Who can tell? A student nation, a secondary people, a disputed territory. We win her if we can but I do not count on her. The policy imposed upon the rest of the world is plain. WE MUST CIRCUMVENT RUSSIA; we must encircle this threat of the great plains before it overwhelms us. As we encircled the lesser threat of the Hohenzollerns. In time. On the West, here, we outflank her with our ally France and Poland her pupil; on the East with our ally Japan. We reach at her through India. We strive to point the spearhead of Afghanistan against her. We hold Gibraltar on her account; we watch Constantinople on her account. America is drawn in with us, necessarily our ally, willy-nilly, because she cannot let Russia strike through China to the sea. There you have the situation of the world. Broadly and boldly seen. Fraught with immense danger—yes. Tragic—if you will. But fraught also with limitless possibilities of devotion and courage." Mr. Parham paused. When it was evident he had fully paused Sir Bussy whispered his habitual monosyllable. Sir Walter cracked a nut and accepted port. "There you are," he said with a sigh in his voice, "if Mr.—?" "Parham, sir." "If Mr. Parham said that in any European capital from Paris to Tokio, it would be taken quite seriously. Quite seriously. That's where we are, ten years from the Armistice." Camelford, who had been listening hitherto, now took up the discourse. "That is perfectly true," he said. "These governments of ours are like automata. They were evolved originally as fighting competitive things and they do not seem able to work in any other way. They prepare for war and they prepare war. It is like the instinctive hunting of a pet cat. However much you feed the beast, it still kills birds. It is made so. And they are made so. Until you destroy or efface them that is what they will do. When you went to Geneva, Sir Walter, I submit with all respect you thought they'd do better than they have done. A lot better?" "I did," said Sir Walter. "I confess I've had a lot of disillusionment —particularly in the last three or four years." "We live in a world of the wildest paradox to-day," said Camelford. "It's like an egg with an unbreakable shell, or a caterpillar that has got perplexed and is half a winged insect and the other half crawler. We can't get out of our governments. We grow in patches and all wrong. Certain things become international—cosmopolitan. Banking, for instance,"—he turned to Hamp. "Banking, sir, has made immense strides in that direction since the war," said Hamp. "I say without exaggeration, immense strides. Yes. We have been learning to work together. As we never thought of doing in pre-war days. But all the same, don't you imagine we bankers think we can stop war. We know better than that. Don't expect it of us. Don't put too much on us. We can't fight popular clamour, and we can't fight a mischievous politician who stirs it up. Above all, we can't fight the printing press. While these sovereign governments of yours can turn paper into money we can be put out of action with the utmost ease. Don't imagine we are that mysterious unseen power, the Money Power, your parlour Bolsheviks talk about. We bankers are what conditions have made us and we are limited by our conditions." "OUR position is fantastic," said Camelford. "When I say 'our' I mean the chemical industries of the world, my associates, that is, here and abroad. I'm glad to say I can count Sir Bussy now among them." Sir Bussy's face was a mask. "Take one instance to show what I mean by 'fantastic,'" Camelford went on. "We in our various ramifications, are the only people able to produce gas on the scale needed in modern war. Practically now all the chemical industries of the world are so linked that I can say 'we.' Well, we have perhaps a hundred things necessary for modern warfare more or less under our control, and gas is the most important. If these sovereign Powers which still divide the world up in such an inconvenient way, contrive another war, they will certainly have to use gas, whatever agreements they may have made about it beforehand. And we, our great network of interests, are seeing to it that they will have plenty of gas, good reliable gas at reasonable business rates, all and more than they need. We supply all of them now and probably if war comes we shall still supply all of them—both sides. We may break up our associations a bit for the actual war, but that will be a mere incidental necessity. And so far we haven't been able to do anything else in our position than what we are doing. Just like you bankers, we are what circumstances have made us. There's nothing sovereign about US. We aren't governments with the power to declare war or make peace. Such influence as we have with governments and war offices is limited and indirect. Our position is that of dealers simply. We sell gas just as other people sell the Army meat or cabbages. "But see how it works out. I was figuring at it the other day. Very roughly, of course. Suppose we put the casualties in the next big war at, say, five million and the gas ones at about three—that, I think, is a very moderate estimate, but then you see I'm convinced the next war will be a gas war—every man gassed will have paid us, on the average, anything between four-pence and three-and-tenpence, according to the Powers engaged, for the manufacture, storage, and delivery of the gas he gets. My estimate is naturally approximate. A greater number of casualties will, of course, reduce the cost to the individual. But each of these predestined gasees—if I may coin a word—is now paying something on that scale year by year in taxation—and we of the big chemical international are seeing that the supply won't fail him. We're a sort of gas club. Like a goose club. Raffle at the next great war. YOUR ticket's death in agony, YOURS a wheezing painful lung and poverty, YOU'RE a blank, lucky chap! You won't get any good out of it, but you won't get any of the torture. It seems crazy to me, but it seems reasonable to everyone else, and what are we to fly in the face of the Instincts and Institutions of Mankind?" Mr. Parham played with the nutcrackers and said nothing. This Camelford was an offensive cynic. He would rob even death in battle of its dignity. Gasees! "The Gasees Club doesn't begin to exhaust the absurdities of the present situation," Camelford went on. "All these damned war offices, throughout the world have what they call secrets. Oh!—Their SECRETS! The fuss. The precautions. Our people in England, I mean our war-office people, have a gas, a wonderful gas—L. It's General Gerson's own pet child. His only child. Beastly filth. Tortures you and then kills you. He gloats over it. It needs certain rare earths and minerals that we produce at Cayme in Cornwall. You've heard of our new works there—rather a wonderful place in its way. Some of our young men do astonishing work. We've got a whole string of compounds that might be used for the loveliest purposes. And in a way they are coming into use. Only unhappily you can also get this choke stink out of one of our products. Or THEY can—and we have to pretend we don't know what they want it for. Secret, you know. Important military secret. The scientific industrial world is keeping secrets like that for half a dozen governments... It's childish. It's insane." Mr. Parham shook his head privately as one who knows better. "Do I understand," said Hamp, feeling his way cautiously, "that you know of that new British gas—I've heard whispers—?" He broke off interrogatively. "We have to know more or less. We have to sit on one side and look on and pretend not to see or know while your spies and experts and our spies and experts poke about trying to turn pure science into pure foolery... Boy scout spying and boy scout chemists... It can't go on. And yet it IS going on. That is the situation. That is where the world's persistence in independent sovereign governments is taking us. What can we do? You say you can do nothing. I wonder. We might cut off the supply of this pet gas for the British; we might cut off certain high explosives and other material that are the darling secrets of the Germans and your people. There'd have to be a tussle with some of our own associates. But I think we could do it now... Suppose we did make the attempt. Would it alter things much? Suppose they had the pluck to arrest us. The Common Fool would be against us." "The Common Fool!" cried Mr. Parham, roused at last. "By that, sir, you mean that the whole tenor of human experience would be against you. What else can there be but these governments at which you cavil? What do they stand for? The common life and thought of mankind. And—forgive me if I put you in difficulties—who are YOU? Would you abolish government? Would you set up some extraordinary super-government, some freemasonry of bankers and scientific men to rule the world by conspiracy?" "AND scientific men! Bankers AND scientific men! Oh, we TRY to be scientific men in our way," protested Hamp, seeking sympathy by beaming through his spectacles at Sir Bussy. "I think I would look for some new way of managing human affairs," said Camelford, answering Mr. Parham's question. "I think sooner or later we shall have to try something of the sort. I think science will have to take control." "That is to say Treason and a new International," flashed Mr. Parham. "Without even the social envy of the proletariat to support you!" "Why not?" murmured Sir Bussy. "And how are you superior people going to deal with the Common Fool —who is, after all, mankind?" "You could educate him to support you," said Atterbury. "He's always been very docile when you've caught him young." "Something very like a fresh start," said Camelford. "A new sort of world. It's not so incredible. Modern political science is in its infancy. It's a century or so younger than chemistry or biology. I suppose that to begin with we should have a new sort of education, on quite other lines. Scrap all these poisonous national histories of yours, for example, and start people's minds clean by telling them what the world might be for mankind." Sir Bussy nodded assent. Mr. Parham found his nod faintly irritating. He restrained an outbreak. "Unhappily for your idea of fresh starts," he said, "the Days of Creation are over, and now one day follows another." He liked that. It was a good point to make. In the pause Sir Walter addressed himself to Camelford. "That idea of yours about the gasees club is very vivid. I could have used that in a lecture I gave, a week ago." The young American, who had taken no part in the discussion hitherto, now ventured timidly: "I think perhaps you Europeans, if I might say so, are disposed to underestimate the sort of drive there was behind the Kellogg Pact. It may seem fruitless—who can tell yet?—but mind you there was something made that gun. It's in evidence, even if it's no more than evidence. The Kellogg Pact isn't the last proposition of that sort you'll get from America." He reddened as he said his piece, but clearly he had something definite behind what he said. "I admit that," said Sir Walter. "In America there is still an immense sentiment towards world peace, and you find something of the same sort in a less developed form everywhere. But it gets no organized expression, no effective development. It remains merely a sentiment. It isn't moving on to directive action. That's what's worrying my mind more and more. Before we can give that peace feeling real effectiveness there has to be a tremendous readjustment of ideas." Mr. Parham nodded his assent with an air of indifference and consumed a few grapes. And then it seemed to him that these other men began to talk with a deliberate disregard of what he had been saying. Or, to be more precise, with a deliberate disregard of the indisputable correctness of what he had been saying. It was not as if it had not been said, it was not as if it had been said and required answering, but it was as if a specimen had been laid upon the table. In the later stages of Sir Bussy's ample and varied dinners Mr. Parham was apt to experience fluctuations of mood. At one moment he would be solid and strong and lucidly expressive, and then he would flush, and waves of anger and suspicion would wash through his mind. And now suddenly, as he listened to the talk—and for a while he did no more than listen—he had that feeling which for some time had been haunting him more and more frequently, that the world, with a sort of lax malice, was slipping away from all that was sane and fine and enduring in human life. To put it plainly, these men were plotting openly and without any disguise, the subordination of patriotism, loyalty, discipline, and all the laboured achievements of statecraft to some vague international commonweal, some fantastic organization of cosmopolitan finance and cosmopolitan industrialism. They were saying things every whit as outrageous as the stuff for which we sent the talkative Bolshevik spinning back to his beloved Russia. And they were going on with this after all he had said so plainly and clearly about political realities. Was it any good to speak further? Yet could he afford to let it go unchallenged? There sat Sir Bussy, drinking it in! They talked. They talked. "When first I went to Geneva," said Sir Walter, "I didn't realize how little could be done there upon the basis of current mentality. I didn't know how definitely existing patriotisms were opposed to the beginnings of an international consciousness. I thought they might fade down in time to a generous rivalry in the service of mankind. But while we try to build up a permanent world peace away there in Geneva, every schoolmaster and every cadet corps in England and every school in France is training the next generation to smash anything of the sort, is doing everything possible to carry young and generous minds back to the exploded delusions of wartime patriotism... All over the world it seems to be the same." The young American, shy in the presence of his seniors, could but make a noise of protest like one who stirs in his sleep. Thereby he excepted his native land. "Then," said Mr. Parham, doing his smile but with a slight involuntary sneer of his left nostril, "you'd begin this great new civilization that is to come, by shutting up our schools?" "He'd CHANGE 'em," corrected Sir Bussy. "Scrap schools, colleges, churches, universities, armies, navies, flags, and honour, and start the millennium from the ground upwards," derided Mr. Parham. "Why not?" said Sir Bussy, with a sudden warning snarl in his voice. "That," said Hamp, with that profundity of manner, that air of marking an epoch by some simple remark, of which only Americans possess the secret, "is just what quite a lot of us are hesitating to say. WHY NOT? Sir Bussy, you got right down to the bottom of things with that 'Why not?'" The speaker's large dark gray eyes strongly magnified by his spectacles went from face to face; his cheeks were flushed. "We've scrapped carriages and horses, we're scrapping coal fires and gas lighting, we've done with the last big wooden ships, we can hear and see things now on the other side of the world and do a thousand—miracles, I call them—that would have been impossible a hundred years ago. What if frontiers too are out of date? What if countries and cultures have become too small? Why should we go on with the schools and universities that served the ends of our great-grandfathers, and with the governments that were the latest fashion in constitutions a century and a half ago?" "I presume," said Mr. Parham unheeded, addressing himself to the flowers on the table before him, "because the dealings of man with man are something entirely different from mechanical operations." "I see no reason why there shouldn't be invention in psychology, just as much as in chemistry or physics," said Camelford. "Your world peace, when you examine it," said Mr. Parham, "flies in the face of the fundamental institutions—the ancient and tested institutions of mankind—the institutions that have made man what he is. That is the reason." "The institutions of mankind," contradicted Camelford, with tranquil assurance, "are just as fundamental and no more fundamental than a pair of trousers. If the world grows out of them and they become inconvenient, it won't kill anything essential in man to get others. That, I submit, is what he has to set about doing now. He grows more and more independent of the idea that his pants are him. If our rulers and teachers won't attempt to let out or replace the old garments, so much the worse for them. In the long run. Though for a time, as Sir Walter seems to think, the tension may fall on us. In the long run we shall have to get a new sort of management for our affairs and a new sort of teacher for our sons—however tedious and troublesome it may be to get them—however long and bloody the time of change may be." "Big proposition," said Mr. Hamp. "Which ought to make it all the more attractive to a citizen of the land of big propositions," said Camelford. "Why should we be so confoundedly afraid of scrapping things?" said Sir Bussy. "If the schools do mischief and put back people's children among the ideas that made the war, why not get rid of 'em? Scrap our stale schoolmasters. We'd get a new sort of school all right." "And the universities?" said Mr. Parham, amused, with his voice going high. Sir Bussy turned on him and regarded him gravely. "Parham," he said slowly, "you're infernally well satisfied with the world. I'm not. You're afraid it may change into something else. You want to stop it right here and now. Or else you may have to learn something new and throw away the old bag of tricks. Yes—I know you. That's your whole mind. You're afraid that a time will come when all the important things of to-day will just not matter a rap; when what that chap Napoleon fancied was his Destiny or what old Richelieu imagined to be a fine forward foreign policy, will matter no more to intelligent people than—" he sought for an image and drew it slowly out of his mind—"the ideas of some old buck rabbit in the days of Queen Elizabeth." The attack was so direct, so deliberately offensive in its allusion to Mr. Parham's masterly studies of Richelieu, that for the moment that gentleman had nothing to say. "Gaw," said Sir Bussy, "when I hear talk like this it seems to me that this Tradition of yours is only another word for Putrefaction. The clean way with Nature is dying and being born. Same with human institutions—only more so. How can we live unless we scrap and abolish? How can a town be clean without a dust destructor? What's your history really? Simply what's been left over from the life of yesterday. Egg shells and old tin cans." "Now THAT'S a thought," said Hamp and turned appreciative horn spectacles to Sir Bussy. "The greatest of reformers, gentlemen," said Hamp, with a quavering of the voice, "told the world it had to be born again. And that, as I read the instruction, covered everybody and everything in it." "It's a big birth we want this time," said Camelford. "God grant it isn't a miscarriage," said Sir Walter. He smiled at his own fancy. "If we WILL make the birth chamber an arsenal, we may have the guns going off—just at the wrong moment." Mr. Parham, still and stiff, smoked his excellent cigar. He knocked off his ash into his ash tray with a firm hand. His face betrayed little of his resentment at Sir Bussy's insult. Merely it insisted upon dignity. But behind that marble mask the thoughts stormed. Should he get up right there and depart? In silence? In contemptuous silence? Or perhaps with a brief bitter speech: "Gentlemen, I've heard enough folly for tonight. Perhaps you do not realize the incalculable mischief such talk as this can do. For me at least international affairs are grave realities." He raised his eyes and found Sir Bussy, profoundly pensive but in no way hostile, regarding him. A moment—a queer moment, and something faded out in Mr. Parham. "Have a little more of this old brandy," said Sir Bussy in that persuasive voice of his. Mr. Parham hesitated, nodded gravely—as it were forgivingly —seemed to wake up, smiled ambiguously, and took some more of the old brandy. But the memory of that conversation was to rankle in Mr. Parham's mind and inflame his imagination like a barbed and poisoned arrowhead that would not be removed. He would find himself reprobating its tendencies aloud as he walked about Oxford, his habit of talking to himself was increased by it, and it broke his rest of nights and crept into his dreams. A deepening hatred of modern scientific influences that he had hitherto kept at the back of his mind, was now, in spite of his instinctive resistance, creeping into the foreground. One could deal with the financial if only the scientific would leave it alone. The banker and the merchant are as old as Rome and Babylon. One could deal with Sir Bussy if it were not for the insidious influence of such men as Camelford and their vast materialistic schemes. They were something new. He supplied force, but they engendered ideas. He could resist and deflect, but they could change. That story about an exclusive British gas...! With Camelford overlooking it like a self-appointed God. Proposing to cut off the supply. Proposing in effect to stand out of war and make the game impossible. The strike, the treason, of the men of science and the modern men of enterprise. Could they work such a strike? The most fretting it was of all the riddles in our contemporary world. And while these signs of Anglo-Saxon decadence oppressed him, came Mussolini's mighty discourse to the Italian Nation on the Eve of the General Elections of 1929. That ringing statement of Fascist aims, that assertion of the paramount need of a sense of the state, of discipline and energy, had a clarity, a nobility, a boldness and power altogether beyond the quality of anything one heard in English. Mr. Parham read it and re-read it. He translated it into Latin and it was even more splendid. He sought to translate it, but that was more difficult, into English prose. "This is a man," said Mr. Parham. "Is there no other man of his kind?" And late one evening he found himself in his bedroom in Pontingale Street before his mirror. For Mr. Parham possessed a cheval glass. He had gone far in his preparation for bed. He had put on his dressing gown, leaving one fine arm and shoulder free for gesticulation. And with appropriate movements of his hand, he was repeating these glorious words of the great dictator. "Your Excellencies, Comrades, Gentlemen," he was saying. "Now do not think that I wish to commit the sin of immodesty in telling you that all this work, of which I have given a summarised and partial résumé, has been activated by my mind. The work of legislation, of putting schemes into action, of control and of the creation of new institutions, has formed only a part of my efforts. There is another part, not so well-known, but the existence of which will be manifest to you through the following figures which may be of interest: I have granted over 60,000 audiences; I have dealt with 1,887,112 cases of individual citizens, received directly by my Private Secretary... "In order to withstand this strain I have put my body in training; I have regulated my daily work; I have reduced to a minimum any loss of time and energy and I have adopted this rule, which I recommend to all Italians. The day's work must be methodically and regularly completed within the day. No work must be left over. The ordinary work must proceed with an almost mechanical regularity. My collaborators, whom I recall with pleasure and whom I wish to thank publicly, have imitated me. The hard work has appeared light to me, partly because it is varied, and I have resisted the strain because my will was sustained by my faith. I have assumed—as was my duty—both the small and the greater responsibilities." Mr. Parham ceased to quote. He stared at the not ungraceful figure in the mirror. "Has Britain no such Man?" II. — HOW SIR BUSSY RESORTED TO METAPSYCHICSBut the real business we have in hand in this book is to tell of the Master Spirit. A certain prelude has been necessary to our story, but now that we are through with it we can admit it was no more than a prelude. Here at the earliest possible moment the actual story starts. There shall be nothing else but story-telling now right to the end of the book. Mr. Parham's metapsychic experiences were already beginning before the conversation recorded in the previous section. They began, or at least the seed of them was sown, in a train bringing Sir Bussy and a party of friends back to London from Oxford after one of Mr. Parham's attempts to impose something of the ripeness and dignity of that ancient home of thought, upon his opulent friend. It was the occasion of Lord Fluffingdon's great speech on the imperial soul. They had seen honorary degrees conferred upon a Royal Princess, an Indian Rajah, the expenditure secretary of a wealthy American millionaire and one of the most brilliant and successful collectors of honours in the world, three leading but otherwise undistinguished conservative politicians, and a Scotch comedian. It had been a perfect day in the sunshine, rich late Gothic old gardens, robes, smiles, and mellow compliments. The company had been the picked best of Who's Who dressed up for the occasion, and Lord Fluffingdon had surpassed expectation. In the compartment with Sir Bussy and Mr. Parham were Hereward Jackson, just in the enthusiastic stages of psychic research, and Sir Titus Knowles, and the spacious open-mindedness of Sir Oliver Lodge, slow, conscientious, and lucid, ruled the discussion. Hereward Jackson started the talk about psychic phenomena. Sir Titus Knowles was fiercely and vulgarly skeptical and early lost his always very thin and brittle temper. Sir Bussy said little. Nearly six years of intermittent association had lit no spark of affection between Sir Titus and Mr. Parham. For Mr. Parham Sir Titus combined all that is fearful in the medical man, who at any moment may tell you to take off everything and be punched about anywhere, and all that is detestable in the scientist. They rarely talked, and when they did contradictions flew like sparks from the impact. "The mediums as a class are rogues and tricksters," said Sir Titus. "It's common knowledge." "Ah, THERE!" said Mr. Parham, cutting in, "there you have the positivism and assurance of—if you'll pardon the adjective—old-fashioned science." "Precious few who haven't been caught at it," said Sir Titus, turning from Hereward Jackson to this new attack upon his flank. "On SOME occasions, but not on ALL occasions," said Mr. Parham. "We have to be logical even upon such irritating questions as this." Normally he would have kept himself smilingly aloof and skeptical. It was his genuine hatred for the harsh mentality of Sir Titus that had drawn him in. But there he was, before he knew it, taking up a position of open-minded inquiry close to Sir Oliver's, and much nearer to Jackson's omnivorous faith, than to doubt and denial. For a time Sir Titus was like a baited badger. "Look at the facts!" he kept barking. "Look at the actual facts!" "That's just what I HAVE looked at," said Hereward Jackson... It did not occur to Mr. Parham that he had let himself in for more than a stimulating discussion until Sir Bussy spoke to him and the others, but chiefly to him, out of his corner. "I didn't know Parham was open-minded like this," he said. And presently: "Have you ever seen any of this stuff, Parham? We ought to go and see some, if you think like that." If Mr. Parham had been alert he might have nipped the thing in the bud then and there, but he was not alert that afternoon. He hardly realized that Sir Bussy had pinned him. And so all that follows followed. III. — METAPSYCHICS IN BUGGINS STREETFor a month or so Mr. Parham opposed and evaded Sir Bussy's pressure towards psychic research. It wasn't at all the sort of thing to do, nowadays. It had been vulgarized. Their names were certain to be used freely in the most undignified connections. And at the bottom of his heart Mr. Parham did not believe that there was the shadow of an unknown reality in these obscure performances. But never had he had such occasion to appreciate the force and tenacity of Sir Bussy's will. He would lie awake at nights wondering why his own will was so inadequate in its resistance. Was it possible, he questioned, that a fine education and all the richness and subtlety that only the classics, classical philosophy, and period history can impart, were incompatible with a really vigorous practical thrust. Oxford educated for quality, but did it educate for power? Yet he had always assumed he was preparing his Young Men for positions of influence and power. It was a disagreeable novelty for him to ask if anything was wrong with his own will and if so, what it was that was wrong. And it seemed to him that if only he had believed in the efficacy of prayer, he would have prayed first and foremost for some tremendous affluence of will that would have borne away Sir Bussy's obstinacy like a bubble in a torrent. So that it would not be necessary to evade and oppose it afresh day after day. And at last, as he perceived he must, yield to it. All the private heart searchings of this period of resistance and delay were shot with the reiteration of what had been through all the six years of intercourse an unsettled perplexity. What was Sir Bussy doing this for? Did he really want to know that there was some sort of chink or retractile veil that led out of this sane world of ours into worlds of unknown wonder, and through which maybe that unknown wonder might presently break into our common day? Did he hope for his "way out of it" here? Or was he simply doing this—as he seemed to have done so many other queer things—to vex, puzzle, and provoke queer reactions in Mr. Parham, Sir Titus, and various other intimates? Or was there a confusion in that untrained intelligence between both sets of motives? Whatever his intentions, Sir Bussy got his way. One October evening after an exceptionally passoverish dinner at Marmion House, Mr. Parham found himself with Sir Titus, Hereward Jackson, and Sir Bussy in Sir Bussy's vast smooth car, in search of 97 Buggins Street, in the darker parts of the borough of Wandsworth, Mr. Hereward Jackson assisting the chauffeur spasmodically, unhelpfully, and dangerously at the obscurer corners. The peculiar gifts of a certain Mr. Carnac Williams were to be studied and considered. The medium had been recommended by the best authorities, and Hereward Jackson had already visited this place before. Their hostess was to be old Mrs. Mountain, a steadfast pillar in the spiritualist movement in dark days and prosperous days alike, and this first essay would, it was hoped, display some typical phenomena, voices, messages, perhaps a materialization, nothing very wonderful, but a good beginner's show. 97 Buggins Street was located at last, a dimly lit double-fronted house with steps up to a door with a fanlight. Old Mrs. Mountain appeared in the passage behind the small distraught domestic who had admitted her guests. She was a comfortable, shapeless old lady in black, with a mid-Victorian lace cap, lace ruffles, and a lace apron. She was disposed to be nervously affable and charming. She welcomed Hereward Jackson with a copious friendliness. "And here's your friends," she said. "Mr. Smith, shall we say? And Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown. Naming no names. Welcome all! Last night he was WONDERFUL." Hereward Jackson explained over his shoulder: "Best to be pseudonymous," he said. She ushered them into a room of her own period, with a cottage piano topped with a woollen mat on which were a pot of some fine-leaved fern and a pile of music, a mantel adorned with a large mirror and many ornaments, a central table with a red cloth and some books, a gas pendant, hanging bookshelves, large gilt-framed oleograph landscapes, a small sofa, a brightly burning fire, and a general air of comfort. Cushions, small mats, and antimacassars abounded, and there was an assemblage of stuffed linnets and canaries under a glass shade. It was a room to eat muffins in. Four people, rather drawn together about the fire and with something defensive in their grouping, stood awaiting the new inquirers. An overgrown-looking young man of forty with a large upturned white face and an expression of strained indifference was "my son Mr. Mountain." A little blonde woman was Miss—something or other; a tall woman in mourning with thin cheeks, burning eyes, and a high colour was "a friend who joins us," and the fourth was Mr. Carnac Williams, the medium for the evening. "Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown," said Mrs. Mountain, "and this gentleman you know." The little blonde woman glowed the friendliness of a previous encounter at Hereward Jackson, and Mr. Mountain hesitated and held out a flabby hand to shake Sir Bussy's. Mr. Parham's first reaction to the medium was dislike. The man was obviously poor, and the dark, narrow eyes in his white face were quick and evasive. He carried his hands bent at the wrist as if he reserved the palms and his manner was a trifle too deferential to Sir Bussy for that complete lack of information about the visitors attributed to the home team. "I can't answer for anything," said Mr. Williams in flat, loud tones. "I'm merely a tool." "A wonderful tool last night," said Mrs. Mountain. "I knew nothing," said Mr. Williams. "It was very wonderful to ME," said the tall woman in a soft musical voice and seemed restrained by emotion from saying more. There was a moment's silence. "Our normal procedure," said Mr. Mountain, betraying a slight lisp in his speech, "is to go upstairs. The room on the first floor is prepared—oh! you'll be able to satisfy yourselves it's not been prepared in any wrong sense. Recently we have been so fortunate as to get actual materializations—a visitant. Our atmosphere has been favourable... If nothing happens to change it... But shall we go upstairs?" The room upstairs seemed very bare in comparison with the crowded cosiness of the room below. It had been cleared of bric-à-brac. There was a large table surrounded by chairs. One of them was an armchair, destined for Mrs. Mountain, and by it stood a small occasional table bearing a gramophone; the rest were those chairs with bun-like seats so characteristic of the Early Maple period. A third table carried some loose flowers, a tambourine, and a large slate, which was presently discovered to be painted with phosphorescent paint. One corner had been curtained off. "That's the cabinet," said Mrs. Mountain. "You're quite welcome to search it." On a small table inside it there were ropes, a candle, sealing wax, and other material. "We aren't for searching to-night," said Sir Bussy. "We're just beginners and ready to take your word for almost anything. We want to get your point of view and all that. It's afterwards we'll make trouble." "A very fair and reasonable way of approaching the spirits," said Williams. "I feel we'll have a good atmosphere." Mr. Parham looked cynically impartial. "If we're not to apply any tests..." began Sir Titus, with a note of protest. "We'll just watch this time," said Sir Bussy. "I'll let you have some tests all right later." "We don't mind tests," said Williams. "There's a lot about this business I'd like to have tested up to the hilt. For I understand it no more than you do. I'm just a vehicle." "Yaa," said Sir Titus. Mr. Mountain proceeded with his explanations. They had been working with a few friends at spirit appearances. Their recent custom had been to get the most skeptical person present to tie up Williams in his chair as hard and firmly as possible. Then hands were joined in the normal way. Then, in complete darkness, except for the faint glimmer of phosphorescence from the slate, they waited. Mrs. Mountain would keep the gramophone going and had a small weak flashlight for the purpose. The person next her could check her movements. The thread of music was very conducive to phenomena, they found. They need not wait in silence, for that sometimes produced a bad atmosphere. They might make light but not frivolous conversation or simple comments until things began to happen. "There's nothing mysterious or magical about it," said Mr. Mountain. "YOU'LL do the tying up," said Hereward Jackson to Sir Titus. "I know a knot or two," said Sir Titus ominously. "Do we strip him first?" "Oo!" said Mr. Mountain reproachfully and indicated the ladies. The question of stripping or anything but a superficial searching was dropped. Mr. Parham stood in unaffected boredom studying the rather fine lines of the lady in mourning while these preliminaries were settled. She was, he thought, a very sympathetic type. The other woman was a trifle blowsy and much too prepossessed by the medium and Hereward Jackson. The rest of these odd people he disliked, though he bore himself with a courtly graciousness towards old Mrs. Mountain. What intolerable folly it all was! After eternities of petty fussing the medium was tied up, the knots sealed, and the circle formed. Mr. Parham had placed himself next to the lady in black, and on the other side he fell into contact with the flabby Mountain. Sir Bussy, by a sort of natural precedence, had got between the medium and the old lady. Sir Titus, harshly vigilant, had secured the medium's left. The lights were turned out. For several dreary centuries nothing happened except a dribble of weak conversation and an uneasy rustling from the medium. Once he moaned. "HE'S GOING OFF!" said Mrs. Mountain. The finger of the lady in mourning twitched, and Mr. Parham was stirred to answering twitches, but it amounted to nothing, and Mr. Parham's interest died away. Sir Bussy began a conversation with Hereward Jackson about the prospects of Wildcat for the Derby. "DARLING MUMMY," came in a faint falsetto from outside the circle. "What was that?" barked Sir Titus sharply. "Ssh!" from Sir Bussy. The lady beside Mr. Parham stirred slightly, and the pressure of her hand beside his intensified. She made a noise as though she wanted to speak, but nothing came but a sob. "My DEAR lady!" said Mr. Parham softly, deeply moved. "Just a fla, Mummy. I can't stop to-night. The's others want to come." Something flopped lightly and softly on the table; it proved afterwards to be a chrysanthemum. There was a general silence, and Mr. Parham realized that the lady beside him was weeping noiselessly. "Milly—sweetheart," she whispered. "Good-night, dear. Good-night." Mr. Parham hadn't reckoned on this sort of thing. It made his attention wander. His fine nature responded too readily to human feeling. He hardly noticed at first a queer sound that grew louder, a slobbering and slopping sound that was difficult to locate. "That's the ectoplasm," said old Mrs. Mountain, "working." Mr. Parham brought his mind, which had been concentrated on conveying the very deepest sympathy of a strong silent man through his little finger, back to the more general issues of the séance. Mrs. Mountain started the gramophone for the fourth or fifth repetition of that French horn solo when Tristan is waiting for Isolde. One saw a dim circle of light and her hand moving the needle. Then the light went out with a click and Wagner resumed. Mr. Mountain was talking to the spinster lady about the best way to get back to Battersea. "Ssssh!" said Sir Titus, as if blowing off steam. Things were happening. "DAMN!" said Sir Titus. "Steady!" said Sir Bussy. "Don't break the circle." "I was struck by a tin box," said Sir Titus, "or something as hard!" "No need to move," said Sir Bussy unkindly. "Struck on the back of the head," said Sir Titus. "It may have been the tambourine," said Mr. Mountain. "Flas!" said the medium's voice, and something soft, cold, and moist struck Mr. Parham in the face and fell in his hand. "Keep the circle, please," said old Mrs. Mountain. Certainly this was exciting in a queer, tedious, unpleasant sort of way. After each event there was a wide expectant interval. "Our friend is coming," said the medium's voice. "Our dear visitant." The tambourine with a faint jingle floated over the table far out of reach. It drifted towards Sir Titus. "If you touch me again!" threatened Sir Titus, and the tambourine thought better of it and, it would seem, made its way back to the other table. A light hand rested for a moment on Mr. Parham's shoulder. Was it a woman's hand? He turned quietly and was startled to find something with a faint bluish luminosity beside him. It was the phosphorescent slate. "Look!" said Hereward Jackson. Sir Titus grunted. A figure was gliding noiselessly and evenly outside the circle. It held the luminous slate and raised and lowered this against its side to show a robed woman's figure with a sort of nun's coif. "She's come," sighed Mrs. Mountain very softly. It seemed a long time before this visitant spoke. "Lee-tle children," said a womanly falsetto. "Leetle children." "Who's the lady?" asked Sir Bussy. The figure became invisible. After a little pause the medium answered from his place. "St. Catherine." The name touched a fount of erudition in Mr. Parham. "WHICH St. Catherine?" "Just St. Catherine." "But there were TWO St. Catherines—or more," said Mr. Parham. "Two who had mystical marriages with the Lord. St. Catherine of Alexandria, whose symbol is the wheel—the patroness of spinsters generally and the Catherinettes of Paris in particular—and St. Catherine of Siena. There's a picture by Memling—perfectly lovely thing. And, yes—there WAS a third one, a Norwegian St. Catherine, if I remember rightly. And possibly others. Couldn't she tell us? I would so like to know." A silence followed this outbreak. "She's never told us anything of that," said Mrs. Mountain. "I THINK it's St. Catherine of Siena," said the spinster lady. "She is a very sweet lady, anyhow," said Hereward Jackson. "Can we be told this?" asked Sir Bussy. The medium's voice replied very softly. "She prefers not to discuss these things. For us she wishes to be just our dear friend, the Lady Catherine. She comes on a mission of mercy." "Don't press it," said Sir Bussy. After a tedious interval St. Catherine became faintly visible again. She kissed Sir Titus softly on the top of his high forehead, leaving him audibly unreconciled, and then she floated back to the left of Mr. Parham. "I came to tell you," she said, "that the little one is happy—so happy. She plays with flas—lovelier flas than you ever saw. Asphodel. And lovely flas like that. She is with me, under my special care. So she was able to come to you."... The dim figure faded into utter darkness. "Farewell, my DEAR ones." "Gaw!" said a familiar voice. The gramophone ran down with a scratching sound. A deep silence followed, broken for a time only by the indignant breathing of Sir Titus Knowles. "WET kisses," he said. The darkness was impenetrable. Then Mrs. Mountain began to fumble with the gramophone, revealing a little glow of light that made the rest of the darkness deeper; a certain amount of scraping and shuffling became audible, and the medium was heard to groan. "I am tired," he complained, "I am terribly tired." Then, to judge by a string of sloppy noises, he seemed to be retracting his ectoplasm. "That was very interesting," said Sir Bussy suddenly. "All the same—" he went on and then paused—"it isn't what I want. It was very kind of St. Catherine, whichever St. Catherine she was, to leave Bliss and all that and visit us. And I LIKED her kissing Sir Titus. It showed a nice disposition. He's not a man you'd kiss for pleasure. But... I don't know if any of you have seen that great fat book by Baron Schrenck-Notzing. Sort of like a scientific book. I've been reading that. What HE got was something different from this." His voice paused interrogatively. "Could we have the light up?" said Mr. Mountain. "In a minute I shall be able to bear it," said Williams, very faint and faded. "Just one more minute." "Then we shall SEE," said Sir Titus. "I think we might break the circle now," said Mrs. Mountain and rose rustlingly. The hand Mr. Parham had been touching slipped out of his reach. The light seemed blinding at first; the room was bleakly uncomfortable, and everybody looked ghastly. The medium's face was a leaden white, he was leaning back in his chair, in which he was still tied, with his head rolling slackly from side to side as though his neck were broken. Sir Titus set himself to examine his knots forthwith. It reminded Mr. Parham of the examination of a casualty. Sir Bussy watched Sir Titus. Mr. Mountain and Hereward Jackson stood up and leant over the table. "The sealing wax intact," said Sir Titus. "The knots good and twisted round the chair, just as I left them. HULLO!" "Found something?" asked Hereward Jackson. "Yes. The thread of cotton between the coat collar and the chair back has been snapped." "That always gets broken somehow," said Mr. Mountain, with scientific detachment. "But WHY?" asked Sir Titus. "We needn't bother about that now," said Sir Bussy, and the medium made noises in his throat and opened and closed his eyes. "Shall we give him water?" asked the spinster lady. Water was administered. Sir Bussy was brooding over his fists on the table. "I want more than this," he said and addressed himself to the medium. "You see, Mr. Williams, this is a very good show you have put up, but it isn't what I am after. In this sort of thing there are degrees and qualities, as in all sorts of things." Williams still appeared very dazed. "Were there any phenomena?" he asked of the company. "Wonderful," said old Mrs. Mountain, with reassuring nods of the head, and the spinster lady echoed, "Beautiful. It was St. Catherine again." The lady in black was too moved for words. Sir Bussy regarded Williams sideways with that unpleasing dropping of his nether lip. "You could do better than this under different conditions," he said in a quasi-confidential manner. "Test conditions," said Sir Titus. "This is a friendly atmosphere, of course," said the medium and regarded Sir Bussy with a mixture of adventure and defensiveness in his eyes. He had come awake very rapidly and was now quite alert. The water had done him good. "I perceive that," said Sir Bussy. "Under severer conditions the phenomena might be more difficult." "That too I perceive." "I'd be willing to participate in an investigation," said Williams in a tone that was almost businesslike. "After what I've seen and heard and felt to-night," said Sir Titus, "I prophesy only one end to such an investigation—Exposure." "How CAN you say such a thing?" cried the spinster lady and turned to Hereward Jackson. "Tell him he is mistaken." Hereward Jackson had played a markedly unaggressive part that evening. "No doubt he is," he said. "Let us be open-minded. I don't think Mr. Williams need shirk an investigation under tests." "Fair tests," said Williams. "I'd see they were fair," said Hereward Jackson. He became thoughtful. "There is such a thing as assisted phenomena," he mused aloud. "For my part, mind you," said Williams, "I'm altogether passive, whatever happens." "But," said Mr. Mountain in tenoring remonstrance to Sir Bussy, "doesn't this evening satisfy you, sir?" "This was a very amiable show," said Sir Bussy. "But it left a lot to be desired." "It did," said Sir Titus. "You mean to say there was anything not straightforward?" challenged Mr. Mountain. "That DEAR voice!" cried old Mrs. Mountain. "The BEAUTY of it!" said the spinster lady. "If you force me to speak," said Sir Titus, "I accuse this man Williams of impudent imposture." "That goes too far," said Hereward Jackson; "much too far. That's dogma on the other side." Mr. Parham had stood aloof from the dispute he saw was gathering. He found it ugly and painful. He disbelieved in the phenomena almost as strongly as he disliked the disbelief of Sir Titus. He felt deeply for the little group which had gone on so happily from one revelation to another, invaded now by brawling denial, and brawling accusations, threatened by brawling exposure. Particularly he felt for the lady in mourning. She turned her eyes to him as if in appeal, and they were bright with unshed tears. Chivalry and pity stormed his heart. "I agree," he said. "I agree with Mr. Hereward Jackson. It is possible the medium, consciously or not, ASSISTED the phenomena. But the messages were REAL." Her face lit with gratitude and became an altogether beautiful face. And he did not even know her name! "And the spirit of my dear one WAS present?" she implored. Mr. Parham met the eye of Sir Titus and met it with hard determination. "Something came to us here from outside," he said; "a message, an intimation, the breath of a soul—call it what you will." And having said this, the seed of belief was sown in Mr. Parham. For never before had he found reason to doubt his own word. "And you are interested? You want to learn more?" pressed old Mrs. Mountain. Mr. Parham went deeper and assented. Had he heard Sir Bussy say, "Gaw," or was that expletive getting on his nerves? "Now, let's get things a bit clearer," said Williams. He was addressing himself directly to Sir Bussy. "I'm not answerable for what happens on these occasions. I go off. I'm not present, so to speak. I'm a mere instrument. You know more of what happens than I do." He glanced from Sir Bussy to old Mrs. Mountain and then came back to Sir Bussy. There was an air of scared enterprise about him that made Mr. Parham think of some rascally valet who plans the desertion of an old and kindly master while still in his employment. It was as plain as daylight that he knew who Sir Bussy was and regarded him as a great opportunity, an opportunity that had to be snatched even at the cost of some inconsistency. His manner admitted an element of imposture in all they had seen that night. And it was plain that Hereward Jackson's convictions moved in accordance with his. And yet he seemed to believe, and Hereward Jackson seemed to believe, that there was more than trickery in it. Insensibly Mr. Parham assimilated the "something in it" point of view. He found himself maintaining it quite ably against Sir Titus. Williams, after much devious talk, came at last to his point. "If you four gentlemen mean business, and if one could be treated as some of these pampered foreign mediums are treated," he said, "these Eva C's and Eusapia Palladinos and such-like, one might manage to give as good or better than they give. I'm only a passive thing in these affairs, but have I ever had a fair chance of showing what was in me?" "Gaw," said Sir Bussy. "You shall have your chance." Williams was evidently almost as frightened as he was grateful at his success. He thought at once of the need of securing a line of retreat if that should prove necessary. He turned to the old lady. "They'll strip me naked and powder my feet. They'll take flashlight photographs of me with the ectoplasm oozing out of me. They'll very likely kill me. It won't be anything like our good times here. But when they are through with it you'll see they'll have justified me. They'll have justified me and justified all the faith you've shown in me." IV. — THE CARFEX HOUSE SEANCESOnce Sir Bussy had launched himself and his friends upon these metapsychic experiments he pursued the investigation with his customary intemperance. Carnac Williams was only one of several lines of investigation. It is a commonplace of psychic literature that the more a medium concentrates on the ectoplasm and materializations, the less is he or she capable of clairvoyance and the transmission of spirit messages. Carnac Williams was to develop along the former line. Meanwhile Sir Bussy took competent advice and secured the frequent presence of the more interesting clairvoyants available in London. Carfex House was spacious, and Sir Bussy had a great supply of secretaries and under butlers. Rooms were told off for the materialization work and others for the reception of messages from the great beyond, and alert and attentive helpers learnt the names and business of the experts and showed them to their proper apartments. The materialization quarters were prepared most elaborately by Sir Titus Knowles. He was resolved to make them absolutely spirit-tight; to make any ectoplasm that was exuded in them feel as uncomfortable and unwelcome as ectoplasm could. He and Williams carried on an interminable wrangle about hangings, lighting, the legitimate use of flashlight photography, and the like. Sir Titus even stood out, most unreasonably, against a black velvet cabinet and conceded Williams black tights for the sake of decency with an ill grace. "We aren't going to have any women about," said Sir Titus. Williams showed himself amazingly temperamental and Sir Titus was mulishly obstinate; Sir Bussy, Hereward Jackson, and Mr. Parham acted as their final court of appeal and pleased neither party. Hereward Jackson was consistently for Williams. On the whole Williams got more from them than Sir Titus, chiefly because of Mr. Parham's lack of intellectual sympathy with the latter. Constantly the casting vote fell to Mr. Parham. With secret delight he heard of—and on several occasions he assisted at—an increasing output of ectoplasm that it entirely defeated Sir Titus to explain. He was forbidden, by the rules and the hypothesis that it might conceivably cause the death of his adversary, to leap forward and grab the stuff. It bubbled out of the corners of Williams's mouth, a horrid white creeping fluid, it flowed from his chest, it accumulated upon his knees; and it was withdrawn with a sort of sluggish alacrity. On the ninth occasion this hitherto shapeless matter took on the rude suggestions of hands and a human face, and a snapshot was achieved. The tests and restrictions imposed upon the trances of the clairvoyants were, from the nature of the case, less rigorous than those directly controlled by Sir Titus, and their results developed rather in advance of the Williams manifestations. The communications differed widely in quality. One medium professed a Red Indian control and also transmitted messages from a gentleman who had lived in Susa, "many years ago, long before the time of Abraham." It was very difficult to determine where the Red Indian left off and where the ancient from Susa began. Moreover, "bad spirits" got in on the Susa communications, and departed friends of Hereward Jackson sent messages to say that it was "splendid" where they were, and that they were "so happy," and wished everyone could be told about it, but faded out under further interrogation in the most unsatisfactory fashion. At an early stage Sir Bussy decided that he had had "enough of that gammon" and this particular practitioner was paid off and retired. There were several such failures. The details varied, but the common factor was a lack of elementary credibility. Two women mediums held out downstairs, while upstairs in the special room Williams, week by week, thrust his enlarging and developing ectoplasm into the pale and formidable disbelief of Sir Titus. Of the two women downstairs one was a middle-aged American with no appeal for Mr. Parham; the other was a much more interesting and attractive type. She was dusky, with a curiously beautiful oval olive-tinted face and she said she was the young widow of an English merchant in Mauritius. Her name was Nanette Pinchot. She was better educated than the common run of psychic material and had very high recommendations from some of the greatest investigators in Paris and Berlin. She spoke English with a pleasing staccato. Neither she nor the American lady professed to be controlled by the usual ghost, and this was new to all the Carfex House investigators. The American lady had trances of a fit-like nature that threw her slanting-wise across her chair in inelegant attitudes. Mrs. Pinchot, when entranced, sat like a pensive cat, with her head inclined forward and her hands folded neatly in her lap. Neither lady had heard of the other. The one lodged with cousins in Highbury; the other stayed in a Kensington hotel. But their line of revelation was the same. Each professed to feel a mighty afflatus from an unknown source which had thrust all commonplace controls aside. There were moments when Mr. Parham was reminded of the Hebrew prophets when they said, "the Voice of the Lord came upon me." But this voice was something other than the Voice of the Lord. Mrs. Pinchot gave the fuller messages. The American lady gave descriptive matter rather than positive statements. She would say, "Where am I? I am afraid. I am in a dark place. An arcade. No, not an arcade, a passage. A great huge passage. Pillars and faces on either side, faces carved on the pillars, terrible faces. Faces of Destiny! It is dark and cold and there is a wind blowing. The light is dim. I do not know where the light comes from. It is very dim. The Spirit, which is Will and Power, is coming down the passage like a mighty wind, seeking a way. How great and lonely the passage is! I am so small, so cold, and so afraid. I am smaller. I am driven like a dead leaf before the wind of the great Spirit. Why was I put into this dreadful place? Let me out! OH, LET ME OUT!" Her distress became evident. She writhed and had to be recalled to the things of this world. By an extraordinary coincidence Mrs. Pinchot also spoke of a great passage down which something was coming. But she did not feel herself actually in the passage, nor was she personally afraid. "There is a corridor," she said. "A breeze of expectation blows down it from some unknown source. And Power is coming. It is as if I hear the tramp of iron footfalls drawing near." Hereward Jackson did not hear these things said. That made it more remarkable that he should bring back a report from Portsmouth. "There is a new Spirit coming into the world," he said. "A man in Portsea has been saying that. He is a medium, and suddenly he has given up saying anything else and taken to warning us of a new time close at hand. It is not the spirit of any departed person. It is a Spirit from Outside seeking to enter the world." Mr. Parham found something rather impressive in these convergent intimations. From the first he had observed Mrs. Pinchot closely, and he found it difficult to believe her capable of any kind of fraud, collusion, or mystification. The friendly candour of her normal bearing passed over without a change into her trance condition. He had some opportunities of studying her when she was not under séance conditions; he twice took her out to tea at Rumpelmayer's and afterwards persuaded Sir Bussy to have her down at the Hangar for a week-end. So he was able to hear her talking naturally and easily about art, foreign travel, ideas in general, and even public affairs. She was really cultivated. She had a fine, inquiring, discriminating mind. She had great breadth of view. She evidently found an intelligent pleasure in his conversation. He talked to her as he rarely talked to women, for commonly his attitude to the opposite sex was light and playful or indulgent and protective. But he found she could even understand his anxieties for the world's affairs, his sense of a threatening anarchism and dissolution in the texture of society, and his feeling for the need of stronger and clearer guidance in our periodic literature. Sometimes she would even anticipate things he was going to say. But when he asked her about the Spirit that was coming into the world she knew nothing of it. Her séance life was quite detached from her daily life. He gave her his books on Richelieu with a friendly inscription and copies of some of his graver articles and addresses. She said they were no ordinary articles. From the outset she had made it plain that she realized that this new circle she had entered was very different in quality from the usual gathering of the credulous and curious with which a medium has to deal. "People talk of the stupidity of spirit communications," she said at the first meeting. "But does anyone ever consider the vulgar quality of the people to whom these communications have to be made?" This time, she felt, the grouping was of a different order. She said she liked to have Sir Titus there particularly, for his hard, clear doubt was like walking on a level firm floor. Sir Titus bowed his forehead with an acknowledgment that was not as purely ironical as it might have been. To great men like Sir Bussy, to sympathetic minds like Hereward Jackson, to learning and mental power, spirits and powers might be attracted who would disdain the vague inquiries of the suburban curious. "And you really believe," said Mr. Parham, "these messages that come through you come from the dead?" "Not a bit of it," said Mrs. Pinchot in that sharp definitive way of hers; "I've never believed anything so nonsensical. The dead can do nothing. If these influences are from people who have passed over, they come because these people still live on. But what the living power may be that moves me to speech I do not know. I don't find any proof that all the intimations, or even most of the intimations we receive, come from ghosts—if one may use that old word for once. Even if some certainly do." "Not disembodied spirits?" said Hereward Jackson. "Sometimes I think it must be something more, something different and something much more general. Even when the names of departed friends are used. How am I to know? I am the only person in your circle who has never heard my own messages. It may be all delusion. It's quite possibly all delusion. We people with psychic gifts are a queer race. We transmit. What we transmit we do not know. But it's you stabler people who have to explain the things that come through us. We are limited by what people expect. When they expect nothing but vulgar ghosts and silly private messages, what else can we transmit? How can we pass on things they could not begin to understand?" "True," said Mr. Parham, "true." "When you get greater minds as receivers you will get greater messages." That too was reasonable. "But there's something in it very wonderful, something that science knows nothing about." "Ah! there I agree," said Mr. Parham. In the earlier séances with her there was a sort of "control" in evidence. "I am the messenger of the Advent," he declared. "A departed spirit?" asked Jackson. "How can I be departed when I am here?" "Are there such things as angels, then?" asked Mr. Parham. ("Gaw!") "Messengers. 'Angel' means 'messenger.' Yes, I am a messenger." "Of someone—or of something—some power which comes?" asked Mr. Parham with a new helpfulness in his voice. "Of someone who seeks a hold upon life, of someone with great power of mastery latent, who seeks to grapple with the world." "He'd better try upstairs," injected Sir Titus. "Here, where there are already will and understanding, he finds his helpers." "But who is this Being who comes? Has he been on earth before?" "A conquering spirit which watches still over the world it has done so much to mould." "Who is he?" "Who WAS he?" "The corridor is long, and he is far away. I am tired. The medium is tired. The effort to speak to you is great because of the Strong Doubter who sits among you. But it is worth while. It is only the beginning. Keep on. I can stay but a little while longer now, but I will return to you." "But what is he coming for? What does he want to do?" There was no answer. The medium remained for some time in a state of insensibility before she came to. Even then she felt faint and begged to be allowed to lie down for a time before she left Carfex House. So it was that Mr. Parham remembered the answers obtained in the first of the séances with Mrs. Pinchot that really took a strong hold of his imagination. The actual sequence of the transmission was perhaps more confused, but this was what stood out in his memory. It would indeed be a mighty miracle if some new Power did come into human affairs. How much there was to change! A miracle altogether desirable. He was still skeptical of the idea of an actual spirit coming to earth, but it was very pleasant to toy with the idea that something, some actual anticipation of coming things, was being symbolized in these riddles. The detailed records of all séances, even the most successful ones, are apt to make copious and tedious reading for those who are not engaged in their special study, and it would serve no useful purpose to relate them here. Mr. Parham's predilection for Mrs. Pinchot helped greatly in the development of that "something-in-it" attitude, which he had first assumed at the Williams séance in Buggins Street. Released from any insistence upon the ghostly element and the survival of the pettier aspects of personalities, the phenomena of the trance state seemed to him to become much more rational and credible. There was something that stirred him profoundly in this suggestion of hovering powers outside our world seeking for some means, a congenial temperament, an understanding mentality, by which they could operate and intervene in its affairs. He imagined entities like the great spirit forms evoked and pictured by Blake and G. F. Watts; he dreamt at last of mighty shapes. Who was this great being who loomed up over his receptive imagination in these Carfex House séances? He asked if it was Napoleon the First, and the answer was, "Yes and no"; not Napoleon and more than Napoleon. Hereward Jackson asked if it was Alexander the Great and got exactly the same answer. Mr. Parham in the night or while walking along the street, would find himself talking in imagination to this mysterious and mighty impending spirit. It would seem to stand over him and think with him as in his morning or evening paper he read fresh evidences of the nerveless conduct of the world's affairs and the steady moral deterioration of our people. His preoccupation with these two clairvoyants led to a certain neglect on his part of the researches of Sir Titus upon Carnac Williams. More and more was he coming to detest the hard and limited materialism of the scientific intelligence. He wanted to think and know as little of these operations as possible. The irritation produced by the normal comments of Sir Titus upon the clairvoyant mediums, and particularly upon Mrs. Pinchot and the American lady, was extreme. Sir Titus was no gentleman; at times his phrases were almost intolerably gross, and on several occasions Mr. Parham was within an ace of fierce reprisals. He almost said things that would have had the force of blows. The proceedings at these materialization séances were unbearably tedious. It took hours that seemed like æons to get a few ectoplasmic gutterings. The pleasure of seeing how much they baffled Sir Titus waned. On at least three occasions, Mr. Parham passed beyond the limits of boredom and fell asleep in his chair, and after that he stayed away for a time. His interest in Carnac Williams was reawakened after that ninth séance in which a face and hands became discernible. He was at Oxford at the time but he returned to London to hear a very striking account of the tenth apparition from Hereward Jackson. "When at first it became plain," said Hereward Jackson, "it might have been a crumpled diminutive of yourself. Then, as it grew larger, it became more and more like Napoleon." Instantly Mr. Parham connected this with his conception of the great Spirit that Mrs. Pinchot had presented as looming over the Carfex House inquiries. And the early resemblance to himself was also oddly exciting. "I must see that," he said. "Certainly I must come and see this materialization stuff again. It isn't fair to Sir Titus for me to keep so much away." He talked it over with Mrs. Pinchot. She showed she was entirely ignorant of what was going on in the room upstairs, and she found the triple coincidence of the Napoleonic allusion very remarkable. For the American lady had also spoken of Buonaparte and Sargon and Genghis Khan in a rambling but disturbing message. It was like a sound of trumpets from the Unknown, first on this side and then on that. Once more Mr. Parham faced the long silences and boredoms of the tense and noiseless grapple of Sir Titus and Williams. It was after dinner, and he knew that for a couple of hours at least nothing could possibly occur. Hereward Jackson seemed in a happier mood, quietly expectant. Sir Bussy, with a certain impatience that had been increasing at every recent séance, tried to abbreviate or at least accelerate the customary strippings, searchings, markings, and sealings. But his efforts were unavailing. "Now you have drawn me into it," said Sir Titus in that strident voice of his, "I will not relax one jot or one tittle in these precautions until I have demonstrated forever the farcical fraudulence of all this solemn spooking. I shan't grudge any price I pay for a full and complete exposure. If anyone wants to go, let him go. So long as some witness remains. But I'd rather die than scamp the job at this stage." "Oh, Gaw!" said Sir Bussy, and Mr. Parham felt that at any time now these researches might come to a violent end. The little man settled into his armchair, pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip for a time and then lapsed, it seemed, into profound meditation. At last the fussing was over and the vigil began. Silence fell and continued and expanded and wrapped about Mr. Parham closer and closer. Very dimly one saw the face of Williams, against the velvet blackness of the recess. He would lie for a long time with his mouth open, and then groan weakly and snore and stir and adopt a new attitude. Each time Mr. Parham heard the sharp rustle of Sir Titus Knowles's alertness. After a time Mr. Parham found himself closing his eyes. It was curious. He still saw the pallid brow and cheekbone of Williams when his eyes were closed. V. — THE VISITANTAfter a time Mr. Parham's interest in the psychic transparency of the human eyelid gave way to his perception of a very unusual flow of ectoplasm from the medium. It had begun quite normally as a faint self-luminous oozing from the corners of the mouth, but now it was streaming much more rapidly than it had ever done before from his neck and shoulders and arms and presently from the entire front of his vaguely outlined body. It was phosphorescent—at first with a greenish and then with a yellowish-green tint. It came so fast that either by contrast Williams seemed to shrink and shrivel, or else he did actually shrink and shrivel. It was impossible to decide that; this outflow of matter was so arresting. This Mr. Parham felt was worth seeing. He was glad he had come. There was enough ectoplasm now to choke Sir Titus. Well might Sir Bussy, lost somewhere in the black darkness close at hand, whisper, "Gaw." The stuff was already animated matter. It did not merely gutter and flow and hang downward, in the spiritless, tallowlike forms it had hitherto assumed. It was different. It had vital force in it. It was not so much slimy as glassy. Its ends lifted and pointed out towards the observers like bulging pseudopodia, like blind animalculæ, like searching fingers, like veiled phantoms. "EH!" said Sir Titus. "This beats me." Hereward Jackson was muttering to himself and shivering. It was strange stuff to watch. Its blunt protrusions touched and flowed into one another. They quivered, hesitated, and advanced. With an astounding rapidity they grew. What were delicate tendrils an instant ago were now long fingers and now blunt lumps. They were transparent, or at least translucent, and one saw streams of whitish and faintly tinted matter flowing within them, as one sees in a microscope the protoplasm of an amoeba streaming about in its body. They grew, they coalesced more and more. A few seconds or a few moments since, for it was difficult to measure the time this dim process was taking, the forms of these protrusions had been tentacular, fungoid, branchingly obtuse. Now they were coalescing, running together and becoming blunter and more closely involved and more and more one consolidated lumpish labouring aggregation. The coming and going of the swirling currents within grew faster and more interwoven. The colouring became stronger. Streaks of red and purple, exquisite lines of glistening white and bands of a pale creamy colour became distinguishable. A sort of discipline in these movements was presently apparent. With a shock it came into Mr. Parham's head that he was seeing bones and nerves and blood vessels hurrying to their appointed places in that swimming swirl. But was this possible? Why did he FEEL these were living structures? For they carried an immense conviction to his mind. As he peered and marvelled this internal circulation of the ectoplasm grew dim. A film was extending over it. At first it was perplexing to say why that swirling vesicle should be dimmed and then came the realization that an opaque skin was forming upon the whole boiling ectoplasmic mass. It became more and more opaque, opaque at last as a body. The process so stirred Mr. Parham to behold, his own nerves and arteries thrilled with such response, that he felt almost as though he himself was being made. Shape, a recognizable form, was now imposed upon this growth. At first merely the vague intimation of head and shoulders. Then very rapidly the appearance of a face, like a still slightly translucent mask in the front of the head lump, and then hair, ears, a complete head and shoulders rising as it were out of the chest of the collapsed medium; plainly the upper part of a strange being whose nether limbs were still fluid and dim. A cold handsome face regarded the watchers, with a firm mouth and slightly contemptuous eyes. And yet it had a strange resemblance to a face that was very familiar indeed to Mr. Parham. "This is beyond me altogether," said Sir Titus. "I never hoped for anything like this," said Hereward Jackson. Mr. Parham was altogether absorbed in the vision and by the mystery of its likeness. Sir Bussy was no longer equal to "Gaw." In another moment, as it seemed, or another half hour, the newcomer was completed. He was of medium height, slenderer and taller than Napoleon the First but with something of the same Byronic beauty. He was clothed in a white silken shirt, wide open at the neck and with knee breeches, grayish stockings and shoes. He seemed to shine with a light of his own. He took a step forward, and Williams dropped like an empty sack from his chair and lay forgotten. "You can turn up the lights," said a firm, clear, sweet, even voice, and stood to see its orders obeyed. It became evident that Sir Titus had been preparing a surprise. From his chair he bent forward, touched a button on the floor, and the room was brightly lit by a score of electric lamps. As the darkness changed to light one saw his body bent down, and then he brought himself back to a sitting position. His face was ghastly white and awestricken; his vast forehead crumpled by a thousand wrinkles. Never was skeptic so utterly defeated; never was unbeliever so abruptly convinced. The visitant smiled and nodded at his confusion. Hereward Jackson stood beside Sir Titus, paralyzed between astonishment and admiration. Sir Bussy also was standing. There was a livelier interest and less detachment in his bearing than Mr. Parham had ever seen before. "For some years I have been seeking my way to this world," said the Visitant, "for this world has great need of me." Hereward Jackson spoke in the silence and his voice was faint. "You have come from another world?" "Mars." They had nothing to say. "I come from the Red Planet, the planet of blood and virility," said the Visitant, and then, after a queer still moment that was drenched with interrogation, he delivered a little speech to them. "I am the Master Spirit who tries and who cleanses the souls of men. I am the spirit of Manhood and Dominion and Order. That is why I have come to you from that sterner planet where I rule. This world is falling into darkness and confusion, into doubt, vain experiments, moral strangeness, slackness, failure of effort, evasion of conflict, plenty without toil, security without vigilance. It has lacked guidance. Voices that might have given it guidance have found no form of utterance. Vague and foolish dreams of universal peace tempt the desires of men and weaken their wills. Life is struggle. Life is effort. I have come to rouse men to their forgotten duties. I have come to bring not peace but a sword. Not for the first time have I crossed the interplanetary gulf. I am the disturber of those waters of life that heal the souls of men. I am the banner of flame. I am the exaltation of history. I breathed in Sargon, in Alexander, in Genghis Khan, in Napoleon. Now I come among you, using you as my mask and servants. This time it is the English who are my chosen people. In their turn. For they are a great and wonderful people still—for all their inexpressiveness. I have come to England, trembling on the brink of decadence, to raise her and save her and lead her back to effort and glory and mastery." "You have come into the world to STAY?" Hereward Jackson was profoundly respectful but also profoundly puzzled. "Master!—are you MATTER? Are you earthly matter? Are you flesh and blood?" "Not as much as I am going to be. But that shall soon be remedied. My honest Woodcock here will see I get some food downstairs and make me free of his house. Meat—sound meat in plenty. At present I'm still depending in part upon that fellow's nasty ectoplasm. I'm half a phantom still." He glanced ungratefully at Carnac Williams, who, having contributed his best, lay flat as an empty sack now upon the shaded floor of the cabinet. No one went to his assistance. Hereward Jackson stooped forward peering. "IS HE DEAD?" he asked. "Phew! the channels one must use!" said the Master Spirit with manifest aversion. "Don't trouble about HIM. Leave him, poor Sludge. He can lie. But you I have need of. You will be my first colleagues. Woodcock, my Crassus, the commissariat?" "There's food downstairs," said Sir Bussy slowly and grudgingly but evidently unable to disobey. "There'll be one or two menservants up still. We can find you meat." "We'll go down. Wine, have you? Red wine? Then we can talk while I eat and drink and put real substance into this still very sketchy body of mine. All night we'll have to talk and plan the things we have to do. You three and I. You brought me, you invoked me, and here I am. No good scowling and doubting now, Sir Titus; your days of blatant denial are past. So soon as I'm equal to it you shall feel my pulse. Which door goes down? Oh! that's a cupboard, is it?" Hereward Jackson went across to the door upon the passage and opened it. The passage seemed larger and more brightly lit than Mr. Parham remembered it. Everything indeed seemed larger. And that light contained rays of an intense and exalting hopefulness. The two other men followed the Master Spirit as he went. They were dumbfounded. They were astounded and docile. But someone was missing! For some moments this shortage perplexed the mind of Mr. Parham. He counted Sir Bussy, One, Sir Titus, Two, and Hereward Jackson, Three. But there had been another. Of course!—Himself! Where was he? His mind spun round giddily. He seemed to be losing touch with everything. Was he present at all? And then he perceived that imperceptibly and incomprehensibly, the Master Spirit had incorporated him. He realized that an immense power of will had taken possession of him, that he lived in a new vigour, that he was still himself and yet something enormously more powerful, that his mind was full and clear and certain as it had never been before. Mutely these others had accepted this stupendous and yet unobtrusive coalescence. "We must talk," said a voice that was his own voice made glorious, and a fine white hand came out from him, shaking its fingers, and motioned the others on. And they obeyed! Marvelling and reluctant, perhaps, but they obeyed.
BOOK III. — THE STRONG HAND AT LASTI. — AN ARM OUTSTRETCHEDThe evangel of the Lord Paramount of England was swift and direct. Clad thinly in the incorporated identity of Mr. Parham, the Senior Tutor of St. Simon's, publicist and historian, sustained at the outset by the wealth of this strangely subdued Sir Bussy which he commandeered without scruple, waited upon in a state of awestricken devotion by Hereward Jackson, and attended hygienically by the cowed and convinced Sir Titus Knowles, the Master Spirit, without haste and without delay, imposed his personality upon the national imagination. Without delay and yet without apparent haste, he set about the task for which he had become incarnate. With unerring judgment he chose and summoned his supporters to his side and arranged what in the case of any inferior type would have been called a vulgar publicity campaign. That is the first necessary phase in any sort of human leadership. To begin with, one must be known. Vulgarization is the road to empire. By that the most fine-minded of men must come to power, if they would have power. The careers of Cæsar and Napoleon opened with a bold operation of the contemporary means of publicity. They could open in no other way. The country was weary of parliamentary government, weary of a conservatism which did not reduce the taxes upon property and enterprise to a minimum, weary of a liberalism that it could not trust to maintain overwhelming but inexpensive armaments, weary of the unintelligible bickerings of liberalism and labour, weary of the growing spectre of unemployment, weary of popular education, religious discussion, and business uncertainty, disappointed by peace and dismayed at the thought of war, neurasthenic and thoroughly irritable and distressed. The papers it read attacked the government and would not support the opposition. Politics could not escape from personalities, and none of the personalities succeeded in being more than actively undignified or industriously dull. Everybody nagged everybody. Trade was bad, the new talking movies a clanging disappointment, county cricket more and more tedious, and the influenza hung about maddeningly. Whenever one tried to do anything one found one had a cold. Criticism and literature fostered discord with whatever was old and would not countenance hope for anything new. Aimless skepticism was the "thing." Nobody seemed to know where to go or what to do, and the birth rate and death rate, falling together, witnessed together to the general indecisiveness. The weather was moody and treacherous. The General Election had pleased nobody. It had taken power out of the hands of a loyal if dull conservative majority, faithful to the honoured traditions of an expanding empire, and transferred it to the control of a vague and sentimental idealism in which nobody believed. The country was ripe for some great change. It was at a mass gathering of the Amalgamated Patriotic Societies in the Albert Hall, convened not very hopefully to protest against any pampering of the unemployed by their fellows on the government benches, that the Lord Paramount, still thinly personating the vanished Mr. Parham, rose, like a beneficent star upon the British horizon. When he stood up to speak he was an unknown man except to the elect few to whom he had already revealed himself. When at last, amidst an unparalleled storm of enthusiasm, he resumed his seat, he was already and irrevocably leader of a national renascence. The residue of the agenda was washed away and forgotten in the wild storm of enthusiasm that beat upon the platform. Yet his début was made with the very minimum of artificiality. His voice rang clear and true into the remotest circles of that great place; the handsome pallor of his face, lit ever and again by an extraordinarily winning smile, focussed every eye. His bearing was inaggressive, and yet his whole being radiated an extraordinary magnetism. His gestures were restrained but expressive; the chief of them the throwing out of a beautifully formed hand. "Who is this man," whispered a thousand lips, "that we have never known of him before?" His speech was entirely devoid of rhetorical gymnastics. His style can be best described as one of colossal simplicity. He touched the familiar and obvious to a new life. His discourse carried along platitudes as hosts carry time-honoured banners and one familiar phrase followed another, like exiled leaders refreshed and renewed returning to their people. With a few closely knit phrases he gathered together the gist of the previous speakers. Some of them had been perhaps a trifle querulous, over explicit, or lengthy, and it was marvellous how he plucked the burning heart from the honest and yet plaintive copiousness that had preceded him and held it out, a throbbing and beating indignation. It was true, he conceded, that our working classes, under the poisonous infection of foreign agitators, deteriorated daily; it was true that art and literature had become the vehicles of a mysterious malaria, true that science was mischievous and miasmatic and the very pulpit and altar were touched by doubt. It was true that our young people had lost all sense of modesty in the poisoned chalice of pleasure and that our growing hosts of unemployed seemed to lack even the will to invent anything to do. Nevertheless... For a moment his golden voice held its great audience in the immense expectation of that overarching word. Then, very gently and clearly and sweetly, it told of what Britain had been to the world and what she still might be, this little island, this jewel in the forehead of the world, this precious jewel, this crowned imperial jewel, set in the stormy frosted silver of the seas. For, after all, these workers of ours—properly safeguarded —were still the best in the world, and their sons and daughters heirs of the mightiest tradition that had ever been hewn from the crucibles of time. (No time to correct that; it had to go. The meaning was plain.) Superficially our land might seem to have given way to a certain lassitude. That made it all the more urgent that we should thrust all masks and misconceptions aside now, and stand forth again in this age of the world's direst need, the mighty race, the race of leaders and adventurers that we were and had always been. BUT... Again a moment of expectation; every face in that quintessential assembly intent. Was all our pride and hope to be dashed and laid aside to subserve the manoeuvres of a handful of garrulous politicians and their parasites and dupes? Was Britain to be forever gagged by its infatuation with elected persons, and the national voice of our great people belied by the tediums and dishonesties of a parliamentary institution that had long outlived its use? Through years of impatience the passionate negative had been engendering itself in our indignant hearts. Let us borrow a phrase from an unexpected quarter. The poor rebels on the outer fringe of the Socialist party, that fringe the Socialist party was so anxious to deny, the Bolsheviki, the Communistky, the Cooks and Maxtons, and so forth, used a phrase that went far beyond their courage. That phrase was Direct Action. Not for such as they were, was the realization of so tremendous a suggestion. For Direct Action could be a great and glorious thing. It could be the drawing of the sword of righteousness. It could be the launching of the thunderbolt. The time had come, the hour was striking, for honest men and true women and all that was real and vital in our national life to think of Direct Action, to prepare for Direct Action; to discipline themselves for the hour of Direct Action, when they would hold and maintain, strike and spare not. For some moments the Master Spirit was like a strong swimmer in a tumultuous sea of applause. As the tumult fell to attention again he sketched out his line of action very briefly and so came to his peroration. "I ask you to return to the essential, the substantial things of life," he said. "Here I stand for plain and simple things—for King and Country, for Religion and Property, for Order and Discipline, for the Peasant on the Land and for all Men at their Work and Duty, for the Rightness of the Right, the Sacredness of Sacred Things and all the Fundamental Institutions of Mankind." He remained standing. The voice died away. For some moments there was a great stillness and then a sound like "Ah!"—a long universal "Ah!" and then a thunder of expression that rose and rose. English audiences they say are hard to move, but this one was on fire. Everyone stood. Everyone sought the relief of gesticulation. All the great hall seemed to be pressing and pouring down towards its Master made manifest. Everywhere were shining eyes and extended hands. "Tell us what to do," cried a hundred voices. "Show us what to do. Lead us!" Fresh people seemed to be flowing into the place as those who had been there throughout pressed down the gangways. How they responded! Surely of all gifts of power that God gives his creatures that of oratory has the swiftest reward! The Lord Paramount faced his conquered audience, and within, restored to the religious confidence of an earlier time, he thanked his God. It was impossible to leave things at that point; some immediate action was needed. "What are we to tell them to do?" pressed the chairman. "Form a league," said the Master simply. Hands were held up to command silence. The chairman's thin voice could be heard reiterating the suggestion. "Yes, form a league," thundered the multitude. "What are we to call the league?" "League of Duty," suggested Hereward Jackson, jammed close to the Master. "The Duty Paramount League," said the Master, his voice cutting through the uproar like the sweep of a sword. The multitude vibrated upon that. A little speechifying followed, heard eagerly but impatiently. The League, someone said, was to be the Fascisti of Britain. There were loud cries of "British Fascisti" and "The English Duce" (variously pronounced). Young Englishmen, hitherto slack and aimless, stood up and saluted Fascist fashion and took on something of the stiff, stern dignity of Roman camerieri as they did so. "And who is he?" cried a penetrating voice. "What is his name? He is our leader. Our Deuce! We will follow him." "Doochy!" someone corrected... Cries and confusion, and then out of it all the words, "Duty Paramount! The Master Paramount! Paramount!" growing to a great shout, a vast vocal upheaval. "Hands up for adhesions," bawled a tall, intensely excited man at the Master Spirit's elbow, and the whole multitude was a ripe cornfield of hands. It was an astounding gathering; young men and old men, beautiful women, tall girls like flames and excited elderly persons of every size and shape, all fused in one stupendous enthusiasm, and many of them waving sticks and umbrellas. Never had there been a religious revival to compare with it. And every eye in all that swaying mass was fixed on the serene determination of the Master Spirit's face. Flashes of blinding lavender-tinted light showed that press cameras were in action. "Turn this place into a headquarters. Enrol them," said the Master Spirit. He felt a tug at his sleeve. It was the first of a number of queer little backward tugs he was to feel even in the first exaltation of his ascent. "We've only got the place until midnight," said a thin, unnecessary, officious-mannered little man. "Disregard that," said the Master Spirit and prepared to leave the auditorium. "They'll turn us out," the little man insisted. "Turn THAT out! NEVER!" said the Master Spirit waving a hand to the following he had created, the stormy forces he had evoked, and scorched the doubter with his blazing eyes. But still the creature insisted. "Well, they'll cut off the lights." "Seize the switches! And tell the organist not to play the National Anthem until he is told to. Tell him to play some stirring music as the enrolment goes on." The timid man shrunk away, and others more resolute obeyed the Master's behests. 'Turn us out' indeed! The organist after a brief parley arranged to play "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" with variations wandering occasionally into "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Rule, Britannia" until a suitable relief could be found for him, and to such magnificent music it was that the League of Duty Paramount was born. The enrolment continued until dawn. Thousands of names were taken. They poured past the little tables endlessly. Their eyes blazed, their noses resembled the first Duke of Wellington's, their chins protruded more and more. It was amazing that the Albert Hall could have held so many earnest and vigorous people... The Master's task for that evening was done. He had fought his first fight on the road to power. Reverential hands guided him down steps of faded baize. He found himself in a little ante-room, and Hereward Jackson was offering him a glass of water. The chairman of the meeting stood out at the centre of a select circle of devotees. Mrs. Pinchot, dark and mutely worshipping, had managed somehow to get into this inner grouping. Her eyes were full of understanding. "Too late for the morning papers," said the chairman, "but we shall see that the evening press gets everything full and good. A wonderful speech sir! Do you mind a few photographers from the picture papers taking shots at you?" "Let them," said the Master Spirit. He considered. "I am to be seen at Carfex House. I shall make that my headquarters. Let them come to me there." For a moment that rare smile of his dazzled the chairman, touched Mrs. Pinchot like a glancing sunbeam, and he had gone. "Not tired, sir?" asked Hereward Jackson anxiously in the car. "It is not for me to be tired," said the Master Spirit. "I have an excellent tonic I can give you at Carfex House," said Sir Titus. "Chemicals when I must," said the Master, with that characteristic gesture of his hand. Yet he was sensible of fatigue and oddly enough of just one faint twinge of anxiety. There was one little speck upon the splendour of this triumph. These two men were manifestly faithful, and Jackson was full of emotion at the immense success of the meeting, but—there ought to have been a third man in the car. "By the by," said the Master Spirit, leaning back restfully in the big Rolls-Royce and closing his eyes with an affectation of complete indifference. "Where is Sir Bussy Woodcock?" Jackson thought. "He went away. He went quite early. He got up suddenly and went out." "Did he say anything?" "Something—it always sounds like 'Gaw.'" The Master Spirit opened his eyes. "He must be sent for—if he is not at Carfex House. I shall want him at hand." But Sir Bussy was not at Carfex House. He had not gone home. The place, however, was entirely at the disposal of the Master Spirit and his retinue. The servants had everything in readiness for them, and the major domo offered to telephone to Marmion House to restore communications with Sir Bussy. But if there was a reply it did not get through to the Master Spirit, and next morning Sir Bussy was still missing. He did not reappear until late the next afternoon and then he drifted into his own property, the most detached and observant person in what was rapidly becoming a busy and militant hive. The organization of the staff of the Master Spirit and the apportionment of rooms to the secretaries he engaged, had gone on rapidly in the absence of the legal owner of the house. Among the secretaries, most energetic and capable of helpers, was little Mrs. Pinchot, the medium. Others were chosen from among the little Oxford group of "Parham's Young Men." Next morning after a séance with a number of photographers, the Master Spirit motored to Harrow School, where as a result of headlong arrangements he was able to address the boys in the morning. His address was substantially the same as that he had given in the Albert Hall, and the enthusiasm of the generous youngsters, led by the more military masters, was a very glorious experience. While he lunched with the head, the gallant lads, neglecting all thought of food, bolted off to put on their cadet uniforms, and an informal parade of the corps was held to bid him farewell, with shouts of "Duty Paramount!" and "We are ready!" There was little classroom work for the rest of that day at Harrow. A strong contingent of reporters was present and next morning saw the demonstration fully reported and pictured in all the daily papers. So his message came through to that greater outer world, the general public, and awakened an immediate response. The following afternoon saw him repeating his triumph on the playing fields of Eton. The time was ripe, and men had been waiting for him. In a few weeks the whole empire knew of the Duty Paramount movement and the coming of the Master Paramount (the formal title of Lord Paramount came later) to lead England back into the paths she had forsaken. The main newspaper groups supported him from the outset; Lord Bothermey became his devoted standard bearer, and all the resources of modern journalism were exerted in his favour. He was urged in leading articles that would have been fulsome had they referred to any mere mortal leader, to conduct his manifest mission of control and suppression fearlessly and speedily. His popularity with the army, navy, and flying corps, and particularly with the very old and very young officers in these services, was instantaneous and complete. Literature cast off the triviality and skepticism that had overtaken it and flamed to his support. Mr. Bloodred Hipkin, the Laureate of Empire, burst into his swan song at his coming and Mr. Berandine Shore, overjoyed at the fall of the entire detestable race of politicians, inundated the press with open letters to proclaim him even greater than Mussolini. He was cheered for twenty minutes at the Stock Exchange. The feminine electorate was conquered en masse by the Byronic beauty of his profile, the elegance of his gestures, and the extraordinary charm of his smile. England fell into his hands like a ripe fruit. It was clear that the executive and legislative functions were his for the taking. II. — THE COUP D'ETATThe Master Spirit was incapable of hesitation. In uniforms of a Cromwellian cut, designed after the most careful consideration of the proper wear for expelling legislative assemblies and made under pressure at remarkable speed, the chiefs of the Duty Paramount movement and a special bodyguard armed with revolvers and swords, marched under his leadership to Westminster at the head of a great popular demonstration. The Houses of Parliament were surrounded. The police offered a half-hearted resistance, for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was himself a strong man and could understand what was happening to the world. An attempt, essentially formal, was made to treat this historical March upon Westminster as ordinary traffic and divert it towards Chelsea; this failing, the police, in accordance with a prearranged scheme, evacuated the building, paraded in good order in Parliament Square, and marched off in Indian file, leaving the League in possession. For some minutes Miss Ellen Wilkerson offered a formidable resistance in one of the corridors, but reinforcements arrived, and she was overpowered. The "Talking Shop" had fallen. The House of Commons was in session and did not seem to know how to get out of it. The Master Spirit, supported by the staff he had gathered about him —except Sir Bussy, who was again unaccountably missing—entered by the Strangers' entrance and came through the division lobby onto the floor of the House. At the significant brown band across the green carpet he stopped short. The atmosphere of the place was tensely emotional as this tall and slender and yet most portentous figure, supported by the devoted lieutenants his magic had inspired, stood facing the Speaker and his two bewigged satellites. Someone had set the division bells ringing, and the House was crowded, the Labour party clustered thickly to his left, Commander Benworthy bulky and outstanding. There was little talk or noise. The great majority of the members present were silently agape. Some were indignant, but many upon the right were manifestly sympathetic. Above, the attendants were attempting, but not very successfully, to clear the Strangers' and Distinguished Strangers' galleries. The reporters stared or scribbled convulsively and there was a luminous abundance of ladies in their particular gallery. Methodical and precise as ever, the tapes in the dining and smoking rooms had announced, "Dictator enters House with armed force. Business in suspense," and had then ceased their useful function. From behind the Speaker's chair a couple of score of the bodyguard, with swords drawn, had spread out to the left and right and stood now at the salute. It would have needed a soul entirely devoid of imagination to ignore the profound historical significance of this occasion, and the Master was of imagination all compact. His stern determination was mellowed but not weakened by a certain element of awe at his own immense achievement. To this House, if not to this particular chamber, Charles the First had come in pursuit of the tragic destiny that was to bring him to Whitehall, and after him, to better effect had come Cromwell, the great precursor of the present event. Here, through a thousand scenes of storm and conflict, the mighty fabric of the greatest empire the world had ever seen had been welded and reshaped. Here had spoken such mighty rulers and gladiators as Walpole and Pelham, Pitt and Burke, Peel and Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli. And now this once so potent assembly had waxed vulgar, senile, labourist, garrulous and ineffective, and the day of rejuvenescence, the restoration of the Phoenix, was at hand. The eyes of the Master Spirit, grave and a little sorrowful, were lifted as if for guidance to the fretted roof and then fell thoughtfully upon the mace, "that bauble," which lay athwart the table before him. He seemed to muse for a moment upon the mighty task he had undertaken, before he addressed himself to the wigged and robed figure at the head of the assembly. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "I must ask you to leave the chair." He turned half-face to the government benches. "Gentlemen, the Ministers of the Crown, I would advise you to yield your portfolios without demur to my secretaries. For the good of His Majesty's realm and the needs of our mighty Empire I must for a time take these things over from you. When England has found her soul again, when her health has been restored, then all her ancient liberties of speech and counsel will return to her again." For a perceptible interval everyone present might have been a wax-work image, so still and intent did they all stand. It might have been some great historical tableau set out at Madame Tussaud's. It seemed already history, and for all the length of that pause it was as if the Lord Paramount were rather witnessing what he had done than actually doing it. It became flattened but bright like a coloured picture in a child's book of history... The action of the piece was resumed by a little significant detail. Two bodyguards came forward and placed themselves at either elbow of the Speaker. "I protest in the name of the Commons of England," said the Speaker, standing and holding his robes ready to descend. "Your protest is duly noted," said the Master Spirit, and turning slowly, ordered and motioned his guards to clear the House. They did their duty without haste or violence. On the left hand herding thickly, was this new labour government, this association of vague idealists and socialist adventurers and its supporters. Mr. Ramsy McDougal stood against the table, as ever a little apart from his colleagues, an image of unreadiness. Mr. Parham had only seen him on one or two occasions before and looking at him now through the Lord Paramount's eyes, he seemed more gaunt and angular than ever, more like a lonely wind-stripped tree upon some blasted heath, more haggard and inaccurate in his questionable handsomeness. He was evidently looking about him for support. His eyes wandered appealingly to the reporters' gallery, to the opposition benches, to the ladies' gallery and to the roof that presumably veiled his God from him, and then they came back to the knots and masses of his own followers. It was clear above the general murmur that he was speaking. He made noises like a cow barking or like a dog which moos. The Lord Paramount heard himself denounced as "the spirit of unrighteousness." Then there was an appeal to "fair play." Finally something about going to "raise the fiery cross." As two of the League guards approached him guided by the Lord Paramount's signal, his gestures which indicated a rallying place elsewhere became more emphatic. For a moment he posed tall and commanding, arm lifted, finger pointing heavenward, before he folded himself up and retired. Behind him Sir Osbert Moses had seemed to be pleading in vain with a sheepish crowd of government supporters for some collective act of protest. Mr. Coope, the extremist, was plainly an advocate for violence, but managed nothing. For the most part these labour people seemed as usual only anxious to find out what was considered the right thing to do and to do it as precipitately as possible. The attendants gave them no help, but the League guards herded them like sheep. But Mr. Philip Snowfield, very pale and angry, remained in his place, uttering what appeared to be inaudible imprecations. As the guards approached him he moved away from them towards the exit but still turned at intervals to say what were visibly disagreeable things and to thump the floor with his stick. "Mark my words," he could be heard hissing, "you fellows will be sorry for this foolery." Commander Benworthy hovered huge and protective above him. The only actual scuffle was with that left- wing desperado, Waxton, who was dealt with in accordance with the peculiar ju-jitsu of the Lord Paramount's guards. He was carried out face downwards, his hair dragging on the floor. The other occupants of the government benches decided not to share his fate and remained vertical and unhandled in their slow retreat. Most of them sought a certain dignity of pose, and folded arms, a sideways carriage, and a certain scornfulness were popular. There was a good deal of bumping against liberals who were doing exactly the same thing at a slightly different angle. Mr. St. George went out stoutly and as if inadvertently, his hands behind his back. It was as if he had been called away by some private concern and had failed to observe what was going on. His daughter who was also a member followed him briskly. Sir Simon John and Mr. Harold Samuel remained whispering together and taking notes, until the advancing shadows of physical expulsion were close at hand. Their gestures made it clear to everyone that they considered the Lord Paramount was acting illegally and that they were greatly pleased to score that point against him. Many of the conservatives were frankly sympathetic with the Lord Paramount. Mr. Baldmin was not in the house, but Sir Austin Chamberland stood talking, smiling and looking on, at the side of Lady Asper, who exulted brightly and clapped her pretty hands when Waxton was tackled and overpowered. She seemed eager that more labour members should join in the fray and get similar treatment, and disappointed when they did not do so. Mr. Emery the great fiscal imperialist stood on a seat the better to watch proceedings and smiled broadly at the whole affair, making movements of benediction. He knew already that he was marked for the Lord Paramount's Council. The Lord Paramount, intent on such particulars, realized suddenly that he was being cheered from the opposition benches. He drew himself up to his full height and bowed gravely. "WHO GOES HOME?" a voice cried and the cry was echoed in the corridors without. It was the time-honoured cry of parliamentary dissolution, that has closed the drama of five hundred parliaments. The Lord Paramount found himself in the handsome passage that leads from the Commons to the Lords. A solitary figure sat there, sobbing quietly. It looked up and revealed the face of that Lord Cato, who was formerly Sir Wilfred Jameson Jicks. "I ought to have done it," he whispered, "I ought to have done it months ago." Then his natural generosity reasserted itself and, dashing away a tear, he stood up and held out his hand frankly and brotherly to the Lord Paramount. "You must help ME now, for England's sake," said the Lord Paramount. III. — HOW LONDON TOOK THE NEWSThe state of London outside the House of Commons on that memorable May evening was one of gaping astonishment. As the twilight deepened to night and the illuminated advertisements grew bright, the late editions of the evening papers gave the first intimations of the coup d'état, and an increasing driftage of people towards Westminster began. The police, still functioning normally outside Palace Yard, were increased as the crowds, entirely inaggressive and orderly crowds, thickened. Some of the rougher elements from Pimlico and Chelsea showed a mild riotousness, but they were kept well in hand. The guards were under arms in Wellington Barracks, and the normal protection of Buckingham Palace was increased, but there was no need of intervention to protect the monarchy. No one in authority attempted to invoke the military against the Master Paramount, and it is open to question whether the officers, and particularly the junior officers, would have consented to act in such a case. Since the days of the Curragh mutiny there has always been an implicit limit to the powers of the politicians over the army. As the expelled Members of Parliament came out by the various exits into the streets they had receptions dependent upon their notoriety and popularity. Generally the crowd showed nothing but an amused sympathy for their debacle. Their names were shouted after them when they were recognized, usually with the addition of "Good old"—so and so. Women members were addressed affectionately by their Christian names when these were known. Many of them got away unobserved. The idea that they were the people's agents and representatives had faded out of English life. They were simply people who had "got into Parliament" and now were being turned out of it. When later on the Master Paramount and the chiefs of the Duty Paramount League emerged, they were received, not so much with enthusiasm as with an observant acquiescence. Few failed to mark the great distinction of the Master's presence. The staffs of the new rulers repaired to Downing Street to accelerate the departure of the private establishments of the dismissed ministers and to prepare for the installation of the heads of the provisional government in the official residences. Until a very late hour that night an affectionate crowd besieged Buckingham Palace "to see," as they put it, "that the King was all right." At intervals members of the Royal Family appeared to reassure the people and were received with loyal cries and the better-known verses of the National Anthem. There was no demand for speeches and no interchange of views. It was a rapprochement too deep for words. Next day the remarkable news in the morning papers filled London with crowds of visitors from the suburbs and provincial towns. They came up to see what was going on, wandered about for the day, and went home again. All day long, large crowds stagnated about the Houses of Parliament. A multitude of hawkers, selling buns, winkles, oranges, and suchlike provender, did a flourishing trade. Attempts at oratory were suppressed by the police, both there and in Trafalgar Square. So the new régime took possession. The Crown, as became a constitutional monarchy, accepted the new state of affairs without comment or any gesture of disapproval. A special levee and a garden party to entertain the League of Duty Paramount were arranged at Buckingham Palace, and the Lord Paramount was photographed, for world-wide publicity, tall and erect, in an attitude of firm but entirely respectful resolution, at his monarch's right hand. He was wearing the livery of a Cabinet Minister, the garter, in which order a timely vacancy had occurred, and the plaque of the Order of Merit. His white and beautifully chiselled face was very grave and still. IV. — THE GRAND COUNCIL IN SESSIONWith a tact and sagacity as great as his courage the Lord Paramount gathered about him a number of councillors who were in effect his ministers. He consulted and directed them, but they had no collective power; their only collective function was cooperation upon the schemes he outlined for their guidance. Occasionally in council they would offer suggestions which were received with attention, considered and commented upon by the Lord Paramount. Sometimes, but rarely, their suggestions would be allowed to sway the course of the national policy. But on the whole he preferred that they should come to him privately and individually with their proposals, rather than interrupt the proceedings of the Council meetings. The Council included all that was best among the leaders of English life. The mighty barons of the popular press were there, and prominently Lord Bothermey. The chief military, naval and air experts were intermittently represented. Coal and steel magnates were well in evidence, particularly those most closely associated with armament firms, and one or two rather evasive personalities of the Sir Bussy Woodcock type attended by command. Sir Bussy might or might not be there; he continued to be difficult to locate. He seemed to become present suddenly and then to become conspicuously absent. The Governor of the Bank of England was present ex officio, though the Lord Paramount found he smiled far too much and said far too little, and there were several leading representatives of the Big Five, who also proved to be markedly silent men with a faraway facial habit. Labour was represented at the Lord Paramount's invitation, by Mr. J. H. Humbus, and women by the Countess of Crum and Craythorpe. Lord Cato was of course a member, and for some reason that the Lord Paramount never had very clear in his mind, Mr. Brimstone Burchell seemed always to be coming in or going out or talking in much too audible undertones to someone while the Council was in session. No-one had asked him; he just came. It was difficult to find an appropriate moment to say something about it. On the whole he seemed to be well disposed and eager to take entire charge of army, navy, air force, munitions, finance, or any other leading function which might be entrusted to him. In addition to these already prominent members a number of vigorous personalities hitherto unknown to British public life, either chosen from among Mr. Parham's Young Men, scions of noble families, or connected with the militant side of the Duty Paramount League, took a silently active part in the proceedings. Alfred Mumby, Colonel Fitz Martin, Ronald Carberry, Sir Horatio Wrex, and the young Duke of Norham, were among the chief of these. Mrs. Pinchot, the only reporter present, sat in a little low chair at the Lord Paramount's right hand and recorded all that happened in shorthand in a gilt-edged notebook. Hereward Jackson, the faithful disciple, also hovered helpfully close to him. The procedure was very simple and straightforward. The Council would assemble or be collected according to the alacrity of the individual member, and the Lord Paramount would enter quite informally, waving a hand to this man and greeting that, and so make his way to the head of the table. There he would stand, Hereward Jackson would say, "Ssh!" and everyone standing or sitting or leaning against the wall would cease to gossip and turn to listen. Explicitly and simply the Lord Paramount would put his views to them. It was very like a college lecturer coming in and talking to a batch of intelligent and sympathetic students. He would explain his policy, say why this had to be done or that, and indicate who it was should undertake whatever task opened before them. An hour or even more might be spent in this way. Then he would drop into his seat, and there would be questions, mostly of an elucidatory nature, a few comments, a suggestion or so, and, with a smile and a friendly word of dismissal, everything was over, and the Council went about its business, each man to do what he knew to be his duty. So simple a task was government now that the follies of party, the presumption and manoeuvres of elected people, the confusion and dishonesties inseparable from the democratic method had been swept aside. The third meeting of the Council was the most important of the earlier series, for then it was that the Lord Paramount gave these heads of the national life, a résumé of the policy he proposed to pursue. Let them consider at first, he said, the position and the manifest dangers and destinies of this dear England of ours and its Empire to which they were all devoted. He would ask them to regard the world as a whole, not to think of it in a parochial spirit, but broadly and sanely, looking beyond the immediate to-morrow. Directly they did so they would begin to realize the existence and development of a great world struggle, which was determined by geography and by history, which was indeed in the very nature of things. The lines of that struggle shaped themselves, rationally, logically, inevitably. Everything else in the world should be subordinated to that. Something almost confidential crept into his manner, and the Council became very silent and attentive. He indicated regions upon the green baize table before him by sweeping gestures of his hands and arms, and his voice sank. "Here," said the Lord Paramount, "in the very centre of the Old World, illimitably vast, potentially more powerful than most of the rest of the world put together—" he paused dramatically—"is RUSSIA. It really does not matter in the least whether she is Czarist or Bolshevik. She is the final danger—the overwhelming enemy. Grow she must. She has space. She has immense resources. She strikes at us, through Turkey as always, through Afghanistan as always, and now through China. Instinctively she does that; necessarily. I do not blame her. But preserve ourselves we must. What will Germany do? Cleave to the East? Cleave to the West? Who can tell? A student nation, a secondary people, a disputed territory. We win her if we can, but I do not count on her. The policy imposed upon the rest of the world is plain. We must circumvent Russia; we must encircle this threat of the Great Plains before it overwhelms us. As we encircled the lesser threat of the Hohenzollerns. In time. On the West, here, we outflank her with our ally France and Poland her pupil; on the East with our ally Japan. We reach at her through India. We strive to point the spearhead of Afghanistan against her. We hold Gibraltar on her account; we watch Constantinople on her account. America is drawn in with us, necessarily our ally, willy-nilly, because she cannot let Russia strike through China to the sea. There you have the situation of the world. Broadly and boldly seen. Fraught with immense danger—yes. Tragic—if you will. But fraught also with limitless possibilities of devotion and courage." The Lord Paramount paused, and a murmur of admiration went round the gathering. Mr. Brimstone Burchell's head nodded like a Chinese automaton's to express his approval. The statement was so perfectly lucid, so direct and compact. Yet it was identically the same speech that Mr. Parham had delivered to Sir Bussy, Mr. Hamp, Camelford, and the young American only a month or so previously, at the dinner table of the former! How different now was its reception when it came from the lips of the Lord Paramount speaking to understanding minds! No carping criticism, or attempts to disregard and ignore, no preposterous alternatives of world organization and the like follies, no intimation of any such alternatives. If Sir Bussy had whispered his habitual monosyllable it was done inaudibly. "And that being our general situation," the Lord Paramount continued, "which is the most becoming thing for a Great Nation to do? To face its Destiny of leadership and championship, open-eyed and resolute, or to wait, lost in petty disputes, blinded by small considerations, until the inevitable antagonist, grown strong and self-conscious, its vast realms organized and productive, China assimilated and India sympathetic and mutinous against its established rulers, strikes at the sceptre in its negligent hands—maybe strikes the sceptre clean out of its negligent hands? Is it necessary to ask that question of the Council of the British peoples? And knowing your answer to be what it must be, then plainly the time for Duty and Action is now. I exhort you to weigh with me the preparations and the strategy that have to be the guiding form of our national policy from this time forth. The time to rally western Europe is now. The time to call plainly to America to take up her part in this gigantic struggle is now." This time the little man sitting at the table was clearly heard. His "Gaw!" was deep and distinct. "Sir Bussy," said the Lord Paramount in a penetrating aside, "for six long years you have said that word 'Gaw' at me and I have borne with you. Say it no more." He did not even pause for an answer, but went on at once to sketch the determinations before the Council. "It is my intention," he said, "so soon as home affairs are regularized to make an informal tour of Europe. Here, between these four walls, I can speak freely of an adventure we all have at heart, the gallant efforts of Prince Otto von Barheim to overthrow the uncongenial republican régime that now disfigures, misrepresents, and humiliates the loyal and valiant German people. It is a lukewarm thing, half radical and Bolshevist and half patriotic, and Germany is minded to spew it out. I have had communications from a very trustworthy source, and I can say with confidence that that adventure is on the high road to success. Prince Otto, like myself, has a profound understanding of the philosophy of history, and like myself he recalls a great nation to its destiny. The good sword of Germany may soon be waiting in its scabbard for our signal. "Yes! I know what you think at this moment, but, believe me, it will be with the consent of France. Nevermore will Britain move without France. M. Parème shall be consulted and I will see to that. The situation would be delicate had we still a parliamentary régime. Happily no questions in the House now can disturb our negotiations. Snowfield is gagged and Benworthy silenced. Trust France. She is fully aware that now it is we alone who stand between her and a German-Italian combination. We reconcile. The French mind is realistic, logical and patriotic. The other European nations may need Dictators but in France, the Republic is Dictator; the army and the nation are one, and, guaranteed security, suitably compensated in Africa and Nearer Asia, France will be ready to take her proper place in the defence of the West against its final danger. The age-long feud of the Rhineland draws to an end. The peace of Charlemagne returns. Even the speeches of M. Parème lose their belligerent note. Such little matters as the language question in Alsace and various repayments and guarantees find their level of unimportance. We have been living too much in the counting house. Europe draws together under pressure from the East and from the West. These things I propose to confirm by personal interviews with the men I shall find in charge of the European nations. Then to our course of action: first, a renewal, a confirmation and intensification of the blockade of Russia—by all Europe, by the United Strong Men of Europe; secondly a vigorous joint intervention to restore the predominance of European ideas and European finance in China; thirdly a direct challenge to Russian propaganda in India and Persia, a propaganda in reality political—social and economic now only in phrase and pretension. If we mean to encircle this mighty threat to all we hold dear, then the time for encirclement is here and now. And so, when at last the Day comes it will not be the Slav aggressive we shall have facing us but the Slav anticipated and at bay." The Lord Paramount paused and did his best to ignore the one flaw upon that perfect gathering. Sir Bussy, looking exceedingly small and wicked and drumming softly on the table with his stumpy fingers, spoke, addressing, as it were, the blank universe. "And how is America going to take this sort of stuff?" "She will be with us." "She may have other ideas." "She HAS to be with us," said the Lord Paramount with a rising intonation, and a murmur of approval came from the corner in which Lord Cato was standing. His face was very pink, and his little eyes were round and bright. His bearing had the unsubdued aggressiveness of an unsmacked child's. He had always regarded America as impertinent and in need of a good snubbing and, if need be, of further chastening. He could not believe that a nation so new could really consist of grown-up people. "The Americans," Sir Bussy informed the world, "don't learn history in English public schools." No one regarded him. "I have begun by sketching the frame of circumstance about our national life," the Lord Paramount resumed, "because the small troubles of internal politics—and relatively they are very small—fall into place directly we recognize the fact that we are a militant people, that our empire is a mighty camp of training for the achievement of our enduring leadership. To this great struggle all our history is a crescendo. When you tell me that we have a million unemployed I rejoice to think we have that much man power free at once for the great adventure. Before 1914 our industrial system had a margin, a necessary margin of unemployment of about five to nine per cent. Now that margin has increased to eleven or twelve per cent.—I will not trouble about the exact figures. A large element of these unemployed come out of the coal-mining industry, which was abnormally inflated after the war. But our gross production has not diminished. Note that! What we are witnessing is a world-wide process, in which industry produces as much as ever, or more, but has so increased its efficiency that it calls for fewer hands. Clearly this so-called unemployment is really a release of energy. These people, in many cases young men, must be taken in hand and trained for other ends. The women can go into munitions. If only on account of unemployment, our great empire needs to take a gallant and aggressive line. What we have saved we must spend. We must not bury our talent in out-of-work sloth. I am no Individualist, I am no Socialist; these are phrases left over by the Nineteenth Century, and little meaning remains in them now. But I say, of him who does not work for his country, neither shall he eat in it, and that he who will not work generously must be made to work hard, and I say also that wealth that is not active and productive for our imperial ends needs to be called upon to justify itself. Wantoning in pleasure cities, lavish entertainments in huge hotels, jazz expenditure, must cease. A special tax on champagne... Yes, a tax on champagne. It is poison for soul and body. No more night clubs for London. A censorship of suggestive plays and books. Criticism by honest police officials—worthy, direct-minded men. Golf only for hygienic ends. Race meetings without special trains. Even the shooting and hunting restrained. Service! Everywhere Service. Duty Paramount. In High and Low alike. These things have been said already upon the slighter stage of Italy; it is for us to say them now, imperially, in tones of thunder, to the very ends of the earth." It seemed that he had done. In the appreciative silence that ensued, the noise of an elderly and edentate gentleman talking through a thick moustache, became evident. The speaker had been at the back of the cluster to the right of the Lord Paramount, but now he came forward in a state of agitated resolution, and grasping with his right hand the back of the chair in which Sir Bussy was sitting, crossed his legs and leaning forward at an almost perilous angle, he gesticulated in an oratical manner with his left. The noise he made rose and fell. Word was not separated from word, but now and then a cough snapped off a length of it. It was a sort of ectoplasmic speech. Very like ectoplasm. Ectoplasm? Ectoplasm? (For a moment the mind of the Lord Paramount was blurred.) This venerable figure was Lord Bylass of Brayne. At intervals it was possible to distinguish the submerged forms of such words and phrases as "tariff"... "adequate protection"... "safeguarding"... "dumping"... "insensate foreign competition"... "colonial preference"... "an empire sufficient unto itself"... "capable, sir, of absorbing every willing worker in the country." For three or four minutes the Lord Paramount endured this interruption with patient dignity, and then he held up a hand to signify that he had heard sufficient for a reply. "A state is a militant organization, and a militant organization that is healthy and complete must be militant through and through," he began with that illuminating directness which had made him the leader and master of all these men. "Tariffs, Lord Bylass, are now the normal everyday method of that same conflict for existence between states which is the substance of all history and which finds its highest, noblest expression in war. By means of tariffs, Lord Bylass, we protect our economic life from confusion with the economic life of other states, we ensure the integrity of our resources against the day of trial, we sustain our allies and attack the social balance and well-being of our enemies and competitors. Here in this council, free from eavesdroppers, we can ignore the pretence that tariffs are designed for the enrichment or security of the common citizen and that they, by themselves, can do anything to absorb unemployed workers. Forgive me, Lord Bylass, if I seem to contradict your arguments while accepting your conclusions. Tariffs do not enrich a country. They cannot do, they never have done, anything of the sort. That is a deception, and I think a harmful deception, that the squalid necessities of that system of elective government we have so happily set aside have forced upon politicians. We can drop it here and now. Tariffs, like every other form of struggle, involve and require sacrifices. If they create employment in one trade by excluding or handicapping the foreign product, then manifestly they must destroy it in another which has hitherto exported goods in payment, direct or indirect, for the newly protected commodity. A tariff is a method of substituting an inconvenient production for a convenient one. In order to cause greater inconvenience elsewhere. The case for protection rests on grounds higher and nobler than considerations of material advantage or disadvantage. We must have tariffs and pay for tariffs, just as we must have armies and navies and pay for them. Why? Because they are the continuing intimation of our national integrity. Our guns and bombs explode only during the war phase, but a tariff sustains a perpetual friction and menace; it injures while we sleep. And I repeat, for it is the very essence of our faith, it is the cardinal belief of our League of Duty Paramount, that a sovereign state which boasts a history and unfurls a flag, must remain either a militant state through and through, pressing its rivals as hard as it can in every possible way, during peace time and wartime alike, or it must become a decadent and useless absurdity fit only to be swept into the cosmopolitan dustbin." The ringing voice ceased. Lord Bylass, who had resumed his perpendicular attitude during the reply of the Lord Paramount, said something either in the nature of approval, disapproval, extension, or qualification of what had gone before, and after perhaps a dozen minor questions had been raised and compactly disposed of the Council settled down to the apportionment of the mighty tasks in hand. First one and then another would sketch his conception of cooperation, and often the Lord Paramount would say no more than "Do it" or "Wait" or "Raise that again in a week's time" or "Not like that." A few of the members for whom there seemed to be no immediate call withdrew to an ante-room to talk together over the tea, sherry, and lemonade served there. Some of the more restless spirits departed altogether. Among these was Sir Bussy Woodcock. The mind of the Lord Paramount seemed to go after him and watch him and yet it knew what he would do. He was to be seen standing pensive on the doorstep of No. 10 Downing Street, that doorstep which has been trodden by every famous man in British affairs for a couple of centuries, and looking with his mouth askew at the dense inexpressive crowd which blocked the opening into Whitehall. The police had formed a cordon, and except for the chauffeurs of the waiting automobiles there were only a few pressmen, press photographers and obvious plain-clothes men standing about in the street itself. But beyond was that mysterious still congestion of the English people, almost cow-like in its collective regard, giving no intimations of its feelings, if indeed it had any feelings, towards this gallant new rule which had relieved it of any lingering illusions about self-government. It was an almost completely silent crowd, save for the yapping of the vendors of the Lord Paramount's photographs. The afternoon was warm and overcast with gray clouds that seemed like everything else to be awaiting orders. The very policemen were lost in passive expectation. Everybody was accepting the Lord Paramount inertly. Sir Bussy remained quite still for nearly a minute. "GAW," he whispered at last and turned slowly towards the little gate to his right that led down the steps to the Horse Guards parade. With his customary foresight he had sent his car round there, where the crowd was inconsiderable. As he vanished through the gate a plain-clothes policeman with an affectation of nonchalance that would not have deceived a baby, detached himself from his fellows and strolled after him. BY ORDER! In another twenty minutes the session was over and the Council was actively dispersing. Lanes were made in the crowd by the departing automobiles. Its more advantageously situated ranks were privileged to see, afar off, the Lord Paramount himself, accompanied by his little dark woman secretary and a tall, slender, devoted-looking man who was carrying a huge portfolio, cross swiftly from No. 10 to the Foreign Office and vanish under its archway. Towards seven the Lord Paramount reappeared and went in the big new Rolls- Royce he had purchased on behalf of the nation, to the War Office, and there he remained until long after midnight. V. — THE LORD PARAMOUNT STUDIES HIS WEAPONSThere were moments even in the opening phase of this great adventure of the Lord Paramount when it was difficult for him to believe himself true, but his sense of duty to those he was lifting out of their ten-year post-war lethargy made him conceal these instants—for there were no more than instants—of weakness from everyone about him, even from the faithful and sustaining Mrs. Pinchot and the indefatigable Hereward Jackson. His ordinary state of mind was one of profound, of almost exultant admiration for his own new vigour of purpose and action. He knew that his ascendency meant a march towards war, war on a vaster and handsomer scale than had ever yet illuminated the page of history. This might have dismayed a lesser soul. But he knew himself the successor of Napoleon and Cæsar and Alexander and Sargon, adequate to the task before him. And he knew what history demands of great nations. His mission was to make history and to make it larger and heavier and with a greater displacement of the fluidities of life than it had ever been made before. As he made it he wrote it in his mind. He saw his own record, the story of his war, towering up at the end of the great series of autobiographic war histories from Thucydides to Colonel Lawrence and Winston Churchill. Parham De Bella Asiatico. That he would do in the golden days of rest, after the victory. It was pleasant to anticipate those crowning literary hours amidst the stresses of present things. He would find himself making character sketches of himself and telling in the third person of his acts and decisions in the recognized style of such records. It was queer at times how strongly his anticipations of this record imposed themselves upon his mind. There were phases and moments when he did not so much seem to be doing and experiencing things as relating them to himself. It was manifest that among the most urgent of his duties was the rapid acquisition of a broad and exact knowledge of the equipment and possibilities of the armed forces of the Empire. Of these he had now to be the directive head, the supreme commander. On him would fall the ultimate responsibility in the day of battle. Other men might advise him, but it was he who must control, and who can control without adequate knowledge? Lucky for him that his mind was as swift as an eagle and that he could grasp the import of a scheme while lesser intelligences still struggled with its preliminary details. He sought among ex-war ministers, sea lords, and high permanent officials in the combatant departments, for informants and experts with whom he could work. It was profoundly important to know and take the measure of all such men. And they had to know him, they had to experience his personal magnetism and be quick to understand and ready to obey him. At first there was some difficulty in getting the right tone. In all the fighting services there is an habitual distrust of politicians, an ingrained disposition to humbug and hoodwink interfering civilians, and this tradition of reserve was sufficiently strong to retard their first surrender to the Lord Paramount's charm and energy for some time. Moreover, there were many restraints and reservations between different sections of the services that were hard to overcome. Most of these men betrayed not only the enthusiasm but the narrowness of the specialist's concentrated mind. Air experts ridiculed battle ships; naval men showed a quiet contempt for the air; gas was a sore subject with nearly everybody; gunners considered everything else subsidiary to well directed gunfire, and the tank people despised sea, air, gunfire, and chemical warfare in nearly equal proportions. "We go through," was their refrain. There were even men who held that the spearhead of warfare was propaganda and that the end to which all other operations must be directed was the production of a certain state of mind (variously defined and described) in the enemy government and population. The Empire was, in fact, partially prepared for every conceivable sort of warfare with every conceivable and many inconceivable antagonists, and apart from a common contempt for pacificists as "damned fools" and for cosmopolitans as dreamers and scoundrels, its defenders did not as yet possess an idea in common to ensure their cooperation when the moment of conflict came. Such were the fruits of our all too copious modern inventiveness and our all too destructive criticism of simple political issues. Such were the consequences of a disputatious parliamentary system and the lack of any single dominating will. The navy was experimenting with big submarines and little submarines, with submarines that carried aircraft inside them and submarines that could come out on land and even climb cliffs, with aircraft carriers and smoke screens, and new types of cruiser; the gunners were experimenting; the army was having a delightful time with tanks, little tanks and big tanks, hideous and ridiculous and frightful and stupendous tanks, tanks that were convertible at a pinch into barges, and tanks that would suddenly expand wings and make long flying hops, and tanks that became field kitchens and bathrooms; the air force killed its two young men or more a week with a patient regularity, elaborating incredible stunts; Gas Warfare was experimenting; each was going its own way irrespective of the others, each was doing its best to crab the others. The Lord Paramount went hither and thither, inspecting contrivances that their promoters declared to be marvellous and meeting a series of oldish young and youngish old men, soured by the fermentation of extravagant hopes. Sir Bussy, an unwilling consultant upon many of these expeditions, found a phrase for them so lacking in dignity that for a time it troubled the Lord Paramount's mind. "Like a lot of damned schoolboys," said Sir Bussy, "mucking about with toy guns and chemical sets in an attic. Each one on his own—just as disconnected as he can be. With unlimited pocket money. What do they think they are up to? What do they think it is for—all this damned militarism? They don't know. They lost connection long ago, and there they are. They'll just set the place on fire. What else do you expect of them?" The Lord Paramount made no reply, but his swift mind tackled the challenge. He was capable of learning, even from an enemy. "Lost connection," that was the illuminating phrase. Disconnected—that was the word. Because they had had no one and no great idea to marshal them in order and unify their efforts. They were the scattered parts of a great war machine which had quietly disarticulated itself after 1918 and followed its divergent traditions and instincts, and it was for him to assemble them into cooperation again. After that remark of Sir Bussy's he knew exactly what to say to these forgotten and unhonoured experts. He knew the one thing of which they stood in need: Connection. To everyone he spoke of the nature of the campaign ahead and of the particular part to be played in it. That was the magic touch for which they had been waiting. It was wonderful how these sorely neglected men brightened at his words. He made them see—Russia; he projected the minds of the airmen towards mighty raids amidst the mountains of central Asia and over the dark plains of eastern Europe; he lit the eyes of the special underseas services with the words "a relentless blockade"; he asked the mechanized soldiers how they would go over steppes and reminded them darkly of the prophetic fact that the first writing on the pioneer tank had been in Russian. To the naval men he spoke also of another task. "While we do our work in the Old World, you are the sure shield between us and the follies of the New." Yes, that meant America, but the word America was never said. America which might do anything, which might even go "modern" and break with history —even her own brief and limited history. The fewer years she was given to think before the crisis came, the better for the traditions of our old world. Many of these brave, ingenious men to whom the Lord Paramount came were sick at heart with hope deferred. Year by year they had invented, contrived, and organized, and still the peace held. There were breezes, but these died away. These workers in the obscurity read pacificist articles in the newspapers; they heard continually of a League of Nations that was to make a futility of all the dear lethal inventions they had given the best of their years to perfect. A clamour for economies, the bitter ingratitude of retrenchment, threatened them. He brought new life and hope to their despondent souls. From amidst the miscellany of experts and officials the figure of a certain General Gerson emerged gradually to a sort of preeminence. He emerged by a kind of innate necessity. He seemed to know more than the others and to have a more exhaustive knowledge. He had a genius for comprehensive war plans. There was something quintessential about him, as though he concentrated all that Mr. Parham had ever read, seen, thought, or felt about soldiers. Undeniably he had force. He was the man to whom it became more and more natural to turn in any doubtful matter. He was presently almost officially the Lord Paramount's right hand in military things. It was not that the Lord Paramount chose him so much as that he arrived. He became the embodiment of the material side of power. He was the sword—or shall we say the hand grenade? —to the Lord Paramount's guiding brain and will. He was his necessary complement. He translated imperial vision into practical reality. He was not exactly a prepossessing person. His solid worth had to be discovered without extraneous aid. He was sturdily built, short and rather thickset, with exceptionally long, large, and hairy hands. His head was small and bomb-shaped and covered with a wiry fuzz. His nose was short but not insignificant, a concentrated, wilful nose. His mouth was large, vituperative in form when open, and accustomed to shut with emphasis. Generally he kept it shut. His bristling moustache was a concession to military tradition rather than an ornament, and his yellow skin was blue spotted as the result of an accident with some new explosive powder. One eye, because of that same accident was of glass; it maintained an expression of implacable will, while its fellow, alert and bright brown, gathered information. His eyebrows were the fierce little brothers of his moustache. He wore uniform whenever he could, for he despised "mufti men," but also he despised the splendours of full uniform. He liked to be a little soiled. He liked common and rather dirty food eaten standing with the fingers instead of forks, and he resorted to harsh and violent exercises to keep fit. His fitness was amazing, a fierce fitness. "In this world," he said, "the fittest survive." But he despised the mawkish games of feebler men. In the country, when he could, he cut down trees with great swiftness and animosity or he pursued and threw over astonished and over-domesticated cows, rodeo fashion. In towns, he would climb swiftly up the backs of high houses and down again, or box, or work an electric drill and excavate and repave back yards. The electric drill bucked up the neighbours tremendously and created a hostile audience that was of use in checking any tendency to slack off. On such occasions he dressed lightly and exposed and ventilated an impressive breadth of hairy chest. The Lord Paramount was more and more compelled by the logic of his own undertakings to respect and defer to this heroic associate as time went on, but he would not have looked like him for the lordship of a dozen worlds. From the first the advice of General Gerson had something of the dictatorial. "You ought to do so and so," he would say and add compactly, "they expect it of you." And the Lord Paramount would realize that that was so. It was, for example, borne in upon him through something in the bearing and tone of General Gerson that it behoved him to display a certain temerity in his attitude to the various new, ingenious, and frightful things that were being accumulated to ensure the peace of the Empire. It was not in the nature of the Lord Paramount to shrink from personal danger but he might have been disposed to husband his time and nervous energy in regard to those things, if it had not been for Gerson's influence. Gerson was hard. And a ruler who rules Gersons must be hard also. A certain hardness is a necessary part of greatness. Good to be reminded of that. At times he found himself sustaining his own determination by talking to himself in quite the old Parham fashion. "I owe it to myself," he said. "I owe it to the world." So he looped the loop over London, holding tight and keeping his face still and calm. He wore strange and dreadful-looking gas masks and went into chambers of vaporous abomination, where instant death would have been the result of a pin prick to his nozzle. It was a pity his intrepid face was so disguised, for it would have been well for weaker spirited men to mark its observant calm. Rather reluctantly he had to see a considerable number of cats, sheep, and dogs demoralized and killed by poison gas, the precious secret of General Gerson's department, that Gas L of which Camelford had spoken, for which no antidote was known. It seemed to hurt damnably in the two or three minutes before the final collapse. Unless all forms of animal expression are a lie, it was death by intolerable torture. "I owe it," he repeated, for there was mercy in his nature. "This gas we do not use," he said firmly, "except as an ultimate resort." "War," said Gerson, sighing contentedly as the last victim ceased to writhe, "war IS an ultimate resort." The Lord Paramount made no answer because he felt he might be sick. He seemed to have Mr. Parham's stomach, and very often in those feats of hardihood he had occasion to feel sick. He spent some chilly and clammy hours at the bottom of the Solent, and he raced at twenty miles an hour in a leaping, bumping tank across the rough of Liss Forest, and both occasions tested him out. He wore boules quiès and fired immense chest-flattening guns by touching a button, and he was wetted to the skin and made sickest of all by tearing down the Channel against a stiff south-wester at forty miles an hour in a new mystery boat that was three parts giant torpedo. "It was the lot of Nelson too," he said, coming ashore, greenly triumphant but empty to the depths of his being. "His heart kept in the right place even if his stomach betrayed him..." VI. — THE LOGIC OF WARSeveral times did the Lord Paramount return to the topic of poison gas with Gerson. He did not want it to be used, but at the same time the logic of war made him anxious to be sure of an effective supply. Camelford's threat of holding it up haunted him with a very tiresome persistence. And Gerson had been a poison gas expert. The Lord Paramount wanted war to be magnificent. Wars are the red letters that illuminate the page of history. The resolute tramp of infantry, the inspiring jingle and clatter of cavalry, the mounting thunder of the guns: that was the music to which history had gone since history was worthy of being called history, and he wished that the old tunes could still be played and history still march to them. Some of these new machines and new methods, he perceived had the hardness and intolerance of a scientific thesis; they despiritualized warfare; they made it indiscriminate; almost they abolished heroism in favour of ingenuity and persistence, these scientific virtues. At the climax men would be just carried forward willy-nilly. He would gladly have subscribed to any common understanding to eliminate the aeroplane, the submarine, and all gas from civilized hostilities, as bacteria and explosive bullets have already been eliminated. But Gerson would have none of these exclusions. "War is war," said he, "and what kills and breaks the spirit best is what you have to use." "But the bombing of towns! Poison gas on civilians. Poison gas almost haphazard." "What right have they to be civilians?" said Gerson. "Probably shirking a levy or something. In the next war there won't be any civilians. Gas doesn't have a fair deal. Everyone's against it. Ask me, I should say it improves fighting. Robs them of the idea there's something safe behind them. How's the old nigger song go? Bombs-- "'Kicking up ahind and afore And a yaller gas aspreading out ahind old Joe'-- Turns 'em back to it." "Practically—at Geneva we have undertaken not to use gas." "Query—the 'practically.' 'Fit comes to that, we've renounced the use of war—by the Kellogg Pact and suchlike flummery. Doesn't prevent every Power in Europe, and Washington too, keeping its Poison Gas Department up to strength and working overtime. No—sir. For propaganda purposes you may begin a war gentlemanly and elegant, but wait till the game warms up! Then you gouge. Then you bite off noses. And the gas comes in—trust me. "Yes," said the Lord Paramount, yielding. "Yes. It's true. To impose a decision one must be stern." He composed himself for some moments as an image of implacable sternness. The expression in the eye of General Gerson was no doubt reluctant respect. "And now for the most probable campaigns," began the Lord Paramount, and stirred the maps that lay upon the table before them. "First—Russia." "Things might very well begin there," said Gerson. For a time they discussed the possibilities arising out of a clash with Moscow. "In that event," said Gerson, "if nothing occurs in nearer Europe, we would have to run a sort of second-rate war. As we did in Palestine with Allenby. For a time, anyhow. The new things are for closer populations. We can't send a lot of ultramodern stuff out there. Aeroplanes with machine guns —in sufficient abundance, of course—ought to settle anything that we're likely to have against us in India or central Asia. Central Asia has always fallen back on nomadism hitherto, cavalry swarms, Parthians, Huns, Mongols, and so on. But that game's up, against aeroplanes and machine guns. The wing will beat the horse. New chapter of history. And the Afghan game of sitting among rocks and sniping at you goes the same way. The bird comes down on him. Every sort of what I might call barbaric and savage warfare is over now —twenty years out of date. We've got 'em. Russia in Asia would be a comparatively easy war. But we can't count on restricting it to Asia." "I hope to do so." "Hope, yes—I said, 'count on it.' And besides, there's Petersburg —what they WILL call Leningrad—and a little raid from that as a base to Moscow, just to settle things. We may be forced to do that. We might fight in central Asia for ten years and settle nothing... And who knows? If things get difficult with us—our friends in Berlin... Or even nearer ... You never know." He scrutinized the Lord Paramount. "It isn't safe," he said, making it plainer, "to lean over Europe and fight Russia." "I do not think it will be like that," said the Lord Paramount. "No. But it might be." Gerson left that doubt to rankle. "I don't care what agreements you make," he said, "not to use this or that. States that can keep such agreements aren't really at war at all. It's just sport, s'long as you have rules. War don't begin until law ends. It isn't necessary if any sort of agreement can be made and enforced. All this agreeing not to use gas." Gerson smiled and showed his black teeth and pointed his witticism—"well, it's gas and nothing else. The decisive factor in any first-class war now has to be gas delivered from the air. Work it out—it's as plain as daylight. It's the only way to decision. All modern war from now on will be a fight to be able to drop gas in quantity on the most crowded, sensitive, nervous centre of the enemy. Then and then only will the other side give in. They HAVE to give in. You go on gassing till they do... What other idea of war CAN there be now?" It was hard stuff, but the man was right. The thoughtful face of the Lord Paramount grew resolute. "I admit the logic of it." The white hand clenched. "I believe the Germans have the most powerful explosives in the world," said Gerson. "If we left it at that they'd be on the top. They're still the ingenious devils they always were. The Republic didn't alter much—and now that's over for good, thank God. 'Ware their chemists, say I! All the same we, as it happens, just now, and God knows for how long, have absolutely the lead in poison gas. Absolutely. It happens—so." "I know," said the Lord Paramount. "Gas L." He was secretly pleased to see Gerson's amazement. "But—who TOLD you of that?" The white hand waved the question aside. "I know, my dear Gerson," smiled the Lord Paramount. "I happen to know. Works at Cayme, eh?" "Well, there you are! If we had a war in Europe now we could astonish the world... Do you know ALL about Gas L?" "I don't," said the Lord Paramount. "Tell me." "WELL," said Gerson, "well," and leant forward over his clenched fists on the table in a pose that was somehow suggestive of a cat with its forefeet tucked under it. He stuck his head on one side. He gave information reluctantly and confusedly. He was not accustomed to give information to anyone. He was not accustomed to give anything to anyone. But gradually before the mind of the Lord Paramount the singularity of Gas L became plain. This was the gas Camelford had spoken of at that dinner at Sir Bussy's which still haunted his mind. This was the unknown gas that needed the rare earths and basic substances that it seemed only Cayme in Cornwall could supply. Even at the time, that gas had touched Mr. Parham's imagination and set him speculating. "Don't the scientific men, the real scientific men know about it?" he asked. "The devil of all this scientific warfare is that science keeps no secrets, and there's always someone, in some other country, hard on your track. Look how we tackled the German gas on the western front. In a week or so." "You're right, precisely," said Gerson, "and that is just why I'd like to get to business with Gas L before very long. Before it's blown upon. Before they've set men to think it out. It's true that Cayme MAY be the only source of the stuff, and in that case the British monopoly is assured. But are we safe?" The Lord Paramount nodded. But he wanted more particulars. The real poison it seemed was not Gas L, but Gas L combined with nearly a hundred times its volume of air. It was very compressible. You let a little sizzle out from its reservoir, it vaporized, expanded, and began to combine. "It hurts. You remember those cats in the experimental chamber," said Gerson. It didn't decompose for weeks. It drifted about and it was still distressful when it was diluted to the merest trace. All the London area could be devastated with a score of tons. And there was no anti-gas known. For all the other known war gases there were anti-gases. But Gas L you had to counter with an impervious mask, adherent at its edges, keeping your air respirable with a combined oxygen maker and carbon dioxide absorber slung under the arm. You had, in fact, to put your men in a sort of sub-aerial diver's helmet that it needed training to adjust. "Think of the moral effect of it," said Gerson. "Paris or Berlin, a dead city, dead from men to rats, and nobody daring to go in to clean it up. After such a sample the world would howl for peace at any price whatever." The Lord Paramount saw it for a moment as in a vision. The Place de la Concorde—still. Paris without a sound. Stiff bodies crumpled by the last agony... He came back to Gerson with an effort. "Plainly Cayme is the key position of our defences," he said. His mind searched among the possibilities of the situation." Why shouldn't we nationalize it right away?" "Why not?" said Gerson and seemed to chew unpleasant things. He finished his chewing. "I will tell you why not. "WE," he said, "know how to make Gas L. We know that. But we don't know how to prepare those basal substances—which are peculiar. And we don't know how to separate those rare earths. That THEY know; they've got secret processes at Cayme. It's a question of linked processes. Probably no single man knows all of them properly. Unless it's Camelford. (Camelford again!) If we seize Cayme, if we make any trouble about Cayme, then, for one thing, we call the attention of foreign experts to what is going on. See?" The Master Spirit and the Master General eyed each other comprehendingly. "What exactly—IS Cayme?" "Cayme in Lyonesse," began Gerson. "Lyonesse?" said the Lord Paramount softly. His mind went back to his youth, his ardent poetic but still classical and seemly youth, when Tennyson was still admired and the lost land of King Arthur cast a glamour on the Cornish coast. For a moment or so he could have imagined he was dreaming, so strong was the flavour of unreality the magic name threw over the story. Then distant Lyonesse and Avalon sleeping under the sunset gave place to the blotched and formidable visage of Gerson again. "It's the new works the Star and Rocket Research Combine have made. It's a sort of joint subsidiary. Romer Steinhart & Co. Camelford. Some American capital. But Woodcock's the moving spirit on the business side. He's become a sort of alter ego of Camelford. Camelford's just taken hold of him and got him. He's a devil of a buyer and cornerer. They're up to something big together. God knows what goes on there! But it isn't Gas L. They're up to something of their own. Some revolution in dyes or films or artificial this, that, or the other. That's what THEY want the stuff for. Cheap films in schools or some such foolery. Think of it! Wasting our gas for the sake of kids in schools! They dole us out the material for our own gas, just as they think proper. At any price they like. And make a favour of it." The mind of the Lord Paramount returned to the point that had held it up some moments before. "Lyonesse? But WHY Lyonesse?" "You don't know? I admit it's been done very quietly. They don't want to advertise it. Two or three square miles of ground brought up out of the sea, down by the village of Cayme and out towards Land's End. The stuff is out there. The works are supposed to be at Cayme, but really they're out beyond low water mark, that was. And there's some old poem or legend or something..." "So it really is Lyonesse!" "That's what they call it." "They've built a place up from the sea bottom?" "No! They've raised the sea bottom and built a place on it. Something between a gas works and a battleship." "But how—! Raised the sea bottom?" "God knows how they did it. There it is. Raised. Mineral veins and all. And while we're at peace we can't raid 'em, we can't search 'em, we can't seize 'em. We can't get at them. That's the one flaw in our military situation. The weak point is the merchant at home. I always said it would be. People say the workers will give trouble. Workers, damn them! never give trouble unless someone eggs them on. They're all as patriotic as I am, really. They're human. They hate foreigners until their minds get spoilt. Strike at the eggers-on, say I, and the workers are yours for the drilling. But there's no national love or loyalty between business men and soldiering. Not the big business men. I mean the big world-wide traders. Of course, we've got so-called nationalist motor-car men and nationalist brands of this and that, but even the men with a straight Union Jack on car or can will hold us up if possible. Still, at the worst, they can be bought. There's something to be said for an army with an all-British equipment out and out. Battles won on Empire food and all that. But it isn't that sort of chap I mean. I mean the men who handle the broad products. This new sort. These new Big Civilians. Who think of the industry before they think of the flag. Who're getting outrageous ideas. It was a BIT like this once or twice in the Great War: they objected to waste, but whatever is going on now is ever so much bigger. What is going on now is fundamental. These people are cornering Victory. That's what it comes to. Making a corner in Victory. Much they care for the Empire! I'm under no illusions. If the Empire wants Victory next time the Empire has got to pay for it, and there's times when I think that it won't get it even if it pays. Suppose they hold it up ANYHOW!" The Lord Paramount was thinking profoundly. The fine and regular teeth nibbled at the knuckles of the shapely hand. He had an idea. Meanwhile, with the undertow of his mind he followed Gerson. "There was a time," said Gerson, "when the man of science knew his place in the world. He kept his place just as the engineer on a battleship kept his place. You had to keep a sharp eye on finance always—finance being so largely Jews and international in spirit—but their women like titles and show and they're sort of silly with the women. And at bottom a Jew is always afraid of a soldier. But your man of science you could trust outright. You could—once. All you had to do with him was to slap him into uniform, give him temporary rank for the duration, and he got so fierce and patriotic he'd kill his mother to please you. And the business men too. They LOVED a belt and a sword. They'd crawl for a bit of ribbon. The old sort of business man who went into shop or workshop at fourteen. Natural born patriots. They'd give the army anything it asked for. Once. Not now. All that has changed. This damned modern education, these new ideas, creep about everywhere. They're a sort of poison gas of the mind. They sap discipline. The young men of science, the clever ones, are all going Bolshy or worse. You'd be astonished. You can't count on them. It's extraordinary. And the business men and the bankers are rotten with pacificism. They get it out of the air. They get it from America. God knows how they get it! 'Does war PAY?' they ask. Does war pay? Pretty question that! We get along now simply because the rich men are afraid of the Communists and the Communists won't have any truck with a rich man. The poor pacificist keeps the rich pacificist in order for us. But will that last? If ever that quarrel eases off and they look around them, you'll have the United States of Everywhere, and fleets and armies will be on the scrap heap and sojers in the casual ward. Look at the situation! About this gas. Here we are with the master gas of the world! Here we are, as we are. England's opportunity if ever there was opportunity. Go right out now and we win. And before we can take a firm line with anyone we have to ask ourselves: 'Shall we get our guns in time? Are we safe for high explosive? And in particular—will Mr. Camelford and Sir Bussy Woodcock please to kindly let us have our gas?' Gurr! When I think of it!" Even great military experts must not be allowed to talk forever. The Lord Paramount sighed and drew himself up in a manner that conveyed the conference was at an end. He tapped the table between them and nodded and spoke reassuringly. "When the time comes, mon général," he said, "you shall have your gas." (And then again that momentary pang of doubt.) VII. — SIR BUSSY IS RECALCITRANTAs soon as the Lord Paramount returned to London Sir Bussy was sent for. It was a curious encounter. These two men had had scarcely a word together in private since that marvellous evening of the Advent when the Master Spirit had come and taken Mr. Parham to himself. Yet all the time the little man had been hovering in a very curious and persistent manner in the background of the Lord Paramount's perceptions. There was little of the tactful Parham now in the calm firm mastery with which the Lord Paramount spoke, and it was as if Sir Bussy had shrunken from his former sullen dominance to the likeness of a wary and resentful schoolboy under reproof. The Lord Paramount was seated at his desk, lordly and serene. He was as large again as Mr. Parham. Compared with Sir Bussy he was enormous. "I want a word with you, Woodcock," he said. The new tone. Sir Bussy grunted faintly. No chair had been placed for him. He considered the situation, dragged one across the room, and sat down. What a little fellow he was! "Well?" he said ungraciously. "I think of making you responsible for the military supplies of the Empire and particularly of non-ferrous metals, explosives, and—gas." Straight to the point. Sir Bussy had nothing ready by way of reply. How WORDLESS! A white finger pointed to him; a clear eye regarded him. "Have you any objection?" "Large order," said Sir Bussy. He attempted no excuse. "It's a responsible position," the Master's voice pursued him. "No doubt." "I say 'responsible.'" "I seemed to hear you say it." The same Sir Bussy as ever. "'Responsible' means that if these things are not forthcoming in limitless abundance on the day of need, it is YOU will answer for it." "Wha'd' you WANT with gas?" Sir Bussy asked abruptly and unexpectedly. "It is of vital importance." The quick mind of the Lord Paramount leapt at once at the revealing discovery that Sir Bussy thought instantly of gas. "But it isn't historical," said Sir Bussy. "It isn't in tradition." "What has that to do with it?" "Isn't all this stuff—carrying on history?" "This stuff?" "The military organization of the Empire, national and imperial ascendancy, flags, armies, frontiers, love of the Empire, devotion, sacrifice, and having a damned good go at Russia." "Manifestly." "What else COULD it be?" Sir Bussy reflected. "Lemme see, where were we?" It was evident that he had been thinking profoundly by the things he had next to say. "Well," he began, developing his premeditated argument, "then why not play your traditional game with the traditional pieces? Why drag in modern science? Use historical armies and fleets for historical destinies and leave gas and tanks and submarines out of it. If you must still play about with flags and frontiers, go back to Brown Bess and foot slogging and ten-pounder field guns and leave these modern things alone. Chemistry doesn't belong to your world. It isn't for you. It's NEW. It's out-size." For a moment the Lord Paramount was baffled. Sir Bussy was still Sir Bussy the unexpected. Then a beautiful word came like an angel of light to the rescue. The Lord Paramount pronounced it like a charm. "Continuity," he said and leant back to observe its effect. The intellectual elements of Mr. Parham that he had absorbed into his constitution suddenly asserted themselves. The Lord Paramount departed from his customary use of pithy and direct speech and argued a point. "You are mentally underdeveloped, Woodcock," he went on—when he should not have gone on. "You are a very good fellow, but you are uneducated. Your historical imagination is that of a child of five. You have no sense of continuity whatever. All things progress by stages—EVOLVE—if we must use that word. You do not understand that. It is you who are old-fashioned with your ideas of revolutions and strange new beginnings and progress that never looks back. Your brain accepts that sort of stuff because nature abhors a vacuum. Let me tell you a little secret, Sir Bussy. As one who knows something of history. There never has been a revolution in all history. There have been so-called revolutions; that is all—times when the clock struck—violent and confused periods; mere froth upon the great stream of events. Broaden down from precedent to precedent—Yes. Begin anew—No. It is the past that rules; it is the past that points us on to our assured Destinies." "No way out, in fact?" said Sir Bussy. "None." "Evolve or nothing?" "That's the law of it." "No fresh starts?" "Continuity." "So the railway train had to evolve, I suppose, bit by bit, slipping its end carriages and expanding out its footboards, until it became an aeroplane, and the mainmast of the sailing ship hollowed out into a funnel and squatted close until the cook's galley became the furnace room and his kettle became a boiler. Always Continuity. Eh? No gaps. No fresh start. Why, damn it! a child of five knows that it's only by fresh starts man can keep alive!" The Lord Paramount stared at his adversary, regretting now that he had stooped to argue with this obstinate and obscure mentality. "I tell you these Powers and Policies of yours are worn out and done for," Sir Bussy went on. "It's a dream you're in. A damned old dream. It wouldn't matter if you weren't sleepwalking and wandering into dangerous places. Gas and high explosives don't belong to your game. Brains don't grow at Aldershot, the soil's too sandy. They dry up there. These experts of yours, these mongrels, these soldiers who dabble in chemistry and engineering, and these engineers and chemists who dabble in soldiering, will let you down when the crash comes... Soldiering's a profession of incompetents and impostors, jobbing about with engineering firms and second-rate chemical combines... You won't get the stuff you want, and even if you get it, your experts won't be able to use it. Or they'll use it all wrong..." The Lord Paramount decided that there must be no more argument. "That is for me to decide," he said. "Your rôle is to facilitate supplies in every possible way." "And suppose I don't choose to." "There is such a thing as treason even in peace time, Sir Bussy." "Treason!" said Sir Bussy. "What! and axes on Tower Hill? Put the cards down. I'll SEE you." It was the first open opposition the Lord Paramount had encountered since his triumphant accession to power, and he found himself strangely perturbed. There was a tremulous quiver in his nerves, and he felt the need for self- control. Sir Bussy stood for much more than himself. An impulse to order his arrest had to be restrained. If anything of that sort was to be done it must be done as undramatically as possible. Behind him were such men as Camelford —incalculable factors. The Lord Paramount turned his eyes to the window and regarded the fine lines of the corner of the United Services' Museum for a moment or so. How he hated Sir Bussy! Still not looking at his recalcitrant visitor he touched a little bell on his desk. "I have given you fair warning," he said. "You can go." Sir Bussy vanished instantly, leaving the faint flavour of a "Gaw" behind him. VIII. — A LITTLE TOUR OF EUROPEFor some time after Sir Bussy had left him the Lord Paramount remained staring out of his window upon Whitehall, in a state of some perplexity. He was like a reader who has lost his place in a story and omitted to turn down the page. He had forgotten himself. He had argued. He had forgotten himself, and some subtle magic in the queerly formidable little creature Sir Bussy, had recalled the suppressed and assimilated Mr. Parham. Something, at any rate, of Mr. Parham. For a moment or so it had been almost as though he were Mr. Parham. Instead of just telling Sir Bussy of his task and his danger he had disputed, had listened to what the fellow had to say and for some moments allowed it to weigh in his mind. Indeed, it still weighed in his mind. Lords Paramount should not do things in this fashion. They know. They know altogether. They are decisive at once. Otherwise what right had they to assume a lordship over their fellows? At any cost their prestige for instant rightness must be upheld. It had been a queer incident, and it must not recur. The memory of one of the late Mr. Parham's dinner-table arguments, of that late Mr. Parham with whom his own being was so mysteriously linked, had taken on a monstrous disproportion. He must recover scale. He turned sharply. Hereward Jackson had entered the room noiselessly and then coughed. There was something extraordinarily reassuring about Hereward Jackson. He was a born believer; he radiated faith; his mental deference, his entirely unquestioning loyalty was like a perpetual tonic to the Master. And a perpetual example to everyone else about him. "All is ready," he said. "You can lunch in the air with a flask and a tin of sandwiches, and the new Dictator in Berlin will be awaiting you about three." For the Lord Paramount had arranged to make a brief circuit of Europe, to marshal the strong men of the Continent about a common policy. They too, masters indeed in their own houses, were still manifestly in need of a leader to unite them for a common control of the chaotic forces of this age. That leader the Lord Paramount proposed to be, a dictator among the dictators, master of masters, the leader of the new Crusade that would reunite Christendom. He made the circuit in open military aeroplanes. Before his incorporation with the Lord Paramount Mr. Parham had had no experience of flying except for one or two fine-weather crossings in the big Paris-London omnibuses. Now, muffled to the eyes, with the sweet fresh air whipping his cheeks and chin and the tip of his nose, mounting, beating the air, swooping like a bird, he realized for the first time what a delight and glory flying may be. Accompanied by companion planes carrying his secretarial staff, and escorted by a number of fighting planes, which ever and again would loop the loop or fall headlong like dead leaves and recover miraculously within fifty feet of the ground, fly turning over screw-like, pattern in squares and long wedges, chase each other in interlacing circles, and perform a score of similar feats for his diversion, the squadrons of the Lord Paramount swept over the pleasant land of Kent and the Channel, coasted by Dunkirk and athwart mouth after mouth and green delta after green delta of the Rhine, and so, leaving the sleeping law courts of The Hague to the left, turned eastward over the plains to Berlin. Berlin was his first objective, for in strict accordance with his forecast to the Council of the Empire the smouldering and resentful nationalism of Germany had broken out, and the Dictator Von Barheim was now effectual master of Germany. He had to be talked to a little, and assurances had to be won from him. Then to Paris to revive the spirit of Locarno. Afterwards Rome. And then, before the week was out, a scythe-like moving of the outer edge. King Paramitri, Count Paroli, Paraminski, and then a spectacular flight at a great height to Madrid and Parimo de Rivera. For Parimo was still at Madrid it seemed. All kindred-spirited men. All patriot master spirits, devoted to the honoured traditions of mankind; to flag and fatherland, to faith and family. At every European capital the aeroplanes rose like swarms of autumnal starlings to greet the great conservator. Once he was within twenty feet of a collision, but his airman displayed astonishing quickness and skill. A youthful and too ardent Italian got out of control and nose-dived into the crowd on the Pincio at Rome, and there was a slight ground accident which burnt out two bombers at Warsaw, but no other misadventures. The exhilaration of circling over one great capital after another, over its parks, towers, bridges, and bristling buildings, its encircling hills and clustering suburbs, and the banking and curving about to come down in a swift, clean rush was immense. What ancient conqueror ever made such a hawk's swoop into an allied city? Then followed the bumping rush up to the aerodrome, and then it was the proudly impassive marble face relaxed for the smiling descent from the machine, the greetings, the cameras, the applause. The vigour of the Lord Paramount's personality, which had been a little impaired in his wrangle with Sir Bussy, was entirely restored by this European tour. His interview in Berlin was pure dominance. There had been street fighting, and the southeast region of the city was said to be in a mess with bombs and machine guns; there was still a little shooting audible in that direction, but Unter den Linden was packed with a patriotic crowd in a state of exalted delight at this immediate personal recognition of the new régime by the master mind of Britain. Everywhere the old imperial flag had reappeared. The room in which these two dictators met was furnished with Prussian severity; everything was very simple, very necessary, and very, very big and heavy. Intimate relics of Frederick the Great occupied a position of honour in a glass case. The snuffbox would have carried through a long campaign, and there was room for luggage in the boots. Both men wore military uniforms. Von Barheim aped the still venerated figure of Bismarck and was none the more flexible in mind or manner for the compression of a tight cuirass; the Lord Paramount wore the simple yet effective service dress of a British general. The cap with its gilt-edged peak, the red band with its richly simple adornments, the well-tailored uniform suited his tall figure extremely. For a time it was a little difficult to get Von Barheim away from the question of war responsibility. He came back to it again and again, and he betrayed a regrettable resentment on account of the post-war policy of France. He harped upon the Rhine. When will Europe forget that ancient dispute? When will Europe look forward? Well it is to be traditional, historical, national, and loyal, but one should not be too rigidly and restrictedly traditional, historical, national, and loyal. If only one could give Europe English eyes! —to see the world. The Lord Paramount perceived that willy-nilly he must play the schoolmaster. "May I put my conceptions of the world situation to you?" he asked. Germany's man of iron nodded a joyless assent. "Here," said the Lord Paramount with a sweeping gesture of his hand over the table, "in the very centre of the Old World, illimitably vast, potentially more powerful than all the rest of the world put together—" he made a momentary pause—"is Russia. Consider Russia." "Their ally in 1914," said Von Barheim. "But not now." "Which is just why they ought to be reasonable and not make themselves intolerable to us." "They have Poland at their beck and call." "POLAND!" The Lord Paramount said no more about Poland. He came back to the unalterable certain greatness of Russia in the future and so proceeded to unfold the standard British conception of world policy in the light of that fact, using almost the same phrases as those he had employed in the recent council, making indeed only one or two modifications, dictated by consideration for the patriotic feelings of Von Barheim. "What part will Germany play in this?" he asked. "Germany, the heart of Europe, the central nation? If she is not the forefront of Westernism against Asia she becomes the forefront of Russia against Europe." "She can be her own forefront," said Von Barheim, but the Lord Paramount disregarded that. He felt he was winning and enlarging Von Barheim. The lucidity of Mr. Parham and the magnetism of the Lord Paramount made indeed an irresistible combination. Strange to think how badly that comprehensive exposition had been received when first it had been given to mortal ears at Sir Bussy's table. Slowly but surely this sturdy German mind was turned away from its sombre preoccupations as the new conceptions opened out before it. Von Barheim seemed to breathe a fresher air. The Lord Paramount came to his climax. "If I could go from here to Paris with some definite proposal," he said and laid a firm white hand on Von Barheim's arm, "if I could restore the Frank to his eastern kindred in friendship and cooperation, I feel I should not have lived in vain." "Danzig," said Von Barheim compactly. Then added: "And the other points I have explained to you." "And why not Danzig? Between the Polish border and the Pacific there is room for compensation." "If it is THAT sort of proposal," said Von Barheim and turned about to face his visitor squarely. "I did not understand at first... If we can rearm freely. A big honest enterprise." They had come to business. Von Barheim clapped his hands in Oriental fashion, and a secretary instantly appeared. "Get a map of the world," he said. "Bring a big atlas." And before eleven next morning the Lord Paramount was in Paris closeted with M. Parème. M. Parème wore the frock coat without which all French statesmanship is invalid, and the Lord Paramount had assumed a dark lounge suit of the most perfect cut. M. Parème was skeptical, realist, swift, and epigrammatic. His manner was more hostile than his matter. For Frenchmen all bargaining is a sort of quarrelling. One side must give in. And this was bargaining of the most elaborate sort. Slowly the Lord Paramount unfolded his vast designs. Slowly and with much resistance M. Parème assimilated those designs. But always with safeguarding conditions. "Germany goes eastward to the north," said M. Parème. "Good. In the country to the north of Moscow there ought to be excellent scope for German energy—particularly in the winter. Later compensations may come in South America. Again good. France does not touch America. She did all she wished to do over there in the Mexican expedition. We are to go southward and eastward, following out our traditional destinies in Syria and North Africa. Again—good. But it is clearly understood that in the final settlement there is nothing in this arrangement to exclude France from additional—indemnifications in central Asia or north China?" Leaving a number of issues open in this region, M. Parème turned suddenly to other possibilities. Suppose the Lord Paramount's proposals collapsed. Such things had been known to occur. Suppose that at the eleventh hour Germany did not abide by this bargain but were to attack France in alliance with Italy, would Britain bind herself to come in on the side of her ancient ally? He was very insistent that Britain held to that. These negotiations must not be supposed to set that older understanding aside. On the other hand, if Italy were to attack France while Germany, through a counter revolution or any other cause, failed to support Italy so that Italy was left alone vis-à-vis with France, then France would be free to deal with Italy and her boundaries and her African possessions without any interference from Great Britain. That was understood? It was to be a simple duel in that case, and all Great Britain would do would be to keep the ring. And in case of the joint defeat of France and Great Britain the latter Power would of course undertake to repay to France all of whatever indemnity she might have to pay in addition to such penalties as were directly imposed upon herself, and regardless of any economic difficulties in which she might find herself? The Lord Paramount's confidence in victory made him very yielding upon such issues. Their talk became less difficult when it turned to America. "And across the Atlantic," asked M. Parème, "our friends the Prohibitionists seem to want to Prohibit war." "They won't intervene," said the Lord Paramount as one who knows absolutely. "Can you even begin to understand the mental operations of America?" said M. Parème. "If they DID choose to interfere," said M. Parème, "they have an overwhelming fleet, and France has a considerable coast line. Would Great Britain undertake in that case to retain at least two thirds of her naval forces in European waters south and west of the British Channel, so as to defend the French coast?"... At last the Lord Paramount had his understanding plain. France would assist and also France would share. The German ambassador, in spite of the very grave doubts of M. Parème, was called in for an informal confirmation. Then, without haste and without delay, the Lord Paramount returned to his aeroplane, and the British squadrons, with an escort of French aces, streamed, stunting gaily, up the sky. The whole sky was a pattern of aeroplanes. It was very beautiful. It had the splendour of newness, the splendour of order, the thrill of convergent power. "Rome," said the Lord Paramount. It was in quite a different key that he met the mighty Paramuzzi, pattern of all the militant great men of the age, a genius almost too stupendous for Italy. "This is a man," said Mr. Parham at their meeting. "Ecce Homo," said Paramuzzi. It was necessary now in the most grandiose manner possible, to offer Italy the fourth place in and the fourth share of the spoils of this mighty adventure of western Europe against the East. She had, moreover, to be a little disillusioned about her future in North Africa. Her attention had to be deflected to Greece, the Balkans, and (a brain wave of the Lord Paramount's) the Crimea. The understanding was achieved. At Rome things were done in the classical style—or perhaps if one may employ a slight contradiction in terms, the neo-classic style. The white colonnades of the Victor Emanuele monument formed a becoming background to the scene. The Lord Paramount wore a British court costume with the Garter and Order of Merit under a cloak of his own design. Paramuzzi met the occasion in black velvet and silver with a hat adorned with a number of exceptionally large ostrich plumes. They met in the focus of a great semicircle of cameras. "Hail, Cæsar Britannicus!" "Hail, Cisalpine Cæsar!" There was some tremendous saluting by serried Fascisti. They were patterned across the Piazza Venetia. Never was saluting carried to higher levels than in Italy under Paramuzzi. They did marvellous things with their hands, their chests, their legs and knees, their chins and noses. They brought down their hands with a slap so unanimous and simultaneous that it was as if the sky had cracked. "Hail, Cæsar Britannicus!" and then the Fascist cry. London cannot do things in this style. When the two great men were alone there was a moment of intense spiritual communion. Paramuzzi thrust his face with intense dilated eyes close to the Byronic visage of his visitor. He thrust a tightly clenched fist even nearer. "POWER!" he said. "POWER!" The other fist came to help in a sort of wrenching gesture. "Exactly," said the Lord Paramount, backing a little with Anglo-Saxon restraint and then bowing stiffly. Paramuzzi englobed a planet with extended hands. His eyes devoured the Englishman. "The world," he said. "And what we are! Virility! The forces of life!" "Yes," said the Lord Paramount. "Yes." "I love life," said Paramuzzi, "I love life with an exorbitant passion. And death and danger, the red essence of life. Discipline, yes—but death and danger. I delight in untamed horses. Attempts at assassination amuse me." And then, with a lapse into great tenderness: "And music. Our Italian Scarlatti... AND LOVE! Sincere, passionate, headlong love! The love of disciples and devotees! Realized." "For me," said the Lord Paramount succinctly, "my duty." He perceived he had scored a point. Paramuzzi would have liked to have said that. To the Nordic mind of the Lord Paramount this encounter had a slight flavour of extravagance, and a certain anxiety invaded his mind as to the outcome of their negotiations, but when it came to business Paramuzzi proved to be a very reasonable man. He was lavish with his assurances and quite ready to accept the fourth share as if it were the first. It was evident the Italian people would receive it as the first and triumph. For there was glamour about this Paramuzzi. He could bring all the glory of Rome out of his sleeve; he could make an old hat look like empire, and a swarming and swelling population of illiterates adequate security for limitless loans... The King of the House of Savoy was something of an anticlimax... In such fashion it was that the Lord Paramount wove his net of understandings and gathered his allies together for his Asiatic war, the great effort of Europe against Asia. Europe versus Asia. He felt like Herodotus preaching Hellenic unity; a greater Herodotus preaching the unity of Christendom; he felt like King Philip of Macedonia preparing the campaigns that Alexander led. He felt like Cæsar marching southward. Like Peter the Hermit. Like John the Baptist. Like—But indeed all history welled up in him. He believed all the promises he extorted. He perceived indeed that these promises were made with a certain resistance, with implicit reservations, but for a time he was able to carry on and disregard the faint flavour of unreality this gave his great combination. He was convinced that if only he held his course his own will was powerful enough to carry the European mind with him. His squadrons throbbed over Europe, and above him was the blue sky —and above the blue that God of Nations who surely rules there, though so many pseudo-intellectual men have forgotten it. The Lord Paramount, in an ecstasy of self-confidence, waved his white hand aloft. The God of Nations grew real again as the Lord Paramount recreated him. The God of Battles came back reassured and sat down again upon the Great White Throne. "MY God," said the Lord Paramount. Whatever obsessions with local feuds might cloud the minds of his kindred dictators, whatever sub-policies and minor issues (from a world point of view) might be complicating their thoughts, surely there was nothing so comprehensive and fundamental and profoundly and essentially true as his own statement of British policy. After all, he owed something to the vanished Parham's intelligence. It was unjust not to admit something brilliant about poor old Parham. The Parham that had been. The man had had penetration even if he had had no power. He had been too modest and inaggressive, but he had had penetration. The more often his admirable summation of the international situation was repeated the more clear and beautiful it seemed. "The lines of the next world struggle shape themselves," said the Lord Paramount to Paramuzzi, "rationally, logically, inevitably. Need I explain the situation to your Latin lucidity? Here—" and he made a sweeping gesture in the air before them, for now he could do it without a table—"here, inimitably vast, potentially more powerful than most of the world put together, is Russia..." Et cetera. And so to the aeroplane again, droning loudly over the mountain crests, a god of destiny, a being history would never forget. Europe became like a large-scale map spread out beneath him. It was as if he sat in Mr. Parham's study at St. Simon's and had lapsed into daydreams with his atlas on his knee. How often had Mr. Parham passed an evening in that very fashion! And so soaring over Europe, he could for a time forget almost altogether his dispute with Camelford and Sir Bussy; the paradoxical puzzle of the gas supply he could ignore almost completely, and those queer impish doubts which scuttled about in the shadows of his glory. IX. — WAR WITH RUSSIAThe results of the Lord Paramount's meteoric circlings in the European heavens would no doubt have become apparent in any event, very soon. But their development was forced on with a very maximum of swiftness by a series of incidents in Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, and along the northwest frontier of India. For such a crisis the mind of the Lord Paramount was fully prepared. He could draw the map of central Asia from memory and tell you the distance between all the chief strategic points. Fact was only assisting his plans. For a century it had been evident to every sound student of history, under the Soviet rule just as plainly as under the Czar, that the whole welfare and happiness of Russia depended upon access to the sea. From the days of Peter the Great to those of the enlightened and penetrating Zinovieff, the tutors of the Russian intelligence had insisted upon the same idea. Dostoievsky had given it the quality of a mystical destiny. It was inconceivable to them that Russia could prosper, flourish, and be happy without owning territories that would give her a broad, uninterrupted, exclusive outlet upon the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. The school of British thought that had produced Mr. Parham was entirely of that opinion, and for an industrious century the statecraft of Britain had schemed, negotiated, and fought with the utmost devotion for the strangulation of Russia. The vast areas of Russia in Europe and Asia could not be productive and prosperous without serious injury to the people in Great Britain. That was axiomatic. If Russia established herself upon the sea, Britain would be irrevocably injured. That there might be a way of trading the products and needs of that great territory in an entirely satisfactory manner without the conquest, assimilation, or stringent suppression of Turks, Persians, Armenians, Baluchis, Indians, Manchus, Chinese, and whoever else intervened, was equally preposterous to the realistic minds of Russia. It was one of those great questions of ascendancy out of which the shapes of history are woven. Steadfastly, automatically, these two great political systems had worked out the logical consequences of their antagonism. The railway in central Asia had been and remained primarily, a weapon in this war. The Russians pushed up their strategic railways from Askabad and Merv and Bokhara; the British replied with corresponding lines. Teheran and Kabul festered with abominable Russian spies and propagandists, scoundrels of the deepest dye, and with the active and high-minded agents Britain employed against them. With the coming of the aeroplane the tension had tightened exceedingly. Over Meshed and Herat buzzed the Russians and the British, like wasps who might at any time sting. This was the situation with which the Lord Paramount had to deal. He meant to force a decision now while the new régime in Russia was still weak and comparatively unprepared. Although the anti-British propaganda of the Russians was extraordinarily effective—"anti-imperialist" they called it—there was every reason to believe that their military discipline, munitions, and transport preparations in Uskub and Turkomania were still far below the Czarist level. The crisis was precipitated by an opportune British aviator who nose- dived in flames into the bazaar at Kushk and killed and cooked several people as well as himself. A violent anti-British riot ensued. Bolshevik propaganda had trained these people for such excesses. A British flag was discovered and duly insulted, and shots were fired at two colleagues of the fallen airman who circled low to ascertain his fate. The news, in an illuminated form, was at once communicated to the press of the world, and the Lord Paramount dictated a spirited communication to Moscow that followed the best precedents of Lord Curzon. The Russian reply was impolite. It declared that British aeroplanes had no business over the Turkoman soviet republic. It reiterated charges of sustained hostility and malignity against the British government since the fall of the Kerensky regime. It enlarged upon the pacific intentions and acts of soviet Russia and the constant provocation to which it had been subjected. It refused point blank to make any apology or offer any compensation. The Lord Paramount communicated this ungracious and insolent reply to the Powers, with an appeal for their sympathy. He announced at the same time that as a consequence of this culminating offence a state of war now existed between the United Soviet Republics and the British Empire. Neutral Powers would observe the customary restraints towards belligerents. Herat and Kandahar were promptly occupied by Russian and British troops respectively, as precautionary measures, and a powerful British air force, supporting a raid of friendly Kurds, took and sacked Meshed. Herat was bombed by the British simultaneously with the far less effective bombing of Kandahar by the Russians. Although only high explosives and incendiary bombs were used in both cases, the Afghan population of these two towns, oblivious to the gigantic urgencies of the situation, displayed the liveliest resentment against Britain. This was manifestly unfair. This was clearly the result of an unscrupulous propaganda. They might perhaps be allowed a certain resentment for Herat, but it was soviet bombs which burst in Kandahar. The Lord Paramount had succeeded in doing what even Mr. Brimstone Burchell had failed to do. He had got his war with Russia—and Afghanistan thrown in. The day following the declaration of hostilities the British and Japanese, acting in strict accordance with a secret agreement already concluded through the foresight of the Lord Paramount, proclaimed the Chinese Kuomintang as an ally of Russia, published documents alleged to have been stolen by trustworthy agents from Russian and Chinese representatives in proof of this statement, and announced the blockade of China. The Japanese also landed very considerable forces to protect the strategic points in the railway system of eastern China from anything that might threaten them. The British people, always a little slow at the uptake, took a day or so to realize that another World War was beginning. At first the hostilities seemed to be all Asia away, and merely spectacular for the common man. The music halls were laughing rather cynically at this return to war, but in quite a patriotic and anti-Bolshevik key. It was a joke against peace talk, which has always been rather boring talk to the brighter sort of people. The Lord Protector considered it advisable to create a press control bureau to make it perfectly clear to the public what was to be thought and felt about the conflict. True, there was none of the swift patriotic response that had made England the envy of the world in 1914, but unemployment was rife, and the recruiting figures were sufficiently satisfactory to preclude an immediate resort to conscription. Anti-Russian propaganda could be developed gradually, and enthusiasm could be fanned as it was required. He issued a general order to commanding officers everywhere: "A cheerful activity is to be maintained. Everyone on the move briskly. Every flag flying and every band busy. This is to be a bright and hopeful war. A refreshing war." The instant fall in the numbers of the unemployed was featured conspicuously in all the papers. X. — AMERICA OBJECTSBut now, after these confident beginnings, came a pause for thought. So far he had been doing his best to leave America out of the reckoning. He had counted on a certain excitement and discontent over there. His concerted action with Japan, and particularly the revelation of a secret understanding with Tokio, was, he knew, bound to produce irritation. But he was now to realize the extreme sensitiveness of American opinion, not only to any appearance of interference with American shipping, but also to any tampering with American interests in China and eastern Siberia. And he was to realize reluctantly how alien to British ideas American thought has become. He was suddenly and strenuously visited by the new American ambassador. Abruptly on the heel of a telephone message at one o'clock in the morning the American ambassador came. Through some conspiracy of accidents the Lord Paramount had not yet met the American ambassador. Mr. Rufus Chanson had been in France, where his wife had been undergoing an operation. Now he had come back post-haste, and a communication from Washington had brought him headlong to the Lord Paramount in the small hours. His appearance recalled at once a certain Mr. Hamp, a banker whom Mr. Parham had met at that memorable dinner at Sir Bussy's. He had the same rather grayish complexion, the same spectacles; he stooped in the same way, and he spoke with the same deliberation. If he had not been Mr. Rufus Chanson, he would certainly have been Mr. Hamp. He was received in the War Office room that had now become the Lord Paramount's home. He was ushered in almost furtively by an under secretary. Mrs. Pinchot, with whom the Lord Paramount had been relaxing his mind, sat in one corner throughout the interview, watching her master with dark adoring eyes. "My lord!" said Mr. Chanson, advancing without a greeting. "What does this mean? What does it all mean? I've hardly kept touch. I got papers on board the boat, and my secretary met me at Dover. I'm thunderstruck. What have you been doing? Why have I got this?" He waved an open document in his hand. The Lord Paramount was surprised by his visitor's extreme agitation but remained calm. "Mr. Chanson, I believe," he said and offered his hand and motioned to a chair. "May I ask what is the matter?" "Don't say you've been deliberately interfering with American shipping at Tientsin," implored Mr. Chanson. "After all that has passed. Don't say you've seized five ships. Don't say it's by your orders the Beauty of Narragansett was fired on and sunk with seven men. As things are, if that is so—God knows what our people won't do!" "There is a blockade." The American appealed to heaven. "WHY, in the name of Holiness, is there a blockade?" "There has been some incident," the Lord Paramount admitted. He turned to Mrs. Pinchot, who rustled with her papers. Her little clear voice confirmed, "Beauty of Narragansett refused to obey signals and sunk. Number of drowned not stated." "My God!" said Mr. Chanson. "Will you British people never understand that in the American people you're dealing with the most excitable people on God's earth? Why did you let it happen? You're asking for it." "I don't understand," said the Lord Paramount calmly. "Oh, God! He doesn't understand! The most sensitive, the most childish, the most intelligent and resolute of nations! And he outrages their one darling idea, the Freedom of the Seas, and he sinks one of their ships and seven of their citizens as though they were so many Hindoos!" The Lord Paramount regarded the scolding, familiar-mannered figure and contrasted it with any possible European diplomatist. Surely the Americans were the strongest of all strangers. And yet so close to us. It was exactly like being scolded by a brother or an intimate schoolfellow, all seemliness forgotten. "We gave notice of our intention. We were within our rights." "I'm not here to argue points. What are we going to do about it? Couldn't you have given way just on that particular thing? I can't help myself, I have to give you this dispatch." He didn't offer to give it. He seemed indeed to cling to it. "Listen to me, my Lord Paramount," he said. "The President is a man of Peace; he's God's own man of Peace; but remember also he's the spokesman of the American people and he has to speak as their representative. This dispatch, sir, is going to the newspapers as we talk. It can't be held. Here it is. You may think it hectoring, but half the folks over there will say it isn't hectoring enough. The Freedom of the Seas! They're mad for it. Even the Middle West, which hasn't an idea what it means, is mad for it. Seizures! And sinking us! Never did I think, when I came to St. James's, I should have to deal with such a situation as this... Everything so pleasant. The court. The kindly friends. And now this fierceness... My wife, sir, over there has taken to her bed again. All the good Paris did her—undone!" He put the paper on the table and wrung his liberated hands. He subsided into distressful mutterings. The Lord Paramount took the dispatch and read it swiftly. His face grew pale and stern as he read. Dismay and indignation mingled in his mind. "Hectoring" was certainly the word for it. It made the historical Venezuela message seem a love letter. These Americans had never been adepts at understatement. Britain had to discontinue the blockade "forthwith"—a needless word—restore certain seized ships, compensate... When he had finished reading he turned back a page, in order to gain time before he spoke. He was thinking very rapidly how the country would take this, how Canada would take it, how the Empire and the world would be affected. He was already very anxious about his proposed allies in Europe, for none had shown a decent promptitude in carrying out the terms of the understandings he had made with them. Germany, Poland, Yugo-Slavia, Italy had done nothing against Russia, had not even closed a frontier, and France, though she had partly mobilized, had made no clear intimation of her intentions and done nothing further in the way of cooperation. All of them seemed to be waiting —for some further cue. What was going to happen to these hesitating associates when they heard of this quarrel with America? "My dear sir," he said. "My dear sir. In Britain we have always been willing to recognize the peculiar difficulties of American diplomacy. But this dispatch—!" "Yeh!" said the American ambassador. "But don't think it's just talking." "It goes too far. We know how urgent the exigencies of party politics can be over there. But the embarrassment—! It is almost a habit with American statesmen to disregard every difficulty with which we may be struggling on this side... I will try to take this patiently, this string of insults. But—The President must have written it at fever heat." "Can't you say that the shooting was a mistake? Hot-headed subordinates and all that?" For a moment the Lord Paramount thought, and then, with a start and a glance at Mrs. Pinchot he exclaimed, "Good heavens! Go back on a man who obeys orders!" "You'll hold to it, it was by order?" "A general order—yes." The American shrugged his shoulders and despaired visibly. "I must consider the situation," said the Lord Paramount. "Your President has put me in a very terrible position. I have come into public affairs to restore honour to human life. I have vowed myself to a high-spirited England. I have come to carry out great policies that will save all that is precious in Western civilization. I do not think that this public of yours in America dreams of the immense issues of this struggle that is now beginning. Nor your President. And while I gather together the forces of this great empire for a world conflict, suddenly this petty affair is seized upon to distress, to complicate—I don't know—possibly to humiliate... What good, I ask you, can this hectoring do? What end can it serve?" "Yeh!" the American ambassador intervened. "But what I want you to understand, sir, is that this message isn't simply hectoring with an eye to the next election, and it isn't just to be set aside as tail-twisting the British lion. You'll get things all wrong if you try to see it like that. The American people are a childish people, perhaps, but they're large. They see things big. They have some broad ideas. Perhaps suddenly they'll grow up into something very fine. Even now they have a kind of rightness. And, rightly or wrongly, they have got this idea of the Freedom of the Seas as strongly now as they have the Monroe idea; they've got it and the President has got it; and if there isn't something done to put this in order, and if your people go seizing or shooting at any more of our ships, well—I'm not threatening you. I'm talking in sorrow and dismay—you'll get an ultimatum." "My DEAR sir!" said the Lord Paramount, still resisting the unpleasant idea. "But an ultimatum means—" "What I'm telling you. It means war, sir. It means something nobody on either side of the Atlantic has ever had the courage to figure out..." XI. — DISLOYALTYFor the truly great, dark days are inevitable. Purple is the imperial colour. All great lives are tragedies. Across the first splendour of the Lord Paramount's ascendancy there began now to fall the shadows of approaching disaster. His mood changed with the mood of his adventure. America had misunderstood him, had almost wilfully refused to respect the depth and power of his tremendous purpose. He had not realized how widely she had diverged from the British conception of history and a European outlook upon world affairs. And suddenly all his giant schemes were straining to the breaking point. The incident of the Beauty of Narragansett and the note from the American President was the turning point of his career. He had known this adventure with human affairs was heroic and vast; he had not realized its extreme and dangerous intricacy. He felt suddenly that he was struggling with a puzzle. It was as if he had been engaged in an argument and had been trapped and involved and confused. His mind was curiously haunted by that dispute of Mr. Parham's with Camelford and Hamp and Sir Bussy. They seemed always in the back of his picture now, welcoming any setback, declaring his values false and his concepts obsolete, and foreshadowing some vague and monstrous new order of things in which he had no part. That vague and monstrous new order of things was at the same time the remotest, least distinct, and most disconcerting element in all this sideshow of unpleasant apprehensions. He had believed himself the chosen head of the united British peoples. Under the stress of the presidential note he was to discover how extremely un-British, British peoples could be. That realization of the supreme significance of the Empire, of which Seeley and Kipling had been the prophets, had reached only a limited section of the population. And the intensity with which that section had realized it had perhaps a little restricted its general realization. Had imperial patriotism come too late? Had it yet to penetrate outwardly and DOWN? Had it failed to grip, or had it lost its grip on the colonial imagination? Not only the masses at home, but the Dominions had drifted out of touch with and respect for, or perhaps had never really been in touch with, the starry pre-eminence of Oxford and Cambridge thought, with army and navy and ruling-class habits and traditions, with the guarded intimacies of London and all that makes our Britain what it is to-day. These larger, vaguer multitudes were following America in a widening estrangement from the essential conceptions of British history and British national conduct. For some years the keen mind of Mr. Parham had sensed this possible ebb of the imperial idea. It had troubled his sleep. Failing it, what was there before us but disintegration? Now the heroic intelligence of the Lord Paramount was suffused by those anxieties of Mr. Parham. Could it be that he might have to play a losing game? Might it be that after all his destiny was not victory but the lurid splendour of a last stand for ideas too noble for this faltering world? When he had seized power the London crowd had seemed oafishly tolerant of this change of régime. It had not applauded, but it had not resisted. Evidently it did not care a rap for Parliament. But, on the other hand, had there been enthusiasm for the dictatorship? Now it became apparent that whatever enthusiasm there might be was shot and tainted by the gravest discontent. As he drove down Whitehall in his big blue car with Mrs. Pinchot and Hereward Jackson to take the air in Richmond Park for his one precious hour of waking rest in the day, he discovered an endless string of sandwich men plodding slowly up the street. "Leave Russia alone," in red, was the leading inscription. This when we were actually at war with Russia. That at least was open treason. Other boards more wordy said: "Leave China alone. We have enough to worry about without grabbing China." A third series declared: "We don't want War with America." That was the culminating point of the protest. These men were plodding up the street unhindered. Not a patriot was in action. No one had even thought of beating them about their heads. And yet sandwich men are particularly easy to beat about their heads. The police had done nothing. What on earth did the people want? National dishonour? He could not disdain these sandwich boards. He was taken too much by surprise. He looked. He turned his head about. He gave himself away. People must have observed his movements, and it was necessary to do something promptly. The car pulled up. "Get out," he said to Hereward Jackson, "go back and have this stopped. Find out who supplied the money." He went on his way past the Houses of Parliament, locked up and, as it seemed to him that day, silently and unfairly reproachful. He was moody with Mrs. Pinchot in Richmond Park. "They are stirring up my own people against me," he said suddenly out of a great silence. Some interesting work was being done in the park with military telpherage, but his mind was preoccupied, and his questions lacked their usual penetrating liveliness. Presently he found himself phrasing the curt sentences of a Decree of public security. That is what things had come to. There would have to be a brief opening, detailing the position of danger in which the Empire was placed. Then would follow the announcement of new and severe laws against unpatriotic publications, unpatriotic agitation, and the slightest suggestion of resistance to the civil and military authorities. The punishments would have to be stern. Real plain treason in wartime calls for death. Military men obliged to kill were to be released from all personal responsibility if their acts were done in good faith. Attacks on the current régime were to involve the death penalty—by shooting. In any case. An Empire that is worth having is worth shooting for. When he returned, stern and preoccupied, to his desk at the War Office, ready to dictate this Decree, he found Hereward Jackson with a medley of fresh and still more disconcerting news. The sandwich men of Whitehall were only the first intimations of a great storm of protest against what speakers were pleased to call the provocation of America. All over the country meetings, processions, and a variety of other demonstrations were disseminating a confused but powerful objection to the Lord Paramount's policy. The opposition to his action against Russia was second only in vigour to the remonstrances against the American clash. "Right or wrong," said one prominent Labour leader at Leicester, "we won't fight either Russia or America. We don't believe in this fighting. We don't believe it is necessary. We were humbugged last time—but never again." And these abominable sentences, this complete repudiation of national spirit, were cheered! "One must shoot," muttered the Lord Paramount; "one must not hesitate to shoot. That would be the turning point," and he called on Mrs. Pinchot to take down his first draft of the Decree. "We must have this broadcast forthwith," he said. "This rot must be arrested, these voices must be silenced, or we go to pieces. Read the Decree over to me..." With the publication of the American blockade message throughout the Empire, all the multiplying evidences of hesitation, disintegration, and positive disloyalty underwent an abrupt and alarming magnification. The Dominions, it became evident, were as disposed as the masses at home toward a dishonourable pacificism. They were as blind to the proper development of the imperial adventure. The Canadian Prime Minister sent the Lord Paramount a direct communication to warn him that in no case could Britain count on Canadian participation in a war with the United States. Moreover, British armed forces in Canadian territory and Canadian waters would have to be immobilized as a precautionary measure if the tension of the situation increased further. He was making all the necessary preparations for this step. A few hours later protests nearly as disconcerting came in from South Africa and Australia. In Dublin there were vast separatist republican meetings, and there was a filibustory raid of uncertain significance against Ulster. At the same time a string of cipher telegrams made it plain that the insurrectionary movement in India was developing very gravely. A systematic attack upon the railway systems behind the northwest frontier was evidently going on; the bombing of bridges and the tearing up of the tracks at important centres was being carried out far more extensively than anyone could have foreseen. The trouble was taking a religious turn in the Punjab. A new leader, following, it would seem, rather upon the precedent of Nansk, the founder of the Sikhs, had appeared out of the blue and was preaching a sort of syncretic communist theology, intended to unite Moslim and Hindu, communist and nationalist, in a common faith and a common patriotism. He was actively militant. His disciples were to be fighters, and their happiest possible end was death in battle. Amidst the confusion one cheering aspect was the steady loyalty of the Indian princes. They had formed a sort of voluntary Council of India of their own, which was already cooperating actively with the imperial authorities in the suppression of disorder and the defence of the frontier. Their readiness to take over responsibilities was indisputable. Such events, the Lord Paramount argued, should have raised the whole of Britain in a unison of patriotic energy. All social conflicts should have been forgotten. A torrent of patriot recruits should be pouring into the army from every position in life. They would have done so in 1914. What had happened since to the spirit and outlook of our people? Well, the Decree of Public Security must challenge them. Its clear insistence on unquestioning loyalty would put the issue plainly. They would have to search their hearts and decide. A further series of anxieties was caused by the ambiguous behaviour of his promised allies in Europe. Some of them were taking action in accordance with the plain undertakings of their respective strong men. France and Italy had mobilized, but on their common frontier. Von Barheim, on the telephone, pleaded that he was embarrassed by a republican and antipatriotic revolt in Saxony. Turkey also had mobilized, and there was complex nationalist trouble in Egypt. The Lord Paramount became more and more aware of the extreme swiftness with which things happen to responsible statesmen as the war phase comes round. The American situation had developed from a featureless uneventfulness to an acute clash in four days. Hour after hour, fresh aspects of the riddle of Empire elaborated themselves. He had drawn together all the threads of Empire into his own hands. There were moments when he felt an intolerable envy of Paramuzzi with his straightforward peninsula and his comparatively simple problem. XII. — THE SERVITUDE OF THE MIGHTYAs the situation became more complicated and the urgent dangers crowded closer and closer upon the Lord Paramount, this realization of the atmosphere of haste in which the great decisions of our modern world are made grew more and more vivid and dominant in his vision of the rôle he had to play. "I found my task too easy at the beginning," he said to Mrs. Pinchot. "Plainly there has to be a struggle, an intricate struggle. I had counted on national and imperial solidarity. I find I have to create it. I had counted on trusty allies, and I find I must take precautions against them. I thought I should be sustained by patriotic science and patriotic finance and patriotic business enterprise, and I find men without souls that evade my inspiration. I fight against forces of dissolution more powerful than I ever dreamt could be launched against the established order of human life. Only our army, our navy, the church, and the old conservative classes stand out amidst this universal decay. They keep their form; they still embody imperial purpose. On these at least I can rely. But see what falls upon me." "My demi-God!" breathed Mrs. Pinchot, but lest it should be a source of embarrassment to both of them he affected not to hear. He became magnificently practical. "I must organize my life so that not a moment of time nor an ounce of energy goes to waste. Here I shall install myself for good. Here I must trust you to control my staff and arrange my hours. Here you must make me as much of a home as I can have, as well as an office. Your intelligence I know I can count upon, as I count upon your loyalty. Gradually we will select a staff from the civil service to act as a filter for news and for responsibility. We will apportion each man his task. At present we have still to assemble that machine. Economy of force, efficiency of action..." Very rapidly these ideas bore fruit, and the Lord Paramount's life began to be ordered so as to squeeze the utmost work out of his marvellous brain in his gigantic struggle to keep the Empire and the world upon the rails of established tradition. Sir Titus Knowles, formerly so antagonistic, had now become the rude but subjugated servant of the master's revealed greatness. To him was entrusted the task of keeping the Lord Paramount fit. He dieted and when necessary he drugged this precious body. He pursued its chemical variations in all their manifestations with sedulous watchfulness. He prescribed its phases of rest and its intervals of sleep. Sir Titus had found his place in life. All day and all night, at every half hour, a simple meal, a cutlet, or a roast fowl would be prepared. Had the moment come to eat? If not, the meal was dismissed and the next in succession was brought into readiness for service. So too the Lord Paramount's couch or his bed was always there for repose or slumber. War and diplomacy have been compared to the game of chess, but it is chess with a board of uncertain shape and extent and with pieces with unlimited powers of spontaneous movement. At any moment astounding adjustments of view must be possible, if this game is to be carried to a triumphant conclusion. In his own room he had a comparatively clear table, from which all papers not immediately under consideration were banished. Usually it bore only a water bottle and glass and a silver bowl in which every day Mrs. Pinchot arranged a fresh mass of simple but beautiful flowers. She and she alone shared this workroom with him, silent and watchful, the only being whose continual close proximity did not interfere with the mighty workings of his mind. Thence he moved to and fro between the large apartment in which General Gerson and Field Marshal Capper had tables covered with maps, and a series of other apartments containing books and files for reference, in which expert secretaries waited, ready to leap to their feet and answer the slightest inquiry. Beyond and out of hearing were typists and other copyists. Further were an outer circle of messengers, waiting rooms for visitors, and the like. Sir Titus arranged that the Lord Paramount should take exercise in artificially oxygenated chambers, clad in a restricted but becoming costume reminiscent of a Spartan athlete. There also he rode horseless saddles that backed and reared in the most hygienic fashion, or he rowed in imaginary boat races with dials recording his speed, or he punched leather balls, or cycled on stationary bicycles, or smacked golf balls at targets that registered the force and distance of his drive—always in a manner, Sir Titus arranged, to exhilarate him and sustain his self-confidence. And once a day he would drive out with Mrs. Pinchot through the sullen and yet stimulating atmosphere of the capital. A simple life it was in essence that the Lord Paramount led during this phase, a life of industrious servitude for the sake of all the noblest traditions of mankind.
BOOK IV. — THE SECOND WORLD WARI. — THE BIG GUNS GO OFFThe Lord Paramount was able to give exactly fifty-three minutes of thought altogether to the threatened Canadian defection before he made a decision. There was one sustained stretch of rather under thirty minutes, before he got up on the morning after he had learnt of this breach on the imperial front; the other twenty-three-odd minutes were in scraps, two or three at a time. There were also some minutes of overlap with the kindred questions of Australia and South Africa. His decision was to take a spirited line both with Canada and the United States. The truth is that in this matter and every matter with which he dealt he did not think things out in the least. Men of action do not think things out. They cannot. Events are too nimble for them. They may pause at times and seem to think, but all they do in fact is to register the effective sum of such ideas as they had accumulated before they became men of action. Like most Englishmen of his type and culture, the Lord Paramount had long allowed a certain resentment against American success to fester in his mind. He had long restrained a craving to behave with spirit towards America. Just to show America. In a crisis this was bound to find release. He resolved to make an immense display of naval force and throw the battle fleet and indeed all the naval forces available across the Atlantic to Halifax, unannounced. It was to be like a queen's move in chess, a move right across the board, bold and dangerous, to create a new situation. Suddenly this awe-inspiring array, with unknown orders and unrevealed intentions, would loom up from nothingness upon the coast of Nova Scotia. This rendezvous was to be approached from a northeasterly direction so as to avoid the liner routes and create an effect of complete surprise. It was to be a blow at the nervous equilibrium of the American continent. A powerful squadron would enter the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and detach an array of small craft to steam up to Ottawa, while the main fleet, with its multitudinous swarming screen of destroyers, torpedo craft and aeroplanes was to spread out in a great curve eastward from Cape Sable, a mighty naval crescent within striking distance of New York. When these manoeuvres were completed the outgoing and incoming liners to New York, Boston, and Halifax need never be out of sight of a British warship or so, cruising ready for action, for nearly a thousand miles. The battleships and battle cruisers were to be instructed to make themselves conspicuous and to hold up and impress shipping. The moral effect on both Canada and the United States could not fail to be immense. More than half the American fleet, the Lord Paramount understood, was in the Pacific based on San Francisco, vis-à-vis to Japan; many ships were reported in dock, and the preponderance of British strength therefore would be obvious to the crudest intelligence. Meanwhile the exchange of views with Washington was to be protracted in every possible way until the display of force could be made. It took, he found, just forty-two minutes more of the Lord Paramount's time to launch the cardinal orders for this stupendous gesture. Once more the unthinking urgency with which the crowning decisions in history must be made impressed itself upon his mind. The acts of history, he realized, are but the abrupt and hazardous confirmation of the vague balance of preceding thought. A multitude of other matters were pressing upon his attention. All the while he was full of unanswered criticisms of the thing he was doing. But there was no time at all to weigh the possibilities of failure in this attempt to browbeat the New World. It seemed the plain and only way of meeting and checking the development of the American threat and so bringing the ambiguous hesitations of the European Powers to an end. He dismissed some lurking doubts and transferred his attentions to the advantages and difficulties of accepting a loan of Japanese troops for service in India. That was the next most urgent thing before him. Bengal was manifestly rotten with non-cooperation and local insurrectionary movements; a systematic wrecking campaign was doing much to disorder railway communications, and the Russo-Afghan offensive was developing an unexpected strength. He realized he had not been properly informed about the state of affairs in India. It was impossible to carry out the orders of the Lord Paramount as swiftly as he had hoped. The Admiralty seemed to have had ideas of its own about the wisdom of entirely denuding the British coasts, and with many ships a certain unpreparedness necessitated delays. The Admiralty has long been a power within a power in the Empire, and the Lord Paramount realized this as a thing he had known and forgotten. It was three days before the Grand Fleet was fairly under way across the Atlantic. It included the Rodney, the Royal Sovereign, and four other ships of that class, the Barham, Warspite, Malaya, and two other battleships, the Hood and Renown and another battle cruiser and the aircraft carriers, Heroic, Courageous, and Glorious. A screen of destroyers and scouting light cruisers had preceded it and covered its left wing. The first division of the minor flotilla coming up from Plymouth had started twelve hours ahead of the capital ships. These latter converged from north and south of the British Isles to a chosen rendezvous south of Cape Farewell. The American navy, he learnt in the course of another day, was already in movement; it was unexpectedly prompt and in unexpected strength. The Lord Paramount was presently informed that a force of unknown composition, but which was stated to include the Colorado, the West Virginia, and at least ten other battleships, was assembling between the Azores and the Gulf of Mexico and steaming northward as if to intercept the British fleet before it reached the Canadian coast. This was a much more powerful assembly of ships than he had supposed possible when first he decided on his queen's move. But that move was now past recall. Something of the chessboard quality hung over the North Atlantic for the next three days. The hostile fleets were in wireless communication within thirty-six hours of the Lord Paramount's decision, and on a chart of the Atlantic in an outer room flagged pins and memoranda kept him substantially aware of the state of the game. Neither government was anxious to excite public feeling by too explicit information of these portentous manoeuvres. Neither, as a matter of fact, admitted any official cognizance of these naval movements for three days. Nothing was communicated to the press, and all inquiries were stifled. The American President seemed to have been engaged in preparing some sort of declaration or manifesto that would be almost but not quite an ultimatum. Steadily these great forces approached each other, and still the two governments assumed that some eleventh-hour miracle would avert a collision. A little after midnight on May 9th the fringes of the fleets were within sight of each other's flares and searchlights. Both forces were steaming slowly and using searchlights freely. Movement had to be discreet. There was an unusual quantity of ice coming south that year and a growing tendency to fog as Newfoundland was approached. Small banks of fog caused perplexing disappearances and reappearances. The night was still and a little overcast, the sea almost calm, and the flickering reflections on the clouds to the south were the first visible intimation the British had of the closeness of the Americans. Wireless communication was going on between the admirals, but there were no other exchanges between the two fleets, though the air was full of the cipher reports and orders of each side. Each fleet was showing lights; peace conditions were still assumed, and survivors from the battle describe that night scene as curiously and impressively unwarlike. One heard the throbbing of engines, the swish and swirl of the waters about the ships, and the rhythmic fluctuations of the whir of the aeroplanes above, but little else. There was hardly any talk, the witnesses agree. A sort of awe, a sense of the close company of Fate upon that westward course kept men silent. They stood still on the decks and watched the pallid search-lights wander to and fro, to pick out and question this or that destroyer or cruiser, or to scrutinize some quietly drifting streak of fog. Some illuminated ship would stand out under a searchlight beam, white and distinct, and then, save for a light or so, drop back into the darkness. Then eyes would go southward to the distant flickerings of the American fleet, still out of sight below the horizon. Like all naval encounters, the history of these fatal hours before the Battle of the North Atlantic remains inextricably confused. Here again the time factor is so short that it is almost impossible to establish a correct sequence of events. What did such and such commander know when he gave this or that order? Was this or that message ever received? It is clear that the American fleet was still assembling and coming round in a great curve as it did so to the south of the British forces. These latter were now steaming southwestward towards Halifax. The American admiral, Semple, was coming into parallelism with the British course. He agreed by wireless not to cross a definite line before sunrise; the two fleets would steam side by side until daylight with at least five miles of water between them. Then he took upon himself to inform Sir Hector Greig, the British commander-in-chief of the general nature of his instructions. "My instructions," said his message, "are to patrol the North Atlantic and to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent any possibility of hostile action against Canada or the United States of America in North American waters." Sir Hector replied: "My instructions are to patrol the seas between Great Britain and Canada, to base myself upon Halifax and send light craft up the Saint Lawrence River." Each referred the situation back to his own government. The Lord Paramount was awakened at dawn and sat in his white silk pajamas, drinking a cup of tea and contemplating the situation. "Nothing must actually happen," he said. "Greig must not fire a shot unless he is fired at. He had better keep on his present course... The Americans seem to be hesitating..." It was still night at Washington, and the American President had never gone to bed. "Are the British in great force?" he asked. Nobody knew the strength of the British. "This cheap Mussolini at Westminster is putting us up some! I don't see why we should climb down. How the devil is EITHER party to climb down? Is there no way out?" "Is there no way out?" asked the Lord Paramount, neglecting his tea. "Battleships are made for battles, I suppose," said someone at Washington. "Aw—don't talk that stuff!" said the President. His intonation strangely enough was exactly what a scholarly imperialist would expect it to be. "We made 'em because we had the Goddamned experts on our hands. Wish to hell we hadn't come in on this." An ingenious person at Washington was suggesting that if the American fleet wheeled about to the south and turned eastward towards Great Britain, Greig would have either to follow with all his forces, split his fleet, or leave England exposed. "That will just repeat the situation off Ireland," said the President. Until it was too late some hitch in his mind prevented him from realizing that every hour of delay opened a score of chances for peace. A sleepless night had left him fagged and unendurably impatient. "We can't have the two fleets steaming to and fro across the Atlantic and not firing a gun. Ludicrous. No. When we built a fleet we meant it to be a fleet. And here it is being a fleet —and a fleet it's got to be—and behave accordingly. We've got to have the situation settled here and now. We've got to end this agony. Semple must keep on. How long can they keep on parallel before anything happens?" A brisk young secretary went to inquire. Meanwhile the Lord Paramount had got into a warm dressing gown and was sketching out the first draft of a brilliant memorandum to the President. It was to be conciliatory in tone, but it was to be firm in substance. It was to take up the whole unsettled question of the freedom of the seas in a fresh and masterful manner. The room was flooded with sunlight, and in a patch of that clear gay brightness on his table were some fresh lilies of the valley, put there by the forethought of Mrs. Pinchot. She had been sent for to put the memorandum in order as soon as his pencil notes were ready. Almost simultaneously messengers of disaster came to both these men. The brisk young secretary returned to the President. "Well," said the President, "how long can we carry on before we see 'em?" "Sir," said the brisk young secretary, with such emotion in his voice that the President looked up and stared at him. "Ugh!" said the President and clutched his hands as if he prayed, for he guessed what that white-faced young man had to tell. "The Colorado," said the young man. "Blown out of the water. We've sunk a great battleship..." It was Hereward Jackson broke the news to the Lord Paramount. His face, too, lit with a sort of funereal excitement, told its message. "Battle!" he gasped. "We've lost the Rodney..." For some moments the consciousness of the Lord Paramount struggled against this realization. "I am dreaming," he said. But if so the dream would not break, and the tale of the disaster began to unfold before him, irreversibly and mercilessly, as if it were history already written. News continued to come from the fleet, but there was no further sign that the direction and inquiries he continued to send out were ever received and decoded. The gray dawn over the dark Atlantic waters had discovered the two fleets within full view of each other and with a lane of vacant water perhaps three miles broad between them. The intention of the two admirals had been to have a five-mile lane, but either there had been some error in reckoning on one side or the other, or else there had been encroachment by the minor craft. Ahead, under the skirts of the flying night were strata of fog which veiled the sea to the west. Each admiral, though still hopeful of peace, had spent every moment since the fleets became aware of one another in urgent preparation for action. The battleships on either side were steaming line ahead with rather more than sufficient space to manoeuvre between them. The Colorado was heading the American line followed by the Maryland and West Virginia; then, a little nearer the British, the Idaho, Mississippi, and New Mexico followed, and after them the California and at least seven other battleships. These three groups were all prepared to wheel round into a battle formation of three columns. In each case the battle cruisers were following the battleships; the Hood was the tail ship of the British, and the aircraft ships were steaming under cover of the battleships on the outer side. Beyond them were light cruiser squadrons. The two main lines of warships were perhaps a little more than five miles apart. Nearer in were the flotillas of destroyers and special torpedo craft held like hounds on a leash and ready at an instant's signal to swing round, rush across the intervening space, and destroy or perish. Submarines were present on the outer verge of the fleets awaiting instructions. The British seem also to have had special mine layers in reserve for their contemplated operations on the American coast. The airplane carriers were tensely ready to launch their air squadrons and made a second line behind the screen of battleships and battle cruisers. As the light increased, the opaque bank of fog ahead began to break up into fluffy masses and reveal something blue and huge beyond. Shapes appeared hunched like the backs of monstrous beasts, at first dark blue, and then with shining streaks that presently began to glitter. A line of icebergs, tailing one after the other in receding symmetry, lay athwart the course of the British fleet and not four miles from the head of that great column. They emerged from the fog garment like a third Armada, crossing the British path and hostile to the British. It was as if the spirit of the Arctic had intervened on the American side. They made the advancing leviathans look like little ships. To the British battle fleet they were suddenly as plain and menacing as a line of cliffs, but it is doubtful whether Admiral Semple ever knew of their existence. Perhaps Greig should have informed Semple of this unexpected obstacle. Perhaps there should have been a discussion. It is so easy to sit in a study and weigh possibilities and probabilities and emerge with the clearest demonstration of the right thing he ought to have done. What he actually did was to issue a general order to the fleet to change direction two points to the south. He probably never realized that these huge ice masses were almost invisible to the American fleet and that his change of direction was certain to be misunderstood. It must have seemed perfectly reasonable to him that the Americans should make a corresponding swerve. So far it had been for him to choose the direction. To the American admiral, on the other hand, quite unaware of the ice ahead, this manoeuvre could have borne only one interpretation. The British, he thought, were swinging round to fight. Perhaps he too should have attempted a further parley. What he did was to fire a shot from one of his six-pounders across the bows of the Rodney. Then he paused as if interrogatively. Just one small intense flash of light, pricking through the cold tones of the dawn, the little hesitating puff of dense whirling smoke just beginning to unfold, the thud of the gun—and then that pause. It was as if a little thing had occurred and nothing else had altered. Each admiral must have been torn most abominably between the desire to arrest a conflict and the urgent necessity of issuing final orders for attack. It is good to have the best of arguments, but if battle is to ensue it is of supreme importance to strike the first blow. No one now will ever know if at this stage there was any further attempt on the part of either admiral to say anything, one to the other. All the survivors speak of that pause, but no one seems able to say whether it lasted for seconds or minutes. For some appreciable length of time, at any rate, these two arrays of gigantic war machines converged upon each other without another shot. For the most part the doomed thousands of their crews must have been in a mood of grim horror at the stupendous thing they were doing. Who knows? There may have been an exaltation. The very guns seemed to sniff the situation incredulously with their lifted snouts. With a whir the first aeroplanes took the air and rose to swoop. Then the Maryland let fly at the two most advanced of the British destroyers with all her available smaller guns and simultaneously in a rippling fringe of flashes both lines exploded in such an outbreak of thudding and crashing gunfire as this planet had never witnessed before. The inevitable had arrived. America and Britain had prepared for this event for ten long years; had declared it could never happen and had prepared for it incessantly. The sporting and competitive instincts of the race had been inflamed in every possible way to develop a perverted and shuddering impulse to this conflict. Yet there may have been an element of amazement still, even in the last moments of Greig and Semple. Imagination fails before those last moments, whether it was rending, cutting, or crushing metal, jetting steam or swirling water that seized and smashed and stamped or scalded the life out of their final astonishment. The Colorado had caught the convergent force of the Rodney and the Royal Sovereign; she was hit by their simultaneous salvoes; her armour must have been penetrated at some vital spot, and she vanished in a sheet of flame that roared up to heaven and changed into a vast pillar of smoke. The Rodney, her chief antagonist, shared her ill luck. The sixteen-inch guns of the Colorado and Maryland had ripped her behind, something had happened to her steering gear; without any loss of speed she swept round in a curve, and the Royal Sovereign, plastered and apparently blinded by the second salvoes of the Maryland, struck her amidships with a stupendous crash. An air torpedo, some witnesses declare, completed her disaster. But that is doubtful. The American aircraft certainly got into action very smartly, but not so quickly as all that. The Rodney, say eyewitnesses, seemed to sit down into the water and then to tilt up, stern down, her futile gun turrets towering high over the Royal Sovereign, and her men falling from her decks in a shower as she turned over and plunged into the deeps just clear of the latter ship. A huge upheaval of steaming water lifted the Royal Sovereign by the bows and thrust her aside as though she were a child's toy. Her upreared bows revealed the injuries she had received in the collision. As she pitched and rolled over the ebullitions of the lost Rodney, the Maryland pounded her for the second time. Her bruised and battered gunners were undaunted. Almost immediately she replied with all her eight big guns, and continued to fight until suddenly she rolled over to follow the flagship to the abyss. Down the British line the Warspite was also in flames and the Hood, very badly ripped and torn by a concentration from the Arizona, Oklahama, and Nevada, had had a series of explosions. The Idaho also was on fire. So this monstrous battle began. After the first contact all appearance of an orderly control disappeared. To get into battle formation the main squadrons had to swing round so as to penetrate the enemy force, and so even this primary movement was never completed. Further combined tactical operations there were none. The rapid cessation of command is a necessary feature of modern marine fighting. The most ingenious facilities for adjusted movement become useless after the first impact. Controls are shot away, signalling becomes an absurdity, and the fight enters upon its main, its scrimmage phase, in which weight tells and anything may happen. The two lines of battleships, already broken into three main bunches, were now clashing into each other and using every gun, each ship seeking such targets as offered and doing its best by timely zigzagging to evade the torpedo attacks that came dashing out of the smoke and confusion. The minor craft fought their individual fights amidst the battleships, seeking opportunities to launch their torpedoes, and soon a swarm of aeroplanes released from the carriers were whirring headlong through the smoke and flames. The temperament and tradition of both navies disposed them for attack and in-fighting, and no record of shirking or surrender clouds the insane magnificence of that tragic opening. Never before had the frightful power of modern guns been released at such close quarters. These big ships were fighting now at distances of two miles or less; some were in actual contact. Every shell told. For the first time in the twentieth century battleships were rammed. The Royal Oak ran down the Tennessee, the two ships meeting almost head on but with the advantage for the Royal Oak, and the Valiant was caught amidships by the New Mexico, which herself, as she prepared to back out of her victim, was rammed broadside on by the Malaya. All these three latter ships remained interlocked and rotating, fighting with their smaller armaments until they sank, and a desperate attempt to board the New Mexico was made from both British battleships. "Fire your guns as often as possible at the nearest enemy" had become the only effective order. "Let go your torpedo at the biggest enemy target." The battle resolved itself slowly into a series of interlocked and yet separate adventures. Smoke, the smoke of the burning ships and of various smoke screens that had been released by hard-pressed units, darkened the sky and blocked out regions of black fog. A continuous roar of crashing explosions, wild eruptions of steam and water, flashes of incandescence and rushes of livid flame made a deafening obscurity through which the lesser craft felt their way blindly to destroy or be destroyed. As the sun rose in the heavens and a golden day shot its shafts into the smoke and flames the long line of the first battle was torn to huge warring fragments from which smoke and steam poured up to the zenith. The battleships and battle cruisers still in action had separated into groups; the Queen Elizabeth, the Barham, and the Warspite, which had got its fires under control, fought, for example, an isolated action with the Pennsylvania and the Mississippi round the still burning and sinking Idaho. The three British ships had pushed right through the American line, taking their antagonists with them as they did so, and this circling conflict drifted far to the south of the original encounter before its gunfire died away and the battered and broken combatants followed each other to the depths. The huge American aircraft carrier, the Saratoga, was involved in this solemn and monstrous dance of death; her decks were swept by a hurricane of fire, and she could no longer give any aid to her aeroplanes, but she made such remarkably good use of her eight-inch guns that she alone survived this conflict. She was one of the few big ships still afloat in the afternoon, and she had then nearly a thousand rescued men aboard of her. Most of the airmen, after discharging their torpedoes, circled high above the battle until their fuel gave out, and then they came down and were drowned. One or two got on to the icebergs. The West Virginia, thrusting to the west of the Royal Sovereign group, struck one of these icebergs and sank later. The Revenge and Resolution, frightfully damaged but still keeping afloat, found themselves towards midday cut off from the main fight by ice and were unable to re-engage. After the first shock of the encounter between the giant ships the rôle of the destroyer flotillas became more and more important. They fought often in a black and suffocating fog and had to come to the closest quarters to tell friends from enemies. They carried on fierce battles among themselves and lost no chance of putting in a torpedo at any larger ship that came their way. The torpedoes of the aircraft showed themselves particularly effective against the light cruisers. They were able to get above the darknesses of the battle and locate and identify the upper works of their quarries. They would swoop down out of the daylight unexpectedly, and no anti-aircraft guns were able to do anything against them. The Nevada, it is said, was sunk by a British submarine, but there is no other evidence of submarine successes in the fight. It is equally probable that she was destroyed by a floating mine—for, incredible as it seems, some floating mines were released by a British mine carrier. No one watched that vast fight as a whole; no one noted how the simultaneous crashes of the first clash, that continuing fury of sound, weakened to a more spasmodic uproar. Here and there would be some stupendous welling up of smoke or steam, some blaze of flame, and then the fog would grow thin and drift aside. Imperceptibly the energy of the conflict ebbed. Guns were still firing, but now like the afterthoughts of a quarrel and like belated repartees. The reddish yellow veils of smoke thinned out and were torn apart. Wide spaces of slowly heaving sea littered with rocking débris were revealed. Ever and again some dark distorted bulk would vanish and leave a dirty eddy dotted with struggling sailors, that flattened out to a rotating oily smudge upon the water. By three in the afternoon the battle was generally over. By half-past three a sort of truce had established itself, a truce of exhaustion. The American flag was still flying over a handful of battered shipping to the southwest, and the British remnant was in two groups, separated by that fatal line of icebergs. These great frozen masses drifted slowly across the area of the battle, glassy and iridescent in the brilliant daylight, with streams of water pouring down their flanks. On one of them were two grounded aeroplanes and at the water-line they had for fenders a fringe of dead or dying men in life belts, fragments of boats and suchlike battle flotsam. This huge cold intervention was indubitably welcome to the now exhausted combatants. Neither side felt justified in renewing the conflict once it had broken off. There is no record who fired the last shot nor when it was fired. And so the Battle of the North Atlantic came to its impotent conclusion. It had not been a battle in any decisive sense, but a collision, a stupendous and stupendously destructive cannonade. Fifty-two thousand men, selected and highly trained human beings in the prime of life, had been drowned, boiled to death, blown to pieces, crushed, smashed like flies under a hammer, or otherwise killed, and metallurgical and engineering products to the value of perhaps five hundred million pounds sterling and representing the toil and effort of millions of workers had been sent to the bottom of the sea. Two British battleships and three American were all in the way of capital ships that emerged afloat, and the losses of light cruisers and minor craft had been in equal or greater proportion. But, at any rate, they had done what they were made to do. The utmost human ingenuity had been devoted to making them the most perfect instruments conceivable for smashing and destroying, and they had achieved their destiny. At last the wireless signals from home could penetrate to the minds of the weary and sickened combatants. They found themselves under orders to cease fire and make for the nearest base. That was in fact what they were doing. The Revenge and the Resolution accompanied by the cruisers Emerald and Enterprise and a miscellaneous flotilla, all greatly damaged and in some cases sinking, were limping on their way to Halifax. The airplane carrier Courageous, with a retinue of seaplanes and an escort of seven destroyers had turned about to the Clyde. To the south the American survivors, in unknown force, were also obeying urgent wireless instructions to withdraw. Acting under directions from their respective admiralties, a number of the still fairly seaworthy craft, including the Saratoga, the Effingham, the Frobisher, the Pensacola, and the Memphis, all flying white flags above their colours, were engaged in salvage work among the flotsam of the battle. There was no cooperation in this work between the British and Americans. And no conflict. They went about their business almost sluggishly, in a mood of melancholy fatigue. Emotion was drained out of them. For a time chivalry and patriotism were equally extinct. There are tales of men weeping miserably and mechanically, but no other records of feeling. There were many small craft in a sinking condition to be assisted, and a certain number of boats and disabled seaplanes. There were men clinging to the abundant wreckage, and numbers of exhausted men and corpses still afloat. The surviving admirals, captains, and commanders, as message after message was decoded, realized more and more plainly that there had been a great mistake. The battle had been fought in error, and they were to lose no time in breaking off and offering, as the British instructions had it, "every assistance possible to enemy craft in distress." It was a confusing change from the desperate gallantry of the morning. There was some doubt as to the treatment of enemy men and material thus salvaged, but ultimately they were dealt with as captures and prisoners of war. This led later to much bitter recrimination. The comments of these various surviving admirals, captains, and commanders, all now fatigued and overwrought men, and many of them experiencing the smart and distress of new wounds, as they set their battered, crippled, and bloodstained ships to these concluding tasks, make no part of this narrative; nor need we dwell upon their possible reflections upon the purpose of life and the ways of destiny as they had been manifested that day. Many of them were simple men, and it is said that battle under modern conditions, when it does not altogether destroy or madden, produces in the survivors a sort of orgiastic cleansing of the nerves. What did they think? Perhaps they did not think, but just went on with their job in its new aspect. It is to be noted, perhaps, that before nightfall some of the ships' crews on both sides were already beginning what was to prove an endless discussion, no doubt of supreme importance to mankind, which side could be said to have "won" the Battle of the North Atlantic. They had already begun to arrange and to collaborate in editing their overcharged and staggering memories... Amazement was going round the earth. Not only in London and New York, but wherever men were assembled in cities the news produced a monstrous perturbation. As night followed daylight round the planet an intense excitement kept the streets crowded and ablaze. Newspapers continued to print almost without intermission as fresh news came to hand, and the wireless organizations flooded the listening world with information and rumour. The British and Americans, it became clearer and clearer, had practically destroyed each other's fleets; they had wiped each other off the high seas. What would happen next, now that these two dominating sea powers were withdrawn from the international balance? The event was dreadful enough in itself, but the consequences that became apparent beyond it, consequences extraordinarily neglected hitherto, were out of all proportion more stupendous and menacing for mankind. II. — FACING THE STORMAll life has something dreamlike in it. No percipient creature has ever yet lived in stark reality. Nature has equipped us with such conceptions and delusions as survival necessitated, and our experiences are at best but working interpretations. Nevertheless, as they diverge more and more from practical truth and we begin to stumble against danger, our dearest dreams are at last invaded by remonstrances and warning shadows. And now this dream that was the life of the Lord Paramount was changing; more and more was it discoloured by doubt and adverse intimations. He had taken hold of power with an absolute confidence. Mr. Parham talking to an undergraduate had never been more confident than the Lord Paramount evicting Parliament. His task then was to have been the restoration of the enduring traditions of human life to their predominance. His rôle had been the godlike suppression of rebellious disorders. By insensible degrees his confidence had been undermined by the growing apprehension of the greatness and insidiousness of the forces of change against which he was pitted. The logic of events had prevailed. He was still convinced of the rightness of his ideas but the godlike rôle had shrunken to the heroic. The Battle of the North Atlantic had been the decisive accident to shatter his immediate vision of a British Empire rejuvenescent and triumphant, crowning the processes of history and recognizing him as its heaven-appointed saviour. He had to begin over again and lower down, and for a time at least at a disadvantage. Blow upon blow rained upon him after that opening day of calamity. First came the tale of disaster from the battle itself: this great battleship lost, that cruiser on fire, a score of minor craft missing. At first both Britain and America accepted the idea of defeat, so heavy on either side was the list of losses. Then followed the relentless unfolding of consequences. The Dominions, with a harsh regard for their own welfare, were standing out. Canada had practically gone over to the United States and was treating for a permanent bond. South Ireland was of course against him; a republican coup d'état had captured Dublin, and there was already bloody and cruel fighting on the Ulster border; South Africa declared for neutrality, and in some of the more Dutch districts Union Jacks had been destroyed; Bengal was afire, and the council of Indian princes had gone over en bloc from their previous loyalty to a declaration of autonomy. They proposed to make peace with Russia, deport English residents, and relieve the Empire of further responsibility in the peninsula. It was appalling to consider the odds against that now isolated garrison. The European combinations of the Lord Paramount had collapsed like a house of cards. The long projected alliance of Paramuzzi with Germany against France, which had failed to materialize so long as the German republic had held and so long as the restraining influence of Anglo-Saxondom had been effective, was now an open fact. For all practical purposes America, Great Britain, Russia, were all now for an indefinite time removed from the chessboard of Europe, and the ancient and obvious antagonism round about the Alpine massif were free to work themselves out. Europe was Rhineland history again. An unhoped for revanche offered itself, plainly and clearly to the German people, and the accumulated resentment of ten years of humiliation and frustration blazed to fury. Von Barheim's once doubtful hold upon power lost any element of doubt. He was hailed as a reincarnation of Bismarck, and in a day Germany became again the Germany of blood and iron that had dominated Europe from 1871 to 1914. Liberalism and socialism were swamped by patriotism and vanished as if they had never been. Within three days of the Battle of the North Atlantic nearly the whole of Europe was at war, and the French were clamouring for the covenanted British support upon their left wing as they advanced into Germany. The French fleet was quite able now to keep the vestiges of America's naval forces out of European waters, and there was also the threat of Japan to turn American attention westward. Hungary had lost no time in attacking Roumania; Czecho- Slovakia and Yugo-Slavia had declared for France, Spain had mounted guns in the mountains commanding Gibraltar and became unpleasant to British shipping, and only Poland remained ambiguously under arms and at peace, between a threatening Russia on the east, dangerous Slav states to the south, a Germany exasperated on the score of Danzig and Silesia, and both Latvia and Lithuania urging grievances. The windows of the Polish Embassy in Paris suffered for this ambiguity. There were pogroms in Hungary and Roumania. Indeed, all over eastern Europe and nearer Asia, whatever the political complexion of the government might be, the population seemed to find in pogroms a release of mental and moral tension that nothing else could give. Turkey, it became evident, was moving on Bagdad, and a revolt in Damascus seemed to prelude a general Arab rising against France, Britain, and the Jewish state in Palestine. Both Bulgaria and Greece mobilized; Bulgaria, it was understood, was acting in concert with Hungary but Greece as ever remained incalculable. Public opinion in Norway was said to be violently pro-American and in Sweden and Finland pro-German, but none of these states took overt military action. The inertias of British foreign policy were tremendous. "We hold to our obligations," said the Lord Paramount, sleepless, white, and weary, and sustained at last only by the tonics of Sir Titus, but still battling bravely with the situation. "We take the left wing in Belgium." III. — OVERTURE IN THE AIR"We take the left wing in Belgium." It was an admission of failure; it was the acceptance of a new situation. In the original scheme for world warfare that the Lord Paramount had laid before the Council of the British Empire, he had dismissed the possibility of fighting in western Europe. He had seen his war east of the Vistula and Danube and with its main field in Asia. He had trusted unduly to the wisdom and breadth of view of both America and the European chancelleries. And consequently, in spite of a certain insistence from Gerson, he had troubled very little about the novel possibilities of air war at home. Now, hard upon the heels of the naval tragedy, came the new war in the air. The land war on the European frontiers made little progress after the first French advance into Westphalia. The Franco-Italian front was strongly fortified on either side, and the numerous and varied mechanisms of the reconstituted British army had still to come into action. There had been some miscalculation about the transport needed to put them across the Channel. But every power now possessed huge air forces, and there was nothing to prevent their coming into action forthwith. The bombing of London, Paris, Hamburg, and Berlin with high explosives occurred almost simultaneously. The moon was just entering upon its second quarter; the weather all over the Northern Hemisphere was warm and serene, and everything favoured this offensive. Night after night, for fifteen days, the air of Europe was filled with the whir of gigantic engines and the expectation of bursting bombs. The fighting planes kept each other busy; anti-aircraft guns were a disappointment, and all the great centres of population seethed with apprehensions and nervous distresses that might at any time explode in senseless panics. The early raiders used only high explosives. The conventions were observed. But everywhere there was a feeling that these explosive and incendiary raids were merely experimental preludes to the dreaded gas attacks. There was a press agitation in London for "Gas masks for everyone" and a strong discussion of the possibilities of the use of "anti-gases." The London authorities issued exhortations to the people to keep calm, and all theatres, music halls, and cinemas were closed to prevent nocturnal congestions of the central districts. Millions of masks were issued, most of them of very slight efficiency, but they served to allay panic, and indeed no alleged precaution was too absurd for that purpose. Gerson, looking ahead, removed as much as he could of the establishment of the government headquarters to a series of great gas-proof dugouts he had prepared at Barnet, but for a time the Master clung to his rooms in the War Office and would not resort to this concealment. Gerson protested in vain. "But," said the Lord Paramount, "Whitehall is Empire. To be driven underground in this fashion is already half defeat." One night a rumour gained conviction as it spread until it became an absolute assurance, that gas was on its way and gas in monstrous quantities. There followed a reign of terror in the East End of London and a frantic exodus into Essex and the West End. The Germans used incendiary shells that night, and there were horrible scenes in the streets as the fire engines fought their way through the westward streaming crowds. Hundreds of cases of people who were crushed and trampled upon reached the hospitals, and the bombs and the fires accounted for thousands more. The Lord Paramount was asked to visit the hospitals. "Can't the Royal Family do that?" he asked almost irritably, for he hated the spectacle of suffering. His heart quailed at the thought of that vista of possibly reproachful sufferers. And then, changing a tone which jarred even on his own sensibilities: "I will not seem to infringe upon the popularity of the reigning house. The people will rather see them than me, and I have my hands full —full!—my God, full to overflowing." Mrs. Pinchot understood, she understood entirely, but the general public, which has no sense of the limitations of the time and energy of its leaders, interpreted this preoccupation with duty as an inhuman rather than superhuman characteristic and made its interpretation very plain and audible. It became clearer and clearer to the Lord Paramount that destiny had not marked him for a popular leader. He tried to steel his heart to that disappointment, but the pain was there. For his heart was as tender as it was great. Gerson greeted the crescendo of the air attacks with unconcealed satisfaction. "They're getting it in Paris worse than we are," he said. "Those German incendiary bombs are amazing, and nerves are all out. They're talking of reprisals on the population in Westphalia. Good! Rome got it too last night. It's this sort of thing the Italians can't stand. They feel too much. They may turn on Paramuzzi in a frenzy if we just keep on at them. But, trust me, nothing could be better to wake up our own people. They'll begin to snarl presently. The British bulldog hasn't begun to fight yet. Wait till its blood is up." The ugly mouth closed with an appreciative snap. "The only possible reply to these German incendiaries is Gas L. And the sooner we get to that the better. Then the world will see." IV. — THE STRONG WAY WITH MUTINYBut the common man in Britain was not being the British bulldog of General Gerson's hopes. He was declining to be a bulldog altogether. He was remaining a profoundly skeptical human being, with the most disconcerting modern tendencies. And much too large a part of his combative energy was directed, not against the appointed enemy, but against the one commanding spirit which could still lead him to victory. The Decree of Public Safety was now the law of the land. It might not be strictly constitutional, but the dictatorship had superseded constitutionalism. Yet everywhere it was being disputed. The national apathy was giving place to a resistance as bold as it was dogged. North, east, and west there were protests, remonstrances, overt obstruction. The recalcitrant workers found lawyers to denounce the Lord Paramount's authority, funds to organize resistance. Half the magistrates in the country were recusant and had to be superseded by military courts. Never had the breach between the popular mind and the imperial will of the directive and possessing classes been so open and so uncompromising. It was astounding to find how superficial loyalty to the Empire had always been. The distress of the Lord Paramount at these tensions was extreme. "My English," he said. "My English. My English have been misled." He would stand with a sheaf of reports from the mobilization department in his hand repeating, "I did not count on this." It needed all the most penetrating reminders of which Gerson was capable to subdue that heroically tender heart to the stern work of repression. And yet, just because the Lord Paramount had stood aside and effaced himself in that matter of the hospitals he was misjudged, and his repressive measures were understood to be the natural expression of a fierce and arrogant disposition. The caricaturists gave him glaring and projecting eyes and a terrible row of teeth. They made his hands—and really they were quite shapely hands —into the likeness of gesticulating claws. That was a particularly cruel attack. "I must be strong," he repeated to himself, "and later they will understand." But it is hard for a patriot to be stark and strong with his own misguided people. Riots had to be dispersed with bayonets and rifle-fire in the south of Wales, in Lancashire and the Midlands. There was savage street fighting in Glasgow. The tale of these domestic casualties lengthened. The killed were presently to be counted by the hundred. "Nip the trouble in the bud," said Gerson. "Arrest the agitators and shoot a few of them, if you don't like firing on crowds. Over half the country now time is being lost and the drafts delayed." So those grim sedition clauses which had looked so calmly heroic on paper were put into operation. The military authorities arrested vigorously. A few old hands were caught in the net but even before the court-martials were held it was apparent to the Lord Paramount that for the most part they were dealing with excitable youths and youngish men. Most of these younger agitators would have been treated very indulgently indeed if they had been university students. But Gerson insisted upon the need of a mental shock for the whole country. "Shoot now," he said, "and you may forgive later. War is war." "Shoot now," said Gerson, "and the rest will come in for training, good as gold. Stop the rot. And let 'em say what they like about you." The Lord Paramount could feel how tenderly and completely that faithful secretary of his could read the intimations of his saddened and yet resolute profile. "Yes," he admitted, "we must shoot—though the bullet tears us on its way." The order went forth. There was a storm of remonstrances, threats, and passionate pleas for pity. That was to have been expected. Much was fended off from direct impact upon the Lord Paramount, but he knew the protest was there. It found an echo in his own too human heart. "The will of a great people," he said, "must override these little individual stories. There is this boy Carrol from Bristol they are asking me to reprieve! There seems to be a special fuss about him. A sort of boy scholar of promise—yes. But read the poison of those speeches he made! He struck an officer..." "Shall Carrol die?" asked an outbreak of placards along Whitehall that no one could account for. That hardened the Lord Protector's mouth; he must show he would not be bullied, and in stern response to that untimely challenge young Carrol and five and thirty associates died at dawn. There was a hideous popular clamour at this unavoidable act of war. The Lord Paramount's secretarial organization was far too new and scanty to protect him adequately from the clamour of this indignation and, it may be, something in himself acted as an all too ready receiver for these messages of antagonism. Abruptly out of the void into which he was wont to vanish appeared Sir Bussy the unquenchable. He was now almost full size again and confident and abrupt in his pre-war style. "This shooting of boys!" he said. "This killing of honest and straightforward people who don't agree with you! Why, damn it! we might be in Italy! It's a century out of date. Why did you ever let this war get loose?" The Lord Paramount stood defensively mute, and it was Gerson who took the word out of his mouth and answered Sir Bussy. "Have you never even heard of discipline? Have you never heard of the needs of war? I tell you we are at war." "But why are we at war?" cried Sir Bussy. "Why the devil are we at war?" "What the devil are fleets and armies for if we are never to use them? What other ways are there for settling national differences? What's a flag for if you're never going to wave it? I tell you, it's not only street-corner boys and Bolshie agitators who are going against the wall. This Empire of ours is fighting for its life. It calls on every man. And you know as well as I know, Sir Bussy, what it needs to win... And at what a pace the stuff is coming in!"... Gerson had turned to the Lord Paramount, and Sir Bussy, it seemed, was no longer present. "Peace time you may be as soft as you like—delay and humbug have always been the rule for home politics, naturally—but you can't play about with war and foreign policy. For things of that order you need a heart of steel." "A heart of steel," echoed the Lord Paramount. "Gas L and a heart of steel." "We go through with it, mon général," said the Lord Paramount. "Trust me." "Time we started going through with it..." What was far more distressing to the Lord Paramount than any other resistances or remonstrances over this business of internal discipline was the emergence from nothingness of a certain old lady, old Mrs. Carrol. Against addresses, protests, demonstrations, threats of murder, and the like, the Lord Paramount could be the strongest of strong men, could show a face of steely disregard. But old Mrs. Carrol was different. Her attack was different in its nature. She did not threaten, she did not abuse. Carrol, it seemed, had been an only son. She wanted him alive again. She came like a sudden thought into his presence. She was exactly like an old woman lodge-keeper at Samphore Park, near Mr. Parham's early home. That old woman, whose name was long since forgotten, had had an only son also, three or four years older than the juvenile Parham, and he had worked in the garden of Mr. Parham's father. Always he had been known as Freddy. He had been a very friendly, likable boy, and the two youngsters had been great friends and allies. He read books and told stories, and once he had confided a dreadful secret to his companion. He was half minded to be a socialist, he was, and he didn't believe not mor'n half the Bible was true. They had had an argument, a quarrel, for it was young Parham's first meeting with sedition, and duty and discipline were in his blood. But of course it was impossible there could be any identity between this long-forgotten rustic and young Carrol. By now he would be old enough to be young Carrol's father. It was a little difficult to trace how this old lady got at the Lord Paramount. She seemed to have great penetrating power. His staff ought perhaps to have fended her off. But the same slight distrust of those about him, that sense of the risk of "envelopment," which made the Lord Paramount desire to be as "accessible" as possible to the generality, left just the sort of opening through which a persistent old woman of that kind might come. At any rate, there she was, obliterating all the rest of the case, very shabby and with a careworn face and a habit of twisting one hand round inside the other as she spoke, extraordinarily reminiscent of Freddy's mother. "When people go to war and get boys shot and the like, they don't think a bit what it means to them they belongs to, their mothers and such, what have given their best years to their upbringing. "He was a good boy," she insisted, "and you had him shot. He was a good SKILFUL boy." She produced a handful of paper scraps from nowhere and held them out, quivering, to the Lord Paramount. "Here's some of the little things he drew before he went into the works. Why, I've seen things by royalties not half so good as these! He didn't ought to have been shot, clever as he was. Isn't there anything to be done about it? "And when he got older he had a meccano set, and he made a railway signal with lights that went on and off, and the model of a windmill that went round when you blew it. No wonder he was welcome in the works. I'd have brought them here for you to see if I'd thought they would have weighed with you. You'd have marvelled. And now he won't never make anything more with his hands, and those busy little brains of his are still as stone." There is no record that Alexander or Cæsar or Napoleon was haunted by an old woman who kept on twisting her hands about as though she were trying to wring the blood out of a deed that was done, and who sought to temper her deadly persistence by a pose of imploration. Almost she cringed. "You don't understand, my good woman," said the Lord Paramount, "He put his brains to a bad use. He was a mutineer. He was a rebel." The old lady would have none of that. "Artie wasn't ever a rebel. Don't I know it? Why, when he was little I was frightened at his goodness, always so willing, he was and so helpful. I've thought time after time, for all his health and spirits, 'That boy must be ailing,' so good he was to me... "And now you've shot him. Can't anything else be done about it still? Can't something be done instead?" "This crucifies me," he said to Mrs. Pinchot. "This crucifies me." That made him feel a little better for a time, but not altogether better. "All things," he said, "I must suffer in my task," and still was not completely convinced. He descended from his cross. He tried to be angry. "Damn old Mrs, Carrol! Can no one make that old woman understand that WAR IS WAR? This is no place for her. She must be stopped from coming here." But she continued to come, nevertheless; though her coming had less and less the quality of a concrete presence and more and more of the vague indefinable besetting distressfulness of a deteriorating dream. V. — THE DECLARATION OF WASHINGTONThe Great War of 1914-18 had not only been the greatest war in history, it had also been the greatest argument about war that had ever stormed through the human mind. The Fourteen Points of President Wilson, the vague, unjustifiable promises of Crewe House to a repentant Germany, had been more effective than any battle. And now this great war the Lord Paramount had launched was taking on the same quality of an immense and uncontrollable argument. In the long run man will be lost or saved by argument, for collective human acts are little more than arguments in partial realization. And now that strange mixture of forward-reaching imagination, hardy enterprise, exalted aims, and apparently inseparable cynicism which makes the American character a wonder and perplexity for the rest of mankind was to become the central reality of the Lord Paramount's mind. The argument was given definite form by an entirely characteristic American action on the part of the President. He issued a declaration, which was to be known in history as the Declaration of Washington, in which, illogically enough since his country was at war, he proposed to decline any further fighting. America, he said, was not too proud but too sane to continue the conflict. He did not add, the Lord Paramount remarked, as he might have done, that the Battle of the North Atlantic had left her quite incapable for a time of any further effective intervention in Europe or Asia. Everything she had left she needed to watch Japan. But that factor in the question the President ignored—shamelessly. And he said things fellows like Hamp or Camelford or Atterbury might have said. He said things Sir Bussy would have cheered. He was the first head of a state to come out definitely on the side of the forces that are undermining and repudiating history. This declaration of inaction, this abandonment of militant nationalism flew like an arrow athwart the Atlantic into the hands and into the mental storm of the Lord Paramount. The document presented itself a hasty duplicate from some transmitting machine, in smudged purple lettering, and he paced his bureau with it in his hand and read it aloud to his always faithful listener. An inner necessity obliged him to read it aloud, distasteful though it was in every line. This great denial was worded with that elaborate simplicity, that stiffly pompous austerity, which has long been the distinctive style of American public utterances. "'There has arisen suddenly out of the momentary failure of one young airman's skill in Persia a great and terrible crisis in the affairs of the world. With an incredible rapidity the larger part of mankind has fallen again into warfare. The material of warfare stood ready to explode, and there was no other means sufficiently available to avert this collapse. All over our planet, beyond every precedent, men are now slaying and destroying. These United States have not been able to remain aloof. Already our battleships have fought and thousands of our sons have been killed, and were it not for the ingrained sanity upon our northern and southern boundaries, all this continent also would be aflame. "'Yet the fortunate position of our territories and our practical community of ideas with the great dominion to the north of us still holds us aloof from the extremer carnage. That and the naval strength that still remains to us, suffice to keep our homeland untouched by the daily and nightly horrors that now threaten civilian life in all the crowded cities of Europe and Asia. Our share in this work of devastation, as far as we are disposed to take a share, depends upon our willingness to attack. So far we have attacked and will attack only to stay the hand of the destroyer. It is still possible for the people of the American communities, almost alone now among all the communities of the world, to sleep soundly of nights, to spend days untroubled by the immediate sounds and spectacle of battle, to think and exchange thought with deliberation, and to consider the rights and possibilities of this tragic explosion of human evil. It is our privilege and our duty now to sit in judgment upon this frightful spectacle as no other people in the world can do. "'It would be easy—indeed, for some of us Americans it has already been too easy—to find in our present relative advantage the recognition of peculiar virtues, the reward of distinctive wisdom. I will not lend myself to any such unctuous patriotism. It is for the historians of a coming day to apportion the praise and blame among the actors in this world catastrophe. Perhaps no actors are guilty; perhaps they are impelled by forces greater than themselves to fulfil the rôles prepared for them; perhaps it is not men and nations but ideas and cultures that we should arraign. What matters now is that justly or unjustly we Americans have been favoured by fortune and granted unequalled privileges. We can serve the world now as no other people can do. In serving the world, we shall also serve ourselves. Upon us, if upon any people, has been bestowed, for the second and supreme occasion, the power of decision between world peace or world destruction. "'Let us, in no spirit of boasting or nationalistic pride, but with thankfulness and humility, consider the peculiar nature of these United States. In their political nature they are unlike anything that has ever existed before. They are not sovereign states as sovereign states are understood in any other part of the world. They were sovereign states, but they have ceded to a common federal government that much of their freedom that might have led to warfare. Not without dire distress and passion and bloodshed did our forefathers work out this continental peace. The practical and intellectual difficulties were very great. It was hard to determine what was of local and what of general concern. To this day many points remain debatable. On the issue whether our labour should be here bound and here free, we spilt the lives of a generation. We learnt that we must make all labour free forever if progress was to continue. Not always have we been wise and noble in our career. Much that we have learnt we have learnt in suffering and through error. Nevertheless, our huge community, year by year and generation by generation, since its liberty was won, has been feeling its way towards the conception of an enduring and universal peace, has been seeking by pacts and propaganda some way of organizing a permanent peace in the world. It has become our tradition so far as we can be said to have a tradition. No other great mass of human beings has ever had so clear and active a peace disposition as our consolidated peoples. To us warfare has become a thing unnecessary and horrible, as intolerable as many another harsh and frightful custom, horrible and unpardonable now as human sacrifice and as that holocaust of victims at a chieftain's burial which once seemed integral to social life. We know, and have gone far to realize in fact, that the life of all human beings can be fearless and free. "'And if we have gone cautiously in our search for peace, avoiding above all things any entangling alliances with Powers organized on the militant pattern of the past, that separateness has not been because we, unmindful of our common humanity, were disposed to a selfish and sluggish isolation from the less happily circumstanced states of the Old World. It is rather because from our beginning and through the great wisdom of our chief founder Washington, we have been aware of the immense dangers that lurk in so mighty a proposition, so intricate and gigantic a project as world organization. It has been our steadfast determination that our naïve and ever-increasing strength should not be tricked into the service of Old World hates and Old World ambitions. From the utterances of President Wilson, through notes and memoranda and messages and conferences, to the days of the Kellogg Pact, the voice of America has been plainly for peace on earth and goodwill between all kinds of men. "'In the past twelve years we have experienced much, seen much, thought and discussed abundantly, and it becomes clearer and clearer in our minds, it is a matter now of common remark and agreement, that we must regard all states and governments of to-day merely as the trustees and temporary holders of power for that universal conciliation and rule to which all things are tending. Here, as the elected head of your federal government, I can say plainly that no man on earth whatever owes more than a provisional allegiance to the rulers he may find above him, and that his profounder, his fundamental loyalty, is to no flag or nation, but to mankind. I say this of our constitution and of our flag as of all other flags and constitutions. The frightful suffering, bloodshed, and destruction of this present moment call to every man to turn his mind and hopes towards that federal government of the world whose creation, steadfastly and speedily, is now the urgent task before our race. Such rulers and ministers as fail to subserve this coalescence now are, we declare, no less than traitors to their human blood, the traitor slaves of dead imaginations and superannuated organizations. "'And so we, the government and people of the United States, stand out of this warfare just as completely as it is possible for us to stand out of it, armed and watchful, seeking some form of intervention that will bring it to an end. We issue our invitations to all such powers as remain still hesitating and neutral in this confusion of hates, to gather in conference, a conference not simply now for treaties, promises, and declarations, but for the establishment forthwith of united activities and unified controls, that shall never cease from operation henceforth. And we appeal not only to sovereign states to realize this conception of which our people has become the guardian and exponent; we appeal to every free-minded individual man and woman in the world. We say to all and sundry, "Stand out of this warfare. Refuse to be belligerent. Withdraw your services, withdraw your resources." We are honest and loyal in our endeavour, we are acting upon the accumulated resolve of a century and a half, and we call to you for a loyalty transcending flag or country. So far as we of these states can assist and support your action, without intensifying the bitterness of conflict, we will. Restrain your rulers. Give yourselves now to that possible Empire of Peace, in which we and you and all the life that stirs upon this planet may cooperate together.'" The reader paused. He took a deep breath, made three paces to the window, and turned. He held out the paper and patted it. "There it is," he said. "It was bound to come. There it is, plain and clear—the bolt that has been gathering force and weight—the moral attack." He paced. "Propaganda with a vengeance. An attack on our morale more deadly than a thousand aeroplanes." He stopped short. "Was there ever such hypocrisy?" he demanded. "Never," said Mrs. Pinchot stoutly. "It's revolting." "They pressed us with their fleet-building. They bullied and quarrelled when we were only too ready for acquiescent action. They Shylocked Europe. And then all this humanitarian virtue!" Something seemed to twist round in the mind of the Lord Paramount, something that twisted round and struck at his heart. He could not maintain his indignant pose. This Presidential address suddenly allied itself with things that had lain dormant in his mind for weeks, things he associated with men like Camelford (and, by the bye, where on earth was Camelford?) and Sir Bussy. He stopped short in his pacing, with the typed copy of the address, held by one corner, dangling from his fingers. "Suppose," said the Lord Paramount, "it is not hypocrisy! Suppose he really means the things he has said here! In spite of his patriots." He stared at Mrs. Pinchot, and she was staring back at him. "But how can he mean things that don't mean anything?" She stuck to it loyally. "But they DO mean something. They DO mean something. Even if they don't mean it straight. Suppose this is humbug. I believe this is humbug. But humbug does not pretend to be something unless it pays to do so. There must be something to which it appeals. What is that something? What is that shapeless drive? Such history as I have ever taught or studied. A world without flags or nations. A sordid universal peace. The end of history. It's in the air; it's in the age. It is what Heaven has sent me to dispute and defeat. A delusion. A dream..." "Where am I?" said the Lord Paramount and passed his hand across his brow. "Who am I?... A delusion and a dream? One or other is a delusion—this new world or mine?"
BOOK V. — QUINTESSENTIALI. — THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES"This is far more than a war between Britain and America," said the Lord Paramount. "Or any war. It is a struggle for the soul of man. All over the world. Let us suppose the President is hypocritical—and he MAY be hypocritical; nevertheless, he is appealing to something which has become very real and powerful in the world. He may be attempting only to take advantage of that something in order to turn the world against me, but that does not make that something to which he appeals less considerable. It is a spirit upon which he calls, a powerful, dangerous spirit. It is the antagonist to the spirit that sustains me, whose embodiment I am. It is my real enemy." "You say things so wonderfully," said Mrs. Pinchot. "You see this man, entrusted in wartime with the leadership of a mighty sovereign state, spits his venom against all sovereign states—against all separate sovereignty. He, the embodiment of a nation, deprecates nationality. He, the constitutional war leader, repudiates war. This is Anarchism enthroned—at the White House. Here is a mighty militant organization—and it has no face. Here is political blackness and night. This is the black threat at the end of history." He paused and resumed with infinite impressiveness: "Everywhere this poison of intellectual restatement undermines men's souls. Even honest warfare, you see, becomes impossible. Propaganda ousts the heroic deed. We promise. We camouflage. We change the face of things. Treason calls to treason." She sat tense, gripping her typewriter with both hands, her eyes devouring him. "Not THUS," said the Lord Paramount his fine voice vibrating. "Not THUS..." "The jewels of life I say are loyalty, flag, nation, obedience, sacrifice... The Lord of Hosts!... Embattled millions!... "I will fight to the end," said the Lord Paramount. "I will fight to the end... Demon, I defy thee!..." His hands sought symbolic action. He crumpled the Presidential address into a ball. He pulled it out again into long rags and tore it to shreds and flung them over the carpet. He walked up and down, kicking them aside. He chanted the particulars of his position. "The enemy relentless—false allies—rebels in the Empire—treachery, evasion, and cowardice at home. God above me! It is no light task that I have in hand. Enemies that change shape, foes who are falsehoods! Is crown and culmination in the succession of empires ours to close in such a fashion? I fight diabolical ideas. If all the hosts of evil rise in one stupendous alliance against me, still will I face them for King and Nation and Empire." He was wonderful, that lonely and gigantic soul pacing the room, thinking aloud, hewing out his mighty apprehensions in fragmentary utterances. The scraps of the torn Presidential address now, in hopeless rout, showed a disposition to get under tables and chairs and into odd corners. It was as if they were ashamed of the monstrous suggestions of strange disloyalties that they had brought to him. "Curious and terrifying to trace the growth of this Adversary, the Critical Spirit, this destroyer of human values... From the days when Authority ruled. When even to question was fatal... Great days then for the soul. Simple faith and certain action. Right known and Sin defined. Now we are nowhere. Sheep without a shepherd... First came little disloyalties rebellious of sense and sloth. Jests—corrosive jests. Impatience with duty. One rebel seeking fellowship by corrupting his fellow. The simple beliefs, incredible as fact but absolutely true for the soul. That was the beginning. If you question them they go: the ages of faith knew that. But man must question, question, question. Man must innovate—stray. So easy to question and so fatal. Then Science arises, a concatenation of questions, at first apologetic and insidious. Then growing proud and stubborn. Everything shall be investigated, everything shall be made plain, everything shall be certain. Pour your acids on the altar! It dissolves. Clearly it was nothing but marble. Pour them on the crown! It was just a circle of metal—alloyed metal. Pour them on the flag! It turns red and burns. So none of these things matter... "Why was this not arrested? Why did authority lose confidence and cease to strike? What lethargy crept into the high places?... "And so at last the human story comes to a pause. The spirit of human history halts at her glorious warp and weft, turns aside, and asks, 'Shall I go on?' "SHALL SHE GO ON? With God's help I will see that she goes on. One mighty struggle, one supreme effort, and then we will take Anarchy—which is Science the Destroyer—by the throat. This Science, which pretends to be help and illumination, which illuminates nothing but impenetrable darkness, must cease. Cease altogether. We must bring our world back again to tradition, to the classical standards, to the ancient and, for man, the eternal values, the historical forms, which express all that man is or can ever be... "I thought that Science was always contradicting herself, but that is only because she contradicts all history. Essential to science is the repudiation of ALL foundations, her own included. She disdains philosophy. The past is a curiosity—or waste paper. Anarchism! Nothing is, but everything is going to be. She redeems all her promises with fresh promissory notes... "Perpetually Science is overthrown, and perpetually she rises the stronger for her overthrow. It is the story of Antæus! Yet Hercules slew him!" "MY Hercules!" whispered Mrs. Pinchot, just audibly. "Held him and throttled him!" "Yes, yes," she whispered, "with those strong arms." The manner of the Lord Paramount changed. He stood quite still and looked his little secretary in her deep, dark eyes. For one instant his voice betrayed tenderness. "It is a great thing," he said, "to have one human being at least in whose presence the armour can be laid aside." She made no answer, but it was as if her whole being dilated and glowed through her eyes. Their souls met in that instant's silence. "And now to work," said the Lord Paramount, and was again the steely master of his destiny. "Oh, God!" he cried abruptly and jumped a foot from the ground. There was no need for her to ask the reason for this sudden reversal of his dignity. A whining overhead, a long whining sound, had grown louder, and then a loud explosion close at hand proclaimed that another enemy aeroplane had slipped through the London cordon. She leapt to her feet and handed him his gas mask before she adjusted her own, for one must set a good example and wear what the people have been told to wear. II. — FANTASIA IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE"There's no gas," he said and pointed to the clear red glow in the east. He tore off his mask, for he hated to have his face concealed. He sniffed the pervading anti-gas with satisfaction. He echoed in a tone of wonder, "STILL there is no gas." She too emerged from her disfiguring visor. "But are we safe?" she asked. "Trust me," he said. The sky was full of the loud drone of engines, but no aircraft was visible. The evening was full of warm-tinted clouds, and the raiders and the fighting machines were no doubt dodging each other above that canopy. The distant air barrage made an undertone to the engine whir, as if an immense rubber ball were being bounced on an equally immense tin tray. The big Rolls- Royce had vanished. Its driver, perhaps, had taken it to some less conspicuous position and had not yet returned. "I find something exhilarating in all this," said the Lord Paramount. "I do not see why I should not share the dangers of my people." A few other intrepid spirits were walking along Whitehall, wearing gas masks of various patterns, and some merely with rags and handkerchiefs to their mouths. Many, like the Lord Paramount, had decided that the fear of gas was premature and either carried their masks in their hands or attempted no protection. Except for two old-fashioned water carts, there were no vehicles in sight. These water carts were busy spraying a heavy, slowly volatile liquid with a sweetish offensive odour that was understood to be an effective antidote to most forms of gas poisoning. It gave off a bluish low-lying mist that swirled and vanished as it diffused. A great deal of publicity had been given to the anti-gas supply after the East End panic. The supply of illuminating gas had been cut off now for some days, and the retorts and mains had been filled with an anti-gas of established efficacy which could be turned on when required from the normal burners. This had the same sweetish smell as the gas sprayed from the carts, and it had proved very reassuring to the public when raids occurred. "Let us walk up Whitehall," said the Lord Paramount. "I seem to remember an instruction that the car should shelter from observation under the Admiralty arch in case of a raid. We might go up there." She nodded. "You are not nervous?" he asked. "Beside you!" she glowed. The car was not under the arch, and they went on into the Square. There seemed to be a lull in the unseen manoeuvres overhead. Either the invaders had gone altogether or they were too high to be heard or they had silencers for their engines. The only explosions audible were the deep and distant firing of the guns of the outer aircraft zone. "It is passing over," said the Lord Paramount. "They must have made off." Then he remarked how many people were abroad and how tranquil was their bearing. There were numbers visible now. A moment ago they had seemed alone. Men and women were coming out from the station of the tube railway very much as they might have emerged after a shower of rain. There were news-vendors who apparently had never left the curb. "There is something about our English folk," he said, "magnificently calm. Something dogged. An obstinate resistance to excitement. They say little but they just carry on." BUT NOW THE AIR WAS SCREAMING! A moment of blank expectation. In an instant the whole area was alive with bursting bombs. Four—or was it five?—deafening explosions and blinding flashes about them and above them followed one another in close succession, and the ordered pavement before them became like a crater in eruption. Mr. Parham had seen very little of the more violent side of warfare. During the first World War a certifiable weakness of the heart and his natural aptitudes had made him more serviceable on the home front. And now, peeping out of the eyes of the Lord Paramount, he was astounded at the grotesque variety of injury to human beings of which explosions are capable. Accustomed to study warfare through patriotic war films, he had supposed that there was a distinctive dignity about death in battle, that for the most part heroes who were slain threw up their arms and fell forward in so seemly a way as to conceal anything that might otherwise be derogatory to themselves or painful to the spectator. But these people who were killed in the Square displayed no such delicacy; perhaps because they were untrained civilians; they were torn to bits, mixed indifferently with masonry, and thrown about like rags and footballs and splashes of red mud. An old match seller who had been squatting on the stone curb, an old woman in a black bonnet, leapt up high into the air towards the Lord Paramount, spread out as if she were going to fly over him like a witch, and then incredibly flew to fragments, all her boxes of matches radiating out as though a gigantic foot had kicked right through her body at them. Her bonnet swept his hat off, and a box of matches and some wet stuff hit him. It wasn't like any sort of decent event. It was pure nightmare—impure nightmare. It was an outrage on the ancient dignity of war. And then he realized the column had been hit and was coming down. Almost solemnly it was coming down. It had been erect so long, and now, with a kind of rheumatic hesitation, it bent itself like a knee. It seemed to separate slowly into fragments. It seemed as though it were being lowered by invisible cords from the sky. There was even time to say things. Never had Mrs. Pinchot seen him so magnificent. He put an arm about her. He had meant to put his hand on her shoulder, but she was little and he embraced her head. "Stay by me," he said. He had time to say, "Trust me and trust God. Death cannot touch me until my work is done." Nelson turned over and fell stiffly and slantingly. He went, with the air of meeting an engagement, clean through the façade of the big insurance buildings on the Cockspur street side of the Square. About the Master and his secretary the bursting pavement jumped again, as the great masses of the column hit it and leapt upon it and lay still. The Lord Paramount was flung a yard or so, and staggered and got to his feet and saw Mrs. Pinchot on all fours. Then she too was up and running towards him with love and consternation in her face. "You are covered with blood!" she cried. "You are covered with blood." "Not mine," he said and reeled towards the streaming ruins of a fountain basin, and was suddenly sick and sick and sick. She washed his face with her handkerchief and guided him towards a plateau of still level pavement outside the Golden Cross Hotel. "It was the weakness of Nelson," he said—for it was one of his standard remarks on such occasions. "Nelson!" he repeated, his thoughts going off at a tangent, and he stared up into the empty air. "Good God!" Hardly twenty feet of the pedestal remained. And then: "High time we made our way to these new headquarters of Gerson's. I wonder where that car can be hiding. Where is that car? Ssh! Those must be bombs again, bursting somewhere on the south side. Don't listen to them." He realized that a number of distraught and dishevelled people were looking at him curiously. They regarded him with a critical expectation. They became suddenly quite numerous. Many of these faces were suspicious and disagreeable. "I would gladly stay here and help with the wounded," he said, "but my duty lies elsewhere." Men with Red Cross badges had appeared from nowhere and were searching among the wreckage. Injured people were beginning to crawl and groan. "We must commandeer a car," said the Lord Paramount. "Find some officers and commandeer a car. I must take you out of all this. We must get out of London to the headquarters as soon as possible. My place is there. We must find out where the car has gone. Gerson will know. We had better walk back to the War Office, perhaps, and start from there. Do not be afraid. Keep close to me... Was that another bomb?" III. — WAR IS WARGerson was talking to him. They were in a different place. It might be they were already in the great Barnet dugout which was to be the new seat of government; a huge and monstrous cavern it was, at any rate; and they were discussing the next step that must be taken if the Empire, now so sorely stressed, so desperately threatened, was still to hack its way through to Victory. Overhead there rumbled and drummed an anti-aircraft barrage. "If we listen to this propaganda of the American President's," said Gerson, "we are lost. People must not listen to it. It's infectious—hallucination. Get on with the war before the rot comes. Get on with the war! It is now or never," said Gerson. His grim and desperate energy dominated the Lord Paramount. "Gas L," he repeated, "Gas L. All Berlin in agony and then no more Berlin. Would they go on fighting after that? For all their new explosives." "I call God to witness," said the Lord Paramount "that I have no mind for gas war." "War is war," said Gerson. "This is not the sort of war I want." Gerson's never very respectful manner gave place to a snarl of irritation. "D'you think this sort of war is the sort of war I want?" he demanded. "Not a bit of it! It's the sort of war these damned chemists and men of science have forced upon us. It's a war made into a monster. Because someone failed to nip science in the bud a hundred years ago. They are doing their best to make war impossible. That's their game. But so long as I live it shan't be impossible whatever they do to it. I'll see this blasted planet blown to bits first. I'll see the last man stifled. What's a world without war? The way to stop this infernal German bombing is to treat Berlin like a nest of wasps and KILL the place. And that's what I want to set about doing now. But we can't get the stuff in! Camelford and Woodcock procrastinate and obstruct. If you don't deal with those two men in a day or so I shall deal with them myself, in the name of military necessity. I want to arrest them." "Arrest them," said the Lord Paramount. "And shoot them if necessary." "Shoot if necessary," said the Lord Paramount... Everything seemed to be passing into Gerson's hands. The Lord Paramount had to remind himself more and more frequently that the logic of war demanded this predominance of Gerson. So long as the war lasted. He began where statecraft ceased, and when he had done statecraft would again take up what he had left of the problems entrusted to him. The Lord Paramount had a persuasion that Camelford and Sir Bussy had been arrested already and had escaped. Some time had elapsed—imperceptibly. Yes, they had been arrested and they had got away. Sir Bussy had shown Camelford how to get away. IV. — A NECESSARY EXECUTIONSomething obscured the Lord Paramount's mind. Clouds floated before it. Voices that had nothing to do with the course of affairs sustained some kind of commentary. Events were no longer following one another with a proper amplitude of transition. He seemed to be passing in cinematograph fashion from scene to scene. A pursuit of Sir Bussy was in progress, Gerson was hunting him, but it was no longer clear where and how these events were unfolding. Then it would seem that Sir Bussy had been discovered hiding in Norway. He had been kidnapped amazingly by Gerson's agents and brought to Norfolk and shot. It was no time to be fussy about operations in neutral territory. And some rigorous yet indefinable necessity required that the Lord Paramount should go secretly at night to see Sir Bussy's body. He was reminded of the heroic murder of Matteotti, of the still more heroic effacement of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon. It is necessary that one man should die for the people. This financial Ishmaelite had to be ended in his turn. The day had come for property also to come into the scheme of duty. The Lord Paramount found himself descending from his automobile at the end of a long winding and bumpy lane that led down to the beach near Sheringham. Extravagantly like Napoleon he felt; he was even wearing a hat of the traditional pattern. He had to be muffled. He was muffled in a cloak of black velvet. The head lamps showed a whitewashed shed, a boat on a bank of shingle; beyond the breakers of an uneasy sea flashed white as they came out of the blue-gray indistinctness into the cone of lights. "This way, sir," said a young officer and made his path more difficult by the officious flicking of an electric torch. The shingle was noisy underfoot. On a plank, already loaded with shot to sink it into the unknown, and covered with a sheet, lay the body of Sir Bussy. For a moment the Lord Paramount stood beside it with his arms folded. The Dictatorship had lost its last internal enemy. Everyone had come to a halt now, and everything was silent except for the slow pulsing of the sea. And in this fashion it was, thought the Lord Paramount, that their six years of association had to end. It had been impossible to incorporate this restless, acquisitive, innovating creature with the great processes of history; he had been incurably undisciplined and disintegrating, and at last it had become a plain struggle for existence between him and his kind, and the established institutions of our race. So long as he had lived he had seemed formidable, but now that his power was wrested from him, there was something pathetic and pitiful in his flimsy proportions. He was a little chap, a poor little fellow. And he had had his hospitably friendly, appealing side. Why had he not listened to Mr. Parham? Why had he not sought his proper place in the scheme of things and learnt to cooperate and obey? Why had he pitted himself against history and perished as all who pit themselves against tradition must perish? The Lord Paramount stood by the little spherical protrusion of the sheet that veiled Sir Bussy's head; Gerson stood at the feet. The Lord Paramount's thoughts went from the dead to the living. Had he really killed Sir Bussy, or had Gerson killed him? What are the real and essential antagonisms of human life? Spite of all the ruthless tumult of events that had crowded upon the Lord Paramount, he had continued thinking. At the outset of his dictatorship, he had thought the main conflict in human affairs was the struggle of historical forms to maintain themselves against the skepticism, the disregard, and the incoherent enterprise of modern life. But was that indeed so? Had Sir Bussy been his real adversary? Or had his real adversary been the wider, more systematic intellectual alienations of Camelford? It was Camelford who had liberated Sir Bussy, had snatched him out of the influence of Mr. Parham. It was Camelford who had given the fundamental mysteries of Sir Bussy's disposition a form of expression. Just as the Lord Paramount himself, out of the fears, prejudices, resistances, habits, loyalties, and conservative vigour of mankind, had been able to evoke the heroic insensitiveness of Gerson. If so, it was Sir Bussy and Gerson who were the vital forces of this affair, the actual powers, and he and Camelford were mere intellectualizers to this restlessness on the one hand and this obstinacy on the other. But why, if Sir Bussy embodied a fundamental human force, had it been so easy to kill him? It was absurd even to dream of killing a fundamental force. Had he indeed been killed so easily? A wedge of doubt invaded the mind of the Lord Paramount and spread out to colour all his thoughts. "Uncover the face," he said. He motioned to the chauffeur to turn his lamps onto the white and shrunken visage. Amazing yet inevitable came the confirmation of his doubts. "Yes," he said. "It is like him, but it is not him. Of course, Gerson, you will ALWAYS kill the wrong man. It is well I came to see with my own eyes." But Gerson was shameless. "And now we've seen it's the wrong one," said Gerson, "it's time we set about the right one—if the Empire is to get its Gas L in time to win this war." "I wonder who this is." "Any old chap who got in the way. Such things have to happen in wartime." The Lord Paramount's reserves showed signs of breaking down. "But shall we ever get this stuff? Shall we ever overtake Camelford and Sir Bussy?" "We got to," said Gerson in a wrathful shout. V. — INTERLUDE WITH A MIRRORThe Lord Paramount had the impression that he was again in the great dugout at Barnet. He was in one of the small apartments that opened out of the central cavern, a sort of dressing room. He was putting on a khaki uniform and preparing to start on a desperate expedition. A young subaltern assisted him timidly. The Lord Paramount was excessively aware of Gerson's voice storming down the passage. He was always storming now. They were still in pursuit of Camelford and Sir Bussy, who were reported to be at those strange new chemical works at Cayme in Lyonesse. They had to be caught and compelled if need be at the point of a revolver, to subserve the political ideas from which they were attempting to escape. The issue whether the soldier or the man of science should rule the world had come to actual warfare. Strange Reality was escaping, and Tradition was hard in pursuit. Gerson and the Lord Paramount were to fly to Devonshire and then rush upon Cayme, "swift and sure as the leap of a tiger," said Gerson. Then indeed, with the chemists captive and Gas L assured, the Empire could confront all the rest of the world with the alternative of submission or death. The Lord Paramount adjusted the complex and difficult belt before a mirror. Then he stood still and stared at the reflection before him. Where was the calm beauty of the Master Spirit? The man he saw, he had seen in other mirrors ten thousand times before. It was the face, just falling short of strength and serenity by the subtle indications of peevishness and indecision, of the Senior Tutor of St. Simon's. And those troubled eyes were Mr. Parham's eyes. And the hair—he had never noted it before—was turning gray. He knew it had been getting thin, but now he saw it was getting gray. Merely Mr. Parham? Had he been dreaming of a Lord Paramount, and had there never been anyone else but himself in this adventurer? And what was this adventure? Was he recovering now from some fantastic intoxication? With a start he realized that Gerson had come into the room and heard the clear-cut, even footsteps approach him. The organizer of victory came to the salute with a clash of accoutrements. "Everything is ready, sir," he said imperatively. Mr. Parham seemed to assent, but now he knew that he obeyed. Like the damned of Swedenborg's visions, he had come of his own accord to his own servitude. VI. — CAYME IN LYONESSEThe chauffeur stopped short at a word from Gerson. "Pull up by the wayside," directed the General, "and try and look like engine trouble." He got out. "We will walk to the top of the hill. The fellow standing there against the sky is our scout. And over beyond is Cayme." The Lord Paramount obeyed in silence. They were perhaps a couple of hundred yards from the crest. The sun was setting, a white blaze, which rimmed the line of the hill with iridescence. For an instant the Lord Paramount glanced back at the bleakness of the Cornish landscape, coldly golden, and then turned to the ascent. "We shall see very little until this damned sun is down," said Gerson. "But there is no hurry now." "An air scout," said the Lord Paramount. "Theirs. They keep it circling. And they have another out to sea. But the water is opaque enough, I hope, to hide our submarines. And besides, they keep pretty far out." "We have submarines?" "Five. Six we had. But one is lost. All the coast has been played hokey with. The sea bed's coming up. God knows how they've done it, but they've raised scores of square miles. Heaved it up somehow. Our submarine must have hit a lump or barrier—which ought not to have been there. They've just made all this Lyonesse of theirs out of nothing—to save paying decent prices to decent landowners. They bore down through it and take out minerals —minerals we'd give our eyes to get—that were hidden under the bottom of the sea." The Lord Paramount regarded the huge boss of stone to the right of them with a puzzled expression. "I seem to remember this road—that rock that sticks up there and the way the road turns round it." "It goes to Penzance. Or it did." "That old disused tin mine we passed, that too seems familiar. Something odd about the double shaft... I've never seen this coast since I was a young man. Then I tramped it with a knapsack. By Land's End and along here and so on to Tintagel." "You'll find it changed in a moment." The Lord Paramount made no answer. "Now. We're getting into view. Stroll easily. That fellow up there may be watching us. The evening's as still and clear as crystal. No mist. Not a cloud. We could do with a little obscurity to-night." "Why have we no aeroplanes up?" Something like contempt sounded in Gerson's voice. "Because we want to take your friends out there by surprise." The Lord Paramount felt again that sense of insufficiency that had been troubling him so frequently during the last few days. He had asked a silly question. More and more was Gerson with his lucid technical capacity taking control of things. There was nothing more to be said, and in silence the Lord Paramount surveyed the view that had opened out before them. Gerson was still in control. "We had better sit down on this bank among the heather. Don't stand still and stare. It won't do to seem even to be watching them." The land was changed indeed. Cayme was unlike any town, any factory, any normal place that Mr. Parham had ever seen. For it was Mr. Parham's eye that now regarded it. It sat up against the incandescent sky, broad, black, squat, like some monstrous new development of the battleship. It was a low, long battleship magnified by ten. Against the light it had no form nor detail, only a hard, long shape. Its vast shadow veiled a wedge of unassimilable detail, that might be a wilderness of streams and rich pools, in gloom and mystery. The land came out to this place, shining where it caught the light, or cut into blunt denticulations by long shadows, alternated triangles of darkness, wherever there was a rock or ridge to impede the light. "But this was sea," said Mr. Parham. "This was sea." "And away there is still Land's End." "Only it isn't Land's End any more. This runs right out." "I came along here I suppose somewhere—hard now to say exactly where—and I had Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur in my knapsack. And I—I was a young man then—I looked across at the sunset—a great clear sunset like this one—and I dreamt of the lost cities and palaces of Lyonesse until almost I could see them, like a mirage, glittering under the sun." "And Lyonesse is here, and it hasn't got any cities or palaces or knights. And it doesn't glitter. And instead of King Arthur and his Table Round, you've got a crew of Camelford's men, brewing God knows what treason... I wish I knew... I wish I knew." Gerson sat in silence for a space, and then he talked again, almost as much to himself as to Mr. Parham. "There they've got the stuff. They've got it; they've got everything. If we can wrench that place out of their hands suddenly—we have it all. I have men who can work it all right, given the stuff. Then we shall have poison gas to scare the world stiff... And we'll scare them... But swift and sure like the pounce of a cat—we must get them down before they can lift a finger. They'll blow the place to smithereens before they let us have it. Camelford has said as much. God knows what chemists are coming to! They didn't dare say 'No' to a soldier in the last Great War." "These coasts have changed," said Mr. Parham, "and the world has changed. And it seems to me tonight as if God himself had changed to something strange and dreadful." They sat in silence. The sun which had been a white blaze had sunk down until it touched the high line of the silhouette of Cayme, and its blinding glory had become only a blazing red disk. "Tell me," said Mr. Parham. "What are our plans?" Gerson glanced sideways to be sure the scout was out of earshot. "We have all the Gas L the Empire could produce before these fellows collared the material. Just about enough for this job and no more. Further on some of it lies along the road, disguised as barrels of tar. Down in the village there, which used to be a fishing village and which now grows vegetables, keeps cows, and takes in washing for Cayme, it is piled up as barrels of beer. We have cases and cylinders hidden among the rocks." "But where are our men?" "At Bodmin, at Penzance, waiting for the dark with bicycles, and, oh! —there's a good lot about here, though you don't see them, hidden in ditches since last night, lying under heaps of dry heather, down in that wood we passed. Waiting for a noiseless rocket at one o'clock to-night. Each one ready for his job. Behind that first line is Burchell with men in every town from Plymouth to Exeter, all hanging about unobtrusively, ready to follow up. What a man he is! What energy! Like a boy, an immense clever boy. He wouldn't let this happen without him. Would there were more like him!" "And at one o'clock?" "Quietly we shift the gas into the great ditch they have round that place, see our masks are adjusted, and let it loose." "Which means?" "They'll wriggle a bit—blast 'em!" "And then?" "No more of them. And at dawn we go in with our gas masks on—and take possession. Like digging out a wasp's nest." "Suppose the gas doesn't work instantly—and they blow up in spite of us?" "Then, my Lord Paramount, we are done. We'll go back to find London selling us, and selling the Union Jack with us, to anyone who cares to buy. We'll go back to find patriotism over and dead from China to Peru. We'll go back to find lords and dictators, ten a penny. Or—if we respect ourselves—we won't go back. But I think we can trust Gas L." Never had the Lord Paramount felt so utterly Mr. Parham. He looked about him at that evening, and it was a golden dome of warmth and stillness in which it was very good to be alive, and far off he heard some late lambs bleating and crying to the deep answers of their mothers. "It's quite possible the book of history will close with a bang," said Gerson; "quite possible. About one o'clock to-morrow morning. We've done what we can. We've stuck like men to our own ideas. But for instance, Gas L is faintly visible, a thin blue-gray vapour. At night it may get past them—but if they see it before they sniff it... Or if they have an anti-gas..." The General left the rest to Mr. Parham's imagination. "Does he keep up all night?" asked Mr. Parham indicating the slowly circling plane by a movement of his head. "There are reliefs. For all we know, we are spotted now. For all we know, every bit of our little scheme is known. For all we know, we're trying to kill a sleeping tiger with a pea shooter, and all we shall do is to wake it up." A long silence. The ever broadening and ever reddening dome of the sun seemed to be pouring its molten substance slowly and steadily into the mysterious black receptacle of Cayme. "How still it is!" whispered Mr. Parham. "That's the damned thing about them," said Gerson, betraying a certain irritability. "STILL! They never give a sign. These scientific men, these 'moderns,' as they call themselves, have never made a declaration or offered a deal a proper-minded man could consider. Only vague criticisms and pointless pacifism. Science has slipped out of our hands when we weren't looking. It used to be subservient enough. Years ago we ought to have forbidden scientific study or scientific knowledge except to men under military discipline, and we ought to have put scientific discoverers under the Official Secrets Act. Then we should have had them under control. And perhaps their damned progress wouldn't have gone on so fast. They'd have mumbled their rotten theories in a corner, and we could have treated them as a joke. And if we'd been more nippy about the traders and the money lenders we could have kept them trading respectfully, as they used to do. But we let the scientific men and the industrialists and the bankers all run about and get notions just as they pleased, and here they are, out of control, a gang of cosmopolitan conspirators with the mask off, actually intercepting munitions that are vital to the Empire and treating for peace with enemy countries on their own account. It's kind of symbolical, sir, that we are here, conducting military operations by stealth, as it were—with even our uniforms planned to be invisible... War ashamed of itself!... THEIR doing!" And suddenly Gerson gave way to an outburst of the obscene, unmeaning blasphemies dear to simple souls the whole world over. He consigned men of science to the most unnatural experiences and the most unseemly behaviour. He raged against the vanity of intelligence and the vileness of mental presumption. The last acutely bright red line of the sun's disk vanished abruptly from above the black crest of Cayme as though someone had suddenly thought of it and drawn it into the building. Minute cirrus clouds that had hitherto been invisible revealed themselves as faint streaks of gold in the sky and slowly faded again. Mr. Parham remained sitting very still. General Gerson turned to the waiting scout with directions for him to get the rugs and hamper out of the car and send it on to Penzance. He and the Lord Paramount would wait here among the stones until it was time to begin the attack. It seemed to Mr. Parham that the time passed very quickly before the attack began. An intense blue evening with a westward glow deepened through twilight into a starry night, which had fewest stars and a brighter edge to the northwest. He supped from the hamper and lay under a rock while Gerson, imitating and answering the sounds of improbable birds, made mysterious visits along the ridge and athwart the moor. Then when darkness came they started off, after much whispering and creeping about, blundering down the long slopes towards the erstwhile cliffs that marked the boundary of the old land and the new. Then a crawling forward with great circumspection and every possible precaution against noise. Then abruptly the startling discovery that he was not alone with Gerson, but one of a numerous line of furtive figures and groups, dimly visible against the sky line, some of them free-handed and some bearing burthens. Gerson handed Mr. Parham a gas mask. "Don't make any mistakes with it," he said. "It's Gas L. Get the edge SUCKING against your face." An interval of waiting in which one heard one's heart beating, and then the noiseless rocket like a meteor across the sky. Another interval for which there was no measure, and then the stealthy release of the Gas L. The Gas L was plainly visible; it was as if it had a sort of gray luminosity. It crept along the ground and then rose slowly like swans' necks, like snakes, like the letter S, or like the top of a manuscript L, craning forward and down again towards the looming masses, now close at hand, of the mysteries of Cayme. It reached them and seemed to feel its way up their steep sides and slowly, slowly reached the crest of the walls and poured over... "At dawn we go in," said Gerson, his voice made Lilliputian by his mask. "At dawn we go in." Mr. Parham shivered and made no reply. He felt cramp for a time, he was tickled and worried by his mask about his ears, and perhaps he slept, for at any rate, the hours again passed very quickly, and almost abruptly the scene was warm with the sunrise. Seen closely and with the light of morning on them, the walls of Cayme were revealed as a hard greenish substance with a surface like dulled metal, and they rose, slanting backwards out of this ditch without any windows or loopholes, towards the sky. The ditch was unexpectedly deep; it made one a little giddy to come upon it suddenly, and in it there was no water at all and no bottom visible, but very far down something cloudy, a sort of heavy yellowish smoke that writhed and curled about and did not rise. One had to move cautiously and peer because of the difficulty of seeing in a gas mask. One saw in a series of clipped pictures. The attack was lined out all along the edge of the ditch, a series of slouching cynocephali with snouted white heads who turned about with cautious and noiseless movements and nosed and made gestures one to the other. Everyone carried a rifle or a revolver in his hand. For a time the line was like a slack string along the edge of the ditch, uncertain of its next step. Then some common impulse had turned them all to the left, and they were following the edge of the ditch in Indian file as if to seek some point at which to cross it. The wall bent away presently, and rounding the bend, Mr. Parham came into view of a narrow drawbridge of open metalwork, about the end of which a number of the assailants had halted in a cluster. Leadership he realized was needed. He found himself with Gerson at the foot of the drawbridge and the others standing as if awaiting a decision. At the far end of that slender strip of open ironwork was an open doorway without a door. It gave into the darkness of an unlit passage. The nothingness in that passage was extraordinary. Not a living thing was to be seen and not a sound broke the immense silence of Cayme. Mr. Parham wished that the word "mouse-trap" had not come into his head. "Well?" came faintly from within Gerson's mask. "If they are dead it is all right for us," said Mr. Parham. "But if they are not dead, then it does not matter what we do, for even here we are completely in their power. One rifleman up there could pick us off one by one." "Why did they leave that door open?" asked Gerson. "I don't know. But I feel I have to go in." "All or nothing," said Gerson. He turned and gestured for six men to accompany them. Mr. Parham in a state that was neither abject nor arrogant, a new Mr. Parham, puzzled and filled with wonder and dread, crossed the little bridge. He entered the passage. Gerson paused behind him to scrutinize the frame of the doorway. He made a comment that was inaudible. He looked up and dodged suddenly. A door guided by grooves fell swiftly, stopped short with a metallic impact, and cut them off from the daylight and all support. Gerson swore and tried to shove it up again. Mr. Parham saw the thing happen without astonishment and remained quite still. They were not in darkness. A few small electric lamps seemed to have been switched on by the falling door. VII. — THE ADVERSARY SPEAKSMr. Parham was astounded by his own fatalism. He who had conceived he held the mastery of the world in his shapely hand was now an almost apathetic spectator of his own frustration. He saw Gerson battering at the trap with a feeling—it was almost akin to gratified malice. Gerson, he realized, had always been the disagreeable aspect of his mastery; always Gerson had spoilt things; always he had touched the stages of the fine romance of this adventure with an unanticipated cruelty and horror. Mr. Parham was traditional and ready to be traditional, but Gerson he saw now was ancestral and archaic. Mr. Parham realized now as he watched those simian fists hammering with furious gestures on the thick metal and pausing for the answering blows of the men outside, that he had come at last to detest Gerson almost as much as he detested Sir Bussy. He knew that this violence was futile, and he despised it as much as he hated it. He put out his arm and touched Gerson. Gerson sprang round, manifestly in a state of intense irritation and his mask did not completely stifle his interrogative snarl. "That door may have fallen automatically," said Mr. Parham. "For all we know yet—everyone here may be dead." Gerson thought and then nodded and made a gesture for Mr. Parham to precede him. "And indeed," said Mr. Parham to himself, "for all I know they may be dead." In another moment he knew better. The little passage opened out into what seemed to be a large circular space and at the further side of this they saw two figures, unmasked and regarding them. Gas L was as if it had never been. They were men clad in the white overalls dear to chemists and surgeons. They made signs as if for Mr. Parham and Gerson to move softly. They pointed to something hidden as yet from the newcomers. Their forms were a little distorted and their gestures a little exaggerated by some intervening transparent substance. So they had had an anti-gas for Gas L. Mr. Parham advanced, and Gerson came close behind. They emerged upon a circular gallery. The place made Mr. Parham think of the inside of the reservoir of a coal- gas works. Such a place would surely look like this place if it had electric lights inside it. It was large—it might have been a hundred yards in diameter—and shaped like a drum. The little gallery on which they stood ran round it, and in the central pit and occupying most of it was a huge glass bulb, a vast retort, in which a greenish-white liquid was boiling and bubbling. The shining curvature of the glass rose before them, reflecting them faintly with a certain distortion. It shortened and broadened them. It robbed Mr. Parham of all his natural dignity and made Gerson look incredibly squat and filthy and evil. The liquid in the retort was not seething equally; it was traversed and torn here and there by spurts and eddies of commotion; here it was mysteriously still and smooth, here with a wild rush came a drive of bursting bubbles. They stormed across the surface and raised eruptive mounds of ebullient liquid. And over the whole whirled and danced wisps of filmy vapour. But this held Mr. Parham's attention only for a moment. He realized that he was in the presence of Camelford and Sir Bussy, and he forgot everything else in that confrontation. Both these men were dressed in the same white overalls as the assistants across on the other side of the rotunda. But they had the air of having expected Mr. Parham and his companion. They seemed to have been coming to meet them. With a gesture of irritation Mr. Parham wrenched off his mask and Gerson followed suit. "The Lord Paramount of Britain," said Camelford and bowed with manifest irony. "Looks uncommonly like my old friend Parham," said Sir Bussy. "This other gentleman, if I'm not mistaken," said Camelford, "is that master strategist, General Gerson." "It's a loyal Englishman, Mr. Camelford," said the General, "who has done his best to save a great empire." "You lost a good lot of it to begin with," said Camelford. "Because we were shot at from behind." "How's your war going now?" "The war's gone to pieces. Mutiny. Disorder. London is in revolt and crying for peace. American peace propaganda has done us in—with treason at the back of us. It's the story of the poor old Kaiser over again. Beaten on the home front. No fair soldiering. If we could have made enough of Gas L —if we could have got all we had reasonably thought we should get... God! There was nothing wrong in my plans. Except that you've made a corner in Gas L. While we fought the enemy, you, you dirty sneaks, cornered our munitions. And now you've got us, and may Hell take you for it!" Camelford turned to Sir Bussy. "He speaks with heat, but I think we may admit his facts are sound. You've always had the buying-up instinct." He smiled blandly at Gerson. "We've got the stuff, as you say. We don't pretend we haven't. Sir Bussy has been amazing. But it isn't for sale. We thought it a pity to waste it on Gas L, and so we are making use of it in another way. Our way." A faint memory of the Lord Paramount reappeared in Mr. Parham. He made the old familiar gesture with his hand. "I want that material," he said. "I demand it." Sir Bussy's nether lip dropped. "What for?" he asked. "To save the Empire. To save the world from chaos." "There ain't going to be no chaos," misquoted Sir Bussy. "What are you going to do? Where do you think you are driving? Are you going to sit here and barter your stolen goods to the highest bidder?" "Cornered, perhaps, but not stolen," Sir Bussy corrected. "Well?" "We're going to take control," said Sir Bussy. "YOU! A handful of financial and technical scoundrels!" "WE'RE not going to take control," said Camelford, "if Sir Bussy will forgive me. Something else HAS taken control. And there are more men coming into this business of creation than you or Gerson dream." Mr. Parham looked about him, at the smooth circular walls about them, at the monstrous glass retort, at the distant figures of the silent attendants in white. Their number had now increased to six, and they all stood watching noiselessly. It was extraordinarily still and large and clean and—queer. It was not like war. It was not like government. It was not like industrialism. It was profoundly unhistorical. It was the new thing coming. And at his side stood Gerson. He, on the contrary, was like all the heroes of all the faint hopes that have ever succeeded. That never very attractive little figure in its uniform of soiled khaki suffered enormously by the contrast, looked brutish, looked earthy. Crawling through the darkness over rough ground usually given over to rabbits and an occasional goat had not improved his never very meticulous appearance, and his native physical vigour, the natural strength of his dark hair, made it very evident that he had had no time for a shave for a couple of days. Mr. Parham, who had always had a reasonable care for his own costume, experienced a wave of profound disloyalty to his sturdy colleague. This latter looked a pig of a creature, he looked as toughly combative with anything and everything as a netted boar. He was more than half an animal. Yet surely for all his savagery he had the inflexible loyalty of a great hero, he had a heart of ruthless, inexorable gold. Surely? Mr. Parham's thoughts came back to the last sentence Camelford had uttered and to this strange place into which he and Gerson had blundered. "Something else had taken control?" Not Gerson but something else? What was the issue that had brought them to this confrontation? Gerson hot and dirty, versus this Something Else? Which was not this group nor that group. Not the nation nor the Empire. Not America nor Europe. Which was a sort of emanation from the released and freely acting intelligence of mankind. A trace of the Master Spirit was still in Mr. Parham's manner, but behind the mask of his resolute bearing he felt his mind had fallen open and lay unprotected against new strange heretical assailants. "What is your aim here?" he asked. "What do you imagine you are doing? My ideas are still the common ideas of humanity. They are the forces of history. They are the driving power that has brought civilization to its present pass. Tradition. Discipline. Obedience. What are your ideas? Why have you raised this land out of the sea and made this place?" "We never raised this land out of the sea," said Camelford. "We never made this place. And we learn our aim as we get to it." "Then who the devil—?" said Gerson. "This place came. No single man planned it. No single man foresaw it. It appeared. As all the great inventions have appeared. Not out of individuals but out of the mind of man. This land with its hidden stores of strange minerals lay under the sea, ready for anyone who fulfilled the conditions fixed for raising it. And these works and the gas we are making, those also depended on the fulfilling of conditions. We individual men of science and men of enterprise do no more than observe the one supreme condition—which is that the human intelligence should have fair play. Now that these things have realized themselves, we look for the next thing we have to do." "Ugh," said Gerson. "The old face of human life is passing away. In that obedient fashion to which our science has trained us we observe the coming of the new. The age of war and conquest is over. War is done with, but with war a thousand other once vital things are done with also. The years of restraint are at an end. The patriots and warriors and masters, the flags and the nations, have to be rounded up now and put away forever. Powers and empires are over. The loyalties that served them must die. They matter no more. They become a monstrous danger. What was it Sir Bussy said? 'The ideas of an old buck rabbit in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.' Shut the book of national conflicts and conquests now and hand it over to the psychologists. We are the workers of a new dawn. Men of no nation. Men without traditions. Men who look forward and not back. Men who have realized the will and the intelligence that we obey and possess in common. Our race has to organize the whole world now, a field for this creative energy that flows through and uses and guides us." "But you are brewing a gas here!" said Mr. Parham. "It is a gas—a dangerous gas. What is it?" "It takes some brewing. If a crack in that retort let in the air—well, somewhere else this thing would have to begin over again. Here it would be finished. This stuff you see here is only a stage in a long string of processes. Before our product is ready to use there have to be corrosive and destructive phases. It is unavoidable that there should be these phases of corrosion and destruction. What is adventure if it has no danger? But when we have done, the gas we shall have here will not be a poison gas at all. Instead we shall have a vapour to enter into blood and nerve and brain and clean the mind of man as it has never been cleaned before. It will allow his brain, so clogged and stifled still by old rubbish, so poisoned and cramped and crippled, to free itself from all that holds it back now from apprehending and willing to the utmost limits of its possibility. And that points to a new world quite different from the world to which your mind is adapted. A world beyond your dreaming. You don't begin to imagine yet a tithe of the things a liberated human brain can do. All your poor old values will be mislaid and forgotten. Your kingdoms and empires, your morals and rights, all you find so lovely and splendid, the heroism and sacrifices of battlefields, your dreams of lordship, every romantic thing, the devotion of servants, the subjugation of women, and the deception of children—all the complex rigmaroles of your old world will be washed out of men's thoughts. We are brewing a new morality here and a new temerity. Instead of distrusting each other, killing each other, competing with and enslaving and consuming one another, we go on to a world of equals, working together under the guidance of realized fact, for ends too high for your imagination..." "But this is the voice of Satan himself," interrupted Mr. Parham. "This is the Sin of Pride defying Heaven. This is Babel come again." "No," said Camelford, and it seemed to Mr. Parham that he began to grow larger and tower over his hearers. "It is the way of escape from our narrow selves. Forward to the new. Cling to this traditionalism of yours a little longer, cling still to what YOU call history, with all these new powers and possibilities we are pressing into your hands—and there can be only one end—Catastrophe." The word Catastrophe reverberated in Mr. Parham's mind. Then his attention was caught and riveted on Gerson's attitude. The General's one serviceable eye, dilated and intent, was fixed on Camelford, his lips were pressed together, his bulldog face was set in an expression of stern indignation. A deep Indian red had invaded his complexion. He was rigid except that his right arm was moving very slowly. His hand gripped the butt of his revolver and was tightening upon it and drawing it out. A strange conflict prevailed in Mr. Parham's mind. He found this talk of Camelford's antagonistic and hateful but he did not want to interrupt it, he wanted to hear the man out; above all, he did not want to have the talk interrupted by Gerson in Gerson's fashion. And besides, what was Gerson doing here? He had not been asked to this party. But was it a party? This was not a dinner party. It was a séance. But no! What was it? Where were we? Cayme? Within the now frightfully confused soul of Mr. Parham intellectuality grappled with reaction. Not yet, at any rate, must things come to this. He made a weak movement of his hand as if in restraint of Gerson's intention. Instantly Gerson had whipped out his weapon. "Stand off," he said in an aside to Parham, and then to Camelford, "Hands up!" Camelford did not seem to realize his danger. "Put that old thing up," he said. "Give it to me. You'll break something." He came, hand out, towards Gerson. "Keep back!" said Gerson. "I'll show you if this sort of thing is over. It's only beginning. I'm the real Lord Paramount. Force and straight shooting. Do you think I care a damn for your gas or you? Catastrophe! A fig for your old catastrophe! Which is always coming and never comes... Hands up, I tell you. Put up your hands, you damned fool! STOP!" He fired. Then very swiftly the blue steel barrel under Mr. Parham's nose sought Sir Bussy. Vainly. Gerson's shot hit the metal door that closed upon that elusive being. Mr. Parham felt an instant pang of exasperation with both these uncontrollable spirits. He still wanted Camelford to go on. His mind flashed back to Camelford. But Camelford was staggering with his hand on his throat. Then it was catastrophe, as Camelford had said. A crash and a splintering of glass. Camelford had fallen through the great glass retort, carrying down a transparent shattering triangle, had splashed into the liquid and now lay far below, moving convulsively on the curve of the nether glass. For a moment the air about them was full of ascendant streamers of vapour made visible as they changed to green and mingled with the air. They eddied and whirled. They spun faster and faster. Gerson had turned his weapon upon Parham. "You too! YOU to talk of war! With the wits of a prig and the guts of a parasite! Get out of my world!" The vituperating mouth hung open arrested. No shot came. But now everything was moving very swiftly. One last flash of frantic perception closed the story. The rotunda yawned open as though some mighty hand had wrenched it in two, and through the separating halves of the roof appeared the warm glow of sunrise. A universe of sound pressed upon and burst the drums of Mr. Parham's ears. An immense explosion which seemed to have been going on for some moments caught him and lifted him backward and upward at an incredible speed, and Gerson, suddenly flat and bloody, flashed by, seemed to be drawn out longer and longer until he was only a thread of scarlet and khaki, and so vanished slanting up the sky, with his revolver spinning preposterously after him... VIII. — POST MORTEMThe world and all things in it vanished in a flash of blinding light. The word "extinction" sang like a flying spark through the disintegrating brain of Mr. Parham. Darkness should have swallowed up that flying spark, but instead it gave place to other sparks, brighter and larger. "Another life or extinction? Another life or extinction?" With a sort of amazement Mr. Parham realized that experience was not at an end for him. He was still something, something that felt and thought. And he was somewhere. Heaven or hell? Heaven or hell? It must be hell, he thought, surely, for it was pervaded by the voice of Sir Titus Knowles, if one could call that harsh, vindictive snarling sound a voice. The very voice of Gerson. Hell—and in the company of Sir Titus! But surely hell would be something fuliginous, and this was a clear white blaze. The words of Sir Titus became distinct. "GOT you!" he bawled. "GOT you! There's the ectoplasm! There's the mighty visitant's face! Painted bladder, as I said. Clever chap, but I've got you. Sham dead if you like for as long as you like, but I tell you the game is up." It was the upstairs room in Carfex House, and Carnac Williams was lying in a dishevelled heap upon the floor. Hereward Jackson was holding back Knowles, who was straining out his leg to kick the motionless body. Mr. Parham staggered up from his armchair and found Sir Bussy doing likewise. Sir Bussy had the flushed face of one roused suddenly from sleep. "What the devil?" he demanded. "I don't understand," said Mr. Parham. "Exposure!" panted Sir Titus triumphantly and tried another kick. "A foul exposure, anyhow," said Hereward Jackson and pushed him back from his exhausted victim. "Spare the poor devil!" "Le' go!" cried Sir Titus-- A manservant had appeared and was respectfully intervening between Sir Titus and Hereward Jackson. Another came to the assistance of Carnac Williams. A tremendous wrangle began... "Gaw!" said Sir Bussy when it was all over. IX. — THE LAST STRAW"I'm going to walk up to Claridge's," said Sir Bussy. "This affair has left me stuffy. You go that way?" "As far as Pontingale Street, yes." "Come on to Claridge's. My nieces are having a great dance there... That ectoplasm fairly turned me sick... I've done with this spook business for good and all." "I always wanted to keep out of it," said Mr. Parham. The two men set out side by side, and for a time each pursued his own thoughts. Sir Bussy's led him apparently to some conclusion, for suddenly he said, "Gaw"—as if he tapped a nail on the head. "Parham, were you awake all through that séance?" "No. I was bored. I fell asleep." "I fell asleep." Sir Bussy reflected. "These séances make you sleep—and dream. That's the trick of them." Mr. Parham looked at his companion, startled. Had he too dreamt? And what had he dreamt? "I dreamt about the things those fellows, Camelford and Hamp, were saying the other night." "Curious!" said Mr. Parham, but he felt the thing was much more curious than his voice betrayed. What if they had had the same dream? "I seemed to see their arguments in a sort of realized kind of way." How poor the man's powers of expression! "You and I were on opposite sides," he added. "Daggers drawn." "I hope not." "There was a war. Gaw! I can't tell you. Such a war! It was like trying to plug a burst steam pipe." Sir Bussy left his hearer to imagine what that meant. And Mr. Parham was able to imagine. "I cornered the chemicals," said Sir Bussy. "I and Camelford. We kind of held it up. We did our best. But at last the natural lunacy in things got loose and—everything seemed to blow to pieces. There was a nasty little toad of a sojer. BANG!" "That was the waking up?" "That was the waking up." Then Sir Bussy went off at a tangent. "We rich men—I mean we big business people—we've been backing the wrong horse. We've been afraid of Bogey Bolshevik and all the new things, and damn it! it's the OLD things that mean to bust up affairs. We're new things ourselves. What did J. C. say? No good putting new wine in old bottles... The world's rising and splashing over. The old notions and boundaries won't hold it... I wish I could describe my dream to you. Extraordinary it was. And you were in it somehow all through... And Camelford... Hamp was American ambassador. Crazy, it was..." Now this was getting more and more remarkable. But no—it was not the same dream—similar, perhaps. It was impossible that it could have been the same... A dream, as everyone knows, can happen with incredible rapidity. It may all have happened in a second. The sounds of Sir Titus Knowles turning on lights and bumping about with the medium and snarling at him had no doubt provided the gunfire and flashes and evoked warlike images in both their awakening minds. And the rest had arisen from what lay ready in their antagonistic attitudes. Sir Bussy went on with conviction: "If we don't see to it, these Old Institutions of yours and all that—these old things that ought to be cleaned up and put away now—will upset the whole human apple cart —like some crazy old granny murdering a child. Foreign offices, war offices, sovereignty, and clutter like that. Bloody clutter. Bloodstained clutter. All that I got as clear as day. They can't hold things any longer. They've got to be superannuated, shoved away in the attic. I didn't realize. We've got to do something about it soon. Damn soon. Before another smash. We new people. We've just floated about getting rich and doing nothing about it... Buying and selling and amalgamating and monopolizing isn't enough. The worst thing in life is to have power and not use it to the full... There wasn't a thing in my nightmare that might not happen." Mr. Parham waited for what might come next. It was extraordinary, this parallelism, but still his reason insisted they could not have had the same identical dream. "Was there," he said, "by any chance, a sort of Lord—Lord Protector in your dream?" "No," said Sir Bussy. "There was just a damned pigheaded patriotic imperial government and a war. Come to think of it, there was something—a sort of dictatorship. They put Labour out of business. I thought the chap was Amery. A sort of lofty Amery. Amery drawn out elegant—if you understand me. He didn't amount to much. What mattered was the ideas behind him." "And where did I come in?" There was a catch in Mr. Parham's breath. "You were on the side of the government and we argued. You were for the war. In this dream I seemed always to be meeting you and arguing. It made it very real. You were some sort of official. We kept on arguing. Even when the bombs were bursting and they tried to shoot me." Mr. Parham was to a certain extent relieved. Not completely but sufficiently. There had been a dream, evidently, a similar dream; a clearly similar dream. It is a distinctive feature of the séance condition that people should have similar dreams; but his dream and Sir Bussy's had not been the same dream. Not exactly the same dream. They had visualized the expectation of a possible war that haunted both their minds, but each in his own fashion —each with his own distinctive personal reference. That was it. The brief and tragic (and possibly slightly absurd) reign of Mr. Parham as Lord Paramount could be locked forever in his own breast. But what was Sir Bussy saying? He had been telling something of his dream that Mr. Parham had missed. "We've got to give people a juster idea of what is going on and give it 'em quick. Or they'll fall into unutterable smash-up. Schools—you can't. You can't get the necessary QUALITY in teachers. Universities lock themselves against us. Yes, they do. We've got to snatch the new generation out of the hands of doddering prigs and pedants and tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em. Catch the oversplash of life. In new ideas, in new organizations. The way out is through books, newspapers, print, talk... 'Light, more light,' as old Gutty said." (Did he mean Goethe?) "I'm coming into the newspaper world, Parham, I tell you. You've often suggested it, and here I am doing as you said. You know a thing or two. This sort of war drift can only BE stopped by a big push the other way. Bigger than anything done so far. Crowds of people in earnest. The Big Push for the new world! What of a big Sunday paper—that's the day they read—to give 'em science, give them the drift and meaning of the new world that—was it Camelford said it?—the new world that's trying to get born... Or was it that chap from Geneva?... Warn them how Granny still mutters and messes about with the knives... A great big powerful paper." At these words a queer irrational excitement made Mr. Parham tingle from head to foot. His sense of antagonism to Sir Bussy faded and vanished. Hopes long cherished and long suppressed arose in him with such a strength and violence that his orientation was lost. He could see this only as one thing, a proposal to himself. The proposal was coming in a manner he had never thought of, it was coming with a strangely twisted look, but surely it was coming. He was going to have his paper. At last. He might have to take rather a different line from the one he would have preferred before his dream, but his dream had twisted and turned him about a lot, and his awakening still more. And anyhow —it was a paper! "Isn't a Saturday weekly perhaps a better medium?" he asked in a strained, ill-controlled voice. "Smaller circulation, perhaps, but more real influence." "No, I want this paper to go out to the main public by the hundred thousand, I want to go behind all the clever fellows. They cut no ice. I want to go out with pictures and vulgar noise and all that, and tell 'em, and tell 'em and tell 'em, week after week, that these old things of yours are played out and dangerous and—oh, damnable!" "THESE OLD THINGS OF YOURS?" Something chill blew upon Mr. Parham. But still the poor desperate soul hung on. For six expectant years he had desired this thing. "I don't quite see myself doing that," he said. "I'm not a Garvin, you know. I doubt if one can be both copious and fine." Sir Bussy stopped short and regarded his companion with amazement, his mouth askew, for a couple of seconds or more. "Gaw!" he said at last. "I wasn't thinking of YOU." Mr. Parham was now very pale. The incredible was happening. His mind refused to accept it. "But the paper!" he gasped. "I'll have to do it with the right sort of fellows," said Sir Bussy, speaking slowly. "It would be up against every damned thing you are." He was staring at Mr. Parham in manifest amazement. As though he realized something for the first time. Six years they had been together, and never had it entered his head that the ideal editor of anything was Mr. Parham. And he meant, he really meant, this illiterate Cockney! to conduct his paper himself. Out of a dream he had got this crazy confidence. Some fantastic dream in the heavy and charged atmosphere of that séance. That infernal séance! That ten thousand times accursed séance! It had put everything awry. It had shattered everything. It had been a vat of mental fermentation. Out of its tedious tensions these hypnotic revelations had arisen. It had dispersed the decent superficial controls of both their minds and laid bare things that should never have been laid bare. It had revealed the roots of their imaginations. It had exposed the irreconcilable. How true and sound had been the instincts of Mr. Parham, when he had resisted the resort to these darkened chambers and these irrational expansions of expectation which are the inevitable consequences of séance conditions! A paper—a great paper, financed by Sir Bussy! And not to be his! A paper AGAINST him! Six years wasted! Slights! Humiliations! Irritations! Tailors' bills! Never in his life had he screamed, but now he was near screaming. He felt with his fingers inside his collar and had no word to say. Something had broken within him. It was the back of that poor weary camel of hope which for six long years had carried him so far and by such winding tracks, uphill and downhill, across great spaces, into strange continents, in pursuit of Sir Bussy. They stopped short at the corner of Pontingale Street. Mr. Parham glared, speechless, at his companion. Here indeed their ways diverged. "But come on," said Sir Bussy. "It's hardly midnight yet. Come on and see if my nieces aren't setting Claridge's afire. Everyone will be there—drabs and duchesses—Gaby—everybody." For the first time in their relationship Mr. Parham declined an invitation. "NO," he said, recovering the power of speech. Sir Bussy never took a refusal without a struggle. "Oh, COME!" he said. Mr. Parham shook his head. His soul was now brimming over with hate for this bilking, vulgar little scoundrel, this treacherous and incurable antagonist. His hate may have looked out of his eyes. They may have revealed the spit of devil within the don. For the first time, perhaps, in this long intercourse Sir Bussy may have seen all that Mr. Parham could feel about him. For twenty seconds of stark revelation the two men confronted each other, and then Mr. Parham, recovering his discretion, was catching his soul back from its windows and drawing down the blinds. But Sir Bussy did not repeat his invitation to Claridge's. "Gaw," he said, and turned away towards Berkeley Square. He did not even say "Good-night." Never before had Mr. Parham heard a Gaw so fraught with derision and dismissal. It was an entirely unanswerable Gaw. It was abandonment. For a minute, perhaps, he stood quite still as Sir Bussy receded. Then slowly, almost submissively, he turned his face towards his lodging in Pontingale Street. It seemed to Mr. Parham that all reality had deserted him. Not only had Sir Bussy gone off with all his dearest hopes, but it was as if his own substance had gone from him also. Within, the late Lord Paramount was nothing now but a vacuum, a cavernous nothingness craving for reassurance. Had he no future? Some day, perhaps, when old Waterham died—if ever that old bit of pemmican did die—the Mastership of St. Simon's. That—and a pose of smiling disdain. With a little acid in the smile. His mind swayed uncertainly and then came round with the quivering decision of a compass needle towards the dusky comfort and intimacy, the limitless understanding and sympathy of little Mrs. Pinchot. She would understand him. She would understand. Even if all that had made history for him went to the dust destructor, even if a new upstart history that took no heed of Princes and Powers, Persons and Policies and was all compact of biology, economics and suchlike innovations, ruled the earth in its stead. He knew she would understand—whatever there was to understand, and see it, whatever it was, in a light that would sustain and help him. True indeed that the chief proofs of her devotion and understanding had come to him in this dream, but there is an element of revelation in every dream, an element of good in every disaster. Happily he had her telephone number... And so, showing a weary back to us, with his evening hat on the back of his head, our deflated publicist recedes up Pontingale Street, recedes with all his vanities, his stores of erudition, his dear preposterous generalizations, his personified nations and all his obsolescent paraphernalia of scholarly political wisdom, so feebly foolish in their substance and so hideously disastrous in their possible consequences, and his author, who has come to feel a curious unreasonable affection for him, must needs bid him a reluctant farewell. THE END
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After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.
