R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 02 - Tales of Midnight

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MORE THAN MELCHISEDECH
VOLUME TWO
TALES OF MIDNIGHT
Book One
'There be two men of all mankind
That I'm forever thinking on:
They chase me everywhere I go --
Melchisedech, Ukalegon.'
[Edwin Arlington Robinson. Two Men.]
1
Well, who was Ukalegon? Skalsky says that Ukalegon was a woman and
no man at all; and that she was, in all ways, the negation of Melchisedech.
But did the poet E. A. Robinson understand that?
In the year 1946, Duffey started off on a week's trip from which, as
it would happen, he would never return.
Now it was the case that Casey Szymansky, who had moved the Crock
out of Duffey's place to more plush quarters, said that he was going on a
trip the same day. Neither told the other any more about it. They were on
tolerable terms with each other by then, but not on really good terms. There
had been quite a bit of property and money coming to Duffey out of his
partnership with Gabriel Szymansky after Gabriel's death. Duffey hadn't
taken all that he was entitled to, but he had taken more than Casey thought
he should have. And Duffey now owned that particular building, the building
on the poor street that had once housed Gabriel's pawn shop.
"Yes, all agreements and papers are in order, Duffey, and they show
such things as belonging to you," Casey and his lawyer had said, "but we
don't beheve the faces of those papers." But they had settled it without
excess bitterness, Duffey taking a little shorter stick than he should have
had. This day, they left Chicago on the same train and on the same coach,
though they had not been seeking each others' company. It wasn't really
embarrassing, but it might have been just a little stuffy. It was always a
problem how an Olympian should handle a Tinan who was in open rebellion.
"I'm sorry about your nose, Duffey," Casey said as they sat
together.
"Oh, that's all right," Duffey told him. It was the first time they
had mentioned it since it had happened. Duffey had had his nose broken (it
wasn't the last time it would happen) in an altercation with goons of the
new people who were associated with Casey on the Crock. New people they
were, but with old goons. The goons had been the same old slant-faced men
out of Duffey's unrealities. Well, did they keep spares for them? Duffey had
done in one of those slant-faces as a follow-up of the altercation, and he
hadn't heard from them since.
And there was something else about this trip. Mary Catherine
Carruthers was on the same train. She had come to the train with Casey, but
they had gone to different coaches, apparently by agreement. Both Casey and
Mary Catherine were plainly startled at seeing Duffey taking the same train,
though Mary Catherine continued always in her total fondness for Duffey.
Casey and Mary Catherine were engaged to be married at this time, as they
had been engaged several times before. But they did not ride in the same
coach.
It was a daytime journey with an early leaving. Duffey and Casey as
if by silent agreement, stayed away from controversial subjects. They talked
intelligently of the mathematics of probability.
"I am bothered by an impossible aggregation of coincidences," Duffey
said. "There are things that are bound to come together in a fantastic
congruence, or they will make liars out of all alsrt of implicit pledges.
And yet the improbability of their coming together is so extreme that there
was not room enough on earth to write the number of that improbability."
"Can you put the aggregation into mathematical form, Duffey?" Casey
asked him. "You have the irritating habit of trying to express things in
words that should be expressed only in mathematical formulae. There are some
problems of contingent philosophy that cannot be phrased except in
mathematical form."
"Oh, I beheve that every problem can be expressed in straightforward
verbal form, Casey," Duffey said. "But this one would sound so silly in the
expressing."
"Many mathematical expressions are absolutely silly," Casey said.
"But I'll try not to guffaw at your straightforward verbalisms, though
sometimes it's hellish hard to refrain."
"Well, I made a few people, Casey," Duffey said. "That was the
beginning of it. I made them with no forethought at all. But it seems to be
a requirement that these people should come together. It was working almost
like a chemical affinity to coagulate. But it's very unlikely that a dozen
people I made, out of all the people in the world, should come together by
chance. I figure that things are being stretched unlawfully, but I don't
quite know what my responsibility is in the situation."
"You -- made -- a -- few -- people? Was that what you said, Duffey?"
"That's right, Casey. Wasn't that acceptable to you?"
"Oh, I suppose so. Are these the first people that you ever made?"
