The banjo clock struck one. I found myself considering a story by Thomas De Quincey entitled “The Vision of Sudden Death.” Although the substance of the tale evaded me, I did recall that it raised the interesting question of whether or not a quick end to life was desirable. The pagans felt it was, but the Christians—because of their concept of absolution—took the opposite view.
“Sudden death, sudden death,” I chanted to myself.
Norbie’s shoes caught my attention. They looked tight on his swollen feet. Large shoes, they were, of the sort called bluchers, after the Prussian general. I got up and undid the laces. He was snoring softly, his multitude of chins resting on his chest. Spittle dangled from the corner of his mouth.
The rite of absolution was superstition. Childishness. Both heaven and hell were misconceptions. Souls moved from world to world in the twinkling of an eye.
I have no recollection of doing so, yet I must have gotten the cartridges from the pantry and then loaded the clip. I do, however, clearly remember kneeling beside the leather armchair and pointing the automatic at Norbie’s perspiring forehead. In an instant, I speculated, he might be transported to a better place. He could escape his misery. He could again be happy. In an instant, he could be reborn. Yes, in a single instant.
The house plants on the window sill began to whisper excitedly, though I wasn’t able to distinguish what they said.
Outside on Beacon Street, a trolley—probably the last of the night—clattered by, and as it did Norbert Hess opened his bulbous eyes. The lids rose slowly, twitching a bit. First the eyes focused on the gun, and then they focused on me. Without hesitating, I pulled the trigger.
That’s precisely how it was. When I look back upon it now, the whole episode seems an accident. I’m absolutely certain I never intended to shoot him—never! I was only playing with the notion—entertaining the philosophical possibilities of such an act—but I definitely hadn’t made a firm decision. It happened, nevertheless. The absinthe, the passing streetcar and the sleeping man’s abrupt wakening—all these conspired to force my hand.
Well, a .45 is a cataclysmic firearm. In the little parlor it went off like a blockbuster, and the angle being what it was, a portion of Norbie’s bald crown flew up to the ceiling. Most of it ricocheted back down to the floor with a noise like crashing crokery, but an egg-shaped mass of gore remained up there, clinging to the calcimine. From it, drops fell. They appeared gray in color until they landed on my friend’s sport shirt; there they bloomed into a radiant red.
Despite my agitation, a line of Poe’s forced its way into my consciousness. Somewhere he’s written: “And raining, it was rain; but having rained, it was blood.”
22
DISPOSITION
Did I feel regret? Perhaps . . . perhaps. But just then, to be perfectly honest, I was more concerned with my own plight than I was with Norbie’s. Had anyone heard that ear-busting gunshot? The windows were open, I saw with alarm, and the drapes only partly drawn. Quickly I closed them both.
What was to be done with this hulking empty body? I asked myself as the buzzing in my head grew louder and louder. Really, my skull was as noisy as a beehive!
Somehow I managed to stagger to the charnel house and fetch the wheelbarrow. In the quiet of the night and to my utter dismay, it jingled and rattled like a legion of fully panoplied Roman infantry marching off to Gaul. I quailed. And the business of winding the cadaver in a clean sheet, rolling it out onto the back porch and there manhandling it into the barrow—that was nightmarish, to say the least.
Down the flagstone path I went, struggling like Sisyphus with the load. Appropriately enough for so melodramatic an incident, the moon was full. It was as round and yellow as the yolk of a fresh egg, and far too generously showered everything with pallid light. Had I been on a stage encompassed by footlights, I couldn’t have been more visible. With the exception of my house and Mrs. Binney’s, however, the surrounding buildings were fortunately not occupied at night, being tenanted solely by physicians, dentists and other professional people. Still, might there not be a caretaker . . . a watchman?
Though there was some forb, the sod cut easily. I piled the squares on the walk. Once I’d exposed the earth, I forsook the spade and began digging with a long-handled shovel. The tree roots made the job an arduous one.
