‘I had the flu and now I have Sally. I have been taking aspirins. Now Belonki wants me to try his joy pills. I am tempted. But the saccharine kid (Mary Schaeffer) likes Sally. I thought if I left them in a room together they would eat each other up and there be nothing left but tre file d’oro (I think that means three blonde hairs, it's from Dante via Finnegan) and a short length of guitar string. I guess it doesn't work for anything but cats in a sack, though. Mary says we have to keep her. It'd cost another thousand dollars to send her home. Sally spent all she had left on those more unfortunate than herself. More unfortunate than herself, is that possible? We were in danger of turning Pollyanna till Margaret and Sally came. That danger is gone now.
‘Tell Hans that if you should die suddenly, and I certainly hope you do, we'll get married and chuck this world-saving business. Finnegan hasn't written since he left last. The boys call me Penelope, but my suitors (j’en ai) keep up my spirits.
‘Marie, I love you and yours. Write me every week and forgive me my crabbishness. But don't ever do a thing like that again.
— Dotty
In some ways this group was unusual. They loved a little luxury, but they defended Poverty as one of the transcendent things. “It's like drink,” Stein said once. “In moderation it is a bright gift of God, but in its extreme it becomes sordid. But Hell waits for him who would abolish either of these glorious things.”
They all knew a little Dago housewife in St. Louis, and sometimes Mary came and drank coffee with her in the kitchen. “What is the wonder?” Dotty asked. “Why doubt it.”
There are many ways to go about it. This was their way. They labored in the world, letting neither hand know what the other did: and if all their works were written, they would fill every book in town. And because of this little group, the world was not destroyed in those decades but was given respite.
13.
Regnum Dei auferetur
Mundus ignet comburetur: Ut scriptura impleretur.
Inimicus seminavit:
Suse luce reparavit
Sicut Moyses exaltavit.
Si vis potes me mundare?
Potens Deus suscitare,
Et compelle ut intrare.
Nonne vobis intellectus?
Praedicabitur in tectis;
‘Hie est filius delectus!’
Tu Melchisedech secundum
Surgens nimis nunc jucundum.
Deus tam dilexit mundum!
— Seminary assignment in Latin Prosody by Henry Salvatore.
But Henry was marked down for that assignment. “Latin isn't Italian enough to have italics,” the instructor priest said. “They're not allowed.”
This one was about Henry but he was hardly in it. Yet it was he who set this apparatus in motion. He was not Iason, of course; he had not been chosen for that role: but he was Euphemus, and he was the real pilot of the ship.
Chapter Six
Casey the Crock, or the Losing of Peleus
1.
Ici Parle Tristram
“I know of an Island in the Sea
Where the days seems always gold:
It's called to me now for nights come three,”
Said Tristram to Isolde.
Ici Parle Isolde
“T’was all of last night that I dreamed a dream
And I stood before a pit,
And the watchful hands of the Virgin Queen
Would guard me away from it.”
Ici on Raconte
The waves lapped weird neath the evening sky
And the distance far was strung
Till one might see if he looked full high
The chains where the stars were hung.
Ici Parle Tristram
“The wind it has risen against us now,
And hard way back we'd mark;
But the isle of my heart lies off our prow
But a little ways in the dark.”
Ici Parle Isolde
“But the sound of the bells it is rising higher
And they wield a woeful power.
‘Quo vadis, filia mea? they ‘quire
From the darksome old church tower.”
Ici Parle Tristram
“A little more and we lose our way
When waters more have flowed,
But think of palaces builded gay
With silver fire and gold.”
Ici Parle Isolde
“I pray that you take me back,” she said,
“For the stars no longer twire,
And the clouds are a-grumbling above our head
And the levin dances fire.”
Ici on Raconte
And far away clanged the old Church Bell
With a mournful melody,
And the small boat rode like a cockerel shell
On the heave of the gurley sea.
Ici Parle Isolde
“And now I bethink me of my dream
When I stood before the pit,
And the hold hands of the Virgin Queen
Would guard me away from it.
“But something is drawing me there,” she said,
“Oh row to your Island far,
Though the wild storm break and the skies flash red,
Ne twire a single star.”
Ici on Raconte
And never they did return again,
And a wonder came to stay
With the poor ar-men and the fisher-men
That the Twain had gone astray.
So sin came back to the worldés face
Whence whilom it were bound,
And touched each high and lowly place
And eke the Table Round.
Ballads of Kasmir Szymanski, Juvenilia, Privately Printed, The Crock, Chicago.
“You were a better poet than I would have thought,” said Finnegan when he had read it in the old pamphlet. “I was better than I am now,” Casey said, “and it's a truer poem than you know. The fall from grace always comes before the doubt. We who are doubters try to deny this. I am not sure that I am able to. I wonder if my own dirty fall from grace will ever have poems or operas written about it?”
“Not unless you do them yourself,” said Finn, “and you probably will.”