"Yes. These, in my present life, are the only people that I have
made, so far as I remember. There are twelve of them if I count them right.
Twelve of them, and another who wasn't counted in the count, and several
more of mixed statue."
"You're sure that you really did it, Duffey? You're not just
dreaming it?"
"I'm sure that I had a lot to do with their forming. Something, but
not everything. Yes, I made them, literally and really."
"Oh, how have they turned out, Duffey?"
"The results aren't all in. In twelve, there should be one Judas. I
don't know which. Oh, you're one of the people I made, Casey."
"Oh? That might explain a few scraps of problems. Just how did you
made me, Duffey. And don't turn it into a dirty joke."
"I made you by a talisman given to your father in a chance encounter
several years before your birth."
"Oh that thing! I have been going to throw it away several times,
but it was such a curious piece of anti-art. I'm told that I held onto it
from my birth till I was six months old and would not be separated from it
at all. I found that it's made of solid gold. It's fairly valuable or that,
but not as a piece of anti-art. Yes, it's real gold."
"Should I use false gold? Don't throw it away, Casey. Your soul may
be in it."
"If my soul was in it once, it wasn't there now, I've recently
traded souls with another person. Did you make anyone else that I know."
"Yes. One other certainly. Two others likely. And I've a feeling
that there are many acquaintances among members of the group that I don't
know about at all. Ah, I don't know just where you're going, Casey, but you
may meet all the others this week. I have the feeling that you creatures
have somehow decided to hold a conclave independently of your maker, me. But
how can you know where to find each other?"
"I don't know, Duffey. I sure don't know where to find any others of
your making, though I bet I'd recognize them as yours."
"Yes, you will probably all recognize each other at sight. And I
believe that I will always know my own creatures when I come on them."
They drifted apart and fell into conversations with different sets
of people in the coach and did not talk to each other again during the trip.
They arrived in St. Louis in the early evening. Duffey and Casey and Mary
Catherine Carruthers all seemed to be leaving the train there.
"Whatever are they going to be doing in St. Louis?" Duffey muttered
about the other two. "And whatever am I going to be doing here myself?"
A young lady at a news stand in the train station was singing some
gibberish as she opened bundles of evening papers.
"Kerowl, kerowl! the dogs do growl.
The Duffeys have come to town!"
"Did you say Duffeys, young lady?" Melchisedech Duffey asked her.
"Yah, Duffeys. There's a bunch of them in town. You should see them,
you will see them. They're everywhere. They're wilder than beggars. They're
showier than Gypseys. Oh, they are something."
"Just exactly where in town are these 'Duffies' to be found?"
"Exactly everywhere," the young lady said. "They're everywhere."
It puzzled Duffey who these Duffeys might be. But if they were
everywhere in town, he would see them. Well, what was he doing here? Duffey
could always find excuses to come to St. Louis. He had business interests
there. He had two partners there, Bagby and Charley Murray. He had a sister
there. He still owned part of the famous Rounders' Club there. But he hadn't
come to St. Louis for any of these reasons. He had come because he had
received a letter in Chicago, postmarked Morgan City, Louisiana, and it had
read: "...be in St. Louis on or about the last Saturday in May. I will see
you there then and give you your assignment for the rest of your life. Henri
Salvatore."
The name Henri Salvatore was not familiar to Duffey, but something
there was familiar, This Henri or Henry was one of Duffey's own creations,
from a talisman given, many years before, to a Cajun riverman. This Cajun,
probably a maternal uncle (since his forgotten surname was definitely not
Salvatore) had surely conferred that talisman for the birthing of this
person who had written the letter. Yes, Duffey would recognize one of his
creations anywhere, even by a letter written by one of them. But why should
a creature be able to give a life assignment to his own creator? And was it
in St. Louis that the talismanic children were going to have their conclave
independently of their creator? Why then was their creator invited to town
by one of them?
Duffey and Casey and Mary Catherine left the station area in three
different taxi cabs, and they went down three different streets. So much for
that. Duffey took his taxi to the home of one of his partners, Charley
Murray.
But the cabs of Duffey and Casey arrived, from opposite directions,
in front of the Murray residence, at the same time. Once again, it was a
thing that could get a little bit stuffy.