Fuzzy-brained as I was, I couldn’t help wondering how I must have looked. The scene might have been clipped from one of those silent horror movies of the early thirties. Even my shadow, cast on the moon-bleached grass, was larger than life and moved in a bizarre and sinister fashion. Only a ragged specter in chains was missing.
At a depth of four feet, as if to embellish my fancy, I found an ancient shinbone. This made me pause. Digging farther, I feared, might reveal a complete skeleton, and then I’d have two relics to bury instead of one. A swift glance at the trench, and another at the wheelbarrow’s cargo, was sufficient to persuade me that the one would accommodate the other, though it would be a rather shallow interment. No matter.
Forthwith I stuck the shovel in the pile of loam, maneuvered the handcart to the brink of the excavation, and as gently as possible slid the shrouded corpse in. By good chance it landed flat on its back. All that was required was to turn the head slightly and arrange the limbs in a decorous pose.
I then hastily intoned a couple of psalms, murmured, “Death’s but a path that must be trod,/If man would ever pass to God,” and tossed a handful of soil on the white sheet. That done, I covered the body with quicklime—to discourage inquisitive dogs—and filled the hole. With the turf back in place, the surface appeared quite undisturbed. I sprinkled the leftover dirt around and returned the tools to the charnel house.
Since there are no apple trees in the Burying Ground, I put him under an oak.
Before going to bed I told Eulalia what had happened. She was very reassuring. She said that it was one of the wisest things I’d ever done, and that she was proud of me.
Then, then, is the entire story. Should the episode ever come to light, I trust this account will justify my actions. To anyone obliged to read it, I offer my apologies for making such an epic of so minor—yet so truly pathetic—a tale.
PART TWO
1
OUTGROWTHS
Every form has its shadow, every utterance its echo, and every history its sequel. Nothing in the universe, including the universe itself, can terminate entirely.
In rereading my report of what happened that weekend last June, I see now that those events were charged with many unsuspected possibilities and potentialities. They contained seeds. Since that time, these embryos have germinated, have sent their tendrils into the light, have blossomed and borne fruit. Dryden says:
If fate be not, then what can we foresee?
And how can we avoid it if it be?
Fate, yes. It is oddly apt that “kismet” is a Turkish word.
Even at this moment, when all has been resolved, my brain teems with irritating conjectures, with “other alternatives.” Have my decisions been the right ones? Have I behaved virtuously? Surely the answer to both questions must be yes—no matter what the philodendrons have been saying. I won’t deny that I have been swayed to some extent by those biological forces intrinsic in healthy men, yet I have rectified the damage done thereby, as best I could.
What a complicated business! How was I to know what a Hydra I was pitted against? I wonder what Great-grampy thinks, wherever in the whirling cosmos he might be.
2
ANOTHER VISITOR
That very Monday, Madge came. The taste in my mouth when I awoke that morning was as bitter as gall, but my head was clear. I ate a good breakfast, then cleaned up the house and stowed the souvenirs, the uniforms and everything else away in closets. The worst task was scrubbing the blood from the Shiraz rug. Later I inspected the grave. It was remarkable how the blades of grass mingled to hide the outline in the greensward. I was sure that the few schoolboys who occasionally entered the Burying Gr
ound through a gap in the fence would never notice the faint scars. And with the lich gate chained the way it was, there wouldn’t be any other visitors.
Eulalia, that afternoon, suggested I write the story down, so I found a tablet and commenced scribbling. In no time I was thoroughly engrossed. Is my mind particularly adapted to this type of narrative? I wonder. It must be, for the words streamed onto the pages with marvelous facility. Only for dinner did I pause in my labors.
Madge arrived at eight-thirty. From Mahir’s description, I had expected a woman at least as old as myself and not at all attractive, but this guess was way off the mark. She was exceedingly comely. There in the summer twilight on my doorstep, she was like a heady vision. Her age I estimated at thirty-six or thirty-seven—an age Balzac maintained was a woman’s zenith. Cleopatra was about that when Mark Antony surrendered the Roman Empire to be with her.
