“More power to them,” she retorted. “I enjoy gossips. I don’t mean that I enjoy gossiping, but that I can innocently give others reason to gossip. I enjoy knowing that they are clacking away their little tongues over something I’ve done—the more outrageous, the better. Makes me feel good.”
“And makes them seem smaller in your eyes. But if you’d really like to provide them with spectacle, we can open the blinds and stage a bang-up performance.”
“Such as what?” she asked with narrowed eyes.
“I’ll chase you around and around the sofa.”
“No, thank you. I’m more interested in your library. And the artifacts. I want to see what the archeologists missed.” Her stare was candid. “I want to see the youth dances.”
“Do you now?” He pushed away from the table as if to get up. “You’ll also want to see my etchings.” Nash .laughed at her sudden expression. “Honest, I do have etchings and you will want to see them. I have several plates on the Mycenaean Age, some early Minoan and late Egyptian sketches. I also have a few rare ones, old treasures, done by an artist attached to Napoleon’s army. I think you’ll enjoy them.”
“Napoleon? In Egypt?”
“Was, yes.” He closed his eyes for a moment in concentrated thought. “Near the end of the eighteenth century I think, following his Italian conquests. Somewhat like another man before him he was really seeking a trade route to India, but he wound up on the Nile with the army and the artist. Lasted a bit over a year; he and the artist lived to return home-but the army wasn’t as lucky. The artist—by name of Denon, Yivant Denon—carried with him in his imagination and on paper some of the most peculiar treasures yet taken from Egypt.”
“Peculiar?” she questioned.
“Wait until you see them. Highly prized by certain types of collectors, and rather expensive today.”
“How did you get them?”
“There was a day when they were quite cheap—a dime a dozen. Time has increased their value of course.”
“Very well, you’ve aroused my curiosity. I want to see these precious treasures.”
“Rather thought you would.” He stood up and pulled back the chair for her. “Leave the dishes for the maid.”
“You have one?” she said quickly, more sharply than she had intended. His casual statement had caught her off guard.
“Me,” he answered. “I can do them later.” Her tone had drawn his curious, questioning scrutiny. “Meanwhile, the night is young and you’re so . . .”
Shirley turned, raised her lips. “Yes?”
“You’re so hungry for knowledge.” He pretended not to see the minute annoyance on her face. “Ten paces forward and turn right at the closed door.”
He preceded her across the room and opened a door into another that she had not seen in her first tour of the house. Nash entered the darkened place and snapped on the lights. The door revealed a book lined room, four solid walls of volumes reaching from ceiling to floor without a window opening anywhere, a room which contained nothing else other than two easy chairs, a single floor lamp placed between them, and a record player.
“Well!” she said with pleasant surprise.
“Conducive to thinking,” he explained, “either deep or shallow thoughts depending upon the inclination, and very nice for dreaming I might add. A woolgatherer’s paradise. There’s no interference from the outside—the room is fairly soundproof. Try it sometime.”
He grinned at her and held it until she had responded. “The books are arranged in no particular system or order except by their general nature and my own habits. Starting there”—and he motioned to a far corner—”mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, biochemistry, geology and geography, down there the psychology and sociology. Sociology extends around the corner and continues there. It seems to be on the increase, you see. Here, a bit on linguistics and much on astronomy. A favourite of mine, that—plus archeology and anthropology. Over there is paleontology, and those two shelves are devoted to physics.” He studied the two shelves and added softly, “That, too, seems to be on the increase.”
“No books?” she asked curiously while staring about the impressive room. “Just books for reading?”
“Fiction? These are more provocative and some are certainly wilder than fiction. But yes—some.” He moved the guiding finger. “Over there.”
“Not many,” Shirley said a moment later.
“Not much time for it,” he confessed.
“Pardon me,” she contradicted, and then smiled to rob the contradiction of its sting, “but I know a man who thinks you have all the time in the world. To do nothing.”
“The man would be shocked to discover how wrong he is!” Nash declared almost angrily. He regretted the words immediately, conscious of the effect they would have on her aware of the implications and questions that would spring into her mind if not to her lips. His tone changed to a light banter as he sought to erase the impression that snapped reply might have given. “The man is jealous—he thinks I’m loafing and he wishes he could.”
“Indeed?” she said dryly. Her steady glance on his face said volumes more. And then she, too, changed her tone. “And now, sir, the etchings. Or am I being forward again?”
He brought them to her from some secure resting place in some other room of the house, returning to the book-lined room with both hands full. While he was away she had started the record player and now she sat relaxed in one of the two chairs, awaiting him. He placed the gentle burden in her lap and she held it there in preliminary examination. There were two large loose-leaf volumes like scrapbooks and many folders and folios, all bound or wrapped in a sturdy material for maximum protection. Before she looked at any of the pictures she saw that all were covered with a thin, tough plastic like cellophane to protect them from dirt and exposure; even so, some of the paper was yellowed and cracked with age and occasionally a jagged streak ran across the face of an illustration to betray its ancient brittleness. She saw all that and the lines of the drawings before she actually saw the intricate pictures themselves, before the careful detail stood out against the whole. She even found herself searching for the name of the illustrator in the lower corners of the first picture, before the massed lines separated themselves and the individual figures commanded her attention. Her eyes wandered across the face of the page and stopped on a figure she recognized, Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love. She looked to see what the goddess was doing and discovered the man at her side.