"I go in here, Casey," Duffey said with just a little bit of
irritation, "An old friend and partner of mine lives here. "
"I go in here also," Casey said, a little bit puzzled. "This was the
address that I have. You had better check your address. Mine checks."
Oh, it was explained all right, after a little whthe, inasmuch as
such almost-embarrassing things are ever explained. Charley Murray greeted
Duffey as his oldest and best friend, as he was. And Charley knew who Casey
was and had been expecting him.
"I meant to phone you, Duffey, and tell you that this young Casey
was coming down from Chicago to St. Louis at about the same time you were,
Charley Murray said. "I thought it would be nice if there were some way you
could recognize each other in case you traveled on the same train. I was
wondering how I could describe you to each other so you could make
yourselves known, but this was a little bit difficult considering that I had
never seen Casey."
"You described us both marvelously, even though at a dwastance, even
though you were not conscious that you were doing it," Duffey said. "The
mind of man was a wonderful thing. Though you had never seen Casey, I
recognized him instantly from your description."
"You are, as always, a crooked-tongued fraud, Melchisedech," Charley
said. "You two met on the train, did yoa? Casey has come to town for the
wedding of an army friend of his, a nephew of mine. We weren't sure how much
room there would be for out-of-town guests over at the Stranahans, so Casey
was here on a possible overflow basis. And he was welcome here, and there,
and everywhere."
Well, that was all right, that was fine, that was as good an
explanation as any. Duffey's breath ran a little short when he heard part of
it, of course, but we all have shortages of breath sometimes. Duffey knew a
man named Stranahan here in St. Louis, a Patrick Stranahan who used to come
into the Rounders' Club, a man who was very close to this Charley Murray,
and a fairly close friend of Duffey himself. And Duffey, once on an evening
of mellow exuberance, had given a gift to this Patrick Stranahan.
It would be fine here, but a little bit nervous and testy. Duffey
rather washed that he had gone to stay with his sister and her husband
Bagby. He was astonished now that he hadn't even thought of that, since he
almost always stayed with them when he was in St. Louis.
"But would the mysterious Henri Salvatore be able to find me at the
Bagbys?" Duffey asked himself now. "Well, will he be able to find me at the
Murrays? Why did I think that he would have a better shot at me here? He
didn't say where to be in St. Louis, and this was a fair-sized city."
About twenty minutes later, there was a car and a voice outside,
both of them calling out for Casey. But Duffey got another one of his shocks
from that. He knew that voice, and yet he knew that he had not ever heard it
before. He knew it because he had made it. It was the voice of one of his
creatures. But the voice and the car went away with Casey, and Duffey
forbare to look out.
Duffey phoned his sister. Then he went over to the Bagbys. Murray
said that they would all meet over at the Rounders' Club later. Duffey spent
several hours with the Bagbys. His sister had always been very close to him,
even when he didn't see her for years at a time. But how had Bagby become so
close? This was the one friend on earth who would do anything for him.
Duffey and Bagby seemed to have an infinite number of points of contact.
Later, Duffey and the Bagbys picked up Beth Keegan, Duffey's old St.
Louis girl, and her husband to go to the Rounders'. Beth was named Erlenbaum
now. "Kerowl, kerowl! the dogs do growl.
The Duffeys have come to town!" Beth chanted when she saw him.
"Where has this doggerel come from, Beth?" Duffey asked her. "What Duffeys?
I have heard this chant before since I have been in town."
"Oh, the Duffeys, the Duffeys, the bright and shining Duffeys! They
are all over town, as lively as a dog blanket full of fleas. You aren't in
with these new Duffeys, Melchisedech. You just haven't their class or color.
You'll see them, you'll see them. There was no way of avoiding them."
"Whence have they their name?" Duffey asked, a little bit
bewildered.
"Oh, from you ultimately, I suppose," Beth said. "They're creatures
of yours, and you are their architect. But I'm afraid they got a little bit
out of hand. You used too much color when you made them, Melchisedech. You
used too much noise. You were working in an unaccustomed medium, I suppose,
but they're badly overdone. Everybody in town loves them. They'd better."