But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed. Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.
TAYEB SALIH was born in 1929 in the Northern Province of Sudan, and has spent most of his life outside the land of his birth. He studied at Khartoum University before going to England to work at the British Broadcasting Corporation as Head of Drama in the Arabic Service. He later worked as Director-General of Information in Qatar in the Arabian Gulf; with UNESCO in Paris and as UNESCO’s representative in Qatar. Culturally, as well as geographically, Tayeb Salih lives astride Europe and the Arab world. In addition to being well read in European literature, his reading embraces the wide range to be found in classical and modern Arabic literature as well as the rich tradition of Islam and Sufism. Before writing Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih published the novella The Wedding of Zein, which was made into an Arabic film that won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976. He has also written several short stories, some of which are among the best to be found in modern Arabic literature, and the novel Bandarshah.
DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES is the leading translator of Arabic fiction into English. Born in Canada, he studied Arabic at the Universities of London and Cambridge. He has to date published some twenty volumes of novels, short stories, plays and poetry from modern Arabic literature. He is a Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo.
WAIL S. HASSAN teaches in the Department of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Tayeb Salih: Ideology and the Craft of Fiction (2003) and of numerous articles on Arabic and comparative literature. A native of Egypt, he has lived in the United States since 1990.
TAYEB SALIH SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH TRANSLATED BY DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES INTRODUCTION BY WAIL S. HASSAN
INTRODUCTION
The
back cover of the first Heinemann edition of this novel, published in English translation in 1969, featured the following statement by Edward W Said, one of the most influential literary and cultural critics of the second half of the twentieth century: ‘Season
of Migration to the North is among the six finest novels to be written in modern Arabic literature.’ Almost two decades earlier, another critic, Albert Guerard, wrote in his introduction to the 1950 New American Library edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that it was ‘among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language’. In praising Salih’s novel, Said was quoting almost verbatim Guerard’s famous appraisal of Conrad’s classic. Said was himself an expert on Conrad, having published a book on him in 1966, so what he wrote about Salih’s novel was calculated to equate its importance to that of Conrad’s within their respective literary traditions: just as Heart of Darkness is a masterpieces of English literature, so is Season of Migration to the North an equally great classic of modern Arabic literature. Later on, in his major book Culture and Imperialism (1993), Said argued that Salih’s novel reverses the trajectory of Heart of Darkness and in effect rewrites it from an Arab African perspective. If Conrad’s story of European colonialism in Africa describes the protagonist’s voyage south to the Congo, and along the way projects Europeans’ fears, desires, and moral dilemmas upon what they called the ‘Dark Continent’, Salih’s novel depicts the journey north from Sudan, another place in Africa, to the colonial metropolis of London, and voices the colonised’s fascination with, and anger at, the coloniser. Both voyages involve the violent conquest of one place by the natives of another: Kurtz is the unscrupulous white man who exploits Africa in the name of the civilising mission, while Mustafa Sa’eed is the opportunist black man who destroys European women in the name of the freedom fight. Both novels also depict a ‘secret sharer’ or a double — Marlow in Conrad’s tale and the unnamed narrator in Salih’s — who are at once obsessed and repulsed by Kurtz and Mustafa Sa’eed, respectively. This way of reading novels from former European colonies as counter- narratives to colonial texts is one of the strategies of postcolonial literary criticism. Postcolonial critics have argued that narratives of conquest by writers such as Daniel Defoe, Rudyard Kipling, Ryder Haggard, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce Cary and others are crucial to understanding British culture. Even the seemingly insular and domestic world of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park depends for its sustenance, according to Said, on the existence of the British Empire in general, and on slave labour in Antigua in particular. Postcolonial critics also emphasise those literary texts from formerly colonised countries that portray the ravages of imperialism and directly challenge the authority and the claims of colonial discourse. In some instances, postcolonial writers have done so by rewriting canonical texts of conquest. In A Tempest, for example, Aimé Césaire rewrote Shakespeare’s The Tempest from the perspective of Caliban; J.M. Coetzee’s Foe is an alternative version to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; and several writers, including Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, V.S. Naipaul and Tayeb Salih have responded in various ways to Conrad’s novels, especially Heart of Darkness, which has emerged as the single most important, controversial and influential narrative of empire, in addition to being a key text of British modernist fiction. Of the novels that rewrite Heart of Darkness, Season of Migration to the North is the most structurally and thematically complex, and the most haunting. If postcolonial criticism, a phenomenon that emerged in American and British universities in the 1980s, has enhanced the reputation of Salih’s novel in its English translation, the Arabic original, Mawsim al-hijira ila al-shamal, became an instant classic as soon as it was published in Beirut in 1966. Although this was not Salih’s first novel, he was still relatively unknown at the time. The impact of the novel on the Arab literary field was such that in 1976, a group of leading critics compiled a collection of essays in which they hailed Salih as abqari al-riwayya al-rabiyya (genius of the Arabic novel). The novel appealed to its Arab readers, first of all, because of its aesthetic qualities — its complex structure, skilful narration, unforgettable cast of characters, and its spellbinding style which evokes the wide range of intense emotions displayed by the characters as it moves gracefully from lyricism to bawdy humor to searing naturalism and the uncanny horror of nightmares, and from the rhythms of everyday Sudanese speech (captured in literary Arabic rather than in the Sudanese dialect as in some of Salih’s other works) to poetic condensation, and from popular song to classical poetry and the lofty idiom of the Qur’an. Indeed, Salih remains one of the best Arabic stylists today, a quality inevitably lost to non-Arabic speakers, although Denys Johnson-Davies’s English translation is outstanding. The second reason for which the novel created such a stir on the Arabic literary scene in the mid-sixties was the radical way in which it responded to Arab liberal discourse on Europe. That discourse began with a movement called the Nahda (revival or renaissance) that sought, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, to rebuild Arab civilisation after centuries of decay under the Ottoman Empire and to confront the threat of European imperialism. The Nahda attempted to weld together two elements: Arab Islamic heritage on the one hand, and modern European civilisation, especially its scientific and technological achievements, on the other. Far from conceiving the two as contradictory or incompatible, the second seemed to Nahda intellectuals to be the natural extension of the first, in view of the great advances in scientific and humanistic knowledge that medieval Arab civilisation had produced, and which contributed in no small measure to the European renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Therefore, the project of the Nahda consisted in selectively synthesising the material advances of modern Europe and the spiritual and moral world view of Islam. However, this conciliatory vision became more difficult to sustain as Europe began to colonise parts of the Arab world in the late nineteenth century and especially after the First World War. Arabs had joined forces with the Allies against the Ottomans in exchange for the promise of independence, a promise that was broken after the war. Moreover, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promising the establishment of a jewish national home on Arab land and European support for the State of Israel deepened Arab resentment. Thus by the 1950s, the secular ideology of pan-Arab nationalism became dominant, and the Nahda’s vision of cultural synthesis gave way to an antagonistic stance toward the West. The collapse of that ideology in the 1967 war with Israel spelled a profound identity crisis that resonated at all levels of Arab consciousness and called for new ways of conceptualising the past, present, and future, even while it further solidified essentialised notions of Self and Other, East and West. Not surprisingly it was during the following decade that the militant ideology of Islamic fundamentalism emerged to fill the void. Begun in 1962 and published in 1966, the novel diagnosed the Arab predicament during that turbulent decade by stressing the violence of the colonial past, of which Mustafa Sa’eed is a product; announcing the demise of the liberal project of the Nahda, championed by Western-educated intellectuals like the narrator who failed to account for imperialism in their vision of cultural synthesis; condemning the corruption of postcolonial governments; and declaring the bankruptcy of traditionalist conservatism hostile to reform, represented by the village elders. The final scene of the novel, and especially its last words, forecasts the state of existential loss and ideological confusion that many in the Arab world would feel in the wake of the 1967 war. Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in the village of Debba in northern Sudan. He attended schools in Debba, Port Sudan, and Umm Durman, before going to Khartoum University to study biology. He then taught at an intermediate school in Rafa’a and a teacher training college in Bakht al-Rida. In 1953, he went to London to work in the Arabic section of the BBC, and during the 1970s he worked in Qatar’s Ministry of Information, then at UNESCO in Paris. Since then, he has lived in London.
Salih’s enormous reputation rests on relatively few works of fiction. In addition to Season of Migration to the North, he has written a novella, ‘Urs al- Zayn (1962, in English The Wedding of Zein), another novel, Bandarshah (first published in Arabic in two parts, Dau al-Beit in 1971 and Meryoud in 1976), and nine short stories, two of which appear in the Heinemann edition of The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories (1969). In 1988, he began writing a column in the London-based Arabic weekly magazine Al-Majallah; those articles on literary cultural and political topics were collected under the title of Mukhtarat (Selections) and published in nine volumes in Beirut in 2004-05. As a Sudanese, Salih came from a liminal place where the Arab world merges with black Africa, and he wrote as an immigrant in London. His fictional village of Wad Hamid in northern Sudan represents the complexities of that location: situated between the fertile Nile valley and the desert, inhabited by peasants but a frequent stop for nomadic tribes, it is a meeting place for several cultures. Its religion, ‘popu1ar Islam’, is a mixture of orthodox Islamic, Sufi, and animist beliefs. The village is beset by tensions that have defined Arab modernity since the nineteenth century: between old and new, science and faith, tradition and innovation. Because he was an immigrant, Salih could write about the colonial metropolis from a vantage point inaccessible to Levantine Arab intellectuals of his and earlier generations, even those among them who had studied in Europe for a while then returned home, often dazzled.
He also felt the predicament of the native there more intensely than they did, both as an African and as an Arab. Such a unique perspective ensured that his enormous talent would produce the most powerful representation of colonial relations yet in Arabic literature. Most of Salih’s novels and short stories are set in the fictional village of Wad Hamid in northern Sudan and form a continuous narrative cycle — the Wad Hamid Cycle — which spans the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1970s. The main narrator of the Wad Hamid Cycle appears as a child in the early short story ‘A Handful of Dates’, then again as the narrator in Season of Migration to the North, a young man who has just returned from England with a Ph.D. in English literature shortly after Sudanese Independence in 1956. He does not appear in The Wedding of Zein, which has a third-person omniscient narrator, but returns as a middle-aged man in Salih’s 1976 short story ‘The Cypriot Man', and as a disenchanted and nostalgic old man in Bandarshah. He is identified as Meheimeed in that novel, but remains unnamed in the other works. Like Season of Migration to the North, several of Salih’s fictions deal with the impact of colonialism and modernity on rural Sudanese society in particular and Arab culture in general. In his highly acclaimed short story ‘The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid’, the attempts of both colonial and postcolonial governments to impose modernisation programmes threaten to sever the villagers’ ties to their spiritual world. Set a few years after Sudanese Independence and narrated by an elderly villager, the story registers the bitterness and resignation of the elders who find themselves unable to preserve their way of life as their children, educated in modern schools, eagerly set the village on an irreversible course of modernisation. Members of this younger generation become the village leaders in The Wedding of Zein. They oversee the introduction of modern schools, hospitals and irrigation schemes into the village and manage most of its other affairs. They present themselves as benign, responsible, yet shrewd politicians who are capable of harmoniously integrating traditional culture with ‘progress’, as they conceive it. They befriend and protect the protagonist, Zein, a village idiot regarded as a saintly fool in the tradition of Sufi dervishes. Zein’s marriage to the most desirable girl in the village represents the spiritual unification of the community as well as the leaders’ ability to bring together the sometimes contentious factions within the village. As such, the novella constructs a utopia in which, despite the shortcomings of the central government, the new nation succeeds at the local level in fulfilling its material and spiritual potential.
Such idealism is shattered, however, in Salih’s next novel, Season of Migration to the North, which depicts the violent history of colonialism as shaping the reality of contemporary Arab and African societies. A naively optimistic, British-educated Meheimeed confronts his double, Mustafa Sa’eed, a Kurtz-like figure who uses the power of racist stereotypes of Africans as hyper- sexual and of Arabia’s exotic appeal to Europeans to seduce and manipulate English women, who for him stands in metonymic relationship to the British Empire, ruled over as it was in its heyday by a mighty woman, Queen Victoria. One source of the novel’s power is its dramatisation of the ways in which colonial hegemony is inextricably mixed with racial and gender hierarchies, an explosive mix the destructiveness of which is graphically illustrated in the novel. As the story continues in Wad Hamid, an unprecedented murder-suicide shocks and enrages the villagers and unveils the violence of traditional patriarch); linking it in kind to sexualised colonial violence. In this way the novel shows that the synthesis of traditional culture and modern ideas envisioned in the liberal discourse of the Nahda and given such poetic expression in The Wedding of Zein cannot succeed in the shadow of colonial and patriarchal hegemony. The crisis of Arab consciousness, ideology and leadership in the late 1960s and 1970s and which led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is the subtext in Salih’s third novel, Bandarshah, which centres on the relationship between past, present and future; or, in the mythical-allegorical scheme of the novel, grandfathers, fathers and grandsons. This problematic relationship is depicted as a vicious cycle in which the past repeats itself: grandsons are ever in conspiracy with grandfathers (of whom they are the split image and whose first name they always bear) against fathers. The novel suggests that the vicious cycle can be broken only when the rigid patriarchal order reflected in the novel’s central allegory is broken. In the turbulent decades that give the Wad Hamid Cycle its temporal frame, the contours of personal, cultural and national identity shift, sometimes violently within a complex matrix of values, traditions, institutions, power relations, new ideas and social and international pressures.
Colonisation and decolonisation involve the redrawing of boundaries, within and across which human beings suffer the traumas of continuity and discontinuity In tackling the questions of cultural memory and identity the impact of colonialism on Arab and African societies, the relationship between modernisation and traditional belief systems, social reform, political authority and the status of women, Salih’s fiction vividly portrays those dislocations and enables a vision of human community based on greater justice, peace and understanding, rather than rigid boundaries jealously guarded by antagonistic communities.
Wail S. Hassan Champaign, 2008
FOR FURTHER REFERENCE
Amyuni, Mona Takieddine, ed. Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North: A Casebook (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press: 1985)
Hassan, Wail S. Tayeb Salih: Ideology and the Craft of Fiction (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003)
It was, gentlemen, after a long absence — seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe — that I returned to my people. I learnt much and much passed me by — but that’s another story. The important thing is that I returned with a great yearning for my people in that small village at the bend of the Nile. For seven years I had longed for them, had dreamed of them, and it was an extraordinary moment when I at last found myself standing amongst them. They rejoiced at having me back and made a great fuss, and it was not long before I felt as though a piece of ice were melting inside of me, as though I were some frozen substance on which the sun had shone — that life warmth of the tribe which I had lost for a time in a land ‘whose fishes die of the cold’. My ears had become used to their voices, my eyes grown accustomed to their forms. Because of having thought so much about them during my absence, something rather like fog rose up between them and me the first instant I saw them. But the fog cleared and I awoke, on the second day of my arrival, in my familiar bed in the room whose walls had witnessed the trivial incidents of my life in childhood and the onset of adolescence. I listened intently to the wind: that indeed was a sound well known to me, a sound which in our village possessed a merry whispering — the sound of the wind passing through palm trees is different from when it passes through fields of corn. I heard the cooing of the turtle-dove, and I looked through the window at the palm tree standing in the courtyard of our house and I knew that all was still well with life. I looked at its strong straight trunk, at its roots that strike down into the ground, at the green branches hanging down loosely over its top, and I experienced a feeling of assurance. I felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose. My mother brought tea. My father, having finished his prayers and recitations from the Koran, came along. Then my sister and brothers came and we all sat down and drank tea and talked, as we have done ever since my eyes opened on life. Yes, life is good and the world as unchanged as ever. Suddenly I recollected having seen a face I did not know among those who had been there to meet me. I asked about him, described him to them: a man of medium height, of around fifty or slightly older, his hair thick and going grey, beardless and with a moustache slightly smaller than those worn by men in the village; a handsome man. ‘That would be Mustafa,’ said my father. Mustafa who? Was he one of the villagers who’d gone abroad and had now returned? My father said that Mustafa was not a local man but a stranger who had come here five years ago, had bought himself a farm, built a house and married Mahmoud’s daughter — a man who kept himself to himself and about whom not much was known. I do not know what exactly aroused my curiosity but I remembered that the day of my arrival he was silent. Everyone had put questions to me and I to them. They had asked me about Europe. Were the people there like us or were they different? Was life expensive or cheap? What did people do in winter? They say that the women are unveiled and dance openly with men. ‘Is it true,’ Wad Rayyes asked me, ‘that they don’t marry but that a man lives with a woman in sin?’ As best I could I had answered their many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people. Are there any farmers among them?’ Mahjoub asked me. ‘Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything — workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us.’ I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub, though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid he would not understand. Bint Majzoub laughed. ‘We were afraid,’ she said, ‘you’d bring back with you an uncircumcised infidel* for a wife.’ But Mustafa had said nothing. He had listened in silence, sometimes smiling; a smile which, I now remember, was mysterious, like someone talking to himself I forgot Mustafa after that, for I began to renew my relationship with people and things in the village. I was happy during those days, like a child that sees its face in the mirror for the first time. My mother never wearied of telling me of those who had died that I might go and pay my condolences and of those who had married that I might go and offer my congratulations, and thus I crossed the length and breadth of the village offering condolences and congratulations. One day I went to my favourite place at the foot of the tall acacia tree on the river bank. How many were the hours I had spent in my childhood under that tree, throwing stones into the river and dreaming, my imagination straying to far-off horizons! I would hear the groaning of the waterwheels on the river, the exchange of shouts between people in the fields, and the lowing of an ox or the braying of a donkey; Sometimes luck would be with me and a steamer would pass by; going up or down-river. From my position under the tree I saw the village slowly undergo a change: the waterwheels disappeared to be replaced on the bank of the Nile by pumps, each one doing the work of a hundred waterwheels. I saw the bank retreating year after year in front of the thrustings of the water, while on another part it was the water that retreated. Sometimes strange thoughts would come to my mind. Seeing the bank contracting at one place and expanding at another, I would think that such was life: with a hand it gives, with the other it takes. Perhaps, though, it was later that I realized this. In any case I now realize this maxim, but with my mind only; for the muscles under my skin are supple and compliant and my heart is optimistic. I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly; I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand. I looked at the river — its waters had begun to take on a cloudy look with the alluvial mud brought down by the rains that must have poured in torrents on the hills of Ethiopia — and at the men with their bodies learning against the ploughs or bent over their hoes, and my eyes take in fields flat as the palm of a hand, right up to the edge of the desert where the houses stand. I hear a bird sing or a dog bark or the sound of an axe on wood — and I feel a sense of stability; I feel that I am important, that I am continuous and integral. No, I am not a stone thrown into the water but seed sown in a field. I go to my grandfather and he talks to me of life forty years ago, fifty years ago, even eighty; and my feeling of security is strengthened. I loved my grandfather and it seems that he was fond of me. Perhaps one of the reasons for my friendship with him was that ever since I was small stories of the past used to intrigue me, and my grandfather loved to reminisce. Whenever I went away I was afraid he would die in my absence. When overcome by yearning for my family I would see him in my dreams; I told him this and he laughed and said, ‘When I was a young man a fortune-teller told me that if I were to pass the age when the Prophet died — that’s to say sixty — I’d reach a hundred.’ We worked out his age, he and I, and found he had about twelve more years to go. My grandfather was talking to me of a tyrant who had ruled over the district in the days of the Turks. I do not know what it was that brought Mustafa to mind but suddenly I remembered him and said to myself that I’d ask my grandfather about him, for he was very knowledgeable about the genealogy of everyone in the village and even of people scattered up and down the river. But my grandfather shook his head and said that he knew nothing about him except that he was from the vicinity of Khartoum and that about five years ago he had come to the village and had bought some land. All of the inheritors of this land had, with the exception of one woman, gone away. The man had therefore tempted her with money and bought it from her. Then, four years ago, Mahmoud had given him one of his daughters in marriage. ‘Which daughter?’ I asked my grandfather. ‘I think it was Hosna,’ he said. Then he shook his head and said, ‘That tribe doesn’t mind to whom they marry their daughters.’ However, he added, as though by way of apology that Mustafa during his whole stay in the village had never done anything which could cause offence, that he regularly attended the mosque for Friday prayers, and that he was ‘always ready to give of his labour and his means in glad times and sad’ — this was the way in which my grandfather expressed himself. Two days later I was on my own reading in the early afternoon. My mother and sister were noisily chattering with some other women in the farthest part of the house, my father was asleep, and my brothers had gone out on some errand or other. I was therefore alone when I heard a faint cough coming from outside the house and on getting up I found it was Mustafa carrying a large water melon and a basketful of oranges. Perhaps he saw the surprise on my face. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ he said. ‘I just thought I’d bring some of the first fruit from my field for you to try I’d also like to get to know you. Noon is not the time for calling — forgive me.’ His excessive politeness was not lost on me, for the people of our village do not trouble themselves with expressions of courtesy — they enter upon a subject at one fell swoop, visit you at noon or evening, and don’t trouble to apologize. I reciprocated his expressions of friendship, then tea was brought. I scrutinized his face as he sat with bowed head. He was without doubt a handsome man, his forehead broad and generous, his eyebrows set well apart and forming crescent-moons above his eyes; his head with its thick greying hair was in perfect proportion to his neck and shoulders, while his nose was sharply- pointed but with hair sprouting from the nostrils. When he raised his face during the conversation and I looked at his mouth and eyes, I was aware of a strange combination of strength and weakness. His mouth was loose and his sleepy eyes gave his face a look more of beauty than of handsomeness. Though he spoke quietly his voice was clear and incisive. When his face was at rest it gained in strength; when he laughed weakness predominated. On looking at his arms I saw that they were strong, with prominent veins; his fingers none the less were long and elegant, and when one’s glance reached them, after taking in his arms and hands, there was the sensation of having all of a sudden descended from a mountain into a valley I decided to let him speak, for he had not come at such a time of intense heat unless he had something important to say to me. Perhaps, on the other hand, he had been prompted to come out of pure goodwill. However, he cut across my conjectures by saying, ‘You’re most likely the only person in the village I haven’t already had the good fortune of getting to know.’ Why doesn’t he discard this formal politeness, being as we are in a village where the men when roused to anger address one another as ‘You son of a bitch’? ‘I have heard a lot about you from your family and friends.’ No wonder, for I used to regard myself as the outstanding young man in the village. ‘They said you gained a high certificate — what do you call it? A doctorate?’ What do you call it? he says to me. This did not please me for I had reckoned that the ten million inhabitants of the country had all heard of my achievement. ‘They say you were remarkable from childhood.’ ‘Not at all.’ Though I spoke thus, I had in those days, if the truth be told, a rather high opinion of myself . A doctorate — that’s really something.’ Putting on an act of humility I told him that the matter entailed no more than spending three years delving into the life of an obscure English poet. I was furious — I won’t disguise the fact from you — when the man laughed unashamedly and said: ‘We have no need of poetry here. It would have been better if you’d studied agriculture, engineering or medicine.’ Look at the way he says ‘we’ and does not include me, though he knows that this is my village and that it is he — not I — who is the stranger. However, he smiled gently at me and I noticed how the weakness in his face prevailed over the strength and how his eyes really contained a feminine beauty ‘But we’re farmers and think only of what concerns us,’ he said with a smile. ‘Knowledge, though, of whatsoever kind is necessary for the advancement of our country.’ I was silent for a while as numerous questions crowded into my head: Where was he from? Why had he settled in this village? What was he about? However, I preferred to bide my time. He came to my aid and said: ‘Life in this village is simple and gracious. The people are good and easy to get along with.’ ‘They speak highly of you,’ I said to him. ‘My grandfather says you’re a most excellent person.’ At this he laughed, perhaps because he remembered some encounter he had had with my grandfather, and he appeared pleased at what I had said. ‘Your grandfather — there’s a man for you,’ he said. ‘There’s a man — ninety years of age, erect, keen of eye and without a tooth missing in his head. He jumps nimbly on to his donkey walks from his house to the mosque at dawn. Ah, there’s a man for you.’ He was sincere in what he said — and why not, seeing that my grandfather is a veritable miracle? I feared that the man would slip away before I had found out anything about him — my curiosity reached such a pitch — and, without thinking, the question came to my tongue: ‘Is it true you’re from Khartoum?’ The man was slightly taken aback and I had the impression that a shadow of displeasure showed between his eyes. Nevertheless he quickly and skillfully regained his composure. ‘From the outskirts of Khartoum in actual fact,’ he said to me with a forced smile. ‘Call it Khartoum.’ He was silent for a brief instant as though debating with himself whether he should keep quiet or say any more to me. Then I saw the mocking phantom of a smile hovering round his eyes exactly as I had seen it the first day. ‘I was in business in Khartoum,’ he said, looking me straight in the face. ‘Then, for a number of reasons, I decided to change over to agriculture. All my life I’ve longed to settle down in this part of the country for some unknown reason. I took the boat not knowing where I was bound for. When it put in at this village, I liked the look of it. Something inside me told me that this was the place. And so, as you see, that’s how it was. I was not disappointed either in the village or its people.’ After a silence he got up, saying that he was off to the fields, and invited me to dinner at his house two days later. ‘Your grandfather knows the secret,’ he said to me with that mocking phantom still more in evidence round his eyes, as I escorted him to the door and he took his leave of me. He did not, though, give me the chance of asking: ‘What secret does my grandfather know? My grandfather has no secrets.’ He went off with brisk, energetic step, his head inclined slightly to the left.
When I went to dinner, I found Mahjoub there, together with the Omda, Sa’eed the shopkeeper, and my father. We dined without Mustafa saying anything of interest. As was his wont he listened more than he talked. When the conversation fell away and I found myself not greatly interested in it, I would look around me as though, trying to find in the rooms and walls of the house the answer to the questions revolving in my head. It was, however, an ordinary house, neither better nor worse than those of the well-to-do in the village. Like the other houses it was divided into two parts: one for the women and the other containing the diwan or reception-room, for the men. To the right of the diwan I saw a rectangular room of red brick with green windows; its roof was not the normal flat one but triangular like the back of an ox. Mahjoub and I rose and left the rest. On the way I asked Mahjoub about Mustafa. He told me nothing new but said, ‘Mustafa’s a deep one.’ I spent two months happily enough in the village and several times chance brought Mustafa and me together. On one occasion I was invited to attend a meeting of the Agricultural Project Committee. It was Mahjoub, the President of the Committee and a childhood friend of mine, who invited me. When I entered, I found that Mustafa was a member of the Committee. They were looking into a matter concerning the distribution of water to the fields. It seemed that certain people, including some members of the Committee, were opening up the water to their fields before the time allocated to them. The discussion became heated and some of them began shouting at each other. Suddenly I saw Mustafa jump to his feet, at which the uproar died down and they listened to him with great respect. Mustafa said it was important that people should submit to the rules of the Project, otherwise things would get out of hand and chaos would reign; especially was it incumbent upon members of the Committee to set a good example, and that if they were to contravene the law they would be punished like anyone else. When he stopped speaking most members of the Committee nodded their heads in approval; those against whom his words had been directed kept silent. There was not the slightest doubt that the man was of a different clay; that by rights he should have been President of the Committee; perhaps because he was not a local man they had not elected him.
About a week later something occurred that stunned me. Mahjoub had invited me to a drinking session and while we were sitting about chatting along came Mustafa to talk to Mahjoub about something to do with the Project. Mahjoub asked him to sit down, but he declined with apologies. When Mahjoub swore he would divorce if he did not, I once again saw the cloud of irritation wrinkle Mustafa’s brows. However, he sat down and quickly regained his usual composure. Mahjoub passed him a glass, at which he hesitated an instant before he took it and placed it beside him without drinking. Again Mahjoub swore the same oath and Mustafa drank. I knew Mahjoub to be impetuous and it occurred to me to stop him annoying the man, it being quite evident he did not at all wish to join the gathering. On second thoughts, though, I desisted. Mustafa drank the first glass with obvious distaste; he drank it quickly as though it were some unpleasant medicine. But when he came to the third glass he began to slow up and to sip the drink with pleasure, the tension disappeared from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes became even more dreamy and listless. The strength you were aware of in his head, brow and nose became dissolved in the weakness that flowed with the drink over his eyes and mouth. Mustafa drank a fourth glass and a fifth. He no longer needed any encouragement, but Mahjoub was in any case continuing to swear he would divorce if the other did not drink up. Mustafa sank down into the chair, stretched out his legs, and grasped the glass in both hands; his eyes gave me the impression of wandering in far-away horizons. Then, suddenly; I heard him reciting English poetry in a clear voice and with an impeccable accent. It was a poem which I later found in an anthology of poetry about the First World War and which goes as follows: Those women of Flanders Await the lost, Await the lost who never will leave the harbour They await the lost whom the train never will bring To the embrace of those women with dead faces, They await the lost, who lie dead in the trenches the barricade and the mud In the darkness of night This is Charing Cross Station, the hour’s past one, There was a faint light, There was a great pain.
After that he gave a deep sigh, still holding the glass between his hands, his eyes wandering off into the horizon within himself. I tell you that had the ground suddenly split open and revealed an afreet standing before me, his eyes shooting out flames, I would not have been more terrified. All of a sudden there came to me the ghastly nightmarish feeling that we — the men grouped together in that room — were not a reality but merely some illusion. Leaping up, I stood above the man and shouted at him: ‘What’s this you’re saying? What’s this you’re saying?’ He gave me an icy look — I don’t know how to describe it, though it was perhaps a mixture of contempt and annoyance. Pushing me violently aside, he jumped to his feet and went out of the room with firm tread, his head held high as though he were something mechanical. Mahjoub, busy laughing with the rest of the people in the gathering, did not notice what had occurred. On the next day I went to him in his field. I found him busy digging up the ground round a lemon tree. He was wearing dirty khaki shorts and a rough cotton shirt that came down to his knees; there were smudges of mud on his face. He greeted me as usual with great politeness and said, ‘Some of the branches of this tree produce lemons, others oranges.’ ‘What an extraordinary thing? I said, deliberately speaking in English. He looked at me in astonishment and said, ‘What?’ When I repeated the phrase he laughed and said, ‘Has your long stay in England made you forget Arabic or do you reckon we’ve become anglicized?’ ‘But last night,’ I said to him, ‘you recited poetry in English.’ His silence irritated me. ‘It’s clear you’re someone other than the person you claim to be,’ I said to him. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you told me the truth?’ He gave no sign of being affected by the threat implicit in my words but continued to dig round the tree. ‘I don’t know what I said or what I did last night,’ he said when he had finished digging, as he brushed the mud from his hands without looking at me. ‘The words of a drunken man should not be taken too seriously. If I said anything, it was the ramblings of a sleep-talker or the ravings of someone in a fever. It had no significance. I am this person before you, as known to everyone in the village. I am nothing other than that — I have nothing to hide.’ I went home, my head buzzing with thoughts, convinced that some story lay behind Mustafa, something he did not want to divulge. Had my ears betrayed me the night before? The English poetry he had recited was real enough. I had neither been drunk, nor yet asleep. The image of him sitting in that chair, legs spread out and the glass held in both hands, was clear and unequivocable. Should I speak to my father? Should I tell Mahjoub? Perhaps the man had killed someone somewhere and had fled from prison? Perhaps he — but what secrets are there in this village? Perhaps he had lost his memory? It is said that some people are stricken by amnesia following an accident. Finally I decided to give him two or three days and if he did not provide me with the truth, then I would tackle him about it.
I did not have long to wait, for Mustafa came to see me that very same evening. On finding my father and brother with me, he said that he wanted to speak to me alone. I got up and we walked off together. ‘Will you come to my house tomorrow evening?’ he said to me. ‘Id like to talk to you.’ When I returned my father asked me, ‘What’s Mustafa want?’ I told him he wanted me to explain a contract for the ownership of some land he had in Khartoum. Just before sunset I went to him and found him alone, seated in front of a pot of tea. He offered me some but I refused for I was impatient to hear the story; he must surely have decided to tell the truth. He offered me a cigarette, which I accepted. I scrutinized his face as he slowly blew out the smoke; it appeared calm and strong. I dismissed the idea that he was a killer — the use of violence leaves a mark on the face that the eye cannot miss. As for his having lost his memory this was a possibility Finally; as Mustafa began to talk, I saw the mocking phantom around his eyes, more distinct than ever before, something as perceptible as a flash of lightning. ‘I shall say things to you I’ve said to no one before. I found no reason for doing so until now I have decided to do so lest your imagination run away with you — since you have studied poetry.’ He laughed so as to soften the edge of scorn that was evident in his voice. ‘I was afraid you’d go and talk to the others, that you’d tell them I wasn’t the man I claimed, which would — would cause a certain amount of embarrassment to them and to me. I thus have one request to make of you — that you promise me on your honour, that you swear to me, you won’t divulge to a soul anything of what I’m going to tell you tonight.’ He gave me a searching look and I said to him: ‘That depends upon what you say to me. How can I promise when I know nothing about you?’ ‘I swear to you,’ he said, ‘that nothing of what I shall tell you will affect my presence in this village. I’m a man in full possession of my faculties, peaceful, and wanting only good for this village and its people.’ I will not conceal from you the fact that I hesitated. But the moment was charged with potentialities and my curiosity was boundless. The long and short of it was that I promised on oath, at which Mustafa pushed a bundle of papers towards me, indicating that I should look at them. I opened a sheet of paper and found it to be his birth certificate: Mustafa Sa’eed, born in Khartoum 16 August 1898, father Sa’eed Othman (deceased), mother Fatima Abdussadek. After that I opened his passport: the name, date and place of birth were the same as in the birth certificate. The profession was given as ‘Student’. The date of issue of the passport was 1916 in Cairo and it had been renewed in London in 1926. There was also another passport, a British one, issued in London in 1929. Turning over the pages, I found it was much stamped: French, German, Chinese and Danish. All this whetted my imagination in an extraordinary manner. I could not go on turning over the pages of the passport. Neither was I particularly interested in looking at the other papers. My face must have been charged with expectancy when I looked at him. Mustafa went on blowing out smoke from his cigarette for a while. Then he said:
‘It’s a long story, but I won’t tell you everything. Some details won’t be of great interest to you, while others… As you see, I was born in Khartoum and grew up without a father, he having died several months before I was born. He did none the less leave us something with which to meet our needs — he used to trade in camels. I had no brothers or sisters, so life was not difficult for my mother and me. When I think back, I see her clearly with her thin lips resolutely closed, with something on her face like a mask, I don’t know — a thick mask, as though her face were the surface of the sea. Do you understand? It possessed not a single colour but a multitude, appearing and disappearing and intermingling. We had no relatives. She and I acted as relatives to each other. It was as if she were some stranger on the road with whom circumstances had chanced to bring me. Perhaps it was I who was an odd creature, or maybe it was my mother who was odd — I don’t know. We used not to talk much. I used to have — you may be surprised — a warm feeling of being free, that there was not a human being, by father or mother, to tie me down as a tent peg to a particular spot, a particular domain. I would read and sleep, go out and come in, play outside the house, loaf around the streets, and there would be no one to order me about. Yet I had felt from childhood that I — that I was different — I mean that I was not like other children of my age: I wasn’t affected by anything, I didn’t cry when hit, wasn’t glad if the teacher praised me in class, didn’t suffer from the things the rest did. I was like something rounded, made of rubber: you throw it in the water and it doesn’t get wet, you throw it on the ground and it bounces back. That was the time when we first had schools. I remember now that people were not keen about them and so the government would send its officials to scour the villages and tribal communities, while the people would hide their sons — they thought of schools as being a great evil that had come to them with the armies of occupation. I was playing with some boys outside our house when along came a man dressed in uniform riding a horse. He came to a stop above us. The other boys ran away and I stayed on, looking at the horse and the man on it. He asked me my name and I told him. “How old are you?” he said. "I don’t know" I said. "Do you want to study at a school?” "What’s school?" I said to him. “A nice stone building in the middle of a large garden on the banks of the Nile. The bell rings and you go into class with the other pupils — you learn reading and writing and arithmetic.” “Will I wear a turban like that?” I said to the man, indicating the dome-like object on his head. The man laughed. “This isn’t a turban,” he said. “It’s a hat.” He dismounted and placed it on my head and the whole of my face disappeared inside it. “When you grow up,” the man said, “and leave school and become an official in the government, you’ll wear a hat like this.” “I’ll go to school,” I said to the man. He seated me behind him on the horse and took me to just such a place as he had described, made of stone, on the banks of the Nile, surrounded by trees and flowers. We went in to see a bearded man wearing a jibba, who stood up, patted me on the head and said: "But where’s your father?” When I told him my father was dead, he said to me: “Who’s your guardian?” “I want to go to school,” I said to him. The man looked at me kindly; then entered my name in a register. They asked me how old I was and I said I didn’t know; and suddenly the bell rang and I fled from them and entered one of the rooms. Then the two men came along and led me off to another room, where they sat me down on a chair among other boys. At noon, when I returned to my mother, she asked me where I’d been and I told her what had happened. For a moment she glanced at me curiously as though she wanted to hug me to her, for I saw that her face had momentarily lit up, that her eyes were bright and her lips had softened as though she wished to smile or to say something. But she did not say anything. This was a turning-point in my life. It was the first decision I had taken of my own free will. ‘I don’t ask you to believe what I tell you. You are entitled to wonder and to doubt — you’re free. These events happened a long time ago. They ate, as you’ll now see, of no value. I mention them to you because they spring to mind, because certain incidents recall certain other ones. ‘At any rate I devoted myself with the whole of my being to that new life. Soon I discovered in my brain a wonderful ability to learn by heart, to grasp and comprehend. On reading a book it would lodge itself solidly in my brain. No sooner had I set my mind to a problem in arithmetic than its intricacies opened up to me, melted away in my hands as though they were a piece of salt I had placed in water. I learnt to write in two weeks, after which I surged forward, nothing stopping me. My mind was like a sharp knife, cutting with cold effectiveness. I paid no attention to the astonishment of the teachers, the admiration or envy of my schoolmates. The teachers regarded me as a prodigy and the pupils began seeking my friendship, but I was busy with this wonderful machine with which I had been endowed. I was cold as a field of ice, nothing in the world could shake me. ‘I covered the first stage in two years and in the intermediate school I discovered other mysteries, amongst which was the English language. My brain continued on, biting and cutting like the teeth of a plough. Words and sentences formed themselves before me as though they were mathematical equations; algebra and geometry as though they were verses of poetry. I viewed the vast world in the geography lessons as though it were a chess board. The intermediate was the furthest stage of education one could reach in those days. After three years the headmaster — who was an Englishman — said to me, "This country hasn’t got the scope for that brain of yours, so take yourself off. Go to Egypt or Lebanon or England. We have nothing further to give you." I immediately said to him: “I want to go to Cairo.” He later facilitated my departure and arranged a free place for me at a secondary school in Cairo, with a scholarship from the government. This is a fact in my life: the way chance has placed in my path people who gave me a helping hand at every stage, people for whom I had no feelings of gratitude; I used to take their help as though it were some duty they were performing for me. ‘When the headmaster informed me that everything had been arranged for my departure to Cairo, I went to talk to my mother. Once again she gave me that strange look. Her lips parted momentarily as though she wanted to smile, then she shut them and her face reverted to its usual state: a thick mask, or rather a series of masks. Then she disappeared for a while and brought back her purse, which she placed in my hand. “Had your father lived,” she said to me, "he would not have chosen for you differently from what you have chosen for yourself Do as you wish, depart or stay it’s up to you. It’s your life and you’re free to do with it as you will. In this purse is some money which will come in useful.” That was our farewell: no tears, no kisses, no fuss. Two human beings had walked along a part of the road together, then each had gone his way. This was in fact the last thing she said to me, for I did not see her again. After long years and numerous experiences, I remembered that moment and I wept. At the time, though, I felt nothing whatsoever. I packed up my belongings in a small suitcase and took the train. No one waved to me and I spilled no tears at parting from anyone. The train journeyed off into the desert and for a while I thought of the town I had left behind me; it was like some mountain on which I had pitched my tent and in the morning I had taken up the pegs, saddled my camel and continued my travels. While we were in Wadi Halfa I thought about Cairo, my brain picturing it as another mountain, larger in size, on which I would spend a night or two, after which I would continue the journey to yet another destination. ‘I remember that in the train I sat opposite a man wearing clerical garb and with a large golden cross round his neck. The man smiled at me and spoke in English, in which I answered. I remember well that amazement expressed itself on his face, his eyes opening wide directly he heard my voice. He examined my face closely then said: “How old are you?" I told him I was fifteen, though actually I was twelve, but I was afraid he might not take me seriously “Where are you going?” said the man. “I’m going to a secondary school in Cairo." “Alone?” he said. "Yes," I said. Again he gave me a long searching look. Before he spoke I said, “I like traveling alone. What’s there to be afraid of?” At this he uttered a sentence to which at the time I did not pay much attention. Then, with a large smile lighting up his face, he said: "You speak English with astonishing fluency." ‘When I arrived in Cairo I found Mr Robinson and his wife awaiting me, Mr Stockwell (the headmaster in Khartoum) having informed them I was coming. The man shook me by the hand and said, “How are you, Mr Sa’eed?" “Very well thank you, Mr Robinson," I told him. Then the man introduced me to his wife, and all of a sudden I felt the woman’s arms embracing me and her lips on my cheek. At that moment, as I stood on the station platform amidst a welter of sounds and sensations, with the woman’s arms round my neck, her mouth on my cheek, the smell of her body — a strange, European smell — tickling my nose, her breast touching my chest, I felt — I, a boy of twelve — a vague sexual yearning I had never previously experienced. I felt as though Cairo, that large mountain to which my camel had carried me, was a European woman just like Mrs Robinson, its arms embracing me, its perfume and the odour of its body filling my nostrils. In my mind her eyes were the colour of Cairo: grey—green, turning at night to a twinkling like that of a firefly. “Mr Sa’eed, you’re a person quite devoid of a sense of fun,” Mrs Robinson used to say to me and it was true that I never used to laugh. "Can’t you ever forget your intellect?" she would say laughing, and on the day they sentenced me at the Old Bailey to seven years’ imprisonment, I found no bosom except hers on which to rest my head. "Don’t cry dear child,” she had said to me, patting my head. They had no children. Mr Robinson knew Arabic well and was interested in Islamic thought and architecture, and it was with them that I visited Cairo’s mosques, its museums and antiquities. The district of Cairo they loved best was al-Azhar. When our feet wearied of walking about we’d take ourselves off to a cafe close by the al- Azhar Mosque where we would drink tamarind juice and Mr Robinson would recite the poetry of al-Ma’arri. At that time I was wrapped up in myself and paid no attention to the love they showered on me. Mrs Robinson was a buxom woman and with a bronze complexion that harmonized with Cairo, as though she were a picture tastefully chosen to go with the colour of the walls in a room. I would look at the hair of her armpits and would have a sensation of panic. Perhaps she knew I desired her. But she was sweet, the sweetest woman I’ve known; she used to laugh gaily and was as tender to me as a mother to her own son. ‘They were on the quayside when the ship set sail with me from Alexandria. I saw her far-away waving to me with her handkerchief then drying her tears with it, her husband at her side, his hands on his hips; even at that distance I could almost see the limpid blueness of his eyes. However I was not sad. My sole concern was to reach London, another mountain, larger than Cairo, where I knew not how many nights I would stay. Though I was then fifteen, I looked nearer twenty for I was as taut and firm-looking as an inflated waterskin. Behind me was a story of spectacular success at school, my sole weapon being that sharp knife inside my skull, while within my breast was a hard, cold feeling — as if it had been cast in rock. And when the sea swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my ribs. The whole of the journey I savoured that feeling of being nowhere, alone, before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. The surface of the sea when calm is another mirage, ever changing and shifting, like the mask on my mother’s face. Here, too, was a desert laid out in blue-green, calling me, calling me. The mysterious call led me to the coast of Dover, to London and tragedy. ‘Later I followed the same road on my return, asking myself during the whole journey whether it would have been possible to have avoided any of what happened. The string of the bow is drawn taut and the arrow must needs shoot forth. I look to right and left, at the dark greenness, at the Saxon villages standing on the fringes of hills. The red roofs of houses vaulted like the backs of cows. A transparent veil of mist is spread above the valleys. What a great amount of water there is here, how vast the greenness! And all those colours! The smell of the place is strange, like that of Mrs Robinson’s body. The sounds have a crisp impact on the ear, like the rustle of birds’ wings. This is an ordered world; its houses, fields, and trees are ranged in accordance with a plan. The streams too do not follow a zigzag course but flow between artificial banks. The train stops at a station for a few minutes; hurriedly people get off hurriedly others get on, then the train moves off again. No fuss. ‘I thought of my life in Cairo. Nothing untoward had occurred. My knowledge had increased and several minor incidents had happened to me; a fellow student had fallen in love with me and had then hated me. "You’re not a human being," she had said to me. “You’re a heartless machine." I had loafed around the streets of Cairo, visited the opera, gone to the theatre, and once I had swum across the Nile. Nothing whatsoever had happened except that the waterskin had distended further, the bowstring had become more taut. The arrow will shoot forth towards other unknown horizons. ‘I looked at the smoke from the engine vanishing to where it is dispersed by the wind and merges into the veil of mist spread across the valleys. Falling into a short sleep, I dreamt I was praying alone at the Citadel Mosque. It was illuminated with thousands of chandeliers, and the red marble glowed as I prayed alone. When I woke up there was the smell of incense in my nose and I found that the train was approaching London. Cairo was a city of laughter, just as Mrs Robinson was a woman of laughter. She had wanted me to call her by her first name — Elizabeth — but I always used to call her by her married name. From her I learnt to love Bach’s music, Keats’s poetry; and from her I heard for the first time of Mark Twain. And yet I enjoyed nothing. Mrs Robinson would laugh and say to me, “Can’t you ever forget your intellect?” Would it have been possible to have avoided any of what happened? At that time I was on the way back. I remembered what the priest had said to me when I was on my way to Cairo: “All of us, my son, are in the last resort traveling alone.” He was fingering the cross on his chest and his face lit up in a big smile as he added: "You speak English with astonishing fluency." The language, though, which I now heard for the first time is not like the language I had learnt at school. These are living voices and have another ring. My mind was like a keen knife. But the language is not my language; I had learnt to be eloquent in it through perseverance. And the train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris.
‘Everything which happened before my meeting her was a premonition; everything I did after I killed her was an apology; not for killing her, but for the lie that was my life. I was twenty-five when I met her at a party in Chelsea. The door, and a long passageway leading to the entrance hall. She opened the door and lingered; she appeared to my gaze under the faint lamplight like a mirage shimmering in a desert. I was drunk, my glass two-thirds empty. With me were two girls; I was saying lewd things to them and they were laughing. She came towards us with wide strides, placing the weight of her body on the right foot so that her buttocks inclined leftwards. She was looking at me as she approached. She stopped opposite me and gave me a look of arrogance, coldness, and something else. I opened my mouth to speak, but she had gone. "Who’s that female?” I said to my two companions. ‘London was emerging from the war and the oppressive atmosphere of the Victorian era. I got to know the pubs of Chelsea, the clubs of Hampstead, and the gatherings of Bloomsbury. I would read poetry talk of religion and philosophy discuss paintings, and say things about the spirituality of the East. I would do everything possible to entice a woman to my bed. Then I would go after some new prey. My soul contained not a drop of sense of fun — just as Mrs Robinson had said. The women I enticed to my bed included girls from the Salvation Army, Quaker societies and Fabian gatherings. When the Liberals, the Conservatives, Labour, or the Communists, held a meeting, I would saddle my camel and go. "You’re ugly” Jean Morris said to me on the second occasion. “I’ve never seen an uglier face than yours." I opened my mouth to speak but she had gone. At that instant, drunk as I was, I swore I would one day make her pay for that. When I woke up, Ann Hammond was beside me in the bed. What was it that attracted Ann Hammond to me? Her father was an officer in the Royal Engineers, her mother from a rich family in Liverpool. She proved an easy prey. When I first met her she was less than twenty and was studying Oriental languages at Oxford. She was lively with a gay intelligent face and eyes that sparkled with curiosity. When she saw me, she saw a dark twilight like a false dawn. Unlike me, she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all her hankerings. I am South that yearns for the North and the ice. Ann Hammond spent her childhood at a convent school. Her aunt was the wife of a Member of Parliament. In my bed I transformed her into a harlot. My bedroom was a graveyard that looked on to a garden; its curtains were pink and had been chosen with care, the carpeting was of a warm greenness, the bed spacious, with swans-down cushions. There were small electric lights, red, blue, and violet, placed in certain corners; on the walls were large mirrors, so that when I slept with a woman it was as if I slept with a whole harem simultaneously. The room was heavy with the smell of burning sandalwood and incense, and in the bathroom were pungent Eastern perfumes, lotions, unguents, powders, and pills. My bedroom was like an operating theatre in a hospital. There is a still pool in the depths of every woman that I knew how to stir. One day they found her dead. She had gassed herself. They also found a small piece of paper with my name on it. It contained nothing but the words: “Mr Sa’eed, may God damn you.” My mind was like a sharp knife. The train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris.
‘In the courtroom in London I sat for weeks listening to the lawyers talking about me — as though they were talking about some person who was no concern of mine. The Public Prosecutor, Sir Arthur Higgins, had a brilliant mind. I knew him well, for he had taught me Criminal Law at Oxford and I had seen him before, at this court, in this very same room, tightening his grip on the accused as they stood in the dock. Rarely did anyone escape him. I saw men weeping and fainting after he had finished his cross examination; but this time he was wrestling with a corpse. ‘“Were you the cause of Ann Hammond’s suicide?” ‘“I don’t know” ‘“And Sheila Greenwood?" ‘“I don’t know" ‘“And Isabella Seymour?" “‘I don’t know” ‘“Did you kill Jean Morris?” ‘“Yes.” ‘“Did you kill her intentionally?” "‘Yes.” ‘It was as though his voice came to me from another world. The man continued skillfully to draw a terrible picture of a werewolf who had been the reason for two girls committing suicide, had wrecked the life of a married woman and killed his own wife — an egoist whose whole life had been directed to the quest of pleasure. Once it occurred to me in my stupor, as I sat there listening to my former teacher, Professor Maxwell Foster-Keen, trying to save me from the gallows, that I should stand up and shout at the court: "This Mustafa Sa’eed does not exist. He’s an illusion, a lie. I ask of you to rule that the lie be killed." But I remained as lifeless as a heap of ashes. Professor Maxwell Foster- Keen continued to draw a distinctive picture of the mind of a genius whom circumstances had driven to killing in a moment of mad passion. He related to them how I had been appointed a lecturer in economics at London University at the age of twenty-four. He told them that Ann Hammond and Sheila Greenwood were girls who were seeking death by every means and that they would have committed suicide whether they had met Mustafa Sa’eed or not. “Mustafa Sa’eed, gentlemen of the jury; is a noble person whose mind was able to absorb Western civilization but it broke his heart. These girls were not killed by Mustafa Sa’eed but by the germ of a deadly disease that assailed them a thousand years ago.” It occurred to me that I should stand up and say to them: “This is untrue, a fabrication. It was I who killed them. I am the desert of thirst. I am no Othello. I am a lie. Why don’t you sentence me to be hanged and so kill the lie?” But Professor Foster-Keen turned the trial into a conflict between two worlds, a struggle of which I was one of the victims. The train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris.
‘I pursued her for three years. Every day the string of the bow became more taut. It was with air that my waterskins were distended; my caravans were thirsty; and the mirage shimmered before me in the wilderness of longing; the arrow’s target had been fixed and it was inevitable the tragedy would take place. “You’re a savage bull that does not weary of the chase,” she said to me one day “I am tired of your pursuing me and of my running before you. Marry me.” So I married her. My bedroom became a theatre of war; my bed a patch of hell. When I grasped her it was like grasping at clouds, like bedding a shooting-star, like mounting the back of a Prussian military march. That bitter smile was continually on her mouth. I would stay awake all night warring with bow and sword and spear and arrows, and in the morning I would see the smile unchanged and would know that once again I had lost the combat. It was as though I were a slave Shahrayar you buy in the market for a dinar encountering a Scheherazade begging amidst the rubble of a city destroyed by plague. By day I lived with the theories of Keynes and Tawney and at night I resumed the war with bow and sword and spear and arrows. I saw the troops returning, filled with terror, from the war of trenches, of lice and epidemics. I saw them sowing the seeds of the next war in the Treaty of Versailles, and I saw Lloyd George lay the foundations of a public welfare state. The city was transformed into an extraordinary woman, with her symbols and her mysterious calls, towards whom I drove my camels till their entrails ached and I myself almost died of yearning for her. My bedroom was a spring-well of sorrow, the germ of a fatal disease. The infection had stricken these women a thousand years ago, but I had stirred up the latent depths of the disease until it had got out of control and had killed. The theatres of Leicester Square echoed with songs of love and gaiety, but my heart did not beat in time with them. Who would have thought that Sheila Greenwood would have the courage to commit suicide? A waitress in a Soho restaurant, a simple girl with a sweet smile and a sweet way of speaking. Her people were village folk from the suburbs of Hull. I seduced her with gifts and honeyed words, and an unfaltering way of seeing things as they really are. It was my world, so novel to her, that attracted her. The smell of burning sandalwood and incense made her dizzy; she stood for a long time laughing at her image in the mirror as she fondled the ivory necklace I had placed like a noose round her beautiful neck. She entered my bedroom a chaste virgin and when she left it she was carrying the germs of self-destruction within her. She died without a single word passing her lips — my storehouse of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible. For every occasion I possess the appropriate garb. ‘“Is it not true, by way of example, that in the period between October 1922 and February 1923, that in this period alone you were living with five women simultaneously?” ‘“Yes." "And that you gave each one the impression you’d marry her?" "‘Yes." ‘“And that you adopted a different name with each one?" "‘Yes." "‘That you were Hassan and Charles and Amin and Mustafa and Richard?" ‘“Yes.” "And yet you were writing and lecturing on a system of economics based on love not figures? Isn’t it true you made your name by your appeal for humanity in economics?" "‘Yes.”
‘Thirty years. The willow trees turned from white to green to yellow in the parks; the cuckoo sang to the spring each year. For thirty years the Albert Hall was crammed each night with lovers of Beethoven and Bach, and the presses brought out thousands of books on aft and thought. The plays of Bernard Shaw were put on at The Royal Court and The Haymarket. Edith Sitwell was giving wings to poetry and The Prince of Wales’s Theatre pulsated with youth and bright lights. The sea continued to ebb and flow at Bournemouth and Brighton, and the Lake District flowered year after year. The island was like a sweet tune, happy and sad, changing like a mirage with the changing of the seasons. For thirty years I was a part of all this, living in it but insensitive to its real beauty unconcerned with everything about it except the filling of my bed each night. ‘Yes. It was summer — they said that they had not known a summer like it for a hundred years. I left my house on a Saturday sniffing the air, feeling I was about to start upon a great hunt. I reached Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. It was packed with people. I stood listening from afar to a speaker from the West Indies talking about the colour problem. Suddenly my eyes came to rest on a woman who was craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the speaker so that her dress was lifted above her knees exposing two shapely bronzed legs. Yes, this was my prey. I walked up to her, like a boat heading towards the rapids. I stood beside her and pressed up close against her till I felt her warmth pervading me. I breathed in the odour of her body, that odour with which Mrs Robinson had met me on the platform of Cairo’s railway station. I was so close to her that, becoming aware of me, she turned to me suddenly. I smiled into her face — a smile the outcome of which I knew not, except that I was determined that it should not go to waste. I also laughed lest the surprise in her face should turn to animosity. Then she smiled. I stood beside her for about a quarter of an hour, laughing when the speaker’s words made her laugh — loudly so that she might be affected by the contagion of it. Then came the moment when I felt that she and I had become like a mare and foal running in harmony side by side. A sound, as though it were not my voice, issued from my throat: “What about a drink, away from this crowd and heat?" She turned her head in astonishment. This time I smiled — a broad innocent smile so that I might change astonishment into, at least, curiosity Meanwhile I closely examined her face: each one of her features increased my conviction that this was my prey. With the instinct of a gambler I knew that this was a decisive moment. At this moment everything was possible. My smile changed to a gladness. I could scarcely keep in rein as she said: “Yes, why not?" We walked along together; she beside me, a glittering figure of bronze under the july sun, a city of secrets and rapture. I was pleased she laughed so freely. Such a woman — there are many of her type in Europe — knows no fear; they accept life with gaiety and curiosity. And I am a thirsty desert, a wilderness of southern desires. As we drank tea, she asked me about my home. I related to her fabricated stories about deserts of golden sands and jungles where non-existent animals called out to one another. I told her that the streets of my country teemed with elephants and lions and that during siesta time crocodiles crawled through it. Half-credulous, half-disbelieving, she listened to me, laughing and closing her eyes, her cheeks reddening. Sometimes she would hear me out in silence, a Christian sympathy in her eyes. There came a moment when I felt I had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungles. This was fine. Curiosity had changed to gaiety and gaiety to sympathy and when I stir the still pool in its depths the sympathy will be transformed into a desire upon whose taut strings I shall play as I wish. "What race are you?” she asked me. ‘Are you African or Asian?” "‘I’m like Othello — Arab—African," I said to her. "‘Yes,” she said, looking into my face. “Your nose is like the noses of Arabs in pictures, but your hair isn’t soft and jet black like that of Arabs.” ‘“Yes, that’s me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty Quarter, while my head is African and teems with a mischievous childishness.” ‘“You put things in such a funny way,” she said laughing. ‘The conversation led us to my family and I told her — without lying this time — that I had grown up without a father. Then, returning to my lies, I gave her such terrifying descriptions of how I had lost my parents that I saw the tears well up in her eyes. I told her I was six years old at the time when my parents were drowned with thirty other people in a boat taking them from one bank of the Nile to the other. Here something occurred which was better than expressions of pity; pity in such instances is an emotion with uncertain consequences. Her eyes brightened and she cried out ecstatically: ‘“The Nile.” ‘“Yes, the Nile.” ‘“'Then you live on the banks of the Nile?" ‘“Yes. Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that when I’m lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me.” ‘Mr Mustafa, the bird has fallen into the snare. The Nile, that snake god, has gained a new victim. The city has changed into a woman. It would be but a day or a week before I would pitch tent, driving my tent peg into the mountain summit. You, my lady, may not known; but you — like Carnarvon when he entered Tutan-Khamen’s tomb — have been infected with a deadly disease which has come from you know not where and which will bring about your destruction, be it sooner or later. My store of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible. I felt the flow of conversation firmly in my hands, like the reins of an obedient mare: I pull at them and she stops, I shake them and she advances; I move them and she moves subject to my will, to left or to right. ‘“Two hours have passed without my being aware of them,” I said to her. “I’ve not felt such happiness for a long time. And there’s so much left for me to say to you and you to me. What would you say to having dinner together and continuing the conversation?" ‘For a while she remained silent. I was not alarmed for I felt that satanic warmth under my diaphragm, and when I feel it I know that I am in full command of the situation. No, she would not say no. “This is an extraordinary meeting,” she said. ‘A man I don’t know invites me out. It’s not right, but —" She was silent. "Yes, why not?” she then said. "There’s nothing to tell from your face you’re a cannibal." "‘You’ll find I’m an aged crocodile who’s lost its teeth," I said to her, a wave of joy stirring in the roots of my heart. “I wouldn’t have the strength to eat you even if I wanted to." I reckoned I was at least fifteen years her junior, for she was a woman in the region of forty whose body — whatever the experiences she had undergone — time had treated kindly. The fine wrinkles on her forehead and at the comers of her mouth told one not that she had grown old, but that she had ripened. ‘Only then did I ask her name. ‘“Isabella Seymour," she said. ‘I repeated it twice, rolling it round my tongue as though eating a pear. "And what’s your name?" ‘“I’m — Amin. Amin Hassan." "‘I shall call you Hassan." ‘With the grills and wine her features relaxed and there gushed forth — upon me — a love she felt for the whole world. I wasn’t so much concerned with her love for the world, or for the cloud of sadness that crossed her face from time to time, as I was with the redness of her tongue when she laughed, the fullness of her lips and the secrets lurking in the abyss of her mouth. I pictured her obscenely naked as she said: “Life is full of pain, yet we must be optimistic and face life with courage." ‘Yes, I now know that in the rough wisdom that issues from the mouths of simple people lies our whole hope of salvation. A tree grows simply and your grandfather has lived and will die simply. That is the secret. You are right, my lady: courage and optimism. But until the meek inherit the earth, until the armies are disbanded, the lamb grazes in peace beside the wolf and the child plays water-polo in the river with the crocodile, until that time of happiness and love comes along, I for one shall continue to express myself in this twisted manner. And when, puffing, I reach the mountain peak and implant the banner, collect my breath and rest — that, my lady is an ecstasy greater to me than love, than happiness. Thus I mean you no harm, except to the extent that the sea is harmful when ships are wrecked against its rocks, and to the extent that the lightning is harmful when it rends a tree in two. This last idea converged in my mind on the tiny hairs on her right arm near to the wrist, and I noticed that the hair on her arms was thicker than with most women, and this led my thoughts to other hair. It would certainly be as soft and abundant as cypress-grass on the banks of a stream. As though the thought had radiated from my mind to hers she sat up straight. “Why do you look so sad?” she said. ‘“Do I look sad? On the contrary I’m very happy" ‘The tender look came back into her eyes as she stretched out her hand and took hold of mine. “Do you know that my mother’s Spanish?” she said. “'That, then, explains everything. It explains our meeting by chance, our spontaneous mutual understanding as though we had got to know each other centuries ago. Doubtless one of my forefathers was a soldier in Tarik ibn Ziyad’s army. Doubtless he met one of your ancestors as she gathered in the grapes from an orchard in Seville. Doubtless he fell in love with her at first sight and she with him. He lived with her for a time, then left her and went off to Africa. There he married again and I was one of his progeny in Africa, and you have come from his progeny in Spain." ‘These words, also the low lights and the wine, made her happy. She gave out throaty gurgling laughs. "‘What a devil you are!" she said. ‘For a moment I imagined to myself the Arab soldiers’ first meeting with Spain: like me at this instant sitting opposite Isabella Seymour, a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the north. However, I seek not glory for the likes of me do not seek glory. After a month of feverish desire I turned the key in the door with her at my side, a fertile Andalusia; after that I led her across the short passageway to the bedroom where the smell of burning sandalwood and incense assailed her, filling her lungs with a perfume she little knew was deadly. In those days, when the summit lay a mere arm’s length away from me, I would be enveloped in a tragic calm. All the fever and throbbing of the heart, the strain of nerves, would be transformed into the calm of a surgeon as he opens up the patient’s stomach. I knew that the short road along which we walked together to the bedroom was, for her, a road of light redolent with the aroma of magnanimity and devotion, but which to me was the last step before attaining the peak of selfishness. I waited by the edge of the bed, as though condensing that moment in my mind, and cast a cold eye at the pink curtains and large mirrors, the lights lurking in the corners of the room, then at the shapely bronze statue before me. When we were at the climax of the tragedy she cried out weakly; “No. No." This will be of no help to you now. The critical moment when it was in your power to refrain from taking the first step has been lost. I caught you unawares; at that time it was in your power to say "No". As for now the flood of events has swept you along, as it does every person, and you are no longer capable of doing anything. Were every person to know when to refrain from taking the first step many things would have been changed. Is the sun wicked when it turns the hearts of millions of human beings into sand-strewn deserts in which the throat of the nightingale is parched with thirst? Lingeringly I passed the palm of my hand over her neck and kissed her in the fountainheads of her sensitivity. With every touch, with every kiss, I felt a muscle in her body relax; her face glowed and her eyes sparkled with a sudden brightness. She gazed hard and long at me as though seeing me as a symbol rather than reality I heard her saying to me in an imploring voice of surrender “I love you,” and there answered her voice a weak cry from the depths of my consciousness calling on me to desist. But the summit was only a step away after which I would recover my breath and rest. At the climax of our pain there passed through my head clouds of old, far-off memories, like a vapour rising up from a salt lake in the middle of the desert. She burst into agonized, consuming tears, while I gave myself up to a feverishly tense sleep.’
It was a steamingly hot ]uly night, the Nile that year having experienced one of those floodings that occur once every twenty or thirty years and become legendary — something for fathers to talk to their sons about. Water covered most of the land lying between the river bank and the edge of the desert where the houses stood, and the fields became like islands amidst the water. The men moved between the houses and the fields in small boats or covered the distance swimming. Mustafa Sa’eed was, as far as I knew an excellent swimmer. My father told me — for I was in Khartoum at the time — that they heard women screaming in the quarter after the evening prayers and, on hurrying to the source of the sound, had found that the screaming was coming from Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. Though he was in the habit of returning from the fields at sunset, his wife had waited for him in vain. On asking about him here and there she was told he had been seen in his field, though some thought he had returned home with the rest of the men. The whole village, carrying lamps, combed the river bank, while some put out in boats, but though they searched the whole night through it was without avail. Telephone messages were sent to the police stations right along the Nile as far as Karma, but Mustafa Sa’eed’s body was not among those washed up on the river bank that week. In the end they presumed he must have been drowned and that his body had come to rest in the bellies of the crocodiles infesting the waters. As for me, I am sometimes seized by the feeling which came over me that night when, suddenly and without my being at all prepared for it, I had heard him quoting English poetry a drink in his hand, his body buried deep in his chair, his legs outstretched, the light reflected on his face, his eyes, it seemed to me, abstractedly wandering towards the horizon deep within himself and with darkness all around us outside as though satanic forces were combining to strangle the lamplight. Occasionally the disturbing thought occurs to me that Mustafa Sa’eed never happened, that he was in fact a lie, a phantom, a dream or a nightmare that had come to the people of that village one suffocatingly dark night, and when they opened their eyes to the sunlight he was nowhere to be seen. Only
the lesser part of the night still remained when I had left Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. I left with a feeling of tiredness — perhaps due to having sat for so long. Yet having no desire to sleep, I wandered off into the narrow winding lanes of the village, my face touched by the cold night breezes that blow in heavy with dew from the north, heavy too with the scent of acacia blossom and animal dung, the scent of earth that has just been irrigated after the thirst of days, and the scent of half-ripe corn cobs and the aroma of lemon trees. The village was as usual silent at that hour of the night except for the puttering of the water pump on the bank, the occasional barking of a dog, and the crowing of a lone cock who prematurely sensed the arrival of the dawn and the answering crow of another. Then silence reigned. Passing by Wad Rayyes’s low-lying house at the bend in the lane, I saw a dim light coming from the small window; and heard his wife give a cry of pleasure. I felt ashamed at having been privy to something I shouldn’t have been: it wasn’t right of me to stay awake wandering round the streets while everyone else was asleep in bed. I know this village street by street, house by house; I know too the ten domed shrines that stand in the middle of the cemetery on the edge of the desert high at the top of the village; the graves too I know one by one, having visited them with my father and mother and with my grandfather. I know those who inhabit these graves, both those who died before my father was born and those who have died since my birth. I have walked in more than a hundred funeral processions, have helped with the digging of the grave and have stood alongside it in the crush of people as the dead man was cushioned around with stones and the earth heaped in over him. I have done this in the early mornings, in the intensity of the noonday heat in the summer months, and at night with lamps in our hands. I have known the fields too ever since the days when there were water-wheels, and the times of drought when the men forsook the fields and when the fertile land stretching from the edge of the desert, where the houses stood, to the bank of the Nile was turned into a barren windswept wilderness. Then came the water pumps, followed by the cooperative societies, and those men who had migrated came back; the land returned to its former state, producing maize in summer and wheat in winter. All this I had been a witness to ever since I opened my eyes on life, yet I had never seen the village at such a late hour of the night. No doubt that large, brilliantly blue star was the Morning Star. At such an hour, just before dawn, the sky seemed nearer to the earth, and the village was enveloped in a hazy light that gave it the look of being suspended between earth and sky. As I crossed the patch of sand that separates the house of Wad Rayyes from that of my grandfather, I remembered the picture that Mustafa Sa’eed had depicted, remembered it with the same feeling of embarrassment as came to me when I overheard the love play of Wad Rayyes with his wife: two thighs, opened wide and white. I reached the door of my grandfather’s house and heard him reading his collects in preparation for the morning prayers. Doesn’t he ever sleep? My grandfathers voice praying was the last sound I heard before I went to sleep and the first I heard on waking. He had been like this for I don’t know how many years, as though he were something immutable in a dynamic world. Suddenly I felt my spirits being reinvigorated as sometimes happens after a long period of depression: my brain cleared and the black thoughts stirred up by the story of Mustafa Sa’eed were dispersed. Now the village was not suspended between sky and earth but was stable: the houses were houses, the trees trees, and the sky was clear and faraway. Was it likely that what had happened to Mustafa Sa’eed could have happened to me? He had said that he was a lie, so was I also a lie? I am from here — is not this reality enough? I too had lived with them. But I had lived with them superficially neither loving nor hating them. I used to treasure within me the image of this little village, seeing it wherever I went with the eye of my imagination. Sometimes during the summer months in London, after a downpour of rain, I would breathe in the smell of it, and at odd fleeting moments before sunset I would see it. At the latter end of the night the foreign voices would reach my ears as though they were those of my people out here. I must be one of those birds that exist only in one region of the world. True I studied poetry; but that means nothing. I could equally well have studied engineering, agriculture, or medicine; they are all means to earning a living. I would imagine the faces over there as being brown or black so that they would look like the faces of people I knew. Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard of our house has grown in our house and not in anyone else’s. The fact that they came to our land, I know not why does that mean that we should poison our present and our future? Sooner or later they will leave our country just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we’ll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were — ordinary people — and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making. Such thoughts accompanied me to my bed and thereafter to Khartoum, where I took up my work in the Department of Education. Mustafa Sa’eed died two years ago, but I still continue to meet up with him from time to time. I lived for twenty-five years without having heard of him or seen him; then, all of a sudden, I find him in a place where the likes of him are not usually encountered. Thus Mustafa Sa’eed has, against my will, become a part of my world, a thought in my brain, a phantom that does not want to take itself off. And thus too I experience a remote feeling of fear, fear that it is just conceivable that simplicity is not everything. Mustafa Sa’eed said that my grandfather knows the secret. A tree grows simply and your grandfather has lived and will die simply' just like that. But suppose he was making fun of my simplicity? On a train journey between Khartoum and El-Obeid I traveled in the same compartment with a retired civil servant. When the train moved out of Kosti the conversation had brought us up to his school days. I learnt from him that a number of my chiefs at the Ministry of Education were contemporaries of his at school, some having been in the same form with him. The man mentioned that so-and-so at the Ministry of Agriculture was a schoolmate of his, that such-and- such an engineer was in the form above him, that so-and-so, the merchant who’d grown rich during the war years, had been the stupidest creature in the form, and that the famous surgeon so-and-so was the best right-wing in the whole school at that time. Suddenly I saw the man’s face light up, his eyes sparkle, as he said in an excited, animated voice: ‘How strange! Can you imagine? I quite forgot the most brilliant student in our form and before now he’s never come to my mind since he left school. Only now do I remember him. Yes — Mustafa Sa’eed.’ Once again there was that feeling that the ordinary things before one’s very eyes were becoming unordinary I saw the carriage window and the door emerge and it seemed to me that the light reflected from the man’s glasses — in an instant that was no longer than the twinkling of an eye — gave off a dazzling flash, bright as the sun at its height. Certainly the world at that moment appeared different also in relation to the retired Mamur in that a complete experience, outside his consciousness, had suddenly come within his reach. When I first saw his face I reckoned him to be in his middle sixties. Looking at him now as he continued to recount his faraway memories, I see a man who is not a day over forty. ‘Yes, Mustafa Sa’eed was the most brilliant student of our day. We were in the same form together and he used to sit directly in front of our row; on the left. How strange! How had he not come to my mind before, seeing that at that time he was a real prodigy? He was the most well-known student at Gordon College, better known than the members of the first eleven, the prefects of the boarding houses, those who spoke at literary evenings, those who wrote in the wall newspapers, and the leading actors in the dramatic groups. He took part in none of these sorts of activities. Isolated and arrogant, he spent his time alone, either reading or going for long walks. We were all boarders in those days at Gordon College, even those of us who were from the three towns of Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman. He was brilliant at everything, nothing being too difficult for his amazing brain. The tone in which the masters addressed him was different from that in which they talked to us, especially the English language teachers; it was as though they were giving the lesson to him alone and excluding the rest of the students.’ The man was silent for a while and I had a strong desire to tell him that I knew Mustafa Sa’eed, that circumstances had thrown him in my path and that he had recounted his life story to me one dark and torrid night; that he had spent his last days in an obscure village at the bend of the Nile, that he had been drowned, had perhaps committed suicide, and that he had made me of all people guardian of his two sons. I said nothing, however, and it was the retired Mamur who continued: ‘Mustafa Sa’eed covered his period of education in the Sudan at one bound — as if he were having a race with time. While we remained on at Gordon College, he was sent on a scholarship to Cairo and later to London. He was the first Sudanese to be sent on a scholarship abroad. He was the spoilt child of the English and we all envied him and expected he would achieve great things. We used to articulate English words as though they were Arabic and were unable to pronounce two consonants together without putting a vowel in between, whereas Mustafa Sa’eed would contort his mouth and thrust out his lips and the words would issue forth as though from the mouth of one whose mother tongue it was. This would fill us with annoyance and admiration at one and the same time. With a combination of admiration and spite we nicknamed him “the black Englishman". In our day the English language was the key to the future: no one had a chance without it. Gordon College was actually little more than an intermediate school where they used to give us just enough education for filling junior government posts. When I left, I worked first as a cashier in the district of Fasher and after strenuous efforts they allowed me to sit for the Administration Examination. Thirty years I spent as a sub-Mamur — imagine it. Just a mere two years before retirement I was promoted to Mamur. The English District Commissioner was a god who had a free hand over an area larger than the whole of the British Isles and lived in an enormous palace full of servants and guarded by troops. They used to behave like gods. They would employ us, the junior government officials who were natives of the country to bring in the taxes. The people would grumble and complain to the English Commissioner, and naturally it was the English Commissioner who was indulgent and showed mercy. And in this way they sowed hatred in the hearts of the people for us, their kinsmen, and love for the colonizers, the intruders. Mark these words of mine, my son. Has not the country become independent? Have we not become free men in our own country? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do. They showed favour to nonentities — and it was such people that occupied the highest positions in the days of the English. We were certain that Mustafa Sa’eed would make his mark. His father was from the Ababda, the tribe living between Egypt and the Sudan. It was they who helped Slatin Pasha escape when he was the prisoner of the Khalifa El-ta’aishi, after which they worked as guides for Kitchener’s army when he reconquered the Sudan. It is said that his mother was a slave from the south, from the tribes of Zandi or Baria — God knows. It was the nobodies who had the best jobs in the days of the English.’ The retired Mamur was snoring away fast asleep when the train passed by the Sennar Dam, which the English had built in 1925, heading westwards to El- Obeid, on the single track stretching out across the desert like a rope bridge between two savage mountains, with a vast bottomless abyss between them. Poor Mustafa Sa’eed. He was supposed to make his mark in the world of Commissioners and Mamurs, yet he hadn’t even found himself a grave to rest his body in, in this land that stretches across a million square miles. I remember his saying that before passing sentence on him at the Old Bailey the judge had said, ‘Mr Sa’eed, despite your academic prowess you are a stupid man. In your spiritual make-up there is a dark spot, and thus it was that you squandered the noblest gift that God has bestowed upon people — the gift of love.’ I remembered too that when I emerged from Mustafa Sa’eed’s house that night the waning moon had risen to the height of a man on the eastern horizon and that I had said to myself that the moon had had her talons clipped. I don’t know why it looked to me as if the moon’s talons had been clipped. In Khartoum
too the phantom of Mustafa Sa’eed appeared to me less than a month after my conversation with the retired Mamur, like a genie who has been released from his prison and will continue thereafter to whisper in men’s ears. To say what? I don’t know. We were in the house of a young Sudanese who was lecturing at the University and had been studying in England at the same time as I, and among those present was an Englishman who worked in the Ministry of Finance. We got on to the subject of mixed marriages and the conversation changed from being general to discussing particular instances. Who were those who had married European women? Who had married English women? Who was the first Sudanese to marry an English woman? So-and-so? No. So-and-so? No. Suddenly — Mustafa Sa’eed.
The person who mentioned his name was the young lecturer at the University and on his face was that very same expression of joy I had glimpsed on the retired Mamur’s face. Under Khartoum’s star-studded sky in early winter the young man went on to say ‘Mustafa Sa’eed was the first Sudanese to marry an Englishwoman, in fact he was the first to marry a European of any kind. I don’t think you will have heard of him, for he took himself off abroad long ago. He married in England and took British nationality. Funny that no one remembers him, in spite of the fact that he played such an important role in the plottings of the English in the Sudan during the late thirties. He was one of their most faithful supporters. The Foreign Office employed him on dubious missions to the Middle East and he was one of the secretaries of the conference held in London in 1936. He’s now a millionaire living like a lord in the English countryside.’ Without realizing it I found myself saying out loud, ‘On his death Mustafa Sa’eed left six acres, three cows, an ox, two donkeys, ten goats, five sheep, thirty date palms, twenty-three acacia, sayal and harraz trees, twenty-five lemons, and a like number of orange, trees, nine ardebs of wheat and nine of maize, and a house made up of five rooms and a diwan, also a further room of red brick, rectangular in shape, with green windows, and a roof that was not flat as those of the rest of the rooms but triangular like the back of an ox, and nine hundred and thirty—seven pounds, three piastres and five milliemes in cash.’ In the instant it takes for a flash of lightning to come and go I saw in the eyes of the young man sitting opposite me a patently live and tangible feeling of terror. I saw it in the fixed look of his eyes, the tremor of the eyelid, and the slackening of the lower jaw. If he had not been frightened, why should he have asked me this question: Are you his son?’ He asked me this question though he too was unaware of why he had uttered these words, knowing as he does full well who I am. Though not fellow students, we had none the less been in England at the same time and had met up on a number of occasions, more than once drinking beer together in the pubs of Knightsbridge. So, in an instant outside the boundaries of time and place, things appear to him too as unreal. Everything seems probable. He too could be Mustafa Sa’eed’s son, his brother, or his cousin. The world in that instant, as brief as the blinking of an eyelid, is made up of countless probabilities, as though Adam and Eve had just fallen from Paradise. All these probabilities settled down into a single state of actuality when I laughed, and the world reverted to what it had been — persons with known faces and known names and known jobs, under the star-studded sky of Khartoum in early winter. He too laughed and said, ‘How crazy of me! Of course you’re not Mustafa Sa’eed’s son or even a relative of his - perhaps you’d never even heard of him in your life before. I forgot that you poets have your flights of fancy’ Somewhat bitterly I thought that, whether I liked it or not, I was assumed by people to be a poet because I had spent three years delving into the life of an obscure English poet and had returned to teach pre-Islamic literature in secondary schools before being promoted to an Inspector of Primary Education. Here the Englishman intervened to say that he didn’t know the truth of what was said concerning the role Mustafa Sa’eed had played in the English political plottings in the Sudan; what he did know was that Mustafa Sa’eed was not a reliable economist. ‘I read some of the things he wrote about what he called “the economics of colonization". The overriding characteristic of his writings was that his statistics were not to be trusted. He belonged to the Fabian school of economists who hid behind a screen of generalities so as to escape facing up to facts supported by figures. Justice, Equality; and Socialism — mere words. The economist isn’t a writer like Charles Dickens or a political reformer like Roosevelt — he’s an instrument, a machine that has no value without facts, figures, and statistics; the most he can do is to define the relationship between one fact and another, between one figure and another. As for making figures say one thing rather than another, that is the concern of rulers and politicians. The world is in no need of more politicians. No, this Mustafa Sa’eed of yours was not an economist to be trusted.’ I asked him if he had ever met Mustafa Sa’eed. ‘No, I never did. He left Oxford a good while before me, but I heard bits and pieces about him from here and there. It seems he was a great one for the women. He built quite a legend of a sort round himself — the handsome black man courted in Bohemian circles. It seems he was a show-piece exhibited by members of the aristocracy who in the twenties and early thirties were affecting liberalism. It is said he was a friend of Lord-this and Lord-that. He was also one of the darlings of the English left. That was bad luck for him, because it is said he was intelligent. There’s nothing in the whole world worse than leftist economists. Even his academic post — I don’t know exactly what it was — I had the impression he got for reasons of this kind. It was as though they wanted to say: Look how tolerant and liberal we are! This African is just like one of us! He has married a daughter of ours and works with us on an equal footing! If you only knew, this sort of European is no less evil than the madmen who believe in the supremacy of the white man in South Africa and in the southern states of America. The same exaggerated emotional energy bears either to the extreme right or to the extreme left. If only he had stuck to academic studies he’d have found real friends of all nationalities, and you’d have heard of him here. He would certainly have returned and benefited with his knowledge this country in which superstitions hold sway; And here you are now believing in superstitions of a new sort: the superstition of industrialization, the superstition of nationalization, the superstition of Arab unity; the superstition of African unity. Like children you believe that in the bowels of the earth lies a treasure you’ll attain by some miracle, and that you’ll solve all your difficulties and set up a Garden of Paradise. Fantasies. Waking dreams. Through facts, figures, and statistics you can accept your reality; live together with it, and attempt to bring about changes within the limits of your potentialities. It was within the capacity of a man like Mustafa Sa’eed to play a not inconsiderable role in furthering this if he had not been transformed into a buffoon at the hands of a small group of idiotic Englishmen.’ While Mansour set out to refute Richard’s views, I gave myself up to my thoughts. What was the use of arguing? This man — Richard — was also fanatical. Everyone’s fanatical in one way or another. Perhaps we do believe in the superstitions he mentioned, yet he believes in a new, a contemporary superstition — the superstition of statistics. So long as we believe in a god, let it be a god that is omnipotent. But of what use are statistics? The white man, merely because he has ruled us for a period of our history; will for a long time continue to have for us that feeling of contempt the strong have for the weak. Mustafa Sa’eed said to them, ‘I have come to you as a conqueror.’ A melodramatic phrase certainly; But their own coming too was not a tragedy as we imagine, nor yet a blessing as they imagine. It was a melodramatic act which with the passage of time will change into a mighty myth. I heard Mansour say to Richard, ‘You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood — and still do?’ Richard said to him, ‘All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.’ They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone’s throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them.
But
I would hope you will not entertain the idea, dear sirs, that Mustafa Sa’eed had become an obsession that was ever with me in my comings and goings. Sometimes months would pass without his crossing my mind. In any case, he had died, by drowning or by suicide — God alone knows. Thousands of people die every day. Were we to pause and consider why each one of them died, and how — what would happen to us, the living? The world goes on whether we choose for it to do so or in defiance of us. And I, like millions of mankind, walk and move, generally by force of habit, in a long caravan that ascends and descends, encamps, and then proceeds on its way. Life in this caravan is not altogether bad. You no doubt are aware of this. The going may be hard by day, the wilderness sweeping out before us like shoreless seas; we pour with sweat, our throats are patched with thirst, and we reach the frontier beyond which we think we cannot go. Then the sun sets, the air grows cool, and millions of stars twinkle in the sky. We eat and drink and the singer of the caravan breaks into song. Some of us pray in a group behind the Sheikh, others form ourselves into circles to dance and sing and clap. Above us the sky is warm and compassionate. Sometimes we travel by night for as long as we have a mind to, and when the white thread is distinguished from the black we say ‘When dawn breaks the travelers are thankful that they have journeyed by night.’ If occasionally we are deceived by a mirage, and if our heads, feverish from the action of heat and thirst, sometimes bubble with ideas devoid of any basis of validity no harm is done. The spectres of night dissolve with the dawn, the fever of day is cooled by the night breeze. Is there any alternative? Thus I used to spend two months a year in that small village at the bend of the Nile where the river, after flowing from south to north, suddenly turns almost at right angles and flows from west to east. It is wide and deep here and in the middle of the water are little islands of green over which hover white birds. On both banks are thick plantations of date palms, with water-wheels turning, and from time to time a water pump. The men are bare-chested; wearing long under- trousers, they cut or sow and when the steamer passes by them like a castle floating in the middle of the Nile, they stand up straight and turn to it for a while and then go back to what they were doing. It passes this place at midday once a week, and there is still the vestige of the reflected shadows of the date palms on the water disturbed by the waves set in motion by the steamer’s engines. A raucous whistle blares out, which will no doubt be heard by my people as they sit drinking their midday coffee at home. From afar the stopping place comes into view: a white platform with a line of sycamore trees. On both banks there is activity: people on donkeys and others on foot, while out from the bank opposite the landing stage little boats and sailing ships set forth. The steamer turns round itself so the engines won’t be working against the current. A fairly large gathering of men and women is there to meet it. That is my father, those my uncles and my cousins; they have tied their donkeys to the sycamore trees. No fog separates them from me this time, for I am coming from Khartoum only after an absence of no more than seven months. I see them with a matter-of-fact eye: their galabias clean but unironed, their turbans whiter than their galabias, their moustaches ranging between long and short, between black and white; some of them have beards, and those who have not grown beards are unshaven. Among their donkeys is a tall black one I have not seen before. They regard the steamer without interest as it casts anchor and the people crowd round where the passengers disembark. They are waiting for me outside and do not hasten forward to meet me. They shake hands hurriedly with me and my wife but smother the child with kisses, taking it in turns to carry her, while the donkeys bear us off to the village. This is how it has been with me ever since I was a student at school, uninterrupted except for that long stay abroad I have already told you about. On the way to the village I ask them about the black donkey and my father says, ‘A bedouin fellow cheated your uncle. He took from him the white donkey you know and five pounds as well.’ I didn’t know which of my uncles had been cheated by the bedouin till I heard the voice of my uncle Abdul Karim say; ‘I swear I’ll divorce if she isn’t the most beautiful donkey in the whole place. She’s more a thoroughbred mare than a donkey. If I wanted I could find somebody who’d pay me thirty pounds for her.’ My uncle Abdurrahman laughs and says, ‘If she’s a mare, she’s a barren one. There’s no use at all in a donkey that doesn’t foal.’ I then asked about this year’s date crop, though I knew the answer in advance. ‘No use at all.’ They say it in one voice and every year the answer’s the same, and I realize that the situation isn’t as they say. We pass by a red brick building on the Nile bank, half finished, and when I ask them about it my uncle Abdul Mannan says, ‘A hospital. They’ve been at it for a whole year and can’t finish it. It’s a hopeless government.’ I tell him that when I was here only seven months ago they hadn’t even started building it, but this has no effect on my uncle Abdul Mannan, who says, ‘All they’re any good at is coming to us every two or three years with their hordes of people, their lorries and their posters: Long live so— and—so, down with so—and—so, We were spared all this hullabaloo in the days of the Eng1ish.’ In fact a group of people in an old lorry passes us shouting, ‘Long live the National Democratic Socialist Party’ Are these the people who are called peasants in books? Had I told my grandfather that revolutions are made in his name, that governments are set up and brought down for his sake, he would have laughed. The idea appears actually incongruous, in the same way as the life and death of Mustafa Sa’eed in such a place seems incredible. Mustafa Sa’eed used regularly to attend prayers in the mosque. Why did he exaggerate in the way he acted out that comic role? Had he come to this faraway village seeking peace of mind? Perhaps the answer lay in that rectangular room with the green windows. What do I expect? Do I expect to find him seated on a chair alone in the darkness? Or do I expect to find him strung up by the neck on a rope dangling from the ceiling? And the letter he has left me in an envelope sealed with red wax, when had he written it? ‘I leave my wife, two sons, and all my worldly goods in your care, knowing that you will act honourably in every respect. My wife knows about all my property and is free to do with it as she pleases. I have confidence in her judgment. However, I would ask you to do this service for a man who did not have the good fortune to get to know you as he would have liked: to give my family your kind attention, and to be a help, a counsellor and an adviser to my two sons and to do your best to spare them the pangs of wanderlust. Spare them the pangs of wanderlust and help them to have a normal upbringing and to take up worthwhile work. I leave you the key of my private room where you will perhaps find what you are looking for. I know you to be suffering from undue curiosity where I am concerned something for which I can find no justification. Whatever my life has been it contains no warning or lesson for anyone. Were it not for my realization that knowledge of my past by the village would have hindered my leading the life I had chosen for myself in their midst there would have been no justification for secrecy. You are released from the pledge you took upon yourself that night and can talk as you please. If you are unable to resist the curiosity in yourself then you will find, in that room that has never before been entered by anyone but myself, some scraps of paper, various fragments of writing and attempts at keeping diaries, and the like. I hope they will in any event help you to while away such hours as you cannot find a better way of spending. I leave it to you to judge the proper time for giving my sons the key of the room and for helping them to understand the truth about me. It is important to me that they should know what sort of person their father was — if that is at all possible. I am not concerned that they should think well of me. To be thought well of is the last thing I’m after; but perhaps it would help them to know the truth about themselves, at a time when such knowledge would not be dangerous. If they grow up imbued with the air of this village, its smells and colours and history; the faces of its inhabitants and the memories of its floods and harvestings and sowings, then my life will acquire its true perspective as something meaningful alongside many other meanings of deeper significance. I don’t know how they will think of me then. They may feel pity for me or they may in their imagination, transform me into a hero. That is not important. The important thing is that my life should not emerge from behind the unknown like an evil spirit and cause them harm. How I would have liked to stay on with them, watching them grow up before my eyes and at least constituting some justification for my existence. I do not know which of the two courses would be the more selfish, to stay on or to depart. In any event I have no choice, and perhaps you will realize what I mean if you cast your mind back to what I said to you that night. It’s futile to deceive oneself. That distant call still rings in my ears. I thought that my life and marriage here would silence it. But perhaps I was created thus, or my fate was thus — whatever may be the meaning of that I don’t know. Rationally I know what is right: my attempt at living in this village with these happy people. But mysterious things in my soul and in my blood impel me towards faraway parts that loom up before me and cannot be ignored. How sad it would be if either or both of my sons grew up with the germ of this infection in them, the wanderlust. I charge you with the trust because I have glimpsed in you a likeness to your grandfather. I don’t know when I shall go, my friend, but I sense that the hour of departure has drawn nigh, so good—bye.’ If Mustafa Sa’eed had chosen his end, then he had undertaken the most melodramatic act in the story of his life. If the other possibility was the right one, then Nature had bestowed upon him the very end which he would have wanted for himself. Imagine: the height of summer in the month of fateful july; the indifferent river has flooded as never before in thirty years; the darkness has fused all the elements of nature into one single neutral one, older than the river itself and more indifferent. In such manner the end of this hero had to be. But was it really the end he was looking for? Perhaps he wanted it to happen in the north, the far north, on a stormy; icy night, under a starless sky; among a people to whom he did not matter — the end of conquering invaders. But, as he said, they conspired against him, the jurors and the witnesses and the lawyers and the judges, to deprive him of it. ‘The jurors,’ he said, ‘saw before them a man who didn’t want to defend himself, a man who had lost the desire for life. I hesitated that night when Jean sobbed into my ear, "Come with me. Come with me.” My life achieved completion that night and there was no justification for staying on. But I hesitated and at the critical moment I was afraid. I was hoping that the court would grant me what I had been incapable of accomplishing. It was as though, realizing what I was after, they decided that they would not grant me the final request I had of them — even Colonel Hammond who I thought wished me well. He mentioned my visit to them in Liverpool and what a good impression I had made on him. He said that he regarded himself as a liberal person with no prejudices. Yet he was a realistic man and had seen that such a marriage would not work. He said too that his daughter Ann had fallen under the influence of Eastern philosophies at Oxford and that she was hesitating between embracing Buddhism or Islam. He could not say for sure whether her suicide was due to some spiritual crisis or because of finding out that Mr Mustafa Sa’eed had deceived her. Ann was his only daughter, and I had got to know her when she was not yet twenty; I deceived her, seducing her by telling her that we would marry and that our marriage would be a bridge between north and south, and I turned to ashes the firebrand of curiosity in her green eyes. And yet her father stands up in court and says in a calm voice that he can’t be sure. This is justice, the rules of the game, like the laws of combat and neutrality in war. This is cruelty that wears the mask of mercy...’ The long and short of it is they sentence him to imprisonment, a mere seven years, refusing to take the decision which he should have taken of his own free will. On coming out of prison he wanders from place to place, from Paris to Copenhagen to Delhi to Bangkok, as he tries to put off the decision. And after that the end came in an obscure village on the Nile; whether it was by chance or whether the curtain was lowered of his own free will no one can say for certain. But I have not come here to think about Mustafa Sa’eed, for here, craning their necks in front of us, are the closely-packed village houses, made of mud and green bricks, while our donkeys press forward as their nostrils breathe in the scent of clover, fodder, and water. These houses are on the perimeter of the desert: it is as though some people in the past had wanted to settle here and had then washed their hands of it and quickly journeyed away. Here things begin and things end. A small girdle of cold, fresh breeze, amidst the meridional heat of the desert, comes from the direction of the river like a halftruth amidst a world filled with lies. The voices of people, birds and animals expire weakly on the ear like whispers, and the regular puttering of the water pump heightens the sensation of the impossible. And the river, the river but for which there would have been no beginning and no end, flows northwards, pays heed to nothing; a mountain may stand in its way so it turns eastwards; it may happen upon a deep depression so it turns westwards, but sooner or later it settles down in its irrevocable journey towards the sea in the north.
I stood at the door of my grandfather’s house in the morning, a vast and ancient door made of harraz, a door that had doubtless been fashioned from the wood of a whole tree. Wad Baseer had made it; Wad Baseer, the village engineer who, though he had not even learnt carpentry at school, had yet made the wheels and rings of the waterwheels, had set bones, had cauterized people and bled with cupping glasses. He was also so knowledgeable about judging donkeys that seldom did anyone from the village buy one without consulting him. Though Wad Baseer is still alive today; he no longer makes such doors as that of my grandfather’s house, later generations of villagers having found out about zan wood doors and iron doors which they bring in from Omdurman. The market for waterwheels, too, dried up with the coming of pumps. I heard them guffawing with laughter and made out the thin, mischievous laugh of my grandfather when in a good humour; Wad Rayyes’s laugh that issues forth from an ever-full stomach; Bakri’s that takes its hue and flavour from the company in which he happens to be; and the strong, mannish laugh of Bint Majzoub. In my mind’s eye I see my grandfather sitting on his prayer-mat with his string of sandalwood prayerbeads in his hand revolving in ever-constant movement like the buckets of a waterwheel; Bint Majzoub, Wad Rayyes and Bakri, all old friends of his, will be sitting on those low couches which are a mere two hand-spans off the floor. According to my grandfather, a couch raised high off the floor indicates vanity; a low one humility. Bint Majzoub will be leaning on one elbow; while in her other hand she holds a cigarette. Wad Rayyes will be giving the impression of producing stories from the tips of his moustaches. Bakri will merely be sitting. This large house is built neither of stone nor yet of red brick but of the very mud in which the wheat is grown, and it stands right at the edge of the field so that it is an extension of it. This is evident from the acacia and sunt bushes that are growing in the courtyard and from the plants that sprout from the very walls where the water has seeped through from the cultivated land. It is a chaotic house, built without method, and has acquired its present form over many years: many differently-sized rooms, some built up against one another at different times, either because they were needed or because my grandfather found himself with some spare money for which he had no other use. Some of the rooms lead off one another, others have doors so low that you have to double up to enter, yet others are doorless; some have many windows, some none. The walls are smooth and plastered with a mixture of rough sand, black mud and animal dung, likewise the roofs, while the ceilings are of acacia wood and palm-tree trunks and stalks. A maze of a house, cool in summer, warm in winter; if one looks objectively at it from outside one feels it to be a frail structure, incapable of survival, but somehow as if by a miracle, it has surmounted time. Entering by the door of the spacious courtyard, I looked to right and to left. Over there were dates spread out on straw matting to dry; over there onions and chillies; over there sacks of wheat and beans, some with mouths stitched up, others open. In a corner a goat eats barley and suckles her young. The fate of this house is bound up with that of the field: if the field waxes green so does it, if drought sweeps over the field it also sweeps over the house. I breathe in that smell peculiar to my grandfather’s house, a discordant mixture of onions and chillies and dates and wheat and horse-beans and fenugreek, in addition to the aroma of the incense which is always floating up from the large earthenware censer. The aroma of incense puts me in mind of my grandfather’s ascetic manner of life and the luxury of his accessories for prayers: the rug on which he prays, made up of three leopard skins stitched together, and which he would use as a coverlet when it turned excessively cold; the brass ewer with its decorations and inscriptions, which he used for his ablutions, and the matching brass basin. He was especially proud of his sandalwood prayerbeads, which he would run through his fingers and rub against his face, breathing in their aroma; when he got angry with one of his grandchildren he would strike him across the head with them, saying that this would chase away the devil that had got into him. All these things, like the rooms of his house and the date palms in his field, had their own histories which my grandfather had recounted to me time and time again, on each occasion omitting or adding something. I lingered by the door as I savoured that agreeable sensation which precedes the moment of meeting my grandfather whenever I return from a journey: a sensation of pure astonishment that that ancient being is still in actual existence upon the earth’s surface. When I embrace him I breathe in his unique smell which is a combination of the smell of the large mausoleum in the cemetery and the smell of an infant child. And that thin tranquil voice sets up a bridge between me and the anxious moment that has not yet been formed, and between the moments the events of which have been assimilated and have passed on, have become bricks in an edifice with perspectives and dimensions. By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. He is no towering oak tree with luxuriant branches growing in a land on which Nature has bestowed water and fertility; rather is he like the sayal bushes in the deserts of the Sudan, thick of bark and sharp of thorn, defeating death because they ask so little of life. That was the cause for wonder: that he was actually alive, despite plague and famines, wars and the corruption of rulers. And now here he is nearing his hundredth year. All his teeth are still intact; though you would think his small lustreless eyes were sightless, yet he can see with them in the pitch darkness of night; his body small and shrunken in upon itself is all bones, veins, skin and muscle, with not a single scrap of fat. None the less he can spring nimbly on to his donkey and walks from his house to the mosque in the twilight of dawn. My grandfather used the edge of his gown to wipe away the tears that had run down his face from laughing so much, and after giving me time to settle myself in the gathering, said, ‘By God, that’s some story of yours, Wad Rayyes.’ This was a cue to Wad Rayyes to continue the story my entrance had interrupted. And afterwards, Hajj Ahmed, I put the girl in front of me on the donkey squirming and twisting, then I forcibly stripped her of all her clothes till she was as naked as the day her mother bore her. She was a young slave girl from down- river who’d just reached puberty — her breasts, Hajj Ahmed, stuck out like pistols and your arms wouldn’t meet round her buttocks. She had been rubbed all over with oil so that her skin glistened in the moonlight and her perfume turned one giddy I took her down to a sandy patch in the middle of the maize, but when I started on her I heard a movement in the maize and a voice saying, "Who’s there?” O Hajj Ahmed, there’s no madness like the madness of youth. Thinking quickly I made out I was an afreet and began letting out Hendish shrieks, scattering sand around and stamping about, so the man panicked and fled. The joke was, though, that my uncle Isa had been following hard on my heels from the moment I snatched the girl from the wedding house right up to when we arrived at the patch of sand. When he saw I was pretending to be an afreet, he stood by watching. Early the next day he went off to my father, may God rest his soul, and told him the whole story “This son of yours is a real devil," he told him, “and if you don’t fmd him a wife this very day he’ll corrupt the whole village and bring down on us no end of scandals," and they in fact married me off that very day to my uncle Rajab’s daughter. God rest her soul, she died giving birth to her first child. “Since when," said Bint Majzoub to him, laughing in her manly voice made hoarse by too much smoking, “you’ve been jumping on and off like a jack donkey" ‘”Is there anyone who knows the sweetness of this thing better than you, Bint Majzoub?” Wad Rayyes said to her. “You’ve buried eight husbands and now you’re an old woman you wouldn’t say no if you were offered it." "‘We’ve heard,” said my grandfather, “that Bint Majzoub’s cries of delight had to be heard to be believed." ‘“May I divorce, Hajj Ahmed," said Bint Majzoub, lighting up a cigarette, “if when my husband was between my thighs I didn’t let out a scream that used to scare the animals tied up at pasn1re." ‘Bakri, who previously had been laughing without saying anything, said, “Tell us, Bint Majzoub, which of your husbands was the best?” ‘“Wad Basheer,” said Bint Majzoub promptly "‘Wad Basheer the dozy dope," said Bakri. “He was so slow a goat could make off with his supper." ‘“May I divorce," said Bint Majzoub, freeing the ash from her cigarette on to the ground with a theatrical movement of her fingers, "if his thing wasn’t like a wedge he’d drive right into me so I could hardly contain myself He’d lift up my legs after the evening prayer and I’d remain splayed open till the call to prayers at dawn. When he had his climax he’d shout like an ox being slaughtered, and always when moving from on top of me he would say ‘Praise be to God, Bint Majzoub.” ‘“It’s not surprising you killed him off in the bloom of youth," said my grandfather to her. "‘The time that fate decreed for him killed him," said Bint Majzoub with a laugh. “This business never kills anyone.” Bint Majzoub was a tall woman of a charcoal complexion like black velvet who, despite the fact she was approaching seventy still retained vestiges of beauty. She was famous in the village, and men and women alike were eager to listen to her conversation which was daring and uninhibited. She used to smoke, drink and swear on oath of divorce like a man. It was said that her mother was the daughter of one of the Fur sultans in Darfur. She had been married to a number of the leading men of the village, all of whom had died and left her a considerable fortune. She had borne one son and a countless number of daughters who were famous for their beauty and for being as uninhibited in their conversation as their mother. It was recounted that one of Bint Majzoub’s daughters married a man of whom her mother did not approve. He took her off on a journey with him and on his return about a year later he decided to hold a banquet to which to invite his wife’s relatives. ‘My mother is quite uninhibited in the way she talks,’ the wife said to him, ‘and it would be better to invite her on her own.’ So they slaughtered some animals and invited her along. After she had eaten and drunk Bint Majzoub said to her daughter, in her husband’s hearing, Amna, this man has not done badly by you, for your house is beautiful and so is your clothing, and he has filled your hands and neck with gold. However it would not appear from the look of him that he is able to satisfy you in bed. Now if you want to have real satisfaction I can find you a husband who once he mounts you will not get off till you’re at your last gasp.’ When the husband heard these words he was so angry he divorced his wife irrevocably on the spot. ‘What’s come over you?’ Bint Majzoub said to Wad Rayyes. ‘For two years now you’ve contented yourself with a single wife. Has your prowess waned?’ Wad Rayyes and my grandfather exchanged glances the meaning of which I was to understand only later. ‘The face is that of an old man, the heart that of a young one,’ said Wad Rayyes. ‘Do you know of a widow or divorced woman who would suit me?’ ‘By God, the truth is, Wad Rayyes,’ said Bakri, ‘that you’re past marrying again. You’re now an old man in your seventies and your grandchildren have children of their own. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself having a wedding every year? What you need now is to bear yourself with dignity and prepare to meet the Almighty God.’ Bint Majzoub and my grandfather both laughed at these words. ‘What do you understand of these matters?’ said Wad Rayyes in feigned anger. ‘Both you and Hajj Ahmed made do with one woman, and when they died and left you you couldn’t find the courage to marry again. Hajj Ahmed here spends all day praying and telling his beads as though Paradise had been created just for him. And you, Bakri, busy yourself in making money till death gives you release from it. Almighty God sanctioned marriage and He sanctioned divorce. “Take them with liberality and separate from them with liberality” he said. "Women and children are the adornment of life on this earth," God said in His noble Book.’ I said to Wad Rayyes that the Koran did not say ‘Women and children’ but ‘Wealth and children’. He answered: ‘In any case, there’s no pleasure like that of fornication.’ Wad Rayyes carefully stroked his curved moustaches upwards, their ends like needle-points, then with his left hand began rubbing the thick white beard that covered his face right up to his temples. Its utter whiteness contrasted strongly with the brownness of his skin, the colour of tanned leather, so that his beard looked like something artificial stuck on to his face. However, the whiteness of his beard blended without difficulty with the whiteness of his large turban, forming a striking frame that brought out the main features of his face: the beautifully intelligent eyes and the thin elegant nose. Wad Rayyes used kohl on his eyes: though he gave as his reason for so doing the fact that kohl was enjoined in the sunna, I believe it was out of vanity. It was in its entirety a beautiful face, especially if you compared it to that of my grandfather, which had nothing characteristic about it, or with Bakri’s which was like a wrinkled water melon. It was obvious that Wad Rayyes was aware of this. I heard that in his youth he was a strikingly handsome man and that the girls, south and north, up- river and down, lost their hearts to him. He had been much married and much divorced, taking no heed of anything in a woman except that she was woman, taking them as they came, and if asked about it replying, ‘A stallion isn’t finicky’ I remember that among his wives was a Dongola woman from El- Khandak, a Hadandawi woman from El-Gedare£ an Abyssinian he’d found employed as a servant by his eldest son in Khartoum, and a woman from Nigeria he’d brought back with him from his fourth pilgrimage. When asked how he had married her he said he’d met her and her husband on the ship between Port Sudan and Jeddah and that he’d struck up a friendship with them. The man, however, had died in Mecca on the Day of Halting at Arafat and had said to him as he was dying, ‘I ask you to look well after my wife.’ He could think of no way of looking after her better than by marrying her, and she lived with him for three years which, for Wad Rayyes, was a long time. He had been delighted with her, the greater part of his pleasure coming from the fact that she was barren. Recounting to people the details of his intimacies with her, he would say ‘No one who hasn’t been married to a Nigerian knows what marriage is.’ During his time with her he married a woman from the Kababeesh he brought back with him from a visit to Hamrat El-Sheikh, but the two women could not bear living together so he divorced the Nigerian to please the Kababeeshi woman, who after a while deserted him and fled to her people in Hamrat El-Sheikh. Wad Rayyes prodded me in the side with his elbow and said, ‘They say the infidel women are something unbelievable.’ ‘I wouldn’t know’ I said to him. ‘What a way to talk!’ he said. A young lad like you in the flower of his youth spending seven years in the land of hanky-panky and you say you don’t know.’ I was silent and Wad Rayyes said, ‘This tribe of yours isn’t any good. You’re one-woman men. The only real man among you is Abdul Karim. Now there’s a man for you.’ We were in fact known in the village for not divorcing our wives and for not having more than one. The villagers used to joke about us and say that we were afraid of our women, except for my uncle Abdul Karim who was both much divorced and much married — and an adulterer to boot. ‘The infidel women aren’t so knowledgeable about this business as our village girls,’ said Bint Majzoub. ‘They’re uncircumcized and treat the whole business like having a drink of water. The village girl gets herself rubbed all over with oil and perfumed and puts on a silky night-wrap, and when she lies down on the red mat after the evening prayer and opens her thighs, a man feels like he’s Abu Zeid El-Hila1i. The man who’s not interested perks up and gets interested.’ My grandfather laughed and so did Bakri. ‘Enough of you and your local girls,’ said Wad Rayyes. ‘The women abroad, they’re the ones all right.’ ‘Your brain’s abroad,’ said Bint Majzoub. ‘Wad Rayyes likes uncircumcised women,’ said my grandfather. ‘I swear to you, Hajj Ahmed,’ said Wad Rayyes, ‘that if you’d had a taste of the women of Abyssinia and Nigeria you’d throw away your string of prayerbeads and give up praying — the thing between their thighs is like an upturned dish, all there for good or bad. We here lop it off and leave it like a piece of land that’s been stripped bare.’ ‘Circumcision is one of the conditions of Islam,’ said Bakri. ‘What Islam are you talking about?’ asked Wad Rayyes. ‘It’s your Islam and Hajj Ahmed’s Islam, because you can’t tell what’s good for you from what’s bad. The Nigerians, the Egyptians, and the Arabs of Syria, aren’t they Moslems like us? But they’re people who know what’s what and leave their women as God created them. As for us, we dock them like you do animals.’ My grandfather laughed so hard that three beads from his string slipped by together without his realizing. ‘As for Egyptian women, the likes of you aren’t up to them,’ he said. ‘And what do you know of Egyptian women?’ Wad Rayyes said to him. Replying for my grandfather, Bakri said, ‘Have you forgotten that Hajj Ahmed traveled to Egypt in the year six* and stayed there for nine months?’ “I walked there,’ said my grandfather, ‘with nothing but my string of prayerbeads and my ewer.’ ‘And what did you do?’ said Wad Rayyes. ‘Return as you went, with your string of beads and your ewer? I swear to you that if I’d been in your place I wouldn’t have come back empty-handed.’ ‘I believe you’d have come back with a woman,’ said my grandfather. ‘That’s all you worry about. I returned with money with which to buy land, repair the waterwheel, and circumcise my sons.’ ‘Good God, Hajj Ahmed, didn’t you taste a bit of the Egyptian stuff?’ said Wad Rayyes. The prayerbeads were slipping through my grandfather’s fingers all this time, up and down like a waterwheel. The movement suddenly ceased and my grandfather raised his face to the ceiling and opened his mouth, but Bakri beat him to it and said, ‘Wad Rayyes, you’re mad. You’re old in years but you’ve got no sense. Women are women whether they’re in Egypt, the Sudan, Iraq or the land of Mumbo-jumbo. The black, the white, and the red — they’re all one and the same.’ So great was his astonishment that Wad Rayyes was unable to say anything. He looked at Bint Majzoub as though appealing to her for help. ‘In God’s truth, I almost got married in Egypt,’ said my grandfather. ‘The Egyptians are good, God-fearing people, and the Egyptian woman knows how to respect a man. I got to know a man in Boulak — we used to meet up for dawn prayers in the Abu ’l-Ala Mosque. I was invited to his house and got to know his family He was the father of several daughters — six of them and any of them was beautiful enough to be able to say to the moon "Get down and I’ll sit in your place". After some time he said to me, “O Sudanese, you are a religious and God—fearing man, let me give you one of my daughters in marriage." In God’s truth, Wad Rayyes, I really fancied the eldest, but shortly after this I got a telegram telling me of my late mother’s death, so I left then and there.’ ‘May God rest her soul,’ said Bakri. ‘She was a fine woman.’ Wad Rayyes gave a deep sigh and said, ‘What a pity — that’s life though. It gives to those who don’t want to take. I swear to you if I’d been in your place I’d have done all sorts of things. I’d have married and settled there and tasted the sweetness of life with the Egyptian girls. What brought you back to this barren, good-for-nothing place?’ ‘The gazelle said, “To me my desert country is as beautiful as Syria,” Bakri quoted the proverb. Lighting up another cigarette and drawing strongly on it so that the air in the room was clouded, Bint Majzoub said to Wad Rayyes, ‘You’re not deprived of the sweetness of life even in this barren, good-for-nothing place. Here you are, hail and hearty and growing no older though you’re over seventy’ ‘I swear, a mere seventy only not a day older, though you’re a good deal older than Hajj Ahmed.’ ‘Have a fear of God, Wad Rayyes!’ my grandfather said to him. ‘Bint Majzoub wasn’t born when I married. She’s two or three years younger than you.’ ‘In any event,’ said Wad Rayyes, ‘as we stand today I’m the most energetic one of you. And I’ll swear that when I’m between a woman’s thighs I’m more energetic than even this grandson of yours.’ ‘You’re a great one for talking,’ said Bint Majzoub. ‘You doubtless run after women because what you’ve got to offer is no bigger than a fingerjoint.’ ‘If only you’d married me, Bint Majzoub,’ said Wad Rayyes, ‘you’d have found something like a British cannon.’ ‘The cannon were silenced when Wad Basheer died,’ said Bint Majzoub. ‘Wad Rayyes, you’re a man who talks rubbish. Your whole brain’s in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain.’ Their voices were all raised in laughter, even that of Bakri who had previously laughed quietly. My grandfather ceased altogether clicking his prayerbeads and gave his thin, shrill, mischievous laugh. Bint Majzoub laughed in her hoarse, manly voice, while Wad Rayyes’s laugh was more of a snort than a laugh. As they wiped the tears from their eyes, my grandfather said, ‘l ask forgiveness of Almighty God, I pray pardon of Him.’ ‘I ask forgiveness of Almighty God,' said Bint Majzoub. ‘By God, what a laugh we’ve had. May God bring us together again on some auspicious occasion.’ ‘I ask God’s forgiveness,’ said Bakri. ‘May God do as He wishes with us all the days of our lives on this earth and in the Hereafter.’ ‘l ask forgiveness of God,’ said Wad Rayyes. ‘We spend our days on the face of the earth and in the Hereafter God does with us as He wills.’ Bint Majzoub sprang to her feet at a bound like a man in his thirties and stood up perfectly straight, with no curve to her back or bend to her shoulders. As though bearing some weight, Bakri stood up. Wad Rayyes rose, leaning slightly on his stick. My grandfather got up from his prayer-rug and seated himself on the couch with the short legs. I looked at them: three old men and an old woman laughing a while as they stood at the grave’s edge. Tomorrow they would be on their way. Tomorrow the grandson would become a father, the father a grandfather, and the caravan would pass on. Then they left. ‘Tomorrow, Effendi, you’re lunching with us,’ Wad Rayyes said to me as he was going. My grandfather stretched himself out on the couch, then laughed, alone this time, as though to underline his feeling of isolation, after the departure of the people who had made him laugh and whom he had made laugh. After a while he said, ‘Do you know why Wad Rayyes invited you to lunch?’ I told him we were friends and that he had invited me before. ‘He wants a favour of you,’ said my grandfather. ‘What’s he want?’ I said. ‘He wants to get married,’ he said. I made a show of laughing and asked my grandfather what Wad Rayyes’s marrying had to do with me. ‘You’re the bride’s guardian.’ I took refuge in silence and my grandfather, thinking I had not understood, said, ‘Wad Rayyes wants to marry Mustafa Sa’eed’s widow.’ Again I took refuge in silence. ‘Wad Rayyes is sprightly enough — and he’s got money’ said my grandfather. ‘In any case, the woman needs someone to protect her. Three years have passed since her husband’s death. Doesn’t she ever want to remarry?’ I told him I was not responsible for her. There was her father, her brothers, why didn’t Wad Rayyes ask for her from them? ‘The whole village knows,’ said my grandfather, ‘that Mustafa Sa’eed made you guardian of his wife and children.’ I told him that while I was guardian of the children the wife was free to do as she pleased and she was not without relatives. ‘She listens to what you say,’ said my grandfather. ‘If you were to talk to her she might agree.’ I felt real anger, which astonished me for such things are commonly done in the village. ‘She has refused younger men than him,’ I said to my grandfather. ‘He’s forty years older than her.’ However, my grandfather insisted that Wad Rayyes was still sprightly that he was comfortably off and that he was sure her father would not oppose it; however, the woman herself might refuse and so they had wanted to make a persuasive intermediary out of me. Anger checked my tongue and I kept silent. The obscene pictures sprang simultaneously to my mind, and, to my extreme astonishment, the two pictures merged: I imagined Hosna Bint Mahmoud, Mustafa Sa’eed’s widow as being the same woman in both instances: two white, wide-open thighs in London, and a woman groaning before dawn in an obscure village on a bend of the Nile under the weight of the aged Wad Rayyes. If that other thing was evil, this too was evil, and if this was like death and birth, the Nile flood and the wheat harvest, a part of the system of the universe, so too was that. I pictured Hosna Bint Mahmoud, Mustafa Sa’eed’s widow; a woman in her thirties, weeping under seventy-year-old Wad Rayyes. Her weeping would be made the subject of one of Wad Rayyes’s famous stories about his many women with which he regales the men of the village. The rage in my breast grew more savage. Unable to remain, I left; behind me I heard my grandfather calling but I did not turn round. At home my father inquired of me the reason for my bad humour so I told him the story ‘Is that something to get angry about?’ he said, laughing.
At approximately four o’clock in the afternoon I went ro Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. I entered by the door of the large courtyard, glanced momentarily to the left at the rectangular room of red brick, silent not as the grave but as a ship that has cast anchor in mid-ocean. However, the time had not yet come. She sat me down in a chair on the stone stoop outside the diwan — the very same place — and brought me a glass of lemon juice. The two boys came up and paid their respects to me; the elder was called Mahmoud, her father’s name, and the younger Sa’eed, his father’s name. They were ordinary children, one eight and the other seven, who went off each morning to their school six miles away seated one behind the other on a donkey: They are my responsibility; and one of the reasons that brings me here each year is to see how they are getting on. This time we shall be holding their circumcision ceremony and shall bring along professional singers and religious chanters to a celebration that will be a landmark in their childhood memories. He had told me to spare them the pangs of wanderlust. I would do nothing of the sort; when they grew up, if they wanted to travel, they should be allowed to. Everyone starts at the beginning of the road, and the world is in an endless state of childhood. The two boys left and she remained, standing in front of me: a slim, tallish figure, firmly built and as lithe as a length of sugar cane; while she used no henna on her feet or hands, a slight smell of perfume hung about her. Her lips were naturally dark red and her teeth strong, white and even. She had a handsome face with wide black eyes in which sadness mingled with shyness. When I greeted her I felt her hand soft and warm in mine. She was a woman of noble carriage and of a foreign type of beauty — or am I imagining something that is not really there? A woman for whom, when I meet her, I feel a sense of hazard and constraint so that I flee from her as quickly as I can. This woman is the offering Wad Rayyes wants to sacrifice at the edge of the grave, with which to bribe death and so gain a respite of a year or two. She remained standing despite my insistence and only seated herself when I said to her, ‘if you don’t sit down I’ll go.’ Conversation began slowly and with difficulty and thus it continued while the sun sank down towards its place of setting and little by little the air grew cooler and little by little our tongues loosened. I said something that made her laugh and my heart throbbed at the sweetness of her laughter. The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and a complete and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes. Nothing remained but the voice warmed by affection, and the faint perfume which was like a spring that might dry up at any moment. ‘Did you love Mustafa Sa’eed?’ I suddenly asked her. She did not answer. Though I waited a while she still did not answer. Then I realized that the darkness and the perfume were all but causing me to lose control and that mine was not a question to be asked at such a time and place. However, it was not long before her voice breached a gap in the darkness and broke through to my ear. ‘He was the father of my children.’ If I am right in my belief the voice was not sad, in fact it contained a caressing tenderness. I let the silence whisper to her, hoping she would say something further. Yes, here it was: ‘He was a generous husband and a generous father. He never let us want for anything in his whole life.’ ‘Did you know where he was from?’ I said as I leaned towards her in the darkness. ‘From Khartoum,’ she said. ‘And what had he been doing in Khartoum? I said. ‘He’d been in business,’ she said. ‘And what brought him here?’ I said. ‘God knows,’ she said. I almost despaired. Then a brisk breeze blew in my direction, carrying a charge of perfume greater than I had hoped for. As I breathed it in I felt my despair becoming keener. Suddenly a large opening occurred in the darkness through which penetrated a voice, this time a sad one with a sadness deeper than the bottom of the river. ‘I think he was hiding something,’ she said. ‘Why?’ I pursued her with the question. ‘He used to spend a lot of time at night in that room,’ she said. ‘What’s in that room?’ I asked, intensifying my pursuit. ‘I don’t know’ she said. ‘I’ve never been in it. You have the keys. Why don’t you investigate for yourself?’ Yes, supposing we were to get up, she and I, this instant, light the lamp, and enter, would we find him strung up by the neck from the ceiling, or would we find him sitting squat-legged on the floor? ‘Why do you think he was hiding something?’ I asked her again. Her voice was not sad now and contained no caressing tenderness; it was saw-edged like a maize leaf. ‘Sometimes at night when he was asleep he’d say things in — in gibberish.’ ‘What gibberish?’ I followed up. ‘I don’t know;’ she said. ‘It was like European talk.’ I remained leaning forward towards her in the darkness, watching, waiting. ‘He kept repeating words in his sleep, like Jeena Jeeny — I don’t know.’ In this very place, at just such a time, in just such darkness as this, his voice, like dead fishes floating on the surface of the sea, used to float out. ‘I went on pursuing her for three years. Every day the bow string became more taut. My caravans were parched with thirst and the mirage glimmered in front of me in the desert of longing. On that night when Jean whispered in my ear, “Come with me. Come with me,” my life had reached completion and there was no reason to stay on —’ The shriek of a child reached me from some place in the quarter. ‘It was as though he felt his end drawing near,’ said Hosna. ‘A week before the day — the day before his death — he arranged his affairs. He tidied up odds and ends and paid his debts. The day before he died he called me to him and told me what he owned and gave me numerous directions about the boys. He also gave me the letter sealed with wax and said to me, "Give it to him if anything happens." He told me that if anything happened you were to be the boys’ guardian. "Consult him in everything you do," he said to me. I cried and said to him, "God willing, nothing bad will happen." “It’s just in case,” he said, "for one never knows in this world." That day I implored him not to go down to the field because of all the flooding. I was afraid, but he told me not to be, and that he was a good swimmer. I was apprehensive all day long and my fears increased when he didn’t come back at his usual time. We waited and then it happened.’ I was conscious of her crying silently then her weeping grew louder and was transformed into a fierce sobbing that shook the darkness lying between her and me. Her perfume and the silence were lost and nothing existed in the whole world except the lamentation of a woman for a husband she did not know, for a man who, spreading his sails, had voyaged off on the ocean in pursuit of a foreign mirage. And the old man Wad Rayyes dreams in his house of nights of dalliance under the silken night-wrap. And I, what shall I do now amidst this chaos? Shall I go up to her, clasp her to my breast, dry her tears with my handkerchief and restore serenity to her heart with my words? I half raised myself; leaning on my arm, but I sensed danger as I remembered something, and remained as I was for a time in a state between action and restraint. Suddenly a feeling of heavy weariness assailed me and I sank down on to the chair. The darkness was thick, deep and basic — not a condition in which light was merely absent; the darkness was now constant, as though light had never existed and the stars in the sky were nothing but rents in an old and tattered garment. The perfume was a jumble of dreams, an unheard sound like that of ants’ feet in a mound of sand. From the belly of the darkness there issued forth a voice that was not hers, a voice that was neither angry nor sad, nor frightened, nothing more than a voice saying: ‘The lawyers were fighting over my body. It was not I who was important but the case. Professor Maxwell Foster-Keen — one of the founders of the Moral Rearmament movement in Oxford, a Mason, and a member of the Supreme Committee for the Protestant Missionary Societies in Africa — did not conceal his dislike of me. In the days when I was a student of his at Oxford he would say to me with undisguised irritation: “You, Mr Sa’eed, are the best example of the fact that our civilizing mission in Africa is of no avail. After all the efforts we’ve made to educate you, it’s as if you’d come out of the jungle for the first time.” And here he was, notwithstanding, employing all his skill to save me from the gallows. Then there was Sir Arthur Higgins, twice married and twice divorced, whose love affairs were notorious and who was famous for his connections with the left and Bohemian circles. I had spent the Christmas of 1925 at his house in Saffron Walden. He used to say to me, “You’re a scoundrel, but I don’t dislike scoundrels because I’m one myself.” Yet in court he employed all his skill to place the hangman’s noose around my neck. The jurors, too, were a varied bunch of people and included a labourer, a doctor, a farmer, a teacher, a businessman, and an undertaker, with nothing in common between them and me; had I asked one of them to rent me a room in his house he would as likely as not have refused, and were his daughter to tell him she was going to marry this African, he’d have felt that the world was collapsing under his feet. Yet each one of them in that court would rise above himself for the first time in his life, while I had a sort of feeling of superiority towards them, for the ritual was being held primarily because of me; and I, over and above everything else, am a colonizer, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided. When Mahmoud Wad Ahmed was brought in shackles to Kitchener after his defeat at the Battle of Atbara, Kitchener said to him, "Why have you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?" It was the intruder who said this to the person whose land it was, and the owner of the land bowed his head and said nothing. So let it be with me. In that court I hear the rattle of swords in Carthage and the clatter of the hooves of Allenby’s horses desecrating the ground of Jerusalem. The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say “Yes" in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history ‘I am no Othello. Othello was a lie.’ Thinking over Mustafa Sa’eed’s words as he sat in that very place on just such a night as this, I listened to her sobbing as though it came to me from afar, mingled in my mind with scattered noises which I had no doubt heard at odd times but which all intertwined together in my brain like a carillon of church bells: the scream of a child somewhere in the neighbourhood, the crowing of cocks, the braying of a donkey and the sounds of a wedding coming from the far side of the river. But now I heard only one sound, that of her anguished weeping. I did nothing. I sat on where I was without moving and left her to weep alone to the night till she stopped. I had to say something, so I said, ‘Clinging to the past does no one any good. You have two children and are still a young woman in the prime of life. Think about the future. Who knows, perhaps you will accept one of the numerous suitors who want to marry you.’ ‘After Mustafa Sa’eed,’ she answered immediately with a decisiveness that astonished me, ‘I shall go to no man.’ Though I had not intended to, I said to her, ‘Wad Rayyes wants to marry you. Your father and family don’t object. He asked me to talk to you on his behalf.’ She was silent for so long that, presuming she was not going to say anything, I was on the point of getting up to leave. At last, though, I became aware of her voice in the darkness like the blade of a knife. ‘If they force me to marry, I’ll kill him and kill myself.’ I thought of several things to say; but presently I heard the muezzin calling for the night prayer: ‘God is great. God is great’. So I stood up, and so did she, and I left without saying anything.
While I was drinking my morning coffee Wad Rayyes came to me. I had intended to go to his house but he forestalled me. He said that he had come to remind me of the invitation of the day before, but I knew that, unable to hold himself in wait, he had come to learn of the result of my intervention. ‘It’s no good,’ I told him as he seated himself ‘She doesn’t want to marry at all. If I were you I’d certainly let the whole matter drop.’ I had not imagined that the news would have such an effect on him. However Wad Rayyes, who changed women as he changed donkeys, now sat in front of me with a morose expression on his face, eyelids trembling, savagely biting his lower lip. He began fidgeting in his seat and tapping the ground nervously with his stick. He took off the slipper from his right foot and put it on again several times as though preparing to get up and go, then reseated himself and opened his mouth as though wishing to speak but without doing so. How extraordinary! Was it reasonable to suppose that Wad Rayyes was in love? ‘It’s not as if there’re not plenty of other women to marry’ I said to him. His intelligent eyes were no longer intelligent but had become two small glass globes fixed in a rigid stare. ‘I shall marry no one but her,’ he said. ‘She’ll accept me whether she likes it or not. Does she imagine she’s some queen or princess? Widows in this village are more common than empty bellies. She should thank God she’s found a husband like me.’ ‘If she’s just like every other woman, then why this insistence? I said to him. ‘You know she’s refused many men besides you, some of them younger. If she wants to devote herself to bringing up her children, why not let her do as she pleases?’ Suddenly Wad Rayyes burst out into a crazy fit of rage which I regarded as quite out of character. In a violent state of excitement, he said something that truly astonished me: ‘Ask yourself why Mahmoud’s daughter refused marriage. You’re the reason — there’s certainly something between you and her. Why do you interfere? You’re not her father or her brother or the person responsible for her. She’ll marry me whatever you or she says or does. Her father’s agreed and so have her brothers. This nonsense you learn at school won’t wash with us here. In this village the men are guardians of the women.’ I don’t know what would have happened if my father had not come in at that moment. Immediately I got up and left.
I went to see Mahjoub in his field. Mahjoub and I are of the same age. We had grown up together and had sat at adjoining desks in the elementary school. He was more clever than I. When we finished our elementary education Mahjoub had said, ‘This amount of education will do me — reading, writing and arithmetic. We’re farming folk like our fathers and grandfathers. All the education a farmer wants is to be able to write letters, to read the newspapers and to know the prescribed rules for prayers. Also so that if we’ve got some problem we can make ourselves understood with the powers-that-be.’ I went my own way and Mahjoub turned into a real power in the village, so that today he has become the Chairman of the Agricultural Project Committee and the Co-operative, and a member of the committee of the hospital that is almost finished. He heads every delegation which goes to the provincial centre to take up instances of injustice. With independence Mahjoub became one of the local leaders of the National Democratic Socialist Party. We would occasionally chat about our childhood in the village and he would say to me, ‘But look where you are now and where I am. You’ve become a senior civil servant and I’m a farmer in this god-forsaken village.’ ‘It's you who’ve succeeded, not I,’ I would say to him with genuine admiration, ‘because you influence actual life in the country. We civil servants, though, are of no consequence. People like you are the legal heirs of authority; you are the sinews of life, you’re the salt of the earth.’ ‘If we’re the salt of the earth,’ Mahjoub would say with a laugh, ‘then the earth is without fIavour.’ He laughed too on hearing of my encounter with Wad Rayyes. ‘Wad Rayyes is an old windbag. He doesn’t mean what he says.’ ‘You know that my relationship with her is dictated by duty neither more nor less,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t pay any attention to Wad Rayyes’s drivel,’ said Mahjoub. ‘Your reputation in the village is without blemish. The people all speak well of you because you’re doing your duty by the children of Mustafa Sa’eed, God rest his soul. He was, after all, a stranger who was in no way related to you.’ After a short silence he said, ‘Anyway if the woman’s father and brothers are agreeable no one can do anything about it.’ ‘But if she doesn’t want to marry?’ I said to him. ‘You know how life is run here,’ he interrupted me. ‘Women belong to men, and a man’s a man even if he’s decrepit.’ ‘But the world’s changed,’ I said to him. ‘These are things that no longer fit in with our life in this age.’ ‘The world hasn’t changed as much as you think,’ said Mahjoub. ‘Some things have changed — pumps instead of water-wheels, iron ploughs instead of wooden ones, sending our daughters to school, radios, cars, learning to drink whisky and beer instead of arak and millet wine — yet even so everything’s as it was.’ Mahjoub laughed as he said, ‘The world will really have changed when the likes of me become ministers in the government. And naturally that,’ he added still laughing, ‘is an out-and-out impossibility.’ ‘Do you think Wad Rayyes has fallen in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud? I said to Mahjoub, who had cheered me up. ‘It’s not out of the question,’ said Mahjoub. ‘Wad Rayyes is a man who hankers after things. For two years now he’s been singing her praises. He asked for her in marriage before and her father accepted but she refused. They waited, hoping that in time she’d accept.’ ‘But why this sudden passion?’ I said to Mahjoub. ‘Wad Rayyes has known Hosna Bint Mahmoud since she was a child. Do you remember her as a wild young girl climbing trees and fighting with boys? As a child she used to swim naked with us in the river. What’s happened to change that now?’ ‘Wad Rayyes,’ said Mahjoub, ‘is like one of those people who are crazy about owning donkeys — he only admires a donkey when he sees some other man riding it. Only then does he find it beautiful and strives hard to buy it, even if he has to pay more than it’s worth.’ After thinking for a while in silence, he said, ‘It’s true, though, that Mahmoud’s daughter changed after her marriage to Mustafa Sa’eed. All women change after marriage, but she in particular underwent an indescribable change. It was as though she were another person. Even we who were her contemporaries and used to play with her in the village look at her today and see her as something new — like a city woman, if you know what I mean.’ I asked Mahjoub about Mustafa Sa’eed. ‘God rest his soul,’ he said. ‘We had a mutual respect for each other. At first the relationship between us was not a strong one, but our work together on the Project Committee brought us closer. His death was an irreparable loss. You know he gave us invaluable help in organizing the Project. He used to look after the accounts and his business experience was of great use to us. It was he who pointed out that we should invest the profits from the Project in setting up a flour mill. We were saved a lot of expense and today people come to us from all over the place. It was he too who pointed out that we should open a co-operative shop. Our prices now are no higher than those in Khartoum. In the old days, as you know supplies used to arrive by steamer once or twice a month. The traders would hoard them till the market had run out, then they would sell them for many times their cost. Today the Project owns ten lorries that bring us supplies every other day direct from Khartoum and Omdurman. I asked him more than once to take over the Chairmanship, but he always used to refuse, saying I was better suited. The Omda and the merchants absolutely loathed him because he opened the villagers’ eyes and spoiled things for them. After his death there were rumours that they had planned to kill him — mere talk. He died from drowning — tens of men were drowned that year. He was a man of great mental capacity Now, there was a man — if there is any justice in the world — who deserved to be a minister in the government.’ ‘Politics have spoilt you,’ I said to Mahjoub. ‘You’ve come to think only in terms of power. Let’s not talk about ministries and the government — tell me about him as a man. What sort of a person was he?’ Astonishment showed on his face. ‘What do you mean by what sort of a person?’ he said. ‘He was as I’ve described him.’ I could not find the appropriate words for explaining what I meant to Mahjoub. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘what’s the reason for your interest in Mustafa Sa’eed? You’ve already asked me several times about him.’ Before I could reply Mahjoub continued, ‘You know, I don’t understand why he made you the guardian of his children. Of course, you deserve the honour of the trust and have carried out your responsibilities in admirable fashion. Yet you knew him less than any of us. We were here with him in the village while you saw him only from year to year. I was expecting he’d have made me, or your grandfather, guardian. Your grandfather was a close friend of his and he used to enjoy listening to his conversation. He used to say to me, “You know, Mahjoub, Hajj Ahmed is a unique person.” "Hajj Ahmed’s an old windbag," I would reply and he would get really annoyed. "No, don’t say that,” he’d say to me. "Hajj Ahmed is a part of history." ‘In any case,’ I said to Mahjoub. ‘I’m only a guardian in name. The real guardian is you. The two boys are here with you, and I’m way off in Khartoum.’ ‘They’re intelligent and well-mannered boys,’ said Mahjoub. ‘They take after their father. They couldn’t be doing better in their studies.’ ‘What will happen to them,’ I said, ‘if this laughable business of marriage Wad Rayyes has in mind goes through?’ ‘Take it easy!’ said Mahjoub. ‘Wad Rayyes will certainly become obsessed with some other woman. Let’s suppose, at the very worst, she marries him; I don’t think he’ll live more than a year or two, and she’ll have her share of his many lands and crops.’ Then, like a sudden blow that lands right on the top of one’s head, Mahjoub’s words struck home: ‘Why don’t you marry her?’ My heart beat so violently within me that I almost lost control. It was some time before I found words and, in a trembling voice, said to Mahjoub: ‘You’re joking of course.’ ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘why don’t you marry her? I’m certain she’d accept. You’re the guardian of the two boys, and you might as well round things off by becoming a father.’ I remembered her perfume of the night before and the thoughts about her that had taken root in my head in the darkness. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I heard Mahjoub saying with a laugh, ‘that you’re already a husband and a father. Every day men are taking second wives. You wouldn’t be the first or the last.’ ‘You’re completely mad,’ I said to Mahjoub, laughing, having recovered my self-control. I left him and took myself off having become certain about a fact which was later on to cost me much peace of mind: that in one form or another I was in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the widow of Mustafa Sa’eed, and that I — like him and Wad Rayyes and millions of others — was not immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe. After we had had the circumcision celebrations for the two boys I returned to Khartoum. Leaving my wife and daughter in the village, I journeyed by the desert road in one of the Project’s lorries. I generally used to travel by steamer to the river port of Karima and from there I would take the train, passing by Abu Hamad and Atbara to Khartoum. But this time I was, for no particular reason, in a hurry so I chose to go the shortest way. The lorry set off first thing in the morning and proceeded eastwards along the Nile for about two hours, then turned southwards at right angles and struck off into the desert. There is no shelter from the sun which rises up into the sky with unhurried steps, its rays spilling out on the ground as though there existed an old blood feud between it and the people of the earth. There is no shelter apart from the hot shade inside the lorry — shade that is not really shade. A monotonous road rises and falls with nothing to entice the eye: scattered bushes in the desert, all thorns and leafless, miserable trees that are neither alive nor dead. The lorry travels for hours without our coming across a single human being or animal. Then it passes by a herd of camels, likewise lean and emaciated. There is not a single cloud heralding hope in this hot sky which is like the lid of Hell·fire. The day here is something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance. In a state close to fever, haphazard thoughts flooded through my head: words taken from sentences, the forms of faces, voices which all sounded as desiccated as light flurries of wind blowing across fallow fields. Why the hurry? ‘Why the hurry?’ she had asked me. ‘Why don’t you stay another week?’ she had said. ‘The black donkey; a bedouin fellow cheated your uncle and sold him the black donkey.’ ‘Is that something to get angry about?’ said my father. Man’s mind is not kept in a refrigerator. It is this sun which is unbearable. It melts the brain. It paralyses thought. And Mustafa Sa’eed’s face springs clearly to my mind, just as I saw it the first day, and is then lost in the roar of the lorry’s engine and the sound of the tyres against the desert stones, and I strive to bring it back and am unable to. The day the boys’ circumcision was celebrated, Hosna bared her head and danced as a mother does on the day her sons are circumcised. What a woman she is! Why don’t you marry her? In what manner used Isabella Seymour to whisper caressingly to him? ‘Ravish me, you African demon. Burn me in the fire of your temple, you black god. Let me twist and turn in your wild and impassioned rites.’ Right here is the source of the fire; here the temple. Nothing. The sun, the desert, desiccated plants and emaciated animals. The frame of the lorry shudders as it descends into a small wadi. We pass by the bones of a camel that has perished from thirst in this wilderness. Mustafa Sa’eed’s face returns to my mind’s eye in the form of his elder son’s face — the one who most resembles him. On the day of the circumcision Mahjoub and I drank more than we should. Owing to the monotony of their lives the people in our village make of every happy event however small an excuse for holding a sort of wedding party. At night I pulled him by the hand, while the singers sang and the men were clapping deep inside the house. We stood in front of the door of that room. I said to him, ‘I alone have the key.’ An iron door. Mahjoub said to me in his inebriated voice: ‘Do you know what’s inside?’ ‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Nothing,’ I said, laughing under the influence of the drink. ‘Absolutely nothing. This room is a big joke — like life. You imagine it contains a secret and there’s nothing there. Absolutely nothing.’ ‘You’re drunk,’ said Mahjoub. ‘This room is filled from floor to ceiling with treasures: gold, jewels, pearls. Do you know who Mustafa Sa’eed is?’ I told him that Mustafa Sa’eed was a lie. ‘Do you want to know the truth about Mustafa Sa’eed?’ I said to him with another drunken laugh. ‘You’re not only drunk but mad,’ said Mahjoub. ‘Mustafa Sa’eed is in fact the Prophet El-Kidr, suddenly making his appearance and as suddenly vanishing. The treasures that lie in this room are like those of King Solomon, brought here by genies, and you have the key to that treasure. Open, Sesame, and let’s distribute the gold and jewels to the people.’ Mahjoub was about to shout out and gather the people together had I not put my hand over his mouth. The next morning each of us woke up in his own house not knowing how he’d got there. The road is endless, without limit, the sun indefatigable. No wonder Mustafa Sa’eed fled to the bitter cold of the North. Isabella Seymour said to him: ‘The Christians say their God was crucified that he might bear the burden of their sins. He died, then, in vain, for what they call sin is nothing but the sigh of contentment in embracing you, O pagan god of mine. You are my god and there is no god but you.’ No doubt that was the reason for her suicide, and not that she was ill with cancer. She was a believer when she met him. She denied her religion and worshipped a god like the calf of the Children of Israel. How strange! How ironic! Just because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way? And my grandfather, with his thin voice and that mischievous laugh of his when in a good humour, where is his place in the scheme of things? Is he really as I assert and as he appears to be? Is he above this chaos? I don’t know. In any case he has survived despite epidemics, the corruption of those in power, and the cruelty of nature. I am certain that when death appears to him he will smile in death’s face. Isn’t this enough? Is more than this demanded of a son of Adam?’ From behind a hill there came into view a bedouin, who hurried towards us, crossing the car’s path. We drew up. His body and clothes were the colour of the earth. The driver asked him what he wanted. He said, ‘Give me a cigarette or some tobacco for the sake of Allah — for two days I haven’t tasted tobacco.’ As we had no tobacco I gave him a cigarette. We thought we might as well stop a while and give ourselves a rest from sitting. Never in my life have I seen a man smoke a cigarette with such gusto. Squatting down on his backside, the bedouin began gulping in the smoke with indescribable avidity. After a couple of minutes he put out his hand and I gave him another cigarette, which he devoured as he had done the first. Then he began writhing on the ground as though in an epileptic fit, after which he stretched himself out, encircled his head with his hands, and went stiff and lifeless as though dead. All the time we were there, around twenty minutes, he stayed like this, until the engine started up, when he jumped to his feet — a man brought back to life — and began thanking me and asking Allah to grant me long life, so I threw him the packet with the rest of the cigarettes. Dust rose up behind us, and I watched the bedouin running towards some tattered tents by some bushes southwards of us, where there were diminutive sheep and naked children. Where, O God, is the shade? Such land brings forth nothing but prophets. This drought can be cured only by the sky. The road is unending and the sun merciless. Now the car lets out a wailing sound as it passes over a stony surface, flat as a table. ‘We are a doomed people, so regale us with amusing stories.’ Who said this? Then: ‘Like someone marooned in the desert who has covered no distance yet spared no mount.’ The driver is not talking; he is merely an extension of the machine in his charge, sometimes cursing and swearing at it, while the country around us is a circle sunk in the mirage. ‘One mirage kept raising us up, another casting us down, and from deserts we were spewed out into yet more deserts.’ Mohamed Sa’eed El- Abbasi, what a poet he was! And Abu Nuwas: ‘We drank as deeply as a people athirst since the age of Aad.’ This is the land of despair and poetry but there is nobody to sing. We came across a government car that had broken down, with five soldiers and a sergeant, all armed with rifles, surrounding it. We drew up and they drank from the water we had and ate some of our provisions, and we let them have some petrol. They said that a woman from the tribe of El-Mirisab had killed her husband and the government was in the process of arresting her. What was her name? What his? Why had she killed him? They do not know — only that she is from the El-Mirisab tribe and that she had killed a man who was her husband. But they would know it: the tribes of El-Mirisab, El-Hawaweer and El- Kababeesh; the judges, resident and itinerant; the Commissioner of North Kordofan, the Commissioner of the Southern North Province, the Commissioner of East Khartoum; the shepherds at the watering places; the Sheikhs and the Nazirs; the bedouin in hair tents at the intersections of the valleys. All of them would know her name, for it is not every day that a woman kills a man, let alone her husband, in this land in which the sun has left no more killing to be done. An idea occurred to me; turning it over in my mind, I decided to express it and see what happened. I said to them that she had not killed him but that he had died from sunstroke — just as Isabella Seymour had died, and Sheila Greenwood, Ann Hammond, and Jean Morris. Nothing happened. ‘We had a horrible Commandant of Police called Major Cook,’ said the sergeant. No use. No sense of wonder. They went on their way and we went on ours. The sun is the enemy. Now it is exactly in the liver of the sky as the Arabs say. What a fiery liver! And thus it will remain for hours without moving — or so it will seem to living creatures when even the stones groan, the trees weep, and iron cries out for help. The weeping of a woman under a man at dawn and two wide-open white thighs. They are now like the dry bones of camels scattered in the desert. No taste. No smell. Nothing of good. Nothing of evil. The wheels of the car strike spitefully against the stones. ‘His twisted road all too soon leads to disaster, and generally the disaster lies clearly before him, as clear as the sun, so that we are amazed how such an intelligent man can in fact be so stupid. Granted a generous measure of intelligence, he has been denied wisdom. He is an intelligent fool.’ That’s what the judge said at the Old Bailey before passing sentence. The road is endless and the sun as bright as it proverbially is. I shall write to Mrs Robinson. She lives in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. Her address has stuck in my memory ever since Mustafa Sa’eed’s conversation that night. Her husband died of typhoid and was buried in Cairo in the cemetery of the Imam Shafi’i. Yes, he embraced Islam. Mustafa Sa’eed said she attended the trial from beginning to end. He was composed the whole time. After sentence was given he wept on her breast. She stroked his head, kissed him on the forehead, and said, ‘Don’t cry dear child.’ She had not liked Jean Morris and had warned him against marrying her. I shall write to her; perhaps she can throw some light on things, perhaps she remembers things he forgot or did not mention. And suddenly the war ended in victory. The glow of sundown is not blood but henna on a woman’s foot, and the breeze that pursues us from the Nile Valley carries a perfume whose smell will not fade from my mind as long as I live. And just as a caravan of camels makes a halt, so did we. The greater part of the journey was behind us. We ate and drank. Some of us performed the night prayer, while the driver and his assistants took some bottles of drink from the lorry. I threw myself down on the sand, lighted a cigarette and lost myself in the splendour of the sky. The lorry too was nourished with water, petrol and oil, and now there it is, silent and content like a mare in her stable. The war ended in victory for us all: the stones, the trees, the animals, and the iron, while I, lying under this beautiful, compassionate sky feel that we are all brothers; he who drinks and he who prays and he who steals and he who commits adultery and he who fights and he who kills. The source is the same. No one knows what goes on in the mind of the Divine. Perhaps He doesn’t care. Perhaps He is not angry. On a night such as this you feel you are able to rise up to the sky on a rope ladder: This is the land of poetry and the possible — and my daughter is named Hope. We shall pull down and we shall build, and we shall humble the sun itself to our will; and somehow we shall defeat poverty. The driver, who had kept silent the whole day has now raised his voice in song: a sweet, rippling voice that you can’t imagine is his. He is singing to his car just as the poets of old sang to their camels:
How shapely is your steering-wheel astride its metal stem. No sleep or rest tonight we’ll have till Sitt Nafour is come.
Another voice is raised in answer:
From the lands of Kawal and Kambu on a journey we are bent. His head he tossed with noble pride, resigned to our intent. The sweat pours down his mighty neck and soaks his massive sides And sparks around his feet do fly as to the sands he strides.
Then a third voice rose up in answer to the other two:
Woe to me, what pain does grip my breast As does the quarry tire my dog in chase. The man of God his very faith you’d wrest And turn aside at Jeddah the pilgrim to Hejaz.
And so we continued on, while every vehicle, coming or going, would stop and join us until we became a huge caravanserai of more than a hundred men who ate and drank and prayed and got drunk. We formed ourselves into a large circle into which some of the younger men entered and danced in the manner of girls. We clapped, stamped on the ground, and hummed in unison, making a festival to nothingness in the heart of the desert. Then someone produced a transistor radio which we placed in the centre of the circle and we clapped and danced to its music. Someone else got the idea of having the drivers line up their cars in a circle and train their headlights on to the ring of dancers so that there was a blaze of light the like of which I do not believe that place had ever seen before. The men imitated the loud trilling cries women utter at festivities and the horns of the cars all rang out together. The light and the clamour attracted the bedouin from the neighbouring wadi ravines and foothills, both men and women, people whom you would not see by day when it was just as if they melted away under the light of the sun. A vast concourse of people gathered. Actual women entered the circle; had you seen them by day you would not have given them a second glance, but at that time and place they were beautiful. A bedouin man brought a sheep which he tied up and slaughtered and then roasted over a fire. One of the travelers produced two crates of beer which he distributed around as he called out, ‘To the good health of the Sudan. To the good health of the Sudan.’ Packets of cigarettes and boxes of sweets were passed round, and the bedouin women sang and danced, the night and the desert resounding with the echoes of a great feast, as though we were some tribe of genies. A feast without a meaning, a mere desperate act that had sprung up impromptu like the small whirlwinds that rise up in the desert and then die. At dawn we parted. The bedouin made their way back to the wadi ravines. The people exchanged shouts of ‘Good—bye, good—bye’, and everyone ran off to his car. The engines revved up and the headlights veered away from the place which moments before had been an intimate stage and which now returned to its former state — a tract of desert. Some of the headlights pointed southwards in the direction of the Nile, some northwards also in the direction of the Nile. The dust swirled up and disappeared. We caught up the sun on the peaks of the mountains of Kerari overlooking Omdurman.
The steamer swung round on itself so that its engines would not be working against the current. Everything happened as it always did: the raucous whistle and the small boats from the opposite shore, the sycamore trees and the bustle on the quay of the landing-stage. Except for one great difference: I stepped ashore and Mahjoub shook me by the hand, avoiding me with his eyes; this time he was the only one who had come to meet me. He was embarrassed, as though feeling guilty about something or as though he were putting the responsibility on to me. Hardly had I shaken hands with him than I said, ‘How did you let this happen?’ ‘What has happened has happened,’ said Mahjoub, fixing the saddle of the tall black donkey which belonged to my uncle Abdul Karim. "The two boys are well and are at my place.’ I had not thought of the boys during the whole of that ghastly journey. I had been thinking of her. Again I said to Mahjoub: ‘What happened?’ He was still avoiding looking at me. He remained silent, adjusting the sheepskin cover on the saddle and tightening the girth round his donkey’s belly. He pushed the saddle slightly forward, seized hold of the reins and jumped on. I remained standing, awaiting the reply that did not come; then I too mounted. Urging the donkey on, he said to me: ‘It’s as I told you in the cable. There’s no point in delving into the matter. In any case we weren’t expecting you.’ ‘I wish I'd done as you advised and married her,’ I said to him, encouraging him to speak. All I succeeded in doing, though, was to drive him into a deeper silence. He was clearly angry for he dug his heel sharply into his donkey though it had done nothing to deserve such treatment. ‘Ever since I got your cable,’ I said to him, chasing after him but without quite catching him up, ‘I haven’t slept or eaten or spoken to a soul. Three days traveling from Khartoum by rail and steamer I’ve spent thinking and asking myself how it happened and I find no answer.’ ‘You’ve never spent such a short time away from the village,’ he said kindly, as though feeling sorry for me. ‘No,’ I said to him. ‘Thirty-two days to be exact.’ ‘Anything new in Khartoum?’ he said. ‘We were busy with a conference,’ I said to him. Interest showed on his face, for he liked to have news of Khartoum, especially news of scandals and stories of bribery and of the corruption of those in power. ‘What were they in conference about this time?’ he said with evident interest. I was upset that he should have so quickly forgotten the matter in hand. ‘The Ministry of Education] I said to him wearily, wishing to cut it short, ‘organized a conference to which it invited delegates from twenty African countries to discuss ways of unifying educational methods throughout the whole continent — I was a member of the secretariat of the conference.’ ‘Let them build the schools first,’ said Mahjoub, ‘and then discuss unifying education. How do these people’s minds work? They waste time in conferences and poppycock and here are our children having to travel several miles to school. Aren’t we human beings? Don’t we pay taxes? Haven’t we any rights in this country? Everything’s in Khartoum. The whole of the country’s budget is spent in Khartoum. One single hospital in Merawi, and it takes us three days to get there. The women die in childbirth — there’s not a single qualified midwife in this place. And you, what are you doing in Khartoum? What’s the use in our having one of us in the government when you’re not doing anything? My donkey had passed him, so I pulled at the reins till he caught up with me. I chose to keep silent, although if it had been any other time I would have shouted at him — he and I had been like that since childhood, shouting at each other when angry; then making it up and forgetting. But now I was hungry and tired and my heart was heavy with grief. Had the circumstances of our meeting this time been better I would have roused him to laughter and to anger with stories about that conference. He will not believe the facts about the new rulers of Africa, smooth of face, lupine of mouth, their hands gleaming with rings of precious stones, exuding perfume from their cheeks, in white, blue, black and green suits of fine mohair and expensive silk rippling on their shoulders like the fur of Siamese cats, and with shoes that reflect the light from chandeliers and squeak as they tread on marble. Mahjoub will not believe that for nine days they studied every aspect of the progress of education in Africa in the Independence Hall built for the purpose and costing more than a million pounds: an imposing edifice of stone, cement, marble and glass, constructed in the form of a complete circle and designed in London, its corridors of white marble brought from Italy and the windows made up of small pieces of coloured glass skillfully arranged in a framework of teak. The floor of the main hall was covered with fine Persian carpets, while the ceiling was in the form of a gilded dome; on all sides chandeliers hung down, each the size of a large camel. The platform on which the Ministers of Education in Africa took it in turns to stand for nine whole days was of red marble like that of Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, its vast ebony surface smooth and shiny. On the walls were oil paintings, and facing the main entrance was a vast map of Africa fashioned in coloured mosaic, each country in a different colour. How can I say to Mahjoub that the Minister who said in his verbose address, received with a storm of clapping: ‘No contradiction must occur between what the student learns at school and between the reality of the life of the people. Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life, which is more dangerous to the future of Africa than imperialism itself’: how can I say to Mahjoub that this very man escapes during the summer months from Africa to his villa on Lake Lucerne and that his wife does her shopping at Harrods in London, from where the articles are flown to her in a private plane, and that the members of his delegation themselves openly say that he is corrupt and takes bribes, that he has acquired whole estates, has set up businesses and amassed properties, has created a vast fortune from the sweat dripping from the brows of wretched, half-naked people in the jungle? Such people are concerned only with their stomachs and their sensual pleasures. There is no justice or moderation in the world. Mustafa Sa’eed said: ‘But I seek not glory for the likes of me do not seek glory.’ Had he returned in the natural way of things he would have joined up with this pack of wolves. They all resemble him: handsome faces and faces made so by comfortable living. One of those Ministers said in the closing party of the conference that Mustafa had been his teacher. The first thing he did when they introduced me to him was to exclaim: ‘You remind me of a dear friend with whom I was on very close terms in London — Dr Mustafa Sa’eed. He used to be my teacher. In 1928 he was President of the Society for the Struggle for African Freedom of which I was a committee member. What a man he was! He’s one of the greatest Africans I’ve known. He had wide contacts. Heavens, that man — women fell for him like flies. He used to say "I’ll liberate Africa with my penis", and he laughed so widely you could see the back of his throat.’ I wanted to put some questions to him but he disappeared in the throng of Presidents and Ministers. Mustafa no longer concerns me, for Mahjoub’s telegram has changed everything, bringing me worries of my own. When I first read Mrs Robinson’s reply to my letter I had a feeling of immense joy. I read it in the train a second time and tried, though in vain, to banish my thoughts from the spot that had become the pivot round which they revolved. The donkeys continued to toss up the stones with their hooves. ‘Why so silent, as though you’ve lost your tongue? Why don’t you say something?’ said Mahjoub. ‘Civil servants like me can’t change anything,’ I said to him. ‘If our masters say “Do so—and—so”, we do it. You’re the head of the National Democratic Socialist Party here. It’s the party in power, so why not pour out your anger on them?’ Mahjoub said apologetically ‘If it hadn’t been for this… this calamity… On the day it happened we were preparing to travel in a delegation to ask for the building of a large hospital, also for an intermediate boys’ school, a primary school for girls, an agricultural school and ...’ Suddenly he broke off and retired into his angry silence. I glanced at the river on our left gleaming with menace and reverberating with mysterious sound. Then, in front of us, there came into view the ten domes in the middle of the cemetery; and the recollection it called forth cut into my heart. ‘We buried them without any fuss, first thing in the morning,’ said Mahjoub. ‘We told the women not to mourn. We held no funeral ceremony and informed no one — the police would only have come along and there would have been all the scandal of an investigation.’ ‘Why the police?’ I asked in alarm. He looked at me for a while, then fell silent. A long time later he said: A week or ten days after you went away her father said he had given Wad Rayyes a promise — and they married her off to him. Her father swore at her and beat her; he told her she’d marry him whether she liked it or not. I didn’t attend the marriage ceremony; no one was there except his friends: Bakri, your grandfather, and Bint Mahjoub. For myself I tried to deflect Wad Rayyes from his purpose, but like someone obsessed he insisted. I talked to her father, who said he wouldn’t be made a laughing-stock by people saying his daughter wouldn’t listen to him. After the marriage I told Wad Rayyes to go about things with tact. For two weeks they remained together without exchanging a word. She was — he was in an indescribable state, like a madman. He complained to all and sundry; saying how could there be in his house a woman he’d married according to the laws of God and His Prophet and how could there not be between them the normal relationship of man and wife. We used to tell him to have patience, then ...’ The two donkeys suddenly brayed at the same time and I almost fell out of the saddle. For two whole days I went on asking people about it, but no one would tell me. They all avoided looking at me as though they were accomplices in some dire crime. ‘Why did you leave your work and come?’ my mother said to me. ‘The two boys,’ I said to her. She looked at me searchingly for a while and said: ‘The boys or the boys’ mother? What was there between you and her? She came to your father and her very words to him were: “Tell him to marry me!" What an impudent hussy! That’s modern women for you! That was bad enough, but the terrible thing she did later was even worse.’ My grandfather too vouchsafed me no information. I found him seated on his couch in a state of fatigue I’d never seen him in before, just as if the source of life inside him had suddenly dried up. I sat on and he still did not speak, only sighed from time to time and fidgeted and called upon God to grant him refuge from the accursed Devil. Every time he did this I would feel twinges of conscience as though the Devil and I were in some sort of league together. After a long time, addressing the ceiling, he said: ‘God curse all women! Women are the sisters of the Devil. Wad Rayyes! Wad Rayyes!’ and my grandfather burst into tears. It was the first time in my life I had seen him crying. He cried much, then wiped away the tears with the hem of his robe and was so long silent that I thought he had gone to sleep. ‘God rest your soul, Wad Rayyes,’ he said after a while. ‘May God forgive him and encompass him with His mercy’ He muttered some prayers and said: ‘He was a man without equal — always laughing, always at hand when one was in trouble. He never said "No" to anyone who asked anything of him. If only he’d listened to me! To end up like that! There is no power and no strength save in God — it’s the first time anything like this has happened in the village since God created it. What a time of affliction we live in!’ ‘What happened? I asked him, plucking up courage. He took no notice of my question and became engrossed in his string of prayer-beads. Then he said: ‘Nothing but trouble comes from that tribe. I said to Wad Rayyes, “This woman’s a bringer of bad luck. Keep away from her.” However, it was fated.’
On the morning of the third day, with a bottle of whisky in my pocket, I went off to see Bint Majzoub. If Bint Majzoub would not tell me, then no one would. Bint Majzoub, pouring some whisky into a large aluminium cup, said: ‘No doubt you want something. We’re not used to having such fine city drink here.’ ‘I wish to know what happened,’ I said to her. ‘No one wants to tell me.’ She took a large gulp from the cup, gave a scowl, and said: ‘The thing done by Bint Mahmoud is not easily spoken of. It is something we have never seen or heard of in times past or present.’ She stopped talking and I waited patiently till a third of the bottle had gone, without it having any effect on her except that she looked more animated. ‘That’s enough of the heathens’ drink,’ said Bint Majzoub, closing the bottle. ‘It’s certainly formidable stuff and not a bit like date arak.’ I looked at her pleadingly ‘The things I’m going to say to you,’ she said, ‘you won’t hear from a living soul in the village — they buried them with Bint Mahmoud and with poor Wad Rayyes. They are shameful things and it’s hard to talk about them.’ Then she gave me a searching look with her bold eyes. ‘These are words that won’t please you,’ she said, ‘especially if ...’ and she lowered her head for an instant. ‘Just like everyone else,’ I said, ‘I want to know what happened. Why should I be the only one who mustn't be allowed to know?’ She drew on the cigarette I gave her. ‘Some time after the evening prayer,’ she continued, ‘I awoke to the screaming of Hosna Bint Mahmoud in Wad Rayyes’s house. The whole village was silent, you couldn’t hear a sound. To tell you God’s truth, I thought that Wad Rayyes had at last achieved what he wanted — the poor man was on the verge of madness: two weeks with the woman without her speaking to him or allowing him to come near her. I gave ear for a time as she screamed and wailed. May God forgive me, I laughed as I heard her screaming, telling myself that Wad Rayyes still had something left in him. The screaming grew louder and I heard a movement in Bakri’s house alongside Wad Rayyes’s. I heard Bakri shouting, “You, should be ashamed of yourself man, making such a scandal and hullabaloo.” Then I heard the voice of Sa’eeda, Bakri’s wife, saying, “Bint Mahmoud, look to your honour. What scandals are these? A virgin bride doesn’t behave like this — as though you’d had no experience of men." Bint Mahmoud’s screams grew louder. Then I heard Wad Rayyes screaming at the top of his voice, “Bakri! Hajj Ahmed! Bint Majzoub! Help! Bint Mahmoud has killed me.” I leapt up from bed and rushed out in a state of undress. I rapped on Bakri’s door and on Mahjoub’s, then ran to Wad Rayyes’s, which I found closed. I cried out at the top of my voice, at which Mahjoub came along, then Bakri. Many people then gathered round us. As we were breaking down the courtyard door we heard a scream — a mountain— shattering scream from Wad Rayyes, then a similar scream from Bint Mahmoud. We entered, Mahjoub, Bakri and I. "Stop the people from entering the house," I said to Mahjoub. “Don’t let any woman enter the house." Mahjoub went out and shouted at the people; when he returned your uncle Abdul Karim was with him, also Sa’eed, Tahir Rawwasi, and even your poor grandfather came from his house.’ The sweat began pouring down Bint Majzoub’s face. Her throat was dry and she pointed to the water. When I had brought it to her she drank, wiped the sweat from her face, and said, ‘I ask pardon and repentance of Almighty God. We found the two of them in Wad Rayyes’s low-ceilinged room looking on to the street. The lamp was alight. Wad Rayyes was as naked as the day he was born; Bint Mahmoud too was naked apart from her torn underclothes. The red straw mat was swimming in blood. I raised the lamp and saw that every inch of Bint Mahmoud’s body was covered in bites and scratches — her stomach, thighs and neck. The nipple of one breast had been bitten through and blood poured down from her lower lip. There is no strength and no power save in God. Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times — in his stomach, chest, face, and between his thighs.’ Bint Majzoub was unable to continue. She swallowed with difficulty and her throat quivered nervously. Then she said: ‘O Lord, there is no opposition to Thy will. We found her lying on her back with the knife plunged into her heart. Her mouth was open and her eyes were staring as though she were alive. Wad Rayyes had his tongue lolling out from between his jaws and his arms were raised in the air.’ Bint Majzoub covered her face with her hand and the sweat trickled down between her fingers; her breathing was fast and laboured. ‘I ask forgiveness of Almighty God,’ she said with difficulty ‘They had both died minutes beforehand. The blood was still warm and dripped from Bint Mahmoud’s heart and from between Wad Rayyes’s thighs. Blood covered the mat and the bed and flowed in rivulets across the floor of the room. Mahjoub, God lengthen his life, was a tower of strength. When he heard Mahmoud’s voice he hurried outside and told your father not to let him in. Then Mahjoub and the men bore off Wad Rayyes’s body, while Bakri’s wife and I, with some of the older women, took care of Bint Mahmoud. We put them in their shrouds that very night and they took them away before sunrise and buried them — she beside her mother and he beside his first wife, Bint Rajab. Some of the women started to hold a funeral ceremony but Mahjoub, God bless him, shut them up and said he’d break the neck of anyone who opened her mouth. What sort of funeral ceremony, my child, can be held in such circumstances? This is a great catastrophe that has befallen the village. All our lives we have enjoyed God’s protection and now finally something like this happens to us! I ask forgiveness and repentance of Thee, O Lord.’ She too wept as my grandfather had done. She wept long and bitterly; then, smiling through her tears, she said, ‘The strange thing about it is that his eldest wife Mabrouka didn’t wake up at all, despite all the shouting that brought people right from the far end of the village. When I went to her and shook her, she raised her head and said, "Bint Majzoub, what’s brought you at this hour?" "Get up," I said to her. "'There’s been a murder in your house." "Whose murder?" she said. “Bint Mahmoud has killed Wad Rayyes and then killed herself" I said to her. "Good riddance!" she said and went back to sleep, and we could hear her snoring while we were busy preparing Bint Mahmoud for burial. When the people returned from the burial, we found Mabrouka sitting drinking her morning coffee. When some of the women wanted to commiserate with her she yelled, “Women, let everyone of you go about her business. Wad Rayyes dug his grave with his own hands, and Bint Mahmoud, God’s blessings be upon her, paid him out in full.” Then she gave trilling cries of joy. Yes, by God, my child, she gave trilling cries of joy and said to the women, “It’s too bad, but if anyone doesn’t like it she can go drink river water." I ask forgiveness of Almighty God. Her father, Mahmoud, almost killed himself with weeping that night — he was bellowing like an ox. Your grandfather was cursing and swearing, laying about him with his stick, yelling and weeping. For no reason your uncle Abdul Karim quarrelled with Bakri. “A murder happens next door to you,” he said to him, “and you sleep right through it?" It was the same thing with the whole village that night — it was as though they’d been visited by devils. Mahjoub alone was calm and collected and saw to everything: he brought shrouds from we don’t know where, and he quietened down Wad Rayyes’s boys who were making a terrible noise. May God spare you such a sight, my child — it was something to break one’s heart and bring white hair to a baby’s head. And it was all without rhyme or reason. She accepted the stranger — why didn’t she accept Wad Rayyes?’
The fields are all fire and smoke. It is the time for preparing to sow the wheat. They clean the ground and collect up the sticks of maize and small stems, mementos of the season that has ended, and make them into burning heaps. The earth is black and level, ready for the coming event. The men’s bodies are bent over their hoes; some are walking behind the ploughs. The tops of the palm trees shudder in the gentle breeze and grow still. Under the sun’s violence at midday hot steam rises from the fields of watered clover. Every breath of wind diffuses the scent of lemon, orange and tangerine. The lowing of an ox, the braying of a donkey or the sound of an axe on wood. Yet the world has changed. I found Mahjoub mud—bespattered, his body naked except for the rag round his middle, moist with sweat, trying to separate a shoot from the mother date palm. I did not greet him and he did not turn to me but went on digging round the shoot. I remained standing, watching him. Then I lit a cigarette and held out the packet to him, but he refused with a shake of his head. I took my cares off to the trunk of a nearby date palm against which I rested my head. There is no room for me here. Why don’t I pack up and go? Nothing astonishes these people. They take everything in their stride. They neither rejoice at a birth nor are saddened at a death. When they laugh they say ‘I ask forgiveness of God’ and when they weep they say ‘I ask forgiveness of God.’ Just that. And I, what have I learnt? They have learnt silence and patience from the river and from the trees. And I, what have I learnt? I noticed that Mahjoub was biting his lower lip as was his habit when engaged on some job of work. I used to beat him in wrestling and running, but he would outstrip me in swimming the river to the other bank and in climbing palm trees. No palm tree was too difficult for him. There was between us the sort of affection that exists between blood brothers. Mahjoub swore at the small palm tree when he eventually succeeded in separating it from the trunk of its mother without breaking its roots. He heaped earth on to the large wound that was left in the trunk, lopped the stalks from the small plant and removed the earth, then threw it down to dry out in the sun. I told myself that he would now be more prepared to talk. He came into the shade where I was, sat down and stretched out his legs. He remained silent for a while, then sighed and said, ‘I ask forgiveness of God.’ He stretched out his hand and I gave him a cigarette — he only smoked when I was at the village and would say ‘we’re burning the government’s money.’ He threw away the cigarette before finishing it. ‘You look ill,’ he said. ‘The journey must have tired you out. Your presence wasn’t necessary. When I sent you the telegram I didn’t expect you’d come.’ ‘She killed him and killed herself I said as though talking to myself. ‘She stabbed him more than ten times and — how ghastly!’ ‘Who told you?’ he said, turning to me in astonishment. ‘He bit off her nipple,’ I continued, giving no heed to his questions, ‘and bit and scratched every inch of her body. How ghastly!’ ‘It must have been Bint Majzoub who told you,’ he shouted angrily ‘God curse her, she can’t hold her tongue. These are things that shou1dn’t be spoken about.’ ‘Whether they’re spoken about or not,’ I said to him, ‘they’ve happened. They happened in front of your very eyes and you did nothing. You, you’re a leader in the village and you did nothing.’ ‘What should we do?’ said Mahjoub. ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you marry her? You’re only any good when it comes to talking. It was the woman herself who had the impudence to speak her mind. We’ve lived in an age when we’ve seen women wooing men.’ ‘And what did she say?’ I said to him. ‘It’s over and done with,’ he said. ‘What’s the use of talking? Give thanks to God that you didn’t marry her. The thing she did wasn’t the act of a human being — it was the act of a devil.’ ‘What did she say?’ I said to him, grinding my teeth. ‘When her father went and swore at her,’ he said, looking at me without sympathy ‘she came to my home at sunrise. She said she wanted you to save her from Wad Rayyes and the attention of suitors. All she wanted was to become formally married to you, nothing more. She said, “He’ll leave me with my children and I want nothing whatsoever from him.” I told her we shouldn’t involve you in the matter, and I advised her to accept the situation. Her father had charge of her and was free to act as he thought fit. I told her Wad Rayyes wouldn’t live for ever. A mad man and a mad woman — how can we be to blame? What could we do about it? Her poor father has been confined to bed ever since that illfated day; he never goes out, never meets anyone. What can I or anyone else do if the world’s gone crazy. Bint Mahmoud’s madness was of a kind never seen before.’ I had to make a great effort not to break into tears. ‘Hosna wasn’t mad,’ I said. ‘She was the sanest woman in the village — it’s you who’re mad. She was the sanest woman in the village — and the most beautiful. Hosna wasn’t mad.’ Mahjoub laughed, guffawed with laughter. ‘How extraordinary!’ I heard him say amidst laughter. ‘Take a pull at yourself man! Wake up! Fancy you falling in love at your age! You’ve become as mad as Wad Rayyes. Schooling and education have made you soft. You’re crying like a woman. Good God, wonders never cease — love, illness and tears, and she wasn’t worth a millieme. If it wasn’t for the sake of decency she wouldn’t have been worth burying — we’d have thrown her into the river or left her body out for the hawks.’ I’m not altogether clear as to what happened next. However, I do remember my hands closing over Mahjoub’s throat; I remember the way his eyes bulged; I remember, too, a violent blow in the stomach and Mahjoub crouching on my chest. I remember Mahjoub prostrate on the ground and me kicking him, and I remember his voice screaming out ‘Mad! You’re mad!’ I remember a clamour and a shouting as I pressed down on Mahjoub’s throat and heard a gurgling sound; then I felt a powerful hand pulling me by the neck and the impact of a heavy stick on my head.
The world has turned suddenly upside down. Love? Love does not do this. This is hatred. I feel hatred and seek revenge; my adversary is within and I needs must confront him. Even so, there is still in my mind a modicum of sense that is aware of the irony of the situation. I begin from where Mustafa Sa’eed had left off. Yet he at least made a choice, while I have chosen nothing. For a while the disk of the sun remained motionless just above the western horizon, then hurriedly disappeared. The armies of darkness, ever encamped near by, bounded in and occupied the world in an instant. If only I had told her the truth perhaps she would not have acted as she did. I had lost the war because I did not know and did not choose. For a long time I stood in front of the iron door. Now I am on my own: there is no escape, no place of refuge, no safeguard. Outside, my world was a wide one; now it had contracted, had withdrawn upon itself until I myself had become the world, no world existing outside of me. Where, then, were the roots that struck down into times past? Where the memories of death and life? What had happened to the caravan and to the tribe? Where had gone the trilling cries of the women at tens of weddings, where the Nile floodings, and the blowing of the wind summer and winter from north and south? Love? Love does not do this. This is hatred. Here I am, standing in Mustafa Sa’eed’s house in front of the iron door, the door of the rectangular room with the triangular roof and the green windows, the key in my pocket and my adversary inside with, doubtless, a fiendish look of happiness on his face. I am the guardian, the lover, and the adversary. I turned the key in the door, which opened without difficulty. I was met by dampness and an odour like that of an old memory. I know this smell: the smell of sandalwood and incense. I felt my way with my finger-tips along the walls and came up against a window pane. I threw open the window and the wooden shutters. I opened a second window and a third, but all that came in from outside was more darkness. I struck a match. The light exploded on my eyes and out of the darkness there emerged a frowning face with pursed lips that I knew but could not place. I moved towards it with hate in my heart. It was my adversary Mustafa Sa’eed. The face grew a neck, the neck two shoulders and a chest, then a trunk and two legs, and I found myself standing face to face with myself This is not Mustafa Sa’eed — it’s a picture of me frowning at my face from a mirror. Suddenly the picture disappeared and I sat in the darkness for I know not how long listening intently and hearing nothing. I lit another match and a woman gave a bitter smile. Standing in an oasis of light, I looked around me and saw there was an old lamp on the table my hand was almost touching. I shook it and found there was oil in it. How extraordinary! I lit the lamp and the shadows and the walls moved away and the ceiling rose up. I lit the lamp and closed the windows. The smell must remain imprisoned here: the smell of bricks and wood and burning incense and sandalwood — and books. Good God, the four walls from floor to ceiling were filled, shelf upon shelf with books and more books and yet more books. I lit a cigarette and filled my lungs with the strange smell. What a fool he was! Was this the action of a man who wanted to turn over a new leaf? I shall bring the whole place down upon his head; I shall set it on fire. I set light to the fine rug beneath my feet and for a while watched it devour a Persian king, mounted on a steed, aiming his lance at a fleeing gazelle. I raised the lamp and found that the whole floor of the room was covered with Persian rugs. I saw that the wall opposite the door ended in an empty space. Lamp in hand, I went up to it. How ridiculous! A fireplace — imagine it! A real English fireplace with all the bits and pieces, above it a brass cowl and in front of it a quadrangular area tiled in green marble, with the mantelpiece of blue marble; on either side of the fireplace were two Victorian chairs covered in a figured silk material, while between them stood a round table with books and notebooks on it. I saw the face of the woman who had smiled at me moments before — a large oil portrait in a gilt frame over the mantelpiece; it was signed in the right-hand corner ‘M. Sa’eed’. I observed that the fire in the middle of the room was spreading. I took eighteen strides towards it (I counted them as I walked) and trod it out. Though I sought revenge, yet I could not resist my curiosity. First of all I shall see and hear, then I shall burn it down as though it had never been. The books — I could see in the light of the lamp that they were arranged in categories. Books on economics, history and literature. Zoology. Geology. Mathematics. Astronomy. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Gibbon. Macaulay Toynbee. The complete works of Bernard Shaw Keynes. Tawney Smith. Robinson. The Economics of Imperfect Competition. Hobson Imperialism. Robinson An Essay on Marxian Economics. Sociology. Anthropology. Psychology. Thomas Hardy. Thomas Mann. E. G. Moore. Thomas Moore. Virginia Woolf. Wittgenstein. Einstein. Brierly. Namier. Books I had heard of and others I had not. Volumes of poetry by poets of whom I did not know the existence. The journals of Gordon. Gulliver’s Travels. Kipling. Housman. The History of the French Revolution Thomas Carlyle. Lectures on the French Revolution Lord Acton. Books bound in leather. Books in paper covers. Old tattered books. Books that looked as if they’d just come straight from the printers. Huge volumes the size of tombstones. Small books with gilt edges the size of packs of playing cards. Signatures. Words of dedication. Books in boxes. Books on the chairs. Books on the floor. What play- acting is this? What does he mean? Owen. Ford Madox Ford. Stefan Zweig. E.
English. The Bible in English. Gilbert Murray. Plato. The Economics of Colonialism Mustafa Sa’eed. Colonialism and Monopoly Mustafa Sa’eed. The Cross and Gunpowder Mustafa Sa’eed. The Rape of Africa Mustafa Sa’eed. Prospero and Caliban. Totem and Taboo. Doughty. Not a single Arabic book. A graveyard. A mausoleum. An insane idea. A prison. A huge joke. A treasure chamber. ‘Open, Sesame, and let’s divide up the jewels among the people.’ The ceiling was of oak and in the middle was an archway, supported by two marble columns of a yellowish red colour, dividing the room in two; the archway was covered by a faience with decorated edges. I was standing at the head of a long dining-table; I don’t know what wood it was made of but its surface was dark and glistening and along two sides were five leather-upholstered chairs. On the right was a settee covered in blue velvet, with cushions of — I touched them: of swansdown. On both sides of the fireplace I saw various objects I had not noticed before: on the right was a long table on which was a silver candelabrum holding ten virgin candles; on the left was another. I lit them candle by candle, and the first thing they cast their light upon was the oil painting above the mantelpiece: the elongated face of a woman with wide eyes and brows that joined above them. The nose was a shade too large and the mouth tended to be too wide. I realized that the glass-fronted bookshelves on the wall opposite the door did not reach to the ground and ended at the two sides of the fireplace with white-painted cupboards that projected two or three feet from the bookshelves. It was the same along the left-hand side. I went up to the photographs ranged on the shelf: Mustafa Sa’eed laughing; Mustafa Sa’eed writing; Mustafa Sa’eed swimming; Mustafa Sa’eed somewhere in the country; Mustafa Sa’eed in gown and mortar-board; Mustafa Sa’eed rowing on the Serpentine; Mustafa Sa’eed in a Nativity play a crown on his head, as one of the Three Kings who brought perfumes and myrrh to Christ; Mustafa Sa’eed standing between a man and a woman. Mustafa Sa’eed had not let a moment pass without recording it for posterity. I took up the picture of a woman and scrutinized it, reading the dedication written in a flowery hand. ‘From Sheila with all my love.’ Sheila Greenwood no doubt. A country girl from the outskirts of Hull. He had seduced her with presents, honeyed words, and an unfaltering way of seeing things as they really are. The smell of burning sandalwood and incense made her dizzy. She really did have a pretty face. Smiling in the picture, she was wearing a necklace, no doubt an ivory one; her arms were bare and her bosom well- developed. She used to work as a waitress by day and pursue her studies in the evening at the Polytechnic. She was intelligent and believed that the future lay with the working class, that a day would come when class differences would be non-existent and all people would be brothers. ‘My mother,’ she used to tell him, ‘would go mad and my father would kill me if they knew I was in love with a black man, but I don’t care.’ ‘She used to sing me the songs of Marie Lloyd as we lay naked,’ he said. ‘I would spend Thursday evenings with her in her room in Camden Town and sometimes she would spend the night with me in my flat. She would lick my face with her tongue and say “Your tongue’s as crimson as a tropic sunset.” I never had enough of her nor she of me. Each time she would gaze at me as though discovering something new "How marvelous your black colour is!” she would say to me — “the colour of magic and mystery and obscenities.”’ She committed suicide. Why did Sheila Greenwood commit suicide, Mr Mustafa Sa’eed? I know that you are hiding away somewhere in this Pharaonic tomb which I shall burn over your head. Why did Hosna Bint Mahmoud kill the old man Wad Rayyes and then kill herself in this village in which no one ever kills anyone? I picked up another photograph and read the dedication which was in a bold, forward-slanting hand: ‘To you until death, Isabella.’ Poor Isabella Seymour. I feel a special sympathy for Isabella Seymour. Round of face and inclined to plumpness, she wore a dress which was too short for the fashions of those days. She was not, as he had described her, exactly a bronze statue, but there was manifest good nature in her face and an optimistic outlook on life. She smiles. She too is smiling. He said she was the wife of a successful surgeon, the mother of two daughters and a son. She had had eleven years of happy married life, regularly going to church every Sunday morning and participating in charitable organizations. Then she met him and discovered deep within herself dark areas that had previously been closed. Despite everything she left him a letter in which she said, ‘If there is a God in Heaven I am sure He will look with sympathetic eye upon the rashness of a poor woman who could not prevent happiness from entering her heart, even if it meant a violation of convention and the wounding of a husband’s pride. May God forgive me and may He grant you as much happiness as you have granted me.’ I heard his voice on that night, darkly rising and falling, holding neither sadness nor regret; if the voice contained any emotion, then it was a ring of joy. ‘I heard her saying to me in an imploring voice of surrender "I love you", and there answered her voice a weak cry from the depths of my consciousness calling on me to desist. But the summit was only a step away after which I would recover my breath and rest. At the climax of our pain there passed through my head clouds of old, far-off memories, like a vapour rising up from a salt lake in the midst of the desert. When her husband took the stand as a witness in the court, all eyes were on him. He was a man of noble features and gait; his grey head had dignity while his whole bearing commanded respect. He was a man who, placed against me in the scales, would outweigh me many times over. He was a witness for the defense, not the prosecution. “Fairness demands,” he said to the court, over which reigned utter silence, “that I say that my wife Isabella knew she had cancer. In the final period before her death she used to suffer from severe attacks of depression. Several days before her death she confessed to me her relationship with the accused. She said she had fallen in love with him and that there was nothing she could do about it. All through her life with me she had been the model of a true and faithful wife. In spite of everything I feel no bitterness within myself; neither against her nor against the accused. I merely feel a deep sadness at losing her.” There is no justice or moderation in the world. I feel bitterness and hatred, for after all those victims he crowned his life with yet another one, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the only woman I have ever loved. She killed poor Wad Rayyes and killed herself because of Mustafa Sa’eed. I picked up a photograph in a leather frame. This was clearly Ann Hammond, despite the fact she was wearing an Arab robe and head-dress. The dedication under the picture was in shaky Arabic writing: ‘From your slave girl, Sausan.’ It was a lively face exuding such exuberant good health that the picture could hardly contain it. There was a dimple in each cheek and the lips were full and relaxed; the eyes glowed with curiosity. All this was apparent in the picture despite the years that must have passed since it was taken. ‘Unlike me, she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all these hankerings of hers. I am South that yearns for the North and the ice. She owned a flat in Hampstead overlooking the Heath which she would go to from Oxford at week-ends. We would spend Saturday night at my place and Sunday night at hers — and sometimes she would stay on over Monday sometimes for the whole week. Then she began absenting herself from the University for a month at a time, then two, until she was sent down. She used to bury her face under my armpit and breathe me into herself as though inhaling some narcotic smoke. Her face would be puckered with pleasure. “I love your sweat," she would say as though intoning rites in a temple. "I want to have the smell of you in full — the smell of rotting leaves in the jungles of Africa, the smell of the mango and the pawpaw and tropical spices, the smell of rains in the deserts of Arabia.” She was an easy prey. I had met her following a lecture I gave in Oxford on Abu Nuwas. I told them that Omar Khayyam was nothing in comparison with Abu Nuwas. I read them some of his poetry about wine in a comic oratorical style which I claimed was how Arabic poetry used to be recited in the Abbasid era. In the lecture I said that Abu Nuwas was a Sufi mystic and that he had made of wine a symbol with which to express all his spiritual yearnings, that the longing for wine in his poetry was really a longing for self-obliteration in the Divine — all arrant nonsense with no basis of fact. However, I was inspired that evening and found the lies tripping off my tongue like sublime truths. Feeling that my elation was communicating itself to my audience, I lied more and more extravagantly After the lecture they all crowded round me, retired civil servants who had worked in the East, old women whose husbands had died in Egypt, Iraq and the Sudan, men who had fought with Kitchener and Allenby, orientalists, and officials in the Colonial Office and the Middle East section of the Foreign Office. Suddenly I saw a girl of eighteen or nineteen rushing towards me through the ranks of people. She put her arms around me and kissed me. "You are beautiful beyond description,” she said, speaking in Arabic, “and the love I have for you is beyond description.” With an emotion the violence of which frightened me, I said: “At last I have found you, Sausan. I searched everywhere for you and was afraid I would never find you. Do you remember?” “How can I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the banks of the river Tigris in the days of El-Ma’ moun,” she said with an emotion no less intense than mine. “I too have followed your footsteps across the centuries, but I was certain we would find each other — and here you are, my darling Mustafa, unchanged since we parted.” It was as if she and I were on a stage surrounded by actors who were performing minor roles. I was the hero and she the heroine. The lights went down, darkness reigned all round us, and she and I remained alone in the middle of the stage with a single light trained upon us. Though I realized I was lying, I felt that somehow I meant what I was saying and that she too, despite her lying, was telling the truth. It was one of those rare moments of ecstasy for which I would sell my whole life; a moment in which, before your very eyes, lies are turned into truths, history becomes a pimp, and the jester is turned into a sultan. Still in the exuberance of that dream, she took me to London in her car. She drove with terrifying speed and from time to time would let go of the driving wheel and put her arms round me. “How happy I am to have found you at last!" she shouted. “I’m so happy I wouldn’t care if I died this very instant." We stopped at pubs on the way; sometimes drinking cider, sometimes beer, red wine, white wine, and sometimes we drank whisky, and with every glass I would quote to her from the poetry of Abu Nuwas. I quoted:
“Does it not please you the earth is awaking, That old virgin wine is there for the taking? Let’s have no excuse, come enjoy this delight; Its mother is green, its sire black as night. Make haste, Karkh’s gardens hang heavy with bloom, Safe and unscathed from War’s blighting doom.”
‘I also quoted to her the lines:
“Full many a glass clear as the lamp of Heaven did I drink Over a kiss or in promise of a tryst we’d keep; So matured it was by time that you would think Beams of light out of the sky did seep.”
‘Then I quoted:
“When the man of war his knights for war deploys And Deaths banner calls alike to grey-beards and to boys, When fires of destruction rage and battle starts, We, using our hands as bows with lilies as our darts, Turn war to revelry and still the best of friends we stay. When on their drums they beat, we on our lutes do play To young men who death in pleasure count a sacrifice divine, While fair cup-bearer, subject of our strife, restores to us the plundered wine, So insistent he, scarce a glass goes empty than it’s filled again. Here a man reels drunkenly, there another by excess is slain. This is true war, not a war that between man and man brings strife; In it with wine we kill and our dead with wine we bring to life.”
And so it was with us: she, moved by poetry and drink, feeding me with sweet lies, while I wove for her intricate and terrifying threads of fantasy. She would tell me that in my eyes she saw the shimmer of mirages in hot deserts, that in my voice she heard the screams of ferocious beasts in the jungles. And I would tell her that in the blueness of her eyes I saw the faraway shoreless seas of the North. In London I took her to my house, the den of lethal lies that I had deliberately built up, lie upon lie: the sandalwood and incense; the ostrich feathers and ivory and ebony figurines; the paintings and drawings of forests of palm trees along the shores of the Nile, boats with sails like doves’ wings, suns setting over the mountains of the Red Sea, camel caravans wending their way along sand dunes on the borders of the Yemen, baobab trees in Kordofan, naked girls from the tribes of the Zandi, the Nuer and the Shuluk, fields of banana and coffee on the Equator, old temples in the district of Nubia; Arabic books with decorated covers written in ornate Kufic script; Persian carpets, pink curtains, large mirrors on the walls, and coloured lights in the corners. She knelt and kissed my feet. “You are Mustafa, my master and my lord,” she said, "and I am Sausan, your slave girl.” And so, in silence, each one of us chose his role, she to act the part of the slave girl and I that of the master. She prepared the bath, then washed me with water in which she had poured essence of roses. She lit the joss-sticks and the sandalwood in the Maghrabi brass brazier hanging in the entrance. She put on an aba and head-dress, while I stretched out on the bed and she massaged my chest, legs, neck and shoulders. “Come here,” I said to her imperiously “To hear is to obey O master!” she answered me in a subdued voice. While still in the throes of fantasy, intoxication and madness, I took her and she accepted, for what happened had already happened between us a thousand years ago. They found her dead in her flat in Hampstead, having gassed herself: they also found a note saying: “Mr Sa’eed, God damn you!” I put back Ann Hammond’s picture in its place to the left of the photograph of Mustafa Sa’eed standing between Mrs Robinson and her husband, on which the dedication at the bottom read, ‘To dear Moozie — Cairo 17/4/ 1913’. It seems that she used to use ‘Moozie’ as a pet name, for in her letter she also refers to him by it. Mustafa Sa’eed, though frowning, looks a mere child in the picture. Mrs Robinson stands to his left, her arm round his shoulders, while her husband’s arm embraces the two of them, and both he and his wife are smiling naturally and happily; their faces are those of young people who have not yet reached their thirties. Despite everything, Mrs Robinson’s love for him did not waver. She attended the trial from beginning to end and heard every word, yet in her letter to me she said:
‘I cannot express the extent of my gratitude to you for having written to me about dear Moozie. Moozie was, for my husband and me, the dearest of people. Poor Moozie. He was a tortured child, yet he brought boundless happiness to the hearts of my husband and me. After that painful business and his leaving London, I lost touch with him, and though I made every effort to re-establish contact I failed, Poor Moozie. What slightly lightens the pain of losing him is the knowledge that he spent the last years of his life happily amongst you and that he married a good wife and had two sons. Please give my love to Mrs Sa’eed. Let her think of me as a mother and if there’s anything I can do for her and her two dear children, tell her not to hesitate to write to me. How happy I’d be if they all came and spent the next summer holidays with me. I am living here alone in the Isle of Wight. Last January I traveled to Cairo and visited my husband’s grave. Ricky had a great love for Cairo and fate decreed that he should be buried in the city he loved more than any other in the world. ‘I am keeping myself busy writing a book about our life — about Ricky, Moozie and me. They were both great men, each in his own way. Ricky's greatness lay in his ability to bring happiness to others. He was somebody who was happy in the real sense of the word; he exuded happiness to everyone he came into contact with. Moozie had the mind of a genius, but he was unstable; he was incapable of either accepting or giving happiness other than to those he really loved and was loved by like Ricky and me. I feel that love and duty require me to tell people the story of those two great men. The book will actually be about Ricky and Moozie because I did nothing of note. I shall write of the splendid services Ricky rendered to Arabic culture, such as his discovery of so many rare manuscripts, the commentaries he wrote on them, and the way he supervised the printing of them. I shall write about the great part played by Moozie in drawing attention here to the misery in which his countrymen live under our colonial mandate, and I shall write in detail about the trial and shall clear his name of all suspicion. I shall be grateful if you’d send me anything left behind by Moozie which would be of assistance to me in writing this book. Perhaps Moozie told you he’d made me trustee of his affairs in London. A certain amount of money has accumulated from royalties from some of his books and from translation rights on others, which I shall forward on directly you let me have the address of the bank to which you want me to transfer it. In this connection let me thank you very much for accepting to look after dear Moozie’s family. Please write to me regularly and tell me their news, also send me a photo of them in your next letter. Yours sincerely, Elizabeth.’
I placed the letter in my pocket and seated myself in the chair to the right of the fireplace. My glance fell on an issue of The Umar dated Monday 26 September 1927. Births, Marriages, Deaths. The marriage was conducted by the Rev Canon Sampson M.A. Funeral service at Stuntney Church, 2 o’clock Wednesday. The Personal Column: Ever beloved. Will it be much longer? ‘Dear Heart.’ Kenya Colony – Mr … Chartered Surveyor returns to Nairobi October 5th. Until then communications regarding reports on properties in the Colony should be addressed to him care of. Advertisement for riding lessons. Blue Persian cats for sale. Girl (17), refined, of gentle birth, seeks opening. Lady by birth (30) desires post abroad. Sports news: West Hill beat Burhill. West Ham Win. The Victory of Gene Tunney. A letter from Zafrullah Khan in which he refutes the views of Sir Chimanlal Setalvad about the dispute between the Moslems and the Hindus in the Punjab. A letter saying that jazz is a cheerful music in a sunless world. Two elephants from Rangoon arrived at the Zoo yesterday having walked from Tilbury Docks. Cattle breeder was attacked by a bull on his farm and gored to death. A man who stole four bananas was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. Imperial and Foreign News. The New offer from Moscow to settle the Russian debt to France. Floods in Switzerland. The Discovery, Captain Scott’s ship, has returned from the Southern Seas. Herr Stresemann gave a speech on disarmament in Geneva on Saturday. Herr Stresemann also made a statement to the ‘Matin’ paper in which he supported President Von Hindenburg’s speech at Tannenberg in which he denied that Germany was responsible for the outbreak of the war. The leading article was about the Treaty of Jeddah which was signed by Sir Gilbert Clayton on behalf of Great Britain and Prince Feisal Abdul-Aziz Al Saud on behalf of his father, the King of the Hejaz and of Nejd and its dependencies. Weather Forecast for England and Wales: Winds mainly between W and N .W, strong at times in exposed places; considerable fair intervals, but a few thundery showers and perhaps occasional local rains. It appeared to be the only newspaper. Was there any significance in its presence here or was it here by mere chance? Opening a notebook, I read on the first page: ‘My Life Story — by Mustafa Sa’eed.’ On the next page was the dedication: ‘To those who see with one eye, speak with one tongue and see things as either black or white, either Eastern or Western.’ I flicked through the rest of the pages but found nothing — not a single sentence, not a single word. Did this too have some significance or was it mere chance? I opened a file and found numerous papers, sketches and drawings. He was, it seems, trying his hand at writing and drawing. The drawings were good and revealed real talent. Coloured drawings of English country scenes in which oak trees, rivers and swans were repeated; pencil sketches of scenes and people from our village. Despite everything I cannot but admit his great skill. Bakri, Mahjoub, my grandfather, Wad Rayyes, Hosna, my uncle Abdul Karim, and others: their faces looked out at me with the penetrating expressions I had long been aware of but which I had been incapable of defining. Mustafa Sa’eed had drawn them with a clarity of vision and sympathy that approached love. Wad Rayyes’s face was more in evidence than the others — eight drawings of him in different poses. Why was he so interested in Wad Rayyes? I looked at some scraps of paper and read, ‘We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom — we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish.’ ‘I left London with Europe having begun to mobilize her armies once again for even more ferocious violence.’ ‘It was not hatred. It was a love unable to express itself. I loved her in a twisted manner. She too.’ ‘The roofs of the houses are all wettened by the drizzle. The cows and sheep in the fields are like white and black pebbles. The light rain of June. Allow me, Madam. These train journeys are boring. How do you do? From Birmingham. To London. How do you describe the scenery? Trees and grass. Haystacks in the middle of the fields. The trees and the grass are the same everywhere. A book by Ngaio Marsh. She hesitated. She didn’t say yes or no.’ Was he describing real events or plotting out a story? ‘My lord, I must object to the prosecution’s resorting to a clear dialectical trick in that he wants to establish the accused’s responsibility for events for which he was not responsible, basing his argument upon something that did in fact happen; he then confirms his assumption of what happened on the basis of his previous assumptions. The accused admits he killed his wife, but this does not make him responsible for all the incidents of suicide by women in the British Isles during the past ten years.’ ‘He who breeds good, for him are hatched young birds that fly with happiness. He who breeds evil, for him there grows a tree whose thorns are sorrow and whose fruit is regret. May God have mercy on someone who has turned a blind eye to error and has indulged in the outward aspect of things.’ I found as well a poem in his handwriting. It seems he was also dabbling in poetry; and it was clear from all the crossings—out and changes that he too was somewhat awed when face to face with art. Here it is:
The sighs of the unhappy in the breast do groan The vicissitudes of Time by silent tears are shown And love and buried hate the winds away have blown. Deep silence has embraced the vestiges of prayer Of moans and supplications and cries of woeful care, And dust and smoke the travelers path ensnare.
Some, souls content, others in dismay. Brows submissive, others …
Mustafa Sa’eed had no doubt spent long hours searching for the right word to tit the metre. The problem intrigued me and I gave it several minutes’ thought. I did not, though, waste too much time on it, for in any case it is a very poor poem that relies on antithesis and comparisons; it has no true feeling, no genuine emotion. This line of mine is no worse than the rest, so I crossed out the last line of the poem and wrote in its place:
Heads humbly bent and faces turned away.
I went on rummaging among the papers and found some scraps on which had been written such phrases as ‘Three barrels of oil’, ‘The Committee will discuss the question of strengthening the base for the pump', and ‘The surplus cement can be sold immediately? Then I found this passage: ‘It was inevitable that my star of destiny should come into collision with hers and that I should spend years in prison and yet more years roaming the face of the earth chasing her phantom and being chased by it. The sensation that, in an instant outside the bounds of time, I have bedded the goddess of Death and gazed out upon Hell from the aperture of her eyes — it’s a feeling no man can imagine. The taste of that night stays on in my mouth, preventing me from savouring anything else.’ I became bored with reading the bits of paper. No doubt there were many more bits buried away in this room, like pieces in an arithmetical puzzle, which Mustafa Sa’eed wanted me to discover and to place side by side and so come out with a composite picture which would reflect favourably upon him. He wants to be discovered, like some historical object of value. There was no doubt of that, and I now know that it was me he had chosen for that role. It was no coincidence that he had excited my curiosity and had then told me his life story incompletely so that I myself might unearth the rest of it. It was no coincidence that he had left me a letter sealed with red wax to further sharpen my curiosity, and that he had made me guardian of his two sons so as to commit me irrevocably, and that he had left me the key to this wax museum. There was no limit to his egoism and his conceit; despite everything, he wanted history to immortalize him. But I do not have the time to proceed further with this farce. I must end it before the break of dawn and the time now was after two in the morning. At the break of dawn tongues of fire will devour these lies. Jumping to my feet, I raised the candlelight to the oil painting on the mantelpiece. Everything in the room was neatly in its place — except for Jean Morris’s picture. It was as if he had not known what to do with it. Though he had kept photographs of all the other women, Jean Morris was there as he saw her, not as seen by the camera. I looked admiringly at the picture. It was the long face of a woman with wide eyes and brows that joined up above them; the nose was on the large size, the mouth slightly too wide. The expression on the face is difficult to put into words: a disturbing, puzzling expression. The thin lips were tightly closed as though she were grinding her teeth, while her jaw was thrust forward haughtily. Was the expression in the eyes anger or a smile? There was something sensual that hovered round the whole face. Was this, then, the phoenix that had ravished the ghoul? That night his voice had been wounded, sad, tinged with regret. Was it because he had lost her? Or was it because she had made him swallow such degradations? ‘I used to find her at every party I went to, as though she made a point of being where I was in order to humiliate me. When I wanted to dance with her, she would say “I wouldn’t dance with you if you were the only man in the world.” When I slapped her cheek, she kicked me and bit into my arm with teeth like those of a lioness. She did no work and I don’t know how she managed to live. Her family were from Leeds; I never met them, not even after I married her, and I know nothing about them except for the odd bits she used to tell me. Her father was a merchant, though I don’t know of what. According to her she was the only girl among five brothers. She used to lie about the most ordinary things and would return home with amazing and incredible stories about incidents that had happened to her and people she’d met. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have a family at all and was like some mendicant Scheherazade. However, she was exceedingly intelligent, and exceedingly charming when she wanted to be, and wherever she went she was surrounded by a band of admirers buzzing round her like flies. Deep within me I felt that, despite her show of disliking me, I interested her; when she and I were brought together at some gathering, she would watch me out of the corner of her eye, taking note of everything I did and said, and if she saw me showing any interest in another woman she was quick to be unpleasant to her. Brazen in word and deed, she abstained from nothing — stealing, lying and cheating; yet, against my will, I fell in love with her and I was no longer able to control the course of events. When I avoided her she would entice me to her, and when I ran after her she fled from me. Once, taking hold of myself, I kept away from her for two weeks. I began to avoid the places she frequented and if I was invited to a party I made sure before going that she wouldn’t be there. Nevertheless, she found her way to my house and surprised me late one Saturday night when Ann Hammond was with me. She heaped filthy curses upon Ann Hammond, and when I tried to drive her away with blows she was not deterred. Ann Hammond left in tears, while she stayed on, standing in front of me like some demon, a challenging defiance in her eyes that stirred remote longings in my heart. Without our exchanging a word, she stripped off her clothes and stood naked before me. All the fires of hell blazed within my breast. Those fires had to be extinguished in that mountain of ice that stood in my path. As I advanced towards her, my limbs trembling, she pointed to an expensive Wedgwood vase on the mantelpiece. "Give this to me and you can have me," she said. If she had asked at that moment for my life as a price I would have paid it. I nodded my head in agreement. Taking up the vase, she smashed it on the ground and began trampling the pieces underfoot. She pointed to a rare Arabic manuscript on the table. “Give me this too,” she said. My throat grew dry with a thirst that almost killed me. I must quench it with a drink of icy water. I nodded my head in agreement. Taking up the old, rare manuscript she tore it to bits, filling her mouth with pieces of paper which she chewed and spat out. It was as though she had chewed at my very liver. And yet I didn’t care. She pointed to a silken Isphahan prayer-rug which I had been given by Mrs Robinson when I left Cairo. It was the most valuable thing I owned, the thing I treasured most. “Give me this too and then you can have me," she said. Hesitating for a moment, I glanced at her as she stood before me, erect and lithe, her eyes agleam with a dangerous brightness, her lips like a forbidden fruit that must be eaten. I nodded my head in agreement. Taking up the prayer-rug, she threw it on to the fire and stood watching gloatingly as it was consumed, the flames reflected on her face. This woman is my quarry and I shall follow her to Hell. I walked up to her and, placing my arm round her waist, leaned over to kiss her. Suddenly I felt a violent jab from her knee between my thighs. When I regained consciousness I found she had disappeared. ‘I continued in pursuit of her for three years. My caravans were thirsty and the mirage shimmered before me in the wilderness of longing. “You’re a savage bull that does not weary of the chase,” she said to me one day. “I am tired of your pursuing me and of my running before you. Marry me.” I married her at the Registry Office in Fulham, no one else attending except for a girlfriend of hers and a friend of mine. As she repeated after the Registrar “I Jean Winifred Morris accept this man Mustafa Sa’eed Othman as my lawfully wedded husband, for better and for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health ..." she suddenly burst into violent sobbing. I was amazed at her expressing such emotion and the Registrar stopped the ceremony and said to her kindly “Come, come. I can understand how you feel. Just a few more moments and it’ll all be over.” After which she continued to whimper, and when it was over she once again broke out sobbing. The Registrar went up and patted her on the shoulder, then shook me by the hand, saying, "Your wife is crying because she’s so happy. I have seen many women cry at their marriage, but I’ve never seen such violent weeping. It seems she loves you very much. Look after her. I’m sure you’ll both be happy.’ She went on crying till we had left the Registry Office, when suddenly her tears turned to laughter. "What a farce!" she said, guffawing with laughter. ‘We spent the remainder of the day drinking. No party, no guests — just she and I and drink. When night brought us together in bed, I wanted to possess her. “Not now” she said, turning her back on me. “I’m tired.” For two months she wouldn’t let me near her; every night she would say “I’m tired" or “I’m unwell.” No longer capable of taking any more, one night I stood over her with a knife in my hand. “I’l1 kill you,” I told her. She glanced at the knife with what seemed to me like longing. "Here’s my breast bared to you,” she said. “Plunge the knife in.” I looked at her naked body which, though within my grasp, I did not possess. Sitting on the side of the bed, I bowed my head meekly. She placed her hand on my cheek and said in a tone that was not devoid of gentleness: “My sweet, you’re not the kind of man that kills.” I experienced a feeling of ignominy loneliness, and loss. Suddenly I remembered my mother. I saw her face clearly in my mind’s eye and heard her saying to me “It’s your life and you’re free to do with it as you will.” I remembered that the news of my mother’s death had reached me nine months ago and had found me drunk and in the arms of a woman. I don’t recollect now which woman it was; I do, though, recollect that I felt no sadness — it was as though the matter was of absolutely no concern to me. I remembered this and wept from deep within my heart. I wept so much I thought I would never stop. I felt Jean embracing me and saying things I couldn’t make out, though her voice was repellent to me and sent a shudder through my body I pushed her violently from me. “I hate you," I shouted at her. “I swear I’ll kill you one day.” In the throes of my sorrow the expression in her eyes did not escape me. They shone brightly and gave me a strange look. Was it surprise? Was it fear? Was it desire? Then, in a voice of simulated tenderness, she said: “I too, my sweet, hate you. I shall hate you until death.” ‘But there was nothing I could do. Having been a hunter, I had become the quarry. I was in torment; and, in a way I could not understand, I derived pleasure from my suffering. Exactly eleven days after that incident — I remember it because I had swallowed its agonies as the man fasting swallows the agonies of the month of Ramadan when it falls in the scorching heat of summer — we were in Richmond Park just before sunset. The park was not wholly empty of people; we heard voices and saw figures moving in the evening glow. We talked only a little and exchanged no expressions of love or flirtation. Without reason she put her arms round my neck and gave me a long kiss. I felt her breast pressing against me. Putting my arms round her waist I pulled her to me and she moaned in a way that tore at my heart—strings and made me oblivious of everything. I no longer remembered anything; I no longer saw or was conscious of anything but this catastrophe, in the shape of a woman, that fate had decreed for me. She was my destiny and in her lay my destruction, yet for me the whole world was not worth a mustard seed in comparison. I was the invader who had come from the South, and this was the icy battlefield from which I would not make a safe return. I was the pirate sailor and Jean Morris the shore of destruction. And yet I did not care. I took her, there in the open air, unconcerned whether we could be seen or heard by people. For me this moment of ecstasy is worth the whole of life. ‘The moments of ecstasy were in fact rare; the rest of the time we spent in a murderous war in which no quarter was given. The war invariably ended in my defeat. When I slapped her, she would slap me back and dig her nails into my face; a volcano of violence would explode within her and she would break any crockery that came to hand and tear up books and papers. This was the most dangerous weapon she had and every battle would end with her ripping up an important book or burning some piece of research on which I had worked for weeks on end. Sometimes I would be so overcome with rage that I would reach the brink of madness and murder and would tighten my grip on her throat, when she would suddenly grow quiet and give me that enigmatic look, a mixture of astonishment, fear, and desire. Had I exerted just that little bit more pressure I would have put an end to the war: Sometimes the war would take us out. Once in a pub she suddenly shouted, “That son of a bitch is making passes at me." I sprang at the man and we seized each other by the throat. People collected round us and suddenly behind me I heard her guffawing with laughter. One of the men who had come to separate us said to me, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, if this woman’s your wife, you’ve married a whore.” He didn’t say a word to her. “It seems this woman enjoys making violent scenes." My anger transferred itself to her and while she was still guffawing with laughter I went up to her. I slapped her and in her usual way she plunged her nails into my face. Only after a lot of trouble was I able to drag her off home. ‘She used to like flirting with every Tom, Dick and Harry whenever we went out together. She would flirt with waiters in restaurants, bus conductors and passers-by. Some would take courage and respond while others would answer with obscene remarks, and so I’d get myself into fights with people, and exchange blows with her in the middle of the street. How often have I asked myself what it was that bound me to her! Why didn’t I leave her and escape? But I knew there was nothing I could do about it and that the tragedy had to happen. I knew she was being unfaithful to me; the whole house was impregnated with the smell of infidelity. Once I found a man’s handkerchief which wasn’t mine. “It’s yours,” she said when I asked her. “This handkerchief isn’t mine,” I told her. “Assuming it’s not your handkerchief” she said, “what are you going to do about it?” On another occasion I found a cigarette case, then a pen. “You’re being unfaithful to me," I said to her. “Suppose I am being unfaithful to you,” she said. “I swear I’ll kill you," I shouted at her. “You only say that,” she said with a jeering smile. “What’s stopping you from killing me? What are you waiting for? Perhaps you’re waiting till you find a man lying on top of me, and even then I don’t think you’d do anything. You’d sit on the edge of the bed and cry.” ‘It was a dark evening in February, the temperature ten degrees below zero. Evening was like morning, morning like night — dark and gloomy. The sun had not shone for twenty-two days. The whole city was a field of ice — ice in the streets and in the front gardens of the houses. The water froze in the pipes and people’s breath came out from their mouths like steam. The trees were bare, their branches collapsing under the weight of snow And all the while my blood was boiling and my head in a fever. On a night such as this momentous deeds occur. This was the night of reckoning. I walked from the station to the house carrying my overcoat over my arm, for my body was burning hot and the sweat poured from my forehead. Though ice crackled under my shoes, yet I sought the cold. Where was the cold? I found her stretched out naked on the bed, her white thighs open. Though her lips were formed into a full smile, there was something like sadness on her face; it was as though she was in a state of great readiness both to give and to take. On first seeing her my heart was filled with tenderness and I felt that Satanic warmth under the diaphragm which tells me that I am in control of the situation. Where had this warmth been all these years? "Was anyone with you?" I said to her in a confident voice I thought I had lost for ever. “There was no one with me,” she answered me in a voice affected by the impact of mine. “This night is for you alone. I’ve been waiting for you a long time.” I felt that for the first time she was telling me the truth. This night was to be the night of truth and of tragedy. I removed the knife from its sheath and sat on the edge of the bed for a time looking at her. I saw the impact of my glances live and palpable on her face. We looked into each other’s eyes, and as our glances met and joined it was though we were two celestial bodies that had merged in an ill- omened moment of time. My glances overwhelmed her and she turned her face from me, but the effect was apparent in the area below her waist which she shifted from right to left, raising herself slightly off the bed; then she settled down, her arms thrown out languorously, and resumed looking at me. I looked at her breast and she too looked at where my glance had fallen, as though she had been robbed of her own volition and was moving in accordance with my will. I looked at her stomach and as she followed my gaze a faint expression of pain came over her face. As my gaze lingered, so did hers; when I hurried she hurried with me. I looked long at her white, wide-open thighs, as though massaging them with my eyes, and my gaze slipped from the soft, smooth surface till it came to rest there, in the repository of secrets, where good and evil are born. I saw a blush spread up her face and her eyelids droop as though she had been unable to control them. Slowly I raised the dagger and she followed the blade with her eyes; the pupils widened suddenly and her face shone with a fleeting light like a flash of lightning. She continued to look at the blade-edge with a mixture of astonishment, fear, and lust. Then she took hold of the dagger and kissed it fervently. Suddenly she closed her eyes and stretched out in the bed, raising her middle slightly; opening her thighs wider. “Please, my sweet,” she said, moaning: “Come — I’m ready now" When I did not answer her appeal she gave a more agonizing moan. She waited. She wept. Her voice was so faint it could hardly be heard. “Please darling.” ‘Here are my ships, my darling, sailing towards the shores of destruction. I leant over and kissed her. I put the blade-edge between her breasts and she twined her legs round my back: Slowly I pressed down. Slowly. She opened her eyes. What ecstasy there was in those eyes! She seemed more beautiful than anything in the whole world. “Darling," she said painfully. “I thought you would never do this. I almost gave up hope of you.” I pressed down the dagger with my chest until it had all disappeared between her breasts. I could feel the hot blood gushing from her chest. I began crushing my chest against her as she called out imploringly: “Come with me. Come with me. Don’t let me go alone.” “I love you,” she said to me, and I believed her. “I love you,” I said to her, and I spoke the truth. We were a torch of flame, the edges of the bed tongues of Hell-fire. The smell of smoke was in my nostrils as she said to me “I love you, my darling,” and as I said to her “I love you, my darling,” and the universe, with its past, present and fixture, was gathered together into a single point before and after which nothing existed.’
Ientered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness. The river was not in full spate as during the days of the flooding nor yet was it at its lowest level. I had put out the candles and locked the door of the room and that of the courtyard without doing anything. Another fire would not have done any good. I left him talking and went out. I did not let him complete the story. I thought of going and standing by her grave. I thought of throwing away the key where nobody could find it. Then I decided against it. Meaningless acts. Yet I had to do something. My feet led me to the river bank as the first glimmerings of dawn made their appearance in the east. I would dispel my rage by swimming. The objects on the two shores were half visible, appearing and disappearing, veering between light and darkness. The river was reverberating with its old familiar voice, moving yet having the appearance of being still. There was no sound except for the reverberation of the river and the puttering of the water-pump not far away. I began swimming towards the northern shore. I went on swimming and swimming till the movements of my body settled down into restful harmony with the forces of the river. I was no longer thinking as I moved forward through the water. The impact of my arms as they struck the water, the movement of my legs, the sound of my heavy breathing, the reverberation of the river and the noise of the pump puttering on the shore — these were the only noises. I continued swimming and swimming, resolved to make the northern shore. That was the goal. In front of me the shore rose and fell, the noises being totally cut off and then blaring forth. Little by little I came to hear nothing but the reverberation of the river.
Then it was as if I were in a vast echoing hall. The shore rose and fell. The reverberation of the river faded and overflowed. In front of me I saw things in a semicircle. Then I veered between seeing and blindness. I was conscious and not conscious. Was I asleep or awake? Was I alive or dead? Even so, I was still holding a thin, frail thread: the feeling that the goal was in front of me, not below me, and that I must move forwards and not downwards. But the thread was so frail it almost snapped and I reached a point where I felt that the forces lying in the river-bed were pulling me down to them. A numbness ran through my legs and arms. The hall expanded and the answering echoes quickened. Now — and suddenly; with a force that came to me from I know not where — I raised my body in the water. I heard the reverberation of the river and the puttering of the water pump. Turning to left and right, I found I was half-way between north and south. I was unable to continue, unable to return. I turned over on to my back and stayed there motionless, with difficulty moving my arms and legs as much as was needed to keep me afloat. I was conscious of the river’s destructive forces pulling me downwards and of the current pushing me to the southern shore in a curving angle. I would not be able to keep thus poised for long; sooner or later the river’s forces would pull me down into its depths. In a state between life and death I saw formations of sand grouse heading northwards. Were we in winter or summer? Was it a casual flight or a migration? I felt myself submitting to the destructive forces of the river, felt my legs dragging the rest of my body downwards. In an instant — I know not how long or short it was — the reverberation of the river turned into a piercingly loud roar and at the very same instant there was a vivid brightness like a flash of lightning. Then, for an indeterminate period, quiet and darkness reigned, after which I became aware of the sky moving away and drawing close, the shore rising and falling. Suddenly I experienced a violent desire for a cigarette. It wasn’t merely a desire; it was a hunger, a thirst. And this was the instant of waking from the nightmare. The sky settled into place, as did the bank, and I heard the puttering of the pump and was aware of the coldness of the water on my body. Then my mind cleared and my relationship to the river was determined. Though floating on the water, I was not part of it. I thought that if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born — without any volition of mine. All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall try to forget. I shall live by force and cunning. I moved my feet and arms, violently and with difficulty until the upper part of my body was above water. Like a comic actor shouting on a stage, I screamed with all my remaining strength, ‘Help! Help!’
*According to pages of 24 and ll4 in Wail S. I-Iassan’s Tayeb Salib: Ideology and tbe Craft of Fiction (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), in Arabic, ‘infidel’ is never used to refer to Christians and jews, who are regarded as ‘People of the Book’ who worship the same God of the Muslims; rather it refers to those who worship other gods. The translation may have overlooked this distinction made in the Qur’an and reinforces the Orientalist misconception that Islam is inherently hostile to Christians, when in fact a European Christian would not, in any case, be referred to as an inHdel. Therefore, ‘Christian’ would be a more fitting term than ‘infidel’ in this context. * i.e. 1306 of the Hegira, or Moslem Calendar, which starts in 622 CE 1/14/2023 0 Comments Paulo coelho the alchemist
The Alchemist is a classic novel in which a boy named Santiago embarks on a journey seeking treasure in the Egyptian pyramids after having a recurring dream about it and on the way meets mentors, falls in love, and most importantly, learns the true importance of who he is and how to improve himself
COVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
TEN YEARS ON
I REMEMBER RECEIVING A LETTER FROM THE AMERICAN publisher Harper Collins that said that: “reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.” I went outside, looked up at the sky, and thought to myself: “So, the book is going to be published in English!” At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path despite all the voices telling me it was impossible. And little by little, my dream was becoming reality. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million copies sold in America. One day, a Brazilian journalist phoned to say that President Clinton had been photographed reading the book. Some time later, when I was in Turkey, I opened the magazine Vanity Fair and there was Julia Roberts declaring that she adored the book. Walking alone down a street in Miami, I heard a girl telling her mother: “You must read The Alchemist!” The book has been translated into fifty-six languages, has sold more than twenty million copies, and people are beginning to ask: What’s the secret behind such a huge success? The only honest response is: I don’t know. All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream. Why? There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there. If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey. Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream, suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how. I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because, once we have overcome the defeats—and we always do—we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives. Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives. Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal—when it was only a step away. This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here. Paulo Coelho Rio de Janeiro November 2002 Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
PROLOGUE
Translated by Clifford E. Landers
THE ALCHEMIST PICKED UP A BOOK THAT SOMEONE IN THE caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. “Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked. “I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied. “Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.” “But…was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked. “Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!” The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.” “What a lovely story,” the alchemist thought.
PART ONE
THE BOY’S NAME WAS SANTIAGO. DUSK WAS FALLING AS the boy arrived with his herd at an abandoned church. The roof had fallen in long ago, and an enormous sycamore had grown on the spot where the sacristy had once stood. He decided to spend the night there. He saw to it that all the sheep entered through the ruined gate, and then laid some planks across it to prevent the flock from wandering away during the night. There were no wolves in the region, but once an animal had strayed during the night, and the boy had had to spend the entire next day searching for it. He swept the floor with his jacket and lay down, using the book he had just finished reading as a pillow. He told himself that he would have to start reading thicker books: they lasted longer, and made more comfortable pillows. It was still dark when he awoke, and, looking up, he could see the stars through the half-destroyed roof. I wanted to sleep a little longer, he thought. He had had the same dream that night as a week ago, and once again he had awakened before it ended. He arose and, taking up his crook, began to awaken the sheep that still slept. He had noticed that, as soon as he awoke, most of his animals also began to stir. It was as if some mysterious energy bound his life to that of the sheep, with whom he had spent the past two years, leading them through the countryside in search of food and water. “They are so used to me that they know my schedule,” he muttered. Thinking about that for a moment, he realized that it could be the other way around: that it was he who had become accustomed to their schedule. But there were certain of them who took a bit longer to awaken. The boy prodded them, one by one, with his crook, calling each by name. He had always believed that the sheep were able to understand what he said. So there were times when he read them parts of his books that had made an impression on him, or when he would tell them of the loneliness or the happiness of a shepherd in the fields. Sometimes he would comment to them on the things he had seen in the villages they passed. But for the past few days he had spoken to them about only one thing: the girl, the daughter of a merchant who lived in the village they would reach in about four days. He had been to the village only once, the year before. The merchant was the proprietor of a dry goods shop, and he always demanded that the sheep be sheared in his presence, so that he would not be cheated. A friend had told the boy about the shop, and he had taken his sheep there.
“I NEED TO SELL SOME WOOL,” THE BOY TOLD THE merchant. The shop was busy, and the man asked the shepherd to wait until the afternoon. So the boy sat on the steps of the shop and took a book from his bag. “I didn’t know shepherds knew how to read,” said a girl’s voice behind him. The girl was typical of the region of Andalusia, with flowing black hair, and eyes that vaguely recalled the Moorish conquerors. “Well, usually I learn more from my sheep than from books,” he answered. During the two hours that they talked, she told him she was the merchant’s daughter, and spoke of life in the village, where each day was like all the others. The shepherd told her of the Andalusian countryside, and related the news from the other towns where he had stopped. It was a pleasant change from talking to his sheep. “How did you learn to read?” the girl asked at one point. “Like everybody learns,” he said. “In school.” “Well, if you know how to read, why are you just a shepherd?” The boy mumbled an answer that allowed him to avoid responding to her question. He was sure the girl would never understand. He went on telling stories about his travels, and her bright, Moorish eyes went wide with fear and surprise. As the time passed, the boy found himself wishing that the day would never end, that her father would stay busy and keep him waiting for three days. He recognized that he was feeling something he had never experienced before: the desire to live in one place forever. With the girl with the raven hair, his days would never be the same again. But finally the merchant appeared, and asked the boy to shear four sheep. He paid for the wool and asked the shepherd to come back the following year.
AND NOW IT WAS ONLY FOUR DAYS BEFORE HE WOULD BE back in that same village. He was excited, and at the same time uneasy: maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of shepherds passed through, selling their wool. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to his sheep. “I know other girls in other places.” But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. The day was dawning, and the shepherd urged his sheep in the direction of the sun. They never have to make any decisions, he thought. Maybe that’s why they always stay close to me. The only things that concerned the sheep were food and water. As long as the boy knew how to find the best pastures in Andalusia, they would be his friends. Yes, their days were all the same, with the seemingly endless hours between sunrise and dusk; and they had never read a book in their young lives, and didn’t understand when the boy told them about the sights of the cities. They were content with just food and water, and, in exchange, they generously gave of their wool, their company, and—once in a while—their meat. If I became a monster today, and decided to kill them, one by one, they would become aware only after most of the flock had been slaughtered, thought the boy. They trust me, and they’ve forgotten how to rely on their own instincts, because I lead them to nourishment. The boy was surprised at his thoughts. Maybe the church, with the sycamore growing from within, had been haunted. It had caused him to have the same dream for a second time, and it was causing him to feel anger toward his faithful companions. He drank a bit from the wine that remained from his dinner of the night before, and he gathered his jacket closer to his body. He knew that a few hours from now, with the sun at its zenith, the heat would be so great that he would not be able to lead his flock across the fields. It was the time of day when all of Spain slept during the summer. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time he had to carry his jacket. But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn. We have to be prepared for change, he thought, and he was grateful for the jacket’s weight and warmth. The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy. His purpose in life was to travel, and, after two years of walking the Andalusian terrain, he knew all the cities of the region. He was planning, on this visit, to explain to the girl how it was that a simple shepherd knew how to read. That he had attended a seminary until he was sixteen. His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and thereby a source of pride for a simple farm family. They worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep. He had studied Latin, Spanish, and theology. But ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man’s sins. One afternoon, on a visit to his family, he had summoned up the courage to tell his father that he didn’t want to become a priest. That he wanted to travel.
“PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD HAVE PASSED through this village, son,” said his father. “They come in search of new things, but when they leave they are basically the same people they were when they arrived. They climb the mountain to see the castle, and they wind up thinking that the past was better than what we have now. They have blond hair, or dark skin, but basically they’re the same as the people who live right here.” “But I’d like to see the castles in the towns where they live,” the boy explained. “Those people, when they see our land, say that they would like to live here forever,” his father continued. “Well, I’d like to see their land, and see how they live,” said his son. “The people who come here have a lot of money to spend, so they can afford to travel,” his father said. “Amongst us, the only ones who travel are the shepherds.” “Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!” His father said no more. The next day, he gave his son a pouch that held three ancient Spanish gold coins. “I found these one day in the fields. I wanted them to be a part of your inheritance. But use them to buy your flock. Take to the fields, and someday you’ll learn that our countryside is the best, and our women are the most beautiful.” And he gave the boy his blessing. The boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world—a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life.
THE HORIZON WAS TINGED WITH RED, AND SUDDENLY THE sun appeared. The boy thought back to that conversation with his father, and felt happy; he had already seen many castles and met many women (but none the equal of the one who awaited him several days hence). He owned a jacket, a book that he could trade for another, and a flock of sheep. But, most important, he was able every day to live out his dream. If he were to tire of the Andalusian fields, he could sell his sheep and go to sea. By the time he had had enough of the sea, he would already have known other cities, other women, and other chances to be happy. I couldn’t have found God in the seminary, he thought, as he looked at the sunrise. Whenever he could, he sought out a new road to travel. He had never been to that ruined church before, in spite of having traveled through those parts many times. The world was huge and inexhaustible; he had only to allow his sheep to set the route for a while, and he would discover other interesting things. The problem is that they don’t even realize that they’re walking a new road every day. They don’t see that the fields are new and the seasons change. All they think about is food and water. Maybe we’re all that way, the boy mused. Even me—I haven’t thought of other women since I met the merchant’s daughter. Looking at the sun, he calculated that he would reach Tarifa before midday. There, he could exchange his book for a thicker one, fill his wine bottle, shave, and have a haircut; he had to prepare himself for his meeting with the girl, and he didn’t want to think about the possibility that some other shepherd, with a larger flock of sheep, had arrived there before him and asked for her hand. It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought, as he looked again at the position of the sun, and hurried his pace. He had suddenly remembered that, in Tarifa, there was an old woman who interpreted dreams.
THE OLD WOMAN LED THE BOY TO A ROOM AT THE BACK of her house; it was separated from her living room by a curtain of colored beads. The room’s furnishings consisted of a table, an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and two chairs. The woman sat down, and told him to be seated as well. Then she took both of his hands in hers, and began quietly to pray. It sounded like a Gypsy prayer. The boy had already had experience on the road with Gypsies; they also traveled, but they had no flocks of sheep. People said that Gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers. But she has the Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old woman that he was fearful. He recited an Our Father silently. “Very interesting,” said the woman, never taking her eyes from the boy’s hands, and then she fell silent. The boy was becoming nervous. His hands began to tremble, and the woman sensed it. He quickly pulled his hands away. “I didn’t come here to have you read my palm,” he said, already regretting having come. He thought for a moment that it would be better to pay her fee and leave without learning a thing, that he was giving too much importance to his recurrent dream. “You came so that you could learn about your dreams,” said the old woman. “And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand. But, whichever it is, I’m going to charge you for the consultation.” Another trick, the boy thought. But he decided to take a chance. A shepherd always takes his chances with wolves and with drought, and that’s what makes a shepherd’s life exciting. “I have had the same dream twice,” he said. “I dreamed that I was in a field with my sheep, when a child appeared and began to play with the animals. I don’t like people to do that, because the sheep are afraid of strangers. But children always seem to be able to play with them without frightening them. I don’t know why. I don’t know how animals know the age of human beings.” “Tell me more about your dream,” said the woman. “I have to get back to my cooking, and, since you don’t have much money, I can’t give you a lot of time.” “The child went on playing with my sheep for quite a while,” continued the boy, a bit upset. “And suddenly, the child took me by both hands and transported me to the Egyptian pyramids.” He paused for a moment to see if the woman knew what the Egyptian pyramids were. But she said nothing. “Then, at the Egyptian pyramids,”—he said the last three words slowly, so that the old woman would understand—“the child said to me, ‘If you come here, you will find a hidden treasure.’ And, just as she was about to show me the exact location, I woke up. Both times.” The woman was silent for some time. Then she again took his hands and studied them carefully. “I’m not going to charge you anything now,” she said. “But I want one-tenth of the treasure, if you find it.” The boy laughed—out of happiness. He was going to be able to save the little money he had because of a dream about hidden treasure! “Well, interpret the dream,” he said. “First, swear to me. Swear that you will give me one-tenth of your treasure in exchange for what I am going to tell you.” The shepherd swore that he would. The old woman asked him to swear again while looking at the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “It’s a dream in the language of the world,” she said. “I can interpret it, but the interpretation is very difficult. That’s why I feel that I deserve a part of what you find. “And this is my interpretation: you must go to the Pyramids in Egypt. I have never heard of them, but, if it was a child who showed them to you, they exist. There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man.” The boy was surprised, and then irritated. He didn’t need to seek out the old woman for this! But then he remembered that he wasn’t going to have to pay anything. “I didn’t need to waste my time just for this,” he said. “I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. And since I am not wise, I have had to learn other arts, such as the reading of palms.” “Well, how am I going to get to Egypt?” “I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with.” “And what if I never get to Egypt?” “Then I don’t get paid. It wouldn’t be the first time.” And the woman told the boy to leave, saying she had already wasted too much time with him. So the boy was disappointed; he decided that he would never again believe in dreams. He remembered that he had a number of things he had to take care of: he went to the market for something to eat, he traded his book for one that was thicker, and he found a bench in the plaza where he could sample the new wine he had bought. The day was hot, and the wine was refreshing. The sheep were at the gates of the city, in a stable that belonged to a friend. The boy knew a lot of people in the city. That was what made traveling appeal to him—he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. He decided to wait until the sun had sunk a bit lower in the sky before following his flock back through the fields. Three days from now, he would be with the merchant’s daughter. He started to read the book he had bought. On the very first page it described a burial ceremony. And the names of the people involved were very difficult to pronounce. If he ever wrote a book, he thought, he would present one person at a time, so that the reader wouldn’t have to worry about memorizing a lot of names. When he was finally able to concentrate on what he was reading, he liked the book better; the burial was on a snowy day, and he welcomed the feeling of being cold. As he read on, an old man sat down at his side and tried to strike up a conversation. “What are they doing?” the old man asked, pointing at the people in the plaza. “Working,” the boy answered dryly, making it look as if he wanted to concentrate on his reading. Actually, he was thinking about shearing his sheep in front of the merchant’s daughter, so that she could see that he was someone who was capable of doing difficult things. He had already imagined the scene many times; every time, the girl became fascinated when he explained that the sheep had to be sheared from back to front. He also tried to remember some good stories to relate as he sheared the sheep. Most of them he had read in books, but he would tell them as if they were from his personal experience. She would never know the difference, because she didn’t know how to read. Meanwhile, the old man persisted in his attempt to strike up a conversation. He said that he was tired and thirsty, and asked if he might have a sip of the boy’s wine. The boy offered his bottle, hoping that the old man would leave him alone. But the old man wanted to talk, and he asked the boy what book he was reading. The boy was tempted to be rude, and move to another bench, but his father had taught him to be respectful of the elderly. So he held out the book to the man—for two reasons: first, that he, himself, wasn’t sure how to pronounce the title; and second, that if the old man didn’t know how to read, he would probably feel ashamed and decide of his own accord to change benches. “Hmm…” said the old man, looking at all sides of the book, as if it were some strange object. “This is an important book, but it’s really irritating.” The boy was shocked. The old man knew how to read, and had already read the book. And if the book was irritating, as the old man had said, the boy still had time to change it for another. “It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.” “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.” “That’s never happened to me,” the boy said. “They wanted me to be a priest, but I decided to become a shepherd.” “Much better,” said the old man. “Because you really like to travel.” “He knew what I was thinking,” the boy said to himself. The old man, meanwhile, was leafing through the book, without seeming to want to return it at all. The boy noticed that the man’s clothing was strange. He looked like an Arab, which was not unusual in those parts. Africa was only a few hours from Tarifa; one had only to cross the narrow straits by boat. Arabs often appeared in the city, shopping and chanting their strange prayers several times a day. “Where are you from?” the boy asked. “From many places.” “No one can be from many places,” the boy said. “I’m a shepherd, and I have been to many places, but I come from only one place— from a city near an ancient castle. That’s where I was born.” “Well then, we could say that I was born in Salem.” The boy didn’t know where Salem was, but he didn’t want to ask, fearing that he would appear ignorant. He looked at the people in the plaza for a while; they were coming and going, and all of them seemed to be very busy. “So, what is Salem like?” he asked, trying to get some sort of clue. “It’s like it always has been.” No clue yet. But he knew that Salem wasn’t in Andalusia. If it were, he would already have heard of it. “And what do you do in Salem?” he insisted. “What do I do in Salem?” The old man laughed. “Well, I’m the king of Salem!” People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it’s better to be with the sheep, who don’t say anything. And better still to be alone with one’s books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you’re talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don’t know how to continue the conversation. “My name is Melchizedek,” said the old man. “How many sheep do you have?” “Enough,” said the boy. He could see that the old man wanted to know more about his life. “Well, then, we’ve got a problem. I can’t help you if you feel you’ve got enough sheep.” The boy was getting irritated. He wasn’t asking for help. It was the old man who had asked for a drink of his wine, and had started the conversation. “Give me my book,” the boy said. “I have to go and gather my sheep and get going.” “Give me one-tenth of your sheep,” said the old man, “and I’ll tell you how to find the hidden treasure.” The boy remembered his dream, and suddenly everything was clear to him. The old woman hadn’t charged him anything, but the old man—maybe he was her husband—was going to find a way to get much more money in exchange for information about something that didn’t even exist. The old man was probably a Gypsy, too. But before the boy could say anything, the old man leaned over, picked up a stick, and began to write in the sand of the plaza. Something bright reflected from his chest with such intensity that the boy was momentarily blinded. With a movement that was too quick for someone his age, the man covered whatever it was with his cape. When his vision returned to normal, the boy was able to read what the old man had written in the sand. There, in the sand of the plaza of that small city, the boy read the names of his father and his mother and the name of the seminary he had attended. He read the name of the merchant’s daughter, which he hadn’t even known, and he read things he had never told anyone.
“I’M THE KING OF SALEM,” THE OLD MAN HAD SAID. “Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?” the boy asked, awed and embarrassed. “For several reasons. But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend.” The boy didn’t know what a person’s “Personal Legend” was. “It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. “At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.” None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy. But he wanted to know what the “mysterious force” was; the merchant’s daughter would be impressed when he told her about that! “It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” “Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?” “Yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” They were both silent for a time, observing the plaza and the townspeople. It was the old man who spoke first. “Why do you tend a flock of sheep?” “Because I like to travel.” The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. “When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.” “He should have decided to become a shepherd,” the boy said. “Well, he thought about that,” the old man said. “But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.” The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant’s daughter. There was surely a baker in her town. The old man continued, “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.” The old man leafed through the book, and fell to reading a page he came to. The boy waited, and then interrupted the old man just as he himself had been interrupted. “Why are you telling me all this?” “Because you are trying to realize your Personal Legend. And you are at the point where you’re about to give it all up.” “And that’s when you always appear on the scene?” “Not always in this way, but I always appear in one form or another. Sometimes I appear in the form of a solution, or a good idea. At other times, at a crucial moment, I make it easier for things to happen. There are other things I do, too, but most of the time people don’t realize I’ve done them.” The old man related that, the week before, he had been forced to appear before a miner, and had taken the form of a stone. The miner had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. For five years he had been working a certain river, and had examined hundreds of thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone—just one more—he would find his emerald. Since the miner had sacrificed everything to his Personal Legend, the old man decided to become involved. He transformed himself into a stone that rolled up to the miner’s foot. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But he had thrown it with such force that it broke the stone it fell upon, and there, embedded in the broken stone, was the most beautiful emerald in the world. “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,” said the old man, with a certain bitterness. “Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. But that’s the way it is.” The boy reminded the old man that he had said something about hidden treasure. “Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents,” said the old man. “If you want to learn about your own treasure, you will have to give me one-tenth of your flock.” “What about one-tenth of my treasure?” The old man looked disappointed. “If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.” The boy told him that he had already promised to give one-tenth of his treasure to the Gypsy. “Gypsies are experts at getting people to do that,” sighed the old man. “In any case, it’s good that you’ve learned that everything in life has its price. This is what the Warriors of the Light try to teach.” The old man returned the book to the boy. “Tomorrow, at this same time, bring me a tenth of your flock. And I will tell you how to find the hidden treasure. Good afternoon.” And he vanished around the corner of the plaza.
THE BOY BEGAN AGAIN TO READ HIS BOOK, BUT HE WAS NO longer able to concentrate. He was tense and upset, because he knew that the old man was right. He went over to the bakery and bought a loaf of bread, thinking about whether or not he should tell the baker what the old man had said about him. Sometimes it’s better to leave things as they are, he thought to himself, and decided to say nothing. If he were to say anything, the baker would spend three days thinking about giving it all up, even though he had gotten used to the way things were. The boy could certainly resist causing that kind of anxiety for the baker. So he began to wander through the city, and found himself at the gates. There was a small building there, with a window at which people bought tickets to Africa. And he knew that Egypt was in Africa. “Can I help you?” asked the man behind the window. “Maybe tomorrow,” said the boy, moving away. If he sold just one of his sheep, he’d have enough to get to the other shore of the strait. The idea frightened him. “Another dreamer,” said the ticket seller to his assistant, watching the boy walk away. “He doesn’t have enough money to travel.” While standing at the ticket window, the boy had remembered his flock, and decided he should go back to being a shepherd. In two years he had learned everything about shepherding: he knew how to shear sheep, how to care for pregnant ewes, and how to protect the sheep from wolves. He knew all the fields and pastures of Andalusia. And he knew what was the fair price for every one of his animals. He decided to return to his friend’s stable by the longest route possible. As he walked past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come, to occupy all of Spain. He could see almost the entire city from where he sat, including the plaza where he had talked with the old man. Curse the moment I met that old man, he thought. He had come to the town only to find a woman who could interpret his dream. Neither the woman nor the old man was at all impressed by the fact that he was a shepherd. They were solitary individuals who no longer believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to their sheep. He knew everything about each member of his flock: he knew which ones were lame, which one was to give birth two months from now, and which were the laziest. He knew how to shear them, and how to slaughter them. If he ever decided to leave them, they would suffer. The wind began to pick up. He knew that wind: people called it the levanter, because on it the Moors had come from the Levant at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The levanter increased in intensity. Here I am, between my flock and my treasure, the boy thought. He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have. There was also the merchant’s daughter, but she wasn’t as important as his flock, because she didn’t depend on him. Maybe she didn’t even remember him. He was sure that it made no difference to her on which day he appeared: for her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises. I left my father, my mother, and the town castle behind. They have gotten used to my being away, and so have I. The sheep will get used to my not being there, too, the boy thought. From where he sat, he could observe the plaza. People continued to come and go from the baker’s shop. A young couple sat on the bench where he had talked with the old man, and they kissed. “That baker…” he said to himself, without completing the thought. The levanter was still getting stronger, and he felt its force on his face. That wind had brought the Moors, yes, but it had also brought the smell of the desert and of veiled women. It had brought with it the sweat and the dreams of men who had once left to search for the unknown, and for gold and adventure—and for the Pyramids. The boy felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold him back except himself. The sheep, the merchant’s daughter, and the fields of Andalusia were only steps along the way to his Personal Legend. The next day, the boy met the old man at noon. He brought six sheep with him. “I’m surprised,” the boy said. “My friend bought all the other sheep immediately. He said that he had always dreamed of being a shepherd, and that it was a good omen.” “That’s the way it always is,” said the old man. “It’s called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner’s luck.” “Why is that?” “Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.” Then the old man began to inspect the sheep, and he saw that one was lame. The boy explained that it wasn’t important, since that sheep was the most intelligent of the flock, and produced the most wool. “Where is the treasure?” he asked. “It’s in Egypt, near the Pyramids.” The boy was startled. The old woman had said the same thing. But she hadn’t charged him anything. “In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you.” Before the boy could reply, a butterfly appeared and fluttered between him and the old man. He remembered something his grandfather had once told him: that butterflies were a good omen. Like crickets, and like grasshoppers; like lizards and four-leaf clovers. “That’s right,” said the old man, able to read the boy’s thoughts. “Just as your grandfather taught you. These are good omens.” The old man opened his cape, and the boy was struck by what he saw. The old man wore a breastplate of heavy gold, covered with precious stones. The boy recalled the brilliance he had noticed on the previous day. He really was a king! He must be disguised to avoid encounters with thieves. “Take these,” said the old man, holding out a white stone and a black stone that had been embedded at the center of the breastplate. “They are called Urim and Thummim. The black signifies ‘yes,’ and the white ‘no.’ When you are unable to read the omens, they will help you to do so. Always ask an objective question. “But, if you can, try to make your own decisions. The treasure is at the Pyramids; that you already knew. But I had to insist on the payment of six sheep because I helped you to make your decision.” The boy put the stones in his pouch. From then on, he would make his own decisions. “Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don’t forget the language of omens. And, above all, don’t forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion. “But before I go, I want to tell you a little story. “A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived. “Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention. “The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “‘Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,’ said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. ‘As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.’ “The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was. “‘Well,’ asked the wise man, ‘did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?’ “The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “‘Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,’ said the wise man. ‘You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.’ “Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen. “‘But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?’ asked the wise man. “Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. “‘Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.’” The shepherd said nothing. He had understood the story the old king had told him. A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep. The old man looked at the boy and, with his hands held together, made several strange gestures over the boy’s head. Then, taking his sheep, he walked away.
AT THE HIGHEST POINT IN TARIFA THERE IS AN OLD FORT, built by the Moors. From atop its walls, one can catch a glimpse of Africa. Melchizedek, the king of Salem, sat on the wall of the fort that afternoon, and felt the levanter blowing in his face. The sheep fidgeted nearby, uneasy with their new owner and excited by so much change. All they wanted was food and water. Melchizedek watched a small ship that was plowing its way out of the port. He would never again see the boy, just as he had never seen Abraham again after having charged him his one-tenth fee. That was his work. The gods should not have desires, because they don’t have Personal Legends. But the king of Salem hoped desperately that the boy would be successful. It’s too bad that he’s quickly going to forget my name, he thought. I should have repeated it for him. Then when he spoke about me he would say that I am Melchizedek, the king of Salem. He looked to the skies, feeling a bit abashed, and said, “I know it’s the vanity of vanities, as you said, my Lord. But an old king sometimes has to take some pride in himself.”
HOW STRANGE AFRICA IS, THOUGHT THE BOY. He was sitting in a bar very much like the other bars he had seen along the narrow streets of Tangier. Some men were smoking from a gigantic pipe that they passed from one to the other. In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—as everyone about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground. “A practice of infidels,” he said to himself. As a child in church, he had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoros on his white horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet. The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an evil look about them. Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had forgotten a detail, just one detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time: only Arabic was spoken in this country. The owner of the bar approached him, and the boy pointed to a drink that had been served at the next table. It turned out to be a bitter tea. The boy preferred wine. But he didn’t need to worry about that right now. What he had to be concerned about was his treasure, and how he was going to go about getting it. The sale of his sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. Before long, maybe in just a few days, he would be at the Pyramids. An old man, with a breastplate of gold, wouldn’t have lied just to acquire six sheep. The old man had spoken about signs and omens, and, as the boy was crossing the strait, he had thought about omens. Yes, the old man had known what he was talking about: during the time the boy had spent in the fields of Andalusia, he had become used to learning which path he should take by observing the ground and the sky. He had discovered that the presence of a certain bird meant that a snake was nearby, and that a certain shrub was a sign that there was water in the area. The sheep had taught him that. If God leads the sheep so well, he will also lead a man, he thought, and that made him feel better. The tea seemed less bitter. “Who are you?” he heard a voice ask him in Spanish. The boy was relieved. He was thinking about omens, and someone had appeared. “How come you speak Spanish?” he asked. The new arrival was a young man in Western dress, but the color of his skin suggested he was from this city. He was about the same age and height as the boy. “Almost everyone here speaks Spanish. We’re only two hours from Spain.” “Sit down, and let me treat you to something,” said the boy. “And ask for a glass of wine for me. I hate this tea.” “There is no wine in this country,” the young man said. “The religion here forbids it.” The boy told him then that he needed to get to the Pyramids. He almost began to tell about his treasure, but decided not to do so. If he did, it was possible that the Arab would want a part of it as payment for taking him there. He remembered what the old man had said about offering something you didn’t even have yet. “I’d like you to take me there if you can. I can pay you to serve as my guide.” “Do you have any idea how to get there?” the newcomer asked. The boy noticed that the owner of the bar stood nearby, listening attentively to their conversation. He felt uneasy at the man’s presence. But he had found a guide, and didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity. “You have to cross the entire Sahara desert,” said the young man. “And to do that, you need money. I need to know whether you have enough.” The boy thought it a strange question. But he trusted in the old man, who had said that, when you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor. He took his money from his pouch and showed it to the young man. The owner of the bar came over and looked, as well. The two men exchanged some words in Arabic, and the bar owner seemed irritated. “Let’s get out of here,” said the new arrival. “He wants us to leave.” The boy was relieved. He got up to pay the bill, but the owner grabbed him and began to speak to him in an angry stream of words. The boy was strong, and wanted to retaliate, but he was in a foreign country. His new friend pushed the owner aside, and pulled the boy outside with him. “He wanted your money,” he said. “Tangier is not like the rest of Africa. This is a port, and every port has its thieves.” The boy trusted his new friend. He had helped him out in a dangerous situation. He took out his money and counted it. “We could get to the Pyramids by tomorrow,” said the other, taking the money. “But I have to buy two camels.” They walked together through the narrow streets of Tangier. Everywhere there were stalls with items for sale. They reached the center of a large plaza where the market was held. There were thousands of people there, arguing, selling, and buying; vegetables for sale amongst daggers, and carpets displayed alongside tobacco. But the boy never took his eye off his new friend. After all, he had all his money. He thought about asking him to give it back, but decided that would be unfriendly. He knew nothing about the customs of the strange land he was in. “I’ll just watch him,” he said to himself. He knew he was stronger than his friend. Suddenly, there in the midst of all that confusion, he saw the most beautiful sword he had ever seen. The scabbard was embossed in silver, and the handle was black and encrusted with precious stones. The boy promised himself that, when he returned from Egypt, he would buy that sword. “Ask the owner of that stall how much the sword costs,” he said to his friend. Then he realized that he had been distracted for a few moments, looking at the sword. His heart squeezed, as if his chest had suddenly compressed it. He was afraid to look around, because he knew what he would find. He continued to look at the beautiful sword for a bit longer, until he summoned the courage to turn around. All around him was the market, with people coming and going, shouting and buying, and the aroma of strange foods…but nowhere could he find his new companion. The boy wanted to believe that his friend had simply become separated from him by accident. He decided to stay right there and await his return. As he waited, a priest climbed to the top of a nearby tower and began his chant; everyone in the market fell to their knees, touched their foreheads to the ground, and took up the chant. Then, like a colony of worker ants, they dismantled their stalls and left. The sun began its departure, as well. The boy watched it through its trajectory for some time, until it was hidden behind the white houses surrounding the plaza. He recalled that when the sun had risen that morning, he was on another continent, still a shepherd with sixty sheep, and looking forward to meeting with a girl. That morning he had known everything that was going to happen to him as he walked through the familiar fields. But now, as the sun began to set, he was in a different country, a stranger in a strange land, where he couldn’t even speak the language. He was no longer a shepherd, and he had nothing, not even the money to return and start everything over. All this happened between sunrise and sunset, the boy thought. He was feeling sorry for himself, and lamenting the fact that his life could have changed so suddenly and so drastically. He was so ashamed that he wanted to cry. He had never even wept in front of his own sheep. But the marketplace was empty, and he was far from home, so he wept. He wept because God was unfair, and because this was the way God repaid those who believed in their dreams. When I had my sheep, I was happy, and I made those around me happy. People saw me coming and welcomed me, he thought. But now I’m sad and alone. I’m going to become bitter and distrustful of people because one person betrayed me. I’m going to hate those who have found their treasure because I never found mine. And I’m going to hold on to what little I have, because I’m too insignificant to conquer the world. He opened his pouch to see what was left of his possessions; maybe there was a bit left of the sandwich he had eaten on the ship. But all he found was the heavy book, his jacket, and the two stones the old man had given him. As he looked at the stones, he felt relieved for some reason. He had exchanged six sheep for two precious stones that had been taken from a gold breastplate. He could sell the stones and buy a return ticket. But this time I’ll be smarter, the boy thought, removing them from the pouch so he could put them in his pocket. This was a port town, and the only truthful thing his friend had told him was that port towns are full of thieves. Now he understood why the owner of the bar had been so upset: he was trying to tell him not to trust that man. “I’m like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.” He ran his fingers slowly over the stones, sensing their temperature and feeling their surfaces. They were his treasure. Just handling them made him feel better. They reminded him of the old man. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” he had said. The boy was trying to understand the truth of what the old man had said. There he was in the empty marketplace, without a cent to his name, and with not a sheep to guard through the night. But the stones were proof that he had met with a king—a king who knew of the boy’s past. “They’re called Urim and Thummim, and they can help you to read the omens.” The boy put the stones back in the pouch and decided to do an experiment. The old man had said to ask very clear questions, and to do that, the boy had to know what he wanted. So, he asked if the old man’s blessing was still with him. He took out one of the stones. It was “yes.” “Am I going to find my treasure?” he asked. He stuck his hand into the pouch, and felt around for one of the stones. As he did so, both of them pushed through a hole in the pouch and fell to the ground. The boy had never even noticed that there was a hole in his pouch. He knelt down to find Urim and Thummim and put them back in the pouch. But as he saw them lying there on the ground, another phrase came to his mind. “Learn to recognize omens, and follow them,” the old king had said. An omen. The boy smiled to himself. He picked up the two stones and put them back in his pouch. He didn’t consider mending the hole—the stones could fall through any time they wanted. He had learned that there were certain things one shouldn’t ask about, so as not to flee from one’s own Personal Legend. “I promised that I would make my own decisions,” he said to himself. But the stones had told him that the old man was still with him, and that made him feel more confident. He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one. After all, what he had always wanted was just that: to know new places. Even if he never got to the Pyramids, he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are, he thought. Although his new world at the moment was just an empty marketplace, he had already seen it when it was teeming with life, and he would never forget it. He remembered the sword. It hurt him a bit to think about it, but he had never seen one like it before. As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,” he said to himself.
HE WAS SHAKEN INTO WAKEFULNESS BY SOMEONE. HE had fallen asleep in the middle of the marketplace, and life in the plaza was about to resume. Looking around, he sought his sheep, and then realized that he was in a new world. But instead of being saddened, he was happy. He no longer had to seek out food and water for the sheep; he could go in search of his treasure, instead. He had not a cent in his pocket, but he had faith. He had decided, the night before, that he would be as much an adventurer as the ones he had admired in books. He walked slowly through the market. The merchants were assembling their stalls, and the boy helped a candy seller to do his. The candy seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day’s work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man—the mysterious old king he had met. “This candy merchant isn’t making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper’s daughter. He’s doing it because it’s what he wants to do,” thought the boy. He realized that he could do the same thing the old man had done—sense whether a person was near to or far from his Personal Legend. Just by looking at them. It’s easy, and yet I’ve never done it before, he thought. When the stall was assembled, the candy seller offered the boy the first sweet he had made for the day. The boy thanked him, ate it, and went on his way. When he had gone only a short distance, he realized that, while they were erecting the stall, one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish. And they had understood each other perfectly well. There must be a language that doesn’t depend on words, the boy thought. I’ve already had that experience with my sheep, and now it’s happening with people. He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and weren’t really new, but that he had never perceived before. And he hadn’t perceived them because he had become accustomed to them. He realized: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world. Relaxed and unhurried, he resolved that he would walk through the narrow streets of Tangier. Only in that way would he be able to read the omens. He knew it would require a lot of patience, but shepherds know all about patience. Once again he saw that, in that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his sheep. “All things are one,” the old man had said.
THE CRYSTAL MERCHANT AWOKE WITH THE DAY, AND FELT the same anxiety that he felt every morning. He had been in the same place for thirty years: a shop at the top of a hilly street where few customers passed. Now it was too late to change anything—the only thing he had ever learned to do was to buy and sell crystal glassware. There had been a time when many people knew of his shop: Arab merchants, French and English geologists, German soldiers who were always well-heeled. In those days it had been wonderful to be selling crystal, and he had thought how he would become rich, and have beautiful women at his side as he grew older. But, as time passed, Tangier had changed. The nearby city of Ceuta had grown faster than Tangier, and business had fallen off. Neighbors moved away, and there remained only a few small shops on the hill. And no one was going to climb the hill just to browse through a few small shops. But the crystal merchant had no choice. He had lived thirty years of his life buying and selling crystal pieces, and now it was too late to do anything else. He spent the entire morning observing the infrequent comings and goings in the street. He had done this for years, and knew the schedule of everyone who passed. But, just before lunchtime, a boy stopped in front of the shop. He was dressed normally, but the practiced eyes of the crystal merchant could see that the boy had no money to spend. Nevertheless, the merchant decided to delay his lunch for a few minutes until the boy moved on.
A CARD HANGING IN THE DOORWAY ANNOUNCED THAT several languages were spoken in the shop. The boy saw a man appear behind the counter. “I can clean up those glasses in the window, if you want,” said the boy. “The way they look now, nobody is going to want to buy them.” The man looked at him without responding. “In exchange, you could give me something to eat.” The man still said nothing, and the boy sensed that he was going to have to make a decision. In his pouch, he had his jacket—he certainly wasn’t going to need it in the desert. Taking the jacket out, he began to clean the glasses. In half an hour, he had cleaned all the glasses in the window, and, as he was doing so, two customers had entered the shop and bought some crystal. When he had completed the cleaning, he asked the man for something to eat. “Let’s go and have some lunch,” said the crystal merchant. He put a sign on the door, and they went to a small café nearby. As they sat down at the only table in the place, the crystal merchant laughed. “You didn’t have to do any cleaning,” he said. “The Koran requires me to feed a hungry person.” “Well then, why did you let me do it?” the boy asked. “Because the crystal was dirty. And both you and I needed to cleanse our minds of negative thoughts.” When they had eaten, the merchant turned to the boy and said, “I’d like you to work in my shop. Two customers came in today while you were working, and that’s a good omen.” People talk a lot about omens, thought the shepherd. But they really don’t know what they’re saying. Just as I hadn’t realized that for so many years I had been speaking a language without words to my sheep. “Do you want to go to work for me?” the merchant asked. “I can work for the rest of today,” the boy answered. “I’ll work all night, until dawn, and I’ll clean every piece of crystal in your shop. In return, I need money to get to Egypt tomorrow.” The merchant laughed. “Even if you cleaned my crystal for an entire year…even if you earned a good commission selling every piece, you would still have to borrow money to get to Egypt. There are thousands of kilometers of desert between here and there.” There was a moment of silence so profound that it seemed the city was asleep. No sound from the bazaars, no arguments among the merchants, no men climbing to the towers to chant. No hope, no adventure, no old kings or Personal Legends, no treasure, and no Pyramids. It was as if the world had fallen silent because the boy’s soul had. He sat there, staring blankly through the door of the café, wishing that he had died, and that everything would end forever at that moment. The merchant looked anxiously at the boy. All the joy he had seen that morning had suddenly disappeared. “I can give you the money you need to get back to your country, my son,” said the crystal merchant. The boy said nothing. He got up, adjusted his clothing, and picked up his pouch. “I’ll work for you,” he said. And after another long silence, he added, “I need money to buy some sheep.”
PART TWO
THE BOY HAD BEEN WORKING FOR THE CRYSTAL MERCHANT for almost a month, and he could see that it wasn’t exactly the kind of job that would make him happy. The merchant spent the entire day mumbling behind the counter, telling the boy to be careful with the pieces and not to break anything. But he stayed with the job because the merchant, although he was an old grouch, treated him fairly; the boy received a good commission for each piece he sold, and had already been able to put some money aside. That morning he had done some calculating: if he continued to work every day as he had been, he would need a whole year to be able to buy some sheep. “I’d like to build a display case for the crystal,” the boy said to the merchant. “We could place it outside, and attract those people who pass at the bottom of the hill.” “I’ve never had one before,” the merchant answered. “People will pass by and bump into it, and pieces will be broken.” “Well, when I took my sheep through the fields some of them might have died if we had come upon a snake. But that’s the way life is with sheep and with shepherds.” The merchant turned to a customer who wanted three crystal glasses. He was selling better than ever…as if time had turned back to the old days when the street had been one of Tangier’s major attractions. “Business has really improved,” he said to the boy, after the customer had left. “I’m doing much better, and soon you’ll be able to return to your sheep. Why ask more out of life?” “Because we have to respond to omens,” the boy said, almost without meaning to; then he regretted what he had said, because the merchant had never met the king. “It’s called the principle of favorability, beginner’s luck. Because life wants you to achieve your Personal Legend,” the old king had said. But the merchant understood what the boy had said. The boy’s very presence in the shop was an omen, and, as time passed and money was pouring into the cash drawer, he had no regrets about having hired the boy. The boy was being paid more money than he deserved, because the merchant, thinking that sales wouldn’t amount to much, had offered the boy a high commission rate. He had assumed he would soon return to his sheep. “Why did you want to get to the Pyramids?” he asked, to get away from the business of the display. “Because I’ve always heard about them,” the boy answered, saying nothing about his dream. The treasure was now nothing but a painful memory, and he tried to avoid thinking about it. “I don’t know anyone around here who would want to cross the desert just to see the Pyramids,” said the merchant. “They’re just a pile of stones. You could build one in your backyard.” “You’ve never had dreams of travel,” said the boy, turning to wait on a customer who had entered the shop. Two days later, the merchant spoke to the boy about the display. “I don’t much like change,” he said. “You and I aren’t like Hassan, that rich merchant. If he makes a buying mistake, it doesn’t affect him much. But we two have to live with our mistakes.” That’s true enough, the boy thought, ruefully. “Why did you think we should have the display?” “I want to get back to my sheep faster. We have to take advantage when luck is on our side, and do as much to help it as it’s doing to help us. It’s called the principle of favorability. Or beginner’s luck.” The merchant was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “The Prophet gave us the Koran, and left us just five obligations to satisfy during our lives. The most important is to believe only in the one true God. The others are to pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, and be charitable to the poor.” He stopped there. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke of the Prophet. He was a devout man, and, even with all his impatience, he wanted to live his life in accordance with Muslim law. “What’s the fifth obligation?” the boy asked. “Two days ago, you said that I had never dreamed of travel,” the merchant answered. “The fifth obligation of every Muslim is a pilgrimage. We are obliged, at least once in our lives, to visit the holy city of Mecca. “Mecca is a lot farther away than the Pyramids. When I was young, all I wanted to do was put together enough money to start this shop. I thought that someday I’d be rich, and could go to Mecca. I began to make some money, but I could never bring myself to leave someone in charge of the shop; the crystals are delicate things. At the same time, people were passing my shop all the time, heading for Mecca. Some of them were rich pilgrims, traveling in caravans with servants and camels, but most of the people making the pilgrimage were poorer than I. “All who went there were happy at having done so. They placed the symbols of the pilgrimage on the doors of their houses. One of them, a cobbler who made his living mending boots, said that he had traveled for almost a year through the desert, but that he got more tired when he had to walk through the streets of Tangier buying his leather.” “Well, why don’t you go to Mecca now?” asked the boy. “Because it’s the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That’s what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at that same horrible café. I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living. “You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you’re different from me, because you want to realize your dreams. I just want to dream about Mecca. I’ve already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it. I’ve already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I’m afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it.” That day, the merchant gave the boy permission to build the display. Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way.
TWO MORE MONTHS PASSED, AND THE SHELF BROUGHT many customers into the crystal shop. The boy estimated that, if he worked for six more months, he could return to Spain and buy sixty sheep, and yet another sixty. In less than a year, he would have doubled his flock, and he would be able to do business with the Arabs, because he was now able to speak their strange language. Since that morning in the marketplace, he had never again made use of Urim and Thummim, because Egypt was now just as distant a dream for him as was Mecca for the merchant. Anyway, the boy had become happy in his work, and thought all the time about the day when he would disembark at Tarifa as a winner. “You must always know what it is that you want,” the old king had said. The boy knew, and was now working toward it. Maybe it was his treasure to have wound up in that strange land, met up with a thief, and doubled the size of his flock without spending a cent. He was proud of himself. He had learned some important things, like how to deal in crystal, and about the language without words…and about omens. One afternoon he had seen a man at the top of the hill, complaining that it was impossible to find a decent place to get something to drink after such a climb. The boy, accustomed to recognizing omens, spoke to the merchant. “Let’s sell tea to the people who climb the hill.” “Lots of places sell tea around here,” the merchant said. “But we could sell tea in crystal glasses. The people will enjoy the tea and want to buy the glasses. I have been told that beauty is the great seducer of men.” The merchant didn’t respond, but that afternoon, after saying his prayers and closing the shop, he invited the boy to sit with him and share his hookah, that strange pipe used by the Arabs. “What is it you’re looking for?” asked the old merchant. “I’ve already told you. I need to buy my sheep back, so I have to earn the money to do so.” The merchant put some new coals in the hookah, and inhaled deeply. “I’ve had this shop for thirty years. I know good crystal from bad, and everything else there is to know about crystal. I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I’ll have to change my way of life.” “Well, isn’t that good?” “I’m already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either went bankrupt or did better than they had before. It made me very depressed. Now, I can see that it hasn’t been too bad. The shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I don’t want to change anything, because I don’t know how to deal with change. I’m used to the way I am.” The boy didn’t know what to say. The old man continued, “You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.” It’s good I refrained from saying anything to the baker in Tarifa, thought the boy to himself. They went on smoking the pipe for a while as the sun began to set. They were conversing in Arabic, and the boy was proud of himself for being able to do so. There had been a time when he thought that his sheep could teach him everything he needed to know about the world. But they could never have taught him Arabic. There are probably other things in the world that the sheep can’t teach me, thought the boy as he regarded the old merchant. All they ever do, really, is look for food and water. And maybe it wasn’t that they were teaching me, but that I was learning from them. “Maktub,” the merchant said, finally. “What does that mean?” “You would have to have been born an Arab to understand,” he answered. “But in your language it would be something like ‘It is written.’” And, as he smothered the coals in the hookah, he told the boy that he could begin to sell tea in the crystal glasses. Sometimes, there’s just no way to hold back the river.
THE MEN CLIMBED THE HILL, AND THEY WERE TIRED when they reached the top. But there they saw a crystal shop that offered refreshing mint tea. They went in to drink the tea, which was served in beautiful crystal glasses. “My wife never thought of this,” said one, and he bought some crystal—he was entertaining guests that night, and the guests would be impressed by the beauty of the glassware. The other man remarked that tea was always more delicious when it was served in crystal, because the aroma was retained. The third said that it was a tradition in the Orient to use crystal glasses for tea because it had magical powers. Before long, the news spread, and a great many people began to climb the hill to see the shop that was doing something new in a trade that was so old. Other shops were opened that served tea in crystal, but they weren’t at the top of a hill, and they had little business. Eventually, the merchant had to hire two more employees. He began to import enormous quantities of tea, along with his crystal, and his shop was sought out by men and women with a thirst for things new. And, in that way, the months passed.
THE BOY AWOKE BEFORE DAWN. IT HAD BEEN ELEVEN months and nine days since he had first set foot on the African continent. He dressed in his Arabian clothing of white linen, bought especially for this day. He put his headcloth in place and secured it with a ring made of camel skin. Wearing his new sandals, he descended the stairs silently. The city was still sleeping. He prepared himself a sandwich and drank some hot tea from a crystal glass. Then he sat in the sun-filled doorway, smoking the hookah. He smoked in silence, thinking of nothing, and listening to the sound of the wind that brought the scent of the desert. When he had finished his smoke, he reached into one of his pockets, and sat there for a few moments, regarding what he had withdrawn. It was a bundle of money. Enough to buy himself a hundred and twenty sheep, a return ticket, and a license to import products from Africa into his own country. He waited patiently for the merchant to awaken and open the shop. Then the two went off to have some more tea. “I’m leaving today,” said the boy. “I have the money I need to buy my sheep. And you have the money you need to go to Mecca.” The old man said nothing. “Will you give me your blessing?” asked the boy. “You have helped me.” The man continued to prepare his tea, saying nothing. Then he turned to the boy. “I am proud of you,” he said. “You brought a new feeling into my crystal shop. But you know that I’m not going to go to Mecca. Just as you know that you’re not going to buy your sheep.” “Who told you that?” asked the boy, startled. “Maktub,” said the old crystal merchant. And he gave the boy his blessing.
THE BOY WENT TO HIS ROOM AND PACKED HIS BELONGINGS. They filled three sacks. As he was leaving, he saw, in the corner of the room, his old shepherd’s pouch. It was bunched up, and he had hardly thought of it for a long time. As he took his jacket out of the pouch, thinking to give it to someone in the street, the two stones fell to the floor. Urim and Thummim. It made the boy think of the old king, and it startled him to realize how long it had been since he had thought of him. For nearly a year, he had been working incessantly, thinking only of putting aside enough money so that he could return to Spain with pride. “Never stop dreaming,” the old king had said. “Follow the omens.” The boy picked up Urim and Thummim, and, once again, had the strange sensation that the old king was nearby. He had worked hard for a year, and the omens were that it was time to go. I’m going to go back to doing just what I did before, the boy thought. Even though the sheep didn’t teach me to speak Arabic. But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. Tangier was no longer a strange city, and he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world. “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it,” the old king had said. But the old king hadn’t said anything about being robbed, or about endless deserts, or about people who know what their dreams are but don’t want to realize them. The old king hadn’t told him that the Pyramids were just a pile of stones, or that anyone could build one in his backyard. And he had forgotten to mention that, when you have enough money to buy a flock larger than the one you had before, you should buy it. The boy picked up his pouch and put it with his other things. He went down the stairs and found the merchant waiting on a foreign couple, while two other customers walked about the shop, drinking tea from crystal glasses. It was more activity than usual for this time of the morning. From where he stood, he saw for the first time that the old merchant’s hair was very much like the hair of the old king. He remembered the smile of the candy seller, on his first day in Tangier, when he had nothing to eat and nowhere to go—that smile had also been like the old king’s smile. It’s almost as if he had been here and left his mark, he thought. And yet, none of these people has ever met the old king. On the other hand, he said that he always appeared to help those who are trying to realize their Personal Legend. He left without saying good-bye to the crystal merchant. He didn’t want to cry with the other people there. He was going to miss the place and all the good things he had learned. He was more confident in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world. “But I’m going back to the fields that I know, to take care of my flock again.” He said that to himself with certainty, but he was no longer happy with his decision. He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn’t really his dream. Who knows…maybe it’s better to be like the crystal merchant: never go to Mecca, and just go through life wanting to do so, he thought, again trying to convince himself. But as he held Urim and Thummim in his hand, they had transmitted to him the strength and will of the old king. By coincidence—or maybe it was an omen, the boy thought—he came to the bar he had entered on his first day there. The thief wasn’t there, and the owner brought him a cup of tea. I can always go back to being a shepherd, the boy thought. I learned how to care for sheep, and I haven’t forgotten how that’s done. But maybe I’ll never have another chance to get to the Pyramids in Egypt. The old man wore a breastplate of gold, and he knew about my past. He really was a king, a wise king. The hills of Andalusia were only two hours away, but there was an entire desert between him and the Pyramids. Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure…the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn’t matter. I know why I want to get back to my flock, he thought. I understand sheep; they’re no longer a problem, and they can be good friends. On the other hand, I don’t know if the desert can be a friend, and it’s in the desert that I have to search for my treasure. If I don’t find it, I can always go home. I finally have enough money, and all the time I need. Why not? He suddenly felt tremendously happy. He could always go back to being a shepherd. He could always become a crystal salesman again. Maybe the world had other hidden treasures, but he had a dream, and he had met with a king. That doesn’t happen to just anyone! He was planning as he left the bar. He had remembered that one of the crystal merchant’s suppliers transported his crystal by means of caravans that crossed the desert. He held Urim and Thummim in his hand; because of those two stones, he was once again on the way to his treasure. “I am always nearby, when someone wants to realize their Personal Legend,” the old king had told him. What could it cost to go over to the supplier’s warehouse and find out if the Pyramids were really that far away?
THE ENGLISHMAN WAS SITTING ON A BENCH IN A STRUCTURE that smelled of animals, sweat, and dust; it was part warehouse, part corral. I never thought I’d end up in a place like this, he thought, as he leafed through the pages of a chemical journal. Ten years at the university, and here I am in a corral. But he had to move on. He believed in omens. All his life and all his studies were aimed at finding the one true language of the universe. First he had studied Esperanto, then the world’s religions, and now it was alchemy. He knew how to speak Esperanto, he understood all the major religions well, but he wasn’t yet an alchemist. He had unraveled the truths behind important questions, but his studies had taken him to a point beyond which he could not seem to go. He had tried in vain to establish a relationship with an alchemist. But the alchemists were strange people, who thought only about themselves, and almost always refused to help him. Who knows, maybe they had failed to discover the secret of the Master Work—the Philosopher’s Stone—and for this reason kept their knowledge to themselves. He had already spent much of the fortune left to him by his father, fruitlessly seeking the Philosopher’s Stone. He had spent enormous amounts of time at the great libraries of the world, and had purchased all the rarest and most important volumes on alchemy. In one he had read that, many years ago, a famous Arabian alchemist had visited Europe. It was said that he was more than two hundred years old, and that he had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. The Englishman had been profoundly impressed by the story. But he would never have thought it more than just a myth, had not a friend of his—returning from an archaeological expedition in the desert—told him about an Arab that was possessed of exceptional powers. “He lives at the Al-Fayoum oasis,” his friend had said. “And people say that he is two hundred years old, and is able to transform any metal into gold.” The Englishman could not contain his excitement. He canceled all his commitments and pulled together the most important of his books, and now here he was, sitting inside a dusty, smelly warehouse. Outside, a huge caravan was being prepared for a crossing of the Sahara, and was scheduled to pass through Al- Fayoum. I’m going to find that damned alchemist, the Englishman thought. And the odor of the animals became a bit more tolerable. A young Arab, also loaded down with baggage, entered, and greeted the Englishman. “Where are you bound?” asked the young Arab. “I’m going into the desert,” the man answered, turning back to his reading. He didn’t want any conversation at this point. What he needed to do was review all he had learned over the years, because the alchemist would certainly put him to the test. The young Arab took out a book and began to read. The book was written in Spanish. That’s good, thought the Englishman. He spoke Spanish better than Arabic, and, if this boy was going to Al- Fayoum, there would be someone to talk to when there were no other important things to do.
“THAT’S STRANGE,” SAID THE BOY, AS HE TRIED ONCE again to read the burial scene that began the book. “I’ve been trying for two years to read this book, and I never get past these first few pages.” Even without a king to provide an interruption, he was unable to concentrate. He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. When I decided to seek out my treasure, I never imagined that I’d wind up working in a crystal shop, he thought. And joining this caravan may have been my decision, but where it goes is going to be a mystery to me. Nearby was the Englishman, reading a book. He seemed unfriendly, and had looked irritated when the boy had entered. They might even have become friends, but the Englishman closed off the conversation. The boy closed his book. He felt that he didn’t want to do anything that might make him look like the Englishman. He took Urim and Thummim from his pocket, and began playing with them. The stranger shouted, “Urim and Thummim!” In a flash the boy put them back in his pocket. “They’re not for sale,” he said. “They’re not worth much,” the Englishman answered. “They’re only made of rock crystal, and there are millions of rock crystals in the earth. But those who know about such things would know that those are Urim and Thummim. I didn’t know that they had them in this part of the world.” “They were given to me as a present by a king,” the boy said. The stranger didn’t answer; instead, he put his hand in his pocket, and took out two stones that were the same as the boy’s. “Did you say a king?” he asked. “I guess you don’t believe that a king would talk to someone like me, a shepherd,” he said, wanting to end the conversation. “Not at all. It was shepherds who were the first to recognize a king that the rest of the world refused to acknowledge. So, it’s not surprising that kings would talk to shepherds.” And he went on, fearing that the boy wouldn’t understand what he was talking about, “It’s in the Bible. The same book that taught me about Urim and Thummim. These stones were the only form of divination permitted by God. The priests carried them in a golden breastplate.” The boy was suddenly happy to be there at the warehouse. “Maybe this is an omen,” said the Englishman, half aloud. “Who told you about omens?” The boy’s interest was increasing by the moment. “Everything in life is an omen,” said the Englishman, now closing the journal he was reading. “There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten. I am in search of that universal language, among other things. That’s why I’m here. I have to find a man who knows that universal language. An alchemist.” The conversation was interrupted by the warehouse boss. “You’re in luck, you two,” the fat Arab said. “There’s a caravan leaving today for Al-Fayoum.” “But I’m going to Egypt,” the boy said. “Al-Fayoum is in Egypt,” said the Arab. “What kind of Arab are you?” “That’s a good luck omen,” the Englishman said, after the fat Arab had gone out. “If I could, I’d write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence. It’s with those words that the universal language is written.” He told the boy it was no coincidence that he had met him with Urim and Thummim in his hand. And he asked the boy if he, too, were in search of the alchemist. “I’m looking for a treasure,” said the boy, and he immediately regretted having said it. But the Englishman appeared not to attach any importance to it. “In a way, so am I,” he said. “I don’t even know what alchemy is,” the boy was saying, when the warehouse boss called to them to come outside.
“I’M THE LEADER OF THE CARAVAN,” SAID A DARK-EYED, bearded man. “I hold the power of life and death for every person I take with me. The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.” There were almost two hundred people gathered there, and four hundred animals—camels, horses, mules, and fowl. In the crowd were women, children, and a number of men with swords at their belts and rifles slung on their shoulders. The Englishman had several suitcases filled with books. There was a babble of noise, and the leader had to repeat himself several times for everyone to understand what he was saying. “There are a lot of different people here, and each has his own God. But the only God I serve is Allah, and in his name I swear that I will do everything possible once again to win out over the desert. But I want each and every one of you to swear by the God you believe in that you will follow my orders no matter what. In the desert, disobedience means death.” There was a murmur from the crowd. Each was swearing quietly to his or her own God. The boy swore to Jesus Christ. The Englishman said nothing. And the murmur lasted longer than a simple vow would have. The people were also praying to heaven for protection. A long note was sounded on a bugle, and everyone mounted up. The boy and the Englishman had bought camels, and climbed uncertainly onto their backs. The boy felt sorry for the Englishman’s camel, loaded down as he was with the cases of books. “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” said the Englishman, picking up the conversation where it had been interrupted in the warehouse. “I’m here because a friend of mine heard of an Arab who…” But the caravan began to move, and it was impossible to hear what the Englishman was saying. The boy knew what he was about to describe, though: the mysterious chain that links one thing to another, the same chain that had caused him to become a shepherd, that had caused his recurring dream, that had brought him to a city near Africa, to find a king, and to be robbed in order to meet a crystal merchant, and… The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being, thought the boy. The caravan moved toward the east. It traveled during the morning, halted when the sun was at its strongest, and resumed late in the afternoon. The boy spoke very little with the Englishman, who spent most of his time with his books. The boy observed in silence the progress of the animals and people across the desert. Now everything was quite different from how it was that day they had set out: then, there had been confusion and shouting, the cries of children and the whinnying of animals, all mixed with the nervous orders of the guides and the merchants. But, in the desert, there was only the sound of the eternal wind, and of the hoofbeats of the animals. Even the guides spoke very little to one another. “I’ve crossed these sands many times,” said one of the camel drivers one night. “But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.” The boy understood intuitively what he meant, even without ever having set foot in the desert before. Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force. I’ve learned things from the sheep, and I’ve learned things from crystal, he thought. I can learn something from the desert, too. It seems old and wise. The wind never stopped, and the boy remembered the day he had sat at the fort in Tarifa with this same wind blowing in his face. It reminded him of the wool from his sheep…his sheep who were now seeking food and water in the fields of Andalusia, as they always had. “They’re not my sheep anymore,” he said to himself, without nostalgia. “They must be used to their new shepherd, and have probably already forgotten me. That’s good. Creatures like the sheep, that are used to traveling, know about moving on.” He thought of the merchant’s daughter, and was sure that she had probably married. Perhaps to a baker, or to another shepherd who could read and could tell her exciting stories—after all, he probably wasn’t the only one. But he was excited at his intuitive understanding of the camel driver’s comment: maybe he was also learning the universal language that deals with the past and the present of all people. “Hunches,” his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. “Maktub,” the boy said, remembering the crystal merchant. The desert was all sand in some stretches, and rocky in others. When the caravan was blocked by a boulder, it had to go around it; if there was a large rocky area, they had to make a major detour. If the sand was too fine for the animals’ hooves, they sought a way where the sand was more substantial. In some places, the ground was covered with the salt of dried-up lakes. The animals balked at such places, and the camel drivers were forced to dismount and unburden their charges. The drivers carried the freight themselves over such treacherous footing, and then reloaded the camels. If a guide were to fall ill or die, the camel drivers would draw lots and appoint a new one. But all this happened for one basic reason: no matter how many detours and adjustments it made, the caravan moved toward the same compass point. Once obstacles were overcome, it returned to its course, sighting on a star that indicated the location of the oasis. When the people saw that star shining in the morning sky, they knew they were on the right course toward water, palm trees, shelter, and other people. It was only the Englishman who was unaware of all this; he was, for the most part, immersed in reading his books. The boy, too, had his book, and he had tried to read it during the first few days of the journey. But he found it much more interesting to observe the caravan and listen to the wind. As soon as he had learned to know his camel better, and to establish a relationship with him, he threw the book away. Although the boy had developed a superstition that each time he opened the book he would learn something important, he decided it was an unnecessary burden. He became friendly with the camel driver who traveled alongside him. At night, as they sat around the fire, the boy related to the driver his adventures as a shepherd. During one of these conversations, the driver told of his own life. “I used to live near El Cairum,” he said. “I had my orchard, my children, and a life that would change not at all until I died. One year, when the crop was the best ever, we all went to Mecca, and I satisfied the only unmet obligation in my life. I could die happily, and that made me feel good. “One day, the earth began to tremble, and the Nile overflowed its banks. It was something that I thought could happen only to others, never to me. My neighbors feared they would lose all their olive trees in the flood, and my wife was afraid that we would lose our children. I thought that everything I owned would be destroyed. “The land was ruined, and I had to find some other way to earn a living. So now I’m a camel driver. But that disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah: people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. “We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.” Sometimes, their caravan met with another. One always had something that the other needed—as if everything were indeed written by one hand. As they sat around the fire, the camel drivers exchanged information about windstorms, and told stories about the desert. At other times, mysterious, hooded men would appear; they were Bedouins who did surveillance along the caravan route. They provided warnings about thieves and barbarian tribes. They came in silence and departed the same way, dressed in black garments that showed only their eyes. One night, a camel driver came to the fire where the Englishman and the boy were sitting. “There are rumors of tribal wars,” he told them. The three fell silent. The boy noted that there was a sense of fear in the air, even though no one said anything. Once again he was experiencing the language without words…the universal language. The Englishman asked if they were in danger. “Once you get into the desert, there’s no going back,” said the camel driver. “And, when you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward. The rest is up to Allah, including the danger.” And he concluded by saying the mysterious word: “Maktub.” “You should pay more attention to the caravan,” the boy said to the Englishman, after the camel driver had left. “We make a lot of detours, but we’re always heading for the same destination.” “And you ought to read more about the world,” answered the Englishman. “Books are like caravans in that respect.” The immense collection of people and animals began to travel faster. The days had always been silent, but now, even the nights— when the travelers were accustomed to talking around the fires— had also become quiet. And, one day, the leader of the caravan made the decision that the fires should no longer be lighted, so as not to attract attention to the caravan. The travelers adopted the practice of arranging the animals in a circle at night, sleeping together in the center as protection against the nocturnal cold. And the leader posted armed sentinels at the fringes of the group. The Englishman was unable to sleep one night. He called to the boy, and they took a walk along the dunes surrounding the encampment. There was a full moon, and the boy told the Englishman the story of his life. The Englishman was fascinated with the part about the progress achieved at the crystal shop after the boy began working there. “That’s the principle that governs all things,” he said. “In alchemy, it’s called the Soul of the World. When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force.” He also said that this was not just a human gift, that everything on the face of the earth had a soul, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal—or even just a simple thought. “Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive…and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us. But in the crystal shop you probably realized that even the glasses were collaborating in your success.” The boy thought about that for a while as he looked at the moon and the bleached sands. “I have watched the caravan as it crossed the desert,” he said. “The caravan and the desert speak the same language, and it’s for that reason that the desert allows the crossing. It’s going to test the caravan’s every step to see if it’s in time, and, if it is, we will make it to the oasis.” “If either of us had joined this caravan based only on personal courage, but without understanding that language, this journey would have been much more difficult.” They stood there looking at the moon. “That’s the magic of omens,” said the boy. “I’ve seen how the guides read the signs of the desert, and how the soul of the caravan speaks to the soul of the desert.” The Englishman said, “I’d better pay more attention to the caravan.” “And I’d better read your books,” said the boy.
THEY WERE STRANGE BOOKS. THEY SPOKE ABOUT MERCURY, salt, dragons, and kings, and he didn’t understand any of it. But there was one idea that seemed to repeat itself throughout all the books: all things are the manifestation of one thing only. In one of the books he learned that the most important text in the literature of alchemy contained only a few lines, and had been inscribed on the surface of an emerald. “It’s the Emerald Tablet,” said the Englishman, proud that he might teach something to the boy. “Well, then, why do we need all these books?” the boy asked. “So that we can understand those few lines,” the Englishman answered, without appearing really to believe what he had said. The book that most interested the boy told the stories of the famous alchemists. They were men who had dedicated their entire lives to the purification of metals in their laboratories; they believed that, if a metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its individual properties, and what was left would be the Soul of the World. This Soul of the World allowed them to understand anything on the face of the earth, because it was the language with which all things communicated. They called that discovery the Master Work—it was part liquid and part solid. “Can’t you just observe men and omens in order to understand the language?” the boy asked. “You have a mania for simplifying everything,” answered the Englishman, irritated. “Alchemy is a serious discipline. Every step has to be followed exactly as it was followed by the masters.” The boy learned that the liquid part of the Master Work was called the Elixir of Life, and that it cured all illnesses; it also kept the alchemist from growing old. And the solid part was called the Philosopher’s Stone. “It’s not easy to find the Philosopher’s Stone,” said the Englishman. “The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.” The boy thought about the crystal merchant. He had said that it was a good thing for the boy to clean the crystal pieces, so that he could free himself from negative thoughts. The boy was becoming more and more convinced that alchemy could be learned in one’s daily life. “Also,” said the Englishman, “the Philosopher’s Stone has a fascinating property. A small sliver of the stone can transform large quantities of metal into gold.” Having heard that, the boy became even more interested in alchemy. He thought that, with some patience, he’d be able to transform everything into gold. He read the lives of the various people who had succeeded in doing so: Helvétius, Elias, Fulcanelli, and Geber. They were fascinating stories: each of them lived out his Personal Legend to the end. They traveled, spoke with wise men, performed miracles for the incredulous, and owned the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. But when the boy wanted to learn how to achieve the Master Work, he became completely lost. There were just drawings, coded instructions, and obscure texts. “WHY DO THEY MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED?” HE asked the Englishman one night. The boy had noticed that the Englishman was irritable, and missed his books. “So that those who have the responsibility for understanding can understand,” he said. “Imagine if everyone went around transforming lead into gold. Gold would lose its value. “It’s only those who are persistent, and willing to study things deeply, who achieve the Master Work. That’s why I’m here in the middle of the desert. I’m seeking a true alchemist who will help me to decipher the codes.” “When were these books written?” the boy asked. “Many centuries ago.” “They didn’t have the printing press in those days,” the boy argued. “There was no way for everybody to know about alchemy. Why did they use such strange language, with so many drawings?” The Englishman didn’t answer him directly. He said that for the past few days he had been paying attention to how the caravan operated, but that he hadn’t learned anything new. The only thing he had noticed was that talk of war was becoming more and more frequent.
THEN ONE DAY THE BOY RETURNED THE BOOKS TO THE Englishman. “Did you learn anything?” the Englishman asked, eager to hear what it might be. He needed someone to talk to so as to avoid thinking about the possibility of war. “I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. “But, above all, I learned that these things are all so simple that they could be written on the surface of an emerald.” The Englishman was disappointed. The years of research, the magic symbols, the strange words, and the laboratory equipment…none of this had made an impression on the boy. His soul must be too primitive to understand those things, he thought. He took back his books and packed them away again in their bags. “Go back to watching the caravan,” he said. “That didn’t teach me anything, either.” The boy went back to contemplating the silence of the desert, and the sand raised by the animals. “Everyone has his or her own way of learning things,” he said to himself. “His way isn’t the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we’re both in search of our Personal Legends, and I respect him for that.”
THE CARAVAN BEGAN TO TRAVEL DAY AND NIGHT. THE hooded Bedouins reappeared more and more frequently, and the camel driver—who had become a good friend of the boy’s—explained that the war between the tribes had already begun. The caravan would be very lucky to reach the oasis. The animals were exhausted, and the men talked among themselves less and less. The silence was the worst aspect of the night, when the mere groan of a camel—which before had been nothing but the groan of a camel—now frightened everyone, because it might signal a raid. The camel driver, though, seemed not to be very concerned with the threat of war. “I’m alive,” he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. “When I’m eating, that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other. “Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.” Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself. “It’s the oasis,” said the camel driver. “Well, why don’t we go there right now?” the boy asked. “Because we have to sleep.”
