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kindred to other false kindred. There were the blessed boarding schools
where a few persons, Sebastian Hilton, John Rattigan, Lily Koch, understood
that he was really a King in Disguise. There was Charley Murray who did
magic tricks while Duffey did real magic.
There was the meteoric gold-touched business venture in St.Louis.
There was the foster-brother Bagby. There was the great Rounder's Club, as
fine a club as was to be found in the world. There was the sister Mary
Louise. There was boxing and promotion. There was the string band. There was
Olga Sanchez of the torchy shoulders, Helen Platner of the Bavarian Club,
Papa Piccone of the Star and Garter, Beth Keegan who was an ivory statuette.
There was the flaming love for objects of art. There was St.
Malachy's. There were the talismans by which persons would be created or at
least awakened. There was a hearty but unexpected leave-taking.
And following that, Melchisedech then being probably in his
seventeenth year, in a very early morning, had walked out on a river shore
in East St. Louis, just below the Eads Bridge, and had walked right on to a
low-lying boat that had been the Argo in disguise.
There had been adventures on the Argo, and now the adventures were
finished for a while. That had been the life of Melchisedech Duffey thus
far.
Duffey still heard the words of the vanished Brannagan: "I'm not
even sure that it has to happen, with as many shimmer lines as there are in
the air now. If we three withdraw from it, we make it a little less likely
to happen. We help to break the consensus."
Then Duffey was swimming in right water again.
"I shall arrive. What time, what circuit first, I ask not," he was
saying. What a time to be quoting Browning. Duffey was swimming in the Sea
of the Seven Lost Years, and one can never be sure onto what shore he will
come out of that sea.
It was the year 1923, and Duffey was quite a young man. He swam
ashore from the muddy river. He had eddying thoughts and he had come on an
eddying way, so perhaps he wasn't a saint all the time. But he was still a
Holy Magus in patent and title.
Melchisedech was swimming and drifting easily. It was the same river
and the same town where he always came out of the sea of the Seven Lost
Years. He touched the shore just below the Eads Bridge. It was the river
town St. Louis. But just below the high bridge there was a little bob-tailed
fishing pier that he had never noticed before. A young boy was sitting on
the end of the pier and dangling a line in the water.
"Holy cow!" the boy whooped. "How far did you swim?"
"Oh, about eight thousand miles," Duffey called easily, "but the
current was in my favor."
"Funny man, you remind me of something funny. I think that Manatee
is the name for it."
"And you remind me of something funny, young fellow," Melchisedech
panted as he lunged onto the shore. "I think that Stranahan is its name."
"My name is Stranahan," the boy gaped, "but how did you know?" "You
have the Stranahan sound. There were four sons in a family I knew, Phiup,
Hugh, Timothy, and Vincent, going from the oldest to the youngest. Which one
are you and how old are you?"
"I'm Philip. I'm ten."
"Ah yes. I knew Vincent best, in his later years."
"But there weren't any later years for Vincent. He died when he was
five days old. He was born on April 5, 1921 and he died on April 10, 1921.
Is it right with you, old man. You made a funny noise."
"Oh, Vincent, Vincent, sure it's all right now. You were always so
droll a kidder. I didn't know you till you winked."
"I can't help it when I wink like that. But I'm not Vincent."
"You winked with Vincent's eyes."
"When Vincent was born his eyes were wide open and everybody called
out 'Oh look, he has Philip's eyes; and in the five days before he died I'd
sit by his bed and we'd look at each other and understand each other. I
believe he could have talked to me, but he seemed to think better of it."
"Well then, Philip with Vincent's eyes, I suppose that everything is
still all right. Everything except everything. Where do I start to pick up
the pieces? Did you ever know a girl named Teresa Piccone?"
"Yes, she's in the first grade at school. FUnny old man, you look at
me with somebody else's eyes too. And I'm in the fifth grade at school.
She's a comical little Italian girl who carries live pet mice in her
pockets."
"That's her. Do they call Your house the Cat Castle?"
"Yes. What's your name, funny old man?"
"Melchisedech."
"Nobody is named Melchisedech. Why don't you go out to our house and
see our folks? Maybe they can find out what's wrong with you. Do you know
where our house is?"
"I do. I'll go there at once. I will see you later, Phiup."
Melchisedech went by the Old Stranahan house, the Cat Castle. He recognized
the place, almost, but it just wasn't the same. It was like a burlesque of
the old house that held visited in other years and in other contexts. He
didn't make himself known there.
After that, Melchisedech was sitting in a sort of tavern only two
blocks from the Cat Castle. It was in the unhappy years when the blight of
prohibition was already on the land, and the only bottles on the shelves
were bevo and near-beer. But the people there were drinking real beer; for
in St. Louis the people knew all the tricks. Well, everybody except
Melchisedech was drinking, but he was not waited on. He shouted and he grew
angry, but he soon realized that the people could not see him or hear him.
"So, it's come to that, has it?" he asked somebody, God, or his
Angel, or his own inner self. "I ask a sign that there really is such a
person as myself. I've come to doubt it and it shatters me. A sign, a sign,
for the love of God, give me a sign! Oh, there's the sign. She isn't very
big though. Little girl, how old are you?"
"I'm five and a little bit more. I'm in the first grade at school. I
saw you looking at the Stranahan house, and then I saw you walk away from
it. I was pretty sure who you were, and I saw what kind of trouble you were
in. The reason that people can't see you is that you're a ghost, either one
who hasn't been born yet or one that has died. The reason that I can see you
is that I can see ghosts."
"Are you Teresa Piccone?"
"Of course I am, and you're King Melchisedech. It has to be that I'd
meet you sometime even if it was after you were dead. Oh, this is a delight,
the way you take off your beard and hang it on your ear. Live people can't
do that."
"Maybe some of them can. Can you see other ghosts, Teresa?" "You
mean Vincent, don't you? He died before I was born and it's only this last
year that I'm able to talk to him. He says that his seeming to be born was
all an illusion, that he was sent to the Stranahans as a good omen. Soon he
will really be born, in another part of the country, to another family of
very good people. And when that happens, the Stranahans will forget even the
illusion of him, but the good omen will be part of them forever. if I were
God, I'd make somebody remember Vincent, just for the fun of it."
"I believe that God has done that, Teresa, just for the fun of it.
He's made somebody remember Vincent. You."
"Oh yes. Of course I will. I always forget about me. But if the
Vincent Stranahan that you remember so well over so many years didn't really
live those years, then it casts a big doubt on you, doesn't it?"
"It sure does, little Teresa. It makes it seem that maybe none of my
lives happened."
"Maybe with all your ancient memories you forgot to be born? If
that's the case, then I think I can fix it up for you. I'll have you be born
to me in twenty years or so. I'll just have you, old King Melchisedech, be
born to me. Then one at least of your lives will be real. And I believe that
if one of them is proved real, all the rest of them will be real too. And in
the meantime we'll stay in touch, we can you know, even if it's only playing
ghost. And in twenty years or so, I'll have the oldest king in the world as
my baby."
"You do give me some slight hope, Teresa."
"And in the meantime, why don't you have some fun? You don't have to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]