Duffey's sister Mary Louise looked wonderful, but even she was a
little bit overdone. But Bascom Bagby, the baroque, the flawed pearl, the
husband of Mary Louise, the brother-in-law of Duffey, though he also was a
little bit overdone, did not look wonderful. He looked too old for his
chronological age. He looked sick. But he looked more than ever like Duffey.
He had lost some of his bluffery and he seemed very glad to see Duffey,
"probably for the last time", as he said. But he was still a powerful and
humorously rough-looking man, with beetling brows and a beetling belly.
"He was my dark object," Duffey said as he had said before. "He was
my uncleansed stables, he was another part of myself, and I sincerely love
the low freak of a man. He was closer to me than kindred."
"Yes, there are odd things happening in town," sister Mary Louise
said. "The 'Duffeys' have come to town. The beggars aren't in it with the
'Duffeys'. I love you with your nose in a sling."
"What Duffeys have come to town?" Melchisedech asked her as he had
asked Beth. "Who are they?"
"If you don't know them, then nobody does," Mary Louise said. "There
has never been so fired-up a band of Gypseys as these Duffeys."
Abd Beth chimed in again. "Oh, there's no question about who they
are," she said. "They're you. They're you if you were multipled ten or
eleven times, if you were better looking and smarter than you really are, if
you were more colorful, if you were wittier, if yoy wer more magnetic. They
are you exactly, with ten thousand superior things added to each of them."
Beth's little girls had long since become big girls. Beth was a
grandmother now, but she was still a piece of cool, ivory statuary that
laughed. "I know, Melky, every time that I see one of them (and I've been
seeing them yesterday and today everywhere) that you thought him up, or her.
If I wanted to make people, how would I start, Duffey? I bet mine wouldn't
be as sprawling or overdone as yours are. We will see some of your creatures
tonight. Wherever we go, some of them will be there. What are they doing in
St. Louis? I also love you with your nose in that sling."
"I believe that the creatures are holding some sort of conclave in
this town this week," Duffey said, "but I didn't authorize it."
"You had better authorize it, Duffey," Erlenbaum, Beth's husband,
said with a mountainous grin. Erlenbaum sometimes kneaded huge fists and
grinned loweringly at Duffey, and Duffey pushed him a ways by taking
friendly liberties upon the lap and bosom of Beth while grinning back at
him. "If you can't whip them, Duffey, and you can't, then you'd better join
them. If they were yours once, they're not now. Any of them would take you
around on a leash like a little dog."
Duffey and the Bagbys and the Erlenbaums arrived at Rounders' Club.
Most times, when Duffey would come into Rounders', whether he had been gone
for an hour or for three years, a band or orchestra or combo would strike up
'The Mng Shall Ride'. For Duffey was still King at the Rounders' Club. But
now he was not noticed when he came in. There were other attractions there.
There was the picture of the 'Severed Giant Hands' up over the
doorway that led to the Elegant Riverboat Deck. These 'Severed Giant
Hands'were an old dream of Duffey's. Now it was the case that Duffey felt
his own hands to be severed and deprived of further creative functions when
he came into the presence of several of his own creations.
How had he ever done them? And how had they gone so far beyond
everything that he had any knowledge of? There were several of the
Duffeys-come-to-town present. They were brilliant, bedazzled, larger than
life, overwhelming, loud, grotesquely suer-intelligent, roughing, shouting,
pleasant, pleasant, pleasant. They had very light ways for their very great
masses. It was as if they had just come from other gravities and other
worlds. Duffey might as well be invisinle, for all that anybody would give
him a look when the more flamboyant 'Duffeys'were there.
Then the vane swung around and Duffey became visible once more.
"Oh, it was Duffey himself!" a female of the incredible species
cried out. She was the most gentle of the 'Duffeys' and she came to
Melchisedech Duffey in a geat sweep. The colors of these creatures! In what
store could you find pigments for such colors?
"Oh, you came to us like a ghost, and we hardly knew you," this
gentle one said, but the chandehers quivered a bit from the sound of her
gentle voice. "It's as though you were hidden in a cloud or in a burning
tree," she said. "And then you must remember that most of us have never seen
you before, and we have never heard your voice.