THE BOY AWOKE AS THE SUN ROSE. THERE, IN FRONT OF him, where the small stars had been the night before, was an endless row of date palms, stretching across the entire desert. “We’ve done it!” said the Englishman, who had also awakened early. But the boy was quiet. He was at home with the silence of the desert, and he was content just to look at the trees. He still had a long way to go to reach the Pyramids, and someday this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment—the party the camel driver had mentioned—and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and his dreams of the future. Although the vision of the date palms would someday be just a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from the war. Yesterday, the camel’s groan signaled danger, and now a row of date palms could herald a miracle. The world speaks many languages, the boy thought.
THE TIMES RUSH PAST, AND SO DO THE CARAVANS, thought the alchemist, as he watched the hundreds of people and animals arriving at the oasis. People were shouting at the new arrivals, dust obscured the desert sun, and the children of the oasis were bursting with excitement at the arrival of the strangers. The alchemist saw the tribal chiefs greet the leader of the caravan, and converse with him at length. But none of that mattered to the alchemist. He had already seen many people come and go, and the desert remained as it was. He had seen kings and beggars walking the desert sands. The dunes were changed constantly by the wind, yet these were the same sands he had known since he was a child. He always enjoyed seeing the happiness that the travelers experienced when, after weeks of yellow sand and blue sky, they first saw the green of the date palms. Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees, he thought. He decided to concentrate on more practical matters. He knew that in the caravan there was a man to whom he was to teach some of his secrets. The omens had told him so. He didn’t know the man yet, but his practiced eye would recognize him when he appeared. He hoped that it would be someone as capable as his previous apprentice. I don’t know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he thought. It wasn’t exactly that they were secrets; God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures. He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.
THE BOY COULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS SEEING: THE oasis, rather than being just a well surrounded by a few palm trees—as he had seen once in a geography book—was much larger than many towns back in Spain. There were three hundred wells, fifty thousand date trees, and innumerable colored tents spread among them. “It looks like A Thousand and One Nights,” said the Englishman, impatient to meet with the alchemist. They were surrounded by children, curious to look at the animals and people that were arriving. The men of the oasis wanted to know if they had seen any fighting, and the women competed with one another for access to the cloth and precious stones brought by the merchants. The silence of the desert was a distant dream; the travelers in the caravan were talking incessantly, laughing and shouting, as if they had emerged from the spiritual world and found themselves once again in the world of people. They were relieved and happy. They had been taking careful precautions in the desert, but the camel driver explained to the boy that oases were always considered to be neutral territories, because the majority of the inhabitants were women and children. There were oases throughout the desert, but the tribesmen fought in the desert, leaving the oases as places of refuge. With some difficulty, the leader of the caravan brought all his people together and gave them his instructions. The group was to remain there at the oasis until the conflict between the tribes was over. Since they were visitors, they would have to share living space with those who lived there, and would be given the best accommodations. That was the law of hospitality. Then he asked that everyone, including his own sentinels, hand over their arms to the men appointed by the tribal chieftains. “Those are the rules of war,” the leader explained. “The oases may not shelter armies or troops.” To the boy’s surprise, the Englishman took a chrome-plated revolver out of his bag and gave it to the men who were collecting the arms. “Why a revolver?” he asked. “It helped me to trust in people,” the Englishman answered. Meanwhile, the boy thought about his treasure. The closer he got to the realization of his dream, the more difficult things became. It seemed as if what the old king had called “beginner’s luck” were no longer functioning. In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage. So he could not be hasty, nor impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path. God placed them along my path. He had surprised himself with the thought. Until then, he had considered the omens to be things of this world. Like eating or sleeping, or like seeking love or finding a job. He had never thought of them in terms of a language used by God to indicate what he should do. “Don’t be impatient,” he repeated to himself. “It’s like the camel driver said: ‘Eat when it’s time to eat. And move along when it’s time to move along.’” That first day, everyone slept from exhaustion, including the Englishman. The boy was assigned a place far from his friend, in a tent with five other young men of about his age. They were people of the desert, and clamored to hear his stories about the great cities. The boy told them about his life as a shepherd, and was about to tell them of his experiences at the crystal shop when the Englishman came into the tent. “I’ve been looking for you all morning,” he said, as he led the boy outside. “I need you to help me find out where the alchemist lives.” First, they tried to find him on their own. An alchemist would probably live in a manner that was different from that of the rest of the people at the oasis, and it was likely that in his tent an oven was continuously burning. They searched everywhere, and found that the oasis was much larger than they could have imagined; there were hundreds of tents. “We’ve wasted almost the entire day,” said the Englishman, sitting down with the boy near one of the wells. “Maybe we’d better ask someone,” the boy suggested. The Englishman didn’t want to tell others about his reasons for being at the oasis, and couldn’t make up his mind. But, finally, he agreed that the boy, who spoke better Arabic than he, should do so. The boy approached a woman who had come to the well to fill a goatskin with water. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m trying to find out where the alchemist lives here at the oasis.” The woman said she had never heard of such a person, and hurried away. But before she fled, she advised the boy that he had better not try to converse with women who were dressed in black, because they were married women. He should respect tradition. The Englishman was disappointed. It seemed he had made the long journey for nothing. The boy was also saddened; his friend was in pursuit of his Personal Legend. And, when someone was in such pursuit, the entire universe made an effort to help him succeed— that’s what the old king had said. He couldn’t have been wrong. “I had never heard of alchemists before,” the boy said. “Maybe no one here has, either.” The Englishman’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! Maybe no one here knows what an alchemist is! Find out who it is who cures the people’s illnesses!” Several women dressed in black came to the well for water, but the boy would speak to none of them, despite the Englishman’s insistence. Then a man approached. “Do you know someone here who cures people’s illnesses?” the boy asked. “Allah cures our illnesses,” said the man, clearly frightened of the strangers. “You’re looking for witch doctors.” He spoke some verses from the Koran, and moved on. Another man appeared. He was older, and was carrying a small bucket. The boy repeated his question. “Why do you want to find that sort of person?” the Arab asked. “Because my friend here has traveled for many months in order to meet with him,” the boy said. “If such a man is here at the oasis, he must be the very powerful one,” said the old man after thinking for a few moments. “Not even the tribal chieftains are able to see him when they want to. Only when he consents. “Wait for the end of the war. Then leave with the caravan. Don’t try to enter into the life of the oasis,” he said, and walked away. But the Englishman was exultant. They were on the right track. Finally, a young woman approached who was not dressed in black. She had a vessel on her shoulder, and her head was covered by a veil, but her face was uncovered. The boy approached her to ask about the alchemist. At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke—the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen—the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert. It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning. Maktub, thought the boy. The Englishman shook the boy: “Come on, ask her!” The boy stepped closer to the girl, and when she smiled, he did the same. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Fatima,” the girl said, averting her eyes. “That’s what some women in my country are called.” “It’s the name of the Prophet’s daughter,” Fatima said. “The invaders carried the name everywhere.” The beautiful girl spoke of the invaders with pride. The Englishman prodded him, and the boy asked her about the man who cured people’s illnesses. “That’s the man who knows all the secrets of the world,” she said. “He communicates with the genies of the desert.” The genies were the spirits of good and evil. And the girl pointed to the south, indicating that it was there the strange man lived. Then she filled her vessel with water and left. The Englishman vanished, too, gone to find the alchemist. And the boy sat there by the well for a long time, remembering that one day in Tarifa the levanter had brought to him the perfume of that woman, and realizing that he had loved her before he even knew she existed. He knew that his love for her would enable him to discover every treasure in the world. The next day, the boy returned to the well, hoping to see the girl. To his surprise, the Englishman was there, looking out at the desert. “I waited all afternoon and evening,” he said. “He appeared with the first stars of evening. I told him what I was seeking, and he asked me if I had ever transformed lead into gold. I told him that was what I had come here to learn. “He told me I should try to do so. That’s all he said: ‘Go and try.’” The boy didn’t say anything. The poor Englishman had traveled all this way, only to be told that he should repeat what he had already done so many times. “So, then try,” he said to the Englishman. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start now.” As the Englishman left, Fatima arrived and filled her vessel with water. “I came to tell you just one thing,” the boy said. “I want you to be my wife. I love you.” The girl dropped the container, and the water spilled. “I’m going to wait here for you every day. I have crossed the desert in search of a treasure that is somewhere near the Pyramids, and for me, the war seemed a curse. But now it’s a blessing, because it brought me to you.” “The war is going to end someday,” the girl said. The boy looked around him at the date palms. He reminded himself that he had been a shepherd, and that he could be a shepherd again. Fatima was more important than his treasure. “The tribesmen are always in search of treasure,” the girl said, as if she had guessed what he was thinking. “And the women of the desert are proud of their tribesmen.” She refilled her vessel and left. The boy went to the well every day to meet with Fatima. He told her about his life as a shepherd, about the king, and about the crystal shop. They became friends, and except for the fifteen minutes he spent with her, each day seemed that it would never pass. When he had been at the oasis for almost a month, the leader of the caravan called a meeting of all of the people traveling with him. “We don’t know when the war will end, so we can’t continue our journey,” he said. “The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, and the war is important to both armies. It’s not a battle of good against evil. It’s a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, and, when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others—because Allah is on both sides.” The people went back to where they were living, and the boy went to meet with Fatima that afternoon. He told her about the morning’s meeting. “The day after we met,” Fatima said, “you told me that you loved me. Then, you taught me something of the universal language and the Soul of the World. Because of that, I have become a part of you.” The boy listened to the sound of her voice, and thought it to be more beautiful than the sound of the wind in the date palms. “I have been waiting for you here at this oasis for a long time. I have forgotten about my past, about my traditions, and the way in which men of the desert expect women to behave. Ever since I was a child, I have dreamed that the desert would bring me a wonderful present. Now, my present has arrived, and it’s you.” The boy wanted to take her hand. But Fatima’s hands held to the handles of her jug. “You have told me about your dreams, about the old king and your treasure. And you’ve told me about omens. So now, I fear nothing, because it was those omens that brought you to me. And I am a part of your dream, a part of your Personal Legend, as you call it. “That’s why I want you to continue toward your goal. If you have to wait until the war is over, then wait. But if you have to go before then, go on in pursuit of your dream. The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That’s the way it will be with our love for each other. “Maktub,” she said. “If I am really a part of your dream, you’ll come back one day.” The boy was sad as he left her that day. He thought of all the married shepherds he had known. They had a difficult time convincing their wives that they had to go off into distant fields. Love required them to stay with the people they loved. He told Fatima that, at their next meeting. “The desert takes our men from us, and they don’t always return,” she said. “We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don’t return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become a part of everything…they become the Soul of the World. “Some do come back. And then the other women are happy because they believe that their men may one day return, as well. I used to look at those women and envy them their happiness. Now, I too will be one of the women who wait. “I’m a desert woman, and I’m proud of that. I want my husband to wander as free as the wind that shapes the dunes. And, if I have to, I will accept the fact that he has become a part of the clouds, and the animals, and the water of the desert.” The boy went to look for the Englishman. He wanted to tell him about Fatima. He was surprised when he saw that the Englishman had built himself a furnace outside his tent. It was a strange furnace, fueled by firewood, with a transparent flask heating on top. As the Englishman stared out at the desert, his eyes seemed brighter than they had when he was reading his books. “This is the first phase of the job,” he said. “I have to separate out the sulfur. To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.” He continued to feed the fire, and the boy stayed on until the desert turned pink in the setting sun. He felt the urge to go out into the desert, to see if its silence held the answers to his questions. He wandered for a while, keeping the date palms of the oasis within sight. He listened to the wind, and felt the stones beneath his feet. Here and there, he found a shell, and realized that the desert, in remote times, had been a sea. He sat on a stone, and allowed himself to become hypnotized by the horizon. He tried to deal with the concept of love as distinct from possession, and couldn’t separate them. But Fatima was a woman of the desert, and, if anything could help him to understand, it was the desert. As he sat there thinking, he sensed movement above him. Looking up, he saw a pair of hawks flying high in the sky. He watched the hawks as they drifted on the wind. Although their flight appeared to have no pattern, it made a certain kind of sense to the boy. It was just that he couldn’t grasp what it meant. He followed the movement of the birds, trying to read something into it. Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership. He felt sleepy. In his heart, he wanted to remain awake, but he also wanted to sleep. “I am learning the Language of the World, and everything in the world is beginning to make sense to me…even the flight of the hawks,” he said to himself. And, in that mood, he was grateful to be in love. When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought. Suddenly, one of the hawks made a flashing dive through the sky, attacking the other. As it did so, a sudden, fleeting image came to the boy: an army, with its swords at the ready, riding into the oasis. The vision vanished immediately, but it had shaken him. He had heard people speak of mirages, and had already seen some himself: they were desires that, because of their intensity, materialized over the sands of the desert. But he certainly didn’t desire that an army invade the oasis. He wanted to forget about the vision, and return to his meditation. He tried again to concentrate on the pink shades of the desert, and its stones. But there was something there in his heart that wouldn’t allow him to do so. “Always heed the omens,” the old king had said. The boy recalled what he had seen in the vision, and sensed that it was actually going to occur. He rose, and made his way back toward the palm trees. Once again, he perceived the many languages in the things about him: this time, the desert was safe, and it was the oasis that had become dangerous. The camel driver was seated at the base of a palm tree, observing the sunset. He saw the boy appear from the other side of the dunes. “An army is coming,” the boy said. “I had a vision.” “The desert fills men’s hearts with visions,” the camel driver answered. But the boy told him about the hawks: that he had been watching their flight and had suddenly felt himself to have plunged to the Soul of the World. The camel driver understood what the boy was saying. He knew that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things. One could open a book to any page, or look at a person’s hand; one could turn a card, or watch the flight of the birds…whatever the thing observed, one could find a connection with his experience of the moment. Actually, it wasn’t that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetration to the Soul of the World. The desert was full of men who earned their living based on the ease with which they could penetrate to the Soul of the World. They were known as seers, and they were held in fear by women and the elderly. Tribesmen were also wary of consulting them, because it would be impossible to be effective in battle if one knew that he was fated to die. The tribesmen preferred the taste of battle, and the thrill of not knowing what the outcome would be; the future was already written by Allah, and what he had written was always for the good of man. So the tribesmen lived only for the present, because the present was full of surprises, and they had to be aware of many things: Where was the enemy’s sword? Where was his horse? What kind of blow should one deliver next in order to remain alive? The camel driver was not a fighter, and he had consulted with seers. Many of them had been right about what they said, while some had been wrong. Then, one day, the oldest seer he had ever sought out (and the one most to be feared) had asked why the camel driver was so interested in the future. “Well…so I can do things,” he had responded. “And so I can change those things that I don’t want to happen.” “But then they wouldn’t be a part of your future,” the seer had said. “Well, maybe I just want to know the future so I can prepare myself for what’s coming.” “If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise,” said the seer. “If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.” “I want to know about the future because I’m a man,” the camel driver had said to the seer. “And men always live their lives based on the future.” The seer was a specialist in the casting of twigs; he threw them on the ground, and made interpretations based on how they fell. That day, he didn’t make a cast. He wrapped the twigs in a piece of cloth and put them back in his bag. “I make my living forecasting the future for people,” he said. “I know the science of the twigs, and I know how to use them to penetrate to the place where all is written. There, I can read the past, discover what has already been forgotten, and understand the omens that are here in the present. “When people consult me, it’s not that I’m reading the future; I am guessing at the future. The future belongs to God, and it is only he who reveals it, under extraordinary circumstances. How do I guess at the future? Based on the omens of the present. The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.” The camel driver had asked what the circumstances were under which God would allow him to see the future. “Only when he, himself, reveals it. And God only rarely reveals the future. When he does so, it is for only one reason: it’s a future that was written so as to be altered.” God had shown the boy a part of the future, the camel driver thought. Why was it that he wanted the boy to serve as his instrument? “Go and speak to the tribal chieftains,” said the camel driver. “Tell them about the armies that are approaching.” “They’ll laugh at me.” “They are men of the desert, and the men of the desert are used to dealing with omens.” “Well, then, they probably already know.” “They’re not concerned with that right now. They believe that if they have to know about something Allah wants them to know, someone will tell them about it. It has happened many times before. But, this time, the person is you.” The boy thought of Fatima. And he decided he would go to see the chiefs of the tribes.
THE BOY APPROACHED THE GUARD AT THE FRONT OF THE huge white tent at the center of the oasis. “I want to see the chieftains. I’ve brought omens from the desert.” Without responding, the guard entered the tent, where he remained for some time. When he emerged, it was with a young Arab, dressed in white and gold. The boy told the younger man what he had seen, and the man asked him to wait there. He disappeared into the tent. Night fell, and an assortment of fighting men and merchants entered and exited the tent. One by one, the campfires were extinguished, and the oasis fell as quiet as the desert. Only the lights in the great tent remained. During all this time, the boy thought about Fatima, and he was still unable to understand his last conversation with her. Finally, after hours of waiting, the guard bade the boy enter. The boy was astonished by what he saw inside. Never could he have imagined that, there in the middle of the desert, there existed a tent like this one. The ground was covered with the most beautiful carpets he had ever walked upon, and from the top of the structure hung lamps of handwrought gold, each with a lighted candle. The tribal chieftains were seated at the back of the tent in a semicircle, resting upon richly embroidered silk cushions. Servants came and went with silver trays laden with spices and tea. Other servants maintained the fires in the hookahs. The atmosphere was suffused with the sweet scent of smoke. There were eight chieftains, but the boy could see immediately which of them was the most important: an Arab dressed in white and gold, seated at the center of the semicircle. At his side was the young Arab the boy had spoken with earlier. “Who is this stranger who speaks of omens?” asked one of the chieftains, eyeing the boy. “It is I,” the boy answered. And he told what he had seen. “Why would the desert reveal such things to a stranger, when it knows that we have been here for generations?” said another of the chieftains. “Because my eyes are not yet accustomed to the desert,” the boy said. “I can see things that eyes habituated to the desert might not see.” And also because I know about the Soul of the World, he thought to himself. “The oasis is neutral ground. No one attacks an oasis,” said a third chieftain. “I can only tell you what I saw. If you don’t want to believe me, you don’t have to do anything about it.” The men fell into an animated discussion. They spoke in an Arabic dialect that the boy didn’t understand, but, when he made to leave, the guard told him to stay. The boy became fearful; the omens told him that something was wrong. He regretted having spoken to the camel driver about what he had seen in the desert. Suddenly, the elder at the center smiled almost imperceptibly, and the boy felt better. The man hadn’t participated in the discussion, and, in fact, hadn’t said a word up to that point. But the boy was already used to the Language of the World, and he could feel the vibrations of peace throughout the tent. Now his intuition was that he had been right in coming. The discussion ended. The chieftains were silent for a few moments as they listened to what the old man was saying. Then he turned to the boy: this time his expression was cold and distant. “Two thousand years ago, in a distant land, a man who believed in dreams was thrown into a dungeon and then sold as a slave,” the old man said, now in the dialect the boy understood. “Our merchants bought that man, and brought him to Egypt. All of us know that whoever believes in dreams also knows how to interpret them.” The elder continued, “When the pharaoh dreamed of cows that were thin and cows that were fat, this man I’m speaking of rescued Egypt from famine. His name was Joseph. He, too, was a stranger in a strange land, like you, and he was probably about your age.” He paused, and his eyes were still unfriendly. “We always observe the Tradition. The Tradition saved Egypt from famine in those days, and made the Egyptians the wealthiest of peoples. The Tradition teaches men how to cross the desert, and how their children should marry. The Tradition says that an oasis is neutral territory, because both sides have oases, and so both are vulnerable.” No one said a word as the old man continued. “But the Tradition also says that we should believe the messages of the desert. Everything we know was taught to us by the desert.” The old man gave a signal, and everyone stood. The meeting was over. The hookahs were extinguished, and the guards stood at attention. The boy made ready to leave, but the old man spoke again: “Tomorrow, we are going to break the agreement that says that no one at the oasis may carry arms. Throughout the entire day we will be on the lookout for our enemies. When the sun sets, the men will once again surrender their arms to me. For every ten dead men among our enemies, you will receive a piece of gold. “But arms cannot be drawn unless they also go into battle. Arms are as capricious as the desert, and, if they are not used, the next time they might not function. If at least one of them hasn’t been used by the end of the day tomorrow, one will be used on you.” When the boy left the tent, the oasis was illuminated only by the light of the full moon. He was twenty minutes from his tent, and began to make his way there. He was alarmed by what had happened. He had succeeded in reaching through to the Soul of the World, and now the price for having done so might be his life. It was a frightening bet. But he had been making risky bets ever since the day he had sold his sheep to pursue his Personal Legend. And, as the camel driver had said, to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world. Everything depended on one word: “Maktub.” Walking along in the silence, he had no regrets. If he died tomorrow, it would be because God was not willing to change the future. He would at least have died after having crossed the strait, after having worked in a crystal shop, and after having known the silence of the desert and Fatima’s eyes. He had lived every one of his days intensely since he had left home so long ago. If he died tomorrow, he would already have seen more than other shepherds, and he was proud of that. Suddenly he heard a thundering sound, and he was thrown to the ground by a wind such as he had never known. The area was swirling in dust so intense that it hid the moon from view. Before him was an enormous white horse, rearing over him with a frightening scream. When the blinding dust had settled a bit, the boy trembled at what he saw. Astride the animal was a horseman dressed completely in black, with a falcon perched on his left shoulder. He wore a turban and his entire face, except for his eyes, was covered with a black kerchief. He appeared to be a messenger from the desert, but his presence was much more powerful than that of a mere messenger. The strange horseman drew an enormous, curved sword from a scabbard mounted on his saddle. The steel of its blade glittered in the light of the moon. “Who dares to read the meaning of the flight of the hawks?” he demanded, so loudly that his words seemed to echo through the fifty thousand palm trees of Al-Fayoum. “It is I who dared to do so,” said the boy. He was reminded of the image of Santiago Matamoros, mounted on his white horse, with the infidels beneath his hooves. This man looked exactly the same, except that now the roles were reversed. “It is I who dared to do so,” he repeated, and he lowered his head to receive a blow from the sword. “Many lives will be saved, because I was able to see through to the Soul of the World.” The sword didn’t fall. Instead, the stranger lowered it slowly, until the point touched the boy’s forehead. It drew a droplet of blood. The horseman was completely immobile, as was the boy. It didn’t even occur to the boy to flee. In his heart, he felt a strange sense of joy: he was about to die in pursuit of his Personal Legend. And for Fatima. The omens had been true, after all. Here he was, face-to-face with his enemy, but there was no need to be concerned about dying—the Soul of the World awaited him, and he would soon be a part of it. And, tomorrow, his enemy would also be a part of that Soul. The stranger continued to hold the sword at the boy’s forehead. “Why did you read the flight of the birds?” “I read only what the birds wanted to tell me. They wanted to save the oasis. Tomorrow all of you will die, because there are more men at the oasis than you have.” The sword remained where it was. “Who are you to change what Allah has willed?” “Allah created the armies, and he also created the hawks. Allah taught me the language of the birds. Everything has been written by the same hand,” the boy said, remembering the camel driver’s words. The stranger withdrew the sword from the boy’s forehead, and the boy felt immensely relieved. But he still couldn’t flee. “Be careful with your prognostications,” said the stranger. “When something is written, there is no way to change it.” “All I saw was an army,” said the boy. “I didn’t see the outcome of the battle.” The stranger seemed satisfied with the answer. But he kept the sword in his hand. “What is a stranger doing in a strange land?” “I am following my Personal Legend. It’s not something you would understand.” The stranger placed his sword in its scabbard, and the boy relaxed. “I had to test your courage,” the stranger said. “Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World.” The boy was surprised. The stranger was speaking of things that very few people knew about. “You must not let up, even after having come so far,” he continued. “You must love the desert, but never trust it completely. Because the desert tests all men: it challenges every step, and kills those who become distracted.” What he said reminded the boy of the old king. “If the warriors come here, and your head is still on your shoulders at sunset, come and find me,” said the stranger. The same hand that had brandished the sword now held a whip. The horse reared again, raising a cloud of dust. “Where do you live?” shouted the boy, as the horseman rode away. The hand with the whip pointed to the south. The boy had met the alchemist.
NEXT MORNING, THERE WERE TWO THOUSAND ARMED men scattered throughout the palm trees at Al-Fayoum. Before the sun had reached its high point, five hundred tribesmen appeared on the horizon. The mounted troops entered the oasis from the north; it appeared to be a peaceful expedition, but they all carried arms hidden in their robes. When they reached the white tent at the center of Al-Fayoum, they withdrew their scimitars and rifles. And they attacked an empty tent. The men of the oasis surrounded the horsemen from the desert and within half an hour all but one of the intruders were dead. The children had been kept at the other side of a grove of palm trees, and saw nothing of what had happened. The women had remained in their tents, praying for the safekeeping of their husbands, and saw nothing of the battle, either. Were it not for the bodies there on the ground, it would have appeared to be a normal day at the oasis. The only tribesman spared was the commander of the battalion. That afternoon, he was brought before the tribal chieftains, who asked him why he had violated the Tradition. The commander said that his men had been starving and thirsty, exhausted from many days of battle, and had decided to take the oasis so as to be able to return to the war. The tribal chieftain said that he felt sorry for the tribesmen, but that the Tradition was sacred. He condemned the commander to death without honor. Rather than being killed by a blade or a bullet, he was hanged from a dead palm tree, where his body twisted in the desert wind. The tribal chieftain called for the boy, and presented him with fifty pieces of gold. He repeated his story about Joseph of Egypt, and asked the boy to become the counselor of the oasis.
WHEN THE SUN HAD SET, AND THE FIRST STARS MADE their appearance, the boy started to walk to the south. He eventually sighted a single tent, and a group of Arabs passing by told the boy that it was a place inhabited by genies. But the boy sat down and waited. Not until the moon was high did the alchemist ride into view. He carried two dead hawks over his shoulder. “I am here,” the boy said. “You shouldn’t be here,” the alchemist answered. “Or is it your Personal Legend that brings you here?” “With the wars between the tribes, it’s impossible to cross the desert. So I have come here.” The alchemist dismounted from his horse, and signaled that the boy should enter the tent with him. It was a tent like many at the oasis. The boy looked around for the ovens and other apparatus used in alchemy, but saw none. There were only some books in a pile, a small cooking stove, and the carpets, covered with mysterious designs. “Sit down. We’ll have something to drink and eat these hawks,” said the alchemist. The boy suspected that they were the same hawks he had seen on the day before, but he said nothing. The alchemist lighted the fire, and soon a delicious aroma filled the tent. It was better than the scent of the hookahs. “Why did you want to see me?” the boy asked. “Because of the omens,” the alchemist answered. “The wind told me you would be coming, and that you would need help.” “It’s not I the wind spoke about. It’s the other foreigner, the Englishman. He’s the one that’s looking for you.” “He has other things to do first. But he’s on the right track. He has begun to try to understand the desert.” “And what about me?” “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream,” said the alchemist, echoing the words of the old king. The boy understood. Another person was there to help him toward his Personal Legend. “So you are going to instruct me?” “No. You already know all you need to know. I am only going to point you in the direction of your treasure.” “But there’s a tribal war,” the boy reiterated. “I know what’s happening in the desert.” “I have already found my treasure. I have a camel, I have my money from the crystal shop, and I have fifty gold pieces. In my own country, I would be a rich man.” “But none of that is from the Pyramids,” said the alchemist. “I also have Fatima. She is a treasure greater than anything else I have won.” “She wasn’t found at the Pyramids, either.” They ate in silence. The alchemist opened a bottle and poured a red liquid into the boy’s cup. It was the most delicious wine he had ever tasted. “Isn’t wine prohibited here?” the boy asked “It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil,” said the alchemist. “It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.” The alchemist was a bit daunting, but, as the boy drank the wine, he relaxed. After they finished eating they sat outside the tent, under a moon so brilliant that it made the stars pale. “Drink and enjoy yourself,” said the alchemist, noticing that the boy was feeling happier. “Rest well tonight, as if you were a warrior preparing for combat. Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense. “Tomorrow, sell your camel and buy a horse. Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die.”
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, THE BOY APPEARED AT THE alchemist’s tent with a horse. The alchemist was ready, and he mounted his own steed and placed the falcon on his left shoulder. He said to the boy, “Show me where there is life out in the desert. Only those who can see such signs of life are able to find treasure.” They began to ride out over the sands, with the moon lighting their way. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find life in the desert, the boy thought. I don’t know the desert that well yet. He wanted to say so to the alchemist, but he was afraid of the man. They reached the rocky place where the boy had seen the hawks in the sky, but now there was only silence and the wind. “I don’t know how to find life in the desert,” the boy said. “I know that there is life here, but I don’t know where to look.” “Life attracts life,” the alchemist answered. And then the boy understood. He loosened the reins on his horse, who galloped forward over the rocks and sand. The alchemist followed as the boy’s horse ran for almost half an hour. They could no longer see the palms of the oasis—only the gigantic moon above them, and its silver reflections from the stones of the desert. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the boy’s horse began to slow. “There’s life here,” the boy said to the alchemist. “I don’t know the language of the desert, but my horse knows the language of life.” They dismounted, and the alchemist said nothing. Advancing slowly, they searched among the stones. The alchemist stopped abruptly, and bent to the ground. There was a hole there among the stones. The alchemist put his hand into the hole, and then his entire arm, up to his shoulder. Something was moving there, and the alchemist’s eyes—the boy could see only his eyes—squinted with his effort. His arm seemed to be battling with whatever was in the hole. Then, with a motion that startled the boy, he withdrew his arm and leaped to his feet. In his hand, he grasped a snake by the tail. The boy leapt as well, but away from the alchemist. The snake fought frantically, making hissing sounds that shattered the silence of the desert. It was a cobra, whose venom could kill a person in minutes. “Watch out for his venom,” the boy said. But even though the alchemist had put his hand in the hole, and had surely already been bitten, his expression was calm. “The alchemist is two hundred years old,” the Englishman had told him. He must know how to deal with the snakes of the desert. The boy watched as his companion went to his horse and withdrew a scimitar. With its blade, he drew a circle in the sand, and then he placed the snake within it. The serpent relaxed immediately. “Not to worry,” said the alchemist. “He won’t leave the circle. You found life in the desert, the omen that I needed.” “Why was that so important?” “Because the Pyramids are surrounded by the desert.” The boy didn’t want to talk about the Pyramids. His heart was heavy, and he had been melancholy since the previous night. To continue his search for the treasure meant that he had to abandon Fatima. “I’m going to guide you across the desert,” the alchemist said. “I want to stay at the oasis,” the boy answered. “I’ve found Fatima, and, as far as I’m concerned, she’s worth more than treasure.” “Fatima is a woman of the desert,” said the alchemist. “She knows that men have to go away in order to return. And she already has her treasure: it’s you. Now she expects that you will find what it is you’re looking for.” “Well, what if I decide to stay?” “Let me tell you what will happen. You’ll be the counselor of the oasis. You have enough gold to buy many sheep and many camels. You’ll marry Fatima, and you’ll both be happy for a year. You’ll learn to love the desert, and you’ll get to know every one of the fifty thousand palms. You’ll watch them as they grow, demonstrating how the world is always changing. And you’ll get better and better at understanding omens, because the desert is the best teacher there is. “Sometime during the second year, you’ll remember about the treasure. The omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you’ll try to ignore them. You’ll use your knowledge for the welfare of the oasis and its inhabitants. The tribal chieftains will appreciate what you do. And your camels will bring you wealth and power. “During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure and your Personal Legend. You’ll walk around, night after night, at the oasis, and Fatima will be unhappy because she’ll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. But you will love her, and she’ll return your love. You’ll remember that she never asked you to stay, because a woman of the desert knows that she must await her man. So you won’t blame her. But many times you’ll walk the sands of the desert, thinking that maybe you could have left…that you could have trusted more in your love for Fatima. Because what kept you at the oasis was your own fear that you might never come back. At that point, the omens will tell you that your treasure is buried forever. “Then, sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you’ve stopped listening to them. The tribal chieftains will see that, and you’ll be dismissed from your position as counselor. But, by then, you’ll be a rich merchant, with many camels and a great deal of merchandise. You’ll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn’t pursue your Personal Legend, and that now it’s too late. “You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love…the love that speaks the Language of the World.” The alchemist erased the circle in the sand, and the snake slithered away among the rocks. The boy remembered the crystal merchant who had always wanted to go to Mecca, and the Englishman in search of the alchemist. He thought of the woman who had trusted in the desert. And he looked out over the desert that had brought him to the woman he loved. They mounted their horses, and this time it was the boy who followed the alchemist back to the oasis. The wind brought the sounds of the oasis to them, and the boy tried to hear Fatima’s voice. But that night, as he had watched the cobra within the circle, the strange horseman with the falcon on his shoulder had spoken of love and treasure, of the women of the desert and of his Personal Legend. “I’m going with you,” the boy said. And he immediately felt peace in his heart. “We’ll leave tomorrow before sunrise,” was the alchemist’s only response.
THE BOY SPENT A SLEEPLESS NIGHT. TWO HOURS BEFORE dawn, he awoke one of the boys who slept in his tent, and asked him to show him where Fatima lived. They went to her tent, and the boy gave his friend enough gold to buy a sheep. Then he asked his friend to go into the tent where Fatima was sleeping, and to awaken her and tell her that he was waiting outside. The young Arab did as he was asked, and was given enough gold to buy yet another sheep. “Now leave us alone,” said the boy to the young Arab. The Arab returned to his tent to sleep, proud to have helped the counselor of the oasis, and happy at having enough money to buy himself some sheep. Fatima appeared at the entrance to the tent. The two walked out among the palms. The boy knew that it was a violation of the Tradition, but that didn’t matter to him now. “I’m going away,” he said. “And I want you to know that I’m coming back. I love you because…” “Don’t say anything,” Fatima interrupted. “One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.” But the boy continued, “I had a dream, and I met with a king. I sold crystal and crossed the desert. And, because the tribes declared war, I went to the well, seeking the alchemist. So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” The two embraced. It was the first time either had touched the other. “I’ll be back,” the boy said. “Before this, I always looked to the desert with longing,” said Fatima. “Now it will be with hope. My father went away one day, but he returned to my mother, and he has always come back since then.” They said nothing else. They walked a bit farther among the palms, and then the boy left her at the entrance to her tent. “I’ll return, just as your father came back to your mother,” he said. He saw that Fatima’s eyes were filled with tears. “You’re crying?” “I’m a woman of the desert,” she said, averting her face. “But above all, I’m a woman.” Fatima went back to her tent, and, when daylight came, she went out to do the chores she had done for years. But everything had changed. The boy was no longer at the oasis, and the oasis would never again have the same meaning it had had only yesterday. It would no longer be a place with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells, where the pilgrims arrived, relieved at the end of their long journeys. From that day on, the oasis would be an empty place for her. From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it every day, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind, hoping that the wind would touch the boy’s face, and would tell him that she was alive. That she was waiting for him, a woman awaiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return.
“DON’T THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE LEFT BEHIND,” THE alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. “Everything is written in the Soul of the World, and there it will stay forever.” “Men dream more about coming home than about leaving,” the boy said. He was already reaccustomed to the desert’s silence. “If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.” The man was speaking the language of alchemy. But the boy knew that he was referring to Fatima. It was difficult not to think about what he had left behind. The desert, with its endless monotony, put him to dreaming. The boy could still see the palm trees, the wells, and the face of the woman he loved. He could see the Englishman at his experiments, and the camel driver who was a teacher without realizing it. Maybe the alchemist has never been in love, the boy thought. The alchemist rode in front, with the falcon on his shoulder. The bird knew the language of the desert well, and whenever they stopped, he flew off in search of game. On the first day he returned with a rabbit, and on the second with two birds. At night, they spread their sleeping gear and kept their fires hidden. The desert nights were cold, and were becoming darker and darker as the phases of the moon passed. They went on for a week, speaking only of the precautions they needed to follow in order to avoid the battles between the tribes. The war continued, and at times the wind carried the sweet, sickly smell of blood. Battles had been fought nearby, and the wind reminded the boy that there was the language of omens, always ready to show him what his eyes had failed to observe. On the seventh day, the alchemist decided to make camp earlier than usual. The falcon flew off to find game, and the alchemist offered his water container to the boy. “You are almost at the end of your journey,” said the alchemist. “I congratulate you for having pursued your Personal Legend.” “And you’ve told me nothing along the way,” said the boy. “I thought you were going to teach me some of the things you know. A while ago, I rode through the desert with a man who had books on alchemy. But I wasn’t able to learn anything from them.” “There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey. You need to learn only one thing more.” The boy wanted to know what that was, but the alchemist was searching the horizon, looking for the falcon. “Why are you called the alchemist?” “Because that’s what I am.” “And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?” “They were looking only for gold,” his companion answered. “They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend, without wanting actually to live out the Personal Legend.” “What is it that I still need to know?” the boy asked. But the alchemist continued to look to the horizon. And finally the falcon returned with their meal. They dug a hole and lit their fire in it, so that the light of the flames would not be seen. “I’m an alchemist simply because I’m an alchemist,” he said, as he prepared the meal. “I learned the science from my grandfather, who learned from his father, and so on, back to the creation of the world. In those times, the Master Work could be written simply on an emerald. But men began to reject simple things, and to write tracts, interpretations, and philosophical studies. They also began to feel that they knew a better way than others had. Yet the Emerald Tablet is still alive today.” “What was written on the Emerald Tablet?” the boy wanted to know. The alchemist began to draw in the sand, and completed his drawing in less than five minutes. As he drew, the boy thought of the old king, and the plaza where they had met that day; it seemed as if it had taken place years and years ago. “This is what was written on the Emerald Tablet,” said the alchemist, when he had finished. The boy tried to read what was written in the sand. “It’s a code,” said the boy, a bit disappointed. “It looks like what I saw in the Englishman’s books.” “No,” the alchemist answered. “It’s like the flight of those two hawks; it can’t be understood by reason alone. The Emerald Tablet is a direct passage to the Soul of the World. “The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That’s what I mean by action.” “Should I understand the Emerald Tablet?” the boy asked. “Perhaps, if you were in a laboratory of alchemy, this would be the right time to study the best way to understand the Emerald Tablet. But you are in the desert. So immerse yourself in it. The desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. You don’t even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.” “How do I immerse myself in the desert?” “Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”
THEY CROSSED THE DESERT FOR ANOTHER TWO DAYS IN silence. The alchemist had become much more cautious, because they were approaching the area where the most violent battles were being waged. As they moved along, the boy tried to listen to his heart. It was not easy to do; in earlier times, his heart had always been ready to tell its story, but lately that wasn’t true. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional over the desert sunrise that the boy had to hide his tears. His heart beat fastest when it spoke to the boy of treasure, and more slowly when the boy stared entranced at the endless horizons of the desert. But his heart was never quiet, even when the boy and the alchemist had fallen into silence. “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day. “Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.” “But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.” “Well, that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.” During the next three days, the two travelers passed by a number of armed tribesmen, and saw others on the horizon. The boy’s heart began to speak of fear. It told him stories it had heard from the Soul of the World, stories of men who sought to find their treasure and never succeeded. Sometimes it frightened the boy with the idea that he might not find his treasure, or that he might die there in the desert. At other times, it told the boy that it was satisfied: it had found love and riches. “My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.” “That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.” “Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.” “You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?” “Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them. “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.” The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. “Even though I complain sometimes,” it said, “it’s because I’m the heart of a person, and people’s hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.” “My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” “Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart. “When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I’ve known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I’ve discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.” So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy slept deeply, and, when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World. It said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. “Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place. “So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.” “Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.” From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that, every time he heard the alarm, he would heed its message. That night, he told all of this to the alchemist. And the alchemist understood that the boy’s heart had returned to the Soul of the World. “So what should I do now?” the boy asked. “Continue in the direction of the Pyramids,” said the alchemist. “And continue to pay heed to the omens. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is.” “Is that the one thing I still needed to know?” “No,” the alchemist answered. “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’ “Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.” The boy remembered an old proverb from his country. It said that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn. ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, THE FIRST CLEAR SIGN OF danger appeared. Three armed tribesmen approached, and asked what the boy and the alchemist were doing there. “I’m hunting with my falcon,” the alchemist answered. “We’re going to have to search you to see whether you’re armed,” one of the tribesmen said. The alchemist dismounted slowly, and the boy did the same. “Why are you carrying money?” asked the tribesman, when he had searched the boy’s bag. “I need it to get to the Pyramids,” he said. The tribesman who was searching the alchemist’s belongings found a small crystal flask filled with a liquid, and a yellow glass egg that was slightly larger than a chicken’s egg. “What are these things?” he asked. “That’s the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. It’s the Master Work of the alchemists. Whoever swallows that elixir will never be sick again, and a fragment from that stone turns any metal into gold.” The Arabs laughed at him, and the alchemist laughed along. They thought his answer was amusing, and they allowed the boy and the alchemist to proceed with all of their belongings. “Are you crazy?” the boy asked the alchemist, when they had moved on. “What did you do that for?” “To show you one of life’s simple lessons,” the alchemist answered. “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.” They continued across the desert. With every day that passed, the boy’s heart became more and more silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to contemplate the desert, and to drink with the boy from the Soul of the World. The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other. When his heart spoke to him, it was to provide a stimulus to the boy, and to give him strength, because the days of silence there in the desert were wearisome. His heart told the boy what his strongest qualities were: his courage in having given up his sheep and in trying to live out his Personal Legend, and his enthusiasm during the time he had worked at the crystal shop. And his heart told him something else that the boy had never noticed: it told the boy of dangers that had threatened him, but that he had never perceived. His heart said that one time it had hidden the rifle the boy had taken from his father, because of the possibility that the boy might wound himself. And it reminded the boy of the day when he had been ill and vomiting out in the fields, after which he had fallen into a deep sleep. There had been two thieves farther ahead who were planning to steal the boy’s sheep and murder him. But, since the boy hadn’t passed by, they had decided to move on, thinking that he had changed his route. “Does a man’s heart always help him?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Mostly just the hearts of those who are trying to realize their Personal Legends. But they do help children, drunkards, and the elderly, too.” “Does that mean that I’ll never run into danger?” “It means only that the heart does what it can,” the alchemist said. One afternoon, they passed by the encampment of one of the tribes. At each corner of the camp were Arabs garbed in beautiful white robes, with arms at the ready. The men were smoking their hookahs and trading stories from the battlefield. No one paid any attention to the two travelers. “There’s no danger,” the boy said, when they had moved on past the encampment. The alchemist sounded angry: “Trust in your heart, but never forget that you’re in the desert. When men are at war with one another, the Soul of the World can hear the screams of battle. No one fails to suffer the consequences of everything under the sun.” All things are one, the boy thought. And then, as if the desert wanted to demonstrate that the alchemist was right, two horsemen appeared from behind the travelers. “You can’t go any farther,” one of them said. “You’re in the area where the tribes are at war.” “I’m not going very far,” the alchemist answered, looking straight into the eyes of the horsemen. They were silent for a moment, and then agreed that the boy and the alchemist could move along. The boy watched the exchange with fascination. “You dominated those horsemen with the way you looked at them,” he said. “Your eyes show the strength of your soul,” answered the alchemist. That’s true, the boy thought. He had noticed that, in the midst of the multitude of armed men back at the encampment, there had been one who stared fixedly at the two. He had been so far away that his face wasn’t even visible. But the boy was certain that he had been looking at them. Finally, when they had crossed the mountain range that extended along the entire horizon, the alchemist said that they were only two days from the Pyramids. “If we’re going to go our separate ways soon,” the boy said, “then teach me about alchemy.” “You already know about alchemy. It is about penetrating to the Soul of the World, and discovering the treasure that has been reserved for you.” “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about transforming lead into gold.” The alchemist fell as silent as the desert, and answered the boy only after they had stopped to eat. “Everything in the universe evolved,” he said. “And, for wise men, gold is the metal that evolved the furthest. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know why. I just know that the Tradition is always right. “Men have never understood the words of the wise. So gold, instead of being seen as a symbol of evolution, became the basis for conflict.” “There are many languages spoken by things,” the boy said. “There was a time when, for me, a camel’s whinnying was nothing more than whinnying. Then it became a signal of danger. And, finally, it became just a whinny again.” But then he stopped. The alchemist probably already knew all that. “I have known true alchemists,” the alchemist continued. “They locked themselves in their laboratories, and tried to evolve, as gold had. And they found the Philosopher’s Stone, because they understood that when something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well. “Others stumbled upon the stone by accident. They already had the gift, and their souls were readier for such things than the souls of others. But they don’t count. They’re quite rare. “And then there were the others, who were interested only in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own.” The alchemist’s words echoed out like a curse. He reached over and picked up a shell from the ground. “This desert was once a sea,” he said. “I noticed that,” the boy answered. The alchemist told the boy to place the shell over his ear. He had done that many times when he was a child, and had heard the sound of the sea. “The sea has lived on in this shell, because that’s its Personal Legend. And it will never cease doing so until the desert is once again covered by water.” They mounted their horses, and rode out in the direction of the Pyramids of Egypt.
THE SUN WAS SETTING WHEN THE BOY’S HEART SOUNDED a danger signal. They were surrounded by gigantic dunes, and the boy looked at the alchemist to see whether he had sensed anything. But he appeared to be unaware of any danger. Five minutes later, the boy saw two horsemen waiting ahead of them. Before he could say anything to the alchemist, the two horsemen had become ten, and then a hundred. And then they were everywhere in the dunes. They were tribesmen dressed in blue, with black rings surrounding their turbans. Their faces were hidden behind blue veils, with only their eyes showing. Even from a distance, their eyes conveyed the strength of their souls. And their eyes spoke of death.
THE TWO WERE TAKEN TO A NEARBY MILITARY CAMP. A soldier shoved the boy and the alchemist into a tent where the chief was holding a meeting with his staff. “These are the spies,” said one of the men. “We’re just travelers,” the alchemist answered. “You were seen at the enemy camp three days ago. And you were talking with one of the troops there.” “I’m just a man who wanders the desert and knows the stars,” said the alchemist. “I have no information about troops or about the movement of the tribes. I was simply acting as a guide for my friend here.” “Who is your friend?” the chief asked. “An alchemist,” said the alchemist. “He understands the forces of nature. And he wants to show you his extraordinary powers.” The boy listened quietly. And fearfully. “What is a foreigner doing here?” asked another of the men. “He has brought money to give to your tribe,” said the alchemist, before the boy could say a word. And seizing the boy’s bag, the alchemist gave the gold coins to the chief. The Arab accepted them without a word. There was enough there to buy a lot of weapons. “What is an alchemist?” he asked, finally. “It’s a man who understands nature and the world. If he wanted to, he could destroy this camp just with the force of the wind.” The men laughed. They were used to the ravages of war, and knew that the wind could not deliver them a fatal blow. Yet each felt his heart beat a bit faster. They were men of the desert, and they were fearful of sorcerers. “I want to see him do it,” said the chief. “He needs three days,” answered the alchemist. “He is going to transform himself into the wind, just to demonstrate his powers. If he can’t do so, we humbly offer you our lives, for the honor of your tribe.” “You can’t offer me something that is already mine,” the chief said, arrogantly. But he granted the travelers three days. The boy was shaking with fear, but the alchemist helped him out of the tent. “Don’t let them see that you’re afraid,” the alchemist said. “They are brave men, and they despise cowards.” But the boy couldn’t even speak. He was able to do so only after they had walked through the center of the camp. There was no need to imprison them: the Arabs simply confiscated their horses. So, once again, the world had demonstrated its many languages: the desert only moments ago had been endless and free, and now it was an impenetrable wall. “You gave them everything I had!” the boy said. “Everything I’ve saved in my entire life!” “Well, what good would it be to you if you had to die?” the alchemist answered. “Your money saved us for three days. It’s not often that money saves a person’s life.” But the boy was too frightened to listen to words of wisdom. He had no idea how he was going to transform himself into the wind. He wasn’t an alchemist! The alchemist asked one of the soldiers for some tea, and poured some on the boy’s wrists. A wave of relief washed over him, and the alchemist muttered some words that the boy didn’t understand. “Don’t give in to your fears,” said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. “If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” “But I have no idea how to turn myself into the wind.” “If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m not afraid of failing. It’s just that I don’t know how to turn myself into the wind.” “Well, you’ll have to learn; your life depends on it.” “But what if I can’t?” “Then you’ll die in the midst of trying to realize your Personal Legend. That’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their Personal Legends were. “But don’t worry,” the alchemist continued. “Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.”
THE FIRST DAY PASSED. THERE WAS A MAJOR BATTLE nearby, and a number of wounded were brought back to the camp. The dead soldiers were replaced by others, and life went on. Death doesn’t change anything, the boy thought. “You could have died later on,” a soldier said to the body of one of his companions. “You could have died after peace had been declared. But, in any case, you were going to die.” At the end of the day, the boy went looking for the alchemist, who had taken his falcon out into the desert. “I still have no idea how to turn myself into the wind,” the boy repeated. “Remember what I told you: the world is only the visible aspect of God. And that what alchemy does is to bring spiritual perfection into contact with the material plane.” “What are you doing?” “Feeding my falcon.” “If I’m not able to turn myself into the wind, we’re going to die,” the boy said. “Why feed your falcon?” “You’re the one who may die,” the alchemist said. “I already know how to turn myself into the wind.”
ON THE SECOND DAY, THE BOY CLIMBED TO THE TOP OF A cliff near the camp. The sentinels allowed him to go; they had already heard about the sorcerer who could turn himself into the wind, and they didn’t want to go near him. In any case, the desert was impassable. He spent the entire afternoon of the second day looking out over the desert, and listening to his heart. The boy knew the desert sensed his fear. They both spoke the same language.
ON THE THIRD DAY, THE CHIEF MET WITH HIS OFFICERS. He called the alchemist to the meeting and said, “Let’s go see the boy who turns himself into the wind.” “Let’s,” the alchemist answered. The boy took them to the cliff where he had been on the previous day. He told them all to be seated. “It’s going to take awhile,” the boy said. “We’re in no hurry,” the chief answered. “We are men of the desert.” The boy looked out at the horizon. There were mountains in the distance. And there were dunes, rocks, and plants that insisted on living where survival seemed impossible. There was the desert that he had wandered for so many months; despite all that time, he knew only a small part of it. Within that small part, he had found an Englishman, caravans, tribal wars, and an oasis with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells. “What do you want here today?” the desert asked him. “Didn’t you spend enough time looking at me yesterday?” “Somewhere you are holding the person I love,” the boy said. “So, when I look out over your sands, I am also looking at her. I want to return to her, and I need your help so that I can turn myself into the wind.” “What is love?” the desert asked. “Love is the falcon’s flight over your sands. Because for him, you are a green field, from which he always returns with game. He knows your rocks, your dunes, and your mountains, and you are generous to him.” “The falcon’s beak carries bits of me, myself,” the desert said. “For years, I care for his game, feeding it with the little water that I have, and then I show him where the game is. And, one day, as I enjoy the fact that his game thrives on my surface, the falcon dives out of the sky, and takes away what I’ve created.” “But that’s why you created the game in the first place,” the boy answered. “To nourish the falcon. And the falcon then nourishes man. And, eventually, man will nourish your sands, where the game will once again flourish. That’s how the world goes.” “So is that what love is?” “Yes, that’s what love is. It’s what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It’s what turns lead into gold, and makes the gold return to the earth.” “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” the desert said. “But you can at least understand that somewhere in your sands there is a woman waiting for me. And that’s why I have to turn myself into the wind.” The desert didn’t answer him for a few moments. Then it told him, “I’ll give you my sands to help the wind to blow, but, alone, I can’t do anything. You have to ask for help from the wind.” A breeze began to blow. The tribesmen watched the boy from a distance, talking among themselves in a language that the boy couldn’t understand. The alchemist smiled. The wind approached the boy and touched his face. It knew of the boy’s talk with the desert, because the winds know everything. They blow across the world without a birthplace, and with no place to die. “Help me,” the boy said. “One day you carried the voice of my loved one to me.” “Who taught you to speak the language of the desert and the wind?” “My heart,” the boy answered. The wind has many names. In that part of the world, it was called the sirocco, because it brought moisture from the oceans to the east. In the distant land the boy came from, they called it the levanter, because they believed that it brought with it the sands of the desert, and the screams of the Moorish wars. Perhaps, in the places beyond the pastures where his sheep lived, men thought that the wind came from Andalusia. But, actually, the wind came from no place at all, nor did it go to any place; that’s why it was stronger than the desert. Someone might one day plant trees in the desert, and even raise sheep there, but never would they harness the wind. “You can’t be the wind,” the wind said. “We’re two very different things.” “That’s not true,” the boy said. “I learned the alchemist’s secrets in my travels. I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul. I want to be like you, able to reach every corner of the world, cross the seas, blow away the sands that cover my treasure, and carry the voice of the woman I love.” “I heard what you were talking about the other day with the alchemist,” the wind said. “He said that everything has its own Personal Legend. But people can’t turn themselves into the wind.” “Just teach me to be the wind for a few moments,” the boy said. “So you and I can talk about the limitless possibilities of people and the winds.” The wind’s curiosity was aroused, something that had never happened before. It wanted to talk about those things, but it didn’t know how to turn a man into the wind. And look how many things the wind already knew how to do! It created deserts, sank ships, felled entire forests, and blew through cities filled with music and strange noises. It felt that it had no limits, yet here was a boy saying that there were other things the wind should be able to do. “This is what we call love,” the boy said, seeing that the wind was close to granting what he requested. “When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.” The wind was a proud being, and it was becoming irritated with what the boy was saying. It commenced to blow harder, raising the desert sands. But finally it had to recognize that, even making its may around the world, it didn’t know how to turn a man into the wind. And it knew nothing about love. “In my travels around the world, I’ve often seen people speaking of love and looking toward the heavens,” the wind said, furious at having to acknowledge its own limitations. “Maybe it’s better to ask heaven.” “Well then, help me do that,” the boy said. “Fill this place with a sandstorm so strong that it blots out the sun. Then I can look to heaven without blinding myself.” So the wind blew with all its strength, and the sky was filled with sand. The sun was turned into a golden disk. At the camp, it was difficult to see anything. The men of the desert were already familiar with that wind. They called it the simum, and it was worse than a storm at sea. Their horses cried out, and all their weapons were filled with sand. On the heights, one of the commanders turned to the chief and said, “Maybe we had better end this!” They could barely see the boy. Their faces were covered with the blue cloths, and their eyes showed fear. “Let’s stop this,” another commander said. “I want to see the greatness of Allah,” the chief said, with respect. “I want to see how a man turns himself into the wind.” But he made a mental note of the names of the two men who had expressed their fear. As soon as the wind stopped, he was going to remove them from their commands, because true men of the desert are not afraid. “The wind told me that you know about love,” the boy said to the sun. “If you know about love, you must also know about the Soul of the World, because it’s made of love.” “From where I am,” the sun said, “I can see the Soul of the World. It communicates with my soul, and together we cause the plants to grow and the sheep to seek out shade. From where I am—and I’m a long way from the earth—I learned how to love. I know that if I came even a little bit closer to the earth, everything there would die, and the Soul of the World would no longer exist. So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living.” “So you know about love,” the boy said. “And I know the Soul of the World, because we have talked at great length to each other during this endless trip through the universe. It tells me that its greatest problem is that, up until now, only the minerals and vegetables understand that all things are one. That there’s no need for iron to be the same as copper, or copper the same as gold. Each performs its own exact function as a unique being, and everything would be a symphony of peace if the hand that wrote all this had stopped on the fifth day of creation. “But there was a sixth day,” the sun went on. “You are wise, because you observe everything from a distance,” the boy said. “But you don’t know about love. If there hadn’t been a sixth day, man would not exist; copper would always be just copper, and lead just lead. It’s true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only.” The sun thought about that, and decided to shine more brightly. The wind, which was enjoying the conversation, started to blow with greater force, so that the sun would not blind the boy. “This is why alchemy exists,” the boy said. “So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. “That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.” “Well, why did you say that I don’t know about love?” the sun asked the boy. “Because it’s not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it’s not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.” “So what do you want of me?” the sun asked. “I want you to help me turn myself into the wind,” the boy answered. “Nature knows me as the wisest being in creation,” the sun said. “But I don’t know how to turn you into the wind.” “Then, whom should I ask?” The sun thought for a minute. The wind was listening closely, and wanted to tell every corner of the world that the sun’s wisdom had its limitations. That it was unable to deal with this boy who spoke the Language of the World. “Speak to the hand that wrote all,” said the sun. The wind screamed with delight, and blew harder than ever. The tents were being blown from their ties to the earth, and the animals were being freed from their tethers. On the cliff, the men clutched at each other as they sought to keep from being blown away. The boy turned to the hand that wrote all. As he did so, he sensed that the universe had fallen silent, and he decided not to speak. A current of love rushed from his heart, and the boy began to pray. It was a prayer that he had never said before, because it was a prayer without words or pleas. His prayer didn’t give thanks for his sheep having found new pastures; it didn’t ask that the boy be able to sell more crystal; and it didn’t beseech that the woman he had met continue to await his return. In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald. He saw that omens were scattered throughout the earth and in space, and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; he could see that not the deserts, nor the winds, nor the sun, nor people knew why they had been created. But that the hand had a reason for all of this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert…or a man into the wind. Because only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe to the point at which six days of creation had evolved into a Master Work. The boy reached through to the Soul of the World, and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.
THE SIMUM BLEW THAT DAY AS IT HAD NEVER BLOWN before. For generations thereafter, the Arabs recounted the legend of a boy who had turned himself into the wind, almost destroying a military camp, in defiance of the most powerful chief in the desert. When the simum ceased to blow, everyone looked to the place where the boy had been. But he was no longer there; he was standing next to a sand-covered sentinel, on the far side of the camp. The men were terrified at his sorcery. But there were two people who were smiling: the alchemist, because he had found his perfect disciple, and the chief, because that disciple had understood the glory of God. The following day, the general bade the boy and the alchemist farewell, and provided them with an escort party to accompany them as far as they chose. THEY RODE FOR THE ENTIRE DAY. TOWARD THE END OF the afternoon, they came upon a Coptic monastery. The alchemist dismounted, and told the escorts they could return to the camp. “From here on, you will be alone,” the alchemist said. “You are only three hours from the Pyramids.” “Thank you,” said the boy. “You taught me the Language of the World.” “I only invoked what you already knew.” The alchemist knocked on the gate of the monastery. A monk dressed in black came to the gates. They spoke for a few minutes in the Coptic tongue, and the alchemist bade the boy enter. “I asked him to let me use the kitchen for a while,” the alchemist smiled. They went to the kitchen at the back of the monastery. The alchemist lighted the fire, and the monk brought him some lead, which the alchemist placed in an iron pan. When the lead had become liquid, the alchemist took from his pouch the strange yellow egg. He scraped from it a sliver as thin as a hair, wrapped it in wax, and added it to the pan in which the lead had melted. The mixture took on a reddish color, almost the color of blood. The alchemist removed the pan from the fire, and set it aside to cool. As he did so, he talked with the monk about the tribal wars. “I think they’re going to last for a long time,” he said to the monk. The monk was irritated. The caravans had been stopped at Giza for some time, waiting for the wars to end. “But God’s will be done,” the monk said. “Exactly,” answered the alchemist. When the pan had cooled, the monk and the boy looked at it, dazzled. The lead had dried into the shape of the pan, but it was no longer lead. It was gold. “Will I learn to do that someday?” the boy asked. “This was my Personal Legend, not yours,” the alchemist answered. “But I wanted to show you that it was possible.” They returned to the gates of the monastery. There, the alchemist separated the disk into four parts. “This is for you,” he said, holding one of the parts out to the monk. “It’s for your generosity to the pilgrims.” “But this payment goes well beyond my generosity,” the monk responded. “Don’t say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less the next time.” The alchemist turned to the boy. “This is for you. To make up for what you gave to the general.” The boy was about to say that it was much more than he had given the general. But he kept quiet, because he had heard what the alchemist said to the monk. “And this is for me,” said the alchemist, keeping one of the parts. “Because I have to return to the desert, where there are tribal wars.” He took the fourth part and handed it to the monk. “This is for the boy. If he ever needs it.” “But I’m going in search of my treasure,” the boy said. “I’m very close to it now.” “And I’m certain you’ll find it,” the alchemist said. “Then why this?” “Because you have already lost your savings twice. Once to the thief, and once to the general. I’m an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There’s one that says, ‘Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.’” They mounted their horses.
“I WANT TO TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT DREAMS,” SAID THE alchemist. The boy brought his horse closer. “In ancient Rome, at the time of Emperor Tiberius, there lived a good man who had two sons. One was in the military, and had been sent to the most distant regions of the empire. The other son was a poet, and delighted all of Rome with his beautiful verses. “One night, the father had a dream. An angel appeared to him, and told him that the words of one of his sons would be learned and repeated throughout the world for all generations to come. The father woke from his dream grateful and crying, because life was generous, and had revealed to him something any father would be proud to know. “Shortly thereafter, the father died as he tried to save a child who was about to be crushed by the wheels of a chariot. Since he had lived his entire life in a manner that was correct and fair, he went directly to heaven, where he met the angel that had appeared in his dream. “‘You were always a good man,’ the angel said to him. ‘You lived your life in a loving way, and died with dignity. I can now grant you any wish you desire.’ “‘Life was good to me,’ the man said. ‘When you appeared in my dream, I felt that all my efforts had been rewarded, because my son’s poems will be read by men for generations to come. I don’t want anything for myself. But any father would be proud of the fame achieved by one whom he had cared for as a child, and educated as he grew up. Sometime in the distant future, I would like to see my son’s words.’ “The angel touched the man’s shoulder, and they were both projected far into the future. They were in an immense setting, surrounded by thousands of people speaking a strange language. “The man wept with happiness. “‘I knew that my son’s poems were immortal,’ he said to the angel through his tears. ‘Can you please tell me which of my son’s poems these people are repeating?’ “The angel came closer to the man, and, with tenderness, led him to a bench nearby, where they sat down. “‘The verses of your son who was the poet were very popular in Rome,’ the angel said. ‘Everyone loved them and enjoyed them. But when the reign of Tiberius ended, his poems were forgotten. The words you’re hearing now are those of your son in the military.’ “The man looked at the angel in surprise. “‘Your son went to serve at a distant place, and became a centurion. He was just and good. One afternoon, one of his servants fell ill, and it appeared that he would die. Your son had heard of a rabbi who was able to cure illnesses, and he rode out for days and days in search of this man. Along the way, he learned that the man he was seeking was the Son of God. He met others who had been cured by him, and they instructed your son in the man’s teachings. And so, despite the fact that he was a Roman centurion, he converted to their faith. Shortly thereafter, he reached the place where the man he was looking for was visiting.’ “‘He told the man that one of his servants was gravely ill, and the rabbi made ready to go to his house with him. But the centurion was a man of faith, and, looking into the eyes of the rabbi, he knew that he was surely in the presence of the Son of God.’ “‘And this is what your son said,’ the angel told the man. ‘These are the words he said to the rabbi at that point, and they have never been forgotten: “My Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. But only speak a word and my servant will be healed.””’ The alchemist said, “No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.” The boy smiled. He had never imagined that questions about life would be of such importance to a shepherd. “Good-bye,” the alchemist said. “Good-bye,” said the boy.
THE BOY RODE ALONG THROUGH THE DESERT FOR SEVERAL hours, listening avidly to what his heart had to say. It was his heart that would tell him where his treasure was hidden. “Where your treasure is, there also will be your heart,” the alchemist had told him. But his heart was speaking of other things. With pride, it told the story of a shepherd who had left his flock to follow a dream he had on two different occasions. It told of Personal Legend, and of the many men who had wandered in search of distant lands or beautiful women, confronting the people of their times with their preconceived notions. It spoke of journeys, discoveries, books, and change. As he was about to climb yet another dune, his heart whispered, “Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That’s where I am, and that’s where your treasure is.” The boy climbed the dune slowly. A full moon rose again in the starry sky: it had been a month since he had set forth from the oasis. The moonlight cast shadows through the dunes, creating the appearance of a rolling sea; it reminded the boy of the day when that horse had reared in the desert, and he had come to know the alchemist. And the moon fell on the desert’s silence, and on a man’s journey in search of treasure. When he reached the top of the dune, his heart leapt. There, illuminated by the light of the moon and the brightness of the desert, stood the solemn and majestic Pyramids of Egypt. The boy fell to his knees and wept. He thanked God for making him believe in his Personal Legend, and for leading him to meet a king, a merchant, an Englishman, and an alchemist. And above all for his having met a woman of the desert who had told him that love would never keep a man from his Personal Legend. If he wanted to, he could now return to the oasis, go back to Fatima, and live his life as a simple shepherd. After all, the alchemist continued to live in the desert, even though he understood the Language of the World, and knew how to transform lead into gold. He didn’t need to demonstrate his science and art to anyone. The boy told himself that, on the way toward realizing his own Personal Legend, he had learned all he needed to know, and had experienced everything he might have dreamed of. But here he was, at the point of finding his treasure, and he reminded himself that no project is completed until its objective has been achieved. The boy looked at the sands around him, and saw that, where his tears had fallen, a scarab beetle was scuttling through the sand. During his time in the desert, he had learned that, in Egypt, the scarab beetles are a symbol of God. Another omen! The boy began to dig into the dune. As he did so, he thought of what the crystal merchant had once said: that anyone could build a pyramid in his backyard. The boy could see now that he couldn’t do so if he placed stone upon stone for the rest of his life. Throughout the night, the boy dug at the place he had chosen, but found nothing. He felt weighted down by the centuries of time since the Pyramids had been built. But he didn’t stop. He struggled to continue digging as he fought the wind, which often blew the sand back into the excavation. His hands were abraded and exhausted, but he listened to his heart. It had told him to dig where his tears fell. As he was attempting to pull out the rocks he encountered, he heard footsteps. Several figures approached him. Their backs were to the moonlight, and the boy could see neither their eyes nor their faces. “What are you doing here?” one of the figures demanded. Because he was terrified, the boy didn’t answer. He had found where his treasure was, and was frightened at what might happen. “We’re refugees from the tribal wars, and we need money,” the other figure said. “What are you hiding there?” “I’m not hiding anything,” the boy answered. But one of them seized the boy and yanked him back out of the hole. Another, who was searching the boy’s bags, found the piece of gold. “There’s gold here,” he said. The moon shone on the face of the Arab who had seized him, and in the man’s eyes the boy saw death. “He’s probably got more gold hidden in the ground.” They made the boy continue digging, but he found nothing. As the sun rose, the men began to beat the boy. He was bruised and bleeding, his clothing was torn to shreds, and he felt that death was near. “What good is money to you if you’re going to die? It’s not often that money can save someone’s life,” the alchemist had said. Finally, the boy screamed at the men, “I’m digging for treasure!” And, although his mouth was bleeding and swollen, he told his attackers that he had twice dreamed of a treasure hidden near the Pyramids of Egypt. The man who appeared to be the leader of the group spoke to one of the others: “Leave him. He doesn’t have anything else. He must have stolen this gold.” The boy fell to the sand, nearly unconscious. The leader shook him and said, “We’re leaving.” But before they left, he came back to the boy and said, “You’re not going to die. You’ll live, and you’ll learn that a man shouldn’t be so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent dream, too. I dreamed that I should travel to the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. In my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins of the sacristy, and I was told that, if I dug at the roots of the sycamore, I would find a hidden treasure. But I’m not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream.” And they disappeared. The boy stood up shakily, and looked once more at the Pyramids. They seemed to laugh at him, and he laughed back, his heart bursting with joy. Because now he knew where his treasure was.
EPILOGUE
THE BOY REACHED THE SMALL, ABANDONED CHURCH JUST as night was falling. The sycamore was still there in the sacristy, and the stars could still be seen through the half-destroyed roof. He remembered the time he had been there with his sheep; it had been a peaceful night…except for the dream. Now he was here not with his flock, but with a shovel. He sat looking at the sky for a long time. Then he took from his knapsack a bottle of wine, and drank some. He remembered the night in the desert when he had sat with the alchemist, as they looked at the stars and drank wine together. He thought of the many roads he had traveled, and of the strange way God had chosen to show him his treasure. If he hadn’t believed in the significance of recurrent dreams, he would not have met the Gypsy woman, the king, the thief, or…“Well, it’s a long list. But the path was written in the omens, and there was no way I could go wrong,” he said to himself. He fell asleep, and when he awoke the sun was already high. He began to dig at the base of the sycamore. “You old sorcerer,” the boy shouted up to the sky. “You knew the whole story. You even left a bit of gold at the monastery so I could get back to this church. The monk laughed when he saw me come back in tatters. Couldn’t you have saved me from that?” “No,” he heard a voice on the wind say. “If I had told you, you wouldn’t have seen the Pyramids. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” The boy smiled, and continued digging. Half an hour later, his shovel hit something solid. An hour later, he had before him a chest of Spanish gold coins. There were also precious stones, gold masks adorned with red and white feathers, and stone statues embedded with jewels. The spoils of a conquest that the country had long ago forgotten, and that some conquistador had failed to tell his children about. The boy took out Urim and Thummim from his bag. He had used the two stones only once, one morning when he was at a marketplace. His life and his path had always provided him with enough omens. He placed Urim and Thummim in the chest. They were also a part of his new treasure, because they were a reminder of the old king, whom he would never see again. It’s true; life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend, the boy thought. Then he remembered that he had to get to Tarifa so he could give one-tenth of his treasure to the Gypsy woman, as he had promised. Those Gypsies are really smart, he thought. Maybe it was because they moved around so much. The wind began to blow again. It was the levanter, the wind that came from Africa. It didn’t bring with it the smell of the desert, nor the threat of Moorish invasion. Instead, it brought the scent of a perfume he knew well, and the touch of a kiss—a kiss that came from far away, slowly, slowly, until it rested on his lips. The boy smiled. It was the first time she had done that. “I’m coming, Fatima,” he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULO COELHO was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the city where he now lives. His own life has in many ways been as varied and unusual as the protagonists of his internationally acclaimed novels. Like them, Paulo Coelho has followed a dream in a quest for fulfillment. His own dream, to be a writer, met with frustration throughout much of his early adult life, a time in which he worked at various professions, some of them materially rewarding but spiritually unfulfilling. “I always knew,” he says, “that my Personal Legend, to use a term from alchemy, was to write.” He was thirty- eight when he published his first book. In 1970, after deciding that law school was not for him, he traveled through much of South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe. Returning to Brazil after two years, he began a successful career as popular songwriter. In 1974, he was imprisoned for a short time by the military dictatorship then ruling in Brazil. In 1980, he experienced one of the defining moments of his life: he walked the five hundred-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. On this ancient highway, used for centuries by pilgrims from France to get to the cathedral said to house the remains of St. James, he achieved a self-awareness and a spiritual awakening that he later described in The Pilgrimage. Paulo Coelho once said that following your dream is like learning a foreign language; you will make mistakes but you will get there in the end. In 1988, he published The Alchemist, a novel that explores this theme, and it launched him as an international bestselling author. Specifically, Paulo Coelho is recognized for his powerful storytelling technique and the profound spiritual insights he blends seamlessly into his parables. Since then, The Alchemist has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide and has been translated into some fifty-six languages. In addition to The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho has written luminous novels about the different streams of our lives, including By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Valkyries, The Fifth Mountain, and Veronika Decides to Die. A winner of numerous literary prizes, Paulo Coelho is also a prominent speaker for humanitarian causes. In 1999, he received a Crystal Award for Artistic Achievement at the Davos Economic Forum Conference.
International Acclaim for Paulo Coelho’sThe Alchemist
“The story has the comic charm, dramatic tension, and psychological intensity of a fairy tale, but it’s full of specific wisdom as well…. A sweetly exotic tale for young and old alike.” --Publishers Weekly
“Beneath this novel’s compelling story and the shimmering elegance with which it’s told lies a bedrock of wisdom about following one’s heart.” --Booklist
“As memorable and meaningful as Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.” --Austin American-Statesman
“A touching, inspiring fable.” --Indianapolis Star
“A little poke in the ribs from on high.” --Detroit Free Press
“The Alchemist is a fabulous success.” --Der Spiegel (Germany) “A remarkable tale about the most magical of all journeys: the quest to fulfill one’s destiny. I recommend The Alchemist to anyone who is passionately committed to claiming the life of their dreams— today.” —Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within
“An entrepreneurial tale of universal wisdom we can apply to the business of our own lives.” —Spencer Johnson, M.D., author of Who Moved My Cheese
“An adventure story full of magic and wisdom.” —Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima
“The Alchemist is a beautiful book about magic, dreams and the treasures we seek elsewhere and then find at our doorstep.” —Madonna in Sonntag-Aktuell (Germany)
“The Alchemist is an unabashed delight and inspirational wonder. This fable is a roseate amalgam of spiritual quest, existential puzzle, lovely sensitivity, and deep strength.” —Malcolm Boyd, author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus?
“Paulo Coelho knows the secret of literary alchemy.” —Kenzaburo Oé, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature “A most tender and gentle story. It is a rare gem of a book, and will most certainly touch the very core of every heart earnestly seeking its own destiny on the journey of life.” —Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., coauthor of Change Your Mind, Change Your Life and Love Is Letting Go of Fear
“Rarely do I come across a story with the directness and simplicity of Coelho’s The Alchemist. It lifts the reader out of time and focuses through a believably unlikely story on a young dreamer looking for himself. A beautiful story with a pointed message for every reader.” —Joseph Girzone, author of Joshua
“This is the type of book that makes you understand more about yourself and about life. It has philosophy, and is spiced with colors, flavors and subjects, like a fairy tale. A lovely book.” --Yedi’ot Aharonot (Israel)
“A boy named Santiago joins the ranks of Candide and Pinocchio by taking us on a very excellent adventure.” —Paul Zindel, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
“The mystic quality in the odd adventures of the boy, Santiago, may bring not only him but others who read this fine book closer to recognizing and reaching their own inner destinies.” —Charlotte Zolotow, author of If You Listen “Paulo Coelho gives you the inspiration to follow your own dreams by seeing the world through your own eyes and not someone else’s.” —Lynn Andrews, author of the Medicine Woman series
“Nothing is impossible, such is Coelho’s message, as long as you wish it with all your heart. No other book bears so much hope, small wonder its author became a guru among all those in search of the meaning of life.” --Focus (Germany)
“The Alchemist is a truly poetic book.” --Welt am Sonntag (Germany)
“Dotted throughout the story and illuminated in a poetic style are metaphors and deep insights that stir our imagination and transport the reader on a fantastic journey of the soul.” --Yomiuri-Shinbun (Japan)
“The Alchemist brings to mind The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, as well as biblical parables.” --Gazeta Wymborcza (Poland)
“The Alchemist is a beautiful and heartwarming story with an exotic flavor…. You may or may not agree with PauloCoelho’s philosophy, but it’s nonetheless a tale that comforts our hearts as much as our souls.” --Bergensavisen (Norway) “The Alchemist is like a modern-day The Little Prince. A supreme and simple book.” --Milorad Pavic (Serbia)
“Among Latin American writers, only Columbia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez is more widely read than Brazil’s Paulo Coelho.” --The Economist
The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom The Valkyries: An Encounter with Angels By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept The Fifth Mountain The Illustrated Alchemist Veronika Decides to Die
CREDITS
Cover design: Doreen Louie Cover photograph © by J. Sims/FPG International
This book is an English version of O Alquimista, the Portuguese original edition, published in Brazil by Editora Rocco Ltd. (Rio de Janeiro). Copyright © 1988 by Paulo Coelho. This edition was prepared by Alan R. Clarke in consultation with Paulo Coelho.
THE ALCHEMIST. Copyright © 1993 by Paulo Coelho. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
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Mobipocket Reader July 2005 ISBN 0-06-088268-9
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United StatesHarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.perfectbound.com 1/14/2023 0 Comments Andre gilde the immortalist
The Immoralist is largely the story of Michel, who marries Marceline, a family friend, to cheer his dying father and provide for his own needs. The two travel to North Africa, where Michel contracts tuberculosis. While recovering from tuberculosis in North Africa, he finds himself drawn sexually to young Arab boys.
UNIVERSAL LIBRARY
Gift of YALE UNIVERSITY
Wit h the aid of the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION 1949
also by ANDR E GID E
THE JOURNALS OF ANDRE GIDE: 1889-1939 Volume I, 1889-1913 Volume II , 1914-1927 Volume III , 1928-1939 IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS THE FRUITS OF THE EARTH (Les Nourritures terrestres & Les Nouvelles Nourritures)
FICTION THE COUNTERFEITERS THE 1MMORALIST LAFCADIO'S ADVENTURES STRAIT IS THE GATE TWO SYMPHONIES (IsabelJe & The Pastoral Symphony) THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES, ROBERT, & GENEVlfiVE
THESE ARE BORZOI BOOKS, PUBLISHE D IN NEW YORK BY ALFRED A. KNOPF THE IMMORALIST
Th e Immoralist
ANDRE GID E
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY DOROTHY BUSSY
Alfred A. Knopf: New York
Copyright 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writ• ing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Published, March 1930 First and Second Printings before Publication Reset and printed from new plates, June 1948 Reprinted July 1948 Reprinted October 1948 Reprinted October 1949 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS L'IMMORALIST E Copyright 1921 by Mercure de France Paris
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. &
Manufactured in the United States of America
My Comrade and Fellow-Traveller
HENR I GHEO N
I W I L L PRAIS E T H E E , ; FO R I A M F E A R F U L L Y AN D W O N D E R F U L L Y MAD E Psalms, 14
P R E F A C E
I PRESENT this book for what i t is worth—a frui t filled wit h bitter ashes, like those colocinths of the desert that grow in a parched and burning soil. Al l they can offer to your thirst is a still more cruel fierceness—yet lying on the golden sand they are not without a beauty of their own. If 1 had held my hero up as an example, it must be admitted that my success would have been small. The few readers who were disposed to interest them• selves in Michel's adventure did so only to reprobate him with all the superiority of their kind hearts. It was not in vain that I had adorned Marceline with so many virtues; they could not forgive Michel for not preferring her to himself. If I had intended this book to be an indictment of Michel, I should have succeeded as little, for no one was grateful to me for the indignation he felt against my hero; it was as though he felt this indignation in spite of me; it overflowed from Michel on to myself; I seemed indeed within an ace of being confounded wit h him . ix PREFAC E x But I intended to make this book as little an in• dictment as an apology and took care to pass no judgment. The public nowadays will not forgive an author who, after relating an action, does not declare himself either for or against it ; more than this, dur• ing the very course of the drama they want him to take sides, pronounce in favor either of Alceste or Philinte, of Hamlet or Ophelia, of Faust or Mar• garet, of Adam or Jehovah. I do not indeed claim that neutrality (I was going to say 'indecision') is the certain mark of a great mind; but I believe that many great minds have been very loath to . . . con• clude—and that to state a problem clearly is not to suppose it solved in advance. It is with reluctance that I use the word 'problem' here. To tell the truth, in art there are no problems— that are not sufficiently solved by the work of art itself. If by 'problem' one means 'drama,' shall I say that the one recounted in this book, though the scene of it is laid in my hero's soul, is nevertheless too gen• eral to remain circumscribed in his individual ad• venture. I do not pretend to have invented this 'problem'; it existed before my book; whether Mi • chel triumph or succumb, the 'problem' will continue to exist, and the author has avoided taking either triumph or defeat for granted. x i P R E F A C E If certain distinguished minds have refused to see in this drama anything but the exposition of a spe• cial case, and in its hero anything but a sufferer from disease, if they have failed to recognize that ideas of very urgent import and very general interest may nevertheless be found in it—the fault lies neither in those ideas nor in that drama, but in the author—in his lack of skill, I should say—though he has put into this book all his passion and all his care, though he has watered it with many tears. But the real inter• est of a work and the interest taken in it by an ephemeral public are two very different things. A man may, I think, without much conceit, take the risk of not arousing immediate interest in interesting things—he may even prefer this to exciting a mo• mentary delight in a public greedy only for sweets and trifles. For the rest, I have not tried to prove anything, but only to paint my picture well and to set it in a good light.
THE IMMORALIST
(TO THE PRIME MINISTER, MR. D. R.)
Sidi B. M., 30th July 189- YES , M Y DEAR BROTHER, of course, as you sup• posed, Michel has confided in us. Here is bis story. You asked me to let you have it and I promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder, will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him myself? . . . Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of turning to good account faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to rec• ognise their own features in this tale. Will it be pos• sible to invent some way of employing all this in• telligence and strength? Or must they be altogether outlawed? In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I cannot guess. . . . He must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so de• servedly attained enable you to find one? Make 3 haste. Michel is still capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to himself. I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve days that Denis, Daniel, and my• self have been here, there has not been a single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months. I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness. We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your reply here, in his house; lose no time about it. You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel, and myself together--a friendship which was strong even in our school days, but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded between us four--at the first summons of any one of us the other three were to hasten. So when I received that mysterious signal of alarm from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis, and we all three let everything go and set out. It is three years since we last saw Michel. He bad married and gone traveling with his wife, and at the time of his last stay in Paris, Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia, and I, as you know, looking after our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puri• tan of old days, whose behavior was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose clear and simple ga%e had so often checked the looseness of our talk. He was . . . but why forestall what his story will tell you? Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel, and I heard 'it. Michel told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain. Michel's house looks down on it and on the village which is not far off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks like the desert. Michel's house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows--or rather, there are no windows, but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that we sleep out of doors on mats. Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one evening, gasping with heat, intoxi• cated with novelty, after having barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M.., where a little cart was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village, which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage. Approached by the road, Michel's house is the first in the village. It is sur• rounded by the low walls of a garden--or rather, an enclosure, in which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander. A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall without more ado. Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he wel• comed us; he was very simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely. Until night came ive barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing-room where the decorations were so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though they were afterwards explained by MicheVs story. Then he served us coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity, and all three of us, like Job's comforters, sat down and waited, watching and admiring the day's abrupt decline over the in• candescent plain. When it was night Michel said:
FIRST PART
M Y DEAR FRIENDS, I knew you were faithful. You have answered my summons as quickly as 1 should have answered yours. An d yet three years have gone by without your seeing me. Ma y your friendship, which has been so proof against absence, be equally proof against the story I am going to tell you. For it was solely to see you, solely that you might listen to me, that I called upon you so suddenly and made you take this journey to my distant abode. The only help I wish for is this—to talk to you. For I have reached a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. No t from weariness though. But I can no longer under• stand things. I want . . . I want to talk, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do wit h one's freedom. Let me speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were talking to myself. Listen: The last time we saw each other, I remember, was in the neighborhood of Angers, in the little country 11 church in which I was married. There were very few people at my wedding, and the presence of real friends turned this commonplace function into something touching. I felt that others were moved, and that in itself was enough to move me. After we left the church, you joined us at my bride's house for a short meal, at which there was neither noise nor laughter; then she and I drove away in a hired car• riage, according to the custom by which we always have to associate the idea of a wedding with the vision of a railway station. I knew my wife very little and thought, without being much distressed by it, that she knew me no bet• ter. 1 had married her without being in love, largely in order to please my father, who, as he lay dying, felt anxious at leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; engrossed by his last illness, I had thought of nothing else all through that melancholy time but how to make his end easier; and so I pledged my life before I knew what the possibilities of life were. Our betrothal took place at my dying father's bedside, without laughter but not without a certain grave joy, so great was the peace it brought him. If, as I say, I did not love my betrothed, at any rate I had never loved any other woman. This seemed to me sufficient to secure our happiness; and I thought I was giving her the whole of myself, without having any knowl- edge of what that self was. She was an orphan as I was, and lived with her two brothers. Her name was Marceline; she was barely twenty; I was four years older. I have said I did not love her—at any rate, I felt for her nothing of what is generally known as love, but I loved her, if that word may cover a feeling of tenderness, a sort of pity, and a considerable meas• ure of esteem. She was a Catholic and I a Protestant . . . but, thought I, so little of a Protestant! The priest accepted me; I accepted the priest; it all went off without a hitch. My father was what is called an 'atheist'—at least so I suppose, for a kind of invincible shyness, which I imagined he shared, had always made it im• possible for me to talk to him about his beliefs. The grave Huguenot teaching which my mother had given me had slowly faded from my mind together with the image of her beauty; you know 1 was young when I lost her. I did not then suspect how great a hold the early moral lessons of our childhood take of one, nor what marks they leave upon the mind. That kind of austerity for which a taste had been left in me by my mother's way of bringing me up, I now applied wholly to my studies. I was fifteen when I lost her; my father took me in hand, looked after me, and himself instructed me with passionate eagerness. I already knew Latin and Greek well; under him I quickly learnt Hebrew, Sanskrit, and finally Persian and Arabic. When I was about twenty I had been so intensively forced that he actually made me his collaborator. It amused him to claim me as his equal and he wanted to show me he was right. The Essay on Phrygian Cults which appeared under his name was in reality my work; he scarcely read it over; nothing he had written ever brought him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me I was a little abashed by the success of this deception. But my reputation was made. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile now at all the honors that were paid me. . . . And so I reached the age of twenty-five, having barely cast a glance at anything but books and ruins, and knowing nothing of life; I spent all my fervor in my work. I loved a few friends (you were among them), but it was not so much my friends I loved as friendship—it was a craving for high-mindedness that made my devotion to them so great; I cherished in myself each and all of my fine feelings. For the rest, I knew my friends as little as I knew myself. The idea that I might have lived a different existence or that anyone could possibly live differently never for a moment crossed my mind. My father and I were satisfied with simple things; we both of us spent so little that I reached the age of twenty-five without knowing that we were rich. I imagined, without giving it much thought, that we had just enough to live on. And the habits of econ• omy I had acquired with my father were so great that I felt almost uncomfortable when I learned that we had a great deal more. I was so careless about such matters that even after my father's death, though I was his sole heir, I failed to realize the ex• tent of my fortune; I did so only when our marriage settlements were being drawn up, and at the same time I learned that Marceline brought me next to nothing. And another thing I was ignorant of—even more important perhaps—was that I had very delicate health. How should I have known this, when I had never put it to the test? I had colds from time to time and neglected them. The excessive tranquillity of the life I led weakened, while at the same time it protected, me. Marceline, on the contrary, seemed strong—that she was stronger than I we were very soon to learn.
On our wedding-day, we went straight to Paris and slept in my apartment, where two rooms had been got ready for us. We stayed in Paris only just long enough to do some necessary shopping, then took the train to Marseilles and embarked at once for Tunis.So many urgent things to be done, so many be• wildering events following each other in too rapid succession, the unavoidable agitation of my wedding coming so soon after the more genuine emotion caused by my father's death—all of this had left me exhausted. It was only on the boat that I was able to realize how tired I was. Up till then, every occupation, while increasing my fatigue, had dis• tracted me from feeling it. The enforced leisure on board ship at last enabled me to reflect. For the first time, so it seemed to me. It was for the first time too that I had consented to forgo my work for any length of time. Up till then I had only allowed myself short holidays. A journey to Spain with my father shortly after my mother's death had, it is true, lasted over a month; another to Germany, six weeks; there were others too, but they had all been student's journeys; my father was never to be distracted from his own particular re• searches; when I was not accompanying him, I used to read. And yet, we had hardly left Marseilles, when memories came back to me of Granada and Seville, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of dances, of laughter, of songs. That is what we are going to find, I thought. I went up on to the deck and watched Marseilles disappearing in the distance. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that I was leav• ing Marceline a little too much to herself. She was sitting in the bow; I drew near, and for the first time really looked at her. Marceline was very pretty. You saw her, so you know. I reproached myself for not having noticed it sooner. 1 had known her too long to see her with any freshness of vision; our families had been friends for ages; I had seen her grow up; I was accustomed to her grace. . . . For the first time now I was struck with astonishment, it seemed to me so great. She wore a big veil floating from a simple black straw hat; she was fair, but did not look delicate. Her bodice and skirt were made of the same material —a Scotch plaid which we had chosen together. I had not wanted the gloom of my mourning to over• shadow her. She felt I was looking at her and turned toward me . . . until then I had paid her only the neces• sary official attentions; I replaced love as best I could by a kind of frigid gallantry, which I saw well enough she found rather tiresome; perhaps at that moment Marceline felt I was looking at her for the first time in a different way. She in her turn looked fixedly at me; then, very tenderly, smiled. I sat down beside her without speaking. I had lived up to then for myself alone, or at any rate in my own fashion; I had married without imagining I should find in my wife anything different from a comrade, without thinking at all definitely that my life might be changed by our union. And now at last I realized that the monologue had come to an end. We were alone on deck. She held up her face and I gently pressed her to me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt as I kissed her an unfamiliar kind of pity, which took hold of me so violently that 1 could not restrain my tears. "What is it, dear?" said Marceline. We began to talk. What she said was so charming that it delighted me. I had picked up in one way or another a few ideas on women's silliness. That evening, in her presence, it was myself I thought awkward and stupid. So the being to whom I had attached my life had a real and individual life of her own! The im• portance of this thought woke me up several times during the night; several times I sat up in my berth in order to look at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below. The next morning the sky was splendid; the sea almost perfectly calm. A few leisurely talks lessened our shyness still more. Marriage was really begin- ning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed in Tunis.
I intended to stay there only a few days. I will confess my folly; in so new a country nothing at• tracted me except Carthage and a few Roman ruins —Timgad, about which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of Sousse, and above all the amphi• theatre of El Djem, which I decided we must visit without delay. We had first to get to Sousse, and from Sousse take the mail diligence; between there and here I was determined to think nothing worth my attention. And yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations, certain portions of me awoke— certain sleeping faculties, which, from not having as yet been used, had kept all their mysterious fresh• ness. But I was more astonished, more bewildered than amused, and what pleased me most was Mar- celine's delight. My fatigue in the meantime was growing greater every day; but I should have thought it shameful to give in to it. I had a bad cough and a curious feeling of discomfort in the upper part of my chest. We are going towards the South, I thought; the heat will put me to rights again. The Sfax diligence leaves Sousse at eight o'clock in the evening and passes through El Djem at one o'clock in the morning. We had engaged cjoupe places; I expected to find an uncomfortable shan• drydan; the seats, however, were fairly com• modious. But oh, the cold! . . . We were both lightly clad and, with a kind of childish confidence in the warmth of southern climes, had taken no wrap with us but a single shawl. As soon as we were out of Sousse and the shelter of its hills, the wind began to blow. It leaped over the plain in great bounds, howling, whistling, coming in by every chink of the door and windows—impossible to protect oneself from it ! We were both chilled to the bone when we arrived, and I was exhausted as well by the jolting of the carriage and by my horrible cough, which shook me even worse. What a night! When we got to El Djem, there was no inn, nothing but a frightful native bordj. What was to be done? The diligence was going on; the village was asleep; the lugubrious mass of the ruins lowered dimly through the dark immensity of the night; dogs were howling. We went into a room whose walls and floor were made of mud and in which stood two wretched beds. Mar- celine was shivering with cold, but here at any rate we were out of the wind. The next day was a dismal one. We were surprised on going out to see a sky that was one unrelieved grey. The wind was still blowing, but less violently than the night before. The diligence passed through again only in the evening. . . . It was a dismal day, I tell you. I went over the amphitheatre in a few minutes and found it disappointing; I thought it actually ugly under that dreary sky. Perhaps my fatigue added to my feeling of tedium. Toward the middle of the day, as I had nothing else to do, I went back to the ruins and searched in vain for inscrip• tions on the stones. Marceline found a place that was sheltered from the wind and sat reading an English book, which by good luck she had brought with her. I went and sat beside her. "What a melancholy day!" I said. "Aren't you bored?" "Not particularly. 1 am reading." "What made us come to such a place? I hope you are not cold, are you?" "Not so very. And you? Oh, you must be. How pale you are!" "No, oh no!" At night, the wind began again as violently as ever At last the diligence arrived. We started. No sooner did the jolting begin than I felt shat• tered. Marceline, who was very tired, had gone to sleep almost at once on my shoulder. M y cough will wake her, I thought, and freeing myself very, very gently, I propped her head against the side of the carriage. In the meantime I had stopped coughing; yes; I had begun to spit instead; this was something new; I brought it up without an effort; it came in little jerks at regular intervals; the sensation was so odd that at first it almost amused me, but I was soon disgusted by the peculiar taste it left in my mouth. My handkerchief was very soon used up. My fingers were covered with it. Should I wake up Marceline? . . . Fortunately I thought of a large silk foulard she was wearing tucked into her belt. I took pos• session of it quietly. The spitting, which I no longer tried to keep back, came more abundantly and I was extraordinarily relieved by it. It is the end of my cold, I thought. Then, there suddenly came over me a feeling of extreme weakness; everything began to spin round and I thought I was going to faint. Should I wake her up? . . . No, shame! . . . (M y puritanical childhood has left me, I think, a hatred of any surrender to bodily weakness—cowardice, I call it.) I controlled myself, made a desperate effort, and finally conquered my giddiness I felt as if I were at sea again, and the noise of the wheels turned into the sound of the waves But I had stopped spitting. Then I sank, overpowered, into a sort of sleep. When I emerged from it, the sky was already fill• ing with dawn. Marceline was still asleep. We were just getting to Sousse. The foulard I was holding in my hand was dark-colored, so that at first I saw nothing; but when I took out my handkerchief, I saw with stupefaction that it was soaked with blood. My first thought was to hide the blood from Mar• celine. But how? I was covered with it ; it seemed to be everywhere; on my fingers especially My nose might perhaps have been bleeding That's it ! If she asks me, 1 shall say my nose has been bleeding. Marceline was still asleep. We drew up at the Sousse hotel. She had to get down first and saw nothing. Our two rooms had been kept for us. I was able to dart into mine and wash away every trace of blood. Marceline had seen nothing. I was feeling very weak, however, and ordered some tea to be brought. And as she was pouring it out, a little pale herself, but very calm and smiling, a kind of irritation seized me to think she had not had the sense to see anything. I felt indeed that I was being unjust, and said to myself that she saw nothing only because I had hidden it from her so cleverly; but I couldn't help it—the feeling grew in me like an instinct, filled me . . . and at last it be• came too strong; I could contain myself no longer; the words slipped out, as though absent-mindedly: "I spat blood last night." She did not utter a sound; she simply turned much paler, tottered, tried to save herself, and fell heavily to the ground. I sprang to her in a sort of fury: "Marceline! Marceline!" What on earth had I done? Wasn't it enough for me to be ill? But, as I have said, I was very weak; I was on the point of fainting myself. I managed, however, to open the door and call. Some• one hurried to our help. I remembered that I had a letter of introduction to an officer in the town, and on the strength of this I sent for the regimental doctor. Marceline in the meantime had recovered her• self and settled down at my bedside, where I lay shivering with fever. The doctor came and examined us both; there was nothing the matter with Marce• line, he declared, and she had not been hurt by her fall; / was seriously ill ; he refused to give a definite opinion and promised to come back before evening. He came back, smiled at me, talked to me and prescribed various remedies. I realized that he gave me up for lost. Shall I confess that I felt not the least shock? I was very tired, I simply let myself go. After all, what had life to offer? I had worked faith• fully to the end, resolutely and passionately done my duty. The rest . . . oh! what did it matter? thought I, with a certain admiration of my own stoicism. What really pained me was the ugliness of my surroundings. This hotel room is frightful/ I thought, and looked at it. Suddenly it occurred to me that in a like room next door was my wife, Mar- celine; and I heard her speaking. The doctor had not gone; he was talking to her; he was studiously lowering his voice. A little time went by—I must have slept. . . . When I woke up, Marceline was there. I could see she had been crying. I did not care for life enough to pity myself; but the ugliness of the place vexed me; my eyes rested on her with a pleasure that was almost voluptuous. She was sitting by me writing. I thought she looked very pretty. I saw her fasten up several let• ters. Then she got up, drew near my bed and took my hand tenderly. "How are you feeling now?" she asked. I smiled and said sadly: "Shall I get better?" But she answered at once, "You shall get better" with such passionate conviction that it almost brought conviction to me too, and there came over me a kind of confused feeling of all that life might mean, of Marceline's own love—a vague vision of such pathetic beauties that the tears started from my eyes and I wept long and helplessly without try• ing or wanting to stop. Wit h what loving violence she managed to get me away from Sousse! How charmingly she pro• tected me, helped me, nursed me! From Sousse to Tunis, from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was admirable. It was at Biskra that I was to get well. Her confidence was perfect; never for a single mo• ment did her zeal slacken. She settled everything, arranged the starts, engaged the rooms. It was not in her power, alas! to make the journey less horrible. Several times I thought I should have to stop and give up. I sweated mortally; I gasped for breath; at times I lost consciousness. At the end of the third day, I arrived at Biskra more dead than alive.
WH Y speak of those first days? What remains of them? Their frightful memory has no tongue. I lost all knowledge of who or where I was. I can only see Marceline, my wife, my life, bending over the bed where I lay agonizing. I know that her passion• ate care, her love, alone saved me. One day, at last, like a shipwrecked mariner who catches sight of land, I felt a gleam of life revisit me; I was able to smile at Marceline. Why should I recall all this? What is important is that Death had touched me, as people say, with its wing. What is important is that I came to think it a very astonishing thing to be alive, that every day shone for me, an unhoped-for light. Before, thought I, I did not understand I was alive. The thrilling discovery of life was to be mine. The day came when I was able to get up. I was utterly enchanted by our home. It was almost noth• ing but a terrace. What a terrace! My room and Marceline's opened out on to it ; at the further end it was continued over roofs. From the highest part, one 27 saw palm-trees above the houses; and above the palm-trees, the desert. On the other side, the terrace adjoined the public gardens and was shaded by the branches of the nearest cassias; lastly, it ran along one side of the courtyard—a small, regular court• yard, planted regularly with six palm-trees—and came to an end with the staircase that led down to the courtyard. My room was spacious and airy; the walls were bare and whitewashed; a little door led to Marceline's room; a large door with glass panes opened on to the terrace. There the hourless days slipped by. How often in my solitude those slow-slipping days come back to me! . . . Marceline sits beside me. She is reading, or sewing, or writing. I am doing nothing—just looking at her. 0 Marceline! Marceline! . . . I look. I see the sun; I see the shadow; I see the line of shadow moving; I have so little to think of that I watch it. I am still very weak; my breathing is very bad; everything tires me—even reading; be• sides, what should 1 read? Existing is occupation enough.
One morning Marceline came in laughing. "I have brought you a friend,1 she said, and I saw come in behind her a little dark-complexioned Arab. His name was Bachir and he had large silent eyes that looked at me. They made me feel embarrassed, and that was enough to tire me. I said nothing, only looked cross. The child, disconcerted by the cold• ness of my reception, turned to Marceline and, with the coaxing grace of a little animal, nestled up against her, took her hand and kissed it, showing his bare arms as he did so. I noticed that under his thin, white gandourah and patched burnous, he was naked. "Come, sit down there," said Marceline, who had noticed my shyness. "Amuse yourself quietly." The little fellow sat down on the floor, took a knife and a piece of djerid wood out of the hood of his burnous, and began to slice at it. I think it was a whistle he was trying to make. After a little time, I ceased to feel uncomfortable. 1 looked at him; he seemed to have forgotten where he was. His feet were bare; he had charmingly turned ankles and wrists. He handled his wretched knife with amusing dexterity Was this really going to interest me? . . . His hair was shaved Arab fashion; he wore a shabby Chechia on his head with a hole in the place of the tassel. His gandourah, which had slipped down a little, showed his delicate little shoulder. I wanted to touch it I bent down; he turned round and smiled at me. I signed to him to pass me his whistle, took it and pretended to ad• mire it. After a time he said he must go. Marceline gave him a cake and I a penny. The next day, for the first time, I felt dull. I seemed to be expecting something. Expecting what? I was listless, restless. At last I could resist no longer. "Isn't Bachir coming this morning, Marceline?" "I f you like, Til fetch him." She left me and went out; after a little she came back alone. What kind of thing had illness made me that I should have felt inclined to cry at seeing her return without Bachir? "I t was too late," she said, "the children had come out of school and dispersed. Some of them are really charming. I think they all know me now." "Well, at any rate, try and get him to come to• morrow." Next morning Bachir came back. He sat down in the same way he had done two days before, took out his knife and tried to carve his bit of wood, but it was too hard for him and he finally managed to stick the blade into his thumb. I shuddered with horror, but he laughed, held out his hand for me to see the glistening cut and looked amused at the sight of his blood running. When he laughed, he showed very white teeth; he licked his cut com- placently and his tongue was as pink as a cat's. Ah! how well he looked! That was what I had fallen in love with—his health. The health of that little body was a beautiful thing. The day after he brought some marbles. He wanted to make me play. Marceline was out or she would have prevented me. I hesitated and looked at Bachir; the little fellow seized my arm, put the marbles into my hand, forced me. The attitude of stooping made me very breathless, but I tried to play all the same. Bachir's pleasure charmed me. At last, however, it was too much for me. I was in a profuse perspiration. I pushed aside the marbles and dropped into an armchair. Bachir, somewhat disturbed, looked at me. "III?" said he sweetly; the quality of his voice was exquisite. Marceline came back at that mo• ment. "Take him away/' I said, "I am tired this morn- ing." A few hours later I had a hemorrhage. It was while I was taking a laborious walk up and dowir. the terrace; Marceline was busy in her room and fortunately saw nothing. My breathlessness had made me take a deeper respiration than usual and the thing had suddenly come. It had filled my mouth. . . . But it was no longer bright, clear blood as on the first occasion. It was a frightful great clot which I spat on to the ground in disgust. I took a few tottering steps. I was horribly upset. I was frightened; I was angry. For up till then I had thought that, step by step, recovery was on the way, and that I had nothing to do but wait for it. This brutal accident had thrown me back. The strange thing is that the first hemorrhage had not affected me so much. I now remembered it had left me almost calm. What was the reason of my fear, my horror now? Alas! it was because I had begun to love life. I returned on my steps, bent down, found the clot, and with a piece of straw picked it up and put it on my handkerchief. It was hideous, almost black in color, sticky, slimy, horrible. . . . I thought of Bachir's beautiful, brilliant flow of blood. . . . And suddenly I was seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more imperious than I had ever felt before—to live! I want to live! I will live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being in this wild, grief-stricken endeavor toward existence. The day before, I had received a letter from T . . . , written in answer to Marceline's anxious enquiries; it was full of medical advice; T had even accompanied his letter with one or two little popular medical pamphlets and a book of a more technical nature, which for that reason seemed to me more serious. I had read the letter carelessly and the printed matter not at all; in the first place I was set against the pamphlets because of their likeness to the moral tracts that used to tease me in my childhood; and then too every kind of advice was irksome to me; and besides, I did not think that Ad• vice to Tuberculous Patients or How to Cure Tu• berculosis in any way concerned me. I did not think I was tuberculous. I inclined to attribute my first hemorrhage to a different cause; or rather, to tell the truth, I did not attribute it to anything; I avoided thinking of it, hardly thought of it at all, and considered myself, if not altogether cured, at least very nearly so. . . . I read the letter; I de• voured the book, the pamphlets. Suddenly, with shocking clearness, it became evident to me that I had not been treating myself properly. Hitherto, I had let myself live passively, trusting to the vaguest of hopes; suddenly I perceived my life was attacked —attacked in its very center. An active host of ene• mies was living within me. I listened to them; I spied on them; I felt them. 1 should not vanquish them without a struggle . . . and I added half aloud, as if better to convince myself, "I t is a mat• ter of will. " I put myself in a state of hostility. Evening was closing in; I planned my strategy. For some time to come, my recovery was to be my one and only concern; my duty was my health; I must think good, I must call right everything that was salutary to me, forget everything that did not contribute to my cure. Before the evening meal, I had decided on my measures with regard to breath• ing, exercise, and nourishment We used to take our meals in a sort of little kiosk that was surrounded by the terrace on all sides. We were alone, quiet, far from everything, and the in• timacy of our meals was delightful. An old Negro used to bring us our food, which was tolerable, from a neighboring hotel. Marceline superintended the menus, ordered one dish or rejected another. . . . Not having much appetite as a rule, I did not mind particularly when the dishes were a failure or the menu insufficient. Marceline, who was herself a small eater, did not know, did not realize that I was not taking enough food. To eat a great deal was the first of my new resolutions. I intended to put it into execution that very evening. I was not able to. We had some sort of uneatable hash, and then a bit of roast meat which was absurdly overdone. My irritation was so great that I vented it upon Marceline and let myself go in a flood of intemper- ate words. I blamed her; to listen to me, it was as though she were responsible for the badness of the food. This slight delay in starting on the regime I had decided to adopt seemed of the gravest impor• tance; I forgot the preceding days; the failure of this one meal spoiled everything. I persisted ob• stinately. Marceline had to go into the town to buy a tin or a jar of anything she could find. She soon came back with a little terrine, of which I devoured almost the whole contents, as though to prove to us both how much I was in need of more food. That same evening we settled on the following plan: the meals were to be much better and there were to be more of them—one every three hours, beginning as early as half-past six in the morning. An abundant provision of every kind of tinned food was to supplement the deficiencies of the hotel menus. I could not sleep that night, so excited was I by the vision of my future virtues. I was, I think, a little feverish; there was a bottle of mineral water beside me; I drank a glass, two glasses; the third time, I drank out of the bottle itself and emptied it at a draught. I strengthened my will as one strengthens one's memory by revising a lesson; I instructed my hostility, directed it against all and sundry; I was to fight with everything; my salva• tion depended on myself alone. At last I saw the night begin to pale; another day had dawned. It had been my night of vigil before the battle. The next day was Sunday. Must I confess that so far I had paid very little attention to Marceline's religious beliefs? Either from indifference or deli• cacy, it seemed to me they were no business of mine; and then I did not attach much importance to them. That morning Marceline went to Mass. When she came back, she told me she had been praying for me. I looked at her fixedly and then said as gently as I could: "You mustn't pray for me, Marceline." "Why not?" she asked, a little troubled. " I don't want favors." "Do you reject the help of God?" "He would have a right to my gratitude after• wards. It entails obligations. I don't like them." To all appearance we were trifling, but we made no mistake as to the importance of our words. "You will not get well all by yourself, my poor dear," she sighed. "I f so, it can't be helped." Then, seeing how un• happy she looked, I added less roughly: "You will help me."
III
I AM going to speak at length of my body. I shall speak of it so much you will think at first I have forgotten my soul. This omission, as I tell you my story, is intentional; out there, it was a fact. I had not strength enough to keep up a double life. "I will think of the spirit and that side of things later," I said to myself, "—when I get better/' I was still far from being well. The slightest thing put me into a perspiration; the slightest thing gave me a cold; my breath was short; sometimes I had a little fever, and often, from- early morning, op• pressed by a dreadful feeling of lassitude, I re• mained prostrate in an armchair, indifferent to everything, self-centered, solely occupied in trying to breathe properly. I breathed laboriously, method• ically, carefully; my expiration came in two jerks which, with the greatest effort of my will, I could only partially control; for a long time after that, I still had need of all my attention to avoid this. But what troubled me most was my morbid sen- 37 sibility to changes of temperature. I think, when I come to reflect on it today, that, in addition to my illness, I was suffering from a general nervous de• rangement. I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena which it seems to me impossible to attribute entirely to a simple condition of tubercu• losis. I was always either too hot or too cold; I put on a ridiculous number of clothes, and only stopped shivering when I began to perspire; then, directly I took anything off, I shivered as soon as I stopped perspiring. Certain portions of my body would turn as cold as ice and, in spite of perspiration, felt like marble to the touch; nothing would warm them. I was so sensitive to cold that if a little water dropped on my feet while I was washing, it gave me a re• lapse; I was equally sensitive to heat This sensibility I kept and still keep, but now it gives me exquisite enjoyment. Any very keen sensibility may, I believe, according as the organism is robust or weakly, become a source of delight or discom• fort. Everything which formerly distressed me is now a delicious pleasure. I do not know how I had managed to sleep up till then with my windows shut; in accordance with T . . s advice, I now tried keeping them open at night; a little at first; soon I flung them wide; soon it became a habit, a need so great that directly the 3 9 , TH E IMMORALIS T window was shut, I felt stifled. Later on, with what rapture was I to feel the night wind blow, the moon shine in upon me! . . . But I am eager to have done with these first stammerings after health. Indeed, thanks to con• stant attention, to pure air, to better food, I soon began to improve. Up till then, my breathlessness had made me dread the stairs and I had not dared to leave the terrace; in the last days of January I at last went down and ventured into the garden. Marceline came with me, carrying a shawl. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The wind, which is often violent in those parts and which I had found particularly unpleasant during the last few days, had dropped. The air was soft and charming. The public gardens! . . . A very wide path runs through the middle of them, shaded by two rows of that kind of very tall mimosa which out there is called cassia. Benches are placed in the shadow of the trees. A canalized river—one, I mean, that is not wide so much as deep, and almost straight— flows alongside the path; other smaller channels take the water from the river and convey it through the gardens to the plants; the thick, heavy-looking water is the same color as the earth—the color of pinkish, greyish clay. Hardly any foreigners walk here—only a few Arabs; as they pass out of the sunlight, their white cloaks take on the color of the shade. I felt an odd shiver come over me as I stepped into that strange shade; I wrapped my shawl tighter about me; but it was not an unpleasant sensation; on the contrary. We sat down on a bench. Marceline was silent. Some Arabs passed by; then came a troop of children. Marceline knew several of them; she signed to them and they came up to us. She told me some of their names; questions and answers passed, smiles, pouts, little jokes. It all rather irri• tated me and my feeling of embarrassment returned. I was tired and perspiring. But must I confess that what made me most uncomfortable was not the children's presence—it was Marceline's. Yes; how• ever slightly, she was in my way. If I had got up, she would have followed me; if I had taken off my shawl, she would have wanted to carry it ; if I had put it on again, she would have said, "Are you cold?" And then, as to talking to the children, I didn't dare to before her; I saw that she had her favorites; I, in spite of myself, but deliberately, took more interest in the others. "Let us go in," I said at last. And I privately re• solved to come back to the gardens alone. The next day, she had to go out about ten o'clock; I took advantage of this. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to come of a morning, carried my shawl; I felt active, light-hearted. We were almost alone in the garden path; I walked slowly, sometimes sat down for a moment, then started off again. Bachir followed, chattering; as faithful and as ob• sequious as a dog. I reached a part of the canal where the washerwomen come down to wash; there was a flat stone placed in the middle of the stream, and upon it lay a little girl, face downwards, dab• bling with her hand in the water; she was busy throwing little odds and ends of sticks and grass into the water and picking them out again. Her bare feet had dipped in the water; there were still traces of wet on them and there her skin showed darker. Bachir went up and spoke to her; she turned round, gave me a smile and answered Bachir in Arabic. "She is my sister," he explained; then he said his mother was coming to wash some clothes and that his little sister was waiting for her. She was called Rhadra in Arabic, which meant 'Green.' He said all this in a voice that was as charming, as clear, as childlike, as the emotion I felt in hearing it. "She wants you to give her two sous," he added. I gave her fifty centimes and prepared to go on, when the mother, the washerwoman, came up. She was a magnificent, heavily built woman, with a high forehead tatooed in blue; she was carrying a basket of linen on her head and was like a Greek caryatid; like a caryatid too, she was simply draped in a wide piece of dark blue stuff, lifted at the girdle and falling straight to the feet. As soon as she saw Bachir, she called out to him roughly. He made an angry answer; the little girl joined in and the three of them started a violent dispute. At last Bachir seemed defeated and ex• plained that his mother wanted him that morning; he handed me my shawl sadly and I was obliged to go off by myself. I had not taken twenty paces when my shawl be• gan to feel unendurably heavy. I sat down, perspir• ing, on the first bench I came to. I hoped some other boy would come along and relieve me of my bur• den. The one who soon appeared and who offered to carry it of his own accord, was a big boy about fourteen years old, as black as a Sudanese and not in the least shy. His name was Ashour. I should have thought him handsome, but that he was blind in one eye. He liked talking; told me where the river came from, and that after running through the public gardens, it flowed into the oasis, which it traversed from end to end. As I listened to him, I forgot my fatigue. Charming as I thought Bachir, I knew him too well by now, and I was glad of a change. I even promised myself to come to the gar- dens all alone another day and sit on a bench and wait for what some lucky chance might bring. . . . After a few more short rests, Ashour and I ar• rived at my door. I wanted to invite him to come in, but I was afraid to, not knowing what Marceline would say. I found her in the dining-room, busied over a very small boy, so frail and sickly looking that my first feeling was one of disgust rather than pity. Marceline said rather timidly: "The poor little thing is ill. " "It's not infectious, I hope. What's the matter with him?" "I don't exactly know yet. He complains of feel• ing ill all over. He speaks very little French. When Bachir comes tomorrow, he will be able to interpret. . . . I am making him a little tea/' Then, as if in excuse, and because I stood there without saying anything, "I've known him a long time," she added. "I haven't dared bring him in be• fore; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps vexing you." "Why in the world!" I cried. "Bring in all the children you like, if it amuses you!" And I thought, with a little irritation at not having done so, that I might have perfectly well brought up Ashour. And yet, as I thought this, I looked at my wife; how maternal and caressing she was! Her tender• ness was so touching that the little fellow went off warm and comforted. I spoke of my walk and gently explained to Marceline why I preferred going out alone. At that time, my nights were generally disturbed by my constantly waking with a start—either frozen with cold or bathed in sweat. That night was a very good one. I hardly woke up at all. The next morning, I was ready to go out by nine o'clock. It was fine; I felt rested, not weak, happy—or rather, amused. The air was calm and warm, but nevertheless, I took my shawl to serve as a pre• text for making acquaintance with the boy who might turn up to carry it. I have said that the gar• den ran alongside our terrace, so that I reached it in a moment. It was with rapture I passed into its shade. The air was luminous. The cassias, whose flowers come very early, before their leaves, gave out a delicious scent—or was it from all around me that came the faint, strange perfume, which seemed to enter me by several senses at once and which so uplifted me? I was breathing more easily too, and so I walked more lightly; and yet at the first bench I sat down, but it was because I was excited —dazzled—rather than tired. I looked. The shadows were transparent and mo- bile; they did not fall upon the ground—seemed barely to rest on it. Light! Oh, light! I listened. What did I hear? Nothing; every• thing; every sound amused me. I remember a shrub some way off whose bark looked of such a curious texture that I felt obliged to go and feel it. My touch was a caress; it gave me rapture. I remember. . . . Was that the morning that was at last to give me birth? I had forgotten I was alone, and sat on, expect• ing nothing, waiting for no one, forgetting the time. Up till that day, so it seemed to me, I had felt so little and thought so much that now I was aston• ished to find my sensations had become as strong as my thoughts. I say, "it seemed to me," for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own—recomposed for them• selves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life. I met no one that day, and I was glad of it ; I took out of my pocket a little Homer, which I had not opened since Marseilles, re-read three lines of the Odyssey and learned them by heart; then, find• ing in their rhythm enough to satisfy me, I dwelled on them awhile with leisurely delight, shut the book, and sat still, trembling, more alive than I had thought it possible to be, my mind benumbed with happiness. . . .
IV
IN the meantime, Marceline, who saw wit h delight that my health was at last improving, had after a few days begun telling me about the marvelous orchards of the oasis. She was fond of the open air and outdoor exercise. My illness left her enough spare time for long walks, from which she returned glowing with enthusiasm; so far she had not said much about them, as she did not dare invite me to go wit h her and was afraid of depressing me by an account of delights I was not yet fit to enjoy. But now that I was better, she counted on their at• traction to complete my recovery. The pleasure I was again beginning to take in walking and looking about me tempted me to join her. An d the next morning we set out together. She led the way along a path so odd that I have never in any country seen its like. It meanders in • dolently between two fairly high mud walls; the shape of the gardens they enclose directs its lei• surely course; sometimes it winds; sometimes it is 47 TH E /MMORALIS T 4 8 broken; a sudden turning as you enter it and you lose your bearings; you cease to know where you came from or where you are going. The water of the river follows the path faithfully and runs along• side one of the walls; the walls are made of the same earth as the path—the same as that of the whole oasis—a pinkish or soft grey clay, which is turned a little darker by the water, which the burning sun crackles, which hardens in the heat and softens with the first shower, so that it becomes a plastic soil that keeps the imprint of every naked foot Above the walls, palm-trees show. Wood-pigeons went flying into them as we came up. Marcelane looked at me. I forgot my discomfort and fatigue. I walked on in a sort of ecstasy, of silent joy, of elation of the senses and the flesh. At that moment there came a gentle breath of wind; all the palms waved and we saw the tallest of the trees bending; then the whole air grew calm again, and I distinctly heard, coming from behind the wall, the song of a flute. A breach in the wall; we went in. I t was a place full of light and shade; tranquil; it seemed beyond the touch of time; full of silence; full of rustlings—the soft noise of running water that feeds the palms and slips from tree to tree, the quiet call of the pigeons, the song of the flute the 4 9 TH E IMMORALIS T boy was playing. He was sitting, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm-tree, watching a herd of goats; our coming did not disturb him; he did not move—stopped playing only for a moment. I noticed during this brief pause that another flute was answering in the distance. We went on a little, then: "It's no use going any further," said Marceline; "these orchards are all alike; possibly at the other end of the oasis they may be a little larger " She spread the shawl on the ground. "Sit down and rest.'' she said. How long did we stay there? I cannot tell. What mattered time? Marceline was near me; I lay down and put my head on her knees. The song of the flute flowed on, stopped from time to time, went on again; the sound of the water . . . From time to time a goat baa'ed. I shut my eyes; I felt Marceline lay her cool hand on my forehead; I felt the burn• ing sun, gently shaded by the palm-trees; I thought of nothing; what mattered thoughts? I felt extraor• dinarily. . . . And from time to time there was another noise; I opened my eyes; a little wind was blowing in the palm-trees; it did not come down low enough to reach us—stirred only the highest branches. The next morning, I returned to the same gar• den with Marceline; on the evening of the same day, I went back to it alone. The goatherd who played the flute was there. 1 went up to him; spoke to him. He was called Lassif, was only twelve years old, was a handsome boy. He told me the names of his goats, told me that the little canals are called 'seghias'; they do not all run every day, he explained; the water, wisely and parsimoniously distributed, satisfies the thirst of the plants, and is then at once withdrawn. At the foot of each palm the ground is hollowed out into a small cup which holds water enough for the tree's needs; an in• genious system of sluices, which the boy worked for me to see, controls the water, conducts it wherever the ground is thirstiest. The next day I saw a brother of Lassif s; he was a little older and not so handsome; he was called Lachmi. By means of the kind of ladder made in the trunk of the tree by the old stumps of excised palm leaves he climbed up to the top of a pol• larded palm; then he came swiftly down again, showing a golden nudity beneath his floating gar• ment. He brought down a little earthen gourd from the place where the head of the tree had been severed; it had been hung up near the fresh cut in order to collect the palm sap, from which the Arabs 5 1 TH E IMM0RAL1S T make a sweet wine they are extremely fond of. At Lachmi's invitation, I tasted it ; but I did not like its sickly, raw, syrupy taste. The following days I went further; I saw other gardens, other goatherds and other goats. As Mar- celine had said, all these gardens were alike; and yet they were all different. Sometimes Marceline would still come with me; but more often, as soon as we reached the orchards, I would leave her, persuade her that I was tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she must not wait for me, for she needed more exercise; so that she would finish the walk without me. I stayed behind with the children. I soon knew a great number of them; I had long conversations with them; I learned their games, taught them others, lost all my pen• nies at pitch and toss. Some of them used to come with me on my walks (every day I walked farther), showed me some new way home, took charge of my coat and my shawl when 1 happened to have them both with me. Before leaving the children, I used to distribute a handful of pennies among them; sometimes they would follow me, playing all the way, as far as my own door; and finally they would sometimes come in. Then Marceline on her side brought in others. She brought the boys who went to school, whom she encouraged to work; when school broke up, the good little boys, the quiet little boys came in; those that I brought were different; but they made friends over their games. We took care always to have a store of syrups and sweetmeats on hand. Soon other boys came of their own accord, even uninvited. I remember each one of them; I can see them still. . . .
Toward the end of January, the weather changed suddenly; a cold wind sprang up and my health im• mediately began to suffer. The great open space that separates the oasis from the town again be• came impassable, and I was obliged once more to content myself with the public gardens. Then it be• gan to rain—an icy rain, which covered the moun• tains on the far northern horizon with snow. I spent those melancholy days beside the fire, gloomily, obstinately, fighting with my illness, which in this vile weather gained upon me. Lu• gubrious days! I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort brought on the most troublesome perspiration; fixing my thoughts exhausted me; di• rectly I stopped paying attention to my breathing, I suffocated. During those melancholy days the children were 5 3 TH E IMMORALIS T my only distraction. In the rainy weather, only the most familiar came in; their clothes were drenched; they sat round the fire in a circle. A long time would often go by without anything being said. I was too tired, too unwell to do anything but look at them; but the presence of their good health did me good. Those that Marceline petted were weakly, sickly, and too well behaved; I was irri • tated with her and with them and ended by keep• ing them at arm's length. To tell the truth, they frightened me. One morning I had a curious revelation as to my own character; Moktir, the only one of my wife's proteges who did not irritate me (because of his good looks perhaps), was alone with me in my room; up till then, I had not cared much about him, but there was something strange, I thought, in the brilliant and sombre expression of his eyes. Some kind of inexplicable curiosity made me watch his movements. I was standing in front of the fire, my two elbows on the mantelpiece, apparently absorbed in a book; but, though I had my back turned to him, I could see what he was doing reflected in the glass. Moktir did not know I was watching him and thought I was immersed in my reading. I saw him go noiselessly up to a table where Marceline had laid her work and a little pair of scissors be- side it, seize them furtively, and in a twinkling en• gulf them in the folds of his burnous. My heart beat quickly for a moment, but neither reason nor reflection could arouse in me the smallest feeling of indignation. More than that! I could not manage to persuade myself that the feeling that filled me at the sight was anything but joy. When I had allowed Moktir ample time for rob• bing me, I turned round again and spoke to him as if nothing had happened. Marceline was very fond of this boy; but I do not think it was the fear of grieving her that made me, rather than denounce Moktir, invent some story or other to explain the loss of her scissors. From that day onwards, Moktir became my fa• vorite.
V
OU R stay at Biskra was not to last much longer. When the February rains were over, the outburst of heat that succeeded them was too violent. After several days of drenching downpour, one morn• ing, suddenly, I woke in an atmosphere of brilliant blue. As soon as I was up, I hurried to the highest part of the terrace. The sky, from one horizon to the other, was cloudless. Mists were rising under the heat of the sun, which was already fierce; the whole oasis was smoking; in the distance could be heard the grumbling of the Oued in flood. The air was so pure and so delicious that I felt better at once, Marceline joined me; we wanted to go out, but that day the mud kept us at home. A few days later, we went back to Lassif s or• chard; the stems of the plants looked heavy, sod• den and swollen with water. This African land, whose thirsty season of waiting was not then known to me, had lain submerged for many long days and was now awaking from its winter sleep, drunken 55 with water, bursting with the fresh rise of sap; throughout it rang the wild laughter of an exultant spring which found an echo, a double, as it were, in my own heart. Ashour and Moktir came with us at first; I still enjoyed their slight friendship, which cost me only half a franc a day; but I soon grew tired of them; not now so weak as to need the example of their health, and no longer finding in their play the food necessary to keep my joy alive, I turned the elation of my mind and senses to Marceline. Her gladness made me realize she had been unhappy before. I excused myself like a child for having so often left her to herself, set down my odd, elusive behavior to the score of weakness, and declared that hitherto loving had been too much for me, but that henceforward, as my health grew, so would my love. I spoke truly, but no doubt I was still very weak, for i t was not till more than a month later that I desired Marceline. In the meantime, it was getting hotter every day. There was nothing to keep us at Biskra—except the charm which afterwards called me back there. Our determination to leave was taken suddenly. In three hours our things were packed. The train started next morning at daybreak. I remember that last night. The moon was nearly full; it streamed into my room by the wide-open 5 7 TH E IMMORALIS T window. Marceline was, I think, asleep. I had gone to bed but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of happy fever—the fever of life itself. . . . I got up, dipped my hands and face in water, then, pushing open the glass doors, went out. It was already late; not a sound; not a breath; the air itself seemed asleep. The Arab dogs, which yelp all night like jackals, could only just be heard in the distance. Facing me lay the little courtyard; the wall opposite cast a slanting band of shadow across it ; the regular palm-trees, bereft of color and life, seemed struck for ever motionless But in sleep there is still some palpitation of life; here, nothing seemed asleep; everything seemed dead. The calm appalled me; and suddenly there rose in me afresh the tragic realization of my life; it came upon me as though to protest, to assert itself, to bewail itself in the silence, so violent, so impetu• ous, so agonizing almost, that I should have cried aloud, if I could have cried like an animal. I took hold of my hand, I remember—my left hand in my right; I wanted to lift it to my head and I did. What for? To assure myself that I was alive and that I felt the wonder of it. I touched my fore• head, my eyelids. Then a shudder seized me. A day will come, thought I, a day will come when I shall not even be strong enough to lift to my lips the very water I most thirst for. . . . I went in, but did not lie down again at once; I wanted to fix that night, to engrave its memory on my mind, to hold and to keep it ; undecided as to what I should do, I took a book from my table —i t was the Bible—and opened it at random; by stooping over it in the moonlight, I could see to read; I read Christ's words to Peter—those words, alas, which I was never to forget: "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands . . ."—thou shalt stretch forth thy hands. . . . The next morning at dawn, we left
vi
I SHALL not speak of every stage of the journey. Some of them have left me only a confused recol• lection; I was sometimes better and sometimes worse in health, still at the mercy of a cold wind and made anxious by the shadow of a cloud; the condition of my nerves too was the cause of fre• quent trouble; but my lungs at any rate were re• covering. Each relapse was shorter and less seri• ous; the attacks were as sharp, but my body was better armed against them. From Tunis we went to Malta, and from there to Syracuse; I found myself back again on the classic ground whose language and history were known to me. Since the beginning of my illness I had lived without question or rule, simply applying myself to the act of living as an animal does or a child. Now that I was less absorbed by my malady, my life became once more certain of itself and conscious. After that long and almost mortal sick• ness, I had thought I should rise again the same 59 as before and be able without difficulty to reknit my present to my past; in the newness of a strange country it had been possible to deceive myself— but not here; everything brought home to me— though I still thought it astonishing—that I was changed. When at Syracuse and later, I wanted to start my work again and immerse myself once more in a mi• nute study of the past, I discovered that some• thing had, if not destroyed, at any rate modified my pleasure in it . . . and this something was the feeling of the present. The history of the past had now taken on for me the immobility, the terrifying fixity of the nocturnal shadows in the little court• yard of Biskra—the immobility of death. In old days, I had taken pleasure in this very fixity, which enabled my mind to work with precision; the facts of history all appeared to me like specimens in a museum, or rather like plants in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the sun. Nowadays, if I still took any pleas• ure in history, it was by imagining it in the present Thus the great political events of the past moved me less than the feeling that began to revive in me for the poets or for a few men of action. At Syra• cuse, I reread Theocritus and reflected that his goat- herds with the beautiful names were the very same as those I had loved at Biskra. My erudition, which was aroused at every step, became an encumbrance and hampered my joy. I could not see a Greek theatre or temple without im• mediately reconstructing it in my mind. Every thought of the festivals of antiquity made me grieve over the death of the ruin that was left stand• ing in their place; and I had a horror of death. I ended by avoiding ruins; the noblest monu• ments of the past were less to me than those sunk gardens of the Latomie whose lemons have the sharp sweetness of oranges—or the shores of the Cyane, still flowing among the papyri as blue as on the day when it wept for Proserpine. I ended by despising the learning that had at first been my pride; the studies that up to then had been my whole life now seemed to me to have a mere accidental and conventional connection with myself. I found out that I was something different and—oh rapture!—that 1 had a separate existence of my own. Inasmuch as I was a specialist, I ap• peared to myself senseless; inasmuch as I was a man, did I know myself at all? I had only just been born and could not as yet know what I had been born. It was that I had to find out. There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die than a long convalescence. After that touch from the wing of Death, what seemed important is so no longer; other things be• come so which had at first seemed unimportant, or which one did not even know existed. The mis• cellaneous mass of acquired knowledge of every kind that has overlain the mind gets peeled off in places like a mask of paint, exposing the bare skin —the very flesh of the authentic creature that had lain hidden beneath it. He it was whom I thenceforward set out to dis• cover—that authentic creature, 'the old Adam/ whom the Gospel had repudiated, whom every• thing about me—books, masters, parents, and I myself had begun by attempting to suppress. And he was already coming into view, still in the rough and difficult of discovery, thanks to all that overlay him, but so much the more worthy to be discovered, so much the more valorous. Thence• forward I despised the secondary creature, the creature who was due to teaching, whom education had painted on the surface. These overlays had to be shaken off. And I compared myself to a palimpsest; I tasted the scholar's joy when he discovers under more recent writing, and on the same paper, a very an• cient and infinitely more precious text. What was this occult text? In order to read it, was it not first of all necessary to efface the more recent one? I was besides no longer the sickly, studious be• ing to whom my early morality, with all its rigidity and restrictions, had been suited. There was more here than a convalescence; there was an increase, a recrudescence of life, the influx of a richer, warmer blood which must of necessity affect my thoughts, touch them one by one, inform them all, stir and color the most remote, delicate and secret fibers of my being. For, either to strength or to weak• ness, the creature adapts itself; it constitutes itself according to the powers it possesses; but if these should increase, if they should permit a wider scope, then . . . I did not think all this at the time, and my description gives a false idea of me. In reality, I did not think at all; I never questioned myself; a happy fatalism guided me. I was afraid that too hasty an investigation might disturb the mystery of my slow transformation. I must allow time for the effaced characters to reappear, and not attempt to re-form them. Not so much neglecting my mind therefore, as allowing it to lie fallow, I gave myself up to the luxurious enjoyment of my own self, of external things, of all existence, which seemed to me divine. We had left Syracuse, and as I ran along the precipitous road that connects Taormina with Mola, I remember shouting aloud, as if my calling could bring him to me: "A new self! A new self!" My only effort then—an effort which was at that time constant—consisted in systematically con• demning and suppressing everything which I be• lieved I owed to my past education and early moral beliefs. Deliberately disdainful of my learning, and in scorn of my scholar's tastes, I refused to visit Agrigentum, and a few days later, on the road to Naples, I passed by the beautiful temple of Paes- tum, in which Greece still breathes, and where, two years later, I went to worship some God or other — I no longer know which. Why do I say 'my only effort'? How could I be interested in myself save as a perfectible be• ing? Never before had my will been so tensely strung as in striving after this unknown and vaguely imagined perfection. I employed the whole of my will indeed, in strengthening and bronzing my body. We had left the coast near Salerno and reached Ravello. There, a keener air, the charm of the rocks, their recesses, their surprises, the unexplored depths of the valleys, all contributed to my strength and enjoyment and gave impetus to my enthusiasm. Not far from the shore and very near the sky, Ravello lies on an abrupt height facing the flat and distant coast of Paestum. Under the Norman dom- ination, it was a city of no inconsiderable impor• tance; it is nothing now but a narrow village where I think we were the only strangers. We were lodged in an ancient religious house which had been turned into a hotel; it is situated on the extreme edge of the rock, and its terraces and gardens seemed to hang suspended over an abyss of azure. Over the wall, festooned with creeping vine, one could at first see nothing but the sea; one had to go right up to the wall in order to discover the steep cul• tivated slope that connects Ravello with the shore by paths that seem more like staircases. Above Ravello, the mountain continues. First come enor• mous olive and caroub trees, with cyclamen grow• ing in their shadow; then, higher up, Spanish chest• nuts in great quantities, cool air, northern plants; lower down lemon trees near the sea. These are planted in small plots owing to the slope of the ground; they are step gardens, nearly all alike; a narrow path goes from end to end through the middle of each; one enters noiselessly, like a thief; one dreams in their green shadow; their foliage is thick and heavy; no direct ray of sunlight pene• trates it ; the lemons, like drops of opaque wax, hang perfumed; they are white and greenish in the shade; they are within reach of one's hand, of one's thirst; they are sweet and sharp and refreshing. The shade was so dense beneath them that I did not dare linger in it after my walk, for exercise still made me perspire. And yet I now managed the steps without being exhausted; I practised climbing them with my mouth shut; I put greater and greater in• tervals between my halts; "I will go so far with• out giving in," I used to say to myself; then, the goal reached, I was rewarded by a glow of satis• fied pride; I would take a few long deep breaths, and feel as if the air entered my lungs more thor• oughly, more efficaciously. I brought all my old assiduity to bear on the care of my body. I began to progress. I was sometimes astonished that my health came back so quickly. I began to think I had exaggerated the gravity of my condition—to doubt that I had been very ill—to laugh at my blood-spitting—to regret that my recovery had not been more arduous. In my ignorance of my physical needs, my treat• ment of myself had at first been very foolish. I now made a patient study of them and came to regard my ingenious exercise of prudence and care as a kind of game. What I still suffered from most was my morbid sensitiveness to the slightest change of temperature. Now that my lungs were cured, I attributed this hyperaesthesia to the nervous de• bility left me by my illness and I determined to conquer it. The sight of the beautiful, brown, sun- burned skins which some of the carelessly clad peas• ants at work in the fields showed beneath their open shirts, made me long to be like them. One morning, after I had stripped, I looked at myself; my thin arms, my stooping shoulders, which no effort of mine could keep straight, but above all the whiteness of my skin, or rather its entire want of color, shamed me to tears. I dressed quickly and, instead of going down to Amalfi as usual, I turned my steps towards some mossy, grass-grown rocks, in a place far from any habitation, far from any road, where I knew no one could see me. When I got there, I undressed slowly. The air was almost sharp, but the sun was burning. I exposed my whole body to its flame. I sat down, lay down, turned myself about. I felt the ground hard beneath me; the waving grass brushed me. Though I was shel• tered from the wind, I shivered and thrilled at every breath. Soon a delicious burning enveloped me; my whole being surged up into my skin. We stayed at Ravello a fortnight; every morn• ing I returned to the same rocks and went on wit h my cure. I soon found I was wearing a trouble• some and unnecessary amount of clothing; my skin having recovered its tone, the constant perspira• tion ceased and I was able to keep warm without superfluous protection. On one of the last mornings (we were in the mid- die of April) , I was bolder still . In a hollow of the rocks I have mentioned, there flowed a spring of transparent water. At this very place it fell in a little cascade—not a very abundant one to be sure, but the fall had hollowed out a deeper basin at its foot in which the water lingered, exquisitely pure and clear. Three times already I had been there, leaned over it , stretched myself along its bank, thirsty and longing; I had gazed at the bottom of polished rock, where not a stain, not a weed was to be seen, and where the sun shot its dancing and iridescent rays. On this fourth day, I came to the spot with my mind already made up. The water looked as bright and as clear as ever, and with • out pausing to think, I plunged straight in. It struck an instant chill through me and I jumped out again quickly and flung myself down on the grass in the sun. There was some wil d thyme growing near by; I picked some of the sweet-smelling leaves, crushed them in my hands and rubbed my wet but burn• ing body with them. I looked at myself for a long while—with no more shame now—with joy. Al • though not yet robust, I felt myself capable of becoming so—harmonious, sensuous, almost beau• tiful .
vii
A N D SO, in the place of all action and all work, I contented myself with physical exercises, which cer• tainly implied a change in my moral outlook, but which I soon began to regard as mere training, as simply a means to an end, and no longer satisfying in themselves. I wil l tell you, however, about one other action of mine, though perhaps you wil l consider i t ridicu • lous, for its very childishness marks the need that then tormented me of showing by some outward sign the change that had come over my inward self: at Amalfi I had my beard and moustache shaved off. Up til l that day I had worn them long and m y hair cropped close. It had never occurred to me that I could do anything else. And suddenly, on the day when I first stripped myself on the rock, my beard made me feel uncomfortable; it was like a last piece of clothing I could not get rid of; I felt as if it were false; it was carefully cut—not in a point, but square, and it then and there struck me 69 as very ugly and ridiculous. When I got back to my hotel room, I looked at myself in the glass and was displeased with my appearance; I looked like what I had hitherto been—an archaeologist—a bookworm. Immediately after lunch, I went down to Amalfi with my mind made up. The town is very small and I could find nothing better than a vulgar little shop in the piazza. It was market day; the place was full; I had to wait interminably; but nothing—neither the suspicious looking razors, nor the dirty yellow shaving-brush, nor the smell, nor the barber's talk could put me off. When my beard fell beneath his scissors, I felt as though I had taken off a mask. But oh! when I saw myself, the emotion that filled me and which I tried to keep down, was not pleasure, but fear. I do not criticize this feeling—I record it. I thought myself quite good-looking . . . no, the reason of my fear was a feeling that my mind had been stripped of all disguise, and it suddenly appeared to me redoubt• able. On the other hand, I let my hair grow. That is all my new and still unoccupied self found to do. I expected it eventually to give birth to actions that would astonish me—but later— later, I said to myself, when it is more fully formed. In the meantime, as I was obliged to live, I was 7 1 TH E IMMORALIS T reduced, like Descartes, to a provisional mode of action. This was the reason Marceline did not no• tice anything. The different look in my eyes, no doubt, and the changed expression of my features, especially on the day when I appeared without my beard, might perhaps have aroused her suspicions, but she already loved me too much to see me as I was; and then I did my best to reassure her. The important thing was that she should not interfere with my renascent life, and to keep it from her eyes, I had to dissemble. For that matter, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was not my 'new self/ So I told myself again and again as an excuse for hid• ing him. In this way I showed her an image of my• self, which by the very fact of its remaining con• stant and faithful to the past, became every day falser and falser. For the time being, therefore, my relationship with Marceline remained the same, though it was every day getting more intense by reason of my growing love. My dissimulation (if that expres• sion can be applied to the need I felt of protecting my thoughts from her judgment), my very dis• simulation increased that love. I mean that it kept me incessantly occupied with Marceline. At first, perhaps, this necessity for falsehood cost me a little effort; but I soon came to understand that the things that are reputed worst (lying, to mention only one) are only difficult to do as long as one has never done them; but that they become—and very quickly too—easy, pleasant and agreeable to do over again, and soon even natural. So then, as is always the case when one overcomes an initial dis• gust, I ended by taking pleasure in my dissimula• tion itself, by protracting it, as if it afforded oppor• tunity for the play of my undiscovered faculties. And every day my life grew richer and fuller, as I advanced towards a riper, more delicious happi• ness.
viii
TH E road from Ravello to Sorrento is so beautiful that I had no desire that morning to see anything more beautiful on earth. The sun-warmed harsh• ness of the recks, the air's abundance, the scents, the limpidity, all filled me with the heavenly de• light of living, and with such contentment that there seemed to dwell in me nothing but a dancing joy; memories and regrets, hope and desire, future and past were alike silent; I was conscious of noth• ing in life but what the moment brought, but what the moment carried away. "O joys of the body!" I exclaimed; "unerring rhythm of the muscles! health! . . ." I had started early that morning, ahead of Mar- celine, for her calmer pleasure would have cooled mine, just as her slower pace would have kept me back. She was to join me by carriage at Positano, where we were to lunch. I was nearing Positano, when a noise of wheels, which sounded like the bass accompaniment to a 73 curious kind of singing, made me look round abruptly. At first I could see nothing because of a turn in the road, which in that place follows the edge of the cliff; then a carriage driven at a frantic pace dashed suddenly into view; it was Marceline's. The driver was singing at the top of his voice, stand• ing up on the box and gesticulating violently, while he ferociously whipped his frightened horse. What a brute the. fellow was! He passed me so quickly that I only just had time to get out of the way and my shouts failed to make him stop. . . . I rushed after him, but the carriage was going too fast. I was terrified that Marceline would fling her• self out of the carriage, and equally so that she would stay in it ; a single jolt might have thrown her into the sea. . . . Al l of a sudden the horse fell down. Marceline jumped out and started running, but I was beside her in a moment The driver, as soon as he saw me, broke into horrible oaths. I was furious with the man; at his first word of abuse, I rushed at him and flung him brutally from his box. I rolled on the ground with him, but did not lose my advantage; he seemed dazed by his fall and was soon still more so by a blow on the face which I gave him, when I saw he meant to bite me. I did not let go of him, however, and pressed with my knee on his chest, while I tried to pinion his arms. I looked at his ugly face, which my fist had madfe still uglier; he spat, foamed, bled, swore; oh, what a horrible creature! He deserved strangling, I thought. And perhaps I should have strangled him —at any rate, I felt capable of it ; and I really be• lieve it was only the thought of the police that pre• vented me. I succeeded, not without difficulty, in tying the madman up, and flung him into the carriage like a sack. Ah! what looks, what kisses Marceline and I exchanged when it was all over. The danger had not been great; but I had had to show my strength, and that in order to protect her. At the moment I felt I could have given my life for her . . . and given it wholly with joy. . . . The horse got up. We left the drunkard at the bottom of the carriage, got on to the box together, and drove as best we could, first to Positano, and then to Sorrento. It was that night that I first possessed Marceline. Have you really understood or must I tell you again that I was as it were new to things of love? Perhaps it was to its novelty that our wedding night owed its grace. . . . For it seems to me, when I recall it, that that first night of ours was our only one, the expectation and the surprise of love added so much deliciousness to its pleasures—so suffi- cient is a single night for the expression of the greatest love, and so obstinately does my memory recall that night alone. It was a flashing moment that caught and mingled our souls in its laughter. . . . But I believe there comes a point in love, once and no more, which later on the soul seeks—yes, seeks in vain—to surpass; I believe that happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it ; that nothing is more fatal to happiness than the re• membrance of happiness. Alas! I remember that night. . . . Our hotel was outside the town and surrounded with gardens and orchards; a very large balcony opened out from our room and the branches of the trees brushed against it. Our wide-open windows let in the dawn freely. I got up and bent tenderly over Marceline. She was asleep; she looked as though she were smiling in her sleep; my greater strength seemed to make me feel her greater delicacy and that her grace was all fragility. Tumultuous thoughts whirled in my brain. I reflected that she was telling the truth when she said I was her all; then, "What do I do for her happiness?" I thought. "Almost all day and every day I abandon her; her every hope is in me and I neglect her! . . . oh, poor, poor Marceline!" My eyes filled with tears. I tried in vain to seek an excuse in my past weakness; what need had I now for so much care and attention, for so much egoism? Was I not now the stronger of the two? The smile had left her cheeks; daybreak, though it had touched everything else with gold, suddenly showed her to me sad and pale; and perhaps the approach of morning inclined me to be anxious. "Shall I in my turn have to nurse you, fear for you, Marceline?" I inwardly cried. I shuddered, and, overflowing with love, pity, and tenderness, I placed between her closed eyes the gentlest, the most lover• like, the most pious of kisses.
ix
T H E few days we stayed at Sorrento were smiling days and very calm. Had I ever enjoyed before such rest, such happiness? Should I ever enjoy them again? . . . I spent almost all my time wit h Marceline; thinking less of myself, I was able to think more of her, and now took as much pleasure in talking to her as I had before taken in being silent. I was at first astonished to feel that she looked upon our wandering life, with which I professed myself perfectly satisfied, only as something tem• porary; but its idleness soon became obvious to me; I agreed it must not last; for the first time, thanks to the leisure left me by my recovered health, there awoke in me a desire for work, and I began to speak seriously of going home; from Marceline's joy, I realized she herself had long been thinking of it . Meanwhile, when I again began to turn my at• tention to some of my old historical studies, I found 78 that I no longer took the same pleasure in them. As I have already told you, since my illness I had come to consider this abstract and neutral acquaint• ance with the past as mere vanity. In other days I had worked at philological research, studying more especially, for instance, the influence of the Goths on the corruption of the Latin language, and had passed over and misunderstood the figures of The- odoric, Cassiodorus, and Amalasontha, and their admirable and astonishing passions, in order to con• centrate all my enthusiasm on mere signs—the waste product of their lives. At present, however, these same signs, and in• deed philology as a whole, were nothing more to me than a means of penetrating farther into things whose savage grandeur and nobility had begun to dawn on me. I resolved to study this period further, to limit myself for a time to the last years of the empire of the Goths, and to turn to account our coming stay at Ravenna, the scene of its closing agonies. But shall I confess that the figure of the young king Athalaric was what attracted me most? I pic• tured to myself this fifteen-year-old boy, worked on in secret by the Goths, in revolt against his mother Amalasontha, rebelling against his Latin education and flinging aside his culture, as a restive horse shakes off a troublesome harness; I saw him preferring the society of the untutored Goths to that of Cassiodorus—too old and too wise—plung• ing for a few years into a life of violent and un• bridled pleasures with rude companions of his own age, and dying at eighteen, rotten and sodden with debauchery. I recognized in this tragic impulse towards a wilder, more natural state, something of what Marceline used to call my 'crisis/ I tried to find some satisfaction in applying my mind to it, since it no longer occupied my body; and in Atha- laric's horrible death, I did my best to read a lesson. So we settled to spend a fortnight at Ravenna, visit Rome and Florence rapidly, then, giving up Venice and Verona, hurry over the end of our jour• ney and not stop again before reaching Paris. I found a pleasure I had never felt before in talking to Marceline about the future; we were still a little undecided as to how we should spend the summer; we were both tired of traveling and I was in need of absolute quiet for my work; then we thought of a place of mine, situated between Lisieux and Pont-L'Eveque, in the greenest of green Normandy; it had formerly belonged to my mother, and I had passed several summers there with her in my child• hood, though I had never gone back to it since her death. My father had left it in charge of a bailiff. an old man by now, who collected the rents and sent them to us regularly. I had kept enchanting memories of a large and very pleasant house stand• ing in a garden watered by running streams; it was called La Moriniere; I thought it would be good to live there. I spoke of spending the following winter in Rome, but as a worker this time, not a tourist But this last plan was soon upset. Amongst the number of letters we found waiting for us at Naples, was one containing an unexpected piece of informa• tion—a chair at the College de France had fallen vacant and my name had been several times mentioned in connection with it ; it was only a temporary post which would leave me free in the fu• ture; the friend who wrote advised me of the few steps to be taken in case I should accept, which he strongly advised me to do. I hesitated to bind my• self to what at first seemed to me slavery; but then I reflected that it might be interesting to put for• ward my ideas on Cassiodorus in a course of lec• tures The pleasure I should be giving Marce- line finally decided me, and once my decision taken, I saw only its advantages. My father had several connections in the learned world of Rome and Florence, with whom I had my• self been in correspondence. They gave me every facility for making the necessary researches in Ra• venna and elsewhere; I had no thoughts now but for my work. Marceline, by her constant consider• ation and in a thousand charming ways, did all she could to help me. Our happiness during those last days of travel was so equable, so calm, that there is nothing to say about it. Men's finest works bear the persistent marks of pain. What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what de• stroys it can be told. I have now told you what prepared it.
SECOND PART
WE arrived at La Moriniere in the first days of July, having stayed in Paris only just long enough to do our shopping and pay a very few visits. La Moriniere is situated, as I have told you, be• tween Lisieux and Pont-L'Eveque in the shadiest, wettest country I know. Innumerable narrow coombes and gently rounded hills terminate near the wide 'Vallee d'Auge.' which then stretches in an uninterrupted plain as far as the sea. There is no horizon; some few copse-woods, filled with mys• terious shade, some few fields of corn, but chiefly meadow land—softly sloping pastures, where the lush grass is mown twice a year, where the apple- trees, when the sun is low, join shadow to shadow, where flocks and herds graze untended; in every hollow there is water—pond or pool or river; from every side comes the continual murmur of streams. Oh, how well I remembered the house! its blue roofs, its walls of stone and brick, its moat, the re- 85 flections in the still waters. . . . It was an old house which would easily have lodged a dozen per• sons; Marceline, three servants, and myself, who occasionally lent a helping hand, found it all we could do to animate a part of it Our old bailiff, who was called Bocage, had already done his best to prepare some of the rooms; the old furniture awoke from its twenty years' slumber; everything had remained just as I remembered it—the panel• ing not too dilapidated, the rooms easy to live in. Bocage, to welcome us, had put flowers in all the vases he could lay hands on. He had had the large courtyard and the nearest paths in the park weeded and raked. When we arrived, the sun's last rays were falling on the house, and from the valley facing it a mist had arisen which hovered there mo• tionless, masking and revealing the river. We had not well arrived, when all at once I recognized the scent of the grass; and when I heard the piercing cries of the swallows as they flew round the house, the whole past suddenly rose up, as though it had been lying in wait for my approach to close over and submerge me. In a few days the house was more or less com• fortable; I might have settled down to work; but I delayed, at first still listening to the voice of my past as it recalled its slightest details to my memory, and then too much absorbed by an unwonted emo• tion. Marceline, a week after our arrival, confided to me that she was expecting a child. Thenceforward I thought I owed her redoubled care, and that she had a right to greater tenderness than ever; at any rate during the first weeks that followed her confidence, I spent almost every min• ute of the day in her company. We used to go and sit near the wood, on a bench where in old days I had been used to sit with my mother; there, each moment brought us a richer pleasure, each hour passed with a smoother flow. If no distinct memory of this period of my life stands out for me, it is not because I am less deeply grateful for it—but be• cause everything in it melted and mingled into a state of changeless ease, in which evening joined morning without a break, in which day passed into day without a surprise. I gradually set to work again with a quiet mind in possession of itself, certain of its strength, look• ing calmly and confidently to the future; with a will that seemed softened, as though by harkening to the counsels of that temperate land. There can be no doubt, I thought, that the ex• ample of such a land, where everything is ripening towards fruition and harvest, must have the best of influences on me. I looked forward with admir- ing wonder to the tranquil promise of the great oxen and fat cows that grazed in those opulent meadows. The apple-trees, planted in order on the sunniest slopes of the hill-sides, gave hopes this summer of a magnificent crop. I saw in my mind's eye the rich burden of fruit which would soon bow down their branches. From this ordered abundance, this joy• ous acceptance of service imposed, this smiling cul• tivation, had arisen a harmony that was the result not of chance but of intention, a rhythm, a beauty, at once human and natural, in which the teeming fecundity of nature and the wise effort of man to regulate it were combined in such perfect agree• ment that one no longer knew which was more ad• mirable. What would man's effort be worth, thought I, without the savagery of the power it controls? What would the wild rush of these upwelling forces become without the intelligent effort that banks it, curbs it, leads it by such pleasant ways to its out• come of luxury? And I let myself go in a dream of lands where every force should be so regulated, all expenditure so compensated, all exchanges so strict, that the slightest waste would be appreciable; then I applied my dream to life and imagined a code of ethics which should institute the scientific and per• fect utilization of a man's self by a controlling intel• ligence. Where had my rebelliousness vanished to? Where was it hiding itself? It seemed never to have ex• isted, so tranquil was I. The rising tide of my love had swept it all away. Meanwhile old Bocage bustled round us; he gave directions, he superintended, he advised; his need of feeling himself indispensable was tiresome in the extreme. In order not to hurt his feelings I had to go over his accounts and listen for hours to his end• less explanations. Even that was not enough; I had to visit the estate with him. His sententious truisms, his continual speeches, his evident self-satisfaction, the display he made of his honesty drove me to ex• asperation; he became more and more persistent and there was nothing I would not have done to recover my liberty, when an unexpected occurrence brought about a change in my relations with him. One evening Bocage announced that he was expect• ing his son Charles the next day. I said, "Oh!" rather casually, having so far trou• bled myself very little as to any children Bocage might or might not have; then, seeing that my in• difference offended him and that he expected some expression of interest and surprise, "Where has he been?" I asked. "In a model farm near Alencon," answered Bo• cage. "How old is he now? About . . . ?" I went on, calculating the age of this son, of whose existence I had so far been totally unaware, and leaving him time enough to interrupt me. . . . "Past seventeen," went on Bocage. "He was not much more than four when your father's good lady died. Ah! He's a big lad now; he'll know more than his dad soon. . . ." Once Bocage was started, nothing could stop him, not even the boredom I very plainly showed. I had forgotten all about this, when the next eve• ning, Charles, newly arrived from his journey, came to pay his respects to Marceline and me. He was a fine strong young fellow, so exuberantly healthy, so lissom, so well-made, that not even the frightful town clothes he had put on in our honor could make him look ridiculous; his shyness hardly added anything to the fine natural red of his cheeks. He did not look more than fifteen, his eyes were so bright and so childlike; he expressed himself clearly, without embarrassment, and, unlike his fa• ther, did not speak when he had nothing to say. 1 cannot remember what we talked about that first evening; I was so busy looking at him that I found nothing to say and let Marceline do all the talking. But next day, for the first time, I did not wait for old Bocage to come and fetch me, in order to go down to the farm, where I knew they were starting work on a pond that had to be repaired. This pond—almost as big as a lake—was leak• ing. The leak had been located and had to be ce• mented. In order to do this, the pond had first to be drained, a thing that had not been done for fifteen years. It was full of carp and tench, great creatures, some of them, that lay at the bottom of the pond without ever coming up. I wanted to stock the moat with some of these fish and give some to the la• borers, so that upon this occasion the pleasure of a fishing party was added to the day's work, as could be seen from the extraordinary animation of the farm; some children from the neighborhood had joined the workers and Marceline herself had prom• ised to come down later. The water had already been sinking for some time when I got there. Every now and then a great ripple suddenly stirred its surface and the brown backs of the disturbed fish came into sight. The children paddling in the puddles round the edges amused themselves with catching gleaming hand- fuls of small fry, which they flung into pails of clear water. The water in the pond was muddy and soon became more and more thick and troubled owing to the agitation of the fish. Their abundance was beyond all expectation: four farm laborers, dipping into the water at random, pulled them out in handfuls. I was sorry that Marceline had not ar• rived and decided to run and fetch her, when a shout signaled the appearance of the first eels. But no one could succeed in catching them; they slipped between the men's fingers. Charles, who up till then had been standing beside his father on the bank, could restrain himself no longer; he took off his shoes and socks in a moment, flung aside his coat and waistcoat, then, tucking up his trousers and shirtsleeves as high as they would go, stepped reso• lutely into the mud. I immediately did the same. "Charles!" I cried, "it was a good thing you came back yesterday, wasn't it?" He was already too busy with his fishing to answer, but he looked at me, laughing. I called him after a moment to help me catch a big eel; we joined hands in trying to hold it . . . Then came another and another; our faces were splashed with mud; sometimes the ooze sud• denly gave way beneath us and we sank into it up to our waists; we were soon drenched. In the ardor of the sport, we barely exchanged a shout or two, a word or two; but at the end of the day, I became aware I was saying 'thou' to Charles, without hav• ing any clear idea when I had begun. Our work in common had taught us more about each other than a long conversation. Marceline had not come yet; she did not come at all, but I ceased to regret her absence; I felt as though she would have a little spoiled our pleasure. Early next morning, I went down to the farm to look for Charles. We took our way together to the woods. As I myself knew very little about my estate and was not much distressed at knowing so little, I was astonished to find how much Charles knew about it and about the way it was farmed; he told me what I was barely aware of, namely, that I had six farmer-tenants, that the rents might have amounted to sixteen or eighteen thousand francs, and that if they actually amounted to barely half that sum, it was because almost everything was eaten up by repairs of all sorts and by the payment of middle• men. His way of smiling as he looked at the fields in cultivation soon made me suspect that the man• agement of the estate was not quite so good as I had at first thought and as Bocage had given me to understand; I pressed Charles further on this sub• ject, and the intelligence of practical affairs which had so exasperated me in Bocage, amused me in a child like him. We continued our walks day after day; the estate was large and when we had visited every corner of it, we began again with more method. Charles did not hide his irritation at the sight of certain fields, certain pieces of land that were overgrown with gorse, thistles and weeds; he instilled into me his hatred of fallow land and set me dreaming with him of a better mode of agri• culture. ''But,'' I said to him at first, "who is it that suf• fers from this lack of cultivation? Isn't it only the farmer himself? However much the profits of his farm vary, his rent still remains the same.'' Charles was a little annoyed: "You understand nothing about it," he ventured to say—and I smiled. "You think only of income and won't consider that the capital is deteriorating. Your land is slowly los• ing its value by being badly cultivated." "I f it were to bring in more by being better cul• tivated, I expect the farmers would set about it. They are too eager for gain not to make as much profit as they can." "You are not counting," continued Charles, "the cost of increased labor. These neglected bits of land are sometimes a long way from the farms. True, if they were cultivated, they would bring in noth• ing or next to nothing, but at any rate, they would keep from spoiling." And so the conversation went on. Sometimes for an hour on end we seemed to be interminably re• peating the same things as we walked over the fields; but I listened, and little by little gathered information. "After all, it's your father's business/' I said one day impatiently. Charles blushed a little. "M y father is old," he said; "he has a great deal to do already, seeing to the upkeep of the build• ings, collecting the rents and so on. It's not his busi• ness to make reforms." "And what reforms would you make?" I asked. But at that he became evasive and pretended he knew nothing about it ; it was only by insisting that I forced him to explain. "I should take away all the uncultivated fields from the tenants," he ended by advising. "I f the farmers leave part of their land uncultivated, it's a proof they don't need it all in order to pay you; or if they say they must keep it all, I should raise their rents. All the people hereabouts are idle," he added. Of the six farms that belonged to me, the one I most liked visiting was situated on a hill that over• looked La Moriniere; it was called La Valterie; the farmer who rented it was a pleasant enough fellow and I used to like talking to him. Nearer La Moriniere was a farm called the 'home farm,' which was let on a system that left Bocage, pend• ing the landlord's absence, in possession of part of the cattle. Now that my doubts had been awak- TH E 1MM0RALIS T 9 6 ened, I began to suspect honest Bocage himself, if not of cheating me, at any rate, of allowing other people to cheat me. One stable and one cow-house were, it is true, reserved to me, but it soon dawned upon me that they had merely been invented so as to allow the farmer to feed his cows and horses with my oats and hay. So far, I had listened indulgently to the very unconvincing reports which Bocage gave me from time to time of deaths, malforma• tions and diseases. I swallowed everything. It had not then occurred to me that it was sufficient for one of the farmer's cows to fall il l for it to become one of my cows, nor that it was sufficient for one of my cows to do well for it to become one of the farmer's; but a few rash remarks of Charles's, a few observations of my own began to enlighten me, and my mind, once given the hint, worked quickly. Marceline, at my suggestion, went over the ac• counts minutely, but could find nothing wrong with them; Bocage's honesty was displayed on every page. What was to be done? Let things be. At any rate, I now watched the management of the cattle in a state of suppressed indignation, but without letting it be too obvious. I had four horses and ten cows—quite enough to be a considerable worry to me. Among my four horses was one which was still called 'the colt,' though it was more than three years old; it was now being broken in; I was beginning to take an interest in it, when one fine morning I was in• formed that it was perfectly unmanageable, that it would be impossible ever to do anything with it and that the best thing would be to get rid of it. As if on purpose to convince me of this, in case I had doubted it, it had been made to break the front of a small cart and had cut its hocks in doing so. I had much ado that day to keep my temper, but what helped me was Bocage's obvious embarrass• ment. After all, thought I, he is more weak than anything else; it is the men who are to blame, but they want a guiding hand over them. I went into the yard to see the colt; one of the men who had been beating it began to stroke it as soon as he heard me coming; I pretended to have seen nothing. I did not know much about horses, but this colt seemed to me a fine animal; it was half-bred, light bay in color and remarkably ele• gant in shape, with a very bright eye and a very light mane and tail. I made sure it had not been in• jured, insisted on its cuts being properly dressed and went away without another word. That evening, as soon as I saw Charles, I tried to find out what he personally thought of the colt. "I think he's a perfectly quiet beast," he said, "but they don't know how to manage him; they'll drive him wild." "And how would you manage him?" "Will you let me have him for a week, Sir? I'l l answer for him." "And what will you do?" "You will see." The next morning, Charles took the colt down to a corner of the field that was shaded by a superb walnut-tree and bordered by the river; I went too, together with Marceline. It is one of my most vivid recollections. Charles had tied the colt with a rope a few yards long to a stake firmly planted in the ground. The mettlesome creature had, it seems, ob• jected for some time with great spirit; but now, tired and quieted, it was going round more calmly; the elasticity of its trot was astonishing and as de• lightful and engaging to watch as a dance. Charles stood in the center of the circle and avoided the rope at every round with a sudden leap, exciting or calming the beast with his voice; he held a long whip in his hand, but I did not see him use it. Every• thing about his look and movements—his youthful- ness, his delight—gave his work the fervent and beautiful aspect of pleasure. Suddenly—I have no idea how—he was astride the animal; it had slack- ened its pace and then stopped; he had patted it a little and then, all of a sudden I saw that he was on its back, sure of himself, barely holding its mane, laughing, leaning forward, still patting and strok• ing its neck. The colt had hardly resisted for a mo• ment; then it began its even trot again, so hand• some, so easy, that I envied Charles and told him so. "A few days' more training and the saddle won't tickle him at all; in a fortnight, Sir, your lady her• self won't be afraid to mount him; he'll be as quiet as a lamb." It was quite true; a few days later, the horse al• lowed himself to be stroked, harnessed, led, with• out any signs of restiveness; and Marceline might really have ridden him if her state of health had permitted. "You ought to try him yourself, Sir," said Charles. I should never have done so alone; but Charles suggested saddling another of the farm horses for himself, and the pleasure of accompanying him proved irresistible. How grateful I was to my mother for having sent me to a riding-school when I was a boy! The recol• lection of those long-ago lessons stood me in good stead. The sensation of feeling myself on horseback was not too strange; after the first few moments, I had no tremors and felt perfectly at ease. Charles's mount was heavier; it was not pure bred, but far from bad-looking, and above all, Charles rode it well. We got into the habit of going out every day; for choice, we started in the early morning, through grass that was still bright with dew; we rode to the limit of the woods; the dripping hazels, shaken by our passage, drenched us with their showers; sud• denly the horizon opened out; there, in front of us, lay the vast Vallee d'Auge and far in the distance could be divined the presence of the sea. We stayed a moment without dismounting; the rising sun col• ored the mists, parted them, dispersed them; then we set off again at a brisk trot; we lingered a little at the farm, where the work was only just begin• ning; we enjoyed for a moment the proud pleasure of being earlier than the laborers—of looking down on them; then, abruptly, we left them; I was home again at La Moriniere just as Marceline was be• ginning to get up. I used to come in drunk with the open air, dazed with speed, my limbs a little stiff with a delicious fatigue, all health and appetite and freshness. Mar• celine approved, encouraged my fancy. I went straight to her room, still in my gaiters, and found her lingering in bed, waiting for me; I came bring• ing with me a scent of wet leaves, which she said she liked. And she listened while I told her of our ride, of the awakening of the fields, of the recom• mencing of the day's labor. . , . She took as much delight, it seemed, in feeling me live as in living herself. Soon I trespassed on this delight too; our rides grew longer, and sometimes I did not come in till nearly noon. I kept the afternoons and evenings, however, as much as possible for the preparation of my lec• tures. My work on them made good progress; I was satisfied with it and thought they might perhaps be worth publishing later as a book. By a kind of natu• ral reaction, the more regular and orderly my life became and the more pleasure I took in establish• ing order about me—the more attracted I felt by the rude ethics of the Goths. With a boldness for which I was afterwards blamed, I took the line throughout my lectures of making the apology and eulogy of nonculture; but, at the same time, in my private life, I was laboriously doing all I could to control, if not to suppress, everything about me and within me that in any way suggested it. How far did I not push this wisdom—or this folly? Two of my tenants whose leases expired at Christ• mas time, came to me with a request for renewal; it was a matter of signing the usual preliminary agree• ment Strong in Charles's assurances and en- couraged by his daily conversations, I awaited the farmers with resolution. They on the other hand, equally strong in the conviction that tenants are hard to replace, began by asking for their rents to be lowered. Their stupefaction was great when I read them the agreement I had myself drawn up, in which I not only refused to lower the rents but also withdrew from the farms certain portions of land, which I said they were making no use of. They pretended at first to take it as a laughing mat• ter—I must be joking. What could I do with the land? It was worth nothing; and if they made no use of it, it was because no use could be made of it Then, seeing I was serious, they turned ob• stinate; I was obstinate too. They thought they would frighten me by threatening to leave. It was what I was waiting for: "All right! Go if you like! I won't keep you/' I said, tearing the agreement up before their eyes. So there I was, with more than two hundred acres left on my hands. I had planned for some time past to give the chief management of this land to Bocage, thinking that in this way I should be giving it indirectly to Charles; my intention also was to look after it a good deal myself; but in real• ity, I reflected very little about it ; the very risk of the undertaking tempted me. The tenants would not be turning out before Christmas; between this and then we should have time to look about us. I told Charles; his delight annoyed me; he could not hide it ; it made me feel more than ever that he was much too young. We were already pressed for time; it was the season when the reaping of the crops leaves the fields empty for early ploughing. By an established custom, the outgoing tenant works side by side with the incoming; the former quits the land bit by bit, as soon as he has carried his crops. I was afraid the two farmers I had dis• missed would somehow revenge themselves on me; but, on the contrary, they made a pretence of be• ing perfectly amiable (I only learned later how much they benefited by this). I took advantage of their complaisance to go up to their land—which was soon going to be mine—every morning and eve• ning. Autumn was beginning; more laborers had to be hired to get on with the ploughing and sow• ing; we had bought harrows, rollers, ploughs; I rode about on horseback, superintending and di• recting the work, taking pleasure in ordering peo• ple about and in using my authority. Meanwhile, in the neighboring meadows, the ap• ples were being gathered; they dropped from the trees and lay rolling in the thick grass; never had there been a more abundant crop; there were not enough pickers; they had to be brought in from the neighboring villages and taken on for a week; Charles and I sometimes amused ourselves by help• ing them. Some of the men beat the branches with sticks to bring down the late fruit; the fruit that fell of itself was gathered into separate heaps; often the overripe apples lay bruised and crushed in the long grass so that it was impossible to walk without step• ping on them. The smell that rose from the ground was acrid and sickly and mingled with the smell of the ploughed land. Autumn was advancing. The mornings of the last fine days are the freshest, the most limpid of all. There were times when the moisture-laden atmos• phere painted all the distances blue, made them look more distant still, turned a short walk into a day's journey; and the whole country looked big• ger; at times again the abnormal transparency of the air brought the horizon closer; it seemed as though it might be reached by one stroke of the wing; and I could not tell which of the two states filled me with a heavier languor. My work was al• most finished—at least, so I told myself, as an en• couragement to be idle. The time I did not spend at the farm, I spent with Marceline. Together we went out into the garden; we walked slowly, she languidly hanging on my arm; the bench where we went to sit looked over the valley, which the eve• ning gradually filled wit h light. She had a tender way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay so til l evening, motionless, speechless, letting the day sink and melt within us. . . . In what a cloak of silence our love had already learned to wrap itself! For already Marceline's love was stronger than words—for sometimes her love was almost an anguish to me. As a breath of wind some• times ripples the surface of a tranquil pool, the slightest emotion was visible in her face; she was listening now to the new life mysteriously quiver• ing withi n her, and I leaned over her as over deep transparent waters where, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but love. Ah ! if this was still happiness, I know I did my best to hold it , as one tries—in vain—to hold the water that slips between one's joined hands; but already I felt, close beside my happiness, something not happi• ness, something indeed that colored my love, but with the colors of autumn. Autum n was passing. Every morning the grass was wetter, til l i t no longer dried i n the fringe of the woods on the shady side of the valley; at the first streak of dawn, it was white. The ducks on the waters of the moat fluttered and flapped their wings; they grew fiercely agitated; sometimes they rose together, calling loudly, and flew in a noisy flight right round La Moriniere. One morning we missed them. Bocage had shut them up. Charles told me that every autumn at migration time they had to be shut up in this way. And a few days later the weather changed. One evening, suddenly, there came a great blast, a breath from the sea, stormy, steady, bringing with it cold and rain, carrying off the birds of passage. Marceline's condition, the business of settling into a new apartment, the work entailed by my lectures, would in any case have soon called us back to town. The bad weather, which began early, drove us away at once. It is true that the farm affairs were to bring me back in November. I was greatly vexed to hear of Bocage's plans for the winter; he told me that he wished to send Charles back to his model farm where, so he declared, he had still a great deal to learn; 1 talked to him long, used all the arguments I could think of, but I could not make him budge; at the outside, he consented to shorten Charles's training by a trifle so as to allow him to come back a little sooner. Bocage did not conceal from me that the running of the two farms would be a matter of no small difficulty; but he had in view, so he said, two highly trustworthy peasants whom he intended to employ; they would be partly farmers, partly ten- 107 TH E 1MMORALIS T ants, partly laborers; the thing was too unusual in these parts for him to hope much good would come of it ; but, he said, it was my own wish. This con• versation took place towards the end of October. In the first days of November, we moved to Paris.
ii
IT was in S . . . Street, near Passy, that we took up our residence. The apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline's brothers, and which we had visited when we had last passed through Paris, was much bigger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was a little un• easy, not only at the increased rent, but at all the other expenses we should certainly be led into. I countered all her fears by pretending I had a hor• ror of anything temporary; I forced myself to be• lieve in this feeling and deliberately exaggerated it . Certainly, the cost of furnishing and arranging the apartment would exceed our income for the present year, but our fortune, which was already large, was sure to increase still further; I counted on my lec• tures for this, on the publication of my book and, such was my folly, on the profits from my new farms. In consequence, I stopped short at no ex• pense, telling myself at each new one that here was 108 109 TH E IMMORALIS T another tie and thinking also that by these means I should suppress every vagabond inclination I felt—or feared I might feel—within me. For the first few days, our time was taken up from morning to night by shopping and other business of the sort; and though eventually Marceline's brother very obligingly offered to do as much as he could for us, it was not long before Marceline felt thoroughly tired out. Then, as soon as we were set• tled in, instead of resting as she should have done, she felt obliged to receive visitors; they flocked to see us now because we had been absent from Paris during the first days of our marriage, and Marce• line, who had become unused to society, was in• capable of getting rid of them quickly or of shut• ting her doors altogether. When I came home in the evening, I found her exhausted, and, though her fatigue, which seemed only natural, caused me no anxiety, I did my best to lessen it ; often receiving visits in her stead, which was very little to my taste, and sometimes paying them—which was still less so. I have never been a brilliant talker; the frivolity, the wit, the spirit of fashionable drawing-rooms, were things in which I could take no pleasure; yet in old days I had frequented some of these salons— but how long ago that seemed! What had happened TH E IMMORALIS T 110 since then? In other people's company, I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring. . . . By a singular piece of ill-luck, you, whom I considered my only real friends, were absent from Paris and not expected back for long. Should I have been able to speak to you more openly? Would you have perhaps understood me better than I did my• self? But what did I know at that time of all that was growing up within me, of all I am now telling you about? The future seemed to me absolutely assured and I had never thought myself more mas• ter of it. And even if I had been more perspicacious, what help against myself should I have found in Hubert, Didier or Maurice, or in all the others whom you know and judge as I do? I very soon discovered, alas, the impossibility of their understanding me. In our very first conversations, I found myself forced to impersonate a false character, to resemble the man they imagined I still was; and for con• venience sake, I pretended to have the thoughts and tastes with which they credited me. One can• not both be sincere and seem so. I was rather more willing to renew my acquaint• ance with the people of my own profession—archae• ologists and philologists—but I found very little more pleasure and no more emotion in talking to Il l TH E IMMORALIS T them than in consulting a good dictionary. I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be con• fessed they did not show it ; most of them, I thought, did not really live—contented themselves with ap• pearing to live, and were on the verge of consider• ing life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing, I could not blame them for it ; and I do not affirm that the mistake was not mine. . . . As to that, what did I mean by 'living'? That is exactly what I wanted to find out. One and another talked cleverly of the different events of life—never of what is at the back of them. As for the few philosophers whose business it should have been to instruct me, I had long known what to expect of them; whether mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far away as possible from the disturbing reality and had no more con• cern for it than the algebraist has for the existence of the quantities he measures. When I got back to Marceline, I did not conceal from her how tedious I found all these acquaint• ances. 'They are all alike,' I said to her. "When I talk to one, I feel as if I were talking to the whole lot." "But, my dear," said Marceline, "you can't ex- TH E 1MM0RALIS T 112 pect each of them to be different from all the others." 'The greater their likeness to each other, the more unlike they are to me." And then I went on with a sigh, "Not one of them has managed to be ill . They are alive—they seem to be alive, and yet not to know they are alive. For that matter, since I have been in their company, I have ceased to be alive myself. Today, amongst other days, what have I done? I had to leave you about nine o'clock. I had just a bare moment for a little reading before I went out; it was the only sat• isfactory moment of the day. Your brother was waiting for me at the solicitor's, and after the solici• tor's, he insisted on sticking to me; I had to see the upholsterer with him; he was really a nuisance at the cabinet-maker's and I only got rid of him at Gaston's; I had lunch in the neighborhood with Philip and then I met Louis at a cafe and went with him to Theodore's absurd lecture, and paid him compliments when it was over; then, in order to get out of his invitation for Sunday, I had to go with him to Arthur's; then to a water-color exhibition with Arthur; then left cards on Albertine and Julie. . . . I came in thoroughly exhausted and found you as tired as myself, after visits from Adeline, Marthe, Jeanne, and Sophie. . . . And now, in the evening, as I look back on my day, it seems to me so vain and so empty that I long to have it back and live it over again hour by hour—and the thought of it makes me inclined to weep." And yet I should not have been able to say what I meant by 'living/ nor whether the very simple secret of my trouble was not that I had acquired a taste for a more spacious, breezier life, one that was less hemmed in, less regardful of others; the se• cret seemed to me much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one who has known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary peo• ple, like a man who has risen from the grave. And at first I merely felt rather painfully out of my ele• ment; but soon I became aware of a very different feeling. I had known no pride, I repeat, when the publication of my Essay had brought me such praise. Was it pride now? Perhaps; but at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather, for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated me—distinguished me —from other people was crucial; what no one said, what no one could say but myself, that it was my task to say. My lectures began soon after; the subject was congenial and I poured into the first of them all my newly born passion. Speaking of the later Latin civ- ilization, I depicted artistic culture as welling up in a whole people, like a secretion, which is at first a sign of plethora, of a superabundance of health, but which afterwards stiffens, hardens, forbids the perfect contact of the mind with nature, hides un• der the persistent appearance of life a diminution of life, turns into an outside sheath, in which the cramped mind languishes and pines, in which at last it dies. Finally, pushing my thought to its logi• cal conclusion, I showed Culture, born of life, as the destroyer of life. The historians criticized a tendency, as they phrased it, to too rapid generalization. Other peo• ple blamed my method; and those who compli• mented me were those who understood me least.
It was at the end of my lecture that I came across Menalque again for the first time. I had never seen much of him, and shortly before my marriage, he had started on one of those distant voyages of dis• covery which sometimes kept him from us for over a year. In the old days, I had never much liked him; he seemed proud and he took no interest in my ex• istence. I was therefore astonished to see him at my first lecture. His very insolence, which had at first held me aloof from him, pleased me, and I thought the smile he gave me all the more charming because I knew he smiled rarely. Recently, an absurd—a shameful—lawsuit had caused a scandal and given the newspapers a convenient occasion to drag him through the mud; those whom he had offended by his disdain and superiority seized this pretext to re• venge themselves; and what irritated them most was that he appeared not to care. "One must allow other people to be right," he used to say when he was insulted, "it consoles them for not being anything else." But 'good society' was indignant and people who, as they say, 'respect themselves/ thought it their duty to turn their backs on him, and so pay him back his contempt. This was an extra encourage• ment to me; feeling myself attracted by a secret in• fluence, I went up to him and embraced him before everyone. When they saw to whom I was talking, the last intruders withdrew; I was left alone with Me- nalque. After the irritating criticisms and inept compli• ments I had been listening to, his few words on the subject of my lecture were very soothing. "You are burning what you used to adore," said he. "Very good. It is a little late in the day, but never mind, the fire is all the fiercer. I am not sure whether I altogether understand you. You make me curious. I don't much care about talking, but I should like to talk to you. Come and dine with me tonight/' ''Dear Menalque," I answered, "you seem to for• get that I am married." "Yes," he answered, "quite true. The frank cor• diality with which you were not afraid to greet me made me think you might be free." I was afraid I might have wounded him; still more so of seeming weak, and I told him I would join him after dinner.
Menalque never did more than pass through Paris on his way to somewhere else; he always stayed in a hotel. On this occasion he had had sev• eral rooms fitted up for him as a private apartment; he had his own servants, took his meals apart, lived apart; stuffs and hangings of great value which he had brought back from Nepal had been hung on the walls and thrown over the furniture, whose com• monplace ugliness was an offence to him. He was dirtying them out, he said, before presenting them to a museum. My haste to rejoin him had been so great that I found him still at table when I came in; as I excused myself for disturbing his meal: "But I have no intention of letting you disturb it," he said, "and I expect you to let me finish it. If you had come to dinner, I should have given you some Shiraz—the wine that Hafiz celebrated—but it is too late now; one must only drink it fasting; but you'll take some liqueur, won't you?" I accepted, thinking he would take some too, and when only one glass was brought in, I expressed as• tonishment. "Forgive me," he said, "but I hardly ever drink such things." "Are you afraid of getting drunk?" "Oh!" replied he, "on the contrary! But I con• sider sobriety a more powerful intoxication—in which I keep my lucidity." "And you pour the drink out for others?" He smiled. "I cannot," said he, "expect everyone to have my virtues. It's good enough to meet with my vices " "You smoke, at any rate?" "No, not even that. Smoking is an impersonal, negative, too easily achieved kind of drunkenness; what I want from drunkenness is an enhancement, not a dimunition of life. But that's enough. Do you know where I have just come from? Biskra. I heard you had been staying there, and I thought I would like to follow up your tracks. What could the blind• folded scholar, the learned bookworm have come to do at Biskra? It's my habit to be discreet only about things that are confided to me; for things that I find out myself, I'l l admit that I have an unbounded curiosity. So I searched, poked about, questioned wherever I could. My indiscretion was rewarded, since it has made me wish to meet you again; since instead of the learned man of habit you seemed to be in the old days, I know now that you are . . . it's for you to tell me what.'' I felt myself blushing. "What did you find out about me, Menalque?" "Do you want to know? But there's no need to be alarmed! You know your friends and mine well enough to be sure there is no one I can talk to about you. You saw how well your lecture was under• stood?" "But," said I, a little impatiently, "there's noth• ing yet to prove that I can talk to you better than to them. Come on then! What is it you found out about me?" "First of all, that you had been ill. " "But there's nothing in that to . . ." "Oh, yesl That in itself is very important. Then I was told you liked going out alone, without a book (that's what started me wondering), or, when you were not alone, you preferred the company of chil• dren to that of your wife . . . Don't blush like that, or I shan't go on." "Go on without looking at me." "One of the children—his name was Moktir, if I remember right—(I have scarcely ever seen a hand• somer boy, and never a greater little swindler) seemed to have a good deal to say about you. I en• ticed him—I bribed him to confide in me . . . not an easy thing to do, as you know, for I think it was only another lie, when he said he was not lying that time Tell me whether what he told me about you is true." In the meantime, Menalque had got up and taken a little box out of a drawer. "Are these scissors yours?" he said, opening the box and taking out a shapeless, twisted, rusty ob• ject, which, however, I had little difficulty in recog• nizing as the pair of scissors Moktir had purloined. "Yes, they are; they were my wife's scissors." "He pretends he took them when your head was turned away one day he was alone in the room with you; but that's not the point; he pretends that at the moment he was hiding them in his burnous, he saw you were watching him in the glass and caught the reflection of your eyes looking at him. You saw the theft and said nothing! Moktir was very much astonished at this silence—and so was I." "An d I am too at what you have just said. What ! Do you mean to say he knew I had caught him at it? " "I t isn't that that matters; you were trying to be more cunning than he; it's a game at which children like that wil l always get the better of us. You thought you had him, and in reality, it was he who had you. . . . But that's not what matters. I should like an explanation of your silence." " I should like one myself." Some time passed without a word from either of us. Menalque, who was pacing up and down the room, lighted a cigarette absent-mindedly and then immediately threw it away. "The fact is," said he, "there's a 'sense,' as peo• ple say, 'a sense' which seems to be lacking in you, my dear Michel." "The 'moral sense,' " said I, forcing myself to smile. "Oh, no! simply the sense of property." "Yo u don't seem to have much of it yourself." "I have so little of it that, as you see, nothing in this place is mine; not even—or rather, especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have a horror of rest; pos• sessions encourage one to indulge in it , and there's nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life well enough to want to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify, my life. I will not say I like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand at every mo• ment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health " "Then what do you blame me for?" I interrupted. "Oh, how little you understand me, my dear Michel; for once that I am foolish enough to try and make a profession of faith! . . . If I care little for the approbation or disapprobation of men, Michel, it is not in order to approve or disapprove in my turn; those words have very little sense for me. I spoke of myself too much just now I was car• ried away by thinking you understood me I simply meant to say that, for a person who has not got the sense of property, you seem to possess a great deal. Isn't that rather serious?" "And what is this great deal I possess?" "Nothing, if you take it in that way But are you not beginning a course of lectures? Have you not an estate in Normandy? Have you not just settled yourself—and luxuriously too—in an apart• ment at Passy? You are married? Are you not ex• pecting a child?" "Well!" said I, impatiently, "it merely proves that I have succeeded in making my life more dangerous than yours." "Yes, merely/' repeated Menalque ironically; then, turning abruptly, he put out his hand: "Well, good-bye now; I don't think any more talk tonight would be of much use. But I shall see you again soon." Some time went by before I saw him again.
Fresh work, fresh preoccupations took up my time; an Italian scholar brought to my notice some new documents he had discovered which were im• portant for my lectures and which I had to study at some length. The feeling that my first lesson had been misunderstood stimulated me to shed a dif• ferent and more powerful light on the succeeding ones; I was thus led to enunciate as a doctrine what I had at first only tentatively suggested as an in• genious hypothesis. How many assertions owe their strength to the lucky circumstance that as sugges• tions they were not understood? In my own case, I admit I cannot distinguish what proportion of ob• stinacy may have mingled with my natural pro• pensity for asserting my opinions. The new things I had to say seemed to me especially urgent because of the difficulty of saying them, and above all of getting them understood. But, alas, how pale words become when compared with deeds! Was not Menalque's life, Menalque's slightest action a thousand times more eloquent than my lectures? How well I understood now that the great philosophers of antiquity, whose teaching was almost wholly moral, worked by example as much—even more than by precept!
The next time I saw Menalque was in my own house, nearly three weeks after our first meeting. We had been giving a crowded evening party, and he came in almost at the end of it. In order to avoid being continually disturbed, Marceline and I had settled to be at home on Thursdays; in this way it was easier to keep our doors shut for the rest of the week. Every Thursday evening then, those people who called themselves our friends used to come and see us; our rooms were large enough to hold a good many guests and they used to stay late. I think that what attracted them most was Marceline's exqui• site charm and the pleasure of talking to each other, for as to myself, from the very beginning of these parties, there was nothing I could find either to say or to listen to, and it was with difficulty I concealed my boredom. That evening, I was wandering aimlessly from the drawing-room to the smoking-room, from the ante-chamber to the library, caught by a sentence here and there, observing very little but looking about me more or less vaguely. Antoine, Etienne and Godefroi were discussing the last vote in the Chamber, as they lolled on my wife's elegant armchairs. Hubert and Louis were carelessly turning over some fine etchings from my father's collection, entirely regardless of how they were creasing them. In the smoking-room, Mathias, the better to listen to Leonard, had put his red-hot cigar down on a rosewood table. A glass of curagoa had been spilt on the carpet. Albert was sprawling impudently on a sofa, with his muddy boots dirty• ing the cover. And the very dust of the air one breathed came from the horrible wear and tear of material objects A frantic desire seized me to send all my guests packing. Furniture, stuffs, prints, lost all their value for me at the first stain; things stained were things touched by disease, with the mark of death on them. I wanted to save them, to lock them up in a cupboard for my own use alone. How lucky Menalque is, thought I, to have no pos• sessions! The reason I suffer is that I want to pre• serve things. But after all, what does it really mat• ter to me? . . . There was a small, less brilliantly lighted draw• ing-room, partitioned off by a transparent glass door, and there Marceline was receiving some of her more intimate friends; she was half reclining on a pile of cushions and looked so fearfully pale and tired that I suddenly took fright and vowed that this reception should be the last. It was already late. I was beginning to take out my watch, when 1 sud• denly felt Moktir's little scissors in my pocket. "Why did the little wretch steal them/' thought I, "i f it was only to spoil and destroy them at once?" At that moment someone touched me on the shoulder; I turned quickly; it was Menalque. He was almost the only person in evening dress. He had just arrived. He asked me to present him to my wife; I should certainly not have done so of my own accord. Menalque was distinguished looking— almost handsome; his face was like a pirate's, barred by an enormous drooping moustache, al• ready quite grey; his eyes shone with a cold flame that denoted courage and decision rather than kind• ness. He was no sooner standing before Marceline than I knew she had taken a dislike to him. After he had exchanged a few banal words of courtesy with her, I carried him off to the smoking-room. I had heard that very morning of the new mission on which the Colonial Office was sending him; the newspapers, as they recalled his adventurous career, seemed to have forgotten their recent base insults and now could find no words fine enough to praise him with. Each was more eager than the other to extol and exaggerate his services to his country, to the whole of humanity, as if he never undertook anything but with a humanitarian purpose; and they quoted examples of his abnegation, his devo• tion, his courage, as if such encomiums might be considered a reward. I began to congratulate him, but he interrupted me at the first words. "What! You too, my dear Michel! But you didn't begin by insulting me," said he. "Leave all that nonsense to the papers. They seem to be surprised that a man with a certain reputation can still have any virtues at all. They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure 1 feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it." 'That may lead far," I said. "Indeed I hope so," answered Menalque. "I f only the people we know could persuade themselves of the truth of this! But most of them believe that it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psycho• logical distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it ; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates; he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily be• lieve there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to—they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone—that is what they suffer from—and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia—the most odi• ous cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything—but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value—and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life> I let Menaique speak on; he was saying exactly what I myself had said the month before to Marce- line; I ought to have approved him. For what rea• son, through what moral cowardice did I interrupt him and say, in imitation of Marceline, the very sentence word for word with which she had inter• rupted me then? "But, my dear Menaique, you can't expect each one of them to be different from all the others." . . . Menaique stopped speaking abruptly, looked at me oddly and then, as at that very moment Eusebe came up to take leave, he unceremoniously turned his back on me and went off to talk about some trifle or other to Hector. The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I realized not only that they were stupid, but worse still, that they might have given Menalque the im• pression that I thought his remarks had been pointed at me. It was late; my guests were leaving. When the drawing-room was nearly empty, Me• nalque came back to me. "I can't leave you like this," he said. ''No doubt, I misunderstood what you said. Let me at least hope so,'' "No," I answered, "you did not misunderstand it . . . but it was senseless, and I had no sooner said it than I knew it was foolish. I was sorry, and especially sorry to think it would make you place me among the very people you were attacking and who, I assure you, are as odious to me as to you. I hate people of principle." "Yes," answered Menalque, laughing, "there is nothing more detestable in the world. It is impos• sible to expect any sort of sincerity from them; for they never do anything but what their principles have decreed they should do; or if they do, they think they have done wrong. At the mere suspicion you might be one of them, the words froze on my lips. I felt by my distress what a great affection I have for you; I hoped I was mistaken—not in my affection, but in the conclusion I had drawn." "Yes, really; your conclusion was wrong." "Oh! it was, I am sure," said he, suddenly taking my hand. "Listen a moment; I shall soon be going away, but I should like to see you again. My ex• pedition this time will be a longer one and more risky than any of the others; I don't know when I shall come back. I must start in a fortnight's time; no one knows I am leaving so soon; I tell you so in confidence. I start at daybreak. The night before leaving is always a night of terrible heartache for me. Give me a proof that you are not a man of prin• ciple; may I count on it that you will spend that last night with me?" "But we shall see each other again before then," I said, a little astonished. "No; during the next fortnight I shall be at home to no one. I shall not even be in Paris. Tomorrow I leave for Budapest; in six days' time I must be in Rome. I have friends dotted here and there to whom I must say good-bye before leaving. There is one expecting me in Madrid." "Very well then, I will pass your night of vigil with you." "And we will have some Shiraz to drink," said Menalque. TH E 1MM0RALIS T 130 A few days after this party, Marceline began to feel less well. 1 have already said she was easily tired; but she did not complain, and as I attributed her fatigue to her condition, I thought it natural and felt no particular anxiety. A rather foolish—or rather ignorant—old doctor had at first been over- reassuring. Some fresh symptoms, however, accom• panied by fever, decided me to send for Dr. Tr , who was considered at that time the clev• erest specialist in Paris for such cases. He expressed astonishment that I had not called him in sooner and prescribed a strict regime which she ought to have begun to follow some time ago. Marceline had been very courageous, but not very prudent, and had overtired herself. She was told she must now lie up till the date of her confinement, which was ex• pected about the end of January. Feeling no doubt a little anxious and more unwell than she would ad• mit, Marceline consented very meekly to the most tiresome orders. She had a moment's rebellion, how• ever, when Tr . . . prescribed quinine in such heavy doses that she knew it might endanger the child. For three days she obstinately refused to take it ; then as her fever increased she was obliged to submit to that too; but this time it was with deep sadness and as if she were mournfully giving up all hope of the future; the resolution which had hith- 131 TH E IMM0RAL1S T erto sustained her seemed broken down by a kind of religious resignation, and her condition grew sud• denly worse in the days that followed. I tended her with greater care than ever, did my best to reassure her and repeated the very words Dr. Tr . . . had used, that he could see nothing very serious in her case; but her extreme anxiety ended by alarming me too. Alas! our happiness was al• ready resting on the dangerous foundations of hope —and hope of what an uncertain future! I, who at first had taken pleasure only in the past, may have one day felt, thought I, the sudden and intoxicating sweetness of a fugitive moment, but the future dis• enchants the present even more than the present then disenchanted the past; and since our night at Sorrento my whole love, my whole life have been projected into the future.
In the meantime the evening I had promised Menalque came round; and notwithstanding the reluctance I felt at abandoning Marceline for a whole winter's night, I got her, as best I could, to acknowledge the solemnity of the occasion and the gravity of my promise. Marceline was a little better that evening and yet I was anxious; a nurse took my place beside her. But as soon as I was in the street, my anxiety gained ground; I shook it off, struggled against it, was angry with myself for not being better able to get rid of it ; thus I gradually reached a state of excessive tension, of singular ex• citement, both very unlike and very like the pain• ful uneasiness from which it sprang, but liker still to happiness. It was late and I strode along rapidly; the snow began to fall in thick flakes; I was glad to be breathing a keener air, to be struggling with the cold; I was happy with the wind, the night, the snow against me; I rejoiced in my strength. Menalque had heard me coming and came out on to the landing to welcome me. He was waiting for me not without impatience. His face was pale and he looked overwrought. He helped me off with my overcoat and forced me to change my wet boots for some soft Persian slippers. Sweets and cakes were standing on a small table by the fire. There were two lamps, but the light in the room came chiefly from the fire on the hearth. Menalque im• mediately enquired after Marceline; for the sake of simplicity I answered that she was very well. ''Are you expecting your child soon ?" he went on. "In a month." Menalque bent down towards the fire as if he wished to hide his face. He remained silent. He re• mained silent so long that at last I felt embarrassed, 133 TH E IMMORALIS T and as I myself could think of nothing to say either, 1 got up, took a few steps, and then went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Presently, as though he were pursuing his thoughts aloud: "One must choose/' he murmured. 'The chief thing is to know what one wants " "Don't you want to go?" I asked, in some uncer• tainty as to what he meant. "I t looks like it." "Are you hesitating then?" "What is the use? You have a wife and child, so stay at home. . . . Of the thousand forms of life, each of us can know but one. It is madness to envy other people's happiness; one would not know what to do with it. Happiness won't come to one ready- made; it has to be made to measure. I am going away tomorrow; yes, I know; I have tried to cut out my happiness to fit me keep your calm happi• ness of hearth and home " '7 cut out my happiness to fit me too," I said, "but I have grown; I am not at ease in my happi• ness now; sometimes I think it is strangling me. . . . "Pooh! you'll get accustomed to it! " said Me- nalque. Then he planted himself in front of me and looked deep into my eyes; as I found nothing to say, he smiled rather sadly. "One imagines one possesses and in reality one is possessed," he went on. "Pour yourself out a glass of Shiraz, dear Michel; you won't often taste it ; and eat some of those rose-colored sweets which the Persians take with it. I shall drink with you this evening, forget that I am leaving tomorrow, and talk as if the night were long. . . . Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In Greece, ideas went hand in hand with life; so that the art• ist's life itself was already a poetic realization, the philosopher's life a putting into action of his philos• ophy; in this way, as both philosophy and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unac• quainted with each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave expression to philos• ophy—and the result was admirably persuasive. Nowadays beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart." "But you live your wisdom," said I; "why do you not write your memoirs? Or simply," I added, see• ing him smile, "recollections of your travels?" "Because I do not want to recollect," he replied. "I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out 135 TH E 1MM0RALIS T of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new hour's freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been." These words were too far in advance of my thoughts not to end by irritating me; I should have liked to hang back, to stop him; but I tried in vain to contradict, and besides I was more irritated with myself than with Menalque. I remained silent there• fore, while he, sometimes pacing up and down like a wild beast in a cage, sometimes stooping over the fire, kept up a long and moody silence, or again broke abruptly into words: "I f only our paltry minds," he said, "were able to embalm our memories! But memories keep badly. The most delicate fade and shrivel; the most volup• tuous decay; the most delicious are the most dan• gerous in the end. The things one repents of were at first delicious." Again a long silence; and then he went on: "Regrets, remorse, repentance, are past joys seen from behind. I don't like looking backwards and I leave my past behind me as the bird leaves his shade to fly away. Oh, Michel! every joy is always await• ing us, but it must always be the only one; it in• sists on finding the bed empty and demands from us a widower's welcome. Oh, Michel! every joy is like the manna of the desert which corrupts from one day to the next; it is like the fountain of Ameles, whose waters, says Plato, could never be kept in any vase. . , . Let every moment carry away with it all that it brought." Menalque went on speaking for long; I cannot repeat all his words; but many of them were im• printed on my mind the more deeply, the more anx• ious I was to forget them; not that they taught me much that was new—but they suddenly laid bare my thoughts—thoughts I had shrouded in so many coverings that I had almost hoped to smother them. And so the night of watching passed. The next morning, after I had seen Menalque into the train that carried him away, as I was walk• ing home on my way back to Marceline, I felt hor• ribly sad and full of hatred of his cynical joy; I wanted to believe it was a sham; I tried to deny it. I was angry with myself for not having found any• thing to say to him in reply; for having said words that might make him doubt my happiness, my love. And I clung to my doubtful happiness—my "calm happiness," as Menalque had called it ; I could not, it was true, banish uneasiness from it, but I assured myself that uneasiness was the very food of love, I imagined the future and saw my child smiling at me; for his sake I would strengthen my character, I would build it up anew. . . . Yes, I walked with a confident step. Alas! when I got in that morning, I was struck by a sight of unaccustomed disorder. The nurse met me and told me guardedly that my wife had been seized in the night with bad sickness and pains, though she did not think the term of her confine• ment was at hand; feeling very ill , she had sent for the doctor; he had arrived post-haste in the night and had not yet left the patient; then, seeing me change color, I suppose, she tried to reassure me, said that things were going much better now, that . . . I rushed to Marceline's room. The room was darkened and at first I could make out nothing but the doctor, who signed to me to be quiet; then I saw a figure in the dark I did not know. Anxiously, noiselessly, I drew near the bed. Marceline's eyes were shut; she was so terribly pale that at first I thought she was dead; but she turned her head towards me, though without opening her eyes. The unknown figure was in a dark corner of the room, arranging, hiding, various objects; I saw shining instruments, cotton wool; I saw, I thought I saw a cloth stained with blood. . . . I felt I was tottering. I almost fell into the doctor's arms; he held me up. I understood; I was afraid of under• standing. . . . "The child?" I asked anxiously. He shrugged his shoulders sadly. I lost all sense of what I was doing and flung myself sobbing against the bed. Oh! how suddenly the future had come upon me! The ground had given way abruptly beneath my feet; there was nothing there but an empty hole into which I stumbled headlong.
My recollections here are lost in dark confusion. Marceline, however, seemed at first to recover fairly quickly. The Christmas holidays allowed me a little respite and I was able to spend nearly the whole day with her. I read or wrote in her room, or read aloud to her quietly. I never went out without bringing her back flowers. I remembered the tenderness with which she had nursed me when I was ill , and sur• rounded her with so much love that sometimes she smiled as though it made her happy. Not a word was exchanged about the melancholy accident that had shattered our hopes. . . . Then phlebitis declared itself; and when that got better, a clot of blood suddenly set her hovering be- tween life and death. It was night time; I remember leaning over her, feeling my heart stop and go on again with hers. How many nights I watched by her bedside, my eyes obstinately fixed on her, hop- ing by the strength of my love to instil some of my own life into hers. I no longer thought much about happiness; my single melancholy pleasure was sometimes seeing Marceline smile. My lectures had begun again. How did I find strength to prepare them, to deliver them? . . . My memory of this time is blurred; I have forgot• ten how the weeks passed. And yet there was a little incident I must tell you about. It was one morning, a little after the embolism; I was sitting with Marceline; she seemed a little bet• ter, but she was still ordered to keep absolutely mo• tionless; she was not allowed to move even her arms. I bent over her to give her some drink and after she had drunk, and as I was still stooping over her, she begged me, in a voice made weaker still by her emotion, to open a little box, which she showed me by the direction of her glance; it was close by, on the table; I opened it and found it full of ribbons, bits of lace, little ornaments of no value I wondered what she wanted. I brought the box to her bedside and took out every object one by one. Was it this? That? . . . No, not yet; and I felt her get- ting agitated. "Oh, Marceline, is it this little rosary you want?" She tried to smile. "Are you afraid then that I shan't nurse you properly?" "Oh, my dear," she murmured. And I remem• bered our conversation at Biskra, and her timid re• proaches when she heard me refuse what she called "the help of God." I went on a little roughly: "/ got well alone all right." "I prayed for you so much," she answered. She said the words tenderly, sadly. There was something anxious and imploring in her look. . . . I took the rosary and slipped it into her weak hand as it lay on the sheet beside her. A tearful, love- laden glance rewarded me—but I could not answer it ; I waited another moment or two, feeling awk• ward and embarrassed; finally, not knowing what to do, I said, "Good-bye," and left the room, with a feeling of hostility, and as though I had been turned out of it.
Meanwhile the horrible clot had brought on seri• ous trouble; after her heart had escaped, it attacked her lungs, brought on congestion, impeded her breathing, made it short and laborious. I thought she would never get well. Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing that had been spoiled.
T H E weather was now becoming warmer. As soon as my lectures were over, 1 took Marceline to La Moriniere, the doctor having told me that all im • mediate danger was past and that nothing would be more likely to complete her cure than a change to purer air. I myself was in great need of rest. The nights I had spent nursing her, almost entirely by myself, the prolonged anxiety, and especially the kind of physical sympathy which had made me at the time of her attack feel the fearful throbbing of her heart in my own breast—all this had exhausted me as much as if I myself had been ill . I should have preferred to take Marceline to the mountains, but she expressed the strongest desire to return to Normandy, declared that no climate could be better for her and reminded me that I must not neglect the two farms of which I had rather rashly assumed the charge. She insisted that as I had made myself responsible for them, it was my business to make them succeed. No sooner had we 142 H 3 TH E IMMORALIS T arrived therefore, than she urged me to visit the es• tate immediately. . . . I am not sure that her friendly insistence did not go with a good deal of abnegation; she was afraid, perhaps, that as she still required assistance, I might think myself bound to stay with her and not feel as free as I might wish to. . . . Marceline was better however; the color had returned to her cheeks, and nothing gave me greater comfort than to feel her smile was less sad; I was able to leave her without uneasiness. I went then to the farms. The first hay was being made. The scented air, heavy with pollen, at first went to my head like a strong drink. I felt that I had hardly breathed at all since last year, or breathed nothing but dust, so drowned was I in the honeyed sweetness of the atmosphere. The bank on which I seated myself in a kind of intoxication overlooked the house; I saw its blue roofs; I saw the still waters of the moat; all around were fields, some newly mown, others rich with grass; farther on, the curve of the brook; farther again, the woods where last autumn I had so often gone riding with Charles. A sound of singing, which I had been lis• tening to for the last moment or two, drew near; it was the haymakers going home, with a fork or a rake on their shoulders. I recognized nearly all of them, and the unpleasant recollection came to me TH E IMMORALIS T 144that I was not there as an enchanted traveler, but as their master. I went up to them, smiled, spoke to them, enquired after each of them in turn. Bo- cage that morning had already given me a report of the crops; he had indeed kept me regularly in• formed by letter of everything that went on in the farms. They were not doing so badly—much better than Bocage had led me to expect. But my arrival was being awaited in order to take some important decisions, and during the next few days I devoted myself to farm business to the best of my ability— not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this semblance of work to give some stability to my dis• integrated life. As soon as Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, a few friends came to stay with us. They were affectionate, quiet people, and Marceline liked their society, but it had the effect of making me leave the house with more pleasure than usual. I preferred the society of the farm hands; I felt that with them there was more to be learned—not that I questioned them—no; and I hardly know how to express the kind of rapture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with their senses rather than with my own—and while I knew what our friends were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement. If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals, listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs of Marceline's, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of my own—no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms grow stiff with the mower's stiff• ness; I was weary with his weariness; the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down his throat; one day, one of them, while sharp• ening his scythe, cut his thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone. And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I became aware of the land• scape, but that I felt it as well by some sense of touch, which my curious power of sympathy inimit• ably enlarged. Bocage's presence was now a nuisance to me; when he came I had to play the master, which I had no longer the least inclination to do. I still gave TH E IMM0RAL1S T 146 orders—I had to—still superintended the laborers; but I no longer went on horseback, for fear of looking down on them from too great a height. But notwithstanding the precautions I took to accustom them to my presence and prevent them from feel• ing ill at ease in it, in theirs I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when 1 was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I pertinaciously tried to discover. I went about prowl• ing, following, spying. For preference I fastened on the rudest and roughest among them, as if I ex• pected to find a guiding light shine from their dark• ness. One in particular attracted me; he was fairly good-looking, tall, not in the least stupid, but wholly guided by instinct, never acting but on the spur of the moment, blown hither and thither by every passing impulse. He did not belong to the place, and had been taken on by some chance. An excellent worker for two days—and on the third dead drunk. One night I crept furtively down to the barn to see him; he lay sprawling in a heavy, drunken sleep. I stayed looking at him a long time One fine day, he went as he had come. How much I should have liked to know along what roads! . . . I learned that same evening that Bocage had dis• missed him. I was furious with Bocage and sent for him. "I t seems you have dismissed Pierre,'' I began. "Wil l you kindly tell me why?" He was a little taken aback by my anger, though I tried to moderate it. "You didn't want to keep a dirty drunkard, did you, Sir? A fellow who led all our best men into mischief!" "It's my business to know the men I want to keep, not yours." "A regular waster! No one knew where he came from. It gave the place a bad name. . . . If he had set fire to the barn one night, you mightn't have been so pleased, Sir." "That's my affair, I tell you. It's my farm, isn't it? I mean to manage it in my own way. In the future, be so good as to give me your reasons be• fore dismissing people." Bocage, as I have told you, had known me since my childhood. However wounding my tone, he was too much attached to me to be much offended. He did not, in fact, take me sufficiently seriously. The Normandy peasant is too often disinclined to be- lieve anything of which he cannot fathom the mo• tive—that is to say, anything not prompted by in• terest. Bocage simply considered this quarrel as a piece of absurdity. I did not want, however, to break off the conver• sation on a note of blame; feeling I had been too sharp with him, I cast about for something pleasant to add. "Isn't your son Charles coming back soon?" I ended by asking after a moment's silence. "I thought you had quite forgotten him, Sir; you seemed to trouble your head about him so little," said Bocage, still rather hurt. "Forget him, Bocage! How could I, after all we did together last year? I'm counting on him in fact to help me with the farms " "You're very good, Sir. Charles is coming home in a week's time." "Well, I'm glad to hear it, Bocage," and I dis• missed him. Bocage was not far wrong; I had not of course forgotten Charles, but I now cared very little about him. How can I explain that after such vehement camaraderie, my feeling for him now should be so flat and spiritless? The fact is my occupations and tastes were no longer the same as last year. My two farms, I must admit, did not interest me so much as the people employed on them; and if I wanted to foregather with them, Charles would be very much in the way. He was far too reasonable and too re• spectable. So notwithstanding the vivid and de• lightful memories I kept of him, I looked forward with some apprehension to his return. He returned. Oh, how right I had been to be ap• prehensive—and how right Menalque was to re• pudiate all memories! There entered the room in Charles's place an absurd individual with a bowler hat. Heavens! how changed he was! Embarrassed and constrained though I felt, I tried not to respond too frigidly to the joy he showed at seeing me again; but even his joy was disagreeable to me; it was awkward, and I thought insincere. I received him in the drawing-room, and as it was late and dark, I could hardly distinguish his face; but when the lamp was brought in, I saw with disgust he had let his whiskers grow. The conversation that evening was more or less dreary; then, as I knew he would be continually at the farms, I avoided going down to them for almost a week, and fell back on my studies and the society of my guests. And as soon as I began to go out again, I was absorbed by a totally new occupation. Wood-cutters had invaded the woods. Every year a part of the timber on the estate was sold; the woods were marked off into twelve equal lots which were cut in rotation and every year furnished, be• sides a few fully grown trees, a certain amount of twelve-year-old copse wood for faggots. This work was done in the winter, and the wood• cutters were obliged by contract to have the ground cleared before spring. But old Heurtevent, the tim• ber-merchant who directed operations, was so slack that sometimes spring came upon the copses while the wood was still lying on the ground; fresh, deli• cate shoots could then be seen forcing their way upwards through the dead branches, and when at last the wood-cutters cleared the ground, it was not without destroying many of the young saplings. That year old Heurtevent's remissness was even greater than we had looked for. In the absence of any other bidder, I had been obliged to let him have the copse wood exceedingly cheap; so that being as• sured in any case of a handsome profit, he took very little pains to dispose of the timber which had cost him so little. And from week to week he put off the work with various excuses—a lack of laborers, or bad weather, or a sick horse, or an urgent call for work elsewhere, and so on—with the result that as late as the middle of summer, none of it had been removed. The year before, this would have irritated me to the highest degree; this year it left me fairly calm; I saw well enough the damage Heurtevent was caus• ing me; but the devastated woods were beautiful; it gave me pleasure to wander in them, tracking and watching the game, startling the snakes, and some• times sitting by the hour on one of the fallen trunks which still seemed to be living on, with green shoots springing from its wounds. Then suddenly, about the middle of the last fort• night in August, Heurtevent made up his mind to send his men. Six of them came with orders to finish the work in ten days. The part of the woods that had been cut was that bordering on La Valterie; it was arranged that the wood-cutters should have their food brought them from the farm, in order to expedite the work. The laborer chosen for this task was a curious young rascal called Bute; he had just come back from a term of military service which had utterly demoralized him; but physically, he was in admirable condition; he was one of the farm hands I most enjoyed talking to. By this arrange• ment I was able to see him without going down to the farm. For it was just at that time that I began going out again. For a few days I hardly left the woods except for my meals at La Moriniere, and I was very often late for them. I pretended I had to superintend the work, though in reality I only went to see the workers. Sometimes two of Heurtevenfs sons joined the batch of six men; one was about twenty, the other about fifteen years old, long-limbed, wiry, hard- featured young fellows. They had a foreign look about them, and I learned later that their mother was actually a Spanish woman. I was astonished at first that she should have traveled to such distant parts, but Heurtevent had been a rolling stone in his youth and had, it appears, married her in Spain. For this reason he was rather looked askance at in the neighborhood. The first time I saw the younger of the sons was, I remember, on a rainy day; he was alone, sitting on a very high cart, on the top of a great pile of faggots. He was lolling back among the branches, and singing, or rather shouting, a kind of extraordinary song, which was like nothing I had ever heard in our parts. The cart-horses knew the road and followed it without any guidance from him. I cannot tell you the effect this song had on me; for I had never heard its like except in Africa. . . . The boy looked excited—drunk; when I passed, he did not even glance at me. The next day, I learned he was a son of Heurtevent's. It was in or• der to see him, or rather in the hopes of seeing him, that I spent so much time in the copse. The men by now had very nearly finished clearing it. The young Heurtevents came only three times. They seemed proud and I could not get a word out of them. Bute, on the other hand, liked talking; I soon managed to make him understand that there was nothing it was not safe to say to me. Upon this he let himself go and soon stripped the countryside of every rag of respectability. I lapped up his myste• rious secrets with avidity. They surpassed my ex• pectation and yet at the same time failed to satisfy me. Was this what was really grumbling below the surface of appearances or was it merely another kind of hypocrisy? No matter! I questioned Bute as I had questioned the uncouth chronicles of the Goths. Fumes of the abyss rose darkly from his stories and as I breathed them uneasily and fear• fully, my head began to turn. He told me to begin with that Heurtevent had relations with his daugh• ter. I was afraid if I showed the slightest disappro• bation I should put an end to his confidences; curi• osity spurred me on. "And the mother? Doesn't she object?" "The mother! She has been dead full twelve years. . . . He used to beat her." "How many are there in the family?" "Five children. You've seen the eldest son and the youngest. There's another of sixteen who's deli• cate and wants to turn priest. And then the eldest daughter has already had two children by the father." And little by little I learned a good deal more, so that do what I would, my imagination began to circle round the lurid attractions of Heurtevent's house like a blow-fly round a putrid piece of meat One night the eldest son had tried to rape a young servant girl, and as she struggled, the father had in• tervened to help his son and had held her with his huge hands; while the second son went piously on with his prayers on the floor above, and the young• est looked on at the drama as an amused spectator. As far as the rape is concerned, I imagine it was not very difficult, for Bute went on to say that not long after, the servant girl, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing, had tried to seduce the young priest. "And hasn't she succeeded?" I asked. "He hasn't given in so far, but he's a bit wobbly," answered Bute. "Didn't you say there was another daughter?* "Yes; she picks up as many fellows as she can lay hold of. And all for nothing too. When she's set on it, she wouldn't mind paying herself. But you mustn't carry on at her father's. He would give you what for. He says you can do as you like in your own house, but don't let other people come nosing round! Pierre, the farm hand you sent away, got a nasty knock on the head one night, though he held his tongue about it . Since then, she has her chaps in the home woods." "Have you had a go yourself?" I asked with an encouraging look. He dropped his eyes for form's sake and said, chuckling: "Every now and then." Then, raising his eyes quickly, "So has old Bocage's boy," he added. "What boy is that?" "Alcide, the one who sleeps at the farm. Surely you know him, Sir?" I was simply astounded to hear Bocage had an• other son. "I t is true," went on Bute, "that last year he was still at his uncle's. But it's very odd you've never met him in the woods, Sir; he poaches in them nearly every night." Bute said these last words in a lower voice. He looked at me and I saw it was essential to smile. Then Bute seemed satisfied and went on: "Good Lord, Sir, of course you know your woods are poached. They're so big it doesn't do much harm to anyone." I looked so far from being displeased that Bute was emboldened to go on, and I think now he was glad to do Bocage an il l turn. He pointed out one or two hollows in the ground in which Alcide had set his snares, and then showed me a place in the hedge where I should be almost certain of catching him. It was a boundary hedge and ran along the top of a bank; there was a narrow opening in it through which Alcide was in the habit of coming about six o'clock in the evening. At this place Bute and I amused ourselves by stretching a copper wire which we very neatly concealed. Then, having made me swear not to give him away, Bute departed. For three evenings I waited in vain. I began to think Bute had played me a trick. . . . At last on the fourth evening, I heard a light step approach• ing. My heart began to beat and I had a sudden revelation of the horrible allurement of the poach• er's life. . . . The snare was so well set that Al • cide walked straight into it. I saw him suddenly fall flat, with his ankle caught in the wire. He tried to save himself, fell down again, and began struggling like a trapped rabbit. But I had hold of him in an instant. He was a wicked looking youngster, with green eyes, tow-colored hair and a ferrety expres• sion. He started kicking; then, as I held him so tight that he was unable to move, he tried to bite; and when that failed, he spat out the most extraor• dinary volley of abuse I have ever heard. In the end I could resist no longer and burst out laughing. At this, he stopped abruptly, looked at me, and went on in a lower tone: "You brute, you! You've hurt me something hor• rible/' "Show me where." He slipped his stocking down over his boot and showed me his ankle, where a slight pink mark was just visible. "It's nothing at all." He smiled a little; then, "I shall tell Father," he said in a cunning voice, "that it's you who set snares." "Why, good Heavens, it's one of your own!" "Sure enough, you never set that one." "Why do you say that?" "You would never know how to set them as well as that. Just show me how you did it." "Give me a lesson " That evening I came in very late for dinner; no one knew where I was and Marceline had been anx• ious. But I did not tell her I had set six snares and so far from scolding Alcide had given him ten sous. The next evening when I went with him to visit the snares, much to my entertainment I found two rabbits caught in them. Of course I let him take them. The shooting season had not yet begun. I wondered what became of the game, as it was im• possible to dispose of it openly without the risk of getting into trouble. Alcide refused to tell me. Finally, I learned, through Bute again, that Heurte- vent was the receiver and his youngest son the go- between between Alcide and him. Was this going to give me an opportunity of a deeper insight into the secrets of that mysterious, unapproachable fam• ily? With what passionate eagerness I set about poaching! I met Alcide every evening; we caught great numbers of rabbits and once even a young roe-deer which still showed some faint signs of life; I can• not recall without horror the delight Alcide took in killing it. We put the deer in a place of safety from which young Heurtevent could take it away at night. From that moment I no longer cared for going out in the day, when there was so little to attract me in the emptied woods. I even tried to work—melan• choly, purposeless work, for I had resigned my tem• porary lectureship—thankless, dreary work, from which I would be suddenly distracted by the slight• est song, the slightest sound coming from the coun• try outside; in every passing cry I heard an invita- tion. How often I have leapt from my reading and run to the window to see—nothing pass by! How often I have hurried out of doors. . . . The only attention I found possible was that of my five senses. But when night fell—and it was the season now when night falls early—that was our hour. I had never before guessed its beauty; and I stole out of doors as a thief steals in. I had trained my eyes to be like a night-bird's. I wondered to see the grass taller and more easily stirred, the trees denser. The dark gave everything fresh dimensions, made the ground look distant, lent every surface the quality of depth. The smoothest path looked dangerous. Everywhere one felt the awakening of creatures that lead a life of darkness. "Where does your father think you are now?" "In the stables looking after the cattle/' Alcide slept there, I knew, close to the pigeons and the hens; as he was locked in at night, he used to creep out by a hole in the roof. There still hung about his clothes a steamy odor of fowls. Then, as soon as the game had been collected, he would disappear abruptly into the dark, as if down a trap-door—without a sign of farewell, without a word of tomorrow's rendezvous. 1 knew that before returning to the farm, where the dogs recognized him and kept silent, he used to meet the Heurtevent boy and deliver his goods. But where? Try as I might, I was never able to find out; threats, bribes, cunning—all failed; the Heurtevents remained in• accessible. I cannot say where my folly showed more triumphantly. Was it in this pursuit of a triv• ial mystery, which constantly eluded me—or had I even invented the mystery by the mere force of my curiosity? But what did Alcide do when he left me? Did he really sleep at the farm? Or did he simply make the farmer think so? My compromis• ing myself was utterly useless; I merely succeeded in lessening his respect without increasing his con• fidence—and it both infuriated and distressed me. After he had disappeared, I suddenly felt myself horribly alone; I went back across the fields, through the dew-drenched grass, my head reeling with darkness, with lawlessness, with anarchy; dripping, muddy, covered with leaves. In the dis• tance there shone from the sleeping house, guiding me like a peaceful beacon, the lamp I had left alight in my study, where Marceline thought I was work• ing, or the lamp of Marceline's own bedroom. I had persuaded her that I should not have been able to sleep without first going out in this way. It was true; I had taken a loathing to my bed. How greatly I should have preferred the barn! Game was plentiful that year; rabbits, hares, pheasants succeeded each other. After three eve• nings, Bute, seeing that everything was going so well, took it into his head to join us. On the sixth of our poaching expeditions, we found only two of the twelve snares we had set; somebody had made a clearance during the day• time. Bute asked me for five francs to buy some more copper wire, as ordinary wire was no use. The next morning I had the gratification of see• ing my ten snares at Bocage's house and I was obliged to compliment him on his zeal. What an• noyed me most was that the year before I had fool• ishly offered fifty centimes for every snare that was brought in; I had therefore to give Bocage five francs. In the meantime Bute had bought some more wire with the five francs I had given him. Four days later, the same story! Ten fresh snares were brought in; another five francs to Bute; another five francs to Bocage. And as I congratulated him: "It's not me you must congratulate, Sir, it's Al - cide," he said. "No, really?" said I. Too much astonishment might have given me away. I controlled myself. "Yes," went on Bocage; "it can't be helped, Sir, I'm growing old. The lad looks around the woods instead of me; he knows them very well; he can tell better than I can where to look out for the snares." "I' m sure he can, Bocage." "So out of the fifty centimes you give me, I let him have twenty-five." "He certainly deserves it. What! Twenty snares in five days! Excellent work! The poachers had bet• ter be careful. I wager they'll lie low now." "Oh, no, Sir. The more one takes, the more one finds. Game is very dear this year, and for the few sous it costs them . . ." I had been so completely diddled that I felt al• most inclined to suspect old Bocage himself of hav• ing a hand in the game. And what specially vexed me in the business was not so much Alcide's three• fold traffic as his deceitfulness. And then what did he and Bute do with the money? I didn't know. I should never know anything about creatures like them. They would always lie; they would go on de• ceiving me for the sake of deceiving. That evening I gave Bute ten francs instead of five and warned him it was for the last time, that if the snares were taken again, so much the worse, but I should not go on. The next day up came Bocage; he looked embar• rassed—which at once made me feel even more so. What had happened? Bocage told me that Bute had been out all night and had only come in at cock• crow. The fellow was as drunk as a fiddler; at Bo- cage's first words, he had grossly insulted him and then flown at him and struck him. . . . "And I've come to ask, Sir,'' said Bocage, "whether you authorize me" (he accented the word a little), "whether you authorise me to dismiss him?" "I'l l think about it, Bocage. I'm extremely sorry he should have been disrespectful. I'll see Let me reflect a little and come again in two hours' time." Bocage went out. To keep Bute was to be painfully lacking in con• sideration for Bocage; to dismiss Bute was to ask for trouble. Well! there was nothing to be done about it. Let come what come might! I had only myself to blame And as soon as Bocage came back: "You can tell Bute we have no further use for him here," I said. Then I waited. What would Bocage do? What would Bute say? It was not till evening that I heard rumors of scandal. Bute had spoken. I guessed it at first from the shrieks I heard coming from Bocage's house; it was Alcide being beaten. Bocage would soon be coming up to see me; here he was; I heard his old footstep approaching and my heart beat even faster than when I was poach- TH E IMMORALIS T J64 ing. It was an intolerable moment. I should have to trot out a lot of fine sentiments. I should be obliged to take him seriously. What could I invent to explain things? How badly I should act! I would have given anything to throw up my part! Bocage came in. I understood absolutely nothing of what he was saying. It was absurd; I had to make him be• gin all over again. In the end, this is what I made out. He thought that Bute was the only guilty party; the inconceivable truth had escaped him— that I could have given Bute ten francs! What for? He was too much of a Normandy peasant to admit the possibility of such a thing. Bute must have stolen those ten francs. Not a doubt of it! When he said I had given them to him, he was merely add• ing a lie to a theft; it was a mere invention to ex• plain away his theft; Bocage wasn't the man to be• lieve a trumped-up story like that There was no more talk of poaching. If Bocage had beaten Al - cide, it was only because the boy had spent the night out. So then, I am saved! In Bocage's eyes, at any rate, everything is all right. What a fool that fellow Bute is! This evening, I must say, I don't feel much in• clined to go out poaching. I thought that everything was all over, when an hour later in came Charles. He looked far from ami- able; the bare sight of him was enough; he struck me as even more tedious than his father. To think that last year! . . . "Well, Charles! I haven't see you for ever so long!" "I f you had wanted to see me, Sir, you had only to come down to the farm. You won't find me gal• livanting about the woods at night." "Oh, your father has told you ... " "M y father has told me nothing, because my father knows nothing. What's the use of telling him at his age that his master is making a fool of him?" "Take care, Charles, you're going too far " "Oh, all right! You're the master—you can do as you please." "Charles, you know perfectly well I've made a fool of no one, and if I do as I please, it's because it does no one any harm but myself." He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "How can one defend your interests when you attack them yourself? You can't protect both the keeper and the poacher at the same time." "Why not?" "Because . . . Oh, you're a bit too clever for me, Sir. I just don't like to see my master joining up with rogues and undoing the work that other people do for him." Charles spoke with more and more confidence as he went on. He held himself almost with dignity. I noticed he had cut off his whiskers. For that matter, what he said was sensible enough, and as I kept si• lence (what could I have said?), he went on: "You taught me last year, Sir, that one has duties to one's possessions. One ought to take one's duties seriously and not play with them . . . or else one doesn't deserve to have possessions/' Silence. "Is that all you have to say?" 'Tor this evening, yes, Sir; but if you ask me some other time, Sir, I may perhaps tell you that my father and I are leaving La Moriniere." And he went out, bowing very low. I hardly took time to reflect: "Charles! . . . He's right, by Jove! . . . Oh, if that's what's meant by possessions . . . Charles!" And 1 ran after him, caught up with him in the dark and called out hastily, as if in a hurry to clinch my sudden determination: "You can tell your father that I am putting La Moriniere up for sale." Charles bowed again gravely and went away without a word. The whole thing is absurd! Absurd! That evening, Marceline was not able to come down to dinner and sent word to say she was unwell. Full of anxiety, I hurried up to her room. She re• assured me quickly. "It's nothing but a cold/' she said. She thought she had caught a chill. "Couldn't you have put on something warmer?'' "I put my shawl on the first moment I felt a shiver." "You should have put it on before you felt a shiver, not after." She looked at me and tried to smile Oh, perhaps it was because the day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. If she had said aloud, "Do you really care whether I live or not?" I should not have heard the words more clearly. "Oh," I thought, "without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps can my hand hold." I sprang to Marceline and covered her pale face with kisses. At that, she broke down and fell sob• bing on my shoulder. . . . "Oh, Marceline! Marceline! Let us go away. Anywhere else but here I shall love you as I did at Sorrento You have thought me changed, per• haps? But anywhere else, you will feel that there is nothing altered in our love." I had not cured her unhappiness, but how eagerly she clutched at hope! . . . It was not late in the year, but the weather was cold and damp, and the last rosebuds were rotting unopened on the bushes. Our guests had long since left us. Marceline was not too unwell to see to the shutting up of the house, and five days later we left.
THIRD PART
AN D SO I tried, yet once more, to close my hand over my love. But what did I want with peaceful happiness? What Marceline gave me, what she stood for in my eyes, was like rest to a man who is not tired. But as I felt she was weary and needed my love, I showered it upon her and pretended that the need was mine. I felt her sufferings unbearably; it was to cure her that I loved her. 0 days and nights of passionate tender care! As others stimulate their faith by exaggerating the ob• servance of its practices, so I fanned my love. And Marceline, as I tell you, began forthwith to recover hope. In her there was still so much youth; in me, she thought, so much promise. We fled from Paris, as though for another honey• moon. But on the very first day of the journey, she got much worse and we had to break it at Neuchatel. 1 loved this lake, which has nothing Alpine about it, with its grey-green shores, and its waters min- 171 gling for a long space, marsh-like, with the land, and filtering through the rushes. I found a very comfortable hotel, with a room looking on to the lake for Marceline. I stayed with her the whole day. She was so far from well the next day that I sent for a doctor from Lausanne. He wanted to know, quite uselessly, whether there were any other cases of tuberculosis in my wife's family. I said there were, though, as a matter of fact, I knew of none; but I disliked saying that I myself had been almost given up on account of it, and that Marceline had never been ill before she nursed me. I put the whole thing down to the score of the clot, though the doc• tor declared that this was merely a contributory cause and that the trouble dated from further back. He strongly recommended the air of the high Alps, which he assured me would cure her; and as just what I myself wished was to spend the whole winter in the Engadine, we started as soon as she was able to bear the journey. I remember every sensation of that journey as vividly as if they had been events. The weather was limpid and cold; we had taken our warmest furs with us. . . . At Coire, the incessant din in the hotel almost entirely prevented us from sleeping. I myself should have put up cheerfully with a sleep• less night and not found it tiring; but Marceline . , . And it was not so much the noise that irritated me as the fact that she was not able to sleep in spite of it. Her need of sleep was so great! The next morning we started before daybreak; we had taken places in the coupe of the Coire diligence; the re• lays were so arranged that St. Moritz could be reached in one day. Tiefenkasten, the Julier, Samaden . . . I re• member it all, hour by hour; I remember the strange, inclement feeling of the air; the sound of the horses' bells; my hunger; the midday halt at the inn; the raw egg that 1 broke into my soup; the brown bread and the sour wine that was so cold. This coarse fare did not suit Marceline; she could eat hardly anything but a few dry biscuits, which I had had the forethought to bring with me. I can recall the closing in of the daylight; the swiftness with which the shade climbs up the wooded moun• tainside; then another halt. And now the air be• comes keener, rawer. When the coach stops, we plunge into the heart of darkness, into a silence that is limpid—limpid—there is no other word for it. The quality, the sonority of the slightest sound ac• quire perfection and fullness in that strange trans• parency. Another start—in the night, this time. Marceline coughs . . . Oh, will she never have done coughing? I think of the Sousse diligence; I feel as if I had coughed better than that. She makes too great an effort. . . . How weak and changed she looks! In the shadow there, I should hardly recognize her. How drawn her features are! Used those two black holes of her nostrils always to be so visible? . . . Oh, how horribly she is cough• ing! Is that the best she can do? I have a horror of sympathy. It is the lurking place of every kind of contagion; one ought only to sympathize with the strong. Oh! she seems really at the last gasp. Shall we never arrive? What is she doing now? She takes her handkerchief out, puts it to her lips, turns aside . . . Horror! Is she going to spit blood too? I snatch the handkerchief roughly from her hand, and in the half light of the lantern look at it. . . . Nothing. But my anxiety has been too visible. Mar- celine attempts a melancholy smile and murmurs: "No; not yet." At last we arrived. It was time, for she could hardly stand. I did not like the rooms that had been prepared for us; we spent the night in them, how• ever, and changed them next day. Nothing seemed fine enough for me nor too expensive. And as the winter season had not yet begun, the vast hotel was almost empty and I was able to choose. I took two spacious rooms, bright, and simply furnished; there was a large sitting-room adjoining, with a big bow-window, from which could be seen the hideous blue lake and a crude mountain, whose name I have forgotten and whose slopes were either too wooded or too bare. We had our meals served separately. The rooms were extravagantly dear. But what do I care? I thought. It is true I no longer have my lec• tures, but I am selling La Moriniere. And then we shall see Besides, what need have I of money? What need have I of all this? . . . I am strong now. . . . A complete change of fortune, I think, must be as instructive as a complete change of health. . . . Marceline, of course, requires lux• ury; she is weak . . . oh, for her sake, I will spend so much, so much that . . . And I felt at one and the same time a horror of luxury and a craving for it. I bathed, I steeped my sensuality in it, and then again it was a vagabond joy that I longed for. In the meanwhile Marceline was getting better and my constant care was having good results. As she had a difficulty in eating, I ordered the most dainty and delicious food to stimulate her appe• tite; we drank the best wines. The foreign brands we experimented on every day amused me so much that I persuaded myself she had a great fancy for them; sharp Rhine wines, almost syrupy Tokays, that filled me with their heady virtue. I remember too an extraordinary Barba-grisca, of which only one bottle was left, so that I never knew whether the others would have had the same bizarre taste. Every day we went for a drive, first in a carriage, and later on, when the snow had fallen, in a sledge, wrapped up to our eyes in fur. I came in with glow• ing cheeks, hungry and then sleepy. I had not, how• ever, given up all idea of work, and every day I found an hour or so in which to meditate on the things I felt it was my duty to say. There was no question of history now; I had long since ceased to take any interest in historical studies except as a means of psychological investigation. I have told you how 1 had been attracted afresh to the past when I thought I could see in it a disquieting re• semblance to the present; I had actually dared to think that by questioning the dead I should be able to extort from them some secret information about life But now if the youthful Athalaric himself had risen from the grave to speak to me, I should not have listened to him. How could the ancient past have answered my present question? —What can man do more? that is what seemed to me important to know. Is what man has hitherto said all that he could say? Is there nothing in him• self he has overlooked? Can he do nothing but re• peat himself? . . . And every day there grew stronger in me a confused consciousness of un- touched treasures somewhere lying covered up, hid• den, smothered by culture and decency and moral• ity. It seemed to me then that I had been born to make discoveries of a kind hitherto undreamed of; and I grew strangely and passionately eager in the pursuit of my dark and mysterious researches, for the sake of which, I well knew, the searcher must abjure and repudiate culture and decency and mo• rality. I soon went to the length of sympathizing only with the wildest outbreaks of conduct in other peo• ple, and of regretting that such manifestations were subject to any control whatever. I came very near thinking that honesty was merely the result of re• strictions or conventions or fear. I should have liked to cherish it as something rare and difficult; but our manners had turned it into a form of mu• tual advantage and commonplace contract. In Switzerland, it is just a part of one's comfort. I understood that Marceline required it ; but I did not conceal from her the new trend of my thoughts; as early as Neuchatel, when she was praising the honesty that is so visible in the faces of the people and the walls of the houses. "I prefer my own," I retorted. "I have a horror of honest folk. I may have nothing to fear from them, but I have nothing to learn either. And be• sides, they have nothing to say. . . . Honest Swiss nation! What does their health do for them? They have neither crimes, nor history, nor literature, nor arts . . . a hardy rose-tree, without thorns or flow• ers. That I should be bored by this honest country was a foregone conclusion, but at the end of two months, my boredom became a kind of frenzy and my one thought was to fly. We were in the middle of January. Marceline was better—much better; the continual low fever that was undermining her had disappeared; a brighter color had returned to her cheeks; she once more enjoyed walking, though not for long, and was not continually tired as she used to be. I did not have much difficulty in persuading her that the bracing air had done her all the good that could be ex• pected and that the best thing for her now would be to go down into Italy, where the kindly warmth of spring would completely restore her . . . and above all, I had not much difficulty in persuading myself—so utterly sick was I of those mountain heights. And yet now, when in my idleness the detested past once more asserts its strength, those are the very memories that haunt me. Swift sledge drives; joy of the dry and stinging air, spattering of the snow, appetite; walks in the baffling fog, curious sonority of voices, abrupt appearance of objects; readings in the snug warmth of the sitting-room, view of the landscape through the windows, view of the icy landscape; tragic waiting for the snow; vanishing of the outer world, soft brooding of one's thoughts. . . . Oh, to skate with her alone once more on the little lake, lying lost among the larches, pure and peaceful—oh, to come home with her once more at night! . . . That descent into Italy gave me all the dizzy sen• sations of a fall. The weather was fine. As we dropped into a warmer and denser air, the rigid trees of the highlands—the larches and symmetrical fire-trees—gave way to the softness, the grace and ease of a luxuriant vegetation. I felt I was leaving abstraction for life, and though it was winter, I imagined perfumes in every breath. Oh, for long— too long, our only smiles had been for shadows! My abstemiousness had gone to my head and I was drunk with thirst as others are with wine. My thrift of life had been admirable; on the threshold of this land of tolerance and promise, all my appe• tites broke out with sudden vehemence. I was full to bursting with an immense reserve of love; some• times it surged from the obscure depths of my senses up into my head and turned my thoughts to shamelessness. This illusion of spring did not last long. The sud• den change of altitude may have deceived me for a moment, but as soon as we left the sheltered shores of the lakes, Bellagio and Como, where we lingered for a day or two, we came into winter and rain. We now suffered from the cold, which we had borne well enough in the Engadine; it was not dry and exhilarating here as it had been in the mountains, but damp and heavy, and Marceline began to cough again. In order to escape it, we pursued our way still further south; we left Milan for Florence, Florence for Rome, Rome for Naples, which in the winter rain is really the most lugubrious town 1 know. I dragged along in unspeakable ennui. We went back to Rome in the hopes of finding, if not warmth, at least a semblance of comfort. We rented an apartment on the Pincio, much too vast, but marvelously situated. Already, at Florence, dis• gusted with hotels, we had rented a lovely villa on the Viale dei Colli, for three months. Anybody else would have wished to spend a lifetime in it. . . . We stayed barely three weeks. And yet at every fresh stage, I made a point of arranging everything as if we were never going to leave Some irre• sistible demon goaded me on And add to this that we traveled with no fewer than eight trunks. There was one I never opened during the whole journey, entirely filled with books. I did not allow Marceline to have any say in our expenses or attempt to moderate them. I knew of course that they were excessive and that they could not last. I could no longer count on any money from La Moriniere. It had ceased to bring in anything, and Bocage wrote that he could not find a purchaser. But all thoughts of the future ended only in mak• ing me spend the more. What need should I have of so much money, once I was alone, I thought; and sick at heart, I watched Marceline's frail life as it ebbed away more quickly still than my for• tune. Although she depended on me for all the ar• rangements, these perpetual and hurried moves tired her; but what tired her still more (1 do not hesitate now to acknowledge it) was the fear of what was in my mind. "I understand/' she said to me one day, "I quite understand your doctrine—for now it has become a doctrine. A fine one perhaps," and then she added sadly, dropping her voice, "but it does away with the weak." "And so it should!" was the answer that burst from me in spite of myself. In my heart then, I felt the sensitive creature shiver and shrivel up at the shock of my dreadful words. . . . Oh, perhaps you will think I did not love Marceline. I swear I loved her passionately. She had never been—I had never thought her—so beautiful. Illness had refined—etherealized her fea• tures. I hardly ever left her, surrounded her with every care, watched over her every moment of the night and day. If she slept lightly, I trained my• self to sleep more lightly still; I watched her as she fell asleep and I was the first to wake. When some• times I left her for an hour to take a solitary walk in the country or streets, a kind of loving anxiety, a fear of her feeling the time long, made me hurry back to her; and sometimes I rebelled against this obsession, called upon my will to help me against it, said to myself, "Are you worth no more than this, you make-believe great man?" And I forced myself to prolong my absence; but then I would come in, my arms laden with flowers, early garden flowers, or hothouse blooms. . . . Yes, I say; I cared for her tenderly. But how can I express this —that in proportion as I respected myself less, I revered her more? And who shall say how many passions and how many hostile thoughts may live together in the mind of man? . . . The bad weather had long since ceased; the sea- son was advancing; and suddenly the almond trees were in bloom. The day was the first of March. I went down in the morning to the Piazza di Spagna. The peasants had stripped the Campagna of its white branches, and the flower-sellers' baskets were full of almond blossom. I was so enchanted that I bought a whole grove of it. Three men carried it for me. I went home with all this flowering spring. The branches caught in the doorways and petals snowed upon the carpet. I put the blossoms every• where, filled all the vases, and, while Marceline was absent from the drawing-room for a moment, made it a bower of whiteness. I was already picturing her delight, when I heard her step . . . ! She opened the door. Oh, what was wrong with her? . . . She tottered. . . . She burst out sobbing. "What is it, my poor Marceline?" . . . , I ran up to her, showered the tenderest caresses upon her. Then as if to excuse her tears: 'The flowers smell too strong,'' she said. . . . And it was a faint, faint, exquisite scent of honey. . . . Without a word, I seized the innocent fragile branches, broke them to pieces, carried them out of the room and flung them away, my temples throbbing with exasperation, my nerves ajar. Oh, if she finds this little bit of spring too much for her! . . . I have often thought over those tears of hers and I believe now that she already felt herself con• demned and was crying for the loss of other springs. . . . I think too that there are strong joys for the strong and weak joys for the weak who would be hurt by strong joys. She was sated by the merest trifle of pleasure; one shade brighter and it was more than she could bear. What she called happi• ness, I called rest, and I was unwilling, unable to rest. Four days later we left again for Sorrento. I was disappointed not to find it warmer. The whole country seemed shivering with cold. The wind, which never ceased blowing, was a severe trial to Marceline. Our plan was to go to the same hotel we had been to at the time of our first journey, and we were given the same room But how aston• ished we were to see that the grey sky had robbed the whole scene of its magic, and that the place we had thought so charming when we had walked in it as lovers was nothing but a dreary hotel gar• den! We settled then to go by sea to Palermo, whose climate we had heard praised; we returned there• fore to Naples, where we were to take the boat and where we stayed on for a few days longer. But at any rate, I was not dull at Naples. Naples is alive —a town that is not overshadowed by the past. I spent nearly every moment of the day with Marceline. At night she was tired and went to bed early; I watched by her until she went to sleep and sometimes went to bed myself; then, when her more regular breathing told me she was asleep, I got up again noiselessly, dressed in the dark, slipped out of doors like a thief. Out of doors! Oh, I could have shouted with joy! What was I bent on? I cannot tell. The sky, which had been dark all day, was cleared of its clouds; the moon was nearly full. I walked at random, without object, without desire, without constraint. I looked at everything with a fresh eye; I listened to every noise with an attentive ear; I breathed the dampness of the night; I touched things with my hand; I went prowling. The last night we spent at Naples I stayed out later than usual on this vagabond debauch. When I came in, I found Marceline in tears. She had waked up suddenly, she said, and been frightened at not feeling me there. I calmed her, explained my absence as well as I could, and resolved not to leave her again. But the first night we spent at Palermo was too much for me—I went out. The orange trees were in flower; the slightest breath of air came laden with their scent. . . . We only stayed five days at Palermo; then, by a long detour, we made our way to Taormina, which we both wanted to see again. I think I have told you that the village is perched high on the mountain side; the station is on the seashore. The carriage that drove us to the hotel took me back again to the station for me to get our trunks. I stood up in the carriage in order to talk to the driver. He was a Sicilian boy from Catania, as beautiful as a line of Theocritus, full of color and odor and savor, like a fruit "Come bella, la signoral" said he, in a charm• ing voice, as he watched Marceline go into the hotel. "Anche tu sei bello, ragazzo" I replied; then, as I was standing so near him, I could not resist, but drew him to me and kissed him. He allowed it laughingly. "/ francesi sono tutti amanti" he said. "Ma non tutti gli italiani arnati," I answered, laughing too. . . . I looked for him on the follow• ing days, but never succeeded in finding him. We left Taormina for Syracuse. Step by step we went over the ground we had covered in our first journey, making our way back to the starting point of our love. And as during our first journey I had week by week progressed towards recovery, so week by week as we went southwards, Marceline's health grew worse. By what aberration, what obstinate blindness, what deliberate folly did I persuade myself, did I above all try and persuade her that what she wanted was still more light and warmth? Why did I re• mind her of my convalescence at Biskra? . . . And yet the air had become warmer; the climate of Palermo is mild and pleasant; Marceline liked it. There, perhaps, she might have . . . But had I the power to choose what I should determine—to de• cide what I should desire? The state of the sea and the irregular boat-service delayed us a week at Syracuse. All the time I did not spend with Marce• line I spent in the old port. O little port of Syra• cuse! Smells of sour wine, muddy alleys, stinking booths, where dockers and vagabonds and wine- bibbing sailors loaf and jostle! The society of the lowest dregs of humanity was delectable company to me. And what need had I to understand their language, when I felt it in my whole body? Even the brutality of their passion assumed in my eyes a hypocritical appearance of health and vigor. In vain I told myself that their wretched life could not have the same flavor for them that it had for me. . . . Oh, I wished I could have rolled under the table with them to wake up only with the first grey shiver of dawn. And their company whetted my growing horror of luxury, of comfort, of all the things I was wrapped round with, of the protection that my newly restored health had made unneces• sary, of all the precautions one takes to preserve one's body from the perilous contact of life. I imag• ined their existence in other surroundings. I should have liked to follow them elsewhere, to probe deeper into their drunken life. . . . Then suddenly I thought of Marceline. What was she doing at this very moment? Suffering, crying, perhaps I got up hastily and hurried back to the hotel; there, over the door, seemed written the words: No poor admitted here. Marceline always received me in the same way, without a word of reproach or suspicion, and strug• gling, in spite of everything, to smile. We took our meals in private; I ordered for her the best our very second-rate hotel could provide. And all through the meal, I kept thinking, "A piece of bread, a bit of cheese, a head of fennel is enough for them and would be enough for me too. And per• haps out there, close by, some of them are hungry and have not even that wretched pittance. And here on my table is enough to fill them for three days." I should have liked to break down the walls and let the guests flock in. . . . For to feel there were people suffering from hunger was dreadful. And I went back again to the port and scattered about at random the small coins with which my pockets were filled. Poverty is a slave-driver; in return for food, men give their grudging labor; all work that is not joy• ous is wretched, I thought, and I paid many of them to rest. "Don't work," I said, "you hate it." In imagination, I bestowed on each of them that lei• sure without which nothing can blossom—neither vice nor art. Marceline did not mistake my thoughts; when I came back from the port, I did not conceal from her what sort of wretches I had been frequenting. Every kind of thing goes to the making of man. Marceline knew well enough what I was trying so furiously to discover; and as I reproached her for being too apt to credit everyone she knew with special virtues of her own invention, "You," said she, "are never satisfied until you have made people exhibit some vice. Don't you understand that by looking at any particular trait, we develop and exaggerate it? And that we make a man become what we think him?" I could have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that the worst instinct of every human being appeared to me the sincerest. But then what did I mean by sincere? We left Syracuse at last. I was haunted by the de• sire and the memory of the past At sea, Marceline's health improved. . . . I can still see the color of the sea. It is so calm that the ship's track in it seems permanent. I can still hear the noises of dripping and dropping water—liquid noises; the swabbing of the deck and the slapping of the sailors' bare feet on the boards. I can see Malta shining white in the sun—the approach to Tunis How changed I am! It was hot; it was fine; everything was glorious. Oh, how I wish that every one of my sentences here could distill a quintessence of voluptuous de• light! I cannot hope to tell my story now with more order than I lived my life. I have been long enough trying to explain how I became what I am. Oh, if only I could rid my mind of all this intolera• ble logic! . . . I feel I have nothing in me that is not noble. Tunis! The quality of the light here is not strength but abundance. The shade is still full of it. The air itself is like a luminous fluid in which everything is steeped; one bathes, one swims in it. This land of pleasure satisfies desire without appeasing it, and desire is sharpened by satisfaction. A land free from works of art; I despise those who cannot recognize beauty until it has been tran- scribed and interpreted. The Arabs have this ad• mirable quality, that they live their art, sing it, dis• sipate it from day to day; it is not fixed, not em• balmed in any work. This is the cause and effect of the absence of great artists. . . . I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?" At Kairouan, which I had not seen before, and which I visited without Marceline, the night was very fine. As I was going back to sleep at the hotel, I remember a group of Arabs I had seen lying out of doors on mats, outside a little cafe. I went and lay down to sleep beside them. I came away cov• ered with vermin. Marceline found the damp of the coast very en• feebling, and I persuaded her that we ought to go on to Biskra as quickly as possible. We were now at the beginning of April. The journey to Biskra is a very long one. The first day we went to Constantine without a break; the second day, Marceline was very tired and we only got as far as El Kantara. I remember seeking there, and toward evening finding, shade that was more delicious and cool than moonshine at night. It flowed about us like a stream of inexhaustible re- freshment. And from the bank where we were sit• ting we could see the plain aflame in the setting sun. That night Marceline could not sleep, disturbed as she was by the strange silence or the tiniest of noises. I was afraid she was feverish. I heard her tossing in the night. Next morning I thought she looked paler. We went on again. Biskra! That then was my goal. . . . Yes; there are the public gardens; the bench . . . I recog• nize the bench on which I used to sit in the first days of my convalescence. What was it I read there? . . . Homer; I have not opened the book since. There is the tree with the curious bark I got up to go and feel. How weak I was then! Look! there come some children! . . . No; I recognize none of them. How grave Marceline is! She is as changed as I. Why does she cough so in this fine weather? There is the hotel! There are our rooms, our terrace! What is Marceline thinking? She has not said a word. As soon as she gets to her room she lies down on the bed; she is tired and says she wants to sleep a little. I go out. I do not recognize the children, but the children recognize me. They have heard of my arrival and come running to meet me. Can it really be they? What a shock! What has happened? They have grown out of all knowledge—hideously. In barely two years! It seems impossible. . . . What fa• tigues, what vices, what sloth have put their ugly mark on faces that were once so bright with youth? What vile labors can so soon have stunted those beautiful young limbs ? What a bankruptcy of hope! . . . I ask a few questions. Bachir is scullion in a cafe; Ashour is laboriously earning a few pen• nies by breaking stones on the roads; Hammatar has lost an eye. And who would believe it? Sadek has settled down! He helps an elder brother sell loaves in the market; he looks idiotic. Agib has set up as a butcher with his father; he is getting fat; he is ugly; he is rich; he refuses to speak to his low- class companions. . . . Flow stupid honorable careers make people! What! Am I going to find here the same things I hated so at home? Boubakir? Married. He is not fifteen yet. It is grotesque. Not altogether though. When I see him that evening he explains that his marriage is a mere farce. He is, I expect, an utter waster; he has taken to drink and lost his looks. . . . So that is all that remains, is it? That is what life has made of them? My in• tolerable depression makes me feel it was largely to see them that I came here. Menalque was right. Memory is an accursed invention. And Moktir? Ah! Moktir has just come out of prison. He is lying low. The others will have noth- ing to do with him. I want to see him. He used to be the handsomest of them all. Is he to be a dis• appointment too? . . . Someone finds him out and brings him to me. No; Moktir has not failed. Even my memory had not painted him as superb as he now is. His strength, his beauty are flawless. . . . He smiles as he recognizes me. "And what did you do before you went to prison ?" "Nothing." "Did you steal ?" He protests. "And what are you doing now?" He smiles. "Well, Moktir, if you have nothing to do, you must come with us to Touggourt." And I suddenly feel seized with a desire to go to Touggourt. Marceline is not well; I do not know what is going on in her mind. When I go back to the hotel that evening, she presses up against me without say• ing a word and without opening her eyes. Her wide sleeve has slipped up and shows how thin she has grown. I take her in my arms, as if she were a sleepy child, and rock and soothe her. Is it love, or an• guish or fever that makes her tremble so? Oh! perhaps there might still be time. . . . Will noth• ing make me stop? I know now—I have found 195 TH E 1MM0RALIS T out at last what gives me my special value. It is a kind of stubborn perseverance in evil. But how do I bring myself to tell Marceline that next day we are to leave again for Touggourt? . . . She is asleep now in the room next mine. The moon has been up some time and is flooding the terrace. The brightness is almost terrifying. There is no hiding from it. The floor of my room is tiled with white, and there the light is brightest. It streams through the wide-open window. I recog• nize the way it shines into the room and the shadow made by the door. Two years ago, it came in still further. . . . Yes; it is almost at the same spot it had reached that night I got up because I could not sleep. . . . It was against that very door-jamb I leaned my shoulder. I recognize the stillness of the palm-trees. What was the sentence I read that night? . . . Oh, yes; Christ's words to Peter: "Now thou girdest thyself and goest where thou would- est . . ." Where am I going? Where would I go? . . . I did not tell you that the last time I was at Naples, I went to Paestum one day by myself. Oh, I could have wept at the sight of those ruined stones. The ancient beauty shone out from them, simple, perfect, smiling—deserted. Art is leaving me, I feel it. To make room for what else? The smiling har• mony once mine is mine no longer No longer TH E IMMORALIS T 196 do I know what dark mysterious God I serve. O great new God! grant me the knowledge of other newer races, unimagined types of beauty. The next morning at daybreak, we left in the dili• gence, and Moktir came with us. Moktir was as happy as a king. Chegga; Kefeldorh'; M'reyer dreary stages of a still more dreary road—an interminable road. I confess I had expected these oases to be more smiling. But there is nothing here but stone and sand; at times a few shrubs with queer flowers; at times an attempt at palm-trees, watered by some hidden spring. . . . Now, to any oasis, I prefer the desert—land of mortal glory and intolerable splen• dor! Man's effort here seems ugly and miserable. All other lands now are weariness to me. "You like what is inhuman/' says Marceline. But she herself, how greedily she looks! Next day it was not so fine; that is, a wind sprang up and the horizon became dull and gray. Marceline is suffering; the sand in the air burns and irritates her throat; the overabundance of light tires her eyes; the hostile landscape crushes her. But it is too late now to turn back. In a few hours we shall be at Touggourt. It is this last part of the journey, though it is still so near me, that I remember least. I find it impos- sible to recall the scenery of the second day or what I did when we first got to Touggourt. But what I do still remember are my impatience and my haste. It had been very cold that morning. Toward eve• ning a burning simoon sprang up. Marceline, ex• hausted by the journey, went to bed as soon as we arrived. I had hoped to find a rather more comfort• able hotel, but our room is hideous; the sand, the sun, the flies have tarnished, dirtied, discolored everything. As we have eaten scarcely anything since daybreak, I order a meal to be served at once; but Marceline finds everything uneatable and I cannot persuade her to touch a morsel. We have with us paraphernalia for making our own tea. I attend to this trifling business, and for dinner we content ourselves with a few biscuits and the tea, made with the brackish water of the country and tasting horrible in consequence. By a last semblance of virtue, I stay with her till evening. And all of a sudden I feel that I myself have come to the end of my strength. O taste of ashes! O deadly lassitude! 0 the sadness of super• human effort! I hardly dare look at her; I am too certain that my eyes, instead of seeking hers, will fasten horribly on the black holes of her nostrils; the suffering expression of her face is agonizing. Nor does she look at me either. I feel her anguish as if I could touch it. She coughs a great deal and then falls asleep. From time to time, she is shaken by a sudden shudder. Perhaps the night will be bad, and before it is too late I must find out where I can get help. I go out. Outside the hotel, the Touggourt square, the streets, the very atmosphere, are so strange that I can hardly believe it is I who see them. After a little I go in again. Marceline is sleeping quietly. I need not have been so frightened; in this peculiar country, one suspects peril everywhere. Absurd! And more or less reassured, I again go out. There is a strange nocturnal animation in the square—a silent flitting to and fro—a stealthy gliding of white burnouses. The wind at times tears off a shred of strange music and brings it from I know not where. Someone comes up to me. . . . Moktir! He was waiting for me, he says—expected me to come out again. He laughs. He knows Toug• gourt, comes here often, knows where to take me. I let myself be guided by him. We walk along in the dark and go into a Moor• ish cafe; this is where the music came from. Some Arab women are dancing—if such a monotonous glide can be called dancing. One of them takes me by the hand; I follow her; she is Moktir's mistress; he comes too. . . . We all three go into the deep, narrow room where the only piece of furniture is a bed. . . . A very low bed on which we sit down. A white rabbit which has been shut up in the room is scared at first but afterwards grows tamer and comes to feed out of Moktir's hand. Coffee is brought. Then, while Moktir is playing with the rabbit, the woman draws me toward her, and I let myself go to her as one lets oneself sink into sleep. . . . Oh, here I might deceive you or be silent—but what use can this story be to me, if it ceases to be truthful? I go back alone to the hotel, for Moktir remains behind in the cafe. It is late. A parching sirocco is blowing; the wind is laden with sand, and, in spite of the night, torrid. After three or four steps, I am bathed in sweat; but I suddenly feel I must hurry and I reach the hotel almost at a run. She is awake perhaps. . . . Perhaps she wants me? No; the window of her room is dark. I wait for a short lull in the wind before opening the door; I go into the room very softly in the dark. What is that noise? . . . I do not recognize her cough Is it really Marceline? . . . I light the light. She is half sitting on the bed, one of her thin arms clutching the bars and supporting her in an upright position; her sheets, her hands, her night- dress are flooded with a stream of blood; her face is soiled with it ; her eyes have grown hideously big; and no cry of agony could be more appalling than her silence. Her face is bathed in sweat; I try to find a little place on it where I can put a horrible kiss; I feel the taste of her sweat on my lips. I wash and refresh her forehead and cheeks What is that hard thing I feel under my foot near the bed? I stoop down and pick up the little rosary that she once asked for in Paris and which she has dropped on the ground. I slip it over her open hand, but im• mediately she lowers her hand and drops the rosary again. . . . What am I to do? I wish I could get help Her hand clutches me desperately, holds me tight; oh, can she think I want to leave her? She says: "Oh, you can wait a little longer, can't you?" Then, as she sees I want to say something, "Don't speak,'' she adds; "everything is all right." I pick up the rosary again and put it back on her hand, but again she lets it drop—yes, deliberately —lets it drop. I kneel down beside her, take her hand and press it to me. She lets herself go, partly against the pillow, partly against my shoulder, seems to sleep a little, but her eyes are still wide open. An hour later, she raises herself, disengages her hand from mine, clutches at her nightdress and tears the lace. She is choking. Toward morning she has another hemor• rhage. . . .
I have finished telling you my story. What more should I say? The French cemetery at Touggourt is a hideous place, half devoured by the sand What little energy I had left I spent in carrying her away from that miserable spot. She rests at El Kantara, in the shade of a private garden she liked. It all happened barely three months ago. Those three months have put a distance of ten years between that time and this.
MICHE L remained silent for a long time. We did not speak either, for we each of us had a strange feeling of uneasiness. We felt, alas, that by telling his story, Michel had made his action more legiti• mate. Our not having known at what point to con• demn it in the course of his long explanation seemed almost to make us his accomplices. We felt, as it were, involved. He finished his story without a quaver in his voice, without an inflection or a ges• ture to show that he was feeling any emotion what• ever; he might have had a cynical pride in not ap• pearing moved or a kind of shyness that made him afraid of arousing emotion in us by his tears, or he might not in fact have been moved. Even now I cannot guess in what proportions pride, strength, reserve, and want of feeling were com• bined in him. After a pause he went on : "What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I 203 have freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless liberty is a burden to me. It is not, believe me, that I am tired of my crime—if you choose to call it that—but I must prove to my• self that I have not overstepped my rights. "When you knew me first, I had great stability of thought, and I know that that is what makes real men. I have it no longer. But I think it is the fault of this climate. Nothing is more discouraging to thought than this persistent azure. Enjoyment here follows so closely upon desire that effort is impos• sible. Here, in the midst of splendor and death, I feel the presence of happiness too close, the yield• ing to it too uniform. In the middle of the day, I go and lie down on my bed to while away the long dreary hours and their intolerable leisure. "Look! I have here a number of white pebbles. I let them soak in the shade, then hold them in the hollow of my hand and wait until their soothing cool• ness is exhausted. Then I begin once more, chang• ing the pebbles and putting back those that have lost their coolness to soak in the shade again. . . . Time passes and the evening comes on Take me away; I cannot move of myself. Something in my will is broken; I don't even know how I had the strength to leave El Kantara. Sometimes I am afraid that what I have suppressed will take vengeance 205 TH E IMMORALIS T on me. I should like to begin over again. I should like to get rid of the remains of my fortune; you see the walls here are still covered with it . . . I live for next to nothing in this place. A half-caste innkeeper prepares what little food I need. The boy who ran away at your approach brings it to me in the evening and morning, in exchange for a few sous and a caress or two. He turns shy with strangers, but with me he is as affectionate and faithful as a dog. His sister is an Ouled-Nai'l and in the winter goes back to Constantine to sell her body to the passers-by. She is very beautiful, and in the first weeks I sometimes allowed her to pass the night with me. But one morning, her brother, little Ali , surprised us together. He showed great annoyance and refused to come back for five days. And yet he knows perfectly well how and on what his sister lives; he used to speak of it before without the slightest embarrassment. . . . Can he be jealous? Be that as it may, the little rascal has succeeded in his object; for, partly from distaste, partly because I was afraid of losing Ali, I have given the woman up since this incident. She has not taken offence; but every time I meet her, she laughs and declares that I prefer the boy to her. She makes out that it is he who keeps me here. Perhaps she is not alto• gether wrong "
A N O T E O N T H E T Y P E
This book is set {on the Linotype) in Elzevir No. 3, a French Old Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are indebted to Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, bas• ing his designs on types used in a book printed by the Elzevirs at Ley den in 1634. The Elzevir family held a distinguished position as printers and publishers for more than a century, their best work appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs were not themselves type founders, they utilised the services of the best type designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Gara- mond, and Sanlecque.
Composed, printed, and bound by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N.
1/14/2023 0 Comments Ayn Rand's anthem
The story of 'Anthem' by Ayn Rand is about a young man who realizes his potential and learns to fully embrace his individuality as he makes an invention. This invention challenges the stifling collectivism of the City of his birth and puts his life in danger which forces him to flee from the City.
AYN RAND
ANTHEM
# Publisher: Signet (September 1, 1961) # Language: English # ISBN-10: 0451153316 # ISBN-13: 9780451153319
Chapter One
It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!
But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it.
It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil. But we have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head.
The walls are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must also write, for--may the Council have mercy upon us!--we wish to speak for once to no ears but our own.
Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said: "There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers." But we cannot change our bones nor our body.
We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist.
We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we are required to repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted:
"We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever."--
We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not.
These words were cut long ago. There is green mould in the grooves of the letters and yellow streaks on the marble, which come from more years than men could count. And these words are the truth, for they are written on the Palace of the World Council, and the World Council is the body of all truth. Thus has it been ever since the Great Rebirth, and farther back than that no memory can reach.
But we must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together.
All men are good and wise. It is only we, Equality 7-2521, we alone who were born with a curse. For we are not like our brothers. And as we look back upon our life, we see that it has ever been thus and that it has brought us step by step to our last, supreme transgression, our crime of crimes hidden here under the ground.
We remember the Home of the Infants where we lived till we were five years old, together with all the children of the City who had been born in the same year. The sleeping halls there were white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds. We were just like all our brothers then, save for the one transgression: we fought with our brothers. There are few offenses blacker than to fight with our brothers, at any age and for any cause whatsoever. The Council of the Home told us so, and of all the children of that year, we were locked in the cellar most often.
When we were five years old, we were sent to the Home of the Students, where there are ten wards, for our ten years of learning. Men must learn till they reach their fifteenth year. Then they go to work. In the Home of the Students we arose when the big bell rang in the tower and we went to our beds when it rang again. Before we removed our garments, we stood in the great sleeping hall, and we raised our right arms, and we said all together with the three Teachers at the head:
"We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist through, by and for our brothers who are the State. Amen."
Then we slept. The sleeping halls were white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds.
We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us.
So we fought against this curse. We tried to forget our lessons, but we always remembered. We tried not to understand what the Teachers taught, but we always understood it before the Teachers had spoken. We looked upon Union 5-3992, who were a pale boy with only half a brain, and we tried to say and do as they did, that we might be like them, like Union 5-3992, but somehow the Teachers knew that we were not. And we were lashed more often than all the other children.
The Teachers were just, for they had been appointed by the Councils, and the Councils are the voice of all justice, for they are the voice of all men. And if sometimes, in the secret darkness of our heart, we regret that which befell us on our fifteenth birthday, we know that it was through our own guilt. We had broken a law, for we had not paid heed to the words of our Teachers. The Teachers had said to us all:
"Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do what the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies."
We knew this well, in the years of our childhood, but our curse broke our will. We were guilty and we confess it here: we were guilty of the great Transgression of Preference. We preferred some work and some lessons to the others. We did not listen well to the history of all the Councils elected since the Great Rebirth. But we loved the Science of Things. We wished to know. We wished to know about all the things which make the earth around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade it.
We think that there are mysteries in the sky and under the water and in the plants which grow. But the Council of Scholars has said that there are no mysteries, and the Council of Scholars knows all things. And we learned much from our Teachers. We learned that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it, which causes the day and night. We learned the names of all the winds which blow over the seas and push the sails of our great ships. We learned how to bleed men to cure them of all ailments.
We loved the Science of Things. And in the darkness, in the secret hour, when we awoke in the night and there were no brothers around us, but only their shapes in the beds and their snores, we closed our eyes, and we held our lips shut, and we stopped our breath, that no shudder might let our brothers see or hear or guess, and we thought that we wished to be sent to the Home of the Scholars when our time would come.
All of the great modern inventions come from the Home of the Scholars, such as the newest one, which was found only a hundred years ago, of how to make candles from wax and string; also, how to make glass, which is put in our windows to protect us from the rain. To find these things, the Scholars must study the earth and learn from the rivers, from the sands, from the winds and the rocks. And if we went to the Home of the Scholars, we could learn from these also. We could ask questions of these, for they do not forbid questions.
And questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours, and that we must know them. We ask, why must we know, but it has no answer to give us. We must know that we may know.
So we wished to be sent to the Home of the Scholars. We wished it so much that our hands trembled under the blankets in the night, and we bit our arm to stop that other pain which we could not endure. It was evil and we dared not face our brothers in the morning. For men may wish nothing for themselves. And we were punished when the Council of Vocations came to give us our life Mandates which tell those who reach their fifteenth year what their work is to be for the rest of their days.
The Council of Vocations came in on the first day of spring, and they sat in the great hall. And we who were fifteen and all the Teachers came into the great hall. And the Council of Vocations sat on a high dais, and they had but two words to speak to each of the Students. They called the Students' names, and when the Students stepped before them, one after another, the Council said: "Carpenter" or "Doctor" or "Cook" or "Leader." Then each Student raised their right arm and said: "The will of our brothers be done."
Now if the Council said "Carpenter" or "Cook," the Students so assigned go to work and do not study any further. But if the Council has said "Leader," then those Students go into the Home of the Leaders, which is the greatest house in the City, for it has three stories. And there they study for many years, so that they may become candidates and be elected to the City Council and the State Council and the World Council--by a free and general vote of all men. But we wished not to be a Leader, even though it is a great honor. We wished to be a Scholar.
So we awaited our turn in the great hall and then we heard the Council of Vocations call our name: "Equality 7-2521." We walked to the dais, and our legs did not tremble, and we looked up at the Council. There were five members of the Council, three of the male gender and two of the female. Their hair was white and their faces were cracked as the clay of a dry river bed. They were old. They seemed older than the marble of the Temple of the World Council. They sat before us and they did not move. And we saw no breath to stir the folds of their white togas. But we knew that they were alive, for a finger of the hand of the oldest rose, pointed to us, and fell down again. This was the only thing which moved, for the lips of the oldest did not move as they said: "Street Sweeper."
We felt the cords of our neck grow tight as our head rose higher to look upon the faces of the Council, and we were happy. We knew we had been guilty, but now we had a way to atone for it. We would accept our Life Mandate, and we would work for our brothers, gladly and willingly, and we would erase our sin against them, which they did not know, but we knew. So we were happy, and proud of ourselves and of our victory over ourselves. We raised our right arm and we spoke, and our voice was the clearest, the steadiest voice in the hall that day, and we said:
"The will of our brothers be done."
And we looked straight into the eyes of the Council, but their eyes were as cold as blue glass buttons. So we went into the Home of the Street Sweepers. It is a grey house on a narrow street. There is a sundial in its courtyard, by which the Council of the Home can tell the hours of the day and when to ring the bell. When the bell rings, we all arise from our beds. The sky is green and cold in our windows to the east. The shadow on the sundial marks off a half-hour while we dress and eat our breakfast in the dining hall, where there are five long tables with twenty clay plates and twenty clay cups on each table. Then we go to work in the streets of the City, with our brooms and our rakes. In five hours, when the sun is high, we return to the Home and we eat our midday meal, for which one-half hour is allowed. Then we go to work again. In five hours, the shadows are blue on the pavements, and the sky is blue with a deep brightness which is not bright. We come back to have our dinner, which lasts one hour. Then the bell rings and we walk in a straight column to one of the City Halls, for the Social Meeting. Other columns of men arrive from the Homes of the different Trades. The candles are lit, and the Councils of the different Homes stand in a pulpit, and they speak to us of our duties and of our brother men. Then visiting Leaders mount the pulpit and they read to us the speeches which were made in the City Council that day, for the City Council represents all men and all men must know. Then we sing hymns, the Hymn of Brotherhood, and the Hymn of Equality, and the Hymn of the Collective Spirit. The sky is a soggy purple when we return to the Home. Then the bell rings and we walk in a straight column to the City Theatre for three hours of Social Recreation. There a play is shown upon the stage, with two great choruses from the Home of the Actors, which speak and answer all together, in two great voices. The plays are about toil and how good it is. Then we walk back to the Home in a straight column. The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through. The moths beat against the street lanterns. We go to our beds and we sleep, till the bell rings again. The sleeping halls are white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds.
Thus have we lived each day of four years, until two springs ago when our crime happened. Thus must all men live until they are forty. At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and children stare at them when passing by the Home of the Useless. Such is to be our life, as that of all our brothers and of the brothers who came before us.
Such would have been our life, had we not committed our crime which has changed all things for us. And it was our curse which drove us to our crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all our brother Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We looked too long at the stars at night, and at the trees and the earth. And when we cleaned the yard of the Home of the Scholars, we gathered the glass vials, the pieces of metal, the dried bones which they had discarded. We wished to keep these things and to study them, but we had no place to hide them. So we carried them to the City Cesspool. And then we made the discovery.
It was on a day of the spring before last. We Street Sweepers work in brigades of three, and we were with Union 5-3992, they of the half-brain, and with International 4-8818. Now Union 5-3992 are a sickly lad and sometimes they are stricken with convulsions, when their mouth froths and their eyes turn white. But International 4-8818 are different. They are a tall, strong youth and their eyes are like fireflies, for there is laughter in their eyes. We cannot look upon International 4-8818 and not smile in answer. For this they were not liked in the Home of the Students, as it is not proper to smile without reason. And also they were not liked because they took pieces of coal and they drew pictures upon the walls, and they were pictures which made men laugh. But it is only our brothers in the Home of the Artists who are permitted to draw pictures, so International 4- 8818 were sent to the Home of the Street Sweepers, like ourselves.
International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for it is a great transgression, the great Transgression of Preference, to love any among men better than the others, since we must love all men and all men are our friends. So International 4-8818 and we have never spoken of it. But we know. We know, when we look into each other's eyes. And when we look thus without words, we both know other things also, strange things for which there are no words, and these things frighten us.
So on that day of the spring before last, Union 5-3992 were stricken with convulsions on the edge of the City, near the City Theatre. We left them to lie in the shade of the Theatre tent and we went with International 4-8818 to finish our work. We came together to the great ravine behind the Theatre. It is empty save for trees and weeds. Beyond the ravine there is a plain, and beyond the plain there lies the Uncharted Forest, about which men must not think.
We were gathering the papers and the rags which the wind had blown from the Theatre, when we saw an iron bar among the weeds. It was old and rusted by many rains. We pulled with all our strength, but we could not move it. So we called International 4-8818, and together we scraped the earth around the bar. Of a sudden the earth fell in before us, and we saw an old iron grill over a black hole.
International 4-8818 stepped back. But we pulled at the grill and it gave way. And then we saw iron rings as steps leading down a shaft into a darkness without bottom. "We shall go down," we said to International 4-8818.
"It is forbidden," they answered.
We said: "The Council does not know of this hole, so it cannot be forbidden."
And they answered: "Since the Council does not know of this hole, there can be no law permitting to enter it. And everything which is not permitted by law is forbidden."
But we said: "We shall go, none the less."
They were frightened, but they stood by and watched us go.
We hung on the iron rings with our hands and our feet. We could see nothing below us. And above us the hole open upon the sky grew smaller and smaller, till it came to be the size of a button. But still we went down. Then our foot touched the ground. We rubbed our eyes, for we could not see. Then our eyes became used to the darkness, and we could not believe what we saw.
No man known to us could have built this place, nor the men known to our brothers who lived before us, and yet it was built by men. It was a great tunnel. Its walls were hard and smooth to the touch; it felt like stone, but it was not stone. On the ground there were long thin tracks of iron, but it was not iron; it felt smooth and cold as glass. We knelt, and we crawled forward, our hand groping along the iron line to see where it would lead. But there was an unbroken night ahead. Only the iron tracks glowed through it, straight and white, calling us to follow. But we could not follow, for we were losing the puddle of light behind us. So we turned and we crawled back, our hand on the iron line. And our heart beat in our fingertips, without reason. And then we knew.
We knew suddenly that this place was left from the Unmentionable Times. So it was true, and those Times had been, and all the wonders of those Times. Hundreds upon hundreds of years ago men knew secrets which we have lost. And we thought: "This is a foul place. They are damned who touch the things of the Unmentionable Times." But our hand which followed the track, as we crawled, clung to the iron as if it would not leave it, as if the skin of our hand were thirsty and begging of the metal some secret fluid beating in its coldness. We returned to the earth. International 4-8818 looked upon us and stepped back.
"Equality 7-2521," they said, "your face is white."
But we could not speak and we stood looking upon them.
They backed away, as if they dared not touch us. Then they smiled, but it was not a gay smile; it was lost and pleading. But still we could not speak. Then they said:
"We shall report our find to the City Council and both of us will be rewarded."
And then we spoke. Our voice was hard and there was no mercy in our voice. We said:
"We shall not report our find to the City Council. We shall not report it to any men." They raised their hands to their ears, for never had they heard such words as these.
"International 4-8818," we asked, "will you report us to the Council and see us lashed to death before your eyes?"
They stood straight of a sudden and they answered:
"Rather would we die."
"Then," we said, "keep silent. This place is ours. This place belongs to us, Equality 7-2521, and to no other men on earth. And if ever we surrender it, we shall surrender our life with it also."
Then we saw that the eyes of International 4-8818 were full to the lids with tears they dared not drop, they whispered, and their voice trembled, so that their words lost all shape:
"The will of the Council is above all things, for it is the will of our brothers, which is holy. But if you wish it so, we shall obey you. Rather shall we be evil with you than good with all our brothers. May the Council have mercy upon both our hearts!"
Then we walked away together and back to the Home of the Street Sweepers. And we walked in silence.
Thus did it come to pass that each night, when the stars are high and the Street Sweepers sit in the City Theatre, we, Equality 7-2521, steal out and run through the darkness to our place. It is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown and the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl under our seat and under the cloth of the tent. Later it is easy to steal through the shadows and fall in line next to International 4-8818, as the column leaves the Theatre. It is dark in the streets and there are no men about, for no men may walk through the City when they have no mission to walk there. Each night, we run to the ravine, and we remove the stones we have piled upon the iron grill to hide it from men. Each night, for three hours, we are under the earth, alone.
We have stolen candles from the Home of the Street Sweepers, we have stolen flints and knives and paper, and we have brought them to this place. We have stolen glass vials and powders and acids from the Home of the Scholars. Now we sit in the tunnel for three hours each night and we study. We melt strange metals, and we mix acids, and we cut open the bodies of the animals which we find in the City Cesspool. We have built an oven of the bricks we gathered in the streets. We burn the wood we find in the ravine. The fire flickers in the oven and blue shadows dance upon the walls, and there is no sound of men to disturb us.
We have stolen manuscripts. This is a great offense. Manuscripts are precious, for our brothers in the Home of the Clerks spend one year to copy one single script in their clear handwriting. Manuscripts are rare and they are kept in the Home of the Scholars. So we sit under the earth and we read the stolen scripts. Two years have passed since we found this place. And in these two years we have learned more than we had learned in the ten years of the Home of the Students.
We have learned things which are not in the scripts. We have solved secrets of which the Scholars have no knowledge. We have come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will not bring us to the end of our quest. We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the hawk's and clearer than rock crystal.
Strange are the ways of evil. We are false in the faces of our brothers. We are defying the will of our Councils. We alone, of the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do it. The evil of our crime is not for the human mind to probe. The nature of our punishment, if it be discovered, is not free for the human heart to ponder. Never, not in the memory of the Ancient Ones' Ancients, never have men done what we are doing.
And yet there is no shame in us and no regret. We say to ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we feel no burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save those of the sun. And in our heart--strange are the ways of evil!-- in our heart there is the first peace we have known in twenty years. Chapter Two
Liberty 5-3000 . . . Liberty five-three thousand . . . Liberty 5-3000 . . . .
We wish to write this name. We wish to speak it, but we dare not speak it above a whisper. For men are forbidden to take notice of women, and women are forbidden to take notice of men. But we think of one among women, they whose name is Liberty 5-3000, and we think of no others.
The women who have been assigned to work the soil live in the Homes of the Peasants beyond the City. Where the City ends there is a great road winding off to the north, and we Street Sweepers must keep this road clean to the first milepost. There is a hedge along the road, and beyond the hedge lie the fields. The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles. Women work in the fields, and their white tunics in the wind are like the wings of sea-gulls beating over the black soil.
And there it was that we saw Liberty 5-3000 walking along the furrows. Their body was straight and thin as a blade of iron. Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt. Their hair was golden as the sun; their hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as if it defied men to restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as if they deigned to fling a scornful gift, and the earth was a beggar under their feet.
We stood still; for the first time we knew fear, and then pain. And we stood still that we might not spill this pain more precious than pleasure.
Then we heard a voice from the others call their name: "Liberty 5-3000," and they turned and walked back. Thus we learned their name, and we stood watching them go, till their white tunic was lost in the blue mist.
And the following day, as we came to the northern road, we kept our eyes upon Liberty 5-3000 in the field. And each day thereafter we knew the illness of waiting for our hour on the northern road. And there we looked at Liberty 5-3000 each day. We know not whether they looked at us also, but we think they did.
Then one day they came close to the hedge, and suddenly they turned to us. They turned in a whirl and the movement of their body stopped, as if slashed off, as suddenly as it had started. They stood still as a stone, and they looked straight upon us, straight in our eyes. There was no smile on their face, and no welcome. But their face was taut, and their eyes were dark. Then they turned as swiftly, and they walked away from us.
But the following day, when we came to the road, they smiled. They smiled to us and for us. And we smiled in answer. Their head fell back, and their arms fell, as if their arms and their thin white neck were stricken suddenly with a great lassitude. They were not looking upon us, but upon the sky. Then they glanced at us over their shoulder, and we felt as if a hand had touched our body, slipping softly from our lips to our feet.
Every morning thereafter, we greeted each other with our eyes. We dared not speak. It is a transgression to speak to men of other Trades, save in groups at the Social Meetings. But once, standing at the hedge, we raised our hand to our forehead and then moved it slowly, palm down, toward Liberty 5-3000. Had the others seen it, they could have guessed nothing, for it looked only as if we were shading our eyes from the sun. But Liberty 5-3000 saw it and understood. They raised their hand to their forehead and moved it as we had. Thus, each day, we greet Liberty 5-3000, and they answer, and no men can suspect.
We do not wonder at this new sin of ours. It is our second Transgression of Preference, for we do not think of all our brothers, as we must, but only of one, and their name is Liberty 5-3000. We do not know why we think of them. We do not know why, when we think of them, we feel of a sudden that the earth is good and that it is not a burden to live.
We do not think of them as Liberty 5-3000 any longer. We have given them a name in our thoughts. We call them the Golden One. But it is a sin to give men other names which distinguish them from other men. Yet we call them the Golden One, for they are not like the others. The Golden One are not like the others.
And we take no heed of the law which says that men may not think of women, save at the Time of Mating. This is the time each spring when all the men older than twenty and all the women older than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of Mating. And each of the men have one of the women assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter, but women never see their children and children never know their parents. Twice have we been sent to the Palace of Mating, but it is an ugly and shameful matter, of which we do not like to think.
We had broken so many laws, and today we have broken one more. Today we spoke to the Golden One. The other women were far off in the field, when we stopped at the hedge by the side of the road. The Golden One were kneeling alone at the moat which runs through the field. And the drops of water falling from their hands, as they raised the water to their lips, were like sparks of fire in the sun. Then the Golden One saw us, and they did not move, kneeling there, looking at us, and circles of light played upon their white tunic, from the sun on the water of the moat, and one sparkling drop fell from a finger of their hand held as frozen in the air.
Then the Golden One rose and walked to the hedge, as if they had heard a command in our eyes. The two other Street Sweepers of our brigade were a hundred paces away down the road. And we thought that International 4-8818 would not betray us, and Union 5-3992 would not understand. So we looked straight upon the Golden One, and we saw the shadows of their lashes on their white cheeks and the sparks of sun on their lips. And we said:
"You are beautiful, Liberty 5-3000."
Their face did not move and they did not avert their eyes. Only their eyes grew wider, and there was triumph in their eyes, and it was not triumph over us, but over things we could not guess. Then they asked:
"What is your name?"
"Equality 7-2521," we answered.
"You are not one of our brothers, Equality 7-2521, for we do not wish you to be."
We cannot say what they meant, for there are no words for their meaning, but we know it without words and we knew it then.
"No," we answered, "nor are you one of our sisters."
"If you see us among scores of women, will you look upon us?"
"We shall look upon you, Liberty 5-3000, if we see you among all the women of the earth." Then they asked:
"Are Street Sweepers sent to different parts of the City or do they always work in the same places?"
"They always work in the same places," we answered, "and no one will take this road away from us."
"Your eyes," they said, "are not like the eyes of any among men."
And suddenly, without cause for the thought which came to us, we felt cold, cold to our stomach.
"How old are you?" we asked.
They understood our thought, for they lowered their eyes for the first time.
"Seventeen," they whispered. And we sighed, as if a burden had been taken from us, for we had been thinking without reason of the Palace of Mating. And we thought that we would not let the Golden One be sent to the Palace. How to prevent it, how to bar the will of the Councils, we knew not, but we knew suddenly that we would. Only we do not know why such thought came to us, for these ugly matters bear no relation to us and the Golden One. What relation can they bear?
Still, without reason, as we stood there by the hedge, we felt our lips drawn tight with hatred, a sudden hatred for all our brother men. And the Golden One saw it and smiled slowly, and there was in their smile the first sadness we had seen in them. We think that in the wisdom of women the Golden One had understood more than we can understand.
Then three of the sisters in the field appeared, coming toward the road, so the Golden One walked away from us. They took the bag of seeds, and they threw the seeds into the furrows of earth as they walked away. But the seeds flew wildly, for the hand of the Golden One was trembling.
Yet as we walked back to the Home of the Street Sweepers, we felt that we wanted to sing, without reason. So we were reprimanded tonight, in the dining hall, for without knowing it we had begun to sing aloud some tune we had never heard. But it is not proper to sing without reason, save at the Social Meetings.
"We are singing because we are happy," we answered the one of the Home Council who reprimanded us.
"Indeed you are happy," they answered. "How else can men be when they live for their brothers?"
And now, sitting here in our tunnel, we wonder about these words. It is forbidden, not to be happy. For, as it has been explained to us, men are free and the earth belongs to them; and all things on earth belong to all men; and the will of all men together is good for all; and so all men must be happy.
Yet as we stand at night in the great hall, removing our garments for sleep, we look upon our brothers and we wonder. The heads of our brothers are bowed. The eyes of our brothers are dull, and never do they look one another in the eyes. The shoulders of our brothers are hunched, and their muscles are drawn, as if their bodies were shrinking and wished to shrink out of sight. And a word steals into our mind, as we look upon our brothers, and that word is fear.
There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and in the air of the streets. Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.
We feel it also, when we are in the Home of the Street Sweepers. But here, in our tunnel, we feel it no longer. The air is pure under the ground. There is no odor of men. And these three hours give us strength for our hours above the ground.
Our body is betraying us, for the Council of the Home looks with suspicion upon us. It is not good to feel too much joy nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.
Yet our brothers are not like us. All is not well with our brothers. There are Fraternity 2-5503, a quiet boy with wise, kind eyes, who cry suddenly, without reason, in the midst of day or night, and their body shakes with sobs so they cannot explain. There are Solidarity 9-6347, who are a bright youth, without fear in the day; but they scream in their sleep, and they scream: "Help us! Help us! Help us!" into the night, in a voice which chills our bones, but the Doctors cannot cure Solidarity 9-6347.
And as we all undress at night, in the dim light of candles, our brothers are silent, for they dare not speak the thoughts of their minds. For all must agree with all, and they cannot know if their thoughts are the thoughts of all, and so they fear to speak. And they are glad when the candles are blown for the night. But we, Equality 7-2521, look through the window upon the sky, and there is peace in the sky, and cleanliness, and dignity. And beyond the City there lies the plain, and beyond the plain, black upon the black sky, there lies the Uncharted Forest.
We do not wish to look upon the Uncharted Forest. We do not wish to think of it. But ever do our eyes return to that black patch upon the sky. Men never enter the Uncharted Forest, for there is no power to explore it and no path to lead among its ancient trees which stand as guards of fearful secrets. It is whispered that once or twice in a hundred years, one among the men of the City escape alone and run to the Uncharted Forest, without call or reason. These men do not return. They perish from hunger and from the claws of the wild beasts which roam the Forest. But our Councils say this is only a legend. We have heard that there are many Uncharted Forests over the land, among the Cities. And it is whispered that they have grown over the ruins of many cities of the Unmentionable Times. The trees have swallowed the ruins, and the bones under the ruins, and all the things which perished. And as we look upon the Uncharted Forest far in the night, we think of the secrets of the Unmentionable Times. And we wonder how it came to pass that these secrets were lost to the world. We have heard the legends of the great fighting, in which many men fought on one side and only a few on the other. These few were the Evil Ones and they were conquered. Then great fires raged over the land. And in these fires the Evil Ones were burned. And the fire which is called the Dawn of the Great Rebirth, was the Script Fire where all the scripts of the Evil Ones were burned, and with them all the words of the Evil Ones. Great mountains of flame stood in the squares of the Cities for three months. Then came the Great Rebirth.
The words of the Evil Ones... The words of the Unmentionable Times... What are the words which we have lost?
May the Council have mercy upon us! We had no wish to write such a question, and we knew not what we were doing till we had written it. We shall not ask this question and we shall not think it. We shall not call death upon our head.
And yet... And yet... There is some word, one single word which is not in the language of men, but which has been. And this is the Unspeakable Word, which no men may speak nor hear. But sometimes, and it is rare, sometimes, somewhere, one among men find that word. They find it upon scraps of old manuscripts or cut into the fragments of ancient stones. But when they speak it they are put to death. There is no crime punished by death in this world, save this one crime of speaking the Unspeakable Word.
We have seen one of such men burned alive in the square of the City. And it was a sight which has stayed with us through the years, and it haunts us, and follows us, and it gives us no rest. We were a child then, ten years old. And we stood in the great square with all the children and all the men of the City, sent to behold the burning. They brought the Transgressor out into the square and they led him to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, theirs was the calmest and happiest face.
As the chains were wound over their body at the stake, and a flame set to the pyre, the Transgressor looked upon the City. There was a thin thread of blood running from the corner of their mouth, but their lips were smiling. And a monstrous thought came to us then, which has never left
As the flames rose, a thing happened which no eyes saw but ours, else we would not be living today. Perhaps it had only seemed to us. But it seemed to us that the eyes of the Transgressor had chosen us from the crowd and were looking straight upon us. There was no pain in their eyes and no knowledge of the agony of their body. There was only joy in them, and pride, a pride holier than it is fit for human pride to be. And it seemed as if these eyes were trying to tell us something through the flames, to send into our eyes some word without sound. And it seemed as if these eyes were begging us to gather that word and not to let it go from us and from the earth. But the flames rose and we could not guess the word....
What--even if we have to burn for it like the Saint of the pyre --what is the Unspeakable Word?
Chapter Three
We, Equality 7-2521, have discovered a new power of nature. And we have discovered it alone, and we are to know it.
It is said. Now let us be lashed for it, if we must. The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore all the things which are not known by all do not exist. But we think that the Council of Scholars is blind. The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them. We know, for we have found a secret unknown to all our brothers.
We know not what this power is nor whence it comes. But we know its nature, we have watched it and worked with it. We saw it first two years ago. One night, we were cutting open the body of a dead frog when we saw its leg jerking. It was dead, yet it moved. Some power unknown to men was making it move. We could not understand it. Then, after many tests, we found the answer. The frog had been hanging on a wire of copper; and it had been the metal of our knife which had sent a strange power to the copper through the brine of the frog's body. We put a piece of copper and a piece of zinc into a jar of brine, we touched a wire to them, and there, under our fingers, was a miracle which had never occurred before, a new miracle and a new power.
This discovery haunted us. We followed it in preference to all our studies. We worked with it, we tested in more ways than we can describe, and each step was another miracle unveiling before us. We came to know that we had found the greatest power on earth. For it defies all the laws known to men. It makes the needle move and turn on the compass which we stole from the Home of the Scholars; but we had been taught, when still a child, that the loadstone points to the north and this is a law which nothing can change; yet our new power defies all laws. We found that it causes lightning, and never have men known what causes lightning. In thunderstorms, we raised a tall rod of iron by the side of our hole, and we watched it from below. We have seen the lightning strike it again and again. And now we know that metal draws the power of the sky, and that metal can be made to give it forth.
We have built strange things with this discovery of ours. We used for it the copper wires which we found here under the ground. We have walked the length of our tunnel, with a candle lighting the way. We could go no farther than half a mile, for earth and rock had fallen at both ends. But we gathered all the things we found and we brought them to our work place. We found strange boxes with bars of metal inside, with many cords and strands and coils of metal. We found wires that led to strange little globes of glass on the walls; they contained threads of metal thinner than a spider's web.
These things help us in our work. We do not understand them, but we think that the men of the Unmentionable Times had known our power of the sky, and these things had some relation to it. We do not know, but we shall learn. We cannot stop now, even though it frightens us that we are alone in our knowledge.
No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many Scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone! Chapter Four
Many days passed before we could speak to the Golden One again. But then came the day when the sky turned white, as if the sun had burst and spread its flame in the air, and the fields lay still without breath, and the dust of the road was white in the glow. So the women of the field were weary, and they tarried over their work, and they were far from the road when we came. But the Golden One stood alone at the hedge, waiting. We stopped and we saw that their eyes, so hard and scornful to the world, were looking at us as if they would obey any word we might speak.
And we said:
"We have given you a name in our thoughts, Liberty 5-3000."
"What is our name?" they asked.
"The Golden One."
"Nor do we call you Equality 7-2521 when we think of you."
"What name have you given us?"
They looked straight into our eyes and they held their head high and they answered:
"The Unconquered."