Casey sketched his life to Finnegan on the several evenings they were together that time, and the other parts he had told him back in the Island days. This may have been during the first visit, but it was more likely during the second or third trip that Finnegan made to Chicago to see Casey.
This isn't entirely the way that Casey told it. This is the way Casey told it as adjusted by what Finnegan knew of Casey. Finnegan always applied a certain coefficient of deflation when considering Casey, as did others. If told in Casey's own words it would put Casey in a much grander light.
Kasmir W. Szymansky (Casey) was born in Chicago on October 7, 1921, the son of Gabriel Szymansky a pawnbroker and antique dealer, and Miriam Lessing. He was an only child, and that is much of what was the matter with him.
With Casey there would always be a problem, a special one, which Casey himself has said is the only problem in the world of any importance.
‘The problem of evil,’ said Petit, ‘for every thinking and reflecting man is a riddle he cannot escape, a disorder introduced voluntarily, by a free decision, into the divine handiwork.’
The problem of evil, says Genesis, is innate ‘for the heart of man is evil from his youth.’
The problem of evil, said Pope, is a devouring one — ‘And hence one master passion in the breast, like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.’
The problem of evil, says Amos, remains a puzzle:‘Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not done?’
The problem of evil, said Pythagoras, is one of cataloging. And he listed under good: ‘Limit, even, one, right, male, rest, straight, light, square.’ And under evil: ‘the unlimited, odd, multitude, left, female, motion, curved, darkness, oblong.’
It is true that the abstraction of Evil i
s a curved, dark, female, multitudinous thing and of the left, but it is much more than that, and Pythagoras is incomplete.
“The Problem of Evil,” said Casey, “is the only problem in the world. Were it not for that, we would have no problems at all. And if we cannot solve it, then we cannot solve anything else. Myself and my four brothers (not of blood) are the only people I know well in the world. I know that we all have this very strongly; that each of us has his way of handling it; and that none of the ways will work.
“You yourself, Finnegan, seem to disdain the whole thing, like the small boy who wet his pants and argued that it wasn't he who did it, that it must have been someone else. Or like the early Augustine ‘For I still held the view that it was not we who sinned, but that sin was committed in us by some being of a different kind.’ Finn, there is no one in you but yourself.”
“Casey, there is a whole town in me.”
“Let it go. Vincent has been one of the quiet-desperation men in this. He is a very patient boy. If he loses a foot he will gain back thirteen inches. He is the only plodder in the world I ever admired, and I may be the only one who knows that he is a plodder. The question is whether the Thing can be contained by a containment policy. I'm pretty sure that it can't be whipped in any other way.
“Henry tried it all with one stroke. He would not hesitate to hack off a hand or pluck out an eye if it were called for. He threw in everything he had, and more. He somehow believed it would be enough. It won't be.
“What if the hand grew back as maleficent and the eye as evil as before? He'd burn his whole self for it, and there's a lot of him. But what if this Saving the World business of him and his is only the worship of a fetish? Consider him forty-five years from now when he is still the immovable body as well as the irresistible force. See him as just another fat and cranky Cajun priest with his thunder full of cracks. Consider him a puffy old bore. Consider him as self-justified. Finn, it could happen.”
“It could not. Heaven and Earth may pass away, but Henry will never be either a bore or self-justified. The world will never get that old.”
“Let it go. Hans enjoys battling dragons, even the one in his own intestines. He shines up his sword with brillo and hacks away at the thing; I'm sure that he passes a few hydra-heads every morning. But he doesn't kill it in himself, no more than we do. The war that is never won is always in danger of being lost. I worry about him sometimes. He's the most passionate man we ever knew. Should he slip just a little, he would become gross. I'd hate to see him become common, but he could turn into a lout.”
“He could not, Casey. By his very nature he could never become one. He has no trace of hypocrisy, whatever else is in him. He may have a lot of clay in him, but none of it is in his head.”
“Let it go. With myself it is no so much the feet of clay as the gumbo-head. I am not the stupidest of you; I am very nearly the smartest of the lot. If there is one thing that makes me seem stupid it is that I have seen what the rest of you haven't. I have seen the odds on us posted. It is said that if we saw the odds against us at the beginning of any endeavor we'd never start. Well, I have seen the odds, and I do not endeavor much.”
Casey sowed a field with dragons’ teeth. It was ordained from the beginning that one of the company must do this. It was one of the Heroic Labors, the least understood of them.
Casey had been an unmuscular and moody boy who held his own at games only by organizing, inventing, and changing the rules. In classes he did better, with less time, and more ability. He began on the business of books earlier than most and learned the mechanics of learning. More than at school, he got his education from the bookshelves of Melchisedech Duffey, his father's part-time partner. And he got an education from his father in spite of the both of them. Between the father and Casey there was natural antipathy; yet Casey was willing to learn Polish and German from him.
Casey was troubled and imaginative from the start. There are those who live always in a dream world. Casey lived in twelve of them.
