Satan's Bushel

by Garet Garrett

  Well, it isn’t every day that a golden goose falls out of the sky into a stockbroker’s lap; and when it happens the miracle shall not be stared in the mouth. This stranger, giving no account of himself, was seen at once to be more than a cool and practiced votary. He was rare. His operations were so large, so audacious and so unexpected that after a little while the broker found himself in a serious dilemma. True, his till was overflowing with commissions. That was all very well. But the fathers of the stock market had summoned him to kneel on the carpet and hear out of the book of rules that paragraph which forbids unsafe trading. Then they warned him that unless he controlled the gambling cyclone that dwelt in his office he should be deemed guilty of conduct prejudicial to the welfare of the Stock Exchange and expelled therefrom.

  Very gently, very ruefully, the broker brought this difficulty to the notice of his client. Dreadwind was not angry. He had rather the look of a man whose feelings are hurt.

  “Limits!” he said to himself. “Limits, limits. Is there no game in the world without a limit?”

  “One,” said the broker.

  “What is it?”

  “Wheat.”

  Dreadwind stood still, struck with an idea.

  “I’ve never gambled in wheat,” he said. “I never thought of it.”

  There was a grain ticker in the office. He walked over to it, gazed at it thoughtfully, ran some of the tape through his fingers.

  “This isn’t like the stock ticker,” he said. “I don’t remember ever to have looked at a grain ticker before. On the stock ticker the amounts bought and sold are printed along with the prices. Here are prices only. No amounts.”

  “That’s all,” said the broker. “The prices only. Amounts are not recorded.”

  “You mean there is no record of the amount of wheat bought and sold in speculation?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How much wheat could I buy or sell this minute?” Dreadwind asked, his eye still upon the grain ticker.

  “Any amount.”

  “A million bushels?”

  “Ten million, fifty million. Any amount.”

  “And all that would show here on the tape would be the price?”

  “Yes,” said the broker.

  “Thanks,” said Dreadwind. “It’s two-thirty. Balance my account, please, and give me the credit in cash.”

  “What are you going to do?” the broker asked.

  “Going to the wheat pit,” said Dreadwind. He added, “I’ll have to see. I don’t believe it.”

  “You knew him as well as anyone here,” I said to Moberly. “He must have crossed you often in the wheat pit. What did you make of him?”

  “He was ten feet high,” said Moberly. “The only man I was ever afraid of—in the pit, I mean to say.”

  That was handsome from Moberly, for, as we all knew, Dreadwind had several times upset him in the open market place. He had been the only man who dared single handed to engage Moberly in a wheat-pit contest; and Moberly without his backing of organized bank credit—Moberly, that is to say, on his own two legs, would have been no match for this invader who knew no rules, no limits and followed a zigzag star.

  “I did not know him,” I said, beginning the story. “Not until afterward, as I shall tell you. I had never seen him, had in fact no idea of his personality. Therefore, what arrested my attention at sight, besides certain singularities of circumstance, was the personality itself, with no suggestion of its identity—I mean, no suggestion that he was the missing Dreadwind. All the time you must keep in mind the kind of man he was—I should say is. No rule of probability contains him. To say that he acts upon impulse, without reflection, in a headlong manner, is true only so far as it goes. Many people have that weakness. With him it is not a weakness. It is a principle of conduct. The impulse in his case is not ungovernable. It does not possess him and overthrow his judgment. It is the other way around. He takes possession of the impulse, mounting it as it were the enchanted steed of the Arabian Nights, and rides it to its kingdom of consequences. What lies at the end is always a surprise; if it is something he doesn’t care for, no matter. Another steed is waiting. Meaning to do this, living for it, he has no baggage. There is nothing behind him. If he has wealth it is portable. He is at any moment ready. A kind of high vagabond, you see.”

  “You almost persuade me to be likewise,” sighed Goran. He was of Polish blood.

  “Very exciting,” I said. “That was Dreadwind’s torment. He could not come to rest. His craving for excitement was a vast hunger. Yet his outwardness, as you know, his superficial aspect, is a mask of perfect serenity. His physical movements are slow, rather hesitating, or as if retarded. I saw them the first time——”

  “Them?” said Moberly, interrupting.

  “Yes,” said Goran. “There’s a woman. Didn’t you get that? Absalom Weaver’s girl. Go on.”

  “——at the edge of a desert,” I continued. “My own errand there was one pertaining to oil. I am not an oil expert. But international oil people are interested obliquely in many collateral things: politics, intrigue, personalities, religion, and what not. Such work is confidential. For that reason I hesitate to mention the place explicitly. No matter. It was such a place as you may see almost anywhere in Southwest Asia—a misspelled name on your map, a journey’s interruption, a jagged symbol of eternity sticking out of the sand, the tomb of a race untended, mythical tomb of a prophet commercialized.