"Oh, bring bread and wine, people! This was the Duffey himself, the
Melchisedech. Ah, but we do love you with your nose in a sling. That shall
be one of your attributes when you are sung in epics! We wouldn't have you
any other way. We were wondering what you could do special for your
apparition."
Duffey had to rub his eyes with his fists. It was as it had been
when he was the Boy King back in his first childhood and he had made some
sun-squirrels. He had not been able to look at them. He had to look away and
rub his eyes. "But you made them," one of the seneschals had chided him,
"why can you not look at them?" "I didn't know they would be so bright when
the light went on inside them" young King Melchisedech had said. And these
his present animations, Duffey sure hadn't realized that they would be this
bright when the light was turned on inside them.
This first of them who had seen him here, this most gentle of the
ultra-people, was named Mary Virginia Schaeffer, and she was from Galveston.
Duffey knew her by this identity, just as she knew him as Duffey.
Some of the others came to meet him. They were overpowering, but
there was something lacking out of the middle of them. Duffey exulted in the
company of these finest of all creatures for a half hour or so, and then he
came back to his objection.
"My central creation was not here," Duffey said accusingly.
"Oh, Finnegan, he'll be here tomorrow," a big-brained, grinning,
young man of this special people swore. "No, Finnegan wasn't here yet
tonight. He was the salt of our lives, and we are saltless without him. But
not quite saltless, Duffey, when you are here."
But there was some oddity in what they knew Duffey by. They knew him
as the editor, now the former editor, of the Crock. It had been a cult sheet
with them. They had reveled in the intelligence of it, in the humor of it,
in the Duffiness of it. But they had only whispy and intuitive knowledge of
Melchisedech in his royal aspect.
The special people who were there, dining and roistering at
Rounders', were John Schultz (who was Hans) (who was the big-brained
grinning young man), and Marie Monaghan who was his wife from Australia.
And Dorothy Yekouris from New Orleans, and Henry Salvatore from
Morgan City Louisiana (Oh, oh, he will give you your rest-of-your-life
scenario, Duffey), and Mary Virginia Schaeffer from Galveston. And Absalom
Stein from Chicago (Duffey already knew him a little bit, but he had never
realized what a magnificent person he was, and he had never been absolutely
sure that he was one of his creations). Six of the high twelve were here
present. And Duffey had traveled from Chicago on the train with two others
of them that day, but from long acquaintanceship with them he did not always
notice just how magic-imbued they really were. Casey Szymansky and Mary
Catherine Carruthers also belonged to these special creatures, but Duffey
had seen them almost daily from their childhoods.
But here about him now were five of his creatures that Duffey had
never seen before, and a sixth one whom he had never seen with open eyes
before. Since when had a sixth one become Absalom Stein? Hadn't he used to
be somebody more grubby?
Oh, there were the old 'Unreality Fringes' about all of the
magnificent animations. And yet they were real. That sort of smokey halo
that they all had, it was called the 'unreality fringe' in the lingo of
sorcerers. But these persons were real.
The people at the Rounders' Club had discovered that Duffey was in
their midst now. For a whthe there, this artist had been in the dark shadow
of his own animated art. He had been dwarfed by it. Now it was recognized
that these special people had all been made by Duffey, that they were among
his easy masterpieces. A little combo there played 'The King Shall Ride'.
And then it played the rousing 'Gadarene Swine Song.' Olga Sanchez of the
torchy shoulders still worked there. She came and caressed him, as others
did. Duffey was back in his legendary feifdom.
Duffey had a whole riot of mixed feelings about this colorful sprawl
of youngish people that he had created. Each one of them was clearly an
expression of his art at its best, but maybe they expressed him a little too
strongly. Oh, they were all brainy and brawny and brilliant, but it may be
that triey were somewhat excessive in all of it. Was this flamboyance in the
right line of real art? Maybe. These special people were arts and statuaries
of Duffey, were they not? They even conceded that they were.
"Duffey misunderstands his own processes," Marie Monaghan Schultz
said. "He does not make us. He collects us and gives us our settings and our
sparkle. He found our souls hidden away and forgotten in old junk stories.
He bought us all for a song. I think it was the 'Gadarene Swine Song' he
bought us for. And now he puts us on display. We were all in 'Razzle Daz'
and when you have been in Razzle Daz, you can't get any higher than that."