I led her into the parlor, silently congratulating myself for having concealed the damp spots in the carpet under pieces of furniture. She glanced around. I offered her the leather chair; she rejected it, however. Like the Turk, she chose the saber-legged chair, but unlike him she sat on it squarely, confidently, possessively.
An antique visage of Carrara marble in some moonlit Italian garden—that is how her face appeared to me in the play of lamplight and soft shadow. I regaled my eyes. Each of us, whether he be a drudge at the bottom of a coal pit or a museum curator surrounded by masterpieces, has his own concept of beauty. I cannot say that Madge was the complete personification of my ideal—it simply wouldn’t be true—but she did come disturbingly close to that Galatea of my fantasies.
Her hair was black, abundant, and rich in coils and ringlets. Two helical strands of it hung down before her delicate ears, like slender serpents. The rest was piled about her head in a casque of inky foam. Flushes of auroral pink highlighted her cheeks, but otherwise her skin was as fair as a Dane’s. As for her mouth, it was pale red, moist and tender-seeming; it made me think of the innermost flesh of a ripe peach.
My scrutiny in no way embarrassed her. She sat there composed, a trim yet full figure in a gaily colored shift that generously left shoulders, arms and legs exposed to the view of the world. Captivating she was. Around her right wrist there was a hammered-gold bracelet, around her graceful neck there was a gold chain from which an oddly shaped, vaguely cruciformed pendant hung. Her ears were pierced by elaborate earrings, tiny chandeliers of gold that tinkled when she moved her head. She used a scent that smelled of camphor, and perhaps sandalwood. Later on I discovered I could ascertain her presence in the house by that tenuous spoor alone. Taken all in all, she struck me as just a little barbaric, but nonetheless charming for that.
Yes, I looked her over carefully, and she sat at her ease, observing me in the act of observing her. As Mahir had said, she was lame, but only slightly. Her left foot was a bit twisted at the ankle and required a special, wedge-soled shoe. In the following days I was to learn that this infirmity had resulted from a scooter accident in Iran; the bones had been set by a bungling physician, she claimed. Though she carried a cane—a slim piece of yellow Malacca, freckled with brown—she did so in a most carefree fashion. The tip of this stick was encased in a long iron ferrule, and the handle adorned with a repoussé silver ram’s head. It was far more like a wand or a scepter than a crutch.
“Your guest has gone?” she asked finally, as if to signal the end of our mutual appraisal. Her voice was deep for a woman, though feminine enough in all other respects.
“My guest?” I said, momentarily disconcerted. “Oh, yes. You met him, didn’t you? Yes, he departed this morning.” That was the truth, of course, but as it sounded sinister, I appended, “He stayed only for the weekend.”
She seemed to hesitate; then she nodded, earrings chinking. “I am here,” she said, “because the shopkeeper, Suleyman, told me you are a descendant of A. Edward Pendleton, the explorer. Is that true, or has the rascal lied to me?”
“It’s true. He was my great-grandfather,” I answered. “Let me say, however, Miss Clerisy—is it ‘Miss,’ by the way?”
“Yes,” said she, with a smile. “I’m divorced.”
“Let me say, Miss Clerisy, that A. Edward Pendleton considered himself to be an Egyptologist rather than a mere explorer. He was an adept—very adept—scholar.”
The lady threw me a sidelong glance. “By modern standards, most nineteenth-century diggers are adjudged unscientific, I’m afraid. Even Petrie’s methods are now thought crude.” Disposing of the subject with an infinitesimal lifting of her eyebrows, she drew an envelope from her handbag and passed it to me. “My credentials,” she declared. “I’m an associate professor of archaeology at the Middle-Eastern Art Institute of the University of Philadelphia.”
Taking the brown envelope and giving it a cursory glance, I replied, “I’m sure your references are of the highest order,” and returned it to her unopened. “But about Great-grampy—he was in Egypt long before Flinders Petrie, you know.”
“Great-grampy?” said she, amused.