Shirley Hoffman heard a sharp indrawn breath and then realized it was her own. She glanced up quickly to see if Nash was watching, was laughing at her, but he had moved across the room. She looked back to the picture, really looked at it and felt the warm blood rush to her face. The mounting flush angered and annoyed her and she strove to conquer it, to thrust it away. She concentrated on Hathor, and those other figures clustered about the goddess. Across the room the music played softly on.
She was not aware of the passage of time, nor of the room, nor consciously aware of one record after another dropping onto the turntable to play itself out. Occasionally she would glance up with a start, turn to look about her, to look for Nash. Sometimes he would be sitting in the chair behind her, concentrating on a book, or again he would be gone from the room altogether without her knowing that the door had opened or closed. She saw him once with an opened can of beer in his hand and next time she looked the can was missing, but still there was no thought of passing time. She vaguely realized the un-wanted flush had long left her face realized there was no longer that burning, creeping sensation beneath the skin of her cheeks. Instead, there was something else she couldn’t immediately identify and it was not confined to her face. A hungry, yearning something that seemed akin to the ancient people who were but inked lines on paper, a something that seemed to search for an outlet still hidden in an undefined vacuum.
With each turned page, each carefully shielded drawing plucked out of a folder, examined in minute detail and then rep
laced for the next, she understood a little more of what had been meant by “peculiar treasure.” She found herself contemplating the mind and the personality of the men who had done these illustrations, wondering about their various receptions in the times in which they lived speculating on what they had first found in those faraway lands to fire their imaginations in this manner. Had Napoleon himself seen this one, that one—and what had he thought of it? Near the end, she realized something else. The men who had done these things were not conventional thinkers, in the conventional sense. They too, by this evidence, did not think as she thought, as Dikty thought, or even Cummings. Did they think along other lines, in abstractions or symbols, or perhaps in a manner utterly foreign—as Nash did? Who was to say now? They were dead, buried, perhaps even their graves lost and forgotten. They could only be half-judged by what they had left behind, and what present-day human could judge evidence such as this with a mind free of bias and prejudice, free of smirking obscenities? A most undeserved obsequy.
She awoke to her surroundings. When she awoke she found herself staring blankly at a shelf of books on the far wall, found her hands folded in her lap atop the stack of pictures, found the record player still turning on some nameless waltz. She concentrated on that, on the name of the piece, and when she had placed it the full awareness of the room had returned to her. Without turning, she knew Nash was seated in the other chair behind her. He made no noise, did not move, but she knew he was there. She also knew she was hungry and what had caused it, what could satisfy it.
Calmly, quite detached, she analyzed the hunger and traced it to its root. The vacuum was no longer undefined and the outlet no longer hidden from her searching mind.
Shirley Hoffman stood up, transferred the contents of her lap to the chair seat, and stepped around the floor lamp to stand behind the second chair. Nash was deep in a printed page. Eagerly, boldly, she bent over him and locked his unsuspecting head in her arms. Then she kissed him held him locked there for a racing eternity, unwilling to break the contact of their lips.
He jumped when their lips met, struggled to break free but she only tightened her arms. Then he sat quite still. Had she been watching his hands she would have seen his fists clench in determination, only to open slowly in a peculiar surrender. Had she been watching his hands and had she been able to read the enigmatic messages there, she would have known that he was fighting an intangible, fighting to reject and not use the easy access she had provided into a very private place—the last remaining privacy man has in the world. The privacy of her mind, the very much hidden world of personal thought. As she persisted in the long kiss his hands unclenched, lay limp and open, and he walked through a doorway into a room without her knowing it. Gregg Hodgkins had required years to discover that entrance and the aftermath.
Shirley broke away, stepped back, breathing heavily.
Nash stared up at her in mild astonishment and uttered a single word. She did not know the word, it was not English and so was strange to her. But by the intensity with which he said it she knew it to be an epithet.
“Are you angry?” she said after a moment.
His answer was not an answer to her question. It was something else altogether, but she thought he was referring to the kiss.
“So long!” Nash exclaimed, still astonished. “So incredibly long. I couldn’t see the end at all.”
X.
“You owe me so much,” Shirley said unexpectedly, “so very, very much.”