The first was that of sports. It was not the sports of the playgrounds, for which he cared little, but that of the sports pages and record books. When Casey was eight years old he wrote his own records, the most amazing set ever. They were mostly of baseball but there were sections of other contingent or parallel careers in other sports.
But for one thing, Casey would have had the best record of any pitcher who ever lived, with well over a thousand games won, and more than one hundred no-hitters. But for one thing, he would have been the first one hundred home-run hitter. But for one thing, he would have been the greatest running back ever, with an incredible sixteen and a fraction yards per carry. And for what other athlete would they have arranged the entire national schedules to enable him to play professional baseball and football both. But for one thing, he would have pitched two hundred consecutive scoreless innings.
The one thing was that his mother found his notebooks and tore them up and told him to go out and play, as he was getting that pasty look. She also ridiculed the contests of the record books with a sort of scorn that was peculiar to her.
“ ‘Casey Syman’ indeed! ‘Extracts from the Official Blue Book of the year 2001, special anniversary edition for the 80th birthday of the greatest player of them all!’ ”
The records were all there, written beautifully, for Casey always wrote a fine hand. She tore them up and threw them out. This was an exasperating end of what could have been a great career. She didn't understand her son or she wouldn't have torn them up.
The second of the imaginary worlds of Casey was an erotic one which also began before he was eight. This was a chameleon life, incoherent and fantastic, and included girls from history and legend, queens and nymphs. There were amazons and female gladiators, Cretan girl bullfighters, circus girl acrobats. Casey had terrible nights with them, for they were as treacherous as the temptations of St. Anthony and as beautiful. They may even have been the same bunch of girls. Casey had an early theory of the ubiquitousness of personal temptations: the continuity of evil coupled with chromatic beauty.
The third of the dream worlds had a religious background, though perhaps no religious element. It took the form that he later called Fortress Christianity, of his being one of a steadfast persecuted minority which combined cleverness and courage to stay ahead of the butchers. There were comings and goings, and hidden names and priest rooms, and prisons and torture. The background was either early Roman Empire or Recusancy England. This was the Fortress Minor.
The Fortress Major was a beleaguered city or fortress indeed, with all the faithful inside and the enemy swarming the walls like giant spiders as the tower bells tolled hour after hour. Later his idea of being one of a persecuted minority was a strong force in the complex that brought him into the party.
The fourth of the worlds was literary. Casey would delineate and give shape to the whole shapeless world. He would write ten thousand words a day, as he could easily do when he had attained facility. That would be a book every ten days and would make him rich and famous. He could do it in five hours a day, which is enough for anyone to work when he has a lot of talent. He would be the American Balzac, only greater. In times to come, Balzac might be spoken of as the French Szymansky.
The fifth of the worlds was that of the explorer. To make this world possible it was necessary that there had been made a serious mathematical and cartological error, and that it had been repeated countless times without proper checking. The possibility had to be entertained that the world was fifty percent larger than we had believed it; that it be not round but melon-shaped. This was Casey's theory of the elongated poles. Antarctica was not so at all. It was an ice ring, not an ice cap; and beyond it was room for a southern sea and a sunny southern continent. This was probably Atlantis which had migrated at the time of the dispersal of the continents. When Casey would journey back and forth between this new-found southern continent and the rest of the world he would enjoy advantages both ways. He would bring modern t
echniques to the southern land, and from it he would bring back the Higher Ethic.
The Higher Ethic was also related to the sixth of the dream worlds. It had no connection with the Fortress Religion of the third world, nor indeed with his own religion. He first got the idea from a magazine ad that he answered very early in life. He got the material from the ad, and not from the material that they sent him, for that was a washout. Nevertheless, this literature which they sent became the first unit in the esoteric library which he later built up.
He got another inkling one winter night after he had served Benediction. About a dozen of the more prominent men of the parish came back through the sacristy. Then they went into the book-lined study of the monsignor and closed the door. They were all very rich. However, only one of two of them commonly came to Benediction. Actually the meeting was in preparation for a fundraising drive, but the fact of it gave Casey ideas of a higher religion practiced only by the very rich; possibly only the monsignor, and not the young priests, knew about this.
Casey heard phrases in sermons sometimes that might be taken in a different way, as intended to identify a practitioner in the speaker. Once a visiting Salesian spoke in the words of the Householder bringing from his treasury things old and new, and he spoke with an odd emphasis which made Casey think that he held the key. But this was the closest that Casey ever came to the secret; and if there was a higher religion practiced only by the very rich, he never found it.
The seventh of the hidden worlds of the mind had to do with linguistics. Casey dreamed of learning all the languages of the world. Casey worked harder to the realization of this goal than any of the others. From his father he had German and Polish, and those were keys to whole groups. From the children in the block he had Italian, from the confectioner on the corner Greek; from the encyclopedic Duffey, Yiddish and Hebrew and Irish. Swedish from the kids one block to the west. And then there were the Thimms and Hugos and Marlboroughs self-taught manuals on the shelves at Duffey's, the Berlitz and Cortina and Langenscheidt, and the little Metoula manuals written in German.
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