  “I was arriving. They were leaving. There was much make-believe commotion about getting them off. From this I knew that he was free with his money. So he was. He threw it around, not with any air of vanity, for there was nobody of his own kind to be impressed, but simply because its language was instantly understood and a plentiful utterance of it galvanized the action. I was the only other sign of Western civility on the scene and he never so much as glanced at me, though I stood near by, looking on. He observed the preparations, attended to them, spoke now and then to his guide and interpreter a word or two in the tone of voice that dead and sleeping people are not supposed to hear—and all the time his mind was somewhere else.

  “The only present reality he seemed conscious of was the woman. I could not imagine what their relations were. His manner toward her was impersonal, formal, even distant; yet that was not his feeling at all. One could sense beneath the manner an aching contradiction. He was absorbed in her utterly. There is no other way to say it. Whatever it was they were doing, or about to do, concerned her; and she herself, not what they did, was his concern.

  “And the woman! A more oblivious human being could not be described. What she was concerned with lay far, far away, or it was something that had never been found, possibly something that did not exist. One would have thought she moved in a trance. She saw nothing, said nothing, heard nothing. Even when her camel got to its feet—a disagreeable sensation that one could see was new to her body—even then her face expressed no awareness of the senses. It might hare been a camel of her dreams.

  “So they went—the stare-blind woman first, the man next, followed by guides and servants, into the rising sun. Ahead of them, on the horizon, many miles away, rose a glinting pyramidal form. In the middle distance was the faint perception of a ruined temple they should pass, some broken stone columns and the torso of a monumental stone figure seated.

  “It left a vivid picture with me. What the picture signified was quest. I made some inquiries about them. All that anybody knew was that they had come and gone, no whence or whither. More was suspected. A very old Arab, thinking perhaps that I should feel some responsibility for a fellow countryman, confronted me repeatedly with accusing gestures. One hand was full of gold which he showed; with the other hand he tapped his forehead and pointed in the direction they had gone.

  “The second time was stranger still. I thought it was. This occurred three months later in Mongolia, north of the Wall, in a country where you meet your kind only once or twice a day, and then not without a sense of per
sonal anxiety. We passed and they did not see me. That was all. They were mounted on shaggy little horses, pads for saddles, hair-rope bridles, two servants following. She was looking straight ahead. He was still absorbed in her.

  “Then the third time was at Buenos Ayres. They came one evening to the gayest hotel, with no luggage or servants, looking desperately weary and travel sore, lodged for the night, and sailed the next morning. I looked at the registration. The name was Jones—A. Jones and wife. I was sure that was not the man’s right name. It couldn’t be.”

  “Put in something about the woman. I want to see her,” said Goran.

  “I’ve tried,” I said.

  “Yes, but something about her appearance,” he insisted. “What was her type?”

  “I can’t describe her,” I said. “Not directly in terms of herself. I never saw her that way. She reminds me of something symbolic.”

  “What?” Goran asked.

  “There’s a picture of the virgins descending stone steps. Their feet are bare. They are clad all alike in draperies of classic simplicity, drawn in a little with a girdle just under the arms, giving them a sweet, long-limbed appearance. In their faces there is knowledge without experience—knowledge of existence, none of life. She is that first one with the bent knee thrusting against her drape.”

  “Now I see her,” said Goran. “It’s what I thought. Go on.”

  “A long time later, a year and a half perhaps, I was on my way up the Irawadi River. Business pertaining to oil still. A young Britisher with whom I keep a vow of friendship was then commissioner of one of the Northern Burmese provinces, newly appointed; and I went out of my path to see him. We had resolved the nature of matter and whether man was risen from a low estate or fallen from a high one, when of a sudden he thought to say:

  “‘One of your mad Americans has broken loose in my province. That’s what you say, isn’t it? He’s told the British Empire what it cannot do. I’m trying to keep it from becoming a diplomatic incident.’ “

  “Where?’ I asked.

  “‘Up the river.’

  “‘Who is he?’

  “‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘Whether he’s going by an alias or has a false passport I can’t make out. He says his name is Jones—something Jones—A. Jones, I think. But I have reason to suppose his real name is—ah—Dread something—yes, Dreadwind. Why do you look so taken up? Do you know him?’

  “I told him of a man named Dreadwind, a Chicago wheat speculator, who had become suddenly nonexistent; also of the pair I had seen wandering about the world in a hypnotized condition, and that the name under which they passed through Buenos Ayres was A. Jones.

  “‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it. A romance, clearly. I hate to interfere, and yet——’

  “‘What’s the row about?’ I asked.

  “‘Perfectly silly!’ he said. ‘It’s about an old teak tree.’

  “‘Why make a fuss about one teak tree more or less?’ I asked. ‘You’ve millions of them.’

  “‘Now, you see,’ he said, ‘it isn’t so simple quite. The teak in these forests is controlled by the state and scientifically cultivated. It has to be cut with reference to age, condition and new growth. A certain bit of it is due to be cut. The order goes out. Then it appears that this particular bit includes one tree for which your fellow countryman has conceived some sort of wild infatuation. I don’t know what or why. He won’t say. But he says—he says—that tree shall not be cut. The British Empire says it shall be. There you are.’

  “‘What will happen?’ I asked.

  “‘It will be cut.’

  “‘Teak wood is a commercial substance,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it a matter money will settle? He probably has plenty of that.’

