“He forged a great tube of copper and iron, and lined it with glass cast at a heat equal to the sun's. Then he rammed it with twenty Frankish tons of white powder. Atop this he loaded a spherical chamber that he had fashioned for himself. Into this he put the Holy Missal and the Scriptures, the writings of the great Augustine and Jerome, and the Natural History of Pliny. He put in bread and wine and an altar stone, and grape cuttings and wheat so he could celebrate the mass. After this, he shot himself to the moon, the first man as far as we know ever to do so. He lived there for ninety years in a condition of great sanctity. This we know, for he said that for as long as he lived he would on the night of every full moon build a bonfire so that the world could see that he was still alive. After ninety years, it was no longer seen, and has not been seen again till this day. The story has been doubted by the doubters. For my part I believe it on the authority of the holy Bishop. And yet I would not so leave the world if I could. I love it too much.”
“It is said that it will soon be left in that way again,” Finnegan remarked.
“Yes, but those who say it are the very ones who say that it is impossible that it could have been left in that way before. The inconsistency of men of science amazes me, and I am sure that it amazes others.”
“For my part,” said Finnegan, “I want to leave the World only for St. Kitts which I have set in my mind as a terrestrial paradise. I am in love with this place to which I may or may not already have been.”
“Then for the love of St. Jack go! You are a man of evident though mysterious means. A boat goes every Thursday, and irregular boats also leave irregularly.”
“I possibly have a different idea as to where St. Kitts is than the shipping companies do, Ignacio.”
“St. Kitts, which is St. Christopher, was a land-fall of our great father Cristóbal Colón. As such it is a holy island, though presently under the dominion of our separated brothers. It is one of the group of five little Islands, the Leewards.”
“Five little islands, the magic number,” Finnegan said. “Did you know that in every pentanesia there is a rogue island?”
“I hadn't known it was a universal rule. In this case it's true. Barbuda Island is good for nothing.”
“Barbuda, my brother! But surely it is good for something.”
“No. Nothing at all in this world.”
“Oh well, I guess not then.”
“It is odd that you should be interested in St. Kitts, for I am so myself. It is as unusual a little island as is in the Indies.”
2.
Finnegan had a concertina. Is it possible that you didn't know he played it? He rather liked his own music though there was much music that he didn't like. He played in the bars and streets with a shocking lack of dignity. Ignacio had to remonstrate with him. A Yankee shouldn't play in the streets like a Gypsy. It was a minor mystery that Ignacio should call him a Yankee. Finnegan had never knowingly passed himself as a Green Mountain Boy, nor as a dealer in nervous wooden nutmegs. He did not twang when he talked, nor had he the Bostonian affliction of speech. He was not stingy, he was not mean, he was in no way narrow or provincial. He had no bad habits but his obvious one. Why should he be taken for a Yankee?
Elena went with the concertina. He had bought it from her, but she wanted to go along and keep an eye on it. She may have intended to repossess it if he ever tired of it or cast it aside.
“How did you happen to come to New Orleans?”
Finnegan asked this Helen. “The only time I come I play for a week only,” she said. “I play in three bars on as many nights but I am not a success. They want me to take my clothes off to my music while I play. This is not only silly and immoral; it is also impossible. It takes all the hands and fingers one can muster to play the instrument. This town here is raw, as any poor girl who plays will know, but it is better than New Orleans.”
Elena, like the rest of them, was in on the joke of pretending that the town was now no longer New Orleans, but had some other name. Finnegan played ‘A Tavern in a Town’, and ‘I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now’. He played the ‘Peanut Vender’ and the ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’.
That night there were some Yankees indeed who came into a place where he was playing. They talked pidgeon Spanish to Finnegan as though he were a barefoot Latino and not a man of means. He would not play for them and they were rude to each other. And after the fight, Elena took Finnegan to his room and put in a call for Ignacio.
“We will have to get a guardian for you,” she said. “We cannot watch you all the time. The abogado has been in touch with your friends and with your girlfriend, and has been trying to get some of them to come down here.”
“I try to call Dotty every day, but the exchanges have been changed. If Dotty wants to see me she can take a taxi and come down. I have a brother who drives a taxi in this town, but we never see each other because we are incompatible. I have a sister whom I love, and even we are a little compatible. Are you also incompatible, Elena?”
“Not very. I can see how you would be easy to be incompatible with though.”
Finnegan lay on the sofa and played and sang a tune of his own making while Elena bathed his brow and washed the blood off his snoot:
‘We'll play us a tune that will never grow old
Though we are marooned on the Main.
Elena has bracelets and jangles of gold
That sound like the Tambuls of Spain.’
“You are such a nice boy, it's a shame you are always crocked,” Elena said. “Have you had troubles? Do you love one who is unattainable? Are you frustrated in the expression of your talents? Did one you loved greatly die tragically and young? Are you disillusioned by the perfidies of the governments and shapers? Are you dangerously fallen from grace? Are you look for a Paraiso? Have you neglected one and are ashamed? Are you in chemical unbalance? For these reasons you drink?”