Duffey gaped almost without understanding her. He had difficulty
remembering, with all this light shining in his eyes and in his ears. But
Razzle Daz had been a little comic strip he drew for the Crock. He had done
it with unused parts of his mind and with unbusy moments of his hands, but
many persons had thought that it was absolutely the best thing in the Crock,
which Duffey had never quite understood. And, yes, of course, these splendid
animations had been the models for the characters in Razzle Daz. Those
characters had even gone by the nicknames of some of the splendid
animations, 'Finnegan' for instance, and 'Hans', and 'Show Boat'.
"Duffey collects works of art," Marie Monaghan went on, "and we are
all of us works of art."
"You are wrong, Marie," Duffey inswasted. "I do make you. But I
haven't collected you, and I don't know how you have collected yourselves in
this town. I did not give you your settings and sparkle quite as you have
them now. I think you're a little overdone. You may have to be changed."
"You will change us at your peril, grubby sorcerer," Dotty Yekourwas
told him. "We like us just the wy we are, and we like you the way you are.
Oh, may your nose never heal!"
But if Duffey had made these people, and of course he had, how did
their excellence become independent of his. Their wit was too fast for him
to keep up with, and all their jokes were obsoleted by new jokes every
minute. When had Duffey's mind ever worked so fast as did the minds of these
creatures of his?
"I knew that you would be exactly like this," Mary Virginia said,
"banging your hands together as you do! It's as though you still had a
'maker's malfet' in your hands!"
She kissed him with that transcendent way she would always have.
Yes, he'd made them with a 'maker's mallet'. He remembered that part of it
now. But these people were all just a little bit larger than life, and
maybe they were too large. Henri Salvatore, the Fat Frenchman, was
tremendous. And Hans Schultz was at least enormous. And Absalom Stein, was
he really that big? But Duffey hadn't seen him for quite a few years. He had
never seen him since he had gone by the name of Absalom Stein.
Those three master-work girls who were here right now, Dotty
Yekouris, Mary Virginia Schaeffer, Marie Monaghan, they didn't look overly
large beside the men they were with. And yet each of them would have stood a
quarter of an inch over six feet, barefooted and slouching and smiling
wickedly. They were ample in all ways.
That estimate of their size was Duffey's subjective estimate, of
course. They may not have loomed that large to other people. But Duffey was
their maker, and what size he comprehended for them should have been the
size imposed on them. Duffey recalled that Mary Catherine Caruthers, also in
this town somewhere, was larger than she would seem to ordinary eyes.
Hans and Marie, Henri Salvatoree, Dotty and Mary Virginia, they were
overwhelming. Even Absalom Stein was overwhelming tonight.
Just when had Absalom Stein outgrown his grubby pupa form as Hugo
Stone? Or hadn't he been one of the many mouthy little Stone brothers and
cousins anyhow? Yeah, Absalom was Hugo. But what, by all the compounded
mysteries, was this Stein doing with the others of them in St. Louis. How
did he even happen to be acquaints with the other talismanic children? There
was a wealthy and lurid Jewishness to him such as has not been so powerfully
expressed since the times of the Elizabethans, and then only on-stage. In
life, there had never been such a type before. Absalom gave the impression
that he was wearing a quantity of splendid jewelry, and he wasn't wearing a
single bauble.
The lavish talk that these people poured out! If only it could be
recovered it could be bottled and sold. If it could be created again after
it was gone, then you would have something. But even the creator Duffey
could not create it again. As with all demiurges, angelics, cavern spirits,
pure intellects, monsters, the extraordinary conversations of these splendid
animations could never be recalled later.
Hans Schultz was a thunder-head out of mythology, a holy ox in the
manner of Aquinas himself. But he was such a clash of bulky colors and bulky
speed and bulky fellowship! He was too loud.
There was bad and overdone art in every one of them except Mary
Virginia. They weren't such things as Melchisedech would put on the market
with his reputation for taste behind them. They were such things as he would
keep for his own gusty enjoyment and cry out "Gad, what genius I had when I
did them!"
Henri Salvatore, the Fat Frenchman from the Swamps, was the center
of gravity of any room or building he was in. He was this by sheer weight.