For a long time we could not speak. Then we said:
"Such thoughts are forbidden, Golden One."
"But you think such thoughts as these and you wish us to think them."
We looked into their eyes and we could not lie.
"Yes," we whispered, and they smiled, and then we said: "Our dearest one, do not obey us." They stepped back, and their eyes were wide and still.
"Speak those words again," they whispered.
"Which words?" we asked. But they did not answer, and we knew it.
"Our dearest one," we whispered.
Never have men said this to women.
The head of the Golden One bowed slowly, and they stood still before us, their arms at their sides, the palms of their hands turned to us, as if their body were delivered in submission to our eyes. And we could not speak.
Then they raised their head, and they spoke simply and gently, as if they wished us to forget some anxiety of their own.
"The day is hot," they said, "and you have worked for many hours and you must be weary."
"No," we answered.
"It is cooler in the fields," they said, "and there is water to drink. Are you thirsty?"
"Yes," we answered, "but we cannot cross the hedge."
"We shall bring the water to you," they said.
Then they knelt by the moat, they gathered water in their two hands, they rose and they held the water out to our lips.
We do not know if we drank that water. We only knew suddenly that their hands were empty, but we were still holding our lips to their hands, and that they knew it but did not move.
We raised our head and stepped back. For we did not understand what had made us do this, and we were afraid to understand it. And the Golden One stepped back, and stood looking upon their hands in wonder. Then the Golden One moved away, even though no others were coming, and they moved stepping back, as if they could not turn from us, their arms bent before them, as if they could not lower their hands. Chapter Five
We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only.
We know not what we are saying. Our head is reeling. We look upon the light which we had made. We shall be forgiven for anything we say tonight . . . .
Tonight, after more days and trials than we can count, we finished building a strange thing, from the remains of the Unmentionable Times, a box of glass, devised to give forth the power of the sky of greater strength than we had ever achieved before. And when we put our wires to this box, when we closed the current--the wire glowed! It came to life, it turned red, and a circle of light lay on the stone before us.
We stood, and we held our head in our hands. We could not conceive of that which we had created. We had touched no flint, made no fire. Yet here was light, light that came from nowhere, light from the heart of metal. We blew out the candle. Darkness swallowed us. There was nothing left around us, nothing save night and a thin thread of flame in it, as a crack in the wall of a prison. We stretched our hands to the wire, and we saw our fingers in the red glow. We could not see our body nor feel it, and in that moment nothing existed save our two hands over a wire glowing in a black abyss.
Then we thought of the meaning of that which lay before us. We can light our tunnel, and the City, and all the Cities of the world with nothing save metal and wires. We can give our brothers a new light, cleaner and brighter than any they have ever known. The power of the sky can be made to do men's bidding. There are no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to grant us anything if we but choose to ask.
Then we knew what we must do. Our discovery is too great for us to waste our time in sweeping streets. We must not keep our secret to ourselves, nor buried under the ground. We must bring it into the sight of all men. We need all our time, we need the work rooms of the Home of the Scholars, we want the help of our brother Scholars and their wisdom joined to ours. There is so much work ahead for all of us, for all the Scholars of the world. In a month, the World Council of Scholars is to meet in our City. It is a great Council, to which the wisest of all lands are elected, and it meets once a year in the different Cities of the earth. We shall go to this Council and we shall lay before them, as our gift, the glass box with the power of the sky. We shall confess everything to them. They will see, understand and forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression. They will explain it to the Council of Vocations, and we shall be assigned to the Home of the Scholars. This has never been done before, but neither has a gift such as ours ever been offered to men.
We must wait. We must guard our tunnel as we had never guarded it before. For should any men save the Scholars learn of our secret, they would not understand it, nor would they believe us. They would see nothing, save our crime of working alone, and they would destroy us and our light. We care not about our body, but our light is...
Yes, we do care. For the first time we do care about our body. For this wire is a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two?
We stretch out our arms. For the first time do we know how strong our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight, for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to know the likeness of our own person. Chapter Six
We have not written for thirty days. For thirty days we have not been here, in our tunnel. We had been caught.
It happened on that night when we wrote last. We forgot, that night, to watch the sand in the glass which tells us when three hours have passed and it is time to return to the City Theatre. When we remembered, the sand had run out.
We hastened to the Theatre. But the big tent stood grey and silent against the sky. The streets of the City lay before us, dark and empty. If we went back to hide in our tunnel, we would be found and our light with us. So we walked to the Home of the Street Sweepers.
When the Council of the Home questioned us, we looked upon the faces of the Council, but there was no curiosity in those faces, and no anger, and no mercy. So when the oldest of them asked us: "Where have you been?" we thought of our glass box and of our light, and we forgot all else. And we answered: "We will not tell you."
The oldest did not question us further. They turned to the two youngest, and said, and their voice was bored:
"Take our brother Equality 7-2521 to the Palace of Corrective Detention. Lash them until they tell."
So we were taken to the Stone Room under the Palace of Corrective Detention. This room has no windows and it is empty save for an iron post. Two men stood by the post, naked but for leather aprons and leather hoods over their faces. Those who had brought us departed, leaving us to the two Judges who stood in a corner of the room. The Judges were small, thin men, grey and bent. They gave the signal to the two strong hooded ones.
They tore our clothes from our body, they threw us down upon our knees and they tied our hands to the iron post.
The first blow of the lash felt as if our spine had been cut in two. The second blow stopped the first, and for a second we felt nothing, then pain struck us in our throat and fire ran in our lungs without air. But we did not cry out.
The lash whistled like a singing wind. We tried to count the blows, but we lost count. We knew that the blows were falling upon our back. Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer. A flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes, and we thought of nothing save that grill, a grill, a grill of red squares, and then we knew that we were looking at the squares of the iron grill in the door, and there were also the squares of stone on the walls, and the squares which the lash was cutting upon our back, crossing and re- crossing itself in our flesh.
Then we saw a fist before us. It knocked our chin up, and we saw the red froth of our mouth on the withered fingers, and the Judge asked:
"Where have you been?"
But we jerked our head away, hid our face upon our tied hands, and bit our lips. The lash whistled again. We wondered who was sprinkling burning coal dust upon the floor, for we saw drops of red twinkling on the stones around us.
Then we knew nothing, save two voices snarling steadily, one after the other, even though we knew they were speaking many minutes apart:
"Where have you been where have you been where have you been where have you been? . . ."
And our lips moved, but the sound trickled back into our throat, and the sound was only:
"The light . . . The light . . . The light "
Then we knew nothing.
We opened our eyes, lying on our stomach on the brick floor of a cell. We looked upon two hands lying far before us on the bricks, and we moved them, and we knew that they were our hands. But we could not move our body. Then we smiled, for we thought of the light and that we had not betrayed it.
We lay in our cell for many days. The door opened twice each day, once for the men who brought us bread and water, and once for the Judges. Many Judges came to our cell, first the humblest and then the most honored Judges of the City. They stood before us in their white togas, and they asked:
"Are you ready to speak?"
But we shook our head, lying before them on the floor. And they departed.
We counted each day and each night as it passed. Then, tonight, we knew that we must escape. For tomorrow the World Council of Scholars is to meet in our City.
It was easy to escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention. The locks are old on the doors and there are no guards about. There is no reason to have guards, for men have never defied the Councils so far as to escape from whatever place they were ordered to be. Our body is healthy and strength returns to it speedily. We lunged against the door and it gave way. We stole through the dark passages, and through the dark streets, and down into our tunnel.
We lit the candle and we saw that our place had not been found and nothing had been touched. And our glass box stood before us on the cold oven, as we had left it. What matter they now, the scars upon our back!
Tomorrow, in the full light of day, we shall take our box, and leave our tunnel open, and walk through the streets to the Home of the Scholars. We shall put before them the greatest gift ever offered to men. We shall tell them the truth. We shall hand to them, as our confession, these pages we have written. We shall join our hands to theirs, and we shall work together, with the power of the sky, for the glory of mankind. Our blessing upon you, our brothers! Tomorrow, you will take us back into your fold and we shall be an outcast no longer. Tomorrow we shall be one of you again. Tomorrow . . . Chapter Seven
It is dark here in the forest. The leaves rustle over our head, black against the last gold of the sky. The moss is soft and warm. We shall sleep on this moss for many nights, till the beasts of the forest come to tear our body. We have no bed now, save the moss, and no future, save the beasts.
We are old now, yet we were young this morning, when we carried our glass box through the streets of the City to the Home of the Scholars. No men stopped us, for there were none about the Palace of Corrective Detention, and the others knew nothing. No men stopped us at the gate. We walked through the empty passages and into the great hall where the World Council of Scholars sat in solemn meeting.
We saw nothing as we entered, save the sky in the great windows, blue and glowing. Then we saw the Scholars who sat around a long table; they were as shapeless clouds huddled at the rise of a great sky. There were the men whose famous names we knew, and others from distant lands whose names we had not heard. We saw a great painting on the wall over their heads, of the twenty illustrious men who had invented the candle. All the heads of the Council turned to us as we entered. These great and wise of the earth did not know what to think of us, and they looked upon us with wonder and curiosity, as if we were a miracle. It is true that our tunic was torn and stained with brown stains which had been blood. We raised our right arm and we said:
"Our greeting to you, our honored brothers of the World Council of Scholars!"
Then Collective 0-0009, the oldest and wisest of the Council, spoke and asked:
"Who are you, our brother? For you do not look like a Scholar."
"Our name is Equality 7-2521," we answered, "and we are a Street Sweeper of this City."
Then it was as if a great wind had stricken the hall, for all the Scholars spoke at once, and they were angry and frightened. "A Street Sweeper! A Street Sweeper walking in upon the World Council of Scholars! It is not to be believed! It is against all the rules and all the laws!"
But we knew how to stop them.
"Our brothers!" we said. "We matter not, nor our transgression. It is only our brother men who matter. Give no thought to us, for we are nothing, but listen to our words, for we bring you a gift such as has never been brought to men. Listen to us, for we hold the future of mankind in our hands."
Then they listened.
We placed our glass box on the table before them. We spoke of it, and of our long quest, and of our tunnel, and of our escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention. Not a hand moved in that hall, as we spoke, nor an eye. Then we put the wires to the box, and they all bent forward and sat still, watching. And we stood still, our eyes upon the wire. And slowly, slowly as a flush of blood, a red flame trembled in the wire. Then the wire glowed. But terror struck the men of the Council. They leapt to their feet, they ran from the table, and they stood pressed against the wall, huddled together, seeking the warmth of one another's bodies to give them courage.
We looked upon them and we laughed and said:
"Fear nothing, our brothers. There is a great power in these wires, but this power is tamed. It is yours. We give it to you."
Still they would not move.
"We give you the power of the sky!" we cried. "We give you the key to the earth! Take it, and let us be one of you, the humblest among you. Let us work together, and harness this power, and make it ease the toil of men. Let us throw away our candles and our torches. Let us flood our cities with light. Let us bring a new light to men!"
But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their eyes were still, and small, and evil.
"Our brothers!" we cried. "Have you nothing to say to us?"
Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and the others followed.
"Yes," spoke Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to you."
The sound of their voice brought silence to the hall and to the beat of our heart.
"Yes," said Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to a wretch who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy! How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the minds of your brothers? And if the Council had decreed that you be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?"
"How dared you, gutter cleaner," spoke Fraternity 9-3452, "to hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of one and not of many?"
"You shall be burned at the stake," said Democracy 4-6998. "No, they shall be lashed," said Unanimity 7-3304, "till there is nothing left under the lashes."
"No," said Collective 0-0009, "we cannot decide upon this, our brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done."
We looked upon them and we pleaded:
"Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do with the light?"
Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.
"So you think you have found a new power," said Collective 0-0009. "Do you think all your brothers think that?"
"No," we answered. "What is not thought by all men cannot be true," said Collective 0-0009.
"You have worked on this alone?" asked International 1-5537.
"Yes," we answered.
"What is not done collectively cannot be good," said International 1-5537.
"Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past," said Solidarity 8-1164, "but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must."
"This box is useless," said Alliance 6-7349.
"Should it be what they claim of it," said Harmony 9-2642, "then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one." "This would wreck the Plans of the World Council," said Unanimity 2-9913, "and without the Plans of the World Council the sun cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all the Councils for the Candle, and to decide upon the number needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon."
"And if this should lighten the toil of men," said Similarity 5-0306, "then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men."
Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.
"This thing," they said, "must be destroyed."
And all the others cried as one:
"It must be destroyed!"
Then we leapt to the table.
We seized our box, we shoved them aside, and we ran to the window. We turned and we looked at them for the last time, and a rage, such as is not fit for humans to know, choked our voice in our throat.
"You fools!" we cried. "You fools! You thrice-damned fools!"
We swung our fist through the windowpane, and we leapt out in a ringing rain of glass.
We fell, but we never let the box fall from our hands. Then we ran. We ran blindly, and men and houses streaked past us in a torrent without shape. And the road seemed not to be flat before us, but as if it were leaping up to meet us, and we waited for the earth to rise and strike us in the face. But we ran. We knew not where we were going. We knew only that we must run, run to the end of the world, to the end of our days.
Then we knew suddenly that we were lying on a soft earth and that we had stopped. Trees taller than we had ever seen before stood over us in a great silence. Then we knew. We were in the Uncharted Forest. We had not thought of coming here, but our legs had carried our wisdom, and our legs had brought us to the Uncharted Forest against our will.
Our glass box lay beside us. We crawled to it, we fell upon it, our face in our arms, and we lay still.
We lay thus for a long time. Then we rose, we took our box, had walked on into the forest.
It mattered not where we went. We knew that men would not follow us, for they never entered the Uncharted Forest. We had nothing to fear from them. The forest disposes of its own victims. This gave us no fear either. Only we wished to be away from the City and the air that touches upon the air of the City. So we walked on, our box in our arms, our heart empty.
We are doomed. Whatever days are left to us, we shall spend them alone. And we have heard of the corruption to be found in solitude. We have torn ourselves from the truth which is our brother men, and there is no road back for us, and no redemption.
We know these things, but we do not care. We care for nothing on earth. We are tired. Only the glass box in our arms is like a living heart that gives us strength. We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth. Why wonder about this? We have not many days to live. We are walking to the fangs awaiting us somewhere among the great, silent trees. There is not a thing behind us to regret.
Then a blow of pain struck us, our first and our only. We thought of the Golden One. We thought of the Golden One whom we shall never see again. Then the pain passed. It is best. We are one of the Damned. It is best if the Golden One forget our name and the body which bore that name. Chapter Eight
It has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.
We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted to leap to our feet, as we have had to leap to our feet every morning of our life, but we remembered suddenly that no bell had rung and that there was no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back, we threw our arms out, and we looked up at the sky. The leaves had edges of silver that trembled and rippled like a river of green and fire flowing high above us.
We did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie thus as long as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought. We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were thinking that these were things without sense, but before we knew it, our body had risen in one leap. Our arms stretched out of their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.
Then we took our glass box, and we went into the forest. We went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops. The trees parted before us, calling us forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on, without thought, without care, with nothing to feel save the song of our body.
We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree branches, and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone and we sent it as an arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had ever tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that there was a great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.
Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down, upturned, and the sky at the bottom. We knelt by the stream and we bent down to drink. And then we stopped. For, upon the blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first time.
We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt no pity when we looked upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear from this being.
We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this day, we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it, and we laughed.
We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic together with the written pages we had brought for the World Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot understand.
Chapter Nine
We have not written for many days. We did not wish to speak. For we needed no words to remember that which has happened to us.
It was on our second day in the forest that we heard steps behind us. We hid in the bushes, and we waited. The steps came closer. And then we saw the fold of a white tunic among the trees, and a gleam of gold.
We leapt forward, we ran to them, and we stood looking upon the Golden One.
They saw us, and their hands closed into fists, and the fists pulled their arms down, as if they wished their arms to hold them, while their body swayed. And they could not speak.
We dared not come too close to them. We asked, and our voice trembled:
"How come you to be here, Golden One?" But they whispered only:
"We have found you "
"How came you to be in the forest?" we asked.
They raised their head, and there was a great pride in their voice; they answered:
"We have followed you."
Then we could not speak, and they said:
"We heard that you had gone to the Uncharted Forest, for the whole City is speaking of it. So on the night of the day when we heard it, we ran away from the Home of the Peasants. We found the marks of your feet across the plain where no men walk. So we followed them, and we went into the forest, and we followed the path where the branches were broken by your body." Their white tunic was torn, and the branches had cut the skin of their arms, but they spoke as if they had never taken notice of it, nor of weariness, nor of fear.
"We have followed you," they said, "and we shall follow you wherever you go. If danger threatens you, we shall face it also. If it be death, we shall die with you. You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation."
They looked upon us, and their voice was low, but there was bitterness and triumph in their voice:
"Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than be blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do not send us away from you."
Then they knelt, and bowed their golden head before us.
We had never thought of that which we did. We bent to raise the Golden One to their feet, but when we touched them, it was as if madness had stricken us. We seized their body and we pressed our lips to theirs. The Golden One breathed once, and their breath was a moan, and then their arms closed around us.
We stood together for a long time. And we were frightened that we had lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is possible to men.
Then we said:
"Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own."
Then we walked on into the forest, their hand in ours.
And that night we knew that to hold the body of a woman in our arms is neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men. We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek no end. But each day added to the chain of days between us and the City is like an added blessing.
We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than we need for our food; we find water and fruit in the forest. At night, we choose a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around it. We sleep in the midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not attack us. We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals, watching us from the tree branches beyond. The fires smolder as a crown of jewels around us, and smoke stands still in the air, in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep together in the midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us, their head upon our breast.
Some day, we shall stop and build a house, when we shall have gone far enough. But we do not have to hasten. The days before us are without end, like the forest.
We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it seems so clear and so simple. When questions come to puzzle us, we walk faster, then turn and forget all things as we watch the Golden One following. The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. They approach us, and they stop, laughing, knowing what we think, and they wait obediently, without questions, till it pleases us to turn and go on.
We go on and we bless the earth under our feet. But questions come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then what is good and what is evil?
Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which comes from one is evil. Thus we have been taught with our first breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet now, as we walk the forest, we are learning to doubt.
There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which taught us joy were the power created in our wires, and the Golden One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come from us alone, they bear no relation to our brothers, and they do not concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.
There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men. What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles within us, struggles to be born.
Today, the Golden One stopped suddenly and said:
"We love you."
But then they frowned and shook their head and looked at us helplessly.
"No," they whispered, "that is not what we wished to say."
They were silent, then they spoke slowly, and their words were halting, like the words of a child learning to speak for the first time:
"We are one . . . alone . . . and only . . . and we love you who are one . . . alone . . . and only."
We looked into each other's eyes and we knew that the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly.
And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find. Chapter Ten
We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper made thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see the Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient bed. This is our home.
We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we have been crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the Cities.
We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow. Stones rolled from under our feet, and we heard them striking the rocks below, farther and farther down, and the mountains rang with each stroke, and long after the strokes had died. But we went on, for we knew that no men would ever follow our track nor reach us here.
Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees, high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and we stopped. But the flame was unmoving, yet blinding as liquid metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there, before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire came from the sun on the glass of its windows.
The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor. There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows went on straight around corners, though how this house kept standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our tunnel.
We both knew it without words: this house was left from the Unmentionable Times. The trees had protected it from time and weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather. We turned to the Golden One and we asked:
"Are you afraid?" But they shook their head. So we walked to the door, and we threw it open, and we stepped together into the house of the Unmentionable Times.
We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to learn and to understand the things of this house. Today, we could only look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have lived here. We thought it strange that man had been permitted to build a house for only twelve.
Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon colors, colors, and more colors than we thought possible, we who had seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey. There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do not know. And there were globes of glass everywhere, in each room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such as we had seen in our tunnel.
We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its threshold. For it was a small room and there were only two beds in it. We found no other beds in the house, and then we knew that only two had lived here, and this passes understanding. What kind of world did they have, the men of the Unmentionable Times?
We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we touched them, but others were of heavier cloth, and they felt soft and new in our fingers.
We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and the letters on their pages were small and so even that we wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we shall begin to read these scripts.
When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds. "We shall never leave this house," we said, "nor let it be taken from us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is your house, Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men whatever as far as the earth may stretch. We shall not share it with others, as we share not our joy with them, nor our love, nor our hunger. So be it to the end of our days."
"Your will be done," they said.
Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home. We brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under our windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh to be cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of wonders, which must have been the cooking room of the house.
We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass. They stood before it and they looked and looked upon their own body.
When the sun sank beyond the mountains, the Golden One fell asleep on the floor, amidst jewels, and bottles of crystal, and flowers of silk. We lifted the Golden One in our arms and we carried them to a bed, their head falling softly upon our shoulder. Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper from the room of the manuscripts, and we sat by the window, for we knew that we could not sleep tonight.
And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits. It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before us. We are to speak. We are to give its goal, its highest meaning to all this glowing space of rock and sky.
We look ahead, we beg our heart for guidance in answering this call no voice has spoken, yet we have heard. We look upon our hands. We see the dust of centuries, the dust which hid great secrets and perhaps great evils. And yet it stirs no fear within our heart, but only silent reverence and pity.
May knowledge come to us! What is this secret our heart has understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it? Chapter Eleven
I am. I think. I will.
My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine . . . .
What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer.
I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect. Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: "I will it!"
Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.
I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold. For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and an unspeakable lie.
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?
But I am done with this creed of corruption.
I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.
This god, this one word:
"I." Chapter Twelve
It was when I read the first of the books I found in my house that I saw the word "I." And when I understood this word, the book fell from my hands, and I wept, I who had never known tears. I wept in deliverance and in pity for all mankind.
I understood the blessed thing which I had called my curse. I understood why the best in me had been my sins and my transgressions; and why I had never felt guilt in my sins. I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
I read many books for many days. Then I called the Golden One, and I told her what I had read and what I had learned. She looked at me and the first words she spoke were:
"I love you."
Then I said: "My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. His name was Prometheus."
"It shall be your name," said the Golden One.
"And I have read of a goddess," I said, "who was the mother of the earth and of all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this be your name, my Golden One, for you are to be the mother of a new kind of gods."
"It shall be my name," said the Golden One.
Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth. I shall live here, in my own house. I shall take my food from the earth by the toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further, the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest among them.
I have learned that the power of the sky was known to men long ago; they called it Electricity. It was the power that moved their greatest inventions. It lit this house with light that came from those globes of glass on the walls. I have found the engine which produced this light. I shall learn how to repair it and how to make it work again. I shall learn how to use the wires which carry this power. Then I shall build a barrier of wires around my home, and across the paths which lead to my home; a barrier light as a cobweb, more impassable than a wall of granite; a barrier my brothers will never be able to cross. For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth. Gaea is pregnant with my child. He will be taught to say "I" and to bear the pride of it. He will be taught to walk straight on his own feet. He will be taught reverence for his own spirit.
When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day, for the last time, into the cursed City of my birth. I shall call to me my friend who has no name save International 4-8818, and all those like him, Fraternity 2- 5503, who cries without reason, and Solidarity 9-6347 who calls for help in the night, and a few others. I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers. They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress. And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter in the new history of man.
These are the last things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning.
What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word "We."
When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the depth of some one spirit, such as spirit existed but for its own sake. Those men who survived- those eager to obey, eager to live for one another, since they had nothing else to vindicate them- those men could neither carry on, nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men- men with nothing to offer save their great numbers- lose the steel towers, the flying ships, the power wires, all the things they had not created and could never keep. Perhaps, later, some men had been born with the mind and the courage to recover these things which were lost; perhaps these men came before the Councils of Scholars. They answered as I have been answered- and for the same reasons.
But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they had lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.
Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word. What agony must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning. And they, those few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And they chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I send my salute across the centuries, and my pity. Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men.
Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. And the day will come when I shall break the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake.
For the coming of that day I shall fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor. And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.
The sacred word:
EGO
7
War with the Newts (Válka s Mloky in the original Czech), also translated as Salamander Wars, is a 1936 satirical science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Čapek. It concerns the discovery in the Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, an intelligent breed of newts, who are initially enslaved and exploited.
BOOK ONEANDRIAS SHEUCHZERIChapter 1THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF CAPTAIN VAN TOCHIf you looked up the little island of Tana Masa on the map you would find it just on the Equator, not far south of Sumatra; but if you were on the deck of the Kandong Bandoeng and asked its captain, J. van Toch, what he thought of this Tana Masa where you've just dropped anchor he would first curse for a short while and then he would tell you that it's the dirtiest hole all the Sunda Islands, even more loathsome than Tana Bala and easily as damnable as Pini or Banyak; that the only apology for a human being that lives there-- not counting these louse-ridden Bataks, of course--is a drunken commercial agent, a cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese, and an even bigger thief, pagan and pig than the whole of Cuba and the whole of the white race put together; if there's anything in this world that's damnable then it's the damned life on this damned Tana Masa. And then, you might cautiously ask him why it is that he's just dropped his damned anchor as if he wanted to spend three damned days here; at which he would snort in irritation and grumble something about not being so damned stupid as to sail all the way to Kandon Bandoeng just to get this damned copra or palm oil, and there's nothing else here, but I've got my damned orders, and you will please be so kind as to mind your own damned business. And he would carry on cursing as widely and as fully as you might expect from a sea captain who was no longer young but still lively for his age. But if, instead of asking all sorts of impertinent questions, you left Captain J. van Toch to grumble and curse by himself you might find out something more. Surely it's obvious the man needs a rest. Just leave him alone, he can sort out his foul mood by himself. "Listen!" the captain said suddenly. "Those damned Jew-boys back in Amsterdam, all they seem to think about is pearls. Have a look around you; can you see any pearls? They say the people are crazy round here for pearls and that sort of thing." At this point the captain spat in anger. "We know all about that, load up with pearls! That's because you people always want to start a war or something. All you're worried about is money. And then you call it a crisis." For a short while, Captain J. van Toch considered whether he ought to start discussing political economics, considering that that's all they ever do talk about nowadays. But it's too hot and languid to talk about that sort of thing here, anchored off Tana Masa; so the captain merely waved his hand and grumbled: "That's what they say, pearls! In Ceylon they've got enough pearls piled up to last them for five years, on Formosa they've put a ban on gathering them--and so they say to me, Captain van Toch, go and see if you can find somewhere new to gather pearls. Go on down to those damned little islands, you might find whole bays full of oysters down there ..." The captain pulled out his light-blue handkerchief and blew his nose in contempt. "Those rats in Europe, they think there's still something to find down here, something they don't already know about. God, what a bunch of fools they are! Next they'll be wanting me to look up the Bataks snouts to see if they don't have them full of pearls. New pearl fisheries! I know there's a new brothel in Padang, but new pearl fisheries? I know these islands like my trousers, all the way from Ceylon down to that damned Clipperton Island, and if anyone thinks there's anything new still left to find there that they can make any money out of, well good luck to them. Thirty years I've been sailing these waters, and now these fools think I'm going to discover something new!" This was a task so insulting it made Captain van Toch gasp. "Why can't they send some green kid to find something for them if they want to gape in astonishment; but instead they expect someone to do that who knows the area as well as Captain J. van Toch...Please try and understand this. In Europe there might still be something left to discover; but here--people only come here to sniff out something they could eat, or rather not even to eat, to find something to buy and sell. If in all these damned tropics there was still something they could double the price of there'd be three commercial agents standing there waving their snotty handkerchiefs at the ships of seven countries to stop for it. That's how it is. I know about these things better than the colonial office of Her Majesty the Queen, if you'll forgive me." Captain van Toch made a great effort to overcome his righteous indignation, and after a prolonged period of exertion he was successful. "D'you see those two contemptible layabouts down there? They're pearl fishers from Ceylon, Sinhalese, God help us, just as the Lord made them; but what He made them for, I don't know. I have them on board with me, and when we find any stretch of coast that doesn't have a sign up saying Agency or Bata or Customs Office down they go in the water to look for oysters. That small bugger, he can dive down eighty meters deep; in the Princes Islands he went down to ninety meters to get the handle from a film projector. But pearls? Nothing! Not a sniff of them! Worthless rabble, these Sinhalese. And that's the sort of worthless work I do. Pretend to be buying palm oil and all the time looking for new pearl fisheries. Next they'll be wanting me to find a new virgin continent for them. This isn't a job for an honest captain in the merchant navy. Captain J. van Toch isn't some cursed adventurer, no. And on he would go; the sea is wide and the ocean of time has no limits; spit in the sea, my friend, and it will not return, berate your destiny and you will never change it; and so on through many preparations and circumstances until we finally arrive at the point when J. van Toch, captain of the Dutch vessel, Kandong Bandoeng, will sigh and climb down into the boat for the trip to Tana Masa where he will negotiate with the drunken half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese extraction about certain business matters. "Sorry, Captain," the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese extraction finally said, "but here on Tana Masa there aren't any oysters. These filthy Bataks," he would inform him with boundless disgust, "will even eat the jellyfish; there are more of them in the water than on the land, the women here smell of fish, you cannot imagine what it is like--what was I saying? Ah, yes, you were asking about women." "And is there not even any stretch of coastline round here," the captain asked, "where these Bataks don't go in the water?" The half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese shook his head. "There is not. Unless you count Devil Bay, but that would not interest you." "Why not?" "Because...no-one is allowed to go there. Another drink, Captain?" "Thanks. Are there sharks there?" "Sharks and everything else besides," the half-cast mumbled. "Is a bad place, Captain. The Bataks would not like to see anyone going down there." "Why not?" "There are demons there, Captain. Sea demons." "What is that, a sea demon? A kind of fish?" "Not a fish," the half-cast corrected him. "Simply demons, Captain. Underwater demons. The Bataks call them tapa. Tapa. They say that that's where they have their city, these demons. Another drink?" "And what do they look like, these sea demons?" The half cast of Cubanese and Portuguese shrugged his shoulders. "Like a demon, Captain. I once saw one of them...or just its head, at least. I was coming back in a boat from Cape Haarlem... and suddenly, in front of me, a kind of lump stuck up out of the water." "And what did it look like?" "It had a head...like a Batak, Captain, but entirely without hair." "Sure it wasn't a real Batak?" "Not a real Batak, Captain. In this place no Batak would ever go into the water. And then...the thing blinked at me with an eyelid from beneath its eye." The half-cast shuddered with the horror of it. "An eyelid from beneath its eye, which reached up to cover the whole eye. That was a tapa." Captain J. van Toch turned his glass of palm wine around between his chubby fingers. "And you hadn't been drinking, had you? You weren't drunk?" "I was drunk, Captain. How else would I ever had rowed into that place. The Bataks don't like it when anyone...anyone disturbs these demons." Captain van Toch shook his head. "Listen, demons don't exist And if they did exist they would look like Europeans. That must have been some kind of fish you saw or something." "A fish!" the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese spluttered. "A fish does not have hands, Captain. I am not some Batak Captain, I went to school in Badyoeng...I might even still know my ten commandments and other scientifically proven facts; and an educated man will know the difference between a demon and an animal. Ask the Bataks, Captain." "Negro superstitions," the captain declared with the jovial confidence of an educated man. "This is scientific nonsense. A demon can't live in water anyway. What would he be doing in the water? You shouldn't listen to all the nonsense talked by the natives, lad. Somebody gave the place the name Devil Bay and ever since then the Bataks have been afraid of it. That's all there is to it," the captain declared, and threw his chubby hand down on the table. "There's nothing there, lad, that is scientifically obvious." "There is, Captain," affirmed the half-cast who had been to school in Badyoeng. "But no sensible person has any business going to Devil Bay." Captain J. van Toch turned red. "What's that?" he shouted. "You dirty Cuban, you think I'm afraid of these demons? We'll see about that," he said as he stood up with all the mass of his honest two hundred pounds. "I'm not going to waste my time with you here, not when I've got business to attend to. But just remember this; the Dutch colonies don't have any demons in them; even if there are in the French. There, there might well be. And now call the mayor of this damned Kampong over to speak to me." It did not take long to find the aforementioned dignitary; he was squatting down beside the half-casts shop chewing sugar cane. He was an elderly man, naked, but a lot thinner than mayors usually are in Europe. Some way behind him, keeping the appropriate distance, the entire village was also squatting, complete with women and children. They were clearly expecting to be filmed. "Now listen to this, son," Captain van Toch said to him in Malay (he could just as well have spoken to him in Dutch or English as the honourable old Batak knew not a word of Malay, and everything said by the captain had to be interpreted into Batak by the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese, but for some reason the captain thought Malay would be more appropriate). "Now listen to this, son, I need a few big, strong, powerful lads to go out on a fishing trip with me. Understand what I mean? Out on a fishing trip." The half-cast translated this and the mayor nodded his head to show he understood; then he turned round to face the wider audience and said something to them, clearly meeting with great success. "Their chief says," translated the half-cast, "that the whole village will go out with the captain wherever the captain might wish." "Very well. So tell him were going to fish for clams in Devil Bay." There followed about fifteen minutes of animated discussion with the whole village taking part, especially the old women. Finally the half-cast turned to the captain. "They say it's not possible to go to Devil Bay, Captain." The captain began to turn red. "And why not?" The half-cast shrugged his shoulders. "Because there are the tapa-tapa there. Demons, Captain." The captain's colour began to rise to purple. "Tell them, then, that if they don't go...I'll knock all their teeth out...I'll tear their ears off...I'll hang the lot of them...and that I'll burn down their entire flea-ridden village. Understand?" The half-cast dutifully translated what the captain had said, at which there was more lively discussion. The half-cast finally turned to the captain. "They say they intend to make a complaint to the police in Padang, Captain, because you've threatened them. There seem to be laws about that. The mayor says he can't allow that sort of thing." Captain J. van Toch began to turn blue. "Tell him, then," he snarled, "that he is a..." and he spoke without pausing for breath for a good eleven minutes. The half-cast translated what he had said, as far as his vocabulary was able; and then he once again translated the Bataks long, but objective, verdict back to the captain. "They say they might be willing to relinquish taking you to court, Captain, if you pay a fine into the hands of the local authorities. They suggest," here he hesitated, "two hundred rupees, Captain; but that seems rather a lot. Offer them five." Captain van Toch's complexion began to break out in purple blotches. First he offered to murder all the Bataks in the world, then the offer went down to giving them all three hundred good kickings, and finally he agreed to content himself with stuffing the mayor and putting him on display in the colonial museum in Amsterdam; for their part, the Bataks went down from two hundred rupees to an iron pump with a wheel, and finally insisted on no more than that the captain give the mayor his petrol cigarette lighter as a token. ("Give it to him, Captain," urged the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese, "I've got three cigarette lighters in my store, even if they don't have wicks.") Thus, peace was restored on Tana Masa; but Captain J. van Toch now knew that the dignity of the white race was at stake. That afternoon a boat set out from the Dutch ship, Kandon Bandoeng, with the following crew: Captain J. van Toch, Jensen the Swede, Gudmundson the Icelander, Gillemainen the Finn, and two Sinhalese pearl fishers. The boat headed straight for Devil Bay. At three o'clock, when the tide was at its highest, the captain stood on the shore, the boat was out watching for sharks about a hundred meters offshore, and both the Sinhalese divers were waiting, knife in hand, for the signal to jump into the water. "Now you go in," the captain told the farther of the two naked savages. The Sinhalese jumped into the water, waded out a few paces and then dived. The captain looked at his watch. After four minutes and twenty seconds a brown head emerged to his left, about sixty meters away; with a strange, desperate shudder which seemed at the same time as if paralysed, the Sinhalese clawed at the rocks, in one hand he had the knife, in the other some pearl bearing oysters. The captain scowled. "So, what's wrong?" he asked, sharply. The Sinhalese was still slithering up the rock, unable to speak with the horror of it. "What has happened?" the captain shouted. "Saheb, Saheb," said the Sinhalese as he sank down on the beach, gasping for breath. "Saheb...Saheb..." "Sharks?" "Djinns," groaned the Sinhalese. "Demons, Captain. Thousands and thousands of demons!" He pressed his fist into his eye. "Everywhere demons, Captain!" "Show me those oysters," the captain ordered him, and began to open one with the knife. Inside, there was a small, perfect pearl. "Find any more of these?" The Sinhalese drew another three oysters out from the bag he had hanging round his neck. "There are oysters down there, Captain, but they are guarded by these demons...They were watching me as I cut them off..." The curls on his head stuck out with shock. "Not here, Saheb, not here!" The captain opened the oysters; two of them were empty and in the third there was a pearl the size of a pea, as round as a drop of mercury. Captain van Toch looked at the pearl and then at the Sinhalese collapsed on the ground. "won't you," he said hesitantly, "dive in there one more time?" Without a word, the Sinhalese shook his head. Captain J. van Toch felt a strong urge to castigate and shout at the Sinhalese; but to his surprise he found that he was speaking quietly and almost gently: "Don't you worry, lad. And what did they look like, these... demons?" "Like little children," said the Sinhalese with a sigh. "They have a tail, Captain, and they're about this high," indicating about one meter twenty above the ground. "They stood all around me and watched what I was doing...a sort of circle of them..." The Sinhalese shuddered. "Saheb, not here Saheb, not here!" Captain van Toch thought for a while. "And what about when they blink; was it with their lower eyelid or what?" "I don't know, Captain," the Sinhalese croaked. "There are ten thousand of them there!" The captain looked round to find the other Sinhalese; he stood about fifty meters away, waiting without interest with his hands crossed over on his shoulders; perhaps because when a person is naked he has nowhere else to put his hands than on his own shoulders. The captain gave him a silent signal and the gaunt Sinhalese jumped into the water. After three minutes and fifty seconds he re-emerged, clawing at the slippery rocks. "Come on, hurry up," the captain shouted, but then he began to look more carefully and soon he himself was jumping and clambering over the rocks to the Sinhalese; no-one would have thought that a body like that could jump so nimbly. At the last moment he caught hold of the Sinhalese hand and pulled him breathless from the water. Then he lay him on the rock and wiped the sweat off his brow. The Sinhalese lay without moving; his shin had been scraped and the bone underneath was exposed, clearly he had injured it on some rock, but he was otherwise unhurt. The captain raised the man's eyelid; all he could see was the white. There was no sign of any oysters or the knife. Just then, the boat and its crew came in close to shore. "Captain," Jensen the Swede called, "there are sharks around here. Are you going to search for oysters any longer?" "No," said the captain. "Come in here and pick up these two." On the way back to the ship Jensen drew the captains attention to something; "Look how it suddenly becomes shallow just here. It goes on just like this as far as the shore." And he demonstrated his point by pushing his oar down into the water. "it's as if there were some kind of weir under the water." The little Sinhalese did not come round until they were back on board; he sat with his knees under his chin, shaking from head to toe. The captain sent everyone away and sat down facing him with his legs wide apart. "Out with it," he said. "What did you see down there?" "Djinns, Saheb," whispered the slender Sinhalese; now even his eyelids had begun to shake, and the whole of his skin came out in goosepimples. "And...what did they look like?" the captain spluttered. "Like...like..." A strip of white appeared once more in the Sinhalese eyes. Captain J. van Toch, with unexpected liveliness, slapped him on both cheeks with his full hand to bring him back to consciousness. "Thanks, Saheb," the gaunt Sinhalese sighed, and the pupils re-appeared in his eyes. "Alright now?" "Yes, Saheb." "Were there oysters down there?" "Yes, Saheb." With a great deal of patience and thoroughness, Captain J. van Toch went on with the cross questioning. Yes, there were demons down there. How many? Thousands and thousands. About the size of a ten year old child, Captain, and almost black. They swim in the water, and on the bottom they walk on two legs. Two legs, Saheb, just like you or me, but always swaying from side to side, like this, like this, like this...Yes Captain, they have hands too, just like people; no, they don't have claws, they're more like a child's hands. No, Saheb, they don't have horns or fur. Yes, they have a tail, a little like a fish's tail but without the fins. And a big head, round like a Bataks. No, they don't say anything, Captain, only a sort of squelch. When the Sinhalese had been cutting an oyster off, about sixteen metres down, he felt something like little cold fingers touch his back. He had looked round and there were hundreds and hundreds of them all around him. Hundreds and hundreds, Captain, swimming around and standing on stones and all of them were watching what the Sinhalese was doing. So he dropped the knife and the oyster and tried to swim up to the surface. Then he struck against some of the demons who had been swimming after him, and what happened next he did not know. Captain J. van Toch looked thoughtfully at the little diver as he sat there shivering. Hell be no good for anything from now on, the said to himself, he would send him to Padang and back on home to Ceylon. Grumbling and snorting, the captain went to his cabin, where he spilled the two pearls out onto the table from a paper bag. One of them was as small as a grain of sand and the other as a pea, with a shimmer of silver and pink. And with that, the captain of the Dutch ship, Kandong Bandoeng, snorted; and then he reached into the cupboard for his bottle of Irish whiskey. At six o clock he had himself rowed back to the village and went straight to the half cast of Cubanese and Portuguese. "Toddy," he said, and that was the only word he uttered; he sat on the corrugated-iron veranda, clutched a thick glass tumbler in his chubby fingers and drank and spat and stared out from under his bushy eyebrows at the dirty and trampled yard where some emaciated yellow chickens pecked at something invisible between the palm trees. The half cast avoided saying anything, and merely poured the drinks. Slowly, the captain's eyes became bloodshot and his fingers began to move awkwardly. It was almost dark when he stood up and tightened his trousers. "Are you going to bed, Captain?" the half cast of demon and devil asked politely. The captain punched his fist in the air. "I'm going to go and see if there are any demons in this world that I've never seen before. You, which damned way is north-west?" "This way," the half cast showed him. "Where are you going?" "To Hell," Captain J. van Toch rasped. "Going to have a look at Devil Bay." It was from that evening on that Captain J. van Toch's behaviour became so strange. He did not return to the village until dawn; said not a word to anyone but merely had himself taken back to the ship, where he locked himself in his cabin until evening. Nobody thought this very odd as the Kandong Bandoeng had some of the blessings of Tana Masa to load on board (copra, pepper, camphor, guttapercha, palm oil, tobacco and labourers); but that evening, when they went to tell him that everything had been loaded, he just snorted and said, "Boat. To the village." And he did not return until dawn. Jensen the Swede, who helped him back on board, merely asked him politely whether they would be setting sail that day. The captain turned on him as if he had just been knifed in the back. "And what's it to you?" he snapped. "You mind your own damned business!" All that day the Kandong Bandoeng lay at anchor off the coast of Tana Masa and did nothing. In the evening the captain rolled out of his cabin and ordered, "Boat. To the village." Zapatis, the little Greek, stared at him with his one blind eye and the other eye squinting. "Look at this lads," he crowed, "either the old mans got some girl or he's gone totally mad." Jensen the Swede scowled. "And what's it to you?" he snapped at Zapatis. "You mind your own damned business!" Then, together with Gudmundson the Icelander, he took the little boat and rowed down to Devil Bay. They stayed in the boat behind the rocks and waited to see what would happen. The captain came across the bay and seemed to be waiting for someone; he stopped for a while and called out something like ts-ts-ts. "Look at this," said Gudmundson, pointing to the sea which now glittered red and gold in the sunset. Jensen counted two, three, four, six fins, as sharp as little scythes, which glided across Devil Bay. "Oh God," grumbled Jensen, "there are sharks here!" When, shortly afterwards, one of the little scythes submerged, a tail swished out above the water and created a violent eddy. At this, Captain J. van Toch on the shore began to jump up and down in fury, issued a gush of curses and threatened the sharks with his fist. Then the short tropical twilight was over and the light of the moon shone over the island; Jensen took the oars and rowed the boat to within a furlong of the shore. Now the captain was sitting on a rock calling ts-ts-ts. Nearby something moved, but it was not possible to see exactly what. It looks like a seal, thought Jensen, but seals don't move like that. It came out of the water between the rocks and pattered along the beach, swaying from side to side like a penguin. Jensen quietly rowed in and stopped half a furlong away from the captain. Yes, the captain was saying something, but the Devil knew what it was; he must have been speaking in Tamil or Malay. He opened his hands wide as if about to throw something to these seals (although Jensen was now sure they were not seals), and all the time babbling his Chinese or Malay. Just then the raised oar slipped out of Jensen's hand and fell in the water with a splash. The captain lifted his head, got up and walked about thirty paces into the water; there was a sudden flashing and banging; the captain was shooting with his browning in the direction of the boat. Almost simultaneously there was a rustling and a splashing in the bay as, with a whirl of activity, it seemed as if a thousand seals were jumping into the water; but Jensen and Gudmundson were already pressing on the oars and driving the boat so hard that it swished through the water until it was behind the nearest corner. When they got back to the ship they said not a word to anyone. The northern races know how to keep silent. In the morning the captain returned; he was angry and unhappy, but said nothing. Only, when Jensen helped him on board both men gave each other a cold and inquisitive look. "Jensen," said the captain. "Yes sir." "Today, we set sail." "Yes sir." "In Surabai you get your papers." "Yes sir." And that was it. That day the Kandong Bandoeng sailed into Padang. In Padang Captain J. van Toch sent his firm in Amsterdam a parcel insured for a thousand two hundred pounds sterling. At the same time he sent a telegram asking for his annual leave. Urgent medical reasons, and so on. Then he wandered around Padang until he found the man he was looking for. This was a native of Borneo, a Dayak who English tourists would sometimes hire as a shark hunter just for the show; as this Dayak still worked in the old way, armed with no more than a long knife. He was clearly a cannibal but he had his fixed terms: five pounds for a shark plus his board. He was also quite startling in appearance, as both hands, his breast and his legs were heavily scarred from contact with shark skin and his nose and ears were decorated with shark teeth. He was known as Shark. With this Dayak, Captain J. van Toch set off back to the island of Tana Masa. Chapter 2MISTER GOLOMBEK AND MISTER VALENTAAs far as the newspapers were concerned, it was the sort of hot day when nothing, absolutely nothing, happens, when no politics is done and there aren't even any tensions in Europe; but it is just on days like this that newspaper readers, lying in an agony of boredom on the beaches or in the sparse shade of trees, demoralised by the heat, the view, the quiet of the countryside and all that makes up their healthy and simple life on holiday, hope in vain to find to find something in the newspapers, something that will be new and refreshing, some murder, some war or some earthquake, in short, anything; and when they are disappointed they throw the paper down and declare in irritation that there is nothing there, nothing whatsoever, that it is not worth reading and they will stop buying a newspaper in future. Meanwhile in the editorial office, there are five or six people left by themselves, as their colleagues are also all on holiday, who throw the paper down in irritation and complain that there is nothing there, nothing whatsoever. And the type-setter comes out of the composing-room and warns them: "Gentlemen, we still don't have a leader for tomorrow's issue". "Well how about, er, that thing about the economic situation in Bulgaria?" suggests one of the gentlemen in the abandoned office. The type-setter sighs deeply: "And who's going to want to read that? Once again, there's going to be nothing in the whole paper worth reading." The six gentlemen left all by themselves raised their eyes to the ceiling as if they might find something worth reading about there. "If only something would happen," said one of them uncertainly. "Or what about, er, some kind of interesting reportage," suggested another. "What about?" "I don't know." "We could think up...some new vitamin or something," grumbled a third. "What now? In the middle of the summer?" a fourth objected. "Look, vitamins are scientific things, that's more suitable for the Autumn." "God it's hot!" yawned the fifth. "Whatever it is it ought to come from the polar regions." "Such as what?" "Something like that Eskimo story. Frozen fingers, eternal ice, that sort of thing." "That's easy enough to say," said the sixth, "but where do we get the story from?" The silence of despair spread across the editorial office. "Last Sunday," began the typesetter hesitantly, "I was in the Moravian hills." "So what?" "Well, I heard something about some Captain Vantoch who was on holiday there. Seems he was born in the area." "Vantoch? Who's he?" "Fat sort of bloke. A sea captain or something. They said he'd been out looking for pearls." Mister Golombek looked at Mister Valenta. "And whereabouts was he looking?" "In Sumatra...and the Celebese...all round that sort of area. They said he'd spent thirty years out there." "Now there's an idea," said Mister Valenta. "That could be a great reportage. Shall we go with it, Golombek?" "Can give it a try, I suppose," Mister Golombek opined, and got off his chair. "It's that gentleman, over there," said the landlord in Moravia. At a table in the garden sat a fat man in a white cap with his legs wide apart, he was drinking beer and seemed thoughtful as he drew broad lines on the table with his finger. Both men went over to him. "I'm Valenta, editorial staff." "I'm Golombek, editorial staff." The fat man raised his eyes: "Eh, what?" "Valenta, from the newspaper." "And I'm Golombek. From the newspaper." The fat man stood up with dignity. "Captain van Toch. Very glad. Take a seat, lads." Both men obligingly sat down and lay writing pads down in front of themselves. "What'll you have to drink, boys?" "Raspberry juice," said Mister Valenta. "Raspberry juice?" repeated the captain in disbelief. "What for? Landlord, bring them each a beer.--Now what was it you wanted?" he asked, putting his elbows on the table. "Is it true that you were born here, Mister Vantoch?" "Ja. Born here." "And tell us, please, how come you went to sea?" "I went via Hamburg." "And how long have you been a captain?" "Twenty years, lads. Got my papers here," he said, emphasising his point by tapping on his breast pocket. "Can show you if you like." Mister Golombek would have liked to see what a captains papers look like, but he restrained himself. "I'm sure you must have seen a good part of the world in those twenty years, Captain." "Ja, I've seen a bit, ja." "And what places have you seen?" "Java. Borneo. Philippines. Fiji Islands. Solomon Islands. Carolines. Samoa. Damned Clipperton Island. A lot of damned islands, lads. Why do you ask?" "Well, it's just that it's all very interesting. Wed like to hear some more about it, you see." "Ja. All just very interesting, eh?" The captain fixed his pale blue eyes on them. "You're from the police then, are you?" "No, were not from the police, Captain, were from the newspapers." "Ah ja, from the newspapers. Reporters, are you? We'll write this down: Captain J. van Toch, captain of the Kandong Bandoeng ..." "What's that?" "The Kandong Bandoeng, port of Surabai. Reason for journey: vacances...how do you say that?" "On holiday." "Ja, dammit, holiday. So you can put that in your newspapers, who's sailed in. And now put your notes away, lads. Your health." "Mister Vantoch, we've come to find you so that you might tell us something about your life." "What for?" "We'll write it down in the papers. People are very interested in reading about distant islands and all the things seen and experienced there by their compatriots, by another Czech..." The captain nodded. "That's all true, lads, I'm the only sea captain ever from this town, that's true. I've heard about one other captain from...from .. somewhere, but I think," he added intimately, "that he's not a proper captain. It's all to do with the tonnage, you see." "And what was the tonnage of your ship?" "Twenty thousand tons, lads." "You were a great captain, were you?" "A great one," the captain said with dignity. "Have you got any money, boys?" Both gentlemen looked at each other a little uncertainly. "We have some money, but not a lot. Are you in need of money, Captain?" "Ja. I might need some" "Well listen. If you tell us lots of things we'll write it up for the paper and you'll get money for it." "How much?" "It could be...could be several thousand," said Mister Golombek generously. "Pounds sterling?" "No, only Czechoslovak koruny." Captain van Toch shook his head. "No, that won't do. I've got that much myself, lads," and he drew a thick wad of banknotes out of his trouser pocket. "See?" Then he put his elbows back on the table and leant forward to the two men. "Gentlemen, I might have some big business for you. And that would mean you giving me fifteen...hold on...fifteen or sixteen million koruny. How about it?" Once again, the two gentlemen looked at each other uncertainly. Newspaper men have experience of all sorts of the strangest madmen, cheats and inventors. "Wait," said the captain, "I've got something here I can show you." His chubby fingers reached into a pocket in his waistcoat and he hunted out something which he placed on the table. It was five pink pearls, the size of cherry stones. "Do you know anything about pearls?" "What might they be worth?" gasped Mister Valenta. "Ja, lots of money, lads. But I carry them around just to show people, just as a sample. So how about it, are you in with me?" he asked, reaching his broad hand across the table. Mister Golombek sighed. "Mister Vantoch, as much money as..." "Halt," the captain interrupted him. "I realise you don't know me; but ask about Captain van Toch anywhere in Surabaya, in Batavia, in Padang or anywhere you like. Go and ask and anyone will tell you ja, Captain van Toch, he is as good as his word." "Mister Vantoch, we don't doubt your word," Mister Golombek protested, "but..." "Wait," the captain ordered. "I know you want to be careful about where you give away your precious money; and quite right too. But here you'll be spending it on a ship, see? You buy a ship, that makes you a ship owner and you can come with me; ja, you can sail with me to see how I'm looking after it. And the money we make, we can share it fifty-fifty. That's honest business, isn't it?" "But Mister Vantoch," Mister Golombek finally exclaimed anxiously, "we just don't have that much money!" "Ja, in that case it's different," said the captain. "Sorry. But now I don't know why you've come to find me." "So that you can tell us about yourself, Captain, you must have had so many experiences..." "Ja, that I have, lads. A damned lot of experiences." "Have you ever been shipwrecked?" "What? What shipwreck? No I haven't. Who do you think I am? If they give me a good ship then nothing can happen to it. You can even go and ask about my references in Amsterdam. Go there and ask." "And what about the natives? Have you met many natives?" Captain van Toch snorted. "This is nothing for an educated man. I'm not going to talk about that." "Then tell us about something else." "Ja, tell you something else," the captain grumbled mistrustfully. "And then you can sell it to some other company which then sends its ships out there. I can tell you, my lad, people are all thieves. And the biggest thieves of all are these bankers in Colombo." "Have you been to Colombo many times? "Ja, many times. And Bangkok too, and Manila...Lads," he suddenly interrupted himself, "I know of a ship. A very good ship, and cheap at the price. It's in Rotterdam. Come and have a look at it. Rotterdam is no distance," and he indicated over his shoulder with his thumb. "Ships are very cheap nowadays, lads. Like old iron. As soon as a ship is six years old they want to replace it with something with a diesel motor. Do you want to see it?" "We can't, Mister Vantoch." "You're very strange people," the captain sighed, and blew his nose noisily into a pale blue handkerchief. "And you don't know of anyone here who might want to buy a ship?" "Here in Moravia?" "Ja, here, or anywhere nearby. I'd like a big deal like this to come here, to my country." "That's very nice of you, Captain..." "Ja. Those others are enormous thieves. And they don't have any money. People like you, from the newspapers, you must know some important people here, bankers and ship owners and the like." "We don't know anyone, Mister Vantoch." "Well, that's a pity," said the captain, sadly. Mister Golombek remembered something. "You don't know Mister Bondy, do you?" "Bondy? Bondy?" Captain van Toch tried to remember. "Wait, that name does sound familiar. Bondy. Ja, there's a Bond Street in London, where all the very rich people live. Does he have some business on Bond Street, this Mister Bondy?" "No, he lives in Prague, but I think he was born here in Moravia." "Jesus!" Captain van Toch burst out gaily, "you're right lads. Had a tailors shop on the square. Ja, Bondy, what was his name? Max. Max Bondy. So he's in business in Prague now, is he?" "No I think that must have been his father. This Bondy is called G.H. President G.H. Bondy, Captain." "G.H.," the captain puzzled. "There was never any G.H. here. Unless you mean Gustl Bondy--but he was never any president. Gustl was a sort of freckle-faced Jew. Can't be him." "It can be him, Mister Vantoch. Don't forget it's many years since you've seen him." "Ja, you could be right. It is many years," the captain agreed. "Forty years, lads. I suppose Gustl could have become important by now. And what is he?" "He's the president of the MEAS organisation--you know?--that enormous factory making boilers and so on, and the president of abut twenty companies and cartels. He's a very important man, Mister Vantoch. They call him a captain of Czech industry." "Captain?" said Captain van Toch in amazement. "So I'm not the only captain from this town! Jesus! That Gustl is a captain too. I suppose I ought to meet up with him. Has he got any money?" "Has he? Enormous amounts of money, Mister Vantoch. He must have hundreds of millions. The richest man in Czechoslovakia." Captain van Toch became very serious. "And a captain, too. Thank you, lads. I'll have to go and see him, this Bondy. Ja, Gustl Bondy, I know. Jewish boy, he was. And now its Captain G.H. Bondy. Ja, ja, things change," he added with a melancholy sigh. "Captain Vantoch, we'll have to go soon so that we don't miss the evening train..." "I'll come down to the harbour with you, then," the captain suggested and he began to weigh anchor. "Very glad to have met you, lads. I know a newspaper man in Surabaya, good lad, ja, a good friend of mine. Hell of a drinker. I could find you both a place on the paper in Surabaya if you like. No? Well, as you like." And as the train drew out of the station Captain van Toch waved to them slowly and triumphantly with his enormous blue handkerchief. As he did so, one large, slightly mis-shapen pearl dropped down into the sand. A pearl which nobody ever found again. Chapter 3G. H. BONDY AND THE CAPTAINIt is a well known fact that the more important a man is the less he has written on his door. Above his shop in Moravia, and all round the door and on the windows, old Max Bondy had to announce in big letters that here was Max Bondy, dealer in sartorial goods of every sort, wedding outfitter, sheets, towels, teatowels, tablecloths and coverings, calico and serge, silks, curtains, lambrequins, and all tailoring and sewing requisites. Founded 1885. His son, G.H. Bondy, captain of industry, president of the MEAS corporation, commercial adviser, brokering adviser, deputy president of the Confederation of Industry, Consulado de la República Ecuador, member of many advisory committees etc. etc. has nothing more on his house door than one small, black, glass panel with gold letters that spell the word: BONDY That is all. Just Bondy. Others might have Julius Bondy, Representative of General Motors on their doors, or ErvÃn Bondy, Doctor of Medicine, or S. Bondy and Company; but there is only one Bondy who is simply Bondy without any further details. (I think the Pope has simply Pius written on his door without any title or number. And God doesn't have a name plate at all, neither in Heaven nor on Earth. You have to work out for yourself who it is that lives where He lives. But none of this belongs to this story, and it is only mentioned in passing.) One burning hot day, in front of the glass panel there stood a gentleman in a white sailors cap, wiping the massive folds of his neck with a blue handkerchief. Damned grand sort of house to live in, he thought, and somewhat uncertainly he pulled on the brass knob of the doorbell. Mister Povondra, the doorman, appeared, took the measure of the heavy man at the door by looking him up and down from his feet to the gold braid on the cap, and with some reserve asked: "Can I help you?" "Yes you can, lad," the gentleman replied loudly. "Does a Mister Bondy live here?" "What is your business with Mister Bondy?" was Mister Povondra's icy reply. "Tell him that Captain van Toch from Surabaya wants to speak to him. Ja," he remembered, "here's my card." And he handed Mister Povondra a visiting card bearing an embossed anchor and the name: CAPTAIN J. VAN TOCH E. I. & P. L. Co S. Kandong Bandoeng Surabaya Naval Club Mister Povondra lowered his eyes and considered this. Had he better tell him that Mister Bondy is not at home? Or that he was afraid that Mister Bondy is at an important conference? There are some callers who need to be announced, and there are some others that a good doorman will deal with himself. Mister Povondra felt a troubling failure of the instinct that normally guides him in these matters; this fat man at the door did not somehow fall into the usual class of unannounced visitors, he did not seem to be a commercial representative, or a functionary of a charitable organisation. Meanwhile, Captain van Toch was snorting and wiping his brow with his handkerchief; at the same time he was blinking ingenuously with his pale blue eyes. Mister Povondra suddenly decided to take the responsibility for this man onto himself. "Please come in Captain van Toch," he said, "I will announce you to Mister Bondy". Captain J. van Toch wiped his brow with his blue handkerchief and looked round the ante-room. Hell, this Gustl has got things alright; it's like the saloon on one of those ships that sail from Rotterdam to Batavia. It must have cost a fortune. And all that by a freckly little Jew, the captain thought in admiration. Meanwhile, in his study, G.H. Bondy was contemplating the captain's visiting card. "And what does he want with me?" he asked suspiciously. "I'm afraid I don't know, Sir," mumbled Mister Povondra unctuously. Mister Bondy was still holding the card in his hand. And embossed ships anchor. Captain J. van Toch, Surabaya--where actually is Surabaya? Is it somewhere in Java? that seemed a very long way away to Mister Bondy. Kandong Bandoeng, that sounds like a gong being struck. Surabaya. And it feels just like the tropics here, today. Surabaya. "Well, you'd better show him in," Mister Bondy ordered. The heavy man in the captain's cap stood in the doorway and saluted. G.H. Bondy went over to welcome him. "Very glad to meet you, Captain. Please, come in," he said in English. "Hello, hello Mister Bondy," proclaimed the captain cheerfully in Czech. "Are you Czech?" asked Mister Bondy in surprise. "Ja, Czech. And we even know each other, Mister Bondy. From Moravia. Vantoch the grain merchant, do you remember?" "That's right, that's right," G.H. Bondy replied with enthusiasm, although he did feel a little disappointment that this was not a Hollander after all. "Vantoch the grain merchant, on the town square, wasn't it. And you haven't changed at all, Mister Vantoch! Still just the same! And how's the grain business going?" "Thanks," the captain replied politely. "It's been a long time now since Dad...how do you say..." "Since he died? Oh, of course, you must be his son..." Mister Bondy's eyes came alive with a sudden memory. My dear Vantoch! You must be that Vantoch who used to fight with me when we were lads!" "Yes, that will have been me, Mister Bondy," agreed the captain seriously. "In fact that's why they sent me away, to Ostrava, up in the north." "You and I were always fighting. But you were stronger than me," Mister Bondy acknowledged sportingly. "Ja, I was stronger than you. You were such a weak little Jew-boy, Mister Bondy. And you were given Hell for it." "I was, that's true," mused G.H. Bondy, somewhat moved. But sit down, my friend! How nice of you to think of me! What brings you here?" Captain van Toch sat down with dignity into a leather armchair and laid his cap on the floor. "I'm here on holiday, Mister Bondy. That's so." "Do you remember," asked Mister Bondy as he sank into his memories, "how you used to shout at me: Jew-boy, Jew-boy, you go to Hell. "Ja," the captain admitted, and he trumpeted with some emotion into his blue handkerchief. "Oh yes, they were good times, lad. But what does it matter now? Time passes. Now were both old men and both captains." "That's true, you're a captain," Mister Bondy reminded himself. "Who'd have thought it? A Captain of Long Distances." "Yessir. A highseaer. East India and Pacific Lines, Sir." "A wonderful career," said Mister Bondy with a sigh. "I'd change places with you straight away, Captain. You must tell me about yourself." "Alright then, " said the captain as he became more lively. "There's something I'd like to tell you about, Mister Bondy. Something very interesting, lad." Captain van Toch looked around uneasily. "Are you looking for something, Captain?" "Ja. Don't you drink beer, Mister Bondy The journey here from Surabaya made me so thirsty." The captain began to rummage in the copious pockets of his trousers and drew out his blue handkerchief, a canvas bag containing something, a bag of tobacco, a knife, a compass and a wad of banknotes. "I think we should send someone out for some beer. What about that steward who showed me in here to your cabin." Mister Bondy rang a bell. "Nothing to worry about, Captain. Meanwhile you could light a cigar..." The captain took a cigar with a red and gold band and drew in the aroma. "Tobacco from Lombok. Bunch of thieves there, for what it's worth." And with that, to Mister Bondy's horror, he crumbled the costly cigar in his massive hands and put the it into a pipe. "Ja, Lombok. Lombok or Sumba." By this time, Mister Povondra had made his silent appearance in the doorway. "Bring us some beer," Mister Bondy ordered. Mister Povondra raised his eyebrow. "Beer? And how much beer?" "A gallon," the captain grumbled as he stepped on a used match on the carpet. "In Aden, the heat was awful, lad. Now, Mister Bondy, I've got some news for you. From the Sunda Islands, see? There's a chance there to do some fantastic business. But I'll need to tell you the whole story. Wait." The captain's eyes turned to the ceiling as he remembered. "I don't really know where to begin." (Yet another business deal, thought G.H. Bondy to himself. God, this is going to be boring. He's going to talk to me about exporting sewing machines to Tasmania or boilers and safety pins to Fiji. Fantastic business, yes, I know. That's what I'm good for. But I'm not some junk dealer, damn it! I'm an adventurer. I'm a poet in my own way. Tell me about Sinbad, sailor-man! Tell me about Surabaya or the Phoenix Islands. Have you never been pulled of course by a magnetic mountain, have you never been captured by the bird, Noh, and taken up to its nest? Don't you come back to port with a cargo of pearls and cinnamon and hardwoods? No? Better start your lies, then.) "I suppose I could start with these lizards," the captain began. "What lizards?" asked the businessman in surprise. "Well, these astonishing lizards they have there, Mister Bondy." "Where?" "On one of these islands. I can't tell you the name, lad. That is a big secret, worth millions." Captain van Toch wiped his brow with his handkerchief. "Where the Hell has that beer got to?" "It will be right here, Captain." "Yes, that's good. And you ought to know that these are very decent and likable animals, these lizards. I know them, lad." The captain slammed his hand down on the table; "and if anyone says they're demons they're a liar, a damned liar, Sir. You and me are more like demons than they are, me, Captain van Toch, Sir. You can take my word for it." G.H. Bondy was startled. Delirium, he thought. Where is that damned Povondra? "There are several thousand of them there, these lizards, but a lot of them are eaten by sharks. That's why these lizards are so rare and only in one place, in this bay that I can't give you the name of." "You mean these lizards live in the sea?" "Ja. In the sea. But at night they come out onto the shore, although after a while they have to go back into the water." "And what do they look like?" (Mister Bondy was trying to gain time before that damned Povondra came back.) "Well, about as big as a seal, but when they walk on their hind legs they'd be about this high," the captain demonstrated. "I won't tell you they're nice to look at, they're not. And they haven't got any scales. They're quite bare, Mister Bondy, naked, like a frog or a salamander. And their front paws, they're like the hands on a child, but they've only got four fingers. Poor things," the captain added in sympathy. "But they're nice animals, Mister Bondy, very clever and very likable." The captain crouched down and, still in that position, began to waddle forward. "And this is how they walk, these lizards." The captain, with some effort and still squatting down, carried his body along in a wave-like movement; at the same time he held his hand out in front of himself like a dog begging for something and fixed his eyes on Mister Bondy in a way that seemed to beg him for sympathy. G.H. Bondy was deeply touched by this and almost felt ashamed. While this was going on, Mister Povondra appeared in the doorway with a jug of beer and raised his eyebrows in shock when he saw the captain's undignified behaviour. "Give us the beer and get out," Mister Bondy exclaimed. The captain stood up, wheezing. "Well, that's what these animals are like, Mister Bondy. Your health," he added as he took a draught of the beer. "This is good beer you've got here, lad. But in a house like this..." The captain wiped his moustache. "And how did you come across these lizards, Captain?" "That's just what I wanted to tell you about, Mister Bondy. It happened like this; I was looking for pearls on Tana Masa..." the captain stopped short. "Or somewhere round those parts. Ja, it was some other island, but for the time being that's still my secret. People are enormous thieves, Mister Bondy, you have to be careful what you say. And while those two damned Sinhalese were under water cutting away the oysters--the oysters hold as fast to the rocks like a Jew holds to his faith and have to be cut away with a knife--the lizards were there watching them, and the Sinhalese thought they were sea monsters. They're very ignorant people, these Sinhalese and Bataks. Anyway, they thought they were demons. Ja." The captain trumpeted noisily into his handkerchief. "You know, lad, it's a strange thing. I don't know whether us Czechs are more inquisitive than other people but whenever I've come across another Czech he's always had to stick his nose into everything find out what's there. I think, us Czechs, we don't want to believe in anything. So I got it into my stupid, old head that I should go and get a closer look at these demons. True, I was drunk at the time, but that was only because I couldn't get these stupid demons out of my mind. Down there on the equator, lad, down there anything's possible. So that evening I went down and had a look at Devil Bay...." Mister Bondy did his best to imagine a bay in the tropics, surrounded by cliffs and jungle. "And then?" "So there I was sitting by the bay and going ts-ts-ts so that the demons would come. And then, lad, after a while, a kind of lizard crawled up out of the water. It stood up on its hind legs, twisting its whole body. And it went ts-ts-ts at me. If I hadn't been drunk I probably would have shot it; but, my friend, I was sloshed as an Englishman, so I said to it, come here, hey you tapa-boy come here, I won't harm you." "Were you speaking to it in Czech?" "No, Malay. That's what they speak most down there, lad. He did nothing, just made a few steps here and there and looked sideways at me like a child that's too shy to talk. And all around in the water were a couple of hundred of these lizards, poking their paws up out of the water and watching me. So I, well yes I was drunk, I squatted down and began to twist about like these lizards so that they wouldn't be afraid of me. Then another lizard crawled out of the water, about the size of a ten year old boy, and he started waddling about too. And in his front paw he had an oyster." The captain took a draught of beer. "Cheers, Mister Bondy. Well it's true that I was very drunk, so I said to him, what a clever lad you are, eh, what is it you want then? Want me to open that oyster for you, do you? Come here then, I can open it with my knife. But he just stood there, still didn't dare come any closer. So once again, I started to twist about like I was a shy little girl. Then he pattered up closer to me, I slowly held out my hand to him and took the oyster from his paw. Now, you can understand we were both a bit afraid, but I was drunk. So I took my knife and opened that oyster; I felt inside to see if there was a pearl there but there wasn't, only that vile snot, like one of those slimy molluscs that live in those shells. Alright then, I said, ts-ts-ts, you can eat it if you like. And I tossed the open oyster over to him. You should have seen how he licked it up, lad. It must have been a wonderful titbit for these lizards. Only, the poor animals weren't able to get into the hard shells with their little fingers. Life is hard, ja!" The captain took another drink of beer. "So I worked it out in my head, lad. When these lizards saw how the Sinhalese cut away the oysters they must have said to themselves, aha, so they eat oysters, and they wanted to see how these Sinhalese would open them. One of these Sinhalese looks pretty much like a lizard when he's in the water, but one of these lizards was more clever than a Sinhalese or a Batak because he wanted to learn something. And a Batak will never want to learn anything unless it's how to thieve something," Captain J. van Toch added in disgust. "So when I was on that shore going ts-ts-ts and twisting about like a lizard they must have thought to themselves that I'm some kind of great-big salamander. That's why they weren't really scared of me and came closer, so that I would open the oysters for them. That's how intelligent and trusting these animals are." Captain van Toch went red. "When I'd got to know them better I took all my clothes off, so that I'd look more like them, naked; but they were still puzzled at the hairs on my chest and that sort of thing. Ja." The captain wiped his handkerchief over his blushing neck. "But I hope I'm not boring you, Mister Bondy." G.H. Bondy was enchanted. "No, no. Not at all. Please carry on, Captain." "Yes, yes alright then. So when this lizard had licked out the shell with all the others watching him they climbed up onto the shore. Some of them even had oysters in their paws--something odd about this, lad, is that they were able to pull them off the cliffs when they only had these little fingers without a thumb, like a child's fingers. At first they were too shy, but then they let me take the oyster out of their hands. True, they weren't proper oysters with pearls in them, all sorts of things it was they brought me, the sort of clams and the like that don't have pearls in them, but I threw them back in the water and told them, that's no good children, they're not worth opening, I'm not going to use my knife on them. But when they brought me a pearl-oyster I opened it with my knife and checked carefully to see if there wasn't a pearl there. Then I gave it back to them for them to lick it out. So by then there was a couple of hundred of these lizards sitting round me and watching to see how it was I opened the oysters. Some of them tried to do it themselves, tried to cut round the oyster with the bits of shell that were lying around. I found that very strange, lad. No animal knows how to use tools; all that an animal knows is what's been shown to it by nature. I admit, I once saw in Buitenzorg a monkey that could open a tin can with a knife; but a monkey, that s not really a proper animal. But I did find it strange." The captain took a drink of beer. "That night, Mister Bondy, I found about eighteen pearls in those shells. Some of them were small and some were bigger and three of them were as big as the stone in a peach, Mister Bondy, as big as the stone in a peach." Captain van Toch nodded his head earnestly. "After I'd got back to my ship in the morning I said to myself, Captain van Toch, sir, it was all just dream, you were drunk, and so on. But I couldn't believe what I told myself, not when I had eighteen pearls in my pocket. Ja." "That is the best story I've ever heard," said Mister Bondy, with a sigh. Captain van Toch was pleased at this and said, "There, you see, lad. I thought about what had happened all that day. I would tame these lizards, wouldn't I. Ja. Tame them and train them to bring me these pearl oysters. There must have been an enormous number of them down there in Devil Bay. So that evening I went down again, but a bit earlier. When the Sun began to go down the lizards began to stick their noses out from the water, one here, then one there, until the water was full of them. I sat on the shore and went ts-ts-ts. Then I looked and saw a shark, just its fin poking up from the water. And then there was a lot of splashing and one of the lizards had had it. I counted twelve of those sharks cruising into Devil Bay in the sunset. Mister Bondy, in just one evening those monsters ate more than twenty of my lizards," the captain exclaimed and blew his nose angrily. "Ja! More than twenty! It stands to reason, a naked lizard like that with those little paws, he can't defend himself. It was enough to make you cry to see a sight like that. You should have seen it, lad..." The captain stopped and thought for a while. "I'm quite fond of animals, you see," he said finally, and lifted his blue eyes to G.H. Bondy. "I don't know what you think of all this, Captain Bondy..." Mister Bondy nodded to show his agreement, and this pleased Captain van Toch. "That's alright, then. "They're very good and intelligent, these tapa-boys; if you tell them something they pay attention like a dog listening to its master. And most of all, these little hands they have, like children's hands. You know lad, I'm an old man and I have no family...Ja, an old man can be very lonely," the captain complained as he overcame his emotion. "It's very easy to become fond of these lizards, for what it's worth. But if only the sharks didn't keep eating them like that! Then when I went after them, after those sharks, and I threw stones at them, then they started throwing stones too, these tapa-boys. You won't believe it, Mister Bondy. True, they couldn't throw the stones very far because their hands were so small, but it was all very strange. As you're so clever, I said to them, you can try and open some of these oysters yourselves with my knife. So I put the knife down on the ground. They were a bit shy at first, but then one of them tried it, pushing the point of the knife between the two halves of the shell. You've got to lever it open, I told him, lever it, see? Twist the knife round, like this, and there, that's it. And he kept on trying, poor thing, until it gave way and the shell opened. There, you see, I said. Not that hard, is it. If some pagan Batak or Sinhalese can do it then why shouldn't a tapa-boy do it too, eh? Now, Mister Bondy, I wasn't going to tell these lizards how it was wonderful, marvellous, astonishing to see what an animal like that could do, but now I can tell you that I was...I was...well simply thunderstruck." "As I can see," answered Mister Bondy. "Yes, that's right. As you can see. I was so confused at all this that I stayed there another day with my ship, and then in the evening went back to Devil Bay and once more I watched how the sharks were eating my lizards. That night I swore that I would put an end to that, lad. I even gave them my word of honour. Tapa-boys, I said, Captain J. van Toch hereby promises, under the majesty of all these stars, that I will help you." Chapter 4CAPTAIN VAN TOCH'S BUSINESSWhile Captain van Toch was saying this the hair on the back of his neck had risen with his anger and excitement. "And so I swore. And ever since then, lad, I've not had a moments peace. In Padang I took some leave due to me and sent a hundred and seven pearls to those Jew-boys in Amsterdam, everything those animals of mine had brought me. Then I found a kind of lad, Dayak he was, a shark-killer, they go in the water and kill the sharks with a knife. Terrible thief and murderer he was, this Dayak. And then with him on a little tramp-steamer, we went back to Tana Masa, and now, lad, in you go and kill these sharks with your knife. I wanted him to kill the sharks so that they'd leave my lizards in peace, but this Dayak was such a cut-throat and pagan he didn't do a thing, not even for those tapa-boys. He didn't give a damn about the job. And all this time I was making my own observations and experiments with these lizards-- just a minute, I've got a ships logbook here where I noted everything down every day." The captain drew a voluminous set of notes out from his breast pocket and began to leaf through them. "What's the date today? I know, the twenty-fifth of June. Now, the twenty-fifth June for instance--last year, this was--I was here and the Dayak was out killing sharks. These lizards have a real big liking for carrion. Toby--that was one of the lizards, a smallish one, clever though," explained the captain. "I had to give them some sort of a name, didn't I, so that I could write about them in this book. So, Toby pushed his fingers into the hole the knife had left. Evening, they brought a dry branch for my fire. No, that's nothing," the captain grumbled. "I'll find another day. Lets say, the twentieth of June, shall we? The lizards continued building their jetty. This was some kind of dam. They were building a new dam at the north-western end of Devil Bay. And this was a fantastic piece of work, lad," the captain explained, "a proper breakwater. And they brought their eggs down to this side of it where the water would be quiet. They thought it up all by themselves, this dam; and I can tell you, no clerk or engineer from Waterstaat in Amsterdam could have made a better plan for a submerged breakwater than they did. An amazingly skilled piece of work. And they dug out, sort of, deep holes in the banks under the water and lived in them during the day. Amazingly clever animals, just like beavers, those great big mice that build dams on a river. And they had a lot of these dams in Devil Bay, big ones and small ones, lovely smooth and level dams, it looked like a city. In the end they wanted to put a dam right across the whole of Devil Bay. That's how it was. They can now lift boulders with a lever, " he read on. " Albert--that was one of the tapa-boys--crushed two of his fingers. Twenty-first: The Dayak ate Albert! But it made him ill. Fifteen drops of opium. Promised not to do it again. Rain all day. Thirtieth of June: Lizards finished building dam. Toby did not want to work. Now, he was clever, Toby," the captain explained with admiration. "The clever ones never want to do anything. He was always working things out with his hands, this Toby. For what it's worth, there are big differences between lizards just like between people. Third of July: Sergeant got the knife. This Sergeant, he was a big strong lizard. And very clever with it. Seventh of July: Sergeant used knife to kill a cuttle-fish. Tenth of July: Sergeant killed big jelly-fish with knife. Strange sort of animal, a jelly-fish is. Looks like jelly but stings like a nettle. And now, Mister Bondy, listen to this. I've got it underlined. Sergeant killed a small shark with the knife. Seventy pounds weight. So there you see it, Mister Bondy," Captain J. van Toch declared in triumph. "Here it is in black and white. That was the big day, lad. To be precise, the thirteenth of July last year." The captain closed his notes. "I'm not ashamed to admit it, Mister Bondy; I knelt down on the shore by that Devil Bay and wept for sheer joy. I knew then that my tapa-boys would not give up. Sergeant got a lovely new harpoon as a reward--a harpoon is best if you're going to go hunting sharks, lad--and I said to him, be a man, Sergeant, and show these tapa-boys they can defend themselves. And do you know," here the captain raised his voice, jumped up and thumped the table in his excitement, "within three days there was a dead shark floating in the bay, horribly mutilated, full of gashes. And all the gashes made by this harpoon." The captain gulped down some more beer. "That's just how it was, Mister Bondy. It was then that I made a kind of a contract with these tapa-boys. That is, I gave them my word that if they would bring me these pearl oysters then I would give them these harpoons and knives for them to defend themselves, see? That's fair business. Whatever he does, a man should be honest even to animals like these. And I gave them some wood too, and two iron wheelbarrows for them to carry the stones for the dam. And the poor things had to pull everything in those tiny hands of theirs. Terrible for them, that's how it was. And I wouldn't have wanted to cheat them. Hold on, lad, I'll show you something." Captain van Toch lifted his belly with one hand and with the other pulled a canvas bag out of his trouser pocket. "Look what I've got here," he said, and emptied it out onto the table. There was a thousand pearls there of all different sizes: some as small as a seed, some the size of a pea and some of them were the size of a cherry; perfectly round pearls, lumpy and irregular pearls, silvery pearls, blue pearls, yellowish pearls like persons skin and pearls of all colours from black to pink. G.H. Bondy's jaw dropped; he could not help himself and had to touch them, roll them around in the tips of his fingers, cover them in both his hands. "These are beautiful," he sighed in wonder and amazement. "Captain, this is like a dream!" "Ja," said the captain without emotion. "They are nice. And that year that I was down there they killed about thirty of those sharks. I've got it written down here," he said, tapping on his breast pocket. "And all with the knives I'd given them, them and the five harpoons. Those knives cost me nearly two American dollars a piece. Very good knives, lad, stainless steel, won't go rusty in the water, not even sea water. And those Bataks cost me a lot of money too. "What Bataks?" "Those native Bataks on that island. They think the tapa-boys are some kind of demon and they're terribly afraid of them. And when they saw me talking with these demons of theirs they just wanted to kill me. All night long they were banging on a kind of gong so that they would chase the demons away from their village. Made a Hell of a noise. And then in the morning they wanted me to pay them for it. For all the work they'd had in doing it. For what it's worth, I can tell you that these Bataks are terrible thieves. But the tapa-boys, the lizards, you can do honest business with them. Very good honest business, Mister Bondy." To Mister Bondy it seemed like he was in a fairy tale. "Buying pearls from them?" "Ja. Only there aren't any pearls left now in Devil Bay, and on other islands there aren't any tapa-boys. And that's the whole problem, lad." Captain J. van Toch looked up as if in triumph. "And that's the big business that I thought out in my head. "Listen lad," he said, stabbing the air with his chubby finger, "there's a lot more of those lizards there now than when I first found them! They can defend themselves now, you see. Eh? And there are going to be more and more of them! Now then, Mister Bondy, don't you think this is a fantastic business opportunity?" "I still don't quite see," replied G.H. Bondy uncertainly, "what exactly it is you have in mind, Captain." "To transport these tapa-boys to other islands where there are other pearl-fishing grounds," the captain finally exclaimed. I saw myself how these lizards can't get across the deep and open sea. They can swim for a little way and they can walk a little way along the seabed, but where the sea is very deep the pressure there is too much for them; they're very soft, you see. But if I had some sort of ship with some kind of tank built into it for them I could take them wherever I wanted, see? And there they could look for the pearls and I would follow behind and provide them with the knives and harpoons and anything else they need. The poor lads increased their population so much in Devil Bay that they soon won't have enough there to eat. They eat the smallest of the fish and molluscs, and those water insects they have there; but they can eat potatoes too, and rusks and ordinary things like that. So that means they could be fed while they're in the tanks on the ship. And I could let them out into the water in suitable places where there aren't many people and there I could have sort of...sort of farms for these lizards of mine. And I'd want them to be able to feed themselves, these animals. They're very likable, Mister Bondy, and very clever too. And when you see them, lad, you'll say, Hullo Captain, useful animals you've got here. Ja. And they're mad about pearls now, just like people. That's the big business I thought up." All this left G.H. Bondy in some embarrassment and confusion. "I'm very sorry, Captain," he began hesitantly, "I...I really don't know..." The clear blue eyes of Captain J. van Toch filled with tears. "That is not good, lad. I could leave you all these pearls here as...as collateral for the ship, but I can't buy the ship all by myself. I know of a very good ship here in Rotterdam...it's fitted with a diesel engine..." "Why did you not suggest this business to someone in Holland?" The captain shook his head. "I know these people, lad. I can't talk about this sort of thing with them. They," he said thoughtfully, "would make me carry all sorts of other things on the ship, and I'd have to sell them all round these islands. Ja. That's something I could do. I know a lot of people, Mister Bondy. And at the same time I could have the tanks on board with my lizards in them..." "That's something it might well be worth thinking about," considered G.H. Bondy. "As it happens, you see...Well you see we need to find new markets for our products, and I was talking about this with some people not long ago. I would need to buy one or two ships, one for south America and the other for these eastern places ..." The captain became more lively. "That's very wise of you, Mister Bondy. Ships are very cheap right now, you could buy a whole harbour full of them..." The captain launched into a deep and technical explanation of what vessels are for sale where and at what prices and boats and tank-steamers; G.H. Bondy did not listen to him but merely watched; G.H. Bondy was a good judge of character. He had not taken Captain van Toch's story about the lizards seriously for one moment; but the captain himself was somebody worth taking seriously. Honest, yes. And he knew his way around down there. Mad, obviously. But very likeable. All this struck a chord in G.H. Bondy's heart and chimed with his love of fantasy. Ships carrying pearls and coffee, ships with spices and all the scents of Arabia. There was a particular, indescribable feeling that G.H. Bondy had before each major and successful decision he made; a sensation which might have been expressed in words thus: It's true I don't really know why, but I think I'll go along with this. He had this feeling now. Meanwhile Captain van Toch was waving his enormous hands in the air to outline ships with awning decks or quarter decks, fantastic ships, lad ... "I'll tell you what, Captain Vantoch," G.H. Bondy suddenly said, "come back here in two weeks time. We can talk about this ship again then." Captain van Toch understood just how much these words meant. He blushed in happiness and said, "And what about the lizards, can I take them on my ship too?" "Yes, of course. Only please don't mention them to anyone. People would think you've gone mad--and so would I." "And can I leave these pearls here with you?" "Yes, if you want to." "Ja, but I'll choose two of the nicest of them that I need to send off to someone." "Who's that?" "Just a couple of newspaper men I know, lad. Oh Hell, wait a minute." "What is it?" "What the Hell were their names?" Captain van Toch blinked his blue eyes thoughtfully. "This head of mine is so stupid, lad. I've completely forgotten what those two lads were called." Chapter 5HOW CAPTAIN J. VAN TOCH TRAINED THE LIZARDS"Well I'm blowed," said a man in Marseille. "It's Jensen, isn't it?" Jensen, the Swede, raised his eyes. "Wait," he said, "and don't say a word until I've placed you." He put his hand to his brow. "The Seagull, wasn't it? No. Empress of India? No. Pernambuco? No. I've got it. Vancouver. Five years ago on the Vancouver, Osaka Line, Frisco. And your name is Dingle, you rascal, Irish." The man grinned and exposed his yellow teeth as he sat down to join Jensen. "Dat's right, Jensen. And if there's a drink goin I'll have it, whatever it is. What brings you to dese parts?" Jensen nodded toward the dock. "I do the Marseille to Saigon route these days. And you?" "I'm on leave," said Dingle with a swagger. "I'm on me way home to see how many children I've got now." Jensen nodded his head earnestly. "So they sacked you again, did they? Drunk on duty were you? If you went to the YMCA like I do then..." Dingle grinned cheerfully. "Dey've got a YMCA here, you mean?" "Today is Saturday," Jensen grumbled. "And where have you been sailing?" "On a kind of a tramp steamer," said Dingle evasively. "All the islands you can tink of down under." "Captain?" "Some fella called van Toch. Dutchman or sometin." Jensen the Swede became thoughtful. "Captain van Toch. I have travelled with him also, brother, some years back. Ship: the Kandong Bandoeng. Line: from demon to Devil. Fat, bald and able to swear in Malay for better effect. I know him well." "Was he already such a lunatic in dem days?" The Swede shook his head. "Old man Toch is all right." "And had he started carrying dem lizards of his about wid him by den?" "No." Jensen thought for a while. "I heard something about that ...in Singapore. Someone was talking all that rubbish there." The Irishman seemed somewhat offended. "Dat is not rubbish, Jensen. Dat's de holy truth about dese lizards." "This man in Singapore, he said it was true as well," the Swede grumbled. "So I gave him a smack in the teeth," he added in triumph. "Well just you listen to me," Dingle defended himself. "I ought to know about dese tings, cause I've seen dese brutes wid me own eyes." "So have I," mumbled Jensen. "Almost black, with a tail about six feet long, and they run about on two feet. I know." "Hideous brutes," shuddered Dingle. "Notting but warts. Holy Mary, I wouldn't touch em for anyting. And I'm sure dey must be poisonous and all!" "Why not?" grumbled the Swede. "Listen. I served once on a ship that was full of people. All over the upper deck and the lower deck, nothing but people, full of women and all that sort of thing, dancing and playing cards. I was the stoker there, see. And now you tell me, you idiot, which do you think is more poisonous?" Dingle spat. "Well if it's Caymans you're talking about, den I won't say notting against you. There was one time I was takin a shipload of snakes to a zoo, from Bandjarmasin they were, and God how they stank! But dese lizards, Jensen, dese are some very strange animals were talkin about. All through the day they stay in that tank o water o theirs; but in the night they climb up out of it-- tip-tap tip-tap tip-tap--and the whole ship was crawlin wid em. Stood up on their hind legs, they did, twistin their heads round to get a good look at you..." The Irishman crossed himself. "And they'd go ts-ts-ts at you, just like dem whores in Hong Kong. God forgive me, but I tink there's sometin funny going on there. If it wasn't so hard to get a job I wouldn't have stayed there a minute, Jens. Not one minute." "Aha," said Jensen. "So that is why you are running home to your mummy, is it?" "Well, dat's part of it. Just to stay there at all a fella had to keep drinking a Hell of a lot, and you know the captains got a ting about that. And the funny ting is, they say that one day I kicked one o the horrors. D'ye hear dat, kicked one o dem, and kicked it so hard that I broke its spine. You should have seen how the captain went on about it; he turned blue, lifted me up by the neck and he would have thrown me overboard into the water if Gregory, the mate, hadn't been there. D'ye know Gregory?" The Swede merely nodded. "That's enough now, Captain, says the mate, and he pours a bucket of water over me head. So in Kokopo I went on shore." Mister Dingle spat in a long, flat curve. "The old man cares more about dem vermin then he does about people. D'ye know he taught em how to speak? On my soul, he used to shut himself in wid em and spend hours talking to them. I tink he's trainin em for a circus or sometin. But the strangest ting of all is that then he lets them out into the water. He'd weigh anchor by some pathetic little island, take a boat out to the shore and check how deep it is there; then he'd come back to these tanks, open the hatch in the side o the ship and let these vermin out into the water. And you should see them jumpin out through this hatch one after the other like trained seals, ten or twenty o them. Then in the night old Toch would row out to the shore again with some kind o crates. And no-one was ever allowed to know what was in them. Then we'd sail on again somewhere else. So that's how it is wid old Toch, Jens. Very strange. Very, very strange." Mister Dingle's eyes lost their sparkle. "Almighty God, Jens, it gave me the creeps! And I drank, Jens, drank like a lunatic; and in the night, when there was this tip-tappin all over the ship, and you could hear them going ts-ts-ts, sometimes I'd tink it was just because of the drink. I'd already had that once in Frisco, well you already know about that, don't you Jensen; only in them days it was just millions of spiders I saw. De-li-rium, the doctors called it in the sailor-hospital. Well, I don't know. But then I asked Big Bing about it, whether he'd been seein tings in the night and all, and he said he had been. Said he'd seen them wid his own eyes how one o these lizards turned the handle on the door and went into the captains cabin. Well, I don't know; this Joe, he was a Hell of a drinker and all. What do you tink, Jens, do you tink Bing had this de-lirium too? What do you tink?" Jensen the Swede merely shrugged his shoulders. "And dat German fella, Peters, he said that when they rowed the captain down to the shore in the Manihiki Islands they hid behind some boulders and watched what the old man was doing wid dem crates of his. Now he says them lizards opened the crates all by themselves, that the old man gave them the chisel to do it with. And d'you know what was in them crates? Knives, he said. Great big long knives and harpoons and that sort o ting. Now I don't believe a word of what Peters said meself cause he has to wear them glasses on his nose, but it's very strange all the same. Now what do you tink of all this?" The veins on Jensen's brow bulged. "What I think of this," he growled, "is that this German of yours in sticking his nose into things that are none of his business, understand? And I can tell you I don't think that's wise of him." "You'd better write and tell him, then," smirked the Irishman. "The safest address to write to would be Hell, you can get hold of him there. And d'you know what it is that I find strange about all o dis? That old Toch goes and visits those lizards of his now and then, down in whatever place he's set them down in. 'Pon my soul, Jens. He has himself put down on shore in de middle o de night and doesn't come back till mornin. Now you tell me, Jensen, what is it he goes down there for? And you tell me, what is it he's got in dem parcels he sends off to Europe? Parcels as big as this, look, and he has them insured for up to a thousand pounds." "How do you know that?" asked the Swede, scowling even more. "A fella knows what he knows," replied Mister Dingle evasively. "And do you know where old Toch got dese lizards from? From Devil Bay. Now there's a fella I know down there, an agent he is, and an educated man, like, and he told me that dese tings are not trained lizards. Nottin o de sort. And if anyone says dese are nottin more than animals you can go and tell dat to the fairies. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise, lad." Mister Dingle gave a significant wink. "Dat's how it is, Jensen, just so's you know. And are you gonna tell me now that Captain van Toch is alright?" "Say that again," grunted the big Swede threateningly. "If old man Toch was alright he wouldn't be carrying demons round the world wid him...and he wouldn't be settlin em down in all the islands he can find like lice in a fur coat. Listen, just in the time that I was on board wid him he must have settled a good couple o thousand o them. The old mans sold his soul, man. And I know what it is that these devils are givin him for it. Rubies and pearls and all o that sort o ting. And you can well believe he wouldn't be doin it for nottin." Jens Jensen turned a deep red. "And what business is it of yours?" he yelled, slamming his hand down on the table. "You mind your own damned business!" Little Dingle jumped back in alarm. "Please," he stuttered in confusion, "what's suddenly...I was only telling you what it was I'd seen. And if you like,...it was just the impression I got. This is you, Jensen, I can tell you it's all just delirium if dat's what you want. You needn't get cross wid me like dat, Jensen. I've already had that meself once in Frisco, you know about that. Serious case it was, that's what the doctors in the sailor-hospital said. You have me word of honour I saw these lizards or demons or whatever they were. But maybe there weren't any." "You did see them, Pat," said the Swede gloomily. "I saw them too." "No Jens," answered Dingle, "you were just delirious. He's all right, old man Toch, only he shouldn't be carryin demons about all round the world. Tell you what, once I get back home I'll have a mass said for the good of his soul. Hang me if I don't." "We don't do that in our faith," said Jensen, deep in thought and quieter now. "And do you really think it would help someone to have a mass said for him?" "Enormous help," exclaimed the Irishman. "I've heard of lots of cases in Ireland when it's been of help, even in the most serious cases. Even when it's involved demons and the like." "Then I shall also have a Catholic mass said for him," Jens Jensen decided. "Only I'll have it done here in Marseille. I think they'll do it cheaper in the big church here, factory prices." "You could be right there, but an Irish mass is better. You see, in Ireland they've got these priests that really can work magic. Just like some fakir or pagan." "Listen Pat," said Jensen, "I would give you twelve francs for this mass here and now. But you are riff-raff, brother; you would just drink it." "Now Jens, man, d'ye tink I'd take a sin like dat on meself? But listen, just so that you'll believe me I'll write you out an IOU for that twelve francs, will that do you?" "That would be all right," thought the Swede, who liked to see things done properly. Mister Dingle borrowed a pen and a piece of paper and laid it out flat on the table. "Now what am I to write down here?" Jens Jensen looked over the Irishman's shoulder. "So write down at the top that this is a receipt." And Mister Dingle, slowly and with his slimey tongue protruding from his mouth with the effort of it, wrote: RECEET I CONFERM THAT I HAVE RECEEVED FROM PAT DINGLE "Is dat all right, like dat?" asked Mister Dingle uncertainly. "And which of us is going keep dis piece o paper? "You are of course, you fool," said the Swede. "A receipt is so that a person won't forget he has been given money." Mister Dingle drank those twelve francs away in Le Havre. He also, instead of going to Ireland, sailed off down to Djibouti; in short, that mass was never said, with the result that no higher power ever did interfere in the course of the events to follow. Chapter 6THE YACHT IN THE LAGOONMister Abe Loeb squinted into the setting sun; he would have like in some way to express how beautiful it was, but his sweetheart, Li, alias Miss Lily Valley, whose real name was Miss Lilian Nowak and who was known in short as golden-haired Li, White Lily, Lily Longlegs and all the other names she had been called during her seventeen years, slept on the warm sand, nestled in a fluffy bathing gown and curled up like a sleeping dog. That is why Abe said nothing about the beauty of the world and merely sighed, scratching his naked feet because there was sand on them. Out there on the ocean was the yacht named after Gloria Pickford; Abe had been given the yacht by his father for passing his university entrance exam. His father was a great guy. Jesse Loeb, film magnate and so on. Abe, said the old man, go and get to know something of the world and take a few of your friends with you. Jesse Loeb was a truly great guy. Gloria Pickford lay out there on the pearly waters and next to him, in the warm sand, lay his sweetheart, Li. Abe sighed with happiness. She was sleeping like a little child, poor thing. Abe felt a yearning to protect her somehow. I really ought to marry her, thought the young Mister Loeb to himself, and as he did so he was tortured with the beautiful feeling in his heart that comes when a firm decision is mixed with fear. Mamma Loeb would be unlikely to agree to it and Papa Loeb made decisions with his hands: You're crazy, Abe. His parents would be unable to understand it, and that was all there was to it. And Mister Abe, sighing with tenderness, covered the white ankle of his sweetheart with the tip of her bathing gown. How come I've got such hairy feet? he thought, absent mindedly. God it's beautiful here, so beautiful. It's a shame that Li can't see it. Mister Abe looked at her charming outline, and through some vague association began to thing about art. This was because his sweetheart, Li, was an artist. A film artist. True, she had never actually been in any films, but she was quite certain she would become the greatest film actress ever; and when Li was certain of something that was what happened. That was what Mamma Loeb couldn't understand; an artist is simply an artist, and she can't be like other girls. And anyway, other girls were no better than she was, Mister Abe decided; that Judy on the yacht, for instance, a rich girl like her--and Abe knew that Fred went into her cabin. Every night, in fact. Whereas Li and I...well Li just isn't like that. I want Baseball Fred to have the best, Abe thought generously, he's a friend from university, but every night...a rich girl like her oughtn't to do that. I think that a girl from a family like Judy's...and Judy isn't even an artist. (That's what these girls sometimes gossip about, Abe remembered; with their eyes shining, and giggling...I never talk about that sort of thing with Fred.) (Li oughtn't to drink so many cocktails, she never knows what she's talking about afterwards.) (This afternoon, for example, she didn't need to...) (I think she and Judy were arguing about who has nicer legs. Why, it clearly has to be Li. I know these things.) (And Fred didn't have to have that dumb idea about a beautiful legs contest. They might do that kind of thing on Palm Beach, but not in private company. And the girls didn't have to lift their skirts so high. That was more than just legs. At least, Li didn't have to. And right there in front of Fred! And a rich girl like Judy didn't have to do it either.) (Maybe I oughtn't to have called the captain over to be the judge. That was dumb of me. The captain went so red, and his mustache stuck out, and he excused himself and slammed the door. Awful. Just awful. The captain didn't have to be so coarse about it. And anyway, it's my yacht, isn't it?) (True, the captain doesn't have a sweetheart with him on board; so how's he going to look on that sort of thing, poor man? Seeing as he's got no choice but to be alone, I mean.) (And why did Li cry when Fred said Judy has nice legs? And then she said Fred was a brute, that he was spoiling the whole trip...Poor Li!) (And now the girls aren't talking to each other. And when I wanted to talk to Fred Judy called him over like a dog. Fred is my best friend after all. And if he's Judy's lover of course he's going to say she has nicer legs! True, he didn't have to be so emphatic about it. That wasn't very tactful towards poor Li; Li is right when she says Fred is a self centered brute. A heck of a brute.) (I really didn't think the trip was going to turn out like this. Devil take that Fred!) Mister Abe realised that he was no longer looking blissfully out at the pearly ocean, but that he was scowling, scowling very hard. He was anxious and no longer in a good mood. Go out and see something of the world, Papa Loeb had said. Well have we seen something of the world? Mister Abe tried hard to remember what exactly it was he had seen, but he wasn't able to remember anything except how Judy and Li, his sweetheart, had shown their legs to Fred, big shouldered Fred, squatting down in front of them. Abe scowled even harder. What's this coral island called anyway? Taraiva, the captain had said. Taraiva, or Tahuara or Taraihatuara-ta-huara. How about if we go back now, and I can say to old Jesse; Dad, we've been to Taraihatuara-ta-huara. (If only I hadn't called the captain over, Mister Abe frowned.) (I have to talk to Li so that she won't do that sort of thing. God, why do I love her so much! I'll talk to her as soon as she wakes up. I'll tell her we ought to get married...) Mister Abe's eyes were full of tears; oh God, is this love or pain, or is this endless pain just part of me being in love with her? Sweetheart Li's eyes, made up in blue like a tender shell, fluttered. "Abe," she called sleepily, "know what I've been thinking? I've been thinking that on this island you could make a fan-tas-tic film." Mister Abe sprinkled fine sand over his unfortunately hairy feet. "Excellent idea, sweetheart. And what sort of film?" Sweetheart Li opened her boundless blue eyes. "Well how about...Imagine I was stuck on this island like Robinson Crusoe. A female Robinson Crusoe. Don't you think that's a great new idea?" "Yeah," said Mister Abe uncertainly. "And how would you have gotten onto this island?" "Easy," came her sweet reply. "Our yacht would just have been shipwrecked in a storm, and all of you would have been drowned, you and Judy and the captain and everyone." "And how about Fred? Fred's a very strong swimmer." Li's smooth brow became furrowed. "In that case, Fred will have to be eaten by a shark. That'd be a great piece of detail," said Abe's sweetheart, clapping her hands as she did so. "And Fred has a really beautiful body for it, don't you think?" Mister Abe sighed. "And what happens after that?" "And then I'd be thrown unconscious onto the shore by a big wave. I'd be wearing those pyjamas, the ones with the blue stripes you liked so much the other day." She narrowed her eyes and looked at him in the tender way she had seen used to depict female seductiveness. "And the film really needs to be in color, Abe. Everyone says how much the color blue goes with my hair." "And who would find you here?" asked Mister Abe objectively." His sweetheart thought for a while. "No-one. I wouldn't be a Robinson Crusoe if there were people here," she said with a surprising grasp of logic. That's what would make it such a great role, because I'd always be on my own. Just imagine it, Abe, Lily Valley in the title role and only role!" "And what would you be doing all through the film?" Li leant up on her elbow. "I've got that all thought out. I'd swim in the lagoon and I'd climb up on the rocks and sing." "In your pyjamas?" "Without my pyjamas," said Abe's sweetheart. "Don't you think that'd be a great success?" "Well you can't do the whole film naked," grumbled Abe, who felt strongly opposed to the idea. "Why not?" answered his sweetheart in innocent surprise. "Who'd be there to see me?" Mister Abe said something that could not be properly heard. "And then," Li considered, "and then...I've got it. Then I'd be captured by a gorilla, you know? A gorilla that's really big and black and hairy." Mister Abe went red, and tried to hide his damned hairy feet even deeper in the sand. "They don't have any gorillas on this island," he objected, not very convincingly. "Yes they do. They've got every possible kind of animal here. You have to look at it scientifically, Abe. And a gorilla would go so well with my complexion. Have you noticed how Judy has hairs on her legs?" "No," said Abe, somewhat displeased at this change of subject. "Awful legs," thought Abe's sweetheart as she looked down at her own. "And as the gorilla carries me away in its arms a young and handsome wild man would come out of the jungle and knock it down." "How would he be dressed?" "He'd have a bow and arrow," was his sweethearts unhesitating reply, "and a wreath on his head. And this wild man would pick me up and take me to the cannibals' campfire." "There aren't any cannibals here," said Abe in defence of the island of Tahuara. "There are too! And the cannibals would want to sacrifice me to their idols and they'd be singing like they do in Hawaii, you know, like those negroes in the Paradise Restaurant. But one of the young cannibals would fall in love with me," sighed Abe's sweetheart, her eyes wide open in amazement, "and then another of the savages would fall in love with me, it could be the cannibal chief this time, and then a white man..." "Where did this white man come from?" asked Abe, just to be sure. "Hell have been there from the start. He could be a famous tenor who's fallen into the savages clutches. That's so that he can sing in the film." "And what would he be wearing?" Abe's sweetheart looked at her big to. "He should be...he should be naked, just like the cannibals." Mister Abe shook his head. "Sweetheart, that wouldn't work. Famous tenors are always horribly fat." "Oh, that's such a shame," lamented Abe's sweetheart. "Maybe Fred could play that part and then the tenor could just do the singing, you know how they do that dubbing in films." "But Fred was eaten by a shark!" Abe's sweetheart frowned. "You don't need to be so realistic all the time, Abe. I just can't talk about art with you. And then this king of the cannibals would put strings and strings of pearls around my neck..." "Where does he get them from?" "Why there's lots of pearls here," Li insisted. "And then Fred gets jealous and boxes with him on the rocks overlooking the sea as it crashes on shore. Don't you think Fred would have a fantastic silhouette against the sky? Isn't that a great idea? And then the two of them would fall into the sea..." This thought cheered Abe up slightly. "And then you could have that detail with the shark. Think how mad it would make Judy if Fred played in a film with me! And I'd get married to this beautiful wild man." The golden-haired Li jumped up from where she lay. "I'd be standing here on the shore like this, outlined against the setting sun, entirely naked, and the film would slowly come to a close." Li threw off her bathing gown. "And now I'm going to go for a swim." "...You haven't got your bathing suit," pointed out Abe in alarm, looking out to the yacht to see if anyone was watching; but Li, his sweetheart, was already dancing across the sand to the lagoon. Suddenly, Abe heard a voice: "Actually, she does look better with her clothes on." The voice was brutally cool and critical. Abe felt crushed at his lack of erotic admiration, he even felt almost guilty about it. But, well, when Li is wearing her clothes and stockings she does, well, seem more beautiful somehow. In his own defence, Abe considered that what he meant was more decent. Well, that as well. And nicer. And why's she running like that? And why do her thighs wobble like that? And why...Stop this! Abe told himself in horror. Li is the most beautiful girl that ever lived. And I'm terribly in love with her. "Even when she's got nothing on?" asked the cool and critical voice. Abe turned his eyes away and looked at the yacht in the lagoon. It was so beautiful, every line was perfect! It's a shame that Fred isn't here. If Fred were here we could talk about how beautiful the yacht is. Meanwhile, Abe's sweetheart had reached the water and was standing in it up to her knees, her arms were stretched out to the setting Sun and she was singing. She can go and swim in Hell, thought Abe in irritation. But it had been nice while she was lying there curled up in a ball, wrapped in her bathing gown and with her eyes closed. Dear Li. And with a touching sigh, Abe kissed the sleeve of her bathing gown. Yes, he was terribly in love with her. So much in love it hurt. There was a sudden, piercing scream from the lagoon. Abe lifted himself up on his elbow so that he could see better. Li, his sweetheart, was screaming, waving her arms in the air and rushing through the water to the shore, floundering and splashing water all around. Abe jumped up and ran to her. "What is it, Li?" (Look at that stupid way she runs, the cool and critical voice remarked. She throws her legs about. She flaps her arms about. It just isn't nice. And she's even squawking as she does it, yes, she squawks.) "What's happened, Li?" called Abe as he ran to her assistance. "Abe, Abe," squawked his sweetheart, and all of a sudden she was there hanging, cold and wet, around his neck. "Abe there's some kind of animal out there!" "Why that's nothing," laughed Abe. "It must be some kind of fish." "Not with an awful head like that," his sweetheart howled, and pressed her wet nose against Abe's breast. Abe wanted to pat her on the shoulder like a father, but on her wet body it would have sounded more like a slap. "Alright, alright," he muttered, "look out there, there's nothing there any more." Li looked out to the lagoon. "It was awful," she sighed, then suddenly started to howl again. "There, there, you see it?" There was the black head of something above the water slowly coming in to shore, its mouth opening and closing. Abe's sweetheart Li screamed hysterically and set off in desperate flight away from the water. Abe did not know what he should do. Should he run after Li so that she would not be so afraid? Or should he stay where he was to show that he had no fear of this animal himself? He chose, of course, the second option; strode towards the sea until he was up to his ankles in water and, his fists clenched, looked the creature in the eye. The black head stopped coming closer, it swayed oddly, and said: Ts-ts-ts. Abe was somewhat uneasy about this, but he could not possibly let it be seen. "What is it you want?" he said sharply. "Ts-ts-ts," the head replied. "Abe, Abe, A-a-abe," sweetheart Li shrieked. "I'm coming," Abe replied, and he slowly (so that nobody would get the wrong idea) went back towards his girl. He stopped and turned to look severely at the sea. At the waters edge, where the sea never stops tracing its lacey patterns in the sand, there was some kind of dark-coloured animal standing on its hind legs. Its head was round and its body swayed. Abe stood where he was with his heart beating fast. "Ts-ts-ts," said the animal. "A-a-abe" wailed his sweetheart, close to fainting. Abe walked backwards, step by step, without letting the animal out of his sight. The animal did not move but merely turned its head to watch him. At last, Abe was once more with his sweetheart, who was lying with her face to the ground and howling and blubbering with the horror of it. "It's...it's some kind of seal," said Abe uncertainly. "We really ought to go back to the ship, Li." But Li merely shuddered. "There's nothing there to be frightened of," Abe insisted. He wanted to kneel down beside Li, but it was his duty to stand like a knight in armour between her and the beast. He wished he were wearing more than just bathing trunks, or that he had at least something like a penknife with him, or that he could find a stick. It was beginning to get dark. The animal came closer again and stopped about thirty paces away. And behind it were five, six, eight of the same animal appearing out of the sea and hesitantly, swaying and tip-tapping, they made their way to where Abe was protecting his sweetheart, Li. "Don't look, Li," gasped Abe, although this was quite unnecessary as Li would not have looked for anything in the world. More of the shadows came out of the sea and formed into a broad semi-circle. By now there was about sixty of them, Abe reckoned. That light patch was his sweetheart Li's bathing gown, the gown she had been asleep in only a short time before. The animals had come as far as this light patch, which lay carelessly thrown down on the sand. Then Abe did something as natural and as nonsensical as the knight in the Schiller story who went into the lion's cage to fetch his lady's glove. There are many natural and nonsensical things that men will keep on doing for as long as the world is still spinning. Without thinking, and with his head erect and his fists clenched, Mister Abe Loeb went in among the animals to fetch the bathing gown belonging to his sweetheart, Li. The animals stepped back slightly but did not run away. Abe picked up the gown, threw it over his arm like a toreador and remained standing where he was. "A-abe," came the desperate whine from behind him. Mister Abe felt a sense of boundless strength and nobility. "What then?" he said to the animals, taking a step closer. "What exactly is it you want?" "Ts-ts," hissed one of the animals, and then, in a rasping voice like an old mans, it barked, "Knife!" The other animals, a little way away joined in, barking like the first: "Knife, knife, knife!" "A-abe!" "Don't be afraid, Li," Abe called back. "Li," came a bark from in front of him. "Li." "Li." "A-a-abe!" To Abe it seemed like he was dreaming. "What is it?" "Knife!" "A-a-abe!" wailed his sweetheart. "Come back here!" "Right away.--I don't have a knife. I'm not going to hurt you. What is it you want?" "Ts-ts," hissed another of them as it swayed its way across to him. Abe stood with his legs apart, the gown still over his arm, but he did not retreat. "Ts-ts," it said. "What is it you want?" The animal seemed to be offering Abe its front paw, but Abe did not like this at all. "What?" he said, somewhat sharply. "Knife," barked the animal, and dropped something whitish, like a beads, from its paw. But they were not beads as they rolled across the sand. "A-abe," stammered Li. "Don't leave me here!" By now, Mister Abe was no longer afraid. "Get out of the way," he said, waving the bathing gown at the animals. The animals made a sudden and hasty retreat. It would now be possible for Abe to withdraw with honour, but so that Li would see what courage he had he stooped down to pick up the white things the animal had dropped from its paw and see what they were. There were three of them, hard, smooth and round and with a dull sheen to them. As it was getting dark, Mister Abe brought them up close to his eyes. "A-abe," wailed his abandoned sweetheart, "Abe!" "I'm coming," Mister Abe called back. "Li, I've got something here for you! Li, Li, I'll bring it right over!" With the bathing gown whirling above his head, Mister Abe Loeb ran across along the shore like a young god. Li was squatting a little way off and shaking. "Abe," she sobbed as her teeth chattered. "How could you,...how could you..." The triumphant Abe knelt down in front of her. "Lily Valley, the gods of the sea, the Tritons, come to pay you homage. I am to tell you that ever since Venus emerged from the foaming deep no artist has ever impressed them like you. As proof of their awe they send you this." Abe held out his hand. "Look, three pearls." "Don't talk garbage, Abe," snorted his sweetheart, Li. "Honest, Li. Take a look, they're genuine pearls!" "Let me see them," she whined, and with trembling hands reached out to touch the whitish spheres. "Abe," she gasped, " they really are pearls! Did you find them in the sand?" "But Li, Sweetheart, you don't just find pearls in the sand!" "Yes you do," his sweetheart insisted. "You wash the sand off in a pan and there they are. Didn't I tell you there must be lots of pearls round here?" "Pearls grow in kind of clams under the water," said Abe, almost sure of himself. "But listen, Li, it was the tritons, they brought them for you? They must have seen you while you were bathing. They wanted to give them to personally, but you were so afraid..." "But they're so ugly," exclaimed Li. "Abe these are wonderful pearls. I'm really fond of pearls!" (Now she's beautiful, said the critical voice. Kneeling here in the sand with the pearls on the palm of her hand...yes, beautiful, it has to be said.) "And those, those animals, did they really..." "They're not animals, sweetheart. They're the gods of the sea, they're called tritons." This did not surprise his sweetheart in the slightest. "Why, that's so nice of them. They really are very sweet. What do you think, Abe, do you think I ought to thank them in some way." "Aren't you afraid of them any more?" Abe's sweetheart shuddered. "Yes. Abe, please, get me out of here!" "Well that means," said Abe, "we've got to get to our boat. Come with me and don't be afraid." "But what if...what if they're standing in our way, Abe?" shuddered Li. "Couldn't you go out there to them on your own? But you can't leave me here all by myself!" "I'll carry you in my arms," offered Mister Abe, the hero. "That would be all right," his sweetheart sighed. "But put your bathing gown on," grumbled Abe. "Right away." Miss Li rearranged her famously golden hair with both hands. "I must look an awful mess! Abe, do you have any lipstick on you?" Abe lay the bathing gown over her shoulders. "I think it's best just to go, Li!" "But I'm afraid," gasped his sweetheart. Mister Abe took her up in his arms. Li thought she was as light as a cloud. Hell, she's heavier than you thought, isn't she, said the critical voice. And now you've got both hands full, haven't you; if those animals do come at us, what then? "Can't you run any faster?" his sweetheart suggested. "Sure," gasped Mister Abe, hardly able not to get his legs in a tangle. By this time it was getting dark very fast. Abe was getting closer to the broad semi-circle formed by the animals. "Hurry Abe, faster, faster," whispered Li. The animals began to sway and gyrate the upper half of their bodies in their peculiar wave-like way. "Quick, Abe, hurry, faster," his sweetheart whined as she kicked her legs about hysterically and jagging her silver-lacquered nails in Abe's neck. "For Gods sake, Li, give it a rest," Abe muttered. "Knife," came a barking voice from just beside them. "Ts-ts-ts." "Knife." "Li." "Knife." "Knife." "Knife." "Li." They had already got past the semi-circle of animals, and Abe felt he could run no further through the damp sand. "You can put me down, now," said his sweetheart, just as Abe's legs were about to give way. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he panted for breath. "Get into the boat, quick," he ordered his sweetheart. The semi-circle of dark shapes had turned to face Li and was coming closer. "Ts-ts-ts." "Knife." "Knife." "Li." But Li did not scream. Li did not run away in terror. Li raised her arms to the sky, the bathing gown slipped off her shoulders, and naked and with both hands she waved to the swaying forms, blowing kisses to them as she did. On her trembling lips there appeared something which could only be called a charming smile. "You're so sweet," she stuttered in her squeaky voice, and stretched her white hands out once again to the swaying shadows. "Come and give me a hand, Li," Abe ordered somewhat sharply as he pushed the boat out into the water. Sweetheart Li picked up her bathing gown. "Goodbye, my darlings!" There was a sound of splashing as the shadows made their way into the water. "So hurry up, Abe," hissed his sweetheart as she paddled out to the boat. "They've nearly reached us!" Mister Abe Loeb was making desperate exertions to get the boat out into the water when sweetheart Li stepped into it to add to the weight, still fluttering her hand about. "Go over to the other side, Abe, they can't see me." "Knife." "Ts-ts-ts." "A-abe." "Knife, ts, knife." "Ts-ts." "Knife!" At last the boat was bobbing on the waves. Mister Abe clambered into it and leant with all his strength on the oars. One of the oars struck against something slippery. Sweetheart Li made a deep sigh. "Aren't they so sweet? And wasn't I just perfect?" Mister Abe rowed out to the yacht with all the strength he had. "Put your bathing gown on, Li," he replied somewhat drily. "I think I was a great success," asserted Miss Li. "And those pearls, Abe, what do you think they're worth?" For a moment, Mister Abe stopped rowing. "I think you needn't have shown so much of yourself, sweetheart." Miss Li felt slightly offended. "Well what if I did? Anyone can see that you're not an artist, Abe Loeb. And now, if you don't mind, keep rowing; I'm getting cold in just this gown!" Chapter 7THE YACHT IN THE LAGOON (continued)On board the Gloria Pickford that evening there were no personal quarrels, but scientific theories were bandied noisily. Fred (loyally supported by Abe) judged that it must certainly have been some kind of lizard, whereas the captain decided on a mammal. There aren't any lizards in the sea, the captain insisted angrily; but the young men from the university gave him no credence; and lizards are somehow more of a sensation. Sweetheart Li contented herself with the belief that they were tritons, that they were so sweet, and it was altogether such a success; and (in the blue striped pyjamas that Abe liked so much) her eyes shone as she dreamt of pearls and of gods of the sea. Judy, of course, was convinced it was all just humbug and nonsense and that Li and Abe had thought the whole thing up. She made furious signs to Fred that he should just leave it. Abe thought that Li should have told them about how he, Abe, went fearlessly among these lizards to fetch her bathing gown; which is why he told them three times about how Li faced them down while he, Abe, pushed the boat out into the water, and he was about to tell them for a fourth time except that Fred and the captain were not listening as they argued passionately about lizards and mammals. (As if it even mattered what they were, thought Abe.) In the end Judy yawned and said she was going to bed; she looked meaningfully at Fred, but Fred had just remembered that before the Flood there were all sorts of strange and ancient lizards with names like diplosaurus and bigosaurus or something like that and I can assure you they walked on their hind legs; Fred had seen them himself in a strange picture in an educational book as big as this. An amazing book, and it's something you should see for yourself. "Abe," came the voice of his sweetheart, Li. "I've got a fantastic idea for a film." "What's that, Li?" "It's something amazingly original. You see, our yacht has sunk and I'm the only survivor on this island. And I'd live there like a female Robinson Crusoe." "And what would you do there?" objected the captain with some skepticism. "Well I'd go swimming and that sort of thing," was sweetheart Li's simple reply. "And then these tritons from the sea would fall in love with me and they'd bring me lots and lots of pearls. You know, just like it really happened. It could even be a nature film or an educational film, don't you think? Something like Trader Horn." "Li's right," declared Fred suddenly. "We ought to go down tomorrow evening and film these lizards." "These mammals, you mean," the captain corrected him. "Me, he means," said Li, "as I'm standing among these tritons." "But wearing your bathing gown," Abe interjected. "I would have my white bathing suit on," said Li. "And Greta would have to do my hair properly. Today I looked just awful." "Who would do the filming?" "Abe. So that he has something to do. And Judy would have to hold the lights if it's already getting dark." "What about Fred?" "Fred would be carrying a bow and arrow and have a wreath on his head, and then if the tritons want to carry me away he can stop them." "Well thanks a lot," Fred grinned. "I think I'd rather have a revolver, though. I think the captain should be there, too." The captain's military moustache bristled. "Don't you worry about a thing. I'll make sure I do everything that needs doing." "Three members of the crew, sir. And properly armed, sir." Sweetheart Li lit up in charming astonishment. "Do you really think it's that dangerous, captain?" "I don't think anything, girl," the captain grumbled, "but I have my orders from Mister Jesse Loeb--at least where Mister Abe is concerned." All the gentlemen threw themselves into a passionate discussion of all the details of the undertaking; Abe winked to his sweetheart, it was already time for her to go to bed. Li obediently went. "You know, Abe," she said to him in her cabin "I think this is going to be a fantastic film!" "It will be, my love," Mister Abe agreed as he tried to kiss her. "Not tonight, Abe," said his love as she pushed him away. "You must understand that I really have to concentrate." Miss Li continued to concentrate all the next day, causing a great deal of work for her poor maid, Greta. There were bath with essential salts and essences, washing her hair with Nurblond shampoo, massage, pedicure, manicure, hairdressing, ironing, trying on and alterations of clothes, and many other different kinds of preparation; even Judy was drawn into the bustle and did what she could do help Li. (At times of difficulty, women can be remarkably loyal to each other. Dressing is one such time.) While all this feverish rush was occupying Miss Li's cabin the gentlemen were fending for themselves, and with ash trays and glasses of strong drink on the table in front of them they worked out a strategic plan about who would stand where and who would take care of what if anything happened; and in the process the captains dignity in the serious question of who would hold command was injured several times. In the afternoon the filming equipment was taken down to the shore of the lagoon, along with a small machine gun, a basket with food and cutlery, a shotgun, a gramophone and other military requisites; all of it perfectly concealed under palm leaves. The three armed members of the crew, with the captain in the function of commander in chief, were in position well before it began to get dark, and then an enormous basket containing a few small things Miss Lily Valley might need was taken to the shore. Then Fred came down with Miss Judy. And then the Sun began to set in all its tropical glory. Meanwhile, Mister Abe was already tapping on the door of Miss Li's cabin for the tenth time. "Sweetheart, it really is time to go now!" "I'm coming, I'm coming," his sweetheart's voice replied, "but please don't make me nervous! I have to get myself ready, don't I?" The captain had his eye on the situation. Out on of the bay he could see a long, glittering band where the waves of the sea met the smooth and level surface of the lagoon. It's as if there were some kind of weir or breakwater under the water there, he thought; it could be sand, or a coral reef, but it looks almost as if it were artificial. Strange place. Here and there on the peaceful surface of the lagoon a black head would appear and make its way to the shore. The captain pursed his lips and reached uneasily for his revolver. It would have been better, he thought, if the women had stayed on board the yacht. Judy began to shiver and held tightly onto Fred. He's so strong, she thought, God I love him so much! Eventually the last boat set out from the yacht. It contained Miss Lily Valley in a white bathing suit and a diaphanous dressing gown, in which, clearly, she was to be thrown up from the sea like a castaway; it also contained Miss Greta and Mister Abe. "Can't you row any faster, Abe," his sweetheart reproached him. Mister Abe saw the black heads as they moved towards the shore and said nothing. "Ts-ts." "Ts." Mister Abe pulled the boat up onto the sand and helped Li and Miss Greta out of it. "Hurry over to the camera, now," whispered the artist, "and when I say Now, start filming." "But we won't be able to see anything," Abe objected. "Then Judy will just have to put the lights on. Greta!" While Mister Abe Loeb took up his place at the camera the artist positioned herself on the sand like a dying swan and Miss Greta adjusted the folds of her dressing gown. "Make sure they can see something of my legs," the artist whispered. "Is that it now? Okay, so move back! Abe, Now!" Abe began turning the handle. "Judy, lights!" But no lights came on. Swaying shadows were emerging from the sea and coming closer to Li. Greta pushed her hand into her mouth so that she would not scream. "Li," called Mister Abe, "Li, run!" "Knife!" "Ts-ts-ts." "Li." "Li." "A-abe!" Somebody removed the safety catch on his revolver. "Don't shoot, damn it!" hissed the captain. "Li," called Abe and stopped filming. "Judy, lights!" Li slowly and languidly stood up and raised her hands to the sky. The flimsy dressing gown slid down off her shoulders, and there was Lily in all her whiteness, stretching her lovely arms above her head as castaways do when they recover from having fainted. Mister Abe began angrily to turn the handle. "For Gods sake, Judy, put the lights on!" "Ts-ts-ts!" "Knife." "Knife." "A-be!" The swaying black shadows formed a ring around Li in all her whiteness. But wait, this was no longer a game. Li no longer had her arms stretched up above her head, she was pushing something away from herself and screaming, "Abe, Abe, one of them touched me!" Just then a blinding glare of lights came on, Abe was quickly turning the handle, Fred and the captain ran towards Li with their revolvers, and Li was crouching on the sand shrieking with horror. At the same time, the fierce light showed tens or hundreds of long dark shadows slipping into the sea as if fleeing from it. At the same time two divers threw a net over one of the shadows as it fled. At the same time Greta fainted and fell to the ground like an empty sack. At the same time two or three shots rang out and caused large splashes in the sea, the two divers with the net were lying on something which twisted and coiled under them, and the light in the hands of Miss Judy went out. The captain switched on his pocket torch. "Children, is everyone alright?" "One of them touched my leg," wailed sweetheart Li. "Oh Fred, it was awful!" then Mister Abe ran up with his torch. "Hey, that was great, Li," he declared enthusiastically, "but I wish Judy had put the lights on earlier" "The wouldn't go on," exclaimed Judy. "They wouldn't go on, would they Fred." "Judy was afraid," Fred apologised for her. "But she didn't do it on purpose, I swear, did you Judy." Judy felt insulted, but in the meantime the two divers had arrived, dragging behind them something in the net that was thrashing about like an enormous fish. "So here it is, Captain. And it's alive." "The damned brute squirted some kind of poison at us. My hands are covered in blisters. And it hurts like Hell." "And it touched me as well," whined Miss Li. "Abe, put the lights on! I want to see if I've got any blisters." "No, sweetheart, there's nothing there," Abe assured here; he was going to kiss the spot just above her knee, but his sweetheart was anxiously rubbing at it. "It was so cold, brr," sweetheart Li complained. "You dropped one of your pearls, ma'am," said one of the divers as he handed over the little ball he had picked up from the sand. "Gee, look Abe," Miss Li squealed, "they brought more pearls for me! All of you come and look for the pearls! There must be lots of pearls round here that the poor animals brought for me! Aren't they sweet, Fred? Here's another one!" "Here's one too!" The three pocket torches were pointed down to the ground. "I've found one that's enormous!" "That belongs to me!" shouted sweetheart Li. "Fred," came the icy voice of Miss Judy. "Be right with you," said Fred as he crawled about the sand on his knees. "Fred, I want to go back to the ship!" "Somebody'll take you there," Fred told her as he continued searching. "Hey, this is fun!" Li and the three men continued crawling about in the sand. "I've got three pearls here," the captain declared. "Show me, show me," squealed Li excitedly and, still on her knees, ran over to him. Just then, there was a sudden glare of magnesium light and the sound of the handle on the camera being turned. "Now I've got you," declared Judy vengefully. "This is going to be a great shot for the papers. Americans look for pearls. Marine reptiles throw pearls to people." Fred sat down. "Christ, Judy's right guys; we've got to tell the press about this!" Li sat down. "Judy is so nice. Judy, take us again, only this time from the front!" "That wouldn't do you any favors, honey," opined Judy. "Listen," said Mister Abe, "we really ought to keep on searching. The tides coming in." In the darkness, at the edge of the sea, a black and swaying shadow appeared. Li screamed: "There...there..." The three torches were turned in that direction. It was only Greta on her knees, looking for pearls in the dark. On Li's lap was the captain's cap with twenty-one pearls in it. Abe poured the drinks and Judy played the gramophone. It was an idyllic, starry night with the eternal sound of the sea. ""So what are we going to call it?" Fred insisted. " Milwaukee industrialists daughter films prehistoric reptiles. " " Primordial lizards praise youth and beauty, " suggested Abe poetically. " SS Gloria Pickford discovers unknown species, " the captain advised. Or " The mystery of Tahuara Island. " "Those are just sub-titles," said Fred. "A title really to say more than that." "How about: Baseball Fred in struggle with monsters, " Judy suggested. "Fred was fantastic when they came at him. I hope that came out all right on film!" The captain cleared his throat. "Actually Miss Judy, I was the first on the scene, but we neednt talk about that. I think the title ought to have a scientific sound to it, sir. Something formal and ...well, scientific. Anteliduvian fauna on Pacific island." " Anteviludian," Fred corrected him. "No, wait, Anteduvidian. Hell, hows it supposed to go? Anteduvidual. Antedinivian. No, thats not it. We;re going to have to think up some simpler title, something that anyone can say. Judys good at that sort of thing." " Antediluvian," said Judy. Fred twisted round to look at her. "Thats too long, Judy. It's longer than those monsters with the tails. A title needs to be shorter. But isn't Judy great? Captain, dont you think shes great?" "She is," the captain agreed. "A remarkable girl." "Quite right, Captain," acknowledged the young giant. "The captain is a great guy. Only, Anteviludian fauna is kinda dumb. Thats no kind of title for the papers. How about Lovers on the Island of Pearls, or something like that?" " Tritons shower the radiant Lily with pearls, " shouted Abe. " Worship from the Empire of Poseidon! The new Aphrodite! " "Thats stupid," protested Fred. "There never were any tritons. Thats been scientifically proven. And there was never any Aphrodite either, were there Judy. Humans meet with ancient lizards! The noble captain attacks antediluvian monsters! It needs to have some pazazz, this title!" "Special edition," declared Abe. " Film star attacked by sea monsters! Modern womans sex appeal triumphs over primitive lizards! Primordial reptiles prefer blondes! " "Abe," sweetheart Li interrupted. "I have an idea." "What sort of idea?" "An idea for a film. Itll be just fantastic, Abe. Just imagine, I'd be bathing in the sea... "That blouse really suits you, Li," Abe interjected. "What? And these tritons would fall in love with me and take me away to the bottom of the sea. And I would be their queen." "At the bottom of the sea?" "That's right, under the water. In their secret kingdom, see, where they have cities and everything." "But sweetheart, at the bottom of the sea you'd drown!" "Don't worry about that, I can swim," said his sweetheart innocently. "So once every day I'd swim up to the shore and breath some air." Li demonstrated her breathing exercises, which involved raising her chest and moving her arms as if swimming. "Like that, see? And on the shore someone, like a young fisherman maybe, would fall in love with me and I'd fall in love with him. Wouldn't that be great?" said sweetheart Li with a sigh. "And he would be so handsome and strong, and these tritons would want to drown him, but I would save him and go with him back to where he lives and the tritons would discover us there and then...and then maybe you could all come along and save us." "Li," said Fred seriously, "that is so dumb that I swear they even could make a film of it. I'll be surprised if old Jesse doesn't make a great film out of it." Fred was right; Jesse Loeb Pictures did, later on, produce a great film with Miss Lily Valley in the leading role; it also had six hundred nayads, one Neptune and twelve thousand extras dressed as various kinds of underwater lizard. But before the film was completed a lot of water had flowed away and many incidents took place, such as: 1. The animal they had captured and kept in Miss Lily's bathtub attracted the lively attention of everyone for two days; by the third day it had stopped moving and Miss Li insisted it was just shy, poor thing; by the third day it had begun to stink and had to be thrown away in an advanced state of decay. 2. Only two pieces of film shot at the lagoon were any use. On one of them sweetheart Li was crouching in terror, waving her arms desperately at one of the animals standing nearby. Everyone agreed it was a great shot. The second showed three men and one girl kneeling down with their noses close to the ground; all of them were seen from the rear and it looked as if they were bowing down to something. This piece of film was suppressed. 3. Almost all the titles suggested for the newspapers were used (even the ones about the antediluvian fauna) in hundreds and hundreds of journals, weeklies and magazines in America and all round the world. They were accompanied with full and detailed accounts of what had happened and many photographs, such as the one of sweetheart Li among the lizards, the one of a single lizard in the bathtub, the one of Li by herself in her bathing suit, photographs of Miss Judy, Mister Abe Loeb, Baseball Fred, the captain of the yacht, the yacht itself, the island of Taraiva and a large number of pearls displayed on black velvet. In this way the career of sweetheart Li was assured; she even refused to appear in music hall and declared to journalists that she would devote herself to her Art. 4. There were of course those claiming specialist knowledge who asserted, as far as could be judged from the photographs, that these were not primaeval lizards at all but some kind of newt. Those with even more specialist knowledge asserted that this species of newt was not known to science and therefore did not exist. There was a long debate in the press about this which came to an end when professor J. W. Hopkins (Yale University) announced that he had examined the photographs available and considered them to be a hoax or a montage; that the species shown seemed to resemble the great covered-gill newt (Cryptobranchus japoÂnicus, Sieboldia maxima, Tritomegas Sieboldii or MegaloÂbatrachus Sieboldii), but done in a way that was inaccurate, inartistic and downright dilletante. In this way the matter remained scientifically settled for a long period. 5. After a suitable time had elapsed, Mister Abe Loeb eventually married Miss Judy. His closest friend, Baseball Fred, was best man in a wedding performed with great celebration and the participation of a wide range of outstanding personalities in politics, art and other fields. Chapter 8ANDRIAS SCHEUCHZERIThe inquisitiveness of man is boundless. It was not enough that Professor J. W. Hopkins (Yale University), the greatest authority of the day in the field of herpatology, had declared these mysterious creatures to be unscientific humbug and mere fantasy; both the specialist and the general press began to report frequent discoveries of these previously unknown animals, resembling giant newts, in all parts of the Pacific Ocean. Relatively reliable reports came from the Solomon Isles, Schoutoen Island, Kapingamarang, Butarit and Tapeteuea, and then further reports came from entire archipelagoes: Nudufetau, Fanufuti, Nukonono and Fukaofu, and then from Kiau, Uahuka, Uapu and Pukapuka. Rumours about Captain van Toch's demons and Miss Lily's tritons circulated around Melanesia and Polynesia respectively; and the papers judged there must be various kinds of underwater and prehistoric monsters, especially as the summer had begun and there was nothing else to write about. The underwater monsters were especially successful among their readers and tritons became the height of fashion in the USA that season; a spectacular revue called Poseidon was performed three hundred times in New York with three hundred of the most beautiful tritonesses and syrens; on the beaches of Miami and California young people bathed in costumes of tritons and nayads (ie. three strings of pearls and nothing else), while in the states of the midwest the Movement for the Suppression of Immorality gained enormously in numbers; there were public demonstrations and several negroes were hanged or burned alive. Eventually the National Geographic Magazine published a special edition covering the scientific expeditions of Columbia University (instigated by J.S. Tincker, otherwise known as the Tin-can King). The reports were endorsed by P. L. Smith, W. Kleinschmidt, Charles Kovar, Louis Forgeron and D. Herrero , which covered all the worlds' authorities in the disciplines of fish parasites, ringworm, botany, infusoria and aphids. Their extensive coverage included: ...On the island of Rakahanga the expedition first encountered prints left by the rear legs of a hitherto unknown species of newt. The prints show five toes, between three and four centimetres long. The number of prints left shows that the coast around the island must have been swarming with these newts. There were no prints of front legs (apart from one set of four, clearly left by a juvenile), showing clearly that these newt move about on their rear limbs. ...It is worth mentioning that there is neither river nor marshland on the island of Rakahanga; this indicates that these newts live in the sea and are most likely the only representatives of that order living in a pelagic environment. It is well known, of course, that the Mexican axolotl (Amblystoma mexicanum) lives in salt lakes, but not even the classic work of W. Korngold, Caudate Amphibians (Urodela), Berlin, 1913, makes any mention of newts living in the sea. ...We waited until into the afternoon in order that we might catch, or at least catch sight of, a live specimen, but in vain. With some regret, we left the island of Rakahanga, where D. Herrer had been successful in finding a beautiful new species of lizard heperoptera. We met with much greater success, however, on the island of Tongarewa. We waited on the foreshore with our guns in our hands. Soon after sunset, the head of a newt emerged from the water, relatively large and slightly flattened. After a short while the newts climbed out onto the sand, swaying as they walked on their hind legs but nonetheless quite agile. When sitting they were just over three feet in height. They sat around in a wide circle and began making distinctive and vigorous circling movements of the upper parts of their bodies, giving the impression that they were dancing. W. Kleinschmidt stood up in order to obtain a better view. At this, the newts turned to look at him and soon were entirely stiff and motionless; they then began with remarkable speed to approach him, uttering sibilant barking sounds. When they were about seven paces away we opened fire on them. They fled, very quickly, and threw themselves into the sea; they were not seen again that evening. On the shore, there remained no more than two dead newts and one newt with a broken spine, uttering an odd sound, something like ogod, ogod, ogod. It then expired after W. Kleinschmidt used a knife to open its pulmonary cavity... (There followed a series of anatomical details which we laymen would be unable to understand; readers with specialist knowledge are referred to the bulletin cited.) The above indicators make it clear that this was a typical member of the order of caudate amphibians (urodela) which, as is widely known, includes the salamander genus (salamandridae), comprising the family of spotted salamanders (tritons) and newts (salamandrae), and the family of tadpole spawning newts (ichthyoidea), made up of the pseudo-gilled newts (cryptobranchiata) and the gilled newts (phanerobranchiata). The newt found on the island of Tongarewa seems to be most closely related to the tadpole spawning pseudo-gilled newts; in many respects, including its size, it is reminiscent of the great Japanese newt (megalobatrachus sieboldii) or the American hellbender, better known as the mud devil, but it does distinguish itself from these species by its well developed sensors and the greater length and strength of its limbs which enable it to move with some facility both in water and on land. (There followed further details of comparative anatomy). Andrias Scheuchzeri After we had prepared the skeletons of the animals killed we made a very interesting observation: the skeleton of these newts is almost identical with the fossil remains of a newt's skeleton found by Dr. Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer in the ×hningen Fault and described by him in his "Homo Diluvii Testis", published in 1726. Readers less familiar with his work are reminded that the above mentioned Dr. Scheuchzer regarded this fossil as the remains of a human being from before the Flood. "Members of the educated World," he writes, "will see from the accompanying Woodcut that there is no Doubt whatsoever that we are dealing with a Man who was Witness to the Great Flood; there is no Feature that does not make ample Display of what could only be a Feature of Mankind, for it does everywhere conform with all the individual Parts of the Skeleton of Man in all its Dimensions. It is a Man made of Stone and shown from the Front; it is a Memorial of Man in a Form now extinct, older than all the Tombs of the Romans, Greeks or even Egyptians or any other People of the East." At a later date, Cuvier recognised the ×hningen fossil skeleton as that of a newt, known as Cryptobranchus Primaevus or Andrias Scheuchzeri Tschudi and long since considered extinct. By means of osteological comparisonswe were able to identify this newt as the primitive and supposedly extinct newt, Andrias. The mysterious ancient reptile, as the newspapers described it, is nothing other than the newt with covered gills known from the fossil record as Andrias Scheuchzeri; or if a new name is needed Cryptobranchus Tinckeri Erectus or the Polynesian Great Newt. ...The question as to why this interesting giant newt has hitherto escaped scientific attention remains a mystery, especially considering the large numbers in which it is found on the islands of Rakahanga and Tongarewa in the Manihiki archipelago. Neither Randolph nor Montgomery make mention of it in their publication Two Years in the Manihiki Islands (1885). The local inhabitants insist that this animal--which they also consider to be poisonous--began to appear no more than six or eight years ago. They say that these sea demons are capable of speech (!), and that in the bays where they live they construct entire systems of weirs and sea-walls in a way that resembles underwater cities; that the water in their bays remains as still as a mill pond throughout the entire year; that they excavate dens and passages in the ground under the water which are many meters long and in which they remain during the day; that at night they come out into the fields to steal sweet potatoes and yams and take hoes and pickaxes and other tools from the human population. The native people have developed a strong aversion to the newts and even live somewhat in fear of them; many of them have preferred to move away to other areas. It is clear that this is nothing more than primitive legends and superstitions resulting from the revolting appearance and upright stance and gait, somewhat resembling the walk of a human being, of these harmless giant newts. ...Travellers tales, according to which these newts are also to be found on other islands than Manihiki, should be taken with extreme caution. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the fresh footprints found on the shore of the island of Tongatabu and published by Captain Croisset in La Nature are those of Andrias Scheuchzer. This finding is of especial importance given that they form a connection between their appearance on the Manihiki Islands with Australasia, where so many vestiges of the development of ancient fauna have been preserved; let us bear in mind in particular the antediluvian lizard hateri or tuatara, which survives to this day on Stephen Island. These islands are mostly sparsely inhabited and hardly touched by civilization, and it is possible that isolated remains of species elsewhere extinct may have continued to survive there. Thanks to the efforts of Mister J.S. Tincker, an antediluvian newt has now been added to the ancient lizard, hateri. If the good Dr. Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer were alive today he would see the resurrection of his Adam of ×hningen... This learned bulletin would certainly have been sufficient to satisfy scientific curiosity about the mysterious sea monsters that were being talked about so much. Unfortunately though, the Dutch researcher, van Hogenhouck, published a report at the same time in which he classified these covered-gilled giant newts in the order of proper newts or tritons under the name of megatriton molucccanus and established that they were distributed throughout the Dutch-Sundanese islands of Jilolo, Morotai and Ceram; there was also a report by the French scientist Dr. Mignard who saw them as typical salamanders and concluded that they had originated in the French islands of Takaroa, Rangiroa and Raroia, calling them simply cryptobranchus salamandroides; there was also a report from H.W. Spence in which he claimed to have recognised a new order of pelagidae, native to the Gilbert Isles, which could be classified under the species name of pelagotriton spencei. Mr. Spence succeeded in transporting a live specimen to London Zoo, where it became the subject of further research and was given the names pelagobatrachus hookeri, salamandrops maritimus, abranchus giganteus, amphiuma gigas and many others. Many scientists insisted that pelagotriton spencei was the same as cryptobranchus tinckeri or that Mignards salamander was no other than andrias scheuchzeri; there were many disputes about priority and other purely scientific questions. So it was that in the end every nation had its own giant newts and furiously and scientifically criticised the newts of other nations. That is why there never was any scientifically agreed opinion about the whole great matter of the newts. Chapter 9ANDREW SCHEUCHZEROne Thursday afternoon, when London zoo was closed to the public, Mister Thomas Greggs, who was in charge of the lizard pavillion, was cleaning out the tanks and terraria. He was entirely alone in the newt section where the great Japanese newt, the American hellbender, Andrias Scheuchzeri and a number of small amphibians, axolotls, eels, reptiles and frogs were exhibited. Mister Greggs went round with his duster and his broom, singing Annie Laurie as he went; when suddenly a rasping voice behind him said: "Look Mum." Mister Thomas Greggs looked round, but there was nobody there; there was just the hellbender slopping around in its mud and that big black newt, that Andrias, which was leant up against the edge of the tank with its front paws and twisting its body round. Must have imagined it, thought Mister Greggs, and continued to sweep the floor till it shone. "Look, a newt," he heard from behind him. Mister Greggs turned quickly round; that black newt, that Andrias, was watching him, blinking with its lower eyelids. "Ugh, it's ugly, isn't it," the newt said suddenly. "Dont get too close to it, love." Mister Greggs opened his mouth in astonishment. "What?" "You sure it doesnt bite?" the newt rasped. "You ...you can speak!" Mister Greggs stammered, unable to believe his ears. "Im scared of that one," the newt exclaimed. "What does it eat, Mum?" "Say Good afternoon," said the astonished Mister Greggs. The newt twisted its body round. "Good afternoon," it rasped. "Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Can I give it a cake?" In some confusion, Mister Greggs reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of bread. "Here you are, then" The newt took the lump of bread into its paw and tried a piece of it. "Look, a newt," it muttered contentedly. "Dad, why is it so black?" Suddenly the newt dived back into the water and just its head re-emerged. "Whys it in the water? Why? Ooh, it's not very nice!" Mister Thomas Greggs scratched the back of his neck in surprise. Oh, it's just repeating what it's heard people saying. "Say Greggs," he tried. "Say Greggs," the newt repeated. "Mister Thomas Greggs." "Mister Thomas Greggs." "Good afternoon." "Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon." The newt seemed able to continue talking without getting tired of it; but by now Greggs did not know what he could say; Mister Thomas Greggs was not a talkative man. "Shut your mouth for now," he said, "and then when Im ready I'll teach you how to talk." "Shut your mouth for now," gurgled the newt. "Good afternoon. Look, a newt. I'll teach you how to talk." The management of the zoo, however, did not look kindly on it when its zookeepers taught the animals tricks; with the elephant it was different, but the other animals were there for educational purposes and not to be presented like in a circus. Mister Greggs therefore kept a secret of the time he spent in the newt pavilion, and was there after all the other people had left, and as he was a widower nobody was curious about his being there by himself. Everyone has his own taste. And not many people went to the newt pavilion anyway; the crocodiles were popular with everyone but Andrias Scheuchzeri spent his days in relative solitude. One day, when it was getting dark and the pavilions were closing, the director of the zoo, Sir Charles Wiggam, was wandering round the different sections just to see that everything was in order. As he went past the newt pavilion there was a splash in one of the tanks and a rasping voice said, "Good evening". "Good evening," the director answered, somewhat surprised. "Whos there?" "I beg your pardon," the rasping voice said, "I thought it was Mister Greggs." "Whos there?" the director repeated. "Andy. Andrew Scheuchzer." Sir Charles went closer to the tank. All he saw was one newt sitting upright and immobile. "Who said that?" "Andy," said the newt. "Who are you?" "Wiggam," exclaimed Sir Charles in astonishment. "Pleased to meet you," said Andrias politely. "How do you do?" "Damn it all!" Sir Charles roared. "Greggs! Hey, Greggs!" The newt flipped quickly away and hid in the water. Mister Thomas Greggs hurried in through the door, out of breath and somewhat uneasy. "How can I help you, sir?" "Greggs, what's the meaning of this?" Sir Charles began. "Has something happened, sir?" stammered Mister Greggs, rather unsure of himself. "This animal is speaking!" "I do beg your pardon, sir," replied Mister Greggs contritely. "You're not to do that, Andy. I've told you a thousand times you're not to bother the people with all your talk. I am sorry, sir, it won't happen again." "Is it you that's taught this newt to speak?" "Well it was him what started it, sir," Greggs defended himself. "I hope it won't happen again, Greggs," said Sir Charles severely. "I'll be keeping an eye on you." Some time after this incident, Sir Charles was sitting with Professor Petrov and talking about so-called animal intelligence, conditioned responses, and about how the popular view will over estimate how much an animal is capable of understanding. Professor Petrov expressed his doubts about Elberfeld's horses who, it was said, could not only count but also work out squares and square roots; after all, not even a normal educated man can work out square roots, said the great scientist. Sir Charles thought of Greggs talking newt. "I have a newt here," he began hesitantly, "that famous andrias scheuchzer it is, and it has learned to talk like a parrot." "Out of the question," said the scientist. "Newts don't have the right sort of tongue." "Then come and have a look," said Sir Charles. "It's cleaning day today, so there won't be too many people there." And out they went. At the entrance to the newt pavillion sir Charles stopped. From inside could be heard the scraping of a broom and a monotonous voice saying something very slowly. "Wait," Sir Charles whispered. "Is there life of Mars?" the monotonous voice said. "Shall I read it?" "No, read us something else, Andy," another voice answered. "Who's to win this years Derby; Pelham Beauty or Gobernador?" "Pelham Beauty," the second voice replied. "But read it anyway." Sir Charles opened the door very quietly. Mister Thomas Greggs was sweeping the floor; and in the tank of sea water sat Andrias Scheuchzeri, slowly, word by word in a rasping voice, reading out the evening paper which he held in his front paws. "Greggs," shouted Sir Charles. The newt flipped over backwards and disappeared under the water. Mister Greggs was startled and dropped his broom. "Yes sir?" "What is the meaning of this?" "Please forgive me, sir," stuttered the unfortunate Greggs. "Andy always reads to me when I'm doing the sweeping. And then when he's sweeping it's me what reads to him." "And who taught him to do that?" "He worked it out for himself, sir. I...I just gave him my paper so that he wouldn't keep talking all the time. He was always talking, sir. So I just thought he could at least learn how to talk proper..." "Andy," called Sir Charles. A black head emerged from the water. "Yes sir," it rasped. "Professor Petrov has come to look at you." "Glad to meet you Professor. I'm Andy Scheuchzer." "How do you know your name is Andrias Scheuchzeri?" "Well it's written down here, sir. Andreas Scheuchzer. Gilbert Islands." "And do you often read the newspaper?" "Oh yes sir. Every day." "And what parts do you most like to read?" "Court cases, horse racing, football,..." "Have you ever seen a football match?" "No sir." "Or a horse race?" "No sir." "Then why do you read it?" "Cause it's in the paper, sir." "Do you have no interest in politics?" "No sir. Is there going to be a war?" "Nobody can tell you that, Andy." "Germanys building a new type of submarine," said Andy anxiously. "Death rays can turn a whole continent to dust." "That's what you've read in the paper, is it?" asked Sir Charles. "Yes sir. Who's going to win this years Derby; Pelham Beauty or Gobernador?" "What do you think, Andy?" "I think Gobernador, sir; but Mister Greggs thinks Pelham Beauty." Andy nodded his head. "Always buy English products. Snider's braces are the best. Do you have the new six-cylinder Tancred Junior yet? Fast, economic and elegant." "Thank you, Andy. That will be enough now." "Who's your favourite film star?" The hair of Professor Petrov's head and moustache bristled. "Excuse me, Sir Charles," he complained, "I really have to go now." "Very well, lets go. Andy, would you mind if some very learned gentlemen came to see you? I think they would be very glad to talk to you." "I shall look forward to it, sir," the newt rasped. "Goodbye Sir Charles. Goodbye Professor." The professor ran from the pavillion snorting and gasping in amazement. "Forgive me, Sir Charles," he said at last, "but could you not show me an animal that does not read the newspapers?" The three learned gentlemen turned out to be Sir Bertram, D.M., Professor Ebbigham, Sir Oliver Dodge, Julian Foxley and others. The following is part of the record of the experiment with Andrias Scheuchzeri. What is your name? Answer: Andrezu Scheuchzer How old are you? A.: I don't know. If you want to look younger, wear the Libella corset. What is the date today? A.: Monday. It's nice weather today. Gibraltar is running in the Epsom this Saturday. What is three times five? A.: Why? Are you able to count? A.: Oh yes. What is seventeen times twenty-nine? Leave us to ask the questions, Andrew. Name some English rivers for us. A.: The Thames... What else? A.: Thames. You don't know any others, do you. Who governs England? A.: King George. God bless him. Very good Andy. Who is the greatest English writer? A.: Kipling. Splendid. Have you read anything by him? A.: No. How do you like Mae West? It's better if we ask the questions, Andy. What do you know of English history? A.: Henry VIII. And what do you know about him? A.: The best film in recent years. Fantastic costumes. A great show. Have you seen it? A.: I haven't. Get to know England: Buy yourself a Ford Baby. What would you most like to see, Andy? A.: The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. How many continents are there? A.: Five. Very good. And what are they called. A.: England, and the other ones. What are the other ones called? A.: There are the Bolsheviks and the Germans. And Italy. Where are the Gilbert Islands? A.: In England. England will not lay a hand on the continent. England needs ten thousand aeroplanes. Visit the English south coast. May we have a look at your tongue, Andy? A.: Yes sir. Clean your teeth with Flit toothpaste: it's economic, it's the best and it's English. For sweet smelling breath, use Flit toothpaste. Thank you, Andy, that will be enough. And now, Andy, tell us ...
And so on. The transcript of the conversation with Andrias Scheuchzeri covered sixteen pages and was published in Natural Science. At the end of the transcript the committee of specialists summarised its findings thus: 1. Andrias Scheuchzeri, a newt kept in London Zoo, is capable of speech, albeit it in a somewhat rasping voice; it has around four hundred words at its disposal; it says only what it has already heard or read. There is, of course, no question of any independent thought. Its tongue is quite mobile; under the circumstances we were unable to examine the vocal cords any closer. 2. The newt is also able to read, although only the evening paper. It takes an interest in the same subjects as the average Englishman and reacts to them in a similar way, ie. with fixed and generally accepted views. Its spiritual life--if it is possible to speak of such a thing--remains in conformity with the conceptions and opinions of our times. 3. Its intelligence should not be over-estimated, as it in no way surpasses that of the average modern man. Despite this sober assessment by the committee of specialists, the Talking Newt became the sensation of London Zoo. Andy was the darling of the crowds that surrounded him and wanted to talk to him on every possible subject, starting with the weather and finishing with the economic crisis and the political situation. At the same time he was given so much chocolate and sweets by his visitors that he became seriously ill in his gastro-intestinal tract. In the end the newt section had to be closed down, but it was already too late; Andrias Scheuchzeri, known as Andy, died as a result of his popularity, showing that even newts can be corrupted by fame. Chapter 10TOWN CARNIVAL IN NOVÉ STRAÅ ACÃMister Povondra, the butler in the Bondy household, was spending this holiday in his native town. There was to be a carnival the following day; and when Mister Povondra went out he led his eight year old son, Frank, by the hand. The whole of Nové StraÅ¡acà was filled with the scent of cakes and pastries and across the street were women and girls coming and going to the bakers with cakes. Two tents had already been set up on the square selling sweets and cakes and coffee, and a hardware dealer was there with his glass and porcelain, and a woman was shouting that she had embroidery and knitwear of every sort you could think of. And then there was a hut made of canvas covered in cloth on all sides. A lightly built man stood there on a ladder fixing on a sign at the top of it. Mister Povondra stopped so that he could see what it said. The thin man climbed down from his ladder and looked up contentedly at the sign he had just put up. And Mister Povondra, with some surprise, read: CAPTAIN J. VAN TOCH and his performing newts Mister Povondra thought of the big fat man with the captain's cap who he had once shown in to see Mister Bondy. And now look where he is, the poor man, thought Mister Povondra in sympathy; a captain he was, and now he's travelling about with some pitiful circus act! Such an impressive and healthy man he was! Maybe I should go in and see how he is, thought the compassionate Mister Povondra. Meanwhile, the thin man had hung up a second sign at the entrance to the tent: !! TALKING LIZARDS !! !! THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC SENSATION !! Entrance 2 koruny. Children (accompanied by parents) half price! Mister Povondra hesitated. Two koruny and another koruna for the lad, that was not cheap. But Frank liked to learn things, and it would all be part of his education to learn about animals in other parts of the world. Mister Povondra was willing to sacrifice something for the boy's education, and so he walked up to the thin man. "Hello," he said, "I'd like to talk to Captain van Toch if that's alright." The little man's chest expanded in his stripey teeshirt. "I'm Captain van Toch, sir." "You're Captain van Toch?" answered Mister Povondra in surprise. "Yes sir," said the little man, and showed him the anchor tattooed on his wrist." Mister Povondra blinked in surprise. How could the captain have shrunk down so small? Surely that's not possible. "I am personally acquainted with Captain van Toch," he said. "My name is Povondra." "Ah, that's different, then," said the little man. "But these newts really are Captain van Toch's. Guaranteed genuine Australian lizards. Come and have a look inside. Were just starting the main show now," he said as he lifted the sheet at the entrance. "Come along, Frank," said Frank's father, and in they went. An exceptionally big and fat woman quickly sat down behind a little table. An odd couple they make, thought Mister Povondra as he paid his three koruny. Inside the tent there was nothing but a rather unpleasant smell and a tin bath. "Where are the newts?" Mister Povondra asked. "In that bathtub," yawned the enormous woman. "Now, don't be afraid, Frank," said Mister Povondra, and he stepped up to the bath. In the water lay something black and immobile, about the size of a fully grown catfish; except that its head seemed to be slightly flat and the skin behind it swollen. "That's the prehistoric newt they've been writing about in all the papers," said Mister Povondra to his son didactically, not letting the boy see his disappointment. (Cheated again, he thought, but id better not let the boy see it. Three koruny down the drain!) "Dad, why's it sitting in a tub of water?" Frank asked. "Because that's where newts live, in water." "And what do newts eat?" "Fish and that sort of thing," suggested Mister Povondra to his son. (Well they had to eat something, he supposed.) "And why's it so ugly?" Frank continued. Mister Povondra didn't know what to say to that; but at that moment the spindly little man came into the tent. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," he began in his cackling voice. "Don't you have more than just one newt?" Mister Povondra asked accusingly. (If there were at least two of them we'd be more like getting our moneys worth.) "The other one died," said the man. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is the famous Andrias, the rare and poisonous lizard from the islands of Australasia. In its native environment it grows to the size of a man and walks on two legs. Come on then," he said as he turned to the black and listless thing in the bathtub, jabbing at it with a stick. The black thing stirred itself and, with some effort, raised itself from the water. Frank recoiled a little but Mister Povondra held his hand tightly, don't be afraid, Daddy's here. The newt stood on its hind legs and supported itself against the side of the tub with its front paws. The gills on the back of its head twitched spasmodically and it breathed with difficulty through its black snout. Its skin was too loose and covered in warts and bloody sores, its eyes were round like a frog's and it seemed in pain when it blinked with some kind of membrane from under the eye. "As you see, ladies and gentlemen," the man continued in his cracked voice, "this is an animal that lives in water; which is why it is equipped with both gills and with lungs to breathe with when it comes out onto land. It has five toes, but only four fingers, but can nonetheless hold various items. Here." The animal closed its fingers around the mans stick and held it in front of itself like a pitiful sceptre. "It can also tie knots in a piece of rope," the man declared as he took the stick away and gave the newt a piece of dirty rope. It held the rope in its hands for a moment and then did indeed tie a knot. "It can also play on a drum and dance," the man cackled as he gave the animal a children's drum and drumstick. The animal struck the drum a few times and twisted the upper half of its body round; then it dropped the stick into the water. "What d'ye do that for, vermin?" the man snarled as he fished the stick out. "And this animal," he declared, raising his voice back to its showman's level and clapping his hands, "is so intelligent and gifted that it is able to speak like a human being." "Guten Morgen," the animal rasped, painfully blinking with its lower eyelids. "Good morning." Mister Povondra was startled, but it seemed to make no great impression on Frank. "What do you say to our honoured public?" the man asked sharply. "Welcome to our show," said the newt with a bow as his gills twitched round. "Willkommen. Ben venuti." "Can you do arithmetic?" "I can." "How much is six times seven?" "Forty-two," croaked the newt with some effort. "There, you see Frank?" Franks father pointed out. "It can do arithmetic." "Ladies and gentlemen," the skinny man crowed, "you are invited to ask questions of your own." "Ask him something, Frank," Mister Povondra suggested. Frank squirmed. "How much is eight times nine?" he finally shouted out; it clearly seemed to him to be one of the hardest questions possible. The newt thought for a while. "Seventy-two." "What's the day today?" Mister Povondra asked. "Saturday," said the newt. Mister Povondra was very impressed. "Just like a human being. What's the name of this town?" The newt opened its mouth and blinked. "It's getting a bit tired now," the man interjected. "Now what do you say to the ladies and gentlemen?" The newt bowed. "I am honoured. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Au revoir." And it quickly hid back in the water. "That...that's a very remarkable animal," said Mister Povondra in wonderment; but three koruny was quite a high price to pay, so he added, "What else do you have to show the boy?" The skinny man was perplexed and pulled on his lower lip. "That's all," he said. "I used to have some monkeys and all," he explained uncertainly, "but they were too much trouble. I could show you me wife if you like. The fattest woman in the world, she used to be. MaruÅ¡ka, come over here!" MaruÅ¡ka heaved herself onto her feet. "What is it?" "Let the gentlemen have a look at you." The fattest woman in the world put her head coquettishly to one side, raised one leg in front of her and lifted her skirt above the knee. This revealed her red knitted stocking which contained something pale and massive, like a leg of ham. "The upper part of the leg has a circumference of eighty-four centimetres," the desiccated little man explained, "only there's so much competition these days that MaruÅ¡ka isn't the fattest woman in the world any more." Mister Povondra pulled his astonished Frank away. "Glad to meet you," a voice rasped from the bathtub. "Do come again. Auf wiedersehen." "What did you think of that, then, Frank?" Mister Povondra asked, once they were outside. "Did you learn something?" "Yes Dad," said Frank. "Dad, why was that lady wearing red stockings?" Chapter 11THE ANTHROPOSAURUSESIt would certainly be an overstatement to say that nobody at that time ever spoke or wrote about anything but the talking newts. People also talked and wrote about other things such as the next war, the economic crisis, football, vitamins and fashion; but there was a lot written about the newts, and much of it was very ill-informed. This is why the outstanding scientist, Professor Vladimir Uher (University of Brno), wrote an article for the newspaper in which he pointed out that the putative ability of Andrias Scheuchzer to speak, which was really no more than the ability to repeat spoken words like a parrot, was of far less interest from a scientific point of view than some of the other questions surrounding this remarkable amphibian. For the scientist, the mysteries of Andrias Scheuchzeri were quite different: where, for instance, did it come from; where had it been throughout entire geological periods; how did it remain unknown for so long when reports of it now were coming in from all tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean. It seems to have been multiplying at an exceptional speed in recent times; how had it acquired such amazing vitality while still in a primitive triassic form, and how had it remained entirely hidden until recently, existing, most likely, in extremely isolated geographic pockets? Had there been a change of some sort in this ancient newt that brought biological advantages so that this rare vestige from the miocene period was given a new and remarkably effective period of existence? In this case it would not be out of the question for Andrias not only to multiply but even to evolve into a better form, and that human science would have the unique opportunity to assist in some of the enormous changes to be undergone by at least one animal species. The ability of Andrias Scheuchzeri to grunt a few dozen words and learn a few phrases--which the lay public perceives as a sign of some kind of intelligence--is no great wonder from a scientific point of view; but the power and vigour with which it shows its ability to survive, bringing it so suddenly and so successfully back to life after spending so long in abeyance, in a retarded state of development and nearly extinct, is no less than miraculous. There are some unusual circumstances to be considered here: Andrias Scheuchzeri is the only species of newt living in the sea and--even more remarkable--the only newt to be found in the area from Ethiopia to Australasia, the Lemuria of ancient myths. Could we not almost say that Nature now wishes to add another form of animal to the world by a precipitate acceleration of the development of a single species, a species which she has so far neglected or has so far been unable to bring fully to life? Moreover: it would be odd if the giant newts of Japan and those of the Alleghan Islands did not have some connecting link in the regions of the ocean lying between them. If Andrias had not been found it would have been necessary to postulate its existence in the very places where it was found; it would simply be needed to fill the space where, according to the geographic and developmental context, it must have been since ancient times. Be that as it may, the learned professor's article concluded, this evolutionary resurrection of a miocene newt cannot fail to fill us all with as much reverence as astonishment at the Genius of Evolution on our planet which is clearly still far from ending its creative task. This article was published despite the tacit, but definite, view of the editors that a learned article of this sort does not belong in a newspaper. Soon afterwards, Professor Uher received a letter from one of its readers: Esteemed Professor Uher, Last year I bought a house on the town square in Čáslav. While examining the house I found a box in the attic containing some rare and very old papers which were clearly of a scientific nature. They included two years' issues of Hýbel's journal, Hyllos for the years 1821 and 22, Jan Svatopluk Presl's Mammals, VojtÄ›ch SedláÄek Základ's Nature of Physics, nineteen years' issues of the general educational publication, Progress, and thirteen years' issues of the Czech Museum Magazine. Inserted next to Presls translation of Cuviers Discussion of Upheavals in the Earths Crust (from 1834) I found and article torn out of some old newspaper about some remarkable lizards. When I read your distinguished article about these mysterious newts I was reminded of this box and brought it back down. I think it might be of some interest to you, and I am therefore, as an enthusiastic nature lover and great admirer of your works, sending its contents to you.
With deepest respects,
J. V. Najman
The cutting included with this letter bore neither title nor date; but the style and spelling suggest it came from the third or fourth decade of the nineteenth century; it was accordingly so yellow and decayed that it was very hard to read. Professor Uher was about to throw it into the bin but he was somehow impressed by the age of this piece of printed paper; he began to read; and after a short time he exclaimed "My God!" and readjusted his glasses. The cutting bore the following text: Concerning Anthropoid Lizards We read in one of the newspapers published overseas that a certain captain, the commander of an English man of war, having returned from a voyage to distant lands, has brought back reports concerning some rather remarkable lizards which he encountered on a minor island in the Australian ocean. On this island, we are told, there is to be found a salt water lake which has neither access to the open sea nor any other means of approach not involving great exertions and difficulties. It was this salt lake that the aforementioned captain and his medical officer had chosen for their recreation when from it emerged some unfamiliar animals. These animals greatly resembled lizards, their means of locomotion, however, was on two legs similar to human beings. In size they were comparable with a sea lion or seal, and once on shore they began to move around in their peculiar manner, giving the impression of a charming and elegant dance. The captain and his medical officer were successful in obtaining one of these animals by means of their guns and inform us that their bodies are of a slimey character, without hair and without anything resembling scales, so that they bear some resemblance to salamanders. The following day, when they returned to the same spot, they were obliged immediately to depart again because of the overpowering stench, and they instructed their divers to hunt all the newts in the lake with their nets, by which means all but a few of the animals were annihilated, leaving no more than two examples which were taken on board the ship. Upon establishing that their bodies contained some kind of poison and the skin was burning to the touch in a way that resembled the sting of a nettle, the animals were placed in barrels of salt water in order that they might be returned to england alive. However, while the ship was near the island of sumatra the captive lizards were successful in making their way from the barrels, opening without any assistance one of the windows of a lower deck, throwing themselves into the sea, and making their escape under cover of darkness. According to the testimony of officers and ratings on board the ship these animals were remarkably odd and sly, walking as they did on their hind legs, and issuing strange barking and squelching sounds. They seemed however to present no danger to man. It would seem appropriate from the preceding to give them the name 'anthroposaurus'. So the cutting went. "My God!" repeated the professor in some excitement, "why is there no date or title on this cutting? And what was this foreign newspaper named by this certain commander and what English ship was this? What was the small island in the Australian Ocean? couldn't these people have been a bit more precise and a bit more, well, a bit more scientific? This is a historic document, it's priceless..." A small island in the Australian Ocean, yes. A small salt water lake. It sounds like a coral island, an atoll with a salt lagoon, difficult of access: just the sort of place a prehistoric species of this sort might survive, isolated from the evolutional developments of other species and undisturbed in a natural reservation. Of course they wouldn't have been able to multiply because of the lack of food in the lake. It's obvious, the professor said to himself. An animal similar to a lizard, but without scales and walking on its hind legs like a man: it could only be Andrias Scheuchzeri, or another newt closely related to it. Supposing it was the same Andrias. Supposing those damned divers in that lagoon wiped them out and just the one pair were taken alive onto that ship; a pair that escaped into the sea by Sumatra. That would mean right on the Equator, in conditions highly favourable for life and with unlimited food. Could it be that this change of environment gave this miocene newt a powerful new evolutionary impulse? It was certainly used to salt water: lets suppose its new home was a calm, enclosed bay with plenty of food; what would happen then? The newts transposed into an environment with optimal conditions, having enormous vigour; their population would burgeon. That's it, the scientist declared joyfully. The newts would start to develop uncontrollably; they would throw themselves into life like mad; they would multiply at an amazing rate because their eggs and their tadpoles would have no particular enemies in the new environment. They would colonise one island after another--it's only strange that some islands have been overlooked. In all other respects it's typical of migration patterns in pursuit of food--and that raises the question of why they didn't develop earlier. Could it be to do with the fact that there is no known species of newt in the area between Ethiopia and Australia? Or rather hasn't been until now. Could there have been some development in this area in the miocene period which was unfavourable for newts? It is certainly possible. Could there have been some particular predator which simply hunted the newts to extinction? Just on a single small island, with an isolated lake, is where the miocene newt survived-- albeit at the price of its evolution coming to a halt. It was like a compressed spring waiting to be released. It's not even out of the question that Nature had its own great plans for this newt, it might have developed even further and further, higher and higher, who knows how high...(At this thought, Professor Uher shuddered slightly; who knows that Andrias Scheuchzeri was not meant to be the human beings of the miocene!) Enough of that! This undeveloped animal suddenly finds itself in a new environment offering boundless promise; a compressed spring waiting to be released. Andrias will have thrown itself into its development with so much miocene vigour and enthusiasm, so much élan vital! So much frenzy to catch up on the thousands and millions of years during which evolution passed it by! Is it at all possible it would be content with just the level of development it has reached today? It would show just the sort of upsurge we have seen--or else it's just on the threshhold of its evolution and getting ready to rise--and who can say where it will go! These were the thoughts and observation that Professor VladimÃr Uher wrote down about this yellowed cutting from an ancient publication, shaking with the intellectual enthusiasm of a discoverer. I must publish it in the newspapers, he said to himself, as nobody ever reads scientific publications. Let everyone know what enormous events Nature has in store for us! I will entitle it Do Newts have a Future? Only, the editor of the Peoples Press looked at Professor Uher's article and shook his head. Not these newts again! I think our readers have had it up to their necks with these newts. It's about time we found something else to write about. And a scientific article such as this doesn't belong in the papers anyway. As a result, the article about the development and prospects of the newts never did appear. Chapter 12THE SALAMANDER-SYNDICATEPresident G.H. Bondy rang the bell and stood up. "Gentlemen," he began, "I have the honour of opening this extraordinary general meeting of the Pacific Export Company. I would like to welcome everyone here and thank them for the contribution they make." "I also," he continued with some emotion, "have the sad duty of giving you some tragic news. Captain Jan van Toch is no longer with us. Our founder, if I can call him that, the father of the great idea of establishing commercial contact with thousands of islands in the far Pacific, our first captain and enthusiastic fellow worker has died. He passed away at the start of this year on board our ship, Šárka, not far from Fanning Island after suffering a stroke while engaged in his duty." (Bet he made a Hell of a fuss, poor man, thought Mister Bondy fleetingly.) "Let us now all stand up in honour of this mans bright memory." All present stood up with a scraping and clattering of chairs and then remained in formal silence, all of them united in the hope that this general meeting wouldn't last too long. (Poor Vantoch, my friend, thought G.H. Bondy with sincere emotion. What does he look like now? I expect they put him on a plank and threw him into the sea--what a splash that must have made! He was certainly a man of great honour, and had such blue eyes...) "Thank you, gentlemen," he added briefly, "for showing such piety in memory of my personal friend, Captain van Toch. I now invite our director, Mister Volavka, to inform you of the economic prospects for PEC over the coming year. None of these figures are yet certain but I hope you won't expect them too have changed too much by the end of the year. Mister Volavka." "Good afternoon," Mister Volavka began, and off he went. "The state of the pearl market is very unsatisfactory. Pearl production last year was nearly twelve times higher than in 1925, which itself was a very good year, but now the price of pearls has begun a catastrophic decline, by as much as sixty five percent. Management has decided, therefore, not to put any of this years pearl harvest on the market and they will be kept in storage until demand has risen again. Unfortunately, pearls went out of fashion last autumn, clearly because they had sunk so low in price. Our Amsterdam branch has, at present, more than two hundred thousand pearls in stock which, for the time being, are next to impossible to sell. "At the same time," Mister Volavka purred on, "there has been a marked reduction in the number of pearls found this year. Many fisheries have had to be abandoned because production was too low. Fisheries discovered just two or three years ago seem to be more or less exhausted. It is for this reason that the management had decided to turn its attention to other fruits of the sea such as coral and shellfish. There has been some success in stimulating the market for coral jewellery and other ornaments, but even here coral from Italy is achieving greater success than that from the Pacific. The management is also studying the possibility of intensive fishing in the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, where the main consideration is how to transport the fish from the Pacific to the European and American markets; results and findings so far are not very encouraging. "On the other hand," the director went on, his voice rising slightly, "our relatively high turnover suggests it might be profitable to diversify into other activities such as the export of textiles, enamel ware, wireless sets and gloves to the Pacific. islands. This business would be amenable to further development; although this year it is already showing a slight loss. there is of course no question of PEC paying any dividend to its shareholders at the end of the year; and the management would like to announce in advance that, on this occasion, it will renounce any commissions and bonuses..." There was a painful silence in the room. (It must have been like this on Fanning Island, thought G.H. Bondy. He died a true sailor, Vantoch. A good man. It's a pity a decent chap like that had to die. And he wasn't even that old...he was no older than I am...) Dr. Hubka stood up to speak; and the minutes of the extraordinary general meeting of the Pacific Export Company continued thus: Dr. Hubka asks whether the PEC might go into liquidation G.H. Bondy replies that management has decided to wait for further suggestions in that matter. Monsieur Louis Bonenfant urges that pearl production should have been done under the supervision of permanent representatives, continuously on site at fisheries, who would check whether pearls were being gathered with enough vigour and specialist skill. Mr. Volavka, director, observes that this has been considered, but it was thought that this would result in excessive administration costs. There would need to be at least three hundred agents on the payroll; there was also the question of how these agents would themselves be supervised to ensure that all pearls found were passed on to the company. M.H. Brinkelaer asks whether the newts can be relied on to pass on all the pearls found by them, and whether they do not dispose of them to somebody not connected with the company. G.H. Bondy observes that this is the first time the newts have been mentioned in public. It has been a rule in this place, up till now, not to mention any details of how the gathering of pearls is carried out. He points out that it was for this reason that the inconspicuous title of Pacific Export Company chosen. M.H. Brinkelaer asks whether it is unacceptable, in this place, to talk about matters which affect the interests of the company, and which moreover have long been known by the general public. G.H. Bondy replies that it is not unacceptable, but it is unprecedented. He welcomes that fact that it is now possible to speak openly. In reply to Mister Brinkelaer's first question, he can state that as far as he knows there is no reason to doubt the total honesty of the newts and their willingness to work at gathering pearls and corals. We must however reckon on known pearl fisheries becoming effectively exhausted in the near future. Where new fisheries are concerned, it was on a journey to find islands which are so far unexploited that our unforgettable colleague, Captain van Toch, died. It has so far been found impossible to find another man with the same experience and the same unshakeable honesty and love for his work to replace him. Colonel D.W. Bright fully acknowledges the services rendered by the late Captain van Toch. He points out, however, that the captain, whose loss we all regret, did show too much concern for the comfort of the aforementioned newts. (Agreement) It was not necessary, for instance, to provide the news with knives and other equipment of such high quality as the late van Toch did. There was no need, for instance, to give them so much food. There is scope for substantial reductions in the costs associated with the maintenance of the newts and in this way raise the net income of the company. (Lively applause) Vice-president J. Gilbert agrees with Colonel Bright, but points out that that was not possible while Captain van Toch was still alive. Captain van Toch insisted that he had his personal obligations towards the newts. There were various reasons why it would have been inadvisable to even suggest neglecting the old mans wishes in this respect. Kurt von Frisch asks whether the newts could not be employed in some other way that might be more profitable than pearl fishing. Their natural, one could say beaver-like, talent for building weirs and other underwater constructions should be taken into account. They could perhaps be put to use in deepening harbours, building piers and performing other technical tasks underwater. G.H. Bondy states that management is actively engaged in this consideration; there are some great possibilities in this respect. He states that the company now owns nearly six million newts; if we consider that one pair of newts might have a hundred tadpoles in any given year the company could well have three hundred million newts at its disposal by this time next year; in ten years the number would be astronomical. G.H. Bondy asks what the company intends to do with this enormous number of newts, when the newt farms are already over-populated and, because of a lack of natural foodstuffs, it has been found necessary to feed the newts with copra, potatoes, maize and similar. K. von Frisch asks whether the newts are edible. J. Gilbert: not at all. Nor do their hides have any use. M. Bonenfant asks management what they now intend to do. G.H. Bondy (standing): "Gentlemen, we convened this extraordinary general meeting in order publicly to draw your attention to the extremely unfavourable prospects of our company which--I hope you will allow me to remind you of this--has proudly paid returns of twenty to twenty-three percent over recent years as well as having well funded reserves and low costs. We stand now at a turning point; the way of doing business which has proved itself so well over recent years is now practically at an end; we have no choice but to find new ways." (Loud applause) "I could even say it is a sign from fate that our excellent friend and captain, J. van Toch, left us just at this time. Our romantic, beautiful--I could even say absurd--trading in pearls was always closely connected with him. I consider this to be the closing chapter in our business; it had its, so to speak, exotic charm, but it was never suitable for modern times. Gentlemen, pearls could never be the concern of a large company which needs to be cohesive horizontally and vertically. For me personally, this affair with pearls was never more than a minor distraction." (Discomfiture) "Yes gentlemen; but a minor distraction which brought substantial profits to me and to you. At the start of our business these newts also had a kind of, shall I say, charm of the new. Three hundred million newts will not have much charm about them." (Laughter) "I spoke earlier about finding new ways of moving forward. While my good friend, Captain van Toch, was still alive there was no question of giving our affairs any other character than that which could be called the Captain van Toch style." (Why not?) "Because, gentlemen, I have too much good taste to mix one style with another. I would say that the style of Captain van Toch was that of a romantic adventurer. It was the style of Jack London, Joseph Conrad and others of that ilk. Old-fashioned, exotic, colonial, almost heroic. I do not deny that he charmed me with this style of his, but since his death we no longer have the right to continue with an epic tale which is adventurous and juvenile. We have before us not a new chapter but a new conception, gentlemen, it is a job for an imagination which is new and fundamentally different." (You speak as if this were all just a story in a novel!) "Yes, gentlemen, you are quite right. I take an artists interest in business. Without a sense of art it is impossible ever to think of something new. We need to be poets if we are to keep the world moving." (Applause) G.H. Bondy bows. "Gentlemen, I am sorry to be closing this chapter, the chapter we might call the van Toch era; an era in which we made use of the child-like and adventurous side that we all have. The time has come now to bring this fairy story of pearls and coral fisheries to an end. Sinbad is dead, gentlemen. And the question is, what now?" (Well that's just what were asking!) "Alright gentlemen: please take out pen and paper and write this down. Six million. Have you got that down? Multiply that by fifty. That makes three hundred million, doesn't it. Multiply that by another fifty. Now that's fifteen thousand million, yes? And now gentlemen, please be so kind as to tell me what, in three years time, were going to do with fifteen thousand million newts. How are we to employ them, how are we going to feed them, and so on." (Let them die, then!) "Yes, but don't you think that would be a pity? Have you not thought that every new newt is a new business opportunity, a new unit of labour waiting to be put to use? Gentlemen, with six million newts we can still make business of some sort. With three hundred million it will be somewhat harder. But gentlemen, fifteen thousand million newts is something quite inconceivable. The newts will devour the company. That is how it is." (And you will be responsible! It was you who started all this business with the newts!) G.H. Bondy raises his head. "And I fully accept that responsibility, gentlemen. Anyone who wishes to can dispose of his shares in the Pacific Export Company immediately. I am quite willing to pay for them..." (How much?) "Their full value." (Consternation. Chairman calls for ten minute pause) After pause, H. Brinkelaer speaks. Expresses pleasure at high rate of increase of newts, and with it the rate of increase of company assets. But, gentlemen, it would of course be sheer madness to breed them without regard for the need; suggests on behalf of shareholders that if the company cannot find suitable work for them itself they should be simply sold as working force to whoever wishes to undertake any work on or under water. (Applause) The cost of feeding a newt is no more than a few centimes; if a pair of newts is sold for, say, a hundred francs, and the working life of a newt is no more than, say, one year, then any investor would see a very good return. (Signs of agreement) J. Gilbert indicates that newts reach ages much higher than one year; we do not yet have enough experience with them to say how long they actually live. H. Brinkelaer modifies his suggestion; the price of a pair of newts should be set at three hundred francs. S. Weissberger asks what sort of work the newts are actually capable of. Mr. Volavka, director: with their natural instincts and their exceptional technical training, the newts would be especially suited to the construction of weirs, embankments and breakwaters, to the deepening of harbours and channels, clearing shallow waters and removal of sediments, and to freeing water channels; they could reinforce and maintain shorelines, extend sea defences, and so on. For work of this sort they would operate in groups of hundreds or thousands of individuals; in projects on this large a scale, where not even modern plant and machinery could be considered, there would be no other way of performing the task at such low cost. (Quite right! Excellent!) DR. HUBKA objects that by selling newts that might find new places to reproduce the company might lose its monopoly on the animals. He suggests the newts be merely rented out to businesses engaged in water works as properly trained and qualified working units with the stipulation that any tadpoles created will continue to be the property of PEC. Mr. Volavka, director, points out that it would not be possible to supervise millions or even thousands of millions of newts in the water, let alone their tadpoles; many newts have already been misappropriated for zoos and menageries. Col. D.W. Bright: Only male newts should be sold or rented out so that they would not be able to reproduce outside the farms and incubators belonging to the company. Mr. Volavka, director: It is not possible to assert that newt farms are the property of the company. A piece of the sea floor cannot be owned or rented. The question of who the newts belong to, if for instance they are living in the surface waters of Her Majesty the Queen of Holland, is very unclear, legally speaking, and could lead to many disputes. (Unease.) In most cases we don't even have any guaranteed fishing rights; in fact, gentlemen, we established our newt farms in the Pacific islands without any legal right to do so. (Growing unease.) J. Gilbert, responding to Colonel Bright, says that experience so far showed that male newts kept in isolation become lethargic and unwilling to work; they are lazy, apathetic and often die from stress. Von Frisch asks whether newts to be sold could not be castrated or sterilised beforehand. J. Gilbert: That would incur too many costs; there simply is no way for us to prevent newts from procreating after they have been sold. S. Weissberger, asks, as a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, that if any newts are to be sold it should be done humanely and in a way that would not offend people's sensibilities. J. Gilbert thanks him for raising the subject; it is understood that the newts would be caught and transported only by trained personnel under proper supervision. It is not, of course, possible to be sure how the newts will be treated by the businesses that buy them. S. Weissberger declares that he is satisfied with the assurances given by Vice-President Gilbert. (Applause.) G.H. Bondy: "Gentlemen, we have, from now on, to abandon any idea of having a monopoly on newts. Unfortunately, under current regulations, we are not able to take out a patent on them." (Laughter.) "We can and must do business with newts in a way that's fundamentally different from the way we have been up till now; and it is essential that our approach to business is fundamentally different and on a far bigger scale." (Hear hear!) "And there are many things, gentlemen, that need to be agreed beforehand. Management suggest the creation of a new, vertically organised trust under the name Salamander Syndicate. Besides our company, the members of the newt syndicate would consist of certain major companies and strong financial groups; there is one company, for instance, that would be engaged in manufacturing special, patented metal tools for the newts ..." (MEAS, you mean?) "Yes, that's right, MEAS is the company I have in mind. There will also be a cartel of companies in the field of chemicals and foodstuffs, manufacturing cheap, patented feed for the newts; there will be a group of transport companies, making use of experience already gained to patent special hygienic tanks for transporting the newts; a block of insurance companies to cover the newts against risk of death or injury during transportation or at the workplace; other interested concerns in the fields of industry, export and finance which, for legal reasons, we are not able to mention by name at this stage. Suffice it to say, gentlemen, that at the start of business the syndicate would have four hundred millions pounds sterling at its disposal." (Excitement) "This file, my friends, is already full of contracts and all they need now is a signature for the creation of one of the biggest commercial organisations of modern times. All that is asked of you by the management, gentlemen is that you give them the authority to establish this gigantic concern whose task will be to cultivate and employ the newts in the best possible way." (Applause and voices of protest). "Gentlemen, please bear in mind the advantages a collaboration of this sort could bring. The Newt Syndicate would provide more than just newts, it would also provide equipment and food for the newts such as maize, carbohydrates, beef fat and sugar for thousands of millions of well fed animals; then there would be transport, insurance, veterinary needs and everything at the lowest rate guaranteed for us if not by a monopoly then at least by being in a dominant position over any other potential rival that might want to deal in newts. Just let them try it, gentlemen; they won't be in competition with us for long." (Bravo!) "But that's not all. The Newt syndicate would provide all kinds of building material for underwater work performed by the newts; for this reason we have the support also of heavy industry, cement works, the stone and timber industries..." (You still don't know how the newts are going to work!) "Gentlemen, at this very moment there are twelve thousand newts at work in Saigon building new docks, basins and jetties." (You didn't tell us about that!) "No. This is our first large scale experiment, and it has been a complete success, meeting all our hopes and expectations. Without any hint of a doubt, the future belongs to newts." (Enthusiastic applause) "And that's not all, gentlemen. There are still many more functions for the Newt Syndicate to perform. the salamander syndicate will seek out work for millions of newts all round the world. They will provide the plans and the ideas for subjugating the oceans. It will disseminate ideas of Utopia, dreams that are gigantic, projects for new coastlines and shipping lanes, causeways that will join continents, whole chains of artificial islands for journeys to new lands in the middle of the oceans. That is where the future of mankind lies. Gentlemen, four fifths of the Earths surface is covered by sea; there's no denying that that is too much; the surface of our world, the map of sea and land, must be corrected. We are giving the world the workers of the sea, gentlemen. Well no longer be doing it in the style of Captain van Toch with his adventurous tales of pearls and treasure but by the tried and tested means of honest toil. We can be mere shopkeepers or we can be more creative; but if we fail to think in terms of oceans and continents we won't have fulfilled out promise. Somebody earlier on mentioned the difficulty of selling a pair of newts. I would rather we thought in terms of thousands of millions of newts, of millions and millions of workers, of moving the crust of the Earth itself, a new Genesis and a new geological age. We have today the chance to talk of a new Atlantis, of ancient continents extending further and further out into the seas, a new world created by man himself. Forgive me, gentlemen, if all this seems Utopian, but we are indeed stepping out into a Utopia. We have already entered in, my friends. All we need to do is work out what technical jobs need to be done by the newts ..." (And the economics!) "Yes. The economics of all this are especially important. Gentlemen, our company is too small to be able to make use of thousands of millions of newts by itself; we don't have the money for it nor the influence. If the map of the seas and the land is to be changed we need also to have the greatest powers in the world taking an interest. But that can be left till later; there is still no need to name what high places have already shown positive interest in the syndicate. But for now, all I ask of you, gentlemen, is that you do not lose sight of the boundless scope of the affair you are about to vote on." (Enthusiastic and sustained applause. Excellent! Bravo!) It was nonetheless necessary, before the vote was held, to promise that shares of the Pacific Export Company would pay a dividend of at least ten percent this year from its reserves. The vote was then eighty-seven percent in favour of the Newt Syndicate and only thirteen percent against. As a result the management's proposal was accepted. The Salamander Syndicate came into life. G.H. Bondy was congratulated. "That was a very good speech, Mister Bondy," old Sigi Weissberger praised. ""Very good. And please, tell me, how did you get the idea?" "How?" G.H. Bondy replied absent mindedly. "Actually, to tell you the truth Mister Weissberger, it was all because of old van Toch. He was always so fond of his newts--what would the poor man have said if we just let those tapa-boys of his die out or be killed?" "Tapa-boys? What do you mean, tapa-boys?" "All those vile newts. At least they'll be treated decently now that they're worth money. And we might as well use them to create a utopia as the horrors are no good for anything else." "I don't see what you mean," Mr. Weissberger said. "Have you ever actually seen one of the newts, Mr. Bondy? I don't really know what they're like. What do they look like?" "I'm afraid I really can't tell you, Mr. Weissberger. How should I know what a newt looks like? Do you think I have the time to bother about what they look like? I'm just glad we've got the Newt Syndicate sorted out." (Supplementary Chapter)The sex life of the newts.One of mans favourite activities is to imagine how the world might be in the distant future, what technical wonders will have been perfected, what social problems solved, how far science and civil organisation will have progressed, and so on. But however much improved, progressed or at least more technically perfect these utopias are, they never fail to take a lively interest in the question of how one of the most ancient of institutions might be. Sex, reproduction, love, marriage, family, the status of women and so on are as popular now as they have always been. Consider, in this respect, the works of Paul Adam, HG. Wells, Aldous Huxley and many others. Taking his example from these authors, and considering that he has already begun to speculate of the future of our planet, the present author regards it as his duty to speculate on what the sexual behaviour of the newts will be. He will settle the matter now so that he will not have to return to it later. In its basic outlines, the sex life of Andrias Scheuchzeri is, of course, no different from that of other tailed amphibians; there is no copulation in the proper sense of the word, the female carries the ova through several stages of their development, the fertilised ova develop into tadpoles in the water and so on; this is something that can be found in any primer of biology. So let us refer then to just a few peculiarities which have been observed in Andrias Scheuchzeri. According to the account given by H. Bolte, the male and female come together in early April; the male will usually remain with just one female throughout any one mating season, and for a period of several days will never leave her side. He will take no sustenance during this period, whereas the female will evince a voracious appetite. The male will pursue the female in the water and attempt to keep his head closely beside hers. If he is successful in this, then he will position his paw in front of her snout in order to prevent escape. He will then become stiff. In this way, with male and female in contact only at the head while their bodies form an angle of approximately thirty degrees, the two animals will float motionless side by side in the water. After a short time has elapsed, the male will begin to convulse with sufficient vigour for their two bodies to collide; after which he will again become stiff, his limbs extended to each side, and touching only the head of his chosen mate with his paw. During this, the female shows a total indifference apart from eating whatever comes within range. This, if we may call it thus, kissing lasts several days; at times the female will pull herself away in pursuit of food, at which the male will pursue in a state of clear agitation if not fury. Eventually the female ceases to show further resistance or attempt to remove herself from the male and the couple will remain floating motionless, resembling a pair of black logs attached to each other in the water. The body of the male will then begin to undergo cramps and convulsions, during which he will discharge large amounts of somewhat sticky foam into the water, immediately after which he will abandon the female and climb away between the rocks and stones in a state of extreme exhaustion; during this period it is possible for the observer to cut off a leg or tail without his showing any kind of defensive reaction. The female will remain for some time in her stiff and motionless posture; she will then show vigorous movement and discharge from her cloaca a chain of eggs inside a gelatinous covering, making frequent use of her rear limbs to assist this process in the way seen among toads. The eggs number between forty and fifty and hang from the female's body. She will swim with them to a safe place and attach them to seaweed, algae or simply to a rock. After a period of ten days, the female will bear another litter of twenty to thirty eggs without any union with the male having taken place; it seems clear that the eggs were fertilised within the cloaca. There will usually be a third and a fourth discharge of eggs after a period of seven or eight days, each of fifteen to twenty eggs variously fertilised. The feather-gilled tadpoles will emerge after a gestation period of between one and three weeks. The tadpoles grow into adult newts after just one year and are able to reproduce in their turn. The behaviour observed by Miss Blanche Kistemaeckers of two newts in captivity was somewhat different. At the time of spawning the male approached only one female and pursued her quite brutally; when she escaped from him he beat her with heavy blows of his tail. He disapproved when she tried to take food and drove her away from it; it was clear he wanted to have her just for himself and simply terrorised her. Once he had discharged his milt he threw himself on another female and tried to eat her, so that he had to be taken from the tank and placed somewhere else. This second female nonetheless produced fertile eggs, numbering sixty-three in total. Miss Kistemaeckers noticed that the cloaca of all three animals was very sore, and she writes that fertilisation of the ova of Andrias Scheuchzeri seems to take place not by copulation, nor even spawning, but by what she called the sexual milieu. It is already evident that the two sexes need not come together at an appropriate time for fertilisation of the eggs to take place. This led the young researcher to carry out further experiments. She separated the two sexes; at the appropriate time she extracted the sperm from the male and put it into the water where the females were, at which the females began to discharge fertilised eggs. In another experiment Miss Kistemaeckers filtered the semen to remove the sperm; this gave a clear, slightly acidic liquid which she put into the females water; the females then began to discharge eggs, about fifty at a time, of which most were fertile and produced normal tadpoles. This is what led Miss Kistemaeckers to the important notion of the sexual milieu, which can be seen as a process in its own right, existing between parthenogenesis and sexual reproduction. The eggs are fertilised simply by a change in the chemical environment (a certain level of acidity, which has not so far been successfully created artificially), which is somehow connected with the sexual functions of the male although these functions themselves are not essential; the fact that the male does conjoin with the female is clearly no more than a vestige of an earlier stage of evolution when Andrias reproduced in the same way as other newts. Miss Kistemaeckers rightly observes that this form of mating is peculiar, some kind of inherited illusion of paternity; the male is not the real father of the tadpoles but only an impersonal provider of the chemical environment which is what really fertilises the ova. If we had a hundred newt couples together in a tank it would be tempting to think that a hundred individual acts of mating would take place; but in fact there will be just the one, a collective a sexualisation of the given environment or, to put it more precisely, the acidification of the water to which the mature eggs of the species will respond by developing into tadpoles. If this unknown acidification agent can be created artificially there will be no more need of males. So the sex life of this remarkable species is actually no more than an illusion; the erotic passion, the pair-bonding and sexual tyranny, fidelity for the time needed, the slow and cumbersome act of intercourse, all these things are actually unnecessary and no more than an outdated and almost symbolic act which, so to speak, decorates the impersonal creation by the male of the procreative environment. The strange indifference shown by the female to the frantic and pointless activity of the male is clear evidence that she instinctively feels that it is nothing more than a formal ceremony or a prelude to the real love-making when they conjoin with the fertilising medium; it could almost be said that the female of Andrias Scheuchzeri understands this state of affairs clearly and goes through it objectively without any erotic illusions. (The experiments performed by Miss Kistemaeckers was followed up with some interesting research by the learned Abbé Bontempelli. Having prepared some dried and powdered milt from Andrias he put it in the female's water, who then began to discharge fertile eggs. He obtained the same result if he dried and powdered Andrias's male organ or if he took an extract in alcohol or by infusion and poured it into the female's water. He tried the same experiment, with the same result, when he took an extract of the male's pituitary gland and even when he took a scraping from the males skin, if taken in the rutting season. In all these cases, the females did not respond at first, but after a while they stopped seeking food and became stiff and motionless in the water, then after some hours they began to discharge eggs in a gelatinous coating, each about the size of pig's droppings.) While discussing this matter, it will be necessary to describe the strange ceremony which became known as the dance of the salamanders. (This does not refer to the Salamander Dance which came into fashion around this time, especially in high society, and which Bishop Hiram declared to be the most depraved dance he had ever heard described.) The dance took place on evenings when there was a full moon (apart from in the breeding season). The males, and only the males, of Andrias would appear on the beach, form themselves into a circle and begin a strange, wave-like twisting and bending of the upper half of the body. This movement was typical of these giant newts at all times, but during these dances it develops into a wild passion, something like the dances of dervishes. Some researchers regard this frenzied twisting and stamping as a kind of cult of the moon, which would mean it is a kind of religious ceremony; on the other hand some researchers see the dance as essentially erotic in character and seek to explain it primarily in terms of the peculiar sexual procedures described above. We have already said that the female of Andrias Scheuchzeri is fertilised by the so-called sexual milieu surrounding males and females rather than by the personal conjoining of individual males and females. It was also said that the females accept this impersonal sexual relationship far more realistically and routinely than the males who, clearly for reasons of instinctive vanity and greed, try to maintain at least the illusion of sexual triumph, leading them to play a role that involves betrothal and a husband's authority. This is one of the greatest erotic illusions to be found, and it is interesting that the illusion is corrected by these grand male ceremonies which seem to be nothing less than an instinctive attempt to reinforce their sense of belonging to a Male Collective. It is thought that this collective dance has the function of overcoming that atavistic and nonsensical illusion of the males sexual individuality; this whirling, inebriating, frenetic gang is nothing other than the Collective Male, the Collective Bridegroom and the Great Copulator that carries out its celebratory wedding dance and abandons itself to the great nuptial rite--and all the time the females are strangely excluded and left to squelch lethargically over the fish or mollusc they have eaten. The famous Charles J. Powell, who gave this newt ritual the name, Dance of the Male Principle, writes: "And in this ritual of male togetherness, do we not see the root and origin of the remarkable collectivism shown by the newts? Let us be aware that true animal society is only to be found where life and development of the species are not built on sexual pair-bonding, such as we see among bees and ants and termites. The society of the bee-hive can be described thus: I, the Mother Hive. In the case of the newts, their society must be described quite differently: We, the Male Principle. It is only when the males mass together at the right time and virtually perspire the fertilising sexual milieu that they become the Great Male which enters the womb of the female and generously multiplies life. Their paternity is collective; and for this reason their entire nature is collective and expresses itself in collective activity, whereas the females, once they have laid their eggs, lead a life that remains dispersed and solitary until the following spring. It is the males alone that create the community, the males alone that carry out collective tasks. There is no other species of animal wherein the female plays such a subordinate role as Andrias; they are excluded from communal activities and show not the slightest interest in them. Their moment comes only when the Male Principle imbues their environment with a chemical acidity that is barely perceptible, but which has such power of penetration, such élan vital, that it is effective even when the currents and tides of the oceans have diluted it to almost nothing. It is as if the Ocean itself were the male, fertilising millions of embryos on its shores. "However vainly the cock might crow," Charles J. Powell continued, "it is to the female that in, most species, nature has given the dominant role in life. The male is there for his own passion and to kill; he is pompous and arrogant, while the female represents the species in all its strength and lasting nobility. In the case of Andrias (and often in the case of man) the relationship is fundamentally different; by the creation of a masculine society and solidarity the male acquires clear biological dominance and determines how the species will develop to a far greater extent than the female. It may well be because of this marked male input to the direction of development that Andrias has so excelled in technical matters, which are talents typical of the male. Andrias is by nature a technologist and tends towards group activities; these secondary features of the male, by which I mean a talent for technology and a flair for organisation, has, before our very eyes, developed with such speed and such success that we would be compelled to speak of a miracle were we not aware of what a powerful force in life sexual determination is. Andrias Scheuchzeri is animal faber, and it is even possible that he will one day surpass man himself given enough time. All this is the result of one fact of nature; that they have created a society that is purely male." BOOK TWOTHE RISE OF CIVILISATIONChapter 1MISTER POVONDRA READS THE PAPERThere are people who collect stamps, and others who collect first editions. Mr. Povondra, the doorman at the house of G.H. Bondy, had long been unable to find any meaning in his life; he had been wondering for years whether to become interested in prehistoric graves or develop a passion for international politics; but one evening, without any sort of warning, he suddenly knew what he had so far been lacking, what would make his life worthwhile. Great events usually come without any sort of warning. That evening Mister Povondra was reading the paper, Mrs. Povondra was darning Frank's socks and Frank was pretending to study the tributaries on the left bank of the Danube. It was pleasantly quiet. "I should have known," muttered Mister Povondra. "What should you have known?" asked Mrs. Povondra as she lifted a thread. "About these newts," said Father Povondra. "It says here that they've sold seventy million of them over the last three months." "That's a lot, isn't it!" said Mrs. Povondra. "I should think so. In fact that's an astonishing number, Mother. Just think, seventy million!" Mister Povondra turned to look at her. "They must have made a fortune selling all of them! And there's all the work they're doing now," he added after thinking for a moment. "It says here that they're claiming new land and building new islands everywhere at an amazing rate.--People can create as much new land as they want now, I should think. This is wonderful, Mother. I'm telling you, this is a bigger step forward than the discovery of America." Mister Povondra thought about this for a while. "A new period of history, don't you think? What shall we do, Mother, we're living in great times." There was once more a long period of homely silence. Father Povondra suddenly started drawing harder on his pipe. "And just think, if it wasn't for me it would never have happened!" "What would never have happened?" "All this business with the newts. This new period of history. If you look at it properly, it was actually me who put it all together." Mrs. Povondra looked up from the holes in the socks. "How's that, then?" "That it was me who let that captain in to see Mister Bondy on that day. If I hadn't announced him there was no way the captain could ever have met Mister Bondy. If it hadn't been for me, Mother, nothing could ever have come of it. Nothing at all." "Maybe this captain could have found someone else," Mrs. Povondra objected. Mister Povondra rattled indignantly on his pipe. "Now what do you know about that sort of thing? It's only Mister G.H. Bondy who could do a thing like that. He has more foresight than I don't know who. Anyone else would just have thought it was all madness or a confidence trick; but not Mister Bondy! He's got a nose for these things, girl!" Mister Povondra considered this for a while. "That captain, what was his name again, Vantoch, he didn't look much. Sort of fat old man, he was. Any other doorman would have told him he had no business knocking at the door, the master isn't home, and that sort of thing; but, you listen, I had some sort of intuition or something. I announced him to Mister Bondy; I said to myself, Mister Bondy might be cross with me but I'll take the responsibility on myself and I'll announce him. I've always said a doorman has to be a good judge of character. There are times when someone rings at the door, and he looks just like a lord, and he turns out to be a refrigerator salesman. And there are other times when some fat old man turns up at the door, and look what can come of that. You need to be a good judge of character," Father Povondra mused. "There you see, Frank, that's the difference a man in a humble position can make. You take my example, always try your best to do your duty just like I've always done." Mister Povondra nodded his head in pride and self congratulation. "I could have turned that captain away at the gate and saved myself the bother of going down the steps. Any other doorman wouldn't have cared and shut the gate in his face, he would. And if he did he'd have ruined this fantastic step forward for mankind. Always bear in mind, Frank, if everyone in the world did his duty everything would be alright. And pay attention when I'm talking to you." "Yes, Dad," muttered Frank discontentedly. Father Povondra cleared his throat. "Pass me the scissors, Mother. I think I'd better cut this article out so that I've always got something to remind me." So it was that Mister Povondra started his collection of newspaper cuttings about the newts. Without his passion as a collector much of the material we now have would otherwise have been lost. He cut out and saved everything written about the newts that he could find; it should even be said that after some initial fumblings he learned to plunder the newspapers in his favourite café wherever there was mention of the newts and even developed an unusual, almost magical, virtuosity in tearing the appropriate article out of the paper and putting it in his pocket right under the nose of the head waiter. It is well known that all collectors are willing to steal and murder if that is what's needed to add a certain item to their collection, but that is not in any way a stain on their moral character. His life was now the life of a collector, and that gave it meaning. Evening after evening he would count and arrange his cuttings under the indulgent eyes of Mrs. Povondra who knew that every man is partly mad and partly a little child; it was better for him to play with his cuttings than to go out drinking and playing cards. She even made some space in the scullery for all the boxes he had made himself for his collection; could anything more be asked of a wife? Even Mister Bondy was surprised at Mister Povondra's encyclopaedic knowledge of everything concerning the newts which he showed at every opportunity. With some embarrassment, Mister Povondra admitted that he collected everything printed about the salamanders and let Mister Bondy see his boxes. G.H. Bondy kindly praised him for his collection; what does it matter that only great men can be so generous and only powerful people can give pleasure without it costing them a penny? It's alright for those who are great. Mister Bondy, for instance, told the office of the Salamander Syndicate to send Mister Povondra all the cuttings to do with the newts that they did not need to keep in their archives, and lucky Mister Povondra, somewhat dismayed, received whole parcels of documents in all the languages of the world every day. And for documents in the Cyrillic alphabet, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese script, Bengali, Tamil, Javanese, Burmese or Taalik he was especially grateful. "When I think;" he said about it all, "without me it would never have happened!" As we have already said, Mister Povondra's collection saved much historic material concerning the whole story of the newts; but that, of course, does not mean to say it was enough to satisfy a scientific historian. Firstly, Mister Povondra had never received a specialist education as assistant in historic or archival methods, and he made no indication on his cuttings of the source, or the date, so that we do not know when or where each document was published. And secondly, faced with so much material piling up around him, Mister Povondra kept mainly the longest articles which he considered must be the most important, while the shorter reports were simply thrown into the coal scuttle; as a result, through all this period, remarkable few facts and reports were conserved by him. Thirdly, the hand of Mrs. Povondra played a considerable part in the matter; when she carefully filled up one of Mister Povondra's boxes she would quietly and secretly pull out some of the cuttings and burn them, which took place several times a year. The only ones she spared were the ones that did not grow in number very fast, such as the cuttings printed in the Malabar, Tibetan or Coptic scripts; these remained more or less complete, although for certain gaps in our body of knowledge they are not of great value. This means that the material we have available concerning the history of the newts is very fragmented, like the land records of the eighth century A.D., or the selected writings of the poetess, Sappho; but some documents, here and there, did happen to survive about this phase of the great history of the world, and despite all the gaps we will do our best to summarise them under the title The Rise of Civilisation. Chapter 2THE RISE OF CIVILISATION (History of the Newts) 1In the history of the epoch announced by G.H. Bondy at the memorable general meeting of the Pacific Export Company with his prophetic words about the coming utopia, 2 it is not possible to measure events in centuries or even decades, as has been possible in previous ages of world history. Instead we must measure history in units of three months, which is how often the quarterly economic statistics appear. 3 In this present period, history, so to speak, is manufactured by mass production; this is why the speed of history is so much greater (estimated to be approximately five-fold). It is simply not possible nowadays to wait centuries for the world to turn into something good or bad. The migrations of nations, for instance, which at one time was drawn out over several generations, could be completed within three years using modern transport methods; otherwise there would be no way of making a profit from it. The same applies to the decline of the Roman Empire, the colonisation of continents, the massacre of the Indians and so on. All this could be completed incomparably faster if put into the hands of well funded business. In this way, the enormous success of the Newt Syndicate and its powerful influence on the history of the world is certainly a sign of things to come. The history of the newts was characterised from the first by good and rational organisation and that is primarily, although not solely, thanks to the Newt Syndicate; it should be acknowledged that science, philanthropy, education, the press and other factors played a substantial part in the astonishing expansion and progress of the newts, but it's still true to say that it was the Newt Syndicate that conquered new continents and coastlines for them, virtually day by day, even when they had to overcome many obstacles to their expansion. 4 The syndicate's quarterly statements show that the newts were gradually settled in the ports of India and China; how colonies of newts overwhelmed the coasts of Africa and jumped over to America where a new and modern hatchery soon appeared on the Gulf of Mexico; how, as well as the broad waves of colonisations, smaller, pioneering groups of newts were sent out to establish new places for migration. The Newt Syndicate sent, for instance, a thousand top quality newts as a present to Waterstaat in Holland, six hundred were given to the city of Marseilles to clean out the old harbour, and similar presents were made elsewhere. The dispersion and settlement of the newts around the world was, unlike the expansion of mankind, simply well planned and enormous; left to Nature it would certainly have taken thousands of years; but that is merely hypothetical. Nature has never been so enterprising and targeted as man's industry and commerce. It seemed that the lively demand for them had its influence on the newts' own reproductive abilities; the number of tadpoles produced by any one female rose to as much as a hundred and fifty per year. Loses to sharks and other predatory fish were reduced almost to zero after the newts had been equipped with underwater pistols and dumdum bullets to protect themselves. 5 ENGLAND CLOSED OFF TO NEWTS? (Reuter) In reply to a question in the House of Commons from Mr. J. Leeds, Sir Samuel Mandeville stated today that His Majesty's Government had closed the Suez Canal to newt transports of any kind; he added that no newt would be permitted to be employed on any shoreline or any sovereign waters of the British Isles. The reason for this measure, Sir Samuel declared, was partly to do with the security of the British Isles and partly to do with old statutes still in force concerning the elimination of slave trading. In reply to a question from Mr. B. Russel, M.P., Sir Samuel stated that this position would, of course, not apply to British colonies and dominions. The expansion of the newt population did not run smoothly everywhere, of course; in some places conservative groups took severe protective measures against the introduction of new workforces, seeing the newts as competition with human workers; 6 Others expressed the fear that the newts, living on small marine animals, posed a threat to fishing, there were those who argued that the newts would undermine coastlines and islands with their underwater tunnels and passageways. There were certainly many people who warned against the introduction of the newts; but whenever any innovation or any progress has been made it has always met with resistance and mistrust; that was the case with industrial machinery and it was the case with the newts. In other places misunderstandings of other sorts appeared, 7 but the news media all round the world, who understood the enormous commercial possibilities offered by the newts, provided a great deal of help in these matters and with the help of effective and large scale advertising campaigns the salamanders became established all around the globe and were welcomed with lively interest and even enthusiasm. 8 Trading in newts was mostly in the hands of the Newt Syndicate, which carried it out with its own specially made tanker ships; the centre of trading was the Salamander Building in Singapore which functioned as a kind of newt stock exchange. 9 As the turnover in newts rose, trading, of course, became very wild; the Newt Syndicate was no longer able to observe and control all the hatcheries established by the late Captain van Toch in many places and especially around the small and remote islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia; many of the bays inhabited by newts were left to their own devices. As a result, while the cultivation of salamanders was well organised and controlled in some areas, in others there was extensive hunting of wild newts, similar in many ways to the seal hunting expeditions that used to take place; the hunting expeditions were to some extent illegal, but as there were no laws protecting the newts no-one was ever brought to account for anything more serious than setting foot on the territory of a sovereign state without permission; as the newts on these islands multiplied at an astonishing rate and now and then caused damage to the local people's fields and orchards, these uncontrolled newt hunts were tacitly regarded as a natural way of regulating the newt population. 10 Trading in newts was well organised, and there was an extensive advertising campaign in the press, but the biggest influence in the expansion of the newt population was the enormous wave of technological idealism which inundated the entire world at that time. G.H. Bondy rightly foresaw that from then on the human spirit would be working with whole new continents and new Atlantisses. The whole of the Newt Age was dominated by a lively and fertile dispute among the technically minded as to whether firm land should be constructed with shores of reinforced concrete or merely light land laid down as deposits of marine sand. New and gigantic projects appeared almost every day: there were some Italian engineers who suggested the construction of a Great Italy taking in most of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Tripoli, the Balearic Islands and the Dodecanese, and others who wanted to establish a new continent to be called 'Lemuria' to the east of Italian Somalia which would take in the entire Indian Ocean in one move. With the help of armies of newts, new islands covering thirteen and a half acres were indeed laid down near the Somalian port of Mogadishu. Japan planned and partly realised a new great island to cover the former Marian Archipelago and made preparations to combine the Caroline and Marshall Islands into two big islands, provisionally named 'New Nippon'; each of the two islands was to be created by means of an artificial volcano which would remind their prospective inhabitants of the famous Mount Fuji. It was also rumoured that German engineers were secretly building a durable, concrete landmass in the Sargasso Sea which was to be the new Atlantis and, it was said, would be a threat to French East Africa; but it seems that this went no further than laying the foundations. In Holland, Zeeland was reclaimed; France combined Guadeloupe, Grande Terre, Basse Terre and La Désirade into one big island; the United States began to build the first airfield-island on the 37th. meridian (two storeys high with an enormous hotel, sport stadium, funfair and a cinema for five thousand people). It simply seemed that the last limits imposed on human expansion imposed by the sea had now fallen; a new and radiant age of amazing technical plans began; man realised that now, at last, he was becoming the Lord of the World, and that was thanks to the newts who had stepped onto the world stage at the right moment and, as it were, with the force of history. There is no doubt that the newts would never have burgeoned the way they did if our own technical age had not prepared so many jobs for them and so many places of long-term employment. The future of the Workers of the Sea now seemed to be guaranteed for centuries to come. Science, too, played an important part in the development of newt commerce, and quickly turned its attention to investigating both the newts' physiology and their psychology. 11 Because of this scientific research people stopped regarding the newts as some kind of miracle; in the cold light of science the salamanders lost much of their aura of primordial strangeness and uniqueness; once they had become the subject of psychological tests they began to seem very average and uninteresting; their enormous talents were dismissed by the scientists to the realm of myth. The common or garden salamander was identified, and it turned out to be something entirely dull and quite limited in its abilities; only the newspapers would now and then display a Miracle Newt that could multiply five figure numbers in its head, but people soon got tired of that, especially when it had been shown that even a mere human could perform the same trick given the right training. People simply began to consider the newts as much a matter of course as an adding machine or other device; they now no longer saw anything mysterious about them, the newts no longer seemed to have emerged from the unknown depths of the sea with who knows what purpose. And people never do regard something as mysterious if it serves and benefits them, only if it's something harmful or threatening; and as the newts, as has been shown, were highly versatile and useful, 12 they were simply accepted as a basic part of a rational and ordinary life. In short, it was entirely natural that the newts stopped being a sensation, even though there were now as many as a hundred million of them; the public interest they had excited had been the interest of a novelty. They still appeared now and then in films (Sally and Andy, the Two Good Salamanders) and on the cabaret stage where singers endowed with an especially bad voice came on in the role of newts with rasping voices and atrocious grammar, but as soon as the newts had become a familiar and large-scale phenomenon the problems they presented, so to speak, were of a different character. 13 Although the great newt sensation quickly evaporated it was replaced with something that was somewhat more solid--the Newt Question. Not for the first time in the history of mankind, the most vigorous activist in the Newt Question was of course a woman. This was Mme. Louise Zimmermann, the manager of a guest house for girls in Lausanne, who, with exceptional and boundless energy, propagated this noble maxim around the world: Give the newts a proper education! She would tirelessly draw attention both to the newts' natural abilities and to the danger that might arise for human civilisation if the salamanders weren't carefully taught to reason and to understand morals, but it was long before she met with anything but incomprehension from the public. 14 "Just as the Roman culture disappeared under the onslaught of the barbarians our own educated civilisation will disappear if it is allowed to become no more than an island in a sea of beings that are spiritually enslaved, our noble ideals cannot be allowed to become dependent on them," she prophesied at six thousand three hundred and fifty seven lectures that she delivered at women's institutes all over Europe, America, Japan, China, Turkey and elsewhere. "If our culture is to survive there must be education for all. We cannot have any peace to enjoy the gifts of our civilisation nor the fruits of our culture while all around us there are millions and millions of wretched and inferior beings artificially held down in the state of animals. Just as the slogan of the nineteenth century was 'Freedom for Women', so the slogan of our own age must be 'GIVE THE NEWTS A PROPER EDUCATION!'" And on she went. Thanks to her eloquence and her incredible persistence, Mme. Louise Zimmermann mobilised women all round the world and gathered sufficient funds to enable her to found the First Newt Lyceum at Beaulieu (near Nice), where the tadpoles of salamanders working in Marseilles and Toulon were instructed in French language and literature, rhetoric, public behaviour, mathematics and cultural history. 15 The Girls' School for Newts in Menton was slightly less successful, as the staple courses in music, diet and cookery and fine handwork (which Mme. Zimmermann insisted on for primarily pedagogical reasons) met with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm, if not with a stubborn hostility among its young students. In contrast with this, though, the first public examinations for young newts was such an instant and startling success that they were quickly followed by the establishment of the Marine Polytechnic for Newts at Cannes and the Newts' University at Marseilles with the support of the society for the care and protection of animals; it was at this university that the first newt was awarded a doctorate of law. The matter of newt education now began to develop quickly and along its normal path. Exemplary though the Écoles Zimmermann were, the most progressive teachers raised a number of serious objections to them; in particular they insisted that the established humanistic schooling for young humans was not suitable for young newts; they certainly recommended the teaching of literature and history but they also recommended that as much time and facilities as possible should be devoted to modern practical subjects such as the natural sciences, craftwork, technical understanding, physical education and so on. These Reform Schools, or Schools for Practical Life, as they were known were, in their turn, passionately opposed by those who supported a classical education and declared that newts could only come to approach the lofty cultural level of human beings on the basis of Latin, and that there was no point in teaching them to speak if they weren't also taught to recite poetry and perform oratory with the eloquence of Cicero. There was a long and rather heated debate which was finally settled when the schools for salamanders were taken over by the state and schools for human children were reformed so that they came as close as possible to the ideals of the Reform Schools for newts. It was now a matter of course that other countries would also declare their belief in making the newts have a proper, state supervised education. One by one, all the seafaring nations declared themselves for it (with the exception of Great Britain, of course); and because these schools for newts were not burdened with the classical traditions of schools for human children, and were able to make use of all the latest methods in psychotechnology, technical education, pre-military exercises and other educational innovations, these schools quickly evolved into the most modern and scientifically advanced educational system in the world, envied by teachers and students everywhere. As soon as there are schools there needs to be a language, and that raised the question of which of the world's languages would be the best for the salamanders to learn. The first newts in the Pacific islands spoke, of course, in the Pidgin English they had picked up from natives and sailors; many of them spoke Malay or other local dialects. Newts bred for the market in Singapore were taught to speak Basic English, the scientifically simplified English that gets by with a few hundred expressions without the encumbrance of outdated grammar; and as a result this modified version of standard English began to be called Salamander English. In the exemplary Écoles Zimmermann the newts expressed themselves in the language of Corneille; not, of course, for any chauvinistic reason but because that is simply part of any good education; at the reform schools, on the other hand, Esperanto was learned so that it would serve as a lingua franca. There were five or six other new Universal Languages which emerged around this time with the intention of replacing the Babylonian confusion of human languages with a single, common mother-tongue for the whole world of newts and men; needless to say that there were countless disputes about which of these international languages is the most useful, most euphonious and the most universal. The final result, of course, was that there was a different universal language propagated in every nation. 16 All this became simpler when the education of newts was nationalised: the newts in every state were to be brought up in the appropriate local language. Although the salamanders found it relatively easy to learn foreign languages and were keen to do so there were found to be some peculiar difficulties, partly to do with adapting their speech organs to human language and partly to do with mainly psychological reasons; they had difficulty, for instance, in pronouncing long words with many syllables and would try to reduce them to a single syllable which they would bark out in a rather nasal voice; they would say L instead of R and lisp on their sibilants; they would leave off grammatical endings, they never did learn to distinguish between 'I' and 'we' and the question of whether a noun was masculine or feminine was matter of complete indifference for them (this may have been manifestation of their indifference to sex outside the breeding season). In short, every language they learned took on new and characteristic forms in their mouths, reorganising it into something simpler and more rudimentary. It is worth nothing that their neologisms, pronounciations and simplified grammar was quickly adopted by both the simplest people in the ports and by the so-called best people; and from the ports this way of speaking spread out into the newspapers and was soon in general use. Even many humans stopped attending to grammatical gender, word endings were dropped, declinations disappeared; our golden youth neglected to say r properly and learned to lisp; few educated people were any longer certain what was meant by 'indeterminism' or 'transcendent', simply because these words, even for human beings, were too long and too hard to pronounce. In short, for good or for ill, the newts became able to speak almost every language of the world according to what coast they lived on. About this time, some of the Czech national newspapers began to complain bitterly, no doubt with good reason, that none of the newts could speak their language. If there were salamanders who could speak Portuguese, Dutch and the languages of other small nations why were there none that could speak Czech? It was true, they conceded in regretful and learned terms, that Czechoslovakia had no sea coasts, and that means there will be no marine newts here, but that does not mean that Czechs should not play the same part in the culture of the world as many of the other nations whose language was being taught to thousands of newts, or perhaps even a greater part. It was only right and proper that the newts should also have some knowledge of Czech culture; but how were they to be informed about it if none of them knew the Czech language? It was not likely that someone somewhere in the world would acknowledge this cultural debt and found a chair in Czech and Czechoslovak literature at one of the newt universities. As the poet puts it, 'Trust no-one in the whole wide world, we have no friends out there'. And so one of the newspaper articles declared that Czechs themselves would have to do something to rectify the matter. Whatever we've done in the world, it asserted, we've done by our own efforts! We have a duty and the right to try to recruit friends even among newts; but it seems that the foreign ministry does not have much interest in spreading the good name of our country and our products among newts, even though other, smaller nations devote millions to opening their cultural treasures to them as well as generating interest in their industrial products.--This article attracted a great deal of interest from the confederation of industry, and one result was that a brief handbook of Czech for newts was published, complete with illustrations of Czechoslovak handwriting styles. It may seem hard to believe, but this little book was remarkably successful and sold more than seven hundred copies. 17 Matters of education and language were, of course, only one aspect of the great newt problem which grew up, as it were, under people's feet. The question quickly arose, for instance, of how people were to behave towards the newts in, so to speak, the social sphere. At first, in the almost prehistoric period of the Newt Age, there were, of course, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals which passionately ensured that the newts were not treated in ways that were cruel or inhumane; and it was thanks to their continuous efforts that government offices almost everywhere saw to it that the regulations set out by police and veterinary inspectors for the conditions of other livestock applied also to newts. Opponents of vivisection signed many protests and petitions calling for a ban on scientific experiments on live newts; and many countries did indeed pass laws to that effect. 18 But as the newts became more educated it became less clear whether newts should simply be included under animal protection legislation; for some reason, not entirely clear, it seemed rather inappropriate. And so the Salamander Protection League was founded under the patronage of the Duchess of Huddersfield. This league, numbering more than two hundred members, mostly in England, achieved many effective and praiseworthy improvements for the newts; in particular, they succeeded in establishing special newt playgrounds on the coast where, undisturbed by inquisitive human eyes, their meetings and sporting celebrations took place (by which they probably meant their secret dances once a month); they ensured that all places of education (even including the University of Oxford) persuaded their students not to throw stones at newts; to some extent they ensured that young tadpoles at school weren't over-burdened with work; and they even saw to it that places where newts lived or worked were surrounded by a high wooden fence that would protect them from various intrusions and, most importantly, would form an adequate barrier between the world of men and the world of newts. 19 However it was not long before these commendable private initiatives, intended to establish a fair and humane relationship between human society and that of newts, were found not to be enough. It was relatively easy to include salamanders into industrial processes, but it was much harder and more complicated to include them in any way into the existing precepts of society. People who were more conservative asserted that there was no question to be solved, there were no legal or social problems; the newts, they said, were simply the property of their employers and the employers were responsible for them and any damage they might cause; despite their undoubted intelligence the salamanders were legally no more than property, an object or an estate, and any legal measure concerning the newts would, they said, be a violation of the holy rights of private property. In response, others objected that as the newts were a kind of intelligent being and to a large extent responsible for their actions they might freely find various ways of violating existing laws. How could a newt owner be expected to bear the responsibility for any offences committed by his salamanders? A risk of that sort would certainly destroy any private initiative where the employment of newts was concerned. There are no fences in the sea, they said, newts cannot be closed in and kept under supervision. For this reason, it would be necessary to pass laws directed at the newts themselves; in this way they would respect the human legal order and conduct themselves in accordance with the regulations laid down for them. 20 As far as is known, the first laws governing salamanders were passed in France. The first paragraph set out the newts' obligations in the event of mobilisation for war; the second (known as the Lex Deval) instructed the newts that they were allowed to settle only on those parts of the coast indicated by their owners or an appropriate office of local government; the third stipulated that newts were required, under any circumstances, to obey any order given them by a member of the police; any failure to obey a police order would entitle police authorities to punish them by means of incarceration in a place that was dry and brightly lit, or even to deny them the right to work for long periods of time. The left-wing parties responded by putting a motion to parliament that a legal social system for newts should be worked out. These social measures would limit the amount of work required from them and place certain obligations on anyone employing newts (eg. fourteen days leave at mating time in the spring); the extreme left objected that the newts should be designated as enemies of the working class because they work too hard in the service of capitalism, work for almost nothing, and thus they endanger the working man's standard of living; this demand was followed up with a strike by harbour workers in Brest and large demonstrations in Paris; many people were injured and Deval was forced to resign his job as minister. In Italy the salamanders were placed under the authority of a special Newt Corporation made up of employers and public officials, in Holland they were governed by the ministry supervising coastal constructions, in short every state solved the newt problem in its own different way; but most of the public decisions governing public responsibility, and largely limiting the animal freedom enjoyed by the newts, were roughly the same anywhere you looked. It should be understood that as soon as the first laws for newts were passed there were people who, in the name of jurisdicial logic, reasoned that if human society places certain obligations on the salamanders it would have to grant them certain rights. Any state that lays down laws for newts acknowledges, ipso facto, that they are beings capable of acting freely and responsibly, as legal subjects, or even as members of the state in which case their status as citizens would need to be adjusted in whatever legislation they lived under. It would, of course, have been possible to designate the newts as foreign immigrants; but in that case the state would be unable to exact certain services and duties from them in the event of mobilisation for war, which every country in the civilised world did do (with the exception of England). In the event of armed conflict we would certainly want the newts to protect our shorelines; but in that case we could not deny them certain civil rights such as the right to vote, the right of assembly, the right to participate in various public offices and so on. 21 It was even suggested that the newts had a kind of independent state of their own under the water; but these considerations and others like them remained purely academic; they never resulted in any practical solution, mainly because the newts themselves never asked for any civil rights from anyone. There was another lively debate about the newts which took place without their direct interest or participation, and that was around the question of whether they could be baptised. The Catholic church took a firm stand from the start and said they certainly could not; as the newts were not the descendants of Adam they were not affected by Original Sin, the sacrament of baptism could not be used to cleanse them of it. The Holy Church had no wish to decide the question as to whether the newts had an immortal soul or any other share of God's love and salvation; their good wishes towards the newts could only be shown by a special prayer for them, to be read on certain days at the same time as prayers for souls in Purgatory and intercessions for unbelievers. 22 For the Protestant church it was not so simple; they acknowledged that the newts had reason and could therefore understand Christian teaching, but they hesitated to make them members of the church and therefore brothers in Christ. So they restricted themselves to issuing an abridged form of the Holy Gospel for Newts on waterproof paper and distributed many million copies of it; they also considered whether they should work out some kind of Basic Christian for them, a rudimentary and simplified version of Christianity analogous to Basic English; but all attempts in this direction created so many theological disputes that in the end they had to give up on the idea. 23 Some of the religious sects, especially those from America, had fewer scruples in the matter; they sent their missionaries out to the newts to teach them the True Faith and baptised them according to the words of Scripture: Go out into the world and teach all nations. But very few missionaries succeeded in getting past the wooden fences that divided the newts from people; employers would not let them have access to the newts because their preaching might keep them away from work. So every so often you would see a preacher standing beside a tarred fence, zealously propounding the word of God, while the dogs fiercely barked at their enemy from the other side. As far as is known, monism was spread quite widely among the newts, with some of the newts believing in materialism and some of them in the gold standard or some other scientific doctrine. One popular philosopher called Georg Sequenz even compiled a special set of religious teachings for the newts centred around a belief in something called the Great Salamander. This system of faith met with no success whatsoever among the newts but found many converts among human beings, especially in the major cities where almost overnight a large number of secret temples for the salamander cult appeared. 24 Most of the newts themselves, somewhat later on, adopted a different faith, although it is not known how they came to it; this was the worship of Moloch, whom they imagined as an enormous newt with a human head; it was said they had gigantic metal idols of this god under the water which they had had made by Armstrong or Krupp. However, no more details about this cult or its rituals were ever learned--despite their reputation for exceptional cruelty and secrecy--because they took place under water. It seems that this faith spread among them because the name 'Moloch' reminded them of the Latin and German words for newts ('Molche'). It is clear from the preceding paragraphs that the Newt Question started out, and for a long time remained, centred around whether and to what extent the newts had reason and whether, as clearly civilised beings, they would be capable of making use of certain human rights, even though only on the edge of the ordered society in which human beings lived; in other words it was an internal question for individual states and it was settled in the context of citizen's rights. It was many years before it occurred to anyone that the Newt Question could have wide ranging international importance, or that it might become necessary to deal with the salamanders not only as intelligent beings but also as a newt collective or nation of newts. In truth, it should be said that the first step towards this conception of the Newt Problem was taken by some of the more eccentric Christian sects who tried to baptise the newts as instructed by Holy Scripture: Go out into the entire world and teach every nation. In this way it was made explicit that the newts were a sort of nation. 25 But the first international and significant acknowledgement of the newts as a nation was in the famous speech given at the Communist Internationals, signed by Comrade Molokov and addressed to "all the repressed and revolutionary newts throughout the world". 26 This call seems to have had no direct effect on the newts themselves, but it was widely discussed in the press around the world and had great influence, at least, in that a rain of fervent invitations from every side began to fall on the newts, exhorting them, as the nation of greater newtdom, they should align themselves with this or that idealist, political or social program of human society. 27 Now the International Bureau of Employment in Geneva began to concern itself with the Newt Problem. Here there were two views in opposition to each other; one side acknowledged the newts as a new working class and strove to have all social legislation extended to them, regulating length of working day, paid holidays, insurance for invalidity and old age and so on; the other view, in contrast, declared that the newts were a growing danger as competition for human manpower and working newts were anti-social and should simply be banned. Not only employers' representatives objected to this idea but also delegates from the working people, pointing out that the newts were not just a new army of workers but also a major and growing market. As has been said, in recent times the numbers employed in metal working (working tools, equipment, metal idols for the newts), weapon manufacture, chemical industry (underwater explosives), paper industry (schoolbooks for the newts), cement manufacture, forestry, artificial foodstuffs (Salamander food) and many other areas had all risen at a rate unprecedented in peace time; there was a rise of 27% in shipping tonnage compared with the period before the newts, coal production increased by 18.6%. The rise in employment and prosperity for people indirectly caused a rise in turnover in other branches of industry too. Most recently, the newts had been ordering more engineering parts according to their own designs, using them to assemble pneumatic drills, hammers, underwater motors, printing machinery, underwater radio equipment and other machinery, all to their own plans and all done underwater. These machine parts were paid for by higher productivity; by now a fifth of all world production in heavy industry and in fine mechanics were dependent on orders from the newts. If you put an end to the newts you can put an end to one factory in five; instead of modern prosperity there would be millions unemployed. The International Bureau of Employment could not, of course, simply ignore this objection, and in the end, and after long discussion, it arrived at this compromise solution, that "the above named group of employees, S (amphibians), may be employed only on water or underwater, and on the shore only as far as ten meters above the high water line; they may not extract coal or oil from beneath the seabed; they may not produce paper, textiles, or artificial leather made from seaweed to be marketed on land" and so on; these restrictions on newt manufacturing were set out in nineteen legal paragraphs which we will not cite in more detail, mainly because, needless to say, nobody paid them any attention; but as a magnanimous and truly international solution to the Newt Problem in the fields of commerce and society it was held up as a useful and imposing achievement. In other respects, international recognition of the newts was somewhat slower, especially where cultural contact was concerned. When the much quoted article, "The Geological Structure of the Seabed around the Islands of the Bahamas", was published in the specialist press and the name 'John Seaman' given as the author, then of course nobody realised that this was the scientific work of an educated salamander; but when newt-researchers appeared at scientific congresses or addressed various academic or learned societies to report on their studies in oceanography, geography, hydrobiology, higher mathematics or other precise sciences in it caused much consternation and indignation, expressed by the great Dr. Martel in the following words: "Do these vermin think they've got something to teach us?" The learned Dr. Onoshita from Japan, who dared to quite from a report by a newt (something to do with the development of the yoke sac of the fry of the deep sea fish, Argyropelecus Hemigymnus Cocco), he was ostracised by the scientific community and committed harakiri; it was a matter of honour and professional pride among university scientists that they don't take into account any of the scientific work done by a newt. This increased the attention (if not outrage) given to the Centre Universitaire de Nice when it invited Dr. Charles Mercier, a highly learned newt from the harbour at Toulon, to give a celebratory lecture on the theme of conic sections in non-Euclidean geometry which was met with remarkable success. 28 Those attending the event included a delegate from Geneva, Mme. Maria Dimineanu; this outstanding and generous lady was so impressed by Dr. Mercier's modesty and erudition ("Pauvre petit," she is said to have sighed, "il est tellement laid!") that she made it a part of her tirelessly active life to have the newts accepted as a member of the United Nations. Politicians tried in vain to explain to this eloquent and energetic lady that the salamanders could not be a member of the United Nations because they were not a sovereign state and did not have any territory. Mme. Dimineanu began to propagate the idea that the newts should have their own free territory somewhere on the planet and their own underwater state. This idea was of course rather unwelcome if not directly dangerous; eventually a happy solution was found in that the United Nations would set up a special Commission for the Study of the Newt Question, which was to include two delegates from the newt world; the first to be called on, under pressure from Mme. Dimineanu, was Dr. Charles Mercier of Toulon, and the second was a certain Don Mario, a fat and learned newt from Cuba carrying out scientific work in the field of plankton and neritic pelagial. In this way the newts reached the highest ever international acknowledgement of their existence. 29 So we see the salamanders achieving a steep and continuous rise. Their population is now estimated at seven thousand million, although with increasing civilisation their fertility shows a marked decline (to twenty or thirty tadpoles per female per year). They have occupied more than sixty percent of the world's coastlines; coasts around the polar regions are still not habitable, but newts from Canada have begun to colonise the coast of Greenland, even succeeding in pushing the Eskimos back inland and taking the fishing industry and the trade in fish oils into their own hands. The upsurge in their material well-being went hand in hand with their progress in civilisation; they join the ranks of educated nations with compulsory schooling and can boast of many hundred of their own underwater newspapers distributed in millions of copies, scientific institutions whose buildings were an example to all, and so on. It should be understood that this cultural ascent was not always smooth and without internal disagreements; we know remarkably little about the internal affairs of the newts, but there are some indications (such as newts found dead with cuts to their noses and heads) that, under the ocean, there was a long, protracted and passionate dispute under the ocean between the young newts and the old. The young newts seem clearly to have been in favour of progress without exception or reserve, and declared that even under the water they should pursue all the educations known on the dry land with all their efforts, even including football, flirting, fascism and sexual perversions; whereas the old newts, it seemed, were more conservative to the nature of newtdom, were unwilling to give up the good old animal habits and instincts; they left no doubt about their condemnation of the young newts' lust for novelty and saw therein a decline and a betrayal of traditional newt ideals; they were certainly also opposed to the foreign influences so blindly followed by the corrupted youth of today, and they asked whether it was worthy of the dignity of proud and self-conscious newts to ape everything done by humans. 30 We can imagine that slogans such as 'Back to the Miocene!', 'Down with all Humanising Influences!', 'Fight for the Right for Newts to be Undisturbed!' and so on were coined. Without a doubt, there were all the preconditions for a lively generational conflict of views, and for a profound revolution in the newts' spiritual development; unfortunately, we are not able to give any more precise details, but we hope that the newts made what they could out of this conflict. So now we see the newts on the way to their greatest flowering; but the world of human beings, too, was enjoying unprecedented prosperity. New continents were planned out with great enthusiasm, shallow waters were converted to dry land, and artificial islands for aeroplanes appeared in the middle of the oceans; but compared with the enormous technical projects which would entirely reconstruct the globe these were as nothing, and the projects awaited nothing but someone to finance them. The newts worked tirelessly in all the seas and on the edge of all the continents for as long as the night lasted; they seemed contented and asked for nothing for themselves but something to do and a piece of coastline where they could drill their holes and build the paths to their dark homes. They had their cities under the water and under the land, their subterranean metropoles, their Essens and their Birminghams twenty to fifty meters down at the bottom of the sea; they have their overcrowded industrial zones, ports, transport lines and cities of a million inhabitants; in short, they had their more or less 31 unknown but, it seems, highly technically developed world. Although they did not have their own kilns and foundries they were given metals by human beings in exchange for work. They did not have their own explosives but they bought them from human beings. Their fuel for transport was the sea with its tides and its currents, with its undertows and differences in temperature; they had to obtain their turbines from human beings but they were well able to make use of them; and what is civilisation if not the ability to make use of things invented by others? Even if the newts, let us say, had no thoughts of their own they were well able to have their own science. They had no music or literature but got by perfectly well without them; and people began to see that thanks to the newts everything was fantastically modern. People could even learn something from the newts--and no wonder: were the newts not amazingly successful and what should people take their example from if not from success? Never in the history of mankind had so much been manufactured, constructed and earned as in this great age. With the newts came enormous progress and the ideal known as Quantity. The phrase, "We people of the Newt Age", became widely used, and used with justified pride; where could we have got in the old-fashioned Human Age with the slow, petty and useless fiddling known as culture, art, pure science or suchlike. The self aware people of the Newt Age declared that they would no longer waste their time delving into the Questions of the Universe; they would have enough to do just with the quantity of things being manufactured. the whole future of the world would consist in constantly raising production and consumption; and for that there would need to be still more newts so that they could produce even more and consume even more. The newts were a simply a matter of quantity; they had achieved their epoch-making changes because there were so many of them. Only now could man's ingenuity work at full effectiveness, because it was working on a huge scale with extremely high manufacturing capacity and a record financial turnover; in short, this was a great age. And what was now still missing for universal prosperity and contentment to make this a true Happy New Age? What was preventing the creation of the Utopia we all longed for, where all these technical triumphs and magnificent possibilities would be harvested, where human happiness would combine with newts' industry to open new horizons further and further to beyond what anyone could imagine? Actually, there was nothing to prevent it; as now trade with the newts would be crowned with the wisdom of the world's most competent administrators, who would also ensure in advance that the machinery of the New Age would run smoothly. In London a conference took place, attended by seafaring nations, where the International Convention on Salamanders was worked out and approved. The high officials who signed the convention agreed to bind themselves not to send their newts into the sovereign waters of other states; not to allow their newts, in any way, to violate the territorial integrity or acknowledged sphere of interest of any other state; that they would not, in any way, interfere in matters affecting the newts belonging to any other seafaring power; that any dispute between its salamanders and those of another state would be settled by the Court of Arbitration at The Hague; that newts would not be armed with any weapons of a calibre exceeding that which is normal for underwater shark guns; that they would not allow their newts to establish close contact with the salamanders of other sovereign states; that they would not assist their newts in the construction of new land or extending their territory without previous permission from the Standing Marine Commission in Geneva, and so on. (There were thirty-seven paragraphs in all) On the other hand, the British suggestion that marine powers should bind themselves not to oblige their newts to carry out any military exercises was rejected; the French suggestion that the salamanders should be internationalised and subjected to the authority of an international newt commission for regulating world waters was rejected; the German suggestion that every newt should have the symbol of the state to which it belonged branded into its skin was rejected; another German suggestion that every marine state be allowed only a certain number of newts so that the numbers in each state would be in proportion to each other was rejected; the Italian suggestion that states with an excess of salamanders be allocated new shores or areas of the sea bed for colonisation was rejected; the Japanese suggestion that they be given an international mandate to govern the newts as representatives of the coloured races (the newts were by nature black) was rejected. 32 Most of these suggestions were deferred for the next conference of marine powers which, for various reasons, did not take place. "By this international action," wrote Monsieur Jules Sauerstoff in 'Le Temps', "the future of the newts is assured, along with peaceful development for people for many decades to come. We congratulate the London conference for its successful conclusions on some difficult questions; and we also congratulate the newts that by this statute they come under the protection of the court at The Hague; they will henceforth be able to devote themselves to their work and their underwater progress with a sense of peace and trust. It should be emphasised that the removal of the Newt Problem from the field of politics, which is what the London conference has achieved, is one of the most important assurances we have of world peace; the disarming of the salamanders, in particular, will do a great deal to reduce the likelihood of underwater conflicts between individual states. The fact is that--even though many border disputes and power struggles continue between states on almost every continent--there is no current threat to world peace, at least not from the direction of the sea. But on dry land, too, we seem to have a better assurance of peace than ever before; the seafaring nations are fully occupied with the construction of new shores and will be able to increase their territory by reclaiming land from the sea instead of trying to extend their frontiers on dry land. There will no longer be any need to fight with iron and gas for every tiny piece of land; all that is needed will be the picks and shovels wielded by the newts for every state to build as much territory as it needs; and it is the London Convention which ensures that the peaceful labour of the newts will bring peace and prosperity for all the nations of the world. The world has never before been so close to a lasting peace and a quiet but glorious efflorescence than now. Instead of the Newt Problem about which so much has been written and said, we will now have good reason to talk of The Golden Age of the Newt'." NOTES[1. Cf. G. Kreuzmann, Geschichte der Molche. Hans Tietze, Der Molch des XX Jahrhunderts. Kurt Wolff, Der Molch and das deutsche Volk. Sir Herbert Owen, Salamanders and the British Empire. Giovanni Focaja, L'evoluzione degli anfibii durante il Fascismo. Léon Bonnet, Les Urodéles et la Société des Nations. S Madariaga, Las Salamandras y la Civilización and others.] [2. Cf. The War with the Newts, book I, chapter 12.] [3. This can be seen straight away from the first cutting in Mr. Povondra's collection: [4. Difficulties of this sort are illustrated in this undated cutting:] [5. Almost the only pistol used for this purpose was the one invented by Inž. Mirko Å afránek and manufactured in the city of Brno.] [6. Cf. the following newpaper report" [7. Cf. a remarkable document from Mr. Povondra's collection: [8. Cf. the following, highly interesting, cutting which, unfortunately, is in an unknown language and cannot therefore be translated: [9. Cf. the following extensive and objective description, signed as e.w., 5th October: [10. We cite the following contemporary description: [11. We cite a report on the scientific congress in Paris by an eye-witness, r.d. [12. The uses to which newts can be put was researched in particular by Wuhrmann in Hamburg, and this is just one short extract from his papers on the subject: [13. This matter was reflected in a survey published in the Daily Star on the theme of Do Newts have a Soul? Here, we quote some of the statements by outstanding personalities from this survey (although of course with no guarantee of their truth): [14. I have never seen a newt, but I am convinced that a being without music is a being without a soul. [15. Viz Mme. Louise Zimmermann, sa vie, ses idées, son eouvre (Alcan). We quote from this work the admiring memory of a newt who was one of her first pupils: [16. Amongst others, the famous linguist, Curtius, in the publication, Janua Linguarum aperta, suggested that the only general language to be adopted by newts should be the Latin of the golden age of Vergil. It is today within our grasp, he declared, for Latin, this most perfect of languages, the richest in grammatical rules and most developed in science, to once more be a living language in use in all parts of the world. If those educated parts of mankind do not take this opportunity then you, salamandrae, gens maritima, you should grasp it yourselves; choose for your home language eruditam linguam Latinam, the only language worthy of being spoken throughout orbis terrarum. Salamandrae, should you resurrect the eternal language of gods and heroes into new life then it will be a service that lasts forever; for, gens Tritonum, with this language we would be accepting the legacy of Rome that was the ruler of the world. [17. Cf. an article by Jaromir Seidel-NovomÄ›stský, preserved in Mr. Povondra's collection of cuttings. [18. In Germany in particular all vivisection was strictly forbidden, albeit, of course, only for Jewish researchers.] [19. This seems also to have affected certain ethical movements. Among the articles in Mr. Povondra's collection was a declaration published in newspapers all around the world, translated into many different languages and even signed by the Duchess of Huddersfield. It read: [20. The first trial of a newt, that took place in Durban, was of great interest to the press all round the world (viz Mr. Povondra's collection of cuttings). The port authority in A. employed a working colony of newts. In the course of time they multiplied so much that the port soon did not have enough room for them all; some tadpoles began to establish new colonies out on the surrounding coastline. Part of this coastline was on the property of farmer B. and he asked the port authority to remove the newts from his private beach because he liked to bathe there. The port authority refused, saying the matter was nothing to do with them as the newts, having settled on his land, had become his private property. While these protracted negotiations continued, the newts, partly from instinct and partly because of the eagerness for work that had been inculcated in them, began, without the appropriate orders or permission, to construct a dyke and a dock on Mr. B.'s stretch of beach. At this, Mr. B. made a complaint with the appropriate office to for damage to his property. At first the complaint was rejected on the grounds that Mr. B.'s land, far from being damaged, had been enhanced by the newts' activities, but this decision was overturned and verdict was passed in favour of the complainant on the grounds that no-one should have to tolerate a neighbour's domesticated animals on his land. The port authority in A. was held responsible for all the damage caused by the newts just as a farmer would be held responsible for damage caused to a neighbour by his cattle. The port authority, of course, objected that it could not be held responsible for the newts because in the sea they could not be fenced in. The neighbour declared that in his view the damage caused by the newts should be seen in the same way as damage caused by chickens which likewise could not be fenced in because they were able to fly. Counsel for the port authority asked how his client was expected to remove the newts or force them to leave Mr. B.'s private beach. The judge answered that that was no concern of the court. Counsel asked whether it would be acceptable to the honourable judge if the port authority had these undesirable newts shot. The judge answered that as an Englishman and a gentleman he would consider that highly inappropriate as well as a violation of Mr. B.'s hunting rights. The port authority was therefore required to remove the newts from the complainant's private property, to remove the damage caused by the newts' having constructed dams and waterworks there and to restore that stretch of beach to its original state. Counsel for the defendant asked whether his client would be allowed to use salamanders for this demolition work. The judge replied that this would certainly not be allowed unless the complainant gave his permission, which was in doubt because the complainants' wife found the newts repellent and was unable to bathe on a beach infested with newts. The port authority objected that without newts it would not be possible to remove the waterworks constructed below the waterline. At this, the judge declared that it was no matter of the court to make decisions on technical details and had no wish to do so; courts were there to protect private property, not to decide what was feasible and what not. [21. There were some who took the matter of equal rights for newts literally, and asked that salamanders be allowed to establish government offices under water and on land (J. Courtaud); or that they should form fully armed underwater regiments with their own underwater commander (General M. S. Desfours); or even that mixed marriages between newts and humans should be allowed (Louis Pierrot, avocat). scientists objected that marriages of this sort would not be possible; but Mister Pierrot declared that it was not a matter of natural possibilities but of a legal principle and that he himself would be willing to take a newt female for his wife in order to show that this reform of the legal principle of marriage need not remain merely on paper. (Later in his career, Mister Pierrot became a highly sought after divorce lawyer.) [22. Viz encyclical from the holy father, Mirabilia Dei Opera.] [23. There were so many publications on this subject that simply to list them would occupy two large volumes.] [24. The papers in Mr. Povondra's collection included a highly pornographic brochure which, according to police reports, had been published in B***. It is not possible to quote the contents of this "private publication, issued in the interests of scientific knowledge" in any respectable book. Instead we will merely cite a few of its details: [25. The Catholic prayers mentioned above also defined the newts as a kind of Dei Creatura de gente Molche (Creatures of God in the Nation of Newts).] [26. The declaration, preserved among Mr. Povondra's papers, went as follows: [27. We were able to find only a few declarations of this sort in Mr. Povondra's collection; the others were probably burned over the years by Mrs. Povondra. Of the remaining material, we can at least cite a few titles: [28. In Mr. Povondra's collection we found a lightweight, rather superficial description of this celebration, although, unfortunately, only the first half. The second half seems to have become lost. [29. Among Mr. Povondra's papers was a rather unclear newspaper photograph showing both newt delegates going up the steps onto the Quai du Mont Blanc on Lake Geneva to take their places at the commission. Lake Leman seems to have been their official accommodation. [30. Mr. Povondra also included two or three articles to do with national politics in his collection. These were about modern youth, and were probably only by mistake that he thought they were about the civilisation of the newts.] [31. One gentleman from the north of Prague told Mr. Povondra about the time he was bathing off the beach at Katwijk aan Zee. He had swum far out into the sea when the lifeguard called out to him, saying he should return to the beach. The gentleman concerned paid no attention and swam further out; then the lifeguard jumped into his boat and paddled out after him. "Swimming isn't allowed here, you know," he said to him. [32. This suggestion was clearly to do with large scale political propaganda, and thanks to Mr. Povondra's collection we have it here at hand. It read: Chapter 3MISTER POVONDRA READS THE PAPERS AGAINThere's nothing that makes the passage of time more obvious than seeing our children grow! Where's little Frank now, who we left (so recently, it seems!) on the tributaries on the left bank of the Danube? "Where's our Frank got to?" grumbled Mr. Povondra as he opened his evening paper. "You know, same as always," said Mrs. Povondra, bent over her sewing. "Out chasing after girls again, is he?" said Mr. Povondra disapprovingly. "Damn boy! Nearly thirty years old, he is, and never spends a single evening at home!" "He certainly gets through his socks fast enough," sighed Mrs. Povondra as she drew another worn-out sock over the wooden last. "Now what am I going to do with this one?" she said as she contemplated a large hole on the heel that resembled the outline of Ceylon. "Better just throw it out, I suppose," she thought critically, but nonetheless, after further strategic considerations, she stuck her needle decisively in at Ceylon's southern coast. A dignified homely peace reigned for a while, the sort the Povondras were so fond of; there was only the rustle of the newspaper and the fast-moving needle and thread to answer it. "Have they got him yet?" asked Mrs. Povondra. "Who?" "That murderer, the one who killed that woman." "I can't be bothered with this murderer of yours," grumbled Mr. Povondra with distinct contempt. "I've been reading here about how tensions have erupted between China and Japan. That's a serious matter, that is. It's always a serious matter out there." "I don't think they're ever going to catch him now," Mrs. Povondra opined. "Who?" "That murderer. They don't often catch them when they murder women." "Japan doesn't like it that China's been regulating the Yellow River. That's politics, that is. For as long as the Yellow River keeps playing up they'll keep on having floods and famines in China, and that keeps China weak. Pass me the scissors, mother, I'll cut this one out." "What for?" "'Cause it says here they've got two million newts working on the Yellow River." "That's a lot, isn't it!" "I should say so. Mind you, girl, I'm sure it must be America that's paying for it. Why would the Mikado want to put his own newts in there--And look at this!" "What is it?" "The Petit Parisien says here that France won't like it at all. And I sure they won't. I wouldn't like it either." "What wouldn't you like, dear?" "For Italy to extend the island of Lampedusa. That's a very important strategic position, that is. Italy would be able to threaten Tunis from there. And the Petit Parisien says that Italy wants to turn the island into a first class marine fortress, that there are sixty thousand armed newts already there--Just think of that! Sixty thousand; that's three divisions, mother. There's something going to happen down there in the Mediterranean if you ask me. Have a look yourself; I'll cut it out for you." In the meantime Ceylon had disappeared under the industrious needle of Mrs. Povondra and reduced itself to no more that the proportions of Rhodes. "And there's England, too, don't forget," Mr. Povondra considered. "They're going to have their troubles, too. In the House of Commons they've been taking about how Great Britain will be left behind all the other states where water constructions are concerned. They say all the other colonial powers are building new shorelines and reclaiming new land all the time while the British government is too conservative and won't trust the newts. And that's quite true, mother. Very conservative they are, the English. I knew someone once who worked at the British embassy, and he would never let our Czech sausage past his lips, not for the life of him. Said they didn't eat it in England so he wouldn't eat it here. I'm not surprised other countries are getting ahead of them." Mr. Povondra nodded his head earnestly. "And there's France extending its coastline out by Calais. So now there's panic on in England that the French might start shooting at them across the Channel if the Channel gets any narrower. That's what it comes to. There's nothing to stop them extending their own coast off Dover and then they should shoot at France." "Why would they want to do that, dear?" asked Mrs. Povondra. "You don't understand these things. These are military matters. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some trouble there. And if not there it'll be somewhere else. It stands to reason, mother, with all these newts the world situation is entirely different. Entirely different." "Do you think there's going to be a war?" asked Mrs. Povondra uneasily. "I wouldn't want our Frank to get mixed up in any war." "War?" thought Mr. Povondra. "It'd have to be a world war so that the world powers could divide the sea between themselves. We'll stay neutral, though. Somebody has to stay neutral so that they can supply arms and all that to the others. That's how it works," concluded Mr. Povondra. "But you women don't understand these things." Mrs. Povondra pressed her lips together and, with a few quick strokes of her needle, finished the elimination of Ceylon from young Frank's sock. "And just think," said Mr. Povondra with hardly suppressed pride, "this dangerous situation wouldn't have arisen if it hadn't been for me! If I hadn't let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy that time then the whole course of history would have been different. There are other doormen who wouldn't have let him in, but I said to myself, I'll take on that responsibility. And now look, you've even got countries like England and France having trouble because of it! And there's still no knowing what might happen next." Mr. Povondra drew vigorously on his pipe. "That's how it is, my love. The papers are full of stories about the newts. Here's another one, look," Mr. Povondra put down his pipe, "it says here that newts have attacked some village near the city of Kankesanturai in Ceylon; seems the natives had been going out and killing them. The police and a squad of the local militia were called in," read Mr. Povondra read, "and then there was a proper shooting match between the newts and the people. Several of the soldiers were injured..." Mr. Povondra put down his paper. "I don't like the sound of that, mother." "Why's that, then?" asked Mrs. Povondra as she carefully and contentedly clicked the scissors over the place where the island of Ceylon had been. "After all, there's nothing there!" "I don't know about that," exclaimed Mr. Povondra as he stood up and began to pace anxiously up and down the living room. "I don't like the sound of that at all. Newts and people shooting at each other; you can't have that sort of thing going on." "Maybe these newts were just trying to defend themselves," laughed Mrs. Povondra as she put the socks away. "Exactly," grumbled Mr. Povondra uneasily. "If these horrors start trying to defend themselves things are going to turn bad. It's the first time they've done that....Oh my God, I don't like the sound of that!" Mr. Povondra stopped pacing and stood in thought. "I don't know but...maybe I should never have let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy!" BOOK THREETHE WAR WITH THE NEWTSChapter 1MASSACRE ON THE COCONUT ISLESIn one thing, Mr. Povondra was mistaken: the shots exchanged at Kankesanturai were not the first conflict between people and newts. The first known skirmish had taken place some years before on the Coconut Isles in the golden age of pirate raids on the salamanders; but even that was not the oldest incident of this sort and in the ports of the Pacific Ocean there was much talk about certain regrettable cases when newts had offered any kind of resistance, sometimes even to the normal S-Trade; although petty incidents such as these are not written about in the history books. On the Coconut Isles, or Keeling Isles, this is what happened: The Montrose, a raiding ship operated by Harriman's Pacific Trade Company and under the captaincy of James Lindley, sailed in for one of its usual newt gathering expeditions of the sort known as a Macaroni Run. The Coconut Isles were well known for a bay with a large newt population settled there by Captain van Toch himself but which, because of its remoteness, was left, as they say, to its own devices. No-one could accuse Captain Lindley of any lack of care and attention, not even in that the men who went on shore were not armed. (At that time the trade in hunting newts had already taken on a standard form; it is true, of course, that the pirate ships had earlier used to equip themselves with machine guns and even light cannons, although they were not intended for use against the newts but against unfair competition from other pirates. One day however, off the island of Karakelong, one of Harrimans steamers came up against a Danish ship whose captain considered the hunting grounds of Karakelong as his territory; so the two sides settled some old accounts to do with their prestige and some trading disputes by leaving the newts alone and starting to fire at each other with their rifles and Hotchkiss guns; on land, victory went to the Danes after their successful knife attack but the Harriman ship then had its success by firing its cannons at the Danish ship and sinking it with all hands, including Captain Nielsen. This became known as the Karakelong Incident. So then governments and officials of the relevant countries had to become involved; pirate ships were from then on forbidden to use cannons, machine guns or hand grenades; the companies involved also allocated what they called the free hunting ground among themselves so that any one newt settlement would only ever be visited by a certain raiding ship; this gentleman's agreement among the great pirates was adhered to and respected even by the smallest raiding businesses.) But to return to Captain Lindley, he conducted himself entirely in accordance with commercial and marine practices of the time when he sent his men out to gather newts armed only with sticks and oars, and the later official enquiry gave the dead captain full satisfaction in that respect. The men who went down to the Coconut Isles that moonlit night were under the command of Lieutenant Eddie McCarth, who was already experienced in this sort of newt-gathering expedition. It is true that the herd of newts they found on the shore was exceptionally large, estimated at between six and seven hundred strong and fully grown males, whereas Lieutenant McCarth had only sixteen men at his command; but it cannot be said that he failed to do his duty, partly because the officers and ratings on the pirate ships were paid, it was said, according to how many newts they captured. In the ensuing enquiry by the marine authorities it was found that "although Lieutenant McCarth is responsible for this unhappy incident it is quite clear that no-one else would have acted differently under the circumstances". The unfortunate young officer had, in fact, shown remarkable prudence in that instead of slowly surrounding the newts, which, given their numbers, could not have been fully achieved, he ordered a sudden attack with the intention of cutting the newts off from the sea, forcing them inland and stunning them one by one with a blow to the head with a club or an oar. Unfortunately, when the attack took place the sailors were separated from each other and nearly two hundred salamanders escaped into the water. While the attacking men were processing those newts which had been prevented from reaching the sea they began to hear shots behind themselves from shark guns; no-one had any idea that these wild and natural newts on the Keeling Isles were equipped with weapons against sharks and no-one ever found out who had given them to them. One of the deck hands, Michael Kelly, who had survived the whole catastrophe, said: "When we heard the first shots we thought it must be some other ship that had come to hunt for newts like we had. Lieutenant McCarth turned round quick and shouted, 'What are you doing, you fools, this is the crew of the Montrose here!' Then he was hit in the side, but he still pulled out his revolver and started shooting. Then he got a second shot in the neck and he fell. Then we saw for the first time that it was the newts firing at us and trying to cut us off from the sea. Then Long Steve raised his oar and rushed out at the newts shouting Montrose! Montrose! so we all started shouting Montrose! and thumping at these horrors with oars or whatever we could. There was about five of us left lying there, but the rest of us fought our way down to the water. Long Steve jumped in and waded out to the boat; but when he got there some of the newts grabbed hold of him and pulled him down under the water. They drowned Charlie and all; he shouted to us Lads, Jesus Christ lads, don't let them get me, but there was nothing we could do. Those vermin were shooting us in the back; Bodkin turned round and he got it in the belly, all he said was Oh no! and he fell. So we all tried to get back inland to the interior of the island; wed already broken all our oars and sticks on these monsters, so all we did was run like rabbits. By then, there was only the four of us left. We didn't dare go any further away from the shore in case we couldn't get back on board ship; we hid behind some stones and bushes and had to look on while the newts finished off our mates. Drowned them in the water like kittens, they did, and if anyone still tried to swim they gave him one on the head with a crowbar. It was only then I saw I had a twisted ankle and couldn't run any further." Captain James Lindley, who had remained on board the Montrose, must have heard the gunfire from the island; whether he thought there was some trouble with the natives or that there were some other newt traders there, he simply took the cook and two of the stokers who had stayed on board, had the machine gun (which was clearly hidden on the ship despite being strictly forbidden) put on the remaining boat, and went out to help his crewmen. He was careful not to set foot on the shore; he merely went close in the boat with the machine gun ready on its prow and stood there with folded arms for all to see. Let us allow Mister Kelly to explain further. "We didn't want to call out to the captain so that the newts wouldn't find us. Mister Lindley stood in the boat with his arms folded and called out, What's going on here? Then the newts turned round to look at him. There was a couple of hundred of them on the shore, and more and more of them kept swimming up from the sea and surrounded the boat. What's going on here? the captain asked, and then a big newt went up close to him and said, Go back! The captain just looked at him, he didn't say anything for a while and then he asked, Are you a newt? We are newts, said this newt. Now please, go back! I want to see what you've been doing with my men, said the old man. You should not have attacked us, said the newt. You will now, please, go back to your ship! The captain didn't say anything again for a while, and then he calmly said, Alright Jenkins, fire! And Stoker Jenkins started firing at the newts with the machine gun." (Later, at the official enquiry, the affair was described in these words: In this respect, Captain James Lindley did no more than we are entitled to expect from a British seaman.) "All the newts were together in a group," Kelly's testimony continued, "and so they fell like corn in a field. Some of them shot at Mr. Lindley with those guns of theirs, but he stood there with his arms folded and didn't even move. Just then a black newt came out of the water just behind the boat, and it had something in its paw something like a tin can, with its other paw it pulled something out of it and threw it into the water under the boat. After about five seconds there was a column of water came up and there was a loud bang, but sort of muffled sounding, and we could feel how it made the ground shake under our feet." (From Kelly's description, the official enquiry concluded that the newts had used an explosive known as W3, supplied to them for removing rock from under the water at the fortification works in Singapore, but it remained a mystery how it came into the hands of the newts on the Coconut Isles. There were some who surmised that the explosives were given them by people, others supposed the newts themselves must already have had some long distance communications. Public opinion clamoured for a ban on giving the newts such dangerous explosives; however the appropriate office declared that there was still no other explosive that was as "highly effective and relatively safe" as W3, and that's how things were left.) "The boat flew up into the air," Kelly's testimony continued," and was ripped to pieces. All the newts, the ones that were still alive, rushed up to the place. We couldn't really see whether Mr. Lindley was dead or alive; but all three of my shipmates--Donovan, Burke and Kennedy--jumped up and went to help him so that he wouldn't fall into the hands of those newts. I wanted to run up as well but I had that twisted ankle so I sat where I was and pulled on my foot with both hands to try and get the bones in the right place. So I don't know what happened next, but when I looked up there was Kennedy lying there face down in the sand and there was no sign at all of Donovan or Burke; there was just still something going on in the water." Kelly then escaped deeper into the island until he found a native village; but the natives behaved strangely towards him and were unwilling even to offer him shelter; perhaps they were afraid of the newts. It was only seven weeks later that the Montrose was found, entirely plundered and abandoned, at anchor off the Coconut Isles by a fishing boat which rescued Kelly. Some weeks later, a British gunboat, HMS Fireball, sailed to the Coconut Isles and spent the night waiting at anchor. It was once again full moon, and the newts came out of the sea, took up their places in a circle on the sand and began their ceremonial dance. Then His Majesty's Ship fired its first rounds of grapeshot into them. Those newts that weren't cut to pieces immediately stiffened and then fled into the water; that was when the six cannons thundered out their terrible salvo and the only newts left were the few that still crawled towards the water on their broken limbs. Then there was another salvo from the cannons, and then a third. When that had ended, HMS Fireball withdrew to half a mile offshore and began to fire into the water as it slowly sailed up and down the coast. This lasted six hours and used about eight hundred rounds of ammunition. Then the Fireball sailed away. Over the following two days, the whole of the sea around the Keeling Isles was covered with the dismembered remains of thousands and thousands of newts. That same night a battleship from Holland, the Van Dijck, fired three rounds into a colony of newts on the island of Goenong Api; the Japanese cruiser Hakodate shot three grenades onto the little newt island of Ailinglaplap; the French gunboat, Bechamel, disrupted the newts dance on the island of Rawaiwai with three shots. This was a warning to the newts. It was not in vain; there was no further incident anywhere comparable with the Keeling Killing, and the trade in newts, both organised and freelance, was able to flourish without disturbance and with official blessing. Chapter 2SKIRMISH IN NORMANDYA conflict that took place in Normandy somewhat later had a quite different character. The newts there, most of whom worked in Cherbourg and lived on the surrounding beaches, had become very fond of apples. Their employers, though, were unwilling to provide them with anything but the usual newt food (they said it would raise construction costs above the projected budget) and so the newts began to undertake scrumping raids in the nearby orchards. The land owners complained about it to the prefecture and the newts were strictly forbidden to go anywhere on the beach outside the designated newt area, but this was of no help; the orchards continued to suffer steady losses, eggs seemed to disappear from the chicken coops, and every morning more and more guard dogs were found dead. So the villagers began to guard their orchards themselves, armed with ancient shotguns, and shot the poaching newts. It would have remained just a local matter; but the people of Normandy were also annoyed that their taxes had been raised and the price of ammunition had gone up, so they developed a deadly malice towards the newts and undertook raids against them in heavily armed gangs. When they had shot a large number of newts even while they were at work, the newt's employers complained to the prefecture and the prefect ordered that the villagers should have their rusty old guns taken away. The villagers of course resisted, and there were unpleasant conflicts between them and the gendarmes; the stubborn Normans were no longer just shooting at the newts but also, now, at the police. Reinforcements were sent out to Normandy and carried out a house to house search. It was just about at this time that there was a very unpleasant incident near Coutances: a group of local lads attacked a newt who, they claimed, had been acting suspiciously near a hen coop. They surrounded him with his back against the wall of a barn and began to throw bricks at him. The injured salamander raised his hand and threw down something that looked like an egg; there was an explosion which ripped not only the newt to pieces but also three of the lads: eleven year old Pierre Cajus, sixteen year old Marcel Bérard and fifteen year old Louis Kermadec; and there were also five other children seriously injured to varying degrees. The news quickly spread throughout the region; about seven hundred people came in buses from all around and attacked the newt colony in the bay of Basse Coutances, armed with shotguns, pitchforks and flails. Around twenty newts were killed before the police were able to subdue the angry crowd. Sappers called in from Cherbourg surrounded the bay with barbed wire; but that night the salamanders came out of the sea, destroyed the barbed wire fences with hand grenades and tried to make their way inland. Several companies of soldiers with machine guns were quickly brought in on lorries and a chain of troops was used to try and keep the newts separate from people. Meanwhile, the people were attacking the finance offices and police stations and one unpopular tax inspector was hanged on a lamppost with a placard saying: Away with the Newts! The newspapers, especially those in Germany, talked about a revolution in Normandy; although the government in Paris issued vehement denials. While the bloody skirmishes between people and newts spread along the coast of Calvados into Picardy and Pas de Calais, the ageing French cruiser, Jules Flambeau, sailed out of Cherbourg towards the western coast of Normandy; it was later found that the cruiser was only intended to calm and reassure the local inhabitants and the newts. The Jules Flambeau dropped anchor a mile and a half from the bay of Basse Coutances; when night came, in order to create a stronger impression, the captain order coloured rockets to be set off. This beautiful spectacle was watched by a large number of people on the shore; suddenly there was a hissing noise and an enormous column of water rose at the bow of the ship; it keeled over and there was a terrible explosion. It was clear that the cruiser was sinking; within a quarter of an hour motor boats had come out from the nearby ports to offer help but they were not needed; apart from three men killed in the explosion itself the whole crew was saved and the Jules Flambeau went down five minutes later, its captain being the last to leave the ship with the memorable words, "There's nothing we can do". The official report, issued that same night, announced that the "ageing cruiser, the Jules Flambeau, which was anyway to be withdrawn from service within a few weeks from now, hit rocks while sailing by night and, with its boiler exploding, sank", but the press were not so easily satisfied; while the government influenced press maintained that the ship had hit a recently laid German mine, the opposition and foreign press carried headlines such as: FRENCH CRUISER TORPEDOED by newts! MYSTERIOUS EVENTS off the coast of Normandy NEWTS IN REVOLT! "We call to account," wrote one French member of parliament in his paper, "those who gave arms to the newts that they could use against people; who put bombs in their paws so that they could kill French villagers and children as they play; who gave these monstrosities from the sea the most modern torpedoes so that they could sink French shipping whenever they want. Let us call them to account, I say: let them be indicted for murder, let them be dragged before a military tribunal for treason, let them be investigated for us to learn how much they profited from supplying the rabble of the oceans with the weapons to attack civilisation!" And so on; there was simply a general consternation, people gathered on the streets and began to build barricades; Senegalese riflemen, their guns stacked in pyramids, were stationed on the boulevards of Paris, and waiting in the suburbs were tanks and armoured cars. This was when the minister for marine affairs, Monsieur François Ponceau, stood in parliament, pale but decisive, and declared: The government accepts the responsibility for having equipped newts on French territory with guns, underwater machine guns, and torpedoes. French newts, however, are equipped only with light, small calibre cannons; German salamanders are armed with 32cm. underwater mortars. On French coasts there is only one underwater arsenal of hand grenades, torpedoes and explosives every twenty-four kilometres on average, on Italian coasts there are deep-water depots of armaments every twenty kilometres and in German waters every eighteen kilometres. France cannot leave her shores unprotected and will not do so. It is not possible for France to simply stop arming her newts. the minister would issue instructions for the most thorough investigations possible to discover who is guilty for the fatal misunderstanding on the Normandy coast; it seems that the newts saw the coloured rockets as a signal for military action and wished to defend themselves. The captain of the Jules Flambeau and the prefect of Cherbourg were both removed from their positions; a special commission was set up to ascertain how businesses involved in water works treated their newts with the expectation that that they would come under strict supervision in future. The government deeply regretted the loss of human lives; Pierre Cajus, Marcel Bérard and Louis Kermadec would be decorated as national heroes, buried at government expense and their parents rewarded with a large sum of money. Substantial changes were made at the highest level to the way French shipping was managed. The government put a motion of no-confidence in the National Assembly, to be settled when more information was available, and the cabinet announced that it would remain in permanent session. The newspapers, according to their political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective measures of this sort. People began frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was simply the more worrying and dangerous than it had been at any time over the previous three or four months. But this was when the minister for agriculture, Monsieur Monti, stepped dexterously in. He gave orders that several hundred loads of apples for the newts should be discharged into the sea twice a week along the French coasts, at government cost, of course. This measure was remarkably successful in pacifying both the newts and the villagers in Normandy and elsewhere. But Monsieur Monti went even further: there had long been deep and serious disturbances in the wine-growing regions, resulting from a lack of turnover, so he ordered that the state should provide each newt with a half litre of white wine per day. At first the newts did not know what to do with this wine because it caused them serious diarrhoea and they poured it into the sea; but with a little time they clearly became used to it, and it was noticed that from then on the newts would show a lot more enthusiasm for sex, although with lower fertility rates than before. In this way, problems to do with the newts and with agriculture were solved in one stroke; fear and tension were assuaged, and, in short, the next time there was another government crisis, caused by the financial scandal around Madame Töppler, the clever and well proven Monsieur Monti became the minister for marine affairs in the new cabinet. Chapter 3INCIDENT IN THE ENGLISH CHANNELNot long afterwards, a Belgian ferry, the Oudenbourg, was steaming its way from Ostende to Ramsgate. In the straits of Dover the duty officer noticed that half a mile south of its usual course there was something going on in the water. He could not be sure that there was no-one drowning there and so he ordered a change of course down to where the perturbance was taking place. Two hundred passengers on the windward side of the ship were shown a very strange spectacle: in some places a vertical jet of water shot out from the surface, and in some of those vertical jets there could be seen something like a black body thrown up with it; the surface of the sea for one or two hundred yards all around was tossing and seething wildly while, from the depths, a loud rattling and humming could be heard. "It was as if there was a small volcano erupting under the sea." As the Oudenbourg slowly approached the place an enormous wave rose about ten yards ahead of it and a terrible noise thundered out like an explosion. The entire ship was lifted violently and the deck was showered with a rain of water that was nearly boiling hot; and landing on the deck with the water was a strong black body which writhed and let out a sharp loud scream; it was a newt that had been injured and burnt. The captain ordered the ship full steam astern so that the ship would not steam straight into the middle of this turbulent Hell; but the water all around had also begun to erupt and the surface of the sea was strewn with pieces of dismembered newts. The ship was finally able to turn around and it fled northwards as fast as possible. Then there was a terrible explosion about six hundred yards to the stern and a gigantic column of water and steam, perhaps a hundred yards high, shot out of the sea. The Oudenbourg set course for Harwich and sent out a radio warning in all directions: "Attention all shipping, attention all shipping! Severe danger on Ostende-Ramsgate lane. Underwater explosion. Cause unknown. All shipping advised avoid area!" All this time the sea was thundering and boiling, almost as if military manoeuvres had been taking place under the water; but apart from the erupting water and steam there was nothing to see. From both Dover and Calais, destroyers and torpedo boats set out at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft flew to the site of the disturbance; but by the time they got there all they found was that the surface was discoloured with something like a yellow mud and covered with startled fish and newts that had been torn to pieces. At first it was thought that a mine in the channel must have exploded; but once the shores on both sides of the Straits of Dover had been ringed off with a chain of soldiers and the English prime-minister had, for the fourth time in the history of the world, interrupted his Saturday evening and hurried back to London, there were those who thought the incident must be of extremely serious international importance. The papers carried some highly alarming rumours, but, oddly enough, this time remained far from the truth; nobody had any idea that Europe, and the whole world with it, stood for a few days on the brink of a major war. It was only several years later that a member of the then British cabinet, Sir Thomas Mulberry, failed to be re-elected in a general election and published his memoirs setting out just what had actually happened; but by then, though, nobody was interested. This, in short, is what happened: Both England and France had begun constructing underwater fortresses for the newts in the English Channel. By means of these fortresses it would have been possible, in case of war, to close it off to shipping entirely. Then, of course, both great powers accused the other of having started it first; but in all probability both sides began fortification at the same time in the fear that the friendly neighbour across the channel might get there before they did. In short, two enormous concrete fortresses armed with heavy cannons, torpedoes, extensive minefields and all that modern weapon technology could give them, had been growing steadily under the surface of the Straits of Dover; on the English side this terrible fortress of the deep was operated by two divisions of heavy newts and around thirty thousand working salamanders, on the French side there were three divisions of first class warrior newts. It seems that on the critical day, a working colony of British newts came across French salamanders on the seabed in the middle of the strait and some kind of misunderstanding developed. The French insisted that their newts had been working peacefully when they were attacked by the British who wanted to repel them, that British armed newts had tried to abduct some French newts who, of course, had defended themselves. At this, British military salamanders began firing into French labouring newts with hand grenades and mortars so that the French newts were forced to use similar weapons. The government of France felt compelled to require full satisfaction from His Britannic Majesty's government and complete withdrawal from the disputed area of the seabed in order to ensure that no similar incident would occur again in the future. On the other hand, the British government sent a special note to the government of the French Republic informing them that French militarised newts had entered the English half of the channel and were about to lay down mines there. The British newts pointed out that they were in their working area; at which the French salamanders, armed to the teeth, responded by throwing hand grenades which killed several working newts on the British side. It was with regret that His Majesty's Government felt obliged to require full satisfaction from the government of the French Republic and the assurance that French military newts would never again enter the British side of the English Channel. At this the French government declared that it could no longer tolerate having a neighbouring state building underwater fortifications in immediate proximity to the French coast. As far as a misunderstanding on the bed of the English Channel was concerned the republic suggested that, in accordance with the London Convention, the dispute be presented to the international court in The Hague. The British government replied that it could not and would not subject the security of British coasts to decisions made by any external body. As victims of the French attack they once again required, and with all possible emphasis, an apology, payment for damages and a guarantee for the future. British shipping stationed at Malta steamed westward at full speed; the Atlantic fleet was given orders to assemble at Portsmouth and Yarmouth. The French government ordered the mobilisation of its naval reserve. It now seemed that neither side could give way; it clearly meant after all nothing less than mastery over the entire channel. At this critical moment Sir Thomas Mulberry discovered the surprising fact that there actually were no working newts or military newts operating on the English side, or at least not officially, as the British Isles were still bound by Sir Samuel Mandeville's prohibition on any salamander working on British coasts or surface waters. This meant that the British government could not officially maintain that French newts had attacked any English newts; the whole issue therefore was reduced to the question whether French newts, deliberately or in error, had crossed over into British sovereign waters. French officials promised that they would investigate the matter; the English government never even suggested that the matter should be presented to the international court in The Hague. Finally the British admiralty came to an agreement with the French admiralty that there would be a five kilometre wide neutral zone between underwater fortifications in the English Channel, and in this way the exceptional friendliness existing between the two states was confirmed. Chapter 4THE NORTHERN NEWTNot many years after the first newt colonies had been settled in the North Sea and the Baltic a German scientist, Dr. Hans Thüring, found that the Baltic newt had certain distinctive physical features--clearly as a result of its environment; that it was somewhat lighter in colour, it walked on two legs, and its cranial index indicated a skull that was longer and narrower than other newts. This variety was given the name Northern Newt or Noble Newt (Andrias Scheuchzeri var. nobilis erecta Thüring). The German press took this Baltic newt as its own, and enthusiastically stressed that it was because of its German environment that this newt had developed into a different and superior sub-species, indisputably above the level of any other salamander. Journalists wrote with contempt of the degenerate newts of the Mediterranean, stunted both physically and mentally, of the savage newts of the tropics and of the inferior, barbaric and bestial newts of other nations. The slogan of the day was From the Great Newt to the German Ãœbernewt. And what had been the origin of all the latter day newts on German soil? Had its glorious miocene skull not been found in ×hningen by the learned German Doctor Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer? There was therefore not the slightest doubt that the original Andrias Scheuchzeri had had its origin in the geological past on German soil; its migration to other seas and climatic zones was something it had had to pay for with its decline and degeneration; but as soon as it found itself back on the soil of its homeland it once again became what it had been in the past: the noble northern Scheuchzer Newt, light in colour, erect in gait and long in skull. It was only on German soil that newts could return to their pure and highest form, such as it had been found by the great Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer from the impression in the quarry at ×hningen. This was why Germany needed new and longer shores, it needed colonies, it needed the seas of the world so that a new generation of racially pure, original German salamanders could develop in German waters. We need new living room for our newts, wrote the German newspapers; and so that this fact was always present to the German eyes a grand memorial to Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer was set up in Berlin. The great doctor was depicted with a thick book in his hand; at his sits the erect and noble Nordic newt, gazing into the distance towards the boundless shores of the worlds oceans. There was, of course, a celebratory speech given at the unveiling of this national monument, and it attracted the attention of newspapers all around the world. A New Threat from Germany, asserted, in particular, the press in England. We have become used to this sort of tone but if, on an official occasion such as this, we are told that Germany is in need of five thousand kilometres of new coastline within three years we have to choice but to give a clear response: Just You Try It! See what happens if you encroach on British shores. We are prepared, and in three years time we will be even better prepared. England must have--and will have-- a navy as large as the two biggest continental powers put together; this relation of power cannot ever be changed. Anyone who wishes to unleash an insane arms race in naval weaponry is welcome to try; no Briton will ever allow his country to fall a single step behind. "We accept the challenge laid down by the Germans," declared the first lord of the admiralty, Sir Francis Drake, in parliament and speaking on behalf of the government. "Whoever tries to lay a hand on any of the worlds oceans will have to find himself facing the might of our ships. The British Empire is strong enough to repel any assault on its outposts or the shores of its colonies and dominions. The construction of new land, island, fortress or airbase in any sea will be considered an attack of this sort if its waves wash onto coastline under British dominion, however tiny. Let this be the last warning to anyone who might wish to change the outline of the world's seas, even if by no more than a yard." In response, parliament allowed the construction of new warships at a preliminary cost of half a million pounds sterling. It was indeed an impressive response to the construction of the provocative memorial to Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer in Berlin; this memorial had cost no more than twelve thousand reichsmark. The outstanding French publicist, the Marquis de Sade, who was always well informed, responded to this speech in this way: The British first lord of the admiralty declares that Great Britain is ready for any eventuality. That is all well and good, but is the noble lord aware that Germany has a standing army of heavily armed newts in the Baltic, currently comprising five million professional salamander soldiers, who are ready to engage in military action at any time on land or sea? On top of that must be considered the seventeen million newts engaged in technical and supportive functions who act as a reserve and are ready, at any time, to become an army of occupation? The Baltic salamander is presently the greatest soldier in the world; trained to the perfect mentality, it sees war is its proper vocation and the most noble; it enters every battle with the enthusiasm of a fanatic, with cool technical planning and the awful discipline of Prussia. And is the British First Lord of the Admiralty moreover aware that Germany is frantically building new transport ships, any one of which can carry a whole brigade of warrior salamanders? Is he aware that hundreds and hundreds of small submarines are being built with a range of three to five thousand kilometres and whose crew will consist of Baltic newts? Is he aware that gigantic underwater fuel depots are being established in various places? So now, let us ask the question once again: can the British citizen be certain that his great country really is well prepared for any eventuality? It is not difficult to imagine, the Marquis de Sade continued, what a difference could be made to the outcome the next war by newts blockading the coasts and equipped with underwater howitzers, mortars and torpedoes; by my faith, this is the first time in history that no-one need envy the English in their splendid isolation surrounded by water. And while we are addressing these questions: is the British admiralty aware also that the Baltic newts are equipped with a new, normally peaceful, apparatus called the pneumatic drill which is capable of drilling ten metres deep into the best Swedish granite in an hour and can penetrate fifty or sixty metres deep into English chalk in the same time? (This was ascertained by secret experiments carried out at night by the German technical expedition on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth of last month on the English coast between Hythe and Folkestone right under the nose of Dover Castle.) I suggest that our friends across the channel calculate for themselves how many weeks it would take for Kent or Essex to be drilled through below sea level like a piece of Swiss cheese. Until now, the Englishman on his island has always looked anxiously to the horizon as the place from which any harm to his flourishing cities, his Bank of England or his warm cottage, so cosy in its evergreen coat of ivy, might come. But now he had better put his ear to the ground where his children are playing: might he not hear, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, a digging and a scraping as, step by step, the newts with these tireless and fearsome drills grind their way deeper to create the paths for laying hitherto unknown explosives. The last word of the age we live in is not war in the air, it is war beneath the water and the land. We have heard the self confident words from the commanders of proud Albion; the ship of Albion today is still a vessel of great power, borne on the waves and master of them; but there might come a day when the waves will close over a vessel that has been broken and send it down to the depths of the ocean. Would it not be better to face this danger sooner rather than later? Within three years it will be too late! The Marquis de Sade was a brilliant publicist, and his warning caused great consternation in England; despite all the denials, people in every part of England were able to hear the newts drilling into the ground beneath their feet. Officials in Germany, of course, issued a categorical denial and repudiated the Marquis' speech, declaring that from start to finish it was no more than provocation and hostile propaganda; at the same time, however, combined manoeuvres were taking place in the Baltic involving the German navy, land forces and warrior newts; squads of sapper newts, in full view of foreign military attachés, under-drilled and blew up six square kilometres of sand dunes near Rügenwald. It was said to be a wonderful spectacle when, with a terrifying roar, the ground rose up and an enormous wall of steam, sand and tree trunks flew skywards; it became as dark as night, and the sand that had been thrown up was scattered over a radius of nearly fifty kilometres, even as far away as Warsaw there was still a sandy rain falling several days later. This enormous explosion left so much fine sand and dust suspended in the atmosphere that all through the rest of that year the sunsets throughout Europe were exceptionally beautiful, coloured a bloody red, and fiery like never before. The sea created after this piece of coast had been blown away was later given the name the Scheuchzer See, and it was the destination for countless school trips for German children singing their favourite newt anthem, Solche Erfolche erreichen nur deutsche Molche. Chapter 5WOLF MEYNERT WRITES HIS OEUVREIt may have been just those tragically glorious sunsets that inspired the lone philosopher, Wolf Meynert, to write his monumental work, The Decline and Fall of Man. We can easily imagine him as he ambles along the shore, his hair loose and his raincoat flapping in the wind, gazing enthralled at the sky that has turned into a blaze of fire and blood. "Yes," he mutters absent mindedly, "yes, now is the time to write the afterword to the history of mankind!" And so he wrote it. The tragedy of the human race has reached its final curtain, Wolf Meynert began. Despite mans lust for enterprise and technical prosperity, all this is no more than the lurid red on the face of an organism already condemned to die. Man has never before come face to face with such an elevated conjuncture in the life of his species than today; but find me one man who is happy; show me the class that lives in contentment, the nation that does not fear its existence under threat. In the midst of all the gifts of civilisation, in the rich luxury of material and spiritual property we are all of us falling inexorably into doubt, anguish and unease. Thus Wolf Meynert went on, with irrefutable logic, to analyse the spiritual state of the modern word, this mix of fear and uncertainty, mistrust and megalomania, cynicism and pettiness: in a word, Wolf Meynert concluded, desperation. Typical portents of the end. Moral agony. So the question is: When was man ever capable of happiness? Individuals, yes, just like any other living thing; but mankind, never. The whole of mans misfortunes arise because he had to become human, or that he became human too late when he was already incorrigibly differentiated into nations and races and faiths and classes and factions and rich and poor and educated and uneducated and lords and slaves. If you take horses, wolves, sheep, cats, foxes, deer, bears and goats, and you herd them into one fold and force them to live in this nonsensical mix-up that you call the Rules of Society and force them to observe these rules, then the result will be unhappiness, discontent and death, a society where not even a divine being could feel at home. That is a more or less precise depiction of the big and hopeless heterogenous herd that we call mankind. Nations, classes, factions cannot all live together in the long term without causing each other worries and getting in each others way until it becomes unbearable; they can all live separated from each other--which was only possible for as long as the world was big enough for them--or they can live against each other, in a struggle of life and death. Biological entities such as race, nation and class have only, where people are concerned, one natural road to take, and that is towards a homogenous and undisturbed bliss; to make a place for themselves and annihilate the others. And that is just what the human race failed to do in time. Now it is too late. We have set up too many doctrines and obligations for ourselves with which we protect these "others" instead of getting rid of them; we have thought up a code of morals, human rights, contracts, laws, equality, humanity and all the rest; we have created a fictitious mankind which includes ourselves and these "others" in some imaginary higher unit. What a fatal mistake! We have set our law of morals above the laws of biology. We have violated the great natural assumption of all societies; that only a homogenous society can be a happy society. And this attainable prosperity is something that we have sacrificed to a great but impossible dream: the creation of one mankind and one social and moral code for all people, nations, classes and factions. Grandiose stupidity. In its way it was man's only honourable attempt to rise above himself. And now he has to pay for this supreme idealism with his own inevitable end. The process by which man tries to organise himself in society is as old as civilisation itself, as old as the first laws and the first communities; after all these millennia, all that he has attained is the deepening of the gulf between races, nations and classes; world opinions have dug themselves deep and firm in the bottomless pit that we see today, and we cannot fail to see that mans unfortunate and historic attempt to make all peoples into one mankind has definitively and tragically collapsed. We are finally beginning to realise it; and that is why there are these plans and efforts to unite human society in a different way, a radical way, the way of making room just for one nation, just for one class or just for one faith. But who can say how deeply we have already been infected with the incurable disease of differentiation? Sooner or later, every supposedly homogenous unit inevitably breaks back down into a disparate jumble of various interests, parties, classes and so on, who will either persecute each other or will suffer together in silence. There is no way out. We are caught in a vicious circle; but history will not continue going round in circles forever. Nature herself has taken care of that by creating a place on Earth for the newts. It is by more than mere chance, Wolf Meynert went on, that the newts have burgeoned just at the time when mans chronic disease, this badly assembled and quickly decaying super-organism, will progress into agony. With few insignificant exceptions, the newts are the only homogenous and large-scale unit; they have so far failed to create any deep distinctions of race, language, nation, state, faith class or caste; there are no masters and slaves among them, no freemen and serfs, no rich and poor; differences have been imposed upon them by their type of work, but for their own perceptions they are of one family, a monolith, of one seed, in all their parts they have the same primitive biology, the same poor natural endowments, the same burdens, and the same low living standard. The last Negroes and Eskimos have incomparably higher living conditions, enjoy infinitely richer property both materially and culturally, than these billions of civilised newts. And there is not even any indication of suffering among the newts. On the contrary. What we see is that they have no need of any of the things with which man seeks escape and relief from the worries of his life or the horrors of his metaphysics; they survive adequately without philosophy, without life after death and without art; they do not know what are fantasy, humour, mysticism, game-playing or dreams; they go through life simply as realists. They are as remote from man as ants or herrings; and they distinguish themselves from ants and herrings only by having moved over into the environment of another species, the civilisation of man. There they have settled themselves just as dogs have settled into mans shelter; they cannot live without it, but they do not cease to be what they are; a very primitive and little differentiated type of animal. All they wish to do is live and multiply; they might even be happy, for there is no sense of inequality to disturb them. They are simply homogenous. For this reason they might one day, indeed one day very soon, find no difficulty in doing that which has escaped the efforts of man: to disperse their species with its unity intact all around the globe, a single global community, in a word, universal newtdom. This day will see the end of millennia of agony for the human genus. Our planet will not have enough room for two faction, both of which strive to dominate the whole world. One of them must give way. We know already which that will be. Distributed around the globe today are around twenty thousand million civilised newts, which is about ten times more than all people put together; it is both a matter of historical logic and biological necessity that the newts that man has subjugated will some day free themselves; that being homogenous they will unite; and that thus having become the greatest power the world has ever seen they will take over. Could anyone be such a fool as to think they would then spare mankind? Could anyone think they will repeat the mistake, made again and again throughout history, of exploiting the defeated nations and classes instead of just annihilating them? Would it be in their interest to keep establishing new differences between men so that then, simply through generosity and idealism, they would try to overcome them? No, this is a historic error that the newts will not commit, declared Wolf Meynert, if only because they will have been warned in this book! They will be the inheritors of the whole of human civilisation; all that we have done or attempted to do in our efforts to shape the world will simply fall into their laps; but if they tried to include ourselves with this legacy, they would be acting against their own interests. They must rid themselves of mankind if they wish to maintain their own uniformity. If they failed to act thus they would they would create, sooner or later, their own destructive tendency among themselves: they would create differences and they would have to endure them. But this is something of which we should have no fear; there is today no creature that will continue the history of mankind that would repeat his suicidal madness. There is no doubt that the world of the newts will be happier than that of mankind; it will be unified, homogenous and governed everywhere in the same spirit. Newt will not be distinct from newt by language, opinion, faith or his requisites for life. There will be no differences among them of culture or class, merely the allocation of tasks. No-one will be master or slave, as all will serve just one Great Newt Whole which will be god, government, employer and spiritual leader. There will be just one nation and just one class. The world will be better and more perfect than ours will have been. This is the only possible Brave New World. Let us therefore make room for it; man is facing his expiry, and there is no more that he can do than to hasten his end with tragic beauty, that is, if it is not too late even for that. Now lets express the views of Wolf Meynert in a way that is more accessible: we are aware that in this way it will lose a lot of its force and its depth, which was so fascinating for the whole of Europe in its time. The young were especially fascinated and adopted a faith in the decline and annihilation of mankind with great enthusiasm. The German Reich banned the teaching of the great pessimist for a number of political reasons and Wolf Meynert had to flee into Switzerland, but the whole of the educated world was nonetheless content to adopt Meynert's theories about the end of mankind; his book, 632 pages long, was published in all the languages of the world and many millions of copies were distributed, even among the newts. Chapter 6X GIVES HIS WARNINGIt may have been as a result of this prophetic book that the literary and artistic avant garde in all the cultural centres declared, After Us, the Salamanders!, The Future belongs to the Newts, Newts Mean Cultural Revolution. Even if they don't have their own art (they explained) at least they are not burdened with idiotic ideals, dried up traditions and all the rigid and boring things taught in schools and given the name of poetry, music, architecture, philosophy and culture in any of its forms. The word culture is senile and it makes us sick. Human art has been with us for too long and is worn-out and if the newts have never fallen for it we will make a new art for them. We, the young, will blaze the path for a new world of salamandrism: we wish to be the first newts, we are the salamanders of tomorrow! And so the young poetic movement of salamandrism was born, triton--or tritone--music was composed and pelagic painting, inspired by the shape world of jellyfish, fish and corals, made its appearance. There were also the water regulating structures made by the newts themselves which were discovered as a new source of beauty and dignity. We've had enough of nature, the slogans went; bring on the smooth, concrete shores instead of the old and ragged cliffs! Romanticism is dead; the continents of the future will be outlined with clean straight lines and re-shaped into conic sections and rhombuses; the old geological must be replaced with a world of geometry. In short, there was once again a new trend that was to be the thing of the future, a new aesthetic sensation and new cultural manifestoes; anyone who failed to join in with the rise of salamandrism before it was too late felt bitterly that he had missed his time, and he would take his revenge by making calls for the purity of mankind, a return to the values of the people and nature and other reactionary slogans. A concert of tritone music was booed off the stage in Vienna, at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris a pelagic painting called Capriccio en Bleu was slashed by an unidentified perpetrator; salamandrism was simply victorious, and its rise was unstoppable. Needless to say, there was no shortage of those who were opposed to this change and stood against "newtmania" as it was called. The most fundamentalist piece of opposition came in the form of an anonymous pamphlet that came out in England under the title X Gives his Warning. The leaflet enjoyed wide circulation, but the identity of its author was never established; there were many who thought it must have been written by some high official in the church, swayed by the observation that X is an abbreviation for Christ. In the first chapter the author tried to use statistics about the newts, apologising at the same time for the inaccuracy of the figures he was using. The estimated total number of salamanders at this time ranged between seven and twenty times the total number of people on the Earth. It was just as uncertain how many factories, oil wells, weed plantations, and eel farms the newts had under the sea making use of water power and other natural sources of energy; there were not even any estimates of the newts industrial manufacturing capacity; least of all did anyone know how well armed the newts were. We knew that the salamanders were dependent on people for their metals, engineering parts, explosives and many types of chemical, but not only did every state keep strictly secret how much weaponry and other products their supplied to their newts, but we also knew remarkably little about what the newts did with the materials they bought from people once they were down in the depths of the sea. One thing that was certain was that the newts did not want people to know these things; over the previous few years so many divers sent down to the seabed had been drowned that it could not possibly be seen as mere chance. It hardly need be said how worrying this was, both from the industrial point of view and the military. It is obviously very difficult to imagine, X continued in the following paragraphs, what the newts might want of people, or how much they could simply take. They cannot live on dry land and there is no way for us to dictate to them what they do under the water. Our respective living environments are completely and unchangeably separate. We require a certain amount of work from them, but in return we give them plenty of food and provide them with raw materials and products such as metals that, without us, they would not have at all. But even if there is no practical reason for any animosity between ourselves and the newts there is, I would say, metaphysical reason: contrasted with creatures of the surface we see creatures of the deep abyss; creatures of the night with creatures of the day; dark ponds of water with bright, dry land. The boundary between water and land has somehow become sharper than it used to be: our land borders on their water. We could live perfectly well separate from each other, exchanging no more than certain goods and services, indefinitely; but it is hard to rid ourselves of the fear that that is not how things will turn out. And why not? I am not able to give you any precise reasons; but this fear is nonetheless with us; it seems like some kind of intuition that one day the sea itself will turn against the land to settle the question of who lives with whom. I have to admit that this anxiety is somewhat irrational, X went on; but it would seem like a great relief if the newts came out against mankind with some kind of demands. We would at least then have the chance to negotiate with them, we would be able to make various concessions, contracts and compromises with them; but this silence of theirs is a thing of horror. This incomprehensible reticence makes me afraid. They might, for instance, wish to ask for certain political advantages for themselves; legislation about the newts is, to put it bluntly, outdated in every state of the world and is not worthy of the dignity of a creature as civilised as the newts nor of a creature so strong in numbers. There is a need to work out new rights and responsibilities for the newts, and to do so in the way that will be of most advantage to them; their working conditions must be improved and they must be better rewarded for the amount of work they do. There are many ways in which their circumstances could be improved if only they would ask for it. Then we would be in a position to make certain concessions and bind ourselves to proper contracts with proper pay; at the very least this would buy time for a number of years. However, the newts ask for nothing; all they do is raise their output and order more supplies; now is the time when we need to ask where, on both sides, this will all come to an end. We used formerly to talk about the yellow peril, or black or red; but they were at least people, and we can at least have some idea of what it is that people will want. But even if we still have no idea how to defend ourselves or even whom we are to defend ourselves against there is one thing that is quite clear: that if the newts stand on one side then the whole of mankind will be on the other. People against newts! The time has come when it needs to be formulated thus. It must be said frankly that the normal person has an instinctive hatred of the salamanders, he loathes them--and he is afraid of them. There is something like a chill veil of horror that has fallen over the whole of mankind. How else are we to explain this frenetic worldliness, this insatiable thirst for fun and debauchery, this orgiastic abandon that has taken control of peoples minds? There has never been a comparable collapse of morals since the time when the Roman Empire collapsed under the onslaught of the barbarians. This is more than the fruit of unprecedented material prosperity, it is the desperation born of suppressed fear and anguish at the thought of our own overturn and annihilation. Drink deep the last goblet, for tomorrow we die! What a disgrace, what a punishment! It seems that God, in His terrible mercy, wishes to allow nations and classes to perish if once they have begun to rush down the road to destruction. Are we to read mene tekel in fiery letters at the feast of mankind? Look at the words written in light shining all through the hours of darkness on the walls of our debauched and dissolute cities! In this way we human beings are already comparable with the newts: we live more by night than by day. If only these salamanders were not so horribly mediocre, exclaimed X in his anxiety. It is true that they are, to some extent, educated, but this has the effect of limiting them further as all that they have taken from human civilisation is that which is the most commonplace and useful, things that are mechanical and repeatable. They stand at the side of man like Wagner at the side of Faust; they learn from these books like the human Faust but with this difference, that this is all they want and suffer from no doubts or questions. The most horrifying thing is that this type of civilised mediocrity, educable but dull and complacent, exists on such a large scale; millions and thousands of millions of individuals all the same; or rather, perhaps I am mistaken, and the most horrifying thing of all is that they have been so successful. They have taught themselves to use machines and numbers, and they have shown that that is all that is needed to become masters of the world. All parts of human civilisation that are without purpose, that are playful, fantastic or antiquated, they have ignored; in this way they have ignored all that makes man human, adopting only that which is purely practical, technical and utilisable. And this pitiful caricature of human civilisation has achieved awesome things; it builds wonders of technology, renovates our old planet and is even a source of fascination of people themselves. From Wagner, his apprentice and servant, Faust learned the secret of success and of mediocrity. Mankind has either to engage in an epoch-making conflict of life and death with the newts or he will become like the newts, never to regain his humanness. As far as I am concerned, X concluded sadly, I would rather see the former. X now gives you his warning, the unknown author continued. It is still possible to shake off this cold and slimey ring that is wrapped around us all. We must rid ourselves of the salamanders. There are already too many of them; they are armed, we know almost nothing about the power of their weapons and they could well turn them against us; but a danger for us more horrible than mere strength and numbers is the success, nay triumph, achieved by their lack of self worth. We do not know what it is that we are to fear more; the technology they have taken from human beings, or their sinister, cold and bestial cruelty; but the two of them together create something inconceivably terrifying and almost diabolic. In the name of culture, in the name of Christianity and mankind we must free ourselves from these newts. And here he called on an unnamed apostle: You madmen, stop feeding the newts! Stop employing them, eschew their services, let them move away somewhere else where they will feed themselves just like any other sea creature! Nature herself has already created order in her copious bounty; but only if people-- human civilisation and human history--will stop working for the salamanders! And stop providing the newts with weapons, end their supply of metals and explosives, send them no more of the machinery and equipment made by man! We do not give the tiger his teeth or venom to the snake; we do not stoke the fires of volcanoes or undermine our dams. Let us ban supplies to any of the seas of the world, let us place the newts outside the law, let them be cursed and banished from our world, let there be a League of Nations to unite us against the newts! The whole of mankind must be prepared to defend its existence with sword in hand; let the king of Sweden, the Pope of Rome or a union of nations call a world conference to unite all the civilised states of the world, let us create a united world--or at least a union of all Christian nations--wherewith to oppose the salamanders! We are today at a turning point. Under the terrible pressure of the salamander threat, it is possible for man to behave responsibly and create a United States of the World to avoid a world war with all its countless victims. May God will it! If it is His will, then the newts will not have come in vain and will have been the instrument of God. This pathetic pamphlet excited wide support among the general public. Old women, in particular, agreed that there had been an unprecedented decline in moral values. On the other hand, the business pages of the newspapers pointed out it would not be possible to reduce the goods supplied to the newts without causing a serious decline in human industrial output and a crisis in many other areas. Agriculture had come to depend on an enormous demand for maize, potatoes and other crops used for newt fodder; if the number of salamanders was reduced there would be a sharp decline in the market price of foodstuffs which would bring farmers to the brink of ruin. The trades unions suspected Mr. X was just a reactionary and declared that they would not allow anything that would impede the supply of goods to the newts; the working man had only just achieved full employment and a proper wage and now Mr. X was wanting to snatch the bread from their hands; the working class is in sympathy with the newts and rejects any attempt to lower their standard of living or deliver them, poor and defenceless, into the hands of capitalism. As far as any League of Nations against the newts was concerned, they denied that there could be any serious political circumstances when it could be needed; there were indeed both the Society of Nations and the London Convention in which sea-going states bound themselves not to equip their newts with heavy weaponry. Needless to say, it is not easy to persuade any state to disarm if it cannot be sure that no other seagoing power is not arming its newts in secret and thereby raising its military power at the expense of its neighbours. Likewise, no state or continent is able to force its newts to move somewhere else, simply because that would have the undesirable effect of raising the industrial and agricultural output, not to mention the military power, of other states and continents. And objections of this sort, which any thinking person would have to acknowledge, were raised everywhere. Despite all this, the pamphlet, X Gives his Warning, had far reaching effects. Movements to oppose the newts spread to almost every country in the world and a variety of organisations such as The Association for the Elimination of the Newts, The Anti-Salamander Club, The Committee for Human Protection were established everywhere. Newt delegates at the thirteenth session of the Commission for the Study of Newt Affairs in Geneva were insulted when they tried to take part. The boards that fenced off the coastline were daubed with threatening graffiti such as Death to the Newts, Salamanders Go Home etc. Many newts had stones thrown at them; no salamander now dared to raise his head above water in daylight. But, despite all of this, there was no sign whatever from them of protest or attempt at retaliation. They were simply invisible, by day at least; and the people who peered through the barriers saw no more than the endless and wearily soughing waves. "Just look at these monstrosities," they said with hatred, "they won't even show themselves!" And it was this tense silence that was suddenly broken by the thunder of the Louisiana Earthquake. Chapter 7THE LOUISIANA EARTHQUAKEOn that day, on the 11th. November at one o'clock in the morning, there was a powerful earth tremor felt in New Orleans; some of the buildings in the black areas collapsed; people ran out onto the street in panic, but there was no second tremor; there was only a short, howling cyclone that struck with a sudden furious onslaught, smashing windows and blowing the rooves off the houses where the negroes lived; a few dozen people were killed; and then there was a heavy downpour of mud. As the New Orleans firemen went out to help in the worst affected areas, telegrams were tapped out from Morgan City, Plaquemine, Baton Rouge and Lafayette: SOS! Send help! City half destroyed by earthquake and cyclone; Mississippi dam at risk of breaking; send searchers, ambulances, all able-bodied men immediately!--From Fort Livingston there was only this laconic question: Hello, anything happening there? It was followed by a message from Lafayette: Attention! Attention! Worst affected New Iberia. Connection between Iberia and Morgan City seems broken. Send help there!--Morgan City telephoned in reply: No communications with New Iberia. Roads and railroads seem destroyed. Send ships and airplanes to Vermillion Bay! We need nothing. Have around thirty dead and hundred injured. --Then a telegram came from Baton Rouge: Received news, worst affected New Iberia. Concentrate resources New Iberia. Here need only workers, urgent, dam in danger of breaking. Doing all possible. And then: Hello, hello, Shreveport, Natchitoches, Alexandria sending trains with help to New Iberia. Hello, hello, Memphis, Winana, Jackson sending trains via Orleans. All vehicles heading dam Baton Rouge.--Hello, Pascagoula here. Some dead here. Need help? By now fire engines, ambulances and trainfuls of helpers and supplies were on their way to Morgan city--Patterson--Franklin. It was not until after four in the morning that the first accurate news arrived: Railroad closed by floods between Franklin and New Iberia, five miles west of Franklin; seems deep fissure opened by earthquake, connects with Vermillion Bay and flooded with seawater. As far as ascertained, fissure extends from Vermillion Bay east-northeast, near Franklin turns northwards, opens into Grand Lake, continues northwards until line Plaquemine--Lafayette, ending in former lake; second branch fissure connects Grand Lake westwards with Napoleonville Lake. Fissure around fifty miles total length, width one to seven miles. Epicenter apparently here. Seems amazing luck fissure missed all major towns. Loss of life nonetheless substantial. In Franklin twenty-four inches rain of mud, in Patterson eighteen inches. Reports from Atchafalaya Bay, sea retreated two miles at time of earthquake, then hundred foot tidal wave. Feared many dead on coast. Still no communication with New Iberia. Meanwhile a train carrying supplies from Natchitoches entered New Iberia from the west; the first reports, sent by a roundabout route via Lafayette and Baton Rouge, were awful. The train had not been able to get closer than a few miles from New Iberia because the track had been swept away by the mud. As people fled from the disaster they reported that a volcano of mud had erupted a couple of miles to the east of the town and instantly drenched the area with a thin, cold rain of it; New Iberia, they said, had disappeared under an onslaught of mud. All work was made extremely difficult by the dark and the continuing rain of mud. There was still no direct connection with New Iberia. At the same time, news arrived from Baton Rouge: thousands of men working on mississippi dam stop if only rain would stop stop need picks shovels trucks workers stop sending help to plaquemine Dispatch from Fort Jackson: one thirty morning sea wave destroyed thirty houses don't know what it was approximately seventy people swept to sea only now repaired equipment post office destroyed hello wire saying what happened urgent telegrapher fred dalton hello please tell minnie im ok apart from broken hand and loss of clothes but at least equipment ok fred The report from Port Eads was somewhat shorter: some dead burywood swept entirely to sea By about eight in the morning the first aircraft sent to help the affected areas had returned. The whole of the coast from Port Arthur (Texas) to Mobile (Alabama) had been hit by a tidal wave; ruined or damaged buildings were everywhere. The south-eastern part of Louisiana (from the road between Lake Charles and Alexandria to Natchez) and the south of Mississippi (as far as the line Jackson-- Hattiesburg--Pascagoula) were swamped with mud. A new bay stretched inland from Vermillion Bay, two to eight miles wide and reaching in on a zig-zag line almost as far as Plaquemine like a long fjord. New Iberia seemed to have been seriously damaged but many people could be seen digging the mud away from roads and houses. Impossible to land. The most serious loss of life likely to have been on the coast. A steamer, clearly from Mexico, sunk off Point au Fer. Sea around Chandeleur Islands covered in debris. Rain easing off over the entire area. Visibility good. The first special issue of the New Orleans paper went out at just after four in the morning; as the day went on more issues were published and the details accumulated; at eight in the morning appeared the first photographs of the affected areas with maps of the new inlets from the sea. At half past eight they printed an interview with the celebrated seismologist from Memphis University, Dr. Wilbur R. Bownell, about the cause of the earthquake in Louisiana. It's still too early to come to any firm conclusions, the famous scientist declared, but it seems that these tremors have nothing to do with the volcanic activity, which has been so active up till now, in the volcano belt of central Mexico which lies directly across from the affected area. Today's earthquake seems rather to be of tectonic origin, that's to say it was caused by the weight and pressure of mountains: one the one side there are the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre, and on the other side there are Appalachian Hills on the extensive lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico which continue down to the mouth of the Mississippi. The chasm that now runs up from Vermillion Bay is only small and insignificant compared with the geological collapse that has already created the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, along with the ring of islands that make up the Greater and Lesser Antilles, which were once a range of mountains. There is no doubt whatsoever that this subsidence in central America will continue with new tremors, new faults and new chasms appearing; it is even possible that the fault running up from Vermilion Bay is no more than a prelude to the reactivation of the tectonic process with its center in the Gulf of Mexico; and if that is the case we might well be witnesses to an enormous geological catastrophe in which nearly a fifth of the United States might end up as seabed. But if that really is the case there is a certain likelihood that the ocean bed in the region of the Antilles will start to rise, or it could be somewhat further east where, according to the ancient legends, we might hope to find the sunken city of Atlantis. On the other hand, the scientist continued more reassuringly, we need not take seriously any fear of volcanic activity in the affected areas; these craters hurling mud into the air are nothing more than eruptions of natural gas which must have been under the Vermilion fault. It wouldn't be at all surprising to find gigantic caverns of gas underneath the Mississippi Delta area, and these caverns of natural gas can explode when they come into contact with the air, hurling hundreds of thousands of tons of water and mud into the air as they do so. But of course, before we can come to any definitive conclusions, Dr. W.R. Brownell repeated, we will need to obtain more data. While Dr. Brownell's geological observations on the catastrophe went to press, the governor of the state of Louisiana received this telegram from Fort Jackson: regret loss of human life stop tried to miss your cities but didn't expect retreat of seawater and tidal wave after explosion stop found three hundred forty six human victims along entire coast stop offer condolences stop chief salamander stop hello fred dalton here fort jackson post office three newts just left who came in office ten minutes ago sent telegram holding pistol to my head but gone now vile monsters paid and ran back in water only doctors dog chased them shouldn't let those creatures free in city no other news send love to minnie lacoste fred dalton telegrapher The governor of the state of Louisiana pored long over this telegram. Some kind of joker, this Fred Dalton, I reckon, he finally said. Best not to give this to the papers. Chapter 8CHIEF SALAMANDER MAKES HIS DEMANDSThree days after the earthquake in Louisiana there was another geological catastrophe announced, this time in China. The coast of the province of Kiangsu, north of Nanking, about half way between the mouth of the Yangtse and the old bed of the Hwangho, was ripped apart in a powerful, thunderous earthquake; the sea gushed into this fissure and joined up with the great lakes of Pan Yoon and Hungtsu between the cities of Hwaingan and Fugyang. Apparently as a result of the earthquake, the Yangtse left its course below Nanking and flowed down towards Lake Tai and on to Hang-Cho. Loss of human life cannot, so far, even be estimated. Hundred of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the provinces to the north and south. Japanese warships have been given orders to sail to the affected area. Although the earthquake in Kiangsu was far more extensive than the disaster in Louisiana it attracted little attention in the world press because everyone was used to catastrophes happening in China and the loss of some million lives did not seem very important; and besides, it was scientifically clear that it was only a tectonic earthquake to do with the deep sea trench near the Riukiu and Philippine archipelagoes. But three days later, seismographs in Europe registered new tremors centred somewhere near the Cape Verde Islands. More detailed reports stated that the coast of Senegambia, south of St. Louis, had been hit by a serious earthquake. A deep fissure appeared between Lampul and Mboro, allowing the sea to gush in through the Merinagh and as far as Wadi Dimar. Eyewitnesses said that a column of fire and steam had erupted from the ground with a terrible noise, hurling sand and stones for miles around; and then there was the sound of the sea as it rushed into the gulf that had been opened up. There was no significant loss of life. This third earthquake stirred up something akin to panic. Were all the Earths volcanoes becoming active? the papers asked. The Earths crust is starting to break up, the popular press declared. Specialists gave their opinion that the Senegambian gulley may have been no more than the result of a granite eruption by Mount Pico on the Cape Verde island of Fogo; this volcano had erupted as recently as 1847 but since then had been considered extinct. In this case, the west African earthquake had nothing to do with seismic events in Louisiana and Kiangsu which were clearly tectonic in origin. But nobody seemed to care whether the Earth was breaking up for tectonic reasons or volcanic. The fact was that all the churches were filled to capacity that day and in some areas they had to stay open all night. At one in the morning on the 20th. November, radio hams over most of Europe suffered serious interference to their reception, as if a new and exceptionally strong broadcaster was operating. They located the interference at two hundred and three metres; it sounded something like the noise of machinery or rushing water; then the continuous, unchanging noise was suddenly interrupted by a horrible, rasping noise (everyone described it in the same way: a hollow, nasal, almost synthetic sounding voice, made all the more so by the electronic apparatus); and this frog-like voice called excitedly, "Hello, hello, hello! Chief Salamander speaking. Hello, chief Salamander speaking. Stop all broadcasting, you men! Stop your broadcasting! Hello, Chief Salamander speaking!" And then another, strangely hollow voice asked: "Ready?" "Ready." There was a click as if the broadcast were being transferred to another speaker; and then another, unnaturally staccato voice called: "Attention! Attention! Attention!" "Hello!" "Now!" A voice was heard in the quiet of the night; it was rasping and tired-sounding but still had the air of authority. "Hello you people! This is Louisiana. This is Kiangsu. This is Senegambia. We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary harm. We wish only that you evacuate those areas of coast which we will notify you of in advance. If you do as we say you will avoid anything regrettable. In future we will give you at least fourteen days notice of the places where we wish to extend our sea. Incidents so far have been no more than technical experiments. Your explosives have proved their worth. Thank you for them. "Hello you people! Remain calm. We wish you no harm. We merely need more water, more coastline, more shallows in which to live. There are too many of us. Your coastlines are already too limited for our needs. For this reason we need to demolish your continents. We will convert them into bays and islands. In this way, the length of coastline can be increased five-fold. We will construct new shallows. We cannot live in deep ocean. We will need your continents as materials to fill in the deep waters. We wish you no harm, but there are too many of us. You will be free to migrate inland. You will not be prevented from fleeing to the hills. The hills will be the last to be demolished. "We are here because you wanted us. You have distributed us over the entire world. Now you have us. We wish that you collaborate with us. You will provide us with steel for our picks and drills. you will provide us with explosives. You will provide us with torpedoes. You will work for us. Without you we will not be able to remove the old continents. Hello you people, Chief Salamander, in the name of all newts everywhere, offers collaboration with you. You will collaborate with us in the demolition of your world. Thank you." The tired, rasping voice became silent, and all that was heard was the constant noise resembling machinery or the sea. "Hello, hello, you people," the grating voice began again, "we will now entertain you with music from your gramophone records. Here, for your pleasure, is the March of the Tritons from the film, Poseidon." The press, of course, said this nocturnal broadcast was just a "crude joke", some illicit sender; but there were nonetheless millions of listeners waiting at their receivers the following night to find out whether the horrible, earnest and rasping voice would speak again. It was heard at precisely one o'clock to the accompaniment of a broad howling and hissing like the sound of the sea. "Good evening, you people," the voice quacked gaily. "To start tonight's broadcast, we would like to play you a gramophone recording of the Salamander Dance from your operetta, Galatea." Once the shameless clamour of the music had come to its end the voice once more began its vile and somehow cheerful croaking. "Hello you people! The British gunboat, Erebus, has just been torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after it had attempted to destroy our broadcasting equipment. The entire crew was drowned. Hello, we urge the British government to issue a statement by radio. The Amenhotep, registered in Port Said, was reluctant to deliver a cargo of explosives we had ordered to our port of Makallaha, apparently on the grounds that orders had been given to refuse any further provisions of explosives. The ship was, of course, sunk. We advise the government of the United Kingdom to revoke this order by noon tomorrow. Failure to do so will result in the sinking of the Winnipeg, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, presently underway in the North Atlantic with cargoes of grain from Canada to Liverpool. Hello, we urge the French government to issue a statement by radio. You are to call back the cruisers presently underway to Senegambia. Work to widen the newly created bay there is still in progress. Chief Salamander has given orders that these two governments should be reassured of his unshakeable friendship towards them. End of message. We will now, for your pleasure, play you gramophone records of Salamandria, valse érotique." The following afternoon the Manitoba, Winnipeg, Ontario and Quebec were sunk south-west of Mizen Head. The world was overcome with a wave of horror. That evening the BBC stated that His Majesty's Government had prohibited any further supplies of food, chemical products, machinery, weapons or metals to the newts. At one o'clock that night an excited voice rasped out from the radio: "Hello, hello, hello, Chief Salamander speaking! Hello, Chief Salamander is going to speak!" And then the tired, croaking and angry voice was heard: "Hello you people! Hello you people! Do you believe we would allow you to starve us? Do not be so foolish! Whatever you do will be turned against you! In the name of all newts of the world I call on Great Britain. With immediate effect, we declare a total blockade of the British Isles with the exception of the Irish Free State. The English Channel will be closed off. The Suez Canal will be closed off. The Straits of Gibraltar will be closed to all shipping. All British ports will be closed. All British shipping in whatever part of the world will be torpedoed. Hello, calling Germany. Orders of explosives are increased ten-fold. They are to be made available immediately at the main depot on the Skagerrak. Hello, calling France. Orders of torpedoes are to be met forthwith and supplied to underwater forts C3, BFF and Quest 5. Hello you people! You have been warned. If any attempt is made to limit our supplies of foodstuffs they will be taken from your ships by force. You have been warned." The tired voice declined to a scarcely comprehensible croaking. "Hello, calling Italy. You are to prepare for the evacuation of the territories around Venice, Padova and Udine. You people have been warned, and warned for the last time. Any more nonsense from you will not be tolerated." There was a long pause while nothing was heard but the hissing of the radio like a cold, black sea. And the gay and quacking voice was heard once more: "And now we will entertain you with gramophone records of one of your latest hits, the Triton Trot." Chapter 9CONFERENCE IN VADUZIt was an odd sort of war, if indeed it could be called a war at all; as there was no newt state nor any acknowledged newt government which could be officially held responsible for the hostilities. The first country to find itself in a state of war with the salamanders was Great Britain. Within the first few hours the newts had sunk almost all British ships at anchor in harbour; there was nothing that they could have done about that. A number of ships on the open sea were, for the time being, comparatively safe, mainly because they were over deep ocean; in this way part of the Royal Navy was saved and was able then to break through the newt blockade of Malta and gather over the depths of the Ionian Sea; but even these units were soon sought out by the newts in their mini-submarines and sunk one by one. Within six weeks the United Kingdom had lost four fifths of its total tonnage. John Bull was given another moment in history to display his famous doggedness. His Majesty's Government refused to negotiate with the newts and did not call off its ban on giving them any supplies. "An Englishman," declared the prime minister on behalf of the entire nation, "will protect animals but will not haggle with them." Just a few weeks later there was a desperate shortage of foodstuffs in the British Isles. The last few scraps of bread and last few spoonfuls of tea or milk were reserved for the children to consume each day; the British nation bore it with exemplary dignity, despite having sunk so low that they had even eaten all their racehorses. The Prince of Wales dug the first furrow in the greens of the Royal Golf Club with his own hand so that carrots could be grown there for the orphans in London. Wimbledon tennis courts were turned over to the cultivation of potatoes, and wheat was sown over the race course at Ascot. "We can endure the greatest of sacrifices, " the leader of the Conservative Party declared in parliament, "but British honour is something we will never give up." The blockade of British coasts was total, and so England was left with only one way of obtaining supplies and maintaining communications, and that was by air. "We need a hundred thousand aircraft," the minister for aviation declared, and all forces were applied to fulfilling this edict; but then the governments of other European powers raised bitter protests that this would disturb the balance of power in the skies; the government of the United Kingdom would have to abandon its plans and promise never to build more than twenty thousand aircraft and even that not within the next five years. They would simply have to remain hungry or pay horrifying prices for foodstuffs supplied by the aircraft of other states; a loaf of bread cost ten shillings, a rat sausage one guinea, a box of caviar twenty-five pounds sterling. This was simply a golden age for business, industry and agriculture on the continent. All military shipping had been removed at the very start of hostilities, and so the war against the newts had to be carried out on dry land and from the air. Armies fired into the water with their cannons and machine guns but without, it seemed, doing the newts any serious harm; although the bombs dropped into the sea from aircraft seemed somewhat more successful. The newts responded by firing on British ports from their underwater cannons, reducing them to piles of rubble. They even fired on London from the Thames Estuary; then the chiefs of staff tried to attack the salamanders with harmful bacteria, petroleum and acid poured into the Thames and several other bays and estuaries. The newts responded by releasing a cloak of poisonous gas over a hundred miles of British coastline. It was no more than a demonstration, but it was enough; for the first time in history the British government was forced to call on foreign powers to intervene on its behalf, citing the ban on the use of poisonous gas in warfare. That night, the rasping, angry and heavy voice of Chief Salamander was heard once again on the airwaves: "Hello you people! England must stop its foolishness! If you poison our water we will poison your air. We use no more than your own weapons. We are not barbarians. We have no wish to wage war with people. All we wish is to be allowed to live. We offer you peace. You will supply us with your products and sell us your land. We are willing to pay you well. We offer you more than peace. We offer you trade. We offer you gold for your land. Hello, calling the government of Great Britain. Tell me your price for the southern part of Lincolnshire around The Wash. You have three days to consider the matter. For this period I will suspend all hostilities apart from the blockades." At that moment the rumbling of underwater cannons off the coasts of England ceased. The land cannons were also silent. There was a strange, almost eerie quiet. The British government declared in parliament that it had no intention of negotiating with animals. The residents of south Lincolnshire were warned that there was clear danger of a major attack by the newts and that they should evacuate coastal areas and move inland; the trains, cars and buses provided, however, carried only children and some women. All the men remained where they were; it simply did not enter their heads that an Englishman might lose the land he lives on. One minute after the three-day truce had expired the shooting began; these were shots from English cannons fired by the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment to the sound of the regimental march, The Red Rose. There was then the thunder of an enormous explosion. The mouth of the River Nene was flooded up as far as Wisbech and the whole of the area around The Wash was inundated by the sea. A number of notable sites collapsed into the water, including the famous Wisbech Abbey, Holland Castle and the George and Dragon. The following day the British government answered questions in parliament: all military measures for the protection of British coasts had been taken; the possibility of further and much more extensive attacks on British soil could not be excluded; that His Majesty's Government was nonetheless unable to negotiate with an enemy which was unwilling even to spare civilians and women. (Agreement) This was a time that would not merely determine the fate of England, but of the entire civilised world. The United Kingdom would be willing to enter into international agreements which would limit these terrible and barbaric attacks which threaten the future of mankind itself. Some weeks later, the nations of the world met together in Vaduz. The conference took place in Vaduz because in the height of the Alps there was no danger from the newts and because most of the world's most powerful and socially important people had already fled there from coastal areas. It was generally agreed that the conference progressed quickly to reach solutions to all the worlds' current problems. Every country (with the exceptions of Switzerland, Afghanistan, Bolivia and some other land-locked countries) agreed emphatically not to recognise the newts as an independent military power, mainly because they would then have to acknowledge their own newts as members of a salamander state; it was even possible that a salamander state of this sort would want to exercise its sovereignty over all the shores and waters occupied by newts. For this reason it was legally and practically impossible to declare war against the newts or put any other sort of international pressure on them; each state would have the right to take measures only against its own newts; it would be a purely internal matter. This meant that it was impossible to speak of any collective diplomatic or military campaign against the newts. Any state that came under attack from the salamanders could receive international aid only in the form of overseas loans for them to help defend themselves. At this, England put forward the proposal that every state should at least bind itself to stop supplying the newts with weapons or explosives. After full consideration the proposal was turned down, mainly because those obligations were already contained in the London Convention; secondly because it would not be possible to prevent any state from providing its newts with equipment and weaponry to defend its own shores "according to its needs"; and thirdly, seafaring nations would "understandably wish to maintain good relations with residents of the sea", so that it was deemed appropriate "not to be precipitate in taking any measure that the newts might feel to be repressive"; every state was nonetheless willing to promise to supply weaponry and explosives to any state under attack from the newts. A suggestion put forward by the Colombian delegates in private session, that at least unofficial negotiations with the newts should take place, was accepted. Chief Salamander was to be invited to send his representatives to the conference. Great Britain protested loudly at this and refused outright to sit at the same table with the newts; but in the end the British delegation had to be content to depart, temporarily, to Engadin, for reasons of health. That night, all seafaring powers sent out an invitation to His Excellency Chief Salamander to name his representatives and send them to Vaduz. The answer was a rasping "Yes; this time we will come to meet you; next time we will expect your delegates to come into the water to meet me." The official announcement followed: "The accredited newt representatives will arrive in two days time at Buchs station by the Orient Express." Every preparation for the arrival of the newts was made with all haste; the most luxurious bathrooms in the city were prepared for them and a special train was chartered to bring cisterns of sea water for the newt delegates to bathe in. The reception for them that evening at the railway station in Vaduz had been meant to be unofficial, but it was still attended by many of the delegates' secretaries, representatives of government offices and around two hundred journalists, photographers and film makers. At exactly twenty-five minutes past six the Orient Express arrived at the station and came to a halt beside the red carpet. From the saloon car emerged three tall and elegant gentlemen with a number of sophisticated-looking secretaries carrying heavy briefcases. "Where are the newts, then?" somebody muttered. Two or three officials went forward uncertainly to meet the three gentlemen; but the first of the gentlemen had already begun, quickly and quietly, to say, "We are the newt delegation. I'm Professor van Dott from The Hague. Maître Rosso Castelli, avocat de Paris. Doctor Manoel Carvalho, avocado of Lisbon." The officials bowed and introduced themselves. "So you are not newts, then," the French secretary said with a sigh. "Of course we are not newts," said Dr. Castelli. We are their lawyers. Excuse me, but I think these gentlemen might want to take some photographs." And then the photographers and newsreel makers took a great many pictures of the smiling newt delegation. The secretaries of the legatees already present also showed their pleasure. It was, after all, only reasonable and proper that the newts should send human beings to represent them. Human beings were easier to deal with. And most of all, it would avoid certain social unpleasantnesses. The first discussions with the newts' delegates took place that same night, addressing the question of how to renew peace with the United Kingdom as soon as possible. Professor van Dott asserted that there was no question that the newts had come under attack from Great Britain; the British gunboat, Erebus, had fired on the newts radio ship on the open sea; the British admiralty had broken peaceful trading with the newts by preventing the Amenhotep from unloading the cargo of explosives they had ordered; thirdly, the British government had instigated a blockade against the newts by its ban on their receiving any supplies of any sort. The newts were unable to make a complaint about these hostile acts either at The Hague, because the London Convention denied them the right to make any complaint, or in Geneva, because the newts were not a member of the United Nations; they were therefore left with no alternative but to defend themselves. Chief Salamander was nonetheless willing to end hostilities under, of course, the following conditions: 1. The United Kingdom was to apologise for the offences cited above; 2. All restrictions on supplies to the newts were to be lifted; 3. As compensation, the newts were to be ceded the lowland areas of the Punjab where they would create new bays and shorelines. The chairman of the conference stated that he would pass these conditions on to his honourable friend, the representative of the United Kingdom, who was currently unable to attend; however he made no secret of his fear that Britain would find these conditions difficult to accept; but we could all hope that they might be the starting point for further negotiations. Next on the agenda was the complaint by France about the newts having caused explosions on the coast of Sengambia, thus interfering in a French colonial dependency. This was answered by the famous Parisian lawyer, Dr. Julien Rosso Castelli. "Prove it!" he said. Seismographs around the world indicate that the earthquake in Senegambia was of volcanic origin and was connected with volcanic activity in Mount Pico on the island of Fogo. "Here in this dossier," he declared as he slapped his hand against it, "are all the scientific proofs you need. If, on the other hand, you have any proof that the earthquake in Senegambia was caused by any activity of my clients, then we await them with interest." BELGIAN DELEGATE, CREUX: Your Chief Salamander declared himself that it was done by the newts" PROFESSOR VAN DOTT: His speech was not official. M. ROSSO CASTELLI: We are authorised by our clients to deny the contents of that speech. I request that expert witnesses be heard on whether the technology is available to create a fissure in the Earths crust sixty-seven kilometres long. I suggest they should try the experiment of creating such a fissure. Unless, gentlemen, you have proof of the opposite, then we will be forced to talk of volcanic activity. Nevertheless, the bay created in Senegambia would be suitable for settlement by a population of newts and Chief Salamander is willing to purchase it from the government of France. We are authorised by our clients to negotiate a price. FRENCH DELEGATE, MINISTER DEVAL: If this is understood to be an offer of compensation for the damage caused, then we are willing to discuss the matter. M. ROSSO CASTELLI: Very well. Although the newt government does request that the contract of purchase cover also the territory of the Landes, extending from the mouth of the Gironde as far as Bayonne, an area covering six thousand seven hundred square kilometres. In other words, the newt government is willing to buy this piece of land in southern France. MINISTER DEVAL (native of Bayonne, member of parliament for Bayonne): So that these salamanders of yours turn part of France into seabed? Never! Never! DR. ROSSO CASTELLI: France will come to regret these words of yours, monsieur. Today we have still been talking of purchase. At this, the session was brought to an end. The subject of the next meeting was a substantial international offer made to the newts: to cause damage to established and densely populated was unacceptable, but they would be able to build new shores and islands for themselves; in which case they could be assured of substantial loans to cover the costs; the new lands and island would then be recognised as their independent and sovereign territory. DR. MANOEL CARVALHO, renowned lawyer from Lisbon, offered his thanks for this proposal which he would convey to the newts; but any child could understand, he said, that building new land would take much longer and cost far more than demolishing old land. Our clients are in need of new bays and shorelines as soon as possible; it is for them a matter of life and death. It would be better for mankind to accept Chief Salamander's generous offer of buying the world from the human beings instead of taking it by force. Our clients have found a way of extracting the gold contained in seawater; so that they have almost unlimited means; they would be able to pay for your world very well, very well indeed. You would do well to bear in mind that, from their point of view, the price of the world will become lower with time, especially if--as might well be expected--any further volcanic or tectonic disasters take place which might well be far larger than anything we have been witness to so far, and these might well substantially reduce the size of the continents. Today you still have the opportunity to sell the world while it is still its present size; when there is nothing left above water but the ruins of a few mountains no-one will want to pay you a penny for it. I am here as representative and legal advisor for the newts, and it is my duty to defend their interests; but I am also a human being just like yourselves, gentlemen, and the well-being of mankind is just as close to my heart as it is to yours. This is why I advise you, indeed I implore you: Sell the continents before it is too late! You can sell them as a whole or sell them country by country. Everyone now is aware of Chief Salamander's generosity and modernity; he gives his assurance that in the course of these unavoidable changes to be made to the surface of the Earth everything possible will be done to protect human life; the continents will be flooded in stages and in a way that will avoid any panic or unnecessary catastrophe. We have been authorised to negotiate either with the this illustrious world conference as a whole or with individual states. The presence of such outstanding lawyers such as Professor van Dott and Maître Julien Rosso Castelli is your assurance that we are concerned not only to defend the legitimate interests of our clients but will also co-operate closely with yourselves to protect those things that are dearest to us all; human culture and the good of all mankind. The atmosphere of the conference had become somewhat tense when another proposal was put forward: that the salamander should be allowed to flood and occupy central China; in return for which the newts would bind themselves in perpetuity to stay away from the shores of Europe and its population. DR. ROSSO CASTELLI: In perpetuity, that is rather a long time. Let us say for a period of twenty years. PROFESSOR VAN DOTT: Central China is not a very large area. Let us say the provinces of Nganhuei, Honan, Kiangsu, Chi-li and Fung-tien. The Japanese representative protested at the ceding of Fung-tien which lay in the Japanese sphere of interest. The Chinese delegate said something, but nobody, unfortunately, was able to understand him. There was an air of growing anxiety in the negotiating chamber; it was already one o'clock in the morning. Just then the secretary to the Italian delegation came into the room and whispered something into the ear of the Italian representative, Count Tosti. The count turned pale, stood up, and although the Chinese delegate, Dr. Ti, was still speaking, he called out hoarsely: "Mister Chairman, may I say something. Reports have just come through that the newts have flooded part of the region of Venice near Portogruaro." There was a chill silence, broken only by the Chinese delegate who was still speaking. "Chief Salamander did warn you of this long ago," grumbled Dr. Carvalho. Professor van Dott turned impatiently and raised his hand. "Mister Chairman, may we return to the subject at hand. We were discussing the province of Fung-tien. We have been authorised to offer the Japanese government compensation for it in the form of gold. The question following on from that is what our clients would receive from the states concerned for the task of evacuating China." At that moment, radio hams were listening to the newts broadcast. "You have just been listening to the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann on gramophone records," the announcer rasped. "Hello, hello, we are now transferring you to Venice." And then, all that could be heard was a black and fathomless soughing, like the sound of rising water. Chapter 10MR. POVONDRA BLAMES HIMSELFWho would have thought so much time had flowed by? Our Mr. Povondra isn't even the doorman any more at G.H. Bondy's house; now, you might say, he is a venerable old man who can enjoy the fruits of his old and industrious life in peace as a pensioner; although his pension doesn't go very far these times of high wartime prices! He still goes out now and then to do some fishing; sitting in his boat with his fishing rod and watching how the water flows by day after day and all the things that go by with it! Sometimes he hooks a dace, sometimes a bass; there seem to be more of them nowadays, maybe because all the rivers are so much shorter. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a nice bass; It's a bit boney sometimes, but the flesh is nice, tastes a bit like almonds. And mother knows just how to cook it. What Mr. Povondra doesn't know, though, is that mother usually uses those newspaper cuttings that he used to collect and arrange for the fire to cook the bass. He didn't keep up his collection, though, not went he started taking his pension; he got himself an fish tank instead where he keeps some goldfish; and he keeps some little newts in there too; sits there for hours, he does, watching them as they lay in the water without moving, or climbing out onto the little bank he made them with some gravel; then hell turn round and say: "Who'd have thought it, mother?" But you've got to do more than just sit there and watch, that's why Mr. Povondra took up keeping fish. Keep yourself busy, you've always got to keep yourself busy, thought Mother Povondra contentedly. Better than if he went out drinking or got involved in politics. A lot of water, truly a lot of water had flowed under the bridges on the Vltava. Even little Frank isn't at school learning about geography any more, he's not even a young man tearing his socks as he rushes after the silly things young men rush after. He's getting older himself, young Frank; he's got himself a good job at the post office, he has, so it's turned out quite useful that he did learn all that geography. He's starting to get a bit of sense too, thought Mr. Povondra as he guided his boat out onto the water by one of the bridges. Hell be coming round, today; it's Sunday and he won't be working. I'll take him out in the boat and we can go upstream up to the tip of StÅ™elecký Island; the fish bite better up there; and Frank can tell me all about what's in the papers. Then we can go back home to his wife and the two nippers-- it wasn't long since Mr. Povondra had relaxed into the quiet joy of being a grandfather. Mind you, it was already a year now since little Marie had started school, she likes school; and there was little Frank, his grandson, nearly weighs five stone already, he does. Mr. Povondra had a strong and deep feeling that everything was right with the world. But there was Frank waiting on the bank waving to him, and Mr. Povondra rowed over. "Glad you've come, mind you it's no more than you should do," he added. "Mind you don't fall in the water now." "Are they biting?" his son asked. "Not really," the old man grumbled. "Lets go upstream a bit, shall we?" It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon; still not time when those madmen and layabouts all come out from their football matches or whatever else they do. Prague was empty and quiet; the few people who wandered along the sides of the river and over the bridges weren't in any hurry as they ambled along decently and with dignity. They were decent reasonable people, not like those crowds who gather and laugh at the fishermen on the Vltava. Once again, Father Povondra had that nice deep feeling that all was well with the world. "What's in the papers then, Son?" he asked with the curtness of a father. "Nothing much, Dad," his son answered. "I saw that those newts have got up as far as Dresden, though." "Germanys had it then," Mr. Povondra asserted. "They're funny people you know, those Germans. They're well educated, but they're funny. I knew a German once, chauffeur he was for some factory; and he wasn't half coarse, this German. Mind you, he kept the car in good condition, I'll say that for him. And now look, Germanys disappearing from the map of the world," Mr. Povondra ruminated. "And all that fuss they used to make! Terrible, it was: everything for the army and everything for the soldiers. But not even they were any match for these newts. And I know about these newts, you know that, don't you. Remember when I took you out to show you one of them when you were only so high?" "Watch out, Dad," said his son, "you've got a bite." "That's only a tiddler," the old man grumbled as he twitched on his rod. Even Germany now, he thought to himself. No-one even bats an eyelid at it these days. What a song and dance they used to make at first whenever these newts flooded anywhere! Even if it was only Mesopotamia or China, the papers were full of it. Not like that now, Mr. Povondra contemplated sadly, staring out at his rod. You get used to anything, I suppose. At least they're not here, though; but I wish the prices weren't so high! Think what they charge for coffee these days! I suppose that's what you have to expect if they go and flood Brazil. If part of the world disappears underwater it has its effect in the shops. The float on Mr. Povondra's line danced about on the ripples of the water. How much of the world is it they've flooded so far then?, the old man considered. There's Egypt and India and China--they've even gone into Russia; and that was a big country, that was, Russia! When you think, all the way up from the Black Sea as far the Arctic Circle--all water! You can't say they haven't taken a lot of our land from us! And their only going slowly... "Up as far as Dresden then, you say?" the old man spoke up. "Ten miles short of Dresden. That means almost the whole of Saxony will soon be under water." "I went there once with Mr. Bondy," Father Povondra told him. "Ever so rich, they were there, Frank. The food wasn't much good though. Nice people, though. Much better than the Prussians. No comparison." "Prussia's gone now as well, though." "I'm not surprised," the old man said regretfully. "I don't like those Prussians. It's good for the French, though, if Germanys in trouble. Give them a chance for some peace, now." "I don't think so, Dad," Frank objected. "They were saying in the papers not long ago how a good third of France is under water now." Mr. Povondra sighed deeply. "There was a Frenchman working for us at Mr. Bondy's, a servant, Jean his name was. And he was a one for the ladies, ruddy disgrace it was. See, it always comes back to you if you're not responsible, like that." "But they say the newts are within ten miles of Paris," his son, Frank, told him. "They had tunnels everywhere and then blew the whole place up. They slaughtered two army divisions, they say." "They make good soldiers, the French," said Mr. Povondra with the air of an expert. "That Jean never used to put up with anything either. I don't what made him like that. Smelt just like a perfume shop, but if he got into a fight he really would fight. But two divisions in the newts' army--that's not much really. When you think about it," the old man considered, "people were better off when they were fighting with other people. And it didn't take them all this time either. It's twenty years it's been going on with the newts, now, and still nothing's happened, they're still making preparations for getting the best positions. But when I think of when I was a young man, now those were battles! Three million people there were on one side and three million on the other," and the old man gesticulated and made the boat rock, "and then it was a Hell of a battle when they got together--but they can't even get themselves a proper war these days. They've always got the same concrete embankments up and never even come together with bayonets. Not a bit of it!" "But newts and people can't go into battle like that, Dad," said Povondra junior in defence of the modern style of warfare. "You just can't make a bayonet charge underwater." "You're quite right," grumbled Mr. Povondra with contempt. "They just can't get together properly. But put an army of people against an army of people, and then you'll see what they can do. And what do you know about war, anyway?" "I just hope they don't come here," said Frank, rather unexpectedly. "When you've got kids, you know..." "What do you mean, come here," asked the startled Mr. Povondra senior. "What, here, all the way to Prague, you mean?" "Not just Prague, anywhere in the country," the worried Povondra junior replied. "If the newts have already got as far as Dresden then I think..." "You think too much, you do," Mr. Povondra reprimanded him. "How would they get here? What, across all these mountains surrounding the country?" "They could come up the Elbe and from there up into the Vltava." At this idea, Father Povondra snorted in disgust. "Don't talk rubbish! Up the Elbe? They might get some of the way up but not all the way. It's all rocks and mountains in the way. I've been there, I've seen them. Not a bit of it, the newts won't get here, well be alright. And Switzerland too, they'll be alright too. It's cause we haven't got any coastline, see, big advantage that is. It's if your country borders on the sea, that's when your in trouble." "But there's sea now as close as Dresden..." "That's Germany, that is," the old man retorted. "That's their business. But the newts can't get as far as us, it stands to reason. They'd have to get all the mountains out the way first; and I don't think you've got much idea how much work that'd be!" "Well that's nothing for them," young Mr. Povondra objected gloomily. "They do that sort of thing all the time! Think of Guatemala; they flooded a whole range of mountains there." "Down there it's different," said the old man confidently. "Don't talk such rubbish, Frank! That was down in Guatemala, not here in Europe. Things are different here." Young Mr. Povondra sighed. "As you say, Dad. But when you think that those horrors have already flooded about a fifth of all the land..." "Only where it's next to the sea, you daft ha'p'orth, not anywhere else. You just don't understand about politics. It's those countries that are next to the sea, they're the ones that have been at war with the newts, not us. Were neutral, we are, and that's why they can't do anything against us. That's just how it is. And now keep quiet for a bit, else we won't catch anything." Over the water was peace and quiet. The trees on StÅ™elecký Island already cast long and delicate shadows on the surface of the Vltava. Trams jangled over the bridge, nannies pushing prams ambled along the banks, the people out on this Sunday afternoon were gay and friendly... "Dad?" exclaimed young Povondra, almost like a child. "What is it?" "Is that a catfish there?" "Where?" Out of the river, just by the National Theatre, there protruded a large black head moving slowly upstream. "Is that a catfish," Povondra junior said again. The old man put down his fishing rod. "That there?" he exclaimed, pointing at it with a shaking finger. "That?" The black head disappeared under the water. "That wasn't a catfish, Frank," explained the old man in a voice that hardly seemed his own. "We might as well go home, now. We've all had it." "Had what?" "A newt. That was a newt, they're here. Lets go home," he repeated as he fumbled to put his rod away. "We've all had it." "You're shaking," said Frank anxiously. "What's wrong?" "Lets just go home," the old man stuttered crossly as his chin quivered. "I'm cold. I'm cold. That's all we needed! We've had it. They're here now. Oh Christ it's cold! I want to go home." Young Mr. Povondra glanced at him quizzically and took hold of the oars. "I'll take there you, Dad," he said in a worried voice and drove the boat to the island with a few strong strokes of the oars. "Just leave it, I'll tie the boat up." "Whys it so cold?" the old man wondered as his teeth chattered. "I'll keep hold of you, Dad. Just come with me," he urged as he took him by the arm. "I think you must have caught a cold on the water. It was just a piece of wood, that's all." The old man was shaking like a leaf. "Piece of wood? Don't give me that! I know what I saw! It was a newt! Let go of me!" Mr. Povondra junior did something he had never done in his life before; he hailed a taxi and pushed his father in as he told the driver where to go. "I'll take you, Dad, it's getting late." "It's already too late," his father raved. "It's much too late. We've all had it, Frank. That wasn't a piece of wood. That was them!" When they got home, young Mr. Povondra almost had to carry his father up the stairs. "Get the bed ready, Mum," he whispered quickly at the door. "We've got to put Dad to bed, he's been taken ill all of a sudden." So there was Father Povondra lying under the bedclothes; his nose peeking strangely out from his face and his lips murmuring and mumbling something that could not be understood; how old he looked, how old! Then he became a little calmer... "Are you feeling better now, Dad?" At the foot of the bed was Mother Povondra, her hand to her mouth and weeping into her apron; their daughter in law was tending the stove and the children, Frank and Marie, gazed wide-eyed at their grandfather as if they hardly knew him. "Are you sure you don't want a doctor, Dad?" Father Povondra looked at the children and whispered something; then his eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Is there anything you need, Dad?" "Yes, yes there is something," the old man whispered. "Something you ought to know. It's all my fault. If only I'd never let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy, if I'd never let him in, all this would never have happened..." "It's alright, nothing's happened, Dad," young Povondra tried to soothe him. "You don't understand these things," the old man gasped. "We've all had it, don't you see that? It's the end of the world. It's going to be all sea even here, even here now that the newts are here. And it's all my fault; I should never have let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy. Everyone ought to know, they ought to know whose fault it all is." "Nonsense," his son replied sharply. "You shouldn't be thinking like this, Dad. It's everyone's fault. It's governments' fault, it's big business's fault. Everyone wanted to have all the newts they could get. We all wanted to get as much out of the newts as we could. That's why we sent them all those weapons and all that--it's all our faults." Mr. Povondra looked up crossly. "It always used to be nothing but sea, and that's how it's going to be again. It's the end of the world. Somebody told me once that even Prague was seabed once. I think it must have been the newts that did it then as well. I should never have let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy. There was something that kept telling me, don't do it, and then I thought to myself, perhaps I'll get a tip from this sea captain. And then, he never did. That's how you destroy the whole world you see, all for nothing..." The old man gulped back something like a tear. "I know, I know full well, we've all had it. It's the end of the world, and it's all my fault..." "Grandfather, wouldn't you like to have some tea?" asked the young Mrs. Povondra sympathetically. "All I want," the old man sighed, "all I want is for these children to forgive me." Chapter 11THE AUTHOR TALKS TO HIMSELF"Well you can't just leave it like that, can you!" the authors internal voice declared. Well, why not? asked the author, rather unsure of himself. "You mean you're going to let Mr. Povondra die like that?" Well I don't want to do it like that but, well, Mr. Povondra's an old man after all, he must be well over seventy... "And you're going to leave him to die in a state of mental torture like that? Can't you even say something like But Grandad, it's not as bad as all that, the newts won't destroy the world, mankind will save itself, just you wait and see? Surely there's something you can do for him!" I suppose I could get a doctor for him, the author suggested. Suppose the old man has had an attack of nerves; or at that age he could have had a lung inflammation, which, thanks be to God, he survives; and he could still sit little Marie on his knee and ask what she's been learning in school. All the joys of old age, I could let the old man have all the joys of old age. "Fine sort of joys of old age that is," the internal voice sneered. "Hell hug the child with his ancient hands and all the time hell be thinking--thinking with horror--that one day shell be fleeing from the rush of water inexorably flooding the whole world; hell wrinkle his bushy brow and whisper in a voice of dread: That's what I did, Marie, that's what I did. Listen, do you really want to have the whole of mankind destroyed?" The author frowned. Don't ask me what I want. Do you think I wanted to see the continents where people live reduced to rubble, do you think I wanted it to end like this? That was just the logical course of events; what could I have done to stop that? I did everything I could; I gave people enough warning; what about that X, that was partly me. I warned them, don't give the newts weapons and explosives, stop this vile trading in salamanders, and so on--and you saw how it all turned out. They all had a thousand good economic and political reasons why they couldn't stop. I'm not a politician or a businessman; how am I supposed to persuade them about these things. What are we supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water; but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all understand, at least it will happen with the help of science technology and public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There's nothing we can do about that. The internal voice was quiet for a while. "And don't you feel sorry for mankind?" Hold on, not so fast! Nobody's saying the whole of mankind has to be destroyed. All the newts want is more shoreline where they can live and lay their eggs. Maybe what they'll do is turn the continents into lots of long strings so that there's as much shoreline as possible. What if there are still some people surviving on these strips of land? And there they can work metal and other things for the salamanders. As the newts can't work with fire themselves, can they. "So mankind will be put into the service of the newts." Yes, if that's what you want to call it. They'll simply be working in factories like they do now. They'll just have different masters, that's all. So that means it might not be so different after all... "And don't you feel sorry for mankind?" Oh, just leave me alone, for Gods sake! What am I supposed to do about it? It is what the people wanted, don't forget; they all wanted to have newts, they wanted commerce, industry and technology; civil authorities and military authorities, they all wanted it; even Povondra junior said so: it's all of our faults. How do you think I could not feel sorry for mankind, anyway? And most of all, I felt sorry for them when I saw how, of their own free will and whatever the cost, how they were hurtling to their own perdition. It'd be enough to make anyone scream. He'd shout and raise his hands as if he'd seen a train going down the wrong track. And now it can't be stopped. The newts are going to keep on multiplying on and on and on and they'll go on demolishing the old continents on and on. Think what it was that Wolf Meynert said about the newts: that people would have to make way for them; and it would only be the salamanders that would create a world that was happy, unified and uniform... "Oh come on, now! Wolf Meynert? Wolf Meynert was an intellectual. Did you think up something so vile and murderous and nonsensical, that no intelectual would want to use it to save the world? Never mind, leave it. What do you think Marie might be doing now?" Marie? I suppose she's out playing somewhere. Don't make a noise, they told her, Grandad's asleep. But she doesn't know what to do and she is bored. "And what's she actually doing?" Don't know. Maybe she's trying to touch her nose with the tip of her tongue. "There, you see? And you'd let something like a new Great Flood come along." Just stop it, will you. I can't work miracles. What has to happen will happen! Things run along their inevitable course. And even that's reassuring in its way: that everything that happens has its own necessity and follows certain rules. "Couldn't the newts be stopped in some way?" No. There are too many of them. They've got to have room to live in. "What about if they all died out in some way? Something like some kind of epidemic or degeneration..." No, that's too cheap and easy. Why should nature have to put right what's been done by man? See?--not even you think they could do anything to save themselves now. You basically think something will come along from somewhere else. I'll tell you something: do you know who it is that still--even now when a fifth of Europe is already underwater--is still providing the newts with explosives and torpedoes and drills? Do you know who it is that's working feverishly in all the laboratories, trying to find even more effective machines and materials for sweeping the world out of existence? Do you know who it is who's lending the newts money, who it is who's financing the end of the world, this new Flood? "Yes, I know. All the factories. All the banks. All the countries in the world." Well then! If it was just newts against people it might be possible to do something; but when it's people against people then there's no way of stopping it, is there. "Hold on, people against people! I've just thought of something. What if it was newts against newts?" Newts against newts. How do you mean? "Well what if for instance...if there are too many newts they might start squabbling about some tiny stretch of coast or some bay or something; then they can start fighting about bigger and bigger lengths of coast until they get into a big struggle about all the coastlines in the world, eh? Newts against newts! How's that, wouldn't that follow the natural course of events?" Er, no, that wouldn't work. You can't have newts fighting with newts. That wouldn't be natural. The newts are just one species. "Well people are just one species too, aren't they. And it's never stopped them fighting with each other; all the same species and think of all the excuses for war they've used! It hasn't had to be about space to live in, it's been about power, prestige, influence, fame, resources and I don't know what else! Why couldn't the newts start fighting among themselves about something like prestige?" Why would they do that? What do you think they'd get out of it? "Nothing, except that some of them would get more coast to live on for a short time and a bit more power than the others. And then after a while it'd be the other way round." And why would some have more power than the others? They're all the same, after all, they're all newts; they've all got the same skeleton, they're all as ugly as each other and all as mediocre as each other. What would make them start killing each other? Just tell me what you think it is that they might start fighting over. "Just leave them to it and they'll soon find something. If there's one group living on the western shore and another on the eastern, they'll probably start to despise each other in the name of West against East. And, here you've got the European salamanders while down there there are the African; it'd be strange if one lot didn't want to be better than the others! So they can go and teach the others a lesson in the name of civilisation, or expansionism or I don't know what: they're bound to think of some kind of ideal or political reason which means that newts on one shore will have to go and beat up the newts on the other shore. The salamanders are as civilised as we are, don't forget; they won't be short of arguments to do with power or commercial interests or legal rights or culture of some such." And they've got plenty of weapons. Don't forget they're fantastically well armed. "Yep, they've got plenty of weapons. And they could learn how it is that history's made from the example given by people, couldn't they!" Hold on a sec., hold on. (The author jumps up and starts to pace excitedly around his study.) You're right, it would be strange if they didn't do it! I can see it now. You only need to look at the map of the world--where's that map, I've got one here somewhere, where is it? "There it is." Right. So here's the Atlantic, there's the Mediterranean, the North Sea. Europe here, America there--so this here is the cradle of culture and modern civilisation. And somewhere there is the sunken city of Atlantis... "And now that's where the newts are flooding Atlantis all over again." That's it. And here is...the Pacific, the Indian Ocean. The ancient and mysterious Orient. The cradle of civilisation, as they say. And somewhere here, somewhere to the east of Africa, is the mythical island of Lemuria that was flooded. Sumatra, and a bit to the east of Sumatra... "The little island of Tana Masa. The cradle of the newts." Exactly. And that's where King Salamander, the spiritual leader of all the newts, has his court. Captain van Toch's tapa-boys still live there, the original newts in the Pacific, and still half wild. So this is their Orient. The whole area is called Lemuria now, while the other area, the civilised, Europeanised or Americanised area where they use all the modern technology, that's Atlantis. So Chief Salamander rules there as a dictator, the great conqueror, soldier and inventor, the Genghis Khan of the newts and destroyer of dry land. Now he will be a magnificent figure. ("...but, do you think he's really a newt?") (...No. Chief Salamander is human. His real name is Andreas Schultze, and he took part in the Great War as an NCO somewhere) ("So that's it!") (Yes, that's it, now you've got it.) So there's Atlantis here, Lemuria there. They form two different groups because of geography, administration, cultural differences... "...and national differences. Don't forget about national differences. The Lemurian salamanders speak Pidgin English, whereas the Atlantic ones speak Basic English." Yes, alright. As time goes by, the Atlantic newts go through the old Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean... "Naturally, the classic way to the East." Right. And at the same time, the Lemurian newts press on around the Cape of Good Hope to the western coast of what had been Africa, asserting that the whole of Africa is part of Lemuria. "Naturally." They use slogans such as, Lemuria for Lemurians, Out with the Foreigners, and so on. A gulf of mistrust develops between Atlanta and Lemuria and old enmities are revived. Their hatred becomes a matter of life and death. "Or else they develop into different nations." Yes. The Atlantians despise the Lemurians and call them filthy savages; the Lemurians have a fanatical hatred for the Atlantian newts and see them as imperialists, western devils, and corruptors of the ancient purity of newtdom. Chief Salamander forces the Lemurians to grant concessions on their shores, supposedly in the interests of trade and civilisation. King Salamander, the noble patriarch of the Lemurians, has to grant these concessions against his will because they have less weapons. Things flare up in the mouth of the Tigris, not far from where Baghdad used to be: the native Lemurians attack the Atlantian colonists, killing two of their officers, supposedly because of some insult to their nation. And as a result of that ... ".. it leads to war. Naturally." Yes, there's a world war of newts against newts. "In the name of culture and decency." And in the name of True Newtdom. In the name of Glory and Greatness. Their slogan is, It's us or them! The Lemurians, armed with Malay kukries and daggers cut down the Atlantian intruders without mercy; but the Atlantian newts have been educated by Europeans and are more advanced and release poisonous chemicals and specially cultured bacteria into the Lemurian Sea and these weapons are so effective they poison all the oceans of the world. The sea is infected with artificially cultivated plague. And that's it. All the newts die. "All of them?" All of them. Down to the very last one. They'll become an extinct species. All that'll be left of them will be the old fossil of Andrias Scheuchzeri in ×hningen. "And what about the people?" The people? Oh, yes, the people. Well, bit by bit they start to come back down from the hills back down to the coasts of what's left of the continents; but the ocean will still be full of the stench of decomposing newts. The continents slowly grow back because of the silt deposited by rivers; the sea is pushed back bit by bit, and everything will be almost the same as it was before. There's a new legend about a Great Flood sent by God to punish man for his sins. And there will be new legends about lands that disappeared under the water, and these lands will have been the cradle of human civilisation; and there will myths and legends about places like England and France and Germany... "And then?" ...and then, I don't really know. THE END1/8/2023 0 Comments Toni morrison -beloved
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Sixty million and more I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. ROMANS 9: 25
124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door sill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only
seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them. Baby Suggs didn't even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn't the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn't like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nas tiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present--intolerable--and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. "Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't." And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver did what they could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a
perfunctory battle against the outrageous behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light. Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, "Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on." The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did. "Grandma Baby must be stopping it," said Denver. She was ten and still mad at Baby Suggs for dying. Sethe opened her eyes. "I doubt that," she
said. "Then why don't it come?" "You forgetting how little it is," said her mother. "She wasn't even two years old when
she died. Too little to understand. Too little to talk much even." "Maybe she don't want to understand," said Denver. "Maybe. But if she'd only come, I could make it clear to her." Sethe released her daughter's hand and together they pushed the sideboard back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124. "For a baby she throws a powerful spell," said Denver. "No more powerful than the way I loved her," Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones; the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I'll do it for free. Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten "Dearly" too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible--that for twenty minutes, a half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing,
every word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) engraved on her baby's headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust. Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil. "We could move," she suggested once to her mother-in-law.