Nash was suddenly startled, wondering if he had made a major error in judgment. He remained on his knees before the fireplace, coaxing into life the small fire he had kindled to dispel the chill the night weather had brought. It would be hot again tomorrow, the summer stickiness of Knoxville, but tonight the mountains had sent down an unusual coolness that penetrated even the house. He did not turn to where she sat, did not pause in the casual act of fanning the newborn flames into steady life, but waited silently for the words that must follow.
She put down her coffee cup into its saucer. “You owe me an explanation. Many explanations.”
He felt the disappointment welling up within him, the keen sense of error. “I do?”
She must have nodded behind him. “May flies,” she said. “An unexplained search for an unexplained immortality. And why it was found too late to save a life. What was found too late? Oh, you owe me so very much!”
A dread, growing weight was suddenly lifted. Nash almost laughed aloud as he asked, “Who wants to know? You—or a man you know?”
“I do,” she retorted promptly. “But I suppose the man will know, eventually. I rather like my job.”
He slowly turned about and sat down, reached out a hand to pat the hearth rug beneath him. “Come here.”
Shirley crossed the room and sank down beside him. “This is nice.” She folded her legs beneath her skirt.
“Most of the ordinary things in the world are nice. Cling to them while you can.”
“Am I going to hear a lecture?” she asked archly.
“No, of course not.”
“I was only teasing. Talk to me. About May flies.”
“It may get awfully boring.”
“Then I’ll stop you. I know how.”
“Yes,” he agreed dryly, “you know how. And what you don’t yet know you’ll learn. You have a long time to learn.”
“Three score and ten,” she quoted the cliché.
He said nothing to that, wrapped in his own thoughts. Behind them the tiny flames crackled through the kindling, spreading the warmth across their backs. The house was quiet, the record player long stilled and the lights turned out except for a small table lamp in the room with them. The door to the book-lined room was closed and the many shelves of volumes forgotten for the night.
“May flies,” she finally prompted.
“May flies,” he repeated. “The eggs are laid in fresh water, to be scattered by the currents, finally to come to rest wherever they may. The larvae often live for several years.”
“I know that,” she interrupted.
“Be quiet. The adults are the ones that concern us. Do you know how long the adults live? A few hours. Only a few hours—they must live a full lifetime in less than a day. That seems strange to us, incredibly strange and incredibly tragic, because we live three score and ten.” He glanced briefly at the girl beside him. “Sometimes longer. But in the space of those few hours the insect must accomplish his mission, fulfill whatever duties have devolved upon him, and prepare the eggs for the following generation. And then die of old age before sundown. Is he aware that only a few hours have passed?”
“Well . . . I don’t know.”
“He is not. If he is able to think about it at all, a lifetime is a life-time. If he is able to think about it, measure it, compare it, then he would surely know he was being cheated by nature. But he is not able to do any of these things because he has no point of comparison, no yardstick to measure time or to measure the span of his life against the spans of other living creatures around him. So, he lives his full lifetime until old age catches him. You do that, don’t you?”
“Well, of course. But I’m not—”
“You aren’t a fly. You are a human. A human has the means and the intelligence to think, to reason, to measure. Humans measure time in a variety of ways, have measured the time required to make one journey about the sun and have called that a year. Therefore you know what a year is and how many of them you may reasonably expect before old age catches up with you. The insect cannot do that and must rely on instinct, must see to it that his work is done to beat that instinctive deadline. But insect and human are both following the same pattern: birth, life over a given span, death. The May fly is as old at the end of the day as you will be at the end of three score and ten. There is no real difference except that each lives according to a different measure of time.”
“Oh, I think I see what you’re getting at. You’re drawing an analogy.”
He nodded. �
��An analogy. The insect lives his span and that is that. He doesn’t know about you; if he did, he would be amazed, would be unable to believe that you could live for thousands of years—according to his timetable. But you know you aren’t living for thousands of years because his timetable is but a few hours in your life. His timetable is below you, and insignificant. Very well then, what is above you? Is there a larger timetable on which your three score and ten are but a few hours as well?”
Shirley opened her mouth and then snapped it shut again, the sudden words unutterable as his startling suggestion penetrated. She was staring up into his face with fascination.
“You are aware of course that other living things on earth outlast your own lifetimes: elephants, parakeets, some species of fish; some of those remarkable trees on the Western Coast live for thousands of years. Each of them may have its own means of measuring the passage of time, but it certainly isn’t by your standards and your timetables. Life spans, and the schedules by which those spans are measured may be either large or small, depending upon who is doing the measuring. You may live several thousand years longer than the insect; those trees may live several thousand years longer than you, relatively speaking. Do you think the trees represent the absolute limit?
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that something else may live untold thousands of years beyond you, beyond the trees, may live a fantastic length of time according to your standards? But then, your standards aren’t valid when applied to a different scale, a different concept of life. No more than the standards of the May fly would be if he attempted to fit you into his life concept. You look down upon the insect from your longer life span, to realize he is gone in a few of your hours. May not something else look down upon you, see you vanish in a few hours?”
The Time Masters Page 11