Henri was a whopper in color and texture and movement and sound. But
balanced proportion was not in him at all.
And Absalom! "Absalom, take off that purple cape with the scarlet
lining! It's just too much!" Oh, but he wasn't wearing a purple cape with a
scarlet lining at all. He was wearing a simple unfigured sports shirt. It
was just something extravagant about him that gave Duffey the impression
that he was wearing the outlandwash get-up.
The twelve talismanic creations of Melchiscdech Duffey were these:
Finnegan, who was the salt of their lives, who was properly named
John Solli, who was (hold onto yourself) the son of Monster Giulio. He'll be
here tomorrow.
John Schultz who was Hans.
Henri Salvatore, who was going to give Duffey the scenario for the
rest of his life.
Vincent Stranahan, the son of Patrick Stranahan and Monica Murray
Stranahan, who was going to get married Saturday.
Casey Szymansky, now seen for the thousand-and-first time, and seen
with new eyes.
Dotty Yekouris.
Mary Monaghan Schultz.
Mary Virginia Schaeffer.
Teresa (Show Boat) Piccone.
(Give more space than that and they'll run away with it.)
Absalom Stein.
Mr. X.
Twelve of them. There was a puzzle how Duffey could have been
spiritual and magic father to Mr. X who claimed to be a bit older than
Duffey. The answer was that Mr. X was an unrepentant liar who was actually
slightly younger than Duffey. There had been the case of Duffey, when he was
very young, giving a talisman to an Italian man who was selling some kind of
confection out of a hokey-pokey push-cart. But X must be reserved for later.
2
The Animated Marvels left, suddenly, a with a great flourish. And
people smthed their 'ain't-they-something' smiies.
Then another of them came in with agr up.
Charley Murray came into the Rounders' Club with his sister Monica
Murray Strnahan and her husband Patrick Stranahan. And with them was Papa
Piccone of the old Star and Garter Theatre. And another person, quite
special.
Charley Murray had given orders for a supper to be served in a
thrice-special room upstairs. Charley was the acting manager of Rounders'.
Duffey was only the King of the place, and the founder, angd the half-owner.
The other person with Charley's party was a talisman-child, and her
set Duffey to quaking in a pleasant terror. This was the daughter of Papa
Piccone, the incipient daughter-in-law of Monica and Patrick Stranahan, She
was the god-daughter of Beth Keegan, Duffey's old girl. She was Teresa
(Showboat) Piccone. She was as much a central creation of the Duffey Corpus
as Duffey's creations had these two foci.
Aw c'mon, no one can describe her more than to say that -- well, she
was sun-burned quicksilver. She was fire and ice and holy wine. She has been
described as 'dark and lithe and probably little.' Well, in her own setting
of the dazzling and larger-than-life people, she might have been called
little. But in the world itself she might not be. She was of fair size and
greatly compromised beauty. The compromising was done by her grimaces and
pleasantly ugly facial contortions. But if one could ever get her face to
stand still, then she had a thunderous beauty. And in no setting could she
ever be called quiet. She was -- No, no, not now, maybe not ever, not in
detail! It's dangerous.
"If her specifications were known, then some Magus other than Duffey
might make another one of her, and one was enough," said Patrick Stranahan.
"Oh my God, how one of her was enough!" Patrick loved his future
daughter-in-law. So did Duffey love Teresa. She was a blue-moon person, not
to be encountered more than once in a lifetime. Look at the others instead.
It was dangerous to look too long at Teresa. You'll get welders' eye-burns.
There are infra-red rays and other things coming out of that blue-light
phenomenon. Look at the others. Teresa was talking constantly. Duffey did
not hear her words. He heard only the cadence of her voice.
Duffey knew Patrick Stranahan well. Patrick used to come into the
Rounders' Club whthe he was still quite a young man, even before Duffey had
sold a piece of the club to Charley Murray. And Duffey had known Monica
Stranaan, the wife of Patrick, the sister of Charley, for a very long time.
He used to live to kiss her for the serenity she gave. She still gave it.