"What'd be the point?" asked Baby Suggs. "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband's spirit was to come back in here? or yours? Don't talk to me. You lucky. You got three left. Three pulling at your skirts and just one raising hell from the other side. Be thankful, why don't you? I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, worrying somebody's house into evil." Baby Suggs rubbed her eyebrows. "My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember." "That's all you let yourself remember," Sethe had told her, but she was down to one herself-- one alive, that is--the boys chased off by the dead one, and her memory of Buglar was fading fast. Howard at least had a head shape nobody could forget. As for the rest, she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe. Unfortunately her brain was devious. She might be hurrying across a field, running practically, to get to the
pump quickly and rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard. Nor was there the faintest scent of ink or the cherry gum and oak bark from which it was made. Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap off--on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--
remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that. When the last of the chamomile was gone, she went around to the front of the house, collecting her shoes and stockings on the way. As if to punish her further for her terrible memory, sitting on the porch not forty feet away was Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. And although she she said, "Is that you?" "What's left." He stood up and smiled. "How you been, girl, besides barefoot?" When she laughed it came out loose and young. "Messed up my legs back yonder. Chamomile." He made a face as though tasting a teaspoon of something bitter.
"I don't want to even hear 'bout it. Always did hate that stuff." Sethe balled up her stockings and jammed them into her pocket. "Come on in." "Porch is fine, Sethe. Cool out here." He sat back down and looked at the meadow on the other side of the road, knowing the eagerness he felt would be in his eyes. "Eighteen years," she said softly. "Eighteen," he repeated. "And I swear I been walking every one of em. Mind if I join you?" He nodded toward her feet and began unlacing his shoes. "You want to soak them? Let me get you a basin of water." She moved closer to him to enter the house. "No, uh uh. Can't baby feet. A whole lot more tramping they got to do yet."
"You can't leave right away, Paul D. You got to stay awhile." "Well, long enough to see Baby Suggs, anyway. Where is she?" "Dead." "Aw no. When?" "Eight years now. Almost nine." "Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard." Sethe shook her head. "Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part. Sorry you missed her though. Is that what you came by for?" "That's some of what I came for. The rest is you. But if all the truth be known, I go anywhere these days. Anywhere they let me sit down." "You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad." He looked at her and the word "bad" took on another meaning.
Sethe smiled. This is the way they were--had been. All of the Sweet Home men, before and after Halle, treated her to a mild brotherly flirtation, so subtle you had to scratch for it. Except for a heap more hair and some waiting in his eyes, he looked the way he had in Kentucky. Peachstone skin; straight-backed. For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready it was to smile, or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feeling you were feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change--underneath it lay the activity. "I wouldn't have to ask about him, would I? You'd tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn't you?" Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the sycamores. "I'd tell you. Sure I'd tell you. I don't know any more now than I did then." Except for the churn, he thought, and you don't need to know that. "You must think he's still alive." "No. I think he's dead. It's not being sure that keeps him alive."
"What did Baby Suggs think?" "Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour." "When she say Halle went?" "Eighteen fifty-five. The day my baby was born." "You had that baby, did you? Never thought you'd make it." He chuckled. "Running off pregnant." "Had to. Couldn't be no waiting." She lowered her head and thought, as he did, how unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it hadn't been for that girl looking for velvet, she never would have. "All by yourself too." He was proud of her and annoyed by her. Proud she had done it; annoyed that she had not needed Halle or him in the doing.
"Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me." "Then she helped herself too, God bless her." "You could stay the night, Paul D." "You don't sound too steady in the offer." Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Oh it's truly meant. I just hope you'll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something." Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood. "You got company?" he whispered, frowning. "Off and on," said Sethe. "Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?" "It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."
He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet and shining legs, holding her shoes and stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle's girl--the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. And though her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now. Because of the hair. A face too still for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, used to make him think of a mask with mercifully punched out eyes. Halle's woman. Pregnant every year including the year she sat by the fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children she had already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. They were to be left with Halle's mother near Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire you could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked instead at the fire while she told him, because her husband was not there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and his wife had a lump in her neck the
size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. She leaned as close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the only female. Mrs. Garner, crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she was widowed. Then schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight. Now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough to step inside her door smack into a pool of pulsing red light. She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it--dry-eyed and lucky. "You said she died soft. Soft as cream," he reminded her.
"That's not Baby Suggs," she said. "Who then?" "My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys." "She didn't live?" "No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left. Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died." Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been. Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up. Still... if her boys were gone... "No man? You here by yourself?" "Me and Denver," she said. "That all right by you?"
"That's all right by me." She saw his skepticism and went on. "I cook at a restaurant in town. And I sew a little on the sly." Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggs to her husband's high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose--a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men--the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase. "Y'all got boys," he told them. "Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stroppin boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one of
"Beg to differ, Garner. Ain't no nigger men." "Not if you scared, they ain't." Garner's smile was wide. "But if you a man yourself, you'll want your niggers to be men too." wife." "I wouldn't have no nigger men round my It was the reaction Garner loved and waited for. "Neither would I," he said. "Neither would I," and there was always a pause before the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoever it was got the meaning. Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and Garner came home bruised and pleased, having demonstrated one more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enough and smart enough to make and call his own niggers men. And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wild man. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl--the one who took Baby
Suggs' place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays. Maybe that was why she chose him. A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change was a serious recommendation. She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while they waited with her. She chose Halle and for their first bedding she sewed herself a dress on the sly. "Won't you stay on awhile? Can't nobody catch up on eighteen years in a day." Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white staircase climbed toward the blue- and-white wallpaper of the second floor. Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among a blizzard of snowdrops all backed by blue. The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing toward it. Every sense he had told him the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out of that air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll.
Paul D looked at the girl and then at Sethe who smiled saying, "Here she is my Denver. This is Paul D, honey, from Sweet Home." "Good morning, Mr. D." "Garner, baby. Paul D Garner." "Yes sir." "Glad to get a look at you. Last time I saw your mama, you were pushing out the front of her dress." "Still is," Sethe smiled, "provided she can get
in it." Denver stood on the bottom step and was
suddenly hot and shy. It had been a long time since anybody (good-willed whitewoman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes. For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. No coloredpeople. Certainly no hazelnut man with
too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions. Someone her mother wanted to talk to and would even consider talking to while barefoot. Looking, in fact acting, like a girl instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver had known all her life. The one who never looked away, who when a man got stomped to death by a mare right in front of Sawyer's restaurant did not look away; and when a sow began eating her own litter did not look away then either. And when the baby's spirit picked up Here Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye, so hard he went into convulsions and chewed up his tongue, still her mother had not looked away. She had taken a hammer, knocked the dog unconscious, wiped away the blood and saliva, pushed his eye back in his head and set his leg bones. He recovered, mute and off-balance, more because of his untrustworthy eye than his bent legs, and winter, summer, drizzle or dry, nothing could persuade him to enter the house again. Now here was this woman with the presence of mind to repair a dog gone savage with pain rocking her crossed ankles and looking away from her own daughter's body. As though
the size of it was more than vision could bear. And neither she nor he had on shoes. Hot, shy, now Denver was lonely. All that leaving: first her brothers, then her grandmother- serious losses since there were no children willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees from her porch railing. None of that had mattered as long as her mother did not look away as she was doing now, making Denver long, downright long, for a sign of spite from the baby ghost. "She's a fine-looking young lady," said Paul
Got her daddy's sweet face." "You know my father?" "Knew him. Knew him well." "Did he, Ma'am?" Denver fought an urge to realign her affection. "Of course he knew your daddy. I told you, he's from Sweet Home."
Denver sat down on the bottom step. There was nowhere else gracefully to go. They were a twosome, saying "Your daddy" and "Sweet Home" in a way that made it clear both belonged to them and not to her. That her own father's absence was not hers. Once the absence had belonged to Grandma Baby--a son, deeply mourned because he was the one who had bought her out of there. Then it was her mother's absent husband. Now it was this hazelnut stranger's absent friend. Only those who knew him ("knew him well") could claim his absence for themselves. Just as only those who lived in Sweet Home could remember it, whisper it and glance sideways at one another while they did. Again she wished for the baby ghost--its anger thrilling her now where it used to wear her out. Wear her out. "We have a ghost in here," she said, and it worked. They were not a twosome anymore. Her mother left off swinging her feet and being girlish. Memory of Sweet Home dropped away from the eyes of the man she was being girlish for. He looked quickly up the lightning-white stairs behind her.
"So I hear," he said. "But sad, your mama said. Not evil." "No sir," said Denver, "not evil. But not sad either." "What then?" "Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked." "Is that right?" Paul D turned to Sethe. "I don't know about lonely," said Denver's mother. "Mad, maybe, but I don't see how it could be lonely spending every minute with us like it does." "Must be something you got it wants." Sethe shrugged. "It's just a baby." "My sister," said Denver. "She died in this house." Paul D scratched the hair under his jaw. "Reminds me of that headless bride back behind Sweet Home. Remember that, Sethe? Used to roam them woods regular." "How could I forget? Worrisome..."
"How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed." "Girl, who you talking to?" Paul D laughed. "True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home." He shook his head. "But it's where we were," said Sethe. "All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not." She shivered a little. A light ripple of skin on her arm, which she caressed back into sleep. "Denver," she said, "start up that stove. Can't have a friend stop by and don't feed him." "Don't go to any trouble on my account," Paul D said. "Bread ain't trouble. The rest I brought back from where I work. Least I can do, cooking from dawn to noon, is bring dinner home. You got any objections to pike?"
him." "If he don't object to me I don't object to
At it again, thought Denver. Her back to them, she jostled the kindlin and almost lost the fire. "Why don't you spend the night, Mr. Garner? You and Ma'am can talk about Sweet Home all night long." Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank Denver's collar, the girl leaned forward and began to cry. "What is the matter with you? I never knew you to behave this way." "Leave her be," said Paul D. "I'm a stranger to her." "That's just it. She got no cause to act up with a stranger. Oh baby, what is it? Did something happen?" But Denver was shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak. The tears she had not shed for nine years wetting her far too womanly breasts. "I can't no more. I can't no more."
"Can't what? What can't you?" "I can't live here. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I can't live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by. Boys don't like me. Girls don't either." "Honey, honey." "What's she talking 'bout nobody speaks to you?" asked Paul D. "It's the house. People don't--" "It's not! It's not the house. It's us! And it's
you!" "Denver!" "Leave off, Sethe. It's hard for a young girl living in a haunted house. That can't be easy." "It's easier than some other things." "Think, Sethe. I'm a grown man with nothing new left to see or do and I'm telling you it ain't easy. Maybe you all ought to move. Who owns this house?"
Over Denver's shoulder Sethe shot Paul D a look of snow. "What you care?" "They won't let you leave?" "No." "Sethe." "No moving. No leaving. It's all right the way
it is." "You going to tell me it's all right with this
child half out of her mind?" Something in the house braced, and in the listening quiet that followed Sethe spoke. "I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running--from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be."
Paul D fished in his vest for a little pouch of tobacco--concentrating on its contents and the knot of its string while Sethe led Denver into the keeping room that opened off the large room he was sitting in. He had no smoking papers, so he fiddled with the pouch and listened through the open door to Sethe quieting her daughter. When she came back she avoided his look and went straight to a small table next to the stove. Her back was to him and he could see all the hair he wanted without the distraction of her face. "What tree on your back?" "Huh." Sethe put a bowl on the table and reached under it for flour. "What tree on your back? Is something growing on your back? I don't see nothing growing on your back." "It's there all the same." "Who told you that?"
"Whitegirl. That's what she called it. I've never seen it and never will. But that's what she said it looked like. A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know." Sethe took a little spit from the tip of her tongue with her forefinger. Quickly, lightly she touched the stove. Then she trailed her fingers through the flour, parting, separating small hills and ridges of it, looking for mites. Finding none, she poured soda and salt into the crease of her folded hand and tossed both into the flour. Then she reached into a can and scooped half a handful of lard. Deftly she squeezed the flour through it, then with her left hand sprinkling water, she formed the dough. "I had milk," she said. "I was pregnant with Denver but I had milk for my baby girl. I hadn't stopped nursing her when I sent her on ahead with Howard and Buglar." Now she rolled the dough out with a wooden pin. "Anybody could smell me long before he saw me. And when he saw me he'd
see the drops of it on the front of my dress. Nothing I could do about that. All I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby girl. Nobody was going to nurse her like me. Nobody was going to get it to her fast enough, or take it away when she had enough and didn't know it. Nobody knew that she couldn't pass her air if you held her up on your shoulder, only if she was lying on my knees. Nobody knew that but me and nobody had her milk but me. I told that to the women in the wagon. Told them to put sugar water in cloth to suck from so when I got there in a few days she wouldn't have forgot me. The milk would be there and I would be there with it." "Men don't know nothing much," said Paul D, tucking his pouch back into his vest pocket, "but they do know a suckling can't be away from its mother for long." "Then they know what it's like to send your children off when your breasts are full." "We was talking 'bout a tree, Sethe." "After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That's what they came in there for. Held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em. She had that lump and couldn't speak but her
eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out I told on em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still." "They used cowhide on you?" "And they took my milk." "They beat you and you was pregnant?" "And they took my milk!" The fat white circles of dough lined the pan in rows. Once more Sethe touched a wet forefinger to the stove. She opened the oven door and slid the pan of biscuits in. As she raised up from the heat she felt Paul D behind her and his hands under her breasts. She straightened up and knew, but could not feel, that his cheek was pressing into the branches of her chokecherry tree. Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women saw him and wanted to weep--to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did
too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made them sad; that secretly they longed to die--to be quit of it--that sleep was more precious to them than any waking day. Young girls sidled up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitations were that had followed them straight from their dreams. Therefore, although he did not understand why this was so, he was not surprised when Denver dripped tears into the stovefire. Nor, fifteen minutes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as well. Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches. Raising his fingers to the hooks of her dress, he knew without seeing them or hearing any sigh that the tears were coming fast. And when the top of her dress was around her hips and he saw the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work of an
ironsmith too passionate for display, he could think but not say, "Aw, Lord, girl." And he would tolerate no peace until he had touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth, none of which Sethe could feel because her back skin had been dead for years. What she knew was that the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else's hands. Would there be a little space, she wondered, a little time, some way to hold off eventfulness, to push busyness into the corners of the room and just stand there a minute or two, naked from shoulder blade to waist, relieved of the weight of her breasts, smelling the stolen milk again and the pleasure of baking bread? Maybe this one time she could stop dead still in the middle of a cooking meal--not even leave the stove--and feel the hurt her back ought to. Trust things and remember things because the last of the Sweet Home men was there to catch her if she sank? The stove didn't shudder as it adjusted to its heat. Denver wasn't stirring in the next room. The pulse of red light hadn't come back and Paul D had not trembled since 1856 and then for eighty-three days in a row. Locked up and chained down, his hands shook so bad he
couldn't smoke or even scratch properly. Now he was trembling again but in the legs this time. It took him a while to realize that his legs were not shaking because of worry, but because the floorboards were and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it. The house itself was pitching. Sethe slid to the floor and struggled to get back into her dress. While down on all fours, as though she were holding her house down on the ground, Denver burst from the keeping room, terror in her eyes, a vague smile on her lips. "God damn it! Hush up!" Paul D was shouting, falling, reaching for anchor. "Leave the place alone! Get the hell out!" A table rushed toward him and he grabbed its leg. Somehow he managed to stand at an angle and, holding the table by two legs, he bashed it about, wrecking everything, screaming back at the screaming house. "You want to fight, come on! God damn it! She got enough without you. She got enough!" The quaking slowed to an occasional lurch, but Paul D did not stop whipping the table around until everything was rock quiet.
Sweating and breathing hard, he leaned against the wall in the space the sideboard left. Sethe was still crouched next to the stove, clutching her salvaged shoes to her chest. The three of them, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D, breathed to the same beat, like one tired person. Another breathing was just as tired. It was gone. Denver wandered through the silence to the stove. She ashed over the fire and pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven. The jelly cupboard was on its back, its contents lying in a heap in the corner of the bottom shelf. She took out a jar, and, looking around for a plate, found half of one by the door. These things she carried out to the porch steps, where she sat down. The two of them had gone up there. Stepping lightly, easy-footed, they had climbed the white stairs, leaving her down below. She pried the wire from the top of the jar and then the lid. Under it was cloth and under that a thin cake of wax. She removed it all and coaxed the jelly onto one half of the half a plate. She took a biscuit and pulled off its black top. Smoke curled from the soft white insides.
She missed her brothers. Buglar and Howard would be twenty two and twenty-three now. Although they had been polite to her during the quiet time and gave her the whole top of the bed, she remembered how it was before: the pleasure they had sitting clustered on the white stairs--she between the knees of Howard or Buglar--while they made up die-witch! stories with proven ways of killing her dead. And Baby Suggs telling her things in the keeping room. She smelled like bark in the day and leaves at night, for Denver would not sleep in her old room after her brothers ran away. Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of the only other company she had. Denver dipped a bit of bread into the jelly. Slowly, methodically, miserably she ate it.
NOT QUITE in a hurry, but losing no time, Sethe and Paul D climbed the white stairs. Overwhelmed as much by the downright luck of
finding her house and her in it as by the certainty of giving her his sex, Paul D dropped twenty-five years from his recent memory. A stair step before him was Baby Suggs' replacement, the new girl they dreamed of at night and fucked cows for at dawn while waiting for her to choose. Merely kissing the wrought iron on her back had shook the house, had made it necessary for him to beat it to pieces. Now he would do more. She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second- story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn't mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else--door knobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time--was interference. It was over before they could get their clothes off. Half-dressed and short of breath,
they lay side by side resentful of one another and the skylight above them. His dreaming of her had been too long and too long ago. Her deprivation had been not having any dreams of her own at all. Now they were sorry and too shy to make talk. Sethe lay on her back, her head turned from him. Out of the corner of his eye, Paul D saw the float of her breasts and disliked it, the spread-away, flat roundness of them that he could definitely live without, never mind that downstairs he had held them as though they were the most expensive part of himself. And the wrought-iron maze he had explored in the kitchen like a gold miner pawing through pay dirt was in fact a revolting clump of scars. Not a tree, as she said. Maybe shaped like one, but nothing like any tree he knew because trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near; talk to if you wanted to as he frequently did since way back when he took the midday meal in the fields of Sweet Home. Always in the same place if he could, and choosing the place had been hard because Sweet Home had more pretty trees than any farm around. His choice he called Brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes, sometimes with Halle or the other
Pauls, but more often with Sixo, who was gentle then and still speaking English. Indigo with a flame-red tongue, Sixo experimented with night-cooked potatoes, trying to pin down exactly when to put smoking-hot rocks in a hole, potatoes on top, and cover the whole thing with twigs so that by the time they broke for the meal, hitched the animals, left the field and got to Brother, the potatoes would be at the peak of perfection. He might get up in the middle of the night, go all the way out there, start the earth-over by starlight; or he would make the stones less hot and put the next day's potatoes on them right after the meal. He never got it right, but they ate those undercooked, overcooked, dried-out or raw potatoes anyway, laughing, spitting and giving him advice. Time never worked the way Sixo thought, so of course he never got it right. Once he plotted down to the minute a thirty-mile trip to see a woman. He left on a Saturday when the moon was in the place he wanted it to be, arrived at her cabin before church on Sunday and had just enough time to say good morning before he had to start back again so he'd make the field call on time Monday morning. He had walked for seventeen hours, sat down for one, turned around and walked seventeen more. Halle and the Pauls spent the
whole day covering Sixo's fatigue from Mr. Garner. They ate no potatoes that day, sweet or white. Sprawled near Brother, his flame-red tongue hidden from them, his indigo face closed, Sixo slept through dinner like a corpse. Now there was a man, and that was a tree. Himself lying in the bed and the "tree" lying next to him didn't compare. Paul D looked through the window above his feet and folded his hands behind his head. An elbow grazed Sethe's shoulder. The touch of cloth on her skin startled her. She had forgotten he had not taken off his shirt. Dog, she thought, and then remembered that she had not allowed him the time for taking it off. Nor herself time to take off her petticoat, and considering she had begun undressing before she saw him on the porch, that her shoes and stockings were already in her hand and she had never put them back on; that he had looked at her wet bare feet and asked to join her; that when she rose to cook he had undressed her further; considering how quickly they had started getting naked, you'd think by now they would be. But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which
they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. She needed to get up from there, go downstairs and piece it all back together. This house he told her to leave as though a house was a little thing--a shirtwaist or a sewing basket you could walk off from or give away any old time. She who had never had one but this one; she who left a dirt floor to come to this one; she who had to bring a fistful of salsify into Mrs. Garner's kitchen every day just to be able to work in it, feel like some part of it was hers, because she wanted to love the work she did, to take the ugly out of it, and the only way she could feel at home on Sweet Home was if she picked some pretty growing thing and took it with her. The day she forgot was the day butter wouldn't come or the brine in the barrel blistered her arms. At least it seemed so. A few yellow flowers on the table, some myrtle tied around the handle of the flatiron holding the door open for a breeze calmed her, and when Mrs. Garner and she sat down to sort bristle, or make ink, she felt fine. Fine. Not scared of the men beyond. The five who slept in quarters near her, but never came in the night. Just touched their raggedy hats when they saw her and stared. And if she brought food to
them in the fields, bacon and bread wrapped in a piece of clean sheeting, they never took it from her hands. They stood back and waited for her to put it on the ground (at the foot of a tree) and leave. Either they did not want to take anything from her, or did not want her to see them eat. Twice or three times she lingered. Hidden behind honeysuckle she watched them. How different they were without her, how they laughed and played and urinated and sang. All but Sixo, who laughed once--at the very end. Halle, of course, was the nicest. Baby Suggs' eighth and last child, who rented himself out all over the county to buy her away from there. But he too, as it turned out, was nothing but a man. "A man ain't nothing but a man," said Baby Suggs. "But a son? Well now, that's somebody." It made sense for a lot of reasons because in all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby's eight children had six fathers. What she
called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children. Halle she was able to keep the longest. Twenty years. A lifetime. Given to her, no doubt, to make up for hearing that her two girls, neither of whom had their adult teeth, were sold and gone and she had not been able to wave goodbye. To make up for coupling with a straw boss for four months in exchange for keeping her third child, a boy, with her--only to have him traded for lumber in the spring of the next year and to find herself pregnant by the man who promised not to and did. That child she could not love and the rest she would not. "God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing. Sethe had the amazing luck of six whole years of marriage to that "somebody" son who had fathered every one of her children. A blessing she was reckless enough to take for granted, lean on, as though Sweet Home really was one. As though a handful of myrtle stuck in the handle of a pressing iron propped against the door in a whitewoman's kitchen could make it hers. As though mint sprig in the mouth
changed the breath as well as its odor. A bigger fool never lived. Sethe started to turn over on her stomach but changed her mind. She did not want to call Paul D's attention back to her, so she settled for crossing her ankles. But Paul D noticed the movement as well as the change in her breathing. He felt obliged to try again, slower this time, but the appetite was gone. Actually it was a good feeling--not wanting her. Twenty-five years and blip! The kind of thing Sixo would do--like the time he arranged a meeting with Patsy the Thirty-Mile Woman. It took three months and two thirty-four-mile round trips to do it. To persuade her to walk one-third of the way toward him, to a place he knew. A deserted stone structure that Redmen used way back when they thought the land was theirs. Sixo discovered it on one of his night creeps, and asked its permission to enter. Inside, having felt what it felt like, he asked the Redmen's Presence if he could bring his woman there. It said yes and Sixo painstakingly instructed her how to get there, exactly when to start out, how his
welcoming or warning whistles would sound. Since neither could go anywhere on business of their own, and since the Thirty-Mile Woman was already fourteen and scheduled for somebody's arms, the danger was real. When he arrived, she had not. He whistled and got no answer. He went into the Redmen's deserted lodge. She was not there. He returned to the meeting spot. She was not there. He waited longer. She still did not come. He grew frightened for her and walked down the road in the direction she should be coming from. Three or four miles, and he stopped. It was hopeless to go on that way, so he stood in the wind and asked for help. Listening close for some sign, he heard a whimper. He turned toward it, waited and heard it again. Uncautious now, he hollered her name. She answered in a voice that sounded like life to him--not death. "Not move!" he shouted. "Breathe hard I can find you." He did. She believed she was already at the meeting place and was crying because she thought he had not kept his promise. Now it was too late for the rendezvous to happen at the Redmen's house, so they dropped where they were. Later he punctured her calf to simulate snakebite so she could use it in some
way as an excuse for not being on time to shake worms from tobacco leaves. He gave her detailed directions about following the stream as a shortcut back, and saw her off. When he got to the road it was very light and he had his clothes in his hands. Suddenly from around a bend a wagon trundled toward him. Its driver, wide-eyed, raised a whip while the woman seated beside him covered her face. But Sixo had already melted into the woods before the lash could unfurl itself on his indigo behind. He told the story to Paul F, Halle, Paul A and Paul D in the peculiar way that made them cry- laugh. Sixo went among trees at night. For dancing, he said, to keep his bloodlines open, he said. Privately, alone, he did it. None of the rest of them had seen him at it, but they could imagine it, and the picture they pictured made them eager to laugh at him--in daylight, that is, when it was safe. But that was before he stopped speaking English because there was no future in it. Because of the Thirty-Mile Woman Sixo was the only one not paralyzed by yearning for Sethe. Nothing could be as good as the sex with her
Paul D had been imagining off and on for twenty-five years. His foolishness made him smile and think fondly of himself as he turned over on his side, facing her. Sethe's eyes were closed, her hair a mess. Looked at this way, minus the polished eyes, her face was not so attractive. So it must have been her eyes that kept him both guarded and stirred up. Without them her face was manageable--a face he could handle. Maybe if she would keep them closed like that... But no, there was her mouth. Nice. Halle never knew what he had. Although her eyes were closed, Sethe knew his gaze was on her face, and a paper picture of just how bad she must look raised itself up before her mind's eye. Still, there was no mockery coming from his gaze. Soft. It felt soft in a waiting kind of way. He was not judging her--or rather he was judging but not comparing her. Not since Halle had a man looked at her that way: not loving or passionate, but interested, as though he were examining an ear of corn for quality. Halle was more like a brother than a husband. His care suggested a family relationship rather than a man's laying claim. For years they saw each other in full daylight
only on Sundays. The rest of the time they spoke or touched or ate in darkness. Predawn darkness and the afterlight of sunset. So looking at each other intently was a Sunday morning pleasure and Halle examined her as though storing up what he saw in sunlight for the shadow he saw the rest of the week. And he had so little time. After his Sweet Home work and on Sunday afternoons was the debt work he owed for his mother. When he asked her to be his wife, Sethe happily agreed and then was stuck not knowing the next step. There should be a ceremony, shouldn't there? A preacher, some dancing, a party, a something. She and Mrs. Garner were the only women there, so she decided to ask her. "Halle and me want to be married, Mrs. Garner." "So I heard." She smiled. "He talked to Mr. Garner about it. Are you already expecting?" "No, ma'am."
you?" "Well, you will be. You know that, don't
"Yes, ma'am." "Halle's nice, Sethe. He'll be good to you." "But I mean we want to get married." "You just said so. And I said all right." "Is there a wedding?" Mrs. Garner put down her cooking spoon. Laughing a little, she touched Sethe on the head, saying, "You are one sweet child." And then no more. Sethe made a dress on the sly and Halle hung his hitching rope from a nail on the wall of her cabin. And there on top of a mattress on top of the dirt floor of the cabin they coupled for the third time, the first two having been in the tiny cornfield Mr. Garner kept because it was a crop animals could use as well as humans. Both Halle and Sethe were under the impression that they were hidden.
Scrunched down among the stalks they couldn't see anything, including the corn tops waving over their heads and visible to everyone else. Sethe smiled at her and Halle's stupidity. Even the crows knew and came to look. Uncrossing her ankles, she managed not to laugh aloud. The jump, thought Paul D, from a calf to a girl wasn't all that mighty. Not the leap Halle believed it would be. And taking her in the corn rather than her quarters, a yard away from the cabins of the others who had lost out, was a gesture of tenderness. Halle wanted privacy for her and got public display. Who could miss a ripple in a cornfield on a quiet cloudless day? He, Sixo and both of the Pauls sat under Brother pouring water from a gourd over their heads, and through eyes streaming with well water, they watched the confusion of tassels in the field below. It had been hard, hard, hard sitting there erect as dogs, watching corn stalks dance at noon. The water running over their heads made it worse. Paul D sighed and turned over. Sethe took the opportunity afforded by his movement to shift as well. Looking at Paul D's back, she
remembered that some of the corn stalks broke, folded down over Halle's back, and among the things her fingers clutched were husk and cornsilk hair. juice. How loose the silk. How jailed down the The jealous admiration of the watching men melted with the feast of new corn they allowed themselves that night. Plucked from the broken stalks that Mr. Garner could not doubt was the fault of the raccoon. Paul F wanted his roasted; Paul A wanted his boiled and now Paul D couldn't remember how finally they'd cooked those ears too young to eat. What he did remember was parting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to graze a single kernel. The pulling down of the tight sheath, the ripping sound always convinced her it hurt. As soon as one strip of husk was down, the rest obeyed and the ear yielded up to him its shy rows, exposed at last. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor ran free. No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
free. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and
DENVER'S SECRETS were sweet. Accompanied every time by wild veronica until she discovered cologne. The first bottle was a gift, the next she stole from her mother and hid among boxwood until it froze and cracked. That was the year winter came in a hurry at suppertime and stayed eight months. One of the War years when Miss Bodwin, the whitewoman, brought Christmas cologne for her mother and herself, oranges for the boys and another good wool shawl for Baby Suggs. Talking of a war full of dead people, she looked happy--flush-faced, and although her voice was heavy as a man's, she smelled like a roomful of flowers--excitement that Denver could have all for herself in the boxwood. Back beyond 1x4 was a narrow field that stopped itself at a wood. On the yonder side of these woods, a stream. In these woods, between the field and the stream, hidden by post oaks, five boxwood
bushes, planted in a ring, had started stretching toward each other four feet off the ground to form a round, empty room seven feet high, its walls fifty inches of murmuring leaves. Bent low, Denver could crawl into this room, and once there she could stand all the way up in emerald light. It began as a little girl's houseplay, but as her desires changed, so did the play. Quiet, primate and completely secret except for the noisome cologne signal that thrilled the rabbits before it confused them. First a playroom (where the silence was softer), then a refuge (from her brothers' fright), soon the place became the point. In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver's imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because loneliness wore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear, and salvation was as easy as a wish. Once when she was in the boxwood, an autumn long before Paul D moved into the house with her mother, she was made suddenly cold by a combination of wind and the perfume on her skin. She dressed herself, bent down to leave and
stood up in snowfall: a thin and whipping snow very like the picture her mother had painted as she described the circumstances of Denver's birth in a canoe straddled by a whitegirl for whom she was named. Shivering, Denver approached the house, regarding it, as she always did, as a person rather than a structure. A person that wept, sighed, trembled and fell into fits. Her steps and her gaze were the cautious ones of a child approaching a nervous, idle relative (someone dependent but proud). A breastplate of darkness hid all the windows except one. Its dim glow came from Baby Suggs' room. When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual. What was unusual (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the living activity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her mother's waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver remember the details of her birth--that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit of common flowers. The dress and her mother together looked like two friendly grown-up women--one (the dress) helping out the other.
And the magic of her birth, its miracle in fact, testified to that friendliness as did her own name. Easily she stepped into the told story that lay before her eyes on the path she followed away from the window. There was only one door to the house and to get to it from the back you had to walk all the way around to the front of 124, past the storeroom, past the cold house, the privy, the shed, on around to the porch. And to get to the part of the story she liked best, she had to start way back: hear the birds in the thick woods, the crunch of leaves underfoot; see her mother making her way up into the hills where no houses were likely to be. How Sethe was walking on two feet meant for standing still. How they were so swollen she could not see her arch or feel her ankles. Her leg shaft ended in a loaf of flesh scalloped by five toenails. But she could not, would not, stop, for when she did the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatient hooves. While she was walking, it seemed to graze, quietly--so she walked, on two feet meant, in this sixth month of pregnancy, for standing still. Still, near a kettle; still, at the churn; still, at the tub and ironing board. Milk, sticky and sour on her dress, attracted every small flying thing from gnats to grasshoppers.
By the time she reached the hill skirt she had long ago stopped waving them off. The clanging in her head, begun as a churchbell heard from a distance, was by then a tight cap of pealing bells around her ears. She sank and had to look down to see whether she was in a hole or kneeling. Nothing was alive but her nipples and the little antelope. Finally, she was horizontal--or must have been because blades of wild onion were scratching her temple and her cheek. Concerned as she was for the life of her children's mother, Sethe told Denver, she remembered thinking: "Well, at least I don't have to take another step." A dying thought if ever there was one, and she waited for the little antelope to protest, and why she thought of an antelope Sethe could not imagine since she had never seen one. She guessed it must have been an invention held on to from before Sweet Home, when she was very young. Of that place where she was born (Carolina maybe? or was it Louisiana?) she remembered only song and dance. Not even her own mother, who was pointed out to her by the eight-year-old child who watched over the young ones--pointed out as the one among many backs turned away from her, stooping in a watery field. Patiently Sethe waited for this particular back to gain the row's end and stand. What she saw was a cloth hat
as opposed to a straw one, singularity enough in that world of cooing women each of whom was called Ma'am. "Seth--thuh." "Ma'am." "Hold on to the baby." "Yes, Ma'am." "Seth--thuh." "Ma'am." "Get some kindlin in here." "Yes, Ma'am." Oh but when they sang. And oh but when they danced and sometimes they danced the antelope. The men as well as the ma'ams, one of whom was certainly her own. They shifted shapes and became something other. Some unchained, demanding other whose feet knew her pulse better than she did. Just like this one in her stomach. "I believe this baby's ma'am is gonna die in wild onions on the bloody side of the Ohio River." That's what was on her mind and what she told
Denver. Her exact words. And it didn't seem such a bad idea, all in all, in view of the step she would not have to take, but the thought of herself stretched out dead while the little antelope lived on--an hour? a day? a day and a night?--in her lifeless body grieved her so she made the groan that made the person walking on a path not ten yards away halt and stand right still. Sethe had not heard the walking, but suddenly she heard the standing still and then she smelled the hair. The voice, saying, "Who's in there?" was all she needed to know that she was about to be discovered by a white boy. That he too had mossy teeth, an appetite. That on a ridge of pine near the Ohio River, trying to get to her three children, one of whom was starving for the food she carried; that after her husband had disappeared; that after her milk had been stolen, her back pulped, her children orphaned, she was not to have an easeful death. No. She told Denver that a something came up out of the earth into her--like a freezing, but moving too, like jaws inside. "Look like I was just cold jaws grinding," she said. Suddenly she was eager for his eyes, to bite into them; to gnaw his cheek.
"I was hungry," she told Denver, "just as hungry as I could be for his eyes. I couldn't wait." So she raised up on her elbow and dragged herself, one pull, two, three, four, toward the young white voice talking about "Who that back in there?" " 'Come see,' I was thinking. 'Be the last thing you behold,' and sure enough here come the feet so I thought well that's where I'll have to start God do what He would, I'm gonna eat his feet off. I'm laughing now, but it's true. I wasn't just set to do it. I was hungry to do it. Like a snake. All jaws and hungry. "It wasn't no whiteboy at all. Was a girl. The raggediest-looking trash you ever saw saying, 'Look there. A nigger. If that don't beat all.' " And now the part Denver loved the best: Her name was Amy and she needed beef and pot liquor like nobody in this world. Arms like cane stalks and enough hair for four or five heads. Slow- moving eyes. She didn't look at anything quick. Talked so much it wasn't clear how she could breathe at the same time. And those
cane-stalk arms, as it turned out, were as strong as iron. "You 'bout the scariest-looking something I ever seen. What you doing back up in here?" Down in the grass, like the snake she believed she was, Sethe opened her mouth, and instead of fangs and a split tongue, out shot the truth. "Running," Sethe told her. It was the first word she had spoken all day and it came out thick because of her tender tongue. "Them the feet you running on? My Jesus my." She squatted down and stared at Sethe's feet. "You got anything on you, gal, pass for food?" "No." Sethe tried to shift to a sitting position but couldn t. "I like to die I'm so hungry." The girl moved her eyes slowly, examining the greenery around her. "Thought there'd be huckleberries. Look like it. That's why I come up in here. Didn't expect to find no nigger woman. If they was any, birds ate em. You like huckleberries?" "I'm having a baby, miss."
Amy looked at her. "That mean you don't have no appetite? Well I got to eat me something." Combing her hair with her fingers, she carefully surveyed the landscape once more. Satisfied nothing edible was around, she stood up to go and Sethe's heart stood up too at the thought of being left alone in the grass without a fang in her head. "Where you on your way to, miss?" She turned and looked at Sethe with freshly lit eyes. "Boston. Get me some velvet. It's a store there called Wilson. I seen the pictures of it and they have the prettiest velvet. They don't believe I'm a get it, but I am." Sethe nodded and shifted her elbow. "Your ma'am know you on the lookout for velvet?" The girl shook her hair out of her face. "My mama worked for these here people to pay for her passage. But then she had me and since she died right after, well, they said I had to work for em to pay it off. I did, but now I want me some velvet." They did not look directly at each other, not straight into the eyes anyway. Yet they
slipped effortlessly into yard chat about nothing in particular--except one lay on the ground. "Boston," said Sethe. "Is that far?" "Ooooh, yeah. A hundred miles. Maybe more." "Must be velvet closer by." "Not like in Boston. Boston got the best. Be so pretty on me. You ever touch it?" "No, miss. I never touched no velvet." Sethe didn't know if it was the voice, or Boston or velvet, but while the whitegirl talked, the baby slept. Not one butt or kick, so she guessed her luck had turned. "Ever see any?" she asked Sethe. "I bet you never even seen any." "If I did I didn't know it. What's it like, velvet?" Amy dragged her eyes over Sethe's face as though she would never give out so confidential a piece of information as that to a perfect stranger. "What they call you?" she asked.
However far she was from Sweet Home, there was no point in giving out her real name to the first person she saw. "Lu," said Sethe. "They call me Lu." "Well, Lu, velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth. The velvet I seen was brown, but in Boston they got all colors. Carmine. That means red but when you talk about velvet you got to say 'carmine.' " She raised her eyes to the sky and then, as though she had wasted enough time away from Boston, she moved off saying, "I gotta go." Picking her way through the brush she hollered back to Sethe, "What you gonna do, just lay there and foal?" "I can't get up from here," said Sethe. "What?" She stopped and turned to hear. "I said I can't get up." Amy drew her arm across her nose and came slowly back to where Sethe lay. "It's a house back yonder," she said. "A house?"
"Mmmmm. I passed it. Ain't no regular house with people in it though. A lean-to, kinda." "How far?" "Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you." "Well he may as well come on. I can't stand up let alone walk and God help me, miss, I can't crawl." "Sure you can, Lu. Come on," said Amy and, with a toss of hair enough for five heads, she moved toward the path. So she crawled and Amy walked alongside her, and when Sethe needed to rest, Amy stopped too and talked some more about Boston and velvet and good things to eat. The sound of that voice, like a sixteen-year-old boy's, going on and on and on, kept the little antelope quiet and grazing. During the whole hateful crawl to the lean to, it never bucked once. Nothing of Sethe's was intact by the time they reached it except the cloth that covered her hair. Below her bloody knees, there was no
feeling at all; her chest was two cushions of pins. It was the voice full of velvet and Boston and good things to eat that urged her along and made her think that maybe she wasn't, after all, just a crawling graveyard for a six-month baby's last hours. The lean-to was full of leaves, which Amy pushed into a pile for Sethe to lie on. Then she gathered rocks, covered them with more leaves and made Sethe put her feet on them, saying: "I know a woman had her feet cut off they was so swole." And she made sawing gestures with the blade of her hand across Sethe's ankles. "Zzz Zzz Zzz Zzz." "I used to be a good size. Nice arms and everything. Wouldn't think it, would you? That was before they put me in the root cellar. I was fishing off the Beaver once. Catfish in Beaver River sweet as chicken. Well I was just fishing there and a nigger floated right by me. I don't like drowned people, you? Your feet remind me of him. All swole like."
Then she did the magic: lifted Sethe's feet and legs and massaged them until she cried salt tears. "It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "Anything dead coming back to life hurts." A truth for all times, thought Denver. Maybe the white dress holding its arm around her mother's waist was in pain. If so, it could mean the baby ghost had plans. When she opened the door, Sethe was just leaving the keeping room. "I saw a white dress holding on to you," Denver said. "White? Maybe it was my bedding dress. Describe it to me." "Had a high neck. Whole mess of buttons coming down the back." "Buttons. Well, that lets out my bedding dress. I never had a button on nothing."
"Did Grandma Baby?" Sethe shook her head. "She couldn't handle them. Even on her shoes. What else?" "A bunch at the back. On the sit-down part." "A bustle? It had a bustle?" "I don't know what it's called." "Sort of gathered-like? Below the waist in the back?" "Um hm." "A rich lady's dress. Silk?" "Cotton, look like." "Lisle probably. White cotton lisle. You say it was holding on to me. How?" "Like you. It looked just like you. Kneeling next to you while you were praying. Had its arm around your waist." "Well, I'll be." "What were you praying for, Ma'am?"
"Not for anything. I don't pray anymore. I just talk." "What were you talking about?" "You won't understand, baby." "Yes, I will." "I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened." "Can other people see it?" asked Denver.
"Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it's you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It's when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. Where I was before I came here, that place is real. It's never going away. Even if the whole farm- -every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there--you who never was there--if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over--over and done with--it's going to always be there waiting for you. That's how come I had to get all my children out. No matter what." Denver picked at her fingernails. "If it's still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing ever dies."
Sethe looked right in Denver's face. "Nothing ever does," she said.
"You never told me all what happened. Just that they whipped you and you run off, pregnant. With me." "Nothing to tell except schoolteacher. He was a little man. Short. Always wore a collar, even in the fields. A schoolteacher, she said. That made her feel good that her husband's sister's husband had book learning and was willing to come farm Sweet Home after Mr. Garner passed. The men could have done it, even with Paul F sold. But it was like Halle said. She didn't want to be the only white person on the farm and a woman too. So she was satisfied when the schoolteacher agreed to come. He brought two boys with him. Sons or nephews. I don't know. They called him Onka and had pretty man ners, all of em. Talked soft and spit in handkerchiefs. Gentle in a lot of ways. You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face. A pretty good farmer, Halle said. Not strong as Mr. Garner but smart enough. He liked the ink I made. It was her recipe, but he preferred how I
mixed it and it was important to him because at night he sat down to write in his book. It was a book about us but we didn't know that right away. We just thought it was his manner to ask us questions. He commenced to carry round a notebook and write down what we said. I still think it was them questions that tore Sixo up. Tore him up for all time." She stopped. Denver knew that her mother was through with it--for now anyway. The single slow blink of her eyes; the bottom lip sliding up slowly to cover the top; and then a nostril sigh, like the snuff of a candle flame--signs that Sethe had reached the point beyond which she would not go. "Well, I think the baby got plans," said Denver. "What plans?" "I don't know, but the dress holding on to you got to mean something."
"Maybe," said Sethe. "Maybe it does have plans." Whatever they were or might have been, Paul D messed them up for good. With a table and a loud male voice he had rid 124 of its claim to local fame. Denver had taught herself to take pride in the condemnation Negroes heaped on them; the assumption that the haunting was done by an evil thing looking for more. None of them knew the downright pleasure of enchantment, of not suspecting but knowing the things behind things. Her brothers had known, but it scared them; Grandma Baby knew, but it saddened her. None could appreciate the safety of ghost company. Even Sethe didn't love it. She just took it for granted--like a sudden change in the weather. But it was gone now. Whooshed away in the blast of a hazelnut man's shout, leaving Denver's world flat, mostly, with the exception of an emerald closet standing seven feet high in the woods. Her mother had secrets--things she wouldn't tell; things she halfway told. Well, Denver had them too. And hers were sweet--sweet as lily-of-the-valley cologne.
Sethe had given little thought to the white dress until Paul D came, and then she remembered Denver's interpretation: plans. The morning after the first night with Paul D, Sethe smiled just thinking about what the word could mean. It was a luxury she had not had in eighteen years and only that once. Before and since, all her effort was directed not on avoiding pain but on getting through it as quickly as possible. The one set of plans she had made--getting away from Sweet Home--went awry so completely she never dared life by making more. Yet the morning she woke up next to Paul D, the word her daughter had used a few years ago did cross her mind and she thought about what Denver had seen kneeling next to her, and thought also of the temptation to trust and remember that gripped her as she stood before the cooking stove in his arms. Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something? She couldn't think clearly, lying next to him listening to his breathing, so carefully, carefully, she had left the bed.
Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There wasn't any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout. The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black, brown and gray wool--the full range of the dark and the muted that thrift and modesty allowed. In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild--like life in the raw. Sethe looked at her hands, her bottle-green sleeves, and thought how little color there was in the house and how strange that she had not missed it the way Baby did. Deliberate, she thought, it must be deliberate, because the last color she remembered was the pink chips in the headstone of her baby girl. After that she became as color conscious as a hen. Every dawn she worked at fruit pies, potato dishes and vegetables while the cook did the soup, meat and all the rest. And she could not remember remembering a molly apple or a yellow squash. Every dawn she saw the dawn, but never
acknowledged or remarked its color. There was something wrong with that. It was as though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it. 124 was so full of strong feeling perhaps she was oblivious to the loss of anything at all. There was a time when she scanned the fields every morning and every evening for her boys. When she stood at the open window, unmindful of flies, her head cocked to her left shoulder, her eyes searching to the right for them. Cloud shadow on the road, an old woman, a wandering goat untethered and gnawing bramble--each one looked at first like Howard--no, Buglar. Little by little she stopped and their thirteen- year-old faces faded completely into their baby ones, which came to her only in sleep. When her dreams roamed outside 124, anywhere they wished, she saw them sometimes in beautiful trees, their little legs barely visible in the leaves. Sometimes they ran along the railroad track laughing, too loud, apparently, to hear her because they never did turn around. When she woke the house crowded in on her: there was the door where the soda crackers were lined up in a row; the white stairs her baby girl loved to
climb; the corner where Baby Suggs mended shoes, a pile of which were still in the cold room; the exact place on the stove where Denver burned her fingers. And of course the spite of the house itself. There was no room for any other thing or body until Paul D arrived and broke up the place, making room, shifting it, moving it over to someplace else, then standing in the place he had made. So, kneeling in the keeping room the morning after Paul D came, she was distracted by the two orange squares that signaled how barren 124 really was. He was responsible for that. Emotions sped to the surface in his company. Things became what they were: drabness looked drab; heat was hot. Windows suddenly had view. And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.
Little rice, little bean, No meat in between. Hard work ain't easy, Dry bread ain't greasy
He was up now and singing as he mended things he had broken the day before. Some old pieces of song he'd learned on the prison farm or in the War afterward. Nothing like what they sang at Sweet Home, where yearning fashioned every note. The songs he knew from Georgia were flat-headed nails for pounding and pounding and pounding. Lay my bead on the railroad line, Train come along, pacify my mind. If I had my weight in lime, I'd whip my captain till he went stone blind.
Five-cent nickel, Ten-cent dime, Busting rocks is busting time.
But they didn't fit, these songs. They were too loud, had too much power for the little house chores he was engaged in--resetting table legs; glazing.
He couldn't go back to "Storm upon the Waters" that they sang under the trees of Sweet Home, so he contented himself with mmmmmmmmm, throwing in a line if one occurred to him, and what occurred over and over was "Bare feet and chamomile sap,/ Took off my shoes; took off my hat." It was tempting to change the words (Gimme back my shoes; gimme back my hat), because he didn't believe he could live with a woman--any woman--for over two out of three months. That was about as long as he could abide one place. After Delaware and before that Alfred, Georgia, where he slept underground and crawled into sunlight for the sole purpose of breaking rock, walking off when he got ready was the only way he could convince himself that he would no longer have to sleep, pee, eat or swing a sledge hammer in chains. But this was not a normal woman in a normal house. As soon as he had stepped through the red light he knew that, compared to 124, the rest of the world was bald. After Alfred he had shut down a generous portion of his head, operating on the part that helped him walk, eat, sleep, sing. If he could do those things--with a little work and a little sex thrown
in--he asked for no more, for more required him to dwell on Halle's face and Sixo laughing. To recall trembling in a box built into the ground. Grateful for the daylight spent doing mule work in a quarry because he did not tremble when he had a hammer in his hands. The box had done what Sweet Home had not, what working like an ass and living like a dog had not: drove him crazy so he would not lose his mind. By the time he got to Ohio, then to Cincinnati, then to Halle Suggs' mother's house, he thought he had seen and felt it all. Even now as he put back the window frame he had smashed, he could not account for the pleasure in his surprise at seeing Halle's wife alive, barefoot with uncovered hair- walking around the corner of the house with her shoes and stockings in her hands. The closed portion of his head opened like a greased lock. "I was thinking of looking for work around here. What you think?" "Ain't much. River mostly. And hogs." "Well, I never worked on water, but I can pick up anything heavy as me, hogs
included." "Whitepeople better here than Kentucky but you may have to scramble some." "It ain't whether I scramble; it's where. You saying it's all right to scramble here?" "Better than all right." "Your girl, Denver. Seems to me she's of a different mind." "Why you say that?" "She's got a waiting way about her. Something she's expecting and it ain't me." "I don't know what it could be." "Well, whatever it is, she believes I'm interrupting it." "Don't worry about her. She's a charmed child. From the beginning." "Is that right?" "Uh huh. Nothing bad can happen to her. Look at it. Everybody I knew dead or gone or dead and gone. Not her. Not my Denver.
Even when I was carrying her, when it got clear that I wasn't going to make it--which meant she wasn't going to make it either--she pulled a whitegirl out of the hill. The last thing you'd expect to help. And when the schoolteacher found us and came busting in here with the law and a shotgun--" "Schoolteacher found you?" "Took a while, but he did. Finally." "And he didn't take you back?" "Oh, no. I wasn't going back there. I don't care who found who. Any life but not that one. I went to jail instead. Denver was just a baby so she went right along with me. Rats bit everything in there but her." Paul D turned away. He wanted to know more about it, but jail talk put him back in Alfred, Georgia. "I need some nails. Anybody around here I can borrow from or should I go to town?" "May as well go to town. You'll need other things."
One night and they were talking like a couple. They had skipped love and promise and went directly to "You saying it's all right to scramble here?" To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The "better life" she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one. The fact that Paul D had come out of "that other one" into her bed was better too; and the notion of a future with him, or for that matter without him, was beginning to stroke her mind. As for Denver, the job Sethe had of keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her was all that mattered.
PLEASANTLY TROUBLED, Sethe avoided the keeping room and Denver's sidelong looks. As she expected, since life was like that--it didn't do any good. Denver ran a mighty interference and on the third day flat- out asked Paul D how long he was going to hang around.
The phrase hurt him so much he missed the table. The coffee cup hit the floor and rolled down the sloping boards toward the front door. "Hang around?" Paul D didn't even look at the mess he had made. "Denver! What's got into you?" Sethe looked at her daughter, feeling more embarrassed than angry. Paul D scratched the hair on his chin. "Maybe I should make tracks." "No!" Sethe was surprised by how loud she said
must not know what you need either. I don't want to hear another word out of you." "I just asked if--" "Hush! You make tracks. Go somewhere and sit down." Denver picked up her plate and left the table but not before adding a chicken back and more bread to the heap she was carrying away. Paul D leaned over to wipe the spilled coffee with his blue handkerchief.
"I'll get that." Sethe jumped up and went to the stove. Behind it various cloths hung, each in some stage of drying. In silence she wiped the floor and retrieved the cup. Then she poured him another cupful, and set it carefully before him. Paul D touched its rim but didn't say anything--as though even "thank you" was an obligation he could not meet and the coffee itself a gift he could not take. Sethe resumed her chair and the silence continued. Finally she realized that if it was going to be broken she would have to do it. "I didn't train her like that." Paul D stroked the rim of the cup. "And I'm as surprised by her manners as you are hurt by em." Paul D looked at Sethe. "Is there history to her question?" "History? What you mean?" "I mean, did she have to ask that, or want to ask it, of anybody else before me?"
Sethe made two fists and placed them on her hips. "You as bad as she is." "Come on, Sethe." "Oh, I am coming on. I am!" "You know what I mean." "I do and I don't like it." "Jesus," he whispered. "Who?" Sethe was getting loud again. "Jesus! I said Jesus! All I did was sit down for supper! and I get cussed out twice. Once for being here and once for asking why I was cussed in the first place!" "She didn't cuss." "No? Felt like it." "Look here. I apologize for her. I'm real-- " "You can't do that. You can't apologize for nobody. She got to do that." "Then I'll see that she does." Sethe sighed.
"What I want to know is, is she asking a question that's on your mind too?" "Oh no. No, Paul D. Oh no." "Then she's of one mind and you another? If you can call what ever's in her head a mind, that is."
"Excuse me, but I can't hear a word against her. I'll chastise her. You leave her alone." Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one. "Why?" he asked her. "Why you think you have to take up for her? Apologize for her? She's grown." "I don't care what she is. Grown don't mean nothing to a mother.
A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing." "It means she has to take it if she acts up. You can't protect her every minute. What's going to happen when you die?" "Nothing! I'll protect her while I'm live and I'll protect her when I ain't." "Oh well, I'm through," he said. "I quit." "That's the way it is, Paul D. I can't explain it to you no better than that, but that's the way it is. If I have to choose--well, it's not even a choice." "That's the point. The whole point. I'm not asking you to choose. Nobody would. I thought--well, I thought you could--there was some space for me." "She's asking me." "You can't go by that. You got to say it to her. Tell her it's not about choosing somebody over her--it's making space for somebody along with her. You got to say it. And if you say it and mean it, then you also got to know you can't gag
"Maybe I should leave things the way they are," she said. "How are they?" "We get along." "What about inside?" "I don't go inside." "Sethe, if I'm here with you, with Denver, you can go anywhere you want. Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you "fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I'm not saying this because I need a place to stay. That's the last thing I need. I told you, I'm a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain't got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn't the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life."
"I don't know. I don't know." "Leave it to me. See how it goes. No promises, if you don't want to make any. Just see how it goes. All right?" "All right." "You willing to leave it to me?" "Well--some of it." "Some?" he smiled. "Okay. Here's some. There's a carnival in town. Thursday, tomorrow, is for coloreds and I got two dollars. Me and you and Denver gonna spend every penny of it. What you say?" "No" is what she said. At least what she started out saying (what would her boss say if she took a day off?), but even when she said it she was thinking how much her eyes enjoyed looking in his face. The crickets were screaming on Thursday and the sky, stripped of blue, was white hot at eleven in the morning. Sethe was badly dressed for the heat, but this being her first social outing in eighteen years, she felt obliged to wear her one good dress, heavy as it was, and a hat. Certainly a hat. She didn't want to meet Lady
Jones or Ella with her head wrapped like she was going to work. The dress, a good- wool castoff, was a Christmas present to Baby Suggs from Miss Bodwin, the whitewoman who loved her. Denver and Paul D fared better in the heat since neither felt the occasion required special clothing. Denver's bonnet knocked against her shoulder blades; Paul D wore his vest open, no jacket and his shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows. They were not holding hands, but their shadows were. Sethe looked to her left and all three of them were gliding over the dust holding hands. Maybe he was right. A life. Watching their hand holding shadows, she was embarrassed at being dressed for church. The others, ahead and behind them, would think she was putting on airs, letting them know that she was different because she lived in a house with two stories; tougher, because she could do and survive things they believed she should neither do nor survive. She was glad Denver had resisted her urgings to dress up--rebraid her hair at least. But Denver was not doing anything to make this trip a pleasure. She agreed to go--sullenly--but her attitude was "Go 'head. Try
and make me happy." The happy one was Paul
Nobody noticed but Sethe and she stopped looking after she decided that it was a good sign. A life. Could be. Up and down the lumberyard fence old roses were dying. The sawyer who had planted them twelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel--something to take the sin out of slicing trees for a living--was amazed by their abundance; how rapidly they crawled all over the stake-and-post fence that separated the lumberyard from the open field next to it where homeless men slept, children ran and, once a year, carnival people pitched tents. The closer the roses got to death, the louder their scent,
and everybody who attended the carnival associated it with the stench of the rotten roses. It made them a little dizzy and very thirsty but did nothing to extinguish the eagerness of the coloredpeople filing down the road. Some walked on the grassy shoulders, others dodged the wagons creaking down the road's dusty center. All, like Paul D, were in high spirits, which the smell of dying roses (that Paul D called to everybody's attention) could not dampen. As they pressed to get to the rope entrance they were lit like lamps. Breathless with the excitement of seeing white people loose: doing magic, clowning, without heads or with two heads, twenty feet tall or two feet tall, weighing a ton, completely tattooed, eating glass, swallowing fire, spitting ribbons, twisted into knots, forming pyramids, playing with snakes and beating each other up. All of this was advertisement, read by those who could and heard by those who could not, and the fact that none of it was true did not extinguish their appetite a bit. The barker called them and their children names ("Pickaninnies free!") but the food on his vest and the hole in his pants rendered it fairly harmless. In any case it was a small price to pay for the fun they might
not ever have again. Two pennies and an insult were well spent if it meant seeing the spectacle of whitefolks making a spectacle of themselves. So, although the carnival was a lot less than mediocre (which is why it agreed to a Colored Thursday), it gave the four hundred black people in its audience thrill upon thrill upon thrill. One-Ton Lady spit at them, but her bulk shortened her aim and they got a big kick out of the helpless meanness in her little eyes. Arabian Nights Dancer cut her performance to three minutes instead of the usual fifteen she normally did-earning the gratitude of the children, who could hardly wait for Abu Snake Charmer, who followed her. Denver bought horehound, licorice, peppermint and lemonade at a table manned by a little whitegirl in ladies' high-topped shoes. Soothed by sugar, surrounded by a crowd of people who did not find her the main attraction, who, in fact, said, "Hey, Denver," every now and then, pleased her enough to consider the possibility that Paul D wasn't all that bad. In fact there was something about him-- when the three of them stood together watching Midget dance--that made the stares of other Negroes
kind, gentle, something Denver did not remember seeing in their faces. Several even nodded and smiled at her mother, no one, apparently, able to withstand sharing the pleasure Paul D. was having. He slapped his knees when Giant danced with Midget; when Two-Headed Man talked to himself. He bought everything Denver asked for and much she did not. He teased Sethe into tents she was reluctant to enter. Stuck pieces of candy she didn't want between her lips. When Wild African Savage shook his bars and said wa wa, Paul D told everybody he knew him back in Roanoke. Paul D made a few acquaintances; spoke to them about what work he might find. Sethe returned the smiles she got. Denver was swaying with delight. And on the way home, although leading them now, the shadows of three people still held hands. A FULLY DRESSED woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat. Everything hurt but her lungs most of all.
Sopping wet and breathing shallow she spent those hours trying to negotiate the weight of her eyelids. The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wind wrinkled it. Nobody saw her emerge or came accidentally by. If they had, chances are they would have hesitated before approaching her. Not because she was wet, or dozing or had what sounded like asthma, but because amid all that she was smiling. It took her the whole of the next morning to lift herself from the ground and make her way through the woods past a giant temple of boxwood to the field and then the yard of the slate-gray house. Exhausted again, she sat down on the first handy place--a stump not far from the steps of
Her neck, its circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer, kept bending and her chin brushed the bit of lace edging her dress. Women who drink champagne when there is nothing to celebrate can look like that: their straw hats with broken brims are often askew; they nod in public places; their shoes are undone. But their
skin is not like that of the woman breathing near the steps of 124. She had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands. By late afternoon when the carnival was over, and the Negroes were hitching rides home if they were lucky--walking if they were not--the woman had fallen asleep again. The rays of the sun struck her full in the face, so that when Sethe, Denver and Paul D rounded the curve in the road all they saw was a black dress, two unlaced shoes below it, and Here Boy nowhere in sight. "Look," said Denver. "What is that?" And, for some reason she could not immediately account for, the moment she got close enough to see the face, Sethe's bladder filled to capacity. She said, "Oh, excuse me," and ran around to the back of 124. Not since she was a baby girl, being cared for by the eight year-old girl who pointed out her mother to her, had she had an emergency that unmanageable. She never made the outhouse. Right in front of its door she had to lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless. Like a horse, she thought, but as it went on and on she thought, No, more like flooding the boat when Denver was born. So
much water Amy said, "Hold on, Lu. You going to sink us you keep that up." But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping now. She hoped Paul D wouldn't take it upon himself to come looking for her and be obliged to see her squatting in front of her own privy making a mudhole too deep to be witnessed without shame. Just about the time she started wondering if the carnival would accept another freak, it stopped. She tidied herself and ran around to the porch. No one was there. All three were insidePaul D and Denver standing before the stranger, watching her drink cup after cup of water. "She said she was thirsty," said Paul D. He took off his cap. "Mighty thirsty look like." The woman gulped water from a speckled tin cup and held it out for more. Four times Denver filled it, and four times the woman drank as though she had crossed a desert. When she was finished a little water was on her chin, but she did not wipe it away. Instead she gazed at Sethe with sleepy eyes. Poorly fed, thought Sethe, and younger than her clothes suggested--good lace at the throat, and a rich
woman's hat. Her skin was flawless except for three vertical scratches on her forehead so fine and thin they seemed at first like hair, baby hair before it bloomed and roped into the masses of black yarn under her hat. "You from around here?" Sethe asked her. She shook her head no and reached down to take off her shoes. She pulled her dress up to the knees and rolled down her stockings. When the hosiery was tucked into the shoes, Sethe saw that her feet were like her hands, soft and new. She must have hitched a wagon ride, thought Sethe. Probably one of those West Virginia girls looking for something to beat a life of tobacco and sorghum. Sethe bent to pick up the shoes. "What might your name be?" asked Paul D. "Beloved," she said, and her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two. They heard the voice first—later the name. "Beloved. You use a last name, Beloved?" Paul D asked her.
"Last?" She seemed puzzled. Then "No," and she spelled it for them, slowly as though the letters were being formed as she spoke them. Sethe dropped the shoes; Denver sat down and Paul D smiled. He recognized the careful enunciation of letters by those, like himself, who could not read but had memorized the letters of their name. He was about to ask who her people were but thought better of it. A young coloredwoman drifting was drifting from ruin. He had been in Rochester four years ago and seen five women arriving with fourteen female children. All their men--brothers, uncles, fathers, husbands, sons--had been picked off one by one by one. They had a single piece of paper directing them to a preacher on DeVore Street. The War had been over four or five years then, but nobody white or black seemed to know it. Odd clusters and strays of Negroes wandered the back roads and cowpaths from Schenectady to Jackson. Dazed but insistent, they searched each other out for word of a cousin, an aunt, a friend who once said, "Call on me. Anytime you get near Chicago, just call on me." Some of them were
running from family that could not support them, some to family; some were running from dead crops, dead kin, life threats, and took-over land. Boys younger than Buglar and Howard; configurations and blends of families of women and children, while elsewhere, solitary, hunted and hunting for, were men, men, men. Forbidden public transportation, chased by debt and filthy "talking sheets," they followed secondary routes, scanned the horizon for signs and counted heavily on each other. Silent, except for social courtesies, when they met one another they neither described nor asked about the sorrow that drove them from one place to another. The whites didn't bear speaking on. Everybody knew. So he did not press the young woman with the broken hat about where from or how come. If she wanted them to know and was strong enough to get through the telling, she would. What occupied them at the moment was what it might be that she needed. Underneath the major question, each harbored another. Paul D wondered at the newness of her shoes. Sethe was deeply touched by her sweet name; the remembrance of glittering headstone made her feel especially kindly toward her. Denver,
however, was shaking. She looked at this sleepy beauty and wanted more. Sethe hung her hat on a peg and turned graciously toward the girl. "That's a pretty name, Beloved. Take off your hat, why don't you, and I'll make us something. We just got back from the carnival over near Cincinnati. Everything in there is something to see." Bolt upright in the chair, in the middle of Sethe's welcome, Beloved had fallen asleep again. "Miss. Miss." Paul D shook her gently. "You want to lay down a spell?" She opened her eyes to slits and stood up on her soft new feet which, barely capable of their job, slowly bore her to the keeping room. Once there, she collapsed on Baby Suggs' bed. Denver removed her hat and put the quilt with two squares of color over her feet. She was breathing like a steam engine. "Sounds like croup," said Paul D, closing the door. "Is she feverish? Denver, could you tell?" "No. She's cold."
"Then she is. Fever goes from hot to cold." "Could have the cholera," said Paul D. "Reckon?" "All that water. Sure sign." "Poor thing. And nothing in this house to give her for it. She'll just have to ride it out. That's a hateful sickness if ever there was one." "She's not sick!" said Denver, and the passion in her voice made them smile. Four days she slept, waking and sitting up only for water. Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence. She rinsed the sheets secretly, after Sethe went to the restaurant and Paul D went scrounging for barges to help unload. She boiled the underwear and soaked it in bluing, praying the fever would pass without damage. So intent was her nursing, she forgot to eat or visit the emerald closet. "Beloved?" Denver would whisper. "Beloved?" and when the black eyes opened a
slice all she could say was "I'm here. I'm still here." Sometimes, when Beloved lay dreamy-eyed for a very long time, saying nothing, licking her lips and heaving deep sighs, Denver panicked. "What is it?" she would ask. "Heavy," murmured Beloved. "This place is heavy." "Would you like to sit up?" "No," said the raspy voice. It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness of the quilt. Denver was pleased because it kept her patient awake longer. She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them. An effort that quickly exhausted her, so Denver rearranged the quilt so its cheeriest part was in the sick girl's sight line. Patience, something Denver had never known, overtook her. As long as her mother did not interfere, she was a model of
compassion, turning waspish, though, when Sethe tried to help. "Did she take a spoonful of anything today?" Sethe inquired. "She shouldn't eat with cholera." "You sure that's it? Was just a hunch of Paul
D's." "I don't know, but she shouldn't eat anyway
just yet." "I think cholera people puke all the time." "That's even more reason, ain't it?" "Well she shouldn't starve to death either, Denver." "Leave us alone, Ma'am. I'm taking care of
her." "She say anything?" "I'd let you know if she did."
Sethe looked at her daughter and thought, Yes, she has been lonesome. Very lonesome. "Wonder where Here Boy got off to?" Sethe thought a change of subject was needed. "He won't be back," said Denver. "How you know?" "I just know." Denver took a square of sweet bread off the plate. Back in the keeping room, Denver was about to sit down when Beloved's eyes flew wide open. Denver felt her heart race. It wasn't that she was looking at that face for the first time with no trace of sleep in it, or that the eyes were big and black. Nor was it that the whites of them were much too white-blue-white. It was that deep down in those big black eyes there was no expression at all. "Can I get you something?" Beloved looked at the sweet bread in Denver's hands and Denver held it out to her. She smiled then and Denver's heart stopped bouncing
and sat down—relieved and easeful like a traveler who had made it home. From that moment and through everything that followed, sugar could always be counted on to please her. It was as though sweet things were what she was born for. Honey as well as the wax it came in, sugar sandwiches, the sludgy molasses gone hard and brutal in the can, lemonade, taffy and any type of dessert Sethe brought home from the restaurant. She gnawed a cane stick to flax and kept the strings in her mouth long after the syrup had been sucked away. Denver laughed, Sethe smiled and Paul D said it made him sick to his stomach. Sethe believed it was a recovering body's need—after an illness-- for quick strength. But it was a need that went on and on into glowing health because Beloved didn't go anywhere. There didn't seem anyplace for her to go. She didn't mention one, or have much of an idea of what she was doing in that part of the country or where she had been. They believed the fever had caused her memory to fail just as it kept her slow-moving. A young woman, about nineteen or twenty, and slender, she moved like a heavier one or an older one, holding on to furniture, resting
her head in the palm of her hand as though it was too heavy for a neck alone. "You just gonna feed her? From now on?" Paul D, feeling ungenerous, and surprised by it, heard the irritability in his voice. "Denver likes her. She's no real trouble. I thought we'd wait till her breath was better. She still sounds a little lumbar to me." "Something funny 'bout that gal," Paul D said, mostly to himself. "Funny how?" "Acts sick, sounds sick, but she don't look sick. Good skin, bright eyes and strong as a bull." "She's not strong. She can hardly walk without holding on to something." "That's what I mean. Can't walk, but I seen her pick up the rocker with one hand." "You didn't."
"Don't tell me. Ask Denver. She was right there with her." "Denver! Come in here a minute." Denver stopped rinsing the porch and stuck her head in the window. "Paul D says you and him saw Beloved pick up the rocking chair single-handed. That so?" Long, heavy lashes made Denver's eyes seem busier than they were; deceptive, even when she held a steady gaze as she did now on Paul D. "No," she said. "I didn't see no such thing." Paul D frowned but said nothing. If there had been an open latch between them, it would have closed.
RAINWATER held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe. Stooping to shake the damper, or snapping sticks for kindlin, Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by
Beloved's eyes. Like a familiar, she hovered, never leaving the room Sethe was in unless required and told to. She rose early in the dark to be there, waiting, in the kitchen when Sethe came down to make fast bread before she left for work. In lamplight, and over the flames of the cooking stove, their two shadows clashed and crossed on the ceiling like black swords. She was in the window at two when Sethe returned, or the doorway; then the porch, its steps, the path, the road, till finally, surrendering to the habit, Beloved began inching down Bluestone Road further and further each day to meet Sethe and walk her back to 124. It was as though every afternoon she doubted anew the older woman's return. Sethe was flattered by Beloved's open, quiet devotion. The same adoration from her daughter (had it been forthcoming) would have annoyed her; made her chill at the thought of having raised a ridiculously dependent child. But the company of this sweet, if peculiar, guest pleased her the way a zealot pleases his teacher. Time came when lamps had to be lit early because night arrived sooner and sooner. Sethe was leaving for work in the dark; Paul D
was walking home in it. On one such evening dark and cool, Sethe cut a rutabaga into four pieces and left them stewing. She gave Denver a half peck of peas to sort and soak overnight. Then she sat herself down to rest. The heat of the stove made her drowsy and she was sliding into sleep when she felt Beloved touch her. A touch no heavier than a feather but loaded, nevertheless, with desire. Sethe stirred and looked around. First at Beloved's soft new hand on her shoulder, then into her eyes. The longing she saw there was bottomless. Some plea barely in control. Sethe patted Beloved's fingers and glanced at Denver, whose eyes were fixed on her pea-sorting task. "Where your diamonds?" Beloved searched Sethe's face. "Diamonds? What would I be doing with diamonds?" "On your ears." "Wish I did. I had some crystal once. A present from a lady I worked for."
"Tell me," said Beloved, smiling a wide happy smile. "Tell me your diamonds." It became a way to feed her. Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on Beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost. She and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying so that it was unspeakable; to Denver's inquiries Sethe gave short replies or rambling incomplete reveries. Even with Paul D, who had shared some of it and to whom she could talk with at least a measure of calm, the hurt was always there-like a tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left. But, as she began telling about the earrings, she found herself wanting to, liking it. Perhaps it was Beloved's distance from the events itself, or her thirst for hearing it—in any case it was an unexpected pleasure.
Above the patter of the pea sorting and the sharp odor of cooking rutabaga, Sethe explained the crystal that once hung from her ears. "That lady I worked for in Kentucky gave them to me when I got married. What they called married hack there and back then. I guess she saw how bad I felt when I found out there wasn't going to be no ceremony, no preacher. Nothing. I thought there should be something--something to say it was right and true. I didn't want it to be just me moving over a bit of pallet full of corn husks. Or just me bringing my night bucket into his cabin. I thought there should be some ceremony. Dancing maybe. A little sweet william in my hair." Sethe smiled. "I never saw a wedding, but I saw Mrs. Garner's wedding gown in the press, and heard her go on about what it was like. Two pounds of currants in the cake, she said, and four whole sheep. The people were still eating the next day. That's what I wanted. A meal maybe, where me and Halle and all the Sweet Home men sat down and ate something special. Invite some of the other colored people from over by Covington or High Trees--those places Sixo used to sneak off to. But it wasn't going to be nothing. They said it was all right for us to be husband and wife and that was it. All of it.
"Well, I made up my mind to have at the least a dress that wasn't the sacking I worked in. So I took to stealing fabric, and wound up with a dress you wouldn't believe. The top was from two pillow cases in her mending basket. The front of the skirt was a dresser scarf a candle fell on and burnt a hole in, and one of her old sashes we used to test the flatiron on. Now the back was a problem for the longest time. Seem like I couldn't find a thing that wouldn't be missed right away. Because I had to take it apart afterwards and put all the pieces back where they were. Now Halle was patient, waiting for me to finish it. He knew I wouldn't go ahead without having it. Finally I took the mosquito netting from a nail out the barn. We used it to strain jelly through. I washed it and soaked it best I could and tacked it on for the back of the skirt. And there I was, in the worst-looking gown you could imagine. Only my wool shawl kept me from looking like a haint peddling. I wasn't but fourteen years old, so I reckon that's why I was so proud of myself. "Anyhow, Mrs. Garner must have seen me in it. I thought I was stealing smart, and she knew everything I did. Even our honeymoon:
going down to the cornfield with Halle. That's where we went first. A Saturday afternoon it was. He begged sick so he wouldn't have to go work in town that day. Usually he worked Saturdays and Sundays to pay off Baby Suggs' freedom. But he begged sick and I put on my dress and we walked into the corn holding hands. I can still smell the ears roasting yonder where the Pauls and Sixo was. Next day Mrs. Garner crooked her finger at me and took me upstairs to her bedroom. She opened up a wooden box and took out a pair of crystal earrings. She said, 'I want you to have these, Sethe.' I said, 'Yes, ma'am.' 'Are your ears pierced?' she said. I said, 'No, ma'am.' 'Well do it,' she said, 'so you can wear them. I want you to have them and I want you and Halle to be happy.' I thanked her but I never did put them on till I got away from there. One day after I walked into this here house Baby Suggs unknotted my underskirt and took em out. I sat right here by the stove with Denver in my arms and let her punch holes in my ears for to wear them." "I never saw you in no earrings," said Denver. "Where are they now?"
"Gone," said Sethe. "Long gone," and she wouldn't say another word. Until the next time when all three of them ran through the wind back into the house with rainsoaked sheets and petticoats. Panting, laughing, they draped the laundry over the chairs and table. Beloved filled herself with water from the bucket and watched while Sethe rubbed Denver's hair with a piece of toweling. "Maybe we should unbraid it?" asked Sethe. "Oh uh. Tomorrow." Denver crouched forward at the thought of a fine-tooth comb pulling her hair.
"Today is always here," said Sethe. "Tomorrow, never." "It hurts," Denver said. "Comb it every day, it won't." "Ouch."
"Your woman she never fix up your hair?" Beloved asked. Sethe and Denver looked up at her. After four weeks they still had not got used to the gravelly voice and the song that seemed to lie in it. Just outside music it lay, with a cadence not like theirs. "Your woman she never fix up your hair?" was clearly a question for sethe, since that's who she was looking at. "My woman? You mean my mother? If she did, I don't remember. I didn't see her but a few times out in the fields and once when she was working indigo. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was in line. If the moon was bright they worked by its light. Sunday she slept like a stick. She must of nursed me two or three weeks--that's the way the others did. Then she went back in rice and I sucked from another woman whose job it was. So to answer you, no. I reckon not. She never fixed my hair nor nothing. She didn't even sleep in the same cabin most nights I remember. Too far from the line-up, I guess. One thing she did do. She picked me up and carried me behind the smokehouse. Back there she opened up her
dress front and lifted her breast and pointed under it. Right on her rib was a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. She said, 'This is your ma'am. This,' and she pointed. 'I am the only one got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me and you can't tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark.' Scared me so. All I could think of was how important this was and how I needed to have something important to say back, but I couldn't think of anything so I just said what I thought. 'Yes, Ma'am,' I said. 'But how will you know me? How will you know me? Mark me, too,' I said. 'Mark the mark on me too.'" Sethe chuckled. "Did she?" asked Denver. "She slapped my face." "What for?" "I didn't understand it then. Not till I had a mark of my own." "What happened to her?"
"Hung. By the time they cut her down nobody could tell whether she had a circle and a cross or not, least of all me and I did look." Sethe gathered hair from the comb and leaning back tossed it into the fire. It exploded into stars and the smell infuriated them. "Oh, my Jesus," she said and stood up so suddenly the comb she had parked in Denver's hair fell to the floor. "Ma'am? What's the matter with you, Ma'am?" Sethe walked over to a chair, lifted a sheet and stretched it as wide as her arms would go. Then she folded, refolded and double folded it. She took another. Neither was completely dry but the folding felt too fine to stop. She had to do something with her hands because she was remembering something she had forgotten she knew. Something privately shameful that had seeped into a slit in her mind right behind the slap on her face and the circled cross. "Why they hang your ma'am?" Denver asked. This was the first time she had heard anything about her mother's mother. Baby Suggs was the only grandmother she knew.
"I never found out. It was a lot of them," she said, but what was getting clear and clearer as she folded and refolded damp laundry was the woman called Nan who took her hand and yanked her away from the pile before she could make out the mark. Nan was the one she knew best, who was around all day, who nursed babies, cooked, had one good arm and half of another. And who used different words. Words Sethe understood then but could neither recall nor repeat now. She believed that must be why she remembered so little before Sweet Home except singing and dancing and how crowded it was. What Nan told her she had forgotten, along with the language she told it in. The same language her ma'am spoke, and which would never come back. But the message--that was and had been there all along. Holding the damp white sheets against her chest, she was picking meaning out of a code she no longer understood. Nighttime. Nan holding her with her good arm, waving the stump of the other in the air. "Telling you. I am telling you, small girl Sethe," and she did that. She told Sethe that her mother and
Nan were together from the sea. Both were taken up many times by the crew. "She threw them all away but you. The one from the crew she threw away on the island. The others from more whites she also threw away. Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man. She put her arms around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never. Never. Telling you. I am telling you, small girl Sethe." As small girl Sethe, she was unimpressed. As grown-up woman Sethe she was angry, but not certain at what. A mighty wish for Baby Suggs broke over her like surf. In the quiet following its splash, Sethe looked at the two girls sitting by the stove: her sickly, shallow-minded boarder, her irritable, lonely daughter. They seemed little and far away. "Paul D be here in a minute," she said. Denver sighed with relief. For a minute there, while her mother stood folding the wash lost in thought, she clamped her teeth and prayed it would stop. Denver hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made
more so by Denver's absence from it. Not being in it, she hated it and wanted Beloved to hate it too, although there was no chance of that at all. Beloved took every opportunity to ask some funny question and get Sethe going. Denver noticed how greedy she was to hear Sethe talk. Now she noticed something more. The questions Beloved asked: "Where your diamonds?" "Your woman she never fix up your hair?" And most perplexing: Tell me your earrings. How did she know? strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded fight and waxy. That's how Beloved looked-- gilded and shining. Paul D took to having Sethe on waking, so that later, when he went down the white stairs where she made bread under Beloved's gaze, his head was clear. In the evening when he came home and the three of them were all there fixing the supper table, her shine was so pronounced he wondered
why Denver and Sethe didn't see it. Or maybe they did. Certainly women could tell, as men could, when one of their number was aroused. Paul D looked carefully at Beloved to see if she was aware of it but she paid him no attention at all--frequently not even answering a direct question put to her. She would look at him and not open her mouth. Five weeks she had been with them, and they didn't know any more about her than they did when they found her asleep on the stump. They were seated at the table Paul D had broken the day he arrived at 124. Its mended legs stronger than before. The cabbage was all gone and the shiny ankle bones of smoked pork were pushed in a heap on their plates. Sethe was dishing up bread pudding, murmuring her hopes for it, apologizing in advance the way veteran cooks always do, when something in Beloved's face, some petlike adoration that took hold of her as she looked at Sethe, made Paul D speak. "Ain't you got no brothers or sisters?"
Beloved diddled her spoon but did not look at him. "I don't have nobody." "What was you looking for when you came here?" he asked her. "This place. I was looking for this place I could be in." "Somebody tell you about this house?" "She told me. When I was at the bridge, she told me." "Must be somebody from the old days," Sethe said. The days when 124 was a way station where messages came and then their senders. Where bits of news soaked like dried beans in spring water-- until they were soft enough to digest. "How'd you come? Who brought you?" Now she looked steadily at him, but did not answer. He could feel both Sethe and Denver pulling in, holding their stomach muscles,
sending out sticky spiderwebs to touch one another. He decided to force it anyway. "I asked you who brought you here?" "I walked here," she said. "A long, long, long, long way. Nobody bring me. Nobody help me." "You had new shoes. If you walked so long why don't your shoes show it?" "Paul D, stop picking on her." "I want to know," he said, holding the knife handle in his fist like a pole. "I take the shoes! I take the dress! The shoe strings don't fix!" she shouted and gave him a look so malevolent Denver touched her arm. "I'll teach you," said Denver, "how to tie your shoes," and got a smile from Beloved as a reward. Paul D had the feeling a large, silver fish had slipped from his hands the minute he grabbed hold of its tail. That it was streaming back off into dark water now, gone but for the
glistening marking its route. But if her shining was not for him, who then? He had never known a woman who lit up for nobody in particular, who just did it as a general announcement. Always, in his experience, the light appeared when there was focus. Like the Thirty-Mile Woman, dulled to smoke while he waited with her in the ditch, and starlight when Sixo got there. He never knew himself to mistake it. It was there the instant he looked at Sethe's wet legs, otherwise he never would have been bold enough to enclose her in his arms that day and whisper into her back. This girl Beloved, homeless and without people, beat all, though he couldn't say exactly why, considering the coloredpeople he had run into during the last twenty years. During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, had hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, like him, stole from pigs; who, like him, slept in trees in the day and walked by night; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, paterollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers. Once he met a Negro about fourteen years old who lived by himself in the
woods and said he couldn't remember living anywhere else. He saw a witless coloredwoman jailed and hanged for stealing ducks she believed were her own babies. Move. Walk. Run. Hide. Steal and move on. Only once had it been possible for him to stay in one spot--with a woman, or a family--for longer than a few months. That once was almost two years with a weaver lady in Delaware, the meanest place for Negroes he had ever seen outside Pulaski County, Kentucky, and of course the prison camp in Georgia. From all those Negroes, Beloved was different. Her shining, her new shoes. It bothered him. Maybe it was just the fact that he didn't bother her. Or it could be timing. She had appeared and been taken in on the very day Sethe and he had patched up their quarrel, gone out in public and had a right good time--like a family. Denver had come around, so to speak; Sethe was laughing; he had a promise of steady work, 124 was cleared up from spirits. It had begun to look like a life. And damn! a water-drinking woman fell sick, got took in, healed, and hadn't moved a peg since. He wanted her out, but Sethe had let her in and he couldn't put her out of a house that
wasn't his. It was one thing to beat up a ghost, quite another to throw a helpless coloredgirl out in territory infected by the Klan. Desperately thirsty for black blood, without which it could not live, the dragon swam the Ohio at will. Sitting at table, chewing on his after-supper broom straw, Paul D decided to place her. Consult with the Negroes in town and find her her own place. No sooner did he have the thought than Beloved strangled on one of the raisins she had picked out of the bread pudding. She fell backward and off the chair and thrashed around holding her throat. Sethe knocked her on the back while Denver pried her hands away from her neck. Beloved, on her hands and knees, vomited up her food and struggled for breath. When she was quiet and Denver had wiped up the mess, she said, "Go to sleep now." "Come in my room," said Denver. "I can watch out for you up there." No moment could have been better. Denver had worried herself sick trying to think of a way to get Beloved to share her room. It
was hard sleeping above her, wondering if she was going to be sick again, fall asleep and not wake, or (God, please don't) get up and wander out of the yard just the way she wandered in. They could have their talks easier there: at night when Sethe and Paul D were asleep; or in the daytime before either came home. Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be. When the girls left, Sethe began to clear the table. She stacked the plates near a basin of water. "What is it about her vex you so?" Paul D frowned, but said nothing. "We had one good fight about Denver. Do we need one about her too?" asked Sethe. "I just don't understand what the hold is. It's clear why she holds on to you, but just can't see why you holding on to her." Sethe turned away from the plates toward him. "what you care who's holding on to who? Feeding her is no trouble. I pick up a little extra
from the restaurant is all. And she's nice girl company for Denver. You know that and I know you know it, so what is it got your teeth on edge?" "I can't place it. It's a feeling in me." "Well, feel this, why don't you? Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a coloredwoman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that." "I know every bit of that, Sethe. I wasn't born yesterday and I never mistreated a woman in my life." "That makes one in the world," Sethe answered. "Not two?" "No. Not two." "What Halle ever do to you? Halle stood by you. He never left you." "What'd he leave then if not me?"
fact." "I don't know, but it wasn't you. That's a
"Then he did worse; he left his children." "You don't know that." "He wasn't there. He wasn't where he said he would be." "He was there." "Then why didn't he show himself? Why did I have to pack my babies off and stay behind to look for him?" "He couldn't get out the loft." "Loft? What loft?" "The one over your head. In the barn." Slowly, slowly, taking all the time allowed, Sethe moved toward the table. "He saw?" "He saw." "He told you?" "You told me."
"What?" "The day I came in here. You said they stole your milk. I never knew what it was that messed him up. That was it, I guess. All I knew was that something broke him. Not a one of them years of Saturdays, Sundays and nighttime extra never touched him. But whatever he saw go on in that barn that day broke him like a twig." "He saw?" Sethe was gripping her elbows as though to keep them from flying away. "He saw. Must have." "He saw them boys do that to me and let them keep on breathing air? He saw? He saw? He saw?" "Hey! Hey! Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain't a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down because they're inside." Sethe was pacing up and down, up and down in the lamplight.
"The underground agent said, By Sunday. They took my milk and he saw it and didn't come down? Sunday came and he didn't. Monday came and no Halle. I thought he was dead, that's why; then I thought they caught him, that's why. Then I thought, No, he's not dead because if he was I'd know it, and then you come here after all this time and you didn't say he was dead, because you didn't know either, so I thought, Well, he just found him another better way to live. Because if he was anywhere near here, he'd come to Baby Suggs, if not to me. But I never knew he saw." "What does that matter now?" "If he is alive, and saw that, he won't step foot in my door. Not Halle." "It broke him, Sethe." Paul D looked up at her and sighed. "You may as well know it all. Last time I saw him he was sitting by the chum. He had butter all over his face." Nothing happened, and she was grateful for that. Usually she could see the picture right away of what she heard. But she could not picture what Paul D said. Nothing came to mind.
Carefully, carefully, she passed on to a reasonable question. "What did he say?" "Nothing." "Not a word?" "Not a word." "Did you speak to him? Didn't you say anything to him? Something!" "I couldn't, Sethe. I just.., couldn't." "Why!" "I had a bit in my mouth." Sethe opened the front door and sat down on the porch steps. The day had gone blue without its sun, but she could still make out the black silhouettes of trees in the meadow beyond. She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it reused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite? I am full God damn it of two boys with
mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up. I am still full of that, God damn it, I can't go back and add more. Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen. But my greedy brain says, Oh thanks, I'd love more--so I add more. And no sooner than I do, there is no stopping. There is also my husband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face because the milk they took is on his mind. And as far as he is concerned, the world may as well know it. And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now. And if Paul D saw him and could not save or comfort him because the iron bit was in his mouth, then there is still more that Paul D could tell me and my brain would go right ahead and take it and never say, No thank you. I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love.
But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day. Exactly like that afternoon in the wild onions-- when one more step was the most she could see of the future. Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been: the two of them back by the milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a care in the world. Feeling it slippery, sticky--rubbing it in their hair, watching it squeeze through their fingers. What a relief to stop it right there. Close. Shut. Squeeze the butter. But her three children were chewing sugar teat under a blanket on their way to Ohio and no butter play would change that. Paul D stepped through the door and touched her shoulder. "I didn't plan on telling you that."
"I didn't plan on hearing it." "I can't take it back, but I can leave it alone," Paul D said. He wants to tell me, she thought. He wants me to ask him about what it was like for him--about how offended the tongue is, held down by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye. Sethe looked up into Paul D's eyes to see if there was any trace left in them. "People I saw as a child," she said, "who'd had the bit always looked wild after that. Whatever they used it on them for, it couldn't have worked, because it put a wildness where before there wasn't any. When I look at you, I don't see it. There ain't no wildness in your eye nowhere."
"There's a way to put it there and there's a way to take it out. I know em both and I haven't figured out yet which is worse." He sat down beside her. Sethe looked at him. In that unlit daylight his face, bronzed and reduced to its bones, smoothed her heart down.
him. "You want to tell me about it?" she asked
"I don't know. I never have talked about it. Not to a soul. Sang it sometimes, but I never told a soul."
"Go ahead. I can hear it." "Maybe. Maybe you can hear it. I just ain't sure I can say it. Say it right, I mean, because it wasn't the bit--that wasn't it." "What then?" Sethe asked. "The roosters," he said. "Walking past the roosters looking at them look at me." Sethe smiled. "In that pine?" "Yeah." Paul D smiled with her. "Must have been five of them perched up there, and at least fifty hens." "Mister, too?"
"Not right off. But I hadn't took twenty steps before I seen him. He come down off the fence post there and sat on the tub." "He loved that tub," said Sethe, thinking, No, there is no stopping now. "Didn't he? Like a throne. Was me took him out the shell, you know. He'd a died if it hadn't been for me. The hen had walked on off with all the hatched peeps trailing behind her. There was this one egg left. Looked like a blank, but then I saw it move so I tapped it open and here come Mister, bad feet and all. I watched that son a bitch grow up and whup everything in the yard." "He always was hateful," Sethe said. "Yeah, he was hateful all right. Bloody too, and evil. Crooked feet flapping. Comb as big as my hand and some kind of red. He sat right there on the tub looking at me. I swear he smiled. My head was full of what I'd seen of Halle a while back. I wasn't even thinking about the bit. Just Halle and before him Sixo, but when I saw Mister I knew it was me too. Not just them, me too. One crazy, one
sold, one missing, one burnt and me licking iron with my hands crossed behind me. The last of the Sweet Home men. "Mister, he looked so... free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn't even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was..." Paul D stopped and squeezed his left hand with his right. He held it that way long enough for it and the world to quiet down and let him go on. "Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub." Sethe put her hand on his knee and rubbed. Paul D had only begun, what he was telling her was only the beginning when her fingers on his knee, soft and reassuring, stopped him. Just as well. Just as well. Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn't get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart
used to be. Its lid rusted shut. He would not pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents it would shame him. And it would hurt her to know that there was no red heart bright as Mister's comb beating in him. Sethe rubbed and rubbed, pressing the work cloth and the stony curves that made up his knee. She hoped it calmed him as it did her. Like kneading bread in the half-light of the restaurant kitchen. Before the cook arrived when she stood in a space no wider than a bench is long, back behind and to the left of the milk cans. Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day's serious work of beating back the past. make-a-new-step, slide, slide and strut on down. Denver sat on the bed smiling and providing the music. She had never seen Beloved this happy. She had seen her pouty lips open wide with the pleasure of sugar or some piece of news Denver gave her. She had felt warm satisfaction radiating from Beloved's skin when she listened to her mother talk about the old days.
But gaiety she had never seen. Not ten minutes had passed since Beloved had fallen backward to the floor, pop-eyed, thrashing and holding her throat. Now, after a few seconds lying in Denver's bed, she was up and dancing.
her. "Where'd you learn to dance?" Denver asked
"Nowhere. Look at me do this." Beloved put her fists on her hips and commenced to skip on bare feet. Denver laughed. "Now you. Come on," said Beloved. "You may as well just come on." Her black skirt swayed from side to side. Denver grew ice-cold as she rose from the bed. She knew she was twice Beloved's size but she floated up, cold and light as a snowflake. Beloved took Denver's hand and placed another on Denver's shoulder. They danced then. Round and round the tiny room and it may have been dizziness, or feeling light and icy at once, that made Denver laugh so hard. A catching laugh that Beloved caught. The two of them, merry as kittens, swung to and fro, to and fro, until exhausted they sat on the floor. Beloved let her head fall back on the edge of the bed while she found her breath and Denver saw the tip of the
thing she always saw in its entirety when Beloved undressed to sleep. Looking straight at it she whispered, "Why you call yourself Beloved?" Beloved closed her eyes. "In the dark my name is Beloved." Denver scooted a little closer. "What's it like over there, where you were before? Can you tell me?"
"Dark," said Beloved. "I'm small in that place. I'm like this here." She raised her head off the bed, lay down on her side and curled up. Denver covered her lips with her fingers. "Were you cold?" Beloved curled tighter and shook her head. "Hot. Nothing to breathe down there and no room to move in." "You see anybody?" "Heaps. A lot of people is down there. Some is dead."
"You see Jesus? Baby Suggs?" "I don't know. I don't know the names." She sat up. "Tell me, how did you get here?" "I wait; then I got on the bridge. I stay there in the dark, in the daytime, in the dark, in the daytime. It was a long time." "All this time you were on a bridge?" "No. After. When I got out." "What did you come back for?" Beloved smiled. "To see her face." "Ma'am's? Sethe?" "Yes, Sethe." Denver felt a little hurt, slighted that she was not the main reason for Beloved's return. "Don't you remember we played together by the stream?" "I was on the bridge," said Beloved. "You see me on the bridge?"
"No, by the stream. The water back in the woods." "Oh, I was in the water. I saw her diamonds down there. I could touch them." "What stopped you?" "She left me behind. By myself," said Beloved. She lifted her eyes to meet Denver's and frowned, perhaps. Perhaps not. The tiny scratches on her forehead may have made it seem so. Denver swallowed. "Don't," she said. "Don't. You won't leave us, will you?" "No. Never. This is where I am." Suddenly Denver, who was sitting cross-legged, lurched forward and grabbed Beloved's wrist. "Don't tell her. Don't let Ma'am know who you are. Please, you hear?" "Don't tell me what to do. Don't you never never tell me what to do." "But I'm on your side, Beloved." "She is the one. She is the one I need. You can go but she is the one I have to have." Her
eyes stretched to the limit, black as the all night sky. "I didn't do anything to you. I never hurt you. I never hurt anybody," said Denver. "Me either. Me either." "What you gonna do?" "Stay here. I belong here." "I belong here too." "Then stay, but don't never tell me what to do. Don't never do that." "We were dancing. Just a minute ago we were dancing together. Let's." "I don't want to." Beloved got up and lay down on the bed. Their quietness boomed about on the walls like birds in panic. Finally Denver's breath steadied against the threat of an unbearable loss.
"Tell me," Beloved said. "Tell me how Sethe made you in the boat." "She never told me all of it," said Denver. "Tell me." Denver climbed up on the bed and folded her arms under her apron. She had not been in the tree room once since Beloved sat on their stump after the carnival, and had not remembered that she hadn't gone there until this very desperate moment. Nothing was out there that this sister-girl did not provide in abundance: a racing heart, dreaminess, society, danger, beauty. She swallowed twice to prepare for the telling, to construct out of the strings she had heard all her life a net to hold Beloved. "She had good hands, she said. The whitegirl, she said, had thin little arms but good hands. She saw that right away, she said. Hair enough for five heads and good hands, she said. I guess the hands made her think she could do it: get us both across the river. But the mouth was what kept her from being scared. She said there ain't nothing to go by with whitepeople. You don't know how they'll
jump. Say one thing, do another. But if you looked at the mouth sometimes you could tell by that. She said this girl talked a storm, but there wasn't no meanness around her mouth. She took Ma'am to that lean-to and rubbed her feet for her, so that was one thing. And Ma'am believed she wasn't going to turn her over. You could get money if you turned a runaway over, and she wasn't sure this girl Amy didn't need money more than anything, especially since all she talked about was getting hold of some velvet." "What's velvet?" "It's a cloth, kind of deep and soft." "Go ahead." "Anyway, she rubbed Ma'am's feet back to life, and she cried, she said, from how it hurt. But it made her think she could make it on over to where Grandma Baby Suggs was and..." "Who is that?" "I just said it. My grandmother." "Is that Sethe's mother?"
"No. My father's mother." "Go ahead." "That's where the others was. My brothers and.., the baby girl. She sent them on before to wait for her at Grandma Baby's. So she had to put up with everything to get there. And this here girl Amy helped." Denver stopped and sighed. This was the part of the story she loved. She was coming to it now, and she loved it because it was all about herself; but she hated it too because it made her feel like a bill was owing somewhere and she, Denver, had to pay it. But who she owed or what to pay it with eluded her. Now, watching Beloved's alert and hungry face, how she took in every word, asking questions about the color of things and their size, her downright craving to know, Denver began to see what she was saying and not just to hear it: there is this nineteen-year-old slave girl--a year older than her self- walking through the dark woods to get to her children who are far away. She is tired, scared maybe, and maybe even lost. Most of all she is by herself and inside her is another baby she has to think about too. Behind her dogs,
perhaps; guns probably; and certainly mossy teeth. She is not so afraid at night because she is the color of it, but in the day every sound is a shot or a tracker's quiet step. Denver was seeing it now and feeling it--through Beloved. Feeling how it must have felt to her mother. Seeing how it must have looked. And the more fine points she made, the more detail she provided, the more Beloved liked it. So she anticipated the questions by giving blood to the scraps her mother and grandmother had told herwand a heartbeat. The monologue became, iri fact, a duet as they lay down together, Denver nursing Beloved's interest like a lover whose pleasure was to overfeed the loved. The dark quilt with two orange patches was there with them because Beloved wanted it near her when she slept. It was smelling like grass and feeling like hands-- the unrested hands of busy women: dry, warm, prickly. Denver spoke, Beloved listened, and the two did the best they could to create what really happened, how it really was, something only Sethe knew because she alone had the mind for it and the time afterward to shape it: the quality of Amy's voice, her breath like burning wood.
The quick-change weather up in those hills— cool at night, hot in the day, sudden fog. How recklessly she behaved with this whitegirlNa recklessness born of desperation and encouraged by Amy's fugitive eyes and her tenderhearted mouth. "You ain't got no business walking round these hills, miss." "Looka here who's talking. I got more business here 'n you got. They catch you they cut your head off. Ain't nobody after me but I know somebody after you." Amy pressed her fingers into the soles of the slavewoman's feet. "Whose baby that?" Sethe did not answer. "You don't even know. Come here, Jesus," Amy sighed and shook her head. "Hurt?" "A touch." "Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know. What you wiggling for?" Sethe raised up on her elbows. Lying on her back so long had raised a ruckus between her shoulder blades. The fire in her feet and the fire on her back made her sweat.
"My back hurt me," she said. "Your back? Gal, you a mess. Turn over here and let me see." In an effort so great it made her sick to her stomach, Sethe turned onto her right side. Amy unfastened the back of her dress and said, "Come here, Jesus," when she saw. Sethe guessed it must be bad because after that call to Jesus Amy didn't speak for a while. In the silence of an Amy struck dumb for a change, Sethe felt the fingers of those good hands lightly touch her back. She could hear her breathing but still the whitegirl said nothing. Sethe could not move. She couldn't lie on her stomach or her back, and to keep on her side meant pressure on her screaming feet. Amy spoke at last in her dreamwalker's voice. "It's a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. See, here's the trunk--it's red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here's the parting for the branches. You got a mighty lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain't blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. What God have in mind, I wonder. I had me some whippings, but I don't remember nothing like this. Mr. Buddy had a right evil hand too. Whip you for looking at him straight. Sure would. I looked right
at him one time and he hauled off and threw the poker at me. Guess he knew what I was a-thinking.'" Sethe groaned and Amy cut her reverie short--long enough to shift Sethe's feet so the weight, resting on leaf-covered stones, was above the ankles. "That better? Lord what a way to die. You gonna die in here, you know. Ain't no way out of it. Thank your Maker I come along so's you wouldn't have to die outside in them weeds. Snake come along he bite you. Bear eat you up. Maybe you should of stayed where you was, Lu. I can see by your back why you didn't ha ha. Whoever planted that tree beat Mr. Buddy by a mile. Glad I ain't you. Well, spiderwebs is 'bout all I can do for you. What's in here ain't enough. I'll look outside. Could use moss, but sometimes bugs and things is in it. Maybe I ought to break them blossoms open. Get that pus to running, you think? Wonder what God had in mind. You must of did something. Don't run off nowhere now." Sethe could hear her humming away in the bushes as she hunted spiderwebs. A humming she concentrated on because as soon as Amy
ducked out the baby began to stretch. Good question, she was thinking. What did He have in mind? Amy had left the back of Sethe's dress open and now a tail of wind hit it, taking the pain down a step. A relief that let her feel the lesser pain of her sore tongue. Amy returned with two palmfuls of web, which she cleaned of prey and then draped on Sethe's back, saying it was like stringing a tree for Christmas. "We got a old nigger girl come by our place. She don't know nothing. Sews stuff for Mrs. Buddy- real fine lace but can't barely stick two words together. She don't know nothing, just like you. You don't know a thing. End up dead, that's what. Not me. I'm a get to Boston and get myself some velvet. Carmine. You don't even know about that, do you? Now you never will. Bet you never even sleep with the sun in your face. I did it a couple of times. Most times I'm feeding stock before light and don't get to sleep till way after dark comes. But I was in the back of the wagon once and fell asleep. Sleeping with the sun in your face is the best old feeling. Two times I did it. Once when I was little. Didn't nobody bother me then. Next time, in back of the wagon, it happened again
and doggone if the chickens didn't get loose. Mr. Buddy whipped my tail. Kentucky ain't no good place to be in. Boston's the place to be in. That's where my mother was before she was give to Mr. Buddy. Joe Nathan said Mr. Buddy is my daddy but I don't believe that, you?" Sethe told her she didn't believe Mr. Buddy was her daddy. "You know your daddy, do you?" "No," said Sethe. "Neither me. All I know is it ain't him." She stood up then, having finished her repair work, and weaving about the lean-to, her slow-moving eyes pale in the sun that lit her hair, she sang: "'When the busy day is done And my weary little one Rocketh gently to and fro; When the night winds softly blow, And the crickets in the glen Chirp and chirp and chirp again; Where "pon the haunted green Fairies dance around their queen, Then from yonder misty skies Cometh Lady Button Eyes."
Suddenly she stopped weaving and rocking and sat down, her skinny arms wrapped around her knees, her good good hands cupping her elbows. Her slow-moving eyes stopped and peered into the dirt at her feet. "That's my mama's song. She taught me it." "Through the muck and mist and glaam To our quiet cozy home, Where to singing sweet and low Rocks a cradle to and fro.
Where the clock's dull monotone Telleth of the day that's done, Where the moonbeams hover o'er Playthings sleeping on the floor, Where my weary wee one lies Cometh Lady Button Eyes.
Layeth she her hands upon My dear weary little one, And those white hands overspread Like a veil the curly head,
Seem to fondle and caress Every little silken tress.
Then she smooths the eyelids down Over those two eyes of brown In such soothing tender wise Cometh Lady Button Eyes . "
Amy sat quietly after her song, then repeated the last line before she stood, left the lean-to and walked off a little ways to lean against a young ash. When she came back the sun was in the valley below and they were way above it in blue Kentucky light. You ain't dead yet, Lu? Lu?" "Not yet "Make you a bet. You make it through the night, you make it all the way." Amy rearranged the leaves for comfort and knelt
down to massage the swollen feet again. "Give these one more real good rub," she said, and when Sethe sucked air through her teeth, she said, "Shut up. You got to keep your mouth shut." Careful of her tongue, Sethe bit down on her lips and let the good hands go to work to the tune of "So bees, sing soft and bees, sing low." Afterward, Amy moved to the other side of the lean-to where, seated, she lowered her head toward her shoulder and braided her hair, saying, "Don't up and die on me in the night, you hear? I don't want to see your ugly black face hankering over me. If you do die, just go on off somewhere where I can't see you, hear?" "I hear," said Sethe. I'll do what I can, miss." Sethe never expected to see another thing in this world, so when she felt toes prodding her hip it took a while to come out of a sleep she thought was death. She sat up, stiff and shivery, while Amy looked in on her juicy back. "Looks like the devil," said Amy. "But you made it through.
Come down here, Jesus, Lu made it through. That's because of me. I'm good at sick things. Can you walk, you think?" "I have to let my water some kind of way." "Let's see you walk on em." It was not good, but it was possible, so Sethe limped, holding on first to Amy, then to a sapling. "Was me did it. I'm good at sick things ain't I?" "Yeah," said Sethe, "you good." "We got to get off this here hill. Come on. I'll take you down to the river. That ought to suit you. Me, I'm going to the Pike. Take me straight to Boston. What's that all over your dress?" "Milk." "You one mess." Sethe looked down at her stomach and touched it. The baby was dead. She had not died
in the night, but the baby had. If that was the case, then there was no stopping now. She would get that milk to her baby girl if she had to swim.
"Ain't you hungry?" Amy asked her. "I ain't nothing but in a hurry, miss." "Whoa. Slow down. Want some shoes?" "Say what?" "I figured how," said Amy and so she had. She tore two pieces from Sethe's shawl, filled them with leaves and tied them over her feet, chattering all the while. "How old are you, Lu? I been bleeding for four years but I ain't having nobody's baby. Won't catch me sweating milk cause... " "I know," said Sethe. "You going to Boston." At noon they saw it; then they were near enough to hear it. By late afternoon they could drink from it if they wanted to. Four stars were visible by the time they found, not a riverboat to stow Sethe away on, or a ferryman willing to take on a fugitive passenger--nothing like that--but a whole boat to steal. It had one oar, lots of holes and two bird nests.
"There you go, Lu. Jesus looking at you." Sethe was looking at one mile of dark water, which would have to be split with one oar in a useless boat against a current dedicated to the Mississippi hundreds of miles away. It looked like home to her, and the baby (not dead in the least) must have thought so too. As soon as Sethe got close to the river her own water broke loose to join it. The break, followed by the redundant announcement of labor, arched her back. "What you doing that for?" asked Amy. "Ain't you got a brain in your head? Stop that right now. I said stop it, Lu. You the dumbest thing on this here earth. Lu! Lu!" Sethe couldn't think of anywhere to go but in. She waited for the sweet beat that followed the blast of pain. On her knees again, she crawled into the boat. It waddled under her and she had just enough time to brace her leaf-bag feet on the bench when another rip took her breath away. Panting under four summer stars, she threw her legs over the sides, because here come the head, as Amy informed her as though she did not know it--as though the rip was a
breakup of walnut logs in the brace, or of lightning's jagged tear through a leather sky. It was stuck. Face up and drowning in its mother's blood. Amy stopped begging Jesus and began to curse His daddy. "Push!" screamed Amy. "Pull," whispered Sethe. And the strong hands went to work a fourth time, none too soon, for river water, seeping through any hole it chose, was spreading over Sethe's hips. She reached one arm back and grabbed the rope while Amy fairly clawed at the head. When a foot rose from the river bed and kicked the bottom of the boat and Sethe's behind, she knew it was done and permitted herself a short faint. Coming to, she heard no cries, just Amy's encouraging coos. Nothing happened for so long they both believed they had lost it. Sethe arched suddenly and the afterbirth shot out. Then the baby whimpered and Sethe looked. Twenty inches of cord hung from its belly and it trembled in the cooling evening air. Amy wrapped her skirt around it and the wet sticky
women clambered ashore to see what, indeed, God had in mind. Spores of bluefern growing in the hollows along the riverbank float toward the water in silver- blue lines hard to see unless you are in or near them, lying right at the river's edge when the sunshots are low and drained. Often they are mistook for insects--but they are seeds in which the whole generation sleeps confident of a future. And for a moment it is easy to believe each one has one--will become all of what is contained in the spore: will live out its days as planned. This moment of certainty lasts no longer than that; longer, perhaps, than the spore itself. On a riverbank in the cool of a summer evening two women struggled under a shower of silvery blue. They never expected to see each other again in this world and at the moment couldn't care less. But there on a summer night surrounded by bluefern they did something together appropriately and well. A pateroller passing would have sniggered to see two throw-away people, two lawless outlaws-- a slave and a
barefoot whitewoman with unpinned hair--wrapping a ten-minute-old baby in the rags they wore. But no pateroller came and no preacher. The water sucked and swallowed itself beneath them. There was nothing to disturb them at their work. So they did it appropriately and well. Twilight came on and Amy said she had to go; that she wouldn't be caught dead in daylight on a busy river with a runaway. After rinsing her hands and face in the river, she stood and looked down at the baby wrapped and tied to Sethe's chest. "She's never gonna know who I am. You gonna tell her? Who brought her into this here world?" She lifted her chin, looked off into the place where the sun used to be. "You better tell her. You hear? Say Miss Amy Denver. Of Boston." Sethe felt herself falling into a sleep she knew would be deep. On the lip of it, just before going under, she thought, "That's pretty. Denver. Real pretty."
IT WAS TIME to lay it all down. Before Paul D came and sat on her porch steps, words whispered in the keeping room had kept her going. Helped her endure the chastising ghost; refurbished the baby faces of Howard and Buglar and kept them whole in the world because in her dreams she saw only their parts in trees; and kept her husband shadowy but there--somewhere. Now Halle's face between the butter press and the churn swelled larger and larger, crowding her eyes and making her head hurt. She wished for Baby Suggs' fingers molding her nape, reshaping it, saying, "Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don't study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield." And under the pressing fingers and the quiet instructive voice, she would. Her heavy knives of defense against misery, regret, gall and hurt, she placed one by one on a bank where dear water rushed on below. Nine years without the fingers or the voice of Baby Suggs was too much. And words whispered in the keeping room were too little.
The butter-smeared face of a man God made none sweeter than demanded more: an arch built or a robe sewn. Some fixing ceremony. Sethe decided to go to the Clearing, back where Baby Suggs had danced in sunlight. Before 124 and everybody in it had closed down, veiled over and shut away; before it had become the plaything of spirits and the home of the chafed, 124 had been a cheerful, buzzing house where Baby Suggs, holy, loved, cautioned, fed, chastised and soothed. Where not one but two pots simmered on the stove; where the lamp burned all night long. Strangers rested there while children tried on their shoes. Messages were left there, for whoever needed them was sure to stop in one day soon. Talk was low and to the point--for Baby Suggs, holy, didn't approve of extra. "Everything depends on knowing how much," she said, and "Good is knowing when to stop." It was in front of that 124 that Sethe climbed off a wagon, her newborn tied to her chest, and felt for the first time the wide arms of her mother-in-law, who had made it to Cincinnati. Who decided that, because slave life had "busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue," she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart--which she put to work at once.
Accepting no title of honor before her name, but allowing a small caress after it, she became an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it. In winter and fall she carried it to AME's and Baptists, Holinesses and Sanctifieds, the Church of the Redeemer and the Redeemed. Uncalled, unrobed, un anointed, she let her great heart beat in their presence. When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of a path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees. After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and they ran from the trees toward her. "Let your mothers hear you laugh," she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.
Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees. "Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet. Finally she called the women to her. "Cry," she told them. "For the living and the dead. Just cry." And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.
"Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a
hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life holding womb and your life- giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh. Sethe wanted to be there now. At the least to listen to the spaces that the long-ago singing had left behind. At the most to get a clue from her husband's dead mother as to what she should do with her sword and shield now, dear Jesus, now nine years after Baby Suggs, holy, proved herself a liar, dismissed her great heart and lay in the keeping-room bed roused once in a while by a craving for color and not for another thing. "Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but
whitefolks." 124 shut down and put up with the venom of its ghost. No more lamp all night long, or neighbors dropping by. No low conversations after supper. No watched barefoot children playing in the shoes of strangers. Baby Suggs, holy, believed she had lied. There was no grace-imaginary or real--and no sunlit dance in a Clearing could change that. Her faith, her love, her imagination and her great big old heart began to collapse twenty-eight days after her daughter-in-law arrived. Yet it was to the Clearing that Sethe determined to go--to pay tribute to Halle. Before the light changed, while it was still the green blessed place she remembered: misty with plant steam and the decay of berries. She put on a shawl and told Denver and Beloved to do likewise. All three set out late one Sunday morning, Sethe leading, the girls trotting behind, not a soul in sight. When they reached the woods it took her no time to find the path through it because big-city revivals were held there regularly now, complete with food-laden tables, banjos and a tent. The old
path was a track now, but still arched over with trees dropping buckeyes onto the grass below. There was nothing to be done other than what she had done, but Sethe blamed herself for Baby Suggs' collapse. However many times Baby denied it, Sethe knew the grief at 124 started when she jumped down off the wagon, her newborn tied to her chest in the underwear of a whitegirl looking for Boston. Followed by the two girls, down a bright green corridor of oak and horse chestnut, Sethe began to sweat a sweat just like the other one when she woke, mud-caked, on the banks of the Ohio. Amy was gone. Sethe was alone and weak, but alive, and so was her baby. She walked a ways downriver and then stood gazing at the glimmering water. By and by a flatbed slid into view, but she could not see if the figures on it were whitepeople or not. She began to sweat from a fever she thanked God for since it would certainly keep her baby warm. When the flatbed was beyond her sight she stumbled on and found herself near three coloredpeople fishing-- two boys and an older man. She stopped and waited to be spoken to. One of the boys pointed and the
man looked over his shoulder at her--a quick look since all he needed to know about her he could see in no time. No one said anything for a while. Then the man said, "Headin' 'cross?" "Yes, sir," said Sethe. "Anybody know you coming?" "Yes, sir." He looked at her again and nodded toward a rock that stuck out of the ground above him like a bottom lip. Sethe walked to it and sat down. The stone had eaten the sun's rays but was nowhere near as hot as she was. Too tired to move, she stayed there, the sun in her eyes making her dizzy. Sweat poured over her and bathed the baby completely. She must have slept sitting up, because when next she opened her eyes the man was standing in front of her with a smoking-hot piece of fried eel in his hands. It was an effort to reach for, more to smell, impossible to eat. She begged him for water and he gave her some of the Ohio in a jar. Sethe drank it all and begged more. The clanging was back in her head but she refused to believe that she had come all that way,
endured all she had, to die on the wrong side of the river. The man watched her streaming face and called one of the boys over. "Take off that coat," he told him. "Sir?" "You heard me." The boy slipped out of his jacket, whining, "What you gonna do? What I'm gonna wear?" The man untied the baby from her chest and wrapped it in the boy's coat, knotting the sleeves in front. "What I'm gonna wear?" The old man sighed and, after a pause, said, "You want it back, then go head and take it off that baby. Put the baby naked in the grass and put your coat back on. And if you can do it, then go on 'way somewhere and don't come back." The boy dropped his eyes, then turned to join the other. With eel in her hand, the baby at
her feet, Sethe dozed, dry-mouthed and sweaty. Evening came and the man touched her shoulder. Contrary to what she expected they poled upriver, far away from the rowboat Amy had found. Just when she thought he was taking her back to Kentucky, he turned the flatbed and crossed the Ohio like a shot. There he helped her up the steep bank, while the boy without a jacket carried the baby who wore it. The man led her to a brush-covered hutch with a beaten floor. "Wait here. Somebody be here directly. Don't move. They'll find you." "Thank you," she said. "I wish I knew your name so I could remember you right." "Name's Stamp," he said. "Stamp Paid. Watch out for that there baby, you hear?" "I hear. I hear," she said, but she didn't. Hours later a woman was right up on her before she heard a thing. A short woman, young, with a croaker sack, greeted her.
"'Saw the sign a while ago," she said. "But I couldn't get here no quicker." "What sign?" asked Sethe. "Stamp leaves the old sty open when there's a crossing. Knots a white rag on the post if it's a child too." She knelt and emptied the sack. "My name's Ella," she said, taking a wool blanket, cotton cloth, two baked sweet potatoes and a pair of men's shoes from the sack. "My husband, John, is out yonder a ways. Where you heading?" Sethe told her about Baby Suggs where she had sent her three children. Ella wrapped a cloth strip tight around the baby's navel as she listened for the holes--the things the fugitives did not say; the questions they did not ask. Listened too for the unnamed, unmentioned people left behind. She shook gravel from the men's shoes and tried to force Sethe's feet into them. They would not go. Sadly, they split them down the heel, sorry indeed to ruin so valuable an item. Sethe put on the boy's jacket, not daring to ask whether there was any word of the children.
"They made it," said Ella. "Stamp ferried some of that party. Left them on Bluestone. It ain't too far." Sethe couldn't think of anything to do, so grateful was she, so she peeled a potato, ate it, spit it up and ate more in quiet celebration. "They be glad to see you," said Ella. "When was this one born?" "Yesterday," said Sethe, wiping sweat from under her chin. "I hope she makes it." Ella looked at the tiny, dirty face poking out of the wool blanket and shook her head. "Hard to say," she said. "If anybody was to ask me I'd say, 'Don't love nothing.' " Then, as if to take the edge off her pronouncement, she smiled at Sethe. "You had that baby by yourself?" "No. Whitegirl helped." "Then we better make tracks." Baby Suggs kissed her on the mouth and refused to let her see the children. They were asleep she said and Sethe was too uglylooking to wake them in the night. She took the newborn and handed it to a young woman in a
bonnet, telling her not to clean the eyes till she got the mother's urine. "Has it cried out yet?" asked Baby. "A little." "Time enough. Let's get the mother well." She led Sethe to the keeping room and, by the light of a spirit lamp, bathed her in sections, starting with her face. Then, while waiting for another pan of heated water, she sat next to her and stitched gray cotton. Sethe dozed and woke to the washing of her hands and arms. After each bathing, Baby covered her with a quilt and put another pan on in the kitchen. Tearing sheets, stitching the gray cotton, she supervised the woman in the bonnet who tended the baby and cried into her cooking. When Sethe's legs were done, Baby looked at her feet and wiped them lightly. She cleaned between Sethe's legs with two separate pans of hot water and then tied her stomach and vagina with sheets. Finally she attacked the unrecognizable feet. "You feel this?" "Feel what?" asked Sethe. "Nothing. Heave up." She helped Sethe to a rocker and lowered her feet into a bucket of
salt water and juniper. The rest of the night Sethe sat soaking. The crust from her nipples Baby softened with lard and then washed away. By dawn the silent baby woke and took her mother's milk. "Pray God it ain't turned bad," said Baby. "And when you through, call me." As she turned to go, Baby Suggs caught a glimpse of something dark on the bed sheet. She frowned and looked at her daughter-in-law bending toward the baby. Roses of blood blossomed in the blanket covering Sethe's shoulders. Baby Suggs hid her mouth with her hand. When the nursing was over and the newborn was asleep--its eyes half open, its tongue dream-sucking--wordlessly the older woman greased the flowering back and pinned a double thickness of cloth to the inside of the newly stitched dress. It was not real yet. Not yet. But when her sleepy boys and crawl ing-already? girl were brought in, it didn't matter whether it was real or not. Sethe lay in bed under, around, over, among but especially with them all. The little girl dribbled clear spit into her face, and Sethe's laugh of delight was so loud the crawling-already? baby blinked.
Buglar and Howard played with her ugly feet, after daring each other to be the first to touch them. She kept kissing them. She kissed the backs of their necks, the tops of their heads and the centers of their palms, and it was the boys who decided enough was enough when she liked their shirts to kiss their tight round bellies. She stopped when and because they said, "Pappie come?" She didn't cry. She said "soon" and smiled so they would think the brightness in her eyes was love alone. It was some time before she let Baby Suggs shoo the boys away so Sethe could put on the gray cotton dress her mother-in-law had started stitching together the night before. Finally she lay back and cradled the crawling already? girl in her arms. She enclosed her left nipple with two fingers of her right hand and the child opened her mouth. They hit home together. Baby Suggs came in and laughed at them, telling Sethe how strong the baby girl was, how smart, already crawling. Then she stooped to gather up the ball of rags that had been Sethe's clothes. "Nothing worth saving in here," she said.
Sethe liked her eyes. "Wait," she called. "Look and see if there's something still knotted up in the petticoat." Baby Suggs inched the spoiled fabric through her fingers and came upon what felt like pebbles. She held them out toward Sethe. "Going away present?" "Wedding present." "Be nice if there was a groom to go with it." She gazed into her hand. "What you think happened to him?" "I don't know," said Sethe. "He wasn't where he said to meet him at. I had to get out. Had to." Sethe watched the drowsy eyes of the sucking girl for a moment then looked at Baby Suggs' face. "He'll make it. If I made it, Halle sure can." "Well, put these on. Maybe they'll light his way." Convinced her son was dead, she handed the stones to Sethe. "I need holes in my ears." to it." "I'll do it," said Baby Suggs. "Soon's you up
Sethe jingled the earrings for the pleasure of the crawling-already? girl, who reached for them over and over again. In the Clearing, Sethe found Baby's old preaching rock and remembered the smell of leaves simmering in the sun, thunderous feet and the shouts that ripped pods off the limbs of the chestnuts. With Baby Suggs' heart in charge, the people let go. Sethe had had twenty-eight days--the travel of one whole moon--of unslaved life. From the pure clear stream of spit that the little girl dribbled into her face to her oily blood was twenty-eight days. Days of healing, ease and real-talk. Days of company: knowing the names of forty, fifty other Negroes, their views, habits; where they had been and what done; of feeling their fun and sorrow along with her own, which made it better. One taught her the alphabet; another a stitch. All taught her how it felt to wake up at dawn and decide what to do with the day. That's how she got through the waiting for Halle. Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with the others, she had claimed herself. Freeing
yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. Now she sat on Baby Suggs' rock, Denver and Beloved watching her from the trees. There will never be a day, she thought, when Halle will knock on the door. Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder. Just the fingers, she thought. Just let me feel your fingers again on the back of my neck and I will lay it all down, make a way out of this no way. Sethe bowed her head and sure enough--they were there. Lighter now, no more than the strokes of bird feather, but unmistakably caressing fingers. She had to relax a bit to let them do their work, so light was the touch, childlike almost, more finger kiss than kneading. Still she was grateful for the effort; Baby Suggs' long distance love was equal to any skin-close love she had known. The desire, let alone the gesture, to meet her needs was good enough to lift her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it. She knew Paul D was adding something to her life--something she wanted to count on but
was scared to. Now he had added more: new pictures and old rememories that broke her heart. Into the empty space of not knowing about Halle—a space sometimes colored with righteous resentment at what could have been his cowardice, or stupidity or bad luck--that empty place of no definite news was filled now with a brand-new sorrow and who could tell how many more on the way. Years ago--when 124 was alive--she had women friends, men friends from all around to share grief with. Then there was no one, for they would not visit her while the baby ghost filled the house, and she returned their disapproval with the potent pride of the mistreated. But now there was someone to share it, and he had beat the spirit away the very day he entered her house and no sign of it since. A blessing, but in its place he brought another kind of haunting: Halle's face smeared with butter and the dabber too; his own mouth jammed full of iron, and Lord knows what else he could tell her if he wanted to. The fingers touching the back of her neck were stronger now-- the strokes bolder as though Baby Suggs were gathering strength. Putting the thumbs at the nape, while the fingers pressed the sides.
Harder, harder, the fingers moved slowly around toward her windpipe, making little circles on the way. Sethe was actually more surprised than frightened to find that she was being strangled. Or so it seemed. In any case, Baby Suggs' fingers had a grip on her that would not let her breathe. Tumbling forward from her seat on the rock, she clawed at the hands that were not there. Her feet were thrashing by the time Denver got to her and then Beloved. "Ma'am! Ma'am!" Denver shouted. "Ma'ammy!" and turned her mother over on her back.
The fingers left off and Sethe had to swallow huge draughts of air before she recognized her daughter's face next to her own and Beloved's hovering above. "You all right?" "Somebody choked me," said Sethe. "Who?" Sethe rubbed her neck and struggled to a sitting position. "Grandma Baby, I reckon. I just asked her to rub my neck, like she used to and she was doing fine and then just got crazy with it, I guess."
"She wouldn't do that to you, Ma'am. Grandma Baby? Uh uh." "Help me up from here." "Look." Beloved was pointing at Sethe's
neck. "What is it? What you see?" asked Sethe. "Bruises," said Denver. "On my neck?" "Here," said Beloved. "Here and here, too." She reached out her hand and touched the splotches, gathering color darker than Sethe's dark throat, and her fingers were mighty cool. "That don't help nothing," Denver said, but Beloved was leaning in, her two hands stroking the damp skin that felt like chamois and looked like taffeta. Sethe moaned. The girl's fingers were so cool and knowing. Sethe's knotted, private, walk-on- water life gave in a bit, softened, and it seemed that the glimpse of happiness she
caught in the shadows swinging hands on the road to the carnival was a likelihood--if she could just manage the news Paul D brought and the news he kept to himself. Just manage it. Not break, fall or cry each time a hateful picture drifted in front of her face. Not develop some permanent craziness like Baby Suggs' friend, a young woman in a bonnet whose food was full of tears. Like Aunt Phyllis, who slept with her eyes wide open. Like Jackson Till, who slept under the bed. All she wanted was to go on. As she had. Alone with her daughter in a haunted house she managed every damn thing. Why now, with Paul D instead of the ghost, was she breaking up? getting scared? needing Baby? The worst was over, wasn't it? She had already got through, hadn't she? With the ghost in 124 she could bear, do, solve anything. Now a hint of what had happened to Halie and she cut out like a rabbit looking for its mother. Beloved's fingers were heavenly. Under them and breathing evenly again, the anguish rolled down. The peace Sethe had come there to find crept into her. We must look a sight, she thought, and closed her eyes to see it: the three women in
the middle of the Clearing, at the base of the rock where Baby Suggs, holy, had loved. One seated, yielding up her throat to the kind hands of one of the two kneeling before her. Denver watched the faces of the other two. Beloved watched the work her thumbs were doing and must have loved what she saw because she leaned over and kissed the tenderness under Sethe's chin. They stayed that way for a while because neither Denver nor Sethe knew how not to: how to stop and not love the look or feel of the lips that kept on kissing. Then Sethe, grabbing Beloved's hair and blinking rapidly, separated herself. She later believed that it was because the girl's breath was exactly like new milk that she said to her, stern and frowning, "You too old for that." She looked at Denver, and seeing panic about to become something more, stood up quickly, breaking the tableau apart. "Come on up! Up!" Sethe waved the girls to their feet. As they left the Clearing they looked pretty much the same as they had when they had come: Sethe in the lead, the girls a
ways back. All silent as before, but with a difference. Sethe was bothered, not because of the kiss, but because, just before it, when she was feeling so fine letting Beloved massage away the pain, the fingers she was loving and the ones that had soothed her before they strangled her had reminded her of something that now slipped her mind. But one thing for sure, Baby Suggs had not choked her as first she thought. Denver was right, and walking in the dappled tree-light, clearer-headed now-- away from the enchantment of the Clearing--Sethe remembered the tou ch of those fingers that she knew better than her own. They had bathed her in sections, wrapped her womb, combed her hair, oiled her nipples, stitched her clothes, cleaned her feet, greased her back and dropped just about anything they were doing to massage Sethe's nape when, especially in the early days, her spirits fell down under the weight of the things she remembered and those she did not: schoolteacher writing in ink she herself had made while his nephews played on her; the face of the woman in a felt hat as she rose to stretch in the field. If she lay among all the hands in the world, she would know Baby Suggs' just as she did the good hands of the whitegirl looking for velvet. But for eighteen years she had lived in a
house full of touches from the other side. And the thumbs that pressed her nape were the same. Maybe that was where it had gone to. After Paul D beat it out of 124, maybe it collected itself in the Clearing. Reasonable, she thought. Why she had taken Denver and Beloved with her didn't puzzle her now--at the time it seemed impulse, with a vague wish for protection. And the girls had saved her, Beloved so agitated she behaved like a two-year-old. Like a faint smell of burning that disappears when the fire is cut off or the window opened for a breeze, the suspicion that the girl's touch was also exactly like the baby's ghost dissipated. It was only a tiny disturbance anyway--not strong enough to divert her from the ambition welling in her now: she wanted Paul D. No matter what he told and knew, she wanted him in her life. More than commemorating Halle, that is what she had come to the Clearing to figure out, and now it was figured. Trust and rememory, yes, the way she believed it could be when he cradled her before the cooking stove.
The weight and angle of him; the true-to-life beard hair on him; arched back, educated hands. His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well--to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other--the things neither had word-shapes for--well, it would come in time: where they led him off to sucking iron; the perfect death of her crawling-already? baby. She wanted to get back--fast. Set these idle girls to some work that would fill their wandering heads. Rushing through the green corridor, cooler now because the sun had moved, it occurred to her that the two were alike as sisters. Their obedience and absolute reliability shot through with surprise. Sethe understood Denver. Solitude had made her secretive--self-manipulated. Years of haunting had dulled her in ways you wouldn't believe and sharpened her in ways you wouldn't believe either. The consequence was a timid but hard-headed daughter Sethe would die to protect. The other, Beloved, she knew less, nothing, about—except that there was nothing she wouldn't do for Sethe and that Denver and she liked each other's company. Now she thought
she knew why. They spent up or held on to their feelings in harmonious ways. What one had to give the other was pleased to take. They hung back in the trees that ringed the Clearing, then rushed into it with screams and kisses when Sethe choked--anyhow that's how she explained it to herself for she noticed neither competition between the two nor domination by one. On her mind was the supper she wanted to fix for Paul D--something difficult to do, something she would do just so--to launch her newer, stronger life with a tender man. Those litty bitty potatoes browned on all sides, heavy on the pepper; snap beans seasoned with rind; yellow squash sprinkled with vinegar and sugar. Maybe corn cut from the cob and fried with green onions and butter. Raised bread, even. Her mind, searching the kitchen before she got to it, was so full of her offering she did not see right away, in the space under the white stairs, the wooden tub and Paul D sitting in it. She smiled at him and he smiled back. "Summer must be over," she said. "Come on in here." "Uh uh. Girls right behind me."
"I don't hear nobody." "I have to cook, Paul D." "Me too." He stood up and made her stay there while he held her in his arms. Her dress soaked up the water from his body. His jaw was near her ear. Her chin touched his shoulder. "What you gonna cook?" "I thought some snap beans." "Oh, yeah." "Fry up a little corn?" "Yeah." There was no question but that she could do it. Just like the day she arrived at 124--sure enough, she had milk enough for all. Beloved came through the door and they ought to have heard her tread, but they didn't. Breathing and murmuring, breathing and murmuring. Beloved heard them as soon as the door banged shut behind her. She jumped at the slam and swiveled her head toward the whispers coming from behind the white stairs. She took a step and felt like crying. She had been so close, then closer. And it was so much better than the
anger that ruled when Sethe did or thought anything that excluded herself. She could bear the hours—nine or ten of them each day but one— when Sethe was gone. Bear even the nights when she was close but out of sight, behind walls and doors lying next to him. But now- even the daylight time that Beloved had counted on, disciplined herself to be content with, was being reduced, divided by Sethe's willingness to pay attention to other things. Him mostly. Him who said something to her that made her run out into the woods and talk to herself on a rock. Him who kept her hidden at night behind doors. And him who had hold of her now whispering behind the stairs after Beloved had rescued her neck and was ready now to put her hand in that woman's own. Beloved turned around and left. Denver had not arrived, or else she was waiting somewhere outside. Beloved went to look, pausing to watch a cardinal hop from limb to branch. She followed the blood spot shifting in the leaves until she lost it and even then she walked on, backward, still hungry for another glimpse.
She turned finally and ran through the woods to the stream. Standing close to its edge she watched her reflection there. When Denver's face joined hers, they stared at each other in the water. "You did it, I saw you," said Denver. "What?" "I saw your face. You made her choke." "I didn't do it." "You told me you loved her." "I fixed it, didn't I? Didn't I fix her neck?" "After. After you choked her neck." "I kissed her neck. I didn't choke it. The circle of iron choked it." "I saw you." Denver grabbed Beloved's arm. "Look out, girl," said Beloved and, snatching her arm away, ran ahead as fast as she could along the stream that sang on the other side of the woods. Left alone, Denver wondered if, indeed, she had been wrong. She and Beloved were standing
in the trees whispering, while Sethe sat on the rock. Denver knew that the Clearing used to be where Baby Suggs preached, but that was when she was a baby. She had never been there herself to remember it .124 and the field behind it were all the world she knew or wanted. Once upon a time she had known more and wanted to. Had walked the path leading to a real other house. Had stood outside the window listening. Four times she did it on her own--crept away from 12 4 early in the afternoon when her mother and grandmother had their guard down, just before supper, after chores; the blank hour before gears changed to evening occupations. Denver had walked off looking for the house other children visited but not her. When she found it she was too timid to go to the front door so she peeped in the window. Lady Jones sat in a straight-backed chair; several children sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. Lady Jones had a book. The children had slates. Lady Jones was saying something too soft for Denver to hear. The children were saying it after her. Four times Denver went to look. The fifth time Lady Jones caught her and said, "Come in the front door, Miss Denver. This is not a side show."
So she had almost a whole year of the company of her peers and along with them learned to spell and count. She was seven, and those two hours in the afternoon were precious to her. Especially so because she had done it on her own and was pleased and surprised by the pleasure and surprise it created in her mother and her brothers. For a nickel a month, Lady Jones did what whitepeople thought unnecessary if not illegal: crowded her little parlor with the colored children who had time for and interest in book learning. The nickel, tied to a handkerchief knot, tied to her belt, that she carried to Lady Jones, thrilled her. The effort to handle chalk expertly and avoid the scream it would make; the capital w, the little i, the beauty of the letters in her name, the deeply mournful sentences from the Bible Lady Jones used as a textbook. Denver practiced every morning; starred every afternoon. She was so happy she didn't even know she was being avoided by her classmates--that they made excuses and altered their pace not to walk with her. It was Nelson Lord--the boy as smart as she was--who put a stop to it; who asked her the question about her mother that put chalk, the little i and all the rest that those afternoons held, out of reach forever. She should have laughed when he said it, or pushed him down, but there was no
meanness in his face or his voice. Just curiosity. But the thing that leapt up in her when he asked it was a thing that had been lying there all along. She never went back. The second day she didn't go, Sethe asked her why not. Denver didn't answer. She was too scared to ask her brothers or anyone else Nelson Lord's question because certain odd and terrifying feelings about her mother were collecting around the thing that leapt up inside her. Later on, after Baby Suggs died, she did not wonder why Howard and Buglar had run away. She did not agree with Sethe that they left because of the ghost. If so, what took them so long? They had lived with it as long as she had. But if Nelson Lord was right--no wonder they were sulky, staying away from home as much as they could. Meanwhile the monstrous and unmanageable dreams about Sethe found release in the concentration Denver began to fix on the baby ghost. Before Nelson Lord, she had been barely interested in its antics. The patience of her mother and grandmother in its presence made her indifferent to it. Then it began to irritate her, wear her out with its mischief. That was when she walked off to
follow the children to Lady Jones' house-school. Now it held for her all the anger, love and fear she didn't know what to do with. Even when she did muster the courage to ask Nelson Lord's question, she could not hear Sethe's answer, nor Baby Suggs' words, nor anything at all thereafter. For two years she walked in a silence too solid for penetration but which gave her eyes a power even she found hard to believe. The black nostrils of a sparrow sitting on a branch sixty feet above her head, for instance. For two years she heard nothing at all and then she heard close thunder crawling up the stairs. Baby Suggs thought it was Here Boy padding into places he never went. Sethe thought it was the India-rubber ball the boys played with bounding down the stairs. "Is that damn dog lost his mind?" shouted Baby Suggs. "He's on the porch," said Sethe. "See for yourself." "Well, what's that I'm hearing then?" Sethe slammed the stove lid. "Buglar! Buglar! I told you all not to use that ball in
here." She looked at the white stairs and saw Denver at the top. "She was trying to get upstairs." "What?" The cloth she used to handle the stove lid was balled in Sethe's hand. "The baby," said Denver. "Didn't you hear her crawling?" What to jump on first was the problem: that Denver heard anything at all or that the crawling- already? baby girl was still at it but more so, The return of Denver's hearing, cut off by an answer she could not hear to hear, cut on by the sound of her dead sister trying to climb the stairs, signaled another shift in the fortunes of the people of 124. From then on the presence was full of spite. Instead of sighs and accidents there was pointed and deliberate abuse. Buglar and Howard grew furious at the company of the women in the house, and spent in sullen reproach any time they had away from their odd work in town carrying water and feed at the stables. Until the spite became so personal it drove each off. Baby Suggs grew tired, went to bed and stayed there until her big old heart quit. Except for an occasional request for color she
said practically nothing--until the afternoon of the last day of her life when she got out of bed, skipped slowly to the door of the keeping room and announced to Sethe and Denver the lesson she had learned from her sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but white people. "They don't know when to stop," she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever. Shortly afterward Sethe and Denver tried to call up and reason with the baby ghost, but got nowhere. It took a man, Paul D, to shout it off, beat it off and take its place for himself. And carnival or no carnival, Denver preferred the venomous baby to him any day. During the first days after Paul D moved in, Denver stayed in her emerald closet as long as she could, lonely as a mountain and almost as big, thinking everybody had somebody but her; thinking even a ghost's company was denied her. So when she saw the black dress with two unlaced shoes beneath it she trembled with secret thanks. Whatever her power and however she used it, Beloved was hers. Denver was alarmed by the harm she thought Beloved planned for Sethe, but felt helpless to thwart it, so
unrestricted was her need to love another. The display she witnessed at the Clearing shamed her because the choice between Sethe and Beloved was without conflict. Walking toward the stream, beyond her green bush house, she let herself wonder what if Beloved really decided to choke her mother. Would she let it happen? Murder, Nelson Lord had said. "Didn't your mother get locked away for murder? Wasn't you in there with her when she went?" It was the second question that made it impossible for so long to ask Sethe about the first. The thing that leapt up had been coiled in just such a place: a darkness, a stone, and some other thing that moved by itself. She went deaf rather than hear the answer, and like the little four o'clocks that searched openly for sunlight, then closed themselves tightly when it left, Denver kept watch for the baby and withdrew from everything else. Until Paul D came. But the damage he did came undone with the miraculous resurrection of Beloved. Just ahead, at the edge of the stream, Denver could see her silhouette, standing barefoot in the water, liking her black skirts up
above her calves, the beautiful head lowered in rapt attention. Blinking fresh tears Denver approached her--eager for a word, a sign of forgiveness. Denver took off her shoes and stepped into the water with her. It took a moment for her to drag her eyes from the spectacle of Beloved's head to see what she was staring at. A turtle inched along the edge, turned and climbed to dry ground. Not far behind it was another one, headed in the same direction. Four placed plates under a hovering motionless bowl. Behind her in the grass the other one moving quickly, quickly to mount her. The impregnable strength of him--earthing his feet near her shoulders. The embracing necks--hers stretching up toward his bending down, the pat pat pat of their touching heads. No height was beyond her yearning neck, stretched like a finger toward his, risking everything outside the bowl just to touch his face. The gravity of their shields, clashing, countered and mocked the floating heads touching.
Beloved dropped the folds of her skirt. It spread around her. The hem darkened in the water.
OUT OF SIGHT of Mister's sight, away, praise His name, from the smiling boss of roosters, Paul D began to tremble. Not all at once and not so anyone could tell. When he turned his head, aiming for a last look at Brother, turned it as much as the rope that connected his neck to the axle of a buckboard allowed, and, later on, when they fastened the iron around his ankles and clamped the wrists as well, there was no outward sign of trembling at all. Nor eighteen days after that when he saw the ditches; the one thousand feet of earth--five feet deep, five feet wide, into which wooden boxes had been fitted. A door of bars that you could lift on hinges like a cage opened into three walls and a roof of scrap lumber and red dirt. Two feet of it over his head; three feet of open trench in front of him with anything that crawled or scurried welcome to share that grave calling itself quarters. And there were forty-five more. He was sent there
after trying to kill Brandywine, the man schoolteacher sold him to. Brandywine was leading him, in a coffle with ten others, through Kentucky into Virginia. He didn't know exactly what prompted him to try--other than Halle, Sixo, Paul A, Paul F and Mister. But the trembling was fixed by the time he knew it was there. Still no one else knew it, because it began inside. A flutter of a kind, in the chest, then the shoulder blades. It felt like rippling-- gentle at first and then wild. As though the further south they led him the more his blood, frozen like an ice pond for twenty years, began thawing, breaking into pieces that, once melted, had no choice but to swirl and eddy. Sometimes it was in his leg. Then again it moved to the base of his spine. By the time they unhitched him from the wagon and he saw nothing but dogs and two shacks in a world of sizzling grass, the roiling blood was shaking him to and fro. But no one could tell. The wrists he held out for the bracelets that evening were steady as were the legs he stood on when chains were attached to the leg irons. But when they shoved him into the box and dropped the cage door down, his hands quit taking instruction. On their own, they
traveled. Nothing could stop them or get their attention. They would not hold his penis to urinate or a spoon to scoop lumps of lima beans into his mouth. The miracle of their obedience came with the hammer at dawn. All forty-six men woke to rifle shot. All forty-six. Three whitemen walked along the trench unlocking the doors one by one. No one stepped through. When the last lock was opened, the three returned and lifted the bars, one by one. And one by one the blackmen emerged--promptly and without the poke of a rifle butt if they had been there more than a day; promptly with the butt if, like Paul D, they had just arrived. When all forty-six were standing in a line in the trench, another rifle shot signaled the climb out and up to the ground above, where one thousand feet of the best hand-forged chain in Georgia stretched. Each man bent and waited. The first man picked up the end and threaded it through the loop on his leg iron. He stood up then, and, shuffling a little, brought the chain tip to the next prisoner, who did likewise. As the chain was passed on and each man stood in the other's place, the line of men turned around, facing the boxes they had come out of. Not one spoke to the other. At least not with words. The
eyes had to tell what there was to tell: "Help me this mornin; 's bad"; "I'm a make it"; "New man"; "Steady now steady." Chain-up completed, they knelt down. The dew, more likely than not, was mist by then. Heavy sometimes and if the dogs were quiet and just breathing you could hear doves. Kneeling in the mist they waited for the whim of a guard, or two, or three. Or maybe all of them wanted it. Wanted it from one prisoner in particular or none-- or all. "Breakfast? Want some breakfast, nigger?" "Yes, sir." "Hungry, nigger?" "Yes, sir." "Here you go." Occasionally a kneeling man chose gunshot in his head as the price, maybe, of taking a bit of foreskin with him to Jesus. Paul D did not know that then. He was looking at his palsied hands, smelling the guard, listening to his soft grunts so like the doves', as he stood before the man kneeling in mist on his right. Convinced he was next, Paul D
retched--vomiting up nothing at all. An observing guard smashed his shoulder with the rifle and the engaged one decided to skip the new man for the time being lest his pants and shoes got soiled by nigger puke. "Hiiii" It was the first sound, other than "Yes, sir" a blackman was allowed to speak each morning, and the lead chain gave it everything he had. "Hiiii!" It was never clear to Paul D how he knew when to shout that mercy. They called him Hi Man and Paul D thought at first the guards told him when to give the signal that let the prisoners rise up off their knees and dance two-step to the music of hand forged iron. Later he doubted it. He believed to this day that the "Hiiii!" at dawn and the "Hoooo!" when evening came were the responsibility Hi Man assumed because he alone knew what was enough, what was too much, when things were over, when the time had come. They chain-danced over the fields, through the woods to a trail that ended in the astonishing beauty of feldspar, and there Paul D's hands disobeyed the furious rippling of his blood and paid attention.
With a sledge hammer in his hands and Hi Man's lead, the men got through. They sang it out and beat it up, garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings. They sang the women they knew; the children they had been; the animals they had tamed themselves or seen others tame. They sang of bosses and masters and misses; of mules and dogs and the shamelessness of life. They sang lovingly of graveyards and sisters long gone. Of pork in the woods; meal in the pan; fish on the line; cane, rain and rocking chairs. And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones--the ones who had been there enough years to have
maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her--kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back. They were the ones whose eyes said, "Help me, 's bad"; or "Look out," meaning this might be the day I bay or eat my own mess or run, and it was this last that had to be guarded against, for if one pitched and ran--all, all forty-six, would be yanked by the chain that bound them and no telling who or how many would be killed. A man could risk his own life, but not his brother's. So the eyes said, "Steady now," and "Hang by me." Eighty-six days and done. Life was dead. Paul D beat her butt all day every day till there was not a whimper in her. Eighty-six days and his hands were still, waiting serenely each rat-rustling night for "Hiiii!" at dawn and the eager clench on the hammer's shaft. Life rolled over dead. Or so he thought. It rained. Snakes came down from short-leaf pine and hemlock. It rained.
Cypress, yellow poplar, ash and palmetto drooped under five days of rain without wind. By the eighth day the doves were nowhere in sight, by the ninth even the salamanders were gone. Dogs laid their ears down and stared over their paws. The men could not work. Chain-up was slow, breakfast abandoned, the two-step became a slow drag over soupy grass and unreliable earth. It was decided to lock everybody down in the boxes till it either stopped or lightened up so a whiteman could walk, damnit, without flooding his gun and the dogs could quit shivering. The chain was threaded through forty-six loops of the best hand-forged iron in Georgia. It rained. In the boxes the men heard the water rise in the trench and looked out for cottonmouths. They squatted in muddy water, slept above it, peed in it. Paul D thought he was screaming; his mouth was open and there was this loud throat-splitting sound--but it may have been somebody else. Then he thought he was crying. Something was running down his cheeks. He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime. Above him rivulets of mud slid
through the boards of the roof. When it come down, he thought, gonna crush me like a tick bug. It happened so quick he had no time to ponder. Somebody yanked the chain--once--hard enough to cross his legs and throw him into the mud. He never figured out how he knew-- how anybody did--but he did know--he did--and he took both hands and yanked the length of chain at his left, so the next man would know too. The water was above his ankles, flowing over the wooden plank he slept on. And then it wasn't water anymore. The ditch was caving in and mud oozed under and through the bars. They waited--each and every one of the forty-six. Not screaming, although some of them must have fought like the devil not to. The mud was up to his thighs and he held on to the bars. Then it came-- another yank--from the left this time and less forceful than the first because of the mud it passed through. It started like the chain-up but the difference was the power of the chain. One by one, from Hi Man back on down the line, they dove. Down through the mud under the bars, blind, groping. Some had sense enough to wrap
their heads in their shirts, cover their faces with rags, put on their shoes. Others just plunged, simply ducked down and pushed out, fighting up, reaching for air. Some lost direction and their neighbors, feeling the confused pull of the chain, snatched them around. For one lost, all lost. The chain that held them would save all or none, and Hi Man was the Delivery. They talked through that chain like Sam Morse and, Great God, they all came up. Like the unshriven dead, zombies on the loose, holding the chains in their hands, they trusted the rain and the dark, yes, but mostly Hi Man and each other. Past the sheds where the dogs lay in deep depression; past the two guard shacks, past the stable of sleeping horses, past the hens whose bills were bolted into their feathers, they waded. The moon did not help because it wasn't there. The field was a marsh, the track a trough. All Georgia seemed to be sliding, melting away. Moss wiped their faces as they fought the live-oak branches that blocked their way. Georgia took up all of Alabama and Mississippi then, so there was no state line to cross and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. If they had known about it, they would have avoided not only Alfred and the beautiful feldspar, but
Savannah too and headed for the Sea Islands on the river that slid down from the Blue Ridge Mountains. But they didn't know. Daylight came and they huddled in a copse of redbud trees. Night came and they scrambled up to higher ground, praying the rain would go on shielding them and keeping folks at home. They were hoping for a shack, solitary, some distance from its big house, where a slave might be making rope or heating potatoes at the grate. What they found was a camp of sick Cherokee for whom a rose was named. Decimated but stubborn, they were among those who chose a fugitive life rather than Oklahoma. The illness that swept them now was reminiscent of the one that had killed half their number two hundred years earlier. In between that calamity and this, they had visited George III in London, published a newspaper, made baskets, led Oglethorpe through forests, helped Andrew Jackson fight Creek, cooked maize, drawn up a constitution, petitioned the King of Spain, been experimented on by Dartmouth, established asylums, wrote their language, resisted settlers, shot bear and translated scripture.
All to no avail. The forced move to the Arkansas River, insisted upon by the same president they fought for against the Creek, destroyed another quarter of their already shattered number. That was it, they thought, and removed themselves from those Cherokee who signed the treaty, in order to retire into the forest and await the end of the world. The disease they suffered now was a mere inconvenience compared to the devastation they remembered. Still, they protected each other as best they could. The healthy were sent some miles away; the sick stayed behind with the dead--to survive or join them. The prisoners from Alfred, Georgia, sat down in semicircle near the encampment. No one came and still they sat. Hours passed and the rain turned soft. Finally a woman stuck her head out of her house. Night came and nothing happened. At dawn two men with barnacles covering their beautiful skin approached them. No one spoke for a moment, then Hi Man raised his hand. The Cherokee saw the chains and went away. When they returned each carried a handful of small
axes. Two children followed with a pot of mush cooling and thinning in the rain. Buffalo men, they called them, and talked slowly to the prisoners scooping mush and tapping away at their chains. Nobody from a box in Alfred, Georgia, cared about the illness the Cherokee warned them about, so they stayed, all forty-six, resting, planning their next move. Paul D had no idea of what to do and knew less than anybody, it seemed. He heard his co-convicts talk knowledgeably of rivers and states, towns and territories. Heard Cherokee men describe the beginning of the world and its end. Listened to tales of other Buffalo men they knew--three of whom were in the healthy camp a few miles away. Hi Man wanted to join them; others wanted to join him. Some wanted to leave; some to stay on. Weeks later Paul D was the only Buffalo man left--without a plan. All he could think of was tracking dogs, although Hi Man said the rain they left in gave that no chance of success. Alone, the last man with buffalo hair among the ailing Cherokee, Paul D finally woke up and, admitting his ignorance, asked how he might get North. Free North. Magical North. Welcoming, benevolent North. The Cherokee smiled and looked around.
The flood rains of a month ago had turned everything to steam and blossoms. "That way," he said, pointing. "Follow the tree flowers," he said. "Only the tree flowers. As they go, you go. You will be where you want to be when they are gone." So he raced from dogwood to blossoming peach. When they thinned out he headed for the cherry blossoms, then magnolia, chinaberry, pecan, walnut and prickly pear. At last he reached a field of apple trees whose flowers were just becoming tiny knots of fruit. Spring sauntered north, but he had to run like hell to keep it as his traveling companion. From February to July he was on the lookout for blossoms. When he lost them, and found himself without so much as a petal to guide him, he paused, climbed a tree on a hillock and scanned the horizon for a flash of pink or white in the leaf world that surrounded him. He did not touch them or stop to smell. He merely followed in their wake, a dark ragged figure guided by the blossoming plums. The apple field turned out to be Delaware where the weaver lady lived. She snapped him up as soon as he finished the sausage she fed
him and he crawled into her bed crying. She passed him off as her nephew from Syracuse simply by calling him that nephew's name. Eighteen months and he was looking out again for blossoms only this time he did the looking on a dray. It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open.
SHE MOVED HIM. Not the way he had beat off the baby's ghost--all bang and shriek with windows smashed and icily iars rolled in a heap. But she moved him nonetheless, and Paul D didn't know how to stop it because it looked like he was moving himself. Imperceptibly, downright reasonably, he was moving out of 124.
The beginning was so simple. One day, after supper, he sat in the rocker by the stove, bone- tired, river-whipped, and fell asleep. He woke to the footsteps of Sethe coming down the white stairs to make breakfast. "I thought you went out somewhere," she
said. Paul D moaned, surprised to find himself
exactly where he was the last time he looked. "Don't tell me I slept in this chair the whole night." Sethe laughed. "Me? I won't say a word to
you." "Why didn't you rouse me?" "I did. Called you two or three times. I gave it up around midnight and then I thought you went out somewhere." He stood, expecting his back to fight it. But it didn't. Not a creak or a stiff joint anywhere. In fact he felt refreshed. Some things are like that, he thought, good-sleep places. The base of certain
trees here and there; a wharf, a bench, a rowboat once, a haystack usually, not always bed, and here, now, a rocking chair, which was strange because in his experience furniture was the worst place for a good- sleep sleep. The next evening he did it again and then again. He was accustomed to sex with Sethe just about every day, and to avoid the confusion Beloved's shining caused him he still made it his business to take her back upstairs in the morning, or lie down with her after supper. But he found a way and a reason to spend the longest part of the night in the rocker. He told himself it must be his back- something supportive it needed for a weakness left over from sleeping in a box in Georgia. It went on that way and might have stayed that way but one evening, after supper, after Sethe, he came downstairs, sat in the rocker and didn't want to be there. He stood up and realized he didn't want to go upstairs either. Irritable and longing for rest, he opened the door to Baby Suggs' room and dropped off to sleep on the bed the old lady died in. That settled it--so it seemed. It became his room and Sethe didn't object--her bed made for two had been occupied by one for eighteen years before
Paul D came to call. And maybe it was better this way, with young girls in the house and him not being her true-to-life husband. In any case, since there was no reduction in his before-breakfast or after-supper appetites, he never heard her complain. It went on that way and might have stayed that way, except one evening, after supper, after Sethe, he came downstairs and lay on Baby Suggs' bed and didn't want to be there. He believed he was having house-fits, the glassy anger men sometimes feel when a woman's house begins to bind them, when they want to yell and break something or at least run off. He knew all about that--felt it lots of times--in the Delaware weaver's house, for instance. But always he associated the house-fit with the woman in it. This nervousness had nothing to do with the woman, whom he loved a little bit more every day: her hands among vegetables, her mouth when she licked a thread end before guiding it through a needle or bit it in two when the seam was done, the blood in her eye when she defended her girls (and Beloved was hers now) or any coloredwoman from a slur. Also in this house-fit there was no anger, no suffocation, no yearning to be elsewhere. He just could not, would
not, sleep upstairs or in the rocker or, now, in Baby Suggs' bed. So he went to the storeroom. It went on that way and might have stayed that way except one evening, after supper, after Sethe, he lay on a pallet in the storeroom and didn't want to be there. Then it was the cold house and it was out there, separated from the main part of 124, curled on top of two croaker sacks full of sweet potatoes, staring at the sides of a lard can, that he realized the moving was involuntary. He wasn't being nervous; he was being prevented. So he waited. Visited Sethe in the morning; slept in the cold room at night and waited. She came, and he wanted to knock her down. In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it. When Paul D had been forced out of 124 into a shed behind it, summer had been hooted offstage and autumn with its bottles of blood and gold had everybody's attention. Even at night, when there should have been a restful intermission, there was none because the voices of a dying landscape were insistent and loud. Paul D packed newspaper under himself and over, to
give his thin blanket some help. But the chilly night was not on his mind. When he heard the door open behind him he refused to turn and look. "What you want in here? What you want?" He should have been able to hear her breathing. "I want you to touch me on the inside part and call me my name." Paul D never worried about his little tobacco tin anymore. It was rusted shut. So, while she hoisted her skirts and turned her head over her shoulder the way the turtles had, he just looked at the lard can, silvery in moonlight, and spoke quietly. "When good people take you in and treat you good, you ought to try to be good back. You don't... Sethe loves you. Much as her own daughter. You know that." Beloved dropped her skirts as he spoke and looked at him with empty eyes. She took a step he could not hear and stood close behind him. "She don't love me like I love her. I don't love nobody but her." "Then what you come in here for?"
"I want you to touch me on the inside part." "Go on back in that house and get to bed." "You have to touch me. On the inside part. And you have to call me my name." As long as his eyes were locked on the silver of the lard can he was safe. If he trembled like Lot's wife and felt some womanish need to see the nature of the sin behind him; feel a sympathy, perhaps, for the cursing cursed, or want to hold it in his arms out of respect for the connection between them, he too would be lost. "Call me my name." "No." "Please call it. I'll go if you call it." "Beloved." He said it, but she did not go. She moved closer with a footfall he didn't hear and he didn't hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn't know it. What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying, "Red heart. Red heart," over and over again. Softly and then so loud it woke Denver, then Paul D himself. "Red heart. Red heart. Red heart."
TO GO BACK to the original hunger was impossible. Luckily for Denver, looking was food enough to last. But to be looked at in turn was beyond appetite; it was breaking through her own skin to a place where hunger hadn't been discovered. It didn't have to happen often, because Beloved seldom looked right at her, or when she did, Denver could tell that her own face was just the place those eyes stopped while the mind behind it walked on. But sometimes--at moments Denver could neither anticipate nor create-- Beloved rested cheek on knuckles and looked at Denver with attention. It was lovely. Not to be stared at, not seen, but being pulled into view by the interested, uncritical eyes of the other. Having her hair examined as a part of her self, not as material or a style. Having her lips, nose, chin caressed as they might be if she were a moss rose a gardener paused to admire. Denver's skin dissolved under that gaze and became soft and bright like the lisle dress that had its arm around her mother's waist. She floated near but outside her own body, feeling vague and intense at the same time. Needing nothing. Being what there was.
At such times it seemed to be Beloved who needed somethingm wanted something. Deep down in her wide black eyes, back behind the expressionlessness, was a palm held out for a penny which Denver would gladly give her, if only she knew how or knew enough about her, a knowledge not to be had by the answers to the questions Sethe occasionally put to her: '"You disremember everything? I never knew my mother neither, but I saw her a couple of times. Did you never see yours? What kind of whites was they? You don't remember none?" Beloved, scratching the back of her hand, would say she remembered a woman who was hers, and she remembered being snatched away from her. Other than that, the clearest memory she had, the one she repeated, was the bridge-standing on the bridge looking down. And she knew one whiteman. Sethe found that remarkable and more evidence to support her conclusions, which she confided to Denver. "Where'd you get the dress, them shoes?" Beloved said she took them. "Who from?"
Silence and a faster scratching of her hand. She didn't know; she saw them and just took them.
"Uh huh," said Sethe, and told Denver that she believed Beloved had been locked up by some whiteman for his own purposes, and never let out the door. That she must have escaped to a bridge or someplace and rinsed the rest out of her mind. Something like that had happened to Ella except it was two men—a father and son— and Ella remembered every bit of it. For more than a year, they kept her locked in a room for themselves. "You couldn't think up," Ella had said, "what them two done to me." Sethe thought it explained Beloved's behavior around Paul D, whom she hated so. Denver neither believed nor commented on Sethe's speculations, and she lowered her eyes and never said a word about the cold house. She was certain that Beloved was the white dress that had knelt with her mother in the keeping room, the true-to-life presence of the baby that had kept her company most of her life. And to be looked at by her, however briefly, kept her grateful for the rest of the time when she was merely the looker. Besides, she had her own set
of questions which had nothing to do with the past. The present alone interested Denver, but she was careful to appear uninquisitive about the things she was dying to ask Beloved, for if she pressed too hard, she might lose the penny that the held-out palm wanted, and lose, therefore, the place beyond appetite. It was better to feast, to have permission to be the looker, because the old hunger--the before-Beloved hunger that drove her into boxwood and cologne for just a taste of a life, to feel it bumpy and not flat--was out of the question. Looking kept it at bay. So she did not ask Beloved how she knew about the earrings, the night walks to the cold house or the tip of the thing she saw when Beloved lay down or came undone in her sleep. The look, when it came, came when Denver had been careful, had explained things, or participated in things, or told stories to keep her occupied when Sethe was at the restaurant. No given chore was enough to put out the licking fire that seemed always to burn in her. Not when they wrung out sheets so tight the rinse water ran back up their arms. Not when they shoveled snow from the path to the outhouse. Or broke three inches of ice from the rain barrel; scoured and boiled last summer's canning jars, packed
mud in the cracks of the hen house and warmed the chicks with their skirts. All the while Denver was obliged to talk about what they were doing--the how and why of it. About people Denver knew once or had seen, giving them more life than life had: the sweet-smelling whitewoman who brought her oranges and cologne and good wool skirts; Lady Jones who taught them songs to spell and count by; a beautiful boy as smart as she was with a birthmark like a nickel on his cheek. A white preacher who prayed for their souls while Sethe peeled potatoes and Grandma Baby sucked air. And she told her about Howard and Buglar: the parts of the bed that belonged to each (the top reserved for herself); that before she transferred to Baby Suggs' bed she never knew them to sleep without holding hands. She described them to Beloved slowly, to keep her attention, dwelling on their habits, the games they taught her and not the fright that drove them increasingly out of the house—anywhere--and finally far away. This day they are outside. It's cold and the snow is hard as packed dirt. Denver has finished singing the counting song Lady Jones taught her students. Beloved is holding her arms steady while Denver unclasps frozen underwear and towels from the line. One by one she lays them in
Beloved's arms until the pile, like a huge deck of cards, reaches her chin. The rest, aprons and brown stockings, Denver carries herself. Made giddy by the cold, they return to the house. The clothes will thaw slowly to a dampness perfect for the pressing iron, which will make them smell like hot rain. Dancing around the room with Sethe's apron, Beloved wants to know if there are flowers in the dark. Denver adds sticks to the stovefire and assures her there are. Twirling, her face framed by the neckband, her waist in the apron strings' embrace, she says she is thirsty. Denver suggests warming up some cider, while her mind races to something she might do or say to interest and entertain the dancer. Denver is a strategist now and has to keep Beloved by her side from the minute Sethe leaves for work until the hour of her return when Beloved begins to hover at the window, then work her way out the door, down the steps and near the road. Plotting has changed Denver markedly. Where she was once indolent, resentful of every task, now she is spry, executing, even extending the assignments Sethe leaves for them. All to be able to say "We got to" and "Ma'am said for us to." Otherwise Beloved gets private and dreamy, or quiet and sullen, and Denver's chances of being
looked at by her go down to nothing. She has no control over the evenings. When her mother is anywhere around, Beloved has eyes only for Sethe. At night, in bed, anything might happen. She might want to be told a story in the dark when Denver can't see her. Or she might get up and go into the cold house where Paul D has begun to sleep. Or she might cry, silently. She might even sleep like a brick, her breath sugary from fingerfuls of molasses or sand-cookie crumbs. Denver will turn toward her then, and if Beloved faces her, she will inhale deeply the sweet air from her mouth. If not, she will have to lean up and over her, every once in a while, to catch a sniff. For anything is better than the original hunger--the time when, after a year of the wonderful little i, sentences rolling out like pie dough and the company of other children, there was no sound coming through. Anything is better than the silence when she answered to hands gesturing and was indifferent to the movement of lips. When she saw every little thing and colors leaped smoldering into view. She will forgo the most violent of sunsets, stars as fat as dinner plates and all the blood of autumn and settle for the palest yellow if it comes from her Beloved.
The cider jug is heavy, but it always is, even when empty. Denver can carry it easily, yet she asks Beloved to help her. It is in the cold house next to the molasses and six pounds of cheddar hard as bone. A pallet is in the middle of the floor covered with newspaper and a blanket at the foot. It has been slept on for almost a month, even though snow has come and, with it, serious winter. It is noon, quite light outside; inside it is not. A few cuts of sun break through the roof and walls but once there they are too weak to shift for themselves. Darkness is stronger and swallows them like minnows. The door bangs shut. Denver can't tell where Beloved is standing. "Where are you?" she whispers in a laughing sort of way. "Here," says Beloved. "Where?" "Come find me," says Beloved. Denver stretches out her right arm and takes a step or two. She trips and falls down onto
the pallet. Newspaper crackles under her weight. She laughs again. "Oh, shoot. Beloved?" No one answers. Denver waves her arms and squinches her eyes to separate the shadows of potato sacks, a lard can and a side of smoked pork from the one that might be human. "Stop fooling," she says and looks up toward the light to check and make sure this is still the cold house and not something going on in her sleep. The minnows of light still swim there; they can't make it down to where she is. "You the one thirsty. You want cider or don't you?" Denver's voice is mildly accusatory. Mildly. She doesn't want to offend and she doesn't want to betray the panic that is creeping over her like hairs. There is no sight or sound of Beloved. Denver struggles to her feet amid the crackling newspaper. Holding her palm out, she moves slowly toward the door. There is no latch or knob--just a loop of wire to catch a nail. She pushes the door open. Cold sunlight displaces the dark. The room is just as it was when they entered-except Beloved is not there. There is no point in looking further, for everything in the place can be seen at first sight. Denver looks anyway because the loss is ungovernable. She
steps back into the shed, allowing the door to close quickly behind her. Darkness or not, she moves rapidly around, reaching, touching cobwebs, cheese, slanting shelves, the pallet interfering with each step. If she stumbles, she is not aware of it because she does not know where her body stops, which part of her is an arm, a foot or a knee. She feels like an ice cake torn away from the solid surface of the stream, floating on darkness, thick and crashing against the edges of things around it. Breakable, meltable and cold. It is hard to breathe and even if there were light she wouldn't be able to see anything because she is crying. Just as she thought it might happen, it has. Easy as walking into a room. A magical appearance on a stump, the face wiped out by sunlight, and a magical disappearance in a shed, eaten alive by the dark. "Don't," she is saying between tough swallows. "Don't. Don't go back." This is worse than when Paul D came to 124 and she cried helplessly into the stove. This is worse. Then it was for herself. Now she is crying because she has no self. Death is a skipped meal compared to this. She can feel her
thickness thinning, dissolving into nothing. She grabs the hair at her temples to get enough to uproot it and halt the melting for a while. Teeth clamped shut, Denver brakes her sobs. She doesn't move to open the door because there is no world out there. She decides to stay in the cold house and let the dark swallow her like the minnows of light above. She won't put up with another leaving, another trick. Waking up to find one brother then another not at the bottom of the bed, his foot jabbing her spine. Sitting at the table eating turnips and saving the liquor for her grandmother to drink; her mother's hand on the keeping-room door and her voice saying, "Baby Suggs is gone, Denver." And when she got around to worrying about what would be the case if Sethe died or Paul D took her away, a dream-come-true comes true just to leave her on a pile of newspaper in the dark. No footfall announces her, but there she is, standing where before there was nobody when Denver looked. And smiling. Denver grabs the hem of Beloved's skirt. "I thought you left me.
I thought you went back." Beloved smiles, "I don't want that place. This the place I am." She sits down on the pallet and, laughing, lies back looking at the cracklights above. Surreptitiously, Denver pinches a piece of Beloved's skirt between her fingers and holds on. A good thing she does because suddenly Beloved sits up. "What is it?" asks Denver. "Look," she points to the sunlit cracks. "What? I don't see nothing." Denver follows the pointing finger. Beloved drops her hand. "I'm like this." Denver watches as Beloved bends over, curls up and rocks. Her eyes go to no place; her moaning is so small Denver can hardly hear it. "You all right? Beloved?"
face." Beloved focuses her eyes. "Over there. Her
Denver looks where Beloved's eyes go; there is nothing but darkness there. "Whose face? Who is it?" "Me. It's me." She is smiling again. THE LAST of the Sweet Home men, so named and called by one who would know, believed it. The other four believed it too, once, but they were long gone. The sold one never returned, the lost one never found. One, he knew, was dead for sure; one he hoped was, because butter and clabber was no life or reason to live it. He grew up thinking that, of all the Blacks in Kentucky, only the five of them were men. Allowed, encouraged to correct Garner, even defy him. To invent ways of doing things; to see what was needed and attack it without permission. To buy a mother, choose a horse or a wife, handle guns, even learn reading if they wanted to--but they didn't want to since
nothing important to them could be put down on paper. Was that it? Is that where the manhood lay? In the naming done by a whiteman who was supposed to know? Who gave them the privilege not of working but of deciding how to? No. In their relationship with Garner was true metal: they were believed and trusted, but most of all they were listened to. He thought what they said had merit, and what they felt was serious. Deferring to his slaves' opinions did not deprive him of authority or power. It was schoolteacher who taught them otherwise. A truth that waved like a scarecrow in rye: they were only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race. Watchdogs without teeth; steer bulls without horns; gelded workhorses whose neigh and whinny could not be translated into a language responsible humans spoke. His strength had lain in knowing that schoolteacher was wrong. Now he wondered. There was Alfred, Georgia, there was Delaware, there was Sixo and still he wondered. If
schoolteacher was right it explained how he had come to be a rag doll--picked up and put back down anywhere any time by a girl young enough to be his daughter. Fucking her when he was convinced he didn't want to. Whenever she turned her behind up, the calves of his youth (was that it?) cracked his resolve. But it was more than appetite that humiliated him and made him wonder if schoolteacher was right. It was being moved, placed where she wanted him, and there was nothing he was able to do about it. For his life he could not walk up the glistening white stairs in the evening; for his life he could not stay in the kitchen, in the keeping room, in the storeroom at night. And he tried. Held his breath the way he had when he ducked into the mud; steeled his heart the way he had when the trembling began. But it was worse than that, worse than the blood eddy he had controlled with a sledge hammer. When he stood up from the supper table at 124 and turned toward the stairs, nausea was first, then repulsion. He, he. He who had eaten raw meat barely dead, who under plum trees bursting with blossoms had crunched through a dove's breast before its heart stopped beating. Because he was a man and a man could do what he would: be still for six hours in a dry well while night dropped; fight
raccoon with his hands and win; watch another man, whom he loved better than his brothers, roast without a tear just so the roasters would know what a man was like. And it was he, that man, who had walked from Georgia to Delaware, who could not go or stay put where he wanted to in 124--shame. Paul D could not command his feet, but he thought he could still talk and he made up his mind to break out that way. He would tell Sethe about the last three weeks: catch her alone coming from work at the beer garden she called a restaurant and tell it all. He waited for her. The winter afternoon looked like dusk as he stood in the alley behind Sawyer's Restaurant. Rehearsing, imagining her face and letting the words flock in his head like kids before lining up to follow the leader. "Well, ah, this is not the, a man can't, see, but aw listen here, it ain't that, it really ain't, Ole Garner, what I mean is, it ain't a weak- ness, the kind of weakness I can fight 'cause 'cause something is happening to me, that girl is doing it, I know you think I never liked her nohow, but she is doing it to me. Fixing me. Sethe, she's fixed me and I can't break it."
What? A grown man fixed by a girl? But what if the girl was not a girl, but something in disguise? A lowdown something that looked like a sweet young girl and fucking her or not was not the point, it was not being able to stay or go where he wished in 124, and the danger was in losing Sethe because he was not man enough to break out, so he needed her, Sethe, to help him, to know about it, and it shamed him to have to ask the woman he wanted to protect to help him do it, God damn it to hell. Paul D blew warm breath into the hollow of his cupped hands. The wind raced down the alley so fast it sleeked the fur of four kitchen dogs waiting for scraps. He looked at the dogs. The dogs looked at him. Finally the back door opened and Sethe stepped through holding a scrap pan in the crook of her arm. When she saw him, she said Oh, and her smile was both pleasure and surprise. Paul D believed he smiled back but his face was so cold he wasn't sure. "Man, you make me feel like a girl, coming by to pick me up after work. Nobody ever did
that before. You better watch out, I might start looking forward to it." She tossed the largest bones into the dirt rapidly so the dogs would know there was enough and not fight each other. Then she dumped the skins of some things, heads of other things and the insides of still more things--what the restaurant could not use and she would not--in a smoking pile near the animals' feet. "Got to rinse this out," she said, "and then I'll be right with you." He nodded as she returned to the kitchen. The dogs ate without sound and Paul D thought they at least got what they came for, and if she had enough for them-- The cloth on her head was brown wool and she edged it down over her hairline against the wind. "You get off early or what?" "I took off early." "Anything the matter?" "In a way of speaking," he said and wiped his
lips. "Not cut back?"
"No, no. They got plenty work. I just-- " "Hm?" "Sethe, you won't like what I'm 'bout to say." She stopped then and turned her face toward him and the hateful wind. Another woman would have squinted or at least teared if the wind whipped her face as it did Sethe's. Another woman might have shot him a look of apprehension, pleading, anger even, because what he said sure sounded like part one of Goodbye, I'm gone. Sethe looked at him steadily, calmly, already ready to accept, release or excuse an in-need-or- trouble man. Agreeing, saying okay, all right, in advance, because she didn't believe any of them--over the long haul--could measure up. And whatever the reason, it was all right. No fault. Nobody's fault. He knew what she was thinking and even though she was wrong-- he was not leaving her, wouldn't ever--the thing he had in mind to tell her was going to be worse. So, when he saw the diminished expectation in her eyes, the melancholy without blame, he could not say it.
He could not say to this woman who did not squint in the wind, "I am not a man." "Well, say it, Paul D, whether I like it or not." Since he could not say what he planned to, he said something he didn't know was on his mind. "I want you pregnant, Sethe. Would you do that for me?" Now she was laughing and so was he. "You came by here to ask me that? You are one crazy-headed man. You right; I don't like it. Don't you think I'm too old to start that all over again?" She slipped her fingers in his hand for all the world like the hand-holding shadows on the side of the road. "Think about it," he said. And suddenly it was a solution: a way to hold on to her, document his manhood and break out of the girl's spell—all in one. He put the tips of Sethe's fingers on his cheek. Laughing, she pulled them away lest somebody passing the alley see them misbehaving in public, in daylight, in the wind. Still, he'd gotten a little more time, bought it, in fact, and hoped the price wouldn't
wreck him. Like paying for an afternoon in the coin of life to come. They left off playing, let go hands and hunched forward as they left the alley and entered the street. The wind was quieter there but the dried-out cold it left behind kept pedestrians fast-moving, stiff inside their coats. No men leaned against door frames or storefront windows. The wheels of wagons delivering feed or wood screeched as though they hurt. Hitched horses in front of the saloons shivered and closed their eyes. Four women, walking two abreast, approached, their shoes loud on the wooden walkway. Paul D touched Sethe's elbow to guide her as they stepped from the slats to the dirt to let the women pass. Half an hour later, when they reached the city's edge, Sethe and Paul D resumed catching and snatching each other's fingers, stealing quick pats on the behind. Joyfully embarrassed to be that grownup and that young at the same time. Resolve, he thought. That was all it took, and no motherless gal was going to break it up. No lazy, stray pup of a woman could turn him around, make him doubt himself, wonder, plead or confess.
Convinced of it, that he could do it, he threw his arm around Sethe's shoulders and squeezed. She let her head touch his chest, and since the moment was valuable to both of them, they stopped and stood that way--not breathing, not even caring if a passerby passed them by. The winter light was low. Sethe closed her eyes. Paul D looked at the black trees lining the roadside, their defending arms raised against attack. Softly, suddenly, it began to snow, like a present come down from the sky. Sethe opened her eyes to it and said, "Mercy." And it seemed to Paul D that it was--a little mercy--something given to them on purpose to mark what they were feeling so they would remember it later on when they needed to. Down came the dry flakes, fat enough and heavy enough to crash like nickels on stone. It always surprised him, how quiet it was. Not like rain, but like a secret. "Run!" he said. "You run," said Sethe. "I been on my feet all
day."
"Where I been? Sitting down?" and he pulled her along. "Stop! Stop!" she said. "I don't have the legs for this." "Then give em to me," he said and before she knew it he had backed into her, hoisted her on his back and was running down the road past brown fields turning white. Breathless at last, he stopped and she slid back down on her own two feet, weak from laughter. "You need some babies, somebody to play with in the snow." Sethe secured her headcloth. Paul D smiled and warmed his hands with his breath. "I sure would like to give it a try. Need a willing partner though." "I'll say," she answered. "Very, very willing." It was nearly four o'clock now and 124 was half a mile ahead.
Floating toward them, barely visible in the drifting snow, was a figure, and although it was the same figure that had been meeting Sethe for four months, so complete was the attention she and Paul D were paying to themselves they both felt a jolt when they saw her close in. Beloved did not look at Paul D; her scrutiny was for Sethe. She had no coat, no wrap, nothing on her head, but she held in her hand a long shawl. Stretching out her arms she tried to circle it around Sethe. "Crazy girl," said Sethe. "You the one out here with nothing on." And stepping away and in front of Paul D, Sethe took the shawl and wrapped it around Beloved's head and shoulders. Saying, "You got to learn more sense than that," she enclosed her in her left arm. Snowflakes stuck now. Paul D felt icy cold in the place Sethe had been before Beloved came. Trailing a yard or so behind the women, he fought the anger that shot through his stomach all the way home. When he saw Denver silhouetted in the lamplight at the window, he could not help thinking, "And whose ally you?"
It was Sethe who did it. Unsuspecting, surely, she solved everything with one blow. "Now I know you not sleeping out there tonight, are you, Paul D?" She smiled at him, and like a friend in need, the chimney coughed against the rush of cold shooting into it from the sky. Window sashes shuddered in a blast of winter air. Paul D looked up from the stew meat. "You come upstairs. Where you belong," she said, "... and stay there." The threads of malice creeping toward him from Beloved's side of the table were held harmless in the warmth of Sethe's smile. Once before (and only once) Paul D had been grateful to a woman. Crawling out of the woods, cross-eyed with hunger and loneliness, he knocked at the first back door he came to in the colored section of Wilmington. He told the woman who opened it that he'd appreciate doing her woodpile, if she could spare him something to eat. She looked him up and down. "A little later on," she said and opened the door wider. She fed him pork sausage, the worst
thing in the world for a starving man, but neither he nor his stomach objected. Later, when he saw pale cotton sheets and two pillows in her bedroom, he had to wipe his eyes quickly, quickly so she would not see the thankful tears of a man's first time. Soil, grass, mud, shucking, leaves, hay, cobs, sea shells—all that he'd slept on. White cotton sheets had never crossed his mind. He fell in with a groan and the woman helped him pretend he was making love to her and not her bed linen. He vowed that night, full of pork, deep in luxury, that he would never leave her. She would have to kill him to get him out of that bed. Eighteen months later, when he had been purchased by Northpoint Bank and Railroad Company, he was still thankful for that introduction to sheets. Now he was grateful a second time. He felt as though he had been plucked from the face of a cliff and put down on sure ground. In Sethe's bed he knew he could put up with two crazy girls—as long as Sethe made her wishes known. Stretched out to his full length, watching snowflakes stream past the window over his feet, it was easy to dismiss the doubts
that took him to the alley behind the restaurant: his expectations for himself were high, too high. What he might call cowardice other people called common sense. Tucked into the well of his arm, Sethe recalled Paul D's face in the street when he asked her to have a baby for him. Although she laughed and took his hand, it had frightened her. She thought quickly of how good the sex would be if that is what he wanted, but mostly she was frightened by the thought of having a baby once more. Needing to be good enough, alert enough, strong enough, that caring--again. Having to stay alive just that much longer. O Lord, she thought, deliver me. Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer. What did he want her pregnant for? To hold on to her? have a sign that he passed this way? He probably had children everywhere anyway. Eighteen years of roaming, he would have to have dropped a few. No. He resented the children she had, that's what. Child, she corrected herself. Child plus Beloved whom she thought of as her own, and that is what he resented. Sharing her with
the girls. Hearing the three of them laughing at something he wasn't in on. The code they used among themselves that he could not break. Maybe even the time spent on their needs and not his. They were a family somehow and he was not the head of it. Can you stitch this up for me, baby? Um hm. Soon's I finish this petticoat. She just got the one she came here in and everybody needs a change. Any pie left? I think Denver got the last of it. And not complaining, not even minding that he slept all over and around the house now, which she put a stop to this night out of courtesy. Sethe sighed and placed her hand on his chest. She knew she was building a case against him in order to build a case against getting pregnant, and it shamed her a little. But she had all the children she needed. If her boys came back one day, and Denver and Beloved stayed on--well, it would be the way it was supposed to be, no? Right after she saw the shadows holding hands at the side of the road hadn't the picture
altered? And the minute she saw the dress and shoes sitting in the front yard, she broke water. Didn't even have to see the face burning in the sunlight. She had been dreaming it for years. Paul D's chest rose and fell, rose and fell under her hand.
DENVER FINISHED washing the dishes and sat down at the table. Beloved, who had not moved since Sethe and Paul D left the room, sat sucking her forefinger. Denver watched her face awhile and then said, "She likes him here." Beloved went on probing her mouth with her finger. "Make him go away," she said. "She might be mad at you if he leaves." Beloved, inserting a thumb in her mouth along with the forefinger, pulled out a back tooth. There was hardly any blood, but Denver said, "Ooooh, didn't that hurt you?"
Beloved looked at the tooth and thought, This is it. Next would be her arm, her hand, a toe. Pieces of her would drop maybe one at a time, maybe all at once. Or on one of those mornings before Denver woke and after Sethe left she would fly apart. It is difficult keeping her head on her neck, her legs attached to her hips when she is by herself. Among the things she could not remember was when she first knew that she could wake up any day and find herself in pieces. She had two dreams: exploding, and being swallowed. When her tooth came out--an odd fragment, last in the row--she thought it was starting. "Must be a wisdom," said Denver. "Don't it hurt?" "Yes." " T h e
n
w h y
d o n ' t
y o u
c r y ? "
" W h a t ? " "If it hurts, why don't you cry?" And she did. Sitting there holding a small white tooth in the palm of her smooth smooth hand. Cried the way she wanted to when turtles came out of the water, one behind the
other, right after the blood-red bird disappeared back into the leaves. The way she wanted to when Sethe went to him standing in the tub under the stairs. With the tip of her tongue she touched the salt water that slid to the corner of her mouth and hoped Denver's arm around her shoulders would keep them from falling apart. The couple upstairs, united, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around 124 the snow went on and on and on. Piling itself, burying itself. Higher. Deeper.
AT THE BACK of Baby Suggs' mind may have been the thought that if Halle made it, God do what He would, it would be a cause for celebration. If only this final son could do for himself what he had done for her and for the three children John and Ella delivered to her door one summer night. When the children arrived and no Sethe, she was afraid and grateful. Grateful that the part of the family that survived was her own grandchildren--the first
and only she would know: two boys and a little girl who was crawling already. But she held her heart still, afraid to form questions: What about Sethe and Halle; why the delay? Why didn't Sethe get on board too? Nobody could make it alone. Not only because trappers picked them off like buzzards or netted them like rabbits, but also because you couldn't run if you didn't know how to go. You could be lost forever, if there wasn't nobody to show you the way. So when Sethe arrived--all mashed up and split open, but with another grandchild in her arms-- the idea of a whoop moved closer to the front of her brain. But since there was still no sign of Halle and Sethe herself didn't know what had happened to him, she let the whoop lie-not wishing to hurt his chances by thanking God too soon. It was Stamp Paid who started it. Twenty days after Sethe got to 124 he came by and looked at the baby he had tied up in his nephew's jacket, looked at the mother he had handed a piece of fried eel to and, for some private reason of his own, went off with two buckets to a place near the river's edge that only he knew about where blackberries grew, tasting so good and happy that to eat them was like
being in church. Just one of the berries and you felt anointed. He walked six miles to the riverbank; did a slide-run-slide down into a ravine made almost inaccessible by brush. He reached through brambles lined with blood-drawing thorns thick as knives that cut through his shirt sleeves and trousers. All the while suffering mosquitoes, bees, hornets, wasps and the meanest lady spiders in the state. Scratched, raked and bitten, he maneuvered through and took hold of each berry with fingertips so gentle not a single one was bruised. Late in the afternoon he got back to 124 and put two full buckets down on the porch. When Baby Suggs saw his shredded clothes, bleeding hands, welted face and neck she sat down laughing out loud. Buglar, Howard, the woman in the bonnet and Sethe came to look and then laughed along with Baby Suggs at the sight of the sly, steely old black man: agent, fisherman, boatman, tracker, savior, spy, standing in broad daylight whipped finally by two pails of blackberries. Paying them no mind he took a berry and put it in the three week-old Denver's mouth. The women shrieked.
"She's too little for that, Stamp." "Bowels be soup." "Sickify her stomach." But the baby's thrilled eyes and smacking lips made them follow suit, sampling one at a time the berries that tasted like church. Finally Baby Suggs slapped the boys' hands away from the bucket and sent Stamp around to the pump to rinse himself. She had decided to do something with the fruit worthy of the man's labor and his love. That's how it began. She made the pastry dough and thought she ought to tell Ella and John to stop on by because three pies, maybe four, were too much to keep for one's own. Sethe thought they might as well back it up with a couple of chickens. Stamp allowed that perch and catfish were jumping into the boat--didn't even have to drop a line. From Denver's two thrilled eyes it grew to a feast for ninety people .124 shook with their voices far into the night. Ninety people who ate so well, and laughed so much, it made them angry. They woke up the next morning and remembered
the meal-fried perch that Stamp Paid handled with a hickory twig, holding his left palm out against the spit and pop of the boiling grease; the corn pudding made with cream; tired, overfed children asleep in the grass, tiny bones of roasted rabbit still in their hands-- and got angry. Baby Suggs' three (maybe four) pies grew to ten (maybe twelve). Sethe's two hens became five turkeys. The one block of ice brought all the way from Cincinnati-- -over which they poured mashed watermelon mixed with sugar and mint to make a punch--became a wagonload of ice cakes for a washtub full of strawberry shrug, 124, rocking with laughter, goodwill and food for ninety, made them angry. Too much, they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing messages; healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing and loving everybody like it was her job and hers alone. Now to take two buckets of blackberries and make ten, maybe twelve, pies; to have turkey enough for the whole town pretty near, new peas in September, fresh cream but no cow, ice and
sugar, batter bread, bread pudding, raised bread, shortbread--it made them mad. Loaves and fishes were His powers--they did not belong to an ex slave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the scale, or picked okra with a baby on her back. Who had never been lashed by a ten-year-old whiteboy as God knows they had. Who had not even escaped slavery--had, in fact, been bought out of it by a doting son and driven to the Ohio River in a wagon--free papers folded between her breasts (driven by the very man who had been her master, who also paid her resettlement fee--name of Garner), and rented a house with two floors and a well from the Bodwins-- the white brother and sister who gave Stamp Paid, Ella and John clothes, goods and gear for runaways because they hated slavery worse than they hated slaves. It made them furious. They swallowed baking soda, the morning after, to calm the stomach violence caused by the bounty, the reckless generosity on display at 124. Whispered to each other in the yards about fat rats, doom and uncalled-for pride. The scent of their disapproval lay heavy in the air. Baby Suggs woke to it and wondered
what it was as she boiled hominy for her grandchildren. Later, as she stood in the garden, chopping at the tight soil over the roots of the pepper plants, she smelled it again. She lifted her head and looked around. Behind her some yards to the left Sethe squatted in the pole beans. Her shoulders were distorted by the greased flannel under her dress to encourage the healing of her back. Near her in a bushel basket was the three-week-old baby. Baby Suggs, holy, looked up. The sky was blue and clear. Not one touch of death in the definite green of the leaves. She could hear birds and, faintly, the stream way down in the meadow. The puppy, Here Boy, was burying the last bones from yesterday's party. From somewhere at the side of the house came the voices of Buglar, Howard and the crawling girl. Nothing seemed amiss--yet the smell of disapproval was sharp. Back beyond the vegetable garden, closer to the stream but in full sun, she had planted corn. Much as they'd picked for the party, there were still ears ripening, which she could see from where she stood. Baby Suggs leaned back into the peppers and the squash vines with her hoe. Carefully, with the blade at just the right angle, she cut through a stalk of
insistent rue. Its flowers she stuck through a split in her hat; the rest she tossed aside. The quiet clok clok clok of wood splitting reminded her that Stamp was doing the chore he promised to the night before. She sighed at her work and, a moment later, straightened up to sniff the disapproval once again. Resting on the handle of the hoe, she concentrated. She was accustomed to the knowledge that nobody prayed for her--but this free floating repulsion was new. It wasn't whitefolks--that much she could tell--so it must be colored ones. And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess. Baby closed her eyes. Perhaps they were right. Suddenly, behind the disapproving odor, way way back behind it, she smelled another thing. Dark and coming. Something she couldn't get at because the other odor hid it. She squeezed her eyes tight to see what it was but all she could make out was high-topped shoes she didn't like the look of. Thwarted yet wondering, she chopped away with the hoe. What could it be? This dark
and coming thing. What was left to hurt her now? News of Halle's death? No. She had been prepared for that better than she had for his life. The last of her children, whom she barely glanced at when he was born because it wasn't worth the trouble to try to learn features you would never see change into adulthood anyway. Seven times she had done that: held a little foot; examined the fat fingertips with her own--fingers she never saw become the male or female hands a mother would recognize anywhere. She didn't know to this day what their permanent teeth looked like; or how they held their heads when they walked. Did Patty lose her lisp? What color did Famous' skin finally take? Was that a cleft in Johnny's chin or just a dimple that would disappear soon's his jawbone changed? Four girls, and the last time she saw them there was no hair under their arms. Does Ardelia still love the burned bottom of bread? All seven were gone or dead. What would be the point of looking too hard at that youngest one? But for some reason they let her keep him. He was with her--everywhere. When she hurt her hip in Carolina she was a real bargain (costing less than Halle, who was
ten then) for Mr. Garner, who took them both to Kentucky to a farm he called Sweet Home. Because of the hip she jerked like a three-legged dog when she walked. But at Sweet Home there wasn't a rice field or tobacco patch in sight, and nobody, but nobody, knocked her down. Not once. Lillian Garner called her Jenny for some reason but she never pushed, hit or called her mean names. Even when she slipped in cow dung and broke every egg in her apron, nobody said you-blackbitchwhat'sthematterwith-you and nobody knocked her down. Sweet Home was tiny compared to the places she had been. Mr. Garner, Mrs. Garner, herself, Halle, and four boys, over half named Paul, made up the entire population. Mrs. Garner hummed when she worked; Mr. Garner acted like the world was a toy he was supposed to have fun with. Neither wanted her in the field--Mr. Garner's boys, including Halle, did all of that--which was a blessing since she could not have managed it anyway. What she did was stand beside the humming Lillian Garner while the two of them cooked, preserved, washed,
ironed, made candles, clothes, soap and cider; fed chickens, pigs, dogs and geese; milked cows, churned butter, rendered fat, laid fires.... Nothing to it. And nobody knocked her down. Her hip hurt every single day--but she never spoke of it. Only Halle, who had watched her movements closely for the last four years, knew that to get in and out of bed she had to lift her thigh with both hands, which was why he spoke to Mr. Garner about buying her out of there so she could sit down for a change. Sweet boy. The one person who did something hard for her: gave her his work, his life and now his children, whose voices she could just make out as she stood in the garden wondering what was the dark and coming thing behind the scent of disapproval. Sweet Home was a marked improvement. No question. And no matter, for the sadness was at her center, the desolated center where the self that was no self made its home. Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.
Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? In Lillian Garner's house, exempted from the field work that broke her hip and the exhaustion that drugged her mind; in Lillian Garner's house where nobody knocked her down (or up), she listened to the whitewoman humming at her work; watched her face light up when Mr. Garner came in and thought, It's better here, but I'm not. The Garners, it seemed to her, ran a special kind of slavery, treating them like paid labor, listening to what they said, teaching what they wanted known. And he didn't stud his boys. Never brought them to her cabin with directions to "lay down with her," like they did in Carolina, or rented their sex out on other farms. It surprised and pleased her, but worried her too. Would he pick women for them or what did he think was going to happen when those boys ran smack into their nature? Some danger he was courting and he surely knew it. In fact, his order for them not to leave Sweet Home, except in his company, was
not so much because of the law, but the danger of men- bred slaves on the loose. Baby Suggs talked as little as she could get away with because what was there to say that the roots of her tongue could manage? So the whitewoman, finding her new slave excellent if silent help, hummed to herself while she worked. When Mr. Garner agreed to the arrangements with Halle, and when Halle looked like it meant more to him that she go free than anything in the world, she let herself be taken 'cross the river. Of the two hard thingsstanding on her feet till she dropped or leaving her last and probably only living child- she chose the hard thing that made him happy, and never put to him the question she put to herself: What for? What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman who walks like a three-legged dog need freedom for? And when she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn't; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her. Something's the matter. What's the matter? What's the matter? she asked herself. She didn't
know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, "These hands belong to me. These my hands." Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud. Mr. Garner looked over his shoulder at her with wide brown eyes and smiled himself. "What's funny, Jenny?" She couldn't stop laughing. "My heart's beating," she said. And it was true. Mr. Garner laughed. "Nothing to be scared of, Jenny. Just keep your same ways, you'll be all right." She covered her mouth to keep from laughing too loud. "These people I'm taking you to will give you what help you need. Name of Bodwin. A brother and a sister. Scots. I been knowing them for twenty years or more." Baby Suggs thought it was a good time to ask him something she had long wanted to know.
"Mr. Garner," she said, "why you all call me Jenny?" '"Cause that what's on your sales ticket, gal. Ain't that your name? What you call yourself?" "Nothings" she said. "I don't call myself nothing." Mr. Garner went red with laughter. "When I took you out of Carolina, Whitlow called you Jenny and Jenny Whitlow is what his bill said. Didn't he call you Jenny?" "No, sir. If he did I didn't hear it." "What did you answer to?" "Anything, but Suggs is what my husband name." "You got married, Jenny? I didn't know it." "Manner of speaking." "You know where he is, this husband?" "No, sir."
"Is that Halle's daddy?" "No, sir." "why you call him Suggs, then? His bill of sale says Whitlow too, just like yours." "Suggs is my name, sir. From my husband. He didn't call me Jenny." "What he call you?" "Baby." "Well," said Mr. Garner, going pink again, "if I was you I'd stick to Jenny Whitlow. Mrs. Baby Suggs ain't no name for a freed Negro." Maybe not, she thought, but Baby Suggs was all she had left of the "husband" she claimed. A serious, melancholy man who taught her how to make shoes. The two of them made a pact: whichever one got a chance to run would take it; together if possible, alone if not, and no looking back. He got his chance, and since she never heard otherwise she believed he made it. Now how could he find or hear tell of her if she was calling herself some bill-of-sale name? She couldn't get over the city. More people than Carolina and enough whitefolks to stop the breath. Two-story buildings
everywhere, and walkways made of perfectly cut slats of wood. Roads wide as Garner's whole house. "This is a city of water," said Mr. Garner. "Everything travels by water and what the rivers can't carry the canals take. A queen of a city, Jenny. Everything you ever dreamed of, they make it right here. Iron stoves, buttons, ships, shirts, hairbrushes, paint, steam engines, books. A sewer system make your eyes bug out. Oh, this is a city, all right. If you have to live in a city--this is it." The Bodwins lived right in the center of a street full of houses and trees. Mr. Garner leaped out and tied his horse to a solid iron post. "Here we are." Baby picked up her bundle and with great difficulty, caused by her hip and the hours of sitting in a wagon, climbed down. Mr. Garner was up the walk and on the porch before she touched ground, but she got a peep at a Negro girl's face at the open door before she followed a path to the back of the house. She waited what seemed a long time before this
same girl opened the kitchen door and offered her a seat by the window. "Can I get you anything to eat, ma'am?" the girl asked. "No, darling. I'd look favorable on some water though." The girl went to the sink and pumped a cupful of water. She placed it in Baby Suggs' hand. "I'm Janey, ma'am." Baby, marveling at the sink, drank every drop of water although it tasted like a serious medicine. "Suggs," she said, blotting her lips with the back of her hand. "Baby Suggs." "Glad to meet you, Mrs. Suggs. You going to be staying here?" "I don't know where I'll be. Mr. Garner--that's him what brought me here--he say he arrange something for me." And then, "I'm free, you know." Janey smiled. "Yes, ma'am." "Your people live around here?" "Yes, ma'am. All us live out on Bluestone." "We scattered," said Baby Suggs, "but maybe not for long."
Great God, she thought, where do I start? Get somebody to write old Whitlow. See who took Patty and Rosa Lee. Somebody name Dunn got Ardelia and went West, she heard. No point in trying for Tyree or John. They cut thirty years ago and, if she searched too hard and they were hiding, finding them would do them more harm than good. Nancy and Famous died in a ship off the Virginia coast before it set sail for Savannah. That much she knew. The overseer at Whitlow's place brought her the news, more from a wish to have his way with her than from the kindness of his heart. The captain waited three weeks in port, to get a full cargo before setting off. Of the slaves in the hold who didn't make it, he said, two were Whitlow pickaninnies name of... But she knew their names. She knew, and covered her ears with her fists to keep from hearing them come from his mouth. Janey heated some milk and poured it in a bowl next to a plate of cornbread. After some coaxing, Baby Suggs came to the table and sat down. She crumbled the bread into the hot milk and discovered she was
hungrier than she had ever been in her life and that was saying something. "They going to miss this?" "No," said Janey. "Eat all you want; it's ours." "Anybody else live here?" "Just me. Mr. Woodruff, he does the outside chores. He comes by two, three days a week." "Just you two?" "Yes, ma'am. I do the cooking and washing." "Maybe your people know of somebody looking for help." "I be sure to ask, but I know they take women at the slaughterhouse." "Doing what?" "I don't know." "Something men don't want to do, I reckon."
"My cousin say you get all the meat you want, plus twenty-five cents the hour. She make summer sausage." Baby Suggs lifted her hand to the top of her head. Money? Money? They would pay her money every single day? Money? "Where is this here slaughterhouse?" she asked. Before Janey could answer, the Bodwins came in to the kitchen with a grinning Mr. Garner behind. Undeniably brother and sister, both dressed in gray with faces too young for their snow-white hair. "Did you give her anything to eat, Janey?" asked the brother. "Yes, sir." "Keep your seat, Jenny," said the sister, and that good news got better.
When they asked what work she could do, instead of reeling off the hundreds of tasks she had performed, she asked about the slaughterhouse. She was too old for that, they said. "She's the best cobbler you ever see," said Mr. Garner. "Cobbler?" Sister Bodwin raised her black thick eyebrows. "Who taught you that?" "Was a slave taught me," said Baby Suggs. "New boots, or just repair?" "New, old, anything." "Well," said Brother Bodwin, "that'll be something, but you'll need more." "What about taking in wash?" asked Sister Bodwin. "Yes, ma'am." "Two cents a pound."
"Yes, ma'am. But where's the in?" "What?" "You said 'take in wash.' Where is the 'in'? Where I'm going to be." "Oh, just listen to this, Jenny," said Mr. Garner. "These two angels got a house for you. Place they own out a ways." It had belonged to their grandparents before they moved in town. Recently it. had been rented out to a whole parcel of Negroes, who had left the state. It was too big a house for Jenny alone, they said (two rooms upstairs, two down), but it was the best and the only thing they could do. In return for laundry, some seamstress work, a little canning and so on (oh shoes, too), they would permit her to stay there. Provided she was clean. The past parcel of colored wasn't. Baby Suggs agreed to the situation, sorry to see the money go but excited about a house with stepsnever mind she couldn't climb them. Mr. Garner told the Bodwins that she was a right fine cook as well as a fine cobbler and showed
his belly and the sample on his feet. Everybody laughed. "Anything you need, let us know," said the sister. "We don't hold with slavery, even Garner's kind."
"Tell em, Jenny. You live any better on any place before mine?" "No, sir," she said. "No place." "How long was you at Sweet Home?" "Ten year, I believe." "Ever go hungry?" "No, sir." "Cold?" "No, sir." Anybody lay a hand on you?" "No, sir "Did I let Halle buy you or not?" "Yes, sir, you did," she said, thinking, But you got my boy and I'm all broke down. You be renting him out to pay for me way after I'm gone to Glory.
Woodruff, they said, would carry her out there, they said, and all three disappeared through the kitchen door. "I have to fix the supper now," said Janey. "I'll help," said Baby Suggs. "You too short to reach the fire." It was dark when Woodruff clicked the horse into a trot. He was a young man with a heavy beard and a burned place on his jaw the beard did not hide. "You born up here?" Baby Suggs asked him. "No, ma'am. Virginia. Been here a couple years." "I see." "You going to a nice house. Big too. A preacher and his family was in there. Eighteen children." "Have mercy. Where they go?" "Took off to Illinois. Bishop Allen gave him a congregation up there. Big."
"What churches around here? I ain't set foot in one in ten years." "How come?" "Wasn't none. I dislike the place I was before this last one, but I did get to church every Sunday some kind of way. I bet the Lord done forgot who I am by now." "Go see Reverend Pike, ma'am. He'll reacquaint you." "I won't need him for that. I can make my own acquaintance. What I need him for is to reacquaint me with my children. He can read and write, I reckon?" "Sure." "Good, 'cause I got a lot of digging up to do." But the news they dug up was so pitiful she quit. After two years of messages written by the preacher's hand, two years of washing, sewing, canning, cobbling, gardening, and sitting in churches, all she found out was that the Whitlow place was gone and that you couldn't write to "a
man named Dunn" if all you knew was that he went West. The good news, however, was that Halle got married and had a baby coming. She fixed on that and her own brand of preaching, having made up her mind about what to do with the heart that started beating the minute she crossed the Ohio River. And it worked out, worked out just fine, until she got proud and let herself be overwhelmed by the sight of her daughter-in-law and Halle's children--one of whom was born on the way--and have a celebration of blackberries that put Christmas to shame. Now she stood in the garden smelling disapproval, feeling a dark and coming thing, and seeing high-topped shoes that she didn't like the look of at all. At all.
WHEN THE four horsemen came--schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff--the house on Bluestone Road was so quiet they thought they were too late. Three of them dismounted, one stayed in the saddle, his rifle ready, his eyes trained away from the house to
the left and to the right, because likely as not the fugitive would make a dash for it. Although sometimes, you could never tell, you'd find them folded up tight somewhere: beneath floorboards, in a pantry--once in a chimney. Even then care was taken, because the quietest ones, the ones you pulled from a press, a hayloft, or, that once, from a chimney, would go along nicely for two or three seconds. Caught red-handed, so to speak, they would seem to recognize the futility of outsmarting a whiteman and the hopelessness of outrunning a rifle. Smile even, like a child caught dead with his hand in the jelly jar, and when you reached for the rope to tie him, well, even then you couldn't tell. The very nigger with his head hanging and a little jelly-jar smile on his face could all of a sudden roar, like a bull or some such, and commence to do disbelievable things. Grab the rifle at its mouth; throw himself at the one holding it--anything. So you had to keep back a pace, leave the tying to another. Otherwise you ended up killing what you were paid to bring back alive. Unlike a snake or a bear, a dead nigger could not be skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in coin.
Six or seven Negroes were walking up the road toward the house: two boys from the slave catcher's left and some women from his right. He motioned them still with his rifle and they stood where they were. The nephew came back from peeping inside the house, and after touching his lips for silence, pointed his thumb to say that what they were looking for was round back. The slave catcher dismounted then and joined the others. Schoolteacher and the nephew moved to the left of the house; himself and the sheriff to the right. A crazy old nigger was standing in the woodpile with an ax. You could tell he was crazy right off because he was grunting--making low, cat noises like. About twelve yards beyond that nigger was another one--a woman with a flower in her hat. Crazy too, probably, because she too was standing stock-still--but fanning her hands as though pushing cobwebs out of her way. Both, however, were staring at the same place--a shed. Nephew walked over to the old nigger boy and took the ax from him. Then all four started toward the shed. Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a
blood- soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowheremin the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arch of its mother's swing. Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim. The three (now four--because she'd had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies they had hoped were alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in sawdust; a third pumped blood down the dress of the main one-- the woman schoolteacher bragged about, the one he said made fine ink, damn good soup, pressed his collars the way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left. But now she'd gone wild, due to the mishandling of the nephew who'd overbeat her and made her cut
and run. Schoolteacher had chastised that nephew, telling him to think--just think--what would his own horse do if you beat it beyond the point of education. Or Chipper, or Samson. Suppose you beat the hounds past that point thataway. Never again could you trust them in the woods or anywhere else. You'd be feeding them maybe, holding out a piece of rabbit in your hand, and the animal would revert--bite your hand clean off. So he punished that nephew by not letting him come on the hunt. Made him stay there, feed stock, feed himself, feed Lillian, tend crops. See how he liked it; see what happened when you overbear creatures God had given you the responsibility of--the trouble it was, and the loss. The whole lot was lost now. Five. He could claim the baby struggling in the arms of the mewing old man, but who'd tend her? Because the woman--something was wrong with her. She was looking at him now, and if his other nephew could see that look he would learn the lesson for sure: you just can't mishandle creatures and expect success. The nephew, the one who had nursed her while his brother held her down, didn't know he
was shaking. His uncle had warned him against that kind of confusion, but the warning didn't seem to be taking. What she go and do that for? On account of a beating? Hell, he'd been beat a million times and he was white. Once it hurt so bad and made him so mad he'd smashed the well bucket. Another time he took it out on Samson--a few tossed rocks was all. But no beating ever made him... I mean no way he could have... What she go and do that for? And that is what he asked the sheriff, who was standing there, amazed like the rest of them, but not shaking. He was swallowing hard, over and over again. "What she want to go and do that for?" The sheriff turned, then said to the other three, "You all better go on. Look like your business is over. Mine's started now." Schoolteacher beat his hat against his thigh and spit before leaving the woodshed. Nephew and the catcher backed out with him. They didn't look at the woman in the pepper plants with the flower in her hat. And they didn't look at the seven or so faces that had edged closer in spite of the catcher's rifle warning. Enough nigger eyes for now. Little nigger-boy eyes open in sawdust; little nigger-girl eyes staring between the wet fingers that held her
face so her head wouldn't fall off; little nigger-baby eyes crinkling up to cry in the arms of the old nigger whose own eyes were nothing but slivers looking down at his feet. But the worst ones were those of the nigger woman who looked like she didn't have any. Since the whites in them had disappeared and since they were as black as her skin, she looked blind. They unhitched from schoolteacher's horse the borrowed mule that was to carry the fugitive woman back to where she belonged, and tied it to the fence. Then, with the sun straight up over their heads, they trotted off, leaving the sheriff behind among the damnedest bunch of coons they'd ever seen. All testimony to the results of a little so-called freedom imposed on people who needed every care and guidance in the world to keep them from the cannibal life they preferred. The sheriff wanted to back out too. To stand in the sunlight outside of that place meant for housing wood, coal, kerosene--fuel for cold Ohio winters, which he thought of now, while resisting the urge to run into the August sunlight. Not because he was afraid. Not at all. He was just cold. And he didn't want to touch anything. The baby in the old man's arms was crying, and the woman's eyes with no whites were gazing
straight ahead. They all might have remained that way, frozen till Thursday, except one of the boys on the floor sighed. As if he were sunk in the pleasure of a deep sweet sleep, he sighed the sigh that flung the sheriff into action. "I'll have to take you in. No trouble now. You've done enough to last you. Come on now." She did not move. "You come quiet, hear, and I won't have to tie you up." She stayed still and he had made up his mind to go near her and some kind of way bind her wet red hands when a shadow behind him in the doorway made him turn. The nigger with the flower in her hat entered. Baby Suggs noticed who breathed and who did not and went straight to the boys lying in the dirt. The old man moved to the woman gazing and said, "Sethe. You take my armload and gimme yours." She turned to him, and glancing at the baby he was holding, made a low sound in her
throat as though she'd made a mistake, left the salt out of the bread or something. "I'm going out here and send for a wagon," the sheriff said and got into the sunlight at last. But neither Stamp Paid nor Baby Suggs could make her put her crawling-already? girl down. Out of the shed, back in the house, she held on. Baby Suggs had got the boys inside and was bathing their heads, rubbing their hands, lifting their lids, whispering, "Beg your pardon, I beg your pardon," the whole time. She bound their wounds and made them breathe camphor before turning her attention to Sethe. She took the crying baby from Stamp Paid and carried it on her shoulder for a full two minutes, then stood in front of its mother. "It's time to nurse your youngest," she said. Sethe reached up for the baby without letting the dead one go. Baby Suggs shook her head. "One at a time," she said and traded the living for the dead, which she carried into the keeping room. When she came back, Sethe was aiming a bloody nipple into the baby's mouth. Baby Suggs slammed her fist on the
table and shouted, "Clean up! Clean yourself up!" They fought then. Like rivals over the heart of the loved, they fought. Each struggling for the nursing child. Baby Suggs lost when she slipped in a red puddle and fell. So Denver took her mother's milk right along with the blood of her sister. And that's the way they were when the sheriff returned, having commandeered a neighbor's cart, and ordered Stamp to drive it. Outside a throng, now, of black faces stopped murmuring. Holding the living child, Sethe walked past them in their silence and hers. She climbed into the cart, her profile knife-clean against a cheery blue sky. A profile that shocked them with its clarity. Was her head a bit too high? Her back a little too straight? Probably. Otherwise the singing would have begun at once, the moment she appeared in the doorway of the house on Bluestone Road. Some cape of sound would have quickly been wrapped around her, like arms to hold and steady her on the way. As it was, they waited till the cart turned about, headed west to town. And then no words. Humming. No words at all.
Baby Suggs meant to run, skip down the porch steps after the cart, screaming, No. No. Don't let her take that last one too. She meant to. Had started to, but when she got up from the floor and reached the yard the cart was gone and a wagon was rolling up. A red-haired boy and a yellow-haired girl jumped down and ran through the crowd toward her. The boy had a half-eaten sweet pepper in one hand and a pair of shoes in the other. "Mama says Wednesday." He held them together by their tongues. "She says you got to have these fixed by Wednesday." Baby Suggs looked at him, and then at the woman holding a twitching lead horse to the road. "She says Wednesday, you hear? Baby? Baby?" She took the shoes from him--high-topped and muddy--saying, "I beg your pardon. Lord, I beg your pardon. I sure do."
Out of sight, the cart creaked on down Bluestone Road. Nobody in it spoke. The wagon rock had put the baby to sleep. The hot sun dried Sethe's dress, stiff, like rigor morris.
THAT AIN'T her mouth. Anybody who didn't know her, or maybe somebody who just got a glimpse of her through the peephole at the restaurant, might think it was hers, but Paul D knew better. Oh well, a little something around the forehead--a quietness--that kind of reminded you of her. But there was no way you could take that for her mouth and he said so. Told Stamp Paid, who was watching him carefully. "I don't know, man. Don't look like it to me. I know Sethe's mouth and this ain't it." He smoothed the clipping with his fingers and peered at it, not at all disturbed. From the solemn air with which Stamp had unfolded the paper, the tenderness in the old man's fingers as he stroked its creases and flattened it out,
first on his knees, then on the split top of the piling, Paul D knew that it ought to mess him up. That whatever was written on it should shake him. Pigs were crying in the chute. All day Paul D, Stamp Paid and twenty more had pushed and prodded them from canal to shore to chute to slaughterhouse. Although, as grain farmers moved west, St. Louis and Chicago now ate up a lot of the business, Cincinnati was still pig port in the minds of Ohioans. Its main job was to receive, slaughter and ship up the river the hogs that Northerners did not want to live without. For a month or so in the winter any stray man had work, if he could breathe the stench of offal and stand up for twelve hours, skills in which Paul D was admirably trained. A little pig shit, rinsed from every place he could touch, remained on his boots, and he was conscious of it as he stood there with a light smile of scorn curling his lips. Usually he left his boots in the shed and put his walking shoes on along with his day clothes in the corner before he went home. A route that took him smack dab through the middle of a cemetery as old as sky, rife with
the agitation of dead Miami no longer content to rest in the mounds that covered them. Over their heads walked a strange people; through their earth pillows roads were cut; wells and houses nudged them out of eternal rest. Outraged more by their folly in believing land was holy than by the disturbances of their peace, they growled on the banks of Licking River, sighed in the trees on Catherine Street and rode the wind above the pig yards. Paul D heard them but he stayed on because all in all it wasn't a bad job, especially in winter when Cincinnati reassumed its status of slaughter and riverboat capital. The craving for pork was growing into a mania in every city in the country. Pig farmers were cashing in, provided they could raise enough and get them sold farther and farther away. And the Germans who flooded southern Ohio brought and developed swine cooking to its highest form. Pig boats jammed the Ohio River, and their captains' hollering at one another over the grunts of the stock was as common a water sound as that of the ducks flying over their heads. Sheep, cows and fowl too floated up and down that river, and all a Negro had to do was show up and there was work: poking, killing, cutting, skinning, case packing and saving offal.
A hundred yards from the crying pigs, the two men stood behind a shed on Western Row and it was clear why Stamp had been eyeing Paul D this last week of work; why he paused when the evening shift came on, to let Paul D's movements catch up to his own. He had made up his mind to show him this piece of paper--newspaper-- with a picture drawing of a woman who favored Sethe except that was not her mouth. Nothing like it. Paul D slid the clipping out from under Stamp's palm. The print meant nothing to him so he didn't even glance at it. He simply looked at the face, shaking his head no. No. At the mouth, you see. And no at whatever it was those black scratches said, and no to whatever it was Stamp Paid wanted him to know. Because there was no way in hell a black face could appear in a newspaper if the story was about something anybody wanted to hear. A whip of fear broke through the heart chambers as soon as you saw a Negro's face in a paper, since the face was not there because the person had a healthy baby, or outran a street mob. Nor was it there because the person had been killed, or maimed or caught or burned or jailed or whipped or evicted or stomped or raped or cheated, since that could
hardly qualify as news in a newspaper. It would have to be something out of the ordinary--something whitepeople would find interesting, truly different, worth a few minutes of teeth sucking if not gasps. And it must have been hard to find news about Negroes worth the breath catch of a white citizen of Cincinnati. So who was this woman with a mouth that was not Sethe's, but whose eyes were almost as calm as hers? Whose head was turned on her neck in the manner he loved so well it watered his eye to see it. And he said so. "This ain't her mouth. I know her mouth and this ain't it." Before Stamp Paid could speak he said it and even while he spoke Paul D said it again. Oh, he heard all the old man was saying, but the more he heard, the stranger the lips in the drawing became. Stamp started with the party, the one Baby Suggs gave, but stopped and backed up a bit to tell about the berries--where they were and what was in the earth that made them grow like that. "They open to the sun, but not the birds, 'cause snakes down in there and the birds know it,
so they just grow--fat and sweet--with nobody to bother em 'cept me because don't nobody go in that piece of water but me and ain't too many legs willing to glide down that bank to get them. Me neither. But I was willing that day. Somehow or 'nother I was willing. And they whipped me, I'm telling you. Tore me up. But I filled two buckets anyhow. And took em over to Baby Suggs' house. It was on from then on. Such a cooking you never see no more. We baked, fried and stewed everything God put down here. Everybody came. Everybody stuffed. Cooked so much there wasn't a stick of kirdlin left for the next day. I volunteered to do it. And next morning I come over, like I promised, to do it." "But this ain't her mouth," Paul D said. "This ain't it at all." Stamp Paid looked at him. He was going to tell him about how restless Baby Suggs was that morning, how she had a listening way about her; how she kept looking down past the corn to the stream so much he looked too. In between ax swings, he watched where Baby was watching. Which is why they both missed it: they were looking the wrong way--toward water--and all the while it was coming down the road. Four. Riding
close together, bunched-up like, and righteous. He was going to tell him that, because he thought it was important: why he and Baby Suggs both missed it. And about the party too, because that explained why nobody ran on ahead; why nobody sent a fleet-footed son to cut 'cross a field soon as they saw the four horses in town hitched for watering while the riders asked questions. Not Ella, not John, not anybody ran down or to Bluestone Road, to say some new whitefolks with the Look just rode in. The righteous Look every Negro learned to recognize along with his ma'am's tit. Like a flag hoisted, this righteousness telegraphed and announced the faggot, the whip, the fist, the lie, long before it went public. Nobody warned them, and he'd always believed it wasn't the exhaustion from a long day's gorging that dulled them, but some other thing--like, well, like meanness--that let them stand aside, or not pay attention, or tell themselves somebody else was probably bearing the news already to the house on Bluestone Road where a pretty woman had been living for almost a month. Young and deft with four children one of which she delivered herself the day before she got there and who now had the full benefit of Baby Suggs' bounty and her big old heart. Maybe they just wanted to know if Baby really was special, blessed in some way they were
not. He was going to tell him that, but Paul D was laughing, saying, "Uh uh. No way. A little semblance round the forehead maybe, but this ain't her mouth." So Stamp Paid did not tell him how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her face beaked, how her hands worked like claws, how she collected them every which way: one on her shoulder, one under her arm, one by the hand, the other shouted forward into the woodshed filled with just sunlight and shavings now because there wasn't any wood. The party had used it all, which is why he was chopping some. Nothing was in that shed, he knew, having been there early that morning. Nothing but sunlight. Sunlight, shavings, a shovel. The ax he himself took out. Nothing else was in there except the shovel--and of course the saw. "You forgetting I knew her before," Paul D was saying. "Back in Kentucky. When she was a girl. I didn't just make her acquaintance a few months ago. I been knowing her a long time. And I can tell you for sure: this ain't her mouth. May look like it, but it ain't."
So Stamp Paid didn't say it all. Instead he took a breath and leaned toward the mouth that was not hers and slowly read out the words Paul D couldn't. And when he finished, Paul D said with a vigor fresher than the first time, "I'm sorry, Stamp. It's a mistake somewhere 'cause that ain't her mouth." Stamp looked into Paul D's eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if it had happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children. "SHE WAS crawling already when I got here. One week, less, and the baby who was sitting up and turning over when I put her on the wagon was crawling already. Devil of a time keeping her off the stairs. Nowadays babies get up and walk soon's you drop em, but twenty years ago when I was a girl, babies stayed babies longer. Howard didn't pick up his own head till he was nine months. Baby Suggs said it was the food, you know. If you ain't got nothing but milk to give em, well they don't do things so quick.
Milk was all I ever had. I thought teeth meant they was ready to chew. Wasn't nobody to ask. Mrs. Garner never had no children and we was the only women there." She was spinning. Round and round the room. Past the jelly cupboard, past the window, past the front door, another window, the sideboard, the keeping-room door, the dry sink, the stove--back to the jelly cupboard. Paul D sat at the table watching her drift into view then disappear behind his back, turning like a slow but steady wheel. Sometimes she crossed her hands behind her back. Other times she held her ears, covered her mouth or folded her arms across her breasts. Once in a while she rubbed her hips as she turned, but the wheel never stopped. "Remember Aunt Phyllis? From out by Minnoveville? Mr. Garner sent one a you all to get her for each and every one of my babies. That'd be the only time I saw her. Many's the time I wanted to get over to where she was. Just to talk. My plan was to ask Mrs. Garner to let me off at Minnowville whilst she went to meeting. Pick me up on her way back. I believe she would a done that if I was to ask her.
I never did, 'cause that's the only day Halle and me had with sunlight in it for the both of us to see each other by. So there wasn't nobody. To talk to, I mean, who'd know when it was time to chew up a little something and give it to em. Is that what make the teeth come on out, or should you wait till the teeth came and then solid food? Well, I know now, because Baby Suggs fed her right, and a week later, when I got here she was crawling already. No stopping her either. She loved those steps so much we painted them so she could see her way to the top." Sethe smiled then, at the memory of it. The smile broke in two and became a sudden suck of air, but she did not shudder or close her eyes. She wheeled. "I wish I'd a known more, but, like I say, there wasn't nobody to talk to. Woman, I mean. So I tried to recollect what I'd seen back where I was before Sweet Home. How the women did there. Oh they knew all about it. How to make that thing you use to hang the babies in the trees--so you could see them out of harm's way while you worked the fields. Was a leaf thing too they gave em to chew on.