“Nueve y uno,” Finnegan said. “Nine yesses and a no. I drink because it is good to drink, and I drink excessively because I have an evil streak.”
“Can't you stop?”
“Anyone can stop at any time. It is as easy as hacking off your hand or plucking out your eye, the matter of a moment. It is better to be maimed than to burn: but it IS a maiming; being weak, I hesitate.” Then Finnegan sang another bit of his far-away song:
‘And now we will weigh it and hang out three sheets,
And then we will do it up brown,
For someone has changed all the names of the streets
And someone has scuttled the town.’
“The poem would be better without the words, and conversely,” said Elena. “Now I write a letter to your Dorotea. What do I say?”
But Finnegan was still singing:
‘Alados naviós arriban del mar;
Los miro al mismo un rey.
Ninguno, apenas, a mi es tocar;
Lo pido el hondo porque.’
“I write: Dear Dorotea,” Elena recited. “Winged ships come from the sea and I look at them like a king. Not one of them, hardly, pertains to me. I ask thereon the deep ‘Why?’ or perhaps the ‘Why not?’ Have you no care that you set Spanish grammar back a thousand years?”
“None, Elena. Why, there's grown men who can't put Spanish into anapest good when they're drunk. Hey, get this one:
‘The Ocean is faded, the salt is all gone,
The wind and the waves go to rest.
The parakeets bark and the dogs sing at dawn
And the sun comes up out of the West.’ ”
“Dear Dotty,” Elena wrote out loud. “The salt has lost its savor, and without you the sea is not as blue as it was. The whole world is awry and a weirdness is on the land. What else shall I write?”
‘The island is empty, there's no one but me,
The shouting is down to a hum;
And maybe you'll come like a cloud from the sea,
And maybe you never will come,’ Finnegan played and sang.
“Dorotea, there is a quiet
ness and desolation on the ocean and islands,” Elena interpreted and wrote, “and only the imminence of your advent, questionable though it be, can ever fill the void. What else shall I write?”
‘Like Omar my glory is drowned in a cup
But Omar was only a clown.
They say when you're down there is no way but up,
But it may be they've never been down.’
“Like the Persian bard I have looked upon the wine when it is red, and now I doubt me that this is the darkness just before dawn or will it get darker yet. What else?”
‘The terns have gone down and the squids they have curled;
The fish are asleep in the sea;
And I am alone in a littoral world,
And you could be lonely with me.’
“The sea-birds have gone to rest and the squids relaxed for the night, and all the fish are asleep. I am alone on a shore with a sadness that I invite you to share with me. Is this Dotty such an angela?”
“Una angela verdad, Elena. She has thick ankles, her only fault. And in Paradise even this defect will disappear.”
“Shall I write something about her ankles, how maybe they will be better when we are all sanctified?”
“It would be hard to express without giving the wrong idea.”
But later, after Ignacio had come, Finnegan began to worry about a letter he had recently received. It was written in the rambling hand and in the alternate large and small letters of one who was drinking. But its message was plain. It told Finnegan that a decision had been made and his life would be required of him. How Finnegan crossed this man is of another story. But how that man struck back is of this one.
“This man, he kills effectively?” Ignacio asked.
“He is not invincible. But I am not invulnerable.”
“The letter, you see, did not come direct but has been forwarded.”
“Why, it was mailed right here in New Orleans.”
“I am out of patience with you, Mr. Solli. You are not in New Orleans and there is no sense in being stubborn about it. This was written to frighten you and to make you break cover. So it is the hounds who are nervous, and not the hare.”
“This little hare is a little nervous,” Finnegan said. “But it will not come suddenly. He isn't a hasty man.”
3.
Dotty got a letter from a lawyer in Havana, and told her friends that she was going to take a cruise. “It's the third time I've been sent funds for my fare,” she said, “and he has been sending me so much money in between times that I could retire if only I knew what my left hand did with it.” “I should think you would be out of patience with Finnegan,” Mrs. Duffey said.
“I have a lot more patience now that he has a lot more money,” Dotty said reasonably. “That was very culpable of me. He signed his last letter ‘culpably yours.’ And nobody ever offered me a vacation before.”
“Then take me along for chaperone,” Mrs. Duffey suggested.
“John and I, for reasons not understood even by ourselves, do not need a chaperone,” Dotty explained. “Now I am going down there, and you can think anything you like.”
4.
Finnegan was shriven on the feast of St. Henry Emperor for his death, if it should come; and thereafter he drank only a little wine. “This hundredth sheep has had a far go of it,” he said, “but he made the rest of them look good.” In those latter days Finnegan rose early and went to mass. Then he'd walk miles through the streets and roads and around the rocks to the clear beach. He carried sketching paper and books. He read Father Farrell's books on the Summa; and St. John of the Cross.
“Why, this is the fleece itself,” he cried. “How have I not known it?”