And Duffey had known Papa Piccone (he already had the name 'Papa
Piccone' when he was twenty-two years old: he seemed older) in the old, old
days. He was and was and would forever be till its destruction the
proprietor of the Star and Garter where everyone went for the shows when
they were young. Beth Erlenbaum, the ivory statuette, had used to work at
the Star and Garter, and she was kindred of the Piccone family. But Duffey
had never seen this Teresa Piccone before. And then she was gone suddenly,
and he wasn't sure that he had seen her at all.
"Oh, I hardly ever get a good look at her myself," said Piccone her
father.
The men were talking. This might have been the same night, upstairs
after supper, when they had withdrawn to the trophy room for cigars and
brandy and Irish whisky. Or it might have been another night in the big club
room at Stranahan's house. It may even have been at Charley Murray's place.
Likely it was several of the nights of that week ran together, and
the men were talking about weighty subjects. Duffey and Bagby and Murray and
Stranahan were there, along with Piccone and Father McGuigan. Stein was
there part of the time, or one of the nights. And Finnegan may have been
there part of the time.
"We come to the crux, to the crossroads," Patrick Stranahan said.
"But the crossroad sign, and the various arms of it, point: 'To nowhere',
'To easy house', 'To crossbar hotel', 'To the charnel house'. There is blood
running down the gaunt tree-piece of the crossroads sign. Some of it was
fresh blood, some of it was old and slow-flowing, some of it was placental
blood. We had supposed that we had come to the end, for a whthe, of the
rivers of blood. The crossroads sign-post indicates otherwise."
This Patrick Stranahan, a lawyer man who was just rich enough to
come hardly into the Kingdom of Heaven, was a very large man, bigger than
any of his four sons. He has been described in another place as "a big,
hairy man. He rumbled when he talked. He even rumbled when he didn't talk.
He had a large and busy stomach and there was always something going on in
there."
"As to the blood on the sign-post," Duffey proposed, "Henry
Salvatore says that the Devil was being released from his thousand-year
durance very soon, possibly this week."
"Henry guesses at the dates," Patrick continued, "and likely at the
year, though in all probability it was this year. Just a hundred years ago
there was a rumor that the Devil had been released. Maybe that was some
other devil, though the events in the past hundred years (1846-1946)
indicate that flagrant evil was released into the world at that time. And
now the noise was even more ominous. We have heard the big iron bolts
sliding back for some time now, but there are a lot of bolts to slide and a
lot of locks to unlock before the stout door swings open. That gaudy Stein
also has some authentic private information, I beheve, but he exaggerates.
It doesn't really matter whether the Devil was released last year or this
year or next year. The release was imminent, as we all know, and it was a
condition that none of us will be able to live with. Some of us will be
exalted and awakened by the assault of it, and some of us will be destroyed
by it. But none of us will be able to live with it. We don't know just how
much difference it will make. The Devil has carried on very effective
warfare all during his imprisonment. But now it will be worse, and of a more
immediate treachery."
"The Monster Giulio told me recently that a rigged council of
Teras-folks had drawn up a petition for the release of the Devil," Bagby
said, "so it wasn't just the humans of the narrow definition who have been
bespoken by false leaders to petition. Groups of half a dozen other sorts of
creatures also have joined in the foulness. Giulio was in St. Louis
recently."
"Giulio? He's been dead for ten years at least," Duffey said.
"I didn't say that the creature wasn't dead. I said that he had been
in St. Louis recently and had given me these reports," Bagby growled. Bagby
had never liked to have his accounts questioned. "My brother, I have my own
communications and meetings, and you have yours. Giulio told me something
else. He says that at the councils of the Teras, they have both the living
and the dead in attendance, and he believes this gives better balance. I
believe that the U.S. Congress should adopt a similar practice."
"You know that Finnegan was the son of the Monster Giulio, don't
you?" Duffey asked.
"No, of course I don't know it," Bagby said. "The Finnegan who got
摘要：

MORETHANMELCHISEDECHVOLUMETWOTALESOFMIDNIGHTBookOne'TherebetwomenofallmankindThatI'mforeverthinkingon:TheychasemeeverywhereIgo--Melchisedech,Ukalegon.'[EdwinArlingtonRobinson.TwoMen.]1Well,whowasUkalegon?SkalskysaysthatUkalegonwasawomanandnomanatall;andthatshewas,inallways,thenegationofMelchisedech....

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