Mint, I believe, or sassafras. Comfrey, maybe. I still don't know how they constructed that basket thing, but I didn't need it anyway, because all my work was in the barn and the house, but I forgot what the leaf was. I could have used that. I tied Buglar when we had all that pork to smoke. Fire everywhere and he was getting into everything. I liked to lost him so many times. Once he got up on the well, right on it. I flew. Snatched him just in time. So when I knew we'd be rendering and smoking and I couldn't see after him, well, I got a rope and tied it round his ankle. Just long enough to play round a little, but not long enough to reach the well or the fire. I didn't like the look of it, but I didn't know what else to do. It's hard, you know what I mean? by yourself and no woman to help you get through. Halle was good, but he was debt-working all over the place. And when he did get down to a little sleep, I didn't want to be bothering him with all that. Sixo was the biggest help. I don't 'spect you rememory this, but Howard got in the milk parlor and Red Cora I believe it was mashed his hand. Turned his thumb backwards. When I got to him, she was getting ready to bite it. I don't know
to this day how I got him out. Sixo heard him screaming and come running. Know what he did? Turned the thumb right back and tied it cross his palm to his little finger. See, I never would have thought of that. Never. Taught me a lot, Sixo." It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning. Circling him the way she was circling the subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Then he thought, No, it's the sound of her voice; it's too near. Each turn she made was at least three yards from where he sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so close you could feel its lips form the words you couldn't make out because they were too close. He caught only pieces of what she said--which was fine, because she hadn't gotten to the main part--the answer to the question he had not asked outright, but which lay in the clipping he showed her. And lay in the smile as well. Because he smiled too, when he showed it to her, so when she burst out laughing at the joke--the mix- up of her face put where some other coloredwoman's ought to be--well, he'd be ready to laugh right along with
her. "Can you beat it?" he would ask. And "Stamp done lost his mind," she would giggle. "Plumb lost it." But his smile never got a chance to grow. It hung there, small and alone, while she examined the clipping and then handed it back. Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes--easy and upfront, the way colts, evangelists and children look at you: with love you don't have to deserve--that made her go ahead and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs, the only person she felt obliged to explain anything to. Otherwise she would have said what the newspaper said she said and no more. Sethe could recognize only seventy-five printed words (half of which appeared in the newspaper clipping), but she knew that the words she did not understand hadn't any more power than she had to explain. It was the smile and the upfront love that made her try. "I don't have to tell you about Sweet Home--what it was--but maybe you don't know what it was like for me to get away from there."
Covering the lower half of her face with her palms, she paused to consider again the size of the miracle; its flavor. "I did it. I got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to. We was here. Each and every one of my babies and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help, of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it; me saying, Go on, and Now. Me having to look out. Me using my own head. But it was more than that. It was a kind of selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt good. Good and right. I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon--there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?" Paul D did not answer because she didn't expect or want him to, but he did know what she
meant. Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon—every thing belonged to the men who had the guns. Little men, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted to. Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that without gunshot fox would laugh at them. And these "men" who made even vixen laugh could, if you let them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight. So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between the trees at chain-up. Grass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn't do. A woman, a child, a brother--a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now, that was freedom.
Circling, circling, now she was gnawing something else instead of getting to the point. "There was this piece of goods Mrs. Garner gave me. Calico. Stripes it had with little flowers in between. 'Bout a yard--not enough for more 'n a head tie. But I been wanting to make a shift for my girl with it. Had the prettiest colors. I don't even know what you call that color: a rose but with yellow in it. For the longest time I been meaning to make it for her and do you know like a fool I left it behind? No more than a yard, and I kept putting it off because I was tired or didn't have the time. So when I got here, even before they let me get out of bed, I stitched her a little something from a piece of cloth Baby Suggs had. Well, all I'm saying is that's a selfish pleasure I never had before. I couldn't let all that go back to where it was, and I couldn't let her nor any of em live under schoolteacher. That was out." Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, him, the subject, would remain one. That she could never close in, pin it down for anybody who had to ask. If they didn't get it right off- she could never explain. Because the truth was simple, not a long drawn-out
record of flowered shifts, tree cages, selfishness, ankle ropes and wells. Simple: she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher's hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe. And the hummingbird wings beat on. Sethe paused in her circle again and looked out the window. She remembered when the yard had a fence with a gate that somebody was always latching and unlatching in the. time when 124 was busy as a way station. She did not see the whiteboys who pulled it down, yanked up the posts and smashed the gate leaving 124 desolate and exposed at the very hour when everybody stopped dropping by. The shoulder weeds of Bluestone Road were all that came toward the house.
When she got back from the jail house, she was glad the fence was gone. That's where they had hitched their horses--where she saw, floating above the railing as she squatted in the garden, schoolteacher's hat. By the time she faced him, looked him dead in the eye, she had something in her arms that stopped him in his tracks. He took a backward step with each jump of the baby heart until finally there were none. "I stopped him," she said, staring at the place where the fence used to be. "I took and put my babies where they'd be safe." The roaring in Paul D's head did not prevent him from hearing the pat she gave to the last word, and it occurred to him that what she wanted for her children was exactly what was missing in 124: safety. Which was the very first message he got the day he walked through the door. He thought he had made it safe, had gotten rid of the danger; beat the shit out of it; run it off the place and showed it and everybody else the difference between a mule and a plow. And because she had not done it before he got there her own self, he thought it was because she could not do it. That she lived with 124 in helpless, apologetic resignation because she had no choice; that minus husband, sons,
mother-in-law, she and her slow-witted daughter had to live there all alone making do. The prickly, mean-eyed Sweet Home girl he knew as Halle's girl was obedient (like Halle), shy (like Halle), and work-crazy (like Halle). He was wrong. This here Sethe was new. The ghost in her house didn't bother her for the very same reason a room-and-board witch with new shoes was welcome. This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and she began. Suddenly he saw what Stamp Paid wanted him to see: more important than what Sethe had done was what she claimed. It scared him. "Your love is too thick," he said, thinking, That bitch is looking at me; she is right over my head looking down through the floor at me. "Too thick?" she said, thinking of the Clearing where Baby Suggs' commands knocked the pods off horse chestnuts. "Love is or it ain't.
Thin love ain't love at all." "Yeah. It didn't work, did it? Did it work?" he asked. "It worked," she said. "How? Your boys gone you don't know where. One girl dead, the other won't leave the yard. How did it work?" "They ain't at Sweet Home. Schoolteacher ain't got em." "Maybe there's worse." "It ain't my job to know what's worse. It's my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that." "What you did was wrong, Sethe." "I should have gone on back there? Taken my babies back there?" "There could have been a way. Some other
way." "What way?"
"You got two feet, Sethe, not four," he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; trackless and quiet. Later he would wonder what made him say it. The calves of his youth? or the conviction that he was being observed through the ceiling? How fast he had moved from his shame to hers. From his cold- house secret straight to her too-thick love. Meanwhile the forest was locking the distance between them, giving it shape and heft. He did not put his hat on right away. First he fingered it, deciding how his going would be, how to make it an exit not an escape. And it was very important not to leave without looking. He stood up, turned and looked up the white stairs. She was there all right. Standing straight as a line with her back to him. He didn't rush to the door. He moved slowly and when he got there he opened it before asking Sethe to put supper aside for him because he might be a little late getting back. Only then did he put on his hat. Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have,
"goodbye" would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. "So long," she murmured from the far side of the trees.
Two
124 WAS LOUD. Stamp Paid could hear it even from the road. He walked toward the house holding his head as high as possible so nobody looking could call him a sneak, although his worried mind made him feel like one. Ever since he showed that newspaper clipping to Paul D and learned that he'd moved out of 124 that very day, Stamp felt uneasy. Having wrestled with the question of whether or not to tell a man about his woman, and having convinced himself that he should, he then began to worry about Sethe. Had he stopped the one shot she had of the happiness a good man could bring her?
Was she vexed by the loss, the free and unasked-for revival of gossip by the man who had helped her cross the river and who was her friend as well as Baby Suggs'? "I'm too old," he thought, "for clear thinking. I'm too old and I seen too much." He had insisted on privacy during the revelation at the slaughter yard--now he wondered whom he was protecting. Paul D was the only one in town who didn't know. How did information that had been in the newspaper become a secret that needed to be whispered in a pig yard? A secret from whom? Sethe, that's who. He'd gone behind her back, like a sneak. But sneaking was his job--his life; though always for a clear and holy purpose. Before the War all he did was sneak: runaways into hidden places, secret information to public places. Underneath his legal vegetables were the contraband humans that he ferried across the river. Even the pigs he worked in the spring served his purposes. Whole families lived on the bones and guts he distributed to them. He wrote their letters and read to them the ones they received. He knew who had dropsy and who needed stovewood; which children had a gift and which needed correction. He knew the secrets of
the Ohio River and its banks; empty houses and full; the best dancers, the worst speakers, those with beautiful voices and those who could not carry a tune. There was nothing interesting between his legs, but he remembered when there had been--when that drive drove the driven--and that was why he considered long and hard before opening his wooden box and searching for the eighteen-year-old clipping to show Paul D as proof. Afterward--not before--he considered Sethe's feelings in the matter. And it was the lateness of this consideration that made him feel so bad. Maybe he should have left it alone; maybe Sethe would have gotten around to telling him herself; maybe he was not the high minded Soldier of Christ he thought he was, but an ordinary, plain meddler who had interrupted something going along just fine for the sake of truth and forewarning, things he set much store by. Now 124 was back like it was before Paul D came to town-worrying Sethe and Denver with a pack of haunts he could hear from the road. Even if Sethe could deal with the return of the spirit, Stamp didn't believe her daughter could. Denver needed somebody normal in her
life. By luck he had been there at her very birth almost--before she knew she was alive--and it made him partial to her. It was seeing her, alive, don't you know, and looking healthy four weeks later that pleased him so much he gathered all he could carry of the best blackberries in the county and stuck two in her mouth first, before he presented the difficult harvest to Baby Suggs. To this day he believed his berries (which sparked the feast and the wood chopping that followed) were the reason Denver was still alive. Had he not been there, chopping firewood, Sethe would have spread her baby brains on the planking. Maybe he should have thought of Denver, if not Sethe, before he gave Paul D the news that ran him off, the one normal somebody in the girl's life since Baby Suggs died. And right there was the thorn. Deeper and more painful than his belated concern for Denver or Sethe, scorching his soul like a silver dollar in a fool's pocket, was the memory of Baby Suggs--the mountain to his sky. It was the memory of her and the honor that was her due that made him walk straight-necked into the yard of 124, although he heard its voices from the road.
He had stepped foot in this house only once after the Misery (which is what he called Sethe's rough response to the Fugitive Bill) and that was to carry Baby Suggs, holy, out of it. When he picked her up in his arms, she looked to him like a gift, and he took the pleasure she would have knowing she didn't have to grind her hipbone anymore--that at last somebody carried bar. Had she waited just a little she would have seen the end of the War, its short, flashy results. They could have celebrated together; gone to hear the great sermons preached on the occasion. As it was, he went alone from house to joyous house drinking what was offered. But she hadn't waited and he attended her funeral more put out with her than bereaved. Sethe and her daughter were dry-eyed on that occasion. Sethe had no instructions except "Take her to the Clearing," which he tried to do, but was prevented by some rule the whites had invented about where the dead should rest. Baby Suggs went down next to the baby with its throat cut--a neighborliness that Stamp wasn't sure had Baby Suggs' approval. The setting-up was held in the yard because nobody besides himself would enter 124--an
injury Sethe answered with another by refusing to attend the service Reverend Pike presided over. She went instead to the gravesite, whose silence she competed with as she stood there not joining in the hymns the others sang with all their hearts. That insult spawned another by the mourners: back in the yard of 124, they ate the food they brought and did not touch Sethe's, who did not touch theirs and forbade Denver to. So Baby Suggs, holy, having devoted her freed life to harmony, was buried amid a regular dance of pride, fear, condemnation and spite. Just about everybody in town was longing for Sethe to come on difficult times. Her outrageous claims, her self-sufficiency seemed to demand it, and Stamp Paid, who had not felt a trickle of meanness his whole adult life, wondered if some of the "pride goeth before a fall" expectations of the townsfolk had rubbed off on him anyhow--which would explain why he had not considered Sethe's feelings or Denver's needs when he showed Paul D the clipping. He hadn't the vaguest notion of what he would do or say when and if Sethe opened the door and turned her eyes on his. He was willing to offer her help, if she wanted any from him, or
receive her anger, if she harbored any against him. Beyond that, he trusted his instincts to right what he may have done wrong to Baby Suggs' kin, and to guide him in and through the stepped-up haunting 124 was subject to, as evidenced by the voices he heard from the road. Other than that, he would rely on the power of Jesus Christ to deal with things older, but not stronger, than He Himself was. What he heard, as he moved toward the porch, he didn't understand. Out on Bluestone Road he thought he heard a conflagration of hasty voices--loud, urgent, all speaking at once so he could not make out what they were talking about or to whom. The speech wasn't nonsensical, exactly, nor was it tongues. But something was wrong with the order of the words and he couldn't describe or cipher it to save his life. All he could make out was the word mine. The rest of it stayed outside his mind's reach. Yet he went on through. When he got to the steps, the voices drained suddenly to less than a whisper. It gave him pause. They had become an occasional mutter-- like the interior sounds a woman makes when she
believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a sth when she misses the needle's eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low, friendly argument with which she greets the hens. Nothing fierce or startling. Just that eternal, private conversation that takes place between women and their tasks. Stamp Paid raised his fist to knock on the door he had never knocked on (because it was always open to or for him) and could not do it. Dispensing with that formality was all the pay he expected from Negroes in his debt. Once Stamp Paid brought you a coat, got the message to you, saved your life, or fixed the cistern he took the liberty of walking in your door as though it were his own. Since all his visits were beneficial, his step or holler through a doorway got a bright welcome. Rather than forfeit the one privilege he claimed for himself, he lowered his hand and left the porch. Over and over again he tried it: made up his mind to visit Sethe; broke through the loud hasty voices to the mumbling beyond it and stopped, trying to figure out what to do at the door. Six times in as many days he abandoned his normal route and tried to knock at 124. But the coldness of the gesture-its sign that he was indeed a stranger
at the gate-overwhelmed him. Retracing his steps in the snow, he sighed. Spirit willing; flesh weak. While Stamp Paid was making up his mind to visit 124 for Baby Suggs' sake, Sethe was trying to take her advice: to lay it all down, sword and shield. Not just to acknowledge the advice Baby Suggs gave her, but actually to take it. Four days after Paul D reminded her of how many feet she had, Sethe rummaged among the shoes of strangers to find the ice skates she was sure were there. Digging in the heap she despised herself for having been so trusting, so quick to surrender at the stove while Paul D kissed her back. She should have known that he would behave like everybody else in town once he knew. The twenty-eight days of having women friends, a mother in-law, and all her children together; of being part of a neighborhood; of, in fact, having neighbors at all to call her own--all that was long gone and would never come back. No more dancing in the Clearing or happy feeds. No more discussions, stormy or quiet, about the true meaning of the Fugitive Bill, the Settlement Fee, God's Ways and Negro pews; antislavery, manumission, skin voting, Republicans, Dred Scott, book learning, Sojourner's high- wheeled buggy, the Colored Ladies of Delaware, Ohio, and the other weighty
issues that held them in chairs, scraping the floorboards or pacing them in agony or exhilaration. No anxious wait for the North Star or news of a beat-off. No sighing at a new betrayal or handclapping at a small victory. Those twenty-eight happy days were followed by eighteen years of disapproval and a solitary life. Then a few months of the sun splashed life that the shadows holding hands on the road promised her; tentative greetings from other coloredpeople in Paul D's company; a bed life for herself. Except for Denver's friend, every bit of it had disappeared. Was that the pattern? she wondered. Every eighteen or twenty years her unlivable life would be interrupted by a short-lived glory? Well, if that's the way it was--that's the way it was. She had been on her knees, scrubbing the floor, Denver trailing her with the drying rags, when Beloved appeared saying, "What these do?" On her knees, scrub brush in hand, she looked at the girl and the skates she held up. Sethe couldn't skate a lick but then and there she decided to take Baby Suggs' advice: lay it all down. She left the bucket where it was. Told Denver to get out the shawls and started
searching for the other skates she was certain were in that heap somewhere. Anybody feeling sorry for her, anybody wandering by to peep in and see how she was getting on (including Paul D) would discover that the woman junkheaped for the third time because she loved her children--that woman was sailing happily on a frozen creek. Hurriedly, carelessly she threw the shoes about. She found one blade--a man's. "Well," she said. "We'll take turns. Two skates on one; one skate on one; and shoe slide for the other." Nobody saw them falling. Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved wore the pair; Denver wore one, step-gliding over the treacherous ice. Sethe thought her two shoes would hold and anchor her. She was wrong. Two paces onto the creek, she lost her balance and landed on her behind. The girls, screaming with laughter, joined her on the ice. Sethe struggled to stand and discovered not only that she could do a split, but that it hurt. Her
bones surfaced in unexpected places and so did laughter. Making a circle or a line, the three of them could not stay upright for one whole minute, but nobody saw them falling. Each seemed to be helping the other two stay upright, yet every tumble doubled their delight. The live oak and soughing pine on the banks enclosed them and absorbed their laughter while they fought gravity for each other's hands. Their skirts flew like wings and their skin turned pewter in the cold and dying light. Nobody saw them falling. Exhausted finally they lay down on their backs to recover breath. The sky above them was another country. Winter stars, close enough to lick, had come out before sunset. For a moment, looking up, Sethe entered the perfect peace they offered. Then Denver stood up and tried for a long, independent glide. The tip of her single skate hit an ice bump, and as she fell, the flapping of her arms was so wild and hopeless that all three--Sethe, Beloved and Denver herself- -laughed till they coughed. Sethe rose to her hands and knees, laughter still shaking her chest, making
her eyes wet. She stayed that way for a while, on all fours. But when her laughter died, the tears did not and it was some time before Beloved or Denver knew the difference. When they did they touched her lightly on the shoulders. Walking back through the woods, Sethe put an arm around each girl at her side. Both of them had an arm around her waist. Making their way over hard snow, they stumbled and had to hold on tight, but nobody saw them fall. Inside the house they found out they were cold. They took off their shoes, wet stockings, and put on dry woolen ones. Denver fed the fire. Sethe warmed a pan of milk and stirred cane syrup and vanilla into it. Wrapped in quilts and blankets before the cooking stove, they drank, wiped their noses, and drank again. "We could roast some taters," said Denver. "Tomorrow," said Sethe. "Time to sleep." She poured them each a bit more of the hot sweet milk. The stovefire roared.
"You finished with your eyes?" asked Beloved. Sethe smiled. "Yes, I'm finished with my eyes. Drink up. Time for bed." But none of them wanted to leave the warmth of the blankets, the fire and the cups for the chill of an unheated bed. They went on sipping and watching the fire. When the click came Sethe didn't know what it was. Afterward it was clear as daylight that the click came at the very beginning-- a beat, almost, before it started; before she heard three notes; before the melody was even clear. Leaning forward a little, Beloved was humming softly. It was then, when Beloved finished humming, that Sethe recalled the click--the settling of pieces into places designed and made especially for them. No milk spilled from her cup because her hand was not shaking. She simply turned her head and looked at Beloved's profile: the chin, mouth, nose, forehead, copied and exaggerated in the huge shadow the fire threw on the wall behind her. Her hair, which Denver
had braided into twenty or thirty plaits, curved toward her shoulders like arms. From where she sat Sethe could not examine it, not the hairline, nor the eyebrows, the lips, nor... "All I remember," Baby Suggs had said, "is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Her little hands I wouldn't know em if they slapped me." .. the birthmark, nor the color of the gums, the shape of her ears, nor... "Here. Look here. This is your ma'am. If you can't tell me by my face, look here." .. the fingers, nor their nails, nor even... But there would be time. The click had clicked; things were where they ought to be or poised and ready to glide in. "I made that song up," said Sethe. "I made it up and sang it to my children. Nobody knows that song but me and my children." Beloved turned to look at Sethe. "I know it," she said. A hobnail casket of jewels found in a tree hollow should be fondled before it is opened. Its
lock may have rusted or broken away from the clasp. Still you should touch the nail heads, and test its weight. No smashing with an ax head before it is decently exhumed from the grave that has hidden it all this time. No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along. Sethe wiped the white satin coat from the inside of the pan, brought pillows from the keeping room for the girls' heads. There was no tremor in her voice as she instructed them to keep the fire— if not, come on upstairs. With that, she gathered her blanket around her elbows and asc. ended the lily-white stairs like a bride. Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent. Fingering a ribbon and smelling skin, Stamp Paid approached 12 4 again. "My marrow is tired," he thought. "I been tired all my days, bone-tired, but now it's in the marrow. Must be what Baby Suggs felt when she lay down and thought about color for the rest of her life." When she told him what her aim was, he thought she was ashamed and too shamed to say
At first he would see her in the yard occasionally, or delivering food to the jail, or shoes in town. Then less and less. He believed then that shame put her in the bed. Now, eight years after her contentious funeral and eighteen years after the Misery, he changed his mind. Her marrow was tired and it was a testimony to the heart that fed it that it took eight years to meet finally the color she was hankering after. The onslaught of her fatigue, like his, was sudden, but
lasted for years. After sixty years of losing children to the people who chewed up her life and spit it out like a fish bone; after five years of freedom given to her by her last child, who bought her future with his, exchanged it, so to speak, so she could have one whether he did or not--to lose him too; to acquire a daughter and grandchildren and see that daughter slay the children (or try to); to belong to a community of other free Negroes--to love and be loved by them, to counsel and be counseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed--and then to have that community step back and hold itself at a distance—well, it could wear out even a Baby Suggs, holy. "Listen here, girl," he told her, "you can't quit the Word. It's given to you to speak. You can't quit the Word, I don't care what all happen to you." They were standing in Richmond Street, ankle deep in leaves. Lamps lit the downstairs windows of spacious houses and made the early evening look darker than it was. The odor of burning leaves was brilliant. Quite by chance, as he pocketed a penny tip for a delivery, he had glanced across the street and recognized the
skipping woman as his old friend. He had not seen her in weeks. Quickly he crossed the street, scuffing red leaves as he went. When he stopped her with a greeting, she returned it with a face knocked clean of interest. She could have been a plate. A carpetbag full of shoes in her hand, she waited for him to begin, lead or share a conversation. If there had been sadness in her eyes he would have understood it; but indifference lodged where sadness should have been. "You missed the Clearing three Saturdays running," he told her. She turned her head away and scanned the houses along the street. "Folks came," he said. "Folks come; folks go," she answered. "Here, let me carry that." He tried to take her bag from her but she wouldn't let him.
"I got a delivery someplace long in here," she said. "Name of Tucker." "Yonder," he said. "Twin chestnuts in the yard. Sick, too." They walked a bit, his pace slowed to accommodate her skip. "Well?" "Well, what?" "Saturday coming. You going to Call or what?" "If I call them and they come, what on earth I'm going to say?" "Say the Word!" He checked his shout too late. Two whitemen burning leaves turned their heads in his direction. Bending low he whispered into her ear, "The Word. The Word." "That's one other thing took away from me," she said, and that was when he exhorted
her, pleaded with her not to quit, no matter what. The Word had been given to her and she had to speak it. Had to. They had reached the twin chestnuts and the white house that stood behind them. "See what I mean?" he said. "Big trees like that, both of em together ain't got the leaves of a young birch." "I see what you mean," she said, but she peered instead at the white house. "You got to do it," he said. "You got to. Can't nobody Call like you. You have to be there." "What I have to do is get in my bed and lay down. I want to fix on something harmless in this world." "What world you talking about? Ain't nothing harmless down here." "Yes it is. Blue. That don't hurt nobody. Yellow
neither." "You getting in the bed to think about yellow?" "I likes yellow." "Then what? When you get through with blue and yellow, then what?" "Can't say. It's something can't be planned." "You blaming God," he said. "That's what you doing." "No, Stamp. I ain't." "You saying the whitefolks won? That what you saying?" "I'm saying they came in my yard." "You saying nothing counts." "I'm saying they came in my yard." "Sethe's the one did it." "And if she hadn't?"
"You saying God give up? Nothing left for us but pour out our own blood?" "I'm saying they came in my yard." "You punishing Him, ain't you." "Not like He punish me." "You can't do that, Baby. It ain't right." "Was a time I knew what that was." "You still know." "What I know is what I see: a nigger woman hauling shoes." "Aw, Baby." He licked his lips searching with his tongue for the words that would turn her around, lighten her load. "We have to be steady. 'These things too will pass.' What you looking for? A miracle?" "No," she said. "I'm looking for what I was put here to look for: the back door," and skipped right to it. They didn't let her in. They took the shoes from her as she stood on the steps and she rested her hip on the railing while the whitewoman went looking for the dime.
Stamp Paid rearranged his way. Too angry to walk her home and listen to more, he watched her for a moment and turned to go before the alert white face at the window next door had come to any conclusion. Trying to get to 124 for the second time now, he regretted that conversation: the high tone he took; his refusal to see the effect of marrow weariness in a woman he believed was a mountain. Now, too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn't count. They came in her yard anyway and she could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed. The whitefolks had tired her out at last. And him. Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken.
He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. The stench stank. Stank up off the pages of the North Star, out of the mouths of witnesses, etched in crooked handwriting in letters delivered by hand. Detailed in documents and petitions full of whereas and presented to any legal body who'd read it, it stank. But none of that had worn out his marrow. None of that. It was the ribbon. Tying his flatbed up on the bank of the Licking River, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom. Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp. He untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket, dropped the curl in the weeds. On the way home, he stopped, short of breath and dizzy. He waited until the spell passed before continuing on his way. A moment later, his breath left him again. This time he sat down by a fence. Rested, he got to his feet, but before he took a step he turned to look back down the
road he was traveling and said, to its frozen mud and the river beyond, "What are these people? You tell me, Jesus. What are they?" When he got to his house he was too tired to eat the food his sister and nephews had prepared. He sat on the porch in the cold till way past dark and went to his bed only because his sister's voice calling him was getting nervous. He kept the ribbon; the skin smell nagged him, and his weakened marrow made him dwell on Baby Suggs' wish to consider what in the world was harmless. He hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red. Mistaking her, upbraiding her, owing her, now he needed to let her know he knew, and to get right with her and her kin. So, in spite of his exhausted marrow, he kept on through the voices and tried once more to knock at the door of 124. This time, although he couldn't cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spoke them.
The people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons. What a roaring.
Sethe had gone to bed smiling, eager to lie down and unravel the proof for the conclusion she had already leapt to. Fondle the day and circumstances of Beloved's arrival and the meaning of that kiss in the Clearing. She slept instead and woke, still smiling, to a snow bright morning, cold enough to see her breath. She lingered a moment to collect the courage to throw off the blankets and hit a chilly floor. work. For the first time, she was going to be late for Downstairs she saw the girls sleeping where she'd left them, but back to back now, each wrapped tight in blankets, breathing into their pillows. The pair and a half of skates were lying by the front door, the stockings hung on a nail behind the cooking stove to dry had not. Sethe looked at Beloved's face and smiled. Quietly, carefully she stepped around her to wake the fire. First a bit of paper, then a little kindlin--not too much--just a taste until it was strong enough for more. She fed its dance until it was wild and fast. When she went outside to collect more wood from the shed, she did not notice the man's frozen footprints. She crunched around to the back, to the cord piled high with
snow. After scraping it clean, she filled her arms with as much dry wood as she could. She even looked straight at the shed, smiling, smiling at the things she would not have to remember now. Thinking, "She ain't even mad with me. Not a bit." Obviously the hand-holding shadows she had seen on the road were not Paul D, Denver and herself, but "us three." The three holding on to each other skating the night before; the three sipping flavored milk. And since that was so--if her daughter could come back home from the timeless place- certainly her sons could, and would, come back from wherever they had gone to. Sethe covered her front teeth with her tongue against the cold. Hunched forward by the burden in her arms, she walked back around the house to the porch-- not once noticing the frozen tracks she stepped in. Inside, the girls were still sleeping, although they had changed positions while she was gone, both drawn to the fire. Dumping the armload into the woodbox made them stir but not wake. Sethe started the cooking stove as
quietly as she could, reluctant to wake the sisters, happy to have them asleep at her feet while she made breakfast. Too bad she would be late for work—too, too bad. Once in sixteen years? That's just too bad. She had beaten two eggs into yesterday's hominy, formed it into patties and fried them with some ham pieces before Denver woke completely and groaned. "Back stiff?" "Ooh yeah." "Sleeping on the floor's supposed to be good for you." "Hurts like the devil," said Denver. "Could be that fall you took." Denver smiled. "That was fun." She turned to look down at Beloved snoring lightly. "Should I wake her?" "No, let her rest."
"She likes to see you off in the morning." I'll make sure she does," said Sethe, and thought, Be nice to think first, before I talk to her, let her know I know. Think about all I ain't got to remember no more. Do like Baby said: Think on it then lay it down--for good. Paul D convinced me there was a world out there and that I could live in it. Should have known better. Did know better. Whatever is going on outside my door ain't for me. The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all there needs to be. They ate like men, ravenous and intent. Saying little, content with the company of the other and the opportunity to look in her eyes. When Sethe wrapped her head and bundled up to go to town, it was already midmorning. And when she left the house she neither saw the prints nor heard the voices that ringed 124 like a noose. Trudging in the ruts left earlier by wheels, Sethe was excited to giddiness by the things she no longer had to remember. I don't have to remember nothing. I don't even have to explain.
She understands it all. I can forget how Baby Suggs' heart collapsed; how we agreed it was consumption without a sign of it in the world. Her eyes when she brought my food, I can forget that, and how she told me that Howard and Buglar were all right but wouldn't let go each other's hands. Played that way: stayed that way especially in their sleep. She handed me the food from a basket; things wrapped small enough to get through the bars, whispering news: Mr. Bodwin going to see the judge--in chambers, she kept on saying, in chambers, like I knew what it meant or she did. The Colored Ladies of Delaware, Ohio, had drawn up a petition to keep me from being hanged. That two white preachers had come round and wanted to talk to me, pray for me. That a newspaperman came too. She told me the news and I told her I needed something for the rats. She wanted Denver out and slapped her palms when I wouldn't let her go. "Where your earrings?" she said. I'll hold em for you." I told her the jailer took them, to protect me from myself. He thought I could do some harm with the wire. Baby Suggs covered her mouth with her hand. "Schoolteacher left town," she said. "Filed a
claim and rode on off. They going to let you out for the burial," she said, "not the funeral, just the burial," and they did. The sheriff came with me and looked away when I fed Denver in the wagon. Neither Howard nor Buglar would let me near them, not even to touch their hair. I believe a lot of folks were there, but I just saw the box. Reverend Pike spoke in a real loud voice, but I didn't catch a word—except the first two, and three months later when Denver was ready for solid food and they let me out for good, I went and got you a gravestone, but I didn't have money enough for the carving so I exchanged (bartered, you might say) what I did have and I'm sorry to this day I never thought to ask him for the whole thing: all I heard of what Reverend Pike said. Dearly Beloved, which is what you are to me and I don't have to be sorry about getting only one word, and I don't have to remember the slaughterhouse and the Saturday girls who worked its yard. I can forget that what I did changed Baby Suggs' life. No Clearing, no company. Just laundry and shoes. I can forget it all now because as soon as I got the gravestone in place you made your presence known in the house and worried us all to distraction. I didn't
understand it then. I thought you were mad with me. And now I know that if you was, you ain't now because you came back here to me and I was right all along: there is no world outside my door. I only need to know one thing. How bad is the scar? As Sethe walked to work, late for the first time in sixteen years and wrapped in a timeless present, Stamp Paid fought fatigue and the habit of a lifetime. Baby Suggs refused to go to the Clearing because she believed they had won; he refused to acknowledge any such victory. Baby had no back door; so he braved the cold and a wall of talk to knock on the one she did have. He clutched the red ribbon in his pocket for strength. Softly at first, then harder. At the last he banged furiously-disbelieving it could happen. That the door of a house with coloredpeople in it did not fly open in his presence. He went to the window and wanted to cry. Sure enough, there they were, not a one of them heading for the door. Worrying his scrap of ribbon to shreds, the old man turned and went down the steps. Now curiosity joined his shame and his debt. Two backs curled away from him as he
looked in the window. One had a head he recognized; the other troubled him. He didn't know her and didn't know anybody it could be. Nobody, but nobody visited that house. After a disagreeable breakfast he went to see Ella and John to find out what they knew. Perhaps there he could find out if, after all these years of clarity, he had misnamed himself and there was yet another debt he owed. Born Joshua, he renamed himself when he handed over his wife to his master's son. Handed her over in the sense that he did not kill anybody, thereby himself, because his wife demanded he stay alive. Otherwise, she reasoned, where and to whom could she return when the boy was through? With that gift, he decided that he didn't owe anybody anything. Whatever his obligations were, that act paid them off. He thought it would make him rambunctious, renegade--a drunkard even, the debtlessness, and in a way it did. But there was nothing to do with it. Work well; work poorly. Work a little; work not at all. Make sense; make none. Sleep, wake up; like somebody, dislike others. It didn't seem much of a way to live and it brought him no satisfaction. So he extended this debtlessness to other people by helping them pay out and off
whatever they owed in misery. Beaten runaways? He ferried them and rendered them paid for; gave them their own bill of sale, so to speak. "You paid it; now life owes you." And the receipt, as it were, was a welcome door that he never had to knock on, like John and Ella's in front of which he stood and said, "Who in there?" only once and she was pulling on the hinge. "where you been keeping yourself? I told John must be cold if Stamp stay inside." "Oh, I been out." He took off his cap and massaged his scalp. "Out where? Not by here." Ella hung two suits of underwear on a line behind the stove. "Was over to Baby Suggs' this morning." "What you want in there?" asked Ella. "Somebody invite you in?" "That's Baby's kin. I don't need no invite to look after her people."
"Sth." Ella was unmoved. She had been Baby Suggs' friend and Sethe's too till the rough time. Except for a nod at the carnival, she hadn't given Sethe the time of day. "Somebody new in there. A woman. Thought you might know who is she." "Ain't no new Negroes in this town I don't know about," she said. "what she look like? You sure that wasn't Denver?" "I know Denver. This girl's narrow." "You sure?" "I know what I see." "Might see anything at all at 124." "True." "Better ask Paul D," she said. "Can't locate him," said Stamp, which was the truth although his efforts to find Paul D had been feeble. He wasn't ready to confront the man whose life he had altered with his graveyard information. "He's sleeping in the church," said Ella.
hurt. "The church!" Stamp was shocked and very
"Yeah. Asked Reverend Pike if he could stay in the cellar." "It's cold as charity in there!" "I expect he knows that." "What he do that for?" "Hes a touch proud, seem like." "He don't have to do that! Any number'll take him in." Ella turned around to look at Stamp Paid. "Can't nobody read minds long distance. All he have to do is ask somebody." "Why? Why he have to ask? Can't nobody offer? What's going on? Since when a blackman come to town have to sleep in a cellar like a dog?" "Unrile yourself, Stamp."
"Not me. I'm going to stay riled till somebody gets some sense and leastway act like a Christian." "It's only a few days he been there." "Shouldn't be no days! You know all about it and don't give him a hand? That don't sound like you, Ella. Me and you been pulling coloredfolk out the water more'n twenty years. Now you tell me you can't offer a man a bed? A working man, too! A man what can pay his own way." "He ask, I give him anything." "Why's that necessary all of a sudden?" "I don't know him all that well." "You know he's colored!" "Stamp, don't tear me up this morning. I don't feel like it." "It's her, ain't it?" "Her who?"
"Sethe. He took up with her and stayed in there and you don't want nothing to--" "Hold on. Don't jump if you can't see bottom." "Girl, give it up. We been friends too long to act like this." "Well, who can tell what all went on in there? Look here, I don't know who Sethe is or none of her people." "What?!" "All I know is she married Baby Suggs' boy and I ain't sure I know that. Where is he, huh? Baby never laid eyes on her till John carried her to the door with a baby I strapped on her chest." "I strapped that baby! And you way off the track with that wagon. Her children know who she was even if you don't." "So what? I ain't saying she wasn't their ma'ammy, but who's to say they was Baby Suggs' grandchildren? How she get on board
and her husband didn't? And tell me this, how she have that baby in the woods by herself? Said a whitewoman come out the trees and helped her. Shoot. You believe that? A whitewoman? Well, I know what kind of white that was." "Aw, no, Ella." "Anything white floating around in the woods—if it ain't got a shotgun, it's something I don't want no part of!" "You all was friends." "Yeah, till she showed herself." "Ella." "I ain't got no friends take a handsaw to their own children." "You in deep water, girl." "Uh uh. I'm on dry land and I'm going to stay there. You the one wet." "What's any of what you talking got to do with Paul D?"
"What run him off? Tell me that." "I run him off." "You?" "I told him about--I showed him the newspaper, about the-- what Sethe did. Read it to him. He left that very day." "You didn't tell me that. I thought he knew." "He didn't know nothing. Except her, from when they was at that place Baby Suggs was at." "He knew Baby Suggs?" "Sure he knew her. Her boy Halle too." "And left when he found out what Sethe did?"
all." "Look like he might have a place to stay after
"What you say casts a different light. I thought--" But Stamp Paid knew what she thought.
"You didn't come here asking about him," Ela said. "You came about some new girl." "That's so." "Well, Paul D must know who she is. Or what she is." "Your mind is loaded with spirits. Everywhere you look you see one." "You know as well as I do that people who die bad don't stay in the ground." He couldn't deny it. Jesus Christ Himself didn't, so Stamp ate a piece of Ella's head cheese to show there were no bad feelings and set out to find Paul D. He found him on the steps of Holy Redeemer, holding his wrists between his knees and looking red-eyed. Sawyer shouted at her when she entered the kitchen, but she just turned her back and reached for her apron. There was no entry now. No crack or crevice available. She had taken pains to keep them out, but knew full well that at any moment they could rock her, rip her
from her moorings, send the birds twittering back into her hair. Drain her mother's milk, they had already done. Divided her back into plant life--that too. Driven her fat- bellied into the woods--they had done that. All news of them was rot. They buttered Halle's face; gave Paul D iron to eat; crisped Sixo; hanged her own mother. She didn't want any more news about whitefolks; didn't want to know what Ella knew and John and Stamp Paid, about the world done up the way whitefolks loved it. All news of them should have stopped with the birds in her hair. Once, long ago, she was soft, trusting. She trusted Mrs. Garner and her husband too. She knotted the earrings into her underskirt to take along, not so much to wear but to hold. Earrings that made her believe she could discriminate among them. That for every schoolteacher there would be an Amy; that for every pupil there was a Garner, or Bodwin, or even a sheriff, whose touch at her elbow was gentle and who looked away when she nursed. But she had come to believe every one of Baby Suggs' last words and buried all recollection of them and luck. Paul D dug it up, gave her back her body, kissed her divided back, stirred her rememory and brought her more news: of
clabber, of iron, of roosters' smiling, but when he heard her news, he counted her feet and didn't even say goodbye. "Don't talk to me, Mr. Sawyer. Don't say nothing to me this morning." "What? What? What? You talking back to
me?" "I'm telling you don't say nothing to me." "You better get them pies made." Sethe touched the fruit and picked up the paring knife. When pie juice hit the bottom of the oven and hissed, Sethe was well into the potato salad. Sawyer came in and said, "Not too sweet. You make it too sweet they don't eat it." "Make it the way I always did." "Yeah. Too sweet." None of the sausages came back. The cook had a way with them and Sawyer's Restaurant never had leftover sausage. If Sethe
wanted any, she put them aside soon as they were ready. But there was some passable stew. Problem was, all her pies were sold too. Only rice pudding left and half a pan of gingerbread that didn't come out right. Had she been paying attention instead of daydreaming all morning, she wouldn't be picking around looking for her dinner like a crab. She couldn't read clock time very well, but she knew when the hands were closed in prayer at the top of the face she was through for the day. She got a metal-top jar, filled it with stew and wrapped the gingerbread in butcher paper. These she dropped in her outer skirt pockets and began washing up. None of it was anything like what the cook and the two waiters walked off with. Mr. Sawyer included midday dinner in the terms of the job--along with $3 .4o a week-- and she made him understand from the beginning she would take her dinner home. But matches, sometimes a bit of kerosene, a little salt, butter too--these things she took also, once in a while, and felt ashamed because she could afford to buy them; she just didn't want the embarrassment of waiting out back of Phelps
store with the others till every white in Ohio was served before the keeper turned to the cluster of Negro faces looking through a hole in his back door. She was ashamed, too, because it was stealing and Sixo's argument on the subject amused her but didn't change the way she felt; just as it didn't change schoolteacher's mind. "Did you steal that shoat? You stole that shoat." Schoolteacher was quiet but firm, like he was just going through the motions--not expecting an answer that mattered. Sixo sat there, not even getting up to plead or deny. He just sat there, the streak-of-lean in his hand, the gristle clustered in the tin plate like gemstones—rough, unpolished, but loot nevertheless. "You stole that shoat, didn't you?" "No. Sir." said Sixo, but he had the decency, to keep his eyes on the meat. "You telling me you didn't steal it, and I'm looking right at you?" "No, sir. I didn't steal it." Schoolteacher smiled. "Did you kill it?"
"Yes, sir. I killed it." "Did you butcher it?" "Yes, sir." "Did you cook it?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then. Did you eat it?" "Yes, sir. I sure did." "And you telling me that's not stealing?" "No, sir. It ain't." "What is it then?" "Improving your property, sir." "What?" "Sixo plant rye to give the high piece a better chance. Sixo take and feed the soil, give you more crop. Sixo take and feed Sixo give you more work." Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers--not the defined.
After Mr. Garner died with a hole in his ear that Mrs. Garner said was an exploded ear drum brought on by stroke and Sixo said was gunpowder, everything they touched was looked on as stealing. Not just a rifle of corn, or two yard eggs the hen herself didn't even remember, everything. Schoolteacher took away the guns from the Sweet Home men and, deprived of game to round out their diet of bread, beans, hominy, vegetables and a little extra at slaughter time, they began to pilfer in earnest, and it became not only their right but their obligation. Sethe understood it then, but now with a paying job and an employer who was kind enough to hire an ex-convict, she despised herself for the pride that made pilfering better than standing in line at the window of the general store with all the other Negroes. She didn't want to jostle them or be jostled by them. Feel their judgment or their pity, especially now. She touched her forehead with the back of her wrist and blotted the perspiration. The workday had come to a close and already she was feeling the excitement. Not since that other escape had she felt so alive. Slopping the alley dogs, watching their frenzy, she pressed her lips. Today would be
a day she would accept a lift, if anybody on a wagon offered it. No one would, and for sixteen years her pride had not let her ask. But today. Oh, today. Now she wanted speed, to skip over the long walk home and be there. When Sawyer warned her about being late again, she barely heard him. He used to be a sweet man. Patient, tender in his dealings with his help. But each year, following the death of his son in the War, he grew more and more crotchety. As though Sethe's dark face was to blame. "Un huh," she said, wondering how she could hurry tine along and get to the no-time waiting for her. She needn't have worried. Wrapped tight, hunched forward, as she started home her mind was busy with the things she could forget. Thank God I don't have to rememory or say a thing because you know it. All. You know I never would a left you. Never. It was all I could think of to do. When the train came I had to be ready. Schoolteacher was teaching us things we couldn't learn. I didn't care nothing about the
measuring string. We all laughed about that-- except Sixo. He didn't laugh at nothing. But I didn't care. Schoolteacher'd wrap that string all over my head, 'cross my nose, around my behind. Number my teeth. I thought he was a fool. And the questions he asked was the biggest foolishness of all. Then me and your brothers come up from the second patch. The first one was close to the house where the quick things grew: beans, onions, sweet peas. The other one was further down for long-lasting things, potatoes, pumpkin, okra, pork salad. Not much was up yet down there. It was early still. Some young salad maybe, but that was all. We pulled weeds and hoed a little to give everything a good start. After that we hit out for the house. The ground raised up from the second patch. Not a hill exactly but kind of. Enough for Buglar and Howard to run up and roll down, run up and roll down. That's the way I used to see them in my dreams, laughing, their short fat legs running up the hill. Now all I see is their backs walking down the railroad tracks. Away from me. Always away from me. But that day they was happy, running up and rolling down. It was early still-- the growing season had took hold but not much was
Right in your face, but you wasn't woke at all. Still asleep. I wanted to pick you up in my arms and I wanted to look at you sleeping too. Didn't know which; you had the sweetest face. Yonder, not far, was a grape arbor Mr. Garner made. Always full of big plans, he wanted to make his own wine to get drunk off. Never did
get more than a kettle of jelly from it. I don't think the soil was right for grapes. Your daddy believed it was the rain, not the soil. Sixo said it was bugs. The grapes so little and tight. Sour as vinegar too. But there was a little table in there. So I picked up your basket and carried you over to the grape arbor. Cool in there and shady. I set you down on the little table and figured if I got a piece of muslin the bugs and things wouldn't get to you. And if Mrs. Garner didn't need me right there in the kitchen, I could get a chair and you and me could set out there while I did the vegetables. I headed for the back door to get the clean muslin we kept in the kitchen press. The grass felt good on my feet. I got near the door and I heard voices. Schoolteacher made his pupils sit and learn books for a spell every afternoon. If it was nice enough weather, they'd sit on the side porch. All three of em. He'd talk and they'd write. Or he would read and they would write down what he said. I never told nobody this. Not your pap, not nobody. I almost told Mrs. Garner, but she was so weak then and getting weaker. This is the first time I'm telling it and I'm telling it to you because it might help explain something to you although I
know you don't need me to do it. To tell it or even think over it. You don't have to listen either, if you don't want to. But I couldn't help listening to what I heard that day. He was talking to his pupils and I heard him say, "Which one are you doing?" And one of the boys said, "Sethe." That's when I stopped because I heard my name, and then I took a few steps to where I could see what they was doing. Schoolteacher was standing over one of them with one hand behind his back. He licked a forefinger a couple of times and turned a few pages. Slow. I was about to turn around and keep on my way to where the muslin was, when I heard him say, "No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And don't forget to line them up." I commenced to walk backward, didn't even look behind me to find out where I was headed. I just kept lifting my feet and pushing back. When I bumped up against a tree my scalp was prickly. One of the dogs was licking out a pan in the yard. I got to the grape arbor fast enough, but I didn't have the muslin. Flies settled all over your face, rubbing their hands.
My head itched like the devil. Like somebody was sticking fine needles in my scalp. I never told Halle or nobody. But that very day I asked Mrs. Garner a part of it. She was low then. Not as low as she ended up, but failing. A kind of bag grew under her jaw. It didn't seem to hurt her, but it made her weak. First she'd be up and spry in the morning and by the second milking she couldn't stand up. Next she took to sleeping late. The day I went up there she was in bed the whole day, and I thought to carry her some bean soup and ask her then. When I opened the bedroom door she looked at me from underneath her nightcap. Already it was hard to catch life in her eyes. Her shoes and stockings were on the floor so I knew she had tried to get dressed. "I brung you some bean soup," I said. She said, "I don't think I can swallow that." "Try a bit," I told her. "Too thick. I'm sure it's too thick." "Want me to loosen it up with a little water?"
"No. Take it away. Bring me some cool water, that's all." "Yes, ma'am. Ma'am? Could I ask you something?" "What is it, Sethe?" "What do characteristics mean?" "What?" "A word. Characteristics." "Oh." She moved her head around on the pillow. "Features. Who taught you that?" "I heard the schoolteacher say it." "Change the water, Sethe. This is warm." "Yes, ma'am. Features?" 'Water, Sethe. Cool water." I put the pitcher on the tray with the white bean soup and went downstairs. When I got back with the fresh water I held her head while she drank. It took her a while because that lump made it hard to swallow. She laid back and
wiped her mouth. The drinking seemed to satisfy her but she frowned and said, "I don't seem able to wake up, Sethe. All I seem to want is sleep." "Then do it," I told her. "I'm take care of things." Then she went on: what about this? what about that? Said she knew Halle was no trouble, but she wanted to know if schoolteacher was handling the Pauls all right and Sixo. "Yes, ma'am," I said. "Look like it." "Do they do what he tells them?" "They don't need telling." "Good. That's a mercy. I should be back downstairs in a day or two. I just need more rest. Doctor's due back. Tomorrow, is it?" "You said features, ma'am?" "What?" "Features?"
"Umm. Like, a feature of summer is heat. A characteristic is a feature. A thing that's natural to a thing." "Can you have more than one?" "You can have quite a few. You know. Say a baby sucks its thumb. That's one, but it has others too. Keep Billy away from Red Corn. Mr. Garner never let her calve every other year. Sethe, you hear me? Come away from that window and listen." "Yes, ma'am." "Ask my brother -in-law to come up after
supper. " "Yes, ma'am. " "If you'd wash your hair you could get rid of that lice." "Ain't no lice in my head, ma'am." "Whatever it is, a good scrubbing is what it needs, not
scratching. Don't tell me we're out of soap." "No, ma'am." "All right now. I'm through. Talking makes me tired." "Yes, ma'am." "And thank you, Sethe." "Yes, ma'am." You was too little to remember the quarters. Your brothers slept under the window. Me, you and your daddy slept by the wall. The night after I heard why schoolteacher measured me, I had trouble sleeping. When Halle came in I asked him what he thought about schoolteacher. He said there wasn't nothing to think about. Said, He's white, ain't he? I said, But I mean is he like Mr. Garner? "What you want to know, Sethe?" "Him and her," I said, "they ain't like the whites I seen before.
The ones in the big place I was before I came here." "How these different?" he asked me. "Well," I said, "they talk soft for one thing." "It don't matter, Sethe. What they say is the same. Loud or soft." "Mr. Garner let you buy out your mother," I
said. "Yep. He did." "Well?" "If he hadn't of, she would of dropped in his cooking stove." "Still, he did it. Let you work it off." "Uh huh." "Wake up, Halle." "I said, Uh huh."
"He could of said no. He didn't tell you no." "No, he didn't tell me no. She worked here for ten years. If she worked another ten you think she would've made it out? I pay him for her last years and in return he got you, me and three more coming up. I got one more year of debt work; one more. Schoolteacher in there told me to quit it. Said the reason for doing it don't hold. I should do the extra but here at Sweet Home." "Is he going to pay you for the extra?" "Nope." "Then how you going to pay it off? How much
is it?" "$123 .7o." "Don't he want it back?" "He want something." "What?" "I don't know. Something, But he don't want me off Sweet Home no more. Say it don't pay to have my labor somewhere else while the boys is small."
"What about the money you owe?" "He must have another way of getting it." "What way?" "I don't know, Sethe." "Then the only question is how? How he going get it?" "No. That's one question. There's one more." "What's that?" He leaned up and turned over, touching my cheek with his knuckles. "The question now is, Who's going buy you out? Or me? Or her?" He pointed over to where you was laying. "What?" "If all my labor is Sweet Home, including the extra, what I got left to sell?" He turned over then and went back to sleep and I thought I wouldn't but I did too for a while. Something he said, maybe, or something he didn't say woke me. I sat up like somebody
hit me, and you woke up too and commenced to cry. I rocked you some, but there wasn't much room, so I stepped outside the door to walk you. Up and down I went. Up and down. Everything dark but lamplight in the top window of the house. She must've been up still. I couldn't get out of my head the thing that woke me up: "While the boys is small." That's what he said and it snapped me awake. They tagged after me the whole day weeding, milking, getting firewood. For now. For now. That's when we should have begun to plan. But we didn't. I don't know what we thought--but getting away was a money thing to us. Buy out. Running was nowhere on our minds. All of us? Some? Where to? How to go? It was Sixo who brought it up, finally, after Paul F. Mrs. Garner sold him, trying to keep things up. Already she lived two years off his price. But it ran out, I guess, so she wrote schoolteacher to come take over. Four Sweet Home men and she still believed she needed her brother- in-law and two boys 'cause people said she shouldn't be alone out there with nothing but Negroes. So he came with a big hat and spectacles and a coach box full of paper.
Talking soft and watching hard. He beat Paul
"That way." Halle was pointing over the stable. "Where he took my ma'am. Sixo say freedom is that way. A whole train is going and if we can get there, don't need to be no buyout." "Train? What's that?" I asked him. They stopped talking in front of me then. Even Halle. But they whispered among themselves and Sixo watched the sky. Not the high part, the low part where it touched the trees. You could tell his mind was gone from Sweet Home. The plan was a good one, but when it came time, I was big with Denver. So we changed it a little. A little. Just enough to butter Halle's face, so Paul D tells me, and make Sixo laugh at last. But I got you out, baby. And the boys too. When the signal for the train come, you all was the only ones ready. I couldn't find Halle or nobody. I
didn't know Sixo was burned up and Paul D dressed in a collar you wouldn't believe. Not till later. So I sent you all to the wagon with the woman who waited in the corn. Ha ha. No notebook for my babies and no measuring string neither. What I had to get through later I got through because of you. Passed right by those boys hanging in the trees. One had Paul A's shirt on but not his feet or his head. I walked right on by because only me had your milk, and God do what He would, I was going to get it to you. You remember that, don't you; that I did? That when I got here I had milk enough for all? One more curve in the road, and Sethe could see her chimney; it wasn't lonely-looking anymore. The ribbon of smoke was from a fire that warmed a body returned to her--just like it never went away, never needed a headstone. And the heart that beat inside it had not for a single moment stopped in her hands. She opened the door, walked in and locked it tight behind her. The day Stamp Paid saw the two backs through the window and then hurried down the steps, he believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. Very few had died
in bed, like Baby Suggs, and none that he knew of, including Baby, had lived a livable life. Even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writers and businessmen had a hard row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that. Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them.
Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own. Meantime, the secret spread of this new kind of whitefolks' jungle was hidden, silent, except once in a while when you could hear its mumbling in places like 124. Stamp Paid abandoned his efforts to see about Sethe, after the pain of knocking and not gaining entrance, and when he did, 124 was left to its own devices. When Sethe locked the door, the women inside were free at last to be what they liked, see whatever they saw and say whatever was on their minds. Almost. Mixed in with the voices surrounding the house, recognizable but undecipherable to Stamp Paid, were the thoughts of the women of 124, unspeakable thoughts, unspoken. of her own free will and I don't have to explain a thing. I didn't have time to explain before because it had to be done quick. Quick. She had to be safe and I put her where she would be. But my love was tough and she back now. I knew she would be. Paul D ran
her off so she had no choice but to come back to me in the flesh. I bet you Baby Suggs, on the other side, helped. I won't never let her go. I'll explain to her, even though I don't have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her. When I explain it she'll understand, because she understands everything already. I'll tend her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else-- and the one time I did it was took from me--they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby. Nan had to nurse whitebabies and me too because Ma'am was in the rice. The little whitebabies got it first and I got what was left. Or none. There was no nursing milk to call my own. I know what it is to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight and holler for it, and to have so little left. i'll tell Beloved about that; she'll understand. She my daughter. The one I managed to have milk for and to get it to her even after they stole it; after they handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it was too nasty to stay in with the horses. But I wasn't too nasty to cook their food or take care of Mrs. Garner. I tended
her like I would have tended my own mother if she needed me. If they had let her out the rice field, because I was the one she didn't throw away. I couldn't have done more for that woman than I would my own ma'am if she was to take sick and need me and I'd have stayed with her till she got well or died. And I would have stayed after that except Nan snatched me back. Before I could check for the sign. It was her all right, but for a long time I didn't believe it. I looked everywhere for that hat. Stuttered after that. Didn't stop it till I saw Halle. Oh, but that's all over now. I'm here. I lasted. And my girl come home. Now I can look at things again because she's here to see them too. After the shed, I stopped. Now, in the morning, when I light the fire I mean to look out the window to see what the sun is doing to the day. Does it hit the pump handle first or the spigot? See if the grass is gray-green or brown or what. Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before. Took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow, then green. She was well into
pink when she died. I don't believe she wanted to get to red and I understand why because me and Beloved outdid ourselves with it. Matter of fact, that and her pinkish headstone was the last color I recall. Now I'll be on the lookout. Think what spring will he for us! I'll plant carrots just so she can see them, and turnips. Have you ever seen one, baby? A prettier thing God never made. White and purple with a tender tail and a hard head. Feels good when you hold it in your hand and smells like the creek when it floods, bitter but happy. We'll smell them together, Beloved. Beloved. Because you mine and I have to show you these things, and teach you what a mother should. Funny how you lose sight of some things and memory others. I never will forget that whitegirl's hands. Amy. But I forget the color of all that hair on her head. Eyes must have been gray, though. Seem like I do rememory that. Mrs. Garner's was light brown--while she was well. Got dark when she took sick. A strong woman, used to be. And when she talked off her head, she'd say it. "I used to be strong as a mule, Jenny."
Called me "Jenny" when she was babbling, and I can bear witness to that. Tall and strong. The two of us on a cord of wood was as good as two men. Hurt her like the devil not to be able to raise her head off the pillow. Still can't figure why she thought she needed schoolteacher, though. I wonder if she lasted, like I did. Last time I saw her she couldn't do nothing but cry, and I couldn't do a thing for her but wipe her face when I told her what they done to me. Somebody had to know it. Hear it. Somebody. Maybe she lasted. Schoolteacher wouldn't treat her the way he treated me. First beating I took was the last. Nobody going to keep me from my children. Hadn't been for me taking care of her maybe I would have known what happened. Maybe Halle was trying to get to me. I stood by her bed waiting for her to finish with the slop jar. Then I got her back in the bed she said she was cold. Hot as blazes and she wanted quilts. Said to shut the window. I told her no. She needed the cover; I needed the breeze. Long as those yellow curtains flapped, I was all right. Should have heeded her. Maybe what sounded like shots really was. Maybe I would have seen somebody or something. Maybe. Anyhow I took my babies to the corn, Halle or no. Jesus. then I heard that woman's
rattle. She said, Any more? I told her I didn't know. She said, I been here all night. Can't wait. I tried to make her. She said, Can't do it. Come on. Hoo! Not a man around. Boys scared. You asleep on my back. Denver sleep in my stomach. Felt like I was split in two. I told her to take you all; I had to go back. In case. She just looked at me. Said, Woman? Bit a piece of my tongue off when they opened my back. It was hanging by a shred. I didn't mean to. Clamped down on it, it come right off. I thought, Good God, I'm going to eat myself up. They dug a hole for my stomach so as not to hurt the baby. Denver don't like for me to talk about it. She hates anything about Sweet Home except how she was born. But you was there and even if you too young to memory it, I can tell it to you. The grape arbor. You memory that? I ran so fast. Flies beat me to you. I would have known right away who you was when the sun blotted out your face the way it did when I took you to the grape arbor. I would have known at once when my water broke. The minute I saw you sitting on the stump, it broke. And when I did see your face it
had more than a hint of what you would look like after all these years. I would have known who you were right away because the cup after cup of water you drank proved and connected to the fact that you dribbled clear spit on my face the day I got to 124. I would have known right off, but Paul D distracted me. Otherwise I would have seen my fingernail prints right there on your forehead for all the world to see. From when I held your head up, out in the shed. And later on, when you asked me about the earrings I used to dangle for you to play with, I would have recognized you right off, except for Paul D. Seems to me he wanted you out from the beginning, but I wouldn't let him. What you think? And look how he ran when he found out about me and you in the shed. Too rough for him to listen to. Too thick, he said. My love was too thick. What he know about it? Who in the world is he willing to die for? Would he give his privates to a stranger in return for a carving? Some other way, he said. There must have been some other way. Let schoolteacher haul us away, I guess, to measure your behind before he tore it up? I have felt what it felt like and nobody walking or stretched out is going to make you feel it too. Not you, not none of mine, and when I tell
you you mine, I also mean I'm yours I wouldn't draw breath without my children. I told Baby Suggs that and she got down on her knees to beg God's pardon for me. Still, it's so. My plan was to take us all to the other side where my own ma'am is. They stopped me from getting us there, but they didn't stop you from getting here. Ha ha. You came right on back like a good girl, like a daughter which is what I wanted to be and would have been if my ma'am had been able to get out of the rice long enough before they hanged her and let me be one. You know what? She'd had the bit so many times she smiled. When she wasn't smiling she smiled, and I never saw her own smile. I wonder what they was doing when they was caught. Running, you think? No. Not that. Because she was my ma'am and nobody's ma'am would run off and leave her daughter, would she? Would she, now? Leave her in the yard with a one-armed woman? Even if she hadn't been able to suckle the daughter for more than a week or two and had to turn her over to another woman's tit that never had enough for all. They said it was the bit that made her smile when she didn't want to.
Like the Saturday girls working the slaughterhouse yard. When I came out of jail I saw them plain. They came when the shift changed on Saturday when the men got paid and worked behind the fences, back of the outhouse. Some worked standing up, leaning on the toolhouse door. They gave some of their nickels and dimes to the foreman as they left but by then their smiles was over. Some of them drank liquor to keep from feeling what they felt. Some didn't drink a drop--just beat it on over to Phelps to pay for what their children needed, or their ma'ammies. Working a pig yard. That has got to be something for a woman to do, and I got close to it myself when I got out of jail and bought, so to speak, your name. But the Bodwins got me the cooking job at Sawyer's and left me able to smile on my own like now when I think about you. But you know all that because you smart like everybody said because when I got here you was crawling already. Trying to get up the stairs. Baby Suggs had them painted white so you could see your way to the top in the dark
where lamplight didn't reach. Lord, you loved the stairsteps. I got close. I got close. To being a Saturday girl. I had already worked a stone mason's shop. A step to the slaughterhouse would have been a short one. When I put that headstone up I wanted to lay in there with you, put your head on my shoulder and keep you warm, and I would have if Buglar and Howard and Denver didn't need me, because my mind was homeless then. I couldn't lay down with you then. No matter how much I wanted to. I couldn't lay down nowhere in peace, back then. Now I can. I can sleep like the drowned, have mercy. She come back to me, my daughter, and she is mine. mother's milk. The first thing I heard after not hearing anything was the sound of her crawling up the stairs. She was my secret company until Paul D came. He threw her out. Ever since I was little she was my company and she helped me wait for my daddy. Me and her waited for him. I love my mother but I know she killed one of her own daughters, and tender as she is with me, I'm scared of her because of it. She missed killing my brothers and they knew it. They told me die-witch! stories to show me the way to do it, if ever I needed to.
Maybe it was getting that close to dying made them want to fight the War. That's what they told me they were going to do. I guess they rather be around killing men than killing women, and there sure is something in her that makes it all right to kill her own. All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too. Not since Miss Lady Jones' house have I left 124 by myself. Never. The only other times--two times in all—I was with my mother. Once to see Grandma Baby put down next to Beloved, she's my sister. The other time Paul D went too and when we came back I thought the house would still be empty from when he threw my sister's ghost out. But
Waiting for me. Tired from her long journey back. Ready to be taken care of; ready for me to protect her. This time I have to keep my mother away from her. That's hard, but I have to. It's all on me. I've seen my mother in a dark place, with scratching noises. A smell coming from her dress. I have been with her where something little watched us from the corners. And touched. Sometimes they touched. I didn't remember it for a long time until Nelson Lord made me. I asked her if it was true but couldn't hear what she said and there was no point in going back to Lady Jones if you couldn't hear what anybody said. So quiet. Made me have to read faces and learn how to figure out what people were thinking, so I didn't need to hear what they said. That's how come me and Beloved could play together. Not talking. On the porch. By the creek. In the secret house. It's all on me, now, but she can count on me. I thought she was trying to kill her that day in the Clearing. Kill her back. But then she kissed her neck and I
have to warn her about that. Don't love her too much. Don't. Maybe it's still in her the thing that makes it all right to kill her children. I have to tell her. I have to protect her. She cut my head off every night. Buglar and Howard told me she would and she did. Her pretty eyes looking at me like I was a stranger. Not mean or anything, but like I was somebody she found and felt sorry for. Like she didn't want to do it but she had to and it wasn't going to hurt. That it was just a thing grown-up people do--like pull a splinter out your hand; touch the corner of a towel in your eye if you get a cinder in it. She looks over at Buglar and Howard--see if they all right. Then she comes over to my side. I know she'll be good at it, careful. That when she cuts it off it'll be done right; it won't hurt. After she does it I lie there for a minute with just my head. Then she carries it downstairs to braid my hair. I try not to cry but it hurts so much to comb it. When she finishes the combing and starts the braiding, I get sleepy. I want to go to sleep but I know if I do I won't wake up. So I have to stay
awake while she finishes my hair, then I can sleep. The scary part is waiting for her to come in and do it. Not when she does it, but when I wait for her to. Only place she can't get to me in the night is Grandma Baby's room. The room we sleep in upstairs used to be where the help slept when whitepeople lived here. They had a kitchen outside, too. But Grandma Baby turned it into a woodshed and toolroom when she moved in. And she boarded up the back door that led to it because she said she didn't want to make that journey no more. She built around it to make a storeroom, so if you want to get in 124 you have to come by her. Said she didn't care what folks said about her fixing a two story house up like a cabin where you cook inside. She said they told her visitors with nice dresses don't want to sit in the same room with the cook stove and the peelings and the grease and the smoke. She wouldn't pay them no mind, she said. I was safe at night in there with her. All I could hear was me breathing but sometimes in the day I couldn't tell whether it was me breathing or somebody next to me. I used to watch Here Boy's stomach go in and out, in and out, to see if it matched mine, holding my breath to get off his rhythm, releasing it to get on. Just to
see whose it was--that sound like when you blow soft in a bottle only regular, regular. Am I making that sound? Is Howard? Who is? That was when everybody was quiet and I couldn't hear anything they said. I didn't care either because the quiet let me dream my daddy better. I always knew he was coming. Something was holding him up. He had a problem with the horse. The river flooded; the boat sank and he had to make a new one. Sometimes it was a lynch mob or a windstorm. He was coming and it was a secret. I spent all of my outside self loving Ma'am so she wouldn't kill me, loving her even when she braided my head at night. I never let her know my daddy was coming for me. Grandma Baby thought he was coming, too. For a while she thought so, then she stopped. I never did. Even when Buglar and Howard ran away. Then Paul D came in here. I heard his voice downstairs, and Ma'am laughing, so I thought it was him, my daddy. Nobody comes to this house anymore. But when I got downstairs it was Paul D and he didn't come for me; he wanted my mother. At first. Then he wanted my sister, too, but she got him out of here and I'm so glad he's gone.
Now it's just us and I can protect her till my daddy gets here to help me watch out for Ma'am and anything come in the yard. My daddy do anything for runny fried eggs. Dip his bread in it. Grandma used to tell me his things. She said anytime she could make him a plate of soft fried eggs was Christmas, made him so happy. She said she was always a little scared of my daddy. He was too good, she said. From the beginning, she said, he was too good for the world. Scared her. She thought, He'll never make it through nothing. Whitepeople must have thought so too, because they never got split up. So she got the chance to know him, look after him, and he scared her the way he loved things. Animals and tools and crops and the alphabet. He could count on paper. The boss taught him. Offered to teach the other boys but only my daddy wanted it. She said the other boys said no. One of them with a number for a name said it would change his mind--make him forget things he shouldn't and memorize things he shouldn't and he didn't want his mind messed up. But my daddy said, If you can't count they can cheat you. If you can't read they can beat you. They thought that
was funny. Grandma said she didn't know, but it was because my daddy could count on paper and figure that he bought her away from there. And she said she always wished she could read the Bible like real preachers. So it was good for me to learn how, and I did until it got quiet and all I could hear was my own breathing and one other who knocked over the milk jug while it was sitting on the table. Nobody near it. Ma'am whipped Buglar but he didn't touch it. Then it messed up all the ironed clothes and put its hands in the cake. Look like I was the only one who knew right away who it was. Just like when she came back I knew who she was too. Not right away, but soon as she spelled her name--not her given name, but the one Ma'am paid the stonecutter for--I knew. And when she wondered about Ma'am's earrings--something I didn't know about--well, that just made the cheese more binding: my sister come to help me wait for my daddy. My daddy was an angel man. He could look at you and tell where you hurt and he could fix it too. He made a hanging thing for Grandma Baby, so she could pull herself up from the floor when she woke up in the morning, and he made a step so when she stood up she was level. Grandma said she was always afraid a whiteman would
knock her down in front of her children. She behaved and did everything right in front of her children because she didn't want them to see her knocked down. She said it made children crazy to see that. At Sweet Home nobody did or said they would, so my daddy never saw it there and never went crazy and even now I bet he's trying to get here. If Paul D could do it my daddy could too. Angel man. We should all be together. Me, him and Beloved. Ma'am could stay or go off with Paul D if she wanted to. Unless Daddy wanted her himself, but I don't think he would now, since she let Paul D in her bed. Grandma Baby said people look down on her because she had eight children with different men. Coloredpeople and whitepeople both look down on her for that. Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down. She said for me not to listen to all that. That I should always listen to my body and love it.
The secret house. When she died I went there. Ma'am wouldn't let me go outside in the yard and eat with the others. We stayed inside. That hurt. I know Grandma Baby would have liked the party and the people who came to it, because she got low not seeing anybody or going anywhere--just grieving and thinking about colors and how she made a mistake. That what she thought about what the heart and the body could do was wrong. The whitepeople came anyway. In her yard. She had done everything right and they came in her yard anyway. And she didn't know what to think. All she had left was her heart and they busted it so even the War couldn't rouse her. She told me all my daddy's things. How hard he worked to buy her. After the cake was ruined and the ironed clothes all messed up, and after I heard my sister crawling up the stairs to get back to her bed, she told me my things too. That I was charmed. My birth was and I got saved all the time. And that I shouldn't be afraid of the ghost. It wouldn't harm me because I tasted its blood when Ma'am nursed me. She said the ghost was after Ma'am and her too for not doing anything to stop it. But it would never hurt me. I just had to watch out for it because it was a greedy ghost and needed
a lot of love, which was only natural, considering. And I do. Love her. I do. She played with me and always came to be with me whenever I needed her. She's mine, Beloved. She's mine. leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked some who eat nasty themselves I do not eat the men without skin bring us their morning water to drink we have none at night I cannot see the dead man on my face daylight comes through the cracks and I can see his locked eyes I am not big small rats do not wait for us to sleep someone is thrashing but there is no room to do it in if we had more to drink we could make tears we cannot make sweat or morning water so the men without skin bring us
theirs one time they bring us sweet rocks to suck we are all trying to leave our bodies behind the man on my face has done it it is hard to make yourself die forever you sleep short and then return in the beginning we could vomit now we do not now we cannot his teeth are pretty white points someone is trembling I can feel it over here he is fighting hard to leave his body which is a small bird trembling there is no room to tremble so he is not able to die my own dead man is pulled away from my face I miss his pretty white points We are not crouching now we are standing but my legs are like my dead man's eyes I cannot fall because there is no room to the men without skin are making loud noises I am not dead the bread is sea-colored I am too hungry to eat it the sun closes my eyes those able to die are in a pile I cannot find my man the one whose teeth I have loved a hot thing the little hill of dead people a hot thing the men without skin push them through with poles the woman is there with the face I want the face that is mine they fall into the sea which is the color of the bread she has nothing in her ears if I had the teeth of the man who died on my face I would bite the circle around her neck bite it away I know she does not like it now there is room to crouch and to watch the crouching others it is
the crouching that is now always now inside the woman with my face is in the sea a hot thing In the beginning I could see her I could not help her because the clouds were in the way in the beginning I could see her the shining in her ears she does not like the circle around her neck I know this I look hard at her so she will know that the clouds are in the way I am sure she saw me I am looking at her see me she empties out her eyes I am there in the place where her face is and telling her the noisy clouds were in my way she wants her earrings she wants her round basket I want her face a hot thing in the beginning the women are away from the men and the men are away from the women storms rock us and mix the men into the women and the women into the men that is when I begin to be on the back of the man for a long time I see only his neck and his wide shoulders above me I am small I love him because he has a song when he turned around to die I see the teeth he sang through his singing was soft his singing is of the place where a woman takes flowers away from their leaves and puts them in a round basket before the clouds she is crouching near us but I do not see her until he locks his eyes and dies on my face we are that way there is no breath
coming from his mouth and the place where breath should be is sweet-smelling the others do not know he is dead I know his song is gone now I love his pretty little teeth instead I cannot lose her again my dead man was in the way like the noisy clouds when he dies on my face I can see hers she is going to smile at me she is going to her sharp earrings are gone the men without skin are making loud noises they push my own man through they do not push the woman with my face through she goes in they do not push her she goes in the little hill is gone she was going to smile at me she was going to a hot thing They are not crouching now we are they are floating on the water they break up the little hill and push it through I cannot find my pretty teeth I see the dark face that is going to smile at me it is my dark face that is going to smile at me the iron circle is around our neck she does not have sharp earrings in her ears or a round basket she goes in the water with my face I am standing in the rain falling the others are taken I am not taken I am falling like the rain is I watch him eat inside I am crouching to keep from falling with the rain I am going to be in pieces he hurts where I sleep he puts his finger there I drop the food and break into pieces she took my face away there is no one to want me to say me my name I wait on the bridge because she
is under it there is night and there is day again again night day night day I am waiting no iron circle is around my neck no boats go on this water no men without skin my dead man is not floating here his teeth are down there where the blue is and the grass so is the face I want the face that is going to smile at me it is going to in the day diamonds are in the water where she is and turtles in the night I hear chewing and swallowing and laughter it belongs to me she is the laugh I am the laugher I see her face which is mine it is the face that was going to smile at me in the place where we crouched now she is going to her face comes through the water a hot thing her face is mine she is not smiling she is chewing and swallowing I have to have my face I go in the grass opens she opens it I am in the water and she is coming there is no round basket no iron circle around her neck she goes up where the diamonds are I follow her we are in the diamonds which are her earrings now my face is coming I have to have it I am looking for the join I am loving my face so much my dark face is close to me I want to join she whispers to me she whispers I reach for her chewing and swallowing she touches me she knows I want to join she chews and swallows me I am gone now I am her face my own face has left me I see me swim away a hot thing I see the
bottoms of my feet I am alone I want to be the two of us I want the join I come out of blue water after the bottoms of my feet swim away from me I come up I need to find a place to be the air is heavy I am not dead I am not there is a house there is what she whispered to me I am where she told me I am not dead I sit the sun closes my eyes when I open them I see the face I lost Sethe's is the face that lef me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join a hot thing I AM BE LOV ED and she is mine. Sethe is the one that picked flowers, yellow flowers in the place before the crouching. Took them away from their green leaves. They are on the quilt now where we sleep. She was about to smile at me when the men without skin came and took us up into the sunlight with the dead and shoved them into the sea. Sethe went into the sea. She went there. They did not push her. She went there. She was getting ready to smile at me and when she saw the dead people pushed into the sea she went also and left me there with no face or hers. Sethe is the face I found and lost in the water under the bridge.
When I went in, I saw her face coming to me and it was my face too. I wanted to join. I tried to join, but she went up into the pieces of light at the top of the water. I lost her again, but I found the house she whispered to me and there she was, smiling at last. It's good, but I cannot lose her again. All I want to know is why did she go in the water in the place where we crouched? Why did she do that when she was just about to smile at me? I wanted to join her in the sea but I could not move; I wanted to help her when she was picking the flowers, but the clouds of gunsmoke blinded me and I lost her. Three times I lost her: once with the flowers because of the noisy clouds of smoke; once when she went into the sea instead of smiling at me; once under the bridge when I went in to j oin her and she came toward me but did not smile. She whispered to me, chewed me, and swam away. Now I have found her in this house. She smiles at me and it is my own face smiling. I will not lose her again. She is mine. Tell me the truth. Didn't you come from the other side?
Yes. I was on the other side. You came back because of me? Yes. You rememory me? Yes. I remember you. You never forgot me? Your face is mine. Do you forgive me? Will you stay? You safe here now. Where are the men without skin? Out there. Way off. Can they get in here? No. They tried that once, but I stopped them. They won't ever come back. One of them was in the house I was in. He hurt me.
They can't hurt us no more. Where are your earrings? They took them from me. The men without skin took them? Yes.
I was going to help you but the clouds got in the way. There're no clouds here. If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away. Beloved. I will make you a round basket. You're back. You're back. Will we smile at me? Can't you see I'm smiling? I love your face. We played by the creek. I was there in the water. In the quiet time, we played. The clouds were noisy and in the way. When I needed you, you came to be with me. I needed her face to smile. I could only hear breathing.
The breathing is gone; only the teeth are left. She said you wouldn't hurt me. She hurt me. I will protect you. I want her face. Don't love her too much. I am loving her too much. Watch out for her; she can give you dreams. She chews and swallows. Don't fall asleep when she braids your hair. She is the laugh; I am the laughter. I watch the house; I watch the yard. She left me. Daddy is coming for us. A hot thing.
Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my Beloved You are mine You are mine You are mine I have your milk I have your smile I will take care of you You are my face; I am you. Why did you leave me who am you? I will never leave you again Don't ever leave me again
You will never leave me again You went in the water I drank your bloo
I brought your milk You forgot to smile I loved you You hurt me You came back to me You left me I waited for you You are mine You are mine You are mine
IT WAS a tiny church no bigger than a rich man's parlor. The pews had no backs, and since the congregation was also the choir, it didn't need a stall. Certain members had been assigned the construction of a platform to raise the preacher a
few inches above his congregation, but it was a less than urgent task, since the major elevation, a white oak cross, had already taken place. Before it was the Church of the Holy Redeemer, it was a dry-goods shop that had no use for side windows, just front ones for display. These were papered over while members considered whether to paint or curtain them--how to have privacy without losing the little light that might want to shine on them. In the summer the doors were left open for ventilation. In winter an iron stove in the aisle did what it could. At the front of the church was a sturdy porch where customers used to sit, and children laughed at the boy who got his head stuck between the railings. On a sunny and windless day in January it was actually warmer out there than inside, if the iron stove was cold. The damp cellar was fairly warm, but there was no light lighting the pallet or the washbasin or the nail from which a man's clothes could be hung. And a oil lamp in a cellar was sad, so Paul D sat on the porch steps and got additional warmth from a bottle of liquor jammed in his coat pocket. Warmth and red eyes. He held his wrist between his knees, not to keep his hands still but because he had nothing else to hold on to. His tobacco tin, blown open, spilled contents
that floated freely and made him their play and prey. He couldn't figure out why it took so long. He may as well have jumped in the fire with Sixo and they both could have had a good laugh. Surrender was bound to come anyway, why not meet it with a laugh, shouting Seven-O! Why not? Why the delay? He had already seen his brother wave goodbye from the back of a dray, fried chicken in his pocket, tears in his eyes. Mother. Father. Didn't remember the one. Never saw the other. He was the youngest of three half-brothers (same mother-different fathers) sold to Garner and kept there, forbidden to leave the farm, for twenty years. Once, in Maryland, he met four families of slaves who had all been together for a hundred years: great-grands, grands, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, children. Half white, part white, all black, mixed with Indian. He watched them with awe and envy, and each time he discovered large families of black people he made them identify over and over who each was, what relation, who, in fact, belonged to who. "That there's my auntie. This here's her boy. Yonder is my pap's cousin. My ma'am was
married twice--this my half-sister and these her two children. Now, my wife..." Nothing like that had ever been his and growing up at Sweet Home he didn't miss it. He had his brothers, two friends, Baby Suggs in the kitchen, a boss who showed them how to shoot and listened to what they had to say. A mistress who made their soap and never raised her voice. For twenty years they had all lived in that cradle, until Baby left, Sethe came, and Halle took her. He made a family with her, and Sixo was hell-bent to make one with the Thirty-Mile Woman. When Paul D waved goodbye to his oldest brother, the boss was dead, the mistress nervous and the cradle already split. Sixo said the doctor made Mrs. Garner sick. Said he was giving her to drink what stallions got when they broke a leg and no gunpowder could be spared, and had it not been for schoolteacher's new rules, he would have told her so. They laughed at him. Sixo had a knowing tale about everything. Including Mr. Garner's stroke, which he said was a shot in his ear put there by a jealous neighbor. "where's the blood?" they asked him.
There was no blood. Mr. Garner came home bent over his mare's neck, sweating and blue- white. Not a drop of blood. Sixo grunted, the only one of them not sorry to see him go. Later, however, he was mighty sorry; they all were. "Why she call on him?" Paul D asked. "Why she need the schoolteacher?" "She need somebody can figure," said Halle. "You can do figures." "Not like that." "No, man," said Sixo. "She need another white on the place." "What for?" "What you think? What you think?" Well, that's the way it was. Nobody counted on Garner dying. Nobody thought he could. How 'bout that? Everything rested on Garner being alive. Without his life each of theirs fell to pieces. Now
ain't that slavery or what is it? At the peak of his strength, taller than tall men, and stronger than most, they clipped him, Paul D. First his shotgun, then his thoughts, for schoolteacher didn't take advice from Negroes. The information they offered he called backtalk and developed a variety of corrections (which he recorded in his notebook) to reeducate them. He complained they ate too much, rested too much, talked too much, which was certainly true compared to him, because schoolteacher ate little, spoke less and rested not at all. Once he saw them playing--a pitching game--and his look of deeply felt hurt was enough to make Paul D blink. He was as hard on his pupils as he was on them--except for the corrections. For years Paul D believed schoolteacher broke into children what Garner had raised into men. And it was that that made them run off. Now, plagued by the contents of his tobacco tin, he wondered how much difference there really was between before schoolteacher and after. Garner called and announced them men--but only on Sweet Home, and by his leave. Was he naming what he saw or creating what he did not? That was the wonder of Sixo, and even
Halle; it was always clear to Paul D that those two were men whether Garner said so or not. It troubled him that, concerning his own manhood, he could not satisfy himself on that point. Oh, he did manly things, but was that Garner's gift or his own will? What would he have been anyway--before Sweet Home--without Garner? In Sixo's country, or his mother's? Or, God help him, on the boat? Did a whiteman saying it make it so? Suppose Garner woke up one morning and changed his mind? Took the word away. Would they have run then? And if he didn't, would the Pauls have stayed there all their lives? Why did the brothers need the one whole night to decide? To discuss whether they would join Sixo and Halle. Because they had been isolated in a wonderful lie, dismissing Halle's and Baby Suggs' life before Sweet Home as bad luck. Ignorant of or amused by Sixo's dark stories. Protected and convinced they were special. Never suspecting the problem of Alfred, Georgia; being so in love with the look of the world, putting up with anything and everything, just to stay alive in a place where a moon he had no right to was nevertheless there. Loving small and in secret. His little love was a tree, of course, but not like Brother--old, wide and beckoning.
In Alfred, Georgia, there was an aspen too young to call sapling. Just a shoot no taller than his waist. The kind of thing a man would cut to whip his horse. Song- murder and the aspen. He stayed alive to sing songs that murdered life, and watched an aspen that confirmed it, and never for a minute did he believe he could escape. Until it rained. Afterward, after the Cherokee pointed and sent him running toward blossoms, he wanted simply to move, go, pick up one day and be somewhere else the next. Resigned to life without aunts, cousins, children. Even a woman, until Sethe. And then she moved him. Just when doubt, regret and every single unasked question was packed away, long after he believed he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he wanted to take root--she moved him. From room to room. Like a rag doll. Sitting on the porch of a dry-goods church, a little bit drunk and nothing much to do, he could have these thoughts. Slow, what-if thoughts that cut deep but struck nothing solid a man could hold on to. So he held his wrists. Passing by that woman's life, getting in it and letting it get in him had set him up for this fall. Wanting to live out his life with a whole woman
was new, and losing the feeling of it made him want to cry and think deep thoughts that struck nothing solid. When he was drifting, thinking only about the next meal and night's sleep, when everything was packed tight in his chest, he had no sense of failure, of things not working out. Anything that worked at all worked out. Now he wondered what-all went wrong, and starting with the Plan, everything had. It was a good plan, too. Worked out in detail with every possibility of error eliminated. Sixo, hitching up the horses, is speaking English again and tells Halle what his Thirty-Mile Woman told him. That seven Negroes on her place were joining two others going North. That the two others had done it before and knew the way. That one of the two, a woman, would wait for them in the corn when it was high--one night and half of the next day she would wait, and if they came she would take them to the caravan, where the others would be hidden. That she would rattle, and that would be the sign. Sixo was going, his woman was going, and Halle was taking his whole family. The two Pauls say they need time to think about it. Time to wonder where they will end up; how they will
live. What work; who will take them in; should they try to get to Paul F, whose owner, they remember, lived in something called the "trace"? It takes them one evening's conversation to decide. Now all they have to do is wait through the spring, till the corn is as high as it ever got and the moon as fat. And plan. Is it better to leave in the dark to get a better start, or go at daybreak to be able to see the way better? Sixo spits at the suggestion. Night gives them more time and the protection of color. He does not ask them if they are afraid. He manages some dry runs to the corn at night, burying blankets and two knives near the creek. Will Sethe be able to swim the creek? they ask him. It will be dry, he says, when the corn is tall. There is no food to put by, but Sethe says she will get a jug of cane syrup or molasses, and some bread when it is near the time to go. She only wants to be sure the blankets are where they should be, for they will need them to tie her baby on her back and to cover them during the journey. There are no clothes other than what they wear. And of course no shoes. The knives
will help them eat, but they bury rope and a pot as well. A good plan. They watch and memorize the comings and goings of schoolteacher and his pupils: what is wanted when and where; how long it takes. Mrs. Garner, restless at night, is sunk in sleep all morning. Some days the pupils and their teacher do lessons until breakfast. One day a week they skip breakfast completely and travel ten miles to church, expecting a large dinner upon their return. Schoolteacher writes in his notebook after supper; the pupils clean, mend or sharpen tools. Sethe's work is the most uncertain because she is on call for Mrs. Garner anytime, including nighttime when the pain or the weakness or the downright loneliness is too much for her. So: Sixo and the Pauls will go after supper and wait in the creek for the Thirty Mile Woman. Halle will bring Sethe and the three children before dawn--before the sun, before the chickens and the milking cow need attention, so by the time smoke should be coming from the cooking stove, they will be in or near the creek with the others. That way, if Mrs. Garner needs Sethe in the night and calls her, Sethe will be there to
answer. They only have to wait through the spring. But. Sethe was pregnant in the spring and by August is so heavy with child she may not be able to keep up with the men, who can carry the children but not her. But. Neighbors discouraged by Garner when he was alive now feel free to visit Sweet Home and might appear in the right place at the wrong time. But. Sethe's children cannot play in the kitchen anymore, so she is dashing back and forth between house and quarters-fidgety and frustrated trying to watch over them. They are too young for men's work and the baby girl is nine months old. Without Mrs. Garner's help her work increases as do schoolteacher's demands. But. After the conversation about the shoat, Sixo is tied up with the stock at night, and locks are put on bins, pens, sheds, coops, the tackroom and the barn door. There is no place to dart into or congregate. Sixo keeps a nail in his mouth now, to help him undo the rope when he has to.
But. Halle is told to work his extra on Sweet Home and has no call to be anywhere other than where schoolteacher tells him. Only Sixo, who has been stealing away to see his woman, and Halle, who has been hired away for years, know what lies outside Sweet Home and how to get there. It is a good plan. It can be done right under the watchful pupils and their teacher. But. They had to alter it--just a little. First they change the leaving. They memorize the directions Halle gives them. Sixo, needing time to untie himself, break open the door and not disturb the horses, will leave later, joining them at the creek with the Thirty-Mile Woman. All four will go straight to the corn. Halle, who also needs more time now, because of Sethe, decides to bring her and the children at night; not wait till first light. They will go straight to the corn and not assemble at the creek. The corn stretches to their shoulders--it will never be higher. The moon is swelling. They can hardly harvest, or chop, or clear, or pick, or haul for listening for a rattle that is not bird or snake. Then one midmorning, they hear it. Or Halle
does and begins to sing it to the others: "Hush, hush. Somebody's calling my name. Hush, hush. Somebody's calling my name. O my Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do?" On his dinner break he leaves the field. He has to. He has to tell Sethe that he has heard the sign. For two successive nights she has been with Mrs. Garner and he can't chance it that she will not know that this night she cannot be. The Pauls see him go. From underneath Brother's shade where they are chewing corn cake, they see him, swinging along. The bread tastes good. They lick sweat from their lips to give it a saltier flavor. Schoolteacher and his pupils are already at the house eating dinner. Halle swings along. He is not singing now. Nobody knows what happened. Except for the churn, that was the last anybody ever saw of Halle. What Paul D knew was that Halle disappeared, never told Sethe anything, and was next seen squatting in butter. Maybe when he got to the gate and asked to see Sethe, schoolteacher heard a tint of anxiety in his voice--the tint that would make him pick up his ever-ready shotgun. Maybe Halle made the mistake of saying "my wife" in some way that would put a light in schoolteacher's eye. Sethe
says now that she heard shots, but did not look out the window of Mrs. Garner's bedroom. But Halle was not killed or wounded that day because Paul D saw him later, after she had run off with no one's help; after Sixo laughed and his brother disappeared. Saw him greased and flat-eyed as a fish. Maybe schoolteacher shot after him, shot at his feet, to remind him of the trespass. Maybe Halle got in the barn, hid there and got locked in with the rest of schoolteacher's stock. Maybe anything. He disappeared and everybody was on his own. Paul A goes back to moving timber after dinner. They are to meet at quarters for supper. He never shows up. Paul D leaves for the creek on time, believing, hoping, Paul A has gone on ahead; certain schoolteacher has learned something. Paul D gets to the creek and it is as dry as Sixo promised. He waits there with the Thirty-Mile Woman for Sixo and Paul A. Only Sixo shows up, his wrists bleeding, his tongue licking his lips like a flame. "You see Paul A?" "No."
"Halle?" "No." "No sign of them?" "No sign. Nobody in quarters but the children." "Sethe?" "Her children sleep. She must be there still." "I can't leave without Paul A." "I can't help you." "Should I go back and look for them?" "I can't help you." "What you think?" "I think they go straight to the corn." Sixo turns, then, to the woman and they clutch each other and whisper. She is lit now with some glowing, some shining that comes from inside her. Before when she knelt on creek pebbles with Paul D, she was nothing, a shape in the dark breathing lightly. Sixo is about to crawl out to look for the knives he buried. He hears something. He hears
nothing. Forget the knives. Now. The three of them climb up the bank and schoolteacher, his pupils and four other whitemen move toward them. With lamps. Sixo pushes the Thirty-Mile Woman and she runs further on in the creekbed. Paul D and Sixo run the other way toward the woods. Both are surrounded and tied. The air gets sweet then. Perfumed by the things honeybees love. Tied like a mule, Paul D feels how dewy and inviting the grass is. He is thinking about that and where Paul A might be when Sixo turns and grabs the mouth of the nearest pointing rifle. He begins to sing. Two others shove Paul D and tie him to a tree. Schoolteacher is saying, "Alive. Alive. I want him alive." Sixo swings and cracks the ribs of one, but with bound hands cannot get the weapon in position to use it in any other way. All the whitemen have to do is wait. For his song, perhaps, to end? Five guns are trained on him while they listen. Paul D cannot see them when they step away from lamplight. Finally one of them hits Sixo in the head with his rifle, and
when he comes to, a hickory fire is in front of him and he is tied at the waist to a tree. Schoolteacher has changed his mind: "This one will never be suitable." The song must have convinced him. The fire keeps failing and the whitemen are put out with themselves at not being prepared for this emergency. They came to capture, not kill. What they can manage is only enough for cooking hominy. Dry faggots are scarce and the grass is slick with dew. By the light of the hominy fire Sixo straightens. He is through with his song. He laughs. A rippling sound like Sethe's sons make when they tumble in hay or splash in rainwater. His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs. Something is funny. Paul D guesses what it is when Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, "Seven-O! Seven-O!" Smoky, stubborn fire. They shoot him to shut him up. Have to. Shackled, walking through the perfumed things honeybees love, Paul D hears the men talking and for the first time learns his worth.
He has always known, or believed he did, his value--as a hand, a laborer who could make profit on a farm--but now he discovers his worth, which is to say he learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future. As soon as the whitemen get to where they have tied their horses and mount them, they are calmer, talking among themselves about the difficulty they face. The problems. Voices remind schoolteacher about the spoiling these particular slaves have had at Garner's hands. There's laws against what he done: letting niggers hire out their own time to buy themselves. He even let em have guns! And you think he mated them niggers to get him some more? Hell no! He planned for them to marry! if that don't beat all! Schoolteacher sighs, and says doesn't he know it? He had come to put the place aright. Now it faced greater ruin than what Garner left for it, because of the loss of two niggers, at the least, and maybe three because he is not sure they will find the one called Halle. The sister-in-law is too weak to help out and doggone if now there ain't a full-scale stampede on his hands. He would have to trade this here one for $900 if he could get it, and set out to
secure the breeding one, her foal and the other one, if he found him. With the money from "this here one" he could get two young ones, twelve or fifteen years old. And maybe with the breeding one, her three pickaninnies and whatever the foal might be, he and his nephews would have seven niggers and Sweet Home would be worth the trouble it was causing him. "Look to you like Lillian gonna make it?" "Touch and go. Touch and go." "You was married to her sister-in-law, wasn't
you?" "I was." "She frail too?" "A bit. Fever took her." "Well, you don't need to stay no widower in these parts." "My cogitation right now is Sweet Home." "Can't say as I blame you. That's some spread."
They put a three-spoke collar on him so he can't lie down and they chain his ankles together. The number he heard with his ear is now in his head. Two. Two? Two niggers lost? Paul D thinks his heart is jumping. They are going to look for Halle, not Paul A. They must have found Paul A and if a whiteman finds you it means you are surely lost. Schoolteacher looks at him for a long time before he closes the door of the cabin. Carefully, he looks. Paul D does not look back. It is sprinkling now. A teasing August rain that raises expectations it cannot fill. He thinks he should have sung along. Loud something loud and rolling to go with Sixo's tune, but the words put him off-- he didn't understand the words. Although it shouldn't have mattered because he understood the sound: hatred so loose it was juba. The warm sprinkle comes and goes, comes and goes. He thinks he hears sobbing that seems to come from Mrs. Garner's window, but it could be anything, anyone, even a she-cat making her yearning known. Tired of holding his head up, he lets his chin rest on the collar and speculates on how he can hobble over to the grate, boil a little water and throw in a handful
of meal. That's what he is doing when Sethe comes in, rain-wet and big-bellied, saying she is going to cut. She has just come back from taking her children to the corn. The whites were not around. She couldn't find Halle. Who was caught? Did Sixo get away? Paul A? He tells her what he knows: Sixo is dead; the Thirty-Mile Woman ran, and he doesn't know what happened to Paul A or Halle. "Where could he be?" she asks. Paul D shrugs because he can't shake his
head. "You saw Sixo die? You sure?" "I'm sure." "Was he woke when it happened? Did he see it coming?" "He was woke. Woke and laughing." "Sixo laughed?" "You should have heard him, Sethe."
Sethe's dress steams before the little fire over which he is boiling water. It is hard to move about with shackled ankles and the neck jewelry embarrasses him. In his shame he avoids her eyes, but when he doesn't he sees only black in them--no whites. She says she is going, and he thinks she will never make it to the gate, but he doesn't dissuade her. He knows he will never see her again, and right then and there his heart stopped. The pupils must have taken her to the barn for sport right afterward, and when she told Mrs. Garner, they took down the cowhide. Who in hell or on this earth would have thought that she would cut anyway? They must have believed, what with her belly and her back, that she wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't surprised to learn that they had tracked her down in Cincinnati, because, when he thought about it now, her price was greater than his; property that reproduced itself without cost. Remembering his own price, down to the cent, that schoolteacher was able to get for him, he wondered what Sethe's would have been.
What had Baby Suggs' been? How much did Halle owe, still, besides his labor? What did Mrs. Garner get for Paul F? More than nine hundred dollars? How much more? Ten dollars? Twenty? Schoolteacher would know. He knew the worth of everything. It accounted for the real sorrow in his voice when he pronounced Sixo unsuitable. Who could be fooled into buying a singing nigger with a gun? Shouting Seven-O! Seven-O! because his Thirty-Mile Woman got away with his blossoming seed. What a laugh. So rippling and full of glee it put out the fire. And it was Sixo's laughter that was on his mind, not the bit in his mouth, when they hitched him to the buckboard. Then he saw Halle, then the rooster, smiling as if to say, You ain't seen nothing yet. How could a rooster know about Alfred, Georgia? "HOWDY." Stamp Paid was still fingering the ribbon and it made a little motion in his pants pocket. Paul D looked up, noticed the side pocket agitation and snorted.
"I can't read. You got any more newspaper for me, just a waste of time." Stamp withdrew the ribbon and sat down on the steps. "No. This here's something else." He stroked the red cloth between forefinger and thumb. "Something else." Paul D didn't say anything so the two men sat in silence for a few moments. "This is hard for me," said Stamp. "But I got to do it. Two things I got to say to you. I'm a take the easy one first." Paul D chuckled. "If it's hard for you, might kill me dead." "No, no. Nothing like that. I come looking for you to ask your pardon. Apologize." "For what?" Paul D reached in his coat pocket for his bottle. "You pick any house, any house where colored live. In all of Cincinnati. Pick any one and
you welcome to stay there. I'm apologizing because they didn't offer or tell you. But you welcome anywhere you want to be. My house is your house too. John and Ella, Miss Lady, Able Woodruff, Willie Pike-anybody. You choose. You ain't got to sleep in no cellar, and I apologize for each and every night you did. I don't know how that preacher let you do it. I knowed him since he was a boy." "Whoa, Stamp. He offered." "Did? Well?" "Well. I wanted, I didn't want to, I just wanted to be off by myself a spell. He offered. Every time I see him he offers again." "That's a load off. I thought everybody gone crazy." Paul D shook his head. "Just me." "You planning to do anything about it?" "Oh, yeah. I got big plans." He swallowed twice from the bottle. Any planning in a bottle is short, thought Stamp, but he knew from personal experience
the pointlessness of telling a drinking man not to. He cleared his sinuses and began to think how to get to the second thing he had come to say. Very few people were out today. The canal was frozen so that traffic too had stopped. They heard the dop of a horse approaching. Its rider sat a high Eastern saddle but everything else about him was Ohio Valley. As he rode by he looked at them and suddenly reined his horse, and came up to the path leading to the church. He leaned forward. "Hey," he said. Stamp put his ribbon in his pocket. "Yes,
sir?" "I'm looking for a gal name of Judy. Works
over by the slaughterhouse." "Don't believe I know her. No, sir." "Said she lived on Plank Road." "Plank Road. Yes, sir. That's up a ways. Mile, maybe."
"You don't know her? Judy. Works in the slaughterhouse." "No, sir, but I know Plank Road. 'Bout a mile up thataway." Paul D lifted his bottle and swallowed. The rider looked at him and then back at Stamp Paid. Loosening the right rein, he turned his horse toward the road, then changed his mind and came back. "Look here," he said to Paul D. "There's a cross up there, so I guess this here's a church or used to be. Seems to me like you ought to show it some respect, you follow me?" "Yes, sir," said Stamp. "You right about that. That's just what I come over to talk to him about. Just that." The rider clicked his tongue and trotted off. Stamp made small circles in the palm of his left hand with two fingers of his right. "You got to choose," he said. "Choose anyone. They let you be if you want em to. My house. Ella. Willie Pike. None of us got much, but all of us got room for one more. Pay a little something when you can, don't when you can't. Think about it.
You grown. I can't make you do what you won't, but think about it." Paul D said nothing. "If I did you harm, I'm here to rectify it." "No need for that. No need at all." A woman with four children walked by on the other side of the road. She waved, smiling. "Hoo- oo. I can't stop. See you at meeting." "I be there," Stamp returned her greeting. "There's another one," he said to Paul
"What about Judy? She take me in?" "Depends. What you got in mind?" "You know Judy?" "Judith. I know everybody."
"Out on Plank Road?" "Everybody." "Well? She take me in?" Stamp leaned down and untied his shoe. Twelve black buttonhooks, six on each side at the bottom, led to four pairs of eyes at the top. He loosened the laces all the way down, adjusted the tongue carefully and wound them back again. When he got to the eyes he rolled the lace tips with his fingers before inserting them. "Let me tell you how I got my name." The knot was tight and so was the bow. "They called me Joshua," he said. "I renamed myself," he said, "and I'm going to tell you why I did it," and he told him about Vashti. "I never touched her all that time. Not once. Almost a year. We was planting when it started and picking when it stopped. Seemed longer. I should have killed him. She said no, but I should have. I didn't have the patience I got now, but I figured maybe somebody else didn't have much patience either--his own wife. Took it in my head to see if she was taking it any better than I was. Vashti and me was in the
fields together in the day and every now and then she be gone all night. I never touched her and damn me if I spoke three words to her a day. I took any chance I had to get near the great house to see her, the young master's wife. Nothing but a boy. Seventeen, twenty maybe. I caught sight of her finally, standing in the backyard by the fence with a glass of water. She was drinking out of it and just gazing out over the yard. I went over. Stood back a ways and took off my hat. I said, 'Scuse me, miss. Scuse me?' She turned to look. I'm smiling. 'Scuse me. You seen Vashti? My wife Vashti?' A little bitty thing, she was. Black hair. Face no bigger than my hand. She said, "What? Vashti?' I say, 'Yes'm, Vashti. My wife. She say she owe you all some eggs. You know if she brung em? You know her if you see her. Wear a black ribbon on her neck.' She got rosy then and I knowed she knowed. He give Vashti that to wear. A cameo on a black ribbon. She used to put it on every time she went to him. I put my hat back on. 'You see her tell her I need her. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.' I backed off before she
could say something. I didn't dare look back till I got behind some trees. She was standing just as I left her, looking in her water glass. I thought it would give me more satisfaction than it did. I also thought she might stop it, but it went right on. Till one morning Vashti came in and sat by the window. A Sunday. We worked our own patches on Sunday. She sat by the window looking out of it. 'I'm back,' she said. 'I'm back, Josh.' I looked at the back of her neck. She had a real small neck. I decided to break it. You know, like a twig--just snap it. I been low but that was as low as I ever got." "Did you? Snap it?" "Uh uh. I changed my name." "How you get out of there? How you get up here?" "Boat. On up the Mississippi to Memphis. Walked from Memphis to Cumberland." "Vashti too?"
"No. She died." "Aw, man. Tie your other shoe!" "What?" "Tie your goddamn shoe! It's sitting right in front of you! Tie it!" "That make you feel better?" "No." Paul D tossed the bottle on the ground and stared at the golden chariot on its label. No horses. Just a golden coach draped in blue cloth. "I said I had two things to say to you. I only told you one. I have to tell you the other." "I don't want to know it. I don't want to know nothing. Just if Judy will take me in or won't she." "I was there, Paul D." "You was where?" "There in the yard. When she did it." "Judy?"
"Sethe." "Jesus." "It ain't what you think." "You don't know what I think." "She ain't crazy. She love those children. She was trying to out hurt the hurter." "Leave off." "And spread it." "Stamp, let me off. I knew her when she was a girl. She scares me and I knew her when she was a girl." "You ain't scared of Sethe. I don't believe you." "Sethe scares me. I scare me. And that girl in her house scares me the most." "Who is that girl? Where she come from?"
"I don't know. Just shot up one day sitting on a stump." "Huh. Look like you and me the only ones outside 124 lay eyes on her." "She don't go nowhere. Where'd you see her?" "Sleeping on the kitchen floor. I peeped in." "First minute I saw her I didn't want to be nowhere around her. Something funny about her. Talks funny. Acts funny." Paul D dug his fingers underneath his cap and rubbed the scalp over his temple. "She reminds me of something. Something, look like, I'm supposed to remember." "She never say where she was from? Where's her people?" "She don't know, or says she don't. All I ever heard her say was something about stealing her clothes and living on a bridge." "What kind of bridge?" "Who you asking?"
"No bridges around here I don't know about. But don't nobody live on em. Under em neither. How long she been over there with Sethe?" "Last August. Day of the carnival." "That's a bad sign. Was she at the carnival?" "No. When we got back, there she was--'sleep on a stump. Silk dress. Brand-new shoes. Black as oil."
"You don't say? Huh. Was a girl locked up in the house with a whiteman over by Deer Creek. Found him dead last summer and the girl gone. Maybe that's her. Folks say he had her in there since she was a pup." "Well, now she's a bitch." "Is she what run you off? Not what I told you 'bout Sethe?" A shudder ran through Paul D. A bone-cold spasm that made him clutch his knees. He didn't know if it was bad whiskey, nights in the cellar, pig fever, iron bits, smiling roosters, fired feet, laughing dead men, hissing
grass, rain, apple blossoms, neck jewelry, Judy in the slaughterhouse, Halle in the butter, ghost-white stairs, chokecherry trees, cameo pins, aspens, Paul A's face, sausage or the loss of a red, red heart. "Tell me something, Stamp." Paul D's eyes were rheumy. "Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger supposed to take? Tell me. How much?" "All he can," said Stamp Paid. "All he can." "why? Why? Why? Why? Why?"
Three
124 WAS QUIET. Denver, who thought she knew all about silence, was surprised to learn hunger could do that: quiet you down and wear you out. Neither Sethe nor Beloved knew or cared about it one way or another. They were too busy rationing their strength to fight each other. So it was she who had to step off the edge of the world and die
because if she didn't, they all would. The flesh between her mother's forefinger and thumb was thin as china silk and there wasn't a piece of clothing in the house that didn't sag on her. Beloved held her head up with the palms of her hands, slept wherever she happened to be, and whined for sweets although she was getting bigger, plumper by the day. Everything was gone except two laying hens, and somebody would soon have to decide whether an egg every now and then was worth more than two fried chickens. The hungrier they got, the weaker; the weaker they got, the quieter they were--which was better than the furious arguments, the poker slammed up against the wall, all the shouting and crying that followed that one happy January when they played. Denver had joined in the play, holding back a bit out of habit, even though it was the most fun she had ever known. But once Sethe had seen the scar, the tip of which Denver had been looking at whenever Beloved undressed--the little curved shadow of a smile in the kootchy-kootchy-coo place under her chin-once Sethe saw it, fingered it and closed her eyes for a long time, the two of them cut Denver out of the games. The cooking games, the sewing games, the hair and dressing-up games. Games
her mother loved so well she took to going to work later and later each day until the predictable happened: Sawyer told her not to come back. And instead of looking for another job, Sethe played all the harder with Beloved, who never got enough of anything: lullabies, new stitches, the bottom of the cake bowl, the top of the milk. If the hen had only two eggs, she got both. It was as though her mother had lost her mind, like Grandma Baby calling for pink and not doing the things she used to. But different because, unlike Baby Suggs, she cut Denver out completely. Even the song that she used to sing to Denver she sang for Beloved alone: "High Johnny, wide Johnny, don't you leave my side, Johnny." At first they played together. A whole month and Denver loved it. From the night they ice- skated under a star-loaded sky and drank sweet milk by the stove, to the string puzzles Sethe did for them in afternoon light, and shadow pictures in the gloaming. In the very teeth of winter and Sethe, her eyes fever bright, was plotting a garden of vegetables and flowers--talking, talking about what colors it would have. She played with Beloved's hair, braiding, puffing, tying, oiling it until it made Denver nervous to watch her They
changed beds and exchanged clothes. Walked arm in arm and smiled all the time. When the weather broke, they were on their knees in the backyard designing a garden in dirt too hard to chop. The thirty-eight dollars of life savings went to feed themselves with fancy food and decorate themselves with ribbon and dress goods, which Sethe cut and sewed like they were going somewhere in a hurry. Bright clothes--with blue stripes and sassy prints. She walked the four miles to John Shillito's to buy yellow ribbon, shiny buttons and bits of black lace. By the end of March the three of them looked like carnival women with nothing to do. When it became clear that they were only interested in each other, Denver began to drift from the play, but she watched it, alert for any sign that Beloved was in danger. Finally convinced there was none, and seeing her mother that happy, that smiling--how could it go wrong?--she let down her guard and it did. Her problem at first was trying to find out who was to blame. Her eye was on her mother, for a signal that the thing that was in her was out, and she would kill again. But it was Beloved who made demands.
Anything she wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things to give her, Beloved invented desire. She wanted Sethe's company for hours to watch the layer of brown leaves waving at them from the bottom of the creek, in the same place where, as a little girl, Denver played in the silence with her. Now the players were altered. As soon as the thaw was complete Beloved gazed at her gazing face, rippling, folding, spreading, disappearing into the leaves below. She flattened herself on the ground, dirtying her bold stripes, and touched the rocking faces with her own. She filled basket after basket with the first things warmer weather let loose in the ground--dandelions, violets, forsythia--presenting them to Sethe, who arranged them, stuck them, wound them all over the house. Dressed in Sethe's dresses, she stroked her skin with the palm of her hand. She imitated Sethe, talked the way she did, laughed her laugh and used her body the same way down to the walk, the way Sethe moved her hands, sighed through her nose, held her head. Sometimes coming upon them making men and women cookies or tacking scraps of cloth on Baby Suggs' old quilt, it was difficult for Denver to tell who was who.
Then the mood changed and the arguments began. Slowly at first. A complaint from Beloved, an apology from Sethe. A reduction of pleasure at some special effort the older woman made. Wasn't it too cold to stay outside? Beloved gave a look that said, So what? Was it past bedtime, the light no good for sewing? Beloved didn't move; said, "Do it," and Sethe complied. She took the best of everything--first. The best chair, the biggest piece, the prettiest plate, the brightest ribbon for her hair, and the more she took, the more Sethe began to talk, explain, describe how much she had suffered, been through, for her children, waving away flies in grape arbors, crawling on her knees to a lean-to. None of which made the impression it was supposed to. Beloved accused her of leaving her behind. Of not being nice to her, not smiling at her. She said they were the same, had the same face, how could she have left her? And Sethe cried, saying she never did, or meant to—that she had to get them out, away, that she had the milk all the time and had the money too for the stone but not enough. That her plan was always that they would all be together on the other side, forever. Beloved wasn't interested. She said when she cried there was no one. That dead men lay on top of her. That she
had nothing to eat. Ghosts without skin stuck their fingers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in the light. Sethe pleaded for forgiveness, counting, listing again and again her reasons: that Beloved was more important, meant more to her than her own life. That she would trade places any day. Give up her life, every minute and hour of it, to take back just one of Beloved's tears. Did she know it hurt her when mosquitoes bit her baby? That to leave her on the ground to run into the big house drove her crazy? That before leaving Sweet Home Beloved slept every night on her chest or curled on her back? Beloved denied it. Sethe never came to her, never said a word to her, never smiled and worst of all never waved goodbye or even looked her way before running away from her. When once or twice Sethe tried to assert herself--be the unquestioned mother whose word was law and who knew what was best--Beloved slammed things, wiped the table clean of plates, threw salt on the floor, broke a windowpane. She was not like them. She was wild game, and nobody said, Get on out of here, girl, and come back when you get some sense. Nobody said, You raise your hand to me and I will knock you into the middle of next week. Ax the trunk, the limb will die.
Honor thy mother and father that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. I will wrap you round that doorknob, don't nobody work for you and God don't love ugly ways. No, no. They mended the plates, swept the salt, and little by little it dawned on Denver that if Sethe didn't wake up one morning and pick up a knife, Beloved might. Frightened as she was by the thing in Sethe that could come out, it shamed her to see her mother serving a girl not much older than herself. When she saw her carrying out Beloved's night bucket, Denver raced to relieve her of it. But the pain was unbearable when they ran low on food, and Denver watched her mother go without--pick- eating around the edges of the table and stove: the hominy that stuck on the bottom; the crusts and rinds and peelings of things. Once she saw her run her longest finger deep in an empty jam jar before rinsing and putting it away. They grew tired, and even Beloved, who was getting bigger, seemed nevertheless as exhausted as they were. In any case she substituted a snarl or a tooth-suck for waving a poker around and 124 was quiet. Listless and sleepy with hunger Denver saw the flesh between her mother's forefinger and
thumb fade. Saw Sethe's eyes bright but dead, alert but vacant, paying attention to everything about Beloved--her lineless palms, her forehead, the smile under her jaw, crooked and much too long-- everything except her basket-fat stomach. She also saw the sleeves of her own carnival shirtwaist cover her fingers; hems that once showed her ankles now swept the floor. She saw themselves beribboned, decked-out, limp and starving but locked in a love that wore everybody out. Then Sethe spit up something she had not eaten and it rocked Denver like gunshot. The job she started out with, protecting Beloved from Sethe, changed to protecting her mother from Beloved. Now it was obvious that her mother could die and leave them both and what would Beloved do then? Whatever was happening, it only worked with three--not two--and since neither Beloved nor Sethe seemed to care what the next day might bring (Sethe happy when Beloved was; Beloved lapping devotion like cream), Denver knew it was on her. She would have to leave the yard; step off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask somebody for help. Who would it be? Who could she stand in front of who wouldn't shame her on learning that her mother sat around like a rag doll, broke
down, finally, from trying to take care of and make up for. Denver knew about several people, from hearing her mother and grandmother talk. But she knew, personally, only two: an old man with white hair called Stamp and Lady Jones. Well, Paul D, of course. And that boy who told her about Sethe. But they wouldn't do at all. Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't even know which way to go. When Sethe used to work at the restaurant and when she still had money to shop, she turned right. Back when Denver went to Lady Jones' school, it was left. The weather was warm; the day beautiful. It was April and everything alive was tentative. Denver wrapped her hair and her shoulders. In the brightest of the carnival dresses and wearing a stranger's shoes, she stood on the porch of 124 ready to be swallowed up in the world beyond the edge of the porch. Out there where small things scratched and sometimes touched. Where words could be spoken that would close your ears shut. Where, if you were
alone, feeling could overtake you and stick to you like a shadow. Out there where there were places in which things so bad had happened that when you went near them it would happen again. Like Sweet Home where time didn't pass and where, like her mother said, the bad was waiting for her as well. How would she know these places? What was more--much more—out there were whitepeople and how could you tell about them? Sethe said the mouth and sometimes the hands. Grandma Baby said there was no defense--they could prowl at will, change from one mind to another, and even when they thought they were behaving, it was a far cry from what real humans did. "They got me out of jail," Sethe once told Baby Suggs. "They also put you in it," she answered. "They drove you 'cross the river." "On my son's back." "They gave you this house." "Nobody gave me nothing."
"I got a job from them." "He got a cook from them, girl." "Oh, some of them do all right by us." "And every time it's a surprise, ain't it?" "You didn't used to talk this way." "Don't box with me. There's more of us they drowned than there is all of them ever lived from the start of time. Lay down your sword. This ain't a battle; it's a rout." Remembering those conversations and her grandmother's last and final words, Denver stood on the porch in the sun and couldn't leave it. Her throat itched; her heart kicked--and then Baby Suggs laughed, clear as anything. "You mean I never told you nothing about Carolina? About your daddy? You don't remember nothing about how come I walk the way I do and about your mother's feet, not to speak of her back? I never told you all that? Is that why you can't walk down the steps? My Jesus my." But you said there was no defense.
"There ain't." Then what do I do? "Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on."
* * *
It came back. A dozen years had passed and the way came back. Four houses on the right, sitting close together in a line like wrens. The first house had two steps and a rocking chair on the porch; the second had three steps, a broom propped on the porch beam, two broken chairs and a clump of forsythia at the side. No window at the front. A little boy sat on the ground chewing a stick. The third house had yellow shutters on its two front windows and pot after pot of green leaves with white hearts or red. Denver could hear chickens and the knock of a badly hinged gate. At the fourth house the buds of a sycamore tree had rained down on the roof and made the yard look as though grass grew there. A woman, standing
at the open door, lifted her hand halfway in greeting, then froze it near her shoulder as she leaned forward to see whom she waved to. Denver lowered her head. Next was a tiny fenced plot with a cow in it. She remembered the plot but not the cow. Under her headcloth her scalp was wet with tension. Beyond her, voices, male voices, floated, coming closer with each step she took. Denver kept her eyes on the road in case they were whitemen; in case she was walking where they wanted to; in case they said something and she would have to answer them. Suppose they flung out at her, grabbed her, tied her. They were getting closer. Maybe she should cross the road--now. Was the woman who half waved at her still there in the open door? Would she come to her rescue, or, angry at Denver for not waving back, would she withhold her help? Maybe she should turn around, get closer to the waving woman's house. Before she could make up her mind, it was too late--they were right in front of her. Two men, Negro. Denver breathed. Both men touched their caps and murmured, "Morning. Morning." Denver believed her eyes spoke gratitude but she never got her mouth open in time to reply. They moved left of her and passed on.
Braced and heartened by that easy encounter, she picked up speed and began to look deliberately at the neighborhood surrounding her. She was shocked to see how small the big things were: the boulder by the edge of the road she once couldn't see over was a sitting-on rock. Paths leading to houses weren't miles long. Dogs didn't even reach her knees. Letters cut into beeches and oaks by giants were eye level now. She would have known it anywhere. The post and scrap-lumber fence was gray now, not white, but she would have known it anywhere. The stone porch sitting in a skirt of ivy, pale yellow curtains at the windows; the laid brick path to the front door and wood planks leading around to the back, passing under the windows where she had stood on tiptoe to see above the sill. Denver was about to do it again, when she realized how silly it would be to be found once more staring into the parlor of Mrs. Lady Jones. The pleasure she felt at having found the house dissolved, suddenly, in doubt. Suppose she didn't live there anymore? Or remember her former student after all this time? What would she say? Denver
shivered inside, wiped the perspiration from her forehead and knocked. Lady Jones went to the door expecting raisins. A child, probably, from the softness of the knock, sent by its mother with the raisins she needed if her contribution to the supper was to be worth the trouble. There would be any number of plain cakes, potato pies. She had reluctantly volunteered her own special creation, but said she didn't have raisins, so raisins is what the president said would be provided--early enough so there would be no excuses. Mrs. Jones, dreading the fatigue of beating batter, had been hoping she had forgotten. Her bake oven had been cold all week--getting it to the right temperature would be awful. Since her husband died and her eyes grew dim, she had let up-to-snuff housekeeping fall away. She was of two minds about baking something for the church. On the one hand, she wanted to remind everybody of what she was able to do in the cooking line; on the other, she didn't want to have to. When she heard the tapping at the door, she sighed and went to it hoping the raisins had at least been cleaned.
She was older, of course, and dressed like a chippy, but the girl was immediately recognizable to Lady Jones. Everybody's child was in that face: the nickel-round eyes, bold yet mistrustful; the large powerful teeth between dark sculptured lips that did not cover them. Some vulnerability lay across the bridge of the nose, above the cheeks. And then the skin. Flawless, economical--just enough of it to cover the bone and not a bit more. She must be eighteen or nineteen by now, thought Lady Jones, looking at the face young enough to be twelve. Heavy eyebrows, thick baby lashes and the unmistakable love call that shimmered around children until they learned better. "Why, Denver," she said. "Look at you." Lady Jones had to take her by the hand and pull her in, because the smile seemed all the girl could manage. Other people said this child was simple, but Lady Jones never believed it. Having taught her, watched her eat up a page, a rule, a figure, she knew better. When suddenly she had stopped coming, Lady Jones thought it was the nickel. She approached the ignorant grandmother one day on
the road, a woods preacher who mended shoes, to tell her it was all right if the money was owed. The woman said that wasn't it; the child was deaf, and deaf Lady Jones thought she still was until she offered her a seat and Denver heard that. "It's nice of you to come see me. What brings
you?" Denver didn't answer. "Well, nobody needs a reason to visit. Let me make us some tea." Lady Jones was mixed. Gray eyes and yellow woolly hair, every strand of which she hated-- though whether it was the color or the texture even she didn't know. She had married the blackest man she could find, had five rainbow-colored children and sent them all to Wilberforce, after teaching them all she knew right along with the others who sat in her parlor. Her light skin got her picked for a coloredgirls', normal school in Pennsylvania and she paid it back by teaching the unpicked. The children who played in dirt until they were old enough for chores, these she taught. The colored population of Cincinnati had two graveyards and six
churches, but since no school or hospital was obliged to serve them, they learned and died at home. She believed in her heart that, except for her husband, the whole world (including her children) despised her and her hair. She had been listening to "all that yellow gone to waste" and "white nigger" since she was a girl in a houseful of silt-black children, so she disliked everybody a little bit because she believed they hated her hair as much as she did. With that education pat and firmly set, she dispensed with rancor, was indiscriminately polite, saving her real affection for the unpicked children of Cincinnati, one of whom sat before her in a dress so loud it embarrassed the needlepoint chair seat. "Sugar?" "Yes. Thank you." Denver drank it all down. "More?" "No, ma'am." "Here. Go ahead." "Yes, ma'am." "How's your family, honey?" Denver stopped in the middle of a swallow. There was no way to tell her how her
family was, so she said what was at the top of her mind. "I want work, Miss Lady." "Work?" "Yes, ma'am. Anything." Lady Jones smiled. "What can you do?" "I can't do anything, but I would learn it for you if you have a little extra." "Extra?" "Food. My ma'am, she doesn't feel good." "Oh, baby," said Mrs. Jones. "Oh, baby." Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word "baby," said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman. The trail she followed to get to that sweet thorny place was made up of paper scraps containing the handwritten names of others. Lady Jones gave her some rice, four eggs and some tea. Denver said she couldn't be away from home long because of her mother's condition. Could she do chores in the morning? Lady Jones told her that
no one, not herself, not anyone she knew, could pay anybody anything for work they did themselves. "But if you all need to eat until your mother is well, all you have to do is say so." She mentioned her church's committee invented so nobody had to go hungry. That agitated her guest who said, "No, no," as though asking for help from strangers was worse than hunger. Lady Jones said goodbye to her and asked her to come back anytime. "Anytime at all." Two days later Denver stood on the porch and noticed something lying on the tree stump at the edge of the yard. She went to look and found a sack of white beans. Another time a plate of cold rabbit meat. One morning a basket of eggs sat there. As she lifted it, a slip of paper fluttered down. She picked it up and looked at it. "M. Lucille Williams" was written in big crooked letters. On the back was a blob of flour-water paste. So Denver paid a second visit to the world outside the porch, although all she said when she returned the basket was "Thank you."
"Welcome," said M. Lucille Williams. Every now and then, all through the spring, names appeared near or in gifts of food. Obviously for the return of the pan or plate or basket; but also to let the girl know, if she cared to, who the donor was, because some of the parcels were wrapped in paper, and though there was nothing to return, the name was nevertheless there. Many had X's with designs about them, and Lady Jones tried to identify the plate or pan or the covering towel. When she could only guess, Denver followed her directions and went to say thank you anywaym whether she had the right benefactor or not. When she was wrong, when the person said, "No, darling. That's not my bowl. Mine's got a blue ring on it," a small conversation took place. All of them knew her grandmother and some had even danced with her in the Clearing. Others remembered the days when 124 was a way station, the place they assembled to catch news, taste oxtail soup, leave their children, cut out a skirt. One remembered the tonic mixed there that cured a relative. One showed her the border of a pillowslip, the stamens of its pale blue flowers French- knotted in Baby Suggs' kitchen by the light of an oil lamp while arguing the Settlement Fee. They
remembered the party with twelve turkeys and tubs of strawberry smash. One said she wrapped Denver when she was a single day old and cut shoes to fit her mother's blasted feet. Maybe they were sorry for her. Or for Sethe. Maybe they were sorry for the years of their own disdain. Maybe they were simply nice people who could hold meanness toward each other for just so long and when trouble rode bareback among them, quickly, easily they did what they could to trip him up. In any case, the personal pride, the arrogant claim staked out at 124 seemed to them to have run its course. They whispered, naturally, wondered, shook their heads. Some even laughed outright at Denver's clothes of a hussy, but it didn't stop them caring whether she ate and it didn't stop the pleasure they took in her soft "Thank you." At least once a week, she visited Lady Jones, who perked up enough to do a raisin loaf especially for her, since Denver was set on sweet things. She gave her a book of Bible verse and listened while she mumbled words or fairly shouted them. By June Denver had read and memorized all fifty-two pages- one for each week of the year.
As Denver's outside life improved, her home life deteriorated. If the whitepeople of Cincinnati had allowed Negroes into their lunatic asylum they could have found candidates in 124. Strengthened by the gifts of food, the source of which neither Sethe nor Beloved questioned, the women had arrived at a doomsday truce designed by the devil. Beloved sat around, ate, went from bed to bed. Sometimes she screamed, "Rain! Rain!" and clawed her throat until rubies of blood opened there, made brighter by her midnight skin. Then Sethe shouted, "No!" and knocked over chairs to get to her and wipe the jewels away. Other times Beloved curled up on the floor, her wrists between her knees, and stayed there for hours. Or she would go to the creek, stick her feet in the water and whoosh it up her legs. Afrerward she would go to Sethe, run her fingers over the woman's teeth while tears slid from her wide black eyes. Then it seemed to Denver the thing was done: Beloved bending over Sethe looked the mother, Sethe the teething child, for other than those times when Beloved needed her, Sethe confined herself to a corner chair. The bigger Beloved got, the smaller Sethe became; the brighter
Beloved's eyes, the more those eyes that used never to look away became slits of sleeplessness. Sethe no longer combed her hair or splashed her face with water. She sat in the chair licking her lips like a chastised child while Beloved ate up her life, took it, swelled up with it, grew taller on it. And the older woman yielded it up without a murmur. Denver served them both. Washing, cooking, forcing, cajoling her mother to eat a little now and then, providing sweet things for Beloved as often as she could to calm her down. It was hard to know what she would do from minute to minute. When the heat got hot, she might walk around the house naked or wrapped in a sheet, her belly protruding like a winning watermelon. Denver thought she understood the connection between her mother and Beloved: Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it. But there would never be an end to that, and seeing her mother diminished shamed and infuriated her. Yet she knew Sethe's greatest fear was the same one Denver had in the beginning--that Beloved might leave. That before Sethe could make her understand what it meant--what it took to drag
the teeth of that saw under the little chin; to feel the baby blood pump like oil in her hands; to hold her face so her head would stay on; to squeeze her so she could absorb, still, the death spasms that shot through that adored body, plump and sweet with life--Beloved might leave. Leave before Sethe could make her realize that worse than that--far worse-- was what Baby Suggs died of, what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble. That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty bet all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing--the part of her that was cl ean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter's private parts, soiled her daughter's thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon.
She might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter. And no one, nobody on this earth, would list her daughter's characteristics on the animal side of the paper. No. Oh no. Maybe Baby Suggs could worry about it, live with the likelihood of it; Sethe had refused--and refused still. This and much more Denver heard her say from her corner chair, trying to persuade Beloved, the one and only person she felt she had to convince, that what she had done was right because it came from true love. Beloved, her fat new feet propped on the seat of a chair in front of the one she sat in, her unlined hands resting on her stomach, looked at her. Uncomprehending everything except that Sethe was the woman who took her face away, leaving her crouching in a dark, dark place, forgetting to smile. Her father's daughter after all, Denver decided to do the necessary. Decided to stop relying on kindness to leave something on the stump. She would hire herself out somewhere, and although she was afraid to leave Sethe and Beloved alone all day not knowing what calamity either one of them
would create, she came to realize that her presence in that house had no influence on what either woman did. She kept them alive and they ignored her. Growled when they chose; sulked, explained, demanded, strutted, cowered, cried and provoked each other to the edge of violence, then over. She had begun to notice that even when Beloved was quiet, dreamy, minding her own business, Sethe got her going again. Whispering, muttering some justification, some bit of clarifying information to Beloved to explain what it had been like, and why, and how come. It was as though Sethe didn't really want forgiveness given; she wanted it refused. And Beloved helped her out. Somebody had to be saved, but unless Denver got work, there would be no one to save, no one to come home to, and no Denver either. It was a new thought, having a self to look out for and preserve. And it might not have occurred to her if she hadn't met Nelson Lord leaving his grandmother's house as Denver entered it to pay a thank you for half a pie. All he did was smile and say, "Take care of yourself, Denver," but she heard it as though it were what
language was made for. The last time he spoke to her his words blocked up her ears. Now they opened her mind. Weeding the garden, pulling vegetables, cooking, washing, she plotted what to do and how. The Bodwins were most likely to help since they had done it twice. Once for Baby Suggs and once for her mother. Why not the third generation as well? She got lost so many times in the streets of Cincinnati it was noon before she arrived, though she started out at sunrise. The house sat back from the sidewalk with large windows looking out on a noisy, busy street. The Negro woman who answered the front door said, "Yes?" "May I come in?" "What you want?" "I want to see Mr. and Mrs. Bodwin." "Miss Bodwin. They brother and sister." "Oh." "What you want em for?"
"I'm looking for work. I was thinking they might know of some." "You Baby Suggs' kin, ain't you?" "Yes, ma'am." "Come on in. You letting in flies." She led Denver toward the kitchen, saying, "First thing you have to know is what door to knock on." But Denver only half heard her because she was stepping on something soft and blue. All around her was thick, soft and blue. Glass cases crammed full of glistening things. Books on tables and shelves. Pearl-white lamps with shiny metal bottoms. And a smell like the cologne she poured in the emerald house, only better. "Sit down," the woman said. "You know my name?" "No, ma'am." "Janey. Janey Wagon." "How do you do?"
so?" "Fairly. I heard your mother took sick, that
"Yes, ma'am." "Who's looking after her?" "I am. But I have to find work." Janey laughed. "You know what? I've been here since I was fourteen, and I remember like yesterday when Baby Suggs, holy, came here and sat right there where you are. Whiteman brought her. That's how she got that house you all live in. Other things, too."
"Yes, ma'am." "What's the trouble with Sethe?" Janey leaned against an indoor sink and folded her arms. It was a little thing to pay, but it seemed big to Denver. Nobody was going to help her unless she told it--told all of it. It was clear Janey wouldn't and wouldn't let her see the Bodwins otherwise. So Denver told this stranger what she hadn't told Lady Jones, in return for which Janey admitted the Bodwins needed help, although they didn't know it. She was alone there, and
now that her employers were getting older, she couldn't take care of them like she used to. More and more she was required to sleep the night there. Maybe she could talk them into letting Denver do the night shift, come right after supper, say, maybe get the breakfast. That way Denver could care for Sethe in the day and earn a little something at night, how's that? Denver had explained the girl in her house who plagued her mother as a cousin come to visit, who got sick too and bothered them both. Janey seemed more interested in Sethe's condition, and from what Denver told her it seemed the woman had lost her mind. That wasn't the Sethe she remembered. This Sethe had lost her wits, finally, as Janey knew she would--trying to do it all alone with her nose in the air. Denver squirmed under the criticism of her mother, shifting in the chair and keeping her eyes on the inside sink. Janey Wagon went on about pride until she got to Baby Suggs, for whom she had nothing but sweet words. "I never went to those woodland services she had, but she was always nice to me. Always. Never be another like her." "I miss her too," said Denver.
"Bet you do. Everybody miss her. That was a good woman." Denver didn't say anything else and Janey looked at her face for a while. "Neither one of your brothers ever come back to see how you all was?"
"No, ma'am." "Ever hear from them?" "No, ma'am. Nothing." "Guess they had a rough time in that house. Tell me, this here woman in your house. The cousin. She got any lines in her hands?" "No," said Denver. "Well," said Janey. "I guess there's a God after all." The interview ended with Janey telling her to come back in a few days. She needed time to convince her employers what they needed: night help because Janey's own family needed her. "I don't want to quit these people, but they can't have all my days and nights too." What did Denver have to do at night? "Be here. In case."
In case what? Janey shrugged. "In case the house burn down." She smiled then. "Or bad weather slop the roads so bad I can't get here early enough for them. Case late guests need serving or cleaning up after. Anything. Don't ask me what whitefolks need at night." "They used to be good whitefolks." "Oh, yeah. They good. Can't say they ain't good. I wouldn't trade them for another pair, tell you that." With those assurances, Denver left, but not before she had seen, sitting on a shelf by the back door, a blackboy's mouth full of money. His head was thrown back farther than a head could go, his hands were shoved in his pockets. Bulging like moons, two eyes were all the face he had above the gaping red mouth. His hair was a cluster of raised, widely spaced dots
made of nail heads. And he was on his knees. His mouth, wide as a cup, held the coins needed to pay for a delivery or some other small service, but could just as well have held buttons, pins or crab-apple jelly. Painted across the pedestal he knelt on were the words "At Yo Service." The news that Janey got hold of she spread among the other coloredwomen. Sethe's dead daughter, the one whose throat she cut, had come back to fix her. Sethe was worn down, speckled, dying, spinning, changing shapes and generally bedeviled. That this daughter beat her, tied her to the bed and pulled out all her hair. It took them days to get the story properly blown up and themselves agitated and then to calm down and assess the situation. They fell into three groups: those that believed the worst; those that believed none of it; and those, like Ella, who thought it through. "Ella. What's all this I'm hearing about Sethe?"
"Tell me it's in there with her. That's all I know." "The daughter? The killed one?" "That's what they tell me." "How they know that's her?" "It's sitting there. Sleeps, eats and raises hell. Whipping Sethe every day." "I'll be. A baby?" "No. Grown. The age it would have been had it lived." "You talking about flesh?" "I'm talking about flesh." "whipping her?" "Like she was batter." "Guess she had it coming." "Nobody got that coming."
"But, Ella--" "But nothing. What's fair ain't necessarily right." "You can't just up and kill your children." "No, and the children can't just up and kill the mama." It was Ella more than anyone who convinced the others that rescue was in order. She was a practical woman who believed there was a root either to chew or avoid for every ailment. Cogitation, as she called it, clouded things and prevented action. Nobody loved her and she wouldn't have liked it if they had, for she considered love a serious disability. Her puberty was spent in a house where she was shared by father and son, whom she called "the lowest yet." It was "the lowest yet" who gave her a disgust for sex and against whom she measured all atrocities. A killing, a kidnap, a rape--whatever, she listened and nodded. Nothing compared to "the lowest yet." She understood Sethe's rage in the shed twenty years ago, but not her reaction to it, which Ella thought was prideful, misdirected,
and Sethe herself too complicated. When she got out of jail and made no gesture toward anybody, and lived as though she were alone, Ella junked her and wouldn't give her the time of day. The daughter, however, appeared to have some sense after all. At least she had stepped out the door, asked or the help she needed and wanted work. When Ella heard 124 was occupied by something or-other beating up on Sethe, it infuriated her and gave her another opportunity to measure what could very well be the devil himself against "the lowest yet." There was also something very personal in her fury. Whatever Sethe had done, Ella didn't like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present. Sethe's crime was staggering and her pride outstripped even that; but she could not countenance the possibility of sin moving on in the house, unleashed and sassy. Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. Slave life; freed life--every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when
you were a solution you were a problem. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and nobody needed more; nobody needed a grown-up evil sitting at the table with a grudge. As long as the ghost showed out from its ghostly place- shaking stuff, crying, smashing and such--Ella respected it. But if it took flesh and came in her world, well, the shoe was on the other foot. She didn't mind a little communication between the two worlds, but this was an invasion. "Shall we pray?" asked the women. "Uh huh," said Ella. "First. Then we got to get down to business." The day Denver was to spend her first night at the Bodwins', Mr. Bodwin had some business on the edge of the city and told Janey he would pick the new girl up before supper. Denver sat on the porch steps with a bundle in her lap, her carnival dress sun-faded to a quieter rainbow. She was looking to the right, in the direction Mr. Bodwin would be coming from. She did not see the women approaching, accumulating
slowly in groups of twos and threes from the left. Denver was looking to the right. She was a little anxious about whether she would prove satisfactory to the Bodwins, and uneasy too because she woke up crying from a dream about a running pair of shoes. The sadness of the dream she hadn't been able to shake, and the heat oppressed her as she went about the chores. Far too early she wrapped a nightdress and hairbrush into a bundle. Nervous, she fidgeted the knot and looked to the right. Some brought what they could and what they believed would work. Stuffed in apron pockets, strung around their necks, lying in the space between their breasts. Others brought Christian faith--as shield and sword. Most brought a little of both. They had no idea what they would do once they got there. They just started out, walked down Bluestone Road and came together at the agreed-upon time. The heat kept a few women who promised to go at home. Others who believed the story didn't want any part of the confrontation and wouldn't have come no matter what the weather. And there were those like Lady Jones who didn't believe the story and hated the ignorance of those who did. So
thirty women made up that company and walked slowly, slowly toward 124. It was three in the afternoon on a Friday so wet and hot Cincinnati's stench had traveled to the country: from the canal, from hanging meat and things rotting in jars; from small animals dead in the fields, town sewers and factories. The stench, the heat, the moisture— trust the devil to make his presence known. Otherwise it looked almost like a regular workday. They could have been going to do the laundry at the orphanage or the insane asylum; corn shucking at the mill; or to dean fish, rinse offal, cradle whitebabies, sweep stores, scrape hog skin, press lard, case-pack sausage or hide in tavern kitchens so whitepeople didn't have to see them handle their food. But not today. When they caught up with each other, all thirty, and arrived at 12 4, the first thing they saw was not Denver sitting on the steps, but themselves. Younger, stronger, even as little girls lying in the grass asleep. Catfish was popping grease in the pan and they saw themselves scoop German potato salad onto the plate. Cobbler oozing purple syrup colored their teeth. They sat on the porch, ran down to the creek, teased the men, hoisted children on their hips or, if they were
the children, straddled the ankles of old men who held their little hands while giving them a horsey ride. Baby Suggs laughed and skipped among them, urging more. Mothers, dead now, moved their shoulders to mouth harps. The fence they had leaned on and climbed over was gone. The stump of the butternut had split like a fan. But there they were, young and happy, playing in Baby Suggs' yard, not feeling the envy that surfaced the next day. Denver heard mumbling and looked to the left. She stood when she saw them. They grouped, murmuring and whispering, but did not step foot in the yard. Denver waved. A few waved back but came no closer. Denver sat back down wondering what was going on. A woman dropped to her knees. Half of the others did likewise. Denver saw lowered heads, but could not hear the lead prayer--only the earnest syllables of agreement that backed it: Yes, yes, yes, oh yes. Hear me. Hear me. Do it, Maker, do it. Yes. Among those not on their knees, who stood holding 124 in a fixed glare, was Ella, trying to see through the walls, behind the door, to what was really in there.
Was it true the dead daughter come back? Or a pretend? Was it whipping Sethe? Ella had been beaten every way but down. She remembered the bottom teeth she had lost to the brake and the scars from the bell were thick as rope around her waist. She had delivered, but would not nurse, a hairy white thing, fathered by "the lowest yet." It lived five days never making a sound. The idea of that pup coming back to whip her too set her jaw working, and then Ella hollered. Instantly the kneelers and the standers joined her. They stopped praying and took a step back to the beginning. In the beginning there were no words. In the beginning was the sound, and they all knew what that sound sounded like. Edward Bodwin drove a cart down Bluestone Road. It displeased him a bit because he preferred his figure astride Princess. Curved over his own hands, holding the reins made him look the age he was. But he had promised his sister a detour to pick up a new girl. He didn't have to think about the way--he was headed for the house he was born in. Perhaps it was his destination that turned his thoughts to time--the way it dripped
or ran. He had not seen the house for thirty years. Not the butternut in front, the stream at the rear nor the block house in between. Not even the meadow across the road. Very few of the interior details did he remember because he was three years old when his family moved into town. But he did remember that the cooking was done behind the house, the well was forbidden to play near, and that women died there: his mother, grandmother, an aunt and an older sister before he was born. The men (his father and grandfather) moved with himself and his baby sister to Court Street sixty-seven years ago. The land, of course, eighty acres of it on both sides of Bluestone, was the central thing, but he felt something sweeter and deeper about the house which is why he rented it for a little something if he could get it, but it didn't trouble him to get no rent at all since the tenants at least kept it from the disrepair total abandonment would permit. There was a time when he buried things there. Precious things he wanted to protect. As a child every item he owned was available and accountable to his family. Privacy was an adult indulgence, but when he got to be one, he seemed not to need it.
The horse trotted along and Edward Bodwin cooled his beautiful mustache with his breath. It was generally agreed upon by the women in the Society that, except for his hands, it was the most attractive feature he had. Dark, velvety, its beauty was enhanced by his strong clean-shaven chin. But his hair was white, like his sister's--and had been since he was a young man. It made him the most visible and memorable person at every gathering, and cartoonists had fastened onto the theatricality of his white hair and big black mustache whenever they depicted local political antagonism. Twenty years ago when the Society was at its height in opposing slavery, it was as though his coloring was itself the heart of the matter. The "bleached nigger" was what his enemies called him, and on a trip to Arkansas, some Mississippi rivermen, enraged by the Negro boatmen they competed with, had caught him and shoe-blackened his face and his hair. Those heady days were gone now; what remained was the sludge of ill will; dashed hopes and difficulties beyond repair. A tranquil Republic? Well, not in his lifetime. Even the weather was getting to be too much for him. He was either too hot or freezing,
and this day was a blister. He pressed his hat down to keep the sun from his neck, where heatstroke was a real possibility. Such thoughts of mortality were not new to him (he was over seventy now), but they still had the power to annoy. As he drew closer to the old homestead, the place that continued to surface in his dreams, he was even more aware of the way time moved. Measured by the wars he had lived through but not fought in (against the Miami, the Spaniards, the Secessionists), it was slow. But measured by the burial of his private things it was the blink of an eye. Where, exactly, was the box of tin soldiers? The watch chain with no watch? And who was he hiding them from? His father, probably, a deeply religious man who knew what God knew and told everybody what it was. Edward Bodwin thought him an odd man, in so many ways, yet he had one clear directive: human life is holy, all of it. And that his son still believed, although he had less and less reason to. Nothing since was as stimulating as the old days of letters, petitions, meetings, debates,
recruitment, quarrels, rescue and downright sedition. Yet it had worked, more or less, and when it had not, he and his sister made themselves available to circumvent obstacles. As they had when a runaway slavewoman lived in his homestead with her mother-in-law and got herself into a world of trouble. The Society managed to turn infanticide and the cry of savagery around, and build a further case for abolishing slavery. Good years, they were, full of spit and conviction. Now he just wanted to know where his soldiers were and his watchless chain. That would be enough for this day of unbearable heat: bring back the new girl and recall exactly where his treasure lay. Then home, supper, and God willing, the sun would drop once more to give him the blessing of a good night's sleep. The road curved like an elbow, and as he approached it he heard the singers before he saw them. When the women assembled outside 124, Sethe was breaking a lump of ice into chunks. She dropped the ice pick into her apron pocket to scoop the pieces into a basin of water. When the music entered the window she was wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved's forehead. Beloved,
sweating profusely, was sprawled on the bed in the keeping room, a salt rock in her hand. Both women heard it at the same time and both lifted their heads. As the voices grew louder, Beloved sat up, licked the salt and went into the bigger room. Sethe and she exchanged glances and started toward the window. They saw Denver sitting on the steps and beyond her, where the yard met the road, they saw the rapt faces of thirty neighborhood women. Some had their eyes closed; others looked at the hot, cloudless sky. Sethe opened the door and reached for Beloved's hand. Together they stood in the doorway. For Sethe it was as though the Clearing had come to her with all its heat and simmering leaves, where the voices of women searched for the right combination, the key, the code, the sound that broke the back of words. Building voice upon voice until they found it, and when they did it was a wave of sound wide enough to sound deep water and knock the pods off chestnut trees. It broke over Sethe and she trembled like the baptized in its wash. The singing women recognized Sethe at once and surprised themselves by their absence
of fear when they saw what stood next to her. The devil-child was clever, they thought. And beautiful. It had taken the shape of a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of the afternoon sun. Thunderblack and glistening, she stood on long straight legs, her belly big and tight. Vines of hair twisted all over her head. Jesus. Her smile was dazzling. Sethe feels her eyes burn and it may have been to keep them clear that she looks up. The sky is blue and clear. Not one touch of death in the definite green of the leaves. It is when she lowers her eyes to look again at the loving faces before her that she sees him. Guiding the mare, slowing down, his black hat wide-brimmed enough to hide his face but not his purpose. He is coming into her yard and he is coming for her best thing. She hears wings. Little hummingbirds stick needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thinks anything, it is no. No no. Nonono. She flies.
The ice pick is not in her hand; it is her hand. Standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling. But now her hand is empty. Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels
the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again. Then Denver, running too. Away from her to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling. And above them all, rising from his place with a whip in his hand, the man without skin, looking. He is looking at her.
Bare feet and chamomile sap. Took off my shoes; took off my hat. Bare feet and chamomile sap Gimme back my shoes; gimme back my hat. Lay my head on a potato sack, Devil sneak up behind my back.
Steam engine got a lonesome whine; Love that woman till you go stone blind. Stone blind; stone blind. Sweet Home gal make you lose your mind.
HIS COMING is the reverse route of his going. First the cold house, the storeroom, then the kitchen before he tackles the beds. Here Boy, feeble and shedding his coat in patches, is asleep by the pump, so Paul D knows Beloved is truly gone. Disappeared, some say, exploded right before their eyes. Ella is not so sure. "Maybe," she says, "maybe not. Could be hiding in the trees waiting for another chance." But when Paul D sees the ancient dog, eighteen years if a day, he is certain 124 is clear of her. But he opens the door to the cold house halfway expecting to hear her. "Touch me. Touch me. On the inside part and call me my name." There is the pallet spread with old newspapers gnawed at the edges by mice. The
lard can. The potato sacks too, but empty now, they lie on the dirt floor in heaps. In daylight he can't imagine it in darkness with moonlight seeping through the cracks. Nor the desire that drowned him there and forced him to struggle up, up into that girl like she was the clear air at the top of the sea. Coupling with her wasn't even fun. It was more like a brainless urge to stay alive. Each time she came, pulled up her skirts, a life hunger overwhelmed him and he had no more control over it than over his lungs. And afterward, beached and gobbling air, in the midst of repulsion and personal shame, he was thankful too for having been escorted to some ocean-deep place he once belonged to. Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light. Paul D shuts the door. He looks toward the house and, surprisingly, it does not look back at him. Unloaded, 124 is just another weathered house needing repair. Quiet, just as Stamp Paid said. "Used to be voices all round that place. Quiet, now," Stamp said. "I been past it a few times and I can't hear a thing. Chastened, I reckon, 'cause Mr. Bodwin say he selling it soon's he can."
"That the name of the one she tried to stab? That one?" "Yep. His sister say it's full of trouble. Told Janey she was going to get rid of it." "And him?" asked Paul D. "Janey say he against it but won't stop it." "Who they think want a house out there? Anybody got the money don't want to live out there." "Beats me," Stamp answered. "It'll be a spell, I guess, before it get took off his hands." "He don't plan on taking her to the law?" "Don't seem like it. Janey say all he wants to know is who was the naked blackwoman standing on the porch. He was looking at her so hard he didn't notice what Sethe was up to. All he saw was some coloredwomen fighting. He thought Sethe was after one of them, Janey say." "Janey tell him any different?"
"No. She say she so glad her boss ain't dead. If Ella hadn't clipped her, she say she would have. Scared her to death have that woman kill her boss. She and Denver be looking for a job." "Who Janey tell him the naked woman was?" "Told him she didn't see none." "You believe they saw it?" "Well, they saw something. I trust Ella anyway, and she say she looked it in the eye. It was standing right next to Sethe. But from the way they describe it, don't seem like it was the girl I saw in there. The girl I saw was narrow. This one was big. She say they was holding hands and Sethe looked like a little girl beside it." "Little girl with a ice pick. How close she get to him?" "Right up on him, they say. Before Denver and them grabbed her and Ella put her fist in her jaw." to." "He got to know Sethe was after him. He got
"Maybe. I don't know. If he did think it, I reckon he decided not to. That be just like him, too. He's somebody never turned us down. Steady as a rock. I tell you something, if she had got to him, it'd be the worst thing in the world for us. You know, don't you, he's the main one kept Sethe from the gallows in the first place." "Yeah. Damn. That woman is crazy. Crazy." "Yeah, well, ain't we all?" They laughed then. A rusty chuckle at first and then more, louder and louder until Stamp took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes while Paul D pressed the heel of his hand in his own. As the scene neither one had witnessed took shape before them, its seriousness and its embarrassment made them shake with laughter. "Every time a whiteman come to the door she got to kill somebody?" "For all she know, the man could be coming for the rent."
way." "Good thing they don't deliver mail out that
"Wouldn't nobody get no letter." "Except the postman." "Be a mighty hard message." "And his last." When their laughter was spent, they took deep breaths and shook their heads. "And he still going to let Denver spend the night in his house? Ha!" "Aw no. Hey. Lay off Denver, Paul D. That's my heart. I'm proud of that girl. She was the first one wrestle her mother down. Before anybody knew what the devil was going on." "She saved his life then, you could say." "You could. You could," said Stamp, thinking suddenly of the leap, the wide swing and snatch of his arm as he rescued the little
curly-headed baby from within inches of a split skull. "I'm proud of her. She turning out fine. Fine." It was true. Paul D saw her the next morning when he was on his way to work and she was leaving hers. Thinner, steady in the eyes, she looked more like Halle than ever. She was the first to smile. "Good morning, Mr. D." "Well, it is now." Her smile, no longer the sneer he remembered, had welcome in it and strong traces of Sethe's mouth. Paul D touched his cap. "How you getting along?" "Don't pay to complain." "You on your way home?" She said no. She had heard about an afternoon job at the shirt factory. She hoped that with her night work at the Bodwins' and another one, she could put away something and help her mother too. When he asked her if they treated her all right over there, she said more than all right. Miss Bodwin taught her stuff. He asked her what stuff and she laughed and said book stuff. "She says I might go to Oberlin. She's experimenting
on me." And he didn't say, "Watch out. Watch out. Nothing in the world more dangerous than a white schoolteacher." Instead he nodded and asked the question he wanted to. "Your mother all right?" "No," said Denver. "No. No, not a bit all right." "You think I should stop by? Would she welcome it?" "I don't know," said Denver. "I think I've lost my mother, Paul D." They were both silent for a moment and then he said, "Uh, that girl. You know. Beloved?" "Yes?" "You think she sure 'nough your sister?" Denver looked at her shoes. "At times. At times I think she was-- more." She fiddled with her shirtwaist, rubbing a spot of something.
Suddenly she leveled her eyes at his. "But who would know that better than you, Paul D? I mean, you sure 'nough knew her." He licked his lips. "Well, if you want my opinion--" "I don't," she said. "I have my own." "You grown," he said. "Yes, sir." "Well. Well, good luck with the job." "Thank you. And, Paul D, you don't have to stay 'way, but be careful how you talk to my ma'am, hear?" "Don't worry," he said and left her then, or rather she left him because a young man was running toward her, saying, "Hey, Miss Denver. Wait up." She turned to him, her face looking like someone had turned up the gas jet. He left her unwillingly because he wanted to talk more, make sense out of the
stories he had been hearing: whiteman came to take Denver to work and Sethe cut him. Baby ghost came back evil and sent Sethe out to get the man who kept her from hanging. One point of agreement is: first they saw it and then they didn't. When they got Sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her hands and looked back to the house, it was gone. Later, a little boy put it out how he had been looking for bait back of 124, down by the stream, and saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman with fish for hair. As a matter of fact, Paul D doesn't care how It went or even why. He cares about how he left and why. Then he looks at himself through Garner's eyes, he sees one thing. Through Sixo's, another. One makes him feel righteous. One makes him feel ashamed. Like the time he worked both sides of the War. Running away from the Northpoint Bank and Railway to join the 44th Colored Regiment in Tennessee, he thought he had made it, only to discover he had arrived at another colored regiment forming under a commander in New Jersey. He stayed there four weeks. The regiment fell apart before it got started on the question of whether the soldiers
should have weapons or not. Not, it was decided, and the white commander had to figure out what to command them to do instead of kill other white men. Some of the ten thousand stayed there to clean, haul and build things; others drifted away to another regiment; most were abandoned, left to their own devices with bitterness for pay. He was trying to make up his mind what to do when an agent from Northpoint Bank caught up with him and took him back to Delaware, where he slave-worked a year. Then Northpoint took $300 in exchange for his services in Alabama, where he worked for the Rebellers, first sorting the dead and then smelting iron. When he and his group combed the battlefields, their job was to pull the Confederate wounded away from the Confederate dead. Care, they told them. Take good care. Coloredmen and white, their faces wrapped to their eyes, picked their way through the meadows with lamps, listening in the dark for groans of life in the indifferent silence of the dead. Mostly young men, some children, and it shamed him a little to feel pity for what he imagined were the sons of the guards in Alfred, Georgia.
In five tries he had not had one permanent success. Every one of his escapes (from Sweet Home, from Brandywine, from Alfred, Georgia, from Wilmington, from Northpoint) had been frustrated. Alone, undisguised, with visible skin, memorable hair and no whiteman to protect him, he never stayed uncaught. The longest had been when he ran with the convicts, stayed with the Cherokee, followed their advice and lived in hiding with the weaver woman in Wilmington, Delaware: three years. And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its graveyards and low-lying rivers. Or just a house—solitary under a chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it. After a few months on the battlefields of Alabama, he was impressed to a foundry in Selma along with three hundred captured, lent or taken coloredmen. That's where the War's end found him, and leaving Alabama when he had
been declared free should have been a snap. He should have been able to walk from the foundry in Selma straight to Philadelphia, taking the main roads, a train if he wanted to, or passage on a boat. But it wasn't like that. When he and two colored soldiers (who had been captured from the 44th he had looked for) walked from Selma to Mobile, they saw twelve dead blacks in the first eighteen miles. Two were women, four were little boys. He thought this, for sure, would be the walk of his life. The Yankees in control left the Rebels out of control. They got to the outskirts of Mobile, where blacks were putting down tracks for the Union that, earlier, they had torn up for the Rebels. One of the men with him, a private called Keane, had been with the Massachusetts 54th. He told Paul D they had been paid less than white soldiers. It was a sore point with him that, as a group, they had refused the offer Massachusetts made to make up the difference in pay. Paul D was so impressed by the idea of being paid money to fight he looked at the private with wonder and envy. Keane and his friend, a Sergeant Rossiter, confiscated a skiff and the three of them floated in Mobile Bay. There the private hailed a Union
gunboat, which took all three aboard. Keane and Rossiter disembarked at Memphis to look for their commanders. The captain of the gunboat let Paul D stay aboard all the way to Wheeling, West Virginia. He made his own way to New Jersey. By the time he got to Mobile, he had seen more dead people than living ones, but when he got to Trenton the crowds of alive people, neither hunting nor hunted, gave him a measure of free life so tasty he never forgot it. Moving down a busy street full of whitepeople who needed no explanation for his presence, the glances he got had to do with his disgusting clothes and unforgivable hair. Still, nobody raised an alarm. Then came the miracle. Standing in a street in front of a row of brick houses, he heard a whiteman call him ("Say there! Yo!") to help unload two trunks from a coach cab. Afterward the whiteman gave him a coin. Paul D walked around with it for hours-- not sure what it could buy (a suit? a meal? a horse?) and if anybody would sell him anything. Finally he saw a greengrocer selling vegetables from a wagon. Paul D pointed to a bunch of turnips. The grocer handed them to him, took his one coin and gave him several more. Stunned, he backed away. Looking
around, he saw that nobody seemed interested in the "mistake" or him, so he walked along, happily chewing turnips. Only a few women looked vaguely repelled as they passed. His first earned purchase made him glow, never mind the turnips were withered dry. That was when he decided that to eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got. And he did it for seven years till he found himself in southern Ohio, where an old woman and a girl he used to know had gone. Now his coming is the reverse of his going. First he stands in the back, near the cold house, amazed by the riot of late-summer flowers where vegetables should be growing. Sweet william, morning glory, chrysanthemums. The odd placement of cans jammed with the rotting stems of things, the blossoms shriveled like sores. Dead ivy twines around bean poles and door handles. Faded newspaper pictures are nailed to the outhouse and on trees. A rope too short for anything but skip-jumping lies discarded near the washtub; and jars and jars of dead lightning bugs. Like a child's house; the house of a very tall child. He walks to the front door and opens it. It is stone quiet. In the place where once a shaft of sad red light had bathed him, locking him where
he stood, is nothing. A bleak and minus nothing. More like absence, but an absence he had to get through with the same determination he had when he trusted Sethe and stepped through the pulsing light. He glances quickly at the lightning-white stairs. The entire railing is wound with ribbons, bows, bouquets. Paul D steps inside. The outdoor breeze he brings with him stirs the ribbons. Carefully, not quite in a hurry but losing no time, he climbs the luminous stairs. He enters Sethe's room. She isn't there and the bed looks so small he wonders how the two of them had lain there. It has no sheets, and because the roof windows do not open the room is stifling. Brightly colored clothes lie on the floor. Hanging from a wall peg is the dress Beloved wore when he first saw her. A pair of ice skates nestles in a basket in the corner. He turns his eyes back to the bed and keeps looking at it. It seems to him a place he is not. With an effort that makes him sweat he forces a picture of himself lying there, and when he sees it, it lifts his spirit. He goes to the other bedroom. Denver's is as neat as the other is messy. But still no Sethe.
Maybe she has gone back to work, gotten better in the days since he talked to Denver. He goes back down the stairs, leaving the image of himself firmly in place on the narrow bed. At the kitchen table he sits down. Something is missing from 124. Something larger than the people who lived there. Something more than Beloved or the red light. He can't put his finger on it, but it seems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it accuses. To the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is ajar, he hears humming. Someone is humming a tune. Something soft and sweet, like a lullaby. Then a few words. Sounds like "high Johnny, wide Johnny. Sweet William bend down low." Of course, he thinks. That's where she is--and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors. Her hair, like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spreads and curves on the pillow. Her eyes, fixed on the window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is. There is too much light here in this room. Things look sold.
"Jackweed raise up high," she sings. "Lambswool over my shoulder, buttercup and clover fly." She is fingering a long clump of her hair.
Paul D clears his throat to interrupt her. "Sethe?" She turns her head. "Paul D." "Aw, Sethe." "I made the ink, Paul D. He couldn't have done it if I hadn't made the ink." "What ink? Who?" "You shaved." "Yeah. Look bad?" "No. You looking good." "Devil's confusion. What's this I hear about you not getting out of bed?" She smiles, lets it fade and turns her eyes back to the window.
"I need to talk to you," he tells her. She doesn't answer. "I saw Denver. She tell you?" "She comes in the daytime. Denver. She's still with me, my Denver." "You got to get up from here, girl." He is nervous. This reminds him of something. "I'm tired, Paul D. So tired. I have to rest a while." Now he knows what he is reminded of and he shouts at her, "Don't you die on me! This is Baby Suggs' bed! Is that what you planning?" He is so angry he could kill her. He checks himself, remembering Denver's warning, and whispers, "What you planning, Sethe?" "Oh, I don't have no plans. No plans at all." "Look," he says, "Denver be here in the day. I be here in the night. I'm a take care of you, you hear? Starting now. First off, you don't smell right. Stay there. Don't move. Let me heat up some water." He stops. "Is it all right, Sethe, if I heat up some water?"
"And count my feet?" she asks him. He steps closer. "Rub your feet." Sethe closes her eyes and presses her lips together. She is thinking: No. This little place by a window is what I want. And rest. There's nothing to rub now and no reason to. Nothing left to bathe, assuming he even knows how. Will he do it in sections? First her face, then her hands, her thighs, her feet, her back? Ending with her exhausted breasts? And if he bathes her in sections, will the parts hold? She opens her eyes, knowing the danger of looking at him. She looks at him. The peachstone skin, the crease between his ready, waiting eyes and sees it--the thing in him, the blessedness, that has made him the kind of man who can walk in a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. Cry and tell him things they only told each other: that time didn't stay put; that she called, but Howard and Buglar walked on down the railroad track and couldn't hear her; that Amy was scared to stay with her because her feet were ugly and her back looked so bad; that her ma'am had hurt her feelings and she couldn't find her hat anywhere and "Paul D?"
"What, baby?" "She left me." "Aw, girl. Don't cry." "She was my best thing." Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind." He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought iron back; the delicious mouth still puffy at the corner from Ella's fist. The mean black eyes. The wet dress steaming before the fire. Her tenderness about his neck jewelry--its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air. How she
never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers. "Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow." He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?"
THERE IS a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down.
It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place. Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away. It was not a story to pass on. They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn't remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn't said anything at all. So, in the end, they forgot her too.
Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or why she crouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like that. Where the memory of the smile under her chin might have been and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-green bloom to the metal. What made her think her fingernails could open locks the rain rained on? It was not a story to pass on. So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative-looked at too long--shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do. This is not a story to pass on. Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and
they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there. By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss. Beloved
TONI MORRISON was born in Lorain, Ohio. The recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, and of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Beloved, she is the author of six other novels. The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, which won the 1978 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, Tar Baby, Jazz, andParadise, which are available or forthcoming in Plume editions. She is Robert F.Goheen Professor, Council of the Humanities, at Princeton University.
Clássico da literatura brasileira, este texto de Machado de Assis continua sendo, cento e trinta anos depois de sua publicação original, uma das mais devastadoras observações sobre a insanidade a que pode chegar a ciência. Tão palpitante quanto de leitura prazerosa, O alienista é uma dessas joias da ficção da literatura mundial.
Médico, Simão Bacamarte passa a se interessar pela psiquiatria, iniciando um estudo sobre a loucura em Itaguaí, onde funda a Casa Verde - um típico hospício oitocentista -, arregimentando cobaias humanas para seus experimentos. O que se segue é uma história surpreendente e atual em seu debate sobre desvios e normalidade, loucura e razão.
O AlienistaMachado de Assis
CAPÍTULO I - DE COMO ITAGUAÍ GANHOU UMA CASA DEORATES
As crônicas da vila de Itaguaí dizem que em tempos remotos vivera ali um certo médico, o Dr. Simão Bacamarte, filho da nobreza da terra e o maior dos médicos do Brasil, de Portugal e das Espanhas. Estudara em Coimbra e Pádua. Aos trinta e quatro anos regressou ao Brasil, não podendo el-rei alcançar dele que ficasse em Coimbra, regendo a universidade, ou em Lisboa, expedindo os negócios da monarquia.
—A ciência, disse ele a Sua Majestade, é o meu emprego único; Itaguaí é o meu universo.
Dito isso, meteu-se em Itaguaí, e entregou-se de corpo e alma ao estudo da ciência, alternando as curas com as leituras, e demonstrando os teoremas com cataplasmas. Aos quarenta anos casou com D. Evarista da Costa e Mascarenhas, senhora de vinte e cinco anos, viúva de um juiz de fora, e não bonita nem simpática. Um dos tios dele, caçador de pacas perante o Eterno, e não menos franco, admirou-se de semelhante escolha e disse-lho. Simão Bacamarte explicou-lhe que D. Evarista reunia condições fisiológicas e anatômicas de primeira ordem, digeria com facilidade, dormia regularmente, tinha bom pulso, e excelente vista; estava assim apta para dar-lhe filhos robustos, sãos e inteligentes. Se além dessas prendas,—únicas dignas da preocupação de um sábio, D. Evarista era mal composta de feições, longe de lastimá-lo, agradecia-o a Deus, porquanto não corria o risco de preterir os interesses da ciência na contemplação exclusiva, miúda e vulgar da consorte.
estudo profundo da matéria, releu todos os escritores árabes e outros, que trouxera para Itaguaí, enviou consultas às universidades italianas e alemãs, e acabou por aconselhar à mulher um regímen alimentício especial. A ilustre dama, nutrida exclusivamente com a bela carne de porco de Itaguaí, não atendeu às admoestações do esposo; e à sua resistência,—explicável, mas inqualificável,— devemos a total extinção da dinastia dos Bacamartes.
Mas a ciência tem o inefável dom de curar todas as mágoas; o nosso médico mergulhou inteiramente no estudo e na prática da medicina. Foi então que um dos recantos desta lhe chamou especialmente a atenção,—o recanto psíquico, o exame de patologia cerebral. Não havia na colônia, e ainda no reino, uma só autoridade em semelhante matéria, mal explorada, ou quase inexplorada. Simão Bacamarte compreendeu que a ciência lusitana, e particularmente a brasileira, podia cobrir-se de "louros imarcescíveis", — expressão usada por ele mesmo, mas em um arroubo de intimidade doméstica; exteriormente era modesto, segundo convém aos sabedores.
—A saúde da alma, bradou ele, é a ocupação mais digna do médico.
—Do verdadeiro médico, emendou Crispim Soares, boticário da vila, e um dos seus amigos e comensais.
A vereança de Itaguaí, entre outros pecados de que é argüida pelos cronistas, tinha o de não fazer caso dos dementes. Assim é que cada louco furioso era trancado em uma alcova, na própria casa, e, não curado, mas descurado, até que a morte o vinha defraudar do benefício da vida; os mansos andavam à solta pela rua. Simão Bacamarte entendeu desde logo reformar tão ruim costume; pediu licença à Câmara para agasalhar e tratar no edifício que ia construir todos os loucos de Itaguaí, e das demais vilas e cidades, mediante um estipêndio, que a Câmara lhe daria quando a família do enfermo o não pudesse fazer. A proposta excitou a curiosidade de toda a vila, e encontrou grande resistência, tão certo é que dificilmente se desarraigam hábitos absurdos, ou ainda maus. A idéia de meter os loucos na mesma casa, vivendo em comum, pareceu em si mesma sintoma de demência e não faltou quem o insinuasse à própria mulher do médico.
—Olhe, D. Evarista, disse-lhe o Padre Lopes, vigário do lugar, veja se seu marido dá um passeio ao Rio de Janeiro. Isso de estudar sempre, sempre, não é bom, vira o juízo.
e mantimento dos doidos pobres. A matéria do imposto não foi fácil achá-la; tudo estava tributado em Itaguaí. Depois de longos estudos, assentou-se em permitir o uso de dois penachos nos cavalos dos enterros. Quem quisesse emplumar os cavalos de um coche mortuário pagaria dois tostões à Câmara, repetindo-se tantas vezes esta quantia quantas fossem as horas decorridas entre a do falecimento e a da última bênção na sepultura. O escrivão perdeu-se nos cálculos aritméticos do rendimento possível da nova taxa; e um dos vereadores, que não acreditava na empresa do médico, pediu que se relevasse o escrivão de um trabalho inútil.
— Os cálculos não são precisos, disse ele, porque o Dr. Bacamarte não arranja nada. Quem é que viu agora meter todos os doidos dentro da mesma casa?
Enganava-se o digno magistrado; o médico arranjou tudo. Uma vez empossado da licença começou logo a construir a casa. Era na Rua Nova, a mais bela rua de Itaguaí naquele tempo; tinha cinqüenta janelas por lado, um pátio no centro, e numerosos cubículos para os hóspedes. Como fosse grande arabista, achou no Corão que Maomé declara veneráveis os doidos, pela consideração de que Alá lhes tira o juízo para que não pequem. A idéia pareceu-lhe bonita e profunda, e ele a fez gravar no frontispício da casa; mas, como tinha medo ao vigário, e por tabela ao bispo, atribuiu o pensamento a Benedito VIII, merecendo com essa fraude aliás pia, que o Padre Lopes lhe contasse, ao almoço, a vida daquele pontífice eminente.
A Casa Verde foi o nome dado ao asilo, por alusão à cor das janelas, que pela primeira vez apareciam verdes em Itaguaí. Inaugurou-se com imensa pompa; de todas as vilas e povoações próximas, e até remotas, e da própria cidade do Rio de Janeiro, correu gente para assistir às cerimônias, que duraram sete dias. Muitos dementes já estavam recolhidos; e os parentes tiveram ocasião de ver o carinho paternal e a caridade cristã com que eles iam ser tratados. D. Evarista, contentíssima com a glória do marido, vestiu-se luxuosamente, cobriu-se de jóias, flores e sedas. Ela foi uma verdadeira rainha naqueles dias memoráveis; ninguém deixou de ir visitá-la duas e três vezes, apesar dos costumes caseiros e recatados do século, e não só a cortejavam como a louvavam; porquanto,—e este fato é um documento altamente honroso para a sociedade do tempo, —porquanto viam nela a feliz esposa de um alto espírito, de um varão ilustre, e, se lhe tinham inveja, era a santa e nobre inveja dos admiradores.
Ao cabo de sete dias expiraram as festas públicas; Itaguaí, tinha finalmente uma casa de orates. CAPÍTULO II - TORRENTES DE LOUCOS
Três dias depois, numa expansão íntima com o boticário Crispim Soares, desvendou o alienista o mistério do seu coração.
—A caridade, Sr. Soares, entra decerto no meu procedimento, mas entra como tempero, como o sal das coisas, que é assim que interpreto o dito de São Paulo aos Coríntios: "Se eu conhecer quanto se pode saber, e não tiver caridade, não sou nada". O principal nesta minha obra da Casa Verde é estudar profundamente a loucura, os seus diversos graus, classificar-lhe os casos, descobrir enfim a causa do fenômeno e o remédio universal. Este é o mistério do meu coração. Creio que com isto presto um bom serviço à humanidade.
—Um excelente serviço, corrigiu o boticário.
—Sem este asilo, continuou o alienista, pouco poderia fazer; ele dá-me, porém, muito maior campo aos meus estudos.
—Muito maior, acrescentou o outro.
E tinha razão. De todas as vilas e arraiais vizinhos afluíam loucos à Casa Verde. Eram furiosos, eram mansos, eram monomaníacos, era toda a família dos deserdados do espírito. Ao cabo de quatro meses, a Casa Verde era uma povoação. Não bastaram os primeiros cubículos; mandou-se anexar uma galeria de mais trinta e sete. O Padre Lopes confessou que não imaginara a existência de tantos doidos no mundo, e menos ainda o inexplicável de alguns casos. Um, por exemplo, um rapaz bronco e vilão, que todos os dias, depois do almoço, fazia regularmente um discurso acadêmico, ornado de tropos, de antíteses, de apóstrofes, com seus recamos de grego e latim, e suas borlas de Cícero, Apuleio e Tertuliano. O vigário não queria acabar de crer. Quê! um rapaz que ele vira, três meses antes, jogando peteca na rua!
—Não digo que não, respondia-lhe o alienista; mas a verdade é o que Vossa Reverendíssima está vendo. Isto é todos os dias.
— Quanto a mim, tornou o vigário, só se pode explicar pela confusão das línguas na torre de Babel, segundo nos conta a Escritura; provavelmente, confundidas antigamente as línguas, é fácil trocá-las agora, desde que a razão não trabalhe...
—Essa pode ser, com efeito, a explicação divina do fenômeno, concordou o alienista, depois de refletir um instante, mas não é impossível que haja também alguma razão humana, e puramente científica, e disso trato...
—Vá que seja, e fico ansioso. Realmente! Os loucos por amor eram três ou quatro, mas só dois espantavam pelo curioso do delírio. O primeiro, um Falcão, rapaz de vinte e cinco anos, supunha-se estrela-d’alva, abria os braços e alargava as pernas, para dar-lhes certa feição de raios, e ficava assim horas esquecidas a perguntar se o sol já tinha saído para ele recolher-se. O outro andava sempre, sempre, sempre, à roda das salas ou do pátio, ao longo dos corredores, à procura do fim do mundo. Era um desgraçado, a quem a mulher deixou por seguir um peralvilho. Mal descobrira a fuga, armou-se de uma garrucha, e saiu-lhes no encalço; achou-os duas horas depois, ao pé de uma lagoa, matou-os a ambos com os maiores requintes de crueldade.
O ciúme satisfez-se, mas o vingado estava louco. E então começou aquela ânsia de ir ao fim do mundo à cata dos fugitivos.
A mania das grandezas tinha exemplares notáveis. O mais notável era um pobre-diabo, filho de um algibebe, que narrava às paredes ( porque não olhava nunca para nenhuma pessoa ) toda a sua genealogia, que era esta:
—Deus engendrou um ovo, o ovo engendrou a espada, a espada engendrou Davi, Davi engendrou a púrpura, a púrpura engendrou o duque, o duque engendrou o marquês, o marquês engendrou o conde, que sou eu.
Dava uma pancada na testa, um estalo com os dedos, e repetia cinco, seis vezes seguidas:
—Deus engendrou um ovo, o ovo, etc.
Outro da mesma espécie era um escrivão, que se vendia por mordomo do rei; outro era um boiadeiro de Minas, cuja mania era distribuir boiadas a toda a gente, dava trezentas cabeças a um, seiscentas a outro, mil e duzentas a outro, e não acabava mais. Não falo dos casos de monomania religiosa; apenas citarei um sujeito que, chamando-se João de Deus, dizia agora ser o deus João, e prometia o reino dos céus a quem o adorasse, e as penas do inferno aos outros; e depois desse, o licenciado Garcia, que não dizia nada, porque imaginava que no dia em que chegasse a proferir uma só palavra, todas as estrelas se despegariam do céu e abrasariam a terra; tal era o poder que recebera de Deus.
Assim o escrevia ele no papel que o alienista lhe mandava dar, menos por caridade do que por interesse científico.
Que, na verdade, a paciência do alienista era ainda mais extraordinária do que todas as manias hospedadas na Casa Verde; nada menos que assombrosa. Simão Bacamarte começou por organizar um pessoal de administração; e, aceitando essa idéia ao boticário Crispim Soares, aceitou-lhe também dois sobrinhos, a quem incumbiu da execução de um regimento que lhes deu, aprovado pela Câmara, da distribuição da comida e da roupa, e assim também da escrita, etc. Era o melhor que podia fazer, para somente cuidar do seu ofício.—A Casa Verde, disse ele ao vigário, é agora uma espécie de mundo, em que há o governo temporal e o governo espiritual. E o Padre Lopes ria deste pio trocado,—e acrescentava,—com o único fim de dizer também uma chalaça: —Deixe estar, deixe estar, que hei de mandá-lo denunciar ao papa.
Uma vez desonerado da administração, o alienista procedeu a uma vasta classificação dos seus enfermos. Dividiu-os primeiramente em duas classes principais: os furiosos e os mansos; daí passou às subclasses, monomanias, delírios, alucinações diversas.
Isto feito, começou um estudo aturado e contínuo; analisava os hábitos de cada louco, as horas de acesso, as aversões, as simpatias, as palavras, os gestos, as tendências; inquiria da vida dos enfermos, profissão, costumes, circunstâncias da revelação mórbida, acidentes da infância e da mocidade, doenças de outra espécie, antecedentes na família, uma devassa, enfim, como a não faria o mais atilado corregedor. E cada dia notava uma observação nova, uma descoberta interessante, um fenômeno extraordinário. Ao mesmo tempo estudava o melhor regímen, as substâncias medicamentosas, os meios curativos e os meios paliativos, não só os que vinham nos seus amados árabes, como os que ele mesmo descobria, à força de sagacidade e paciência. Ora, todo esse trabalho levava-lhe o melhor e o mais do tempo. Mal dormia e mal comia; e, ainda comendo, era como se trabalhasse, porque ora interrogava um texto antigo, ora ruminava uma questão, e ia muitas vezes de um cabo a outro do jantar sem dizer uma só palavra a D. Evarista. CAPÍTULO III - DEUS SABE O QUE FAZ
Ilustre dama, no fim de dois meses, achou-se a mais desgraçada das mulheres: caiu em profunda melancolia, ficou amarela, magra, comia pouco e suspirava a cada canto. Não ousava fazer-lhe nenhuma queixa ou reproche, porque respeitava nele o seu marido e senhor, mas padecia calada, e definhava a olhos vistos. Um dia, ao jantar, como lhe perguntasse o marido o que é que tinha, respondeu tristemente que nada; depois atreveu-se um pouco, e foi ao ponto de dizer que se considerava tão viúva como dantes. E acrescentou:
—Quem diria nunca que meia dúzia de lunáticos...
Não acabou a frase; ou antes, acabou-a levantando os olhos ao teto,—os olhos, que eram a sua feição mais insinuante,— negros, grandes, lavados de uma luz úmida, como os da aurora. Quanto ao gesto, era o mesmo que empregara no dia em que Simão Bacamarte a pediu em casamento. Não dizem as crônicas se D. Evarista brandiu aquela arma com o perverso intuito de degolar de uma vez a ciência, ou, pelo menos, decepar-lhe as mãos; mas a conjetura é verossímil. Em todo caso, o alienista não lhe atribuiu intenção. E não se irritou o grande homem, não ficou sequer consternado. O metal de seus olhos não deixou de ser o mesmo metal, duro, liso, eterno, nem a menor prega veio quebrar a superfície da fronte quieta como a água de Botafogo. Talvez um sorriso lhe descerrou os lábios, por entre os quais filtrou esta palavra macia como o óleo do Cântico:
—Consinto que vás dar um passeio ao Rio de Janeiro.
— "Não há remédio certo para as dores da alma; esta senhora definha, porque lhe parece que a não amo; dou-lhe o Rio de Janeiro, e consola-se". E porque era homem estudioso tomou nota da observação.
Mas um dardo atravessou o coração de D. Evarista. Conteve-se, entretanto; limitou-se a dizer ao marido que, se ele não ia, ela não iria também, porque não havia de meter-se sozinha pelas estradas.
—Irá com sua tia, redargüiu o alienista. Note-se que D. Evarista tinha pensado nisso mesmo; mas não quisera pedi-lo nem insinuá-lo, em primeiro lugar porque seria impor grandes despesas ao marido, em segundo lugar porque era melhor, mais metódico e racional que a proposta viesse dele.
—Oh! mas o dinheiro que será preciso gastar! suspirou D. Evarista sem convicção.
—Que importa? Temos ganho muito, disse o marido. Ainda ontem o escriturário prestou-me contas. Queres ver?
E levou-a aos livros. D. Evarista ficou deslumbrada. Era uma via-láctea de algarismos. E depois levou-a às arcas, onde estava o dinheiro.
Deus! eram montes de ouro, eram mil cruzados sobre mil cruzados, dobrões sobre dobrões; era a opulência.
Enquanto ela comia o ouro com os seus olhos negros, o alienista fitava-a, e dizia-lhe ao ouvido com a mais pérfida das alusões:
—Quem diria que meia dúzia de lunáticos...
—Deus sabe o que faz!
Três meses depois efetuava-se a jornada. D. Evarista, a tia, a mulher do boticário, um sobrinho deste, um padre que o alienista conhecera em Lisboa, e que de aventura achava-se em Itaguaí cinco ou seis pajens, quatro mucamas, tal foi a comitiva que a população viu dali sair em certa manhã do mês de maio. As despedidas foram tristes para todos, menos para o alienista. Conquanto as lágrimas de
ciência, e só de ciência, nada o consternava fora da ciência; e se alguma coisa o preocupava naquela ocasião, se ele deixava correr pela multidão um olhar inquieto e policial, não era outra coisa mais do que a idéia de que algum demente podia achar-se ali misturado com a gente de juízo.
—Adeus! soluçaram enfim as damas e o boticário.
E partiu a comitiva. Crispim Soares, ao tornar a casa, trazia os olhos entre as duas orelhas da besta ruana em que vinha montado; Simão Bacamarte alongava os seus pelo horizonte adiante, deixando ao cavalo a responsabilidade do regresso. Imagem vivaz do gênio e do vulgo! Um fita o presente, com todas as suas lágrimas e saudades, outro devassa o futuro com todas as suas auroras. CAPÍTULO IV - UMA TEORIA NOVA
Ao passo que D. Evarista, em lágrimas, vinha buscando o 1 [Rio de Janeiro, Simão Bacamarte estudava por todos os lados uma certa idéia arrojada e nova, própria a alargar as bases da psicologia. Todo o tempo que lhe sobrava dos cuidados da Casa Verde, era pouco para andar na rua, ou de casa em casa, conversando as gentes, sobre trinta mil assuntos, e virgulando as falas de um olhar que metia medo aos mais heróicos.
Um dia de manhã,—eram passadas três semanas,—estando Crispim Soares ocupado em temperar um medicamento, vieram dizer-lhe que o alienista o mandava chamar.
—Trata-se de negócio importante, segundo ele me disse, acrescentou o portador.
Crispim empalideceu. Que negócio importante podia ser, se não alguma notícia da comitiva, e especialmente da mulher? Porque este tópico deve ficar claramente definido, visto insistirem nele os cronistas; Crispim amava a mulher, e, desde trinta anos, nunca estiveram separados um só dia. Assim se explicam os monólogos que ele fazia agora, e que os fâmulos lhe ouviam muita vez:—"Anda, bem feito, quem te mandou consentir na viagem de Cesária? Bajulador, torpe bajulador! Só para adular ao Dr. Bacamarte. Pois agora agüenta-te; anda, agüenta-te, alma de lacaio, fracalhão, vil, miserável. Dizes amem a tudo, não é? aí tens o lucro, biltre!"—E muitos outros nomes feios, que um homem não deve dizer aos outros, quanto mais a si mesmo. Daqui a imaginar o efeito do recado é um nada. Tão depressa ele o recebeu como abriu mão das drogas e voou à Casa Verde.
Simão Bacamarte recebeu-o com a alegria própria de um sábio, uma alegria abotoada de circunspeção até o pescoço.
—Estou muito contente, disse ele.
—Notícias do nosso povo? perguntou o boticário com a voz trêmula. O alienista fez um gesto magnífico, e respondeu: —Trata-se de coisa mais alta, trata-se de uma experiência científica. Digo experiência, porque não me atrevo a assegurar desde já a minha idéia; nem a ciência é outra coisa, Sr. Soares, senão uma investigação constante. Trata-se, pois, de uma experiência, mas uma experiência que vai mudar a face da Terra. A loucura, objeto dos meus estudos, era até agora uma ilha perdida no oceano da razão; começo a suspeitar que é um continente. Disse isto, e calou-se, para ruminar o pasmo do boticário. Depois explicou compridamente a sua idéia. No conceito dele a insânia abrangia uma vasta superfície de cérebros; e desenvolveu isto com grande cópia de raciocínios, de textos, de exemplos. Os exemplos achou-os na história e em Itaguaí mas, como um raro espírito que era, reconheceu o perigo de citar todos os casos de Itaguaí e refugiou-se na história. Assim, apontou com especialidade alguns personagens célebres, Sócrates, que tinha um demônio familiar, Pascal, que via um abismo à esquerda, Maomé, Caracala, Domiciano, Calígula, etc., uma enfiada de casos e pessoas, em que de mistura vinham entidades odiosas, e entidades ridículas. E porque o boticário se admirasse de uma tal promiscuidade, o alienista disse-lhe que era tudo a mesma coisa, e até acrescentou sentenciosamente:
—A ferocidade, Sr. Soares, é o grotesco a sério.
—Gracioso, muito gracioso! exclamou Crispim Soares levantando as mãos ao céu.
Quanto à idéia de ampliar 0 território da loucura, achou-a 0 boticário extravagante; mas a modéstia, principal adorno de seu espírito, não lhe sofreu confessar outra coisa além de um nobre entusiasmo; declarou-a sublime e verdadeira, e acrescentou que era "caso de matraca". Esta expressão não tem equivalente no estilo moderno. Naquele tempo, Itaguaí que como as demais vilas, arraiais e povoações da colônia, não dispunha de imprensa, tinha dois modos de divulgar uma notícia; ou por meio de cartazes manuscritos e pregados na porta da Câmara, e da matriz;—ou por meio de matraca.
Eis em que consistia este segundo uso. Contratava-se um homem, por um ou mais dias, para andar as ruas do povoado, com uma matraca na mão.
De quando em quando tocava a matraca, reunia-se gente, e ele anunciava o que lhe incumbiam,—um remédio para sezões, umas terras lavradias, um soneto, um donativo eclesiástico, a melhor tesoura da vila, o mais belo discurso do ano, etc. O sistema tinha inconvenientes para a paz pública; mas era conservado pela grande energia de divulgação que possuía. Por exemplo, um dos vereadores,—aquele justamente que mais se opusera à criação da Casa Verde,—desfrutava a reputação de perfeito educador de cobras e macacos, e aliás nunca domesticara um só desses bichos; mas, tinha o cuidado de fazer trabalhar a matraca todos os meses. E dizem as crônicas que algumas pessoas afirmavam ter visto cascavéis dançando no peito do vereador; afirmação perfeitamente falsa, mas só devida à absoluta confiança no sistema. Verdade, verdade, nem todas as instituições do antigo regímen mereciam o desprezo do nosso século.
—Há melhor do que anunciar a minha idéia, é praticá-la, respondeu o alienista à insinuação do boticário. E o boticário, não divergindo sensivelmente deste modo de ver, disse-lhe que sim, que era melhor começar pela execução.
—Sempre haverá tempo de a dar à matraca, concluiu ele. Simão Bacamarte refletiu ainda um instante, e disse: —Suponho o espírito humano uma vasta concha, o meu fim, Sr. Soares, é ver se posso extrair a pérola, que é a razão; por outros termos, demarquemos definitivamente os limites da razão e da loucura. A razão é o perfeito equilíbrio de todas as faculdades; fora daí insânia, insânia e só insânia.
O Vigário Lopes a quem ele confiou a nova teoria, declarou lisamente que não chegava a entendê-la, que era uma obra absurda, e, se não era absurda, era de tal modo colossal que não merecia princípio de execução.
—Com a definição atual, que é a de todos os tempos, acrescentou, a loucura e a razão estão perfeitamente delimitadas. Sabe-se onde uma acaba e onde a outra começa. Para que transpor a cerca?
Sobre o lábio fino e discreto do alienista rogou a vaga sombra de uma intenção de riso, em que o desdém vinha casado à comiseração; mas nenhuma palavra saiu de suas egrégias entranhas.
A ciência contentou-se em estender a mão à teologia, — com tal segurança, que a teologia não soube enfim se devia crer em si ou na outra. Itaguaí e o universo ficavam à beira de uma revolução. CAPÍTULO V - O TERROR
Quatro dias depois, a população de Itaguaí ouviu consternada a notícia de que um certo Costa fora recolhido à Casa Verde.
—Impossível!
—Qual impossível! foi recolhido hoje de manhã.
— Mas, na verdade, ele não merecia... Ainda em cima! depois de tanto que ele fez...
Costa era um dos cidadãos mais estimados de Itaguaí, Herdara quatrocentos mil cruzados em boa moeda de El-rei Dom João V, dinheiro cuja renda bastava, segundo lhe declarou 0 tio no testamento, para viver "até o fim do mundo". Tão depressa recolheu a herança, como entrou a dividi-la em empréstimos, sem *usura, mil cruzados a um, dois mil a outro, trezentos a este, oitocentos àquele, a tal ponto que, no fim de cinco anos, estava sem nada. Se a miséria viesse de chofre, o pasmo de Itaguaí, seria enorme; mas veio devagar; ele foi passando da opulência à abastança, da abastança à mediania, da mediania à pobreza, da pobreza à miséria, gradualmente. Ao cabo daqueles cinco anos, pessoas que levavam o chapéu ao chão, logo que ele assomava no fim da rua, agora batiam-lhe no ombro, com intimidade, davam-lhe piparotes no nariz, diziam-lhe pulhas. E o Costa sempre lhano, risonho. Nem se lhe dava de ver que os menos corteses eram justamente os que tinham ainda a dívida em aberto; ao contrário, parece que os agasalhava com maior prazer, e mais sublime resignação. Um dia, como um desses incuráveis devedores lhe atirasse uma chalaça grossa, e ele se risse dela, observou um desafeiçoado, com certa perfídia: — "Você suporta esse sujeito para ver se ele lhe paga". Costa não se deteve um minuto, foi ao devedor e perdoou-lhe a divida.— "Não admira, retorquiu o outro; o Costa abriu mão de uma estrela, que está no céu". Costa era perspicaz, entendeu que ele negava todo o merecimento ao ato, atribuindo-lhe a intenção de rejeitar o que não vinham meter-lhe na algibeira. Era também pundonoroso e inventivo; duas horas depois achou um meio de provar que lhe não cabia um tal labéu: pegou de algumas dobras, e mandou-as de empréstimo ao devedor.
—Agora espero que...—pensou ele sem concluir a frase.
Esse último rasgo do Costa persuadiu a crédulos e incrédulos; ninguém mais pôs em dúvida os sentimentos cavalheirescos daquele digno cidadão. As necessidades mais acanhadas saíram à rua, vieram bater-lhe à porta, com os seus chinelos velhos, com as suas capas remendadas. Um verme, entretanto, rola a alma do Costa: era o conceito do desafeto. Mas isso mesmo acabou; três meses depois veio este pedir-lhe uns cento e vinte cruzados com promessa de restituir-lhos daí a dois dias; era 0 resíduo da grande herança, mas era também uma nobre desforra: Costa emprestou o dinheiro logo, logo, e sem juros. Infelizmente não teve tempo de ser pago; cinco meses depois era recolhido à Casa Verde.
Imagina-se a consternação de Itaguaí, quando soube do caso. Não se falou em outra coisa, dizia-se que o Costa ensandecera, ao almoço, outros que de madrugada; e contavam-se os acessos, que eram furiosos, sombrios, terríveis,—ou mansos, e até engraçados, conforme as versões. Muita gente correu à Casa Verde, e achou o pobre Costa, tranqüilo, um pouco espantado, falando com muita clareza, e perguntando por que motivo o tinham levado para ali. Alguns foram ter com o alienista. Bacamarte aprovava esses sentimentos de estima e compaixão, mas acrescentava que a ciência era a ciência, e que ele não podia deixar na rua um mentecapto. A última pessoa que intercedeu por ele (porque depois do que vou contar ninguém mais se atreveu a procurar o terrível médico) foi uma pobre senhora, prima do Costa. O alienista disse-lhe confidencialmente que esse digno homem não estava no perfeito equilíbrio das faculdades mentais, à vista do modo como dissipara os cabedais que...
—Isso, não! isso, não! interrompeu a boa senhora com energia. Se ele gastou tão depressa o que recebeu, a culpa não é dele.
—Não?
—Não, senhor. Eu lhe digo como o negócio se passou. O defunto meu tio não era mau homem; mas quando estava furioso era capaz de nem tirar 0 chapéu ao Santíssimo. Ora, um dia, pouco tempo antes de morrer, descobriu que um escravo lhe roubara um boi; imagine como ficou.
A cara era um pimentão; todo ele tremia, a boca escumava; lembra-me como se fosse hoje. Então um homem feio, cabeludo, em mangas de camisa, chegou-se a ele e pediu água. Meu tio (Deus lhe fale n alma!) respondeu que fosse beber ao rio ou ao inferno. O homem olhou para ele, abriu a mão em ar de ameaça, e rogou esta praga:—"Todo o seu dinheiro não há de durar mais de sete anos e um dia, tão certo como isto ser o sino-salamão! E mostrou o sino-salamão impresso no braço. Foi isto, meu senhor; foi esta praga daquele maldito.
Bacamarte espetara na pobre senhora um par de olhos agudos como punhais. Quando ela acabou, estendeu-lhe a mão polidamente, como se o fizesse à própria esposa do vice-rei, e convidou-a a ir falar ao primo. A mísera acredit ou; ele levou-a à Casa Verde e encerrou-a na galeria dos alucinados.
A notícia desta aleivosia do ilustre Bacamarte lançou o terror à alma da população. Ninguém queria acabar de crer, que, sem motivo, sem inimizade, o alienista trancasse na Casa Verde uma senhora perfeitamente ajuizada, que não tinha outro crime senão o de interceder por um infeliz. Comentava-se o caso nas esquinas, nos barbeiros; edificou-se um romance, umas finezas namoradas que o alienista outrora dirigira à prima do Costa, a indignação do Costa e o desprezo da prima. E daí a vingança. Era claro. Mas a austeridade do alienista, a vida de estudos que ele levava, pareciam desmentir uma tal hipótese. Histórias! Tudo isso era naturalmente a capa do velhaco. E um dos mais crédulos chegou a murmurar que sabia de outras coisas, não as dizia, por não ter certeza plena, mas sabia, quase que podia jurar.
—Você, que é íntimo dele, não nos podia dizer o que há, o que houve, que motivo...
Crispim Soares derretia-se todo. Esse interrogar da gente inquieta e curiosa, dos amigos atônitos, era para ele uma consagração pública. Não havia duvidar; toda a povoação sabia enfim que o privado do alienista era ele, Crispim, o boticário, o colaborador do grande homem e das grandes coisas; daí a corrida à botica. Tudo isso dizia o carão jucundo e o riso discreto do boticário, o riso e o silêncio, porque ele não respondia nada; um, dois, três monossílabos, quando muito, soltos, secos, encapados no fiel sorriso constante e miúdo, cheio de mistérios científicos, que ele não podia, sem desdouro nem perigo, desvendar a nenhuma pessoa humana.
—Há coisa, pensavam os mais desconfiados.
Um desses limitou-se a pensá-lo, deu de ombros e foi embora. Tinha negócios pessoais Acabava de construir uma casa suntuosa. Só a casa bastava para deter a chamar toda a gente; mas havia mais,—a mobília, que ele mandara vir da Hungria e da Holanda, segundo contava, e que se podia ver do lado de fora, porque as janelas viviam abertas,—e o jardim, que era uma obra-prima de arte e de gosto. Esse homem, que enriquecera no fabrico de albardas, tinha tido sempre o sonho de uma casa magnífica, jardim pomposo, mobília rara. Não deixou o negócio das albardas, mas repousava dele na contemplação da casa nova, a primeira de Itaguaí, mais grandiosa do que a Casa Verde, mais nobre do que a da Câmara, Entre a gente ilustre da povoação havia choro e ranger de dentes, quando se pensava, ou se falava, ou se louvava a casa do albardeiro,—um simples albardeiro, Deus do céu!
—Lá está ele embasbacado, diziam os transeuntes, de manhã.
De manhã, com efeito, era costume do Mateus estatelar-se, no meio do jardim, com os olhos na casa, namorado, durante uma longa hora, até que vinham chamá-lo para almoçar. Os vizinhos, embora o cumprimentassem com certo respeito, riam-se por trás dele, que era um gosto. Um desses chegou a dizer que o Mateus seria muito mais econômico, e estaria riquíssimo, se fabricasse as albardas para si mesmo; epigrama ininteligível, mas que fazia rir às bandeiras despregadas.
A razão deste outro dito era que, de tarde, quando as famílias safam a passeio (jantavam cedo) usava o Mateus postar-se à janela, bem no centro, vistoso, sobre um fundo escuro, trajado de branco, atitude senhoril, e assim ficava duas e três horas até que anoitecia de todo. Pode crer-se que a intenção do Mateus era ser admirado e invejado, posto que ele não a confessasse a nenhuma pessoa, nem ao boticário, nem ao Padre Lopes seus grandes amigos. E entretanto não foi outra a alegação do boticário, quando o alienista lhe disse que o albardeiro talvez padecesse do amor das pedras, mania que ele Bacamarte descobrira e estudava desde algum tempo. Aquilo de contemplar a casa...
—Não, senhor, acudiu vivamente Crispim Soares.
—Não?
—Há de perdoar-me, mas talvez não saiba que ele de manhã examina a obra, não a admira; de tarde, são os outros que o admiram a ele e à obra.—E contou o uso do albardeiro, todas as tardes, desde cedo até o cair da noite.
Uma volúpia científica alumiou os olhos de Simão Bacamarte. Ou ele não conhecia todos os costumes do albardeiro, ou nada mais quis, interrogando o Crispim, do que confirmar alguma notícia incerta ou suspeita vaga. A explicação satisfê-lo; mas como tinha as alegrias próprias de um sábio, concentradas, nada viu o boticário que fizesse suspeitar uma intenção sinistra. Ao contrário, era de tarde, e o alienista pediu-lhe o braço para irem a passeio. Deus! era a primeira vez que Simão Bacamarte dava o seu privado tamanha honra; Crispim ficou trêmulo, atarantado, disse que sim, que estava pronto. Chegaram duas ou três pessoas de fora, Crispim mandou-as mentalmente a todos os diabos; não só atrasavam o passeio, como podia acontecer que Bacamarte elegesse alguma delas, para acompanhá-lo, e o dispensasse a ele. Que impaciência! que aflição! Enfim, saíram. O alienista guiou para os lados da casa do albardeiro, viu-o à janela, passou cinco, seis vezes por diante, devagar, parando, examinando as atitudes, a expressão do rosto. O pobre Mateus, apenas notou que era objeto da curiosidade ou admiração do primeiro volto de Itaguaí redobrou de expressão, deu outro relevo às atitudes... Triste! triste, não fez mais do que condenar-se; no dia seguinte, foi recolhido à Casa Verde.
—A Casa Verde é um cárcere privado, disse um médico sem clínica.
Nunca uma opinião pegou e grassou tão rapidamente. Cárcere privado: eis o que se repetia de norte a sul e de leste a oeste de Itaguaí,—a medo, é verdade, porque durante a semana que se seguiu à captura do pobre Mateus, vinte e tantas pessoas,— duas ou três de consideração,—foram recolhidas à Casa Verde. O alienista dizia que só eram admitidos os casos patológicos, mas pouca gente lhe dava crédito. Sucediam-se as versões populares. Vingança, cobiça de dinheiro, castigo de Deus, monomania do próprio médico, plano secreto do Rio de Janeiro com o fim de destruir em Itaguaí qualquer gérmen de prosperidade que viesse a brotar, arvorecer, florir, com desdouro e míngua daquela cidade, mil outras explicações, que não explicavam nada, tal era o produto diário da imaginação pública. Nisto chegou do Rio de Janeiro a esposa do alienista, a tia, a mulher do Crispim Soares, e toda a mais comitiva, —ou quase toda—que algumas semanas antes partira de Itaguaí O alienista foi recebê-la, com o boticário, o Padre Lopes os vereadores e vários outros magistrados. O momento em que D. Evarista pôs os olhos na pessoa do marido é considerado pelos cronistas do tempo como um dos mais sublimes da história moral dos homens, e isto pelo contraste das duas naturezas, ambas extremas, ambas egrégias. D. Evarista soltou um grito, —balbuciou uma palavra e atirou-se ao consorte—de um gesto que não se pode melhor definir do que comparando-o a uma mistura de onça e rola. Não assim o ilustre Bacamarte; frio como diagnóstico, sem desengonçar por um instante a rigidez científica, estendeu os braços à dona que caiu neles e desmaiou. Curto incidente; ao cabo de dois minutos D. Evarista recebia os cumprimentos dos amigos e o préstito punha-se em marcha.
—A propósito de Casa Verde, disse o Padre Lopes escorregando habilmente para o assunto da ocasião, a senhora vem achá-la muito cheia de gente.
—Sim?
—É verdade. Lá está o Mateus...
—O albardeiro?
—O albardeiro; está o Costa, a prima do Costa, e Fulano, e Sicrano, e...
—Tudo isso doido?
—Ou quase doido, obtemperou padre.
—Mas então? O vigário derreou os cantos da boca, à maneira de quem não sabe nada ou não quer dizer tudo; resposta vaga, que se não pode repetir a outra pessoa por falta de texto. D. Evarista achou realmente extraordinário que toda aquela gente ensandecesse; um ou outro, vá; mas todos? Entretanto custava-lhe duvidar; o marido era um sábio, não recolheria ninguém à Casa Verde sem prova evidente de loucura.
—Sem dúvida... sem dúvida... ia pontuando o vigário.
Três horas depois cerca de cinqüenta convivas sentavam-se em volta da mesa de Simão Bacamarte; era o jantar das boas-vindas. D. Evarista foi o assunto obrigado dos brindes, discursos, versos de toda a casta, metáforas, amplificações, apólogos. Ela era a esposa do novo Hipócrates, a musa da ciência, anjo, divina, aurora, caridade, vida, consolação; trazia nos olhos duas estrelas segundo a versão modesta de Crispim Soares e dois sóis no conceito de um vereador. O alienista ouvia essas coisas um tanto enfastiado, mas sem visível impaciência. Quando muito, dizia ao ouvido da mulher que a retórica permitia tais arrojos sem significação. D. Evarista fazia esforços para aderir a esta opinião do marido; mas, ainda descontando três quartas partes das louvaminhas, ficava muito com que enfunar-lhe a alma. Um dos oradores, por exemplo, Martim Brito, rapaz de vinte e cinco anos, pintalegrete acabado, curtido de namoros e aventuras, declamou um discurso em que o nascimento de D. Evarista era explicado pelo mais singular dos reptos. Deus, disse ele, depois de dar o universo ao homem e à mulher, esse diamante e essa pérola da coroa divina (e o orador arrastava triunfalmente esta frase de uma ponta a outra da mesa), Deus quis vencer a Deus, e criou D. Evarista."
Ciúmes? Mas como explicar que, logo em seguida, fossem recolhidos José Borges do Couto Leme, pessoa estimável, o Chico das cambraias, folgazão emérito, o escrivão Fabrício e ainda outros? O terror acentuou-se. Não se sabia já quem estava são, nem quem estava doido. As mulheres, quando os maridos safam, mandavam acender uma lamparina a Nossa Senhora; e nem todos os maridos eram valorosos, alguns não andavam fora sem um ou dois capangas. Positivamente o terror. Quem podia emigrava. Um desses fugitivos chegou a ser preso a duzentos passos da vila. Era um rapaz de trinta anos, amável, conversado, polido, tão polido que não cumprimentava alguém sem levar o chapéu ao chão; na rua, acontecia-lhe correr uma distancia de dez a vinte braças para ir apertar a mão a um homem grave, a uma senhora, às vezes a um menino, como acontecera ao filho do juiz de fora. Tinha a vocação das cortesias. De resto, devia as boas relações da sociedade, não só aos dotes pessoais, que eram raros, como à nobre tenacidade com que nunca desanimava diante de uma, duas, quatro, seis recusas, caras feias, etc. O que acontecia era que, uma vez entrado numa casa, não a deixava mais, nem os da casa o deixavam a ele, tão gracioso era o Gil Bernardes. Pois o Gil Bernardes, apesar de se saber estimado, teve medo quando lhe disseram um dia que o alienista o trazia de olho; na madrugada seguinte fugiu da vila, mas foi logo apanhado e conduzido à Casa Verde.
—Devemos acabar com isto! —Não pode continuar! —Abaixo a tirania! —Déspota! violento! Golias!
Não eram gritos na rua, eram suspiros em casa, mas não tardava a hora dos gritos. O terror crescia; avizinhava-se a rebelião. A idéia de uma petição ao governo, para que Simão Bacamarte fosse capturado e deportado, andou por algumas cabeças, antes que o barbeiro Porfírio a expendesse na loja com grandes gestos de indignação. Note-se — e essa é uma das laudas mais puras desta sombrio história — note-se que o Porfírio, desde que a Casa Verde começara a povoar-se tão extraordinariamente, viu crescerem-lhe os lucros pela aplicação assídua de sanguessugas que dali lhe pediam; mas o interesse particular, dizia ele, deve ceder ao interesse público. E acrescentava:—é preciso derrubar o tirano! Note-se mais que ele soltou esse grito justamente no dia em que Simão Bacamarte fizera recolher à Casa Verde um homem que trazia com ele uma demanda, o Coelho.
—Não me dirão em que é que o Coelho é doido? bradou o Porfírio, E ninguém lhe respondia; todos repetiam que era um homem perfeitamente ajuizado. A mesma demanda que ele trazia com o barbeiro, acerca de uns chãos da vila, era filha da obscuridade de um alvará e não da cobiça ou ódio. Um excelente caráter o Coelho. Os únicos desafeiçoados que tinha eram alguns sujeitos que dizendo-se taciturnos ou alegando andar com pressa mal o viam de longe dobravam as esquinas, entravam nas lojas, etc. Na verdade, ele amava a boa palestra, a palestra comprida, gostada a sorvos largos, e assim é que nunca estava só, preferindo os que sabiam dizer duas palavras, mas não desdenhando os outros. O Padre Lopes que cultivava o Dante, e era inimigo do Coelho, nunca o via desligar-se de uma pessoa que não declamasse e emendasse este trecho:
La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto Quel "seccatore"...
mas uns sabiam do ódio do padre, e outros pensavam que isto era uma oração em latim. CAPÍTULO VI - A REBELIÃO
Cerca de trinta pessoas ligaram-se ao barbeiro, redigiram e `_ levaram uma representação à Câmara.
A Câmara recusou aceitá-la, declarando que a Casa Verde era uma instituição pública, e que a ciência não podia ser emendada por votação administrativa, menos ainda por movimentos de rua.
—Voltai ao trabalho, concluiu o presidente, é o conselho que vos damos.
A irritação dos agitadores foi enorme. O barbeiro declarou que iam dali levantar a bandeira da rebelião e destruir a Casa Verde; que Itaguaí não podia continuar a servir de cadáver aos estudos e experiências de um déspota; que muitas pessoas estimáveis e algumas distintas, outras humildes mas dignas de apreço, jaziam nos cubículos da Casa Verde; que o despotismo científico do alienista complicava-se do espírito de ganância, visto que os loucos ou supostos tais não eram tratados de graça: as famílias e em falta delas a Câmara pagavam ao alienista...
—É falso! interrompeu o presidente.
—Falso?
—Há cerca de duas semanas recebemos um ofício do ilustre médico em que nos declara que, tratando de fazer experiências de alto valor psicológico, desiste do estipêndio votado pela Câmara, bem como nada receberá das famílias dos enfermos.
A notícia deste ato tão nobre, tão puro, suspendeu um pouco a alma dos rebeldes. Seguramente o alienista podia estar em erro, mas nenhum interesse alheio à ciência o instigava; e para demonstrar o erro, era preciso alguma coisa mais do que arruaças e clamores. Isto disse o presidente, com aplauso de toda a Câmara. O barbeiro, depois de alguns instantes de concentração, declarou que estava investido de um mandato público e não restituiria a paz a Itaguaí antes de ver por terra a Casa
Verde—"essa Bastilha da razão humana"—expressão que ouvira a um poeta local e que ele repetiu com muita ênfase. Disse, e, a um sinal, todos saíram com ele.
Imagine-se a situação dos vereadores; urgia obstar ao ajuntamento, à rebelião, à luta, ao sangue. Para acrescentar ao mal um dos vereadores que apoiara o presidente ouvindo agora a denominação dada pelo barbeiro à Casa Verde—"Bastilha da razão humana"—achou-a tão elegante que mudou de parecer. Disse que entendia de bom aviso decretar alguma medida que reduzisse a Casa Verde; e porque o presidente, indignado, manifestasse em termos enérgicos o seu pasmo, o vereador fez esta reflexão: —Nada tenho que ver com a ciência; mas, se tantos homens em quem supomos são reclusos por dementes, quem nos afirma que o alienado não é o alienista?
Sebastião Freitas, o vereador dissidente, tinha o dom da palavra e falou ainda por algum tempo, com prudência mas com firmeza. Os colegas estavam atônitos; o presidente pediu-lhe que, ao menos, desse o exemplo da ordem e do respeito à lei, não aventasse as suas idéias na rua para não dar corpo e alma à rebelião, que era por ora um turbilhão de átomos dispersos. Esta figura corrigiu um pouco o efeito da outra: Sebastião Freitas prometeu suspender qualquer ação, reservando-se o direito de pedir pelos meios legais a redução da Casa Verde. E repetia consigo namorado:— Bastilha da razão humana!
Entretanto a arruaça crescia. Já não eram trinta mas trezentas pessoas que acompanhavam o barbeiro, cuja alcunha familiar deve ser mencionada, porque ela deu o nome à revolta; chamavam-lhe o Canjica—e o movimento ficou célebre com o nome de revolta dos Canjicas. A ação podia ser restrita—visto que muita gente, ou por medo, ou por hábitos de educação, não descia à rua; mas o sentimento era unânime, ou quase unânime, e os trezentos que caminhavam para a Casa Verde,— dada a diferença de Paris a Itaguaí,—podiam ser comparados aos que tomaram a Bastilha.
—Há de ser alguma patuscada, dizia ela, mudando a posição de um alfinete. Benedita, vê se a barra está boa.
—Está, sinhá, respondia a mucama de cócoras no chão, está boa. Sinhá vira um bocadinho. Assim. Está muito boa.
—Não é patuscada, não, senhora; eles estão gritando: — Morra o Dr. Bacamarte!!! o tirano! dizia o moleque assustado.
—Cala a boca, tolo! Benedita, olha aí do lado esquerdo; não parece que a costura está um pouco enviesada? A risca azul não segue até abaixo; está muito feio assim; é preciso descoser para ficar igualzinho e...
Era a rebelião que desembocava na Rua Nova.
instante de triunfo súbito, imperceptível, entranhado, de satisfação moral, ao ver que a realidade vinha jurar por ele.
—Morra o alienista! bradavam as vozes mais perto.
—Você não ouve estes gritos? perguntou a digna esposa em lágrimas.
O alienista atendeu então; os gritos aproximavam-se, terríveis, ameaçadores; ele compreendeu tudo. Levantou-se da cadeira de espaldar em que estava sentado, fechou o livro, e, a passo firme e tranqüilo, foi depositá-lo na estante. Como a introdução do volume desconsertasse um pouco a linha dos dois tomos contíguos, Simão Bacamarte cuidou de corrigir esse defeito mínimo, e, aliás, interessante. Depois disse à mulher que se recolhesse, que não fizesse nada.
—Não, não, implorava a digna senhora, quero morrer ao lado de você...
Simão Bacamarte teimou que não, que não era caso de morte; e ainda que o fosse, intimava-lhe, em nome da vida, que ficasse. A infeliz dama curvou a cabeça, obediente e chorosa.
—Abaixo a Casa Verde! bradavam os Canjicas.
O alienista caminhou para a varanda da frente e chegou ali no momento em que a rebelião também chegava e parava, defronte, com as suas trezentas cabeças rutilantes de civismo e sombrias de desespero.—Morra! morra! bradaram de todos os lados, apenas o vulto do alienista assomou na varanda. Simão Bacamarte fez um sinal pedindo para falar; os revoltosos cobriram-lhe a voz com brados de indignação. Então o barbeiro, agitando o chapéu, a fim de impor silêncio à turba, conseguiu aquietar os amigos, e declarou ao alienista que podia falar, mas acrescentou que não abusasse da paciência do povo como fizera até então.
—Direi pouco, ou até não direi nada, se for preciso. Desejo saber primeiro o que pedis.
—Não pedimos nada, replicou fremente o barbeiro; ordenamos que a Casa Verde seja demolida, ou pelo menos despojada dos infelizes que lá estão. —Não entendo.
—Entendeis bem, tirano; queremos dar liberdade às vítimas do vosso ódio, capricho, ganância...
O alienista sorriu, mas o sorriso desse grande homem não era coisa visível aos olhos da multidão; era uma contração leve de dois ou três músculos, nada mais. Sorriu e respondeu:
—Meus senhores, a ciência é coisa séria, e merece ser tratada com seriedade. Não dou razão dos meus atos de alienista a ninguém, salvo aos mestres e a Deus. Se quereis emendar a administração da Casa Verde, estou pronto a ouvir-vos; mas, se exigis que me negue a mim mesmo, não ganhareis nada. Poderia convidar alguns de vós em comissão dos outros a vir ver comigo os loucos reclusos; mas não o faço, porque seria dar-vos razão do meu sistema, o que não farei a leigos nem a rebeldes.
Disse isto o alienista e a multidão ficou atônita; era claro que não esperava tanta energia e menos ainda tamanha serenidade. Mas o assombro cresceu de ponto quando o alienista, cortejando a multidão com muita gravidade, deu-lhe as costas e retirou-se lentamente para dentro. O barbeiro tornou logo a si e, agitando o chapéu, convidou os amigos à demolição da Casa Verde; poucas vozes e frouxas lhe responderam. Foi nesse momento decisivo que o barbeiro sentiu despontar em si a ambição do governo; pareceu-lhe então que, demolindo a Casa Verde e derrocando a influência do alienista, chegaria a apoderar-se da Câmara, dominar as demais autoridades e constituir-se senhor de Itaguaí. Desde alguns anos que ele forcejava por ver o seu nome incluído nos pelouros para o sorteio dos vereadores, mas era recusado por não ter uma posição compatível com tão grande cargo. A ocasião era agora ou nunca. Demais, fora tão longe na arruaça que a derrota seria a prisão ou talvez a forca ou o degredo. Infelizmente a resposta do alienista diminuíra o furor dos sequazes. O barbeiro, logo que o percebeu, sentiu um impulso de indignação e quis bradar-lhes:— Canalhas! covardes! —mas conteve-se e rompeu deste modo: Meus amigos, lutemos até o fim! A salvação de Itaguaí está nas vossas mãos dignas e heróicas. Destruamos o cárcere de vossos filhos e pais, de vossas mães e irmãs, de vossos parentes e amigos, e de vós mesmos. Ou morrereis a pão e água, talvez a chicote, na masmorra daquele indigno.
E a multidão agitou-se, murmurou, bradou, ameaçou, congregou-se toda em derredor do barbeiro. Era a revolta que tornava a si da ligeira síncope e ameaçava arrasar a Casa Verde.
—Vamos! bradou Porfírio, agitando o chapéu.
—Vamos! repetiram todos. Deteve-os um incidente: era um corpo de dragões que, a marche-marche, entrava na Rua Nova. CAPÍTULO VII - O INESPERADO
Chegados os dragões em frente aos Canjicas houve um instante de estupefação. Os Canjicas não queriam crer que a força pública fosse mandada contra eles; mas o barbeiro compreendeu tudo e esperou. Os dragões pararam, o capitão intimou à multidão que se dispersasse; mas, conquanto uma parte dela estivesse inclinada a isso, a outra parte apoiou fortemente o barbeiro, cuja resposta consistiu nestes termos alevantados:
—Não nos dispersaremos. Se quereis os nossos cadáveres, podeis tomá-los; mas só os cadáveres; não levareis a nossa honra, o nosso crédito, os nossos direitos, e com eles a salvação de Itaguaí.
Nada mais imprudente do que essa resposta do barbeiro; e nada mais natural. Era a vertigem das grandes crises. Talvez fosse também um excesso de confiança na abstenção das armas por parte dos dragões; confiança que o capitão dissipou logo, mandando carregar sobre os Canjicas. O momento foi indescritível. A multidão urrou furiosa; alguns, trepando às janelas das casas ou correndo pela rua fora, conseguiram escapar; mas a maioria ficou bufando de cólera, indignada, animada pela exortação do barbeiro. A derrota dos Canjicas estava iminente quando um terço dos dragões,— qualquer que fosse o motivo, as crônicas não o declaram,—passou subitamente para o lado da rebelião. Este inesperado reforço deu alma aos Canjicas, ao mesmo tempo que lançou o desanimo às fileiras da legalidade. Os soldados fiéis não tiveram coragem de atacar os seus próprios camaradas, e um a um foram passando para eles, de modo que, ao cabo de alguns minutos, o aspecto das coisas era totalmente outro. O capitão estava de um lado com alguma gente contra uma massa compacta que o ameaçava de morre. Não teve remédio, declarou-se vencido e entregou a espada ao barbeiro.
A revolução triunfante não perdeu um só minuto; recolheu os feridos às casas próximas e guiou para a Câmara Povo e tropa fraternizavam, davam vivas a el-rei, ao vice-rei, a Itaguaí, ao "ilustre Porfírio". Este ia na frente, empunhando tão destramente a espada, como se ela fosse apenas uma navalha um pouco mais comprida. A vitória cingia-lhe a fronte de um nimbo misterioso. A dignidade de governo começava a eurijar-lhe os quadris.
Os vereadores, às janelas, vendo a multidão e a tropa, cuidaram que a tropa capturara a multidão, e sem mais exame, entraram e votaram uma petição ao vice-rei para que mandasse dar um mês de soldo aos dragões, "cujo denodo salvou Itaguaí do abismo a que o tinha lançado uma cáfila de rebeldes . Esta frase foi proposta por Sebastião Freitas, o vereador dissidente cuja defesa dos Canjicas tanto escandalizara os colegas. Mas bem depressa a ilusão se desfez. Os vivas ao barbeiro, os morras aos vereadores e ao alienista vieram dar-lhes noticia da triste realidade. O presidente não desanimou:—Qualquer que seja a nossa sorte, disse ele, lembremo-nos que estamos ao serviço de Sua Majestade e do povo.—Sebastião insinuou que melhor se poderia servir à coroa e à vila saindo pelos fundos e indo conferenciar com o juiz de fora, mas toda a Câmara rejeitou esse alvitre.
Daí a nada o barbeiro, acompanhado de alguns de seus tenentes, entrava na sala da vereança intimava à Câmara a sua queda. A Câmara não resistiu, entregou-se e foi dali para a cadeia. Então os amigos do barbeiro propuseram-lhe que assumisse o governo da vila em nome de Sua Majestade. Porfírio aceitou o encargo, embora não desconhecesse (acrescentou) os espinhos que trazia; disse mais que não podia dispensar o concurso dos amigos presentes; ao que eles prontamente anuíram. O barbeiro veio à janela e comunicou ao povo essas resoluções, que o povo ratificou, aclamando o barbeiro. Este tomou a denominação de—"Protetor da vila em nome de Sua Majestade, e do povo".—Expediram-se logo várias ordens importantes, comunicações oficiais do novo governo, uma exposição minuciosa ao vice-rei, com muitos protestos de obediência às ordens de Sua Majestade; finalmente uma proclamação ao povo, curta, mas enérgica:
"Itaguaienses!
Uma Câmara corrupta e violenta conspirava contra os interesses de Sua Majestade e do povo. A opinião pública tinha-a condenado; um punhado de cidadãos, fortemente apoiados pelos bravos dragões de Sua Majestade, acaba de a dissolver ignominiosamente, e por unânime consenso da vila, foi-me confiado o mando supremo, até que Sua Majestade se sirva ordenar o que parecer melhor ao seu real serviço. Itaguaienses! não vos peço senão que me rodeeis de confiança, que me auxilieis em restaurar a paz e a fazenda publica, tão desbaratada pela Câmara que ora findou às vossas mãos. Contai com o meu sacrifício, e ficai certos de que a coroa será por nós.
O Protetor da vila em nome de Sua Majestade e do povo Porfírio Caetano das Neves". Toda a gente advertiu no absoluto silêncio desta proclamação acerca da Casa Verde; e, segundo uns, não podia haver mais vivo indício dos projetos tenebrosos do barbeiro. O perigo era tanto maior quanto que, no meio mesmo desses graves sucessos, o alienista metera na Casa Verde umas sete ou oito pessoas, entre elas duas senhoras e sendo um dos homens aparentado com o Protetor. Não era um repto, um ato intencional; mas todos o interpretaram dessa maneira; e a vila respirou com a esperança de que o alienista dentro de vinte e quatro horas estaria a ferros e destruído o terrível cárcere.
O dia acabou alegremente. Enquanto o arauto da matraca ia recitando de esquina em esquina a proclamação, o povo espalhava-se nas ruas e jurava morrer em defesa do ilustre Porfírio Poucos gritos contra a Casa Verde, prova de confiança na ação do governo. O barbeiro faz expedir um ato declarando feriado aquele dia, e entabulou negociações com o vigário para a celebração de um Te-Deum, tão conveniente era aos olhos dele a conjunção do poder temporal com o espiritual; mas o Padre Lopes recusou abertamente o seu concurso.
—Em todo caso, Vossa Reverendíssima não se alistará entre os inimigos do governo? disse-lhe o barbeiro, dando à fisionomia um aspecto tenebroso.
Ao que o Padre Lopes respondeu, sem responder:
—Como alistar-me, se o novo governo não tem inimigos?
O barbeiro sorriu; era a pura verdade. Salvo o capitão, os vereadores e os principais da vila, toda a gente o aclamava. Os mesmos principais, se o não aclamavam, não tinham saído contra ele. Nenhum dos almotacés deixou de vir receber as suas ordens. No geral, as famílias abençoavam o nome daquele que ia enfim libertar Itaguaí da Casa Verde e do terrível Simão Bacamarte. CAPÍTULO VIII - AS ANGÚSTIAS DO BOTICÁRIO
Vinte e quatro horas depois dos sucessos narrados no capítulo anterior, o barbeiro saiu do palácio do governo,—foi a denominação dada à casa da Câmara,— com dois ajudantes-de-ordens, e dirigiu-se à residência de Simão Bacamarte. Não ignorava ele que era mais decoroso ao governo mandá-lo chamar; o receio, porém, de que o alienista não obedecesse, obrigou-o a parecer tolerante e moderado.
Não descrevo o terror do boticário ao ouvir dizer que o barbeiro ia à casa do alienista.—Vai prendê-lo, pensou ele. E redobraram-lhe as angústias. Com efeito, a tortura moral do boticário naqueles dias de revolução excede a toda a descrição possível. Nunca um homem se achou em mais apertado lance: —a privança do alienista chamava-o ao lado deste, a vitória do barbeiro atraía-o ao barbeiro. Já a simples noticia da sublevação tinha-lhe sacudido fortemente a alma, porque ele sabia a unanimidade do ódio ao alienista; mas a vitória final foi também o golpe final. A esposa, senhora máscula, amiga particular de D. Evarista, dizia que o lugar dele era ao lado de Simão Bacamarte; ao passo que o coração lhe bradava que não, que a causa do alienista estava perdida, e que ninguém, por ato próprio, se amarra a um cadáver. Fê-lo Catão , é verdade, sed victa Catoni, pensava ele, relembrando algumas palestras habituais do Padre Lopes; mas Catão não se atou a uma causa vencida, ele era a própria causa vencida, a causa da república; o seu ato, portanto, foi de egoísta, de um miserável egoísta; minha situação é outra.
Insistindo, porém, a mulher, não achou Crispim Soares outra saída em tal crise senão adoecer; declarou-se doente e meteu-se na cama.
—Lá vai o Porfírio à casa do Dr. Bacamarte, disse-lhe a mulher no dia seguinte à cabeceira da cama; vai acompanhado de gente.
—Vai prendê-lo, pensou o boticário.
Uma idéia traz outra; o boticário imaginou que, uma vez preso o alienista, viriam também buscá-lo a ele na qualidade de cúmplice. Esta idéia foi 0 melhor dos vesicatórios. Crispim Soares ergueu-se, disse que estava bom, que ia sair; e, apesar de todos os esforços e protestos da consorte, vestiu-se e saiu. Os velhos cronistas são unânimes em dizer que a certeza de que o marido ia colocar-se nobremente ao lado do alienista consolou grandemente a esposa do boticário; e notam com muita perspicácia o imenso poder moral de uma ilusão; porquanto, o boticário caminhou resolutamente ao palácio do governo e não à casa do alienista. Ali chegando, mostrou-se admirado de não ver o barbeiro, a quem ia apresentar os seus protestos de adesão, não o tendo feito desde a véspera por enfermo. E tossia com algum custo. Os altos funcionários que lhe ouviam esta declaração, sabedores da intimidade do boticário com o alienista, compreenderam toda a importância da adesão nova e trataram a Crispim Soares com apurado carinho; afirmaram-lhe que o barbeiro não tardava; Sua Senhoria tinha ido à Casa Verde, a negócio importante, mas não tardava. Deram-lhe cadeira, refrescos, elogios; disseram-lhe que a causa do ilustre Porfírio era a de todos os patriotas; ao que o boticário ia repetindo que sim, que nunca pensara outra coisa, que isso mesmo mandaria declarar a Sua Majestade. CAPÍTULO IX - DOIS LINDOS CASOS
Não se demorou o alienista em receber o barbeiro; declarou-lhe que não tinha meios de resistir, e portanto estava prestes a obedecer. Só uma coisa pedia, é que o não constrangesse a assistir pessoalmente à destruição da Casa Verde.
O alienista mal podia dissimular o assombro; confessou que esperava outra coisa, o arrasamento do hospício, a prisão dele, o desterro, tudo, menos...
—O pasmo de Vossa Senhoria, atalhou gravemente o barbeiro, vem de não atender à grave responsabilidade do governo. O povo, tomado de uma cega piedade que lhe dá em tal caso legitima indignação, pode exigir do governo certa ordem de atos; mas este, com a responsabilidade que lhe incumbe, não os deve praticar, ao menos integralmente, e tal é a nossa situação. A generosa revolução que ontem derrubou uma Câmara vilipendiada e corrupta, pediu em altos brados o arrasamento da Casa Verde; mas pode entrar no animo do governo eliminar a loucura? Não. E se o governo não a pode eliminar, está ao menos apto para discriminá-la, reconhecê-la? Também não; é matéria de ciência. Logo, em assunto tão melindroso, o governo não pode, não quer dispensar o concurso de Vossa Senhoria. O que lhe pede é que de certa maneira demos alguma satisfação ao povo. Unamo-nos, e o povo saberá obedecer. Um dos alvitres aceitáveis, se Vossa Senhoria não indicar outro, seria fazer retirar da Casa Verde aqueles enfermos que estiverem quase curados e bem assim os maníacos de pouca monta, etc. Desse modo, sem grande perigo, mostraremos alguma tolerância e benignidade.
—Quantos mortos e feridos houve ontem no conflito? perguntou Simão Bacamarte depois de uns três minutos.
O barbeiro ficou espantado da pergunta, mas respondeu logo que onze mortos e vinte e cinco feridos.
—Onze mortos e vinte e cinco feridos! repetiu duas ou três vezes o alienista.
E em seguida declarou que o alvitre lhe não parecia bom mas que ele ia catar algum outro, e dentro de poucos dias lhe daria resposta. E fez-lhe várias perguntas acerca dos sucessos da véspera, ataque, defesa, adesão dos dragões, resistência da Câmara etc., ao que o barbeiro ia respondendo com grande abundância, insistindo principalmente no descrédito em que a Câmara caíra. O barbeiro confessou que o novo governo não tinha ainda por si a confiança dos principais da vila, mas o alienista podia fazer muito nesse ponto. O governo, concluiu o barbeiro, folgaria se pudesse contar não já com a simpatia senão com a benevolência do mais alto espírito de Itaguaí e seguramente do reino. Mas nada disso alterava a nobre e austera fisionomia daquele grande homem que ouvia calado, sem desvanecimento nem modéstia, mas impassível como um deus de pedra.
—Onze mortos e vinte e cinco feridos, repetiu o alienista depois de acompanhar o barbeiro até a porta. Eis aí dois lindos casos de doença cerebral. Os sintomas de duplicidade e descaramento deste barbeiro são positivos. Quanto à toleima dos que o aclamaram, não é preciso outra prova além dos onze mortos e vinte e cinco feridos.—Dois lindos casos!
—Viva o ilustre Porfírio! bradaram umas trinta pessoas que aguardavam o barbeiro à porta.
O alienista espiou pela janela e ainda ouviu este resto de uma pequena fala do barbeiro às trinta pessoas que o aclamavam:
—...porque eu velo, podeis estar certos disso, eu velo pela execução das vontades do povo. Confiai em mim; e tudo se fará pela melhor maneira. Só vos recomendo ordem. E ordem, meus amigos, é a base do governo...
—Viva o ilustre Porfírio bradaram as trinta vozes, agitando os chapéus.
—Dois lindos casos! murmurou o alienista. CAPÍTULO X - RESTAURAÇÃO
Dentro de cinco dias, o alienista meteu na Casa Verde cerca de cinqüenta aclamadores do novo governo. O povo indignou-se. O governo, atarantado, não sabia reagir. João Pina, outro barbeiro, dizia abertamente nas ruas, que o Porfírio estava "vendido ao ouro de Simão Bacamarte", frase que congregou em torno de João Pina a gente mais resoluta da vila. Porfírio vendo o antigo rival da navalha à testa da insurreição, compreendeu que a sua perda era irremediável, se não desse um grande golpe; expediu dois decretos, um abolindo a Casa Verde, outro desterrando o alienista. João Pina mostrou claramente com grandes frases que o ato de Porfírio! era um simples aparato, um engodo, em que o povo não devia crer. Duas horas depois caía Porfírio! ignominiosamente e João Pina assumia a difícil tarefa do governo. Como achasse nas gavetas as minutas da proclamação, da exposição ao vice-rei e de outros atos inaugurais do governo anterior, deu-se pressa em os fazer copiar e expedir; acrescentam os cronistas, e aliás subentende-se, que ele lhes mudou os nomes, e onde o outro barbeiro falara de uma Câmara corrupta, falou este de "um intruso eivado das más doutrinas francesas e contrário aos sacrossantos interesses de Sua Majestade", etc.
Nisto entrou na vila uma força mandada pelo vice-rei e restabeleceu a ordem. O alienista exigiu desde logo a entrega do barbeiro Porfírio e bem assim a de uns cinqüenta e tantos indivíduos que declarou mentecaptos; e não só lhe deram esses como afiançaram entregar-lhe mais dezenove sequazes do barbeiro, que convalesciam das feridas apanhadas na primeira rebelião.
Este ponto da crise de Itaguaí marca também o grau máximo da influência de Simão Bacamarte. Tudo quanto quis, deu-se-lhe; e uma das mais vivas provas do poder do ilustre médico achamo-la na prontidão com que os vereadores, restituídos a seus lugares, consentiram em que Sebastião Freitas também fosse recolhido ao hospício. O alienista, sabendo da extraordinária inconsistência das opiniões desse vereador, entendeu que era um caso patológico, e pediu-o. A mesma coisa aconteceu ao boticário. O alienista, desde que lhe falaram da momentânea adesão de Crispim Soares à rebelião dos Canjicas, comparou-a à aprovação que sempre recebera dele ainda na véspera, e mandou capturá-lo. Crispim Soares não negou o fato, mas explicou-o dizendo que cedera a um movimento de terror ao ver a rebelião triunfante, e deu como prova a ausência de nenhum outro aro seu, acrescentando que voltara logo à cama, doente. Simão Bacamarte não o contrariou; disse, porém, aos circunstantes que o terror também é pai da loucura, e que o caso de Crispim Soares lhe parecia dos mais caracterizados.
Mas a prova mais evidente da influência de Simão Bacamarte foi a docilidade com que a Câmara lhe entregou o próprio presidente. Este digno magistrado tinha declarado, em plena sessão, que não se contentava, para lavá-la da afronta dos Canjicas, com menos de trinta almudes de sangue; palavra que chegou aos ouvidos do alienista por boca do secretário da Câmara entusiasmado de tamanha energia. Simão Bacamarte começou por meter 0 secretário na Casa Verde, e foi dali à Câmara à qual declarou que o presidente estava padecendo da "demência dos touros", um gênero que ele pretendia estudar, com grande vantagem para os povos. A Câmara a princípio hesitou, mas acabou cedendo.
Daí em diante foi uma coleta desenfreada. Um homem não podia dar nascença ou curso à mais simples mentira do mundo, ainda daquelas que aproveitam ao inventor ou divulgador, que não fosse logo metido na Casa Verde. Tudo era loucura. Os cultores de enigmas, os fabricantes de charadas, de anagramas, os maldizentes, os curiosos da vida alheia, os que põem todo o seu cuidado na tafularia, um ou outro almotacé enfunado, ninguém escapava aos emissários do alienista. Ele respeitava as namoradas e não poupava as namoradeiras, dizendo que as primeiras cediam a um impulso natural e as segundas a um vício. Se um homem era avaro ou pródigo, ia do mesmo modo para a Casa Verde; daí a alegação de que não havia regra para a completa sanidade mental. Alguns cronistas crêem que Simão Bacamarte nem sempre procedia com lisura, e citam em abono da afirmação (que não sei se pode ser aceita) o fato de ter alcançado da Câmara uma postura autorizando o uso de um anel de prata no dedo polegar da mão esquerda, a toda a pessoa que, sem outra prova documental ou tradicional, declarasse ter nas veias duas ou três onças de sangue godo. Dizem esses cronistas que o fim secreto da insinuação à Câmara foi enriquecer um ourives amigo e compadre dele; mas, conquanto seja certo que o ourives viu prosperar o negócio depois da nova ordenação municipal, não o é menos que essa postura deu à Casa Verde uma multidão de inquilinos; pelo que, não se pode definir, sem temeridade, o verdadeiro fim do ilustre médico. Quanto à razão determinativa da captura e aposentação na Casa Verde de todos quantos usaram do anel, é um dos pontos mais obscuros da história de Itaguaí a opinião mais verossímil é que eles foram recolhidos por andarem a gesticular, à loa, nas ruas, em casa, na igreja. Ninguém ignora que os doidos gesticulam muito. Em todo caso, é uma simples conjetura; de positivo, nada há.
—Onde é que este homem vai parar? diziam os principais da terra. Ah! se nós tivéssemos apoiado os Canjicas...
Um dia de manhã—dia em que a Câmara devia dar um grande baile,—a vila inteira ficou abalada com a notícia de que a própria esposa do alienista fora metida na Casa Verde. Ninguém acreditou; devia ser invenção de algum gaiato. E não era: era a verdade pura. D. Evarista fora recolhida às duas horas da noite. O Padre Lopes correu ao alienista e interrogou-o discretamente acerca do fato.
—Já há algum tempo que eu desconfiava, disse gravemente o marido. A modéstia com que ela vivera em ambos os matrimônios não podia conciliar-se com o furor das sedas, veludos, rendas e pedras preciosas que manifestou logo que voltou do Rio de Janeiro. Desde então comecei a observá-la. Suas conversas eram todas sobre esses objetos; se eu lhe falava das antigas cortes, inquiria logo da forma dos vestidos das damas; se uma senhora a visitava na minha ausência, antes de me dizer o objeto da visita, descrevia-me o trajo, aprovando umas coisas e censurando outras. Um dia, creio que Vossa Reverendíssima há de lembrar-se, propôs-se a fazer anualmente um vestido para a imagem de Nossa Senhora da matriz. Tudo isto eram sintomas graves; esta noite, porém, declarou-se a total demência. Tinha escolhido, preparado, enfeitado o vestuário que levaria ao baile da Câmara Municipal; só hesitava entre um colar de granada e outro de safira. Anteontem perguntou-me qual deles levaria; respondi-lhe que um ou outro lhe ficava bem. Ontem repetiu a pergunta ao almoço; pouco depois de jantar fui achá-la calada e pensativa.—Que tem? perguntei-lhe.—Queria levar o colar de granada, mas acho o de safira tão bonito!—Pois leve o de safira.—Ah! mas onde fica o de granada?—Enfim, passou a tarde sem novidade. Ceamos, e deitamo-nos. Alta noite, seria hora e meia, acordo e não a vejo; levanto-me, vou ao quarto de vestir, acho-a diante dos dois colares, ensaiando-os ao espelho, ora um ora outro. Era evidente a demência: recolhi-a logo.
O Padre Lopes não se satisfez com a resposta, mas não objetou nada. O alienista, porém, percebeu e explicou-lhe que o caso de D. Evarista era de "mania santuária", não incurável e em todo caso digno de estudo.
—Conto pô-la boa dentro de seis semanas, concluiu ele.
E a abnegação do ilustre médico deu-lhe grande realce. Conjeturas, invenções, desconfianças, tudo caiu por terra desde que ele não duvidou recolher à Casa Verde a própria mulher, a quem amava com todas as forças da alma. Ninguém mais tinha o direito de resistir-lhe—menos ainda o de atribuir-lhe intuitos alheios à ciência. Era um grande homem austero, Hipócrates forrado de Catão. CAPÍTULO XI - O ASSOMBRO DE ITAGUAÍ
E agora prepare-se o leitor para o mesmo assombro em que ficou a vila ao saber um dia que os loucos da Casa Verde iam todos ser postos na rua.
—Todos?
—Todos.
—É impossível; alguns sim, mas todos...
—Todos. Assim o disse ele no ofício que mandou hoje de manhã à Câmara
De fato o alienista oficiara à Câmara expondo: — 1': que verificara das estatísticas da vila e da Casa Verde que quatro quintos da população estavam aposentados naquele estabelecimento; 2° que esta deslocação de população levara-o a examinar os fundamentos da sua teoria das moléstias cerebrais, teoria que excluía da razão todos os casos em que o equilíbrio das faculdades não fosse perfeito e absoluto; 3° que, desse exame e do fato estatístico, resultara para ele a convicção de que a verdadeira doutrina não era aquela, mas a oposta, e portanto, que se devia admitir como normal e exemplar o desequilíbrio das faculdades e como hipóteses patológicas todos os casos em que aquele equilíbrio fosse ininterrupto; 4D que à vista disso declarava à Câmara que ia dar liberdade aos reclusos da Casa Verde e agasalhar nela as pessoas que se achassem nas condições agora expostas; 5° que, tratando de descobrir a verdade científica, não se pouparia a esforços de toda a natureza, esperando da Câmara igual dedicação; 6º que restituía à Câmara e aos particulares a soma do estipêndio recebido para alojamento dos supostos loucos, descontada a parte efetivamente gasta com a alimentação, roupa, etc.; o que a Câmara mandaria verificar nos livros e arcas da Casa Verde.
O assombro de Itaguaí foi grande; não foi menor a alegria dos parentes e amigos dos reclusos. Jantares, danças, luminárias, músicas, tudo houve para celebrar tão fausto acontecimento. Não descrevo as festas por não interessarem ao nosso propósito; mas foram esplêndidas, tocantes e prolongadas.
E vão assim as coisas humanas! No meio do regozijo produzido pelo ofício de Simão Bacamarte, ninguém advertia na frase final do § 4º, uma frase cheia de experiências futuras. CAPÍTULO XII - O FINAL DO § 4º.
Apagaram-se as luminárias, reconstituíram-se as famílias, tudo parecia reposto nos antigos eixos. Reinava a ordem, a Câmara exercia outra vez o governo sem nenhuma pressão externa; o presidente e o vereador Freitas tornaram aos seus lugares. O barbeiro Porfírio, ensinado pelos acontecimentos, tendo "provado tudo", como o poeta disse de Napoleão, e mais alguma coisa, porque Napoleão não provou a Casa Verde, o barbeiro achou preferível a glória obscura da navalha e da tesoura às calam idades brilhantes do poder; foi, é certo, processado; mas a população da vila implorou a clemência de Sua Majestade; daí o perdão. João Pina foi absolvido, atendendo-se a que ele derrocara um rebelde. Os cronistas pensam que deste fato é que nasceu o nosso adágio:—ladrão que furta ladrão tem cem anos de perdão;— adágio imoral, é verdade, mas grandemente útil.
Não só findaram as queixas contra o alienista, mas até nenhum ressentimento ficou dos atos que ele praticara; acrescendo que os reclusos da Casa Verde, desde que ele os declarara plenamente ajuizados, sentiram-se tomados de profundo reconhecimento e férvido entusiasmo. Muitos entenderam que o alienista merecia uma especial manifestação e deram-lhe um baile, ao qual se seguiram outros bailes e jantares. Dizem as crônicas que D. Evarista a princípio tivera idéia de separar-se do consorte, mas a dor de perder a companhia de tão grande homem venceu qualquer ressentimento de amor-próprio e o casal veio a ser ainda mais feliz do que antes.
Não menos íntima ficou a amizade do alienista e do boticário. Este concluiu do ofício de Simão Bacamarte que a prudência é a primeira das virtudes em tempos de revolução e apreciou muito a magnanimidade do alienista, que ao dar-lhe a liberdade estendeu-lhe a mão de amigo velho.
—É um grande homem, disse ele à mulher, referindo aquela circunstância.
Não é preciso falar do albardeiro, do Costa, do Coelho, do Martim Brito e outros especialmente nomeados neste escrito; basta dizer que puderam exercer livremente os seus hábitos anteriores. O próprio Martim Brito, recluso por um discurso em que louvara enfaticamente D. Evarista, fez agora outro em honra do insigne médico—"cujo altíssimo gênio, elevando as asas muito acima do sol, deixou abaixo de si todos os demais espíritos da terra".
Entretanto, a Câmara que respondera o ofício de Simão Bacamarte com a ressalva de que oportunamente estatuiria em relação ao final do § 4°, tratou enfim de legislar sobre ele. Foi adorada sem debate uma postura, autorizando o alienista a agasalhar na Casa Verde as pessoas que se achassem no gozo do perfeito equilíbrio das faculdades mentais. E porque a experiência da Câmara tivesse sido dolorosa, estabeleceu ela a cláusula de que a autorização era provisória, limitada a um ano, para o fim de ser experimentada a nova teoria psicológica, podendo a Câmara antes mesmo daquele prazo mandar fechar a Casa Verde, se a isso fosse aconselhada por motivos de ordem pública. O vereador Freitas propôs também a declaração de que, em nenhum caso, fossem os vereadores recolhidos ao asilo dos alienados: cláusula que foi aceita, votada e incluída na postura apesar das reclamações do vereador Galvão. O argumento principal deste magistrado é que a Câmara legislando sobre uma experiência científica, não podia excluir as pessoas dos seus membros das conseqüências da lei; a exceção era odiosa e ridícula. Mal proferira estas duas palavras, romperam os vereadores em altos brados contra a audácia e insensatez do colega; este, porem, ouviu-os e limitou-se a dizer que votava contra a exceção.
—A vereança, concluiu ele, não nos dá nenhum poder especial nem nos elimina do espírito humano.
Simão Bacamarte aceitou a postura com todas as restrições. Quanto à exclusão dos vereadores, declarou que teria profundo sentimento se fosse compelido a recolhê-los à Casa Verde; a cláusula, porém, era a melhor prova de que eles não padeciam do perfeito equilíbrio das faculdades mentais. Não acontecia o mesmo ao vereador Galvão, cujo acerto na objeção feita, e cuja moderação na resposta dada às invectivas dos colegas mostravam da parte dele um cérebro bem organizado; pelo que rogava à Câmara que lho entregasse. A Câmara sentindo-se ainda agravada pelo proceder do vereador Galvão, estimou 0 pedido do alienista e votou unanimemente a entrega.
Compreende-se que, pela teoria nova, não bastava um fato ou um dito para recolher alguém à Casa Verde; era preciso um longo exame, um vasto inquérito do passado e do presente. O Padre Lopes, por exemplo, só foi capturado trinta dias depois da postura, a mulher do boticário quarenta dias. A reclusão desta senhora encheu o consorte de indignação. Crispim Soares saiu de casa espumando de cólera e declarando às pessoas a quem encontrava que ia arrancar as orelhas ao tirano. Um sujeito, adversário do alienista, ouvindo na rua essa noticia, esqueceu os motivos de dissidência, e correu à casa de Simão Bacamarte a participar-lhe o perigo que corria. Simão Bacamarte mostrou-se grato ao procedimento do adversário, e poucos minutos lhe bastaram para conhecer a retidão dos seus sentimentos, a boa-fé, o respeito humano, a generosidade; apertou-lhe muito as mãos, e recolheu-o à Casa Verde.
—Um caso destes é raro, disse ele à mulher pasmada. Agora esperemos o nosso Crispim.
Crispim Soares entrou. A dor vencera a raiva, o boticário não arrancou as orelhas ao alienista. Este consolou o seu privado, assegurando-lhe que não era caso perdido; talvez a mulher tivesse alguma lesão cerebral; ia examiná-la com muita atenção; mas antes disso não podia deixá -la na rua. E, parecendo-lhe vantajoso reuni-los, porque a astúcia e velhacaria do marido poderiam de certo modo curar a beleza moral que ele descobrira na esposa, disse Simão Bacamarte:
—O senhor trabalhará durante o dia na botica, mas almoçará e jantará com sua mulher, e cá passará as noites, e os domingos e dias santos.
A proposta colocou o pobre boticário na situação do asno de Buridan. Queria viver com a mulher, mas temia voltar à Casa Verde; e nessa luta esteve algum tempo, até que D. Evarista o tirou da dificuldade, prometendo que se incumbiria de ver a amiga e transmitiria os recados de um para outro. Crispim Soares beijou-lhe as mãos agradecido. Este último rasgo de egoísmo pusilânime pareceu sublime ao alienista.
Ao cabo de cinco meses estavam alojadas umas dezoito pessoas; mas Simão Bacamarte não afrouxava; ia de rua em rua, de casa em casa, espreitando, interrogando, estudando; e quando colhia um enfermo levava-o com a mesma alegria com que outrora os arrebanhava às dúzias. Essa mesma desproporção confirmava a teoria nova; achara-se enfim a verdadeira patologia cerebral. Um dia conseguiu meter na Casa Verde o juiz de fora; mas procedia com tanto escrúpulo que o não fez senão depois de estudar minuciosamente todos os seus atos e interrogar os principais da vila. Mais de uma vez esteve prestes a recolher pessoas perfeitamente desequilibradas; foi o que se deu com um advogado, em quem reconheceu um tal conjunto de qualidades morais e mentais que era perigoso deixá-lo na rua. Mandou prendê-lo; mas o agente, desconfiado, pediu-lhe para fazer uma experiência; foi ter com um compadre, demandado por um testamento falso, e deu-lhe de conselho que tomasse por advogado o Salustiano; era o nome da pessoa em questão.
—Então parece-lhe...?
—Sem dúvida: vá, confesse tudo, a verdade inteira, seja qual for, e confie-lhe a causa.
O homem foi ter com o advogado, confessou ter falsificado o testamento e acabou pedindo que lhe tomasse a causa. Não se negou o advogado; estudou os papéis, arrazoou longamente, e provou a todas as luzes que o testamento era mais que verdadeiro. A inocência do réu foi solenemente proclamada pelo juiz e a herança passou-lhe às mãos. O distinto jurisconsulto deveu a esta experiência a liberdade.
Mas nada escapa a um espírito original e penetrante. Simão Bacamarte, que desde algum tempo notava o zelo, a sagacidade, a paciência, a moderação daquele agente, reconheceu a habilidade e o tino com que ele levara a cabo uma experiência tão melindrosa e complicada, e determinou recolhê-lo imediatamente à Casa Verde; deu-lhe todavia um dos melhores cubículos.
Os alienados foram alojados por classes. Fez-se uma galeria de modestos; isto é, os loucos em quem predominava esta perfeição moral; outra de tolerantes, outra de verídicos, outra de símplices, outra de leais, outra de magnânimos, outra de sagazes, outra de sinceros, etc. Naturalmente as famílias e os amigos dos reclusos bradavam contra a teoria; e alguns tentaram compelir a Câmara a cassar a licença. A Câmara porém, não esquecera a linguagem do vereador Galvão, e, se cassasse a licença, vê-lo-ia na rua e restituído ao lugar; pelo que, recusou. Simão Bacamarte oficiou aos vereadores, não agradecendo, mas felicitando-os por esse ato de vingança pessoal.
Desenganados da legalidade, alguns principais da vila recorreram secretamente ao barbeiro Porfírio e afiançaram-lhe todo o apoio de gente, de dinheiro e influência na corte, se ele se pusesse à testa de outro movimento contra a Câmara e o alienista. O barbeiro respondeu-lhes que não; que a ambição o levara da primeira vez a transgredir as leis, mas que ele se emendara, reconhecendo o erro próprio e a pouca consistência da opinião dos seus mesmos sequazes; que a Câmara entendera autorizar a nova experiência do alienista, por um ano: cumpria, ou esperar o fim do prazo, ou requerer ao vice-rei, caso a mesma Câmara rejeitasse o pedido. Jamais aconselharia o emprego de um recurso que ele viu falhar em suas mãos e isso a troco de mortes e ferimentos que seriam o seu eterno remorso.
Dois dias depois o barbeiro era recolhido à Casa Verde.— Preso por ter cão, preso por não ter cão! exclamou o infeliz.
Chegou o fim do prazo, a Câmara autorizou um prazo suplementar de seis meses para ensaio dos meios terapêuticos. O desfecho deste episódio da crônica itaguaiense é de tal ordem e tão inesperado, que merecia nada menos de dez capítulos de exposição; mas contento-me com um, que será o remate da narrativa, e um dos mais belos exemplos de convicção científica e abnegação humana. CAPÍTULO XIII - PLUS ULTRA!
Era a vez da terapêutica. Simão Bacamarte, ativo e sagaz em descobrir enfermos, excedeu-se ainda na diligência e penetração com que principiou a tratá-los. Neste ponto todos os cronistas estão de pleno acordo: o ilustre alienista faz curas pasmosas, que excitaram a mais viva admiração em Itaguaí.
Com efeito, era difícil imaginar mais racional sistema terapêutico. Estando os loucos divididos por classes, segundo a perfeição moral que em cada um deles excedia às outras, Simão Bacamarte cuidou em atacar de frente a qualidade predominante. Suponhamos um modesto. Ele aplicava a medicação que pudesse incutir-lhe o sentimento oposto; e não ia logo às doses máximas,—graduava-as, conforme o estado, a idade, o temperamento, a posição social do enfermo. Às vezes bastava uma casaca, uma fita, uma cabeleira, uma bengala, para restituir a razão ao alienado; em outros casos a moléstia era mais rebelde; recorria então aos anéis de brilhantes, às distinções honoríficas, etc. Houve um doente poeta que resistiu a tudo. Simão Bacamarte começava a desesperar da cura, quando teve a idéia de mandar correr matraca para o fim de o apregoar como um rival de Garção e de Píndaro. —Foi um santo remédio, contava a mãe do infeliz a uma comadre; foi um santo remédio.
Outro doente, também modesto, opôs a mesma rebeldia à medicação; mas, não sendo escritor (mal sabia assinar o nome), não se lhe podia aplicar o remédio da matraca. Simão Bacamarte lembrou-se de pedir para ele o lugar de secretário da Academia dos Encobertos, estabelecida em Itaguaí. Os lugares de presidente e secretários eram de nomeação régia, por especial graça do finado Rei Dom João V, e implicavam o tratamento de Excelência e o uso de uma placa de ouro no chapéu. O governo de Lisboa recusou o diploma; mas, representando o alienista que o não pedia como prêmio honorífico ou distinção legitima, e somente como um meio terapêutico para um caso difícil, o governo cedeu excepcionalmente à súplica; e ainda assim não o faz sem extraordinário esforço do ministro da marinha e ultramar, que vinha a ser primo do alienado. Foi outro santo remédio.
—Realmente, é admirável! Dizia-se nas ruas, ao ver a expressão sadia e enfunada dos dois ex-dementes.
Tal era o sistema. Imagina-se o resto. Cada beleza moral ou mental era atacada no ponto em que a perfeição parecia mais sólida; e o efeito era certo. Nem sempre era certo. Casos houve em que a qualidade predominante resistia a tudo; então o alienista atacava outra parte, aplicando à terapêutica o método da estratégia militar, que toma uma fortaleza por um ponto, se por outro o não pode conseguir.
No fim de cinco meses e meio estava vazia a Casa Verde; todos curados! O vereador Galvão, tão cruelmente afligido de moderação e eqüidade, teve a felicidade de perder um tio; digo felicidade, porque o tio deixou um testamento ambíguo, e ele obteve uma boa interpretação corrompendo os juízes e embaçando os outros herdeiros. A sinceridade do alienista manifestou-se nesse lance; confessou ingenuamente que não teve parte na cura: foi a simples vis medicatrix da natureza. Não aconteceu o mesmo com o Padre Lopes. Sabendo o alienista que ele ignorava perfeitamente o hebraico e o grego, incumbiu-o de fazer uma análise crítica da versão dos Setenta; o padre aceitou a incumbência, e em boa hora o fez; ao cabo de dois meses possuía um livro e a ilberdade. Quanto à senhora do boticário, não ficou muito tempo na célula que lhe coube, e onde aliás lhe não faltaram carinhos.
—Por que é que o Crispim não vem visitar-me: dizia ela todos os dias.
Respondiam-lhe ora uma coisa, ora outra; afinal disseram-lhe a verdade inteira. A digna matrona não pôde conter a indignação e a vergonha. Nas explosões da cólera escaparam-lhe expressões soltas e vagas, como estas:
—Tratante!... velhaco!... ingrato!... Um patife que tem feito casas à custa de ungüentos falsificados e podres... Ah! tratante!...
Simão Bacamarte advertiu que, ainda quando não fosse verdadeira a acusação contida nestas palavras, bastavam elas para mostrar que a excelente senhora estava enfim restituída ao perfeito desequilíbrio das faculdades; e prontamente lhe deu alta.
Agora, se imaginais que o alienista ficou radiante ao ver sair o último hóspede da Casa Verde, mostrais com isso que ainda não conheceis o nosso homem. Plus ultra! era a sua divisa. Não lhe bastava ter descoberto a teoria verdadeira da loucura; não o contentava ter estabelecido em Itaguaí. o reinado da razão. Plus ultra! Não ficou alegre, ficou preocupado, cogitativo; alguma coisa lhe dizia que a teoria nova tinha, em si mesma, outra e novíssima teoria.
—Vejamos, pensava ele; vejamos se chego enfim à última verdade.
Dizia isto, passeando ao longo da vasta sala, onde fulgurava a mais rica biblioteca dos domínios ultramarinos de Sua Majestade. Um amplo chambre de damasco, preso à cintura por um cordão de seda, com borlas de ouro (presente de uma universidade) envolvia o corpo majestoso e austero do ilustre alienista. A cabeleira cobria-lhe uma extensa e nobre calva adquirida nas cogitações cotidianas da ciência. Os pés, não delgados e femininos, não graúdos e mariolas, mas proporcionados ao vulto, eram resguardados por um par de sapatos cujas fivelas não passavam de simples e modesto latão. Vede a diferença:—só se lhe notava luxo naquilo que era de origem científica; o que propriamente vinha dele trazia a cor da moderação e da singeleza, virtudes tão ajustadas à pessoa de um sábio.
Era assim que ele ia, o grande alienista, de um cabo a outro da vasta biblioteca, metido em si mesmo, estranho a todas as coisas que não fosse o tenebroso problema da patologia cerebral. Súbito, parou. Em pé, diante de uma janela, com o cotovelo esquerdo apoiado na mão direita, aberta, e o queixo na mão esquerda, fechada, perguntou ele a si:
—Mas deveras estariam eles doidos, e foram curados por mim,—ou o que pareceu cura não foi mais do que a descoberta do perfeito desequilíbrio do cérebro?
E cavando por aí abaixo, eis o resultado a que chegou: os cérebros bem organizados que ele acabava de curar, eram desequilibrados como os outros. Sim, dizia ele consigo, eu não posso ter a pretensão de haver-lhes incutido um sentimento ou uma faculdade nova; uma e outra coisa existiam no estado latente, mas existiam.
Chegado a esta conclusão, o ilustre alienista teve duas sensações contrárias, uma de gozo, outra de abatimento. A de gozo foi por ver que, ao cabo de longas e pacientes investigações, constantes trabalhos, luta ingente com o povo, podia afirmar esta verdade:—não havia loucos em Itaguaí. Itaguaí não possuía um só mentecapto. Mas tão depressa esta idéia lhe refrescara a alma, outra apareceu que neutralizou o primeiro efeito; foi a idéia da dúvida. Pois quê! Itaguaí. não possuiria um único cérebro concertado? Esta conclusão tão absoluta, não seria por isso mesmo errônea, e não vinha, portanto, destruir o largo e majestoso edifício da nova doutrina psicológica?
A aflição do egrégio Simão Bacamarte é definida pelos cronistas itaguaienses como uma das mais medonhas tempestades morais que têm desabado sobre o homem. Mas as tempestades só aterram os fracos; os forres enrijam-se contra elas e fitam o trovão. Vinte minutos depois alumiou-se a fisionomia do alienista de uma suave claridade.
—Sim, há de ser isso, pensou ele.
Isso é isto. Simão Bacamarte achou em si os característicos do perfeito equilíbrio mental e moral; pareceu-lhe que possuía a sagacidade, a paciência, a perseverança, a tolerância, a veracidade, o vigor moral, a lealdade, todas as qualidades enfim que podem formar um acabado mentecapto. Duvidou logo, é certo, e chegou mesmo a concluir que era ilusão; mas, sendo homem prudente, resolveu convocar um conselho de amigos, a quem interrogou com franqueza. A opinião foi afirmativa.
—Nenhum defeito?
—Nenhum, disse em coro a assembléia.
—Nenhum vício?
—Nada. —Tudo perfeito?
—Tudo.
—Não, impossível, bradou o alienista. Digo que não sinto em mim essa superioridade que acabo de ver definir com tanta magnificência. A simpatia é que vos faz falar. Estudo-me e nada acho que justifique os excessos da vossa bondade.
A assembléia insistiu; o alienista resistiu; finalmente o Padre Lopes. explicou tudo com este conceito digno de um observador:
—Sabe a razão por que não vê as suas elevadas qualidades, que aliás todos nós admiramos? É porque tem ainda uma qualidade que realça as outras:—a modéstia.
Era decisivo. Simão Bacamarte curvou a cabeça juntamente alegre e triste, e ainda mais alegre do que triste. Ato continuo, recolheu-se à Casa Verde. Em vão a mulher e os amigos lhe disseram que ficasse, que estava perfeitamente são e equilibrado: nem rogos nem sugestões nem lágrimas o detiveram um só instante.
—A questão é científica, dizia ele; trata-se de uma doutrina nova, cujo primeiro exemplo sou eu. Reúno em mim mesmo a teoria e a prática.
—Simão! Simão! meu amor! dizia-lhe a esposa com o rosto lavado em lágrimas.
Mas o ilustre médico, com os olhos acesos da convicção científica, trancou os ouvidos à saudade da mulher, e brandamente a repeliu. Fechada a porta da Casa Verde, entregou-se ao estudo e à cura de si mesmo. Dizem os cronistas que ele morreu dali a dezessete meses no mesmo estado em que entrou, sem ter podido alcançar nada. Alguns chegam ao ponto de conjeturar que nunca houve outro louco além dele em Itaguaí mas esta opinião fundada em um boato que correu desde que o alienista expirou, não tem outra prova senão o boato; e boato duvidoso, pois é atribuído ao Padre Lopes. que com tanto fogo realçara as qualidades do grande homem. Seja como for, efetuou-se o enterro com muita pompa e rara solenidade. CredoI believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development. Especially do I believe in the Negro Race: in the beauty of its genius, the sweetness of its soul, and its strength in that meekness which shall yet inherit this turbulent earth. I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law. I believe in Service—humble, reverent service, from the blackening of boots to the whitening of souls; for Work is Heaven, Idleness Hell, and Wage is the "Well done!" of the Master, who summoned all them that labor and are heavy laden, making no distinction between the black, sweating cotton hands of Georgia and the first families of Virginia, since all distinction not based on deed is devilish and not divine. I believe in the Devil and his angels, who wantonly work to narrow the opportunity of struggling human beings, especially if they be black; who spit in the faces of the fallen, strike them that cannot strike again, believe the worst and work to prove it, hating the image which their Maker stamped on a brother's soul. I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength. I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love. I believe in the Training of Children, black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation. Finally, I believe in Patience—patience with the weakness of the Weak and the strength of the Strong, the prejudice of the Ignorant and the ignorance of the Blind; patience with the tardy triumph of Joy and the mad chastening of Sorrow. ITHE SHADOW OF YEARSI was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The house was quaint, with clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there were five rooms, a tiny porch, a rosy front yard, and unbelievably delicious strawberries in the rear. A South Carolinian, lately come to the Berkshire Hills, owned all this—tall, thin, and black, with golden earrings, and given to religious trances. We were his transient tenants for the time. My own people were part of a great clan. Fully two hundred years before, Tom Burghardt had come through the western pass from the Hudson with his Dutch captor, "Coenraet Burghardt," sullen in his slavery and achieving his freedom by volunteering for the Revolution at a time of sudden alarm. His wife was a little, black, Bantu woman, who never became reconciled to this strange land; she clasped her knees and rocked and crooned:
"Do bana coba—gene me, gene me!Ben d'nuli, ben d'le—"
Tom died about 1787, but of him came many sons, and one, Jack, who helped in the War of 1812. Of Jack and his wife, Violet, was born a mighty family, splendidly named: Harlow and Ira, Cloë, Lucinda, Maria, and Othello! I dimly remember my grandfather, Othello,—or "Uncle Tallow,"—a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah—"Aunt Sally"—a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of whom the youngest was Mary, my mother. Mother was dark shining bronze, with a tiny ripple in her black hair, black-eyed, with a heavy, kind face. She gave one the impression of infinite patience, but a curious determination was concealed in her softness. The family were small farmers on Egremont Plain, between Great Barrington and Sheffield, Massachusetts. The bits of land were too small to support the great families born on them and we were always poor. I never remember being cold or hungry, but I do remember that shoes and coal, and sometimes flour, caused mother moments of anxious thought in winter, and a new suit was an event! At about the time of my birth economic pressure was transmuting the family generally from farmers to "hired" help. Some revolted and migrated westward, others went cityward as cooks and barbers. Mother worked for some years at house service in Great Barrington, and after a disappointed love episode with a cousin, who went to California, she met and married Alfred Du Bois and went to town to live by the golden river where I was born. Alfred, my father, must have seemed a splendid vision in that little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt against the world. He, too, was small, but squarish. I remember him as I saw him first, in his home in New Bedford,—white hair close-cropped; a seamed, hard face, but high in tone, with a gray eye that could twinkle or glare. Long years before him Louis XIV drove two Huguenots, Jacques and Louis Du Bois, into wild Ulster County, New York. One of them in the third or fourth generation had a descendant, Dr. James Du Bois, a gay, rich bachelor, who made his money in the Bahamas, where he and the Gilberts had plantations. There he took a beautiful little mulatto slave as his mistress, and two sons were born: Alexander in 1803 and John, later. They were fine, straight, clear-eyed boys, white enough to "pass." He brought them to America and put Alexander in the celebrated Cheshire School, in Connecticut. Here he often visited him, but one last time, fell dead. He left no will, and his relations made short shrift of these sons. They gathered in the property, apprenticed grandfather to a shoemaker; then dropped him. Grandfather took his bitter dose like a thoroughbred. Wild as was his inner revolt against this treatment, he uttered no word against the thieves and made no plea. He tried his fortunes here and in Haiti, where, during his short, restless sojourn, my own father was born. Eventually, grandfather became chief steward on the passenger boat between New York and New Haven; later he was a small merchant in Springfield; and finally he retired and ended his days at New Bedford. Always he held his head high, took no insults, made few friends. He was not a "Negro"; he was a man! Yet the current was too strong even for him. Then even more than now a colored man had colored friends or none at all, lived in a colored world or lived alone. A few fine, strong, black men gained the heart of this silent, bitter man in New York and New Haven. If he had scant sympathy with their social clannishness, he was with them in fighting discrimination. So, when the white Episcopalians of Trinity Parish, New Haven, showed plainly that they no longer wanted black Folks as fellow Christians, he led the revolt which resulted in St. Luke's Parish, and was for years its senior warden. He lies dead in the Grove Street Cemetery, beside Jehudi Ashmun. Beneath his sternness was a very human man. Slyly he wrote poetry,—stilted, pleading things from a soul astray. He loved women in his masterful way, marrying three beautiful wives in succession and clinging to each with a certain desperate, even if unsympathetic, affection. As a father he was, naturally, a failure,—hard, domineering, unyielding. His four children reacted characteristically: one was until past middle life a thin spinster, the mental image of her father; one died; one passed over into the white world and her children's children are now white, with no knowledge of their Negro blood; the fourth, my father, bent before grandfather, but did not break—better if he had. He yielded and flared back, asked forgiveness and forgot why, became the harshly-held favorite, who ran away and rioted and roamed and loved and married my brown mother. So with some circumstance having finally gotten myself born, with a flood of Negro blood, a strain of French, a bit of Dutch, but, thank God! no "Anglo-Saxon," I come to the days of my childhood. They were very happy. Early we moved back to Grandfather Burghardt's home,—I barely remember its stone fireplace, big kitchen, and delightful woodshed. Then this house passed to other branches of the clan and we moved to rented quarters in town,—to one delectable place "upstairs," with a wide yard full of shrubbery, and a brook; to another house abutting a railroad, with infinite interests and astonishing playmates; and finally back to the quiet street on which I was born,—down a long lane and in a homely, cozy cottage, with a living-room, a tiny sitting-room, a pantry, and two attic bedrooms. Here mother and I lived until she died, in 1884, for father early began his restless wanderings. I last remember urgent letters for us to come to New Milford, where he had started a barber shop. Later he became a preacher. But mother no longer trusted his dreams, and he soon faded out of our lives into silence. From the age of five until I was sixteen I went to a school on the same grounds,—down a lane, into a widened yard, with a big choke-cherry tree and two buildings, wood and brick. Here I got acquainted with my world, and soon had my criterions of judgment. Wealth had no particular lure. On the other hand, the shadow of wealth was about us. That river of my birth was golden because of the woolen and paper waste that soiled it. The gold was theirs, not ours; but the gleam and glint was for all. To me it was all in order and I took it philosophically. I cordially despised the poor Irish and South Germans, who slaved in the mills, and annexed the rich and well-to-do as my natural companions. Of such is the kingdom of snobs! Most of our townfolk were, naturally, the well-to-do, shading downward, but seldom reaching poverty. As playmate of the children I saw the homes of nearly every one, except a few immigrant New Yorkers, of whom none of us approved. The homes I saw impressed me, but did not overwhelm me. Many were bigger than mine, with newer and shinier things, but they did not seem to differ in kind. I think I probably surprised my hosts more than they me, for I was easily at home and perfectly happy and they looked to me just like ordinary people, while my brown face and frizzled hair must have seemed strange to them. Yet I was very much one of them. I was a center and sometimes the leader of the town gang of boys. We were noisy, but never very bad,—and, indeed, my mother's quiet influence came in here, as I realize now. She did not try to make me perfect. To her I was already perfect. She simply warned me of a few things, especially saloons. In my town the saloon was the open door to hell. The best families had their drunkards and the worst had little else. Very gradually,—I cannot now distinguish the steps, though here and there I remember a jump or a jolt—but very gradually I found myself assuming quite placidly that I was different from other children. At first I think I connected the difference with a manifest ability to get my lessons rather better than most and to recite with a certain happy, almost taunting, glibness, which brought frowns here and there. Then, slowly, I realized that some folks, a few, even several, actually considered my brown skin a misfortune; once or twice I became painfully aware that some human beings even thought it a crime. I was not for a moment daunted,—although, of course, there were some days of secret tears—rather I was spurred to tireless effort. If they beat me at anything, I was grimly determined to make them sweat for it! Once I remember challenging a great, hard farmer-boy to battle, when I knew he could whip me; and he did. But ever after, he was polite. As time flew I felt not so much disowned and rejected as rather drawn up into higher spaces and made part of a mightier mission. At times I almost pitied my pale companions, who were not of the Lord's anointed and who saw in their dreams no splendid quests of golden fleeces. Even in the matter of girls my peculiar phantasy asserted itself. Naturally, it was in our town voted bad form for boys of twelve and fourteen to show any evident weakness for girls. We tolerated them loftily, and now and then they played in our games, when I joined in quite as naturally as the rest. It was when strangers came, or summer boarders, or when the oldest girls grew up that my sharp senses noted little hesitancies in public and searchings for possible public opinion. Then I flamed! I lifted my chin and strode off to the mountains, where I viewed the world at my feet and strained my eyes across the shadow of the hills. I was graduated from high school at sixteen, and I talked of "Wendell Phillips." This was my first sweet taste of the world's applause. There were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my mother's smile. She was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy. It was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content and has not yet awakened. I felt a certain gladness to see her, at last, at peace, for she had worried all her life. Of my own loss I had then little realization. That came only with the after-years. Now it was the choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! At last, I was going beyond the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily. There came a little pause,—a singular pause. I was given to understand that I was almost too young for the world. Harvard was the goal of my dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were silent. Harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even the mill owners' sons had aimed lower. Finally it was tactfully explained that the place for me was in the South among my people. A scholarship had been already arranged at Fisk, and my summer earnings would pay the fare. My relatives grumbled, but after a twinge I felt a strange delight! I forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious irony by which I was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town, with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) "mine own people." Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that first supper at Fisk with the world "colored" and opposite two of the most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen. I promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy! As I peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly, but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, I seem to view my life divided into four distinct parts: the Age of Miracles, the Days of Disillusion, the Discipline of Work and Play, and the Second Miracle Age. The Age of Miracles began with Fisk and ended with Germany. I was bursting with the joy of living. I seemed to ride in conquering might. I was captain of my soul and master of fate! I willed to do! It was done. I wished! The wish came true. Now and then out of the void flashed the great sword of hate to remind me of the battle. I remember once, in Nashville, brushing by accident against a white woman on the street. Politely and eagerly I raised my hat to apologize. That was thirty-five years ago. From that day to this I have never knowingly raised my hat to a Southern white woman. I suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that they swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes. Consider, for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just escaped from a narrow valley: I willed and lo! my people came dancing about me,—riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need, and pleading; darkly delicious girls—"colored" girls—sat beside me and actually talked to me while I gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in boastful dreams. Boys with my own experiences and out of my own world, who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies. I studied eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling themselves some shadow of the Veil and lifting it gently that we darker souls might peer through to other worlds. I willed and lo! I was walking beneath the elms of Harvard,—the name of allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions! I needed money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,—not all I wanted or strove for, but all I needed to keep in school. Commencement came and standing before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, I told them certain astonishing truths, waving my arms and breathing fast! They applauded with what now seems to me uncalled-for fervor, but then! I walked home on pink clouds of glory! I asked for a fellowship and got it. I announced my plan of studying in Germany, but Harvard had no more fellowships for me. A friend, however, told me of the Slater Fund and how the Board was looking for colored men worth educating. No thought of modest hesitation occurred to me. I rushed at the chance. The trustees of the Slater Fund excused themselves politely. They acknowledged that they had in the past looked for colored boys of ability to educate, but, being unsuccessful, they had stopped searching. I went at them hammer and tongs! I plied them with testimonials and mid-year and final marks. I intimated plainly, impudently, that they were "stalling"! In vain did the chairman, Ex-President Hayes, explain and excuse. I took no excuses and brushed explanations aside. I wonder now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but instead he smiled and surrendered. I crossed the ocean in a trance. Always I seemed to be saying, "It is not real; I must be dreaming!" I can live it again—the little, Dutch ship—the blue waters—the smell of new-mown hay—Holland and the Rhine. I saw the Wartburg and Berlin; I made the Harzreise and climbed the Brocken; I saw the Hansa towns and the cities and dorfs of South Germany; I saw the Alps at Berne, the Cathedral at Milan, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Pesth; I looked on the boundaries of Russia; and I sat in Paris and London. On mountain and valley, in home and school, I met men and women as I had never met them before. Slowly they became, not white folks, but folks. The unity beneath all life clutched me. I was not less fanatically a Negro, but "Negro" meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and world-fellowship. I felt myself standing, not against the world, but simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the greater, finer world at my back urging me on. I builded great castles in Spain and lived therein. I dreamed and loved and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, I dropped suddenly back into "nigger"-hating America! My Days of Disillusion were not disappointing enough to discourage me. I was still upheld by that fund of infinite faith, although dimly about me I saw the shadow of disaster. I began to realize how much of what I had called Will and Ability was sheer Luck! Suppose my good mother had preferred a steady income from my child labor rather than bank on the precarious dividend of my higher training? Suppose that pompous old village judge, whose dignity we often ruffled and whose apples we stole, had had his way and sent me while a child to a "reform" school to learn a "trade"? Suppose Principal Hosmer had been born with no faith in "darkies," and instead of giving me Greek and Latin had taught me carpentry and the making of tin pans? Suppose I had missed a Harvard scholarship? Suppose the Slater Board had then, as now, distinct ideas as to where the education of Negroes should stop? Suppose and suppose! As I sat down calmly on flat earth and looked at my life a certain great fear seized me. Was I the masterful captain or the pawn of laughing sprites? Who was I to fight a world of color prejudice? I raise my hat to myself when I remember that, even with these thoughts, I did not hesitate or waver; but just went doggedly to work, and therein lay whatever salvation I have achieved. First came the task of earning a living. I was not nice or hard to please. I just got down on my knees and begged for work, anything and anywhere. I wrote to Hampton, Tuskegee, and a dozen other places. They politely declined, with many regrets. The trustees of a backwoods Tennessee town considered me, but were eventually afraid. Then, suddenly, Wilberforce offered to let me teach Latin and Greek at $750 a year. I was overjoyed! I did not know anything about Latin and Greek, but I did know of Wilberforce. The breath of that great name had swept the water and dropped into southern Ohio, where Southerners had taken their cure at Tawawa Springs and where white Methodists had planted a school; then came the little bishop, Daniel Payne, who made it a school of the African Methodists. This was the school that called me, and when re-considered offers from Tuskegee and Jefferson City followed, I refused; I was so thankful for that first offer. I went to Wilberforce with high ideals. I wanted to help to build a great university. I was willing to work night as well as day. I taught Latin, Greek, English, and German. I helped in the discipline, took part in the social life, begged to be allowed to lecture on sociology, and began to write books. But I found myself against a stone wall. Nothing stirred before my impatient pounding! Or if it stirred, it soon slept again. Of course, I was too impatient! The snarl of years was not to be undone in days. I set at solving the problem before I knew it. Wilberforce was a colored church-school. In it were mingled the problems of poorly-prepared pupils, an inadequately-equipped plant, the natural politics of bishoprics, and the provincial reactions of a country town loaded with traditions. It was my first introduction to a Negro world, and I was at once marvelously inspired and deeply depressed. I was inspired with the children,—had I not rubbed against the children of the world and did I not find here the same eagerness, the same joy of life, the same brains as in New England, France, and Germany? But, on the other hand, the ropes and myths and knots and hindrances; the thundering waves of the white world beyond beating us back; the scalding breakers of this inner world,—its currents and back eddies—its meanness and smallness—its sorrow and tragedy—its screaming farce! In all this I was as one bound hand and foot. Struggle, work, fight as I would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing. I had all the wild intolerance of youth, and no experience in human tangles. For the first time in my life I realized that there were limits to my will to do. The Day of Miracles was past, and a long, gray road of dogged work lay ahead. I had, naturally, my triumphs here and there. I defied the bishops in the matter of public extemporaneous prayer and they yielded. I bearded the poor, hunted president in his den, and yet was re-elected to my position. I was slowly winning a way, but quickly losing faith in the value of the way won. Was this the place to begin my life work? Was this the work which I was best fitted to do? What business had I, anyhow, to teach Greek when I had studied men? I grew sure that I had made a mistake. So I determined to leave Wilberforce and try elsewhere. Thus, the third period of my life began. First, in 1896, I married—a slip of a girl, beautifully dark-eyed and thorough and good as a German housewife. Then I accepted a job to make a study of Negroes in Philadelphia for the University of Pennsylvania,—one year at six hundred dollars. How did I dare these two things? I do not know. Yet they spelled salvation. To remain at Wilberforce without doing my ideals meant spiritual death. Both my wife and I were homeless. I dared a home and a temporary job. But it was a different daring from the days of my first youth. I was ready to admit that the best of men might fail. I meant still to be captain of my soul, but I realized that even captains are not omnipotent in uncharted and angry seas. I essayed a thorough piece of work in Philadelphia. I labored morning, noon, and night. Nobody ever reads that fat volume on "The Philadelphia Negro," but they treat it with respect, and that consoles me. The colored people of Philadelphia received me with no open arms. They had a natural dislike to being studied like a strange species. I met again and in different guise those curious cross-currents and inner social whirlings of my own people. They set me to groping. I concluded that I did not know so much as I might about my own people, and when President Bumstead invited me to Atlanta University the next year to teach sociology and study the American Negro, I accepted gladly, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars. My real life work was done at Atlanta for thirteen years, from my twenty-ninth to my forty-second birthday. They were years of great spiritual upturning, of the making and unmaking of ideals, of hard work and hard play. Here I found myself. I lost most of my mannerisms. I grew more broadly human, made my closest and most holy friendships, and studied human beings. I became widely-acquainted with the real condition of my people. I realized the terrific odds which faced them. At Wilberforce I was their captious critic. In Philadelphia I was their cold and scientific investigator, with microscope and probe. It took but a few years of Atlanta to bring me to hot and indignant defense. I saw the race-hatred of the whites as I had never dreamed of it before,—naked and unashamed! The faint discrimination of my hopes and intangible dislikes paled into nothing before this great, red monster of cruel oppression. I held back with more difficulty each day my mounting indignation against injustice and misrepresentation. With all this came the strengthening and hardening of my own character. The billows of birth, love, and death swept over me. I saw life through all its paradox and contradiction of streaming eyes and mad merriment. I emerged into full manhood, with the ruins of some ideals about me, but with others planted above the stars; scarred and a bit grim, but hugging to my soul the divine gift of laughter and withal determined, even unto stubbornness, to fight the good fight. At last, forbear and waver as I would, I faced the great Decision. My life's last and greatest door stood ajar. What with all my dreaming, studying, and teaching was I going to do in this fierce fight? Despite all my youthful conceit and bumptiousness, I found developed beneath it all a reticence and new fear of forwardness, which sprang from searching criticisms of motive and high ideals of efficiency; but contrary to my dream of racial solidarity and notwithstanding my deep desire to serve and follow and think, rather than to lead and inspire and decide, I found myself suddenly the leader of a great wing of people fighting against another and greater wing. Nor could any effort of mine keep this fight from sinking to the personal plane. Heaven knows I tried. That first meeting of a knot of enthusiasts, at Niagara Falls, had all the earnestness of self-devotion. At the second meeting, at Harper's Ferry, it arose to the solemnity of a holy crusade and yet without and to the cold, hard stare of the world it seemed merely the envy of fools against a great man, Booker Washington. Of the movement I was willy-nilly leader. I hated the role. For the first time I faced criticism and cared. Every ideal and habit of my life was cruelly misjudged. I who had always overstriven to give credit for good work, who had never consciously stooped to envy was accused by honest colored people of every sort of small and petty jealousy, while white people said I was ashamed of my race and wanted to be white! And this of me, whose one life fanaticism had been belief in my Negro blood! Away back in the little years of my boyhood I had sold the Springfield Republican and written for Mr. Fortune's Globe. I dreamed of being an editor myself some day. I am an editor. In the great, slashing days of college life I dreamed of a strong organization to fight the battles of the Negro race. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is such a body, and it grows daily. In the dark days at Wilberforce I planned a time when I could speak freely to my people and of them, interpreting between two worlds. I am speaking now. In the study at Atlanta I grew to fear lest my radical beliefs should so hurt the college that either my silence or the institution's ruin would result. Powers and principalities have not yet curbed my tongue and Atlanta still lives. It all came—this new Age of Miracles—because a few persons in 1909 determined to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday properly by calling for the final emancipation of the American Negro. I came at their call. My salary even for a year was not assured, but it was the "Voice without reply." The result has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and The Crisis and this book, which I am finishing on my Fiftieth Birthday. Last year I looked death in the face and found its lineaments not unkind. But it was not my time. Yet in nature some time soon and in the fullness of days I shall die, quietly, I trust, with my face turned South and eastward; and, dreaming or dreamless, I shall, I am sure, enjoy death as I have enjoyed life. A Litany at AtlantaO Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days-- Hear us, good Lord! Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy Sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy Heaven, O God, crying: We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord! We are not better than our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed,—curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home. Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners! And yet, whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity? Thou knowest, good God! Is this Thy Justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence and the innocent be crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty? Justice, O Judge of men! Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the Fathers dead? Have not seers seen in Heaven's halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of endless dead? Awake, Thou that sleepest! Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, through blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free—far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy, and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust! Turn again, O Lord; leave us not to perish in our sin! From lust of body and lust of blood,-- Great God, deliver us! From lust of power and lust of gold,-- Great God, deliver us! From the leagued lying of despot and of brute,-- Great God, deliver us! A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack, and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars where church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance! Bend us Thine ear, O Lord! In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one. Turn again our captivity, O Lord! Behold this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black man, who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: Work and Rise! He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but someone told how someone said another did—one whom he had never seen nor known. Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children to poverty and evil. Hear us, O heavenly Father! Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes, who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever! Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say! Bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the plan; give us the sign! Keep not Thou silent, O God! Sit not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing! Ah! Christ of all the Pities! Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words! Thou art still the God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul's Soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night. But whisper—speak—call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path! Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the liar. Whither? To death? Amen! Welcome, dark sleep! Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must,—and it is red. Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape. Selah! In yonder East trembles a star. Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord! Thy Will, O Lord, be done! Kyrie Eleison! Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord! We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord! Our voices sink in silence and in night. Hear us, good Lord! In night, O God of a godless land! Amen! In silence, O Silent God. IITHE SOULS OF WHITE FOLKHigh in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,—ugly, human. The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful! This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying: "My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born—white!" I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly: "But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen! Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the slave is discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! Do we sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or angry groans in India or triumphant banzais in Japan? "To your tents, O Israel!" These nations are not white! After the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Everything considered, the title to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty. It ought, at least, to look plausible. How easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man's soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white man's thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white man's deed; that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man's dream. In fine, that if from the world were dropped everything that could not fairly be attributed to White Folk, the world would, if anything, be even greater, truer, better than now. And if all this be a lie, is it not a lie in a great cause? Here it is that the comedy verges to tragedy. The first minor note is struck, all unconsciously, by those worthy souls in whom consciousness of high descent brings burning desire to spread the gift abroad,—the obligation of nobility to the ignoble. Such sense of duty assumes two things: a real possession of the heritage and its frank appreciation by the humble-born. So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. But when the black man begins to dispute the white man's title to certain alleged bequests of the Fathers in wage and position, authority and training; and when his attitude toward charity is sullen anger rather than humble jollity; when he insists on his human right to swagger and swear and waste,—then the spell is suddenly broken and the philanthropist is ready to believe that Negroes are impudent, that the South is right, and that Japan wants to fight America. After this the descent to Hell is easy. On the pale, white faces which the great billows whirl upward to my tower I see again and again, often and still more often, a writing of human hatred, a deep and passionate hatred, vast by the very vagueness of its expressions. Down through the green waters, on the bottom of the world, where men move to and fro, I have seen a man—an educated gentleman—grow livid with anger because a little, silent, black woman was sitting by herself in a Pullman car. He was a white man. I have seen a great, grown man curse a little child, who had wandered into the wrong waiting-room, searching for its mother: "Here, you damned black—" He was white. In Central Park I have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black folk rode by in a motor car. He was a white man. We have seen, you and I, city after city drunk and furious with ungovernable lust of blood; mad with murder, destroying, killing, and cursing; torturing human victims because somebody accused of crime happened to be of the same color as the mob's innocent victims and because that color was not white! We have seen,—Merciful God! in these wild days and in the name of Civilization, Justice, and Motherhood,—what have we not seen, right here in America, of orgy, cruelty, barbarism, and murder done to men and women of Negro descent. Up through the foam of green and weltering waters wells this great mass of hatred, in wilder, fiercer violence, until I look down and know that today to the millions of my people no misfortune could happen,—of death and pestilence, failure and defeat—that would not make the hearts of millions of their fellows beat with fierce, vindictive joy! Do you doubt it? Ask your own soul what it would say if the next census were to report that half of black America was dead and the other half dying. Unfortunate? Unfortunate. But where is the misfortune? Mine? Am I, in my blackness, the sole sufferer? I suffer. And yet, somehow, above the suffering, above the shackled anger that beats the bars, above the hurt that crazes there surges in me a vast pity,—pity for a people imprisoned and enthralled, hampered and made miserable for such a cause, for such a phantasy! Conceive this nation, of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to make the "World Safe for Democracy"! Can you imagine the United States protesting against Turkish atrocities in Armenia, while the Turks are silent about mobs in Chicago and St. Louis; what is Louvain compared with Memphis, Waco, Washington, Dyersburg, and Estill Springs? In short, what is the black man but America's Belgium, and how could America condemn in Germany that which she commits, just as brutally, within her own borders? A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. Say to men, earnestly and repeatedly: "Honesty is best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by." Say this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if not to it. But say to a people: "The one virtue is to be white," and the people rush to the inevitable conclusion, "Kill the 'nigger'!" Is not this the record of present America? Is not this its headlong progress? Are we not coming more and more, day by day, to making the statement "I am white," the one fundamental tenet of our practical morality? Only when this basic, iron rule is involved is our defense of right nation-wide and prompt. Murder may swagger, theft may rule and prostitution may flourish and the nation gives but spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be black or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of Negro blood, and the righteousness of the indignation sweeps the world. Nor would this fact make the indignation less justifiable did not we all know that it was blackness that was condemned and not crime. In the awful cataclysm of World War, where from beating, slandering, and murdering us the white world turned temporarily aside to kill each other, we of the Darker Peoples looked on in mild amaze. Among some of us, I doubt not, this sudden descent of Europe into hell brought unbounded surprise; to others, over wide area, it brought the Schaden Freude of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, I judge, looked on silently and sorrowfully, in sober thought, seeing sadly the prophecy of our own souls. Here is a civilization that has boasted much. Neither Roman nor Arab, Greek nor Egyptian, Persian nor Mongol ever took himself and his own perfectness with such disconcerting seriousness as the modern white man. We whose shame, humiliation, and deep insult his aggrandizement so often involved were never deceived. We looked at him clearly, with world-old eyes, and saw simply a human thing, weak and pitiable and cruel, even as we are and were. These super-men and world-mastering demi-gods listened, however, to no low tongues of ours, even when we pointed silently to their feet of clay. Perhaps we, as folk of simpler soul and more primitive type, have been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of white religion. We have curled our lips in something like contempt as we have witnessed glib apology and weary explanation. Nothing of the sort deceived us. A nation's religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure. Nor would we be unfair in this criticism: We know that we, too, have failed, as you have, and have rejected many a Buddha, even as you have denied Christ; but we acknowledge our human frailty, while you, claiming super-humanity, scoff endlessly at our shortcomings. The number of white individuals who are practising with even reasonable approximation the democracy and unselfishness of Jesus Christ is so small and unimportant as to be fit subject for jest in Sunday supplements and in Punch, Life, Le Rire, and Fliegende Blätter. In her foreign mission work the extraordinary self-deception of white religion is epitomized: solemnly the white world sends five million dollars worth of missionary propaganda to Africa each year and in the same twelve months adds twenty-five million dollars worth of the vilest gin manufactured. Peace to the augurs of Rome! We may, however, grant without argument that religious ideals have always far outrun their very human devotees. Let us, then, turn to more mundane matters of honor and fairness. The world today is trade. The world has turned shopkeeper; history is economic history; living is earning a living. Is it necessary to ask how much of high emprise and honorable conduct has been found here? Something, to be sure. The establishment of world credit systems is built on splendid and realizable faith in fellow-men. But it is, after all, so low and elementary a step that sometimes it looks merely like honor among thieves, for the revelations of highway robbery and low cheating in the business world and in all its great modern centers have raised in the hearts of all true men in our day an exceeding great cry for revolution in our basic methods and conceptions of industry and commerce. We do not, for a moment, forget the robbery of other times and races when trade was a most uncertain gamble; but was there not a certain honesty and frankness in the evil that argued a saner morality? There are more merchants today, surer deliveries, and wider well-being, but are there not, also, bigger thieves, deeper injustice, and more calloused selfishness in well-being? Be that as it may,—certainly the nicer sense of honor that has risen ever and again in groups of forward-thinking men has been curiously and broadly blunted. Consider our chiefest industry,—fighting. Laboriously the Middle Ages built its rules of fairness—equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. What do we see today? Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,—all this, with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers! War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near? Think of the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in German Africa, in British Nigeria, in French and Spanish Morocco, in China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen lesser places—were not these horrible, too? Mind you, there were for most of these wars no Red Cross funds. Behold little Belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world forgotten Congo? What Belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth, of what she has done to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880. Down the dark forests of inmost Africa sailed this modern Sir Galahad, in the name of "the noble-minded men of several nations," to introduce commerce and civilization. What came of it? "Rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form," wrote Glave in 1895. Harris declares that King Leopold's régime meant the death of twelve million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes." Yet the fields of Belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing elsewhere on its own account. As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battlesmoke and heard faintly the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: This is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture—back of all culture,—stripped and visible today. This is where the world has arrived,—these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable heights of which it boasted. Here is whither the might and energy of modern humanity has really gone. But may not the world cry back at us and ask: "What better thing have you to show? What have you done or would do better than this if you had today the world rule? Paint with all riot of hateful colors the thin skin of European culture,—is it not better than any culture that arose in Africa or Asia?" It is. Of this there is no doubt and never has been; but why is it better? Is it better because Europeans are better, nobler, greater, and more gifted than other folk? It is not. Europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. If we could scan the calendar of thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated ignorance of white schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget Sonni Ali. The greatness of Europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than that of other days and races. In other words, the deeper reasons for the triumph of European civilization lie quite outside and beyond Europe,—back in the universal struggles of all mankind. Why, then, is Europe great? Because of the foundations which the mighty past have furnished her to build upon: the iron trade of ancient, black Africa, the religion and empire-building of yellow Asia, the art and science of the "dago" Mediterranean shore, east, south, and west, as well as north. And where she has builded securely upon this great past and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more splendid human triumph; but where she has ignored this past and forgotten and sneered at it, she has shown the cloven hoof of poor, crucified humanity,—she has played, like other empires gone, the world fool! If, then, European triumphs in culture have been greater, so, too, may her failures have been greater. How great a failure and a failure in what does the World War betoken? Was it national jealousy of the sort of the seventeenth century? But Europe has done more to break down national barriers than any preceding culture. Was it fear of the balance of power in Europe? Hardly, save in the half-Asiatic problems of the Balkans. What, then, does Hauptmann mean when he says: "Our jealous enemies forged an iron ring about our breasts and we knew our breasts had to expand,—that we had to split asunder this ring or else we had to cease breathing. But Germany will not cease to breathe and so it came to pass that the iron ring was forced apart." Whither is this expansion? What is that breath of life, thought to be so indispensable to a great European nation? Manifestly it is expansion overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good. This Europe has largely done. The European world is using black and brown men for all the uses which men know. Slowly but surely white culture is evolving the theory that "darkies" are born beasts of burden for white folk. It were silly to think otherwise, cries the cultured world, with stronger and shriller accord. The supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary: Darker peoples are dark in mind as well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer, cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of mausers and maxims; they have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical idiots,—"half-devil and half-child." Such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly and in limited ways. They are not simply dark white men. They are not "men" in the sense that Europeans are men. To the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,—and let them be paid what men think they are worth—white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless. Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide mark of meanness,—color! Such is the silent revolution that has gripped modern European culture in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its zenith came in Boxer times: White supremacy was all but world-wide, Africa was dead, India conquered, Japan isolated, and China prostrate, while white America whetted her sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America, lynching her own Negroes the while. Temporary halt in this program was made by little Japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of such "yellow" presumption! What sort of a world would this be if yellow men must be treated "white"? Immediately the eventual overthrow of Japan became a subject of deep thought and intrigue, from St. Petersburg to San Francisco, from the Key of Heaven to the Little Brother of the Poor. The using of men for the benefit of masters is no new invention of modern Europe. It is quite as old as the world. But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed. The imperial width of the thing,—the heaven-defying audacity—makes its modern newness. The scheme of Europe was no sudden invention, but a way out of long-pressing difficulties. It is plain to modern white civilization that the subjection of the white working classes cannot much longer be maintained. Education, political power, and increased knowledge of the technique and meaning of the industrial process are destined to make a more and more equitable distribution of wealth in the near future. The day of the very rich is drawing to a close, so far as individual white nations are concerned. But there is a loophole. There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. It is here that the golden hand beckons. Here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences. These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in "punitive" expeditions when they revolt. In these dark lands "industrial development" may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial history of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with only one test of success,—dividends! This theory of human culture and its aims has worked itself through warp and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize. Everything great, good, efficient, fair, and honorable is "white"; everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is "yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." The changes of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper heading and moving-picture, in sermon and school book, until, of course, the King can do no wrong,—a White Man is always right and a Black Man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. There must come the necessary despisings and hatreds of these savage half-men, this unclean canaille of the world—these dogs of men. All through the world this gospel is preaching. It has its literature, it has its secret propaganda and above all—it pays! There's the rub,—it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm-oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper—they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully. Small wonder, then, that in the practical world of things-that-be there is jealousy and strife for the possession of the labor of dark millions, for the right to bleed and exploit the colonies of the world where this golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the whipping and shooting. It was this competition for the labor of yellow, brown, and black folks that was the cause of the World War. Other causes have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless were, but they were subsidiary and subordinate to this vast quest of the dark world's wealth and toil. Colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream. They belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in Hong Kong and Anam, in Borneo and Rhodesia, in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, in Panama and Havana—these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms. Germany, at last one and united and secure on land, looked across the seas and seeing England with sources of wealth insuring a luxury and power which Germany could not hope to rival by the slower processes of exploiting her own peasants and workingmen, especially with these workers half in revolt, immediately built her navy and entered into a desperate competition for possession of colonies of darker peoples. To South America, to China, to Africa, to Asia Minor, she turned like a hound quivering on the leash, impatient, suspicious, irritable, with blood-shot eyes and dripping fangs, ready for the awful word. England and France crouched watchfully over their bones, growling and wary, but gnawing industriously, while the blood of the dark world whetted their greedy appetites. In the background, shut out from the highway to the seven seas, sat Russia and Austria, snarling and snapping at each other and at the last Mediterranean gate to the El Dorado, where the Sick Man enjoyed bad health, and where millions of serfs in the Balkans, Russia, and Asia offered a feast to greed well-nigh as great as Africa. The fateful day came. It had to come. The cause of war is preparation for war; and of all that Europe has done in a century there is nothing that has equaled in energy, thought, and time her preparation for wholesale murder. The only adequate cause of this preparation was conquest and conquest, not in Europe, but primarily among the darker peoples of Asia and Africa; conquest, not for assimilation and uplift, but for commerce and degradation. For this, and this mainly, did Europe gird herself at frightful cost for war. The red day dawned when the tinder was lighted in the Balkans and Austro-Hungary seized a bit which brought her a step nearer to the world's highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another. Then came that curious chorus of challenges, those leaping suspicions, raking all causes for distrust and rivalry and hatred, but saying little of the real and greatest cause. Each nation felt its deep interests involved. But how? Not, surely, in the death of Ferdinand the Warlike; not, surely, in the old, half-forgotten revanche for Alsace-Lorraine; not even in the neutrality of Belgium. No! But in the possession of land overseas, in the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker world,—on coolies in China, on starving peasants in India, on black savages in Africa, on dying South Sea Islanders, on Indians of the Amazon—all this and nothing more. Even the broken reed on which we had rested high hopes of eternal peace,—the guild of the laborers—the front of that very important movement for human justice on which we had builded most, even this flew like a straw before the breath of king and kaiser. Indeed, the flying had been foreshadowed when in Germany and America "international" Socialists had all but read yellow and black men out of the kingdom of industrial justice. Subtly had they been bribed, but effectively: Were they not lordly whites and should they not share in the spoils of rape? High wages in the United States and England might be the skilfully manipulated result of slavery in Africa and of peonage in Asia. With the dog-in-the-manger theory of trade, with the determination to reap inordinate profits and to exploit the weakest to the utmost there came a new imperialism,—the rage for one's own nation to own the earth or, at least, a large enough portion of it to insure as big profits as the next nation. Where sections could not be owned by one dominant nation there came a policy of "open door," but the "door" was open to "white people only." As to the darkest and weakest of peoples there was but one unanimity in Europe,—that which Hen Demberg of the German Colonial Office called the agreement with England to maintain white "prestige" in Africa,—the doctrine of the divine right of white people to steal. Thus the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises "darkies." If one has the temerity to suggest that these workingmen may walk the way of white workingmen and climb by votes and self-assertion and education to the rank of men, he is howled out of court. They cannot do it and if they could, they shall not, for they are the enemies of the white race and the whites shall rule forever and forever and everywhere. Thus the hatred and despising of human beings from whom Europe wishes to extort her luxuries has led to such jealousy and bickering between European nations that they have fallen afoul of each other and have fought like crazed beasts. Such is the fruit of human hatred. But what of the darker world that watches? Most men belong to this world. With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations. What, then, is this dark world thinking? It is thinking that as wild and awful as this shameful war was, it is nothing to compare with that fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of the White World cease. The Dark World is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer. Let me say this again and emphasize it and leave no room for mistaken meaning: The World War was primarily the jealous and avaricious struggle for the largest share in exploiting darker races. As such it is and must be but the prelude to the armed and indignant protest of these despised and raped peoples. Today Japan is hammering on the door of justice, China is raising her half-manacled hands to knock next, India is writhing for the freedom to knock, Egypt is sullenly muttering, the Negroes of South and West Africa, of the West Indies, and of the United States are just awakening to their shameful slavery. Is, then, this war the end of wars? Can it be the end, so long as sits enthroned, even in the souls of those who cry peace, the despising and robbing of darker peoples? If Europe hugs this delusion, then this is not the end of world war,—it is but the beginning! We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's and Asia's,—in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference, however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than any preceding civilization ever faced. It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this rôle. For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,—making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,—rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down black; to your tents, O white folk, and world war with black and parti-colored mongrel beasts! Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown and yellow peoples are concerned. And this, too, in spite of the fact that there has been no actual failure; the Indian is not dying out, the Japanese and Chinese have not menaced the land, and the experiment of Negro suffrage has resulted in the uplift of twelve million people at a rate probably unparalleled in history. But what of this? America, Land of Democracy, wanted to believe in the failure of democracy so far as darker peoples were concerned. Absolutely without excuse she established a caste system, rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical colonies. She stands today shoulder to shoulder with Europe in Europe's worst sin against civilization. She aspires to sit among the great nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser breeds without the law" and she is at times heartily ashamed even of the large number of "new" white people whom her democracy has admitted to place and power. Against this surging forward of Irish and German, of Russian Jew, Slav and "dago" her social bars have not availed, but against Negroes she can and does take her unflinching and immovable stand, backed by this new public policy of Europe. She trains her immigrants to this despising of "niggers" from the day of their landing, and they carry and send the news back to the submerged classes in the fatherlands. All this I see and hear up in my tower, above the thunder of the seven seas. From my narrowed windows I stare into the night that looms beneath the cloud-swept stars. Eastward and westward storms are breaking,—great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable. I will not believe that all that was must be, that all the shameful drama of the past must be done again today before the sunlight sweeps the silver seas. If I cry amid this roar of elemental forces, must my cry be in vain, because it is but a cry,—a small and human cry amid Promethean gloom? Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,—this modern Prometheus,—hang bound by his own binding, tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his mighty cry reverberating through the world, "I am white!" Well and good, O Prometheus, divine thief! Is not the world wide enough for two colors, for many little shinings of the sun? Why, then, devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, "I am black!" The Riddle of the Sphinx
Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea!Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free!The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep,Have kissed each other in God's name and kissed a world to sleep.