He sketched the faces of his friends. He drew Show Boat whom he loved, and Dotty whom he loved, and Anastasia from another life whom he loved and who was dead; and Mary Catherine and Mary Schaeffer and Marie and Maurine and Patti and Doll Delancy and dark Francine. And Vincent and Henry and Hans and Casey; and Duffey and Stein and Hilary and the Goat Man. He tried to draw X but the face would not come; he drew a Piedmontese X for him. He drew one other, Saxon Seaworthy. ‘But he is not my friend.’ ‘Why is he not my friend?’ ‘He is going to have me killed.’ ‘And for this we cannot be friends?’
He drew both the faces of Papadiabolous the Devil. He drew Le Marin, and Freddy Castle and Tom Shire. He drew Don Lewis, and Don Barnaby the Duke of Moule; and wondered how deep a secret was there. He limned Loy Larkin who was a pink cloud. He sketched Doppio di Pinne who was his own double or fetch, who had died in his place either in the cabin of the Brunhilde at the hands of Papadiabolous or later on Galveston Island in a trap of Saxon Seaworthy.
Finnegan looked at his pictures, and he knew that certain pairs of them were the same persons. Teresa Piccone was the same person as Anastasia Demetriades, however unlikely it seemed. Casey and Stein were aspects of the same person: no wonder they were both split wide open! Elena was both herself and Angela Cosquin (forgive us, you have not met Angela, and it grows late). Private Gregory back in Ward Fourteen was the same person as Papadiabolous the Devil, and this was the hardest of all of them for Finnegan to accept.
5.
Niccolo Crotolus, the old left-footed killer, sat and talked business with a minor police person with whom he always cleared matters when in town. Niccolo was a large and shapeless man who rattled when he walked due to the number of objects that he carried loose in his pockets, and his lumbering motions. For this reason, it is possible that Crotolus was a nickname, Nick the Rattle. This may have been further connected by his learned employers with his other nickname, for the Crotalus cerastes is the Sidewinder, a rattlesnake. Niccolo himself gave another version: “Crotolo is our family name, and it means a castanet. It is an old word and it is gone, and castagnetta, the new word, means a little chestnut. We were called Crotolo because we were a family of dancers and musicians, Zingaro (Gitano, you would say). The Niccolo I have from our astute Florentine father whom in mind I resemble. You recall his discourse on the way in which a Prince must keep faith?”
“Him I have not read,” said the minor police person.
“That it is not necessary that the Prince have the quality, but only that he seem to have it. Now, perhaps, it is the same with the Delegate: it is not necessary that I follow instructions, but that I seem to follow them. For the ‘Prince’ has now changed his mind five times. ‘Wait two days and then dispatch him’ he wired. And then ‘Hold until you hear from me.’ Then again ‘Do it at once and have it done with.’ And immediately afterwards ‘If you have not done it, do not do it; maybe we should not kill him at all.’ Then ‘Kill him, kill him!’ And finally ‘Delay a little.’ Should I not pretend that I have not received this last wire? By arrangement, I get only half pay when a job is called off on the theory that I have run no danger, that I have been on a pleasant vacation. By the same count, your soborno is only half if it is not done.”
“Then by all means kill him. A message like this could easily have gone astray. Or you may tomorrow have a new note ordering you to go ahead. And there is no great wrong to have anticipated an order. Does he suspect?”
“He knows for sure. He looked me in the eye and grinned and he knew that I was the executioner. But he would not drink with me, not even for the gesture. ‘No more until I drink it new,’ he said. I wonder if they have it in the Kingdom?”
“Wine only, I believe, and rum for the Islanders. But that is speculation; I do not know.”
“There was originally the piccola vendetta and the grande vendetta, the little revenge and the great revenge. This was when there were more in the business than there are now. For the piccola, one was assassinated when probably or possibly in the state of grace, and sometimes was even given the chance to attain that state. For the grande, one was killed when almost certainly not in that state. The rates were several times higher for the grande than for the piccola. There was much fraud in this. Often one collected for the grande but effected only the p
iccola, insured death but not necessarily damnation for the victim. But there was never such deception in our family. What we collected for we effected.
“Now the distinction is about gone. The employers no longer believe in either grace or damnation. I hadn't heard the terms for many years, since I was a boy in the old country. But in his last instructions my employer specified that it must be only the piccola. I was not sorry. I do not mix sentiment with business, but I have grown fond of the boy while I followed him. It will surely be the piccola. He is quite ready to die.”
“Tomorrow then, when he is past the rocks, and to the beach in the afternoon.”
6.
Dotty came to the end of her voyage. There had been attentive boyfriends, and she was flattered and nearly happy. And she remembered what either Raleigh had written or Finnegan had said, that whoever knows only the land knows only half the world and is only half a person. It was early Wednesday morning, the same as the Fourth Morning of the World when God had already made the ocean and let it roll all night and now was ready to place the sun in its course. And He hung it fifteen degrees up in the sky and let it start from there, just above the morning cloud bank.
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