“Yes, it’s what we called him,” I said, nodding and grinning. Then I continued, “He sailed from Boston for Alexandria as soon as he was mustered out of the Union Army, in 1865. He hungered for more adventure; that’s the kind of man he was. Did you know that he was born in this very house, Miss Clerisy? And he lived the last eleven years of his life here, also, dying at the age of ninety-three. His grave is scarcely a hundred yards from where we’re sitting.”
“Fascinating. Did he by chance leave any personal papers—letters, diaries or the like?”
“Indeed he did. In the library upstairs, there’s a raft of notebooks and other unpublished material.”
Deep within her eyes, which were the color of choice amber, a gleam kindled. “I would very much like to have a look at those papers,” she asserted quickly. “Might I come by tomorrow, in the morning?”
“By all means, do. I can tell you now, however, that you’ll need far more than a single day to properly evaluate what’s there. He was an inveterate diarist—a chronic chronicler, if I may so put it.”
She allowed me a polite laugh for my quip, then went on to say she’d always believed A. Edward Pendleton had been killed in a duel in Africa, sometime before the First World War. Knowing all about this incident, I was able to clarify it for her. It was not the old boy who had perished, I explained, but his opponent—a Prussian officer. The duel was fought in Dar-es-Salaam, over the favors of a lady. Great-grampy, who was at least seventy then, was obliged to flee to Zanzibar and the protection of the British.
I made two cups of instant coffee, and while we drank it she told me a little of her background. Though she was not herself an Egyptologist—most of her work having been done in Mesopotamia—she had twice been on digs in the Valley of the Kings and knew a good deal about the Nile civilization. I gathered that she could even decipher hieroglyphics.
But her autobiography was brief and poor in detail, and we were soon discussing my great-grandfather again. Had he left many artifacts? she asked. Yes, quite a few, I admitted. Any papyri? No, none that I could remember. Had I sold many things to that Turk? Twenty or twenty-five, I thought. Had I shown them to the museum first? No, they’d all been objects of little artistic virtue. The lady shook her head censoriously, earrings jingling. Had anyone else ever come to see the notebooks in the library? No one, and I’d always wondered why. Not even while he was living? Not even then, as far as I knew. Did he ever relate any of his adventures to me? Yes, often. What was he like?
The answer to this last question could not be a simple one. I thought for a while, and then said, “Great-grampy was prismatic, in every sense of the word. If you were to shine a single beam of light on him, he would diffuse it instantly into a rainbow. What a pity he’s not here to talk with you, Miss Clerisy! He possessed so much knowledge and so much vitality. There were some people who thought him . . . well just a bit insensitive, because of his practical jokes, but he wasn’t insen
sitive at all. Many’s the time I saw him weep while reciting Egyptian poetry.”
“Really? What sort of Egyptian poetry?” Madge asked me, staring into my eyes with unblinking concentration.
“Oh, prayers and things. They were strangely moving. I remember one that began:
How quiet is this righteous prince!
The noble destiny has come to pass.
“It was a great favorite of his. You see, he was very much taken with the ancient Egyptian religion.”
“Do you mean he believed in it?”
“I think he did—yes. It wasn’t always easy to tell when he was serious, yet I do feel he genuinely believed in it.”
“I see. What else did he talk about with you?”
Finding that my eyes had fastened themselves on one of her bare shoulders in a rude stare, I wrenched them away and affected an expression of dreamy contemplation. “Everything under the sun,” I replied. “He knew Petrie, of course—and Maspero and James Breasted and the others. Who didn’t he know? There was the British general, Chinese Gordon, who died in the Sudan; there was Burton, the translator of The Arabian Nights; there was Brazza of the Congo; there was Paul Du Chaillu. The list of his acquaintances is a long one, and the stories he told about them were endless. Some of these tales—his visiting Livingstone before Stanley ever got there, and his fighting at Rorke’s Drift and Omdurman—were obviously fictions, but the rest of them were too detailed to be anything but true.”
The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton Page 8