The will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky,And not from the East and not from the West knelled thatsoul-waking cry,But out of the South,—the sad, black South—it screamed fromthe top of the sky,Crying: "Awake, O ancient race!" Wailing, "O woman, arise!"And crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in themidnight cries,--But the burden of white men bore her back and the white worldstifled her sighs.
The white world's vermin and filth:All the dirt of London,All the scum of New York;Valiant spoilers of womenAnd conquerers of unarmed men;Shameless breeders of bastards,Drunk with the greed of gold,Baiting their blood-stained hooksWith cant for the souls of the simple;Bearing the white man's burdenOf liquor and lust and lies!
Unthankful we wince in the East,Unthankful we wail from the westward,Unthankfully thankful, we curse,In the unworn wastes of the wild:I hate them, Oh!I hate them well,I hate them, Christ!As I hate hell!If I were God,I'd sound their knellThis day!Who raised the fools to their glory,But black men of Egypt and Ind,Ethiopia's sons of the evening,Indians and yellow Chinese,Arabian children of morning,And mongrels of Rome and Greece?Ah, well!And they that raised the boastersShall drag them down again,—Down with the theft of their thievingAnd murder and mocking of men;Down with their barter of womenAnd laying and lying of creeds;Down with their cheating of childhoodAnd drunken orgies of war,--downdowndeep down,Till the devil's strength be shorn,Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,And married maiden, mother of God,Bid the black Christ be born!Then shall our burden be manhood,Be it yellow or black or white;And poverty and justice and sorrow,The humble, and simple and strongShall sing with the sons of morningAnd daughters of even-song:Black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea,Wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free,Where 'neath the bloody finger-marks thy riven bosom quakes,Thicken the thunders of God's Voice and lo! a world awakes!
IIITHE HANDS OF ETHIOPIA"Semper novi quid ex Africa," cried the Roman proconsul, and he voiced the verdict of forty centuries. Yet there are those who would write world history and leave out of account this most marvelous of continents. Particularly today most men assume that Africa is far afield from the center of our burning social problems and especially from our problem of world war. Always Africa is giving us something new or some metempsychosis of a world-old thing. On its black bosom arose one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of self-protecting civilizations, which grew so mightily that it still furnishes superlatives to thinking and speaking men. Out of its darker and more remote forest fastnesses came, if we may credit many recent scientists, the first welding of iron, and we know that agriculture and trade flourished there when Europe was a wilderness. Nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of Africa, from Greece to Great Britain. As Mommsen says: "It was through Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world." In Africa the last flood of Germanic invasions spent itself within hearing of the last gasp of Byzantium, and it was through Africa that Islam came to play its great rôle of conqueror and civilizer. With the Renaissance and the widened world of modern thought Africa came no less suddenly with her new-old gift. Shakespeare's "Ancient Pistol" cries:
A foutre for the world and worldlings base!I speak of Africa and golden joys!
He echoes a legend of gold from the days of Punt and Ophir to those of Ghana, the Gold Coast, and the Rand. This thought had sent the world's greed scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of Africa to the Good Hope of gain, until for the first time a real world-commerce was born, albeit it started as a commerce mainly in the bodies and souls of men. The present problem of problems is nothing more than democracy beating itself helplessly against the color bar,—purling, seeping, seething, foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black and brown and yellow slavery. The indictment of Africa against Europe is grave. For four hundred years white Europe was the chief support of that trade in human beings which first and last robbed black Africa of a hundred million human beings, transformed the face of her social life, overthrew organized government, distorted ancient industry, and snuffed out the lights of cultural development. Today instead of removing laborers from Africa to distant slavery, industry built on a new slavery approaches Africa to deprive the natives of their land, to force them to toil, and to reap all the profit for the white world. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of the essential facts underlying these broad assertions. A recent law of the Union of South Africa assigns nearly two hundred and fifty million acres of the best of natives' land to a million and a half whites and leaves thirty-six million acres of swamp and marsh for four and a half-million blacks. In Rhodesia over ninety million acres have been practically confiscated. In the Belgian Congo all the land was declared the property of the state. Slavery in all but name has been the foundation of the cocoa industry in St. Thome and St. Principe and in the mines of the Rand. Gin has been one of the greatest of European imports, having increased fifty per cent. in ten years and reaching a total of at least twenty-five million dollars a year today. Negroes of ability have been carefully gotten rid of, deposed from authority, kept out of positions of influence, and discredited in their people's eyes, while a caste of white overseers and governing officials has appeared everywhere. Naturally, the picture is not all lurid. David Livingstone has had his successors and Europe has given Africa something of value in the beginning of education and industry. Yet the balance of iniquity is desperately large; but worse than that, it has aroused no world protest. A great Englishman, familiar with African problems for a generation, says frankly today: "There does not exist any real international conscience to which you can appeal." Moreover, that treatment shows no certain signs of abatement. Today in England the Empire Resources Development Committee proposes to treat African colonies as "crown estates" and by intensive scientific exploitation of both land and labor to make these colonies pay the English national debt after the war! German thinkers, knowing the tremendous demand for raw material which would follow the war, had similar plans of exploitation. "It is the clear, common sense of the African situation," says H.G. Wells, "that while these precious regions of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its 'possessions' to its own advantage and the disadvantage of the others, there can be no permanent peace in the world. It is impossible." We, then, who fought the war against war; who in a hell of blood and suffering held hardly our souls in leash by the vision of a world organized for peace; who are looking for industrial democracy and for the organization of Europe so as to avoid incentives to war,—we, least of all, should be willing to leave the backward world as the greatest temptation, not only to wars based on international jealousies, but to the most horrible of wars,—which arise from the revolt of the maddened against those who hold them in common contempt. Consider, my reader,—if you were today a man of some education and knowledge, but born a Japanese or a Chinaman, an East Indian or a Negro, what would you do and think? What would be in the present chaos your outlook and plan for the future? Manifestly, you would want freedom for your people,—freedom from insult, from segregation, from poverty, from physical slavery. If the attitude of the European and American worlds is in the future going to be based essentially upon the same policies as in the past, then there is but one thing for the trained man of darker blood to do and that is definitely and as openly as possible to organize his world for war against Europe. He may have to do it by secret, underground propaganda, as in Egypt and India and eventually in the United States; or by open increase of armament, as in Japan; or by desperate efforts at modernization, as in China; but he must do it. He represents the vast majority of mankind. To surrender would be far worse than physical death. There is no way out unless the white world gives up such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white" implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world worth living in,—or trouble is written in the stars! It is, therefore, of singular importance after disquieting delay to see the real Pacifist appear. Both England and Germany have recently been basing their claims to parts of black Africa on the wishes and interests of the black inhabitants. Lloyd George has declared "the general principle of national self-determination applicable at least to German Africa," while Chancellor Hertling once welcomed a discussion "on the reconstruction of the world's colonial possessions." The demand that an Africa for Africans shall replace the present barbarous scramble for exploitation by individual states comes from singularly different sources. Colored America demands that "the conquered German colonies should not be returned to Germany, neither should they be held by the Allies. Here is the opportunity for the establishment of a nation that may never recur. Thousands of colored men, sick of white arrogance and hypocrisy, see in this their race's only salvation." Sir Harry H. Johnston recently said: "If we are to talk, as we do, sentimentally but justly about restoring the nationhood of Poland, about giving satisfaction to the separatist feeling in Ireland, and about what is to be done for European nations who are oppressed, then we can hardly exclude from this feeling the countries of Africa." Laborers, black laborers, on the Canal Zone write: "Out of this chaos may be the great awakening of our race. There is cause for rejoicing. If we fail to embrace this opportunity now, we fail to see how we will be ever able to solve the race question. It is for the British Negro, the French Negro, and the American Negro to rise to the occasion and start a national campaign, jointly and collectively, with this aim in view." From British West Africa comes the bitter complaint "that the West Africans should have the right or opportunity to settle their future for themselves is a thing which hardly enters the mind of the European politician. That the Balkan States should be admitted to the Council of Peace and decide the government under which they are to live is taken as a matter of course because they are Europeans, but no extra-European is credited, even by the extremist advocates of human equality, with any right except to humbly accept the fate which Europe shall decide for him." Here, then, is the danger and the demand; and the real Pacifist will seek to organize, not simply the masses in white nations, guarding against exploitation and profiteering, but will remember that no permanent relief can come but by including in this organization the lowest and the most exploited races in the world. World philanthropy, like national philanthropy, must come as uplift and prevention and not merely as alleviation and religious conversion. Reverence for humanity, as such, must be installed in the world, and Africa should be the talisman. Black Africa, including British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish possessions and the independent states of Abyssinia and Liberia and leaving out of account Egypt and North Africa, on the one hand, and South Africa, on the other, has an area of 8,200,000 square miles and a population well over one hundred millions of black men, with less than one hundred thousand whites. Commercial exploitation in Africa has already larger results to show than most people realize. Annually $200,000,000 worth of goods was coming out of black Africa before the World War, including a third of the world's supply of rubber, a quarter of all of the world's cocoa, and practically all of the world's cloves, gum-arabic, and palm-oil. In exchange there was being returned to Africa one hundred millions in cotton cloth, twenty-five millions in iron and steel, and as much in foods, and probably twenty-five millions in liquors. Here are the beginnings of a modern industrial system: iron and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw materials. These materials are capable of indefinite expansion: cotton may yet challenge the southern United States, fruits and vegetables, hides and skins, lumber and dye-stuffs, coffee and tea, grain and tobacco, and fibers of all sorts can easily follow organized and systematic toil. Is it a paradise of industry we thus contemplate? It is much more likely to be a hell. Under present plans there will be no voice or law or custom to protect labor, no trades unions, no eight-hour laws, no factory legislation,—nothing of that great body of legislation built up in modern days to protect mankind from sinking to the level of beasts of burden. All the industrial deviltry, which civilization has been driving to the slums and the backwaters, will have a voiceless continent to conceal it. If the slave cannot be taken from Africa, slavery can be taken to Africa. Who are the folk who live here? They are brown and black, curly and crisp-haired, short and tall, and longheaded. Out of them in days without date flowed the beginnings of Egypt; among them rose, later, centers of culture at Ghana, Melle, and Timbuktu. Kingdoms and empires flourished in Songhay and Zymbabwe, and art and industry in Yoruba and Benin. They have fought every human calamity in its most hideous form and yet today they hold some similar vestiges of a mighty past,—their work in iron, their weaving and carving, their music and singing, their tribal government, their town-meeting and marketplace, their desperate valor in war. Missionaries and commerce have left some good with all their evil. In black Africa today there are more than a thousand government schools and some thirty thousand mission schools, with a more or less regular attendance of three-quarters of a million school children. In a few cases training of a higher order is given chiefs' sons and selected pupils. These beginnings of education are not much for so vast a land and there is no general standard or set plan of development, but, after all, the children of Africa are beginning to learn. In black Africa today only one-seventeenth of the land and a ninth of the people in Liberia and Abyssinia are approximately independent, although menaced and policed by European capitalism. Half the land and the people are in domains under Portugal, France, and Belgium, held with the avowed idea of exploitation for the benefit of Europe under a system of caste and color serfdom. Out of this dangerous nadir of development stretch two paths: one is indicated by the condition of about three per cent of the people who in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and French Senegal, are tending toward the path of modern development; the other path, followed by a fourth of the land and people, has local self-government and native customs and might evolve, if undisturbed, a native culture along their own peculiar lines. A tenth of the land, sparsely settled, is being monopolized and held for whites to make an African Australia. To these later folk must be added the four and one-half millions of the South African Union, who by every modern device are being forced into landless serfdom. Before the World War tendencies were strongly toward the destruction of independent Africa, the industrial slavery of the mass of the blacks and the encouragement of white immigration, where possible, to hold the blacks in subjection. Against this idea let us set the conception of a new African World State, a Black Africa, applying to these peoples the splendid pronouncements which have of late been so broadly and perhaps carelessly given the world: recognizing in Africa the declaration of the American Federation of Labor, that "no people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live"; recognizing in President Wilson's message to the Russians, the "principle of the undictated development of all peoples"; recognizing the resolution of the recent conference of the Aborigines Protection Society of England, "that in any reconstruction of Africa, which may result from this war, the interests of the native inhabitants and also their wishes, in so far as those wishes can be clearly ascertained, should be recognized as among the principal factors upon which the decision of their destiny should be based." In other words, recognizing for the first time in the history of the modern world that black men are human. It may not be possible to build this state at once. With the victory of the Entente Allies, the German colonies, with their million of square miles and one-half million black inhabitants, should form such a nucleus. It would give Black Africa its physical beginnings. Beginning with the German colonies two other sets of colonies could be added, for obvious reasons. Neither Portugal nor Belgium has shown any particular capacity for governing colonial peoples. Valid excuses may in both cases be advanced, but it would certainly be fair to Belgium to have her start her great task of reorganization after the World War with neither the burden nor the temptation of colonies; and in the same way Portugal has, in reality, the alternative of either giving up her colonies to an African State or to some other European State in the near future. These two sets of colonies would add 1,700,000 square miles and eighteen million inhabitants. It would not, however, be fair to despoil Germany, Belgium, and Portugal of their colonies unless, as Count Hertling once demanded, the whole question of colonies be opened. How far shall the modern world recognize nations which are not nations, but combinations of a dominant caste and a suppressed horde of serfs? Will it not be possible to rebuild a world with compact nations, empires of self-governing elements, and colonies of backward peoples under benevolent international control? The great test would be easy. Does England propose to erect in India and Nigeria nations brown and black which shall be eventually independent, self-governing entities, with a full voice in the British Imperial Government? If not, let these states either have independence at once or, if unfitted for that, be put under international tutelage and guardianship. It is possible that France, with her great heart, may welcome a Black France,—an enlarged Senegal in Africa; but it would seem that eventually all Africa south of twenty degrees north latitude and north of the Union of South Africa should be included in a new African State. Somaliland and Eritrea should be given to Abyssinia, and then with Liberia we would start with two small, independent African states and one large state under international control. Does this sound like an impossible dream? No one could be blamed for so regarding it before 1914. I, myself, would have agreed with them. But since the nightmare of 1914-1918, since we have seen the impossible happen and the unspeakable become so common as to cease to stir us; in a day when Russia has dethroned her Czar, England has granted the suffrage to women and is in the act of giving Home Rule to Ireland; when Germany has adopted parliamentary government; when Jerusalem has been delivered from the Turks; and the United States has taken control of its railroads,—is it really so far-fetched to think of an Africa for the Africans, guided by organized civilization? No one would expect this new state to be independent and self-governing from the start. Contrary, however, to present schemes for Africa the world would expect independence and self-government as the only possible end of the experiment At first we can conceive of no better way of governing this state than through that same international control by which we hope to govern the world for peace. A curious and instructive parallel has been drawn by Simeon Strunsky: "Just as the common ownership of the northwest territory helped to weld the colonies into the United States, so could not joint and benevolent domination of Africa and of other backward parts of the world be a cornerstone upon which the future federation of the world could be built?" From the British Labor Party comes this declaration: "With regard to the colonies of the several belligerents in tropical Africa, from sea to sea, the British Labor Movement disclaims all sympathy with the imperialist idea that these should form the booty of any nation, should be exploited for the profit of the capitalists, or should be used for the promotion of the militarists' aims of government. In view of the fact that it is impracticable here to leave the various peoples concerned to settle their own destinies it is suggested that the interests of humanity would be best served by the full and frank abandonment by all the belligerents of any dreams of an African Empire; the transfer of the present colonies of the European Powers in tropical Africa, however, and the limits of this area may be defined to the proposed Supernational Authority, or League of Nations." Lloyd George himself has said in regard to the German colonies a word difficult to restrict merely to them: "I have repeatedly declared that they are held at the disposal of a conference, whose decision must have primary regard to the wishes and interests of the native inhabitants of such colonies. None of those territories is inhabited by Europeans. The governing considerations, therefore, must be that the inhabitants should be placed under the control of an administration acceptable to themselves, one of whose main purposes will be to prevent their exploitation for the benefit of European capitalists or governments." The special commission for the government of this African State must, naturally, be chosen with great care and thought. It must represent, not simply governments, but civilization, science, commerce, social reform, religious philanthropy without sectarian propaganda. It must include, not simply white men, but educated and trained men of Negro blood. The guiding principles before such a commission should be clearly understood. In the first place, it ought by this time to be realized by the labor movement throughout the world that no industrial democracy can be built on industrial despotism, whether the two systems are in the same country or in different countries, since the world today so nearly approaches a common industrial unity. If, therefore, it is impossible in any single land to uplift permanently skilled labor without also raising common labor, so, too, there can be no permanent uplift of American or European labor as long as African laborers are slaves. Secondly, this building of a new African State does not mean the segregation in it of all the world's black folk. It is too late in the history of the world to go back to the idea of absolute racial segregation. The new African State would not involve any idea of a vast transplantation of the twenty-seven million Negroids of the western world, of Africa, or of the gathering there of Negroid Asia. The Negroes in the United States and the other Americas have earned the right to fight out their problems where they are, but they could easily furnish from time to time technical experts, leaders of thought, and missionaries of culture for their backward brethren in the new Africa. With these two principles, the practical policies to be followed out in the government of the new states should involve a thorough and complete system of modern education, built upon the present government, religion, and customary laws of the natives. There should be no violent tampering with the curiously efficient African institutions of local self-government through the family and the tribe; there should be no attempt at sudden "conversion" by religious propaganda. Obviously deleterious customs and unsanitary usages must gradually be abolished, but the general government, set up from without, must follow the example of the best colonial administrators and build on recognized, established foundations rather than from entirely new and theoretical plans. The real effort to modernize Africa should be through schools rather than churches. Within ten years, twenty million black children ought to be in school. Within a generation young Africa should know the essential outlines of modern culture and groups of bright African students could be going to the world's great universities. From the beginning the actual general government should use both colored and white officials and later natives should be worked in. Taxation and industry could follow the newer ideals of industrial democracy, avoiding private land monopoly and poverty, and promoting co-operation in production and the socialization of income. Difficulties as to capital and revenue would be far less than many imagine. If a capable English administrator of British Nigeria could with $1,500 build up a cocoa industry of twenty million dollars annually, what might not be done in all Africa, without gin, thieves, and hypocrisy? Capital could not only be accumulated in Africa, but attracted from the white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as legitimate home industry offers. There is no sense in asserting that the ideal of an African State, thus governed and directed toward independence and self-government, is impossible of realization. The first great essential is that the civilized world believe in its possibility. By reason of a crime (perhaps the greatest crime in human history) the modern world has been systematically taught to despise colored peoples. Men of education and decency ask, and ask seriously, if it is really possible to uplift Africa. Are Negroes human, or, if human, developed far enough to absorb, even under benevolent tutelage, any appreciable part of modern culture? Has not the experiment been tried in Haiti and Liberia, and failed? One cannot ignore the extraordinary fact that a world campaign beginning with the slave-trade and ending with the refusal to capitalize the word "Negro," leading through a passionate defense of slavery by attributing every bestiality to blacks and finally culminating in the evident modern profit which lies in degrading blacks,—all this has unconsciously trained millions of honest, modern men into the belief that black folk are sub-human. This belief is not based on science, else it would be held as a postulate of the most tentative kind, ready at any time to be withdrawn in the face of facts; the belief is not based on history, for it is absolutely contradicted by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Arabian experience; nor is the belief based on any careful survey of the social development of men of Negro blood to-day in Africa and America. It is simply passionate, deep-seated heritage, and as such can be moved by neither argument nor fact. Only faith in humanity will lead the world to rise above its present color prejudice. Those who do believe in men, who know what black men have done in human history, who have taken pains to follow even superficially the story of the rise of the Negro in Africa, the West Indies, and the Americas of our day know that our modern contempt of Negroes rests upon no scientific foundation worth a moment's attention. It is nothing more than a vicious habit of mind. It could as easily be overthrown as our belief in war, as our international hatreds, as our old conception of the status of women, as our fear of educating the masses, and as our belief in the necessity of poverty. We can, if we will, inaugurate on the Dark Continent a last great crusade for humanity. With Africa redeemed Asia would be safe and Europe indeed triumphant. I have not mentioned North and South Africa, because my eye was centered on the main mass of the Negro race. Yet it is clear that for the development of Central Africa, Egypt should be free and independent, there along the highway to a free and independent India; while Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli must become a part of Europe, with modern development and home rule. South Africa, stripped of its black serfs and their lands, must admit the resident natives and colored folk to its body politic as equals. The hands which Ethiopia shall soon stretch out unto God are not mere hands of helplessness and supplication, but rather are they hands of pain and promise; hard, gnarled, and muscled for the world's real work; they are hands of fellowship for the half-submerged masses of a distempered world; they are hands of helpfulness for an agonized God! Twenty centuries before Christ a great cloud swept over seas and settled on Africa, darkening and well-nigh blotting out the culture of the land of Egypt. For half a thousand years it rested there, until a black woman, Queen Nefertari, "the most venerated figure in Egyptian history," rose to the throne of the Pharaohs and redeemed the world and her people. Twenty centuries after Christ, Black Africa,—prostrated, raped, and shamed, lies at the feet of the conquering Philistines of Europe. Beyond the awful sea a black woman is weeping and waiting, with her sons on her breast. What shall the end be? The world-old and fearful things,—war and wealth, murder and luxury? Or shall it be a new thing,—a new peace and a new democracy of all races,—a great humanity of equal men? "Semper novi quid ex Africa!" The Princess of the Hither IslesHer soul was beautiful, wherefore she kept it veiled in lightly-laced humility and fear, out of which peered anxiously and anon the white and blue and pale-gold of her face,-beautiful as daybreak or as the laughing of a child. She sat in the Hither Isles, well walled between the This and Now, upon a low and silver throne, and leaned upon its armposts, sadly looking upward toward the sun. Now the Hither Isles are flat and cold and swampy, with drear-drab light and all manner of slimy, creeping things, and piles of dirt and clouds of flying dust and sordid scraping and feeding and noise. She hated them and ever as her hands and busy feet swept back the dust and slime her soul sat silver-throned, staring toward the great hill to the westward, which shone so brilliant-golden beneath the sunlight and above the sea. The sea moaned and with it moaned the princess' soul, for she was lonely,—very, very lonely, and full weary of the monotone of life. So she was glad to see a moving in Yonder Kingdom on the mountainside, where the sun shone warm, and when the king of Yonder Kingdom, silken in robe and golden-crowned and warded by his hound, walked down along the restless waters and sat beside the armpost of her throne, she wondered why she could not love him and fly with him up the shining mountain's side, out of the dirt and dust that nested between the This and Now. She looked at him and tried to be glad, for he was bonny and good to look upon, this king of Yonder Kingdom,—tall and straight, thin-lipped and white and tawny. So, again, this last day, she strove to burn life into his singularly sodden clay,—to put his icy soul aflame wherewith to warm her own, to set his senses singing. Vacantly he heard her winged words, staring and curling his long mustaches with vast thoughtfulness. Then he said: "We've found more gold in Yonder Kingdom." "Hell seize your gold!" blurted the princess. "No,—it's mine," he maintained stolidly. She raised her eyes. "It belongs," she said, "to the Empire of the Sun." "Nay,—the Sun belongs to us," said the king calmly as he glanced to where Yonder Kingdom blushed above the sea. She glanced, too, and a softness crept into her eyes. "No, no," she murmured as with hesitating pause she raised her eyes above the sea, above the hill, up into the sky where the sun hung silent and splendid. Its robes were heaven's blue, lined and broidered in living flame, and its crown was one vast jewel, glistening in glittering glory that made the sun's own face a blackness,—the blackness of utter light. With blinded, tear-filled eyes she peered into that formless black and burning face and sensed in its soft, sad gleam unfathomed understanding. With sudden, wild abandon she stretched her arms toward it appealing, beseeching, entreating, and lo! "Niggers and dagoes," said the king of Yonder Kingdom, glancing carelessly backward and lighting in his lips a carefully rolled wisp of fragrant tobacco. She looked back, too, but in half-wondering terror, for it seemed-- A beggar man was creeping across the swamp, shuffling through the dirt and slime. He was little and bald and black, rough-clothed, sodden with dirt, and bent with toil. Yet withal something she sensed about him and it seemed,-- The king of Yonder Kingdom lounged more comfortably beside the silver throne and let curl a tiny trail of light-blue smoke. "I hate beggars," he said, "especially brown and black ones." And he then pointed at the beggar's retinue and laughed,—an unpleasant laugh, welded of contempt and amusement. The princess looked and shrank on her throne. He, the beggar man, was—was what? But his retinue,—that squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and viciousness—was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked like Death, and the twisted woman whom men called Pain. Yet they all walked as one. The King of Yonder Kingdom laughed, but the princess shrank on her throne, and the king on seeing her thus took a gold-piece from out of his purse and tossed it carelessly to the passing throng. She watched it with fascinated eyes,—how it rose and sailed and whirled and struggled in the air, then seemed to burst, and upward flew its light and sheen and downward dropped its dross. She glanced at the king, but he was lighting a match. She watched the dross wallow in the slime, but the sunlight fell on the back of the beggar's neck, and he turned his head. The beggar passing afar turned his head and the princess straightened on her throne; he turned his head and she shivered forward on her silver seat; he looked upon her full and slow and suddenly she saw within that formless black and burning face the same soft, glad gleam of utter understanding, seen so many times before. She saw the suffering of endless years and endless love that softened it. She saw the burning passion of the sun and with it the cold, unbending duty-deeds of upper air. All she had seen and dreamed of seeing in the rising, blazing sun she saw now again and with it myriads more of human tenderness, of longing, and of love. So, then, she knew. She rose as to a dream come true, with solemn face and waiting eyes. With her rose the king of Yonder Kingdom, almost eagerly. "You'll come?" he cried. "You'll come and see my gold?" And then in sudden generosity, he added: "You'll have a golden throne,-up there-when we marry." But she, looking up and on with radiant face, answered softly: "I come." So down and up and on they mounted,-the black beggar man and his cavalcade of Death and Pain, and then a space; and then a lone, black hound that nosed and whimpered as he ran, and then a space; and then the king of Yonder Kingdom in his robes, and then a space; and last the princess of the Hither Isles, with face set sunward and lovelight in her eyes. And so they marched and struggled on and up through endless years and spaces and ever the black beggar looked back past death and pain toward the maid and ever the maid strove forward with lovelit eyes, but ever the great and silken shoulders of the king of Yonder Kingdom arose between the princess and the sun like a cloud of storms. Now, finally, they neared unto the hillsides topmost shoulder and there most eagerly the king bent to the bowels of the earth and bared its golden entrails,-all green and gray and rusted-while the princess strained her pitiful eyes aloft to where the beggar, set 'twixt Death and Pain, whirled his slim back against the glory of the setting sun and stood somber in his grave majesty, enhaloed and transfigured, outstretching his long arms, and around all heaven glittered jewels in a cloth of gold. A while the princess stood and moaned in mad amaze, then with one wilful wrench she bared the white flowers of her breast and snatching forth her own red heart held it with one hand aloft while with the other she gathered close her robe and poised herself. The king of Yonder Kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still fingering the earth, and saw the offer of her bleeding heart. "It's a Negro!" he growled darkly; "it may not be." The woman quivered. "It's a nigger!" he repeated fiercely. "It's neither God nor man, but a nigger!" The king grasped his sword and looked north and east; he raised his sword and looked south and west. "I seek the sun," the princess sang, and started into the west. "Never!" cried the king of Yonder Kingdom, "for such were blasphemy and defilement and the making of all evil." So, raising his great sword he struck with all his might, and more. Down hissed the blow and it bit that little, white, heart-holding hand until it flew armless and disbodied up through the sunlit air. Down hissed the blow and it clove the whimpering hound until his last shriek shook the stars. Down hissed the blow and it rent the earth. It trembled, fell apart, and yawned to a chasm wide as earth from heaven, deep as hell, and empty, cold, and silent. On yonder distant shore blazed the mighty Empire of the Sun in warm and blissful radiance, while on this side, in shadows cold and dark, gloomed the Hither Isles and the hill that once was golden, but now was green and slimy dross; all below was the sad and moaning sea, while between the Here and There flew the severed hand and dripped the bleeding heart. Then up from the soul of the princess welled a cry of dark despair,—such a cry as only babe-raped mothers know and murdered loves. Poised on the crumbling edge of that great nothingness the princess hung, hungering with her eyes and straining her fainting ears against the awful splendor of the sky. Out from the slime and shadows groped the king, thundering: "Back—don't be a fool!" But down through the thin ether thrilled the still and throbbing warmth of heaven's sun, whispering "Leap!" IVOF WORK AND WEALTHFor fifteen years I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder. The teacher's life is a double one. He stands in a certain fear. He tends to be stilted, almost dishonest, veiling himself before those awful eyes. Not the eyes of Almighty God are so straight, so penetrating, so all-seeing as the wonder-swept eyes of youth. You walk into a room: to the left is a tall window, bright with colors of crimson and gold and sunshine. Here are rows of books and there is a table. Somber blackboards clothe the walls to the right and beside your desk is the delicate ivory of a nobly cast head. But you see nothing of this: you see only a silence and eyes,—fringed, soft eyes; hard eyes; eyes great and small; eyes here so poignant with beauty that the sob struggles in your throat; eyes there so hard with sorrow that laughter wells up to meet and beat it back; eyes through which the mockery and ridicule of hell or some pulse of high heaven may suddenly flash. Ah! That mighty pause before the class,—that orison and benediction—how much of my life it has been and made. I fought earnestly against posing before my class. I tried to be natural and honest and frank, but it was a bitter hard. What would you say to a soft, brown face, aureoled in a thousand ripples of gray-black hair, which knells suddenly: "Do you trust white people?" You do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world's; you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying, and miserably you sit and lie on, to the greater glory of God. I taught history and economics and something called "sociology" at Atlanta University, where, as our Mr. Webster used to say, we professors occupied settees and not mere chairs. I was fortunate with this teaching in having vivid in the minds of my pupils a concrete social problem of which we all were parts and which we desperately desired to solve. There was little danger, then, of my teaching or of their thinking becoming purely theoretical. Work and wage were thrilling realities to us all. What did we study? I can tell you best by taking a concrete human case, such as was continually leaping to our eyes and thought and demanding understanding and interpretation and what I could bring of prophecy. St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet,—as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud. The other city is dusty and hot beyond all dream,—a feverish Pittsburg in the Mississippi Valley—a great, ruthless, terrible thing! It is the sort that crushes man and invokes some living superman,—a giant of things done, a clang of awful accomplishment. Three men came wandering across this place. They were neither kings nor wise men, but they came with every significance—perhaps even greater—than that which the kings bore in the days of old. There was one who came from the North,—brawny and riotous with energy, a man of concentrated power, who held all the thunderbolts of modern capital in his great fists and made flour and meat, iron and steel, cunning chemicals, wood, paint and paper, transforming to endless tools a disemboweled earth. He was one who saw nothing, knew nothing, sought nothing but the making and buying of that which sells; who out from the magic of his hand rolled over miles of iron road, ton upon ton of food and metal and wood, of coal and oil and lumber, until the thronging of knotted ways in East and real St. Louis was like the red, festering ganglia of some mighty heart. Then from the East and called by the crash of thunderbolts and forked-flame came the Unwise Man,—unwise by the theft of endless ages, but as human as anything God ever made. He was the slave for the miracle maker. It was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into gasping energy. The rasp of his hard breathing shook the midnights of all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great nation to trembling. And then, at last, out of the South, like a still, small voice, came the third man,—black, with great eyes and greater memories; hesitantly eager and yet with the infinite softness and ancient calm which come from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but of endless ages. Here, surely, was fit meeting-place for these curiously intent forces, for these epoch-making and age-twisting forces, for these human feet on their super-human errands. Yesterday I rode in East St. Louis. It is the kind of place one quickly recognizes,—tireless and with no restful green of verdure; hard and uneven of street; crude, cold, and even hateful of aspect; conventional, of course, in its business quarter, but quickly beyond one sees the ruts and the hollows, the stench of ill-tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy, gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great factories pouring out stench, filth, and flame—these and all other things so familiar in the world market places, where industry triumphs over thought and products overwhelm men. May I tell, too, how yesterday I rode in this city past flame-swept walls and over gray ashes; in streets almost wet with blood and beside ruins, where the bones of dead men new-bleached peered out at me in sullen wonder? Across the river, in the greater city, where bronze St. Louis,—that just and austere king—looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the rolling heights of Forest Park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises or privileges in a modern town. There, too, you may escape the buying of indulgences from the great terminal fist, which squeezes industry out of St. Louis. In fact, East St. Louis is a paradise for high and frequent dividends and for the piling up of wealth to be spent in St. Louis and Chicago and New York and when the world is sane again, across the seas. So the Unwise Men pouring out of the East,—falling, scrambling, rushing into America at the rate of a million a year,—ran, walked, and crawled to this maelstrom of the workers. They garnered higher wage than ever they had before, but not all of it came in cash. A part, and an insidious part, was given to them transmuted into whiskey, prostitutes, and games of chance. They laughed and disported themselves. God! Had not their mothers wept enough? It was a good town. There was no veil of hypocrisy here, but a wickedness, frank, ungilded, and open. To be sure, there were things sometimes to reveal the basic savagery and thin veneer. Once, for instance, a man was lynched for brawling on the public square of the county seat; once a mayor who sought to "clean up" was publicly assassinated; always there was theft and rumors of theft, until St. Clair County was a hissing in good men's ears; but always, too, there were good wages and jolly hoodlums and unchecked wassail of Saturday nights. Gamblers, big and little, rioted in East St. Louis. The little gamblers used cards and roulette wheels and filched the weekly wage of the workers. The greater gamblers used meat and iron and undid the foundations of the world. All the gods of chance flaunted their wild raiment here, above the brown flood of the Mississippi. Then the world changed; then civilization, built for culture, rebuilt itself for wilful murder in Europe, Asia, America, and the Southern Seas. Hands that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron for guns. The wants of common men were forgotten before the groan of giants. Streams of gold, lost from the world's workers, filtered and trickled into the hands of gamblers and put new power into the thunderbolts of East St. Louis. Wages had been growing before the World War. Slowly but remorselessly the skilled and intelligent, banding themselves, had threatened the coffers of the mighty, and slowly the mighty had disgorged. Even the common workers, the poor and unlettered, had again and again gripped the sills of the city walls and pulled themselves to their chins; but, alas! there were so many hands and so many mouths and the feet of the Disinherited kept coming across the wet paths of the sea to this old El Dorado. War brought subtle changes. Wages stood still while prices fattened. It was not that the white American worker was threatened with starvation, but it was what was, after all, a more important question,—whether or not he should lose his front-room and victrola and even the dream of a Ford car. There came a whirling and scrambling among the workers,—they fought each other; they climbed on each others' backs. The skilled and intelligent, banding themselves even better than before, bargained with the men of might and held them by bitter threats; the less skilled and more ignorant seethed at the bottom and tried, as of old, to bring it about that the ignorant and unlettered should learn to stand together against both capital and skilled labor. It was here that there came out of the East a beam of unearthly light,—a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers hardly believed it. Slowly they saw the gates of Ellis Island closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and fainter, until the stream of immigrants overseas was stopped by the shadow of death at the very time when new murder opened new markets over all the world to American industry; and the giants with the thunderbolts stamped and raged and peered out across the world and called for men and evermore,—men! The Unwise Men laughed and squeezed reluctant dollars out of the fists of the mighty and saw in their dream the vision of a day when labor, as they knew it, should come into its own; saw this day and saw it with justice and with right, save for one thing, and that was the sound of the moan of the Disinherited, who still lay without the walls. When they heard this moan and saw that it came not across the seas, they were at first amazed and said it was not true; and then they were mad and said it should not be. Quickly they turned and looked into the red blackness of the South and in their hearts were fear and hate! What did they see? They saw something at which they had been taught to laugh and make sport; they saw that which the heading of every newspaper column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press dispatch, and the distortion of every speech and book had taught them was a mass of despicable men, inhuman; at best, laughable; at worst, the meat of mobs and fury. What did they see? They saw nine and one-half millions of human beings. They saw the spawn of slavery, ignorant by law and by deviltry, crushed by insult and debauched by systematic and criminal injustice. They saw a people whose helpless women have been raped by thousands and whose men lynched by hundreds in the face of a sneering world. They saw a people with heads bloody, but unbowed, working faithfully at wages fifty per cent. lower than the wages of the nation and under conditions which shame civilization, saving homes, training children, hoping against hope. They saw the greatest industrial miracle of modern days,—slaves transforming themselves to freemen and climbing out of perdition by their own efforts, despite the most contemptible opposition God ever saw,—they saw all this and what they saw the distraught employers of America saw, too. The North called to the South. A scream of rage went up from the cotton monopolists and industrial barons of the new South. Who was this who dared to "interfere" with their labor? Who sought to own their black slaves but they? Who honored and loved "niggers" as they did? They mobilized all the machinery of modern oppression: taxes, city ordinances, licenses, state laws, municipal regulations, wholesale police arrests and, of course, the peculiarly Southern method of the mob and the lyncher. They appealed frantically to the United States Government; they groveled on their knees and shed wild tears at the "suffering" of their poor, misguided black friends, and yet, despite this, the Northern employers simply had to offer two and three dollars a day and from one-quarter to one-half a million dark workers arose and poured themselves into the North. They went to the mines of West Virginia, because war needs coal; they went to the industries of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, because war needs ships and iron; they went to the automobiles of Detroit and the load-carrying of Chicago; and they went to East St. Louis. Now there came fear in the hearts of the Unwise Men. It was not that their wages were lowered,—they went even higher. They received, not simply, a living wage, but a wage that paid for some of the decencies, and, in East St. Louis, many of the indecencies of life. What they feared was not deprivation of the things they were used to and the shadow of poverty, but rather the definite death of their rising dreams. But if fear was new-born in the hearts of the Unwise Men, the black man was born in a house of fear; to him poverty of the ugliest and straitest type was father, mother, and blood-brother. He was slipping stealthily northward to escape hunger and insult, the hand of oppression, and the shadow of death. Here, then, in the wide valley which Father Marquette saw peaceful and golden, lazy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of God,—here, then, was staged every element for human tragedy, every element of the modern economic paradox. Ah! That hot, wide plain of East St. Louis is a gripping thing. The rivers are dirty with sweat and toil and lip, like lakes, along the low and burdened shores; flatboats ramble and thread among them, and above the steamers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with mighty grace from shore to shore. Everywhere are brick kennels,—tall, black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. The ground is littered with cars and iron, tracks and trucks, boxes and crates, metals and coal and rubber. Nature-defying cranes, grim elevators rise above pile on pile of black and grimy lumber. And ever below is the water,—wide and silent, gray-brown and yellow. This is the stage for the tragedy: the armored might of the modern world urged by the bloody needs of the world wants, fevered today by a fabulous vision of gain and needing only hands, hands, hands! Fear of loss and greed of gain in the hearts of the giants; the clustered cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in the hearts of the workers; the dumb yearning in the hearts of the oppressed; the echo of laughter heard at the foot of the Pyramids; the faithful, plodding slouch of the laborers; fear of the Shadow of Death in the hearts of black men. We ask, and perhaps there is no answer, how far may the captain of the world's industry do his deeds, despite the grinding tragedy of its doing? How far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving other and what the world calls lesser men? How far may those who reach up out of the slime that fills the pits of the world's damned compel men with loaves to divide with men who starve? The answers to these questions are hard, but yet one answer looms above all,—justice lies with the lowest; the plight of the lowest man,—the plight of the black man—deserves the first answer, and the plight of the giants of industry, the last. Little cared East St. Louis for all this bandying of human problems, so long as its grocers and saloon-keepers flourished and its industries steamed and screamed and smoked and its bankers grew rich. Stupidity, license, and graft sat enthroned in the City Hall. The new black folk were exploited as cheerfully as white Polacks and Italians; the rent of shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted gleeful gains, and the crimes of white men and black men flourished in the dark. The high and skilled and smart climbed on the bent backs of the ignorant; harder the mass of laborers strove to unionize their fellows and to bargain with employers. Nor were the new blacks fools. They had no love for nothings in labor; they had no wish to make their fellows' wage envelopes smaller, but they were determined to make their own larger. They, too, were willing to join in the new union movement. But the unions did not want them. Just as employers monopolized meat and steel, so they sought to monopolize labor and beat a giant's bargain. In the higher trades they succeeded. The best electrician in the city was refused admittance to the union and driven from the town because he was black. No black builder, printer, or machinist could join a union or work in East St. Louis, no matter what his skill or character. But out of the stink of the stockyards and the dust of the aluminum works and the sweat of the lumber yards the willing blacks could not be kept. They were invited to join unions of the laborers here and they joined. White workers and black workers struck at the aluminum works in the fall and won higher wages and better hours; then again in the spring they struck to make bargaining compulsory for the employer, but this time they fronted new things. The conflagration of war had spread to America; government and court stepped in and ordered no hesitation, no strikes; the work must go on. Deeper was the call for workers. Black men poured in and red anger flamed in the hearts of the white workers. The anger was against the wielders of the thunderbolts, but here it was impotent because employers stood with the hand of the government before their faces; it was against entrenched union labor, which had risen on the backs of the unskilled and unintelligent and on the backs of those whom for any reason of race or prejudice or chicane they could beat beyond the bars of competition; and finally the anger of the mass of white workers was turned toward these new black interlopers, who seemed to come to spoil their last dream of a great monopoly of common labor. These angers flamed and the union leaders, fearing their fury and knowing their own guilt, not only in the larger and subtler matter of bidding their way to power across the weakness of their less fortunate fellows, but also conscious of their part in making East St. Louis a miserable town of liquor and lust, leaped quickly to ward the gathering thunder from their own heads. The thing they wanted was even at their hands: here were black men, guilty not only of bidding for jobs which white men could have held at war prices, even if they could not fill, but also guilty of being black! It was at this blackness that the unions pointed the accusing finger. It was here that they committed the unpardonable crime. It was here that they entered the Shadow of Hell, where suddenly from a fight for wage and protection against industrial oppression East St. Louis became the center of the oldest and nastiest form of human oppression,—race hatred. The whole situation lent itself to this terrible transformation. Everything in the history of the United States, from slavery to Sunday supplements, from disfranchisement to residence segregation, from "Jim-Crow" cars to a "Jim-Crow" army draft—all this history of discrimination and insult festered to make men think and willing to think that the venting of their unbridled anger against 12,000,000 humble, upstriving workers was a way of settling the industrial tangle of the ages. It was the logic of the broken plate, which, seared of old across its pattern, cracks never again, save along the old destruction. So hell flamed in East St. Louis! The white men drove even black union men out of their unions and when the black men, beaten by night and assaulted, flew to arms and shot back at the marauders, five thousand rioters arose and surged like a crested stormwave, from noonday until midnight; they killed and beat and murdered; they dashed out the brains of children and stripped off the clothes of women; they drove victims into the flames and hanged the helpless to the lighting poles. Fathers were killed before the faces of mothers; children were burned; heads were cut off with axes; pregnant women crawled and spawned in dark, wet fields; thieves went through houses and firebrands followed; bodies were thrown from bridges; and rocks and bricks flew through the air. The Negroes fought. They grappled with the mob like beasts at bay. They drove them back from the thickest cluster of their homes and piled the white dead on the street, but the cunning mob caught the black men between the factories and their homes, where they knew they were armed only with their dinner pails. Firemen, policemen, and militiamen stood with hanging hands or even joined eagerly with the mob. It was the old world horror come to life again: all that Jews suffered in Spain and Poland; all that peasants suffered in France, and Indians in Calcutta; all that aroused human deviltry had accomplished in ages past they did in East St. Louis, while the rags of six thousand half-naked black men and women fluttered across the bridges of the calm Mississippi. The white South laughed,—it was infinitely funny—the "niggers" who had gone North to escape slavery and lynching had met the fury of the mob which they had fled. Delegations rushed North from Mississippi and Texas, with suspicious timeliness and with great-hearted offers to take these workers back to a lesser hell. The man from Greensville, Mississippi, who wanted a thousand got six, because, after all, the end was not so simple. No, the end was not simple. On the contrary, the problem raised by East St. Louis was curiously complex. The ordinary American, tired of the persistence of "the Negro problem," sees only another anti-Negro mob and wonders, not when we shall settle this problem, but when we shall be well rid of it. The student of social things sees another mile-post in the triumphant march of union labor; he is sorry that blood and rapine should mark its march,—but, what will you? War is life! Despite these smug reasonings the bare facts were these: East St. Louis, a great industrial center, lost 5,000 laborers,—good, honest, hard-working laborers. It was not the criminals, either black or white, who were driven from East St. Louis. They are still there. They will stay there. But half the honest black laborers were gone. The crippled ranks of industrial organization in the mid-Mississippi Valley cannot be recruited from Ellis Island, because in Europe men are dead and maimed, and restoration, when restoration comes, will raise a European demand for labor such as this age has never seen. The vision of industrial supremacy has come to the giants who lead American industry and finance. But it can never be realized unless the laborers are here to do the work,—the skilled laborers, the common laborers, the willing laborers, the well-paid laborers. The present forces, organized however cunningly, are not large enough to do what America wants; but there is another group of laborers, 12,000,000 strong, the natural heirs, by every logic of justice, to the fruits of America's industrial advance. They will be used simply because they must be used,—but their using means East St. Louis! Eastward from St. Louis lie great centers, like Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York; in every one of these and in lesser centers there is not only the industrial unrest of war and revolutionized work, but there is the call for workers, the coming of black folk, and the deliberate effort to divert the thoughts of men, and particularly of workingmen, into channels of race hatred against blacks. In every one of these centers what happened in East St. Louis has been attempted, with more or less success. Yet the American Negroes stand today as the greatest strategic group in the world. Their services are indispensable, their temper and character are fine, and their souls have seen a vision more beautiful than any other mass of workers. They may win back culture to the world if their strength can be used with the forces of the world that make for justice and not against the hidden hates that fight for barbarism. For fight they must and fight they will! Rising on wings we cross again the rivers of St. Louis, winding and threading between the towers of industry that threaten and drown the towers of God. Far, far beyond, we sight the green of fields and hills; but ever below lies the river, blue,—brownish-gray, touched with the hint of hidden gold. Drifting through half-flooded lowlands, with shanties and crops and stunted trees, past struggling corn and straggling village, we rush toward the Battle of the Marne and the West, from this dread Battle of the East. Westward, dear God, the fire of Thy Mad World crimsons our Heaven. Our answering Hell rolls eastward from St. Louis. Here, in microcosm, is the sort of economic snarl that arose continually for me and my pupils to solve. We could bring to its unraveling little of the scholarly aloofness and academic calm of most white universities. To us this thing was Life and Hope and Death! How should we think such a problem through, not simply as Negroes, but as men and women of a new century, helping to build a new world? And first of all, here is no simple question of race antagonism. There are no races, in the sense of great, separate, pure breeds of men, differing in attainment, development, and capacity. There are great groups,—now with common history, now with common interests, now with common ancestry; more and more common experience and present interest drive back the common blood and the world today consists, not of races, but of the imperial commercial group of master capitalists, international and predominantly white; the national middle classes of the several nations, white, yellow, and brown, with strong blood bonds, common languages, and common history; the international laboring class of all colors; the backward, oppressed groups of nature-folk, predominantly yellow, brown, and black. Two questions arise from the work and relations of these groups: how to furnish goods and services for the wants of men and how equitably and sufficiently to satisfy these wants. There can be no doubt that we have passed in our day from a world that could hardly satisfy the physical wants of the mass of men, by the greatest effort, to a world whose technique supplies enough for all, if all can claim their right. Our great ethical question today is, therefore, how may we justly distribute the world's goods to satisfy the necessary wants of the mass of men. What hinders the answer to this question? Dislikes, jealousies, hatreds,—undoubtedly like the race hatred in East St. Louis; the jealousy of English and German; the dislike of the Jew and the Gentile. But these are, after all, surface disturbances, sprung from ancient habit more than from present reason. They persist and are encouraged because of deeper, mightier currents. If the white workingmen of East St. Louis felt sure that Negro workers would not and could not take the bread and cake from their mouths, their race hatred would never have been translated into murder. If the black workingmen of the South could earn a decent living under decent circumstances at home, they would not be compelled to underbid their white fellows. Thus the shadow of hunger, in a world which never needs to be hungry, drives us to war and murder and hate. But why does hunger shadow so vast a mass of men? Manifestly because in the great organizing of men for work a few of the participants come out with more wealth than they can possibly use, while a vast number emerge with less than can decently support life. In earlier economic stages we defended this as the reward of Thrift and Sacrifice, and as the punishment of Ignorance and Crime. To this the answer is sharp: Sacrifice calls for no such reward and Ignorance deserves no such punishment. The chief meaning of our present thinking is that the disproportion between wealth and poverty today cannot be adequately accounted for by the thrift and ignorance of the rich and the poor. Yesterday we righted one great mistake when we realized that the ownership of the laborer did not tend to increase production. The world at large had learned this long since, but black slavery arose again in America as an inexplicable anachronism, a wilful crime. The freeing of the black slaves freed America. Today we are challenging another ownership,-the ownership of materials which go to make the goods we need. Private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. When, however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Today, therefore, we are challenging this ownership; we are demanding general consent as to what materials shall be privately owned and as to how materials shall be used. We are rapidly approaching the day when we shall repudiate all private property in raw materials and tools and demand that distribution hinge, not on the power of those who monopolize the materials, but on the needs of the mass of men. Can we do this and still make sufficient goods, justly gauge the needs of men, and rightly decide who are to be considered "men"? How do we arrange to accomplish these things today? Somebody decides whose wants should be satisfied. Somebody organizes industry so as to satisfy these wants. What is to hinder the same ability and foresight from being used in the future as in the past? The amount and kind of human ability necessary need not be decreased,—it may even be vastly increased, with proper encouragement and rewards. Are we today evoking the necessary ability? On the contrary, it is not the Inventor, the Manager, and the Thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather the Gambler and the Highwayman. Rightly-organized industry might easily save the Gambler's Profit and the Monopolist's Interest and by paying a more discriminating reward in wealth and honor bring to the service of the state more ability and sacrifice than we can today command. If we do away with interest and profit, consider the savings that could be made; but above all, think how great the revolution would be when we ask the mysterious Somebody to decide in the light of public opinion whose wants should be satisfied. This is the great and real revolution that is coming in future industry. But this is not the need of the revolution nor indeed, perhaps, its real beginning. What we must decide sometime is who are to be considered "men." Today, at the beginning of this industrial change, we are admitting that economic classes must give way. The laborers' hire must increase, the employers' profit must be curbed. But how far shall this change go? Must it apply to all human beings and to all work throughout the world? Certainly not. We seek to apply it slowly and with some reluctance to white men and more slowly and with greater reserve to white women, but black folk and brown and for the most part yellow folk we have widely determined shall not be among those whose needs must justly be heard and whose wants must be ministered to in the great organization of world industry. In the teaching of my classes I was not willing to stop with showing that this was unfair,—indeed I did not have to do this. They knew through bitter experience its rank injustice, because they were black. What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be permanently made with the majority of mankind left out. These disinherited darker peoples must either share in the future industrial democracy or overturn the world. Of course, the foundation of such a system must be a high, ethical ideal. We must really envisage the wants of humanity. We must want the wants of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger numbers for every human height of attainment. To be sure, there are differences between men and groups and there will ever be, but they will be differences of beauty and genius and of interest and not necessarily of ugliness, imbecility, and hatred. The meaning of America is the beginning of the discovery of the Crowd. The crowd is not so well-trained as a Versailles garden party of Louis XIV, but it is far better trained than the Sans-culottes and it has infinite possibilities. What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior! What hinders our approach to the ideals outlined above? Our profit from degradation, our colonial exploitation, our American attitude toward the Negro. Think again of East St. Louis! Think back of that to slavery and Reconstruction! Do we want the wants of American Negroes satisfied? Most certainly not, and that negative is the greatest hindrance today to the reorganization of work and redistribution of wealth, not only in America, but in the world. All humanity must share in the future industrial democracy of the world. For this it must be trained in intelligence and in appreciation of the good and the beautiful. Present Big Business,—that Science of Human Wants—must be perfected by eliminating the price paid for waste, which is Interest, and for Chance, which is Profit, and making all income a personal wage for service rendered by the recipient; by recognizing no possible human service as great enough to enable a person to designate another as an idler or as a worker at work which he cannot do. Above all, industry must minister to the wants of the many and not to the few, and the Negro, the Indian, the Mongolian, and the South Sea Islander must be among the many as well as Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen. In this coming socialization of industry we must guard against that same tyranny of the majority that has marked democracy in the making of laws. There must, for instance, persist in this future economics a certain minimum of machine-like work and prompt obedience and submission. This necessity is a simple corollary from the hard facts of the physical world. It must be accepted with the comforting thought that its routine need not demand twelve hours a day or even eight. With Work for All and All at Work probably from three to six hours would suffice, and leave abundant time for leisure, exercise, study, and avocations. But what shall we say of work where spiritual values and social distinctions enter? Who shall be Artists and who shall be Servants in the world to come? Or shall we all be artists and all serve? The Second ComingThree bishops sat in San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, peering gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering shadows on book-lined walls. Three letters lay in their laps, which said: "And thou, Valdosta, in the land of Georgia, art not least among the princes of America, for out of thee shall come a governor who shall rule my people." The white bishop of New York scowled and impatiently threw the letter into the fire. "Valdosta?" he thought,—"That's where I go to the governor's wedding of little Marguerite, my white flower,—" Then he forgot the writing in his musing, but the paper flared red in the fireplace. "Valdosta?" said the black bishop of New Orleans, turning uneasily in his chair. "I must go down there. Those colored folk are acting strangely. I don't know where all this unrest and moving will lead to. Then, there's poor Lucy—" And he threw the letter into the fire, but eyed it suspiciously as it flamed green. "Stranger things than that have happened," he said slowly, "'and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars ... for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.'" In San Francisco the priest of Japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment. Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. I shall go and report to Kioto." So in the dim waning of the day before Christmas three bishops met in Valdosta and saw its mills and storehouses, its wide-throated and sandy streets, in the mellow glow of a crimson sun. The governor glared anxiously up the street as he helped the bishop of New York into his car and welcomed him graciously. "I am troubled," said the governor, "about the niggers. They are acting queerly. I'm not certain but Fleming is back of it." "Fleming?" "Yes! He's running against me next term for governor; he's a firebrand; wants niggers to vote and all that—pardon me a moment, there's a darky I know—" and he hurried to the black bishop, who had just descended from the "Jim-Crow" car, and clasped his hand cordially. They talked in whispers. "Search diligently," said the governor in parting, "and bring me word again." Then returning to his guest, "You will excuse me, won't you?" he asked, "but I am sorely troubled! I never saw niggers act so. They're leaving by the hundreds and those who stay are getting impudent! They seem to be expecting something. What's the crowd, Jim?" The chauffeur said that there was some sort of Chinese official in town and everybody wanted to glimpse him. He drove around another way. It all happened very suddenly. The bishop of New York, in full canonicals for the early wedding, stepped out on the rear balcony of his mansion, just as the dying sun lit crimson clouds of glory in the East and burned the West. "Fire!" yelled a wag in the surging crowd that was gathering to celebrate a southern Christmas-eve; all laughed and ran. The bishop of New York did not understand. He peered around. Was it that dark, little house in the far backyard that flamed? Forgetful of his robes he hurried down,—a brave, white figure in the sunset. He found himself before an old, black, rickety stable. He could hear the mules stamping within. No. It was not fire. It was the sunset glowing through the cracks. Behind the hut its glory rose toward God like flaming wings of cherubim. He paused until he heard the faint wail of a child. Hastily he entered. A white girl crouched before him, down by the very mules' feet, with a baby in her arms,-a little mite of a baby that wailed weakly. Behind mother and child stood a shadow. The bishop of New York turned to the right, inquiringly, and saw a black man in bishop's robes that faintly re-echoed his own. He turned away to the left and saw a golden Japanese in golden garb. Then he heard the black man mutter behind him: "But He was to come the second time in clouds of glory, with the nations gathered around Him and angels—" at the word a shaft of glorious light fell full upon the child, while without came the tramping of unnumbered feet and the whirring of wings. The bishop of New York bent quickly over the baby. It was black! He stepped back with a gesture of disgust, hardly listening to and yet hearing the black bishop, who spoke almost as if in apology: "She's not really white; I know Lucy—you see, her mother worked for the governor—" The white bishop turned on his heel and nearly trod on the yellow priest, who knelt with bowed head before the pale mother and offered incense and a gift of gold. Out into the night rushed the bishop of New York. The wings of the cherubim were folded black against the stars. As he hastened down the front staircase the governor came rushing up the street steps. "We are late!" he cried nervously. "The bride awaits!" He hurried the bishop to the waiting limousine, asking him anxiously: "Did you hear anything? Do you hear that noise? The crowd is growing strangely on the streets and there seems to be a fire over toward the East. I never saw so many people here—I fear violence—a mob—a lynching—I fear—hark!" What was that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered feet? Deep in his heart a wonder grew. What was it? Ah, he knew! It was music,—some strong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward them. So high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind them. The governor, ashen-faced, crouched in the car; but the bishop said softly as the ecstasy pulsed in his heart: "Such music, such wedding music! What choir is it?" V"THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE"The lady looked at me severely; I glanced away. I had addressed the little audience at some length on the disfranchisement of my people in society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided the while her cold, green eye. I finished and shook weary hands, while she lay in wait. I knew what was coming and braced my soul. "Do you know where I can get a good colored cook?" she asked. I disclaimed all guilty concupiscence. She came nearer and spitefully shook a finger in my face. "Why—won't—Negroes—work!" she panted. "I have given money for years to Hampton and Tuskegee and yet I can't get decent servants. They won't try. They're lazy! They're unreliable! They're impudent and they leave without notice. They all want to be lawyers and doctors and" (she spat the word in venom) "ladies!" "God forbid!" I answered solemnly, and then being of gentle birth, and unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, I ran; I ran home and wrote a chapter in my book and this is it. I speak and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk, however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its dirt and noise and low wage. The factory was closed to us. Our little lands were too small to feed most of us. A few clung almost sullenly to the old homes, low and red things crouching on a wide level; but the children stirred restlessly and walked often to town and saw its wonders. Slowly they dribbled off,—a waiter here, a cook there, help for a few weeks in Mrs. Blank's kitchen when she had summer boarders. Instinctively I hated such work from my birth. I loathed it and shrank from it. Why? I could not have said. Had I been born in Carolina instead of Massachusetts I should hardly have escaped the taint of "service." Its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my scruples; and yet I am sure I would have fought long even in Carolina, for I knew in my heart that thither lay Hell. I mowed lawns on contract, did "chores" that left me my own man, sold papers, and peddled tea—anything to escape the shadow of the awful thing that lurked to grip my soul. Once, and once only, I felt the sting of its talons. I was twenty and had graduated from Fisk with a scholarship for Harvard; I needed, however, travel money and clothes and a bit to live on until the scholarship was due. Fortson was a fellow-student in winter and a waiter in summer. He proposed that the Glee Club Quartet of Fisk spend the summer at the hotel in Minnesota where he worked and that I go along as "Business Manager" to arrange for engagements on the journey back. We were all eager, but we knew nothing of table-waiting. "Never mind," said Fortson, "you can stand around the dining-room during meals and carry out the big wooden trays of dirty dishes. Thus you can pick up knowledge of waiting and earn good tips and get free board." I listened askance, but I went. I entered that broad and blatant hotel at Lake Minnetonka with distinct forebodings. The flamboyant architecture, the great verandas, rich furniture, and richer dresses awed us mightily. The long loft reserved for us, with its clean little cots, was reassuring; the work was not difficult,—but the meals! There were no meals. At first, before the guests ate, a dirty table in the kitchen was hastily strewn with uneatable scraps. We novices were the only ones who came to eat, while the guests' dining-room, with its savors and sights, set our appetites on edge! After a while even the pretense of meals for us was dropped. We were sure we were going to starve when Dug, one of us, made a startling discovery: the waiters stole their food and they stole the best. We gulped and hesitated. Then we stole, too, (or, at least, they stole and I shared) and we all fattened, for the dainties were marvelous. You slipped a bit here and hid it there; you cut off extra portions and gave false orders; you dashed off into darkness and hid in corners and ate and ate! It was nasty business. I hated it. I was too cowardly to steal much myself, and not coward enough to refuse what others stole. Our work was easy, but insipid. We stood about and watched overdressed people gorge. For the most part we were treated like furniture and were supposed to act the wooden part. I watched the waiters even more than the guests. I saw that it paid to amuse and to cringe. One particular black man set me crazy. He was intelligent and deft, but one day I caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the clown,—crouching, grinning, assuming a broad dialect when he usually spoke good English—ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more money than any waiter in the dining-room. I did not mind the actual work or the kind of work, but it was the dishonesty and deception, the flattery and cajolery, the unnatural assumption that worker and diner had no common humanity. It was uncanny. It was inherently and fundamentally wrong. I stood staring and thinking, while the other boys hustled about. Then I noticed one fat hog, feeding at a heavily gilded trough, who could not find his waiter. He beckoned me. It was not his voice, for his mouth was too full. It was his way, his air, his assumption. Thus Caesar ordered his legionaries or Cleopatra her slaves. Dogs recognized the gesture. I did not. He may be beckoning yet for all I know, for something froze within me. I did not look his way again. Then and there I disowned menial service for me and my people. I would work my hands off for an honest wage, but for "tips" and "hand-me-outs," never! Fortson was a pious, honest fellow, who regarded "tips" as in the nature of things, being to the manner born; but the hotel that summer in other respects rather astonished even him. He came to us much flurried one night and got us to help him with a memorial to the absentee proprietor, telling of the wild and gay doings of midnights in the rooms and corridors among "tired" business men and their prostitutes. We listened wide-eyed and eager and wrote the filth out manfully. The proprietor did not thank Fortson. He did not even answer the letter. When I finally walked out of that hotel and out of menial service forever, I felt as though, in a field of flowers, my nose had been held unpleasantly long to the worms and manure at their roots. "Cursed be Canaan!" cried the Hebrew priests. "A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." With what characteristic complacency did the slaveholders assume that Canaanites were Negroes and their "brethren" white? Are not Negroes servants? Ergo! Upon such spiritual myths was the anachronism of American slavery built, and this was the degradation that once made menial servants the aristocrats among colored folk. House servants secured some decencies of food and clothing and shelter; they could more easily reach their master's ear; their personal abilities of character became known and bonds grew between slave and master which strengthened from friendship to love, from mutual service to mutual blood. Naturally out of this the West Indian servant climbed out of slavery into citizenship, for few West Indian masters—fewer Spanish or Dutch—were callous enough to sell their own children into slavery. Not so with English and Americans. With a harshness and indecency seldom paralleled in the civilized world white masters on the mainland sold their mulatto children, half-brothers and half-sisters, and their own wives in all but name, into life-slavery by the hundreds and thousands. They originated a special branch of slave-trading for this trade and the white aristocrats of Virginia and the Carolinas made more money by this business during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than in any other way. The clang of the door of opportunity thus knelled in the ears of the colored house servant whirled the whole face of Negro advancement as on some great pivot. The movement was slow, but vast. When emancipation came, before and after 1863, the house servant still held advantages. He had whatever education the race possessed and his white father, no longer able to sell him, often helped him with land and protection. Notwithstanding this the lure of house service for the Negro was gone. The path of salvation for the emancipated host of black folk lay no longer through the kitchen door, with its wide hall and pillared veranda and flowered yard beyond. It lay, as every Negro soon knew and knows, in escape from menial serfdom. In 1860, 98 per cent of the Negroes were servants and serfs. In 1880, 30 per cent were servants and 65 per cent were serfs. The percentage of servants then rose slightly and fell again until 21 per cent were in service in 1910 and, doubtless, much less than 20 per cent today. This is the measure of our rise, but the Negro will not approach freedom until this hateful badge of slavery and mediaevalism has been reduced to less than 10 per cent. Not only are less than a fifth of our workers servants today, but the character of their service has been changed. The million menial workers among us include 300,000 upper servants,—skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food. But the labor movement turned their backs on those black men when the white world dinned in their ears. Negroes are servants; servants are Negroes. They shut the door of escape to factory and trade in their fellows' faces and battened down the hatches, lest the 300,000 should be workers equal in pay and consideration with white men. But, if the upper servants could not escape to modern, industrial conditions, how much the more did they press down on the bodies and souls of 700,000 washerwomen and household drudges,—ignorant, unskilled offal of a millionaire industrial system. Their pay was the lowest and their hours the longest of all workers. The personal degradation of their work is so great that any white man of decency would rather cut his daughter's throat than let her grow up to such a destiny. There is throughout the world and in all races no greater source of prostitution than this grade of menial service, and the Negro race in America has largely escaped this destiny simply because its innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers. To such sexual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless changes of masters. Indeed, here among American Negroes we have exemplified the last and worst refuge of industrial caste. Menial service is an anachronism,—the refuse of mediaeval barbarism. Whey, then, does it linger? Why are we silent about it? Why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks does the whole Negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their getting a cook or a maid? No one knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic service at its best. I have seen children who were spiritual sons and daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses, and old servants honored and revered. But in every such case the Servant had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage. Now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same revolution in household help as in factory help and public service. While organized industry has been slowly making its help into self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of men from the worst conditions. The cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold. First, the ancient high estate of Service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath; secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven. The Master spoke no greater word than that which said: "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant!" What is greater than Personal Service! Surely no social service, no wholesale helping of masses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty in the personal aid of man to man. It is the purest and holiest of duties. Some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the First Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, the Keepers of the Robes, and the Knights of the Bath, the highest nobility that hedged an anointed king. Nor does it differ today in what the mother does for the child or the daughter for the mother, in all the personal attentions in the old-fashioned home; this is Service! Think of what Friend has meant, not simply in spiritual sympathies, but in physical helpfulness. In the world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice, and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food, the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment—what greater, more intimate, more holy Services are there than these? And yet we are degrading these services and loathing them and scoffing at them and spitting upon them, first, by turning them over to the lowest and least competent and worst trained classes in the world, and then by yelling like spoiled children if our babies are neglected, our biscuits sodden, our homes dirty, and our baths unpoured. Let one suggest that the only cure for such deeds is in the uplift of the doer and our rage is even worse and less explicable. We will call them by their first names, thus blaspheming a holy intimacy; we will confine them to back doors; we will insist that their meals be no gracious ceremony nor even a restful sprawl, but usually a hasty, heckled gulp amid garbage; we exact, not a natural, but a purchased deference, and we leave them naked to insult by our children and by our husbands. I remember a girl,—how pretty she was, with the crimson flooding the old ivory of her cheeks and her gracious plumpness! She had come to the valley during the summer to "do housework." I met and walked home with her, in the thrilling shadows, to an old village home I knew well; then as I turned to leave I learned that she was there alone in that house for a week-end with only one young white man to represent the family. Oh, he was doubtless a "gentleman" and all that, but for the first time in my life I saw what a snare the fowler was spreading at the feet of the daughters of my people, baited by church and state. Not alone is the hurt thus offered to the lowly,—Society and Science suffer. The unit which we seek to make the center of society,—the Home—is deprived of the help of scientific invention and suggestion. It is only slowly and by the utmost effort that some small foothold has been gained for the vacuum cleaner, the washing-machine, the power tool, and the chemical reagent. In our frantic effort to preserve the last vestiges of slavery and mediaevalism we not only set out faces against such improvements, but we seek to use education and the power of the state to train the servants who do not naturally appear. Meantime the wild rush from house service, on the part of all who can scramble or run, continues. The rules of the labor union are designed, not simply to raise wages, but to guard against any likeness between artisan and servant. There is no essential difference in ability and training between a subway guard and a Pullman porter, but between their union cards lies a whole world. Yet we are silent. Menial service is not a "social problem." It is not really discussed. There is no scientific program for its "reform." There is but one panacea: Escape! Get yourselves and your sons and daughters out of the shadow of this awful thing! Hire servants, but never be one. Indeed, subtly but surely the ability to hire at least "a maid" is still civilization's patent to respectability, while "a man" is the first word of aristocracy. All this is because we still consciously and unconsciously hold to the "manure" theory of social organization. We believe that at the bottom of organized human life there are necessary duties and services which no real human being ought to be compelled to do. We push below this mudsill the derelicts and half-men, whom we hate and despise, and seek to build above it—Democracy! On such foundations is reared a Theory of Exclusiveness, a feeling that the world progresses by a process of excluding from the benefits of culture the majority of men, so that a gifted minority may blossom. Through this door the modern democrat arrives to the place where he is willing to allot two able-bodied men and two fine horses to the task of helping one wizened beldam to take the morning air. Here the absurdity ends. Here all honest minds turn back and ask: Is menial service permanent or necessary? Can we not transfer cooking from the home to the scientific laboratory, along with the laundry? Cannot machinery, in the hands of self-respecting and well-paid artisans, do our cleaning, sewing, moving, and decorating? Cannot the training of children become an even greater profession than the attending of the sick? And cannot personal service and companionship be coupled with friendship and love where it belongs and whence it can never be divorced without degradation and pain? In fine, can we not, black and white, rich and poor, look forward to a world of Service without Servants? A miracle! you say? True. And only to be performed by the Immortal Child. Jesus Christ in TexasIt was in Waco, Texas. The convict guard laughed. "I don't know," he said, "I hadn't thought of that." He hesitated and looked at the stranger curiously. In the solemn twilight he got an impression of unusual height and soft, dark eyes. "Curious sort of acquaintance for the colonel," he thought; then he continued aloud: "But that nigger there is bad, a born thief, and ought to be sent up for life; got ten years last time—" Here the voice of the promoter, talking within, broke in; he was bending over his figures, sitting by the colonel. He was slight, with a sharp nose. "The convicts," he said, "would cost us $96 a year and board. Well, we can squeeze this so that it won't be over $125 apiece. Now if these fellows are driven, they can build this line within twelve months. It will be running by next April. Freights will fall fifty per cent. Why, man, you'll be a millionaire in less than ten years." The colonel started. He was a thick, short man, with a clean-shaven face and a certain air of breeding about the lines of his countenance; the word millionaire sounded well to his ears. He thought—he thought a great deal; he almost heard the puff of the fearfully costly automobile that was coming up the road, and he said: "I suppose we might as well hire them." "Of course," answered the promoter. The voice of the tall stranger in the corner broke in here: "It will be a good thing for them?" he said, half in question. The colonel moved. "The guard makes strange friends," he thought to himself. "What's this man doing here, anyway?" He looked at him, or rather looked at his eyes, and then somehow he felt a warming toward him. He said: "Well, at least, it can't harm them; they're beyond that." "It will do them good, then," said the stranger again. The promoter shrugged his shoulders. "It will do us good," he said. But the colonel shook his head impatiently. He felt a desire to justify himself before those eyes, and he answered: "Yes, it will do them good; or at any rate it won't make them any worse than they are." Then he started to say something else, but here sure enough the sound of the automobile breathing at the gate stopped him and they all arose. "It is settled, then," said the promoter. "Yes," said the colonel, turning toward the stranger again. "Are you going into town?" he asked with the Southern courtesy of white men to white men in a country town. The stranger said he was. "Then come along in my machine. I want to talk with you about this." They went out to the car. The stranger as he went turned again to look back at the convict. He was a tall, powerfully built black fellow. His face was sullen, with a low forehead, thick, hanging lips, and bitter eyes. There was revolt written about his mouth despite the hang-dog expression. He stood bending over his pile of stones, pounding listlessly. Beside him stood a boy of twelve,—yellow, with a hunted, crafty look. The convict raised his eyes and they met the eyes of the stranger. The hammer fell from his hands. The stranger turned slowly toward the automobile and the colonel introduced him. He had not exactly caught his name, but he mumbled something as he presented him to his wife and little girl, who were waiting. As they whirled away the colonel started to talk, but the stranger had taken the little girl into his lap and together they conversed in low tones all the way home. In some way, they did not exactly know how, they got the impression that the man was a teacher and, of course, he must be a foreigner. The long, cloak-like coat told this. They rode in the twilight through the lighted town and at last drew up before the colonel's mansion, with its ghost-like pillars. The lady in the back seat was thinking of the guests she had invited to dinner and was wondering if she ought not to ask this man to stay. He seemed cultured and she supposed he was some acquaintance of the colonel's. It would be rather interesting to have him there, with the judge's wife and daughter and the rector. She spoke almost before she thought: "You will enter and rest awhile?" The colonel and the little girl insisted. For a moment the stranger seemed about to refuse. He said he had some business for his father, about town. Then for the child's sake he consented. Up the steps they went and into the dark parlor where they sat and talked a long time. It was a curious conversation. Afterwards they did not remember exactly what was said and yet they all remembered a certain strange satisfaction in that long, low talk. Finally the nurse came for the reluctant child and the hostess bethought herself: "We will have a cup of tea; you will be dry and tired." She rang and switched on a blaze of light. With one accord they all looked at the stranger, for they had hardly seen him well in the glooming twilight. The woman started in amazement and the colonel half rose in anger. Why, the man was a mulatto, surely; even if he did not own the Negro blood, their practised eyes knew it. He was tall and straight and the coat looked like a Jewish gabardine. His hair hung in close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even yellow. A peremptory order rose to the colonel's lips and froze there as he caught the stranger's eyes. Those eyes,—where had he seen those eyes before? He remembered them long years ago. The soft, tear-filled eyes of a brown girl. He remembered many things, and his face grew drawn and white. Those eyes kept burning into him, even when they were turned half away toward the staircase, where the white figure of the child hovered with her nurse and waved good-night. The lady sank into her chair and thought: "What will the judge's wife say? How did the colonel come to invite this man here? How shall we be rid of him?" She looked at the colonel in reproachful consternation. Just then the door opened and the old butler came in. He was an ancient black man, with tufted white hair, and he held before him a large, silver tray filled with a china tea service. The stranger rose slowly and stretched forth his hands as if to bless the viands. The old man paused in bewilderment, tottered, and then with sudden gladness in his eyes dropped to his knees, and the tray crashed to the floor. "My Lord and my God!" he whispered; but the woman screamed: "Mother's china!" The doorbell rang. "Heavens! here is the dinner party!" exclaimed the lady. She turned toward the door, but there in the hall, clad in her night clothes, was the little girl. She had stolen down the stairs to see the stranger again, and the nurse above was calling in vain. The woman felt hysterical and scolded at the nurse, but the stranger had stretched out his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them. They caught some words about the "Kingdom of Heaven" as he slowly mounted the stairs with his little, white burden. The mother was glad of anything to get rid of the interloper, even for a moment. The bell rang again and she hastened toward the door, which the loitering black maid was just opening. She did not notice the shadow of the stranger as he came slowly down the stairs and paused by the newel post, dark and silent. The judge's wife came in. She was an old woman, frilled and powdered into a semblance of youth, and gorgeously gowned. She came forward, smiling with extended hands, but when she was opposite the stranger, somewhere a chill seemed to strike her and she shuddered and cried: "What a draft!" as she drew a silken shawl about her and shook hands cordially; she forgot to ask who the stranger was. The judge strode in unseeing, thinking of a puzzling case of theft. "Eh? What? Oh—er—yes,—good evening," he said, "good evening." Behind them came a young woman in the glory of youth, and daintily silked, beautiful in face and form, with diamonds around her fair neck. She came in lightly, but stopped with a little gasp; then she laughed gaily and said: "Why, I beg your pardon. Was it not curious? I thought I saw there behind your man"—she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she argued—"the shadow of great, white wings. It was but the light on the drapery. What a turn it gave me." And she smiled again. With her came a tall, handsome, young naval officer. Hearing his lady refer to the servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack. Last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed. He started to pass the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I beg your pardon,—I think I have met you?" The stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the guests on. But the rector lingered and looked perplexed. "Surely, I know you. I have met you somewhere," he said, putting his hand vaguely to his head. "You—you remember me, do you not?" The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess' unspeakable relief passed out of the door. "I never knew you," he said in low tones as he went. The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face. "I beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "It is a great pleasure to be here,—somehow I thought I knew that man. I am sure I knew him once." The stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust. He touched her lightly with his hand and said: "Go, and sin no more!" With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running. The stranger turned eastward into the night. As they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night. The colonel's wife within shuddered. "The bloodhounds!" she said. The rector answered carelessly: "Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose. Really, they need severer measures." Then he stopped. He was trying to remember that stranger's name. The judge's wife looked about for the draft and arranged her shawl. The girl glanced at the white drapery in the hall, but the young officer was bending over her and the fires of life burned in her veins. Howl after howl rose in the night, swelled, and died away. The stranger strode rapidly along the highway and out into the deep forest. There he paused and stood waiting, tall and still. A mile up the road behind a man was running, tall and powerful and black, with crime-stained face and convicts' stripes upon him, and shackles on his legs. He ran and jumped, in little, short steps, and his chains rang. He fell and rose again, while the howl of the hounds rang louder behind him. Into the forest he leapt and crept and jumped and ran, streaming with sweat; seeing the tall form rise before him, he stopped suddenly, dropped his hands in sullen impotence, and sank panting to the earth. A greyhound shot out of the woods behind him, howled, whined, and fawned before the stranger's feet. Hound after hound bayed, leapt, and lay there; then silently, one by one, and with bowed heads, they crept backward toward the town. The stranger made a cup of his hands and gave the man water to drink, bathed his hot head, and gently took the chains and irons from his feet. By and by the convict stood up. Day was dawning above the treetops. He looked into the stranger's face, and for a moment a gladness swept over the stains of his face. "Why, you are a nigger, too," he said. Then the convict seemed anxious to justify himself. "I never had no chance," he said furtively. "Thou shalt not steal," said the stranger. The man bridled. "But how about them? Can they steal? Didn't they steal a whole year's work, and then when I stole to keep from starving—" He glanced at the stranger. "No, I didn't steal just to keep from starving. I stole to be stealing. I can't seem to keep from stealing. Seems like when I see things, I just must—but, yes, I'll try!" The convict looked down at his striped clothes, but the stranger had taken off his long coat; he had put it around him and the stripes disappeared. In the opening morning the black man started toward the low, log farmhouse in the distance, while the stranger stood watching him. There was a new glory in the day. The black man's face cleared up, and the farmer was glad to get him. All day the black man worked as he had never worked before. The farmer gave him some cold food. "You can sleep in the barn," he said, and turned away. "How much do I git a day?" asked the black man. The farmer scowled. "Now see here," said he. "If you'll sign a contract for the season, I'll give you ten dollars a month." "I won't sign no contract," said the black man doggedly. "Yes, you will," said the farmer, threateningly, "or I'll call the convict guard." And he grinned. The convict shrank and slouched to the barn. As night fell he looked out and saw the farmer leave the place. Slowly he crept out and sneaked toward the house. He looked through the kitchen door. No one was there, but the supper was spread as if the mistress had laid it and gone out. He ate ravenously. Then he looked into the front room and listened. He could hear low voices on the porch. On the table lay a gold watch. He gazed at it, and in a moment he was beside it,—his hands were on it! Quickly he slipped out of the house and slouched toward the field. He saw his employer coming along the highway. He fled back in tenor and around to the front of the house, when suddenly he stopped. He felt the great, dark eyes of the stranger and saw the same dark, cloak-like coat where the stranger sat on the doorstep talking with the mistress of the house. Slowly, guiltily, he turned back, entered the kitchen, and laid the watch stealthily where he had found it; then he rushed wildly back toward the stranger, with arms outstretched. The woman had laid supper for her husband, and going down from the house had walked out toward a neighbor's. She was gone but a little while, and when she came back she started to see a dark figure on the doorsteps under the tall, red oak. She thought it was the new Negro until he said in a soft voice: "Will you give me bread?" Reassured at the voice of a white man, she answered quickly in her soft, Southern tones: "Why, certainly." She was a little woman, and once had been pretty; but now her face was drawn with work and care. She was nervous and always thinking, wishing, wanting for something. She went in and got him some cornbread and a glass of cool, rich buttermilk; then she came out and sat down beside him. She began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself,—the things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for. She told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy. She said it was hard to get niggers to work. She said they ought all to be in the chain-gang and made to work. Even then some ran away. Only yesterday one had escaped, and another the day before. At last she gossiped of her neighbors, how good they were and how bad. "And do you like them all?" asked the stranger. She hesitated. "Most of them," she said; and then, looking up into his face and putting her hand into his, as though he were her father, she said: "There are none I hate; no, none at all." He looked away, holding her hand in his, and said dreamily: "You love your neighbor as yourself?" She hesitated. "I try—" she began, and then looked the way he was looking; down under the hill where lay a little, half-ruined cabin. "They are niggers," she said briefly. He looked at her. Suddenly a confusion came over her and she insisted, she knew not why. "But they are niggers!" With a sudden impulse she arose and hurriedly lighted the lamp that stood just within the door, and held it above her head. She saw his dark face and curly hair. She shrieked in angry terror and rushed down the path, and just as she rushed down, the black convict came running up with hands outstretched. They met in mid-path, and before he could stop he had run against her and she fell heavily to earth and lay white and still. Her husband came rushing around the house with a cry and an oath. "I knew it," he said. "It's that runaway nigger." He held the black man struggling to the earth and raised his voice to a yell. Down the highway came the convict guard, with hound and mob and gun. They paused across the fields. The farmer motioned to them. "He—attacked—my wife," he gasped. The mob snarled and worked silently. Right to the limb of the red oak they hoisted the struggling, writhing black man, while others lifted the dazed woman. Right and left, as she tottered to the house, she searched for the stranger with a yearning, but the stranger was gone. And she told none of her guests. "No—no, I want nothing," she insisted, until they left her, as they thought, asleep. For a time she lay still, listening to the departure of the mob. Then she rose. She shuddered as she heard the creaking of the limb where the body hung. But resolutely she crawled to the window and peered out into the moonlight; she saw the dead man writhe. He stretched his arms out like a cross, looking upward. She gasped and clung to the window sill. Behind the swaying body, and down where the little, half-ruined cabin lay, a single flame flashed up amid the far-off shout and cry of the mob. A fierce joy sobbed up through the terror in her soul and then sank abashed as she watched the flame rise. Suddenly whirling into one great crimson column it shot to the top of the sky and threw great arms athwart the gloom until above the world and behind the roped and swaying form below hung quivering and burning a great crimson cross. She hid her dizzy, aching head in an agony of tears, and dared not look, for she knew. Her dry lips moved: "Despised and rejected of men." She knew, and the very horror of it lifted her dull and shrinking eyelids. There, heaven-tall, earth-wide, hung the stranger on the crimson cross, riven and blood-stained, with thorn-crowned head and pierced hands. She stretched her arms and shrieked. He did not hear. He did not see. His calm dark eyes, all sorrowful, were fastened on the writhing, twisting body of the thief, and a voice came out of the winds of the night, saying: "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise!" VIOF THE RULING OF MENThe ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reached this ideal because of ignorance and selfishness. The simplest object would be rule for the Pleasure of One, namely the Ruler; or of the Few—his favorites; or of many—the Rich, the Privileged, the Powerful. Democratic movements inside groups and nations are always taking place and they are the efforts to increase the number of beneficiaries of the ruling. In 18th century Europe, the effort became so broad and sweeping that an attempt was made at universal expression and the philosophy of the movement said that if All ruled they would rule for All and thus Universal Good was sought through Universal Suffrage. The unrealized difficulty of this program lay in the widespread ignorance. The mass of men, even of the more intelligent men, not only knew little about each other but less about the action of men in groups and the technique of industry in general. They could only apply universal suffrage, therefore, to the things they knew or knew partially: they knew personal and menial service, individual craftsmanship, agriculture and barter, taxes or the taking of private property for public ends and the rent of land. With these matters then they attempted to deal. Under the cry of "Freedom" they greatly relaxed the grip of selfish interests by restricting menial service, securing the right of property in handiwork and regulating public taxes; distributing land ownership and freeing trade and barter. While they were doing this against stubborn resistance, a whole new organization of work suddenly appeared. The suddenness of this "Industrial Revolution" of the 19th century was partly fortuitous—in the case of Watt's teakettle—partly a natural development, as in the matter of spinning, but largely the determination of powerful and intelligent individuals to secure the benefits of privileged persons, as in the case of foreign slave trade. The result was on the one hand a vast and unexampled development of industry. Life and civilization in the late 19th and early 20th century were Industry in its whole conception, language, and accomplishment: the object of life was to make goods. Now before this giant aspect of things, the new democracy stood aghast and impotent. It could not rule because it did not understand: an invincible kingdom of trade, business, and commerce ruled the world, and before its threshold stood the Freedom of 18th century philosophy warding the way. Some of the very ones who were freed from the tyranny of the Middle Age became the tyrants of the industrial age. There came a reaction. Men sneered at "democracy" and politics, and brought forth Fate and Philanthropy to rule the world—Fate which gave divine right to rule to the Captains of Industry and their created Millionaires; Philanthropy which organized vast schemes of relief to stop at least the flow of blood in the vaster wounds which industry was making. It was at this time that the lowest laborers, who worked hardest, got least and suffered most, began to mutter and rebel, and among these were the American Negroes. Lions have no historians, and therefore lion hunts are thrilling and satisfactory human reading. Negroes had no bards, and therefore it has been widely told how American philanthropy freed the slave. In truth the Negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many civilian helpers in the Civil War. This war was not a war for Negro freedom, but a duel between two industrial systems, one of which was bound to fail because it was an anachronism, and the other bound to succeed because of the Industrial Revolution. When now the Negro was freed the Philanthropists sought to apply to his situation the Philosophy of Democracy handed down from the 18th century. There was a chance here to try democratic rule in a new way, that is, against the new industrial oppression with a mass of workers who were not yet in its control. With plenty of land widely distributed, staple products like cotton, rice, and sugar cane, and a thorough system of education, there was a unique chance to realize a new modern democracy in industry in the southern United States which would point the way to the world. This, too, if done by black folk, would have tended to a new unity of human beings and an obliteration of human hatreds festering along the color line. Efforts were begun. The 14th and 15th amendments gave the right to vote to white and black laborers, and they immediately established a public school system and began to attack the land question. The United States government was seriously considering the distribution of land and capital—"40 acres and a mule"—and the price of cotton opened an easy way to economic independence. Co-operative movements began on a large scale. But alas! Not only were the former slave-owners solidly arrayed against this experiment, but the owners of the industrial North saw disaster in any such beginnings of industrial democracy. The opposition based its objections on the color line, and Reconstruction became in history a great movement for the self-assertion of the white race against the impudent ambition of degraded blacks, instead of, in truth, the rise of a mass of black and white laborers. The result was the disfranchisement of the blacks of the South and a world-wide attempt to restrict democratic development to white races and to distract them with race hatred against the darker races. This program, however, although it undoubtedly helped raise the scale of white labor, in much greater proportion put wealth and power in the hands of the great European Captains of Industry and made modern industrial imperialism possible. This led to renewed efforts on the part of white European workers to understand and apply their political power to its reform through democratic control. Whether known as Communism or Socialism or what not, these efforts are neither new nor strange nor terrible, but world-old and seeking an absolutely justifiable human ideal—the only ideal that can be sought: the direction of individual action in industry so as to secure the greatest good of all. Marxism was one method of accomplishing this, and its panacea was the doing away with private property in machines and materials. Two mighty attacks were made on this proposal. One was an attack on the fundamental democratic foundation: modern European white industry does not even theoretically seek the good of all, but simply of all Europeans. This attack was virtually unanswered—indeed some Socialists openly excluded Negroes and Asiatics from their scheme. From this it was easy to drift into that form of syndicalism which asks socialism for the skilled laborer only and leaves the common laborer in his bonds. This throws us back on fundamentals. It compels us again to examine the roots of democracy. Who may be excluded from a share in the ruling of men? Time and time again the world has answered: The Ignorant That is, we have assumed that only the intelligent should vote, or those who know how to rule men, or those who are not under benevolent guardianship, or those who ardently desire the right. These restrictions are not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot—they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance, "The ignorant ought not to vote." We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it. Or, in other words, education is not a prerequisite to political control—political control is the cause of popular education. Again, to make experience a qualification for the franchise is absurd: it would stop the spread of democracy and make political power hereditary, a prerequisite of a class, caste, race, or sex. It has of course been soberly argued that only white folk or Englishmen, or men, are really capable of exercising sovereign power in a modern state. The statement proves too much: only yesterday it was Englishmen of high descent, or men of "blood," or sovereigns "by divine right" who could rule. Today the civilized world is being ruled by the descendants of persons who a century ago were pronounced incapable of ever developing a self-ruling people. In every modern state there must come to the polls every generation, and indeed every year, men who are inexperienced in the solutions of the political problems that confront them and who must experiment in methods of ruling men. Thus and thus only will civilization grow. Again, what is this theory of benevolent guardianship for women, for the masses, for Negroes—for "lesser breeds without the law"? It is simply the old cry of privilege, the old assumption that there are those in the world who know better what is best for others than those others know themselves, and who can be trusted to do this best. In fact no one knows himself but that self's own soul. The vast and wonderful knowledge of this marvelous universe is locked in the bosoms of its individual souls. To tap this mighty reservoir of experience, knowledge, beauty, love, and deed we must appeal not to the few, not to some souls, but to all. The narrower the appeal, the poorer the culture; the wider the appeal the more magnificent are the possibilities. Infinite is human nature. We make it finite by choking back the mass of men, by attempting to speak for others, to interpret and act for them, and we end by acting for ourselves and using the world as our private property. If this were all, it were crime enough—but it is not all: by our ignorance we make the creation of the greater world impossible; we beat back a world built of the playing of dogs and laughter of children, the song of Black Folk and worship of Yellow, the love of women and strength of men, and try to express by a group of doddering ancients the Will of the World. There are people who insist upon regarding the franchise, not as a necessity for the many, but as a privilege for the few. They say of persons and classes: "They do not need the ballot." This is often said of women. It is argued that everything which women with the ballot might do for themselves can be done for them; that they have influence and friends "at court," and that their enfranchisement would simply double the number of ballots. So, too, we are told that American Negroes can have done for them by other voters all that they could possibly do for themselves with the ballot and much more because the white voters are more intelligent. Further than this, it is argued that many of the disfranchised people recognize these facts. "Women do not want the ballot" has been a very effective counter war-cry, so much so that many men have taken refuge in the declaration: "When they want to vote, why, then—" So, too, we are continually told that the "best" Negroes stay out of politics. Such arguments show so curious a misapprehension of the foundation of the argument for democracy that the argument must be continually restated and emphasized. We must remember that if the theory of democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of all a matter of recognized want or desire. Democracy is a method of realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings. The world has, in the past, attempted various methods of attaining this end, most of which can be summed up in three categories: The method of the benevolent tyrant. The method of intrusting the government of a people to a strong ruler has great advantages when the ruler combines strength with ability, unselfish devotion to the public good, and knowledge of what that good calls for. Such a combination is, however, rare and the selection of the right ruler is very difficult. To leave the selection to force is to put a premium on physical strength, chance, and intrigue; to make the selection a matter of birth simply transfers the real power from sovereign to minister. Inevitably the choice of rulers must fall on electors. Then comes the problem, who shall elect. The earlier answer was: a select few, such as the wise, the best born, the able. Many people assume that it was corruption that made such aristocracies fail. By no means. The best and most effective aristocracy, like the best monarchy, suffered from lack of knowledge. The rulers did not know or understand the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last analysis only the man himself, however humble, knows his own condition. He may not know how to remedy it, he may not realize just what is the matter; but he knows when something hurts and he alone knows how that hurt feels. Or if sunk below feeling or comprehension or complaint, he does not even know that he is hurt, God help his country, for it not only lacks knowledge, but has destroyed the sources of knowledge. So soon as a nation discovers that it holds in the heads and hearts of its individual citizens the vast mine of knowledge, out of which it may build a just government, then more and more it calls those citizens to select their rulers and to judge the justice of their acts. Even here, however, the temptation is to ask only for the wisdom of citizens of a certain grade or those of recognized worth. Continually some classes are tacitly or expressly excluded. Thus women have been excluded from modern democracy because of the persistent theory of female subjection and because it was argued that their husbands or other male folks would look to their interests. Now, manifestly, most husbands, fathers, and brothers will, so far as they know how or as they realize women's needs, look after them. But remember the foundation of the argument,—that in the last analysis only the sufferer knows his sufferings and that no state can be strong which excludes from its expressed wisdom the knowledge possessed by mothers, wives, and daughters. We have but to view the unsatisfactory relations of the sexes the world over and the problem of children to realize how desperately we need this excluded wisdom. The same arguments apply to other excluded groups: if a race, like the Negro race, is excluded, then so far as that race is a part of the economic and social organization of the land, the feeling and the experience of that race are absolutely necessary to the realization of the broadest justice for all citizens. Or if the "submerged tenth" be excluded, then again, there is lost from the world an experience of untold value, and they must be raised rapidly to a place where they can speak for themselves. In the same way and for the same reason children must be educated, insanity prevented, and only those put under the guardianship of others who can in no way be trained to speak for themselves. The real argument for democracy is, then, that in the people we have the source of that endless life and unbounded wisdom which the rulers of men must have. A given people today may not be intelligent, but through a democratic government that recognizes, not only the worth of the individual to himself, but the worth of his feelings and experiences to all, they can educate, not only the individual unit, but generation after generation, until they accumulate vast stores of wisdom. Democracy alone is the method of showing the whole experience of the race for the benefit of the future and if democracy tries to exclude women or Negroes or the poor or any class because of innate characteristics which do not interfere with intelligence, then that democracy cripples itself and belies its name. From this point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of current criticism of extension of the ballot. It is the business of a modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number. Again, it is the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the number of persons of mature age who can vote. Such possible voters must be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new national wisdom and strength. The addition of the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and confusing. Today those who have a voice in the body politic have expressed their wishes and sufferings. The result has been a smaller or greater balancing of their conflicting interests. The appearance of new interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older equilibrium. It is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be neglected. These interests will not, surely, be all fully realized, but they will be recognized and given as full weight as the conflicting interests will allow. The problem of government thereafter would be to reduce the necessary conflict of human interests to the minimum. From such a point of view one easily sees the strength of the demand for the ballot on the part of certain disfranchised classes. When women ask for the ballot, they are asking, not for a privilege, but for a necessity. You may not see the necessity, you may easily argue that women do not need to vote. Indeed, the women themselves in considerable numbers may agree with you. Nevertheless, women do need the ballot. They need it to right the balance of a world sadly awry because of its brutal neglect of the rights of women and children. With the best will and knowledge, no man can know women's wants as well as women themselves. To disfranchise women is deliberately to turn from knowledge and grope in ignorance. So, too, with American Negroes: the South continually insists that a benevolent guardianship of whites over blacks is the ideal thing. They assume that white people not only know better what Negroes need than Negroes themselves, but that they are anxious to supply these needs. As a result they grope in ignorance and helplessness. They cannot "understand" the Negro; they cannot protect him from cheating and lynching; and, in general, instead of loving guardianship we see anarchy and exploitation. If the Negro could speak for himself in the South instead of being spoken for, if he could defend himself instead of having to depend on the chance sympathy of white citizens, how much healthier a growth of democracy the South would have. So, too, with the darker races of the world. No federation of the world, no true inter-nation—can exclude the black and brown and yellow races from its counsels. They must equally and according to number act and be heard at the world's council. It is not, for a moment, to be assumed that enfranchising women will not cost something. It will for many years confuse our politics. It may even change the present status of family life. It will admit to the ballot thousands of inexperienced persons, unable to vote intelligently. Above all, it will interfere with some of the present prerogatives of men and probably for some time to come annoy them considerably. So, too, Negro enfranchisement meant reconstruction, with its theft and bribery and incompetency as well as its public schools and enlightened, social legislation. It would mean today that black men in the South would have to be treated with consideration, have their wishes respected and their manhood rights recognized. Every white Southerner, who wants peons beneath him, who believes in hereditary menials and a privileged aristocracy, or who hates certain races because of their characteristics, would resent this. Notwithstanding this, if America is ever to become a government built on the broadest justice to every citizen, then every citizen must be enfranchised. There may be temporary exclusions, until the ignorant and their children are taught, or to avoid too sudden an influx of inexperienced voters. But such exclusions can be but temporary if justice is to prevail. The principle of basing all government on the consent of the governed is undenied and undeniable. Moreover, the method of modern democracy has placed within reach of the modern state larger reserves of efficiency, ability, and even genius than the ancient or mediaeval state dreamed of. That this great work of the past can be carried further among all races and nations no one can reasonably doubt. Great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a reasonable chance. This is, of course, denied. It is denied so volubly and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. We do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom they come in closest contact. It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound to respect. So, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility of living beside Negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or social pariahs. All this proves that none are so blind as those nearest the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings among steadily-increasing circles of men. If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we going to make democracy effective where it now fails to function—particularly in industry? The Marxists assert that industrial democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and materials. Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand the industrial process. They do not know:
What to doHow to do itWho could do it bestorHow to apportion the resulting goods.
There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to thrift and intelligence. So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance. This is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world. But how about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence—would democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty and intricate industrial process of modern times? The knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. Consequently it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided when the people once understand the fundamentals of industry. How can civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made—whether bread or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? Can so vast a power be kept from the people? But it may be opportunely asked: has our experience in electing public officials led us to think that we could run railways, cotton mills, and department stores by popular vote? The answer is clear: no, it has not, and the reason has been lack of interest in politics and the tyranny of the Majority. Politics have not touched the matters of daily life which are nearest the interests of the people—namely, work and wages; or if they have, they have touched it obscurely and indirectly. When voting touches the vital, everyday interests of all, nominations and elections will call for more intelligent activity. Consider too the vast unused and misused power of public rewards to obtain ability and genius for the service of the state. If millionaires can buy science and art, cannot the Democratic state outbid them not only with money but with the vast ideal of the common weal? There still remains, however, the problem of the Majority. What is the cause of the undoubted reaction and alarm that the citizens of democracy continually feel? It is, I am sure, the failure to feel the full significance of the change of rule from a privileged minority to that of an omnipotent majority, and the assumption that mere majority rule is the last word of government; that majorities have no responsibilities, that they rule by the grace of God. Granted that government should be based on the consent of the governed, does the consent of a majority at any particular time adequately express the consent of all? Has the minority, even though a small and unpopular and unfashionable minority, no right to respectful consideration? I remember that excellent little high school text book, "Nordhoff's Politics," where I first read of government, saying this sentence at the beginning of its most important chapter: "The first duty of a minority is to become a majority." This is a statement which has its underlying truth, but it also has its dangerous falsehood; viz., any minority which cannot become a majority is not worthy of any consideration. But suppose that the out-voted minority is necessarily always a minority? Women, for instance, can seldom expect to be a majority; artists must always be the few; ability is always rare, and black folk in this land are but a tenth. Yet to tyrannize over such minorities, to browbeat and insult them, to call that government a democracy which makes majority votes an excuse for crushing ideas and individuality and self-development, is manifestly a peculiarly dangerous perversion of the real democratic ideal. It is right here, in its method and not in its object, that democracy in America and elsewhere has so often failed. We have attempted to enthrone any chance majority and make it rule by divine right. We have kicked and cursed minorities as upstarts and usurpers when their sole offense lay in not having ideas or hair like ours. Efficiency, ability, and genius found often no abiding place in such a soil as this. Small wonder that revolt has come and high-handed methods are rife, of pretending that policies which we favor or persons that we like have the anointment of a purely imaginary majority vote. Are the methods of such a revolt wise, howsoever great the provocation and evil may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step backward a thousand years because our present problem is baffling? Surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the crankiest, humblest and poorest and blackest peoples, must be the real key to the consent of the governed. Peoples and governments will not in the future assume that because they have the brute power to enforce momentarily dominant ideas, it is best to do so without thoughtful conference with the ideas of smaller groups and individuals. Proportionate representation in physical and spiritual form must come. That this method is virtually coming in vogue we can see by the minority groups of modern legislatures. Instead of the artificial attempts to divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions. For a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. Today we are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. The only hindrance to the faster development of this government by allied minorities is the fear of external war which is used again and again to melt these living, human, thinking groups into inhuman, thoughtless, and murdering machines. The persons, then, who come forward in the dawn of the 20th century to help in the ruling of men must come with the firm conviction that no nation, race, or sex, has a monopoly of ability or ideas; that no human group is so small as to deserve to be ignored as a part, and as an integral and respected part, of the mass of men; that, above all, no group of twelve million black folk, even though they are at the physical mercy of a hundred million white majority, can be deprived of a voice in their government and of the right to self-development without a blow at the very foundations of all democracy and all human uplift; that the very criticism aimed today at universal suffrage is in reality a demand for power on the part of consciously efficient minorities,—but these minorities face a fatal blunder when they assume that less democracy will give them and their kind greater efficiency. However desperate the temptation, no modern nation can shut the gates of opportunity in the face of its women, its peasants, its laborers, or its socially damned. How astounded the future world-citizen will be to know that as late as 1918 great and civilized nations were making desperate endeavor to confine the development of ability and individuality to one sex,—that is, to one-half of the nation; and he will probably learn that similar effort to confine humanity to one race lasted a hundred years longer. The doctrine of the divine right of majorities leads to almost humorous insistence on a dead level of mediocrity. It demands that all people be alike or that they be ostracized. At the same time its greatest accusation against rebels is this same desire to be alike: the suffragette is accused of wanting to be a man, the socialist is accused of envy of the rich, and the black man is accused of wanting to be white. That any one of these should simply want to be himself is to the average worshiper of the majority inconceivable, and yet of all worlds, may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor. The world has long since awakened to a realization of the evil which a privileged few may exercise over the majority of a nation. So vividly has this truth been brought home to us that we have lightly assumed that a privileged and enfranchised majority cannot equally harm a nation. Insane, wicked, and wasteful as the tyranny of the few over the many may be, it is not more dangerous than the tyranny of the many over the few. Brutal physical revolution can, and usually does, end the tyranny of the few. But the spiritual losses from suppressed minorities may be vast and fatal and yet all unknown and unrealized because idea and dream and ability are paralyzed by brute force. If, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? How will it function? What will be its field of work? The paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. Mankind is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk, disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art. In this intricate whirl of activities, the theory of government has been hitherto to lay down only very general rules of conduct, marking the limits of extreme anti-social acts, like fraud, theft, and murder. The theory was that within these bounds was Freedom—the Liberty to think and do and move as one wished. The real realm of freedom was found in experience to be much narrower than this in one direction and much broader in another. In matters of Truth and Faith and Beauty, the Ancient Law was inexcusably strait and modern law unforgivably stupid. It is here that the future and mighty fight for Freedom must and will be made. Here in the heavens and on the mountaintops, the air of Freedom is wide, almost limitless, for here, in the highest stretches, individual freedom harms no man, and, therefore, no man has the right to limit it. On the other hand, in the valleys of the hard, unyielding laws of matter and the social necessities of time production, and human intercourse, the limits on our freedom are stern and unbending if we would exist and thrive. This does not say that everything here is governed by incontrovertible "natural" law which needs no human decision as to raw materials, machinery, prices, wages, news-dissemination, education of children, etc.; but it does mean that decisions here must be limited by brute facts and based on science and human wants. Today the scientific and ethical boundaries of our industrial activities are not in the hands of scientists, teachers, and thinkers; nor is the intervening opportunity for decision left in the control of the public whose welfare such decisions guide. On the contrary, the control of industry is largely in the hands of a powerful few, who decide for their own good and regardless of the good of others. The making of the rules of Industry, then, is not in the hands of All, but in the hands of the Few. The Few who govern industry envisage, not the wants of mankind, but their own wants. They work quietly, often secretly, opposing Law, on the one hand, as interfering with the "freedom of industry"; opposing, on the other hand, free discussion and open determination of the rules of work and wealth and wages, on the ground that harsh natural law brooks no interference by Democracy. These things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and determination. They are strictly controlled. Who controls them? Who makes these inner, but powerful, rules? Few people know. Others assert and believe these rules are "natural"—a part of our inescapable physical environment. Some of them doubtless are; but most of them are just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful private persons who today control industry. Just here it is that modern men demand that Democracy supplant skilfully concealed, but all too evident, Monarchy. In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter here. Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few. They point to the failure of attempts at democratic control in industry, just as we used to point to Spanish-American governments, and they expose, not simply the failures of Russian Soviets,—they fly to arms to prevent that greatest experiment in industrial democracy which the world has yet seen. These are the ones who say: We must control labor or civilization will fail; we must control white labor in Europe and America; above all, we must control yellow labor in Asia and black labor in Africa and the South, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton. And yet,—and yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy? Must industry rule men or may men rule even industry? And unless men rule industry, can they ever hope really to make laws or educate children or create beauty? That the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let no man deny. We must spread that sympathy and intelligence which tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public control; we must learn to select for public office ability rather than mere affability. We must stand ready to defer to knowledge and science and judge by result rather than by method; and finally we must face the fact that the final distribution of goods—the question of wages and income is an ethical and not a mere mechanical problem and calls for grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. All this means time and development. It comes not complete by instant revolution of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years—it comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and grow and as children are trained in Truth. These steps are in many cases clear: the careful, steady increase of public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we learn the way; the use of taxation to limit inheritance and to take the unearned increment for public use beginning (but not ending) with a "single tax" on monopolized land values; the training of the public in business technique by co-operation in buying and selling, and in industrial technique by the shop committee and manufacturing guild. But beyond all this must come the Spirit—the Will to Human Brotherhood of all Colors, Races, and Creeds; the Wanting of the Wants of All. Perhaps the finest contribution of current Socialism to the world is neither its light nor its dogma, but the idea back of its one mighty word—Comrade! The CallIn the Land of the Heavy Laden came once a dreary day. And the King, who sat upon the Great White Throne, raised his eyes and saw afar off how the hills around were hot with hostile feet and the sound of the mocking of his enemies struck anxiously on the King's ears, for the King loved his enemies. So the King lifted up his hand in the glittering silence and spake softly, saying: "Call the Servants of the King." Then the herald stepped before the armpost of the throne, and cried: "Thus saith the High and Mighty One, who inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy,—the Servants of the King!" Now, of the servants of the king there were a hundred and forty-four thousand,—tried men and brave, brawny of arm and quick of wit; aye, too, and women of wisdom and women marvelous in beauty and grace. And yet on this drear day when the King called, their ears were thick with the dust of the enemy, their eyes were blinded with the flashing of his spears, and they hid their faces in dread silence and moved not, even at the King's behest. So the herald called again. And the servants cowered in very shame, but none came forth. But the third blast of the herald struck upon a woman's heart, afar. And the woman straightway left her baking and sweeping and the rattle of pans; and the woman straightway left her chatting and gossiping and the sewing of garments, and the woman stood before the King, saying: "The servant of thy servants, O Lord." Then the King smiled,—smiled wondrously, so that the setting sun burst through the clouds, and the hearts of the King's men dried hard within them. And the low-voiced King said, so low that even they that listened heard not well: "Go, smite me mine enemies, that they cease to do evil in my sight." And the woman quailed and trembled. Three times she lifted her eyes unto the hills and saw the heathen whirling onward in their rage. And seeing, she shrank—three times she shrank and crept to the King's feet. "O King," she cried, "I am but a woman." And the King answered: "Go, then, Mother of Men." And the woman said, "Nay, King, but I am still a maid." Whereat the King cried: "O maid, made Man, thou shalt be Bride of God." And yet the third time the woman shrank at the thunder in her ears, and whispered: "Dear God, I am black!" The King spake not, but swept the veiling of his face aside and lifted up the light of his countenance upon her and lo! it was black. So the woman went forth on the hills of God to do battle for the King, on that drear day in the land of the Heavy Laden, when the heathen raged and imagined a vain thing. VIITHE DAMNATION OF WOMENI remember four women of my boyhood: my mother, cousin Inez, Emma, and Ide Fuller. They represented the problem of the widow, the wife, the maiden, and the outcast. They were, in color, brown and light-brown, yellow with brown freckles, and white. They existed not for themselves, but for men; they were named after the men to whom they were related and not after the fashion of their own souls. They were not beings, they were relations and these relations were enfilmed with mystery and secrecy. We did not know the truth or believe it when we heard it. Motherhood! What was it? We did not know or greatly care. My mother and I were good chums. I liked her. After she was dead I loved her with a fierce sense of personal loss. Inez was a pretty, brown cousin who married. What was marriage? We did not know, neither did she, poor thing! It came to mean for her a litter of children, poverty, a drunken, cruel companion, sickness, and death. Why? There was no sweeter sight than Emma,—slim, straight, and dainty, darkly flushed with the passion of youth; but her life was a wild, awful struggle to crush her natural, fierce joy of love. She crushed it and became a cold, calculating mockery. Last there was that awful outcast of the town, the white woman, Ide Fuller. What she was, we did not know. She stood to us as embodied filth and wrong,—but whose filth, whose wrong? Grown up I see the problem of these women transfused; I hear all about me the unanswered call of youthful love, none the less glorious because of its clean, honest, physical passion. Why unanswered? Because the youth are too poor to marry or if they marry, too poor to have children. They turn aside, then, in three directions: to marry for support, to what men call shame, or to that which is more evil than nothing. It is an unendurable paradox; it must be changed or the bases of culture will totter and fall. The world wants healthy babies and intelligent workers. Today we refuse to allow the combination and force thousands of intelligent workers to go childless at a horrible expenditure of moral force, or we damn them if they break our idiotic conventions. Only at the sacrifice of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of modern women bear children. This is the damnation of women. All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins. The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness free and strong. The world must choose the free woman or the white wraith of the prostitute. Today it wavers between the prostitute and the nun. Civilization must show two things: the glory and beauty of creating life and the need and duty of power and intelligence. This and this only will make the perfect marriage of love and work.
God is Love,Love is God;There is no God but LoveAnd Work is His Prophet!
All this of woman,—but what of black women? The world that wills to worship womankind studiously forgets its darker sisters. They seem in a sense to typify that veiled Melancholy:
"Whose saintly visage is too brightTo hit the sense of human sight,And, therefore, to our weaker viewO'er-laid with black."
Yet the world must heed these daughters of sorrow, from the primal black All-Mother of men down through the ghostly throng of mighty womanhood, who walked in the mysterious dawn of Asia and Africa; from Neith, the primal mother of all, whose feet rest on hell, and whose almighty hands uphold the heavens; all religion, from beauty to beast, lies on her eager breasts; her body bears the stars, while her shoulders are necklaced by the dragon; from black Neith down to
"That starr'd Ethiop queen who stroveTo set her beauty's praise aboveThe sea-nymphs,"
through dusky Cleopatras, dark Candaces, and darker, fiercer Zinghas, to our own day and our own land,—in gentle Phillis; Harriet, the crude Moses; the sybil, Sojourner Truth; and the martyr, Louise De Mortie. The father and his worship is Asia; Europe is the precocious, self-centered, forward-striving child; but the land of the mother is and was Africa. In subtle and mysterious way, despite her curious history, her slavery, polygamy, and toil, the spell of the African mother pervades her land. Isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in thought if not in name, of the dark continent. Nor does this all seem to be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through which all nations pass,—it appears to be more than this,—as if the great black race in passing up the steps of human culture gave the world, not only the Iron Age, the cultivation of the soil, and the domestication of animals, but also, in peculiar emphasis, the mother-idea. "No mother can love more tenderly and none is more tenderly loved than the Negro mother," writes Schneider. Robin tells of the slave who bought his mother's freedom instead of his own. Mungo Park writes: "Everywhere in Africa, I have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a Negro than insulting his mother. 'Strike me,' cries a Mandingo to his enemy, 'but revile not my mother!'" And the Krus and Fantis say the same. The peoples on the Zambezi and the great lakes cry in sudden fear or joy: "O, my mother!" And the Herero swears (endless oath) "By my mother's tears!" "As the mist in the swamps," cries the Angola Negro, "so lives the love of father and mother." A student of the present Gold Coast life describes the work of the village headman, and adds: "It is a difficult task that he is set to, but in this matter he has all-powerful helpers in the female members of the family, who will be either the aunts or the sisters or the cousins or the nieces of the headman, and as their interests are identical with his in every particular, the good women spontaneously train up their children to implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family thus becomes a simple and an easy matter. 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.' What a power for good in the native state system would the mothers of the Gold Coast and Ashanti become by judicious training upon native lines!" Schweinfurth declares of one tribe: "A bond between mother and child which lasts for life is the measure of affection shown among the Dyoor" and Ratzel adds: "Agreeable to the natural relation the mother stands first among the chief influences affecting the children. From the Zulus to the Waganda, we find the mother the most influential counsellor at the court of ferocious sovereigns, like Chaka or Mtesa; sometimes sisters take her place. Thus even with chiefs who possess wives by hundreds the bonds of blood are the strongest and that the woman, though often heavily burdened, is in herself held in no small esteem among the Negroes is clear from the numerous Negro queens, from the medicine women, from the participation in public meetings permitted to women by many Negro peoples." As I remember through memories of others, backward among my own family, it is the mother I ever recall,—the little, far-off mother of my grandmothers, who sobbed her life away in song, longing for her lost palm-trees and scented waters; the tall and bronzen grandmother, with beaked nose and shrewish eyes, who loved and scolded her black and laughing husband as he smoked lazily in his high oak chair; above all, my own mother, with all her soft brownness,—the brown velvet of her skin, the sorrowful black-brown of her eyes, and the tiny brown-capped waves of her midnight hair as it lay new parted on her forehead. All the way back in these dim distances it is mothers and mothers of mothers who seem to count, while fathers are shadowy memories. Upon this African mother-idea, the westward slave trade and American slavery struck like doom. In the cruel exigencies of the traffic in men and in the sudden, unprepared emancipation the great pendulum of social equilibrium swung from a time, in 1800,—when America had but eight or less black women to every ten black men,—all too swiftly to a day, in 1870,—when there were nearly eleven women to ten men in our Negro population. This was but the outward numerical fact of social dislocation; within lay polygamy, polyandry, concubinage, and moral degradation. They fought against all this desperately, did these black slaves in the West Indies, especially among the half-free artisans; they set up their ancient household gods, and when Toussaint and Cristophe founded their kingdom in Haiti, it was based on old African tribal ties and beneath it was the mother-idea. The crushing weight of slavery fell on black women. Under it there was no legal marriage, no legal family, no legal control over children. To be sure, custom and religion replaced here and there what the law denied, yet one has but to read advertisements like the following to see the hell beneath the system: "One hundred dollars reward will be given for my two fellows, Abram and Frank. Abram has a wife at Colonel Stewart's, in Liberty County, and a mother at Thunderbolt, and a sister in Savannah. "WILLIAM ROBERTS." "Fifty dollars reward—Ran away from the subscriber a Negro girl named Maria. She is of a copper color, between thirteen and fourteen years of age—bareheaded and barefooted. She is small for her age—very sprightly and very likely. She stated she was going to see her mother at Maysville. "SANFORD THOMSON." "Fifty dollars reward—Ran away from the subscriber his Negro man Pauladore, commonly called Paul. I understand General R.Y. Hayne has purchased his wife and children from H.L. Pinckney, Esq., and has them now on his plantation at Goose Creek, where, no doubt, the fellow is frequently lurking. "T. DAVIS." The Presbyterian synod of Kentucky said to the churches under its care in 1835: "Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder and permitted to see each other no more. These acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the iniquity of our system. There is not a neighborhood where these heartrending scenes are not displayed. There is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts whose mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear." A sister of a president of the United States declared: "We Southern ladies are complimented with the names of wives, but we are only the mistresses of seraglios." Out of this, what sort of black women could be born into the world of today? There are those who hasten to answer this query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came nothing decent in womanhood; that adultery and uncleanness were their heritage and are their continued portion. Fortunately so exaggerated a charge is humanly impossible of truth. The half-million women of Negro descent who lived at the beginning of the 19th century had become the mothers of two and one-fourth million daughters at the time of the Civil War and five million grand-daughters in 1910. Can all these women be vile and the hunted race continue to grow in wealth and character? Impossible. Yet to save from the past the shreds and vestiges of self-respect has been a terrible task. I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire. Alexander Crummell once said of his sister in the blood: "In her girlhood all the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. In the field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room, in the factory she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her childhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passion. All the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tiger for the ownership and possession of her own person and ofttimes had to suffer pain and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion. When she reached maturity, all the tender instincts of her womanhood were ruthlessly violated. At the age of marriage,—always prematurely anticipated under slavery—she was mated as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or the auction block." Down in such mire has the black motherhood of this race struggled,—starving its own wailing offspring to nurse to the world their swaggering masters; welding for its children chains which affronted even the moral sense of an unmoral world. Many a man and woman in the South have lived in wedlock as holy as Adam and Eve and brought forth their brown and golden children, but because the darker woman was helpless, her chivalrous and whiter mate could cast her off at his pleasure and publicly sneer at the body he had privately blasphemed. I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called "pride of race," the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. I cannot forget that it is such Southern gentlemen into whose hands smug Northern hypocrites of today are seeking to place our women's eternal destiny,—men who insist upon withholding from my mother and wife and daughter those signs and appellations of courtesy and respect which elsewhere he withholds only from bawds and courtesans. The result of this history of insult and degradation has been both fearful and glorious. It has birthed the haunting prostitute, the brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an efficient womanhood, whose strength lies in its freedom and whose chastity was won in the teeth of temptation and not in prison and swaddling clothes. To no modern race does its women mean so much as to the Negro nor come so near to the fulfilment of its meaning. As one of our women writes: "Only the black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'" They came first, in earlier days, like foam flashing on dark, silent waters,—bits of stern, dark womanhood here and there tossed almost carelessly aloft to the world's notice. First and naturally they assumed the panoply of the ancient African mother of men, strong and black, whose very nature beat back the wilderness of oppression and contempt. Such a one was that cousin of my grandmother, whom western Massachusetts remembers as "Mum Bett." Scarred for life by a blow received in defense of a sister, she ran away to Great Barrington and was the first slave, or one of the first, to be declared free under the Bill of Rights of 1780. The son of the judge who freed her, writes: "Even in her humble station, she had, when occasion required it, an air of command which conferred a degree of dignity and gave her an ascendancy over those of her rank, which is very unusual in persons of any rank or color. Her determined and resolute character, which enabled her to limit the ravages of Shay's mob, was manifested in her conduct and deportment during her whole life. She claimed no distinction, but it was yielded to her from her superior experience, energy, skill, and sagacity. Having known this woman as familiarly as I knew either of my parents, I cannot believe in the moral or physical inferiority of the race to which she belonged. The degradation of the African must have been otherwise caused than by natural inferiority." It was such strong women that laid the foundations of the great Negro church of today, with its five million members and ninety millions of dollars in property. One of the early mothers of the church, Mary Still, writes thus quaintly, in the forties: "When we were as castouts and spurned from the large churches, driven from our knees, pointed at by the proud, neglected by the careless, without a place of worship, Allen, faithful to the heavenly calling, came forward and laid the foundation of this connection. The women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to carry up the noble structure and in the name of their God set up their banner; most of our aged mothers are gone from this to a better state of things. Yet some linger still on their staves, watching with intense interest the ark as it moves over the tempestuous waves of opposition and ignorance.... "But the labors of these women stopped not here, for they knew well that they were subject to affliction and death. For the purpose of mutual aid, they banded themselves together in society capacity, that they might be better able to administer to each others' sufferings and to soften their own pillows. So we find the females in the early history of the church abounding in good works and in acts of true benevolence." From such spiritual ancestry came two striking figures of war-time,—Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. For eight or ten years previous to the breaking out of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was a constant attendant at anti-slavery conventions, lectures, and other meetings; she was a black woman of medium size, smiling countenance, with her upper front teeth gone, attired in coarse but neat clothes, and carrying always an old-fashioned reticule at her side. Usually as soon as she sat down she would drop off in sound sleep. She was born a slave in Maryland, in 1820, bore the marks of the lash on her flesh; and had been made partially deaf, and perhaps to some degree mentally unbalanced by a blow on the head in childhood. Yet she was one of the most important agents of the Underground Railroad and a leader of fugitive slaves. She ran away in 1849 and went to Boston in 1854, where she was welcomed into the homes of the leading abolitionists and where every one listened with tense interest to her strange stories. She was absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led North over three hundred fugitives without losing a single one. A standing reward of $10,000 was offered for her, but as she said: "The whites cannot catch us, for I was born with the charm, and the Lord has given me the power." She was one of John Brown's closest advisers and only severe sickness prevented her presence at Harper's Ferry. When the war cloud broke, she hastened to the front, flitting down along her own mysterious paths, haunting the armies in the field, and serving as guide and nurse and spy. She followed Sherman in his great march to the sea and was with Grant at Petersburg, and always in the camps the Union officers silently saluted her. The other woman belonged to a different type,—a tall, gaunt, black, unsmiling sybil, weighted with the woe of the world. She ran away from slavery and giving up her own name took the name of Sojourner Truth. She says: "I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I would say, 'Mammy, what makes you groan so?' And she would say, 'I am groaning to think of my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don't know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at the stars!'" Her determination was founded on unwavering faith in ultimate good. Wendell Phillips says that he was once in Faneuil Hall, when Frederick Douglass was one of the chief speakers. Douglass had been describing the wrongs of the Negro race and as he proceeded he grew more and more excited and finally ended by saying that they had no hope of justice from the whites, no possible hope except in their own right arms. It must come to blood! They must fight for themselves. Sojourner Truth was sitting, tall and dark, on the very front seat facing the platform, and in the hush of feeling when Douglass sat down she spoke out in her deep, peculiar voice, heard all over the hall: "Frederick, is God dead?" Such strong, primitive types of Negro womanhood in America seem to some to exhaust its capabilities. They know less of a not more worthy, but a finer type of black woman wherein trembles all of that delicate sense of beauty and striving for self-realization, which is as characteristic of the Negro soul as is its quaint strength and sweet laughter. George Washington wrote in grave and gentle courtesy to a Negro woman, in 1776, that he would "be happy to see" at his headquarters at any time, a person "to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficial in her dispensations." This child, Phillis Wheatley, sang her trite and halting strain to a world that wondered and could not produce her like. Measured today her muse was slight and yet, feeling her striving spirit, we call to her still in her own words: "Through thickest glooms look back, immortal shade." Perhaps even higher than strength and art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as characteristic of Negro womanhood. Long years ago, before the Declaration of Independence, Kate Ferguson was born in New York. Freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she took the children of the streets of New York, white and black, to her empty arms, taught them, found them homes, and with Dr. Mason of Murray Street Church established the first modern Sunday School in Manhattan. Sixty years later came Mary Shadd up out of Delaware. She was tall and slim, of that ravishing dream-born beauty,—that twilight of the races which we call mulatto. Well-educated, vivacious, with determination shining from her sharp eyes, she threw herself singlehanded into the great Canadian pilgrimage when thousands of hunted black men hurried northward and crept beneath the protection of the lion's paw. She became teacher, editor, and lecturer; tramping afoot through winter snows, pushing without blot or blemish through crowd and turmoil to conventions and meetings, and finally becoming recruiting agent for the United States government in gathering Negro soldiers in the West. After the war the sacrifice of Negro women for freedom and uplift is one of the finest chapters in their history. Let one life typify all: Louise De Mortie, a free-born Virginia girl, had lived most of her life in Boston. Her high forehead, swelling lips, and dark eyes marked her for a woman of feeling and intellect. She began a successful career as a public reader. Then came the War and the Call. She went to the orphaned colored children of New Orleans,—out of freedom into insult and oppression and into the teeth of the yellow fever. She toiled and dreamed. In 1887 she had raised money and built an orphan home and that same year, in the thirty-fourth year of her young life, she died, saying simply: "I belong to God." As I look about me today in this veiled world of mine, despite the noisier and more spectacular advance of my brothers, I instinctively feel and know that it is the five million women of my race who really count. Black women (and women whose grandmothers were black) are today furnishing our teachers; they are the main pillars of those social settlements which we call churches; and they have with small doubt raised three-fourths of our church property. If we have today, as seems likely, over a billion dollars of accumulated goods, who shall say how much of it has been wrung from the hearts of servant girls and washerwomen and women toilers in the fields? As makers of two million homes these women are today seeking in marvelous ways to show forth our strength and beauty and our conception of the truth. In the United States in 1910 there were 4,931,882 women of Negro descent; over twelve hundred thousand of these were children, another million were girls and young women under twenty, and two and a half-million were adults. As a mass these women were unlettered,—a fourth of those from fifteen to twenty-five years of age were unable to write. These women are passing through, not only a moral, but an economic revolution. Their grandmothers married at twelve and fifteen, but twenty-seven per cent of these women today who have passed fifteen are still single. Yet these black women toil and toil hard. There were in 1910 two and a half million Negro homes in the United States. Out of these homes walked daily to work two million women and girls over ten years of age,—over half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of white women. These, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their daily bread like men; independent and approaching economic freedom! They furnished a million farm laborers, 80,000 farmers, 22,000 teachers, 600,000 servants and washerwomen, and 50,000 in trades and merchandizing. The family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture with which these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically independent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the man remains the sole breadwinner. What is the inevitable result of the clash of such ideals and such facts in the colored group? Broken families. Among native white women one in ten is separated from her husband by death, divorce, or desertion. Among Negroes the ratio is one in seven. Is the cause racial? No, it is economic, because there is the same high ratio among the white foreign-born. The breaking up of the present family is the result of modern working and sex conditions and it hits the laborers with terrible force. The Negroes are put in a peculiarly difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below the standard, while the openings for colored women in certain lines of domestic work, and now in industries, are many. Thus while toil holds the father and brother in country and town at low wages, the sisters and mothers are called to the city. As a result the Negro women outnumber the men nine or ten to eight in many cities, making what Charlotte Gilman bluntly calls "cheap women." What shall we say to this new economic equality in a great laboring class? Some people within and without the race deplore it. "Back to the homes with the women," they cry, "and higher wage for the men." But how impossible this is has been shown by war conditions. Cessation of foreign migration has raised Negro men's wages, to be sure—but it has not only raised Negro women's wages, it has opened to them a score of new avenues of earning a living. Indeed, here, in microcosm and with differences emphasizing sex equality, is the industrial history of labor in the 19th and 20th centuries. We cannot abolish the new economic freedom of women. We cannot imprison women again in a home or require them all on pain of death to be nurses and housekeepers. What is today the message of these black women to America and to the world? The uplift of women is, next to the problem of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. When, now, two of these movements—woman and color—combine in one, the combination has deep meaning. In other years women's way was clear: to be beautiful, to be petted, to bear children. Such has been their theoretic destiny and if perchance they have been ugly, hurt, and barren, that has been forgotten with studied silence. In partial compensation for this narrowed destiny the white world has lavished its politeness on its womankind,—its chivalry and bows, its uncoverings and courtesies—all the accumulated homage disused for courts and kings and craving exercise. The revolt of white women against this preordained destiny has in these latter days reached splendid proportions, but it is the revolt of an aristocracy of brains and ability,—the middle class and rank and file still plod on in the appointed path, paid by the homage, the almost mocking homage, of men. From black women of America, however, (and from some others, too, but chiefly from black women and their daughters' daughters) this gauze has been withheld and without semblance of such apology they have been frankly trodden under the feet of men. They are and have been objected to, apparently for reasons peculiarly exasperating to reasoning human beings. When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not, how does he look,—but what is his message? It is of but passing interest whether or not the messenger is beautiful or ugly,—the message is the thing. This, which is axiomatic among men, has been in past ages but partially true if the messenger was a woman. The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "What else are women for?" Beauty "is its own excuse for being," but there are other excuses, as most men know, and when the white world objects to black women because it does not consider them beautiful, the black world of right asks two questions: "What is beauty?" and, "Suppose you think them ugly, what then? If ugliness and unconventionality and eccentricity of face and deed do not hinder men from doing the world's work and reaping the world's reward, why should it hinder women?" Other things being equal, all of us, black and white, would prefer to be beautiful in face and form and suitably clothed; but most of us are not so, and one of the mightiest revolts of the century is against the devilish decree that no woman is a woman who is not by present standards a beautiful woman. This decree the black women of America have in large measure escaped from the first. Not being expected to be merely ornamental, they have girded themselves for work, instead of adorning their bodies only for play. Their sturdier minds have concluded that if a woman be clean, healthy, and educated, she is as pleasing as God wills and far more useful than most of her sisters. If in addition to this she is pink and white and straight-haired, and some of her fellow-men prefer this, well and good; but if she is black or brown and crowned in curled mists (and this to us is the most beautiful thing on earth), this is surely the flimsiest excuse for spiritual incarceration or banishment. The very attempt to do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,—an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made them, but they are asked to be efficient, to be strong, fertile, muscled, and able to work. If they marry, they must as independent workers be able to help support their children, for their men are paid on a scale which makes sole support of the family often impossible. On the whole, colored working women are paid as well as white working women for similar work, save in some higher grades, while colored men get from one-fourth to three-fourths less than white men. The result is curious and three-fold: the economic independence of black women is increased, the breaking up of Negro families must be more frequent, and the number of illegitimate children is decreased more slowly among them than other evidences of culture are increased, just as was once true in Scotland and Bavaria. What does this mean? It forecasts a mighty dilemma which the whole world of civilization, despite its will, must one time frankly face: the unhusbanded mother or the childless wife. God send us a world with woman's freedom and married motherhood inextricably wed, but until He sends it, I see more of future promise in the betrayed girl-mothers of the black belt than in the childless wives of the white North, and I have more respect for the colored servant who yields to her frank longing for motherhood than for her white sister who offers up children for clothes. Out of a sex freedom that today makes us shudder will come in time a day when we will no longer pay men for work they do not do, for the sake of their harem; we will pay women what they earn and insist on their working and earning it; we will allow those persons to vote who know enough to vote, whether they be black or female, white or male; and we will ward race suicide, not by further burdening the over-burdened, but by honoring motherhood, even when the sneaking father shirks his duty. "Wait till the lady passes," said a Nashville white boy. "She's no lady; she's a nigger," answered another. So some few women are born free, and some amid insult and scarlet letters achieve freedom; but our women in black had freedom thrust contemptuously upon them. With that freedom they are buying an untrammeled independence and dear as is the price they pay for it, it will in the end be worth every taunt and groan. Today the dreams of the mothers are coming true. We have still our poverty and degradation, our lewdness and our cruel toil; but we have, too, a vast group of women of Negro blood who for strength of character, cleanness of soul, and unselfish devotion of purpose, is today easily the peer of any group of women in the civilized world. And more than that, in the great rank and file of our five million women we have the up-working of new revolutionary ideals, which must in time have vast influence on the thought and action of this land. For this, their promise, and for their hard past, I honor the women of my race. Their beauty,—their dark and mysterious beauty of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces—is perhaps more to me than to you, because I was born to its warm and subtle spell; but their worth is yours as well as mine. No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. I have known the women of many lands and nations,—I have known and seen and lived beside them, but none have I known more sweetly feminine, more unswervingly loyal, more desperately earnest, and more instinctively pure in body and in soul than the daughters of my black mothers. This, then,—a little thing—to their memory and inspiration. Children of the Moon
I am dead;Yet somehow, somewhere,In Time's weird contradiction, IMay tell of that dread deed, wherewithI brought to Children of the MoonFreedom and vast salvation.
I was a woman born,And trod the streaming street,That ebbs and flows from Harlem's hills,Through caves and cañons limned in light,Down to the twisting sea.
That night of nights,I stood alone and at the End,Until the sudden highway to the moon,Golden in splendor,Became too real to doubt.
Dimly I set foot upon the air,I fled, I flew, through the thrills of light,With all about, above, below, the whirringOf almighty wings.
I found a twilight land,Where, hardly hid, the sunSent softly-saddened rays ofRed and brown to burn the iron soilAnd bathe the snow-white peaksIn mighty splendor.
Black were the men,Hard-haired and silent-slow,Moving as shadows,Bending with face of fear to earthward;And women there were none.
"Woman, woman, woman!"I cried in mounting terror."Woman and Child!"And the cry sang backThrough heaven, with theWhirring of almighty wings.
Wings, wings, endless wings,—Heaven and earth are wings;Wings that flutter, furl, and fold,Always folding and unfolding,Ever folding yet again;Wings, veiling some vastAnd veiléd face,In blazing blackness,Behind the folding and unfolding,The rolling and unrolling ofAlmighty wings!
I saw the black men huddle,Fumed in fear, falling face downward;Vainly I clutched and clawed,Dumbly they cringed and cowered,Moaning in mournful monotone:
O Freedom, O Freedom,O Freedom over me;Before I'll be a slave,I'll be buried in my grave,And go home to my God,And be free.
It was angel-musicFrom the dead,And ever, as they sang,Some wingéd thing of wings, filling all heaven,Folding and unfolding, and folding yet again,
Tore out their blood and entrails,'Til I screamed in utter terror;And a silence came—A silence and the wailing of a babe.
Then, at last, I saw and shamed;I knew how these dumb, dark, and dusky thingsHad given blood and life,To fend the caves of underground,The great black caves of utter night,Where earth lay full of mothersAnd their babes.
Little children sobbing in darkness,Little children crying in silent pain,Little mothers rocking and groping and struggling,Digging and delving and groveling,Amid the dying-dead and dead-in-lifeAnd drip and dripping of warm, wet blood,Far, far beneath the wings,—The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
I bent with tears and pitying hands,Above these dusky star-eyed children,—Crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices,Pleading low for light and love and living—And I crooned:
"Little children weeping there,God shall find your faces fair;Guerdon for your deep distress,He shall send His tenderness;For the tripping of your feetMake a mystic music sweetIn the darkness of your hair;Light and laughter in the air—Little children weeping there,God shall find your faces fair!"
I strode above the stricken, bleeding men,The rampart 'ranged against the skies,And shouted:"Up, I say, build and slay;Fight face foremost, force a way,Unloose, unfetter, and unbind;Be men and free!"
Dumbly they shrank,Muttering they pointed toward that peak,Than vastness vaster,Whereon a darkness brooded,"Who shall look and live," they sighed;And I sensedThe folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood;We built a day, a year, a thousand years,Blood was the mortar,—blood and tears,And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings,The wingéd, folding Wing of ThingsDid furnish much mad mortarFor that tower.
Slow and ever slower rose the towering task,And with it rose the sun,Until at last on one wild day,Wind-whirled, cloud-swept and terribleI stood beneath the burning shadowOf the peak,Beneath the whirring of almighty wings,While downward from my feetStreamed the long line of dusky facesAnd the wail of little children sobbing under earth.
Alone, aloft,I saw through firmaments on highThe drama of Almighty God,With all its flaming suns and stars."Freedom!" I cried."Freedom!" cried heaven, earth, and stars;And a Voice near-far,Amid the folding and unfolding of almighty wings,Answered, "I am Freedom—Who sees my face is free—He and his."
I dared not look;Downward I glanced on deep-bowed heads and closed eyes,Outward I gazed on flecked and flaming blue—But ever onward, upward flewThe sobbing of small voices,—Down, down, far down into the night.
Slowly I lifted livid limbs aloft;Upward I strove: the face! the face!Onward I reeled: the face! the face!To beauty wonderful as sudden death,Or horror horrible as endless life—Up! Up! the blood-built way;(Shadow grow vaster!Terror come faster!)Up! Up! to the blazing blacknessOf one veiléd face.
And endless folding and unfolding,Rolling and unrolling of almighty wings.The last step stood!The last dim cry of painFluttered across the stars,And then—Wings, wings, triumphant wings,Lifting and lowering, waxing and waning,Swinging and swaying, twirling and whirling,Whispering and screaming, streaming and gleaming,Spreading and sweeping and shading and flaming—Wings, wings, eternal wings,'Til the hot, red blood,Flood fleeing flood,Thundered through heaven and mine ears,While all across a purple sky,The last vast pinion.Trembled to unfold.
VIIITHE IMMORTAL CHILDIf a man die shall he live again? We do not know. But this we do know, that our children's children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, center in the Immortal Child and his education is the problem of problems. And first for illustration of what I would say may I not take for example, out of many millions, the life of one dark child. It is now nineteen years since I first saw Coleridge-Taylor. We were in London in some somber hall where there were many meeting, men and women called chiefly to the beautiful World's Fair at Paris; and then a few slipping over to London to meet Pan-Africa. We were there from Cape Colony and Liberia, from Haiti and the States, and from the Islands of the Sea. I remember the stiff, young officer who came with credentials from Menelik of Abyssinia; I remember the bitter, black American who whispered how an army of the Soudan might some day cross the Alps; I remember Englishmen, like the Colensos, who sat and counseled with us; but above all, I remember Coleridge-Taylor. He was a little man and nervous, with dark-golden face and hair that bushed and strayed. His fingers were always nervously seeking hidden keys and he was quick with enthusiasm,—instinct with life. His bride of a year or more,—dark, too, in her whiter way,—was of the calm and quiet type. Her soft contralto voice thrilled us often as she sang, while her silences were full of understanding. Several times we met in public gatherings and then they bade me to their home,—a nest of a cottage, with gate and garden, hidden in London's endless rings of suburbs. I dimly recall through these years a room in cozy disorder, strewn with music—music on the floor and music on the chairs, music in the air as the master rushed to the piano now and again to make some memory melodious—some allusion real. And then at last, for it was the last, I saw Coleridge-Taylor in a mighty throng of people crowding the Crystal Palace. We came in facing the stage and scarcely dared look around. On the stage were a full orchestra, a chorus of eight hundred voices, and some of the world's famous soloists. He left his wife sitting beside me, and she was very silent as he went forward to lift the conductor's baton. It was one of the earliest renditions of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast." We sat at rapt attention and when the last, weird music died, the great chorus and orchestra rose as a man to acclaim the master; he turned toward the audience and then we turning for the first time saw that sea of faces behind,—the misty thousands whose voices rose to one strong shout of joy! It was a moment such as one does not often live. It seemed, and was, prophetic. This young man who stepped forth as one of the most notable of modern English composers had a simple and uneventful career. His father was a black surgeon of Sierra Leone who came to London for study. While there he met an English girl and this son was born, in London, in 1875. Then came a series of chances. His father failed to succeed and disappeared back to Africa leaving the support of the child to the poor working mother. The child showed evidences of musical talent and a friendly workingman gave him a little violin. A musician glancing from his window saw a little dark boy playing marbles on the street with a tiny violin in one hand; he gave him lessons. He happened to gain entrance into a charity school with a master of understanding mind who recognized genius when he saw it; and finally his beautiful child's treble brought him to the notice of the choirmaster of St. George's, Croyden. So by happy accident his way was clear. Within his soul was no hesitation. He was one of those fortunate beings who are not called to Wander-Jahre, but are born with sails set and seas charted. Already the baby of four little years was a musician, and as choir-boy and violinist he walked unhesitatingly and surely to his life work. He was graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in 1894, and married soon after the daughter of one of his professors. Then his life began, and whatever it lacked of physical adventure in the conventional round of a modern world-city, it more than gained in the almost tempestuous outpouring of his spiritual nature. Life to him was neither meat nor drink,—it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him. To create, to do, to accomplish; to know the white glory of mighty midnights and the pale Amen of dawns was his day of days. Songs, pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers. Nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet sudden popularity. Rather they were the flaming bits that must be said and sung,—that could not wait the slower birth of years, so hurried to the world as though their young creator knew that God gave him but a day. His whole active life was scarcely more than a decade and a half, and yet in that time, without wealth, friends, or influence, in the face of perhaps the most critical and skeptical and least imaginative civilization of the modern world, he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten. And this was but one side of the man. On the other was the sweet-tempered, sympathetic comrade, always willing to help, never knowing how to refuse, generous with every nerve and fiber of his being. Think of a young musician, father of a family, who at the time of his death held positions as Associate of the Royal College of Music, Professor in Trinity College and Crystal Palace, Conductor of the Handel Choral Society and the Rochester Choral Society, Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, where he had charge of the choral choir, the orchestra, and the opera. He was repeatedly the leader of music festivals all over Great Britain and a judge of contests. And with all this his house was open in cheering hospitality to friends and his hand ever ready with sympathy and help. When such a man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. We may call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer overwork,—the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,—the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to die; who deserve, not for themselves, but for the world, leisure, freedom from distraction, expert medical advice, and intelligent sympathy. Coleridge-Taylor's life work was not finished,—it was but well begun. He lived only his first period of creative genius, when melody and harmony flashed and fluttered in subtle, compelling, and more than promising profusion. He did not live to do the organized, constructive work in the full, calm power of noonday,—the reflective finishing of evening. In the annals of the future his name must always stand high, but with the priceless gift of years, who can say where it might not have stood. Why should he have worked so breathlessly, almost furiously? It was, we may be sure, because with unflinching determination and with no thought of surrender he faced the great alternative,—the choice which the cynical, thoughtless, busy, modern world spreads grimly before its greater souls—food or beauty, bread and butter, or ideals. And continually we see worthier men turning to the pettier, cheaper thing—the popular portrait, the sensational novel, the jingling song. The choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high and the empty, but only too often it is between starvation and something. When, therefore, we see a man, working desperately to earn a living and still stooping to no paltry dickering and to no unworthy work, handing away a "Hiawatha" for less than a song, pausing for glimpses of the stars when a world full of charcoal glowed far more warmly and comfortably, we know that such a man is a hero in a sense never approached by the swashbuckling soldier or the lying patriot. Deep as was the primal tragedy in the life of Coleridge-Taylor, there lay another still deeper. He smiled at it lightly, as we all do,—we who live within the veil,—to hide the deeper hurt. He had, with us, that divine and African gift of laughter, that echo of a thousand centuries of suns. I mind me how once he told of the bishop, the well-groomed English bishop, who eyed the artist gravely, with his eye-glass—hair and color and figure,—and said quite audibly to his friends, "Quite interesting—looks intelligent,—yes—yes!" Fortunate was Coleridge-Taylor to be born in Europe and to speak a universal tongue. In America he could hardly have had his career. His genius was, to be sure, recognized (with some palpitation and consternation) when it came full-grown across the seas with an English imprint; but born here, it might never have been permitted to grow. We know in America how to discourage, choke, and murder ability when it so far forgets itself as to choose a dark skin. England, thank God, is slightly more civilized than her colonies; but even there the path of this young man was no way of roses and just a shade thornier than that of whiter men. He did not complain at it,—he did not "Wince and cry aloud." Rather the hint here and there of color discrimination in England aroused in him deeper and more poignant sympathy with his people throughout the world. He was one with that great company of mixed-blooded men: Pushkin and Dumas, Hamilton and Douglass, Browning and many others; but he more than most of these men knew the call of the blood when it came and listened and answered. He came to America with strange enthusiasm. He took with quite simple and unconscious grace the conventional congratulations of the musical world. He was used to that. But to his own people—to the sad sweetness of their voices, their inborn sense of music, their broken, half-articulate voices,—he leapt with new enthusiasm. From the fainter shadowings of his own life, he sensed instinctively the vaster tragedy of theirs. His soul yearned to give voice and being to this human thing. He early turned to the sorrow songs. He sat at the faltering feet of Paul Laurence Dunbar and he asked (as we sadly shook our heads) for some masterpiece of this world-tragedy that his soul could set to music. And then, so characteristically, he rushed back to England, composed a half-dozen exquisite harmonies haunted by slave-songs, led the Welsh in their singing, listened to the Scotch, ordered great music festivals in all England, wrote for Beerbohm Tree, took on another music professorship, promised a trip to Germany, and at last, staggering home one night, on his way to his wife and little boy and girl, fell in his tracks and in four days was dead, at the age of thirty-seven. They say that in his death-throe he arose and facing some great, ghostly choir raised his last baton, while all around the massive silence rang with the last mist-music of his dying ears. He was buried from St. Michael's on September 5, 1912, with the acclaim of kings and music masters and little children and to the majestic melody of his own music. The tributes that followed him to his grave were unusually hearty and sincere. The head of the Royal College calls the first production of "Hiawatha" one of the most remarkable events in modern English musical history and the trilogy one of the most universally-beloved works of modern English music. One critic calls Taylor's a name "which with that of Elgar represented the nation's most individual output" and calls his "Atonement" "perhaps the finest passion music of modern times." Another critic speaks of his originality: "Though surrounded by the influences that are at work in Europe today, he retained his individuality to the end, developing his style, however, and evincing new ideas in each succeeding work. His untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, a short life—like those of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Hugo Wolf—has robbed the world of one of its noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist of power and worth." But the tributes did not rest with the artist; with peculiar unanimity they sought his "sterling character," "the good husband and father," the "staunch and loyal friend." And perhaps I cannot better end these hesitating words than with that tribute from one who called this master, friend, and whose lament cried in the night with more of depth and passion than Alfred Noyes is wont in his self-repression to voice:
"Through him, his race, a moment, lifted upForests of hands to beauty, as in prayer,Touched through his lips the sacramental cupAnd then sank back, benumbed in our bleak air."
Yet, consider: to many millions of people this man was all wrong. First, he ought never to have been born, for he was the mulatto son of a white woman. Secondly, he should never have been educated as a musician,—he should have been trained, for his "place" in the world and to make him satisfied therewith. Thirdly, he should not have married the woman he loved and who loved him, for she was white and the niece of an Oxford professor. Fourthly, the children of such a union—but why proceed? You know it all by heart. If he had been black, like Paul Laurence Dunbar, would the argument have been different? No. He should never have been born, for he is a "problem." He should never be educated, for he cannot be educated. He should never marry, for that means children and there is no place for black children in this world. In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith. All words and all thinking lead to the child,—to that vast immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents. Such thought as this it was that made the Master say of old as He saw baby faces: "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea." And yet the mothers and fathers and the men and women of my race must often pause and ask: Is it worth while? Ought children be born to us? Have we any right to make human souls face what we face today? The answer is clear: If the great battle of human right against poverty, against disease, against color prejudice is to be won, it must be won, not in our day, but in the day of our children's children. Ours is the blood and dust of battle; theirs the rewards of victory. If, then, they are not there because we have not brought them into the world, we have been the guiltiest factor in conquering ourselves. It is our duty, then, to accomplish the immortality of black blood, in order that the day may come in this dark world when poverty shall be abolished, privilege be based on individual desert, and the color of a man's skin be no bar to the outlook of his soul. If it is our duty as honest colored men and women, battling for a great principle, to bring not aimless rafts of children to the world, but as many as, with reasonable sacrifice, we can train to largest manhood, what in its inner essence shall that training be, particularly in its beginning? The first temptation is to shield the child,—to hedge it about that it may not know and will not dream of the color line. Then when we can no longer wholly shield, to indulge and pamper and coddle, as though in this dumb way to compensate. From this attitude comes the multitude of our spoiled, wayward, disappointed children. And must we not blame ourselves? For while the motive was pure and the outer menace undoubted, is shielding and indulgence the way to meet it? Some Negro parents, realizing this, leave their children to sink or swim in this sea of race prejudice. They neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from brutal fact. Out of this may come strength, poise, self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing deception, and self-distrust. It is, all said, a brutal, unfair method, and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. Why not, rather, face the facts and tell the truth? Your child is wiser than you think. The truth lies ever between extremes. It is wrong to introduce the child to race consciousness prematurely; it is dangerous to let that consciousness grow spontaneously without intelligent guidance. With every step of dawning intelligence, explanation—frank, free, guiding explanation—must come. The day will dawn when mother must explain gently but clearly why the little girls next door do not want to play with "niggers"; what the real cause is of the teacher's unsympathetic attitude; and how people may ride in the backs of street cars and the smoker end of trains and still be people, honest high-minded souls. Remember, too, that in such frank explanation you are speaking in nine cases out of ten to a good deal clearer understanding than you think and that the child-mind has what your tired soul may have lost faith in,—the Power and the Glory. Out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing balm. Once the colored child understands the white world's attitude and the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life motive,—a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing man has. How many white folk would give their own souls if they might graft into their children's souls a great, moving, guiding ideal! With this Power there comes, in the transfiguring soul of childhood, the Glory: the vision of accomplishment, the lofty ideal. Once let the strength of the motive work, and it becomes the life task of the parent to guide and to shape the ideal; to raise it from resentment and revenge to dignity and self-respect, to breadth and accomplishment, to human service; to beat back every thought of cringing and surrender. Here, at last, we can speak with no hesitation, with no lack of faith. For we know that as the world grows better there will be realized in our children's lives that for which we fight unfalteringly, but vainly now. So much for the problem of the home and our own dark children. Now let us look beyond the pale upon the children of the wide world. What is the real lesson of the life of Coleridge-Taylor? It is this: humanly speaking it was sheer accident that this boy developed his genius. We have a right to assume that hundreds and thousands of boys and girls today are missing the chance of developing unusual talents because the chances have been against them; and that indeed the majority of the children of the world are not being systematically fitted for their life work and for life itself. Why? Many seek the reason in the content of the school program. They feverishly argue the relative values of Greek, mathematics, and manual training, but fail with singular unanimity in pointing out the fundamental cause of our failure in human education: That failure is due to the fact that we aim not at the full development of the child, but that the world regards and always has regarded education first as a means of buttressing the established order of things rather than improving it. And this is the real reason why strife, war, and revolution have marked the onward march of humanity instead of reason and sound reform. Instead of seeking to push the coming generation ahead of our pitiful accomplishment, we insist that it march behind. We say, morally, that high character is conformity to present public opinion; we say industrially that the present order is best and that children must be trained to perpetuate it. But, it is objected, what else can we do? Can we teach Revolution to the inexperienced in hope that they may discern progress? No, but we may teach frankly that this world is not perfection, but development: that the object of education is manhood and womanhood, clear reason, individual talent and genius and the spirit of service and sacrifice, and not simply a frantic effort to avoid change in present institutions; that industry is for man and not man for industry and that while we must have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work but the worker—not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and beauty widened. Back of our present educational system is the philosophy that sneers at the foolish Fathers who believed it self-evident, "that all men were created free and equal." Surely the overwhelming evidence is today that men are slaves and unequal. But is it not education that is the creator of this freedom and equality? Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. They do not want equality because the thrill of their happiness comes from having things that others have not. But may not human education fix the fine ideal of an equal maximum of freedom for every human soul combined with that minimum of slavery for each soul which the inexorable physical facts of the world impose—rather than complete freedom for some and complete slavery for others; and, again, is not the equality toward which the world moves an equality of honor in the assigned human task itself rather than equal facility in doing different tasks? Human equality is not lack of difference, nor do the infinite human differences argue relative superiority and inferiority. And, again, how new an aspect human differences may assume when all men are educated. Today we think of apes, semi-apes, and human beings; tomorrow we may think of Keir Hardies, Roosevelts, and Beethovens—not equals but men. Today we are forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy life, and excuse ourselves by saying that the world's work must be done. We are degrading some sorts of work by honoring others, and then expressing surprise that most people object to having their children trained solely to take up their father's tasks. Given as the ideal the utmost possible freedom for every human soul, with slavery for none, and equal honor for all necessary human tasks, then our problem of education is greatly simplified: we aim to develop human souls; to make all intelligent; to discover special talents and genius. With this course of training beginning in early childhood and never ceasing must go the technical training for the present world's work according to carefully studied individual gifts and wishes. On the other hand, if we arrange our system of education to develop workmen who will not strike and Negroes satisfied with their present place in the world, we have set ourselves a baffling task. We find ourselves compelled to keep the masses ignorant and to curb our own thought and expression so as not to inflame the ignorant. We force moderate reformers and men with new and valuable ideas to become red radicals and revolutionists, since that happens to be the only way to make the world listen to reason. Consider our race problem in the South: the South has invested in Negro ignorance; some Northerners proposed limited education, not, they explained, to better the Negro, but merely to make the investment more profitable to the present beneficiaries. They thus gained wide Southern support for schools like Hampton and Tuskegee. But could this program be expected long to satisfy colored folk? And was this shifty dodging of the real issue the wisest statesmanship? No! The real question in the South is the question of the permanency of present color caste. The problem, then, of the formal training of our colored children has been strangely complicated by the strong feeling of certain persons as to their future in America and the world. And the reaction toward this caste education has strengthened the idea of caste education throughout the world. Let us then return to fundamental ideals. Children must be trained in a knowledge of what the world is and what it knows and how it does its daily work. These things cannot be separated: we cannot teach pure knowledge apart from actual facts, or separate truth from the human mind. Above all we must not forget that the object of all education is the child itself and not what it does or makes. It is here that a great movement in America has grievously sinned against the light. There has arisen among us a movement to make the Public School primarily the hand-maiden of production. America is conceived of as existing for the sake of its mines, fields and factories, and not those factories, fields and mines as existing for America. Consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's industrial efficiency. Those who oppose this program, especially if they are black, are accused of despising common toil and humble service. In fact, we Negroes are but facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services, increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius for the common weal? Without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses Democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends. Without a more careful conservation of human ability and talent the world cannot secure the services which its greater needs call for. Yet today who goes to college, the Talented or the Rich? Who goes to high school, the Bright or the Well-to-Do? Who does the physical work of the world, those whose muscles need the exercise or those whose souls and minds are stupefied with manual toil? How is the drudgery of the world distributed, by thoughtful justice or the lash of Slavery? We cannot base the education of future citizens on the present inexcusable inequality of wealth nor on physical differences of race. We must seek not to make men carpenters but to make carpenters men. Colored Americans must then with deep determination educate their children in the broadest, highest way. They must fill the colleges with the talented and fill the fields and shops with the intelligent. Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom. But why am I talking simply of "colored" children? Is not the problem of their education simply an intensification of the problem of educating all children? Look at our plight in the United States, nearly 150 years after the establishment of a government based on human intelligence. If we take the figures of the Thirteenth Census, we find that there were five and one-half million illiterate Americans of whom 3,184,633 were white. Remembering that illiteracy is a crude and extreme test of ignorance, we may assume that there are in the United States ten million people over ten years of age who are too ignorant either to perform their civic duties or to teach industrial efficiency. Moreover, it does not seem that this illiteracy is disappearing rapidly. For instance, nine percent of American children between ten and nineteen years of age cannot read and write. Moreover, there are millions of children who, judging by the figures for the school year 1909-10, are not going to learn to read and write, for of the Americans six to fourteen years of age there were 3,125,392 who were not in school a single day during that year. If we take the eleven million youths fifteen to twenty years of age for whom vocational training is particularly adapted, we find that nearly five per cent of these, or 448,414, are absolutely illiterate; it is not too much to assume that a million of them have not acquired enough of the ordinary tools of intelligence to make the most of efficient vocational training. Confining ourselves to the white people, over fifteen per cent of the white children six to fourteen years of age, or 2,253,198, did not attend school during the school year 1909-10. Of the native white children of native parents ten to fourteen years of age nearly a tenth were not in school during that year; 121,878 native white children of native parents, fifteen to nineteen years of age, were illiterate. If we continue our attention to the colored children, the case is, of course, much worse. We cannot hope to make intelligent workmen and intelligent citizens of a group of people, over forty per cent of whose children six to fourteen years of age were not in school a single day during 1909-10; for the other sixty per cent the school term in the majority of cases was probably less than five months. Of the Negro children ten to fourteen years of age 18.9 per cent were illiterate; of those fifteen to nineteen years of age 20.3 per cent were illiterate; of those ten to fourteen years of age 31.4 per cent did not go to school a single day in 1909-10. What is the trouble? It is simple. We are spending one dollar for education where we should spend ten dollars. If tomorrow we multiplied our effort to educate the next generation ten-fold, we should but begin our bounden duty. The heaven that lies about our infancy is but the ideals come true which every generation of children is capable of bringing; but we, selfish in our own ignorance and incapacity, are making of education a series of miserable compromises: How ignorant can we let a child grow to be in order to make him the best cotton mill operative? What is the least sum that will keep the average youth out of jail? How many months saved on a high school course will make the largest export of wheat? If we realized that children are the future, that immortality is the present child, that no education which educates can possibly be too costly, then we know that the menace of Kaiserism which called for the expenditure of more than 332 thousand millions of dollars was not a whit more pressing than the menace of ignorance, and that no nation tomorrow will call itself civilized which does not give every single human being college and vocational training free and under the best teaching force procurable for love or money. This world has never taken the education of children seriously. Misled by selfish dreamings of personal life forever, we have neglected the true and practical immortality through the endless life of children's children. Seeking counsels of our own souls' perfection, we have despised and rejected the possible increasing perfection of unending generations. Or if we are thrown back in pessimistic despair from making living folk decent, we leap to idle speculations of a thousand years hereafter instead of working steadily and persistently for the next generation. All our problems center in the child. All our hopes, our dreams are for our children. Has our own life failed? Let its lesson save the children's lives from similar failure. Is democracy a failure? Train up citizens that will make it succeed. Is wealth too crude, too foolish in form, and too easily stolen? Train up workers with honor and consciences and brains. Have we degraded service with menials? Abolish the mean spirit and implant sacrifice. Do we despise women? Train them as workers and thinkers and not as playthings, lest future generations ape our worst mistake. Do we despise darker races? Teach the children its fatal cost in spiritual degradation and murder, teach them that to hate "niggers" or "chinks" is to crucify souls like their own. Is there anything we would accomplish with human beings? Do it with the immortal child, with a stretch of endless time for doing it and with infinite possibilities to work on. Is this our attitude toward education? It is not—neither in England nor America—in France nor Germany—with black nor white nor yellow folk. Education to the modern world is a burden which we are driven to carry. We shirk and complain. We do just as little as possible and only threat or catastrophe induces us to do more than a minimum. If the ignorant mass, panting to know, revolts, we dole them gingerly enough knowledge to pacify them temporarily. If, as in the Great War, we discover soldiers too ignorant to use our machines of murder and destruction, we train them—to use machines of murder and destruction. If mounting wealth calls for intelligent workmen, we rush tumultuously to train workers—in order to increase our wealth. But of great, broad plans to train all men for all things—to make a universe intelligent, busy, good, creative and beautiful—where in this wide world is such an educational program? To announce it is to invite gasps or Brobdingnagian laughter. It cannot be done. It will cost too much. What has been done with man can be done with men, if the world tries long enough and hard enough. And as to the cost—all the wealth of the world, save that necessary for sheer decent existence and for the maintenance of past civilization, is, and of right ought to be, the property of the children for their education. I mean it. In one year, 1917, we spent $96,700,000,000 for war. We blew it away to murder, maim, and destroy! Why? Because the blind, brutal crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the only visible way to heaven. We did it. We had to do it, and we are glad the putrid horror is over. But, now, are we prepared to spend less to make a world in which the resurgence of such devilish power will be impossible? Do we really want war to cease? Then educate the children of this generation at a cost no whit less and if necessary a hundred times as great as the cost of the Great War. Last year, 1917, education cost us $915,000,000. Next year it ought to cost us at least two thousand million dollars. We should spend enough money to hire the best teaching force possible—the best organizing and directing ability in the land, even if we have to strip the railroads and meat trust. We should dot city and country with the most efficient, sanitary, and beautiful school-houses the world knows and we should give every American child common school, high school, and college training and then vocational guidance in earning a living. Is this a dream? Can we afford less? Consider our so-called educational "problems"; "How may we keep pupils in the high school?" Feed and clothe them. "Shall we teach Latin, Greek, and mathematics to the 'masses'?" If they are worth teaching to anybody, the masses need them most. "Who shall go to college?" Everybody. "When shall culture training give place to technical education for work?" Never. These questions are not "problems." They are simply "excuses" for spending less time and money on the next generation. Given ten millions of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million children? The real answer is—kill nine hundred and ninety thousand of them quickly and not gradually, and make thoroughly-trained men and women of the other ten thousand. But who set the limit of ten million dollars? Who says it shall not be ten thousand millions, as it ought to be? You and I say it, and in saying it we sin against the Holy Ghost. We sin because in our befuddled brains we have linked money and education inextricably. We assume that only the wealthy have a real right to education when, in fact, being born is being given a right to college training. Our wealth today is, we all know, distributed mainly by chance inheritance and personal favor and yet we attempt to base the right to education on this foundation. The result is grotesque! We bury genius; we send it to jail; we ridicule and mock it, while we send mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. For three hundred years we have denied black Americans an education and now we exploit them before a gaping world: See how ignorant and degraded they are! All they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. When Dunbar and Taylor happen along, we are torn between something like shamefaced anger or impatient amazement. A world guilty of this last and mightiest war has no right to enjoy or create until it has made the future safe from another Arkansas or Rheims. To this there is but one patent way, proved and inescapable, Education, and that not for me or for you but for the Immortal Child. And that child is of all races and all colors. All children are the children of all and not of individuals and families and races. The whole generation must be trained and guided and out of it as out of a huge reservoir must be lifted all genius, talent, and intelligence to serve all the world. Almighty Death[1]
Softly, quite softly—For I hear, above the murmur of the sea,Faint and far-fallen footsteps, as of OneWho comes from out beyond the endless ends of Time,With voice that downward looms thro' singing stars;Its subtle sound I see thro' these long-darkened eyes,I hear the Light He bringeth on His hands—Almighty Death!Softly, oh, softly, lest He pass me by,And that unquivering Light toward which my longing soulAnd tortured body through these years have writhed,Fade to the dun darkness of my days.
Softly, full softly, let me rise and greetThe strong, low luting of that long-awaited call;Swiftly be all my good and going gone,And this vast veiled and vanquished vigor of my soulSeek somehow otherwhere its rest and goal,Where endless spaces stretch,Where endless time doth moan,Where endless light doth pourThro' the black kingdoms of eternal death.
Then haply I may see what things I have not seen,Then I may know what things I have not known;Then may I do my dreams.
[1]For Joseph Pulitzer, October 29, 1911. IXOF BEAUTY AND DEATHFor long years we of the world gone wild have looked into the face of death and smiled. Through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it was to die for that which our souls called sufficient. Like all true beauty this thing of dying was so simple, so matter-of-fact. The boy clothed in his splendid youth stood before us and laughed in his own jolly way,—went and was gone. Suddenly the world was full of the fragrance of sacrifice. We left our digging and burden-bearing; we turned from our scraping and twisting of things and words; we paused from our hurrying hither and thither and walking up and down, and asked in half-whisper: this Death—is this Life? And is its beauty real or false? And of this heart-questioning I am writing. My friend, who is pale and positive, said to me yesterday, as the tired sun was nodding: "You are too sensitive." I admit, I am—sensitive. I am artificial. I cringe or am bumptious or immobile. I am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and I lack humor. "Why don't you stop all this?" she retorts triumphantly. You will not let us. "There you go, again. You know that I—" Wait! I answer. Wait! I arise at seven. The milkman has neglected me. He pays little attention to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen closes Marshall's; they say white women frequent it. "Do all eating places discriminate?" No, but how shall I know which do not—except-- I hurry home through crowds. They mutter or get angry. I go to a mass-meeting. They stare. I go to a church. "We don't admit niggers!" Or perhaps I leave the beaten track. I seek new work. "Our employees would not work with you; our customers would object." I ask to help in social uplift. "Why—er—we will write you." I enter the free field of science. Every laboratory door is closed and no endowments are available. I seek the universal mistress, Art; the studio door is locked. I write literature. "We cannot publish stories of colored folks of that type." It's the only type I know. This is my life. It makes me idiotic. It gives me artificial problems. I hesitate, I rush, I waver. In fine,—I am sensitive! My pale friend looks at me with disbelief and curling tongue. "Do you mean to sit there and tell me that this is what happens to you each day?" Certainly not, I answer low. "Then you only fear it will happen?" I fear! "Well, haven't you the courage to rise above a—almost a craven fear?" Quite—quite craven is my fear, I admit; but the terrible thing is—these things do happen! "But you just said—" They do happen. Not all each day,—surely not. But now and then—now seldom, now, sudden; now after a week, now in a chain of awful minutes; not everywhere, but anywhere—in Boston, in Atlanta. That's the hell of it. Imagine spending your life looking for insults or for hiding places from them—shrinking (instinctively and despite desperate bolsterings of courage) from blows that are not always but ever; not each day, but each week, each month, each year. Just, perhaps, as you have choked back the craven fear and cried, "I am and will be the master of my—" "No more tickets downstairs; here's one to the smoking gallery." You hesitate. You beat back your suspicions. After all, a cigarette with Charlie Chaplin—then a white man pushes by-- "Three in the orchestra." "Yes, sir." And in he goes. Suddenly your heart chills. You turn yourself away toward the golden twinkle of the purple night and hesitate again. What's the use? Why not always yield—always take what's offered,—always bow to force, whether of cannon or dislike? Then the great fear surges in your soul, the real fear—the fear beside which other fears are vain imaginings; the fear lest right there and then you are losing your own soul; that you are losing your own soul and the soul of a people; that millions of unborn children, black and gold and mauve, are being there and then despoiled by you because you are a coward and dare not fight! Suddenly that silly orchestra seat and the cavorting of a comedian with funny feet become matters of life, death, and immortality; you grasp the pillars of the universe and strain as you sway back to that befrilled ticket girl. You grip your soul for riot and murder. You choke and sputter, and she seeing that you are about to make a "fuss" obeys her orders and throws the tickets at you in contempt. Then you slink to your seat and crouch in the darkness before the film, with every tissue burning! The miserable wave of reaction engulfs you. To think of compelling puppies to take your hard-earned money; fattening hogs to hate you and yours; forcing your way among cheap and tawdry idiots—God! What a night of pleasure! Here, then, is beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a fierce gleam of world-hate. Which is life and what is death and how shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? Any explanation must necessarily be subtle and involved. No pert and easy word of encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of these things. And first and before all, we cannot forget that this world is beautiful. Grant all its ugliness and sin—the petty, horrible snarl of its putrid threads, which few have seen more near or more often than I—notwithstanding all this, the beauty of this world is not to be denied. Casting my eyes about I dare not let them rest on the beauty of Love and Friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. Of one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the glory of physical nature; this, though the last of beauties, is divine! And so, too, there are depths of human degradation which it is not fair for us to probe. With all their horrible prevalence, we cannot call them natural. But may we not compare the least of the world's beauty with the least of its ugliness—not murder, starvation, and rapine, with love and friendship and creation—but the glory of sea and sky and city, with the little hatefulnesses and thoughtfulnesses of race prejudice, that out of such juxtaposition we may, perhaps, deduce some rule of beauty and life—or death? There mountains hurl themselves against the stars and at their feet lie black and leaden seas. Above float clouds—white, gray, and inken, while the clear, impalpable air springs and sparkles like new wine. Last night we floated on the calm bosom of the sea in the southernmost haven of Mount Desert. The water flamed and sparkled. The sun had gone, but above the crooked back of cumulus clouds, dark and pink with radiance, and on the other sky aloft to the eastward piled the gorgeous-curtained mists of evening. The radiance faded and a shadowy velvet veiled the mountains, a humid depth of gloom behind which lurked all the mysteries of life and death, while above, the clouds hung ashen and dull; lights twinkled and flashed along the shore, boats glided in the twilight, and the little puffing of motors droned away. Then was the hour to talk of life and the meaning of life, while above gleamed silently, suddenly, star on star. Bar Harbor lies beneath a mighty mountain, a great, bare, black mountain that sleeps above the town; but as you leave, it rises suddenly, threateningly, until far away on Frenchman's Bay it looms above the town in withering vastness, as if to call all that little world petty save itself. Beneath the cool, wide stare of that great mountain, men cannot live as giddily as in some lesser summer's playground. Before the unveiled face of nature, as it lies naked on the Maine coast, rises a certain human awe. God molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here and renew their spirit. This I have done and turning I go to work again. As we go, ever the mountains of Mount Desert rise and greet us on our going—somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength. About us beats the sea—the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men. The land sinks to meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful mountain. Then there are islands—bold rocks above the sea, curled meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining. All the colors of the sea lie about us—gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming whites. Long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them. It is a mighty coast—ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in massive, frightful lineaments. Everywhere stand the pines—the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait. Near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and meadowed. Afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal. We skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses that creep up the hills. We are sailing due westward and the sun, yet two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades of shadows beyond. Why do not those who are scarred in the world's battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life? I asked this once sitting in a Southern home. Outside the spring of a Georgia February was luring gold to the bushes and languor to the soft air. Around me sat color in human flesh—brown that crimsoned readily; dim soft-yellow that escaped description; cream-like duskiness that shadowed to rich tints of autumn leaves. And yet a suggested journey in the world brought no response. "I should think you would like to travel," said the white one. But no, the thought of a journey seemed to depress them. Did you ever see a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are over there-- "What d'ye want? What? Where?" The agent browbeats and contradicts you, hurries and confuses the ignorant, gives many persons the wrong change, compels some to purchase their tickets on the train at a higher price, and sends you and me out on the platform, burning with indignation and hatred! The "Jim-Crow" car is up next the baggage car and engine. It stops out beyond the covering in the rain or sun or dust. Usually there is no step to help you climb on and often the car is a smoker cut in two and you must pass through the white smokers or else they pass through your part, with swagger and noise and stares. Your compartment is a half or a quarter or an eighth of the oldest car in service on the road. Unless it happens to be a thorough express, the plush is caked with dirt, the floor is grimy, and the windows dirty. An impertinent white newsboy occupies two seats at the end of the car and importunes you to the point of rage to buy cheap candy, Coco-Cola, and worthless, if not vulgar, books. He yells and swaggers, while a continued stream of white men saunters back and forth from the smoker to buy and hear. The white train crew from the baggage car uses the "Jim-Crow" to lounge in and perform their toilet. The conductor appropriates two seats for himself and his papers and yells gruffly for your tickets before the train has scarcely started. It is best not to ask him for information even in the gentlest tones. His information is for white persons chiefly. It is difficult to get lunch or clean water. Lunch rooms either don't serve niggers or serve them at some dirty and ill-attended hole in the wall. As for toilet rooms,—don't! If you have to change cars, be wary of junctions which are usually without accommodation and filled with quarrelsome white persons who hate a "darky dressed up." You are apt to have the company of a sheriff and a couple of meek or sullen black prisoners on part of your way and dirty colored section hands will pour in toward night and drive you to the smallest corner. "No," said the little lady in the corner (she looked like an ivory cameo and her dress flowed on her like a caress), "we don't travel much." Pessimism is cowardice. The man who cannot frankly acknowledge the "Jim-Crow" car as a fact and yet live and hope is simply afraid either of himself or of the world. There is not in the world a more disgraceful denial of human brotherhood than the "Jim-Crow" car of the southern United States; but, too, just as true, there is nothing more beautiful in the universe than sunset and moonlight on Montego Bay in far Jamaica. And both things are true and both belong to this our world, and neither can be denied. The sun, prepared to cross that awful border which men call Night and Death, marshals his hosts. I seem to see the spears of mighty horsemen flash golden in the light; empurpled banners flame afar, and the low thunder of marching hosts thrills with the thunder of the sea. Athwart his own path, screening a face of fire, he throws cloud masses, masking his trained guns. And then the miracle is done. The host passes with roar too vast for human ear and the sun is set, leaving the frightened moon and blinded stars. In the dusk the green-gold palms turn their star-like faces and stretch their fan-like fingers, lifting themselves proudly, lest any lordly leaf should know the taint of earth. Out from the isle the serpent hill thrusts its great length around the bay, shouldering back the waters and the shadows. Ghost rains sweep down, smearing his rugged sides, yet on he writhes, undulant with pine and palm, gleaming until his low, sharp head and lambent tongue, grown gray and pale and silver in the dying day, kisses the molten gold of the golden sea. Then comes the moon. Like fireflies nesting in the hand of God gleams the city, dim-swathed by fairy palms. A long, thin thumb, mist-mighty, points shadowy to the Spanish Main, while through the fingers foam the Seven Seas. Above the calm and gold-green moon, beneath the wind-wet earth; and here, alone, my soul enchained, enchanted! From such heights of holiness men turn to master the world. All the pettiness of life drops away and it becomes a great battle before the Lord. His trumpet,—where does it sound and whither? I go. I saw Montego Bay at the beginning of the World War. The cry for service as high as heaven, as wide as human feeling, seemed filling the earth. What were petty slights, silly insults, paltry problems, beside this call to do and dare and die? We black folk offered our services to fight. What happened? Most Americans have forgotten the extraordinary series of events which worked the feelings of black America to fever heat. First was the refusal to accept Negro volunteers for the army, except in the four black regiments already established. While the nation was combing the country for volunteers for the regular army, it would not let the American Negro furnish even his proportionate quota of regular soldiers. This led to some grim bantering among Negroes: "Why do you want to volunteer?" asked many. "Why should you fight for this country?" Before we had chance to reply to this, there came the army draft bill and the proposal by Vardaman and his ilk to except Negroes. We protested to Washington in various ways, and while we were insisting that colored men should be drafted just as other citizens, the bill went through with two little "jokers." First, it provided that Negroes should be drafted, but trained in "separate" units; and, secondly, it somewhat ambiguously permitted men to be drafted for "labor." A wave of fear and unrest spread among Negroes and while we were looking at both these provisions askance, suddenly we received the draft registration blank. It directed persons "of African descent" to "tear off the corner!" Probably never before in the history of the United States has a portion of the citizens been so openly and crassly discriminated against by action of the general government. It was disheartening, and on top of it came the celebrated "German plots." It was alleged in various parts of the country with singular unanimity that Germans were working among the Negroes, and it was further intimated that this would make the Negroes too dangerous an element to trust with guns. To us, of course, it looked as though the discovery and the proposition came from the same thinly-veiled sources. Considering carefully this series of happenings the American Negro sensed an approaching crisis and faced a puzzling dilemma. Here was evidently preparing fertile ground for the spread of disloyalty and resentment among the black masses, as they were forced to choose apparently between forced labor or a "Jim-Crow" draft. Manifestly when a minority group is thus segregated and forced out of the nation, they can in reason do but one thing—take advantage of the disadvantage. In this case we demanded colored officers for the colored troops. General Wood was early approached and asked to admit suitable candidates to Plattsburg. He refused. We thereupon pressed the government for a "separate" camp for the training of Negro officers. Not only did the War Department hesitate at this request, but strong opposition arose among colored people themselves. They said we were going too far. "We will obey the law, but to ask for voluntary segregation is to insult ourselves." But strong, sober second thought came to our rescue. We said to our protesting brothers: "We face a condition, not a theory. There is not the slightest chance of our being admitted to white camps; therefore, it is either a case of a 'Jim-Crow' officers' training camp or no colored officers. Of the two things no colored officers would be the greater calamity." Thus we gradually made up our minds. But the War Department still hesitated. It was besieged, and when it presented its final argument, "We have no place for such a camp," the trustees of Howard University said: "Take our campus." Eventually twelve hundred colored cadets were assembled at Fort Des Moines for officers' training. The city of Des Moines promptly protested, but it finally changed its mind. Des Moines never before had seen such a class of colored men. They rapidly became popular with all classes and many encomiums were passed upon their conduct. Their commanding colonel pronounced their work first class and declared that they presented excellent material for officers. Meantime, with one accord, the thought of the colored people turned toward Colonel Young, their highest officer in the regular army. Charles Young is a heroic figure. He is the typical soldier,—silent, uncomplaining, brave, and efficient! From his days at West Point throughout his thirty years of service he has taken whatever task was assigned him and performed it efficiently; and there is no doubt but that the army has been almost merciless in the requirements which it has put upon this splendid officer. He came through all with flying colors. In Haiti, in Liberia, in western camps, in the Sequoia Forests of California, and finally with Pershing in Mexico,—in every case he triumphed. Just at the time we were looking to the United States government to call him to head the colored officers' training at Des Moines, he was retired from the army, because of "high blood pressure!" There is no disputing army surgeons and their judgment in this case may be justified, but coming at the time it did, nearly every Negro in the United States believed that the "high blood pressure" that retired Colonel Young was in the prejudiced heads of the Southern oligarchy who were determined that no American Negro should ever wear the stars of a General. To say that Negroes of the United States were disheartened at the retirement of Colonel Young is to put it mildly,—but there was more trouble. The provision that Negroes must be trained separately looked simple and was simple in places where there were large Negro contingents, but in the North with solitary Negroes drafted here and there we had some extraordinary developments. Regiments appeared with one Negro where the Negro had to be separated like a pest and put into a house or even a village by himself while the commander frantically telegraphed to Washington. Small wonder that one poor fellow in Ohio solved the problem by cutting his throat. The whole process of drafting Negroes had to be held up until the government could find methods and places for assembling them. Then came Houston. In a moment the nation forgot the whole record of one of the most celebrated regiments in the United States Army and its splendid service in the Indian Wars and in the Philippines. It was the first regiment mobilized in the Spanish-American War and it was the regiment that volunteered to a man to clean up the yellow fever camps when others hesitated. It was one of the regiments to which Pershing said in December: "Men, I am authorized by Congress to tell you all that our people back in the States are mightily glad and proud at the way the soldiers have conducted themselves while in Mexico, and I, General Pershing, can say with pride that a finer body of men never stood under the flag of our nation than we find here tonight." The nation, also, forgot the deep resentment mixed with the pale ghost of fear which Negro soldiers call up in the breasts of the white South. It is not so much that they fear that the Negro will strike if he gets a chance, but rather that they assume with curious unanimity that he has reason to strike, that any other persons in his circumstances or treated as he is would rebel. Instead of seeking to relieve the cause of such a possible feeling, most of them strain every effort to bottle up the black man's resentment. Is it inconceivable that now and then it bursts all bounds, as at Brownsville and Houston? So in the midst of this mental turmoil came Houston and East St. Louis. At Houston black soldiers, goaded and insulted, suddenly went wild and "shot up" the town. At East St. Louis white strikers on war work killed and mobbed Negro workingmen, and as a result 19 colored soldiers were hanged and 51 imprisoned for life for killing 17 whites at Houston, while for killing 125 Negroes in East St. Louis, 20 white men were imprisoned, none for more than 15 years, and 10 colored men with them. Once upon a time I took a great journey in this land to three of the ends of our world and over seven thousand mighty miles. I saw the grim desert and the high ramparts of the Rocky Mountains. Three days I flew from the silver beauty of Seattle to the somber whirl of Kansas City. Three days I flew from the brute might of Chicago to the air of the Angels in California, scented with golden flowers, where the homes of men crouch low and loving on the good, broad earth, as though they were kissing her blossoms. Three days I flew through the empire of Texas, but all these shall be tales untold, for in all this journey I saw but one thing that lived and will live eternal in my soul,—the Grand Cañon. It is a sudden void in the bosom of the earth, down to its entrails—a wound where the dull titanic knife has turned and twisted in the hole, leaving its edges livid, scarred, jagged, and pulsing over the white, and red, and purple of its mighty flesh, while down below—down, down below, in black and severed vein, boils the dull and sullen flood of the Colorado. It is awful. There can be nothing like it. It is the earth and sky gone stark and raving mad. The mountains up-twirled, disbodied and inverted, stand on their peaks and throw their bowels to the sky. Their earth is air; their ether blood-red rock engreened. You stand upon their roots and fall into their pinnacles, a mighty mile. Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! See yonder peak! No human foot has trod it. Into that blue shadow only the eye of God has looked. Listen to the accents of that gorge which mutters: "Before Abraham was, I am." Is yonder wall a hedge of black or is it the rampart between heaven and hell? I see greens,—is it moss or giant pines? I see specks that may be boulders. Ever the winds sigh and drop into those sun-swept silences. Ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until I fear. It is a grim thing, unholy, terrible! It is human—some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown. One throws a rock into the abyss. It gives back no sound. It falls on silence—the voice of its thunders cannot reach so far. It is not—it cannot be a mere, inert, unfeeling, brute fact—its grandeur is too serene—its beauty too divine! It is not red, and blue, and green, but, ah! the shadows and the shades of all the world, glad colorings touched with a hesitant spiritual delicacy. What does it mean—what does it mean? Tell me, black and boiling water! It is not real. It is but shadows. The shading of eternity. Last night yonder tesselated palace was gloom—dark, brooding thought and sin, while hither rose the mountains of the sun, golden, blazing, ensanguined. It was a dream. This blue and brilliant morning shows all those burning peaks alight, while here, shapeless, mistful, brood the shadowed towers. I have been down into the entrails of earth—down, down by straight and staring cliffs—down by sounding waters and sun-strewn meadows; down by green pastures and still waters, by great, steep chasms—down by the gnarled and twisted fists of God to the deep, sad moan of the yellow river that did this thing of wonder,—a little winding river with death in its depth and a crown of glory in its flying hair. I have seen what eye of man was never meant to see. I have profaned the sanctuary. I have looked upon the dread disrobing of the Night, and yet I live. Ere I hid my head she was standing in her cavern halls, glowing coldly westward—her feet were blackness: her robes, empurpled, flowed mistily from shoulder down in formless folds of folds; her head, pine-crowned, was set with jeweled stars. I turned away and dreamed—the cañon,—the awful, its depths called; its heights shuddered. Then suddenly I arose and looked. Her robes were falling. At dim-dawn they hung purplish-green and black. Slowly she stripped them from her gaunt and shapely limbs—her cold, gray garments shot with shadows stood revealed. Down dropped the black-blue robes, gray-pearled and slipped, leaving a filmy, silken, misty thing, and underneath I glimpsed her limbs of utter light. My God! For what am I thankful this night? For nothing. For nothing but the most commonplace of commonplaces; a table of gentlewomen and gentlemen—soft-spoken, sweet-tempered, full of human sympathy, who made me, a stranger, one of them. Ours was a fellowship of common books, common knowledge, mighty aims. We could laugh and joke and think as friends—and the Thing—the hateful, murderous, dirty Thing which in American we call "Nigger-hatred" was not only not there—it could not even be understood. It was a curious monstrosity at which civilized folk laughed or looked puzzled. There was no elegant and elaborate condescension of—"We once had a colored servant"—"My father was an Abolitionist"—"I've always been interested in your people"—there was only the community of kindred souls, the delicate reverence for the Thought that led, the quick deference to the guest. You left in quiet regret, knowing that they were not discussing you behind your back with lies and license. God! It was simply human decency and I had to be thankful for it because I am an American Negro, and white America, with saving exceptions, is cruel to everything that has black blood—and this was Paris, in the years of salvation, 1919. Fellow blacks, we must join the democracy of Europe. Toul! Dim through the deepening dark of early afternoon, I saw its towers gloom dusky toward the murk of heaven. We wound in misty roads and dropped upon the city through the great throats of its walled bastions. There lay France—a strange, unknown, unfamiliar France. The city was dispossessed. Through its streets—its narrow, winding streets, old and low and dark, carven and quaint,—poured thousands upon thousands of strange feet of khaki-clad foreigners, and the echoes threw back awkward syllables that were never French. Here was France beaten to her knees yet fighting as never nation fought before, calling in her death agony across the seas till her help came and with all its strut and careless braggadocio saved the worthiest nation of the world from the wickedest fate ever plotted by Fools. Tim Brimm was playing by the town-pump. Tim Brimm and the bugles of Harlem blared in the little streets of Maron in far Lorraine. The tiny streets were seas of mud. Dank mist and rain sifted through the cold air above the blue Moselle. Soldiers—soldiers everywhere—black soldiers, boys of Washington, Alabama, Philadelphia, Mississippi. Wild and sweet and wooing leapt the strains upon the air. French children gazed in wonder—women left their washing. Up in the window stood a black Major, a Captain, a Teacher, and I—with tears behind our smiling eyes. Tim Brimm was playing by the town-pump. The audience was framed in smoke. It rose ghost-like out of memories—bitter memories of the officer near dead of pneumonia whose pain was lighted up by the nurses waiting to know whether he must be "Jim-Crowed" with privates or not. Memories of that great last morning when the thunders of hell called the Ninety-second to its last drive. Memories of bitter humiliations, determined triumphs, great victories, and bugle-calls that sounded from earth to heaven. Like memories framed in the breath of God, my audience peered in upon me—good, brown faces with great, kind, beautiful eyes—black soldiers of America rescuing beloved France—and the words came in praise and benediction there in the "Y," with its little stock of cigarettes and candies and its rusty wood stove. "Alors," said Madame, "quatre sont morts"—four dead—four tall, strong sons dead for France—sons like the sweet and blue-eyed daughter who was hiding her brave smile in the dusk. It was a tiny stone house whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the feet of black soldiers marching home. There was a cavernous wardrobe, a great fireplace invaded by a new and jaunty iron stove. Vast, thick piles of bedding rose in yonder corner. Without was the crowded kitchen and up a half-stair was our bedroom that gave upon a tiny court with arched stone staircase and one green tree. We were a touching family party held together by a great sorrow and a great joy. How we laughed over the salad that got brandy instead of vinegar—how we ate the golden pile of fried potatoes and how we pored over the post-card from the Lieutenant of the Senegalese—dear little vale of crushed and risen France, in the day when Negroes went "over the top" at Pont-à-Mousson. Paris, Paris by purple façade of the opera, the crowd on the Boulevard des Italiens and the great swing of the Champs Elysées. But not the Paris the world knows. Paris with its soul cut to the core—feverish, crowded, nervous, hurried; full of uniforms and mourning bands, with cafés closed at 9:30—no sugar, scarce bread, and tears so interwined with joy that there is scant difference. Paris has been dreaming a nightmare, and though she awakes, the grim terror is upon her—it lies on the sand-closed art treasures of the Louvre. Only the flowers are there, always the flowers, the Roses of England and the Lilies of France. New York! Behind the Liberty that faces free France rise the white cliffs of Manhattan, tier on tier, with a curving pinnacle, towers square and twin, a giant inkwell daintily stoppered, an ancient pyramid enthroned; beneath, low ramparts wide and mighty; while above, faint-limned against the turbulent sky, looms the vast grace of that Cathedral of the Purchased and Purchasing Poor, topping the world and pointing higher. Yonder the gray cobwebs of the Brooklyn bridges leap the sea, and here creep the argosies from all earth's ends. We move to this swift home on dun and swelling waters and hear as we come the heartbeats of the new world. New York and night from the Brooklyn Bridge: The bees and fireflies flit and twinkle in their vast hives; curved clouds like the breath of gods hover between the towers and the moon. One hears the hiss of lightnings, the deep thunder of human things, and a fevered breathing as of some attendant and invincible Powers. The glow of burning millions melts outward into dim and fairy outlines until afar the liquid music born of rushing crowds drips like a benediction on the sea. New York and morning: the sun is kissing the timid dew in Central Park, and from the Fountain of Plenty one looks along that world street, Fifth Avenue, and walks toward town. The earth life and curves graciously down from the older mansions of princes to the newer shops of luxury. Egypt and Abyssinia, Paris and Damascus, London and India caress you by the way; churches stand aloof while the shops swell to emporiums. But all this is nothing. Everything is mankind. Humanity stands and flies and walks and rolls about—the poor, the priceless, the world-known and the forgotten; child and grandfather, king and leman—the pageant of the world goes by, set in a frame of stone and jewels, clothed in scarlet and rags. Princes Street and the Elysian Fields, the Strand and the Ringstrasse—these are the Ways of the World today. New York and twilight, there where the Sixth Avenue "L" rises and leaps above the tenements into the free air at 110th Street. It circles like a bird with heaven and St. John's above and earth and the sweet green and gold of the Park beneath. Beyond lie all the blue mists and mysteries of distance; beneath, the city rushes and crawls. Behind echo all the roar and war and care and maze of the wide city set in its sullen darkening walls, flashing weird and crimson farewells. Out at the sides the stars twinkle. Again New York and Night and Harlem. A dark city of fifty thousand rises like magic from the earth. Gone is the white world, the pale lips, the lank hair; gone is the West and North—the East and South is here triumphant. The street is crowd and leisure and laughter. Everywhere black eyes, black and brown, and frizzled hair curled and sleek, and skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood. Humanity is packed dense in high piles of close-knit homes that lie in layers above gray shops of food and clothes and drink, with here and there a moving-picture show. Orators declaim on the corners, lovers lark in the streets, gamblers glide by the saloons, workers lounge wearily home. Children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and beautiful and ugly and evil, even as Life is elsewhere. And then—the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern seas—vast, sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored and Black and White—between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor Jesus who was called the Christ! There is something in the nature of Beauty that demands an end. Ugliness may be indefinite. It may trail off into gray endlessness. But Beauty must be complete—whether it be a field of poppies or a great life,—it must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty. I know there are those who envisage a beauty eternal. But I cannot. I can dream of great and never-ending processions of beautiful things and visions and acts. But each must be complete or it cannot for me exist. On the other hand, Ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal unfulfilment is a cause of joy. There is in it nothing new or unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. But Beauty is fulfilment. It satisfies. It is always new and strange. It is the reasonable thing. Its end is Death—the sweet silence of perfection, the calm and balance of utter music. Therein is the triumph of Beauty. So strong is the spell of beauty that there are those who, contradicting their own knowledge and experience, try to say that all is beauty. They are called optimists, and they lie. All is not beauty. Ugliness and hate and ill are here with all their contradiction and illogic; they will always be here—perhaps, God send, with lessened volume and force, but here and eternal, while beauty triumphs in its great completion—Death. We cannot conjure the end of all ugliness in eternal beauty, for beauty by its very being and definition has in each definition its ends and limits; but while beauty lies implicit and revealed in its end, ugliness writhes on in darkness forever. So the ugliness of continual birth fulfils itself and conquers gloriously only in the beautiful end, Death. At last to us all comes happiness, there in the Court of Peace, where the dead lie so still and calm and good. If we were not dead we would lie and listen to the flowers grow. We would hear the birds sing and see how the rain rises and blushes and burns and pales and dies in beauty. We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. But we know that being dead, our Happiness is a fine and finished thing and that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt in the Court of Peace. The Prayers of God
Name of God's Name!Red murder reigns;All hell is loose;On gold autumnal airWalk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;While high on hills of hate,Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,Thou sittest, dumb.
Father Almighty!This earth is mad!Palsied, our cunning hands;Rotten, our gold;Our argosies reel and staggerOver empty seas;All the long aislesOf Thy Great Temples, God,Stink with the entrailsOf our souls.And Thou art dumb.
Above the thunder of Thy Thunders, Lord,Lightening Thy Lightnings,Rings and roarsThe dark damnationOf this hell of war.Red piles the pulp of hearts and headsAnd little children's hands.
Allah!Elohim!Very God of God!
Death is here!Dead are the living; deep—dead the dead.Dying are earth's unborn—The babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy,Poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs,Great-pictured dreams,Enmarbled phantasies,High hymning heavens—allIn this dread nightWrithe and shriek and choke and dieThis long ghost-night—While Thou art dumb.
Have mercy!Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!Stand forth, unveil Thy Face,Pour down the lightThat seethes above Thy Throne,And blaze this devil's dance to darkness!Hear!Speak!In Christ's Great Name—
Blood? Is it wet with blood?'Tis from my brother's hands.(I know; his hands are mine.)It flowed for Thee, O Lord.
War? Not so; not war—Dominion, Lord, and over black, not white;Black, brown, and fawn,And not Thy Chosen Brood, O God,We murdered.To build Thy Kingdom,To drape our wives and little ones,And set their souls a-glitter—For this we killed these lesser breedsAnd civilized their dead,Raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold!
(He raved and writhed,I heard him cry,I felt the life-light leap and lie,I saw him crackle there, on high,I watched him wither!)
Awake me, God! I sleep!What was that awful word Thou saidst?That black and riven thing—was it Thee?That gasp—was it Thine?This pain—is it Thine?Are, then, these bullets piercing Thee?Have all the wars of all the world,Down all dim time, drawn blood from Thee?Have all the lies and thefts and hates—Is this Thy Crucifixion, God,And not that funny, little cross,With vinegar and thorns?Is this Thy kingdom here, not there,This stone and stucco drift of dreams?
XTHE COMETHe stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—"nothing!" as he said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him. "The comet?" "The comet——" Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked: "Well, Jim, are you scared?" "No," said the messenger shortly. "I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the junior clerk affably. "Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say—wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim," turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down into the lower vaults today." The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened. "Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there,—it isn't very pleasant, I suppose." "Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out. "Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world. He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault—some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure—and he saw the dull sheen of gold! "Boom!" A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse. He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling! "Robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone—with all this money and all these dead men—what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street. How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon—Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight. In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can—as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car, silent, and within—but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay—but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way—the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,—ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still. When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see. He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights. "Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced the food down. Then he started up the street,—looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody—nobody—he dared not think the thought and hurried on. Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway—then he almost laughed. No—a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God. "Hello—hello—help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "There's a dead girl in here and a man and—and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses—for the love of God go and bring the officers——" And the words trailed off into hysterical tears. He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five—rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out. So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other. "What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,—and see——" She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery. The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body. "I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out—I saw the dead! "What has happened?" she cried again. He answered slowly: "Something—comet or devil—swept across the earth this morning and—many are dead!" "Many? Very many?" "I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you." She gasped and they stared at each other. "My—father!" she whispered. "Where is he?" "He started for the office." "Where is it?" "In the Metropolitan Tower." "Leave a note for him here and come." Then he stopped. "No," he said firmly—"first, we must go—to Harlem." "Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps. "There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said. "I don't know how to drive it," he said. "I do," she answered. In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th. He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She did not look, but said: "You have lost—somebody?" "I have lost—everybody," he said, simply—"unless——" He ran back and was gone several minutes—hours they seemed to her. "Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket. "I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem—the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence—the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent: Dear Daughter: I've gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me. J.B.H. "Come," she cried nervously. "We must search the city." Up and down, over and across, back again—on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death—death and silence! They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor—a smell—and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled back helplessly in her seat. "What can we do?" she cried. It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly. "The long distance telephone—the telegraph and the cable—night rockets and then—flight!" She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. In fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked—she beat back the thought—but it looked,—it persisted in looking like—she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath. "Hello!" she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world must answer. Would the world answer? Was the world—-- Silence! She had spoken too low. "Hello!" she cried, full-voiced. She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones: "Hello—hello—hello!" What was that whirring? Surely—no—was it the click of a receiver? She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world—she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty—too terrible! She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,—with a man alien in blood and culture—unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must escape—she must fly; he must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughts-- She gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs—listened, and glided into a sidehall. A moment she shrank back: the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked out. He was standing at the top of the alley,—silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know—she did not care. She simply leaped and ran—ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings. She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone on the streets—alone in the city—perhaps alone in the world! There crept in upon her the sense of deception—of creeping hands behind her back—of silent, moving things she could not see,—of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered: "Not—that." And he answered slowly: "No—not that!" They climbed into the car. She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. In the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous. It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere. Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,—not dead. They moved in quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace. They moved in some solemn, world-wide Friedhof, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept until—until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other's eyes—he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought. To both, the vision of a mighty beauty—of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away. Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth. The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold. "Do you know the code?" she asked. "I know the call for help—we used it formerly at the bank." She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of the waters far below,—the dark and restless waters—the cold and luring waters, as they called. He stepped within. Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did not come. Then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters, and said quietly: "The world lies beneath the waters now—may I go?" She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her heart. She answered in a voice clear and calm, "No." Upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and looked half-consciously for the elf-queen to wave life into this dead world again. She forgot to wonder at the quickness with which he had learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And then as they whirled and swung into Madison Square and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were great! Perhaps she had seen the elf-queen? The man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up at him with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him. He seemed very human,—very near now. "Have you had to work hard?" she asked softly. "Always," he said. "I have always been idle," she said. "I was rich." "I was poor," he almost echoed. "The rich and the poor are met together," she began, and he finished: "The Lord is the Maker of them all." "Yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our human distinctions seem—now," looking down to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows. "Yes—I was not—human, yesterday," he said. She looked at him. "And your people were not my people," she said; "but today——" She paused. He was a man,—no more; but he was in some larger sense a gentleman,—sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his hands and—his face. Yet yesterday—-- "Death, the leveler!" he muttered. "And the revealer," she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. Above the dead past hovered the Angel of Annunciation. She was no mere woman. She was neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. She was primal woman; mighty mother of all men to come and Bride of Life. She looked upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong, vigorous manhood—his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. He was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of another clime and blood, but her Brother Humanity incarnate, Son of God and great All-Father of the race to be. He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering darkness. Dark-purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. Suddenly, as though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud-curtain fell away. Low on the horizon lay a long, white star—mystic, wonderful! And from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars. In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped the lone majesty of kings long dead. He arose within the shadows, tall, straight, and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters hovering to his grasp. It was as though some mighty Pharaoh lived again, or curled Assyrian lord. He turned and looked upon the lady, and found her gazing straight at him. Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face—eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love—it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid. Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other—the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice, "The world is dead." "Long live the——" "Honk! Honk!" Hoarse and sharp the cry of a motor drifted clearly up from the silence below. They started backward with a cry and gazed upon each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled. "Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk!" came the mad cry again, and almost from their feet a rocket blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. She covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. He dropped and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. A blue flame spluttered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering rocket as it flew. Then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth. "Clang—crash—clang!" The roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the great tower tremble. A murmur and babel of voices swept in upon the night. All over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered, and flamed; and then with a sudden clanging of doors the entrance to the platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed to the girl and lifted her to his breast. "My daughter!" he sobbed. Behind him hurried a younger, comelier man, carefully clad in motor costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face flushed deeper and deeper crimson. "Julia," he whispered; "my darling, I thought you were gone forever." She looked up at him with strange, searching eyes. "Fred," she murmured, almost vaguely, "is the world—gone?" "Only New York," he answered; "it is terrible—awful! You know,—but you, how did you escape—how have you endured this horror? Are you well? Unharmed?" "Unharmed!" she said. "And this man here?" he asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm and turning toward the Negro. Suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to his hip. "Why!" he snarled. "It's—a—nigger—Julia! Has he—has he dared——" She lifted her head and looked at her late companion curiously and then dropped her eyes with a sigh. "He has dared—all, to rescue me," she said quietly, "and I—thank him—much." But she did not look at him again. As the couple turned away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets. "Here, my good fellow," he said, thrusting the money into the man's hands, "take that,—what's your name?" "Jim Davis," came the answer, hollow-voiced. "Well, Jim, I thank you. I've always liked your people. If you ever want a job, call on me." And they were gone. The crowd poured up and out of the elevators, talking and whispering. "Who was it?" "Are they alive?" "How many?" "Two!" "Who was saved?" "A white girl and a nigger—there she goes." "A nigger? Where is he? Let's lynch the damned——" "Shut up—he's all right-he saved her." "Saved hell! He had no business——" "Here he comes." Into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly, with the eyes of those that walk and sleep. "Well, what do you think of that?" cried a bystander; "of all New York, just a white girl and a nigger!" The colored man heard nothing. He stood silently beneath the glare of the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed; slowly he put his other hand into his pocket and brought out a baby's filmy cap, and gazed again. A woman mounted to the platform and looked about, shading her eyes. She was brown, small, and toil-worn, and in one arm lay the corpse of a dark baby. The crowd parted and her eyes fell on the colored man; with a cry she tottered toward him. "Jim!" He whirled and, with a sob of joy, caught her in his arms. A Hymn to the Peoples
O Truce of God!And primal meeting of the Sons of Man,Foreshadowing the union of the World!From all the ends of earth we come!Old Night, the elder sister of the Day,Mother of Dawn in the golden East,Meets in the misty twilight with her brood,Pale and black, tawny, red and brown,The mighty human rainbow of the world,Spanning its wilderness of storm.
Softly in sympathy the sunlight falls,Rare is the radiance of the moon;And on the darkest midnight blaze the stars—The far-flown shadows of whose brillianceDrop like a dream on the dim shores of Time,Forecasting Days that are to theseAs day to night.
So sit we all as one.So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves,The Buddha walks with Christ!And Al-Koran and Bible both be holy!
Almighty Word!In this Thine awful sanctuary,First and flame-haunted City of the Widened World,Assoil us, Lord of Lands and Seas!
We are but weak and wayward men,Distraught alike with hatred and vainglory;Prone to despise the Soul that breathes within—High visioned hordes that lie and steal and kill,Sinning the sin each separate heart disclaims,Clambering upon our riven, writhing selves,Besieging Heaven by trampling men to Hell!We be blood-guilty! Lo, our hands be red!Not one may blame the other in this sin!But here—here in the white Silence of the Dawn,Before the Womb of Time,With bowed hearts all flame and shame,We face the birth-pangs of a world:We hear the stifled cry of Nations all but born—The wail of women ravished of their stunted brood!We see the nakedness of Toil, the poverty of Wealth,We know the Anarchy of Empire, and doleful Death of Life!And hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry:
Publicado em 1937, pouco depois de implantado o Estado Novo, este livro teve a primeira edição apreendida e exemplares queimados em praça pública de Salvador por autoridades da ditadura. Em 1940, marcou época na vida literária brasileira, com nova edição, e a partir daí, sucederam-se as edições nacionais e em idiomas estrangeiros. A obra teve também adaptações para o rádio, teatro e cinema. Documento sobre a vida dos meninos abandonados nas ruas de Salvador, Jorge Amado a descreve em páginas carregadas de beleza, dramaticidade e lirismo. Matilde: Jogávamos jogos de prenda. Andávamos de carro de boi. Morávamos em casa mal-assombrada. Conversávamos com moças e mágicos. Achavas a Bahia imensa e misteriosa. A poesia deste livro vem de ti. CRIANÇAS LADRONAS AS AVENTURAS SINISTRAS DOS “CAPITÃES DA AREIA” – A CIDADE INFESTADA POR CRIANÇAS QUE VIVEM DO FURTO – URGE UMA PROVIDÊNCIA DO JUIZ DE MENORES E DO CHEFE DE POLÍCIA – ONTEM HOUVE MAIS UM ASSALTO Já por várias vezes o nosso jornal, que é sem dúvida o órgão das mais legítimas aspirações da população baiana, tem trazido noticias sobre a atividade criminosa dos “Capitães da Areia”, nome pelo qual é conhecido o grupo de meninos assaltantes e ladrões que infestam a nossa urbe. Essas crianças que tão cedo se dedicaram à tenebrosa carreira do crime não têm moradia certa ou pelo menos a sua moradia ainda não foi localizada. Como também ainda não foi localizado o local onde escondem o produto dos seus assaltos, que se tornam diários, fazendo jus a uma imediata providência do Juiz de Menores e do doutor Chefe de Polícia. Esse bando que vive da rapina se compõe, pelo que se sabe, de um número superior a 100 crianças das mais diversas idades, indo desde os 8 aos 16 anos. Crianças que, naturalmente devido ao desprezo dado à sua educação por pais pouco servidos de sentimentos cristãos, se entregaram no verdor dos anos a uma vida criminosa. São chamados de “Capitães da Areia” porque o cais é o seu quartel-general. E têm por comandante um mascote dos seus 14 anos, que é o mais terrível de todos, não só ladrão, como já autor de um crime de ferimentos graves, praticado na tarde de ontem. Infelizmente a Identidade deste chefe é desconhecida. O que se faz necessário é uma urgente providência da policia e do juizado de menores no sentido da extinção desse bando e para que recolham esses precoces criminosos, que já não deixam a cidade dormir em paz o seu sono tão merecido, aos Institutos de reforma de crianças ou às prisões. Passemos agora a relatar o assalto de ontem, do qual foi vítima um honrado comerciante da nossa praça, que teve sua residência furtada em mais de um conto de réis e um seu empregado ferido pelo desalmado chefe dessa malta de jovens bandidos. NA RESIDÊNCIA DO COMENDADOR JOSE FERREIRA No Corredor da Vitória, coração do mais chique bairro da cidade, se eleva a bela vivenda do Comendador José Ferreira, dos mais abastados e acreditados negociantes desta praça, com loja de fazendas na rua Portugal. É um gosto ver o palacete do comendador, cercado de jardins, na sua arquitetura colonial. Pois ontem esse remanso de paz e trabalho honesto passou uma hora de indescritível agitação e susto com a invasão que sofreu por parte dos “Capitães da Areia”. Os relógios badalavam as três horas da tarde e a cidade abafava de calor quando o jardineiro notou que algumas crianças vestidas de molambos rondavam o jardim da residência do comendador. O jardineiro tratou de afastar da frente da casa aqueles incômodos visitantes. E, como eles continuassem o seu caminho, descendo a rua, Ramiro, o jardineiro, volveu ao seu trabalho nos jardins do fiando do palacete. Minutos depois, porém, era o ASSALTONão tinham passado ainda cinco minutos quando o jardineiro Ramiro ouviu gritos assustados vindos do interior da residência. Eram gritos de pessoas terrivelmente assustadas. Armando-se de uma foice o jardineiro penetrou na casa e mal teve tempo de ver vários moleques que, como um bando de demônios na expressão curiosa de Ramiro, fugiam saltando as janelas, carregados com objetos de valor da sala de jantar. A empregada que havia gritado estava cuidando da senhora do comendador, que tivera um ligeiro desmaio em virtude do susto que passara. O Jardineiro dirigiu-se às pressas para o jardim, onde teve lugar a LUTAAconteceu que no jardim a linda criança que é Raul Ferreira, de 11 anos, neto do comendador, que se achava de visita aos avós, conversava com o chefe dos “Capitães da Areia”, que é reconhecível devido a um talho que tem no rosto. Na sua inocência, Raul ria para o malvado, que sem dúvida pensava em furtá-lo. O jardineiro se atirou então em cima do ladrão. Não esperava, porém, pela reação do moleque, que se revelou um mestre nestas brigas. E o resultado é que, qando pensava ter seguro o chefe da malta, o jardineiro recebeu uma punhalada no ombro e logo em seguida outra no braço, sendo obrigado a largar o criminoso, que fugiu. A polícia tomou conhecimento do fato, mas até o momento que escrevemos a presente nota nenhum rastro dos “Capitães da Areia” foi encontrado. O Comendador José Ferreira, ouvido pela nossa reportagem, avalia o seu prejuízo em mais de um conto de réis, pois só o pequeno relógio de sua esposa estava avaliado em 900$ e foi furtado. URGE UMA PROVIDÊNCIAOs moradores do aristocrático bairro estão alarmados e receosos de que os assaltos se sucedam, pois este não é o primeiro levado a efeito pelos “Capitães da Areia”. Urge uma providência que traga para semelhantes malandros um justo castigo e o sossego para as nossas mais distintas famílias. Esperamos que o ilustre chefe de polícia e o não menos ilustre doutor Juiz de Menores saberão tomar as devidas providências contra esses criminosos tão Jovens e já tão ousados. A OPINIÃO DA INOCÊNCIAA nossa reportagem ouviu também o pequeno Raul, que, como dissemos, tem onze anos e já é dos ginasianos mais aplicados do Colégio Antônio Vieira. Raul mostrava uma grande coragem, e nos disse acerca da sua conversa com o terrível chefe dos “Capitães da Areia”. – Ele disse que eu era um tolo e não sabia o que era brincar. Eu respondi que tinha uma bicicleta e muito brinquedo. Ele riu e disse que tinha a rua e o cais. Fiquei gostando dele, parece um desses meninos de cinema que fogem de casa para passar aventuras. Ficamos então a pensar neste outro delicado problema para a infância que é o cinema, que tanta idéia errada infunde às crianças acerca da vida. Outro problema que está merecendo a atenção do doutor Juiz de Maiores. A ele volveremos. Reportagem publicada no Jornal da Tarde , na página de “Fatos Policiais”, com um clichê da casa do comendador e um deste no momento em que era condecorado. CARTA DO SECRETÁRIO DO CHEFE DE POLÍCIA À REDAÇÃO DO JORNAL DA TARDE “Sr. diretor do Jornal da Tarde Cordiais saudações. Tendo chegado ao conhecimento do doutor chefe de polícia a reportagem publicada ontem na segunda edição desse jornal sobre as atividades dos “Capitães da Areia”, bando de crianças delinqüentes, e o assalto levado a efeito por este mesmo bando na residência do comendador José Ferreira, o doutor chefe de polícia se apressa a comunicar à direção deste jornal que a solução do problema compete antes ao juiz de maiores que à policia. A polícia neste caso deve agir em obediência a um pedido do doutor Juiz de Menores. Mas que, no entanto, vai tomar sérias providências para que semelhantes atentados não se repitam e para que os autores do de anteontem sejam presos para sofrerem o castigo merecido. Pelo exposto fica claramente provado que a polícia não merece nenhuma crítica pela sua atitude em face desse problema. Não tem agido com maior eficiência porque não foi solicitada pelo juiz de menores. Cordiais saudações. Secretário do Chefe de Policia.” Publicada em primeira página do Jornal da Tarde, com clichê do chefe de polícia e um vasto comentário elogioso. CARTA DO DOUTOR JUIZ DE MENORES À REDAÇÃO DO JORNAL DA TARDE “Exmo. Sr. diretor do Jornal da Tarde. Cidade do Salvador Neste Estado. Meu caro patrício. Cordiais saudações. Folheando, num dos raros momentos de lazer que me deixam as múltiplas e variadas preocupações do meu espinhoso cargo, o vosso brilhante vespertino, tomei conhecimento de uma epístola do infatigável doutor chefe de polícia do Estado, na qual dizia dos motivos por que a polícia não pudera até a data presente intensificar a meritória campanha contra os menores delinqüentes que infestam a nossa urbe. Justifica-se o doutor chefe de polícia declarando que não possuía ordens do juizado de menores no sentido de agir contra a delinqüência infantil. Sem querer absolutamente culpar a brilhante e infatigável chefia de polícia, sou obrigado, a bem da verdade essa mesma verdade que tenho colocado como o farol que ilumina a estrada da minha vida com a sua luz puríssima, a declarar que a desculpa não procede. Não procede, senhor diretor, porque ao juizado de menores não compete perseguir e prender os menores delinqüentes e, sim, designar o local onde devem cumprir pena, nomear curador para acompanhar qualquer processo contra eles instaurado, etc. Não cabe ao juizado de menores capturar os pequenos delinqüentes. Cabe velar pelo seu destino posterior. E o senhor doutor chefe de polícia sempre há de me encontrar onde o dever me chama, porque jamais, em 50 anos de vida impoluta, deixei de cumpri-lo. Ainda nestes últimos meses que decorreram mandei para o Reformatório de Menores vários menores delinqüentes ou abandonados. Não tenho culpa, porém, de que fujam, que não se impressionem com o exemplo de trabalho que encontram naquele estabelecimento de educação e que, por meio da fuga, abandonem um ambiente onde se respiram paz e trabalho e onde são tratados com o maior carinho. Fogem e se tornam ainda mais perversos, como se o exemplo que houvessem recebido fosse mau e daninho. Por quê? Isso é um problema que aos psicólogos cabe resolver e não a mim, simples curioso da filosofia. O que quero deixar claro e cristalino, senhor diretor, é que o doutor chefe de polícia pode contar com a melhor ajuda deste juizado de menores para intensificar a campanha contra os menores delinqüentes. De V.Exa., admirador e patrício grato, Juiz de Menores.” Publicada no Jornal da Tarde com o clichê do juiz de menores em uma coluna e um pequeno comentário elogioso. CARTA DE UMA MÃE, COSTUREIRA, À REDAÇÃO DO “JORNAL DA TARDE” Sr. Redator: Desculpe os erros e a letra pois não sou costumeira nestas coisas de escrever e se hoje venho a vossa presença é para botar os pontos nos ii. Vi no jornal uma notícia sobre os furtos dos “Capitães da Areia” e logo depois veio a polícia e disse que ia perseguir eles e então o doutor dos menores veio com uma conversa dizendo que era uma pena que eles não se emendavam no reformatório para onde ele mandava os pobres. É pra falar no tal do reformatório que eu escrevo estas mal traçadas linhas. Eu queria que seu jornal mandasse uma pessoa ver o tal do reformatório para ver como são tratados os filhos dos pobres que têm a desgraça de cair nas mãos daqueles guardas sem alma. Meu filho Alonso teve lá seis meses e se eu não arranjasse tirar ele daquele inferno em vida, não sei se o desgraçado viveria mais seis meses. O menos que acontece pros filhos da gente é apanhar duas e três vezes por dia. O diretor de lá vive caindo de bêbedo e gosta de ver o chicote cantar nas costas dos filhos dos pobres. Eu vi isso muitas vezes porque eles não ligam pra gente e diziam que era para dar exemplo. Foi por isso que tirei meu filho de lá. Se o jornal do senhor mandar uma pessoa lá, secreta, há de ver que comida eles comem, o trabalho de escravo que têm, que nem um homem forte agüenta, e as surras que tomam. Mas é preciso que vá secreto senão se eles souberem vira um céu aberto.Vá de repente e há de ver quem tem razão. E por essas e outras que existem os “Capitães da Areia”. Eu prefiro ver meu filho no meio deles que no tal reformatório. Se o senhor quiser ver uma coisa de cortar o coração vá lá.Também se quiser pode conversar com o Padre José Pedro, que foi capelão de lá e viu tudo isso. Ele também pode contar e com melhores palavras que eu não tenho. Maria Ricardina, costureira. Publicada na quinta pagina do jornal da Tarde, entre anúncios, sem clichês e sem comentários CARTA DO PADRE JOSE PEDRO À REDAÇÃO DO “JORNAL DA TARDE” Sr. Redator do Jornal da Tarde. Saudações em Cristo. Tendo lido, no vosso conceituado jornal, a carta de Maria Ricardina que apelava para mim como pessoa que podia esclarecer o que é a vida das crianças recolhidas ao reformatório de menores, sou obrigado a sair da obscuridade em que vivo para vir vos dizer que infelizmente Maria Ricardina tem razão. As crianças no aludido reformatório são tratadas como feras, essa é a verdade. Esqueceram a lição do suave Mestre, senhor Redator, e em vez de conquistarem as crianças com bons tratos, fazem-nas mais revoltadas ainda com espancamentos seguidos e castigos físicos verdadeiramente desumanos. Eu tenho ido lá levar às crianças o consolo da religião e as encontro pouco dispostas a aceitá-lo devido naturalmente ao ódio que estão acumulando naqueles jovens corações tão dignos de piedade. O que tenho visto, senhor Redator, daria um volume. Muito grato pela atenção. Servo em Cristo, Padre José Pedro Carta publicada na terceira página do Jornal da Tarde, sob o título “Será Verdade?” e sem comentários. CARTA DO DIRETOR DO REFORMATÓRIO À REDAÇÃO DO “JORNAL DA TARDE” Exmo. Sr. diretor do Jornal da Tarde. Saudações. Tenho acompanhado com grande interesse a campanha que o brilhante órgão da imprensa baiana, que com tão rútila inteligência dirigis, tem feito contra os crimes apavorantes dos “Capitães da areia”, bando de delinqüentes que amedronta a cidade e impede que ela viva sossegadamente. Foi assim que li duas cartas de acusações contra o estabelecimento que dirijo e que a modéstia e somente a modéstia, senhor diretor me impede que chame de modelar. Quanto à carta de uma mulherzinha do povo, não me preocupei com ela, não merecia a minha resposta. Sem dúvida é uma das multas que aqui vêm e querem impedir que o Reformatório cumpra a sua santa missão de educar os seus filhos. Elas os criam na rua, na pândega, e como eles aqui são submetidos a uma vida exemplar, elas são as primeiras a reclamar, quando deviam beijar as mãos daqueles que estão fazendo dos seus filhos homens de bem. Primeiro vêm pedir lugar para os filhos. Depois sentem falta deles, do produto dos furtos que eles levam para casa, e então saem a reclamar contra o Reformatório. Mas, como já disse, senhor diretor, esta carta não me preocupou. Não é uma mulherzinha do povo quem há de compreender a obra que estou realizando à frente deste estabelecimento. O que me abismou, senhor diretor, foi a carta do Padre José Pedro. Este sacerdote, esquecendo as funções do seu cargo, veio lançar contra o estabelecimento que dirijo graves acusações. Esse padre que eu chamarei padre do demônio, se me permitis uma pequena ironia, senhor diretor abusou das suas funções para penetrar no nosso estabelecimento de educação em horas proibidas pelo regulamento e contra ele eu tenho de formular uma séria queixa: ele tem incentivado os menores que o Estado colocou a meu cargo à revolta, à desobediência. Desde que ele penetrou os umbrais desta casa que os casos de rebeldia e contravenções aos regulamentos aumentaram. O tal padre é apenas um instigador do mau caráter geral dos menores sob a minha guarda. E por isso vou fechar-lhe as portas desta casa de educação. Porém, senhor diretor, fazendo minhas as palavras da costureira que escreveu a este jornal, sou eu quem vem vos pedir que envieis um redator ao Reformatório. Disso faço questão. Assim podereis, e o público também, ter ciência exata e fé verdadeira sobre a maneira como são tratados os menores que se regeneram no Reformatório Baiano de Menores Delinqüentes e Abandonados. Espero o vosso redator na segunda-feira. E se não digo que ele venha no dia que quiser é que estas visitas devem ser feitas nos dias permitidos pelo regulamento e é meu costume nunca me afastar do regulamento. Este é o motivo único por que convido o vosso redator para segunda-feira. Pelo que vos fico imensamente grato, como pela publicação desta. Assim ficará confundido o falso vigário de Cristo. Criado agradecido e admirador atento, Diretor do Reformatório Baiano de Menores Delinqüentes e Abandonados Publicada na 3º página do Jornal da Tarde com um clichê do reformatório e uma notícia adiantando que na próxima segunda- feira irá um redator do Jornal da Tarde ao reformatório. UM ESTABELECIMENTO MODELAR ONDE REINAM A PAZ E O TRATADO – UM DIRETOR QUE É UM AMIGO – ÓTIMA COMIDA – CRIANÇAS LADRONAS EM CAMINHO DA REGENERAÇÃO – ACUSAÇÕES IMPROCEDENTES – SÓ UM INCORRIGÍVEL RECLAMA – O “REFORMATÓRIO BAIANO” É UMA GRANDE FAMÍLIA – ONDE DEVIAM ESTAR OS “CAPITÃES DA AREIA”. Títulos da reportagem publicada na segunda edição de terça-feira do jornal da Tarde, ocupando toda a primeira página, sobre o Reformatório Baiano, com diversos clichês do prédio e um do diretor. Sob a lua num velho trapiche abandonado O trapicheSob a lua, num velho trapiche abandonado, as crianças dormem. Antigamente aqui era o mar. Nas grandes e negras pedras dos alicerces do trapiche as ondas ora se rebentavam fragorosas, ora vinham se bater mansamente. A água passava por baixo da ponte sob a qual muitas crianças repousam agora, iluminadas por uma réstia amarela de lua. Desta ponte saíram inúmeros veleiros carregados, alguns eram enormes e pintados de estranhas cores, para a aventura das travessias marítimas. Aqui vinham encher os porões e atracavam nesta ponte de tábuas, hoje comidas. Antigamente diante do trapiche se estendia o mistério do mar-oceano, as noites diante dele eram de um verde escuro, quase negras, daquela cor misteriosa que é a cor do mar à noite. Hoje a noite é alva em frente ao trapiche. É que na sua frente se estende agora o areal do cais do porto. Por baixo da ponte não há mais rumor de ondas. A areia invadiu tudo, fez o mar recuar de muitos metros. Aos poucos, lentamente, a areia foi conquistando a frente do trapiche. Não mais atracaram na sua ponte os veleiros que iam partir carregados. Não mais trabalharam ali os negros musculosos que vieram da escravatura. Não mais cantou na velha ponte uma canção um marinheiro nostálgico.A areia se estendeu muito alva em frente ao trapiche. É nunca mais encheram de fardos, de sacos, de caixões, o imenso casarão. Ficou abandonado em meio ao areal, mancha negra na brancura do cais. Durante anos foi povoado exclusivamente pelos ratos que ai atravessavam em corridas brincalhonas, que rolam a madeira das portas monumentais, que o habitavam como senhores exclusivos. Em certa época um cachorro vagabundo o procurou como refúgio contra o vento e contra a chuva. Na primeira noite não dormiu, ocupado em despedaçar ratos que passavam na sua frente. Dormiu depois de algumas noites, ladrando à lua pela madrugada, pois grande parte do teto já ruíra e os raios da lua penetravam livremente, iluminando o assoalho de tábuas grossas. Mas aquele era um cachorro sem pouso certo e cedo partiu em busca de outra pousada, o escuro de uma porta, o vão de urna ponte, o corpo quente de uma cadela. E os ratos voltaram a dominas até que os Capitães da Areia lançaram as suas vistas para o casarão abandonado. Neste tempo a porta caíra para um lado e um do grupo, certo dia em que passeava na extensão dos seus domínios porque toda a zona do areal do cais, como aliás toda a cidade da Bahia, pertence aos Capitães da Areia, entrou no trapiche. Seria bem melhor dormida que a pura areia, que as pontes dos demais trapiches onde por vezes a água subia tanto que ameaçava levá-los. E desde esta noite uma grande parte dos Capitães da Areia dormia no velho trapiche abandonado, em companhia dos ratos, sob a lua amarela. Na frente, a vastidão da areia, uma brancura sem fim.Ao longe, o mar que arrebentava no cais. Pela porta viam as luzes dos navios que entravam e saiam. Pelo teto viam o céu de estrelas, alua que os iluminava. Logo depois transferiram para o trapiche o depósito dos objetos que o trabalho do dia lhes proporcionava. Estranhas coisas entraram então para o trapiche. Não mais estranhas, porém, que aquela meninos, moleques de todas as cores e de idades as mais variadas, desde os 9 aos 16 anos, que à noite se estendiam pelo assoalho e por debaixo da ponte e dormiam, indiferentes ao vento que circundava o casarão uivando, indiferentes à chuva que muitas vezes os lavava, mas com os olhos puxados para as luzes dos navios, com os ouvidos presos às canções que vinham das embarcações... É aqui também que mora o chefe dos Capitães da Areia: Pedro Bala. Desde cedo foi chamado assim, desde seus cinco anos. Hoje tem 15 anos. Há dez que vagabundeia nas ruas da Bahia. Nunca soube de sua mãe, seu pai morrera de um balaço. Ele ficou sozinho e empregou anos em conhecer a cidade. Hoje sabe de todas as suas ruas e de todos os seus becos. Não há venda, quitanda, botequim que ele não conheça. Quando se incorporou aos Capitães da Areia o cais recém- construído atraiu para as suas areias todas as crianças abandonadas da cidade o chefe era Raimundo, o Caboclo, mulato avermelhado e forte. Não durou muito na chefia o caboclo Raimundo. Pedro Bala era muito mais ativo, sabia planejar os trabalhos, sabia tratar com os outros, trazia nos olhos e na voz a autoridade de chefe. Um dia brigaram. A desgraça de Raimundo foi puxar uma navalha e cortar o rosto de Pedro, um talho que ficou para o resto da vida. Os outros se meteram e como Pedro estava desarmado deram razão a ele e ficaram esperando a revanche, que não tardou. Uma noite, quando Raimundo quis surrar Barandão, Pedro tomou as dores do negrinho e rolaram na luta mais sensacional a que as areias do cais jamais assistiram. Raimundo era mais alto e mais velho. Porém Pedro Bala, o cabelo loiro voando, a cicatriz vermelha no rosto, era de uma agilidade espantosa e desde esse dia Raimundo deixou não só a chefia dos Capitães da Areia, como o próprio areal. Engajou tempos depois num navio. Todos reconheceram os direitos de Pedro Bala à chefia, e foi desta época que a cidade começou a ouvir falar nos Capitães da Areia, crianças abandonadas que viviam do furto. Nunca ninguém soube o número exato de meninos que assim viviam. Eram bem uns cem e destes mais de quarenta dormiam nas ruínas do velho trapiche. Vestidos de farrapos, sujos, semi-esfomeados, agressivos, soltando palavrões e fumando pontas de cigarro, eram, em verdade, os donos da cidade, os que a conheciam totalmente, os que totalmente a amavam, os seus poetas. Noite dos Capitães da AreiaA grande noite de Paz da Bahia veio do Cais, envolveu os saveiros, o forte, o quebra-mar, se estendeu sobre as ladeiras e as torres das igrejas. Os sinos já não tocam as ave-marias que as seis horas há muito que passaram. E o céu está cheio de estrelas, se bem a lua não tenha surgido nesta noite clara. O trapiche se destaca na brancura do areal, que conserva as marcas dos passos dos Capitães da Areia, que já se recolheram. Ao longe, a fraca luz da lanterna da Porta do Mar, botequim de marítimos, parece agonizar. Passa um vento frio que levanta a areia e torna difíceis os passos do negro João Grande, que se recolhe. Vai curvado pelo vento como a vela de um barco. E alto, o mais alto do bando, e o mais forte também, negro de carapinha baixa e músculos retesados, embora tenha apenas treze anos, dos quais quatro passados na mais absoluta liberdade, correndo as ruas da Bahia com os Capitães da Areia. Desde aquela tarde em que seu pai, carroceiro gigantesco, foi pegado por um caminhão quando tentava desviar o cavalo para um lado da rua, João Grande não voltou pequena casa do morro. Na sua frente estava a cidade misteriosa, e ele partiu para conquistá-la. A cidade da Bahia, negra e religiosa, é quase tão misteriosa como o verde mar. Por isso João Grande não voltou mais. Engajou com 9 anos nos Capitães da Areia, quando o Caboclo ainda era o chefe e o grupo pouco conhecido, pois o Caboclo não gostava de se arriscar. Cedo João Grande se fez um dos chefes e nunca deixou de ser convidado para as reuniões que os maiorais faziam planejar os furtos. Não que fosse um bom organizador de assalta uma inteligência viva. Ao contrário, doía- lhe a cabeça se tinha que pensar. Ficava com os olhos ardendo, como ficava também quando via alguém fazendo maldade com os menores. Então seus músculos se retesavam e estava disposto a qualquer briga. Mas a sua enorme força muscular o fizera temido. O Sem-Pernas dizia dele:
E os menores, aqueles pequeninos que chegavam para o grupo cheios de receio tinham nele o mais decidido protetor. Pedro, o chefe, também gostava de ouvi-lo. E João Grande bem sabia que não era por causa da sua força que tinha a amizade do Bala. Pedro achava que o negro era bom e não se cansava de dizer:
João Grande vem vindo para o trapiche. O vento quer impedir passos e ele se curva todo, resistindo contra o vento que levanta a areia. Ele foi à Porta do Mar beber um trago de cachaça com o Querido-de-Deus, que chegou hoje dos mares do Sul, de uma pescaria. O Querido-de-Deus é o mais célebre capoeirista da cidade. Quem não o respeita na Bahia? No jogo de capoeira de Angola ninguém pode se medir com o Querido-de-Deus, nem mesmo Zé Moleque, que deixou fama no Rio de Janeiro. O Querido-de-Deus contou as novidades e avisou que no dia seguinte apareceria no trapiche para continuar as lições de capoeira que Pedro Bala, João Grande e o Gato tomam. João Grande fuma um cigarro e anda para o trapiche. As marcas dos seus grandes pés ficam na areia, mas o vento logo as destrói. O negro pensa que nessa noite de tanto vento são perigosos os caminhos do mar. João Grande passa por debaixo da ponte – os pés afundam na areia – evitando tocar no corpo dos companheiros que já dormem. Penetra no trapiche. Espia um momento indeciso até que nota a luz da vela do Professor. Lá está ele, no mais longínquo canto do casarão, lendo à luz de uma vela. João Grande pensa que aquela luz ainda é menor e mais vacilante que a da lanterna da Porta do Mar e que o Professor está comendo os olhos de tanto ler aqueles livros de letra miúda. João Grande anda para onde está o Professor, se bem durma sempre na porta do trapiche, como um cão de fila, o punhal próximo da mão, para evitar alguma surpresa. Anda entre os grupos que conversam, entre as crianças que dormem, e chega para perto do Professor. Acocora-se junto a ele e fica espiando a leitura atenta do outro. João José, o Professor, desde o dia em que furtara um livro de histórias numa estante de uma casa da Barra, se tomara perito nestes furtos. Nunca, porém, vendia os livros, que ia empilhando num canto do trapiche, sob tijolos, para que os ratos não os roessem. Lia-os todos numa ânsia que era quase febre. Gostava de saber coisas e era ele quem muitas noites, contava aos outras histórias de aventureiros, de borne do mar, de personagens heróicos e lendários, histórias que faziam aqueles olhos vivos se espicharem para o mar ou para as misteriosas ladeiras da cidade, numa ânsia de aventuras e de heroísmo. João José era o único que lia correntemente entre eles e, no entanto, só estive na escola ano e meio. Mas o treino diário da leitura despertara completamente sua imaginação e talvez fosse ele o único que tivesse uma certa consciência do heróico das suas vidas. Aquele saber, aquela vocação para contar histórias, fizera-o respeitado entre os Capitães Areia, se bem fosse franzino, magro e triste, o cabelo moreno caindo sobre os olhos apertados de míope. Apelidaram-no de Professor porque num livro furtado ele aprendera a fazer mágicas com lenços níqueis e também porque, contando aquelas histórias que lia e muitas que inventava, fazia a grande e misteriosa mágica de os transportar para mundos diversos, fazia com que os olhos vivos dos Capitães da Areia brilhassem como só brilham as estrelas da noite da Bahia. Pedro Bala nada resolvia sem o consultar e várias vezes foi a imaginação Professor que criou os melhores planos de roubo. Ninguém sabia, entanto, que um dia, anos passados, seria ele quem haveria de contar em quadros que assombrariam o país a história daquelas vidas e muitas outras histórias de homens lutadores e sofredores. Talvez só o sou se Don’Aninha, a mãe do terreiro da Cruz de Opô Afonjá, porque Don’Aninha sabe de tudo que Yá lhe diz através de um búzio noites de temporal. João Grande ficou muito tempo atento à leitura. Para o negro aquelas letras nada diziam. O seu olhar ia do livro para a luz oscilante da vela, e desta para o cabelo despenteado do Professor. Terminou por se cansar e perguntou com sua voz cheia e quente:
Professor desviou os olhos do livro, bateu a mão descarnada no ombro do negro, seu mais ardente admirador:
E volveu os olhos para as páginas do livro. João Grande acendeu um cigarro barato, ofereceu outro em silêncio ao Professor e ficou fumando de cócoras, como que guardando a leitura do outro. Pelo trapiche ia um rumor de risadas, de conversas, de gritos. João Grande distinguia bem a voz do Sem-Pernas, estrídula e fanhosa.O Sem-Pernas falava alto, ria muito. Era o espião do grupo, aquele que sabia se meter na casa de uma família uma semana, passando por um bom menino perdido dos pais na imensidão agressiva da cidade. Coxo, o defeito físico valera- lhe o apelido. Mas valia-lhe também a simpatia de quanta mãe de família o via, humilde e tristonho, na sua porta pedindo um pouco de comida e pousada por uma noite. Agora, meio do trapiche, O Sem-Pernas metia a ridículo o Gato, que perde todo um dia para furtar um anelão cor de vinho, sem nenhum valo, real, pedra falsa, de falsa beleza também. Fazia já uma semana que o Gato avisara a meio mundo:
E o Gato não descansou enquanto não conseguiu, no aperto um bonde das seis horas da tarde, tirar o anel do dedo do homem, escapulindo na confusão, porque o dono logo percebeu. Exibia o anel no dedo médio, com vaidade. O Sem-Pernas ria:
Falavam naturalmente em mulher apesar do mais velho ter apenas 16 anos. Cedo conheciam os mistérios do sexo. Pedro Bala, que ia entrando, desapartou o começo de briga. João Grande deixou o Professor lendo e veio para junto do chefe. O Sem-Pernas ria sozinho, resmungando acerca do anel. Pedro o chamou e foi com ele e com João Grande para o canto onde estava Professor...
Ficaram os quatro sentados. O Sem-Pernas acendeu uma ponta de charuto caro, ficou saboreando. João Grande espiava o pedaço de mar que se via através da porta, além do areal. Pedro falou:
Pediu um cigarro, João Grande deu. O Sem-Pernas, já afastado, chamava Pirulito. Pedro foi em busca do Gato, tinha um assunto a conversar com ele. Depois voltou, se estendeu perto do lugar onde estava Professor. Este retornou ao seu livro, sobre o qual se debruçou até que a vela queimou-se toda e a escuridão do trapiche o envolveu. João Grande caminhou vagarosamente para a porta, onde se deitou ao comprido, o punhal no cinto. Pirulito era magro e muito alto, uma cara seca, meio amarelada, os olhos encovados e fundos, a boca rasgada e pouco risonha. O Sem-Pernas primeiro fez pilhéria perguntando se ele já estava rezado, depois entrou no assunto da pilhagem de chapéus, acertaram que a levariam um certo número de meninos que escolheram cuidadosamente, marcaram as zonas onde operariam e se separaram. Pirulito então foi para o seu canto costumeiro. Dormia invariavelmente ali, onde as paredes do trapiche faziam um ângulo. Tinha disposto carinhosamente as suas coisas: um cobertor velho, um travesseiro que trouxera certa vez de um hotel onde penetrara levando as malas de um viajante, um par de calças que vestia aos domingos junto com uma blusa de cor indefinida, porém mais ou menos limpa. E pregados na parede, com pregos pequenos, dois quadros de santos: um Santo Antônio carregando um Menino Deus Pirulito se chamava Antônio e tinha ouvido dizer que Santo Antônio era brasileiro e uma Nossa Senhora das Sete Dores que tinha o peito cravado de setas: sob o seu quadro uma flor murcha. Pirulito recolheu a flor, aspirou-a, viu que não tinha mais perfume. Então a amarrou junto ao bentinho que trazia no peito e do bolso do velho paletó que vestia retirou um cravo vermelho que colhera num jardim, mesmo sob as vistas do guarda, naquela hora indecisa do crepúsculo. E colocou o cravo por baixo do quadro, enquanto fitava a santa com um olhar comovido. Logo ajoelhou-se. Os outros, a princípio, faziam muita pilhéria quando o viam de joelhos, rezando. Porém já haviam se acostumado e ninguém mais reparava. Começou a rezar e seu ar de asceta se pronunciou ainda mais, seu rosto de criança ficou mais pálido e mais grave, suas mãos longas e magras se levantaram ante o quadro. Todo seu rosto tinha uma espécie de auréola e a sua voz tonalidades e vibrações que os companheiros não conheciam. Era como se estivesse fora do mundo, não no velho e arruinado trapiche, mas numa outra terra, junto com Nossa Senhora das Sete Dores. No entanto, sua reza era simples e não fora sequer aprendida em catecismos. Pedia que a Senhora o ajudasse a um dia poder entrar para aquele colégio que estava no Sodré, e de onde saíam os homens transformados em sacerdotes. O Sem-Pernas, que vinha combinar um detalhe da questão dos chapéus e que, desde que o vira rezando, trazia uma pilhéria preparada, uma pilhéria que só como pensar nela ele ria e que iria desconcertar completamente Pirulito, quando chegou perto e viu Pirulito rezando, de mãos levantadas, olhos fixos ninguém sabia onde, o rosto aberto em êxtase estava como que vestido de felicidade, parou, o riso burlão murchou nos seus lábios e ficou a espiá-lo meio a medo, possuído de um sentimento que era um pouco de inveja e um pouco de desespero. O Sem-Pernas ficou parado, olhando. Pirulito não se mona. Apenas seus lábios tinham um lento movimento. O Sem-Pernas costumava burlar dele, como de todos os demais do grupo, mesmo de Professor, de quem gostava, mesmo de Pedro Bala, a quem respeitava. Logo que um novato entrava para os Capitães da Areia formava uma idéia ruim de Sem-Pernas. Porque ele logo botava um apelido, ria de um gesto, de uma frase do novato. Ridicularizava tudo, era dos que mais brigavam. Tinha mesmo fama de malvado.Uma vez fez tremendas crueldades com um gato que entrara no trapiche. E um dia cortara de navalha um garçom de restaurante para furtar apenas um frango assado. Um dia em que teve um abscesso na perna o rasgou friamente a canivete e na vista de todos o espremeu rindo. Muitos do grupo não gostavam dele, mas aqueles que passavam por cima de tudo e se faziam seus amigos diziam que ele era um sujeito bom. No mais fundo do seu coração ele tinha pena da desgraça de todos. E rindo, e ridicularizando, era que fugia da sua desgraça. Era como um remédio. Ficou parado olhando Pirulito, que rezava concentrado. No rosto do que rezava ia uma exaltação, qualquer coisa que ao primeiro momento o Sem-Pernas pensou que fosse alegria ou felicidade. Mas fitou o rosto do outro e achou que era uma expressão que ele não sabia definir.E pensou, contraindo o seu rosto pequeno, que talvez por isso ele nunca tivesse pensado em rezar, em se voltar para o céu de que tanto falava o padre José Pedro quando vinha vê-los. O que ele queria era felicidade, era alegria, era fugir de toda aquela miséria, de toda aquela desgraça que os cercava e os estrangulava. Havia, é verdade, a grande liberdade das ruas. Mas havia também o abandono de qualquer carinho, a falta de todas as palavras boas. Pirulito buscava isso no céu, nos quadros de santo, nas flores murchas que trazia para Nossa Senhora das Sete Dores, como um namorado romântico dos bairros chiques da cidade traz para aquela a quem ama com intenção de casamento. Mas o Sem-Pernas não compreendia que aquilo pudesse bastar. Ele queria uma coisa imediata, uma coisa que pusesse seu rosto sorridente e alegre, que o livrasse da necessidade de rir de todos e de rir de tudo. Que o livrasse também daquela angústia, daquela vontade de chorar que o tomava nas noites de inverno.Não queria o que tinha Pirulito, o rosto cheio de uma exaltação. Queria alegria, uma mão que, o acarinhasse, alguém que com muito amor o fizesse esquecer o defeito físico e os muitos anos talvez tivessem sido apenas meses ou semanas, mas para ele seriam sempre longos anos que vivera sozinho nas ruas da cidade, hostilizado pelos homens que passavam, empurrado pelos guardas, surrado pelos moleques maiores. Nunca tivera família. Vivera na casa de um padeiro a quem chamava meu padrinho e que o surrava. Fugiu logo que pôde compreender que a fuga o libertaria. Sofreu fome, um dia levaram-no preso. Ele quer um carinho, u’a mão que passe sobre os seus olhos e faça com que ele possa se esquecer daquela noite na cadeia, quando os soldados bêbados o fizeram correr com sua perna coxa em volta de uma saleta. Em cada canto estava um com uma borracha comprida. As marcas que ficaram nas suas costas desapareceram. Mas de dentro dele nunca desapareceu a dor daquela hora. Corria na saleta como um animal perseguido por outros mais fortes. A perna coxa se recusava a ajudá-lo. E a borracha zunia nas suas costas quando o cansaço o fazia parar. A princípio chorou muito, depois, não sabe como, as lágrimas secaram. Certa hora não resistiu mais, abateu-se no chão. Sangrava. Ainda hoje ouve como os soldados riam e como nu aquele homem de colete cinzento que fumava um charuto. Depois encontrou os Capitães da Areia foi o Professor quem o trouxe, haviam feito camaradagem num banco de jardim e ficou com eles. Não tardou a se destacar porque sabia como nenhum afetar uma grande dor e assim conseguir enganar senhoras, cujas casas eram depois visitadas pelo grupo já ciente de todos os lugares onde havia objetos de valor e de todos os hábitos da casa. E o Sem- Pernas tinha verdadeira satisfação ao pensar em quanto o xingariam aquelas senhoras que o haviam tomado por um pobre órfão. Assim se vingava, porque seu coração estava cheio de ódio. Confusamente desejava ter uma bomba como daquelas de certa história que o Professor contara que arrasasse toda a cidade, que levasse todos pelos ares. Assim ficaria alegre. Talvez ficasse também se viesse alguém, possivelmente uma mulher de cabelos grisalhos e mãos suaves, que o apertasse contra o peito, que acarinhasse seu rosto e o fizesse dormir um sono bom, um sono que não estivesse cheio dos sonhos da noite na cadeia. Assim ficaria alegre, o ódio não estaria mais no seu coração. E não teria mais desprezo, inveja, ódio de Pirulito que, de mãos levantadas e olhos fixos, foge do seu mundo de sofrimentos para um mundo que conheceu nas conversas do padre José Pedro. Um rumor de conversas se aproxima. Vem um grupo de quatro entrando no silêncio que já reina na noite do trapiche. O Sem-Pernas se estremece, ri nas costas de Pirulito, que continua a rezar. Encolhe os ombros, decide deixar para a manhã do dia seguinte o acerto dos detalhes do furto dos chapéus. E como tem medo de dormir, vai ao encontro do grupo que chega, pede um cigarro, diz dichotes sobre a aventura de mulheres que os quatro contam:
Os outros se irritam:
O Sem-Pernas ri, sardônico:
E sai andando pelo trapiche. O Gato ainda não está dormindo. Sempre sai depois das onze horas. É o elegante do grupo. Quando chegou, alvo e rosado, Boa-Vida tentou conquistá-lo. Mas já naquele tempo o Gato era de uma agilidade incrível e não vinha, como Boa-Vida pensava, da casa de uma família. Vinha do meio dos Índios Maloqueiros, crianças que m vivem sob as pontes de Aracaju. Fizera a viagem na rabada de um trem. Conhecia bem a vida de um grupo de crianças abandonadas. E já tinha da mais de 13 anos. Assim conheceu logo os motivos por que Boa-Vida, mulato troncudo e feio, o tratou com tanta consideração, lhe ofereceu cigarros e lhe deu parte do seu jantar e correu com ele acidade. Depois bateram juntos um par de sapatos novos que estava exposto na porta de uma casa na Baixa dos Sapateiros. Boa- Vida tinha dito:
Boa-Vida olhou para ele. O Gato levava gravata, um paletó remendado e, coisa espantosa!, levava meias.
Boa-Vida achava-o decididamente lindo. O Gato tinha um ar petulante, e embora não fosse uma beleza efeminada, agradava a Boa-Vida, que, além de tudo, não tinha muita sorte com mulheres, pois aparentava muito menos que 13 anos, baixo e acachapado. O Gato era alto e sobre os seus lábios de 14 anos começava a surgir uma penugem de bigode que ele cultivava. Boa-Vida naquele momento o amou com certeza, porque disse:
Boa-Vida quis aproveitar os agradecimentos do outro para iniciar sua conquista. E baixou a mão pelas coxas do Gato, que se esquivou só com o jogo do corpo. O Gato riu consigo mesmo e não disse nada. Boa-Vida achou que não devia insistir, senão era capaz de espantar o menino. Ele não sabia nada do Gato e nem imaginava que este conhecia seu jogo. Andaram juntos parte da noite, vendo a iluminação da cidade o Gato estava assombrado, e por volta das onze foram para o trapiche. Boa-Vida mostrou o Gato a Pedro e levou-o depois para o lugar onde dormia:
O Gato deitou. Boa-Vida se estendeu ao lado. Quando pensou que o outro estava dormindo o abraçou com uma mão e com a outra começou a puxar-lhe as calças devagarinho. Num minuto o Gato estava de pé:
Mas Boa-Vida já não via nada, só via seu desejo, a vontade que tinha do corpo alvo do Gato, de enrolar o rosto nos cabelos morenos do Gato, de apalpar as carnes duras das coxas do Gato. E se atirou em cima dele com intenção de derrubá-lo e forçá-lo. Mas o Gato desviou o corpo, passou-lhe a perna, Boa-Vida se estendeu de nariz. Já tinha se formado um grupo em torno. O Gato disse:
Arrancou com o lençol de Boa-Vida para outro canto e dormiu e dormiu. Levaram algum tempo inimigos, mas depois voltaram às boas e agora, quando o Gato se cansa de uma pequena, entrega ao Boa-Vida.Uma noite o Gato andava pelas ruas das mulheres, o cabelo muito lustroso de brilhantina barata, uma gravata enrolada no pescoço, assoviando como se fosse um daqueles malandros da cidade. As mulheres o olhavam e riam:
O Gato respondia aos sorrisos e seguia. Esperava que uma o chamasse e fizesse o amor com ele. Mas não queria por dinheiro, não só porque os níqueis que possuía não passavam de mil e quinhentos, ou como porque os Capitães da Areia não gostavam de pagar mulher. Tinham as negrinhas de dezesseis anos para derrubar no areal. As mulheres olhavam para a sua figura de garoto. Sem dúvida achavam-no belo na sua meninice viciada e gostariam de fazer o amor com ele. Mas não o chamavam porque aquela era a hora em que agi esperavam os homens que pagavam, e elas tinham que pensar na casa e no almoço do dia seguinte. Se contentavam assim com rir e fazer pilhérias. Sabiam que dali sairia um daqueles vigaristas que enchem a vida de uma mulher, que lhe tomam dinheiro, dão pancadas, mas também dão muito amor. Muitas delas gostariam de ser a primeira mulher deste malandro tão jovem. Mas eram dez horas, hora dos homens que pagavam. E o Gato andava de um lado para ou inutilmente. Foi quando viu Dalva, que vinha pela rua embuçada num capote de peles apesar da noite deverão. Ela passou por ele quase da o ver. Era uma mulher de uns trinta e cinco anos, corpo forte, rosto cheio de sensualidade. O Gato a desejou imediatamente. Foi a dela. Viu quando entrou em casa sem se voltar. Ficou na esq esperando.Minutos depois ela apareceu na janela. O Gato subiu desceu a rua, mas ela nem o olhava. Depois passou um velho, atendeu ao chamado dela, entrou. O Gato ainda esperou, porém, mesmo depois do velho ter saído muito apressado, procurando não ser visto, ela não voltou à janela. Noites e noites o Gato volveu à mesma esquina só para vê-la. Agora tudo o que conseguia em dinheiro era para comprar trajes usados e se pôr elegante. Tinha o dom da elegância malandra, que está mais no jeito de andar, de colocar o chapéu e dar um laço despreocupado na gravata que na roupa propriamente. O Gato desejava Dalva do mesmo modo como desejava comida ao ter fome, como desejava dormir ao ter sono. Já não atendia ao chamado das outras mulheres quando, passada a meia-noite, elas já tinham feito para as despesas do dia seguinte e então queriam o amor juvenil do pequeno malandro. Uma vez foi com uma só para saber da vida de Dalva. Foi assim que se inteirou de que ela tinha um amante, um tocador de flauta num café, que tomava o dinheiro que ela fazia e ainda tomava porres colossais na sua casa, atrapalhando a vida de todas as rameiras do prédio. O Gato voltava todas as noites. Dalva nunca lhe deu sequer um olhar. Por isso ele ainda a amava mais. Ficava numa espera dolorosa até meia hora depois de meia- noite, quando o flautista chegava e, depois de a beijar na janela, entrava pela porta mal iluminada. Então o Gato ia para o trapiche, a cabeça cheia de pensamentos: se um dia o flautista não viesse... Se o flautista morresse... Era fraco, talvez não agüentasse nem o peso dos quatorze anos do Gato. E apertava a navalha que levava na blusa. E uma noite o flautista não veio. Nesta noite Dalva andara pelas ruas como uma doida, voltara tarde para casa, não recebera nenhum homem e agora estava ali, postada na janela, apesar de já ter dado as doze horas há muito tempo. Aos poucos a rua foi ficando deserta. Não restaram senão o Gato na esquina e Dalva, que ainda esperava na janela. O Gato sabia que aquela era a sua noite e estava alegre. Dalva desesperava. Então o Gato começou a passear de um lado para o outro da rua até que a mulher o notou e fez um sinal. Ele veio logo, sorrindo.
O Gato saiu humilhado. Primeiro pensou em não ir e em nunca mais voltar a ver Dalva. Mas depois se decidiu a ir para ver de perto o flautista que tinha coragem de abandonar uma mulher tão bonita. Chegou no prédio um sobrado negro de muitos andares, subiu as escadas, no primeiro andar perguntou a um garoto que dormia no corredor qual era o quarto do Sr. Gastão. O garoto mostrou o último quarto, o Gato bateu na porta. O flautista veio abrir, estava de cuecas e na cama o Gato viu uma mulher magra. Estavam os dois bêbados. O Gato falou:
De dentro do quarto a mulher falou:
O flautista riu também:
O flautista o olhou muito sério:
O Gato entrou. A mulher na cama se cobriu. O flautista riu:
Bebeu a cachaça. O flautista já voltara para a cama e beijava a mulher. Nem viram que o Gato saía e que levava a bolsa da prostituta, que estava esquecida na cadeira, sobre vestidos. Na rua o Gato contou sessenta e oito mil-réis. Jogou a bolsa no pé da escada, meteu o dinheiro no bolso. E foi para rua de Dalva, assoviando. Dalva o esperava na janela. O Gato olhou para ela fixamente:
Entraram no quarto. A primeira coisa que o Gato viu foi um retrato de Gastão tocando flauta, vestido de smoking. Sentou na cama olhando o retrato. Dalva espiava espantada e mal pôde novamente interrogar:
Foi até onde estava o quadro do santo. Fez a promessa e voltou.
Desta vez ela sentou, ele a pegou e a derrubou na cama. Depois que ela gemeu com o amor e com os tabefes que ele lhe deu, murmurou:
Ele se levantou, endireitou as calças, foi até onde estava o retrato do flautista Gastão e o rasgou.
Fechou a porta do quarto. O Gato tirou a roupa. Por isso o Gato sai toda meia-noite e não dorme no trapiche. Só volta pela manhã para ir com os outros para as aventuras do dia. O Sem-Pernas se aproximou e pilheriou:
Mas o Gato não estava disposto a conversar e o Sem-Pernas continuou a sua peregrinação através do trapiche. O Sem-Pernas encostou-se junto a uma parede e deixou que o tempo passasse. Viu o Gato sair por volta das onze e meia. Sorriu porque ele havia lavado a cara, posto brilhantina no cabelo e ia marchando com aquele passo gingado que caracteriza os malandros e os marítimos. Depois o Sem-Pernas ficou muito tempo olhando as crianças que dormiam. Ali estavam mais ou menos cinqüenta crianças, sem pai, sem mãe, sem mestre. Tinham de si apenas a liberdade de correr as ruas. Levavam vida nem sempre fácil, arranjando o que comer e o que vestir, ora carregando uma mala, ora furtando carteiras e chapéus, ora ameaçando homens, por vezes pedindo esmola. E o grupo era de mais de cem crianças, pois muitas outras não dormiam no trapiche. Se espalhavam nas portas dos arranha-céus, nas pontes, nos barcos virados na areia do Porto da Lenha. Nenhuma delas reclamava. Por vezes morria um de moléstia que ninguém sabia tratar, Quando calhava vir o padre José Pedro, ou a mãe-de-santo Don’Aninha ou também o Querido-de-Deus, o doente tinha algum remédio. Nunca, porém, era como um menino que tem sua casa. O Sem-Pernas ficava pensando. E achava que a alegria daquela liberdade era pouca para a desgraça daquela vida. Voltou-se porque ouviu movimento. Alguém se levantava no meio do casarão. O Sem-Pernas reconheceu o negrinho Barandão, que se dirigia de manso para o areal de fora do trapiche. O Sem-Pernas pensou que ele ia esconder qualquer coisa que furtara e não quem mostrar aos companheiros. E aquilo era um crime conta as Leis dobando. O Sem-Pernas seguiu Barandão, atravessando ente os que dormiam. O negrinho já tinha transposto a porta do trapiche e dava a volta no prédio para o lado esquerdo. Em cima era o céu de estrelas. Barandão agora caminhava apressadamente. O Sem-Pernas notou que ele se dirigia para o outro extremo do trapiche, onde a areia era mais fina ainda. Foi então pelo outro lado e chegou a tempo de ver Barandão que se encontrava com um vulto. Logo o reconheceu: era Almiro, um do grupo, de doze anos, gordo e preguiçoso. Deitaram-se juntos, o negro acariciando Admiro. O Sem-Pernas chegou a ouvir palavras. Um dizia: meu filhinho, meu filhinho. O Sem-Pernas recuou e a sua angústia cresceu. Todos procuravam um carinho, qualquer coisa fora daquela vida: o Professor naqueles livros que lia a noite toda, o Gato na cama de uma mulher da vida que lhe dava dinheiro, Pirulito na oração que o transfigurava, Barandão e Almiro no amor na areia do cais. O Sem-Pernas sentia que uma angústia o tomava e que era impassível dormir. Se dormisse viriam os maus sonhos da cadeia. Queria que aparecesse alguém a quem ele pudesse torturar com dichotes. Queria uma briga. Pensou em ir acender um fósforo na perna de um que dormisse. Mas quando olhou da porta do trapiche, sentiu somente pena e uma doida vontade de fugir. E saiu correndo pelo areal, correndo sem fito, fugindo da sua angústia. Pedro Bala acordou com um ruído perto de si. Dormia de bruços e olhou por baixo dos braços. Viu que um menino se levantava e se aproximava cautelosamente do canto de Pirulito. Pedro Bala, no meio do sana em que estava, pensou, a princípio, que se tratasse de um caso de pederastia. E ficou atento para expulsar o passivo do grupo, pois uma das leis do grupo era que não admitiriam pederastas passivos. Mas acordou completamente e logo recordou que era impossível, pois Pirulito não era destas coisas. Devia se tratar de furto. Realmente o garoto já abria o baú de Pirulito. Pedro Bala se atirou em cima dele. A luta foi rápida. Pirulito acordou, mas os demais dormiam. – Tu tá roubando um companheiro? O outro ficou calado, coçando o queixo ferido. Pedro Bala continuou:
Era bem capaz de querer ver mesmo a medalha. É uma medalha que o padre José Pedro me deu.
Ou entrava para o grupo de Ezequiel, que vivi todo dia na cadeia, ou acabava no reformatório. Pirulito intercedeu de novo e Pedro Bala voltou para perto do Professor. Então o menino disse com a voz ainda temendo:
ficou perguntando o que eu queria. Aí topamos a conversar. Eu disse que amanhã ia levar um presente pra ela. Porque foi boa, boa assim comigo, sabe? – e agora gritava parecia que tinha raiva. Pirulito tomou a medalha que o padre lhe dera, ficou mirando. De repente estendeu para o menino:
Volta Seca entrou no trapiche quando a madrugada já ia alta. O cabelo de mulato sertanejo estava revolto. Calçava alpercatas como quando viera da caatinga. O seu rosto sombrio se projetou dentro do casarão. Passou por cima do corpo do negro João Grande. Cuspiu adiante, passou o pé em cima. Apertado no braço trazia um jornal.Olhou todo o salão procurando alguém. Segurou o jornal com as mãos grandes e calosas logo que distinguiu onde estava Professor. E sem se importar da hora tardias e dirigiu para lá e começou a chamá-lo:
Professor sentou-se. O rosto sombrio de Volta Seca estava meio invisível na escuridão.
O Professor buscou uma vela, acendeu, começou a ler a notícia do jornal. Lampião tinha entrado numa vila da Bahia, matara oito soldados, deflorara moças, saqueara os cofres da Prefeitura. O rosto sombrio de Volta Seca se iluminou. Sua boca apertada se abriu num sorriso. E ainda feliz deixou o Professor, que apagava a vela, e foi para o seu canto. Levava o jornal para cortar o retrato do grupo de Lampião. Dentro dele ia uma alegria de primavera. Ponto das PitangueirasEsperavam que o guarda andasse. Este demorou olhando o céu, mirando a rua deserta. O bonde desapareceu na curva. Era o último dos bondes da linha de Brotas naquela noite. O guarda acendeu um cigarro. Com o vento que fazia, gastou três fósforos. Depois suspendeu a gola da capa, pois havia um frio úmido que o vento trazia das chácaras onde balouçavam mangueiras e sapotizeiros. Os três meninos esperavam que o guarda andasse para poder atravessar de um lado para o outro da rua e entrar na travessa sem calçamento. O Querido-de-Deus não tinha podido vir. Toda a tarde tinha passado na Porta do Mar esperando o homem que não veio. Se ele tivesse vindo seria mais fácil, pois com o Querido-de-Deus ele não ia discutir, mesmo porque devia muita coisa ao capoeirista. Mas não tinha vindo, a informação fora errada, e o Querido-de-Deus já tinha uma viagem acertada para essa noite. Ia a Itaparica. Durante a tarde, num terreninho que havia no findo da Porta do Mar, fizeram treinos do jogo capoeira. O Gato prometia ser, com algum tempo, um lutador capaz de se pegar com o próprio Querido-de-Deus. Pedro Bala também tinha muito jeito. Dos três o menos ágil era o negro João Grande muito bom numa luta onde pudesse empregar sua enorme força física Assim mesmo aprendia o bastante para se livrar de um mais forte ele. Quando se cansaram passaram para a sala. Pediram quatro pi e o Gato sacou um baralho do bolso das calças. Um velho bar sebento, de canas muito grossas.O Querido-de- Deus afirmava o homem viria, o camarada que lhe dera a informação era um sujeito seguro. Era negócio para render muito e o Querido-de-Deus preferia chamar os Capitães da Areia, seus amigos, a um dos malandros do cais. Sabia que os Capitães da Areia valiam mais que muitos homens e tinham a boca calada. A Portado Mar estava quase deserto àquela hora. Somente dois marinheiros de um baiano bebiam cerveja ao fundo, conversando, O Gato pôs o baralho em cima da mesa e propôs:
O Querido-de-Deus pegou no baralho:
Começaram o jogo. O Gato descobria duas cartas na mesa, os outros apostavam numa, a banca ficava com a outra. A princípio Pedro Bala e o Querido-de-Deus ganharam. João Grande não estava jogando conhecia demais o baralho do Gato, só fazia espiar, rindo com seus dentes alvos, quando o Querido-de-Deus dizia que estava com sorte neste dia porque era o dia de Xangô, seu santo. Sabia que a sorte seria só no princípio e que quando o Gato começasse a ganhar não pararia mais. Certo momento o Gato começou a ganhar. Quando ganhou a primeira vez, disse com uma voz meio triste:
João Grande abriu mais seu sorriso, O Gato ganhou de novo. Pedro Bala se levantou, recolheu os níqueis que havia ganho. O Gato olhou desconfiado: Tu não vai botar nada agora?
O Querido-de-Deus ficou perdendo. João Grande ria e o capoeirista se afundava. Pedro Bala tinha voltado, mas não jogava. Ria com João Grande, O Querido-de- Deus passou tudo quanto tinha ganho. João Grande disse entre dentes:
O Querido-de-Deus passou cinco mil-réis do capital. Só ganhara duas vezes durante as últimas jogadas e estava meio desconfiado. O Gato abriu o baralho na mesa.Puxou um rei e um sete.
Ninguém foi. Nem mesmo o Querido-de-Deus, que olhava o ar baralho muito desconfiado. O Gato perguntou:
João Grande soltou uma daquelas suas gargalhadas escandalosas. Pedro Bala e o Querido-de-Deus riram também. O Gato olhou para João Grande com raiva:
Os marinheiros olharam desconfiados para o menino. Mas baixo cutucou o outro com o cotovelo e murmurou qualquer coisa ao ouvido. O Gato riu para dentro porque sabia que ele estava dizendo que seria fácil arrancar o dinheiro daquela criança. Se abancaram os dois e o Querido-de-Deus achou estranho que Pedro Bala se abancasse também. João Grande, no entanto, não só não achou estranho se abancou também. Ele sabia que era preciso tapear os marinheiros e então era necessário que a gente do grupo perdesse também. Os marinheiros, do mesmo modo que tinha acontecido com o Querido-de-Deus, começaram ganhando. Mas durou pouca a aragem da sorte e em breve só o Gato ganhava dos quatro. Pedro Bala soltava aclamações:
O outro, que tinha um bigodinho, jogava calado e cada vez apostava mais alto. Também Pedro Bala subia o valor das suas apostas. Certa hora o de bigodinho virou pro Gato:
O Gato coçou o cabelo cheio de brilhantina barata, aparentando uma indecisão que os companheiros sabiam que não possuía. Vá lá. Topo. Só pra dar meio de você livrar teu prejuízo. O de bigodinho apostou cinco mil. O baixo foi com três mil-réis. Foram ambos num ás contra um valete da banca. Pedro Bala e João Grande foram no ás também. O Gato começou a virar as cartas. A primeira era um nove. O baixo batia com os dedos, o outro puxava o bigodinho. Veio em seguida um dois e o baixo disse:
Mas veio um sete e depois um dez e então veio um valete. O Gato arrastou a mesa, enquanto Pedro Bala fazia uma cara de grande aborrecimento e dizia:
O baixo confessou que estava limpo. O de bigodinho meteu as mãos nos bolsos:
Se levantaram, cumprimentaram o grupo, pagaram a cerveja que tinham bebido na outra mesa. O Gato os convidou a voltarem no outro dia. O baixo respondeu que o navio deles saía aquela noite para Caravelas. Só quando voltasse. E se foram, de braço dado, comentando a pouca sorte. O Gato contou o lucro. Sem juntar o dinheiro que Pedro Bala e João Grande haviam perdido, existia um lucro de trinta e oito mil-réis. O Gato devolveu o dinheiro de Pedro Bala, depois o de João Grande, ficou um minuto pensando. Meteu a mão no bolso, tirou os cinco mil réis que o Querido-de-Deus havia perdido anteriormente:
O Querido-de-Deus beijou a nota com satisfação, bateu a mão nas costas do Gato:
Mas já o sol se punha e o homem não vinha. Eles pediram outra pinga. Com o cair da tarde o vento que vinha do mar aumentou. O Querido-de-Deus começava a ficar impaciente. Fumava cigarro sobre cigarro. Pedro Bala espiava para a porta. O Gato dividiu os trinta e oito mil-réis pelos três. João Grande perguntou:
Ninguém respondeu. Esperavam o homem e agora tinham a impressão que ele não viria. A informação tinha sido errada. Não ouviam sequer a canção que vinha do mar.A Porta do Mar estava deserta e seu Felipe quase dormia no balcão. Não tardaria, no entanto, a estar cheia, e então todo acerto seria impossível com o homem. Ele não haveria de querer conversar ali com o salão cheio. Poderiam conhecê-lo, e ele não queria isto. Tampouco o queriam os Capitães da Areia. Em verdade, o Gato não sabia de que se tratava. E pouco má sabiam Pedro Bala e João Grande. Sabiam quanto sabia o Querido-de-Deus, a quem o negócio tinha sido proposto e que o tinha aceito para Pedro Bala e os Capitães da Areia. No entanto, ele mesmo tinha apenas vagas informações e iam saber de tudo pelo homem que marcara uma entrevista à tarde na Porta do Mar. Mas até as seis horas não chegou. Em lugar dele chegou o tal que tinha falado ao Querido-de-Deus. Chegou na hora em que o grupo ia sair. Explicou que homem não tinha podido vir. Mas que esperava o Querido-de-Deus à noite, na rua em que morava. Viria por volta de uma da madrugada O Querido-de-Deus declarou que não podia ir, mas que entregava o assunto aos Capitães da Areia. O intermediário mirou os meninos, desconfiado. O Querido-de-Deus perguntou:
O intermediário pareceu se conformar. Combinaram pan um da manha e se separaram. O Querido-de-Deus foi para seu barco, os Capitães da Areia para o trapiche, o intermediário desapareceu no cais. O Sem-Pernas não havia ainda voltado. Não havia ninguém no trapiche. Deviam estar todos espalhados pelas ruas da cidade, cavando o jantar. Os três saíram novamente e foram comer num restaurante barato que havia no mercado. Na saída do trapiche, o Gato, que estava muito alegre com o resultado do jogo, quis passar uma rasteira em Pedro Bala. Mas este livrou o corpo e derrubou o Gato:
Entraram no restaurante fazendo barulho. Um velho, que era o garçom, se aproximou com desconfiança. Sabia que os Capitães da Areia não gostavam de pagar e que aquele de talho na cara era o mais temível de todos. Apesar de haver bastante gente no restaurante, o velho disse: Acabou tudo. Não tem mais bóia. Pedro Bala replicou:
O velho ficava indeciso. Então o Gato bateu o dinheiro em cima da mesa:
Foi um argumento suficiente. O garçom começou a trazer os pratos: um prato de sarapatel e depois uma feijoada. Quem pagou foi o Gato. Depois Pedro Bala propôs que fossem andando até Brotas, pois já que iam a pé tinham muito que caminhar.
O Gato então disse que chegaria depois e os encontraria lá. Tinha uma coisa que fazer antes. Ia avisar a Dalva para que não o esperasse essa noite. E agora estavam ali, no Ponto das Pitangueiras, esperando que o guarda se alistasse. Escondidos no vão de um portal, não falavam. Ouviam o vôo dos morcegos que atacavam os sapotis maduros nos pés. Finalmente, o guarda andou, eles ficaram espiando até que a sua figura desapareceu na curva que a rua fazia. Então atravessaram e entraram na alameda das chácaras e novamente se esconderam num portal. O homem não tardou muito. Saltou de um automóvel na esquina, pagou a corrida e veio subindo a alameda. Tudo o que se ouvia eram os seus passos e o rumor das folhas que o vento balançava nas árvores. Quando o homem vinha próximo, Pedro Bala saiu do portal.Os outros vieram logo depois e como que o guardavam, pareciam dois guarda-costas. O homem se aproximou mais do muro junto ao qual vinha andando. Pedro caminhava para ele. Quando estava defronte, parou:
O homem não disse nada. Sacou a caixa de fósforos, estendeu ao menino. Pedro riscou um e, enquanto acendia o cigarro, olhou para o homem. Depois, ao entregara caixa de fósforos, perguntou:
fazer o trabalho direito – retrucou Pedro Bala, quando os outros dois tinham se aproximado.
O homem parecia refletir. Enfim se decidiu:
Os meninos obedeceram. Num portão o homem parou, abriu, ficou esperando. Veio de dentro um grande cão que lhe lambia as mãos. O homem fez os três entrarem, atravessaram uma rua de árvores, o homem abriu a porta da casa. Entraram para uma saleta, o homem pôs a capa e o chapéu numa cadeira e sentou-se. Os três estavam de pé. O homem fez sinal para que sentassem e primeiro eles miraram desconfiados as largas e cômodas poltronas. Isso Pedro Bala e João Grande, porque o Gato já estava se sentando muito a gosto, numa atitude displicente. A outro sinal do homem, Pedro e o Grande se sentaram, sendo que João Grande ficou sentado apenas na ponta da cadeira, como se temesse sujá- la. O homem tinha um ar de riso. De repente levantou-se e falou, mirando a Pedro, em quem reconhecera o chefe:
O homem puxou o relógio do bolso: São uma e um quarto. Ele só volta às duas e meia... – olhava os Capitães da Areia ainda com indecisão.
O homem se decidiu:
cachorro que já deve estar solto. E bravo. João Grande interrompeu:
Verei já. – Olhava os meninos. Parecia perguntar a si mesmo se devia confiar neles.
Apesar do seu desespero, o homem sorriu da bravata de Pedro Bala:
O homem não vacilou muito. Olhava o relógio, onde os ponteiros corriam:
Aí o Gato falou:
João Grande apoiava o Gato com um gesto de cabeça. Pedro Bala repetiu as últimas palavras do outro:
Em frente da casa a rua estava completamente deserta, numa janela da casa havia luz e eles viam a sombra de uma mulher que andava de um lado para outro o Grande bateu na testa:
Pedro Bala estava olhando a janela com luz, se voltou: Não tem nada. Isso me cheira a coisa de amigamento. O sujeito aquele derrubava a zinha daqui e agora o empregado tem as cartas que os dois se escrevia e quer dar o alarme. Esse pacote tá com perfume. É que o outro há de ter. Fez sinal para os dois esperarem do outro lado da rua, chegou para perto do portão da casa. Logo que se encostou, um grande cão se aproximou latindo. Pedro Bala amarrou um cordel no ferrolho do portão, enquanto o cão andava de um lado para outro, latindo baixo. Depois chamou os outros dois:
Treparam na gradezinha do muro. Pedro Bala puxou com o cordão o ferrolho e o portão abriu. O Gato tinha ido para a esquina O cão ao ver o portão aberto se precipitou para a rua, ficou remexendo uma lata de lixo. Pedro Bala e João Grande pularam o muro, cerraram o portão para que o cachorro não pudesse entrar, se adiantaram entre as árvores. Na janela iluminada da casa o vulto de mulher continuava a andar. João Grande disse baixinho:
Abriu a porta do quarto, desceu as escadas. Chegou na porta da cozinha, o homem ainda estava sentado. Então Pedro Bala reparou que ele estava sentado em cima do embrulho. Aparecia uma ponta sob a perna do homem. Pedro pensou que tudo estava perdido. Como iria ele tirar o embrulho de baixo da perna do homem? Saiu da porta da cozinha, foi andando para onde estava o Grande. Só se ele e o Grande atacassem o homem. Mas aí haveria gritaria, todo mundo saberia do roubo. E o senhor que os tinha empregado não queria saber disso. De repente teve uma idéia. Chegou perto de onde tinha deixado o Grande, assoviou baixinho. João Grande apareceu logo. Pedro falou em voz muito baixa:
Voltou rápido para a porta da cozinha. Dai a um minuto a campainha soou. O empregado levantou-se às pressas, abotoou o paletó e se dirigiu para a frente da casa pelo corredor, onde acendeu uma luz. Pedro Bala penetrou na copa, trocou os pacotes e abriu para os lados da chácara. Saltou o muro, assoviou para o Gato e João Grande. O Gato veio logo. Mas João Grande não apareceu. Andaram de um lado para outro e o negro não chegava. Pedro começava a ficar impaciente pensando que o empregado podia ter surpreendido João Grande e agora estar atracado com ele. Mas quando ele passara por aqueles lados não havia escutado nenhum ruído... Disse:
Assoviaram novamente, não tiveram resposta. Pedro Bala resolveu:
Mas ouviram o assovio de João Grande, que não tardou a estar ao lado deles. Pedro perguntou:
O Gato tinha pegado o cachorro pela coleira e o punha para dentro do portão. Tiraram o cordel do ferrolho e desapareceram pelo outro lado da rua. Aí o Grande aplicou:
O Gato perguntou muito curioso:
O negro não respondeu. Um automóvel entrava pela rua. Pedro Bala bateu no ombro do negro e João Grande sabia que o chefe estava aprovando o que ele fizera. Então seu rosto se abriu de satisfação e murmurou:
E, já em outra rua, os três soltaram a larga, livre e ruidosa. gargalhada dos Capitães da Areia, que era como um hino do povo da Bahia. As luzes do carrosselO Grande Japonês não era senão um pequeno carrossel nacional, que vinha de uma triste peregrinação pelas paradas cidades do interior naqueles meses de inverno, quando as chuvas são longas e o Natal está muito distante ainda. De tão desbotada que estava a tinta, tinta que antigamente fora azul e vermelha e agora o azul era um branco sujo e o vermelho um quase cor-de-rosa, e de tantos pedaços que faltavam em certos cavalos e em certos bancos, Nhozinho França resolveu não armá-lo numa das praças centrais da cidade e sim em Itapagipe. Ali as famílias não são tão ricas, há muitas ruas só de operários e as crianças pobres saberiam gostar do velho carrossel desbotado. O pano tinha muitos buracos também, além de um rasgão enorme que fazia o carrossel depender da chuva. Já fora belo, fora mesmo o orgulho da meninada de Maceió noutros tempos. Ficava então ao lado de uma roda-gigante e de uma sombrinha, sempre na mesma praça, e nos domingos e feriados as crianças ricas, vestidas de marinheiro ou de pequeno lorde inglês, as meninas de holandesa ou de finos vestidos de seda, vinham se aboletar nos cavalos preferidos, indo os menores nos bancos com as aias. Os pais iam para a roda-gigante, outros preferiam a sombrinha onde podiam empurrar as mulheres, tocando muitas vezes nas coxas e nas nádegas.O parque de Nhozinho França era naquele tempo a alegria da cidade. E, mais que tudo, o carrossel dava dinheiro, rodando incansavelmente com as suas luzes de todas as cores. Nhozinho achava a vida boa, as mulheres belas, os homens amáveis para com ele, mas achava que a bebida era boa também, fazia os homens mais amáveis e as mulheres mais belas. E bebeu assim primeiro a sombrinha, depois a roda-gigante. Depois, como não queria se separar do carrossel, ao qual tinha um pegadio especial, o desarmou uma noite com o auxílio de amigos e começou a peregrinar nas cidades de Alagoas e Sergipe. Enquanto isto, os credores o xingavam de quanto nome feio conheciam.Andou muito Nhozinho França com o seu carrossel. Depois de percorrer todas as cidadezinhas dos dois estados, de se embriagar em todos os seus bares, penetrou no estado da Bahia e até para o bando de Lampião e lê deu uma função. Estava numa pobre vila do sertão e não lhe faltava o dinheiro apenas para o transporte do seu carrossel. Faltava para o miserável hotel onde se hospedara e que era o único da vila, e também o trago de pinga, para a cerveja, que não era gelada ali, assim mesmo ele gostava. O carrossel armado no capim da praça da Matriz estava parado fazia uma semana. Nhozinho França esperava a noite de sábado e a tarde de domingo para ver se fazia algum cobre para arribar para um lugar melhor. Mas na sexta-feira Lampião entrou na vila com vinte e dois homens e então o carrossel teve muito que trabalhar. Como as crianças, os grandes cangaceiros, homens que tinham vinte e trinta mortes, acharam belo o carrossel, acharam que mirar suas luzes rodando, ouvir a música velhíssima da sua pianola e montar naqueles estropiados cavalos de pau era a maior felicidade. E o carrossel de Nhozinho França salvou a pequena vila de ser saqueada, as moças de serem defloradas, os homens de serem mortos. Só mesmo os dois soldados da polícia baiana que lustravam as botas na frente do posto policial foram fuzilados pelos cangaceiros, assim mesmo antes que eles vissem o carrossel armado na praça da Matriz. Porque talvez ai aos soldados da polícia baiana Lampião perdoasse nessa noite de suprema felicidade para o bando de cangaceiros. Então eles foram como crianças, gozaram daquela felicidade que nunca haviam gozado na sua meninice de filhos de camponeses: montar e rodar num cavalo de madeira de um carrossel, onde havia música de uma pianola e onde as luzes eram de todas as cores: azuis, verdes, amarelas, roxas vermelhas como o sangue que sai do corpo dos assassinados. Isso mesmo contou Nhozinho a Volta Seca que ficou excitadíssimo e ao Sem- Pernas naquela tarde em que os encontrou na Porta do Mar e os convidou para que o ajudassem no serviço de carrossel durante os dias que estivesse armado na Bahia, em Itapagipe. Não podia marcar ordenado, mas talvez desse para tirar cada um uns cinco mil-réis por noite. E quando Volta Seca mostrou suas habilidades em imitar animais os mais vários, Nhozinho França se entusiasmou por completo, mandou baixar mais uma garrafa de cerveja declarou que Volta Seca ficaria na porta chamando o público, enquanto o Sem-Pernas o ajudaria com as máquinas e tomaria conta pianola. Ele mesmo venderia as entradas enquanto o carrossel estivesse parado. Quando estivesse rodando, Volta Seca o faria. E de quando em vez, disse piscando o olho, um sai pra tomar uma pinga enquanto o outro faz o serviço de dois. Volta Seca e o Sem-Pernas nunca haviam acolhido uma com tanto entusiasmo. Eles muitas vezes já tinham visto um carrossel mas quase sempre ouviam de longe, cercado de mistério, cavalgadas seus rápidos ginetes por meninos ricos e choraminguentos. O Se Pernas já tinha mesmo certo dia em que penetrou num Parque de Diversões armado no Passeio Público chegado a comprar entrada para um, mas o guarda o expulsou do recinto porque ele estava vestido de farrapos. Depois o bilheteiro não quis lhe devolver o bilhete da entrada, o que fez com que o Sem-Pernas metesse as mãos na gaveta da bilheteria, que estava aberta, abafasse o troco, e tivesse que desaparecer do Passeio Público de uma maneira muito rápida, enquanto em todo o Parque se ouviam os gritos de: Ladrão!, ladrão! Houve uma tremenda confusão, enquanto o Sem-Pernas descia muito calmamente a Gamboa de Cima, levando nos bolsos pelo menos cinco vezes o que tinha pago pela entrada. Mas o Sem-Pernas preferiria, sem dúvida, ter rodado no carrossel, montado naquele fantástico cavalo de cabeça de dragão, que era sem dúvida a coisa mais estranha e tentadora na maravilha que era o carrossel para os seus olhos. Criou ainda mais ódio aos guardas e maior amor aos carrosséis distantes. E agora, de repente, vinha um homem que pagava cerveja e fazia o milagre de o chamar para viver uns dias junto a um verdadeiro carrossel, movendo com ele, montando nos seus cavalos, vendo de perto rodarem as luzes de todas as cores. E para o Sem-Pernas, Nhozinho França não era o bêbado que estava em sua frente na pobre mesa da Porta do Mar. Para seus olhos era um ser extraordinário, algo como Deus, para quem rezava Pirulito, algo como Xangô, que era o santo de João Grande e do Querido-de-Deus. Porque nem o padre José Pedro e nem mesmo a mãe-de-santo Don’Aninha seriam capazes de realizar aquele milagre. Nas noites da Bahia, numa praça de Itapagipe, as luzes do carrossel girariam loucamente movimentadas pelo Sem-Pernas.Era como num sonho, sonho muito diverso dos que o Sem-Pernas costumava ter nas suas noites angustiosas. E pela primeira vez seus olhos sentiram-se úmidos de lágrimas que não eram causadas pela dor ou pela raiva. E seus olhos úmidos miravam Nhozinho França como a um ídolo. Por ele até a garganta de um homem o Sem- Pernas abriria com a navalha que traz entre a calça e o velho colete preto que lhe serve de paletó. – É uma beleza – disse Pedro Bala olhando o velho carrossel armado. E João Grande abria os olhos para ver melhor. Penduradas estavam as lâmpadas azuis, verdes, amarelas, roxas, vermelhas. É velho e desbotado o carrossel de Nhozinho França. Mas tem a sua beleza. Talvez esteja nas lâmpadas, ou na música da pianola velhas valsas de perdido tempo, ou talvez nos ginetes de pau. Entre eles tem um pato que é para sentar dentro os mais pequenos.. Tem a sua beleza, sim, porque a opinião unânime dos Capitães da Areia é que ele é maravilhoso. Que importa que seja velho, roto e de cores apagadas se agrada às crianças? Foi uma surpresa quase incrível quando naquela noite o Sem-Pernas chegou ao trapiche dizendo que ele e Volta Seca iam trabalhar uns dias num carrossel. Muitos não acreditaram, pensaram que fosse mais uma pilhéria do Sem-Pernas. Então iam perguntar a Volta Seca que, como sempre, estava metido no seu canto sem falar, examinando um revólver que furtara numa casa de armas. Volta Seca fazia que sim com a cabeça e por vezes dizia:– Lampião já rodou nele, Lampião é meu padrim... O Sem-Pernas convidou a todos para irem ver o carrossel na outra noite, quando o acabariam de armar. E saiu para encontrar Nhozinho – França. Naquele momento todos os pequenos corações que pulsavam no trapiche invejaram a suprema felicidade do Sem-Pernas, piano mesmo Pirulito, que tinha quadros de santos na sua parede, Volta mesmo João Grande, que nessa noite iria com o Querido-de-Deus ao candomblé de Procópio, no Matatu, até mesmo o Professor, que lia livros, e quem sabe se também Pedro Bala, que nunca tivera inveja de nenhum porque era o chefe de todos? Todos o invejaram, sim. Como invejaram Volta Seca, que no seu canto, o cabelo mestiço e despenteado, os olhos apertados e a boca rasgada naquele rictus raiva, apontava o revólver ora para um dos meninos, ora para um todos que passava, ora para as estrelas, que eram muitas no céu. Na outra noite foram todos com o Sem-Pernas e Volta Seca e tinham passado o dia fora, ajudando Nhozinho a armar o carrossel ver o carrossel armado. E estavam parados diante dele, extasiados beleza, as bocas abertas de admiração. O Sem-Pernas mostrava tu Volta Seca levava um por um para mostrar o cavalo que tinha s cavalgado por seu padrinho Virgulino Ferreira Lampião. Eram quase cem crianças olhando o velho carrossel de Nhozinho França, estas horas estava encornado num pifão tremendo na Porta do Mar. O Sem-Pernas mostrou a máquina um pequeno motor que falhava muito com um orgulho de proprietário. Volta Seca não se desprendia do cavalo onde rodara Lampião.O Sem-Pernas estava muito cuidadoso do carrossel e não deixava que eles o tocassem, que bulissem em nada. Foi quando o Professor perguntou:
Pedro Bala apoiou a idéia com entusiasmo. Os outros esperavam a resposta do Sem-Pernas ansiosos. O Sem-Pernas disse que sim, e então muitos bateram palmas, outros gritaram. Foi quando Volta Seca deixou o cavalo onde montara Lampião e veio para eles:
Todos queriam. O sertanejo trepou no carrossel, deu corda na pianola e começou a música de uma valsa antiga. O rosto sombrio de Volta Seca se abria num sorriso.Espiava a pianola, espiava os meninos envoltos em alegria. Escutavam religiosamente aquela música que saía do bojo do carrossel na magia da noite da cidade da Bahia só para ai ouvidos aventureiros e pobres dos Capitães da Areia. Todos estavam silenciosos. Um operário que vinha pela rua, vendo a aglomeração de meninos na praça, veio para o lado deles. E ficou também parado, escutando a velha música. Então a luz da lua se estendeu sobre todos, as estrelas brilharam ainda mais no céu, o mar ficou de todo manso talvez que Yemanjá tivesse vindo também ouvir a música e a cidade era como que um grande carrossel onde giravam em invisíveis cavalos os Capitães da Areia. Neste momento de música eles sentiram-se donos da cidade. E amaram-se uns aos outros, se sentiram irmãos porque eram todos eles sem carinho e sem conforto e agora tinham o carinho e conforto da música. Volta Seca não pensava com certeza em Lampião neste momento. Pedro Bala não pensava em ser um dia o chefe de todos os malandros da cidade. O Sem-Pernas em se jogar no mar, onde os sonhos são todos belos. Porque a música saía do bojo do velho carrossel só para eles e para o operário que parara. E era uma unidade valsa velha e triste, já esquecida por todos os homens da cidade. Desemboca gente de todas asmas. E noite de sábado, amanhã os homens não irão para o trabalho. Podem demorar na rua essa noite. Muitos preferiram ir para os bares, a Porta do Mar está cheia, mas co que tinham filhos vieram com eles para a praça, que é mal iluminada. Em compensação aí estão as luzes do carrossel que rodam. As crianças olham para elas e batem palmas. Em frente à bilheteria Volta Seca imita vozes de animais e chama o público. Leva uma cartucheira como se estivesse no sertão. Nhozinho França achou que isto chamaria a atenção do povo e Volta Seca parece mesmo um cangaceiro com o chapéu de couro e a cartucheira atravessada. E imita animais até que se reúnam homens, mulheres e crianças na sua frente. Então oferece entradas, que as crianças compram. Vai uma alegria por toda a praça. As luzes do carrossel alegram a todos. No centro, agachado, o Sem-Pernas ajuda Nhozinho França a botar o motor para trabalhar. E carrossel gira, carregado de meninos, a pianola toca suas velhas valsas, Volta Seca vende entradas. Na praça, casais de namorados passeiam. Mães de família compram picolés e sorvetes, um poeta sentado perto do mar faz um poema sobre as luzes do carrossel e a alegria das crianças. O carrossel ilumina toda a praça e todos os corações. A cada momento desemboca das ruas e dos becos. Volta Seca imita os animais, vestido de cangaceiro. Quando o carrossel pára de girar, os meninos o invadem, exibindo o bilhete de ingresso, e é difícil conte-los. Quando um encontra mais lugar, fica comum rosto magoado de desilusão e impaciente a sua vez. E quando o carrossel pára, os que vão nele querem saltar, é preciso que o Sem-Pernas venha e diga:
Só assim deixam os velhos cavalos, que nunca se cansam da corrida. Outros cavalgam os ginetes e a corrida recomeça, as girando, todas as cores fazendo uma cor única e estranha, a pi tocando sua antiga música. Também vão casais de namorados bancos e enquanto gira o carrossel murmuram palavras de amor. Há mesmo quem troque um beijo na corrida, quando o motor falha e as luzes se apagam. Então Nhozinho França e o Sem-Pernas se debruçam sobre o motor e examinam o defeito até a corrida recomeçar, abafando os protestos dos meninos. O Sem-Pernas já aprendeu todos os mistérios do motor. Certa hora Nhozinho França manda que o Sem-Pernas vá substituir Volta Seca na venda de bilhetes. E manda que Volta Seca vá andar no carrossel. E o menino toma o cavalo que serviu a Lampião. E enquanto dura a corrida, vai pulando como se cavalgasse um verdadeiro cavalo. E faz movimentos com o dedo, como se atirasse nos que vão na sua frente, e na sua imaginação os vê cair banhados em sangue, sob os tiros da sua repetição. E o cavalo corre e cada vez com mais, e ele mata a todos, porque são todos soldados ou fazendeiros ricos. Depois possui nos bancos a todas as mulheres, saqueia vilas, cidades, tens de ferro, montado no seu cavalo, armado com seu rifle. Depois vai o Sem-Pernas. Vai calado, uma estranha comoção o possui. Vai como um crente para uma missa, um amante para o seio da mulher amada, um suicida para a morte. Vai pálido e coxeia. Monta um cavalo azul que tem estrelas pintadas no lombo de madeira. Os lábios estão apertados, seus ouvidos não ouvem a música da pianola só vê as luzes que giram com ele e prende em si a certeza de que está num carrossel, girando num cavalo como todos aqueles meninos que têm pai e mãe, e uma casa e quem os beije e quem os ame. Pensa que é um deles e fecha os olhos para guardar melhor esta certeza. Já Se vê os soldados que o surraram, o homem de colete queria. Volta Seca os matou na sua corrida. O Sem-Pernas vai teso no seu cavalo. É como se corresse sobre o mar para as estrelas, na mais maravilhosa viagem do mundo.Uma viagem como o Professor nunca leu nem inventou. Seu coração bate tanto, tanto, que ele o aperta com a mão. Nesta noite os Capitães da Areia não vieram. Não só a função carrossel na praça terminou muito tarde às duas horas da manhã os homens ainda rodavam, como muitos deles, inclusive Pedro Bala Boa-Vida, Barandão e o Professor, estavam ocupados em viria assuntos. Marcaram para o dia seguinte, das três para as quatro da manhã. Pedro Bala perguntou ao Sem-Pernas se ele já sabia manobrar bem com o motor: Não paga a pena dar um prejuízo ao teu patrão – explicou.
jogava damas com João Grande, perguntou:
O Gato disse que de tarde não ia. Tinha o que fazer, já que à noite ia estar ocupado no carrossel. O Sem-Pernas mangou:
tatu... O Gato não respondeu. João Grande também não iria à tarde. Tinha que ir encontrar como Querido-de-Deus para irem comer uma feijoada na casa de Don’Aninha, a mãe-de-santo.Finalmente ficou resolvido que fosse um grupo pequeno operar à tarde na praça. Os outros iriam para onde bem quisessem. Só à noite se reuniriam para irem todos correr no carrossel.
O Professor tinha vencido João Grande já em três partidas fez uma coleta para comprarem dois litros de gasolina:
Mas na tarde do domingo chegou o padre José Pedro, que era uma das raríssimas pessoas que sabiam onde ficava a pousada mais permanente dos Capitães da Areia. O padre José Pedro se fizera amigo deles há bastante tempo. A amizade veio por intermédio do Boa-Vida. Este, um dia, penetrara, após uma missa, na sacristia de uma igreja onde oficiava padre José Pedro. Penetrara mais por curiosidade que por outra qualquer coisa. Boa-Vida não era dos que mais faziam pela vida. Gostava de deixara vida correr, sem se preocupar muito. Era mais um parasita do grupo. Um dia, quando lhe dava ganas, entrava numa casa de onde trazia um objeto de valor ou batia o relógio de um homem. Quase nunca o punha ele mesmo na mão dos intermediários. Trazia e entregava a Pedro Bala, assim como uma contribuição que dava ao grupo. Tinha muitos amigos entre os estivadores do cais, em várias casas pobres da Cidade de Palha, em muitos pontos da Bahia Comia em casa de um, em casa de outro.Em geral não aborrecia a nenhum. Se contentava com as mulheres que sobravam do Gato e mais que nenhum conhecia a cidade, suas ruas, seus lugares curiosos, uma festa onde podiam ir beber e dançar. Quando já tinha algum tempo que havia contribuído com algum objeto de valor para a economia do grupo, fazia um esforço, arranjava algo que rendesse dinheiro e entregava a Pedro Bala. Mas realmente não gostava de nenhuma espécie de trabalho, fosse honesto ou desonesto. Gostava era de deitar na areia do cais, horas e horas espiando os navios, de ficar de cócoras tardes inteiras nos portões dos armazéns do porto ouvindo histórias de valentias. Vestia-sede farrapos, pois só providenciava arranjar uma roupa quando seu traje caía aos pedaços. Gostava de andar ao léu nas ruas da cidade, entrando nos jardins para fumar um cigarro sentado num banco, entrando nas igrejas para espiar a beleza do ouro velho, flanando pelas ruas calçadas de grandes pedras negras. Naquela manhã, quando viu o povo saindo da missa, entrou a igreja displicentemente e foi furando até a sacristia. Espiava tudo, os altares, os santos, riu de um São Benedito muito preto. Na sacristia não tinha ninguém e ele viu um objeto de ouro que devia dar muito dinheiro. Espiou mais uma vez, não viu ninguém. Foi passando a mão mas alguém tocou no seu ombro. O padre José Pedro acabara de entrar:
O padre José Pedro espiou as roupas do Boa-Vida e riu. Boa-Vida olhou também para seus trapos:
O padre José Pedro sorriu de novo. Sabia perfeitamente que Boa-Vida estava mentindo. Há muito que ele aguardava uma oportunidade para travar relações comas crianças abandonadas da cidade. Pensava que aquela era a missão que lhe estava reservada. Já fizera umas tantas visitas ao reformatório de menores, mas ali lhe punham todas as dificuldades porque ele não esposava as idéias do diretor de que é necessário surrar uma criança para a emendar de um erro. E mesmo o diretor tinha idéias únicas sobre os erros. Há bastante tempo que o padre José Pedro ouvia falar nos Capitães da Areia e sonhava entrar em contato com eles, poder trazer todos aqueles corações a Deus. Tinha uma vontade enorme de trabalhar com aquelas crianças, de ajudá-las a serem boas. Por isso tratou o melhor que pôde a Boa-Vida. Quem sabe se por intermédio dele não chegaria, aos Capitães da Areia? E assim foi. O padre José Pedro não era considerado uma grande inteligência entre o clero. Era mesmo um dos mais humildes entre aquela legião de padre s da Bahia. Em verdade fora cinco anos operário numa fábrica de tecidos, antes de entrar para o seminário. O diretor da fábrica, num dia em que o bispo a visitara, resolveu dar mostra de generosidade e disse que já que o senhor bispo se queixava da falta de vocação sacerdotal, ele estava disposto a custear os estudos de um seminarista ou de alguém que quisesse estudar para padre. José Pedro, que estava no seu tear, ouvindo, se aproximou e disse que ele queria ser padre. Tanto o patrão como o bispo tiveram uma surpresa. José Pedro já não era moço e não tinha estudo algum. Mas o patrão, diante do bispo, não quis voltar atrás. E José Pedro foi para o seminário. Os demais seminaristas riam dele. Nunca conseguiu ser um bom aluno. Bem comportado, isso era. Também dos mais devotos, daqueles que mais se acercavam da igreja. Não estava de acordo com muitas das coisas que aconteciam no seminário e por isso os meninos o perseguiam. Não conseguia penetrar os mistérios da filosofia, da teologia e do latim. Mas era piedoso e tinha desejos de catequizar crianças ou índios. Sofreu muito, principalmente depois que, passados dois anos, o dono da fábrica deixou de pagar seus gastos e ele teve que trabalhar de bedel no seminário para poder continuar. Mas conseguiu se ordenar e ficou adido a uma igreja da capital, esperando uma paróquia. Porém seu grande desejo era catequizar as crianças abandonadas da cidade, os meninos que, sem pai e sem mãe, viviam do roubo, em meio a todos os vícios.O padre José Pedro queria levar aqueles corações todos a Deus. Assim começou a freqüentar o reformatório de menores, onde a princípio o diretora recebia com muita cortesia. Mas quando ele declarou contra os castigos corporais, contra deixar as crianças co fome dias seguidos, então as coisas mudaram. Um dia teve escrever uma carta sobre o assunto para a redação de um jornal. Então sua entrada foi proibida no reformatório e até uma queixa contra foi dirigida ao arcebispado. Por isso não teve uma freguesia Porém seu maior desejo era conhecer os Capitães da Areia, problema dos menores abandonados e delinqüentes, que quase preocupava a ninguém em toda a cidade, era a maior preocupação padre José Pedro. Ele queria se aproximar daquelas crianças não para trazê-las para Deus, como para ver se havia algum meio melhorar sua situação. Pouca influência tinha o padre José Pedro. Não tinha mesmo influência nenhuma, nem tampouco sabia como agir para ganhar a confiança daqueles pequenos ladrões. Mas s que a vida deles era falta de todo o conforto, de todo carinho, uma vida de fome e de abandono. E se o padre José Pedro não cama, comida e roupa para levar até eles, tinha pelo menos pala de carinho e, sem dúvida, muito amor no seu coração. Numa se enganou, a princípio, o padre José Pedro: em lhes oferecer, trocado abandono da liberdade que gozavam, soltos na rua, possibilidade de vida mais confortável. O padre José Pedro sabia que não podia acenar com o reformatório àquelas crianças. Ele conhecia demais as leis do reformatório, as escritas e as que cumpriam. E sabia que não havia possibilidade de nele uma criança tomar boa e trabalhadora.Mas o padre José Pedro confiava em amigas que possuía, beatas velhas e religiosas. Elas podiam se encarregar de vários dos Capitães da Areia, de educá-los e alimentá-los.Mas isso seria o abandono de tudo de grande que tinha a vida a aventura da liberdade nas ruas da mais misteriosa e bela das cidades do mundo, nas ruas da Bahia de Todos os Santos. E logo que, intermédio de Boa- Vida, o padre José Pedro fez relações com Capitães da Areia, viu que se lhes fizesse essa proposta perderia a confiança que já depositavam nele e que se mudariam do trapiche ele nunca mais os veria. Além do mais não tinha absoluta co naquelas solteironas velhuscas que viviam metidas na igreja e aproveitavam os intervalos das missas para comentarem a vida Lembrava-se que, a princípio, elas tinham ficado magoadas com ele porque, ao acabar de celebrar pela primeira vez naquela igreja, um grupo de beatas se acercou dele com o evidente propósito de o ajudar a mudar os trajes do oficio da missa. E ressoaram em torno a ele exclamações comovidas:
Uma velhusca magra juntava as mãos em adoração:
Pareciam adorá-lo e o padre José Pedro se revoltou. Em verdade ele sabia que a grande maioria dos padre s não se revoltava e ganhava tons presentes de galinhas, perus, lenços bordados e por vezes até antigos relógios de ouro que passavam através de gerações na mesma família. Mas o padre José Pedro tinha outra idéia da sua missão, pensava que os outros estavam errados e foi com um furor sagrado que disse:
As beatas o olhavam assombradas. Era como se ele fosse o próprio Anticristo. O padre completou:
E enquanto elas saíam atemorizadas, ele repetia mais com magoa que com raiva:
As beatas foram diretas ao padre Clóvis, que era gordo, calvo e muito bem- humorado, confessor preferido de todas elas. Narraram-lhe entre exclamações de assombro o que acabara de se passar. O padre Clóvis mirou as beatas com um olhar terno e as consolou:
Ficou rindo quando elas partiram. E murmurava de si para si:
Depois as beatas foram aos poucos se aproximando novamente do padre José Pedro. A verdade é que nunca chegaram a ter com uma perfeita intimidade. O seu ar sério, a sua bondade que se reservava para quando se fazia necessária, e seu horror às intriguinhas sacristia faziam com que elas o respeitassem mais que o amassem. Algumas, no entanto, aquelas que em geral eram ou viúvas ou esposas de maus maridos, se fizeram mais ou menos suas amigas. Outra cais o afastava das beatas: ele era a negação do pregador. Nunca havia conseguido descrever o inferno com a força de convicção do padre Clóvis, por exemplo. Sua retórica era pobre e falha. No entanto, ele acreditava, ele era um crente. E dificilmente se poderia dizer que padre Clóvis acreditasse pelo menos no inferno. A princípio o padre José Pedro pensara em levar os Capitães da Areia às beatas. Pensava que assim salvaria não só as crianças de vida miserável, como salvaria também as beatas de uma inutilidade perniciosa. Poderia conseguir que elas se dedicassem aos meninos com a mesma fervorosa devoção com que se dedicavam às igrejas, aos gordos padre s. O padre José Pedro adivinhava mais do que sabia se elas passavam os dias em inúteis conversas nas igrejas, ou aba lenços para o padre Clóvis, era porque não haviam tido, na malograda existência de virgens, um filho, um esposo, a quem dedicar seu tempo e seu carinho. Agora ele levaria filhos para elas.Muito tempo o padre José Pedro acariciou este projeto. Chegou mesmo levar para casa de uma um menino do reformatório. Isso muito de conhecer os Capitães da Areia, quando apenas ouvia falar nela experiência deu maus resultados: o menino arribou da casa da solteirona levando uns objetos de prata, preferindo a liberdade da rua mesmo vestido de farrapos e sem muita certeza de almoço, aos trajes e ao almoço garantido com a obrigação de rezar o terço em alta, assistir várias missas e bênçãos todos os dias. Depois o padre José Pedro compreendeu que a experiência tinha fracassado mais por culpa da solteirona que do menino. Porque evidentemente
Boa-Vida o apresentou ao grupo, que aos poucos ganhou a confiança da maioria, viu que era totalmente inútil pensar nesse projeto. Viu que era absurdo, porque a liberdade era o sentimento mais arraigado nos corações dos Capitães da Areia e que tinha que tentar outros meios. Nas primeiras vezes os meninos o olhavam com desconfiança. Ouviam muitas vezes na rua dizer que padre dava peso, que negócio de padre era para mulher. Mas o padre José Pedro tinha sido operário e sabia como tratar os meninos. Tratava-os como a homens, como a amigos. E assim conquistou a confiança deles, se fez amigo de todos, mesmo daqueles que, como Pedro Bala e o Professor, não gostavam de rezar. Dificuldade grande só teve mesmo com o Sem- Pernas. Enquanto que o Professor, Pedro Bala, o Gato eram indiferentes às palavras do padre o Professor, no entanto, gostava dele, pois lhe trazia livros, Pirulito, Volta Seca e João Grande, principalmente o primeiro, muito atentos ao que ele dizia, o Sem-Pernas lhe fazia uma oposição que a princípio tinha sido muito tenaz. Porém o padre José Pedro terminara por conquistara confiança de todos. E pelo menos em Pirulito descobrira uma vocação sacerdotal. Mas naquela tarde não foi com muita satisfação que o viram chegar. Pirulito se aproximou e beijou a mão do padre. Volta Seca também. Os demais o cumprimentaram.O padre José Pedro explicou:
Os ouvidos se fizeram atentos. O Sem-Pernas resmungou:
Mas se calou porque Pedro Bala o olhava com raiva. O padre sorriu com bondade. Sentou-se num caixão, João Grande viu que a batina dele era suja e velha. Tinha remendos feitos com linha a grande para a magreza do padre. Cutucou Pedro Bala, que espiou também. Então o Bala disse:
João Grande sabia que tudo era por causa da batina rasgada e grande para a magreza do padre. Os outros responderam viva, o padre sorriu acenando com a mão, João Grande não tirava os olhos da batina. Pensou que Pedro Bala era mesmo um chefe, sabia de tudo, sabia fazer tudo. Por Pedro Bala, João Grande se deixaria cortar a facão como aquele negro de Ilhéus por Barbosa, o grande senhor do cangaço. O padre José Pedro meteu a mão no bolso da batina, tirou o breviário negro. Abriu e de dentro sacou algumas notas de dez mil-réis:
Esperava que os rostos se animassem mais. Que uma extraordinária alegria reinasse em toda sala. Porque assim ficaria ainda mais convicto de que estava servindo a Deus quando daqueles quinhentos mil-réis que dona Guilhermina Silva dera para comprar velas pano altar da Virgem tirara cinqüenta mil-réis para levar os Capitães da Areia ao carrossel. E como os rostos não ficaram subitamente alegres, ele ficou desconcertado, as notas na mão, olhando a multidão de meninos. Pedro Bala coçou o cabelo que lhe caía sobre as orelhas, quis falar, não acertou. Olhou então para o Professor, e foi este quem aplicou:
não aceita? Não vai, não é? – e espiava o padre, cujo rosto agora estava novamente alegre.
Olhavam para o padre sem compreender. Pedro Bala franzia testa como quando tinha um problema a resolver, o Professor tentou falar. Mas, João Grande compreendeu tudo, apesar de ser o mais burro de todos:
Os outros entenderam. Pirulito pensou que tivesse sido um grande pecado, mas sentiu que a bondade do padre era maior que o pecado. Então o Sem-Pernas veio coxeando ainda mais que o seu natural, como se viesse lutando consigo mesmo, chegou peno do padre e quase gritou a princípio, se bem logo baixasse muito a voz:
E o sorriso do Sem-Pernas e a amizade que o padre lia nos olhos de todos haveria lágrimas nos olhos do Grande lhe restituíram a calma, a serenidade, a confiança no seu ato e no seu Deus. Disse com sua voz natural:
Pedro Bala sentia que tinha uma dívida a saldar com o padre. Queria que o padre soubesse que todos eles compreendiam. E como não achasse nada mais à mão, se dispôs a perder o trabalho que poderiam fizer naquela tarde e convidou o padre:
Padre José Pedro disse que sim, porque sabia que aquilo era mais um passo na sua intimidade com os Capitães da Areia. E foi um grupo pm o padre para a praça. Vários não foram, o Gato inclusive, que foi ver Dalva. Mas os que iam pareciam um bando de bons meninos que tinham do catecismo. Se estivessem bem vestidos e limpos, pareceria um colégio de tão em ordem que eles iam. Na praça rodaram tudo com o padre. Mostravam com orgulho Volta Seca imitando animais, vestido de cangaceiro, o Sem-Pernas fazendo sozinho o carrossel girar, porque Nhozinho França fora tomar uma cerveja num bar. Uma pena que à tarde as luzes do carrossel não estivessem acesas. Não era tão belo como à noite, as luzes girando de todas as cores. Mas eles tinham orgulho de Volta Seca imitando animais, do Sem-Pernas movimentando o carrossel, fazendo as crianças subirem, as crianças baixarem. O Professor, com um pedaço de lápis e uma tampa de caixa, desenhou Volta Seca vestido de cangaceiro. Tinha um jeito especial para desenhar e por vem ganhava dinheiro fazendo desenho, nas calçadas, de homens que passavam, de senhoritas que iam com os noivos. Estes paravam um minuto, riam do desenho ainda indeciso, as noivas diziam:
Ele recolhia os níqueis e então ficava a retocar o desenho feito a giz, a ampliá-lo, a colocar homens decais e mulheres da vida, até um guarda o expulsava da calçada.Por vezes já tinha um grupo espiando e havia quem dissesse:
poetas, cantores e pintores. O Professor acabou o desenho no qual pôs o carrossel e Nhozinho França caindo de bêbado e deu ao padre. Estavam todos num cerrado espiando o desenho, que o padre elogiava, quando ouviram:
E o lorgnon da velha magra se assestou contra o grupo como arma de guerra. O padre José Pedro ficou meio sem jeito, os me olhavam com curiosidade os ossos do pescoço e do peito da velha onde um barret custosíssimo brilhava à luz do sol. Houve um m to em que todos ficaram calados, até que o padre José Pedro ânimo e disse:
Mas a viúva Margarida Santos assestou novamente o lorgnon de ouro.
A velha olhou superiora e fez um gesto de desprezo com a boca. O padre continuou:
Os meninos a fitavam com curiosidade. Só o Sem-Pernas, que tinha vindo do carrossel pois Nhozinho França já voltara, a olhava com raiva. Pedro Bala se adiantou um passo, quis explicar:
Mas a velha deu um repelão e se afastou.
Pedro Bala aí riu escandalosamente, pensando que se não fosse pelo padre a velha já não teria o barret nem tampouco o lorgnon. A velha se afastou com um ar de grande superioridade, não sem dizer es para o padre José Pedro:
Pedro Bala ria cada vez mais, e o padre também riu, se bem sentisse triste pela velha, pela incompreensão da velha. Mas o carrossel girava com as crianças bem vestidas e aos poucos os olhos dos Capitães da Areia se voltaram para ele e estavam cheios de desejo de ar nos cavalos, de girar com as luzes. Eram crianças, sim– pensou padre. No começo da noite caiu uma carga d’água. Também as nuvens logo depois desapareceram do céu e as estrelas brilharam, ou também a lua cheia. Pela madrugada os Capitães da Areia vieram. O Sem-Pernas botou o motor para trabalhar. E eles esqueceram não eram iguais às demais crianças, esqueceram que não tinham, nem pai, nem mãe, que viviam de furto como homens, que temidos na cidade como ladrões. Esqueceram as palavras da velha de lorgnon. Esqueceram tudo e foram iguais a todas as crianças, cavalgando os ginetes do carrossel, girando com as luzes. As estrelas brilhavam, brilhava a lua cheia. Mas, mais que tudo, brilhavam noite da Bahia as luzes azuis, verdes, amarelas, roxas, vermelhas, do Grande Carrossel Japonês. DocasPedro Bala bateu a moeda de quatrocentos réis na parede da Alfândega, ela caiu adiante da de Boa-Vida. Depois Pirulito bate dele, a moeda ficou entre a de Boa- Vida e a de Pedro Bala. Boa-Vida estava acocorado, espiando. Tirou o cigarro da boca:
E continuaram o jogo, mas Boa-Vida e Pirulito perderam moedas de quatrocentão, que Pedro Bala embolsou:
Diante deles estavam os saveiros ancorados. Do Mercado mulheres e homens. Eles esperavam nesta tarde o saveiro do Querido-de-Deus. O capoeirista estava numa pescaria, que sua profissão e pescador. Continuaram o jogo do cruzado até que Pedro Bala limpou os outros dois. A cicatriz do seu rosto brilhava. Gostava de vai assim num jogo limpo, principalmente quando os parceiros eram da força do Pirulito que fora muito tempo o campeão do grupo e de Boa-Vida. Quando terminaram, Boa-Vida puxou o bolso para fora:
esperando o Querido-de-Deus, mas Pedro Bala foi com Boa-Vida para as docas. Atravessaram as ruas do cais, afundaram os pés na areia.Um navio desatracava do armazém 5, haviam movimento de gente que entrava e saía. Pedro Bala perguntou ao Boa-Vida:
Pedro Bala ficou se lembrando da história. Boa-Vida achava besteira sair da Bahia, onde, quando crescesse, seria tão fácil viver uma boa existência de malandro, navalha na calça, violão debaixo do braço, uma morena para derrubar no areal. Era a existência que desejava ter quando se fizesse completamente homem. Chegaram ao portão do armazém sete. João de Adão, um estivador negro e fortíssimo, antigo grevista, temido e amado em toda a estiva, estava sentado num caixão.Fumava cachimbo e os músculos saltavam sob sua camisa. Quando viu os meninos foi saudando:
Só chamava Pedro de Capitão Pedro e gostava de conversar com eles. Ofereceu um pedaço de caixão a Pedro Bala, Boa-Vida se acocorou na sua frente. Num canto, uma negra velha vendia laranjas cocadas, vestida com uma saia de chitão e uma anágua que deixava ver os seios ainda duros apesar da sua idade. Boa-Vida ficou espiando os peitos da negra, enquanto descascava uma laranja que apanhara no bueiro.
Deixa de conversa, tia. Tu ainda topa a coisa... A negra riu com vontade:
João de Adão balançou a cabeça que sim, fechou os o recordando os longínquos tempos da primeira greve que chefiara docas. Era um dos doqueiros mais velhos, embora ninguém lhe d a idade que tinha. Pedro Bala falou:
A negra mostrou a carapinha toda pintada de branco. Tinha tirado o lenço que enrolava na cabeça e Boa-Vida chalaceou:
Pedro Bala. – Tu nunca ouviu falar Capitão?
Pedro ficou fazendo cálculos e o próprio João de Adão interrompeu.
guardado pra tu.
Pedro Bala riscava o asfalto com um graveto. Olhou João de Adão:
satisfação. Pedro Bala riu também. Estava contente de saber a história de seu pai, porque ele tinha sido um homem valente. Mas perguntou lentamente:
João de Adão pensou um momento:
história que teu pai tinha fintado ela de casa, ela era de uma família rica lá de cima
João de Adão repetiu:
Pedro Bala fez um aceno com a cabeça. Depois perguntou:
E ficaram ouvindo João de Adão narrar a greve. Quando ele acabou, Pedro Bala disse:
O navio apitava nas manobras de atracação. De todos os cantos surgiam estivadores que se iam dirigindo para o grande armazém Pedro Bala os olhou com carinho. Seu pai fora um deles, morrera defesa deles. Ali iam passando homens brancos, mulatos, negros muitos negros. Iam encher os porões de um navio de sacos de cacau, fardos de fumo, açúcar, todos os produtos do estado que iam para pátrias longínquas, onde outros homens como aqueles, talvez altos loiros, descarregariam o navio, deixariam vazios os seus porões, pai fora um deles. Só agora o sabia. E por eles fizera discursos trepado em um caixão, brigara, recebem uma bala no dia em que a cavalaria enfrentou os grevistas. Talvez ali mesmo, onde ele se sentava, ti caldo o sangue de seu pai. Pedro Bala mirou o chão agora asfaltado. Por baixo daquele asfalto devia estar o sangue que correra do corpo seu pai. Por isso, no dia em que quisesse, teria um lugar nas d entre aqueles homens, o lugar que fora de seu pai. E teria também carregar fardos... Vida dura aquela, com fardos de sessenta quilos costas. Mas também poderia fazer uma greve assim como seu pai João de Adão, brigar com policias, morrer pelo direito deles, vingaria seu pai, ajudaria aqueles homens a lutar pelo seu vagamente Pedro Bala sabia o que era isso. Imaginava-se n greve, lutando.E sorriam os seus olhos como sorriam os seus Boa-Vida, que chupava a terceira laranja, interrompeu seu sonho:
cara, não tinha que tirar nem pôr pan Raimundo. Um homem bonito... Boa-Vida riu entre dentes. Perguntou quanto devia, pagou duzentos réis. Depois olhou mais uma vez os peitos da ri perguntou:
A negra atirou o chinelo, Boa-Vida desviou o corpo:
Boa-Vida estendeu a mão numa saudação quando ela falou em Omolu, o deus da bexiga. A tarde caía. Um homem comprou cocada. As luzes se acenderam de repente. A negra se levantou, boa-vida ajudou a que ela botasse o tabuleiro na cabeça. Ao longe, Pirulito apontava com o Querido-de-Deus. Pedro Bala olhou mais uma vez os homens que nas docas carregavam fardos para o navio holandês. Nas largas costas negras e mestiças brilhavam gotas de suor. Os pescoços musculosos iam curvados sob os fardos.E os guindastes rodavam ruidosamente. Um dia iria fazer uma greve como seu pai... Lutar gelo direito... Um dia um homem assim como João de Adão poderia contar a outros meninos na porta das docas a sua história, como contavam a de seu pai. Seus olhos tinham um intenso brilho na noite recém-chegada. Ajudaram o Querido-de-Deus a desembarcar a pescaria, que fora boa. Yemanjá o tinha ajudado. Um homem que tinha banca de peixe no mercado comprou toda a pescaria.Depois foram comer num restaurante próximo. Pirulito foi ver o padre José Pedro, que estava lhe ensinando a ler e a escrever. Passou pelo trapiche antes, para apanhar uma caixa de penas que tinha levantado numa papelaria pela manhã. Pedro Bala, Boa-Vida e o Querido-de-Deus andaram para o candomblé do Gantois o Querido era ogã, onde Omolu apareceu com suas vestimentas vermelhas e avisou a seus filhinhos pobres, no cântico mais lindo que pode haver, que em breve a miséria acabaria, que ele levaria a bexiga para a casa dos ricos e que os pobres seriam alimentados e felizes. Os atabaques tocavam na noite de Omolu. E ele anunciava que o dia de vingança dos pobres chegaria. As negras dançavam, os homens estavam alegres. O dia da vingança chegaria. Pedro Bala veio sozinho pelas ruas da cidade, pois o Boa-Vida fora com o Querido-de-Deus dançar num bleforé. Desceu as ladeiras que o conduziam à cidade baixa. Ia devagar, como se carregasse um peso dentro de si, ia como que curvado por dentro. Pensava na conversa da tarde com João de Adão, conversa que o alegrara porque ficara sabendo que seu pai fora um homem valente do cais, um homem que chegara a deixar uma história. Mas João de Adão falara também dos direitos dos doqueiros. Pedro Bala nunca tinha ouvido falar naquilo e, no entanto, fora por estes direitos que seu pai morrera. E depois, na macumba do Gantois, Omolu, paramentado de vermelho, dissera que odiada vingança dos pobres não tardaria a chegar.E isso oprimia o coração de Pedro Bala, como aqueles fardos de sessenta quilos oprimem o cangote dos estivadores. Quando acabou a descida da ladeira se dirigiu para o areal, vontade de ir para o trapiche ver se dormia. Um cachorro latiu à sua passagem, pensando que ele ia lhe disputar o osso que estava roendo. No fim da rua Pedro Bala viu um vulto. Parecia uma mulher andava apressada. Sacudiu seu corpo de menino como se sacode animal jovem ao ver a fêmea, e com passo rápido se aproximou mulher que agora entrava no areal. A areia chiava sob os pés e a mulher notou que era seguida. Pedro Bala podia vê-la bem quando ela passava sob os postes: era uma negrinha bem jovem, talvez tivesse apenas anos como ele. Mas os seios saltavam pontiagudos e as nádegas rolavam no vestido, porque os negros mesmo quando estão andando naturalmente é como se dançassem. E o desejo cresceu deu Pedro Bala, era um desejo que nascia da vontade de afogar a angústia que o oprimia. Pensando nas nádegas rebolantes da negrinha pensava na morte de seu pai defendendo o direito dos grevistas, Omolu pedindo vingança na noite de macumba. Pensava em derrubar a negrinha sobre a areia macia, em acariciar seus seios duros talvez seios de virgem, sempre seios de menina, em possuir seu corpo quente de negra. Apressou seus passos, porque a negrinha se desviara da rua que cortava o areal e se internara por este, se afastando dos postes de iluminação. Mas quando ela notou que Pedro Bala estava cada vez mais próximo, se lançou para a frente quase correndo. Pedro compreendeu que ele ia para uma daquelas ruas perdidas entre o morro e o mar, e que se atravessava o areal era para caminho mais curto e com mais facilidade poder fugir dele. Ia um silêncio por todo o cais, só chiar da areia sob os passos deles fazia estremecer de medo o coração da negrinha e de impaciência o coração de Pedro Bala. Mas estava cada vez mais próximo. Andava muito mais rápido que a negra e a alcançaria com mais dez passos. E ela tinha ainda muito que andar no areal antes de atingir os trapiches e as ruas que ficam além dos trapiches. Pedro sorria, um sorriso de dentes apertados, era igual a um animal feroz caçando no deserto um outro animal para seu almoço. Quando já ia levando a mão para tocarem seu ombro e fazer com que ela voltasse o rosto, a negrinha começou a correr. Pedro Bala se lançou em sua perseguição e logo a alcançou. Mas ia a tal velocidade esbarrou nela e ambos rolaram na areia. Pedro se levantou de um rindo, chegou para o lado dela, que procurava se pôr em pé:
O rosto da negrinha era de terror. Mas quando viu que seu seguidor era um menino de quinze para dezesseis anos se animou is um pouco e perguntou com raiva:
E a agarrou pelo braço e novamente a derrubou na areia. O medo voltou a possuí- la, um terror doido. Vinha da casa da avó e ia para sua onde mãe e irmãs a esperavam.Para que tinha vindo de noite, para que se arriscara na areia do cais? Não sabia que a Meia das docas é a cama de amor de todos os malandros, de todos os ladrões, de todos marítimos, de todos os Capitães da Areia, de todos os que não podem pagar mulher e têm sede de um corpo na cidade santa da Bahia? Ela não sabia disto, mal fizera quinze anos, havia muito pouco tempo que era mulher. Pedro Bala também só tinha quinze anos, mas há muito tempo conhecia não só o areal e os seus segredos, como os segredos do amor das mulheres.Porque se os homens conhecem esses segredos muito antes que as mulheres, os Capitães da Areia os conheciam muito antes que qualquer homem. Pedro Bala a queria porque há muito sentia os desejos de homem e conhecia as carícias do amor. Ela não o queria porque fazia pouco que se tornara mulher e pretendia reservar seu corpo para um mulato que a soubesse apaixonar. Não o queria entregar assim ao primeiro que a encontrasse no areal. E está com os olhos entupidos de medo. Pedro Bala passou a mão na carapinha da negra:
E olhava em torno de si para ver se enxergava alguém a quem gritar, a quem pedir socorro, alguém que a ajudasse a conservar a sua virgindade, que tinham lhe ensinado que era preciosa. Mas à noite no areal do cais da Bahia não se vêem senão sombras e não se ouvem mais que gemidos de amor, baques de corpos que rolam confundidos na areia. Pedro Bala acariciava seus seios e ela, no fundo de seu terror, começava a sentir um fio de desejo, como um fio de água que corre entre montanhas e vai engrossando aos poucos até se transformar em caudaloso rio. E isso fez com que crescesse o seu terror. Se ela não resistisse contra o desejo e deixasse que ele a possuísse, estaria perdida, iria deixar uma mancha de sangue no areal, da qual ririam os estivadores na madrugada seguinte. A certeza da sua fraqueza lhe deu novo alento e novas forças. Baixou a cabeça, mordeu a mão de Pedro que segurava seu seio. Pedro deu um grito, retirou a mão, ela se levantou e correu. Mas ele a pegou e agora seu desejo estava misturado com raiva.
Pedro não respondia. Conhecia outras que faziam chiquê. Em geral porque tinham um amante a esperá-las. Nem por um momento pensou que a negrinha fosse virgem.Mas ela resistia e o xingava, e mordia, batia suas frágeis mãos no peito de Pedro Bala.
E agora fazia por acariciá-la, queria dominar sua raiva, fazer com que ela sentisse desejo. Suas mãos desciam ao longo do seu corpo, deitou-a com esforço. Ela agora repetia num refrão:
Ele suspendeu as saias pobres de chita, apareceram as duras coxas da negra. Mas estavam uma sobre a outra e Pedro Bala tentou separá-las. A negrinha reagiu de novo, mas como o menino a estava acariciando e ela sentiu a chegada impetuosa do desejo, não o xingou mais, senão que disse num pedido angustioso:
Ele olhou, ela estava chorando de medo e também porque sua vontade estava enfraquecendo, seus peitos estavam intumescidos.
Pedro Bala vacilava. Os seios da negrinha intumescidos sob seus dedos. As coxas duras, a carapinha do sexo.
Chorava, e Pedro Bala tinha pena, mas o desejo estava solto dentro dele. Então propôs ao ouvido da negra e fazia cócegas a língua dele:
Mas ele a acarinhava, uma cócega subiu pelo corpo dela. Começou a compreender que se não o satisfizesse como ele queria, sua virgindade ficaria ali. E quando ele prometeu novamente sua língua a excitava no ouvido se doer eu tiro... ela consentiu.
Mas depois que tinha se satisfeito pela primeira vez e ela gritara e mordera as mãos, vendo que ela ainda estava possuída pelo desejo, tentou desvirginá-la.Mas ela sentiu e saltou como uma louca:
E soluçava alto, e levantava os braços, estava como uma louca, toda sua defesa eram seus gritos, suas lágrimas, suas imprecações contra o chefe dos Capitães da Areia. Mas para Pedro a maior defesa da negrinha eram os olhos cheios de pavor, olhos de animal mais fraco que não tem forças para se defender. E como seu maior desejo fosse satisfizera, e como aquela angústia do princípio da noite voltava a dominá-lo, ele falou:
Ela fez que sim com a cabeça. Seus olhos estavam iguais aos de um doido e naquele momento só sentia dor e pavor, vontade de fugir. Agora que as mãos dele, os lábios dele, o sexo de Pedro, não tocavam mais nas carnes dela, seu desejo desaparecera e pensava unicamente em defender sua virgindade. Respirou quando ele disse:
quantos paus se faz uma cangalha... Ela começou a andar sem nada responder. Mas o menino a acompanhou: – Vou te levar para um malandro não lhe pegar. Foram os dois e ela chorava. Ele quis pegar na mão dela, ela não deixou e se afastou dele. Ele tentou novamente, novamente ela retirou a mão. Então ele disse:
E foram de mãos dadas. Ela chorava e aquele choro foi angustiando Pedro Bala, foi fazendo com que voltasse sua inquietação do começo da noite, a visão de seu pai morrendo na luta, a visão de Omolu anunciando vingança. Começou a maldizer intimamente o encontro da cabrocha e apressou o passo para chegar quanto antes ao começo da rua. Ela soluçava e ele falou com raiva:
Ela apenas o olhou e seus olhos apesar de ainda ir com ele e ainda estar apavorada estavam cheios de ódio e desprezo. Pedro baixou a cabeça, não sabia o que dizer, não tinha mais desejo nem raiva, só tristeza no seu coração. Ouviram a música de um samba que um homem cantava na rua. Ela soluçou mais alto, ele foi chutando a areia. Agora se sentia mais fraco que ela, a mão da negrinha pesava na sua como se fosse chumbo. Largou a mão, ela se afastou dele. Pedro não protestou. Queria não a ter encontrado, não ter também João de Adão nem ter ido ao Gantois. Chegaram na rua, ele disse:
Ela olhou novamente com ódio deitou a correr. Mas na esquina mais próxima parou, virou para ele que ainda olhava e rogou praga com uma voz que o encheu de medo:
Ela, antes de desaparecer na esquina, cuspiu no chão num supremo desprezo e ainda repetiu:
“Uma criança também” – ouvia na voz do vento, no samba que cantavam, uma voz dizia dentro dele. Aventura de OgumOutra noite, uma noite de inverno, na qual os saveiros não se aventuraram no mar, noite da cólera de Yemanjá e Xangô, quando os relâmpagos eram o único brilho no céu carregado de nuvens negras e pesadas, Pedro Bala, o Sem-Pernas e João Grande foram levar a mãe-de-Santo, Don’Aninha, até sua casa distante. Ela viera ao trapiche pela tarde, precisava de um favor deles, e enquanto explicava, a noite caiu espantosa e terrível.
Fora este assunto que trouxera ali. Numa batida num candomblé que se bem não fosse o seu, porque nenhum polícia se aventurava a dar batida no candomblé de Aninha, estava sob a sua proteção, a polícia tinha carregado com Ogum, que repousava no seu altar. Don’Aninha tinha usado da sua força junto a um guarda para conseguir a volta do santo fora mesmo à casa de um professor da Faculdade de Medicina, seu amigo, que vinha estudar a religião negra no seu candomblé, pedir que ele conseguisse a restituição do deus. O professor realmente pensava em conseguir que a policia lhe entregasse a imagem. Mas para juntar à sua coleção de ídolos negros e não para reintegrá-la no seu altar no candomblé distante. Por isso, por estar Ogum numa sala de detidos na polícia, Xangô descarrega os raios nessa noite. Por último Don’Aninha veio aonde estavam os Capitães da Areia, seus amigos de há muito, porque são amigos da grande mãe-de-santo todos os negros e todos os pobres da Bahia. Para cada um ela tem uma palavra amiga e materna. Cura doenças, junta amantes, seus feitiços matam homens ruins. Explicou que tinha acontecido a Pedro Bala. O chefe dos Capitães da Areia ia pouco aos candomblés, como pouco ouvia as lições do padre José Pedro. Mas era amigo tanto do padre como da Mãe-de-santo, e entre os Capitães da Areia quando se é amigo se serve ao amigo. Agora levavam Aninha para sua casa. A noite em torno era tormentosa e colérica. A chuva os curvava sob o grande guarda-chuva branco da Mãe-de-santo. Os candomblés batiam em desagravo a Ogum e talvez num deles ou em muitos deles Omolu anunciasse a vingança do povo pobre. Don’Aninha disse aos meninos com uma voz amarga:
Pedro Bala sentiu uma onda dentro de si. Os pobres não tinham nada. O padre José Pedro dizia que os pobres um dia iriam para o reino dos céus, onde Deus seria igual para todos. Mas a razão jovem de Pedro Bala não achava justiça naquilo. No reino do céu seriam iguais. Mas já tinham sido desiguais na terra, a balança pendia sempre para um lado. As imprecações da mãe-de-santo enchiam a noite mais que o ruído dos agogôs e atabaques que desagravavam Ogum. Don’Aninha era magra e alta, um tipo aristocrático de negra, e sabia levar como nenhuma das negras da cidade suas roupas de baiana. Tinha o rosto alegre, se bem bastasse um olhar seu para inspirar absoluto respeito. Nisso se parecia com o padre José Pedro. Mas agora estava com um ar terrível e suas imprecações contra os ricos e a polícia enchiam a noite da Bahia e o coração de Pedro Bala. Quando a deixaram, rodeada das suas filhas-de-santo, que beijavam sua mão, Pedro Bala prometeu:
Ela bateu a mão na cabeça loira dele, sorriu. João Grande e o Sem-Pernas beijaram a mão da negra. Desceram a ladeira. Os agogôs e atabaques ressoavam desagravando Ogum. O Sem-Pernas não acreditava em nada, mas devia favores a Don’Aninha. Perguntou:
João Grande calou a boca, porque sabia que Ogum era grande demais, mesmo na cadeia podia castigar o Sem-Pernas. Pedro Bala coçou o queixo, pediu um cigarro:
Desceram para o trapiche. A chuva entrava pelos buracos do teto, a maior parte dos meninos se amontoavam nos cantos onde ainda havia telhado. O Professor tentara acender sua vela, mas o vento parecia brincar com ele, apagava-a de minuto a minuto. Afinal ele desistiu de ler essa noite e ficou peruando um jogo de sete-e-meio que o Gato bancava, ajudado por Boa-Vida, num canto. Moedas no chão, mas nenhum rumor desviava Pirulito das suas orações diante da Virgem e de Santo Antônio.Nestas noites de chuva eles não podiam dormir. De quando em vez a luz de um relâmpago iluminava o trapiche e então se viam as caras magras e sujas dos Capitães da Areia. Muitos deles eram tão crianças que temiam ainda dragões e monstros lendários: Se chegavam para junto dos mais velhos, que apenas sentiam frio e sono. Outros, os negros, ouviram no trovão a voz de Xangô. Para todos estas noites de chuva eram terríveis. Mesmo para o Gato, que tinha uma mulher em cujo seio escondia a jovem cabeça, as noites de temporal eram noites más. Porque nestas noites homens que na cidade não têm onde reclinar a sua cabeça amedrontada, que não têm senão uma cama de solteiro e querem esconder num seio de mulher o seu temor, pagavam para dormir com Dalva e pagavam bem. Assim o Gato ficava no trapiche, bancando jogos com seu baralho marcado, ajudado na roubalheira pelo Boa-Vida. Ficavam todos juntos, inquietos, mas sós todavia, sentindo que lhes faltava algo, não apenas uma cama quente num quarto coberto, mas também doces palavras de mãe ou de irmã que fizessem o temor desaparecer. Ficavam todos amontoados e alguns tiritavam de frio, sob as camisas e calças esmolambadas. Outros tinham paletós furtados ou apanhado sem lata de lixo, paletós que utilizavam como sobretudo. O Professor tinha mesmo um sobretudo, de tão grande arrastava no chão. Uma vez, e era no verão, um homem parara vestido com um grosso sobretudo para tomar um refresco numa das cantinas da cidade. Parecia um estrangeiro. Era pelo meio da tarde e o calor doía nas carnes. Mas o homem parecia não senti-lo, vestido com seu sobretudo novo. O Professor achou o homem engraçado e com cara de sujeito de dinheiro e começou a fazer um desenho dele com o sobretudo enorme, maior que o homem, era o próprio homem o sobretudo, a giz no passeio. E ria de satisfação, porque provavelmente o homem lhe daria uma prata de dois mil-réis. O homem voltou-se na sua cadeira e olhou o desenho quase concluído. O Professor ria, achava o desenho bom, o sobretudo dominando o homem, era mais que o homem. Mas o homem não gostou da coisa, se deixou possuir por uma grande raiva, levantou-se da cadeira e deu dois pontapés no Professor. Um atingiu o menino nos rins e ele rolou pela calçada gemendo. O homem ainda meteu o pé no seu rosto, dizendo congestionado ao se afastar:
E saiu batendo moedas na mão, após meio apagar com o pé o desenho. A garçonete veio e ajudou o Professor a se levantar. Olhou com piedade o menino, que apalpava o lugar dos rins doloridos, olhou o desenho, disse:
Meteu a mão no bolso onde guardava as gorjetas, tirou uma prata de um mil-réis, quis dar ao Professor. Mas ele recusou com a mão, sabia que ia fazer falta a ela.Olhou o desenho semi-apagado, seguiu seu caminho ainda com as mãos nos rins. Ia quase sem pensar, com um nó na garganta. Ele quisera agradar o homem, merecer uma prata dele. Tivera dois pontapés e palavras brutais. Não compreendia. Por que eram odiados assim na cidade? Eram pobres crianças sem pai, sem mãe. Por que aqueles homens bem vestidos tanto os odiavam? Foi com sua dor. Mas aconteceu que no caminho para o trapiche, no deserto do areal sob o sol, encontrou novamente, minutos depois, o homem de sobretudo. Parecia que ia para um dos navios atracados no porto e levava agora o sobretudo no braço porque o sol estava abrasador. Professor tirou a navalha poucas vezes a usava e se aproximou do homem. O calor tinha alijado do areal todos os homens e o do sobretudo cortava pela areia para fazer o caminho mais curto para o cais. O Professor foi silenciosamente por detrás do homem quando chegou perto tomou a frente com a navalha na mão. A vista do homem tinha transformado a confusão de seus sentimentos num único sentimento: vingança. O homem o olhou aterrorizado. 0 Professor crescia em sua frente com a navalha aberta. Murmurou entre dentes:
O Professor avançou com a navalha, o homem ficou branco.
Levou o sobretudo para a cantina, guardou. O Professor sumiu até que o navio saiu barra afora. Mas de onde estava viu a batida dos guardas pelo areal e pelas ruas adjacentes. Foi assim que o Professor tinha conseguido aquele sobretudo, que nunca quis vender. Adquirira um sobretudo e muito ódio. E tempos depois, quando as suas pinturas murais admiraram todo o país eram motivos de vidas de crianças abandonadas, de velhos mendigos, de operários e doqueiros que rebentavam cadeias, notaram que nelas os gordos burgueses apareciam sempre vestidos com enormes sobretudos que tinham mais personalidade que eles próprios. Pedro Bala, João Grande e o Sem-Pernas entraram no trapiche. Foram para o grupo que jogava em torno ao Gato. Quando eles chegaram, o jogo parou um momento, o Gato ficou espiando os três:
João Grande sentou para espiar, Pedro Bala se afastou com o Professor para um canto. Queria combinar uma maneira de roubar a imagem de Ogum da polícia. Discutiram parte da noite e já eram onze horas quando Pedro Bala, antes de sair, falou para todos os Capitães da Areia:
E saiu. João Grande o acompanhou até a porta. O Professor veio para junto do Gato novamente. Os menores olhavam a partida do chefe com certo receio. Tinham uma grande confiança em Pedro Bala e sem ele muitos não saberiam como se arranjar. Pirulito veio do seu canto, deixara uma oração pelo meio:
O jogo recomeçou. Chuva e raios, trovões e nuvens no céu. O frio intenso no trapiche. Gotas de água caíam sobre os meninos que jogavam. Mas o jogo agora era sem atenção, o próprio Gato se esquecia de ganhar, havia como que uma confusão em todo o trapiche. Durou até que Professor disse:
João Grande e o Gato foram com ele. Nesta noite foi Pirulito que se deitou na porta do trapiche com o punhal sob a cabeça. E perto dele Volta Seca espiava a noite com sua cara sombria. E pensava em que lugar estaria nesta noite de temporal o grupo de Lampião na imensidade das caatingas. Talvez que nessa noite de temporal lutassem com a polícia como ia fazer agora Pedro Bala. E Volta Seca pensou que quando Pedro Bala fosse grande como um homem seria tão corajoso como Lampião. Lampião era o dono do sertão, das caatingas sem fim. Pedro Bala seria dono da cidade, do casario, das ruas, do cais. E Volta Seca, que era do sertão, poderia andar nas caatingas e nas cidades. Porque Lampião era seu padrinho e Pedro Bala seu amigo. Imitou o cocorocó de um galo e isso era sinal de que Volta Seca estava alegre. Pedro Bala, enquanto subia a ladeira da Montanha, revia mentalmente seu plano. Fora arquitetado com a ajuda do Professor e era a coisa mais arriscada em que se metera até hoje. Mas Don’Aninha bem que merecia que um corresse risco por ela. Quando tinha um doente ela trazia remédios feitos com folhas, tratava dele, muitas vezes curava. E quando aparecia um Capitão da Areia no seu terreiro ela o tratava como a um homem, como a um ogã, dava-lhe do melhor para comer, do melhor para beber. O plano era arriscado, possivelmente não daria certo, Pedro Bala comeria cadeia uns dias e terminaria remetido para o reformatório, onde a vida era pior que vida de cão. Mas havia uma possibilidade de dar certo, e Pedro Bala jogaria tudo nesta possibilidade. Chegou ao largo do Teatro. A chuva caía e os guardas se abrigavam sob as capas. Começou a subir a ladeira de São Bento vagarosamente. Tomou por São Pedro, atravessou o largo da Piedade, subiu o Rosário, agora estava nas Mercês, diante da Central de Policia, olhando as janelas, o movimento de guardas e secretas que entravam e safam. De minuto em minuto um bonde passava fazendo ruídos nos trilhos, iluminando ainda mais a rua já bastante iluminada. O guarda amigo de Don’Aninha tinha dito que Ogum estava na sala de detidos, jogado sobre um armário, em meio a diversos outros objetos apreendidos em batidas várias em casas de ladrões. Naquela sala colocavam os que eram presos durante a noite antes de serem ouvidos ou pelo delegado ou pelos comissários de turno e que depois ou eram remetidos para as prisões ou para a rua. Ali, num canto, a princípio dentro de um armário que logo se encheu, depois junto ou sobre ele, colocavam objetos sem valor apreendidos nas batidas policiais. O plano de Pedro Bala era passar a noite ou parte dela na sala de detidos e levar ao sair se conseguisse sair a imagem de Ogum consigo. Tinha uma grande vantagem: não era conhecido entre a polícia. Mesmo só raros guardas o conheciam como moleque das ruas, se bem todos os guardas e mesmo alguns investigadores desejassem ardentemente capturar o chefe dos Capitães da Areia. Sabiam dele apenas que tinha aquele talho no rosto e Pedro Bala passou a mão no talho. Mas o pensavam maior do que era em verdade e também faziam a idéia de que Pedro Bala devia ser mulato e de mais idade. Se chegassem a descobrir que ele era o chefe dos Capitães da Areia talvez nem para o reformatório o mandassem. Muito provavelmente iria diretamente para a penitenciária.Porque do reformatório se consegue fugir, mas da penitenciária não é fáciL Enfim... – e Pedro Bala andou até o Campo Grande. Mas já não ia com aquele seu passo despreocupado de moleque das ruas da cidade. Ia agora gingando como um filho de marítimo, o boné puxado por causa da chuva, a gola do paletó devia ter sido anteriormente de um homem muito grande levantada. O guarda estava debaixo de uma árvore por causa da chuva. Pedro veio chegando assim como quem tem medo. E quando falou ao guarda, sua voz era a de uma criança que estava temerosa da noite tempestuosa da cidade.
O guarda olhou:
Pedro tentou novamente puxar conversa, mas o guarda o ameaçou com o cassetete:
Pedro saiu com cara de choro. O guarda ficou espiando o menino. Pedro parou no ponto de bonde, esperou. Do primeiro carro não desceu ninguém, mas do segundo saltou um casal. Pedro se atirou em cima da mulher, o homem viu que ele queria abafar a carteira dela, segurou Pedro por um braço. A coisa fora tão mal feita que se um dos Capitães da Areia passasse ali sem dúvida não reconheceria o seu chefe. O guarda, que via acena, já estava junto a eles:
Se afastou levando Pedro pelo braço. O menino ia com uma cara entre amedrontada e risonha:
Entraram na Central. O guarda atravessou um corredor, largou Pedro Bala na sala dos detidos. Havia uns cinco ou seis homens. O guarda disse troçando:
ver quanto tempo você vai dormir aqui... Pedro ficou calado. Os outros presos nem ligavam para ele, estavam muito interessados em fazer troça com um pederasta que tinha sido preso e se dizia chamar Mariazinha.A um canto Pedro Bala viu o armário. A imagem de Ogum estava ao lado, junto de uma cesta para papéis inúteis. Pedro se adiantou para ali, tirou o paletó, pôs sobre a imagem. E enquanto os outros conversavam, enrolou Ogum não era grande, havia outras imagens muito maiores no seu paletó e deitou-se no chão. Pôs a cabeça sobre o embrulho e fez que dormia. Os presos daquela noite continuavam a rir com o pederasta, exceto um velho que tremia num canto, Pedro não sabia se de frio ou de medo. Mas ouvia a voz de um negro jovem que dizia a Mariazinha:
O velho continuava a tremer. Um malandro de cara chupada pela tísica percebeu o velho no canto:
não... Agora um guarda gozava na porta e o de cara chupada se virou para o velho, que se encolheu todo:
Pedro, que estava de olhos fechados, adivinhou que o velho chorava. Mas continuou fingindo que estava dormindo. Ogum doía nos ossos da sua cabeça. Os presos continuavam a pilheriar com o pederasta e o velho, até que chegou outro guarda e falou para o velho:
se dirigia a todos, guardas e presos. E tremia tanto, que todos tiveram pena e até o malandro de cara chupada baixou a cabeça. Só o pederasta sorria. O velho não voltou. Depois foi o pederasta. Demorou muito. O de cara chupada explicava que Mariazinha era de boa família. Naturalmente estavam telefonando para casa dele, pedindo que o viessem buscar para não terem que o prender de novo naquela noite. De quando em vez, quando tomava cocaína demais, dava escândalos na rua e era trazido por um guarda. Quando Mariazinha voltou, foi só para pegar o chapéu. Então viu Pedro Bala deitado e disse:
Pedro cuspiu de olhos fechados:
Até o guarda riu e explicou para os outros a história de Pedro. Mas o negro jovem foi chamado e eles ficaram silenciosos. Sabiam que o negro tinha esfaqueado um homem num breforé nesta noite. Quando o preto voltou trazia as mãos inchadas dos bolos. Explicou:
Não conversou mais, procurou um canto, se arriou. Os outros também ficaram calados. E foram indo um por um para o despacho do comissário. Uns eram postos em liberdade, outros iam para o calabouço, outros voltavam apanhados. O temporal cessara e a madrugada chegava. Pedro foi o último a ser chamado. Deixou o paletó onde enrolara Ogum. O comissário era um jovem advogado que reluzia um rubi no dedo e um charuto no queixo. Quando Pedro entrou com o guarda, pedia café em voz alta. Pedro ficou diante da escrivaninha, parado. O guarda disse:
O guarda retirou-se. O comissário leu a parte do guarda que prendera Pedro Bala, olhou o menino:
Que seu pai era saveirista em Mar Grande e naquele dia pela manhã viera com o saveiro e o trouxera. Mas voltara em seguida para buscar outra carga e o deixara na cidade passeando, porque o saveiro tornaria à Bahia ainda à tardinha e então ele poderia voltar com seu pai. Mas com o temporal seu pai não tinha podido voltar e ele, que não conhecia ninguém, ficou na chuvas em ter onde dormir. Perguntou a um homem na rua onde poderia dormir, o homem respondera que na polícia. Então ele pedira ao guarda que o levasse a dormir na policia, o guarda não deixara, ele fizera então que ia furtar a mulher só para ser levado, para poder dormir sob um teto.
O delegado, que sorvia o café em golinhos, disse de si para si:
Tocou a campainha chamando o guarda. Pedro estava com os nervos todos em tensão. O guarda chegou, o comissário perguntou se na polícia havia um livro de registro de saveiristas de Mar Grande que ancoravam no cais do Mercado.
Pedro Bala olhou para o relógio: marcava cinco e meia da manhã. O guarda demorou uns minutos, o comissário não se ocupou mais de Pedro, que estava de pé ante sua secretária. Só quando o guarda voltou e disse: Tem, sim senhor... Hoje mesmo teve no cais, mas voltou logo... – o comissário fez um gesto com a mão e falou para o guarda:
Pedro abriu o paletó, mostrou a imagem de Ogum. João Grande riu com satisfação:
Foram descendo a ladeira escorregadia da chuva. E Pedro Bala ia narrando as aventuras da noite. O Gato perguntou:
Primeiro Pedro Bala pensou em dizer que não, depois confessou:
E riu da cara gozada que João Grande fazia. O céu agora estava azul, sem nuvens, o sol brilhava e da ladeira eles viam os saveiros que partiam do cais do Mercado. Deus sorri como um negrinhoO menino era tentação por demais grande. Nem parecia um meio-dia de inverno. O sol deixava cair sobre ruas uma claridade macia, que não queimava, mas cujo calor acariciava como a mão de uma mulher. No jardim próximo as flores desabrochavam em cores. Margaridas e onze-horas, rosas e cravos, dália e violetas. Parecia haver na rua um perfume bom, muito sutil, mas que Pirulito sentia entrar nas suas narinas e como que embriagá-lo. Tinha comido na porta de uma casa de portugueses ricos as sobras de almoço que fora quase um banquete. A criada, que lhe trouxera o prato cheio, dissera, mirando as ruas, o sol de inverno, os homens que passavam sem capa:
Essas palavras foram com Pirulito pela rua. Um dia lindo, e o menino ia despreocupado, assoviando um samba que lhe ensinara o Querido-de-Deus, recordando que o padre José Pedro prometera tudo fazer para 1he conseguir um lugar n o seminário. Padre José Pedro lhe dissera que toda aquela beleza que caía envolvendo a terra e homens era um presente de Deus e que era preciso agradecer a Deus. Pirulito mirou o céu azul onde Deus devia estar e agradeceu num sorriso e pensou que Deus era realmente bom. E pensando em Deus pensou também nos Capitães da Areia. Eles furtavam, brigavam nas ruas, xingavam nomes, derrubavam negrinhas no areal, por vezes feriam com navalhas ou punhal homens e polícias. Mas, no entanto, eram bons, uns eram amigos dos outros. Se faziam tudo aquilo é que não tinham casa, nem pai, nem mãe, a vida deles era uma vida sem ter comida certa e dormindo num casarão quase sem teto. Se não fizessem tudo aquilo morreriam de fome, porque eram raras as casas que davam de comer a um, de vestir a outro. E nem toda a cidade poderia dar a todos. Pirulito pensou que todos estavam condenados ao inferno. Pedro Bala não acreditava no inferno, Professor tampouco, riam dele. João Grande acreditava era em Xangô, em Omolu, nos deuses dos negros que vieram da África. O Querido-de-Deus, que era um pescador valente e um capoeirista sem igual, também acreditava neles, misturava-os com os santos dos brancos que tinham vindo da Europa. O padre José Pedro dizia que aquilo era superstição, que era coisa errada, mas que a culpa não era deles. Pirulito se entristeceu na beleza do dia. Estariam todos condenados ao inferno? O inferno era um lugar de fogo eterno, era um lugar onde os condenados ardiam uma vida que nunca acabava. E no inferno havia martírios desconhecidos mesmo na polícia, mesmo no reformatório de menores. Pirulito vira há poucos dias um frade alemão que descrevia o inferno num sermão na Igreja da Piedade. Nos bancos, homens e mulheres recebiam as palavras de fogo do frade como chicotadas no lombo. O frade era vermelho e de seu rosto pingava o suor. Sua língua era atrapalhada e dela o inferno saía mais terrível ainda, as labaredas lambendo os corpos que foram lindos na terra e se entregaram ao amor, as mãos que foram ágeis e se entregaram ao furto, ao manejo do punhal e da navalha. Deus no sermão do frade era justiceiro e castigador, não era o Deus dos dias lindos do padre José Pedro. Depois explicaram a Pirulito que Deus era a suprema bondade, a suprema justiça. E Pirulito envolveu seu amor a Deus numa capa de temor a Deus e agora vivia entre os dois sentimentos.Sua vida era uma vida desgraçada de menino abandonado e por isso tinha que ser uma vida de pecado, de furtos quase diários, de mentiras nas portas das casas ricas.Por isso na beleza do dia Pirulito mira o céu com os olhos crescidos de medo e pede perdão a Deus tão bom mas não tão justo também... pelos seus pecados e os dos Capitães da Areia. Mesmo porque eles não tinham culpa. A culpa era da vida... O padre José Pedro dizia que a culpa era da vida e tudo fazia para remediar a vida deles, pois sabia que era a única maneira de fazer com que eles tivessem uma existência limpa. Porém uma tarde em que estava o padre e estava o João de Adão, o doqueiro disse que a culpa era da sociedade mal organizada, era dos ricos...Que enquanto tudo não mudasse, os meninos não poderiam ser homens de bem. E disse que o padre José Pedro nunca poderia fazer nada por eles porque ricos não deixariam.O padre José Pedro naquele dia tinha ficado muito triste, e quando Pirulito o foi consolar, explicando que ele não ligasse ao que João de Adão dizia, o padre respondeu balançando a cabeça magra.
Padre José Pedro achava que Deus perdoaria e queria ajudá-los. E como não encontrava meios, e sim uma barreira na sua frente todos queriam tratar os Capitães da Areia ou como a criminosos ou como crianças iguais àquelas que foram criadas com um lar e uma família ficava como que desesperado, por vezes ficava atarantado.Mas esperava que Deus o inspirasse um dia e até lá ia acompanhando meninos, conseguindo por vezes evitar atos de malvadeza das crianças. Fora mesmo ele um dos que mais concorreram para extermina pederastia no grupo. E isto foi uma das suas grandes experiências sentido de como agir para tratar com os Capitães da Areia. Enquanto ele lhes disse que era necessário acabar pecado, uma coisa imoral e feia, os meninos riram nas suas costa e continuaram a dormir com os mais novos e bonitos. Mas no dia e que o padre, desta vez ajudado pelo Querido-de-Deus, afirmou que aquilo era coisa indigna num homem, fazia um homem igual a uma mulher, pior que uma mulher, Pedro Bala tomou medidas violentas, expulsou os passivos do grupo. E por mais que o padre fizesse não quis mais ali.
Por assim dizer, Pedro Bala arrancou a pederastia entre os Capitães da Areia como um médico arranca um apêndice doente do corpo de um homem. O difícil para o padre José Pedro era conciliar as coisas. Mas ia tenteando e por vezes sorna satisfeito dos resultados. A não ser quando João de Adão ria dele e dizia que só a revolução acertaria tudo aquilo. Lá em cima, na cidade alta, os homens ricos e as mulheres queriam que os Capitães da Areia fossem para as prisões para o reformatório, que era pior que as prisões. Lá embaixo, nas docas, João de Adão queria acabar com os ricos, fazer tudo igual, dar escola aos meninos. O padre queria dar casa, escola, carinho e conforto aos meninos sem a revolução, sem acabar com os ricos. Mas de todos os lados era uma barreira. Ficava como perdido e pedia a Deus que o inspirasse. E com certo pavor via que, quando pensava no problema, dava, sem sequer o sentir, razão ao doqueiro João de Adão. Então era possuído de temor, porque não fora assim que lhe haviam ensinado, e rezava horas seguidas para que Deus o iluminasse. Pirulito fora a grande conquista do padre José Pedro entre os Capitães da Areia. Tinha fama de ser um dos mais malvados do grupo, contavam dele que uma vez pusera o punhal na garganta de um menino que não queria lhe emprestar dinheiro e o fora enfiando devagarinho, sem tremer, até que o sangue começou a correr e o outro lhe deu tudo que queria. Mas contavam também que outra vez cortou de navalha a Chico Banha quando o mulato torturava um gato que se aventurara no trapiche atrás dos ratos. No dia que o padre José Pedro começou a falar de Deus, do céu, de Cristo, da bondade e da piedade, Pirulito começou a mudar. Deus o chamava e ele sentia sua voz poderosa no trapiche. Via Deus nos seus sonhos e ouvia o chamado de Deus de que falava o padre José Pedro. E se voltou de todo para Deus, ouvia a voz de Deus, rezava ante os quadros que o padre lhe dera. No primeiro dia começaram a mofar dele no trapiche. Ele espancou um dos menores, os outros se calaram. No outro dia o padre disse que ele fizera mal, que era preciso sofrer por Deus, e Pirulito então dera a sua navalha quase nova ao menino a que espancara. E não espancara mais nenhum, evitava as brigas e se não evitava os furtos era que aquilo era o meio de vida que eles tinham, não tinham mesmo outro. Pirulito sentia o chamado de Deus, que era intenso, e queria sofrer por Deus. Ajoelhava horas e horas no trapiche, dormia no chão nu, rezava mesmo quando o sono o queria derrubar, fugia das negrinhas que ofereciam o amor na areia quente do cais. Mas então amava Deus-pura-bondade e sofria para pagar o sofrimento que Deus passara na terra. Depois veio aquela revelação de Deus justiça para Pirulito ficou Deus-vingança e o temor de Deus invadiu o seu coração e se misturou ao amor de Deus. Suas orações foram mais longas, o terror do inferno se misturava à beleza de Deus. Jejuava dias inteiros e sua face ficou macilenta como a de um anacoreta. Tinha olhos de místico e pensava ver Deus nas noites de sonho. Por isso conservava seus olhos afastados das nádegas e seios das negrinhas que andavam como que dançando ante os olhos de todos nas ruas pobres da cidade. Sua esperança era um dia ser sacerdote do seu Deus, viver só para a sua contemplação, viver só para Ele.A bondade de Deus fazia com que ele esperasse conseguí-lo. O temor de Deus vingando-se dos pecados de Pirulito fazia com que ele desesperasse. E é esse amor e esse temor que fazem Pirulito indeciso ante a vitrina nesta hora de meio-dia, cheia de beleza. O sol é brando e claro, as flores desabrocham no jardim, vem uma calma e uma paz de todos os lados. Mas, mais belo que tudo é a imagem da Conceição com o Menino, que está na prateleira daquela loja de uma só porta. Na vitrina, quadros de santos, livros de orações em encadernações luxuosas, terços de ouro, relicários de prata. Mas dentro, bem na ponta da prateleira que chega até a porta, a imagem da Virgem da Conceição estende o Menino para Pirulito. Pirulito pensa que a Virgem está a lhe entregar Deus, Deus criança e nu, pobre como Pirulito. O escultor fez o Menino magro e a Virgem triste da magreza do seu Menino, mostrá-lo aos homens gordos e ricos. Por isso a imagem está ali e não se vende. O Menino nas imagens é sempre gordo, um ar de menino rico, um Deus Rico. Ali é um Deus Pobre, um menino pobre, mesmo igual a Pirulito, ainda mais igual àqueles mais novos do grupo exatamente igual a um de colo, de poucos meses de idade, que fico abandonado na rua no dia que sua mãe morreu de um ataque, quando levava nos braços, e que João Grande trouxe para o trapiche, onde ficou até o fim da tarde os meninos vinham e espiavam e riam do Professor e do Grande, afobados para arranjar leite e água para o bebê quando a mãe-de-santo Don’Aninha viera e o levara consigo, recostado ao seu seio. Só que aquele era um menino negro e o Menino branco. No mais a parecença é absoluta. Até uma cara de choro tem o Menino, magro e pobre, nos braços da Virgem. E esta o oferece Pirulito, aos carinhos de Pirulito, ao amor de Pirulito. Lá fora o dia é lindo, o sol é brando, as flores desabrocham. Só o Menino tem for e frio neste dia. Pirulito o levará consigo para o trapiche dos Capitães da Areia. Rezará para ele, cuidará dele, o alimentará com seu amor. Não vêem que, ao contrário de todas as imagens, ele não está preso nos braços da Virgem, está solto nas suas mãos, ela o está oferecendo carinho de Pirulito? Ele dá um passo. Dentro da loja só uma senhorita espera os fregueses, pintando os lábios com uma nova marca de batom. É facílimo levar o Menino. Pirulito estende o pé noutro passo, mas o temor de Deus o assalta, E fica parado, pensando. Ele tinha jurado a Deus, no seu temor, que só furtaria para comer ou quando fosse uma coisa ordenada pelas leis do grupo, um assalto para o qual fosse indicado por Pedro Bala. Porque ele pensava que trair as leis nunca tinham sido escritas, mas existiam na consciência de cada um deles dos Capitães da Areia era um pecado também. E agora ia furtar só para ter o Menino consigo, alimentá-lo com seu carinho. Era um pecado, não era para comer, para matar o frio, nem para cumprir as leis do grupo. Deus era justo e o castigaria, lhe daria o fogo do inferno. Suas carnes arderiam, suas mãos que levassem o Menino queimariam durante uma vida que nunca acabava. O Menino era do dono da loja. Mas o dono da loja rinha tantos Meninos, e todos gordos, e rosados, não iria sentir falta de um só, e de um magro e friorento! Os outros estavam como ventre envolto em panos caros, sempre panos azuis, mas de rica fazenda. Este estava totalmente nu, tinha frio no ventre, era magro, nem do escultor tivera carinho.E a Virgem o oferecia a Pirulito, o Menino estava solto nos braços dela... O dono da loja tinha tantos Meninos, tantos... Que falta lhe faria este? Talvez nem se importasse, talvez até se risse quando soubesse que haviam furtado aquele Menino que nunca tinha conseguido vender, que estava solto nos braços da Virgem, diante do qual as beatas que vinham comprar diziam horrorizadas:
Nossa Senhora. Cai no chão e pronto. Esse não... E o Menino ia ficando. A Virgem o oferecia ao carinho dos que passavam, mas ninguém o queria. As beatas não queriam levá-lo para seus oratórios, onde havia Meninos calçados de sandálias de ouro, com coroa de ouro na cabeça. Só Pirulito viu que o Menino tinha fome e sede, tinha frio também e quis levá-lo. Mas Pirulito não tinha dinheiro e tampouco tinha o costume de comprar as coisas. Pirulito podia levá-lo consigo, podia dar ao Menino que comer, que beber, que vestir, tudo tirado do seu amor a Deus. Mas se o fizesse, Deus o castigaria, o fogo do inferno comeria, durante uma vida que nunca acabava, suas mãos que levassem o Menino, sua cabeça que pensava em levar o Menino. Então Pirulito lembrou-se que só o pensar já era pecado. Que se pecava só de pensar em cometer o pecado. O frade alemão dissera que muitas vezes um estava pecando e nem o sabia porque estava pecando com o pensamento. Pirulito estava pecando, sentiu que estava pecando, teve medo de Deus e deitou a correr para não continuar a pecar. Mas não correu muito, ficou na esquina, pôde se afastar para longe da imagem. Olhou outras vitrines, assim não pecava. Meteu as mãos no bolso prendia as mãos..., desviou pensamento. Mas agora os homens que volviam ao trabalha após o almoço passavam na sua frente e um pensamento o assaltou: dentro em pouco os outros empregados da loja voltariam e então seria impossível levar o Menino. Seria impossível... E Pirulito voltou a frente da loja de objetos religiosos. Lá estava o Menino, e a Virgem o oferecia a Pirulito. Um relógio deu a primeira hora da tarde. Não tardariam a voltar os outros empregados. Quantos seriam? Mesmo que fosse somente um, a loja era tão pequena que ficaria impossível levar o Menino. Parece que é a Virgem que está lhe dizendo isso. Que é a Virgem a lhe dizer que se ele não levar o Menino agora não o poderá levar mais, parece que está mesmo dizendo isso. E com certeza foi ela, sim, foi ela quem com que a senhorita entrasse pela cortina que tem no fundo da loja e a deixasse sozinha. Sim, foi a Virgem, que agora estende o Menino para Pirulito o quanto podem seus braços e o chama com sua doce voz:
Não olha o Menino. Mas sente que agora, encostado ao seu peito, o Menino sorri, não tem mais fome nem sede nem frio. Sorri o Menino como sorria o negrinho de poucos meses quando se encontrou no trapiche e viu que João Grande lhe dava leite às colheradas com suas mãos enormes, enquanto o Professor o sustinha encostado ao calor do seu peito. Assim sorri o Menino. FamíliaFoi Boa-Vida que contou a Pedro Bala que naquela casa da Graça tinha coisa de ouro de fazer medo. O dono da casa, pelo jeito, parecia colecionador, o Boa-Vida tinha ouvido um malandro dizer que na casa havia uma sala entupida de objetos de ouro e prata que no emprego haviam de dar uma fortuna. À tarde Pedro Bala foi como Boa-Vida ver a casa. Era um prédio moderno e elegante, jardim na frente, garagem ao fundo, espaçosa residência de gente rica. O Boa-Vida cuspiu por entre os dentes, desenhando uma flor no passeio com o cuspe, e disse:
Uma empregada abriu a porta da frente, saiu para o jardim. No hall, que ficou à vista, eles perceberam quadros pela parede, estatuetas sobre as mesas. Pedro Bala riu:
Pedro Bala olhou mais uma vez a casa, se acercou um pouco do jardim, assoviando. A empregada colhia flores e os seios alvos apareciam sob o decote, pois ela estava curvada. Pedro Bala espiou. Eram seios alvos terminando em bicos vermelhos. Boa-Vida suspirou ao seu lado.
Mas a empregada já os vira e os olhava como a perguntar o que desejavam. Pedro Bala sacou o boné e pediu:
Voltou com dois copos d’água e eram copos como eles nunca tinham visto de tão bonitos. Beberam a água, Pedro Bala agradeceu – Muito obrigado... e baixinho lindeza. A empregada falou também baixinho:
Saíram pela rua, Boa-Vida fumando sua ponta de charuto, abanando o rosto com o chapéu-coco que usava. Pedro Bala com, comentou:
Boa-Vida desviou a conversa: souber onde fica os troço melhor a gente vem, uns cinco ou seis, tira o ourame...
Voltou-se. Olhou a casa. A criada se debruçava na grade, Pedro Bala deu adeus. Ela respondeu, Boa-Vida cuspiu:
No outro dia, por volta de onze e meia da manhã, o Sem-Pernas apareceu em frente à casa. Quando ele tocou a campainha a empregada com certeza ainda pensava na noite que passara com Pedro Bala no seu quarto no Garcia, porque não ouviu o tilintar. O menino tocou de novo e na janela de um quarto do primeiro andar assomou a cabeça grisalha de uma senhora, que mirou com os olhos apertados ao Sem-Pernas:
A senhora fez com a mão sinal que ele esperasse e dentro de poucos minutos estava no portão sem ouvir sequer as desculpas da empregada por não ter atendido à porta:
Parecia que ia chorar. A senhora olhava muito impressionada:
O Sem-Pernas mostrou a perna capenga, andou na frente da senhora forçando o defeito. Ela o fitava com compaixão:
E como o Sem-Pernas pensasse que ela ainda estava indecisa completou com cinismo, uma voz de choro:
Mas a senhora não estava indecisa. Estava era se lembrando seu filho, que tinha morrido com a idade daquele e que ao morrer matara toda a sua alegria e a do marido.Este ainda tinha as suas coleções de obras de arte, mas ela tinha apenas a recordação daquele filho que a deixara tão cedo. Por isso olha o Sem-Pernas, esfarrapado, com um grande carinho e ao lhe falar sua voz tem uma doçura diferente da de sempre. Há como que um pouco de alegria na doçura da sua voz, e isso espanta a criada:
O Sem-Pernas nada dizia, apenas secava com as costas da mão lagrimas fingidas.
Depois perguntou como ele se chamava, e o Sem-Pernas deu o primeiro nome que lhe passou pela cabeça:
Disse em voz alta, porque agora o Sem-Pernas olhava seu rosto emocionado:
Dona Ester o acompanhou comovida. Viu que a empregada mostrava o banheiro ao Sem-Pernas, dava-lhe um roupão e se dirigia pata o quarto em cima da garagem para arrumá-lo o chofer tinha se despedido, o quarto estava vazio. Dona Ester se aproximou, disse ao Sem-Pernas que parara na porta do banheiro:
O Sem-Pernas agora olhava a senhora que desaparecia, e tinha raiva, mas não sabia se era dela ou de si mesmo. Dona Ester sentou-se em frente ao seu penteador, ficou com os olhos parados, quem a visse pensaria que ela olhava o céu através da janela. Porém, em verdade, ela nada olhava, nada via. Olhava, sim, para dentro de si, para as suas recordações de muitos anos, e via um menino da idade do Sem-Pernas, vestido com uma roupa de marinheiro, correndo no jardim da outra casa, da qual se mudaram depois que ele morreu. Era um menino cheio de vida e de alegria, gostava de rir e de saltar. Quando se cansava de correr com o gato, de montar na gangorra do jardim, de jogar a bola de borracha no quintal para o cão lobo a apanhar, vinha e passava os braços em torno ao colo de dona Ester, a beijava no rosto e ficava com ela, vendo livros de figuras, aprendendo a ler e a desenhar as letras. Para tê-lo junto a si o maior tempo possível dona Ester e o marido resolveram ensinar ao filho as primeiras letras mesmo em casa. Um dia e os olhos de dona Ester se enchem de lágrimas veio a febre. Depois o pequeno caixão saiu pela porta e ela o olhava de olhos espantados, não podia compreender seu filho houvesse morrido.O retrato dele ampliado num quadro no seu quarto, mas uma cortina o cobre sempre, porque ela não gosta de rever a face do filho para não renovar sua angústia. Também roupas que ele usou estão todas trancadas na sua pequena mala jamais buliram nela. Mas agora dona Ester tira as chaves da sua caixa de jóias. E, lentamente, muito lentamente, se dirige para onde está a mala. Puxa uma cadeira na qual senta. Abre com mãos trêmulas a maleta. Mira as calças e blusas, a roupa de marinheiro, os pequenos pijamas e camisolas com que ele dormia. Aperta a roupa de marinheiro ao peito como se abraçasse seu filho. As lágrimas rebentam. Agora um menino pobre e órfão viera bater à sua porta. Depois da morte de seu filho ela não quisera ter outro, não gostava mesmo de ver e brincar com crianças para não avivar a dor das suas recordações. Mas um, pobre e órfão, aleijado e triste, que se dissera chamar Augusto como seu filho, batera em sua porta pedindo pão, pousada e carinho. Por isso ela tem coragem de abrir a mala onde guarda roupas que seu filho usou. Por isso tira esta roupa azul de marinheiro, a roupa da qual ele mais gostava. Porque para dona Ester seu filho voltou hoje na figura desta criança andrajosa e aleijada, sem pai, sem mãe. Seu filho voltou e suas lágrimas não são apenas de dor. Voltou seu filho macilento e esfomeado, com uma perna aleijada e vestido de farrapos. Mas em breve será novamente o Augusto alegre e feliz daqueles anos passados, e novamente virá e passará os braços em torno ao seu pescoço e lerá as grandes letras da cartilha. Dona Ester se levanta. Leva consigo a roupa azul de marinheiro. E é vestido com ela que o Sem-Pernas come o melhor almoço da sua vida. Se a roupa de marinheiro tivesse sido feita de propósito para ele não estaria tão bem. Estava perfeita no Sem-Pernas e quando ele se olhou no espelho da sala quase não se reconheceu. Estava lavado, a empregada tinha posto brilhantina no seu cabelo e perfume no seu rosto. A roupa de marinheiro era um a beleza. O Sem-Pernas se mirava no espelho. Passou a mão na cabeça, depois no peito alisando a roupa, sorriu pensando no Gato. Daria muito para que o Gato o visse tão elegante.Tinha também sapatos novos, mas a verdade é que os sapatos o desgostavam um pouco porque tinham um laço de fita, pareciam um pouco sapatos de mulher. O Sem-Pernas achava esquisito estar vestido de marinheiro com sapatos de mulher. Andou para o jardim, pois queria fumar, nunca tinha deixado de tragar o seu cigarro após o almoço. Por vezes não havia almoço, mas havia sempre uma ponta de cigarro ou de charuto. Ali era preciso cuidado, não podia fumar abertamente. Se o houvessem deixado na cozinha de mistura com a criadagem, como o deixavam nas outras casas onde penetrara para depois roubar, poderia fumar, conversar na língua de poucos termos dos Capitães da Areia. Mas desta vez o tinham lavado, vestido de novo, posto brilhantina no seu cabelo e perfume no rosto. Depois tinham lhe dado comida na sala de jantar. E durante o almoço a senhora conversara com ele como se ele fosse um menino bem criado. Agora mandara que ele brincasse no jardim, onde o gato amarelo que se chamava Berloque esquentava ao sol. O Sem-Pernas chega para um banco, tira do bolso o maço de cigarros baratos. Quando mudara a roupa não se esquecera dos cigarros. Acende um e começa a saborear as tragadas, pensando na sua nova vida. Muitas vezes já fizera aquilo: penetrar em casa de uma família como um menino pobre, órfão e aleijado e neste título passar os dias necessários para fazer um reconhecimento completo da casa, dos lugares onde guardávamos objetos de valor, das saídas fáceis para uma fuga. Depois os Capitães da Areia invadiam a casa numa noite, levavam os objetos valiosos, e no trapiche o Sem-Pernas gozava invadido por uma grande alegria, alegria da vingança. Porque naquelas casas, se o acolhiam, se lhe davam comida e dormida, era como cumprindo uma obrigação fastidiosa. Os donos da casa evitavam se aproximar dele, e o deixavam na sua sujeira, nunca tinham uma palavra boa para ele. Olhavam-no sempre como a perguntar quando ele iria. E muitas vezes a senhora que se comovera com a sua história, contada na porta em voz soluçante, e o acolhera, mostrava evidentes sinais de arrependimento. Para o Sem-Pernas elas o acolhiam de remorso. Porque o Sem-Pernas achava que eles eram todos culpados da situação de todas as crianças pobres. E odiava a todos, com um ódio profundo. Sua grande e quase única alegria era calcular o desespero das famílias após o roubo, ao pensar que aquele garoto esfomeado a quem tinham dado comida quem fizera o reconhecimento da casa e indicara a outras criar esfomeadas onde estavam os objetos de valor. Mas desta vez estava sendo diferente. Desta vez não o deixa na cozinha com seus molambos, não o puseram a dormir no quintal. Deram-lhe roupa, um quarto, comida na sala de jantar. Era como hóspede, era como um hóspede querido. E fumando o seu cigarro escondido o Sem-Pernas pergunta a si mesmo por que está se escondendo para fumar, o Sem-Pernas pensa sem compreender. Não compreende nada do que se passa. Sua cata está franzida. Lembra os dias da cadeia, a surra que lhe deram, os sonhos que nunca deixaram de persegui-lo. E, de súbito, tem medo de que nesta casa sejam bons para ele. Sim, um grande medo de que sejam bons para ele. Não sabe mesmo porque, mas tem medo. E levanta- se, sai do seu esconderijo e vai fumar bem por baixo da janela da senhora. Assim verão que é um menino perdido, que não merece um quarto, roupa nova, comida na sala de jantar. Assim o mandarão para a cozinha, ele poderá 1evar para diante sua obra de vingança, conservar o ódio no seu coração. Porque se esse ódio desaparecer, ele morrerá, não terá nenhum motivo para viver. E diante dos seus olhos passa a visão do homem de colete que vê os soldados a espancar o Sem- Pernas e ri numa gargalhada brutal. Isso há de impedir sempre o Sem-Pernas de ver o rosto bondoso de dona Ester, o gesto protetor das mãos do padre José Pedro, a solidariedade dos músculos grevistas do estivador João de Adão. Será sozinho e seu ódio alcança a todos, brancos e negros, homens e mulheres, ricos e pobres. Por isso teme que sejam bons para cons Pela tarde o dono da casa, Raul, chegou do seu escritório. Era advogado de muito nome, enriquecera na profissão, era catedrático na Faculdade de Direito, mas antes de tudo era um colecionador. Tinha uma boa galeria de quadros e tinha moedas antigas, obras raras de arte. O Sem-Pernas viu quando ele entrou. Neste momento o Sem-Pernas via as gravuras de um livro para crianças e ria sozinho do elefante tolo a quem o macaco enganava. Raul não o viu, subiu as escadas. Mas depois a empregada veio chamar o Sem-Pernas e o levou ao quarto de dona Ester. Raul ali estava de manga a de camisa, fumando um cigarro e olhou o menino com um sorriso divertido, já que o Sem-Pernas mostrava uma cara muito atrapalhada na entrada do quarto:
O Sem-Pernas entrou capengando, não tinha onde botar as mãos. Dona Ester falou com bondade:
O Sem-Pernas sentou-se na ponta de uma cadeira e ficou esperando. O advogado o estudava, mirando seu rosto, mas era com simpatia, e o Sem-Pernas preparava as respostas para as inevitáveis perguntas. Contou novamente a história inventada pela manhã, mas quando começou a chorar abundantes lágrimas o advogado mandou que ele parasse e se levantou, dirigindo-se à janela. O Sem-Pernas compreendeu que ele estava comovido, e este resultado da sua arte o fez ficar orgulhoso. Sorriu só para si. Mas agora o advogado se aproximava de dona Ester e a beijava na testa e depois nos lábios. O Sem-Pernas baixou os olhos. Raul andou até ele, botou a mão no seu ombro e falou:
O advogado o despedia com um gesto. O Sem-Pernas saiu, mas ainda viu Raul se aproximar de dona Ester e dizer:
Era a hora do crepúsculo, as luzes se acendiam e o Sem-Pernas pensou que nesta hora os Capitães da Areia percorriam a cidade procurando o que comer. Pena que no cinema não pudesse gritar quando o mocinho surrava o vilão, como fazia nas vezes que conseguira penetrar no galinheiro do Olímpia ou do cinema de Itapagipe. Ali, no Guarani, luxuoso e de cômodas cadeiras, tinha que ouvir o filme em silêncio e num momento que não se conteve e soltou um assovio, Raul o olhou. É verdade que sorria, mas também é certo que fez um gesto para que Sem-Pernas não assoviasse mais. Depois o levaram a tomar sorvete no bar que havia em frente ao cinema. O Sem- Pernas, enquanto tomava seu gelado, pensava em que ia cometendo uma irremediável tolice quando o advogado perguntara o que ele queria. Estivera para pedir uma cerveja bem geladinha. Mas se contivera em tempo e pedira o sorvete. No automóvel o advogado foi na frente guiando e o Sem-Pernas foi atrás com dona Ester, que conversava com ele. A conversa era difícil para o Sem-Pernas, que tinha que controlar sua terminologia que era escassa e repleta de palavrões. Dona Ester perguntava coisas de sua mãe, o Sem-Pernas respondia como podia, fazendo grande esforço para reter os detalhes que inventava para posteriormente cair em contradição. Por fim chegaram na casa da Graça e dona Ester conduziu o Sem-Pernas para o quarto em cima da garagem:
Ela se acercou dele e o beijou na face:
Saiu, cerrando a porta. O Sem-Pernas ficou parado, sem um gesto, sem responder sequer o boa noite, a mão no rosto, no lugar em que dona Ester o beijara. Não pensava, não via nada. Só a suave carícia do beijo, uma carícia como nunca tivera, uma carícia de mãe. Só a suave carícia no seu rosto. Era como se o mundo houvesse parado naquele momento do beijo e tudo houvesse mudado. Só havia no universo inteiro a sensação suave daquele beijo maternal na face do Sem- Pernas. Depois foi o horror dos sonhos da cadeia, o homem de colete que ria brutalmente, os soldados que surravam o Sem-Pernas, que corria com a perna aleijada em voltada saleta. Mas de repente chegou dona Ester e o homem de colete e os soldados morreram entre infinitas torturas, porque agora o Sem-Pernas estava vestido com uma roupa de marinheiro e tinha um chicote na mão como o mocinho do cinema. Oito dias se passaram. Pedro Bala por várias vezes já andara em frente da casa para saber notícias do Sem-Pernas, que tardava a voltar ao trapiche. Já havia tempo mais que suficiente para que o Sem-Pernas soubesse onde se quedavam todos os objetos facilmente transportáveis da casa e as saídas que podiam auxiliar a fuga. Mas em vez de ver o Sem-Pernas, Pedro Bala via era a empregada, que pensava que ele vinha por ela. Certo dia em que conversava com a empregada, Pedro Bala tocou com muito jeito no assunto do Sem-Pernas:
Pedro Bala sorriu, porque sabia que o Sem-Pernas, quando queria, se fazia passar pelo melhor menino do mundo. A empregada continuou: – É um pouco mais moço que você, mas é mesmo um menino. Não é assim um perdido como você, que até já dorme com mulher... – e ria para Pedro Bala.
Ela gostaria que fosse, e se bem desconfiasse muito que não, gostava que ele lhe dissesse aquilo. Se sentia não só como amante do menino, mas um pouco como mãe também.
De outra vez Pedro Bala conseguiu ver o Sem-Pernas. Este estava estirado no jardim o gato roncava ao seu lado, espiando um livro de figuras, e Pedro Bala ficou espantadíssimo quando o viu vestido com uma calça de casimira cinza e uma blusa de seda. Até o cabelo do Sem-Pernas estava penteado, e Pedro Bala quedou um momento boquiaberto, sem sequer assoviar para o Sem-Pernas. Afinal voltou a si e assoviou. O Sem-Pernas se pôs logo de pé, viu o Bala do outro lado da rua. Fez um sinal para que ele o esperasse, saiu pelo portão, após ver que ninguém da casa estava próximo. Pedro Bala andava para a esquina, e Sem-Pernas o acompanhou. Quando chegou perto, ainda mais se espantou Pedro Bala:
O Sem-Pernas fez uma cara de aborrecimento, mas Bala continuou:
fosse Don’Aninha, que deu beberagem a ele que botou ele em pé, tu não via mais ele. Tá mais magro que um espeto... E com essa notícia se despediu, dando mais uma vez pressa ao Sem-Pernas. O Sem-Pernas voltou a se estender no jardim. Mas agora não via as figuras do livro. Via era o Gringo. O Gringo fora um dos mais perseguidos pelo Sem-Pernas no grupo. Filho de árabes, falava com uma pronúncia esquisita, e isso dava lugar a piadas consecutivas do Sem-Pernas. O Gringo não era forte e nunca conseguira ser importante entre os Capitães da Areia, se bem Pedro Bala e Professor procurassem dar lugar a isso. Gostavam de ter entre eles um estrangeiro ou quase estrangeiro. Mas o Gringo se contentava com pequenos furtos, evitava os assaltos arriscados e ideava um baú cheio de bugigangas para vender nas ruas às criadas das casas ricas. O Sem Pernas o maltratava sem piedade, burlando dele, do seu falar arrevesado, da sua falta de coragem. Mas agora, deitado sobre a grama macia do jardim rico, vestido com boa roupa, penteado e com perfume, um livro de figuras ao lado, o Sem-Pernas pensava no Gringo quase morrendo, enquanto ele comia bem e vestia bem. Não só o Gringo estivera quase morrendo. Durante aqueles oito dias os Capitães da Areia continuaram mal vestidos, mal alimentados, dormindo sob a chuva no trapiche ou embaixo das pontes. Enquanto isso, o Sem-Pernas dormia em boa cama, comia boa comida, tinha até uma senhora que o beijava e o chamava de filho. Se sentiu como um traidor do grupo. Era igual àquele doqueiro do qual fala João de Adão cuspindo no chão e passando o pé em cima com desprezo. Aquele doqueiro que na greve grande se passara para o outro lado, para o lado dos ricos, furara a greve, fora contratar homens de fora para trabalhar nas docas. Nunca mais um homem do cais apertou sua mão, nunca mais um o tratou como amigo. E se para alguém o Sem-Pernas abria exceção no seu ódio, que abrangia o mundo todo, era para as crianças que formavam os Capitães da Areia. Estes eram seus companheiros, eram iguais a ele, eram as vítimas de todos os demais, pensava o Sem-Pernas. E agora sentia que os estava abandonando, que estava passando para o outro lado. Com este pensamento se sobressaltou, sentou-se. Não, ele não os trairia.Antes de tudo estava a lei do grupo, a lei dos Capitães da Areia. Os que a traíam eram expulsos e nada de bom os esperava no mundo. E nunca nenhum a havia traído do modo como o Sem-Pernas a ia trair. Para virar menino mimado, para virar uma daquelas crianças que eram eterno motivo de galhofa para eles. Não, não os trairia. Teriam bastado três dias para ele localizar os objetos de valor da casa. Mas a comida, a roupa, o quarto, e mais que a comida, a roupa e o quarto, o carinho de dona Ester tinham feito que ele passasse já oito dias. Tinha sido comprado por este carinho como o estivador fora comprado por dinheiro. Não, não trairia. Mas aí pensou se não ia trair dona Ester. Ela confiara nele. Ela também na sua casa tinha uma lei como os Capitães da Areia: só castigava quando havia erro, pagava o bem com o bem. O Sem-Pernas ia trair essa lei, ia pagar o bem com o mal. Lembrou-se que das outras vezes, quando dava o fora de uma casa para ela ser assaltada, era uma grande alegria que o invadia. Desta vez não tinha alegria nenhuma. Seu ódio para todos não desaparecera, é verdade. Mas abrira uma exceção para a gente daquela casa, porque dona Ester o chamava de filho e o beijava na face. O Sem-Pernas luta consigo mesmo. Gostaria de continuar naquela vida. Mas que adiantaria isso para os Capitães da Areia? E ele era um deles, nunca poderia deixar de ser um deles porque uma vez os soldados o prenderam e o surraram enquanto um homem de colete ria brutalmente. E o Sem-Pernas se decidiu. Mas olhou com carinho as janelas do quarto de dona Ester e ela, que o espiava, notou que ele chorava:
Só então o Sem-Pernas viu que estava mesmo chorando, limpou as lágrimas, mordeu a mão. Dona Ester chegava para junto dele:
E o trouxe para junto de si, sentou-se no banco, encostou a cabeça do Sem- Pernas no seu seio maternal.
Dona Ester o beijou na face onde as lágrimas corriam:
Então os lábios do Sem-Pernas se descerraram e ele soluçou, chorou muito encostado ao peito de sua mãe. E enquanto a abraçava e se deixava beijar, soluçava porque a ia abandonar e, mais que isso, a ia roubar. E ela talvez nunca soubesse que o Sem-Pernas sentia que ia roubar a si próprio também. Como não sabia que o choro dele, que os soluços dele eram um pedido de perdão. Os acontecimentos se precipitaram, porque Raul teve que fazer uma viagem ao Rio de Janeiro, a negócios importantes de advocacia. E o Sem-Pernas achou que não havia melhor ocasião para o assalto. Na tarde em que se foi, mirou a casa toda, acariciou o gato Berloque, conversou com a criada, olhou os livros de gravura. Depois foi ao quarto de dona Ester, disseque ia até o Campo Grande passear. Ela então lhe contou que Raul traria uma bicicleta do Rio para ele e então todas as tardes ele andaria nela pelo Campo Grande, em vez de passear a pé. O Sem- Pernas baixou os olhos, mas antes de sair veio até dona Ester e a beijou. Era a primeira vez que a beijava, e ela ficou muito alegre. Ele disse baixinho, arrancando as palavras de dentro de si:
Saiu e não voltou. Essa noite dormiu no seu canto no trapiche. Pedro Bala tinha ido com um grupo para a casa. Os outros tinham rodeado o Sem-Pernas, admirando suas roupas, seu cabelo assentado, o perfume que evolava do seu corpo. Mas o Sem-Pernas meteu o braço em um, foi resmungando para seu canto. E ali ficou mordendo as unhas, sem dormir, angustiado, até que Pedro Bala voltou com os outros, trazendo os resultados do assalto. Comunicou ao Sem- Pernas que fora a coisa mais canja do mundo, que ninguém dera fé na casa, que todos tinham continuado dormindo. Talvez que nem no dia seguinte descobrissem o roubo. E mostrava os objetos de ouro e de prata:
O Sem-Pernas fechava os olhos para não ver. Depois que todos foram dormir, ele se aproximou do Gato:
O Gato olhou cheio de espanto. A sua roupa era a melhor do grupo, sem dúvida. Mas era roupa velha, estava muito longe de valer a boa roupa de casimira que o Sem-Pernas vestia. Tá doido, pensou o Gato enquanto respondia:
Trocaram a roupa. O Sem-Pernas voltou ao seu canto, procurou dormir. Na rua vinha doutor Raul com dois guardas. Eram os mesmos soldados que o haviam espancado na cadeia. O Sem-Pernas corria, mas doutor Raul o apontava e os soldados o levavam para a mesma sala. A cena era a mesma de sempre: os soldados que se divertiam a fazê-lo correr com sua perna capengando e o espancavam e o homem de colete que ria. Só que na sala estava também dona Ester, que o olhava com os olhos tristes e dizia que ele não era mais seu filho, era um ladrão. E os olhos de dona Ester o faziam sofrer mais que as pancadas dos soldados, mais que o riso brutal do homem. Acordou molhado de suor, fugiu da noite do trapiche, a madrugada o encontrou vagando no areaL No outro dia, à noite, Pedro Bala viera trazer o dinheiro da sua parte no furto. Mas o Sem-Pernas o recusou sem dar explicações. Depois Volta Seca chegou com um jornal que trazia notícias de Lampião. Professor leu a notícia para Volta Seca e ficou vendo as outras coisas que o jornal trazia.Então chamou:
O Sem-Pernas veio. Outros vieram com ele e formaram um círculo. Professor disse:
Ontem desapareceu da casa número... da rua..., Graça, um filho dos donos da casa, chamado Augusto. Deve ter se perdido na cidade que pouco conhecia. É coxo de uma perna, tem treze anos de idade, é muito tímido, veste roupa de casimira cinza. A polícia o procura para o entregar aos seus pais aflitos, mas até agora não o encontrou.A família gratificará bem quem der noticias do pequeno Augusto e o conduz a sua casa. O Sem-Pernas ficou calado. Mordia o lábio. Professor disse:
Sem-Pernas fez que sim com a cabeça. Quando descobrissem o furto não o procurariam mais como a um filho desaparecido. Barandão fez uma cara de riso e gritou:
mamar a tu... Mas não disse mais nada, porque o Sem-Pernas já estava em cima dele e levantava o punhal. E esfaquearia sem dúvida o negrinho se João Grande e Volta Seca não o tirassem de cima dele. Barandão saiu amedrontado. O Sem-Pernas foi indo para o seu canto, um olhar de ódio para todos. Pedro B ala foi atrás dele, botou a mão em seu ombro:
você... Não se importe, não.
E rebentou em soluços, que deixaram os Capitães da Areia estupefatos. Só Pedro Bala e o Professor compreendiam, e este abanava as mãos porque não podia fazer nada. Pedro Bala puxava uma conversa comprida sobre um assunto muito diferente. Lá fora o vento corria sobre a areia e seu ruído era como uma queixa. Manhã como um quadroPedro Bala, enquanto sobe a ladeira da montanha, vai pensando que não existe nada melhor no mundo que andar assim, ao azar, nas ruas da Bahia.Algumas destas ruas são asfaltadas, mas a grande, a imensa maioria é calçada de pedras negras. Moças se debruçam nas janelas dos casarões antigos e ninguém pode saber se é uma costureira que romanticamente espera casar com noivo rico ou se é uma prostituta que o mira de um balcão velhíssimo, enfeitado apenas de flores. Entram mulheres de negros véus nas igrejas. O sol bate nas pedras ou no asfalto do calçamento, ilumina os telhados das casas. Na sacada de um sobradão, flores medram em pobres latas. São de diversas cores e o sol lhes dá seu diário alimento de luz. Os sinos da igreja da Conceição da Praia chamam as mulheres de véu que passam apressadas.No meio da ladeira um preto e um mulato estão curvados sobre uns dados que o preto acabou de jogar. Pedro Bala, ao passar, cumprimenta o negro:
Mas o mulato já atirou os dados e o negro se volta todo para o jogo. Pedro Bala continua seu caminho. O Professor vai com ele. Sua figura magra se atira para frente como se lhe fosse difícil vencer a ladeira. Mas sorri da festa do dia. Pedro Bala vira-se para ele e surpreende seu sorriso. A cidade está alegre, cheia de sol. Os dias da Bahia parecem dias de festa, pensa Pedro Bala, que se sente invadido também pela alegria. Assovia com força, bate risonhamente no ombro de Professor. E os dois riem, e logo a risada se transforma em gargalhada. No entanto, não têm mais que uns poucos níqueis no bolso, vão vestidos de farrapos, não sabem o que comerão. Mas estão cheios da beleza do dia e da liberdade de andar pelas ruas da cidade. E vão rindo sem ter do que, Pedro Bala com o braço passado no ombro de Professor. De onde estão podem ver o Mercado e o cais dos saveiros e mesmo o velho trapiche onde dormem. Pedro Bala se recosta no muro da ladeira e diz a Professor:
Continua com a voz áspera como se alguém o tivesse batido:
–... mas nunca pode ser um troço alegre, não... Professor parece não ter ouvido a interrupção de Pedro Bala. Agora está com os olhos longe e parece ainda mais fraco.
Tu sabe... Tudo com cara de fome, eu nem sei dizer. É um troço que sinto... Pedro Bala não estava mais espantado:
coisas vira, tudo vai ser de vice-versa...
Fez uma pausa, olhou Pedro Bala que o escutava, continuou:
Pedro Bala ficou pensativo. Olhava Professor como que pensando. Logo falou com um ar muito sério:
Saíram andando. Professor parecia ter perdido a alegria do dia. Como que ela se afastara para longe dele. Então Pedro Bala deu-lhe um soco de leve:
Professor riu. Pedro Bala riu também:
Tomou uma atitude de lutador, um braço estirado. Professor riu, Bala também riu, logo o riso se transformou em gargalhada. E só pararam de gargalhar para aderira um grupo de desocupados que se reunira em torno a um tocador de violão. O homem tocava e cantava uma moda da cidade da Bahia: “Quando ela disse adeus... meu peito em cruz transformou...” Eles aderiram. Pouco depois cantavam junto ao homem. E com eles cantavam todos e eram saveiristas, malandros, doqueiros, até uma prostituta cantava. O homem do violão estava todo entregue a sua música, não via mesmo ninguém. Se o homem não se levantasse para ir embora, ainda tocando seu violão e cantando, eles teriam se esquecido de continuar a caminhada para a cidade alta.Mas o homem foi embora levando a alegria da sua música. O grupo se dispersou, um vendedor de jornais passou apregoando os diários da manhã. Professor e Pedro Bala continuaram a subir a ladeira. Do largo do Teatro subiram para a rua Chile. Professor tirou o giz do bolso, sentou-se no passeio. Pedro Bala ficou a seu lado. Quando viram vir o casal, Professor começou a desenhar. Fez um desenho o mais rápido que pôde. O casal estava muito perto já, Professor agora fazia as caras. A moça sorria, sem dúvida seriam noivos. Mas iam tão entretidos na sua conversa que nem notaram o desenho. Foi preciso que Pedro Bala se adiantasse até eles:
O homem olhou para Pedro Bala e já ia dizer um desaforo quando a moça viu o desenho do Professor e chamou sua atenção:
O rapaz espiou e sorriu. Voltou-se para Pedro Bala:
Professor dava os últimos retoques no bigode elegantíssimo do homem. Depois passou a aperfeiçoar a figura da moça. Ela então ficou no jeito de quem estava posando.Riam os dois, ela se dependurava no braço do amado. O homem puxou a carteira de níqueis, atirou uma prata de dois mil-réis, que Pedro Bala apanhou no ar. Seguiram. O desenho ficou no meio do passeio.Umas senhoritas que vinham das compras o viram de longe e uma disse:
Pedro Bala e Professor ouviram e abriram na gargalhada. E abraçados seguiram juntos na liberdade das ruas. Quase junto do palácio do governo pararam novamente. Professor ficou de giz na mão esperando que saísse do ponto do bonde um pato. Pedro Bala assoviava ao seu lado. Breve teriam o dinheiro para um bom almoço e ainda para levar um presente para Clara, a amante do Querido-de-Deus, que fazia anos naquele dia. Uma velhota deu dez tostões por seu desenho. A velhota era feia e Professor tinha conservado sua feiúra no desenho. Pedro Bala notou:
Professor riu. Assim passaram a manhã, Professor fazendo a cara dos que vinham pela rua, Pedro Bala recolhendo as pratas ou os níqueis que jogavam. Quase meio-dia veio um homem que fumava numa piteira que parecia cara. Pedro Bala correu para avisar ao Professor:
Professor começou a desenhar a figura magra do homem. A piteira longa, os cabelos encaracolados que apareciam sob o chapéu. O homem trazia também um livro na mão e Professor teve um desejo irresistível de fazer o desenho do homem lendo o livro. O homem ia passando, Pedro Bala chamou sua atenção:
O homem tirou a longa piteira da boca, perguntou a Bala:
Pedro Bala apontou o desenho em que o Professor trabalhava. O homem aparecia sentado se bem não houvesse cadeira nem nada estava sentado no ar, fumando sua piteira e lendo seu livro. O cabelo encaracolado voava sob o chapéu. O homem examinou o desenho atentamente, foi espiá-lo em diversos ângulos, nada dizia. Quando o Professor deu o trabalho por concluído, ele perguntou:
O homem estava um pouco incrédulo, mas sem dúvida recordou outros exemplos no fundo da sua memória:
Voltou ao examinar o desenho. Tirou uma longa fumaçada da sua piteira. Os dois meninos olhavam para a piteira encantados. O homem perguntou ao Professor:
Professor coçou a cabeça como se fosse uma coisa difícil de responder. Pedro Bala quis falar, mas nada disse, estava atarantado. Por fim Professor explicou:
Pedro Bala esperava o níquel, mesmo porque o guarda já os olhava desconfiado da esquina. Professor espiava a piteira do homem longa, desenhada a fogo, uma maravilha.Mas o homem continuou:
Pedro Bala não deu tempo a que Professor respondesse. Foi ele quem falou:
O homem meteu a mão no bolso e tirou um cartão:
alguma coisa por você. Professor tomou o cartão. O guarda se encaminhava para ele Pedro Bala se despediu:
O homem ia puxando a carteira de níqueis, mas viu o olhar do Professor na sua piteira. Jogou o cigarro fora, entregou a piteira ao menino.
Mas os dois desabaram pela rua Chile, porque o guarda já estava quase junto a eles. O homem olhava meio sem compreender quando ouviu a voz do guarda:
O homem fez que não com a cabeça e olhou a rua. Mas não havia nem rastro dos dois meninos. O homem agradeceu ao guarda, afirmando mais uma vez que não tinha sido furtado, e desceu a rua, murmurando:
Professor exibia a piteira. Estava agora nos fundos de um arranha-céu, onde existia um restaurante chique. Pedro Bala sabia como conseguir do cozinheiro os restos do menu. Esperavam o almoço na rua deserta. Depois que comeram, Pedro Bala ofereceu cigarros e o Professor se dispôs a fumar na piteira que o homem lhe dera. Procurou limpá-la:
Como não achou coisa melhor com que limpar, fez do cartão do homem um palito e o enfiou na piteira. Quando terminou, jogou o cartão na rua. Pedro Bala perguntou:
Mas Pedro Bala se fez sério:
Professor baixou a cabeça:
Quem é que quer saber da gente? Quem? Só ladrão, só ladrão... – e sua voz se elevava, agora gritava com ódio. Pedro Bala fez que sim com a cabeça, sua mão soltou o cartão, que caiu na sarjeta. Agora não riam mais e estavam tristes na alegria da manhã cheia de sol, da manhã igual a um quadro de um pintor das Belas-Artes. Operários passavam para o trabalho, após o almoço pobre, e era tudo que eles viam, que eles conseguiam ver na manhã. AlastrimOmolu mandou a bexiga negra para a cidade. Mas lá em cima os homens ricos se vacinaram, e Omolu era um deus das florestas da África, não sabia destas coisas de vacina. E a varíola desceu para a cidade dos pobres e botou gente doente, botou negro cheio de chaga em cima da cama. Então vinham os homens da Saúde Pública, metiam os doentes num saco, leva para o lazareto distante. As mulheres ficavam chorando, porque sabiam que eles nunca mais voltariam. Omolu tinha mandado a bexiga negra para a cidade alta, para a cidade dos ricos. Omolu não sabia da vacina, Omolu era um deus das florestas da África, que podia saber de vacinas e coisas científicas? Mas como a bexiga já estava solta e era a terrível bexiga negra, Omolu teve que deixar que ela descesse para a cidade dos pobres. Já que a soltara, tinha que deixar que ela realizasse sua obra. Mas como Omolu tinha pena dos seus filhinhos pobres, tirou a força da bexiga negra, virou em alastrim, que é uma bexiga branca e tola, quase um sarampo. Apesar disto, os homens da Saúde Pública vinham e levavam os doentes para o lazareto. Ali as famílias não podiam ir visitá-los, eles não tinham ninguém, só a visita do médico. Morriam sem ninguém saber e quando um conseguia voltar era mirado como um cadáver que houvesse ressuscitado. Os jornais falavam da epidemia de varíola e da necessidade da vacina. Os candomblés batiam noite e dia, em honra a Omolu, para aplacar a fúria de Omolu. O pai-de-santo Paim, do Alto do Abacaxi, preferido de Omolu, bordou uma toalha branca de seda, com lantejoulas, para oferecer a Omolu e aplacar sua raiva. Mas Omolu não quis, Omolu lutava contra a vacina. Nas casas pobres as mulheres choravam. De medo do alastrim, de medo do lazareto. Almiro foi o primeiro dos Capitães da Areia que caiu com alastrim. Uma noite, quando o negrinho Barandão o procurou no seu canto para fazer o amor aquele amor que Pedro Bala proibira no trapiche, Almiro lhe disse:
Mostrou os braços já cheios de bolhas a Barandão:
Barandão era um negrinho corajoso, todo o grupo sabia disto. Mas da bexiga, da moléstia de Omolu, Barandão tinha um medo doido, um medo que muitas raças africanas tinham acumulado dentro dele. E sem se preocupar que descobrissem suas relações sexuais com Almiro saiu gritando entre os grupos:
Os meninos foram se levantando aos poucos e se afastando receosos do lugar onde estava Almiro. Este começou a soluçar. Pedro Bala não tinha chegado ainda. Professor, o Gato e João Grande também andavam por fora. Daí ter sido o Sem-Pernas quem domino a situação. O Sem-Pernas nestes últimos tempos andava cada vez mais arredio, quase não falava com ninguém. Fazia espantosas burlas de todo mundo, por tudo puxava uma briga, só respeitava mesmo Pedro Bala. Pirulito rezava por ele mais que por nenhum, e por vezes pensava que Satanás tinha se metido no corpo do Sem-Pernas. O padre José Pedro era paciente com ele, mas também do padre o Sem-Pernas se afastara. Não queria saber de ninguém, conversa em que ele se metia era conversa que terminava em briga. Quando o Sem-Pernas passou entre os grupos, todos se afastaram. Quase o temiam tanto quanto à bexiga. O Sem-Pernas tinha arranjado por aqueles dias um cachorro ao qual se dedicava inteiramente. A princípio, quando o cão aparecera no trapiche, esfomeado, Sem-Pernas o maltratou quanto pôde. Mas terminou por acarinhá-lo e tomar para si. Agora como que vivia inteiramente para o cachorro. E por isso voltou só para levar o cão, que o acompanhara, para longe de Almiro. Depois andou novamente para onde estavam os menino. Estes cercavam Almiro de longe. Apontavam as bolhas que apareciam no peito do menino. Antes de tudo, Sem-Pernas falou com sua voz fanhosa para Barandão:
Barandão o olhou assustado. Depois, Sem-Pernas falou para todos, apontando Almiro com o dedo:
Todos o olhavam, esperando o que ele diria. Almiro soluçava, as mãos no rosto, encolhido na parede. Sem-Pernas falava:
Almiro fazia que não, que não, e seus soluços enchiam o trapiche. 0 negrinho Barandão tremia, Pirulito clamava que era castigo de Deus por causa dos pecados deles, os outros não sabiam que fazer. Sem-Pernas se preparava para forçar sua idéia. Pirulito se abraçou com um quadro de Nossa Senhora e disse:
Alguns juntaram as mãos e Pirulito chegou a iniciar um padre-nosso. Mas Sem- Pernas o afastou com uma das mãos:
Pirulito ficou rezando em voz baixa ainda atracado com o santo. Parecia um quadro estranho. Ao fundo, Almiro soluçava e dizia que não. Pirulito rezava, os outros estavam indecisos, não sabiam o que fazer. Barandão tremia de medo, pensando que estava contagiado. Sem-Pernas voltou a falar:
Como via que os outros ainda estavam irresolutos, marchou para o lado de Almiro e estendeu o pé para lhe dar uma pancada:
Mas neste instante uma mão o pegou e o sacudiu longe. Volta Seca se plantou entre Almiro e o Sem-Pernas. O mulato levava um revólver na mão e os seus olhos fuzilavam:
Volta Seca ficou diante de Almiro com o revólver na mão. Almiro soluçava, e mais alto gritava quando olhava as bolhas que se estendiam pelo seu corpo. Pirulito rezava, pedia a Deus que voltasse a ser suprema bondade, não fosse suprema justiça. Depois Pirulito se lembrou de chamar o padre José Pedro. Escapuliu pela porta do trapiche, se dirigiu à casa do padre. Mas pelo caminho ainda ia rezando, os olhos dilatados cheios do temor de Deus. Pedro Bala chegou acompanhado do Professor e de João Grande. Voltavam de um negócio que tinham resolvido bem e comentavam o sucesso entre gargalhadas. O Gato tinha ido com eles, mas não voltara. Ficara em casa de Dalva. Os três entraram no trapiche e a primeira coisa que enxergaram foi Volta Seca com o revólver na mão.
Sem-Pernas se levantou do seu canto, o cachorro o acompanhou:
apontava Almiro. – Aquele fresco tá com a bexiga... João Grande se encolheu. Pedro Bala olhou Almiro, o Professor andou para onde esta Volta Seca. O mulato não largava o revólver. Pedro perguntou então:
O menino inclinou a cabeça e rebentou em soluços. Sem-Pernas gritou:
que todo mundo fica sabendo onde a gente se acoita. Só tem mesmo que deixar ele numa rua onde passe gente. Vamos fazer, tu queira ou não... Pedro Bala gritou:
Sem-Pernas saiu murmurando. O cachorro veio lamber seus pés, mas ele deu-lhe um pontapé. Logo depois se arrependeu, porém, e começou a acarinhar o cão, enquanto espiava os outros. Pedro Bala andou até Almiro. João Grande queria vencer o medo e ir para junto de Almiro também. Mas o medo da bexiga era uma coisa enorme nele, era quase maior que sua bondade. Só Professor estava junto de Pedro Bala. Este disse a Almiro: Almiro mostrou os braços cheios de bolhas. Professor disse:
Almiro mostrou os braços cheios de bolhas. Professor disse:
Pedro Bala ficou pensando. Ia um silêncio pelo trapiche. João Grande conseguiu vencer o medo e se aproximou. Mas ia com passo arrastados. Parecia violentar sua própria vontade para chegar até junto de Almiro. Foi quando entrou Pirulito acompanhado do padre José Pedro. O padre deu boas noites e perguntou quem era o doente Pirulito apontou Almiro, o padre se dirigiu para ele, chegou perto, pegou no braço, examinou. Depois disse a Pedro Bala:
O Sem-Pernas se levantou outra vez, veio para junto deles:
O padre mirou Pedro Bala com os olhos abertos. Aquele meninos viviam a lhe dar surpresas, sempre mais adiantados em inteligência do que ele pensava. E, no fundo, o padre sabia que eles tinham razão.
Pedro Bala ficou confuso. Passado um momento, disse:
O padre bem sabia que era verdade, calou. Foi quando João Grande falou:
Não quero ir para lá... – soluçou Almiro. – Eu tinha fugido. Pedro Bala se aproximou dele e falou com voz muito mansa:
Havia uma lei que obrigava os cidadãos a denunciarem à Saúde Pública os casos de varíola que conhecessem, para o imediato recolhimento dos variolosos aos lazaretos. O padre José Pedro conhecia a lei, mas, mais uma vez, ficou com os Capitães da Areia contra a lei. Pedro Bala foi à casa de Almiro, a mãe do menino ficou feito louca, era uma lavadeira amigada com um pequeno lavrador além da Cidade de Palha. Foram buscar Almiro e o padre o visitou e depois levou um médico. Mas acontece que o médico estava cavando um lugar na Saúde Pública e denunciou o caso de varíola. Almiro foi mesmo levado para o lazareto e o padre ficou em maus lençóis, pois o médico que se dizia livre-pensador, mas em verdade era espírita denunciou o padre também como encobridor do caso. As autoridades não agiram contra o padre, mas se queixaram ao arcebispado. E o padre José Pedro foi chamado à presença do Cônego Secretário do Arcebispado.Ficou amedrontado. Pesadas cortinas, cadeiras de alto espaldar, um retrato de Santo Inácio numa parede. Na outra, um crucifixo. Uma grande mesa, custosos tapetes. O padre José Pedro entrou na sala com o coração batendo muito. Não tinha absoluta certeza do motivo por que recebera aquela comunicação do Cônego Secretário do Arcebispado para comparecer ao Palácio Episcopal. No primeiro momento lembrou-se da paróquia que esperava inutilmente havia dois anos. Seria sua paróquia? Sorriu com alegria. Então, sim, iria ser um verdadeiro sacerdote, iria ter almas entregues a si, à sua guia. Serviria a Deus. Mas certa tristeza o invadiu: e suas crianças, as crianças abandonadas das ruas da Bahia, principalmente os Capitães da Areia, como ficariam? Ele era um dos seus poucos amigos. Nunca um outro padre se voltara para aqueles meninos. Se contentavam em ir celebrar de quando em vez uma missa no reformatório, o que os tornava mais antipáticos ao meninos porque atrasava o magro café. O padre José Pedro, enquanto esperava sua paróquia, se dedicara aos meninos abandonados.Não podia dizer que os resultados tivessem sido grandes. Mas era preciso compreender que ele estava fazendo uma experiência, que muita vezes tinha que voltar atrás.Fazia pouco tempo que o padre captar de todo a confiança dos meninos. Estes já o tratavam como amigo, mesmo quando não o levavam a sério como sacerdote. O padre tiver de passar por cima de muita coisa para conseguir a confiança de Capitães da Areia. Mas José Pedro pensava que só Pirulito e a sua vocação pagavam a pena. O padre tivera que fazer muita coisa contra o que lhe haviam ensinado. Pactuara mesmo com coisa que a Igreja condenaria. Mas era o único jeito... Aí o padre lembrou-seque bem podia ser por causa daquilo que o haviam chamado. Devia ter sido por aquilo. Muitas beatas já murmuravam por causa das suas relações com as crianças que viviam do furto. E havia aquele caso de Almiro. Devia ser por aquilo. O primeiro sentimento do padre José Pedro quando descobriu o motivo da comunicação foi um grande temor. Ia ser castigado com certeza, perderia toda esperança de uma paróquia. E o padre José Pedro necessitava de uma paróquia. Sustentava uma mãe velha, uma irmã na Escola Normal. Logo depois pensou que muito possivelmente tudo o que fizera fora errado, seus superiores não aprovariam. E, no Seminário, lhe tinham ensinado a obedecer. Mas pensou nos meninos. Na sua memória passaram as figuras de Pirulito, Pedro Bala, Professor, Sem-Pernas, Boa-Vida, o Gato. Era preciso salvar aqueles pequeninos... As crianças eram a maior ambição de Cristo. Devia se fazer tudo para salvar aquelas crianças. Não era culpa deles se estavam perdidos... O Cônego entrou. Nos seus pensamentos o padre nem vira que muitos minutos de espera tinham se passado. Não viu tampouco quando o Cônego entrou com um passo manso.Era alto e muito magro, anguloso, com a batina muito limpa, os raros cabelos que lhe restavam muito bem penteados. Os lábios tinham uma linha dura. Um rosário descia-lhe em torno ao pescoço. Se bem sua figura desse uma impressão de pureza, essa impressão não fazia seus traços mais doces. Não havia nenhuma simpatia humana na sua figura, nos seus traços duros. Como que a pureza era uma couraça que o afastava do mundo. Diziam que era inteligentíssimo, grande orador sacro, célebre pela rigidez dos seus costumes. Ali estava parado diante do padre José Pedro, olhando com olhos observadores a figura baixa do padre, a sua batina suja e remendada em dois lugares, o seu ar de medo, a falta de inteligência que de mistura com a bondade se refletia na cara do padre. Estudou o padre uns poucos minutos. O bastante para penetrar a fundo na alma sem complicações de José Pedro. Tossiu. O padre o viu, levantou-se, beijou humildemente sua mão:
Olhava com os olhos sem expressão o padre. Sentou-se, cruzou as mãos com grande cuidado, afastou sua reluzente batina da batina suja do padre José Pedro. Sua voz contrastava com sua pessoa. Podia-se dizer que era uma voz doce, quase feminina, se não fosse um acento de decisão que a cada passo surgia nela. O padre José Pedro baixou a cabeça e esperou que o Cônego falasse. Este começou:
Padre José Pedro quis figurar uma cara de quem não entendia. Mas a malícia era superior à sua inteligência e naquele momento ele pensava nos Capitães da Areia.O Cônego sorriu ligeiramente.
O padre olhou com uns olhos abertos, mas logo baixou cabeça:
O padre José Pedro ouviu com pavor. Era o que ele temia. Os seus superiores, aqueles que tinham inteligência para compreender os desejos de Deus, não estavam de acordo com os métodos que ele empregara junto aos Capitães da Areia. Vinha um temor de dentro dele, não propriamente um temor do Cônego, do arcebispo mas um temor de ter ofendido a Deus. E até suas mãos tremiam ligeiramente. A voz do Cônego retomou sua doçura. Era como uma voz de mulher, doce e suave, mas que negava a um homem suas carícias:
os olhos na esperança de que o senhor conhecesse seu erro e se emendasse... Olhou o padre com olhos duros. José Pedro baixou a cabeça.
Fuzilou o padre com os olhos. Mas desta vez José Pedro não baixou a cabeça, apenas repetiu:
O padre José Pedro sabia daquilo. Não era preciso que lhe repetissem que fora um dos piores alunos do Seminário em matéria de estudos. Por isso mesmo tinha tanto medo de ter errado, de ter ofendido a Deus. O Cônego devia ter razão, era muito mais inteligente, estava muito mais próximo de Deus, que é a suprema inteligência. O Cônego fez um gesto com a mão, como quem relegava para longe aquele incidente da viúva, e a sua voz se fez doce novamente:
O padre não tentou negar:
O padre José Pedro tinha confiança na bondade de Deus. Muitas vezes pensara que Deus aprovava o que ele estava fazendo. Agora pensava isto também. Aquele pensamento tinha enchido seu coração de repente. Levantou o busto, fixou a vista no Cônego:
O padre José Pedro tentou explicar:
O padre José Pedro se sentiu novamente em dúvida. Mas elevou o pensamento a Deus, voltou parte da sua confiança:
O senhor é um comunista, um inimigo da Igreja... O padre o olhou horrorizado. O Cônego levantou-se, estendeu a mão para o padre:
Virou as costas ao padre e foi saindo. O padre José Pedro deu dois passos até ele, falou com voz estrangulada:
Mas o padre ainda ficou parado uns minutos, querendo dizer alguma coisa. Mas não dizia nada, estava como que apatetado, olhando a porta por onde o Cônego tinha saído. Naquele momento não podia pensar em nada. Estava cômico com a mão ainda estendida, o corpo meio caído para um lado, a batina suja e remendada, os olhos abertos, apavorados, os lábios tremendo como que querendo falar. As pesadas cortinas impediam que a luz entrasse na sala. O padre ainda se demorou na obscuridade. Um comunista... Uma orquestra vagabunda, porém afinada, tocava uma velha valsa na rua: “Fiquei sem alegria, senhor meu Deus...” O padre José Pedro ia encostado à parede. O Cônego dissera que ele não podia compreender os desígnios de Deus. Não tinha inteligência, estava falando igual a um comunista. Era aquela palavra que mais perseguia o padre. De todos os púlpitos todos os padres tinham falado contra aquela palavra. E agora ele... O Cônego era muito inteligente, estava próximo de Deus pela inteligência, era-lhe fácil ouvir a voz de Deus. Ele estava errado, perdera aqueles dois anos de tanto trabalho.Pensara levar tantas crianças a Deus... Crianças extraviadas... Será que elas tinham culpa? Deixai vir a mim as criancinhas... Cristo... Era uma figura radiosa e moça. Os sacerdotes também disseram que ele era um revolucionário. Ele queria as crianças... Ai de quem faça mal a uma criança... A viúva Santos era uma protetora da Igreja... Será que ela também ouvia a voz de Deus? Dois anos perdidos...Fazia concessões, sim, fazia. Senão, como tratar com os Capitães da Areia? Não eram crianças iguais às outras... Sabiam tudo, até os segredos do sexo. Eram como homens, se bem fossem crianças... Não era possível tratá-los como aos meninos que vão ao colégio dos jesuítas fazer a primeira comunhão. Aqueles têm mãe, pai, irmãs, padre s confessores e roupas e comida, têm tudo... Mas não seria ele quem podia dar lições ao Cônego... O Cônego sabia de tudo, era muito inteligente. Podia ouvira voz de Deus... Estava próximo de Deus... Não foi dos alunos mais brilhantes... Tinha sido dos piores... Deus não ia falar a um padre ignorante... Ouvia João de Adão. Um comunista como João de Adão... Mas os comunistas são maus, querem acabar tudo... João de Adão era um homem bom... Um comunista... E Cristo? Não, não podia pensar que Cristo fosse um comunista... O Cônego devia entender melhor que um pobre padre de batina suja... O Cônego era inteligente e Deus é a suprema inteligência... Pirulito queria ser padre. Queria ser padre, sim, a sua vocação era verdadeira. Mas pecava todos os dias, roubava, assaltava. Não era culpa deles... Está falando como um comunista... Por que este vai num automóvel, fuma um charuto? Falando como um comunista... O Cônego disse, será que Deus o perdoa? O padre José Pedro vai encostado à parede. As últimas notas da orquestra distante chegam aos seus ouvidos. Os olhos do padre estão esbugalhados. Sim, padre José Pedro, Deus às vezes fala aos mais ignorantes... Aos mais ignorantes... Ele era ignorante... Mas, Deus, ouvi... São uns pobres meninos... Que sabem eles do bem e do mal? Se ninguém nunca lhes ensinou nada? Nunca u’a mão de mãe nas suas cabeças. Uma palavra boa de um pai. Senhor, eles não sabem o que fazem...Por isso estive com eles, fiz como eles queriam muitas vezes... O padre aperta as mãos, as eleva para o céu. Será que um comunista age assim? Dar um pouco de conforto àquelas pequenas almas. Salvá-las, melhorar seus destinos... Antes dali só saíam ladrões, batedores de carteira, vigaristas, os melhores eram os malandros... A profissão mais digna... Queria que agora saíssem homens para o trabalho, honestos, dignos... Tinha que ir aos poucos... Do reformatório saíam piores... Não é com castigo brutal, Deus, ouvi... Lá o castigo é brutal... Só com paciência, com bondade... Cristo também pensava assim... Por que como um comunista?... Deus pode falar a um ignorante... Abandonar as crianças? A paróquia está perdida... Mãe velha que soluçará... E a carreira da irmã na Escola Normal? Também ela quer ensinar a crianças... Mas serão outras crianças, crianças com livros, com pai, com mãe... Não serão iguais a estas abandonadas na rua, dormindo sob a lua, nas pontes, nos trapiches... Não pode abandoná-las. Com quem estará Deus? Com o Cônego ou com o pobre padre? A viúva... Não, Deus está com o padre... Está com o padre... Sou muito ignorante para ouvir a voz de Deus... Se esconde na porta de uma igreja. Mas por vezes Deus fala aos ignorantes... Sai da porta da igreja, continua a caminhada encostado na parede. Continuará, sim. Se estiver errado, Deus o perdoará... As boas intenções não desculpam os maus atos. Mas Deus é a suprema bondade... Continuará... Os Capitães da Areia talvez não dêem só ladrões... E não seria uma grande alegria para Cristo?... Sim, Cristo sorri. É uma figura radiosa. Sorri o padre José Pedro. Obrigado, meu Deus, obrigado. O padre ajoelha na rua, levanta as mãos para o céu. Mas olha a gente que sorri. Se põe de pé espantado, salta num bonde cheio de vergonha. Um homem comenta:
Todos riem no ponto de bondes. Boa-Vida meteu a unha negra, rasgou a bolha. Depois espiou o braço: estava cheio. Por isso sentia tanto calor, um amolecimento no corpo. Era a febre da bexiga.A cidade pobre estava assolada de bexiga. Os médicos diziam que a epidemia já estava declinando, mas ainda assim eram muitos os casos, todos os dias ia gente para o lazareto. Gente que não voltava, pensou Boa-Vida. Até Almiro, por cuja causa se armara tão grande barulho no trapiche, fora para o lazareto. E não voltara... Era um menino bonito. Havia quem dissesse que ele e Barandão... Mas não era ruim, não aborrecia ninguém. Sem- Perna armara um escândalo. Depois que soubera que ele morrera ficara ainda mais retraído, parecia o culpado da morte de Almiro. Não conversava com ninguém. Só com o cachorro que arranjara.
Acendeu um cigarro. Andou para o trapiche. Só o Professor estava. Àquelas horas da tarde era difícil que estivesse alguém no trapiche. Professor viu quando ele entrou:
Boa-Vida jogou um. Chegou no seu canto, fez uma trouxa com seus trapos. Professor ficou espiando aquele movimento:
Boa-Vida andou até ele com a trouxa debaixo do braço:
O mulato riu:
Professor olhou os braços cheios de bolhas, o peito.
Professor calou-se. Queria dizer muita coisa. O mulato estava na sua frente, a trouxa debaixo do braço cheio de bolha de bexiga. Boa Vida falou:
Boa-Vida fez que sim, saíram do trapiche. Boa-Vida olhou a cidade, fez um gesto com a mão. Era como um adeus. Boa-Vida era malandro e ninguém ama sua cidade como os malandros. Olhou o Professor:
Seu vulto desapareceu no areal. Professor ficou com as palavras presas, um nó na garganta. Mas também achava bonito Boa-Vida andar assim para a morte para não contaminar os outros. Os homens assim são os que têm uma estrela no lugar do coração. E quando morrem o coração fica no céu, diz o Querido-de-Deus. Boa-Vida era um menino, não era um homem. Mas já tinha uma estrela no lugar do coração. Já desapareceu o seu vulto. E então a certeza de que não mais verá seu amigo encheu o coração do Professor. A certeza de que o outro ia para a morte. Nas macumbas em honra de Omolu, o povo negro, castigado com a bexiga, cantava: “Cabono, aziela engoma! Quero vê couro zoa! Omolu vai pro sertão Bexiga vai espalha.” Omolu espalhara a bexiga na cidade. Era uma vingança contra a cidade dos ricos. Mas os ricos tinham a vacina, que sabia Omolu de vacinas? Era um pobre deus das florestas d’África. Um deus dos negros pobres. Que podia saber de vacinas? Então a bexiga desceu e assolou o povo de Omolu. Tudo que Omolu pôde fazer foi transformar a bexiga de negra em alastrim, bexiga branca e tola. Assim mesmo morrera negro, morrera pobre. Mas Omolu dizia que não fora o alastrim que matara. Fora o lazareto. Omolu só queria com o alastrim marcar seus filhinhos negros. O lazareto é que os matava. Mas as macumbas pediam que ele levasse a bexiga da cidade, levasse para os ricos latifundiários do sertão. Eles tinham dinheiro, léguas e léguas de terra, mas não sabiam tampouco da vacina. O Omolu diz que vai pro sertão. E os negros, os ogãs, as filhas e pais-de-santo cantam: “Ele é mesmo nosso pai e é quem pode nos ajudar...” Omolu promete ir. Mas para que seus filhos negros não esqueçam avisa no seu cântico de despedida: “Ora, adeus, ó meus filhinhos, Qu’eu vou e torno a vortá...” E numa noite que os atabaques batiam nas macumbas, numa noite de mistério da Bahia, Omolu pulou na máquina da Leste Brasileira e foi para o sertão de Juazeiro.A bexiga foi com ele. Boa-Vida voltou magro, a roupa dançando no seu corpo. A cara agora estava toda picada. Os outros o olharam ainda com receio quando naquela noite ele entrou no trapiche. Mas Professor andou logo para ele:
Boa-Vida sorriu. Vinham apertar a mão dele, Pedro Bala lhe deu um abraço:
Até Sem-Pernas veio, João Grande ficou junto de Boa-Vida. 0 mulato olhou os amigos. Pediu um cigarro. Sua mão estava descarnada, o rosto ossudo. Ficou calado, olhando com amor o velho trapiche, os meninos, o cachorro que estava deitado no colo do Sem-Pernas. Então João Grande perguntou:
Boa-Vida se voltou rápido. Seu rosto tomou uma expressão amarga de desgosto. Demorou um pouco a responder. Depois as palavras saíram com dificuldade:
Não achou mais que dizer. Sem-Pernas perguntou entre dentes:
Olhou como se pedisse que não lhe perguntassem mais nada. João Grande disse para os outros:
Boa-Vida apoiou com um gesto da mão. Disse baixinho:
Professor olhou o peito de Boa-Vida. Estava todo picado da varíola. Mas no lugar do coração Professor viu uma estrela. Uma estrela no lugar do coração. DestinoOcuparam a mesa do canto. O gato puxou o barulho. Mas nem Pedro Bala, nem João Grande, nem Professor, tampouco Boa-Vida se interessaram. Esperavam o Querido-de-Deus na Porta do Mar. As mesas estavam cheias. Muito tempo a Porta do Mar andara sem fregueses. A varíola não deixava. Agora que ela tinha ido embora, os homens comentavam as mortes. Alguém falou no lazareto. É uma desgraça ser pobre, disse um marítimo. Numa mesa pediram cachaça. Houve um movimento de copo no balcão. Um velho então disse:
Pedro Bala levantou a cabeça, Professor ouviu sorridente. Mas João Grande e Boa-Vida pareciam apoiar as palavras do velho, que repetiu:
Olhou para todos. O velho calou e também olhava com respeito. A confiança foi de novo chegando para todos. Lá fora um violão começou a tocar. Noite da grande paz, da grande paz dos teus olhos Filha de BexiguentoA música já recomeçara no morro. Os malandros voltavam a tocar violão, a cantar modinhas, a inventar sambas que depois vendiam aos sambistas célebres da cidade.Na venda de Deoclécio novamente ficava um grupo todas as tardes. Durante algum tempo tudo cessara no morro para dar lugar ao choro e lamentações das mulheres e crianças.Os homens passavam de cabeça baixa para as suas casas ou para o trabalho. E os caixões negros de adultos, os caixões brancos de virgens, os pequenos caixões de crianças desciam as ásperas ladeiras do morro para o cemitério distante. Isso quando não eram sacos que desciam com os variolosos ainda vivos que eram levados para o lazareto.A família chorava como choraria a um morto, pela certeza de que eles não voltariam jamais. Nem a música de um violão. Nem a voz cheia de um negro cortava então a tristeza do morro. Só a reza das sentinelas, o choro convulsivo das mulheres. Assim estava o morro quando Estêvão foi levado para o lazareto. Não voltou, certa tarde Margarida soube que ele morrera por lá. Nesta tarde ela já estava com febre.Mas o alastrim parecia ser dos mais mansos no corpo da lavadeira e ela escondeu de todos a notícia, conseguiu não ser metida num saco. Aos poucos foi melhorando. Os dois filhos andavam pela casa, fazendo o que ela mandava. Zé Fuinha era um bocado inútil, ainda não sabia fazer nada, com seus seis anos. Mas Dora tinha treze para quatorze anos, os seios já haviam começado a surgir sob o vestido, parecia uma mulherzinha, muito séria, a buscar os remédios para a mãe, a tratar dela. Margarida melhorou quando já os violões recomeçavam a tocar no morro, porque a epidemia de varíola tinha se acabado. A música voltou a dominar as noites do morro e Margarida, se bem ainda não estivesse completamente boa, foi ã casa de algumas de suas freguesas em busca de roupa. Voltou com a trouxa nas costas, se atirou para a fonte. Trabalhou o dia todo, sob o sol e a chuva que caiu pela tarde. No outro dia não voltou ao trabalho porque recaiu do alastrime a recaída é sempre terrível. Dois dias depois descia do morro o último caixão feito pela varíola. Dora não soluçava. Corriam as lágrimas pelo seu rosto, mas enquanto o caixão descia ela pensava era em Zé Fuinha, que pedia o que comer. O irmãozinho chorava de dor e de fome. Era muito menino para compreender que tinha ficado sem ninguém na imensidão da cidade. Os vizinhos deram jantar aos órfãos nesta tarde. No outro dia pela manhã o árabe que era dono dos barracões do morro mandou derramar álcool no de Margarida para desinfetar. E logo o alugou, pois era um barracão bem situado, bem no alto da ladeira. E enquanto os vizinhos discutiam o problema dos órfãos, Dora tomou o irmão pela mão e desceu para a cidade. Não se despediu de ninguém, era como uma fuga. Zé Fuinha ia sem saber para onde, arrastado pela irmã. Dora marchava tranqüila. Na cidade havia de encontrar quem lhes desse de comer, quem pelo menos tomasse conta de seu irmão. Ela arranjaria um emprego de copeira numa casa. Ainda era uma menina, mas havia muitas casas que preferiam mesmo uma menina porque o ordenado era menor. Sua mãe certa vez falara em a empregar de copeira na casa de uma freguesa. Dora sabia onde era e se dirigiu para lá. O morro, a música dos violões, o samba que um negro cantava ficaram para trás. Os pés descalços de Dora se queimam no asfalto ardente. Zé Fuinha vai alegre, vendo a cidade para ele desconhecida, os bondes que passam repleto, as marinetes que buzinam, a multidão que corta as ruas. Dora fora com Margarida certa vez à casa desta freguesa. É na Barra, elas tinham ido num bonde bagageiro, levando a trouxa de roupa lavada. A dona da casa fizera festa a Dora, perguntara se ela queria vir trabalhar ali. Margarida ficara de trazê-la quando ela estivesse mais crescida. Era para lá que Dora pensava ir. E perguntando a ume a outro tomou o caminho da Barra. A caminhada era grande, o sol no asfalto queimava seus pés sem sapato. Zé Fuinha começou a pedir de comer e a se queixar do cansaço. Dora o acalentou com promessas e seguiram. Mas no Campo Grande Zé Fuinha não pôde mais. A caminhada era demasiada para ele, para os seus seis anos. Então Dora entrou numa padaria, trocou os únicos quinhentos réis que possuía, comprou dois pães dormidos, deixou Zé Fuinha sentado num banco com os pães: – Tu come e me espera, tá ouvindo? Eu vou ali, volto já. Mas não vá sair daqui, senão você se perde... Zé Fuinha prometeu com uma cara muito séria, dando dentadas nos pães duros. Ela o beijou e seguiu. O guarda que a informou olhou para os seus seios que nasciam. 0 cabelo loiro dela, maltratado, voava com o vento. Sentia queimaduras nas solas dos pés e um cansaço no corpo todo. Mas seguiu. O número era 611. Quando chegou ao 53 parou um pouco para descansar e pensar o que diria à dona da casa. Depois retomou a caminhada. Agora a fome ajudava a magoar seu corpo, a fome terrível das crianças de 13 anos, uma fome que exige comida imediatamente. Dora tinha vontade de chorar, de se deixar cair na rua, sob o sol, e não fazer movimentos. Uma saudade dos pais mortos a invadiu. Mas reagiu contra tudo e continuou. O 611 era uma casa grande, quase um palacete, com árvores na frente. Numa mangueira, um balanço onde uma menina da idade de Dora se divertia. Um rapazote dos seus 17 anos a balançava e riam os dois. Eram os filhos do dono da casa. Dora ficou a olhá-los com inveja uns minutos. Depois tocou a campainha. O rapaz olhou, mas continuou a balançar a irmã. Dora tocou novamente, a empregada veio. Ela explicou que queria falar com dona Laura, a patroa. A empregada a olhou com desconfiança. Mas o rapazola deixou de balançar a irmã e andou até o portão. Espiava os seios mal nascidos de Dora, os pedaços de coxas que apareciam sob o vestido. Perguntou:
Não vê que ela morreu...O rapaz não despregava os olhos dos seios de Dora. Era bonita a menina, de olhos grandes, cabelo muito loiro, neta de italiano com mulata. Margarida dizia que ela puxara ao avô, que também tinha cabelos muito loiros e um bigodão bem tratado. Dora baixou os olhos porque o rapaz não tirava os dele dos seus peitos.Ele também se desconcertou, falou para a empregada:
O rapaz puxou um cigarro, acendeu. Jogou a fumaça para cima estendendo o beiço, deu mais uma espiada para os peitos de Dora:
O vento levantou um pouco o vestido dela. Ele teve pensamento canalhas ao ver o pedaço de coxa. Já se sonhava na cama, Dora trazendo o café pela manhã, a safadeza que se seguiria.
Ela agradeceu. Mas estava um pouco assustada, se bem lhe escapasse muito da malícia dos olhares dele. Dona Laura chegou, os cabelos grisalhos, a filha atrás dela, espiando Dora com olhos compridos. Era sardenta, mas tinha certa graça. Dora contou que a mãe tinha morrido:
Dora não sabia que dizendo aquilo tinha perdido a possibilidade do emprego.
A mocinha se afastou receosa. Até o rapaz se desviou um pouco, pensou nos seios pequenos de Dora marcados de varíola. Cuspiu com nojo. Dona Laura tomou um tom triste:
Queria acabar a conversa. Voltou-se para o filho:
O rapaz deu, ela pôs em cima da grade. Tinha medo de tocar em Dora, queria que fosse dali, antes de contagiar a casa.
Dora voltou a descer a rua. O rapaz ainda espiou as nádegas que apareciam redondas sob o vestido apertado. Mas a voz de dona Laura o interrompeu. Ela falava para a empregada:
O rapaz voltou a balançar a irmã sob as mangueiras. Mas de vez em quando suspirava para si mesmo: tinha uns peitos muito bons... Zé Fuinha não estava no banco. Dora levou um susto. Era capaz que o irmão tivesse saído andando pela cidade e se perdesse. E como ela o iria encontrar, ela que tão pouco conhecia a cidade? Demais um grande cansaço a invadia, um desânimo, saudade da mãe morta, vontade de chorar. Os pés doíam e ela tinha fome. Pensou em comprar pão agora possuía dois mil e quatrocentos, mas em vez disto saiu em busca do irmão. Foi encontrá-lo embaixo das árvores do jardim comendo ameixas verdes. Dora deu-lhe uma pancada na mão:
Ela comprou pão, comeram. A tarde toda foi uma caminhada de um lado para outro à procura de emprego. Em todas as casas diziam que não, o medo da varíola era maior que qualquer bondade. No começo da noite Zé Fuinha não se agüentava mais de cansado. Dora estava triste e pensava em voltar ao morro. Ia ser uma carga para os vizinhos pobres. Não queria voltar. Do morro sua mãe tinha saído num caixão, seu pai metido num saco. Mais uma vez deixou Zé Fuinha sozinho num jardim para ir comprar o que comer numa padaria, antes que fechasse. Gastou os últimos níqueis. As luzes se acenderam e ela achou a princípio muito bonito. Mas logo depois sentiu que a cidade era sua inimiga, que apenas queimara os seus pés e a cansara. Aquelas casas bonitas não a quiseram. Voltou curvada, afastando com as costas das mãos as lágrimas. E novamente não encontrou Zé Fuinha. Depois de andar em volta do jardim foi dar com o irmão, que espiava um jogo de gude entre dois garotos: um negro forte e um magrelo branco. Dora sentou num banco, chamou o irmão. Os garotos que jogavam se levantaram também. Ela desembrulhou os pães, deu um a Zé Fuinha. Os garotos a olhavam. O preto estava com fome, ela bem viu. Ofereceu do pão a eles. Ficaram os quatro comendo o pão dormido era mais barato em silêncio. Quando terminaram, o preto bateu as mãos uma na outra, falou:
O branco magrelo, que tinha estado calado, perguntou:
Agora chorava. Zé Fuinha brincava no chão com as bolas que os outros tinham deixado perto das árvores. O preto coçava a cabeça. 0 magrelo olhou para ele, depois para Dora:
O magrelo falou para o negro:
O negro olhou. Evidentemente estava atarantado. O branco coçou o pescoço, espantando uma mosca. Botou a mão no ombro de Dora muito devagarinho, como se tivesse medo de a tocar:
O preto fez esforço para sorrir: – Não é um palacete, mas é melhor que a rua... Andaram. João Grande e Professor iam na frente. Ambos tinham vontade de conversar com Dora, mas nenhum sabia o que dizer, não tinham se visto ainda num apuro assim.A luz das lâmpadas batia nos cabelos loiros dela. O preto disse:
Mas não olhavam nem os seios, nem as coxas. Olhavam o cabelo loiro batido pela luz das lâmpadas elétricas. No areal Zé Fuinha não pôde mais ir andando. O negro João Grande pegou a criança apesar de ser também criança... e a botou nas costas. Professor ia junto de Dora, mas estavam calados na noite. Entraram no trapiche meio desconfiados. João Grande arriou Zé Fuinha no chão, ficou parado, esperando que o Professor e Dora entrassem. Foram todos para o canto do Professor, que acendeu a vela. Os outros espiavam para o canto com surpresa. O cachorro do Sem-Pernas latiu.
Não se lembrou do resto, ficou meio encabulado, foi embora ver Dalva. Mas os demais já se aproximavam. Sem-Pernas e Boa-Vida vinham na frente. Dora olhava assustada.Zé Fuinha dormia de cansaço. João Grande se pôs na frente de Dora. A luz da vela iluminava o cabelo loiro da menina, de quando em vez pousava nos seios. se levantou, encostou-se na parede. Agora a lua aparecia pelos buracos do teto. Boa-Vida estava diante deles. Sem-Pernas vinha coxeando, e os outros logo atrás, os olhos estirados para Dora. Boa-Vida falou:
Professor se adiantou:
Sem-Pernas riu seu riso burlão, apontou os outros:
Dora se chegou para junto de Zé Fuinha, que acordara e tremia de medo. Uma voz disse entre os meninos:
nós também... Outro gritou:
Muitos riram. Um se adiantou, mostrou o sexo a João Grande – Vê como a bichinha está, Grande. Doidinha... João Grande e se pôs na frente de Dora. Não dizia nada, mas puxou o punhal. O Sem-Pernas gritou:
Volta Seca saiu de entre o grupo. Trazia os olhos muito excitado um riso no rosto sombrio:
Sabiam que Professor era fraco, não agüentava pancada. Estava doidamente excitados, mas ainda temiam João Grande, que segurava o punhal. Volta Seca se via como no meio do grupo de Lampião, pronto para deflorar junto com todos uma filha de fazendeiro. A vela iluminava os cabelos loiros de Dora. Ia um pavor pelo rosto dela. João Grande não dizia nada, mas segurava o punhal na mão. Professor abriu a navalha, ficou junto dele. Então Volta Seca também puxou do punhal, começou a avançar.Os outros vinham por detrás dele, o cachorro latia. Boa-Vida falou mais uma vez:
Professor pensava que se o Gato estivesse ali, estaria do lado deles, porque o Gato já, tinha mulher. Mas o Gato já tinha saído. Dora via o grupo avançar. O medo foi vencendo o desânimo e o cansaço em que estava. Zé Fuinha chorava. Dora não tirava os olhos de Volta Seca. A cara sombria do mulato estava aberta em desejo, um riso nervoso a sacudia. Viu também os sinais da varíola no rosto de Boa-Vida quando este passou em frente da vela, e então se lembrou da mãe morta. Um soluço a sacudiu e deteve um momento os meninos. Professor disse:
Eles pararam um momento. Mas Volta Seca falou:
Continuaram avançando. Iam vagarosamente, os olhos fixos ora em Dora, ora no punhal que João Grande tinha na mão. De repente se apressaram, chegaram muito mais perto. João Grande falou pela primeira vez:
Boa-Vida riu, Volta Seca manejou o punhal. Zé Fuinha chorava, Dora o olhou com os olhos apavorados. Se abraçou nele, viu João Grande derrubar Boa-Vida. A voz de Pedro Bala, que entrava, fez com que parassem:
Professor levantou-se. Volta Seca o soltou, já o havia cortado no braço. Boa-Vida ficou deitado como estava, um talho no rosto. João Grande continuou em guarda na frente de Dora. Pedro Bala se adiantou:
Boa-Vida falou do chão mesmo: Estes frescos arranjaram uma comida e quer que seja para ele só. A gente também tem direito...
Bala olhou para Dora. V’m os peitos, o cabelo loiro.
O negro olhou Pedro Bala espantado. O grupo avançava novamente, agora chefiado por Pedro Bala. João Grande estendeu os braços, gritou:
Pedro Bala parou, o grupo parou atrás dele. Agora Pedro Bala olhava Dora com outros olhos. Via o terror no rosto dela, as lágrimas que caíam dos olhos. Ouviu o choro de Zé Fuinha. João Grande falava:
Pedro Bala disse baixinho:
Pulou para o lado de João Grande e de Professor.
nela. Quem quiser que venha... Os menores e mais medrosos foram se afastando. Boa-Vida se levantou, foi para seu canto, limpando o sangue. Volta Seca falou para Pedro Bala devagar:
Ela saiu do seu canto, arrancou um pedaço da fralda, começou a ver a ferida do Professor. Depois marchou para onde estava Boa-Vida que se encolheu todo, molhou a ferida do malandro, botou um pano em cima. Todo o temor, todo o cansaço tinham desaparecido. Porque confiava em Pedro Bala. Depois perguntou a Volta-Seca:
Sem-Pernas espiava. O cachorro saiu do colo dele, veio lamber os pés de Dora. Ela o acarinhou, perguntou ao Sem-Pernas:
Ela sorriu. Pedro Bala andou ao léu no trapiche. Depois disse para todos:
Pedro Bala olhou os cabelos loiros. A lua entrava pelo trapiche. Dora, MãeO gato veio gingando o corpo naquele seu caminhar característico. Andara procurando enfiar a linha na agulha uma imensidade de tempo. Dora fizera Zé Fuinha dormir, agora se preparava para ouvir Professor ler aquela história tão bonita que estava no livro de capa azul. O Gato veio gingando o corpo, se aproximou devagar:
Mirava a agulha e a linha que tinha na mão. Parecia estar diante de um problema grave. Não sabia como se arranjar. Professor parou a leitura, Gato mudou de conversa:
Enfiou a linha, deu um nó numa das pontas. Gato disse para Professor:
Estendeu a mão para receber a agulha, mas Dora não entregou. Perguntou o que é que Gato tinha que coser. Gato mostrou o paletó roto no bolso. Era aquela roupa de casimira que fora do Sem-Pernas quando ele andara feito menino rico numa casa da Graça:
Professor e Gato ficaram vendo ela coser. Em verdade não era uma maravilha de costura, mas eles nunca tinham tido ninguém que remendasse suas roupas. E somente Gato e Pirulito tinham costume de remendar eles mesmos as suas. Gato porque era metido a elegante e tinha uma amante, Pirulito porque gostava de andar limpo. Os outros deixavam que os farrapos que arranjavam se esfarrapassem ainda mais, até se tornarem trapos inúteis. Então mendigavam ou furtavam outra calça e outro paletó. Dora acabou o serviço:
Gato alisou o cabelo cheio de brilhantina:
Virou-se. A camisa estava rasgada de cima a baixo. Dora mandou que ele sentasse, começou a coser no corpo dele mesmo. Quando os dedos dela tocaram pela primeira vez nas costas de Gato, ele sentiu um arrepio. Como quando Dalva passava as unhas crescidas e tratadas, arranhando suas costas e dizendo:
Mas Dalva não cosia suas roupas, talvez nem soubesse enfiar uma linha no fundo de uma agulha. Gostava era de se bater com ele na cama, arranhar suas costas, mas de propósito, pra o arrepiar e o excitar, para que o amor se fizesse ainda melhor. E Dora, não. Não era de propósito. A mão dela unhas maltratadas e sujas, roídas a dente não queria excitar, nem arrepiar. Passava como a mão de uma mãe que remendava camisas do filho. A mãe do Gato morrera cedo. Era uma mulher frágil e bonita.Também tinha as mãos maltratadas, que esposa de operário não tem manicura. E era dela também aquele gesto de remendar as camisas de Gato, mesmo nas costas de Gato.A mão de Dora o toca de novo. Agora a sensação é diferente. Não é mais um arrepio de desejo. É aquela sensação de carinho bom, de segurança que lhe davam as mãos de sua mãe. Dora está por detrás dele, ele não vê. Imagina então que é sua mãe que voltou. Gato está pequenino de novo, vestido com um camisolão de bulgariana e nas brincadeiras pelas ladeiras do morro o rompe todo. E sua mãe vem, faz com que ele se sente na sua frente e suas mãos ágeis manejam a agulha, de quando em vez o tocam e lhe dão aquela sensação de felicidade absoluta. Nenhum desejo. Somente felicidade. Ela voltou, remenda as camisas do Gato. Uma vontade de deitar no colo de Dora e deixar que ela cante para ele dormir, como quando era pequenino. Se recorda que ainda uma criança. Mas só na idade, porque no mais é igual a um homem furtando para viver, dormindo todas as noites com uma mulher da vida, tomando dinheiro dela. Mas nesta noite é totalmente criança esquece Dalva, suas mãos que o arranham, lábios que prendem os seus em beijos longos, sexo que o absorve. Esquece sua vida de pequeno batedor de carteiras, de dono de um baralho marcado, jogado desonesto. Esquece tudo, é apenas um menino de quatorze anos com uma mãezinha que remenda suas camisas. Vontade de que ela cante para ele dormir... Uma daquelas cantigas de ninar que falam em bicho- papão. Dora morde a linha, se inclina para ele. Os cabelos loiro dela tocam no ombro do Gato. Mas ele não tem outro desejo senão que ela continue a ser sua mãezinha. Sua felicidade naquele momento é quase absurda. É como se não houvesse existido toda a sua vida depois da morte da sua mãe. É como se tivesse se conservado um criança igual a todas. Porque nesta noite sua mãe voltou. Por isso a inconsciente carícia dos cabelos loiros de Dora não excita seu desejo. Mas aumenta sua felicidade. E a voz dela que diz: tá pronto, Gato, soa aos seus ouvidos direitinho a voz doce e musical de sua mãe que cantava, a cabeça do Gato recostada no seu colo, cantigas de ninar. Levanta, olha Dora com olhos agradecidos:
Gato joga o paletó nas costas e sai com seu passo gingado. Sente que há qualquer coisa de novo no trapiche: eles encontraram mãe, carinho e cuidados de mãe. Dalva o estranha nesta noite:
Mas ele guarda seu segredo. É uma coisa tão grande demais encontrar na terra uma mãe que já morreu. Dalva não o entenderia. Quando Professor estava começando a história, João Grande chegou e sentou-se ao lado deles. A noite era chuvosa. Na história que Professor lia, a noite era chuvosa também e o navio estava em grande perigo. Os marinheiros apanhavam de chicote, o capitão era um malvado. O barco a vela parecia soçobrar a cada momento, o chicote dos oficiais caía sobre as costas nuas dos marinheiros. João Grande tinha uma expressão de dor no rosto. Volta Seca chegou com um jornal, mas não interrompeu a história, ficou ouvindo. Agora o marinheiro John apanhava chibatadas porque escorregara e caíra no meio do temporal. Volta Seca interrompeu:
Foi o que fez o marinheiro James, um homenzarrão. Se atirou em cima do capitão, a revolta estalou no buque. Lá fora chovia. Chovia na história também, era a história de um temporal e de uma revolta. Um dos oficiais ficou do lado dos marinheiros.
Amavam o heroísmo. Volta Seca espiou Dora. Os olhos dela brilhavam, ela amava o heroísmo também. Isso agradou ao sertanejo. Depois o marinheiro James sustentou uma luta feroz. Volta Seca assoviou como um passarinho de tanto contentamento. Dora riu também, satisfeita. Riram os dois juntos, logo foi uma gargalhada dos quatro, como era costume dos Capitães da Areia. Gargalharam alguns minutos, outros se aproximaram, a tempo de ouvir o resto da história. Olhavam o rosto sério de Dora, rosto de uma quase mulherzinha que os fitava com carinho de mãe. Sorriam e, quando o marinheiro James jogou o capitão do navio num barco salva-vidas e o chamou de cobra sem veneno, eles todos gargalharam junto com Dora, e a olharam com amor. Como crianças olham a mãe muito amada. Quando a história acabou, eles voltaram para os seus cantos entre comentários:
Volta Seca espichou o jornal para Professor Dora olhou o mulato, ele sorriu meio confuso.
Dora ouvia encantada. Seu rosto sério fitava com a maior simpatia o rosto sombrio do mulato. Volta Seca ficou calado, mas num jeito de quem queria dizer alguma coisa. Por fim falou.
Olhou Dora, mas baixou a cabeça:
Professor olhou com seus olhos de míope. Volta Seca quase gritava, seu rosto sombrio tinha a alegria de uma descoberta. Também ele descobriu sua mãe, pensou Professor.Dora estava séria, mas sei olhar era carinhoso. Volta Seca riu, ela riu, virou logo gargalhada. Mas Professor não os acompanhou na gargalhada. Começou a ler muito rápido o relato do jornal. Lampião fora pegado de surpresa ao entrar numa vila. O chofer de um caminhão que o vira na estrada com o grupo tocara para a vila e avisara. Dera tempo de pedirem reforços de vilas próximas e a coluna volante também veio. Quando Lampião entrou na vila encontrou foi bala muita pela frente, bala que ele não esperava. O tiroteio foi grande, Lampião só pôde mesmo abrir para a caatinga, que é sua casa. Um dos homens do grupo ficou estirado com um balaço no peito. Cortaram a cabeça dele, que foi enviada para a Bahia em triunfo. Vinha a fotografia no jornal. A boca aberta, os olhos furados, um homem segurando pela carapinha rala. Tinham cortado o pescoço a facão. Dora comentou:
Volta Seca olhou agradecido. Seus olhos estavam injetados, seu rosto todavia mais sombrio. Dolorosamente sombrio.
te pegar... A notícia adiantava que Lampião devia ter outros homens feridos, pois a retirada do grupo fora por demais rápida. Volta Seca falou em surdina. Era como se falasse para si mesmo...
Afirmava à sua mãe, forte e valente mulata sertaneja, capaz de brigar com soldados, comadre de Lampião, amásia de cangaceiro, que podia confiar nele, que não o pegariam vivo, que lutaria até morrer... Dora ouvia com orgulho. Professor apertou os olhos e viu também, em lugar de Dora, uma sertaneja forte, defendendo seu pedaço de terra contra os coronéis, com a ajuda amiga dos cangaceiros.Viu a mãe de Volta Seca. E era o que o mulato via. Os cabelos loiros eram carapinha rala, os olhos doces eram os olhos achinesados da sertaneja, o rosto grave era o rosto sombrio da camponesa explorada. E o sorriso era o mesmo sorriso de orgulho de mãe para filho. Pirulito a viu chegar com desconfiança. Para ele Dora era o pecado. Havia bastante tempo que ele desistira das negrinhas do areal e da quentura dos corpos se embolando no areal. Se despia aos poucos dos seus pecados para aparecer puro aos olhos de Deus e poder merecer a graça de se vestir com as vestes dos sacerdotes. Pensava mesmo em arranjar um lugar de vendedor de jornais para fugir do pecado diário do furto. Olhava Dora com receio: a mulher era o pecado. Em verdade ela era apenas uma criança, uma criança abandonada como eles. Não ria como as negrinhas do areal um riso insolente de convite, um riso de dentes apertados pelo desejo. Seu rosto era sério, parecia o rosto de uma mulherzinha muito digna. Mas os pequenos seios que nasciam se empinavam no vestido, o pedaço de coxa que aparecia era branco e redondo. Pirulito tinha medo. Não tanto da tentação de Dora. Ela não parecia das que tentavam, era uma criança, era muito cedo para isto. Mas tinha medo da tentação que vinha dentro dele, que o demônio punha dentro dele. E procurava rezar em voz baixa enquanto ela se aproximava. Dora ficou olhando os quadros de santo. Professor parou atrás dela, olhava também. Havia flores sob a imagem do Menino Deus que Pirulito furtara um dia. Dora chegou mais perto:
O medo começou a desaparecer do coração do Pirulito. Ela se interessava pelos seus santos, santos para os quais ninguém ligava no trapiche. Dora perguntou:
Pirulito fez que sim com a cabeça e sorriu. Se adiantou, mostrou tudo que possuía. Os quadros, o catecismo, o terço, tudo. Ela olhava com satisfação. Sorria também enquanto Professor a espiava com os olhos míopes. Pirulito contava a história de Santo Antônio, que tinha estado em dois lugares ao mesmo tempo. Isso para salvar seu pai da forca, para a qual fora condenado injustamente. Contava do mesmo modo como Professor lia histórias heróicas de marinheiros corajoso e revoltosos. Dora escutava com a mesma atenção e a mesma simpatia. Conversavam os dois, Professor calado, ouvindo. Pirulito contou coisas da sua religião, milagres de santos, a bondade do padre José Pedro:
Ela disse que com certeza. Ele já havia esquecido que ela podia trazer a tentação nos seios de menina, nas coxas gordas, na cabeleira loira, agora falava como a uma mulher mais velha que o ouvia com carinho. Como a uma mãe. Só então compreendeu. Porque naquele momento lhe veio uma vontade de contar a ela que queria ser sacerdote, que queria seguir aquela vocação, que sentia o chamado de Deus. Só à sua mãe teria coragem de contar isso. E ela está na sua frente. Ele fala:
O rosto de Pirulito se iluminou. Olhou para Dora, falou com a voz exaltada:
–... é capaz de que um dia eu seja padre.
Era como um filho que levasse parte da sua guloseima para sua mãe, que lhe dera o níquel para que comprasse. E Dora aceitou, como uma mãe aceita parte da guloseima do filho querido para que este fique satisfeito. Professor via a mãe de Pirulito, que não sabia como era, como fora. Mas a via ali no lugar de Dora. Sentiu inveja da felicidade de Pirulito. Encontraram Pedro Bala estendido na areia. O chefe dos Capitães da Areia não entrara para o trapiche nesta noite. Ficara espiando a lua, deitado na quentura boa da areia. A chuva tinha cessado e vento que corna agora era morno. Professor deitou também, Dora sentou entre os dois. Pedro Bala a espiou pelo canto dos olhos, puxou o boné mais para a cara. Dora disse voltada para ele:
Ela não disse nada, mas ficou triste. Professor então falou.
Pedro Bala olhou os dois. Suspendeu o boné, sentou na areia. Mas Dora o olhava com carinho. Para ele... Para ele era tudo: esposa, irmã e mãe. Sorriu confuso para Dora:
Mas Professor viu os sorrisos dos dois. E disse ainda uma vez com voz sombria: – É como mãe! Dora, Irmã e NoivaComo o vestido dificultava seus movimentos e como ela queria ser totalmente um dos Capitães da Areia, o trocou por umas calças que deram a Brandão numa casa da cidade alta. As calças tinham ficado enormes para o negrinho, ele então as ofereceu a Dora. Também estavam grandes para ela, teve que as cortar nas pernas para que dessem. Amarrou com cordão, seguindo o exemplo de todos, o vestido servia de blusa. Se não fosse a cabeleira loira e os seios nascentes, todos a poderiam tomar como um menino, um dos Capitães da Areia. No dia em que, vestida como um garoto, ela apareceu na frente de Pedro Bala, o menino começou a rir. Chegou a se enrolar no chão de tanto rir. Por fim conseguiu dizer:
Ela ficou triste, Pedro Bala parou de rir.
O assombro dele não teve limites:
Ela o olhava calma, esperando que ele concluísse a frase. –... que vai andar com a gente pela rua, batendo coisas...
Dizia com voz soturna, porque, para ele, ela também não era mãe. Também para o Professor ela era a Amada.
De momento ele não encontrou nada que dizer. Olhou para ela e pensativo, já não tinha vontade de rir. Depois de algum tempo falou:
Ele encolheu os ombros num gesto de quem não tinha nada com aquilo. Havia avisado. Mas ela bem sabia que ele estava preocupado. Por isso ainda disse:
empurrão...
Pedro Bala se conformou. No fundo gostava da atitude dela, se bem tivesse medo dos resultados. Andava com eles pelas ruas, igual a um dos Capitães da Areia. Já não achava a cidade inimiga. Agora a amava também, aprendi a andar nos becos, nas ladeiras, a pongar nos bondes, nos automóveis em disparada. Era ágil como o mais ágil. Andava sempre com Pedro Bala, João Grande e Professor. João Grande não a largava, era como uma sombra de Dora, e se babava de satisfação quando ela o chamava com sua voz amiga de meu irmão. O negro a seguia como um cachorro e se dedicara totalmente a ela. Vivia num assombro das qualidades de Dora. Quase a achava tão valente como Pedro Bala. Dizia o Professor num espanto:
Professor preferia que não fosse assim. Sonhava com um olhar de carinho dos olhos da Dora. Mas não daquele carinho maternal que ela tinha para os menores e para os mais tristes, Volta Seca, Pirulito. Tampouco um olhar fraternal, como os que ela lançava a João Grande, a Sem-Pernas, a Gato, a ele mesmo. Queria um daqueles olhares plenos de amor que ela lançava a Pedro Bala quando o via na carreira, fugindo da polícia ou de um homem que dizia na porta de uma loja:
Daqueles olhares ela só tinha para Pedro Bala, e este nem reparava. Professor ouve os elogios de João Grande mas não sorri. Pedro Bala naquela noite chegou no trapiche com um olho inchado e o lábio roxo, sangrando. Topara com Ezequiel, chefe de outro grupo de meninos mendigos e ladrões, grupo muito menor que o dos Capitães da Areia e muito mais sem ordem. Ezequiel vinha com uns três do grupo, inclusive um que fora expulso dos Capitães da Areia por ter sido pegado furtando um companheiro. Pedro Bala tinha ido deixar Dora e Zé Fuinha no pé da ladeira do Taboão para que eles fossem para o trapiche. João Grande tinha um serviço a fazer e não pudera ir com Dora. Pedro Bala pensou em ir com ela, em não deixá-la sozinha no areal. Mas como ainda não caíra a noite, não havia perigo de um negro dar em cima dela. Demais ele tinha que ir receber uns cobres da mão de Gonzales do 14, dinheiro que era devido a uma batida que o grupo fizera nuns objetos de ouro de um árabe rico. Enquanto andava para o 14, Pedro Bala pensava em Dora. No cabelo loiro que caía no pescoço, nos olhares dela. Era bonita, era igual a uma noiva. Noiva... Nem podia pensar nisso. Não queria que os outros do grupo se sentissem com direito de pensar em safadezas com ela. E se ele dissesse a Dora que ela era como uma noiva para ele, outro poderia se julgar no direito de também dizer. E então não haveria mais lei nem direito entre os Capitães da Areia. Pedro Bala se recorda de que é o chefe... Vai tão distraído que quase esbarra com Ezequiel. Estão os quatro parados diante dele. Ezequiel é um mulato alto, fuma uma ponta de charuto. Pedro Bala fica parado também, esperando. Ezequiel cospe:
O menino que fora dos Capitães da Areia pergunta:
O menino range os dentes, quer avançar. Mas Ezequiel faz um gesto com a mão e avisa a Pedro Bala:
Com o soco Ezequiel rolou. Mas os outros três já estavam em cima de Pedro Bala. Ezequiel meteu o pé na cara de Bala. O que for, dos Capitães da Areia gritou:
O guarda vinha marchando para eles, debandaram. Pedro Bala apanhou o boné, as lágrimas de raiva desciam junto com sangue. Estendeu a mão fechada para o lado por onde Ezequiel e os seus haviam desaparecido. O guarda falou:
Pedro Bala cuspiu puro sangue. Desceu a ladeira devagar, nem pensou em ir buscar o dinheiro de Gonzales. Descia resmungando consigo mesmo: Só são homem quatro contra um. E pensava vinganças. Entrou no trapiche, Dora estava sozinha com o irmão, que dormia. Os últimos raios do sol entravam pelo teto, dando uma estranha claridade ao casarão. Dora o viu entrar e andou para ele:
Mas enxergou o olho inchado de Pedro, o beiço partido:
Ela o sentou, foi ao canto de Pirulito, trouxe água. Com um pedaço de pano limpou as feridas dele. Pedro arquitetava plano de vingança. Ela apoiou:
Agora limpava os lábios dele, estava curvada na sua frente, seu rosto bem próximo do de Bala, os cabelos loiros misturados com os dele.
Ele abanou a cabeça afirmando. Então ela chegou os lábios para junto dos de Pedro Bala, os beijou e depois fugiu. Ele saiu correndo atrás dela, mas ela se escondia, não se deixava pegar. Aos poucos foram chegando os outros. Ela de longe sorna para Pedro Bala. Não havia nenhuma malícia no seu sorriso. Mas seu olhar era diferente do olhar de irmã que lançava aos outros. Era um doce olhar de noiva, de noiva ingênua e tímida. Talvez mesmo não soubessem que era amor. Apesar de não ser noite de lua, havia um romântico romance no casarão colonial. Ela sorria e baixava os olhos, por vezes piscava com um olhe porque pensava que isto era namorar. E seu coração batia rápido quando olhava. Não sabia que isso era amor. Por fim a lua veio estendeu sua luz amarela no trapiche. Pedro Bala se deitou na areia e mesmo de olhos fechados via Dora. Sentiu quando ela chegou e deitou a seu lado. Disse:
Mesmo não sabendo que era amor, sentiam que era bom. Quando Sem-Pernas e João Grande chegaram, Pedro Bala se levantou da areia e reuniu os chefes. Foram para junto da vela do Professor. Dora veio também e sentou entre João Grande e Boa-Vida. O malandro acendeu um cigarro, falou para Dora:
Pedro Bala interrompeu a conversa. Olhavam para o lábio dele, o olho inchado. Ele narrou o caso:
Formaram um plano de batalha. E pelo meio da noite saíram uns trinta. O grupo de Ezequiel dormia para as bandas do Porto da Lenha, nuns barcos virados e na ponte.Dora foi junto a Pedro Bala e levava uma navalha também. Sem-Pernas disse:
Nunca houvera mulher tão valente como Rosa Palmeirão. Dera em seis soldados de uma vez. Todo marítimo sabe o seu ABC no cais da Bahia. Por isso Dora gosta da comparação e sorri:
Irmão... É uma palavra boa e amiga. Se acostumaram a chamá-la de irmã. Ela também os trata de mano, de irmão. Para os menores é como uma mãezinha, igual a uma mãezinha. Cuida deles. Para os mais velhos é como uma irmã que diz palavras boas e brinca inocentemente com eles e com eles passa os perigos da vida aventurosa que levam. Mas nenhum sabe que para Pedro Bala ela é a noiva. Nem mesmo o Professor sabe. E dentro do seu coração Professor também a chama de noiva. O cachorro que o Sem-Pernas arranjou vai latindo. Volta Seca imita o latir de um cachorro, todos riem. João Grande assovia um samba. Boa-Vida começa a cantá- lo em voz alta: “A mulata me abandonou...” Vão alegres. Levam navalhas e punhais nas calças. Mas só o sacarão se os outros puxarem. Porque os meninos abandonado também têm uma lei e uma moral, um sentido de dignidade humana. De repente João Grande grita:
Com a algazarra que fazem, Ezequiel sai de sob um barco:
A volta foi um triunfo. Apesar do Sem-Pernas ter um talho e Barandão vir quase nos braços de tanta pancada um grandão do grupo de Ezequiel o surrara até que Volta Seca o rebentou, voltavam todo alegres, comentando a vitória. Os que tinham ficado no trapiche deram vivas. Ainda demoraram muito conversando, comentando. Falavam na coragem de Dora, que brigara igual a um menino. Igual a um homem, dizia João Grande. Era como uma irmã, exatamente igual a uma irmã... Igual a uma noiva, exatamente igual a uma noiva, pensava Pedro Bala, estendido na areia. A lua amarelava o areal, as estrelas se refletiam no mar azul da Bahia.Ela veio, deitou ao lado dele. E começaram a falar de coisas tolas. Igual a uma noiva. Não se beijaram, não se abraçaram, o sexo não os chamava naquele momento.Só de leve o loiro cabelo dela tocava em Pedro Bala.
Riram os dois e logo foi uma gargalhada. Era um hábito dos Capitães da Areia. Ela começou a contar coisas do morro, histórias dos vizinhos, ele relembrava fatos da vida agitada do grupo:
Riam inocentemente, felizes de estarem um ao lado do outro. Depois o sono veio. Estavam separados, Pedro tomou a mão dela, segurou. Dormiram como dois irmãos. ReformatórioO Jornal da Tarde trouxe a notícia em grandes títulos. Uma manchete ia de lado a lado na primeira página: PRESO O CHEFE DOS “CAPITÃES DA AREIA” Depois vinham os títulos que estavam em cima de um clichê, onde se viam Pedro Bala, Dora, João Grande, Sem-Pernas e Gato cercados de guardas e investigadores: UMA MENINA NO GRUPO – A SUA HISTÓRIA – RECOLHIDA A UM ORFANATO – O CHEFE DOS “CAPITÃES DA AREIA” É FILHO DE UM GREVISTA – OS OUTROS CONSEGUEM FUGIR – “O REFORMATÓRIO O ENDIREITARÁ”, NOS AFIRMA O DIRETOR. Sob o clichê vinha esta legenda: Após ser batida esta chapa o chefe dos peraltas armou uma discussão e um barulho que deu lugar a que os demais moleques presos pudessem fugir. O chefe é o que está marcado contra cruz e ao seu lado vê-se Dora, a nova gigolete dos moleques baianos. Vinha a notícia: Ontem a polícia baiana lavrou um tento. Conseguiu prender o chefe do grupo de menores delinqüentes conhecidos pelo nome de “Capitães da Areia”. Por mais de uma vez este jornal tratou do problema dos menores que viviam nas ruas e da cidade dedicados ao furto. Por várias vezes também noticiamos os assaltos levados a efeito por este mesmo grupo. Realmente a cidade vivia sob o temor constante destes meninos, que ninguém sabia onde moravam, cujo chefe ninguém conhecia. Há alguns meses tivemos ocasião de publicar cartas do doutor Chefe de Polícia, do doutor Juiz de Menores e do diretor do Reformatório Baiano sobre este problema. Todos eles prometiam incentivar a campanha contra os menores delinqüentes e em particular contra os “Capitães da Areia”. Esta campanha tão meritória deu os seus primeiros frutos ontem com a prisão do chefe desta malta e de vários do grupo, inclusive uma menina. Infelizmente, devido a uma sagaz burla de Pedro Bala, o chefe, os demais conseguiram escapar de entre as mãos dos guardas. Em todo caso, a polícia já conseguiu muito prendendo o chefe e a romântica inspiradora dos roubos: Dora, uma figura interessantíssima de menor delinqüente. Feitos estes comentários, narremos os fatos: A TENTATIVA DE FURTOOntem, às últimas horas da tarde, cinco meninos e uma menina penetraram no palacete do doutor Alcebíades Menezes, na ladeira de São Bento. Foram porém pressentidos pelo filho do dono da casa, estudante de medicina, que deixou que eles penetrassem num quarto, onde os trancou. Chamou então os guardas e investigadores, a quem os entregou. A reportagem do “Jornal da Tarde ”, informada do fato, partiu para a casa do doutor Alcebíades. Lá chegando, encontrou os menores que eram levados à chefia de polícia.Pedimos então para tirar um retrato do grupo· A polícia muito gentilmente consentiu. Pois no momento em que o fotógrafo acabava de fazer funcionar o magnésio e batera chapa, Pedro Bala, o temível chefe dos “Capitães da Areia”, facilitou a EVASÃOPondo em prática uma agilidade incomum Pedro Bala se livrou dos braços do investigador que o segurava e com um golpe de capoeira o derrubou. No entanto não fugiu.É claro que os demais guardas e investigadores se precipitaram em cima dele para impedir a sua fuga. Só então foi possível compreender o plano do chefe dos “Capitães da Areia” pois este gritou para os companheiros presos. – Arriba, pessoal. Um único guarda ficara a tomar conta dos outros, e um deles, muito ágil, o derrubou também com um golpe de capoeira. E desabaram para a ladeira da Montanha. NA POLÍCIANa chefia de polícia quisemos ouvir Pedro Bala. Mas ele nada nos disse, como tampouco quis declarar às autoridades o lugar onde dormiam e guardavam seus furtos os “Capitães da Areia”. Só declarou seu nome, disse que era filho de um antigo grevista que foi morto num “meeting” na célebre greve das docas de 191..., que não tinha ninguém no mundo. Quanto a Dora, é filha de uma lavadeira que morreu de varíola quando da epidemia que alastrou a cidade. Não faz senão quatro meses que está entre os “Capitães da Areia”, mas já tomou parte em muitos assaltos. E parece ter uma grande honra nisso. NOIVOSDora declarou à nossa reportagem que era noiva de Pedro Bala e que iam se casar. É uma menina ainda ingênua, mais digna de piedade que de castigo. Fala no seu noivado com maior das ingenuidades. Não tem mais de quatorze anos, enquanto Pedro Bala anda pelos seus dezesseis. Dora foi leva da ao Orfanato Nossa Senhora da Piedade.Neste santo ambiente não tardará a esquecer Pedro Bala, o romântico noivo-bandido, e a sua vida criminosa entre os “Capitães da Areia”. Quanto a Pedro Bala, será recolhido ao Reformatório de Menores logo que a polícia consiga que ele declare qual o local onde se esconde o grupo. A polícia tem grandes esperanças de consegui-lo ainda hoje. OUVINDO O DIRETOR NO REFORMATÓRIOO diretor do Reformatório Baiano de Menores Abandonados e Delinqüentes é um velho amigo do “Jornal da Tarde ”. Certa vez uma reportagem nossa desfez um círculo de calúnias jogada contra aquele estabelecimento de educação e seu diretor.Hoje ele se achava na polícia esperando poder levar consigo o menor Pedro Bala. A uma pergunta nossa, respondeu.
E a outra pergunta nossa, sorriu:
João Grande estendeu os braços para os outros, falou:
Quando o levaram para aquela sala Pedro Bala calculava o que o esperava. Não veio nenhum guarda. Vieram dois soldados de polícia, um investigador, o diretor do reformatório. Fecharam a sala. O investigador disse numa voz risonha:
O diretor do reformatório riu:
O investigador perguntou:
Virou as costas. O investigador fez um sinal para os soldados. Pedro Bala sentiu duas chicotadas de uma vez. E o pé do investigador na sua cara. Rolou no chão, xingando.
Agora davam-lhe de todos os lados. Chibatadas, socos pontapés. O diretor do reformatório levantou-se, sentou-lhe o pé Pedro Bala caiu do outro lado da sala. Nem se levantou. Os soldados vibraram os chicotes. Ele via João Grande, Professor, Volta Seca, Sem-Pernas, o Gato. Todos dependiam dele. A segurança de todos dependia da coragem dele. Ele era o chefe, não podia trair. Lembrou-se da cena da tarde. Conseguira dar fuga aos outros, apesar de estar preso também. O orgulho encheu seu peito. Não falaria, fugiria do reformatório, libertaria Dora. E se vingaria... Se vingaria... Grita de dor. Mas não sai uma palavra dos seus lábios. Vai te fazendo noite para ele. Agora já não sente dores, já não sente nada. No entanto, os soldados ainda o surram, o investigador o soqueia. Mas e não sente mais nada.
O investigador assentiu. Com a promessa de no dia seguinte mandar buscar Pedro Bala, o diretor retirou-se. Na madrugada, quando Pedro acordou, os presos cantavam. Era uma moda triste. Falava do sol que havia nas ruas, em quanto é grande e bela a liberdade. O bedel Ranulfo, que o tinha ido buscar na polícia, o levou à presença do diretor. Pedro Bala sentia o corpo todo doer das pancadas do dia anterior. Mas ia satisfeito, porque nada tinha dito, porque não revelara o lugar onde os Capitães da Areia viviam. Lembram-se da canção que os presos cantavam na madrugada que nascia. Dizia que a liberdade é o bem maior do mundo. Que nas ruas havia sol e luz e nas células havia uma eterna escuridão porque ali a liberdade era desconhecida. Liberdade.João de Adão, que estava nas ruas, sob o sol, falava nela também. Dizia que não era só por salários que fizera aquelas greves nas docas e faria outras. Era pela liberdade que os doqueiros tinham pouca. Pela liberdade o pai de Pedro Bala morrera.n Pela liberdade – pensava Pedro – dos seus amigos, ele apanhara uma surra na polícia. Agora seu corpo estava mole e dolorido, seus ouvidos cheios da moda que os presos cantavam. Lá fora, dizia a velha canção, é o sol, a liberdade e a vida.Pela janela Pedro Bala vt o sol. A estrada passa adiante dó grande portão do reformatório. Aqui dentro é como se fosse uma eterna escuridão. Lá fora é a liberdade e a vida. E a vingança, pensa Pedro Bala. O diretor entra. O bedel Ranulfo o cumprimenta e mostra Bala. O diretor sorri, esfrega as mãos uma na outra, senta ante uma alta secretária. Olha Pedro Bala uns minutos:
Pedro Bala o espia com os olhos injetados. Sente cansaço, uma vontade doida de dormir. Bedel Ranulfo aventura uma pergunta:
O bedel cumprimenta e vai saindo com Pedro Bala. O diretor ainda recomenda:
Lá fora é a liberdade e o sol. A cadeia, os presos na cadeia, a surra ensinaram a Pedro Bala que a liberdade é o bem maior do mundo. Agora sabe que não foi apenas para que sua história fosse contada no cais, no Mercado, na Porta do Mar, que seu pai morrera pela liberdade. A liberdade é como o sol. É o bem maior do mundo. Ouviu o bedel Ranulfo fechar o cadeado por fora. Fora atirado dentro da cafua. Era um pequeno quarto, por baixo da escada, onde não se podia estar em pé, porque não havia altura, nem tampouco estar deitado ao comprido, porque não havia comprimento. Ou ficava sentado, ou deitado com as pernas voltadas para o corpo numa posição mais que incômoda. Assim mesmo Pedro Bala se deitou. Seu corpo dava uma volta e seu primeiro pensamento era que a cafua só servia para o homem-cobra que vira, certa vez, no circo. Era totalmente cerrado o quarto, a escuridão era completa. O ar entrava pelas frestas finas e raras dos degraus da escada. Pedro Bala, deitado como estava, não podia fazer o menor movimento. Por todos os lados as paredes o impediam. Seus membros doíam, ele tinha uma vontade doida de esticar as pernas. Seu rosto estava cheio de equimoses das pancadas na polícia, e desta vez Dora não estava ali para trazer um pano frio e cuidar do seu rosto ferido. A liberdade era Dora também.Não era só o sol, andar livre nas ruas, rir no cais a grande gargalhada dos Capitães da Areia. Era também sentir junto a si o cabelo loiro de Dora, ouvir ela contar coisas do morro, sentir os lábios dela sobre os seus lábios feridos. Noiva. Também ela estava sem liberdade. Os membros de Pedro Bala doem e agora dói sua cabeça também. Dora está como ele, sem sol, sem liberdade. Foi levada para um orfanato. Noiva. Antes que ela aparecesse ele nunca pensara nesta palavra: noiva. Gostava de derrubar negrinhas no areal. De encostar peito com peito, cabeça com cabeça, pernas com pernas, sexo com sexo. Mas nunca pensara em deitar na areia ao lado de uma menina, menina como ele, e conversar de coisas tolas e correr picula como os outros meninos, sem a derrubar para fazer o amor. Era outra maneira do amor, pensava numa confusão. Ele nunca tivera uma idéia perfeita do amor. Que era ele, senão uma criança abandonada nas ruas, que pela força e agilidade e coragem conseguira chefiar o grupo mais valente de meninos abandonados, os Capitães da Areia? Que podia saber de amor? Sempre pensara que o amor fosse o momento gostoso em que uma negrinha ou uma mulata gemia sob seu corpo no areal do cais. Isto cedo aprendeu, quando não tinha ainda 13 anos. Isto sabiam todos os Capitães da Areia, mesmo os mais pequenos, aqueles que ainda não tinham forças para derrubar uma cabrocha. Mas já o sabiam, e pensavam com alegria no dia em que o fariam. Os membros e a cabeça de Pedro Bala doem. Tem sede, ainda não bebeu nem comeu neste dia. Com Dora foi diferente. Logo que ela chegou, tanto ele como todos os que estavam no trapiche pensaram em a derrubar, em a possuir, em praticar com ela, que era bonita, o único amor de que tinham notícia. Mas como era apenas uma menina, eles a tinham respeitado. Depois ela foi como uma mãe para todos. E como uma irmã também, João Grande dizia certo. Mas para ele desde o primeiro momento fora diferente. Fora também uma companheira de brinquedos como para os demais, irmã querida. Mas fora também uma alegria diversa da que dá uma irmã. Noiva. Gostaria, sim. Mesmo quando quer negar a si próprio não pode. É verdade que nada faz para isso, que se contenta de conversar com ela, de ouvir a sua voz, pegar timidamente na sua mão. Mas gostaria de possuí-la também, de vê-la gemer de amor. Não, porém, por uma noite. Por todas as noites de toda uma vida. Como outros têm esposa, esposa que é mãe, irmã e amiga. Ela era mãe, irmã e amigados Capitães da Areia. Para Pedro Bala é noiva, um dia será esposa. Não a podem ter num orfanato como uma menina sem ninguém. Ela tem um noivo, uma legião de irmãos e de filhos de quem cuidar. O cansaço desaparece dos membros de Pedro Bala. Ele precisa de movimento, de andar, de correr, para poder conceber um plano para livrar Dora. Ali naquela escuridão é que não pode. Fica inútil pensando que ela está talvez numa cafua também. Senta-se como pode. Ratos correm na cafua. Mas ele está por demais acostumado com os ratos, não liga. Mas Dora terá medo deste ruído contínuo. É de enlouquecer um que não seja o chefe dos Capitães Areia. Quanto mais uma menina... É verdade que Dora é a menina valente de quantas mulheres já nasceram na Bahia, que é a terra das mulheres valentes. Mais valente mesmo que Rosa Palmeirão, que deu em seis soldados, que Maria Cabaçu, que não respeitava cara, que a companheira de Lampião, que maneja um fuzil igual a um cangaceiro. Mais valente porque é apenas uma menina, apenas está começando a viver. Pedro Bala sorri com orgulho, apesar das dores, do cansaço, sede que aos poucos o aperta. Como seria bom um copo d’água! Diante do areal do trapiche é o mar, um nunca acabar de água. Mar que o Querido-de-Deus, o grande capoeirista, corta com seu saveiro para as pescarias nos mares do Sul. O Querido-de-Deus é um bom sujeito. Se Pedro Bala não houvesse aprendido com ele o jogo capoeira de Angola, a luta mais bonita do mundo, porque é também uma dança, não teria podido dar fuga a João Grande, Gato e Sem-Pernas. Agora ali, na cafua, sem poder se mexer, a capoeira não vai lhe servir de nada. Gostaria era de beber água. Será que Dora também tem sede a estas horas?Deve estar também numa cafua, Pedro Bala imagina o orfanato igualzinho ao reformatório. A sede é pior que uma cobra cascavel. Faz mais medo que a bexiga. Porque vai apertando a garganta de um, vai fazendo os pensamentos confusos. Um pouco de água. Um pouco de luz também. Porque se houver um pouco de luz talvez ele veja o rosto de Dora risonho. Assim na escuridão ele o vê cheio de sofrimento, cheio de dor. Uma raiva surda, impotente, cresce dentro dele. Levanta-se um pouco, a cabeça encosta nos degraus escada que lhe serve de teto. Esmurra a porta da cafua. Mas parece que lá fora não tem ninguém que o ouça. Vê a cara malvada do diretor. Enterrará seu punhal até o mais fundo do coração do diretor. Sem que sua mão trema, sem remorsos, gozando. Seu punhal ficou na polícia. Mas Volta Seca lhe dará o seu, ele tem uma pistola.Volta Seca quer ir para o bando de Lampião, que é seu padrinho. Lampião mata soldado, mata homem ruim. Pedro Bala neste momento ama Lampião como a um seu herói, a um seu vingador. É o braço armado dos pobres no sertão. Um dia ele poderá ser do grupo de Lampião também. E quem sabe se não poderiam invadir a cidade da Bahia, abrir a cabeça do diretor do reformatório?Que cara ele não faria quando visse Pedro Bala entrar no reformatório na frente de uns cangaceiros... Soltaria a garrafa de pinga, presente de um amigo de Santo Amaro, e Pedro Bala lhe abriria a cabeça. Não. Antes o deixaria naquela mesma cafua, sem ter o que comer, sem ter o que beber. Sede... A sede o maltrata. Faz com que ele veja na escuridão da parede o rosto triste e doloroso de Dora. Aquela certeza de que ela está sofrendo... Fecha os olhos. Procura pensar em Professor, Volta Seca, João Grande, Gato, Sem-Pernas, Boa- Vida, todos os do trapiche salvando Dora. Mas não pode. Mesmo de olhos fechados vê o rosto dela, amargurado pela sede. Esmurra a porta novamente. Grita, xinga nomes. Ninguém o atende, ninguém o vê, ninguém o ouve. Assim deve ser o inferno. Pirulito tem razão de ter medo do inferno. É por demais terrível.Sofrer sede e escuridão. A canção dos presos dizia que lá fora é a liberdade e o sol. E também a água, os rios correndo muito alvos sobre pedras, as cascatas caindo, o grande mar misterioso. Professor, que sabe muitas coisas, porque à noite lê livros furtados, à luz de uma vela (está comendo os olhos...) lhe disse certa vez que tem mais água no mundo que terra. Tinha lido num livro. Mas nem um pingo de água na sua cafua. Na de Dora não deve ter também. Para que esmurrar a porta como o faz neste momento? Ninguém o atende, suas mãos já doem. Na véspera o surraram na polícia. Suas costas estão negras, seu peito ferido, o rosto inchado. Por isso o diretor disse que ele tinha cara de criminoso. Não tem, não. Ele quer é liberdade. Um dia um velho disse que não se mudava o destino de ninguém. João de Adão disseque se mudava, sim, ele acreditara em João de Adão. Seu pai morrera para mudar o destino dos doqueiros. Quando ele sair, irá ser doqueiro também, lutar pela liberdade, pelo sol, por água e de comer para todos. Cospe um cuspe grosso. A sede aperta sua garganta. Pirulito quer ser padre para fugir daquele inferno. Padre José Pedro sabia que o reformatório era assim, falava contra meterem os meninos lá. Mas que podia um pobre padre sem paróquia contra todos? Porque todos odeiam os meninos pobres, pensa Pedro Bala. Quando sair, pedirá à mãe-de-santo Don’Aninha que faça um feitiço forte para matar o diretor. Ela tem força com Ogum, e ele uma vez tirara Ogum da polícia. Fizera muita coisa para a sua idade. Dora também fizera muita coisa naqueles meses entre eles. Agora passavam sede, Pedro Bala esmurra inutilmente uma porta. A sede o rói por dentro como uma legião de ratos.Cai enrodilhado no chão e o cansaço o vence. Apesar da sede, dorme. Mas tem sonhos terríveis, ratos roem o rosto belo de Dora. Acorda porque alguém bate pancadas leves num dos degraus da escada. Levanta- se curvado, não pode ficar de pé direito, que a escada não consente. Pergunta em voz baixa:
Uma alegria doida o invade quando respondem:
Ouve um assovio. A voz continua, agora rápida:
Pedro Bala ouve os passos que se afastam. Mas está mais alegre. Pensa em seguida que o recado é de Dora, mas vê que é uma tolice pensar isso. Como Dora havia de lhe enviar um recado? Deve ser um do grupo. Devem estar tratando de tirá-lo dali. Mas primeiro é preciso que ele saia da cafua. Enquanto ele estiver ali, os Capitães da Areia não poderão fazer nada. Depois que ele estiver andando no reformatório todo, aí a fuga será fácil. Pedro Bala senta-se para pensar. Que hora serão, que dia será? Ali é sempre noite, nunca brilha a luz do sol. Espera impaciente que o seu informante volte. Porém este demora, ele se agita. Que estarão fazendo os outros sem ele? Professor conceberá algum plano para o tirarem dali.Mas enquanto ele estive na cafua é inútil. E enquanto não o tirarem, ele não poderá tirar Dora do orfanato. Abrem a porta. Pedro Bala se atira para a frente, pensando que o vão soltar. Uma mão o empurra:
Vê o bedel Ranulfo na porta. Traz um caneco com água, que Pedro Bala arranca das suas mãos e bebe em grandes goles. Mas é tão pouca... Não chega para matar a sede.O bedel lhe entrega um prato de barro com uma água onde bóiam alguns caroços de feijão. Pedro Bala pede:
Ouve a chave que o tranca. Tateia na escuridão até encontrar o prato. Bebe a água escura do feijão. Nem repara que é salgadíssima. Depois come os grãos duros.Mas a sede o ataca novamente. O feijão muito salgado ativa a sede. O que é um caneco de água para aquela sede que exigia uma moringa? Deita. Já não pensa em nada.Passam-se horas. Ele apenas vê na escuridão o rosto triste de Dora. E sente dores no corpo todo. Muito mais tarde ouve novamente baterem na escada. Pergunta:
A voz não responde. Pedro pensa com desespero que é capaz do menino ter ido embora. No entanto, ele não ouviu passos na escada... Mas volta a voz:
Minutos depois as pancadas soam muito de leve na porta. A vi por debaixo da porta:
Pedro Bala faz o que lhe mandam. Um cigarro amassado chega às suas mãos. Ele acaba de o retirar de sob a porta. Logo depois é um fósforo que vem sobre um pedaço de caixa, o pedaço onde se risca.
Mas neste momento ouve um barulho lá fora. O som de uma bofetada, um corpo que rola. E uma voz que ele não conhece fala:
Pedro se encolhe. Agora um vai sofrer castigo por causa dele. Quando fugir, levará aquele para os Capitães da Areia. Para o sol e liberdade. Acende o cigarro.Com muito cuidado para não perder fósforo que é o único. Esconde a brasa do cigarro sob a mão para que ninguém o possa ver pelas frestas da escada. O silêncio o envolve de novo, e com o silêncio os pensamentos, as visões. Quando termina de fumar, se enrodilha no chão. Se pudesse dormir... Pelo menos não veria o rosto cheio de sofrimento de Dora. Quantas horas? Quantos dias? A escuridão é sempre a mesma, a sede é sempre igual. Já lhe trouxeram água e feijão três vezes. Aprendeu a não beber caldo de feijão, que aumenta a sede. Agora está muito mais fraco, um desânimo no corpo todo. O barril onde defeca exala um cheiro horrível. Não o retiraram ainda. E sua barriga dói, sofre horrores para defecar. É como se as tripas fossem sair. As pernas não o ajudam. O que o mantém em pé é o ódio que enche seu coração.
É tudo quanto consegue dizer. Assim mesmo, em voz baixa. Já não tem forças para gritar, para esmurrar a porta. Agora está certo de que morrerá ali. Cada vez sofre maiores dores para defecar. Vê Dora estendida no chão, morrendo de sede, chamando por ele. João Grande está do lado dela, mas separado por grades. Professore Pirulito choram. Trouxeram-lhe água e feijão pela quarta vez. Ele bebe a água, mas demora a comer o feijão. Só sabe dizer em voz baixa:
Antes que a comida se poderia chamar aquilo de comida? chegasse naquele dia para Pedro era sempre noite, a voz voltou a chamá-lo na escada. Ele perguntou, sem se levantar sequer:
O cigarro o reanima um pouco. Pode pensar que com mais cinco dias morrerá. Aquilo é castigo para um homem, não para um menino. O ódio não cresce mais em seu coração.Já atingiu o máximo. É sempre noite. Dora morre lentamente ante suas vistas. João Grande ao seu lado, as grades separando. Professor e Pirulito choram. Ele dorme ou está acordado?A barriga dói violentamente. Quanto tempo durará ainda a escuridão? E a agonia de Dora? O cheiro do barril é insuportável. Dora agoniza ante seus olhos. Será que ele agoniza também? A cara do diretor aparece ao lado do rosto de Dora. Vem torturar sua agonia ainda mais? Quanto tempo ela leva para morrer... Pedro Bala pede que ela morra logo, logo... Será melhor. Agora o direto veio, veio para aumentar a tortura. Ouve a voz dele:
Abre mais os olhos. Agora não vê mais Dora. Só a cara do diretor que sorri:
Não pode fitar a claridade que entra pelas janelas. Mal se agüenta nas pernas. Cai no meio do corredor. Dora teria morrido ou não? – pensa ao cair. Está novamente na sala do diretor. Este o olha sorridente:
Pedro Bala está irreconhecível de tão magro. Os ossos aparecem junto à pele. O rosto, verdoso da complicação intestinal. O bedel Fausto, dono daquela voz que ele ouvira certa vez na porta da cafua, está ao seu lado. E um tipo forte, tem fama de ser tão malvado quanto o diretor. Pergunta:
Agora vê detidamente o casarão. No meio do pátio o cabeleireiro raspa a sua cabeça a zero. Vê a cabeleira loira rolar no chão. Dão-lhe umas calças e paletó de mescla azul. Veste-se ali mesmo. O bedel leva o a uma oficina de ferreiro:
Entrega os objetos a Pedro Bala. Marcham para o canavial, onde outros meninos trabalham. Neste dia, de tão fraco, Pedro Bala mal sustém o facão. Por isso os bedéis o soqueiam. Ele nada diz. À noite, na fila, olha para todos, querendo descobrir aquele que lhe falava e dava cigarros. Sobem as escadas, andam para o dormitório, que fica no terceiro andar para impedir qualquer idéia de fuga. A porta é fechada. O bedel Fausto diz:
Um menino avermelhado faz o pelo-sinal. Todos repetem as palavras e os gestos. Depois é um padre-nosso e uma ave-maria, ditas com voz forte apesar do cansaço. Pedro se joga na cama. Uma coberta suja o espera. Mudam a roupa de cama de 15 em 15 dias. E a roupa de cama é apenas uma coberta e uma fronha para um travesseiro de pedra. Já está dormindo quando alguém toca no seu ombro.
Pedro olha o mulato que está a seu lado. Pode ter dez anos:
O menino vai embora. Pedro nem perguntou seu nome. Tudo o que quer é dormir. Mas os que andam para as camas dos pederastas fazem ruído. O bedel Fausto sai do seu quarto de tabiques:
Silêncio. O bedel esfrega os olhos, anda entre as camas. Um enorme relógio dá dez horas na parede.
Silêncio. O bedel range os dentes:
vai pra cafua. Agora está desocupada... Uma voz de menino corta o silêncio:
É um pequeno, meio amarelento.
Os olhos todos estão fitos nele. Fausto anima a delação:
Quando o bedel se recolhe, Jeremias ameaça Henrique. Os outros comentam. Pedro Bala dorme. No refeitório, enquanto bebiam o café aguado e mastigavam o bolachão duro, seu vizinho de mesa fala:
Mastiga o bolachão. Continua:
Pedro Bala olha com desconfiança:
O bedel Campos bate as mãos Todos se levantam. Dirigem-se para as diversas oficinas ou para os terrenos cultivados. Pelo meio da tarde Pedro Bala vê o Sem-Pernas que passa na estrada. Vê também um bedel que o tange. Castigos... Castigos... É a palavra que Pedro Bala mais ouve no reformatório. Por qualquer coisa são espancados, por um nada são castigados. O ódio se acumula dentro de todos eles. No extremo do canavial passa um bilhete a Sem-Pernas. No outro dia encontra a corda entre as moitas de cana. Com certeza a puseram durante a noite. É um rolo de corda fina e resistente. Está novinha. No meio dela o punhal que Pedro mete nas calças. A dificuldade é levar o rolo para o dormitório. Fugir durante o dia é impossível, com a vigilância dos bedéis. Não pode levar o rolo entre a roupa, que notariam. De repente surge uma briga. Jeremias se joga sobre o bedel Fausto com o facão na mão. Outros meninos se atiram também, mas vem um grupo de bedéis armados de chicotes.Estão sujeitando Jeremias. Pedro mete o rolo de corda debaixo do paletó, abre para o dormitório. Um bedel vem descendo a escada com um revólver na mão. Pedro se esconde atrás de uma porta.O bedel vem rápido, passa. Empurra a corda para baixo do colchão, volta para o canavial. Jeremias foi levado para a cafua. Os bedéis agora juntam os meninos. Ranulfo e Campos foram em perseguição de Agostinho, que pulou a cerca na confusão da briga. O bedel Fausto, com um talho no ombro, foi para a enfermaria. O diretor está entre eles, os olhos fuzilando de raiva. Um bedel conta os meninos. Pergunta a Pedro Bala:
O bedel o olha desconfiado, mas passa. Voltam Ranulfo e Campos com Agostinho. O fujão é surrado na vista de todos. Depois o diretor diz:
Pedro Bala se arrepia. Como irão ficar dois na pequenez da cafua? Nesta noite a vigilância é grande, ele não tenta nada. Os meninos rangem os dentes de raiva. Duas noites depois, quando o bedel Fausto já tinha se recolhido há muito ao seu quarto de tabiques e quando todos dormiam, Pedro Bala se levantou, tirou a corda de sob o colchão. Sua cama ficava junto a uma janela. Abriu. Amarrou a corda num dos armadores de rede que existiam na parede. Deixou que a corda caísse pela janela.Era curta. Faltava ainda muito. Recolheu. Procurava fazer o menor barulho possível, mas assim mesmo um dos seus vizinhos de cama acordou:
Aquele não tinha boa fama. Costumava delatar. Por isso mesmo fora colocado ao lado de Pedro Bala. Bala puxou o punhal, mostrou a ele.
Põe o punhal ao alcance da mão. Recolhe completamente a corda, amarra o lençol na ponta com um daqueles nós que o Querido-de-Deus lhe ensinou. Ameaça mais uma vez o menino, joga a corda, passa o corpo pela janela, começa a descida. Ainda no meio ouve os gritos denunciadores do delator. Se deixa escorregar pela corda, salta ao chão. O pulo é grande, mas ele já salta correndo. Pula a cerca, após evitar os cachorros policiais que estão soltos. Desaba pela estrada. Tem alguns minutos de vantagem. O tempo dos bedéis se vestirem e saírem em sua perseguição e soltarem os cachorros também. Pedro Bala prende o punhal nos dentes, tira a roupa. Assim os cachorros não o conhecerão pelo faro. E nu, na madrugada fria, inicia a carreira para o sol, para a liberdade. Professor lê a manchete do Jornal da Tarde: “O CHEFE DOS «CAPITÃES DA AREIA » CONSEGUE FUGIR DO REFORMATÓRIO” Trazia uma longa entrevista com o diretor furioso. Todo o trapiche ri. Até o padre José Pedro, que está com eles, ri em gargalhadas, como se fosse um dos Capitães da Areia. OrfanatoUm mês de orfanato bastou para matar a alegria e a saúde de Dora. Nascera no morro, infância em correrias no morro. Depois a liberdade das ruas da cidade, a vida aventurosa dos Capitães da Areia. Não era uma flor de estufa. Amava o sol, a rua, a liberdade. Fizeram duas tranças do seu cabelo, amarraram com fitas. Fitas cor-de-rosa. Deram-lhe um vestido de pano azul, um avental de um azul mais escuro. Faziam com que ela ouvisse aulas junto com meninas de cinco e seis anos. A comida era má, havia castigo também. Ficar em jejum, perder os recreios. Veio uma febre, ela esteve na enfermaria. Quando voltou estava macilenta. Tinha sempre febre, mas não dizia nada, porque odiava o silêncio da enfermaria, onde o sol não entrava e das as horas pareciam a hora agonizante do crepúsculo. Quando podia, chegava perto das grades, porque por vezes divisava Professor ou João Grande que rondavam por ali. Um dia lhe passaram um bilhete. Pedro Bala fugira do reformatório. Viria tirá-la dali. Nem sentiu a febre em que estava. A visaram por intermédio de outro bilhete, que Professor escreveu e lhe jogou, que ela arranjasse um meio de ir para a enfermaria. Mas nem foi preciso, porque uma irmã notou o avermelhado das suas faces. Pôs a mão no seu rosto:
Era sempre crepúsculo na enfermaria. Era como uma ante-sala do túmulo, com as pesadas cortinas que impediam a luz de entrar. O médico que a vira balançara a cabeça com tristeza. Mas a luz entrou com eles. Como Pedro Bala estava magro, pensou Dora ao se pôr ao seu lado. João Grande, Gato, Professor, estavam com ele. Professor mostrou anavalha à Irmã, que abafou um grito. A menina que estava com catapora na outra cama tremia sob os lençóis. Dora queimava de febre, mal podia estar de pé. A Irmã murmurou:
Saíram pela porta. Volta Seca tinha o grande cachorro preso pela coleira. Tinham trazido um pedaço de carne. Gato abriu o portão. Na rua disse:
Se atiraram por uma ladeira. Dora nem sentia a febre porque ia junto com Pedro Bala, ele pegando na sua mão. Volta Seca fechava a marcha, a mão no punhal, um sorriso no rosto sombrio. Noite de Grande PazOs Capitães da Areia olham mãezinha Dora, a irmãzinha Dora, Dora noiva, Professor vê Dora, sua amada. Os Capitães da Areia olham em silêncio. A mãe- de-santo Don’Aninha reza oração forte para a febre que consome Dora desaparecer. Com um galho de sabugueiro manda que a febre se vá. Os olhos febris de Dora sorriem. Parece que a grande paz da noite da Bahia está também nos seus olhos. Os Capitães da Areia olham em silêncio sua mãe, irmã e noiva. Mal a recuperaram, a febre a derrubou. Onde está a alegria dela, por que ela não corre picula com seus filhinhos menores, não vai para a aventura das ruas com seus irmãos negros, brancos e mulatos? Onde está a alegria dos olhos dela? Só uma grande paz, a grande paz da noite. Porque Pedro Bala aperta sua mão com calor. A paz da noite da Bahia não está no coração dos Capitães da Areia. Tremem com receio de perder Dora. Mas a grande paz da noite está nos olhos dela. Olhos que se fecham docemente, enquanto a mãe-de-santo Aninha enxota a febre que a devora. A paz da noite envolve o trapiche. Dora, EsposaO cachorro late a lua na areia. Sem-Pernas sai do trapiche, acompanha Don’Aninha através do areal. Ela disse que a febre não tardaria a ir embora. Pirulito sai também, vai chamar o padre José Pedro. Tem confiança no padre, ele pode saber um remédio. Dentro do trapiche os Capitães da Areia estão silenciosos. Dora pediu que eles fossem dormir. Se deitaram pelo chão, mas são raros os que dormem. Na paz imensa da noite pensam na febre que consome Dora. Ela beijou Zé Fuinha, mandou que ele fosse dormir. Ele não compreende bem. Sabe que ela está doente, mas não pensa um momento que ela o poderá abandonar.Mas os Capitães da Areia temem que isso aconteça. Então ficarão novamente sem mãe, sem irmã, sem noiva. Agora só João Grande e Pedro Bala estão a seu lado. O negro sorri, mas Dora sabe que o sorriso dele é forçado, é um sorriso para a animar, um sorriso arrancado à força da tristeza que o negro sente. Pedro Bala segura sua mão. Mais retirado, Professor está dobrado sobre si mesmo, a cabeça enterrada nas mãos. Dora diz:
Ele se aproxima. A voz dela é um fio de voz. Pedro fala com carinho:
Pedro deita ao seu lado. João Grande se afasta, chega para perto de Professor. Mas não conversam, ficam entregues à sua tristeza. No entanto é uma noite de paz que envolve o trapiche. E a paz da noite está também nos olhos doentes de Dora.
Ele se chega mais, os corpos estão juntos. Ela toma a mão dele, leva ao seu peito. Arde de febre. A mão de Pedro está sobre seu seio de menina. Ela faz com que ele a acaricie, diz:
A mão dele pousada nos seus seios, os corpos juntos. Uma grande paz nos olhos dela:
Se abraçam. O desejo é abrupto e terrível. Pedro não a quer magoar, mas ela não mostra sinais de dor. Uma grande paz em todo seu ser.
Ela parecia não sentir a dor da posse. Seu rosto acendido pela febre se enche de alegria. Agora a paz é só da noite, com Dora está a alegria. Os corpos se desunem. Dora murmura:
Ele a beija. A paz voltou ao rosto dela. Fita Pedro Bala com amor.
Deita ao lado dela, segura sua mão ardente. Esposa. A paz da noite envolve os esposos. O amor é sempre doce e bom, mesmo quando a morte está próxima. Os corpos não se balançam mais no ritmo do amor. Mas nos corações dos dois meninos não há mais nenhum medo. Somente paz, a paz da noite da Bahia. Na madrugada, Pedro põe a mão na testa de Dora. Fria. Não tem mais pulso, o coração não bate mais. O seu grito atravessa o trapiche, desperta os meninos. João Grande a olha de olhos abertos. Diz a Pedro Bala:
Professor se chega, fica olhando. Não tem coragem de tocar no corpo dela. Mas sente que para ele a vida do trapiche acabou, não lhe resta mais nada que fazer ali. Pirulito entra com o padre José Pedro. O padre pega no pulso de Dora, bota a mão na testa:
Inicia uma oração. E quase todos rezam em voz alta.
Pedro Bala se lembra das rezas à noite no reformatório. Seus ombros se encolhem, tapa os ouvidos. Volta-se, vê o corpo de Dora. Pirulito pôs uma flor roxa entre seus dedos. Pedro Bala rompe em soluços. Veio a mãe-de-santo Don ’Aninha, veio também o Querido-de-Deus. Pedro Bala não toma parte da conversa. Aninha diz:
Foi como uma sombra para todos, um acontecimento sem explicação. Menos para Pedro Bala, que a teve. Menos para Professor que a amou. Padre José Pedro fala – Vai pro céu, não tinha pecado. Não sabia o que era pecado... Pirulito reza. Querido-de-Deus sabe o que esperam dele. Que leve o cadáver no seu saveiro e o jogue no mar, adiante do forte velho. Como poderá sair um enterro do trapiche? É difícil explicar tudo isso ao padre José Pedro. O Sem- Pernas o faz numa voz apressada. O padre a princípio se horroriza. É um pecado, ele não pode consentir num pecado. Mas consente, que não vai denunciar onde moram os Capitães da Areia. Pedro Bala não fala. Em torno é a paz da noite. Nos olhos mortos de Dora, olhos de mãe, de irmã, de noiva e de esposa, há uma grande paz. Alguns meninos choram. Volta Seca e João Grande vão levar o corpo. Mas, parado ante ele, está Pedro Bala, imóvel. Volta Seca não pode estende as mãos. João Grande chora como uma mulher. Don’Aninha toma do braço de Pedro, tira-o dali e envolve o corpo de Dora numa toalha branca de rendas:
Mas ninguém pode levar o cadáver. Porque Pedro Bala está abraçado com ele, não o larga. Professor o chama:
Levam-na para a paz da noite, para o mistério do mar. O padre reza, é uma estranha procissão que se dirige na noite para o saveiro do Querido-de-Deus. Do areal, Pedro Bala vê o saveiro que se afasta. Morde as mãos, estende os braços. Voltam para o trapiche. A vela branca do saveiro se perde no mar. A lua ilumina o areal, as estrelas tanto estão no céu como no mar. Há uma paz na noite. Paz que veio dos olhos de Dora. Como uma estrela de loira cabeleiraContam no cais da Bahia que quando morre um homem valente vira estrela no céu. Assim foi com Zumbi, com Lucas da Feira, com Besouro, todos os negros valentes.Mas nunca se viu um caso de uma mulher, por mais valente que fosse, virar estrela depois de morta. Algumas, como Rosa Palmeirão, como Maria Cabaçu, viraram santas nos candomblés de caboclo. Nunca nenhuma virou estrela. Pedro Bala se joga n’água. Não pode ficar no trapiche, entre os soluços e as lamentações. Quer acompanhar Dora, quer ir com ela, se reunir a ela nas Terras do Sem Fim de Yemanjá. Nada para diante sempre. Segue a rota do saveiro do Querido-de-Deus. Nada, nada sempre. Vê Dora em sua frente, Dora, sua esposa, os braços estendidos para ele. Nada até já não ter forças. Bóia então, os olhos voltados para as estrelas e a grande lua amarela do céu. Que importa morrer quando se vai em busca da amada, quando o amor nos espera? Que importa tampouco que os astrônomos afirmem que foi um cometa que passou sobre a Bahia naquela noite? O que Pedro Bala viu foi Dora feita estrela, indo para o céu. Fora mais valente que todas mulheres, mais valente que Rosa Palmeirão, que Maria Cabaçu. Tão valente que antes de morrer, mesmo sendo uma menina, se dera ao seu amor. Por isso virou uma estrela no céu. Uma estrela de longa cabeleira loira, uma estrela como nunca tivera nenhuma na noite de paz da Bahia. A felicidade ilumina o rosto de Pedro Bala. Para ele veio também a paz da noite. Porque agora sabe que ela brilhará para ele entre mil estrelas no céu sem igual da cidade negra. O saveiro do Querido-de-Deus o recolhe. Canção da Bahia, canção da liberdade VocaçõesNão havia passado muito tempo sobre a morte de Dora, a imagem da sua presença tão rápida e no entanto tão marcante, da sua morte também, ainda enchia de visões as noites do trapiche. Alguns, quando entravam, todavia, olhavam para o canto onde ela costumava sentar ao lado do Professor e de João Grande. Ainda com a esperança de encontrá-la. Fora um acontecimento sem explicação. Fora o totalmente inesperado na vida deles, o aparecimento de u’a mãe, de uma irmã. Motivo por que eles ainda a procuravam, apesar de terem visto o Querido-de- Deus a levar no seu saveiro para o fundo do mar. Só Pedro Bala não a procurava no trapiche. Procurava ver, no céu de tanta estrela, uma que tivesse longa e loira cabeleira. Um dia Professor entrou no trapiche e não acendeu sua vela, não abriu um livro de histórias, não conversou. Para ele toda aquela vida tinha acabado desde que Dora fora levada pela febre. Quando ela viera, enchera o trapiche com sua presença. Para Professor tudo tinha uma nova significação. O trapiche ficara como a moldura de um quadro: ora os cabelos loiros caindo sobre Gato, que via sua mãe, ora os lábios que beijavam Zé Fuinha para ele dormir. Ou a boca que cantava cantigas de ninar.Também sorrisos de orgulho para a coragem de Volta Seca, como se fosse uma destemida mulata sertaneja. Ou a entrada no trapiche, os cabelos voando, o rosto todo rindo, de volta da aventura do dia nas ruas da cidade. Ou os olhos cheios de amor, a febre queimando seu rosto, as mãos chamando o amado para a posse primeira e última. Agora Professor olhava o trapiche como para uma moldura sem quadro. Inútil. Para ele deixara de ter significação, ou tinha uma significação terrível demais. Mudara muito naqueles meses após a morte de Dora, andava calado, o rosto sério, e entrara em relações com aquele senhor que certa vez, num passeio da rua Chile, conversara com ele, lhe dera uma piteira e seu endereço. Nesta noite Professor não acendeu vela, não abriu livro de história. Ficou calado quando João Grande veio para seu lado. Arrumava suas coisas numa trouxa. Quase tudo era livro. João Grande olhava sem dizer nada, mas compreendia muito, se bem todos dissessem que não havia negro mais burro que o negrinho João Grande. Mas quando Pedro Bala chegou e sentou também a seu lado e lhe ofereceu um cigarro, Professor falou:
Professor olhou o trapiche, os meninos que andavam, que riam, que se moviam como sombras entre os ratos:
Pedro Bala não disse nada, mas a pergunta estava nos seus olhos. João Grande não perguntava nada, compreendia tudo.
A voz de Pedro Bala o animou:
Professor também não entendeu. Tampouco Pedro Bala sabia explicar. Mas tinha confiança no Professor, nos quadros que ele faria na marca do ódio que ele levava no coração, na marca de amor à justiça e à liberdade que ele levava dentro de si. Não se vive inutilmente uma infância entre os Capitães da Areia. Mesmo quando depois se vai se um artista e não um ladrão, assassino ou malandro. Mas Pedro Bala não sabia explicar tudo isso. Apenas disse:
gente... O mais batuta... Professor baixou a cabeça. João Grande se levantou, sua voz era um chamado, era um grito de despedida também:
Vieram todos, ficaram em torno. João Grande estendeu os braços:
O viva apertou o coração do menino. Olhou para o trapiche. Não era como um quadro sem moldura. Era como a moldura de inúmeros quadros. Como quadros de uma fita de cinema. Vida s de luta e de coragem. De miséria também. Uma vontade de ficar. Mas que adiantava ficar? Se fosse, poderia ser de melhor ajuda. Mostraria aquelas vidas... Apertam sua mão, o abraçam. Volta Seca está triste, tão triste como se tivesse morrido um cangaceiro do grupo de Lampião. Na noite do cais o homem da piteira, que era um poeta, entrega uma carta e dinheiro a Professor:
Nunca um passageiro de terceira teve tanta gente na sua despedida. Volta Seca lhe dá um punhal de presente. Pedro Bala faz tudo para rir, para dizer coisas gozadas.Mas João Grande não esconde a tristeza que vai dentro dele. Professor ainda de longe vê o boné de Pedro, que se sacode no cais. E no meio daqueles homens desconhecidos, oficiais fardados, comerciantes e senhoritas, fica tímido, não sabe que fazer, sente que toda a sua coragem ficou com os Capitães da Areia. Mas dentro do seu peito vem uma marca de amor à liberdade. Marca que o faria abandonar o velho pintor que lhe ensina coisas acadêmicas para ir pintar por sua conta quadros que, antes de admirar, espantam todo o país. Passou o inverno, passou o verão, veio outro inverno, e este cheio de longas chuvas, o vento não deixou de correr uma só noite areal. Agora Pirulito vendia jornais, fazia trabalhos de engraxate, carregava bagagens dos viajantes. Conseguira deixar de furtar para viver. Pedro Bata consentira que ele continuasse no trapiche, apesar que ele não levava a mesma vida que os outros. Pedro Bala não entende o que vai dentro de Pirulito. Sabe que ele quer ser padre, que quer fugir daquela vida. Mas acha que aquilo não resolverá nada, não endireitará nada na vida de todos eles. O padre José Pedro fazia tudo para mudar a vida deles. Mas era um só, os outros não achavam que ele fizesse bem. Que tinha adiantado? Só todos unidos, como dizia João de Adão. Mas Deus chamava Pirulito. Nas noites do trapiche o menino ouvia o chamado de Deus. Era uma voz poderosa dentro dele. Uma voz poderosa como a voz do mar, como a voz do vento que corre em torno ao casarão. Uma voz que não fala aos seus ouvidos, que fala seu coração. Uma voz que o chama, que o alegra e o amedronta mesmo tempo. Uma voz que exige tudo dele para lhe dar a felicidade a servir. Deus o chama. E o chamado de Deus dentro de Pirulito é poderoso como a voz do vento, como a voz potente do mar. Pirulito quer viver para Deus, inteiramente para Deus, uma vida de recolhimento e de penitência, uma vida que o limpe dos pecados, que o torne digno da contemplação de Deus. Deus o chama e Pirulito pensa na sua salvação. Será um penitente, não olhará mais o espetáculo do mundo. Não quer ver nada do que se passa no mundo para ter os olhos suficientemente limpos para poderem ver a face de Deus. Porque para aqueles que não têm os olhos completamente limpos de todo pecado, a face de Deus é terrível como o mar enfurecido. Mas para que têm os olhos e o coração limpos de todo o pecado, a face de Deus é mansa como as ondas do mar numa manhã de sol e de bonança. Pirulito está marcado por Deus. Mas está marcado também pela vida dos Capitães da Areia. Desiste da sua liberdade, de ver e ouvir o espetáculo do mundo, da marca de aventura dos Capitães da Areia, para ouvir o chamado de Deus. Porque a voz de Deus que fala no seu coração é tão poderosa que não tem comparação. Rezará pelos Capitães da Areia na sua cela de penitente. Porque tem que ouvir e seguir a voz que o chama. É uma voz que transfigura seu rosto na noite invernosa do trapiche.Como se lá fora fosse a primavera. Padre José Pedro foi chamado novamente ao arcebispado. Desta vez o Cônego está acompanhado do superior dos Capuchinhos. Padre José Pedro treme, pensando que novamente vão lhe ralhar, vão falar dos seus pecados. Fez uma coisa contra as leis para ajudar os Capitães da Areia. Teme ter fracassado, porque em quase nada conseguira melhorara vida deles. Mas em certos momentos cruéis levara um pouco de conforto àqueles pequenos corações. E tinha Pirulito... Era uma conquista para Deus. Se não fizera tudo, se não transformara como queria aquelas vidas, não tinha perdido tudo também. Algo havia conseguido para Deus. Se alegrava, apesar da tristeza do pouco que havia conseguido para os Capitães da Areia. Assim mesmo, em certos momentos fora como a família que lhes faltava. Certas horas tinha sido pai e mãe. Agora os chefes estavam já rapazes, quase homens. Professor já tinha ido embora, outros não tardariam a ir. Mesmo que fossem ser ladrões, levar uma vida de pecado, em certos momentos o padre conseguira minorar o espetáculo de miséria das suas vidas com um pouco de conforto e de carinho. E de solidariedade. Mas desta vez o Cônego não ralha. Anuncia que o arcebispado resolveu lhe dar uma paróquia. Conclui:
A paróquia nunca tivera cura porque o arcebispo nunca encontrara um padre que se dispusesse a ir para o meio dos cangaceiros, numa perdida vila do alto sertão.Mas o nome do lugarejo alegrou o coração do padre José Pedro. Ia para o meio dos cangaceiros. E os cangaceiros são como crianças grandes. Agradeceu, ia falar, mas o superior dos Capuchinhos o interrompeu:
Pirulito irá ser frade. Um dia talvez se ordene. O padre sai agradecendo a Deus. Levam o padre à estação. O apito do trem é como um lamento. Estão ali vários dos Capitães da Areia. Padre José Pedro os fita com amor. Pedro Bala diz:
senhor... Não reconhecem Pirulito quando ele chega vestido com uma batina de frade, um longo cordão pendendo ao lado. Padre José Pedro diz:
Eles olham Pirulito com certa vergonha. Mas Pirulito sorri. Está mais magro, um ar de asceta. Com o hábito de capuchinho fica muito alto.
Se despede. Entra para o vagão. O trem apita, é como uma despedida. Da janela, o padre vê os meninos que agitam mãos e bonés, velhos chapéus, trapos que servem de lenço. Uma velha que vai defronte dele, doidinha para puxar conversa, se espanta do padre chorando. Boa-Vida pouco aparece no trapiche. Tem um violão, faz sambas, está enorme, mais um malandro nas ruas da Bahia. Ninguém tem uma vida igual à dos malandros. Passa o dia conversando nas docas, no mercado, vai às festas dos morros e da Cidade de Palha à noite, ou às macumbas. Toca seu violão, come e bebe do melhor, apaixona as cabrochas bonitas com sua voz e sua música. Arma fuzuê nas festas e quando a polícia o persegue vem se esconder no trapiche entre os Capitães da Areia. Então toca para eles, ri com eles em gargalhadas como se ainda fosse um deles. Boa-Vida vai se afastando aos poucos, à proporção que vai crescendo. Quando tiver dezenove anos já não voltará. Será um malandro completo, um daqueles mulatos que amam a Bahia acima de tudo, que fazem uma vida perfeita nas ruas da cidade. Inimigo da riqueza e do trabalho, amigo das festas, da música, do corpo das cabrochas. Malandro. Armador de fuzuês. Jogador de capoeira navalhista, ladrão quando se fizer preciso. De bom coração, como canta um ABC que Boa-Vida faz acerca de outro malandro. Prometendo às cabrochas se regenerar e ir para o trabalho, sendo malandro sempre.Um dos valentões da cidade. Figura que os futuros Capitães da Areia amarão e admirarão, como Boa- Vida amou e admirou o Querido-de-Deus. Um dia, passado muito tempo, Pedro Bala ia com o Sem-Pernas pelas ruas. Entraram numa igreja da Piedade, gostavam de ver as coisas de ouro, mesmo era fácil bater uma bolsa de uma senhora que rezasse. Mas não havia nenhuma senhora na igreja àquela hora. Somente um grupo de meninos pobres e um capuchinho que lhes ensinava catecismo.
Pedro Bala ficou olhando. Encolheu os ombros:
Pirulito não os via. Com uma paciência e uma bondade extremas ensinava às crianças buliçosas as lições de catecismo. Os dois Capitães da Areia saíram balançando a cabeça. Pedro Bala botou a mão no ombro do Sem-Pernas.
A voz bondosa de Pirulito atravessa a igreja. A voz de ódio do Sem-Pernas estava junto de Pedro Bala. Mas ele não ouvia nenhuma. Ouvia era a voz de João de Adão, o doqueiro, a voz de seu pai morrendo na luta. Canção de amor da vitalinaGato contou que a solteirona era cheia do dinheiro. Era a última de uma família rica, andava pelos quarenta e cinco anos, feia e nervosa. Corna a notícia de que tinha uma sala cheia de coisas de ouro, de brilhantes e jóias acumuladas pela família através de gerações. Pedro Bala pensou que era uma coisa capaz de dar um bocado de dinheiro. Gonzales, o dono da casa de penhor O 14, dava dinheiro por aqueles objetos. Perguntou ao Sem-Pernas:
Riram no trapiche. Gato saiu para ver Dalva. Sem-Pernas avisou:
A solteirona abriu a porta. Só tinha uma criada, uma negra velha, que parecia fazer parte da herança, pois acompanhava a família há cinqüenta anos. A solteirona olhou muito digna para o Sem-Pernas:
A solteirona não tirava os olhos dele. Um menino... Não era a bondade que falava dentro dela. Era a voz do sexo que dava seus últimos latidos. Dentro em pouco seu sexo ficaria inútil, os médicos diziam que então o seu nervoso cessaria. Muito antes, quando ainda era mocinha, houvera um menino na casa para fazer compras.Fora bom... Mas seu irmão descobrira, expulsara o menino. Agora o irmão estava morto, outro menino vinha pedir para fazer compras:
Mandou que ele tomasse banho. Pela tarde deu-lhe dinheiro para as compras e mais para uma roupa para ele. Sem-Pernas conseguiu bater mil e duzentos nas contas.Pensou:
Na cozinha a negra contava histórias antigas com sua língua embolada. Sem- Pernas ouvia demonstrando excessivo interesse para ganhar confiança da negra. Mas quando perguntou pelas coisas de ouro a negra não respondeu. Sem-Pernas não insistiu. Sabia ser paciente, estava acostumado àquele trabalho. Na sala a solteirona fazia ponto de cruz numa toalha, mirava Sem-Pernas com interesse, pela porta. Era feia de cara, mas o corpo velhusco ainda tinha certo atrativo. Chamou Sem-Pernas para ver o trabalho que ela estava fazendo, quando Sem- Pernas olhou ela se curvou, ele viu os seios grandes. Mas não pensou que ela estivesse lhe mostrando. Achou o trabalho muito bonito, disse:
Parecia até um menino bem-educado. Apesar da perna coxa e da cara feia, a solteirona o achou lindo. Seria melhor que fosse um pouco menos crescido. Mas assim mesmo... Novamente se curvou, mostrou os seios ao Sem-Pernas. Sem- Pernas desviou o olhar, não pensava que fosse de propósito. Quando ele elogiou novamente o trabalho, ela passou a mão no seu rosto:
A negra botou um colchão na sala de jantar para o Sem-Pernas dormir. Cobriu com um lençol, arranjou um travesseiro. A solteirona conversava na casa de uma amiga, na mesma rua, e quando voltou Sem-Pernas já estava deitado. Ouviu que ela se despedia de alguém:
Entrou, trancou a porta da rua, tirou a chave. A negra já tinha ido dormir no quarto junto da cozinha. A solteirona veio até a sala de jantar, deu uma espiada em Sem-Pernas, que fez que estava dormindo. Suspirou. Marchou para seu quarto. As luzes estavam todas apagadas na casa. Apesar de ser muito cedo em relação à hora em que dormiam no trapiche, Sem-Pernas se entregou ao sono. Por isso não sabe a que horas a vitalina veio. Sentiu foi uma mão que passava em seus cabelos. Pensou que fosse um sonho bom. A mão deslizava, passava no seu peito, na sua barriga, agora segurava de manso no seu sexo. Sem-Pernas despertou completamente, mas ficou de olhos fechados. A solteirona machucava seu sexo, se encostava contra ele. Estava de camisa de dormir, suspendeu a camisa, botou a mão de Sem-Pernas no seu corpo, Sem-Pernas se encostou nela. Quis falar, ela pôs a mão na sua boca, apontou para a cozinha:
Disse ainda mais baixo:
Se apertava contra ele. Puxou as calças do Sem-Pernas. Depois se cobriram com o lençol. Mas quando Sem-Pernas quis tudo, ela disse:
Era uma coisa incompleta que enraivecia Sem-Pernas. A solteirona gemia baixinho de amor. Apertava a cabeça do Sem-Pernas contra seus seios enormes, o sexo dele contra suas coxas, a mão do menino no seu sexo. Sem-Pernas levanta estremunhado. Um grande cansaço nos seus membros. Aquelas noites são como batalhas. Nunca é um gozo completo, uma satisfação total. A solteirona quer uma migalha de amor. Teme o amor completo, o escândalo de um filho. Mas tem sede e fome de amor, quer nem que sejam as migalhas. Mas Sem-Pernas quer fazer o amor completo, aquilo o irrita, faz crescer seu ódio. Ao mesmo tempo se sente preso ao corpo da solteirona, às carícias a meio, trocadas na noite. Uma coisa o retém naquela casa. Se bem ao acordar tenha ódio de Joana, uma raiva impotente, uma vontade de a estrangular já que não a pode possuir totalmente, se a acha feia e velha, quando a noite se acerca fica nervoso pelos carinhos da vitalina, pela mão que movimenta seu sexo de menino, pelos seus seios onde repousa a cabeça, pelas suas coxas grossas. Imagina planos para a possuir, mas a solteirona os frustra, fugindo no último momento, e ralha com ele em voz baixa. Uma raiva surda possui Sem- Pernas.Mas a mão dela vem de novo para seu sexo e ele não pode lutar contra o desejo. E volta àquela luta tremenda da qual sai nervoso e esgotado. Durante o dia responde mal a Joana, diz brutalidades, a solteirona chora. Ele a chama de vitalina, diz que vai embora. Ela lhe dá dinheiro, pede que ele fique. Mas não é pelo dinheiro que ele fica. Fica porque o desejo o retém. Já sabe qual a chave que abre a sala onde Joana guarda seus objetos de ouro. Sabe como tirar a chave para levá-la aos Capitães da Areia. Mas o desejo o retém ali, junto dos seios e das coxas da vitalina. Junto da mão da vitalina.Fora sempre infeliz para o lado de mulher. Quando conseguia uma negrinha no areal era com a ajuda dos outros, era à força. Nenhuma olhava para ele, convidando com os olhos. Outros eram feios, mas ele era repulsivo com a perna coxa, andando feito caranguejo. Demais terminara por se fazer antipático e a se acostumara possuir negrinhas a pulso. Agora vinha uma mulher branca e com dinheiro, velha e feiúsca era verdade, mas bem comível ainda, e se deitava com ele. Acariciava seu sexo com a mão, juntava coxa com coxa, deitava sua cabeça nos seus seios grandes. Sem-Pernas não podia sair dali, se bem cada dia estivesse mais bruto e mais inquieto.Seu desejo reclamava uma posse completa. Mas a vitalina se contentava em colher migalhas do amor. Sem-Pernas durante o dia a odeia, se odeia, odeia o mundo todo. Pedro Bala reclamou a demora. Já era tempo do Sem-Pernas saber os segredos da casa. Sem-Pernas diz que sim, que não demora mais. E naquela noite a batalha de amor é mais forte ainda. A solteirona geme de amor, recolhendo as migalhas do amor. Mas não cede a sua honra. Isso dá coragem ao Sem-Pernas para no outro dia arribar com a chave. A vitalina o espera para o amor. Está como uma esposa a quem o marido abandonasse. Chora e se lastima. Seu amor não vem, ela também precisa de amor, como todas essas moças que passam de vestidos bonitos na rua. Mas o roubo a enfurece. Porque pensa que Sem-Pernas só amou nas noites longas de vícios para a furtar. Sua sede de amor humilhada. É como se houvessem cuspido na sua cara, dizendo que era por causa da sua feiúra. Chora, não geme mais uma canção de amor. Se sente com coragem para estrangular o Sem-Pernas se encontrasse.Porque burlaram do seu amor, da sede de amor que está no seu sangue. A sua desgraça é mais completa porque durante uma semana foi plenamente feliz com as migalhas de amor. Rola no chão com um ataque. No trapiche, Sem-Pernas ri, relatando sua aventura. Mas no fundo sabe que a solteirona o fez ainda pior, aumentou com seus vícios o ódio que vivia latente no seu coração. Agora um desejo insatisfeito enche suas noites. Um desejo que impede seu sono, que lhe dá raiva. Na rabada de um tremOs navios chegam a Ilhéus carregados de mulheres. Mulheres que vêm da Bahia, de Aracaju, o mulherio todo de Recife, mesmo do Rio de Janeiro. Os gordos coronéis olham das pontes a chegada das mulheres. Morenas, loiras e mulatas, vêm em busca deles. Porque a notícia da alta do cacau correu pelo país todo. A notícia de que numa cidade relativamente pequena como Ilhéus estavam abertos quatro cabarés. Que os coronéis queimavam nas noites de jogo e de champanha notas de quinhentos mil-réis.Que pela madrugada saíam nus pelas ruas da cidade, formando o chamado terno do Y. A notícia corria pelas ruas de mulheres perdidas. Os caixeiros-viajantes levavam a notícia. O cabaré da Brama, em Aracaju, ficou despovoado de mulheres. Foram para o El-Dorado, cabaré de Ilhéus. O mulherio de Recife desceu todo em alguns navios do Lloyd Brasileiro. Os pernambucanos ficaram sem mulheres, vieram todas para o cabaré Bataclan, apelidado pelos estudantes em férias de Escola. Vieram algumas do Rio de Janeiro e estas foram para o Trianon, ex-Vesúvio, o mais luxuoso dos quatro cabarés da cidade do cacau. Até Rita Tanajura, célebre pelas grandes nádegas reboleantes, deixou a paz da sua cidade de Estância, onde era a rainha do pequeno mulherio de vida fácil e onde se dava com todo mundo, e veio ser a rainha do Far-West, o cabaré da rua do Sapo, onde os beijos e o estalo das garrafas de champanha se misturavam com os tiros, com o barulho das brigas. Porque o Far-West era o cabaré dos capatazes, dos pequenos fazendeiros de repente enriquecidos. Na rua de Dalva, na zona das mulheres perdidas da Bahia, a casas se despovoaram. Vieram mulheres para o Bataclan, mulheres para o El-Dorado, mulheres para o Far-West.Umas poucas vieram para o Trianon, onde dançavam com os coronéis. No Bataclan mulheres pernambucanas e sergipanas davam parte do dinheiro que ganhavam dos coronéis, e que era muito, aos estudantes que em compensação lhes davam o amor. Os viajantes enchiam o El-Dorado Até no Far- West as mulheres ganhavam jóias. Por vezes ganhavam um tiro também, como uma estranha jóia vermelha no peito. Rita Tanajura dançava o charleston em cima de uma mesa, entre champanha e tiros. Tudo isso foi naquela alta do cacau de há muitos anos. Quando Dalva soube que Isabel tinha colares e anel de brilhante e, no entanto, não estava no Trianon, que era o mais luxuoso dos cabarés, estava era no Bataclan, não resistiu. Arrumou as malas. O que não faria ela no Trianon, ela que era a melhor das mulheres da sua rua Enfardou Gato com uma elegantíssima roupa de casimira feita sol medida, de repente Gato não era mais um menino, era o mais jovem dos vigaristas da Bahia. Na noite que, envergando seu traje novo, sapatos negros de verniz, gravata borboleta, chapéu de palhinha, apareceu no trapiche João Grande soltou uma exclamação de assombro:
Gato não fizera ainda dezoito anos. Fazia quatro que amava Dalva. Virou para João Grande:
Ofereceu cigarros tirados de uma cigarreira cara, alisou o cabelo bem assentado. Botou a mão no ombro de Pedro Bala:
Pedro sorriu. Era outro que ia. Não seriam meninos toda vida... Bem sabia que eles nunca tinham parecido crianças. Desde pequenos na arriscada vida da rua, os Capitães da Areia eram como homens eram iguais a homens. Toda a diferença estava no tamanho. No mais eram iguais: amavam e derrubavam negras no areal desde cedo furtavam para viver como os ladrões da cidade. Quando eram preso apanhavam surras como os homens.Por vezes assaltavam de armas na mão como os mais temidos bandidos da Bahia. Não tinham também conversas de meninos, conversavam como homens. Sentiam mesmo como homens. Quando outras crianças só se preocupavam com brincar, estudar livros para aprender a ler, eles se viam envolvidos em acontecimentos que só os homens sabiam resolver. Sempre tinham sido como homens, na sua vida de miséria e de aventura, nunca tinham sido perfeitamente crianças. Porque o que faz a criança é o ambiente de casa, pai, mãe, nenhuma responsabilidade. Nunca eles tiveram pai e mãe na vida da rua. E tiveram sempre que cuidar de si mesmos, foram sempre os responsáveis por si. Tinham sido sempre iguais a homens. Agora os mais velhos, os que eram desde há anos os chefes do grupo, estavam rapazolas, começavam a ir para seus destinos.Professor já fora, fazia quadros no Rio de Janeiro. Boa-Vida se desligara aos poucos do trapiche, toca violão nas festas, vai aos candomblés, arma fuzuê nas quermesses. É mais um malandro na cidade. Seu nome já é conhecido até nos jornais. Como os outros vagabundos, é conhecido pelos investigadores de polícia, que sempre estão de olho nos malandros. Pirulito é frade num convento, Deus o chamou, nunca mais saberão dele. Agora é o Gato que parte, vai arrancar dinheiro dos coronéis de Ilhéus.O Querido-de-Deus certa vez disse que Gato enricaria. Porque a vida na rua, no abandono, fez de Gato um jogador desonesto, um vigarista, um gigolô de mulheres. Não demorará que os outros partam. Só Pedro Bala não sabe o que fazer. Dentro em pouco será mais que um rapazola, será um homem e terá que deixar para outro a chefia dos Capitães da Areia. Para onde irá? Não poderá ser um intelectual como Professor, cujas mãos só viviam para pintar, não nasceu para malandro, como Boa-Vida, que não sente o espetáculo da luta diária dos homens, que só ama andar vagabundando pelas ruas, conversar acocorado nas docas, beber nas festas de morro. Pedro sente o espetáculo dos homens, acha que aquela liberdade não é suficiente para a sede de liberdade que tem dentro de si. Tampouco sente o chamado de Deus, como Pirulito o sentiu. Para ele as pregações do padre José Pedro nunca disseram nada. Gostava do padre como de um homem bom. Só as palavras de João de Adão encontravam acolhida no seu coração. Mas João de Adão mesmo sabe muito pouco. O que tem é músculos potentes e voz autoritária, e no entanto amiga, para chefiar uma greve. Tampouco Pedro Bala quer ir como Gato enganar os coronéis de Ilhéus, arranca o dinheiro deles. Quer qualquer coisa que não sabe ainda o que é, e por isso se demora entre os Capitães da Areia. O trapiche grita se despedindo do Gato. Este sorri, elegantíssimo, alisando o cabelo, no dedo aquele anelão cor de vinho que furtar certa vez. Do cais Pedro Bala dá adeus ao Gato. Vestido com suas roupas esfarrapadas, agitando o boné, se sente muito longe do Gato, que ao lado de Dalva parece um homem feito com sua roupa bem talhada Pedro sente uma aflição, uma vontade de fugir, de ir para qualquer parte num navio ou na rabada de um trem. Mas quem vai na rabada de um trem é Volta Seca. Uma tarde a polícia o pegou quando o mulato despojava um negociante da sua carteira. Volta Seca tinha então dezesseis anos. Foi levado para a polícia, o surraram porque ele xingava todos, soldados e delegados com aquele imenso desprezo que o sertanejo tem pela polícia. Ele não soltou um grito enquanto apanhou. Oito dias depois o puseram na rua, e ele saiu quase alegre, porque agora tinha uma missão na vida matar soldados de polícia. Passou uns dias no trapiche, o rosto sombrio, afogado em pensamentos. O sertão o chamava, a luta do cangaço o chamava. Um dia disse a Pedro Bala:
Os Índios Maloqueiros eram os Capitães da Areia em Aracaju. Viviam sob as pontes, roubavam e brigavam nas ruas. O juiz de menores Olimpio Mendonça era um homem bom, procurava resolver os conflitos como melhor podia, se abismava com a inteligência das crianças iguais a homens, compreendia que era impossível resolver o problema.Contava aos romancistas coisas dos meninos, no fundo amava os meninos. Mas se sentia aflito porque não podia resolver o problema deles. Quando entre os Índios Maloqueiros aparecia algum novo, ele já sabia que era um baiano que tinha chegado na rabada de um trem. E quando um sumia, sabia que tinha ido para entre os Capitães da Areia na Bahia. Uma madrugada o trem de Sergipe apitou na estação da Calçada. Ninguém tinha vindo trazer Volta Seca à estação porque ele ia para voltar, ia passar uns tempos entre os Índios Maloqueiros, esquecer a polícia baiana, que o tinha marcado. Volta Seca se meteu no vagão de carga que estava aberto, se escondeu entre uns fardos. Aos poucos o trem abandona a estação. Depois é a estrada do sertão, Índia Nordestina. Nas casas de barro aparecem mulheres e meninas. Os homens seminus lavram a terra.Na estrada de animais que corre paralela à estrada de ferro passam boiadas. Vaqueiros gritam tangendo os animais. Nas estações vendem doces de milho, mingau, mungunzá, pamonha e canjica. O sertão vai entrando pelo nariz e pelos olhos de Volta Seca. Queijos e rapaduras passam em tabuleiros nas pequenas estações, as paisagens agrestes jamais esquecidas enchem novamente os olhos do sertanejo. Estes muitos anos na cidade não tinham arrancado seu amor ao sertão miserável e belo. Nunca fora um menino da cidade igual a Pedro Bala, a Boa-Vida, ao Gato. Fora sempre um deslocado na cidade, com uma fala diferente, falando em Lampião, dizendo meu padrim, imitando as vozes dos animais sertanejos. Antigamente ele e sua mãe tinham um pedaço de terra. Ela era comadre de Lampião, os coronéis respeitavam sua terra. Mas quando Lampião se internou pelo sertão de Pernambuco os coronéis ficaram com a terra da mãe de Volta Seca. Ela desceu para a cidade para pedir justiça. Morreu no caminho, Volta Seca continuou a caminhada com seu rosto sombrio. Muita coisa aprendeu na cidade, entre os Capitães da Areia. Aprendeu que não era só no sertão que os homens ricos eram ruins para com os pobres.Na cidade, também. Aprendeu que as crianças pobres são desgraçadas em toda parte, que os ricos perseguem e mandam em toda parte. Sorriu por vezes, mas nunca deixou de odiar. Na figura de José Pedro descobriu o motivo por que Lampião respeitava os padre s. Se já pensava que Lampião era um herói, a sua experiência na cidade, o ódio adquirido na cidade, fez com que amasse a figura de seu padrinho acima de tudo. Acima mesmo da de Pedro Bala. Agora é o sertão. Perfume das flores do sertão. Campos amigos, aves amigas, magros cachorros nas portas das casas. Velhos que parecem missionários indianos, negros de longos rosários no pescoço. Cheiro bom de comidas de milho e mandioca. Homens magros que lavram a terra para ganhar mil e quinhentos dos donos da terra. Só caatinga é que é de todos, porque Lampião libertou a caatinga expulsou os homens ricos da caatinga, fez da caatinga a terra dos cangaceiros que lutam contra os fazendeiros. O herói Lampião, herói de todo o sertão de cinco estados. Dizem que ele é um criminoso, um cangaceiro sem coração, assassino, desonrador, ladrão. Mas para Volta Seca, para os homens, as mulheres e as crianças do sertão é um novo Zumbi dos Palmares, ele é um libertador, um capitão de um novo exército. Porque a liberdade é como o sol, o bem maior do mundo. E Lampião luta, mata, deflora e furta pela liberdade. Pela liberdade e pela justiça para os homens explorados do sertão imenso de cinco estados: Pernambuco, Paraíba, Alagoas, Sergipe e Bahia. O sertão comove os olhos de Volta Seca. O trem não corre, este vai devagar, cortando as terras do sertão. Aqui tudo é lírico, pobre e belo. Só a miséria dos homens é terrível. Mas estes homens são tão fortes que conseguem criar beleza dentro desta miséria. Que não farão quando Lampião libertar toda a caatinga, implantar a justiça e a liberdade? Passam violeiros, improvisadores de poesia. Passam vaqueiros que tangem o gado, homens plantam mandioca e milho. Nas estações os coronéis descem para estirar as pernas. Levam grandes revólveres. Os violeiros cegos cantam pedindo uma esmola. Um negro de camisa e rosário atravessa essa a estação dizendo estranhas coisas em língua desconhecida. Foi escravo, hoje é um doido na estação. Todos temem, temem suas pragas. Porque ele sofreu muito, o chicote de feitor rasgou suas costas. Também o chicote da polícia, feitor dos ricos, rasgou as costas de Volta Seca. Todos o temerão um dia também. Caatingas do sertão, olor das flores sertanejas, o manso andar do trem sertanejo. Homens de alpercatas e chapéu de couro. Criança que estudam para cangaceiro na escola da miséria e da exploração do homem. O trem pára no meio da caatinga. Volta Seca pula fora do vagão. Os cangaceiros apontam os fuzis, o caminhão que os trouxe está parado no outro lado da estrada, os fios do telégrafo cortados. Na caatinga agreste não se vê ninguém. Uma moça desmaia num dos carros, um caixeiro-viajante esconde a carteira com dinheiro.Um coronel gordo sai do vagão, fala:
O cangaceiro de óculos aponta o fuzil:
Volta Seca pensa que seu coração vai estalar de alegria. Encontrou seu padrinho, Virgulino Ferreira Lampião, herói das crianças sertanejas. Chega para junto dele, um outro cangaceiro o quer afastar, mas ele diz:
Lampião o reconhece, sorri. Os cangaceiros estão entrando nos vagões de primeira, não são muitos, uns doze. Volta Seca pede:
Entra para a coleta. Desmaios e gritos lá dentro, o soar de um disparo. Depois o grupo volta para a estrada. Traz dois soldados de polícia que viajavam no trem.Lampião divide dinheiro com os cangaceiros. Volta Seca também recebe. De um vagão sai um fio de sangue. O cheiro bom do sertão penetra as narinas de volta Seca.Os soldados são encostados numas árvores. Zé Baiano prepara o fuzil, mas a voz de Volta Seca faz um pedido:
Seu rosto sombrio tem um riso que o enche todo. Cai o primeiro, o segundo tenta fugir, mas a bala o alcança nas costas Depois Volta Seca corre para cima dele com o punhal, sacia sua vingança. Zé Baiano diz:
Como um trapezista de circoFora demasiada audácia atacar aquela casa da rua rui Barbosa. Perto dali, na praça do Palácio, andavam muitos guardas, investigadores, soldados. Mas eles tinham sede de aventura, estavam cada vez maiores, cada vez mais atrevidos. Porém havia muita gente na casa, deram o alarme, os guardas chegaram. Pedro Bala e João Grande abalaram pela ladeira da Praça. Barandão abriu no mundo também. Mas o Sem-Pernas ficou encurralado na rua. Jogava picula com os guardas. Estes tinham se despreocupado dos outros, pensavam que já era alguma coisa pegar aquele coxo. Sem-Pernas corria de um lado para outro da rua, os guardas avançavam. Ele fez que ia escapuli por outro lado, driblou um dos guardas, saiu pela ladeira. Mas em vez de descer e tomar pela Baixa dos Sapateiros, se dirigiu para a praça do Palácio. Porque Sem-Pernas sabia que se corresse na rua o pegariam com certeza. Eram homens, de pernas maiores que as suas, e além do mais ele era coxo, pouco podia correr. E acima de tudo não queria que o pegassem. Lembrava-se da vez que fora à polícia. Dos sonhos das suas noites más. Não o pegariam e enquanto corre este é o único pensamento que vai com ele. Os guardas vêm nos seus calcanhares. Sem-Pernas sabe que eles gostarão de o pegar, que a captura de um dos Capitães da Areia é uma bela façanha para um guarda. Essa será a sua vingança. Não deixará que o peguem, não tocarão a mão no seu corpo. Sem-Pernas os odeia como odeia a todo mundo, porque nunca pôde ter um carinho. E no dia que o teve foi obrigado ao abandonar porque a vida já o tinha marcado demais. Nunca tivera uma alegria de criança. Se fizera homem antes dos dez anos para lutar pela mais miserável das vidas: a vida de criança abandonada. Nunca conseguira amar ninguém, a não ser a este cachorro que o segue. Quando os corações das demais crianças ainda estão puros de sentimentos, o do Sem-Pernas já estava cheio de ódio. Odiava a cidade, a vida, os homens.Amava unicamente o seu ódio, sentimento que o fazia forte e corajoso apesar do defeito físico. Uma vez uma mulher foi boa para ele. Mas em verdade não o fora para ele e sim para o filho que perdera e que pensara que tinha voltado. De outra feita outra mulher se deitara com ele numa cama, acariciara seu sexo, se aproveitara dele para colher migalhas do amor que nunca tivera. Nunca, porém, o tinham amado pelo que ele era, menino abandonado, aleijado e triste. Muita gente tinha odiado.E ele odiara a todos. Apanhara na polícia, um homem ria quando o surravam. Para ele é este homem que corre em sua perseguição na figura dos guardas. Se o levarem, o homem rirá novo. Não o levarão. Vêm em seus calcanhares, mas não o levarão. Pensam que elevai parar junto ao grande elevador. Mas Sem-Pernas não pára. Sobe para o pequeno muro, volve o rosto para os guardas que ainda correm, ri com toda a força do seu ódio, cospe na cara de um que se aproxima estendendo os braços, se atira de costas no espaço como se fosse um trapezista de circo. A praça toda fica em suspenso por um momento. Se jogou, diz uma mulher, e desmaia. Sem-Pernas se rebenta na montanha como um trapezista de circo que não tivesse alcançado o outro trapézio. O cachorro late entre as grades do muro. Notícias de jornalO Jornal da Tarde publica um telegrama do rio dando conta do sucesso da exposição de um jovem pintor até então desconhecido. Dias depois transcreve uma crítica de arte publicada também num jornal do Rio de Janeiro. Porque o pintor é baiano, e o Jornal da Tarde é muito cioso das glórias baianas. Um trecho da crítica de arte, após falar das qualidades e defeitos do novo pintor social, de usar e abusar de expressões como clima, luz, cor, ângulos, força e outras mais, diz:... um detalhe notaram todos que foram estranha exposição de cenas e retratos de meninos pobres. É que todos os sentimentos bons estão sempre representados na figura de uma menina magra de cabelos loiros e faces febris. E que todos os sentimentos maus estão representados por um homem de sobretudo negro e um ar de viajante. Que representará para um psicanalista a repetição quase inconsciente destas figuras em todos os quadros? Sabe-se que o pintor João José tem uma história... E continuava o abuso das palavras cor, força, clima, luz, ângulos e outras mais complicadas. Meses depois uma notícia informava aos leitores do Jornal da Tarde, sob o título de PRESENTE DE GREGO A POLÍCIA DE BELMONTE DEVOLVE O VIGARISTA GATO que a polícia de Belmonte, havia recebido da policia de Ilhéus um verdadeiro presente de grego. Um conhecido e jovem vigarista que atuava em Ilhéus com o nome de °Gato ”, após ter abiscoitado bons cobres de muitos fazendeiros e comerciantes, fora remetido para Belmonte. Lá continuava a passar contos do vigário, em que era mestre. Conseguira vender uma imensidade de terras, ótimas para o cultivo do cacau, a muitos fazendeiros. Quando estes foram ver as terras, não eram mais que o leito sobre o qual corre o rio Cachoeira. A polícia de Belmonte tinha conseguido deitar mão no temível vigarista e o remetia de volta para Ilhéus. Os ilheenses são mais ricos que nós, terminava com certa ironia o correspondente que assinava a notícia, podem sustentar com mais conforto o elegante Gato que os filhos da bela Belmonte, a Princesa do Sul. Porque se Belmonte é a Princesa, Ilhéus é muito justamente chamada a Rainha do Sul. Entre fatos policiais sem importância o Jornal da Tarde noticiou um dia que um malandro conhecido pelo nome de Boa-Vida armara um fuzuê tremendo numa festa na Cidade de Palha, abrira a cabeça do dono da casa com uma garrafa de cerveja e estava sendo procurado pela polícia. Perto de um Natal o Jornal da Tarde apareceu com manchetes em tipos enormes. Uma notícia de tanta sensação como aquela que fizera conhecida a história da mulher que acompanhava o bando de Lampião, a amante do cangaceiro. Porque a população dos cinco estados, de Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Paraíba e Pernambuco, vive com os olhos fitos em Lampião. Com ódio ou com amor, nunca com indiferença. A manchete dizia em letras garrafais: UMA CRIANÇA DE 16 ANOS NO GRUPO DE LAMPIÃO Os tipos das letras dos títulos que encabeçavam a reportagem eram também enormes: É UM DOS MAIS TEMÍVEIS CANGACEIROS – TRINTA E CINCO TRAÇOS NO SEU FUZIL – PERTENCEU AOS “CAPITÃES DA AREIA” – A MORTE DE MACHADÃO DEVIDA A VOLTA SECA A reportagem era extensa. Contava como as vilas saqueadas há algum tempo vinham notando entre o bando de Lampião uma criança de uns dezesseis anos, que levava o nome de Volta Seca. Apesar da sua idade, o jovem cangaceiro se fizera temido em todo o sertão como um dos mais cruéis do grupo. Constava que seu fuzil tinha trinta e cinco marcas. E cada marca num fuzil de cangaceiro representa um homem morto. Depois vinha a história da morte de Machadão, um dos mais antigos do grupo de Lampião. Aconteceu que o grupo tinha pegado na estrada um velho sargento de polícia. E Lampião o entregara a Volta Seca para que o despachasse. Volta Seca o despachara devagarinho, à ponta de punhal, cortando os pedacinhos com visível satisfação. Fora tanta a crueldade, que Machadão, horrorizado, levantou o fuzil para acabar com Volta Seca. Mas antes que disparasse, Lampião, que tinha um grande orgulho de Volta Seca, atirou em Machadão. Volta Seca continuara sua tarefa. A notícia se estendia, narrando diversos outros crimes do cangaceiro de 16 anos. Depois lembrava que entre os Capitães da Areia vivera um menino com o nome de Volta Seca e que era possível que fosse o mesmo. Vinham então várias considerações de ordem moral. A edição se esgotou. Meses depois a edição se esgotou novamente porque trazia a notícia da prisão de Volta Seca, enquanto dormia, executada pela coluna volante que percorria o sertão dando caça a Lampião. Anunciava que o cangaceiro chegaria no outro dia à Bahia. Vinham vários clichês onde Volta Seca aparecia com seu rosto sombrio. O Jornal da Tarde dizia que era rosto de criminoso nato. O que não era verdade, como o próprio Jornal da Tarde noticiou tempos depois, ao relatar em edições extraordinárias e sucessivas o júri que condenou Volta Seca a 30 anos de prisão por 15 mortes conhecidas e provadas. No entanto, seu fuzil tinha 60 marcas. E o jornal lembrava esse fato, repetindo que cada marca era um homem morto. Mas publicava também parte do relatório do médico-legista, cavalheiro de honestidade e cultura reconhecidas, já então um dos grandes sociólogos e etnógrafos do país, relatório que provava que Volta Seca era um tipo absolutamente normal e que se virara cangaceiro e matara tantos homens e com tamanha crueldade não fora por vocação de nascença. Fora o ambiente... e vinham as devidas considerações científicas. O que aliás não despertou tanta curiosidade entre o público como a descrição de belíssimo, vibrantíssimo e apaixonadíssimo discurso de doutor Promotor Público, que fizera os jurados chorar, e até o próprio juiz tinha limpado as lágrimas, ao descrever o doutor Promotor, com sublime força oratória, o sofrimento das vítimas do feroz cangaceiro-menino. O público ficou indignado porque Volta Seca não chorou durante o júri. Seu rosto sombrio estava cheio de estranha calma. CompanheirosHá um movimento novo na cidade. Pedro Bala sai do trapiche com João Grande e Barandão. O cais está deserto, parece que todos o abandonaram. Somente soldados de policia guardam os grandes armazéns. Não há descarga de navios neste dia. Porque os estivadores, com João de Adão à frente, foram prestar solidariedade aos condutores de bonde que estão em greve. Parece que há uma festa na cidade, mas uma festa diferente de todas. Passam grupos de homens que conversam, os automóveis cortam as ruas conduzindo gente para o trabalho, empregados no comércio riem, a ladeira da Montanha está cheia de gente que sobe e desce, pois os elevadores também estão parados.As marinetes vão entupidas, gente sobrando pelas portas. Os grupos de grevistas passam silenciosos para a sede do sindicato, onde vão ouvir a leitura do manifesto dos estivadores, que João de Adão conduz nas suas mãos grandes. Na porta do sindicato grupos conversam, soldados montam guarda. Pedro Bala anda com João Grande e Barandão pelas ruas. Diz: – Tá bonito... João Grande também sorri, o negrinho Barandão fala:
Vão para a porta do sindicato. Entram homens negros, mulatos, espanhóis e portugueses. Vêem quando João de Adão e os outros estivadores saem entre vivas dos operários das linhas de bonde. Eles vivam também. João Grande e Barandão porque gostam do doqueiro João de Adão. Pedro Bala não só por isso como porque acha bonito o espetáculo da greve, é como uma das mais belas aventuras dos Capitães da Areia. Um grupo de homens bem vestidos entra no sindicato. Da porta eles ouvem uma voz que discursa, uma que interrompe: Vendido, amarelo.
Tem vontade de entrar, de se misturar com os grevistas, de gritar e lutar ao lado deles. A cidade dormiu cedo. A lua ilumina o céu, vem a voz de um negro do mar em frente. Canta a amargura da sua vida desde que a amada se foi. No trapiche as crianças já dormem. Até o negro João Grande ronca estirado na porta, o punhal ao alcance da mão. Somente Pedro Bala vela, estirado na areia, olhando a lua, ouvindo o negro que canta as saudades da sua mulata que partiu. O vento traz trechos soltos da canção e ela faz com que Pedro Bala procure Dora no meio das estrelas do céu. Ela também virou uma estrela, uma estranha estrela de longa cabeleira loira. Os homens valentes têm uma estrela em lugar do coração. Mas nunca se ouviu falar de uma mulher que tivesse no peito, como uma flor, uma estrela. As mulheres mais valentes da terra e do mar da Bahia, quando morriam, viravam santas para os negros, como os malandros que foram também muito valentes. Rosa Palmeirão virou santa num candomblé de caboclo, rezam para ela orações em nagô, Maria Cabaçu é santa nos candomblés de Itabuna, pois foi naquela cidade que ela mostrou sua coragem primeiro. Eram duas mulheres grandes e fortes. De braços musculosos como homens, como grevistas. Rosa Palmeirão era bonita, tinha o andar gingado de marítima, era uma mulher do mar, certa vez teve um saveiro, cortou as ondas da entrada da barra. Os homens do cais a amavam não só pela sua coragem, como pelo seu corpo também. Maria Cabaçu era feia, mulata escura, filha de negro e índia, grossa e zangada. Dava nos homens que a achavam feia. Mas se entregou toda a um cearense amarelo e fraco que a amou como se ela fosse uma mulher bonita, de corpo belo e olhos sensuais. Tinham sido valentes, viraram santas nos candomblés de caboclo, que são candomblés que de quando em vez inventam novos santos, não têm aquela pureza de rito dos candomblés nagôs dos negros. São candomblés dos mulatos. Mas Dora fora mais valente que elas. Era apenas uma menina, vivera igual a um dos Capitães da Areia, e todos sabem que um capitão da areia é igual a um homem valente. Dora vivera com eles, fora mãe para todos eles. Mas fora irmã também, correra com eles pelas ruas, invadira casas, batera carteiras, brigara com o grupo de Ezequiel.Depois, para Pedro Bala, fora noiva e esposa, esposa quando a febre a devorava, quando a morte já a rondava naquela noite de tanta paz. Paz que ia dos olhos dela para a noite em torno. Estivera no orfanato, fugira dele, igual a Pedro Bala fugindo do reformatório. Tivera coragem para morrer, consolando seus filhos, irmãos, noivos e esposo que eram os Capitães da Areia. A mãe-de-santo Don’Aninha a enrolara numa toalha branca, bordada como se fora para um santo. O Querido-de-Deus a levara no seu saveiro para junto de Yemanjá. Padre José Pedro rezava. Todos a queriam. Mas só Pedro Bala quis ir com ela. Professor fugiu do trapiche porque não pôde mais suportar o casarão depois que ela partiu. Mas só Pedro Bala se jogou n’água para seguir o destino de Dora, ir fazer com ela aquela maravilhosa viagem que os valentes fazem com Yemanjá no fundo verde do mar. Por isso só ele viu quando ela virou estrela e cruzou os céus. Ela veio só para ele, com sua longa cabeleira loira. Brilhou sobre sua cabeça de quase afogado e suicida. Deu-lhe novas forças, o saveiro do Querido-de-Deus que voltava o pôde recolher. Agora olha o céu procurando a estrela de Dora. É uma estrela de longa cabeleira loira, uma estrela como não existe nenhuma outra. Porque nunca existiu nenhuma mulher como Dora, que era uma menina. A noite está cheia de estrelas que se refletem no mar calmo. A voz do negro parece se dirigir às estrelas, como que há pranto na sua voz cheia. Ele também procura a amada que fugiu na noite da Bahia. Pedro Bala pensa que a estrela que é Dora talvez ande agora correndo sobre as ruas, becos e ladeiras da cidade a procurá-lo.Talvez o pense numa aventura nas ladeiras. Mas hoje não são os Capitães da Areia que estão metidos numa bela aventura. São os condutores de bonde, negros fortes, mulatos risonhos, espanhóis e portugueses, que vieram de terras distantes. São eles, que levantam os braços e gritam iguais aos Capitães da Areia. A greve se soltou na cidade. É uma coisa bonita a greve, é a mais bela das aventuras. Pedro Bala tem vontade de entrar na greve, de gritar com toda a força do seu peito, de apartear os discursos. Seu pai fazia discursos numa greve, uma bala o derrubou. Ele tem sangue de grevista. Demais a vida da rua o ensinou a amar a liberdade.A canção daqueles presos dizia que a liberdade é como o sol: o bem maior do mundo. Sabe que os grevistas lutam pela liberdade, por um pouco mais de pão, por um pouco mais de liberdade. É como uma festa aquela luta. Os vultos que se aproximam o fazem levantar desconfiado. Mas logo reconhece a figura enorme do estivador João de Adão. Junto a ele vem um rapaz bem vestido, mas com os cabelos despenteados. Pedro Bala tira o boné, fala para João de Adão:
João de Adão ri. Distende seus músculos, seu rosto está aberto num sorriso para o chefe dos Capitães da Areia:
O rapaz estende a mão para Pedro Bala. O chefe dos Capitães da Areia limpa primeiro sua mão no paletó rasgado, depois aperta a do estudante. João de Adão está explicando:
olha sem desconfiança. O estudante sorri:
Acordam João Grande ao passar. O negro olha com desconfiança o estudante, pensa que é um polícia, levanta um pouco o punhal por detrás do braço. Só Pedro Bala vê e fala:
Vão os quatro. Sentam num canto. Alguns dos Capitães da Areia acordam e espiam o grupo. O estudante olha o trapiche, as crianças que dormem. Treme como se um vento frio tivesse passado pelo seu corpo:
Mas Pedro Bala está dizendo a João de Adão:
A voz de Alberto é mansa e boa. Pedro Bala o escuta enlevado, como se fosse a voz de um negro cantando uma canção no mar.
O estudante sabe o nome de seu pai. Seu pai foi um campeão... Todos o conhecem. Teve uma morte bonita, morreu numa greve, a greve é a festa dos pobres... Escuta a voz do estudante:
da Areia nem Capitão Pedro... É um companheiro... Companheiro... Companheiro... Pedro Bala acha a palavra mais bonita do mundo. O estudante diz como Dora dizia a palavra irmão.
Pedro Bala apresenta:– Este negro é João Grande, um negro bom. Quem for bom é igual a João Grande, melhor não é... Alberto estende a mão ao negro. João Grande fica um momento indeciso, não está acostumado a apertos de mão. Mas logo aperta aquela mão, meio encabulado. O estudante novamente diz:
De repente, interessado, pergunta:
Pedro Bala quer conversar sobre a greve, saber o que querem dele:
Então o companheiro João de Adão lembrou de vocês...
proposta de chamar os Capitães da Areia, muitos companheiros tinham se declarado contra. Sorriam da idéia. João de Adão só dizia:
Aquilo, aquela confiança, impressionara Alberto e alguns outros. Por fim a idéia venceu, não perderiam nada em tentar. Agora está satisfeito de ter vindo. E na sua cabeça já fazia planos para aproveitar na luta os Capitães da Areia. Para quanta coisa não serviriam aqueles meninos esfomeados e mal vestidos? Lembrava-se de outros exemplos, da luta antifascista na Itália, os meninos de Lusso. Sorria para Pedro Bala. Explicou o plano: os furadores de greve viriam pela madrugada para os três grandes depósitos de bondes para tomar conta dos carros. Os Capitães da Areia deviam se dividir em três grupos, guardar as entradas dos três depósitos.E impedir, fosse como fosse, que os furadores de greve conseguissem botar os bondes em marcha. Pedro Bala assentia com a cabeça. Virou para João de Adão:
bom?
O estudante fazia planos sobre os Capitães da Areia. Agora Pedro Bala acordava todos e explicava o que tinham que fazer. O estudante estava entusiasmado com as palavras do moleque. Quando terminou de explicar, Bala resumiu tudo nestas palavras:
O estudante faz um gesto.
Companheiros. Palavra bonita, pensa Pedro Bala. Ninguém dorme mais no trapiche nesta noite. Preparam as mais diversas armas. Na madrugada que nasce, as estrelas começam a desaparecer do céu. Mas Pedro Bala parece ver numa estrela que corre a estrela de Dora que o alegra. Companheira...Também ela tinha sido uma companheira boa. A palavra brinca na sua boca, é a palavra mais bonita que ele já viu. Pedirá a Boa-Vida que faça um samba dela, um samba para um negro cantar à noite no mar. Vão como se fossem para uma festa. Armados com as mais diversas armas: navalhas, punhais pedaços de pau. Vão para uma festa, porque a greve é a festa dos pobres, repete Pedro Bala para si mesmo. No pé da ladeira da Montanha se dividem em três grupos. João Grande chefia um, Barandão vai com outro, o maior vai com Pedro Bala. Vão para uma festa. A primeira festa verdadeira que têm aquelas crianças. Ainda assim é uma festa de homens. Mas é uma festa dos pobres, dos pobres como eles. A madrugada é fria. Na esquina do depósito, quando Pedro Bala está colocando os meninos, Alberto se aproxima dele. Pedro se volta o rosto sorridente. O estudante fala:
Agora é o estudante quem sorri. Evidentemente está entusiasma do com os meninos. Pedirá à organização para trabalhar com eles. Irão fazer muitas coisas juntos. Os fura-greves vêm num grupo cerrado. Um americano o chefia com a cara fechada. Se dirigem todos para a entrada. Da sombra, dos becos, ninguém sabe de onde, como demônios fugidos do inferno, surgem meninos esfarrapados e de armas na mão. Punhais, navalhas, paus. Tomam a porta, o grupo dos fura-greves pára. Logo os demônios se atiram, é um bolo só. São em número maior que o grupo de fura-greves. Estes rolam com os golpes de capoeira, recebem pauladas, alguns já fogem. Pedro Bala derruba o americano, com a ajuda de outro o soqueia.Os fura-greves pensam que são demônios fugidos do inferno. A gargalhada livre e grande dos Capitães da Areia ressoa na madrugada. A greve não é furada. Também João Grande e Barandão são vitoriosos. O estudante ri com eles a gargalhada dos Capitães da Areia. No trapiche diz para alegria dos meninos:
Diz o vento que passa, diz a voz do coração de Pedro Bala. É como a música de uma canção cantada por um negro:
Os atabaques ressoam como clarins de guerraDepois de terminada a greve o estudante continua a vir ao trapiche.Mantém longas conversas com Pedro Bala, transforma os Capitães da Areia numa brigada de choque. Uma tarde Pedro Bala vai pela rua Chile, o boné desabado sobre os olhos, assoviando, enquanto arrasta os pés no chão. Uma voz exclama:
Se volta. O Gato está elegantíssimo na sua frente. Uma pérola na gravata, um anel no dedo mínimo, roupa azul, chapéu de feltro quebrado num jeito malandro:
Entram numa rua sem movimento. Gato explica que chegou de lá. Ilhéus há poucos dias. Que arrancou um bocado de dinheiro de lá. Está um homem e todo perfumado e elegante:
Conversam e riem. Gato pergunta notícia dos outros. Diz que no dia seguinte embarcará para Aracaju com a morena, pois açúcar está dando dinheiro. Pedro Bala o vê ir embora todo elegante. Pensa que se ele tivesse demorado mais algum tempo no trapiche, talvez não fosse um ladrão. Aprenderia com Alberto, estudante, o que ninguém soubera lhe ensinar. Aquilo que Professor como que adivinhara. A revolução chama Pedro Bala como Deus chamava Pirulito nas noites do trapiche. É uma voz poderosa dentro dele, poderosa como a voz do mar, como a voz do vento, tão poderosa como uma voz sem comparação. Como a voz de um negro que canta num saveiro o samba que Boa-Vida fez: “Companheiros, chegou a hora...” A voz o chama. Uma voz que o alegra, que faz bater seu coração. Ajudar a mudar o destino de todos os pobres. Uma voz que atravessa a cidade, que parece vir dos atabaques que ressoam nas macumbas da religião ilegal dos negros. Uma voz que vem com o ruído dos bondes onde vão os condutores e motorneiros grevistas. Uma voz que vem do cais, do peito dos estivadores, de João de Adão, de seu pai morrendo num comício, dos marinheiros dos navios, dos saveiristas e dos canoeiros. Uma voz que vem do grupo que joga a luta da capoeira, que vem dos golpes que o Querido-de-Deus aplica. Uma voz que vem mesmo do padre José Pedro, padre pobre de olhos espantados diante do destino terrível dos Capitães da Areia. Uma voz que vem das filhas-de-santo do candomblé de Don’Aninha, na noite que a polícia levou Ogum. Voz que vem do trapiche dos Capitães da Areia. Que vem do reformatório e do orfanato. Que vem do ódio do Sem-Pernas se atirando do elevador para não se entregar. Que vem no trem da Leste Brasileira, através do sertão, do grupo de Lampião pedindo justiça para os sertanejos. Que vem de Alberto, o estudante pedindo escolas e liberdade para a cultura. Que vem dos quadros de Professor, onde meninos esfarrapados lutam naquela exposição da rua Chile. Que vem de Boa-Vida e dos malandros da cidade, do bojo dos seus violões, dos sambas tristes que eles cantam. Uma voz que vem de todos os pobres, do peito de todos os pobres. Uma voz que diz uma palavra bonita de solidariedade, de amizade: companheiros. Uma voz que convida para a festa da luta. Que é como um samba alegre de negro, como ressoar dos atabaques nas macumbas. Voz que vem da lembrança de Dora, valente lutadora. Voz que chama Pedro Bala. Como a voz de Deus chamava Pirulito, a voz do ódio o Sem-Pernas, como a voz dos sertanejos chamava Volta Seca para o grupo de Lampião. Voz poderosa como nenhuma outra. Porque é uma voz que chama para lutar por todos, pelo destino de todos, sem exceção. Voz poderosa como nenhuma outra. Voz que atravessa a cidade e vem de todos os lados. Voz que traz com ela uma festa, que faz o inverno acabar lá fora e ser a primavera. A primavera da luta. Voz que chama Pedro Bala, que o leva para a luta. Voz que vem de todos os peitos esfomeados da cidade, de todos os peitos explorados da cidade. Voz que traz o bem maior do mundo, bem que é igual ao sol, mesmo maior que o sol: a liberdade. A cidade no dia de primavera é deslumbradoramente bela. Uma voz de mulher canta a canção da Bahia. Canção da beleza da Bahia. Cidade negra e velha, sinos de igreja, ruas calçadas de pedra. Canção da Bahia que uma mulher canta. Dentro de Pedro Bala uma voz o chama: voz que traz para a canção da Bahia, a canção da liberdade. Voz poderosa que o chama. Voz de toda a cidade pobre da Bahia, voz da liberdade. A revolução chama Pedro Bala. Pedro Bata foi aceito na organização no mesmo dia em que João Grande embarcou como marinheiro num navio cargueiro do Lóide. No cais dá adeus ao negro, que parte para a sua primeira viagem. Mas não é um adeus como aqueles que dera aos outros que partiram antes. Não é mais um gesto de despedida. É um gesto de saudação ao companheiro que parte:
Agora comanda uma brigada de choque formada pelos Capitães da Areia. O destino deles mudou, tudo agora é diverso. Intervêm em comícios, em greves, em lutas obreiras.O destino deles é outro. A luta mudou seus destinos. Ordens vieram para a organização dos mais altos dirigentes. Que Alberto ficasse com os Capitães da Areia e Pedro Bala fosse organizar os índios Maloqueiros de Aracaju em brigada de choque também. E que depois continuasse a mudar o destino das outras crianças abandonadas do país. Pedro Bala entra no trapiche. A noite cobriu a cidade. A voz do negro canta no mar. A estrela de Dora brilha quase tanto quanto a lua no céu mais lindo do mundo. Pedro Bala entra, olha as crianças. Barandão vem para junto dele, agora tem 15 anos o negrinho. Pedro Bala olha. Estão deitados, alguns já dormem, outros conversam, fumam cigarros, riem a grande gargalhada dos Capitães da Areia. Bala reúne a todos, bota Barandão junto de si:
O negrinho Barandão fala:
Os punhos dos Capitães da Areia se levantam fechados. – Bala! Bala! – gritam numa despedida. Os gritos enchem a noite, calam a voz do negro que canta no mar, estremecem o céu de estrelas e o coração de Pedro. Punhos fechados de crianças que se levantam.Bocas que gritam se despedindo do chefe: Ba1a! Bala! Barandão está na frente de todos. Ele agora é o chefe. Pedro Bala parece ver Volta Seca, Sem-Pernas, Gato, Professor, Pirulito, Boa-Vida, João Grande e Dora, todos ao mesmo tempo entre eles. Agora o destino deles mudou. A voz do negro no mar canta o samba de Boa-Vida: “Companheiros, vamos pra luta...” De punhos levantados, as crianças saúdam Pedro Bala, que parte para mudar o destino de outras crianças. Barandão grita na frente de todos, ele agora é o novo chefe. De longe, Pedro Bala ainda vê os Capitães da Areia. Sob a lua, num velho trapiche abandonado, eles levantam os braços. Estão em pé, o destino mudou. Na noite misteriosa das macumbas os atabaques ressoam como clarins de guerra. Uma Pátria e uma famíliaAnos depois os jornais de classe, pequenos jornais, dos quais vários não tinham existência legal e se imprimiam em tipografias clandestinas, jornais que circulavam nas fábricas, passados de mão em mão, e que eram lidos à luz de fifós, publicavam sempre notícias sobre um militante proletário, o camarada Pedro Bala, que estava perseguido pela policia de cinco estados como organizador de greves, como dirigente de partidos ilegais, como perigoso inimigo da ordem estabelecida. No ano em que todas as bocas foram impedidas de falar, no ano que foi todo ele uma noite de terror, esses jornais únicas bocas que ainda falavam clamavam pela liberdade de Pedro Bala, líder da sua classe, que se encontrava preso numa colônia. E, no dia em que ele fugiu, em inúmeros lares, na hora pobre do jantar, rostos se iluminaram ao saber da notícia. E, apesar de que fora era o terror, qualquer daqueles lares era um lar que se abriria para Pedro Bala, fugitivo da polícia. Porque a revolução é uma pátria e uma família. Na casa mal-assombrada de Doninha Quaresma (existiam botijas enterradas e a alma de Doninha), hoje do Capitão, na paz de Estância. Sergipe, março de 937. A bordo do Rakuyo Maru, subindo a costa da América do pelo Pacífico, em caminho do México, junho de 937. FIM |
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