  “‘Yes, he seems to have a lot of money,’ the commissioner said, rather acidly. ‘He’s offered to buy the whole forest. That was silly, wasn’t it? Then he corrupted the native officials. Bribed them to spare the tree. That’s a very serious offense. The next thing was that he got some kind of magic or witchcraft to be practiced on the tree until now I understand the whole place is weird with superstition about it.’

  “The English understand human idiosyncrasy, envy it secretly, and are yet quite capable of dealing in an unromantic manner with its troublesome manifestations. This was altogether true of my friend, the commissioner. He was greatly annoyed; it seemed to him his government had been made to appear ludicrous. It could not cut down a teak tree in its own forest because an American preferred to have it stand. Well, we put the subject aside, thinking of it still, and talked absently of other matters. As we parted he said: ‘You’re going that way. Perhaps you’ll have a look at this tree-fey person.’ And he gave me exact directions.

  “My curiosity by this time was absurdly moved, and I pursued it in a straight line—as straight as the native means of transportation permitted. On the way, with nothing else to think about, I discovered in myself a sentiment of irrational sympathy for the man; for both of them in fact, but for the man especially. That is the sort of thing I have learned to call a human chemistry. We seem to have nothing to do with it. Do you know that impulse to serve or befriend in a romantic spirit someone who apparently does not need you at all, a stranger perhaps, one you have never seen before and may never see again? That is what I mean. Then again people who do need you, who have rightful claims upon your goods and interest, and whose claims you honor, do not move your sympathies at all. I’m trying to explain the fact that the mere thought of being able to assist Dreadwind, or Jones, to save his tree gave me a sense of charity, gratitude and pleasure mingled.

  “I had been through this country before. The river and its affluents at the time of year it was are littered with small craft. I was only surprised that as we neared my destination the number of them seemed to increase. Presently there was no doubt of it. More than I had ever seen before at one time so far north were moored at the landing place. The village was a short distance inland. A procession was headed that way. Knowing it to be a small village of bamboo houses with no metropolitan attractions I began to inquire. A religious ceremony was taking place. One of a most unusual character. Then I remembered what the commissioner had said and was not unprepared to hear that the ceremony connected itself with a tree.

  “A word about teakwood. It is in many respects the finest wood there is—dark, heavy, oily, does not crack, warp or shrink, much used in fine shipbuilding and for ornamental carving. The teak tree grows in isolated, defensive clusters among other trees of the forest, aloof and lordly, sometimes attaining to a height of a hundred and fifty feet, with a girth of twenty-five. But the particular teak tree that had become so suddenly an object of preposterous interest was not one of a cluster. It stood alone at the edge of the forest, sole survivor of its group, for it was of enormous age, much older than anything organic or human in the village near by.

  “It was not then, however, that I got my impression of the tree. There was too much going on. In the act of comprehending the scene itself I grasped the fact that here was something new in Asia. The imagination, the cynical daring, the gold, of a Chicago wheat speculator acting through a corrupt, cunning and greedy priestcraft upon native Oriental superstition! Can you imagine it?

  “In a ring around the tree stood ten elephants, ornately decorated, their heads pointing in. The most gorgeously geared one bore on its back a miniature temple with an idol indwelling. Next within the elephant circle was a ring of holy devotees in propitiating attitudes. Inside this kneeling circle were the officiating magicians, all in loin cloths. One crawled on all fours around the tree, pretending to be an animal. One was preoccupied with self-torturing gymnastics. One ate a nauseous substance from a dish and spewed it out. Others resting from their grotesque exertions lay prone as if in prayer. A rude clay image suggestively mutilated was an object of grimacing attention. Around the body of the tree was wound some red stuff of hateful texture. Above this, attached to the bark, was the effigy of a gigantic but
terfly; and over that a great leering mask. Four men squatting in a square drew snaky, unmusical notes from reed pipes. There was no other sound. Incense was burning at the base of the tree. The pungent odor of it seemed to float through other smells—the smell of elephants, the smell of people, the smell of Eastern food—without touching or mingling. The spectators numbered several thousand, and they had been bought without knowing it. When their eyes should be sated with the spectacle of the tree rite there would be a feast in the village. It was then preparing; and the scent of it, savory to these thin nostrils, was causing the stomach to assert its claims against those of the fascinated soul.

  “I turned away in disgust, ashamed of mankind in the sight of trees and noble beasts. It is sickening enough to witness the soul’s groveling under fears of the mind’s invention when its puerile acts are spontaneous and emotionally true; but here was pretence at the source. The priesthood was bought. Only the people were deceived. At the same time one was obliged to admire Dreadwind’s shrewdness. He was creating an enormous superstition—that is to say, a native public opinion, in defense of the tree. The published purpose of all this magic was to cajole, propitiate, persuade to beneficence, a spirit—a western spirit and therefore a hostile one—that had come to dwell in the tree. It followed without saying that the dwelling must not be destroyed, for if it were, then of course the angry spirit would burst forth in the form of a blue bull and take its revenge upon the whole community.

  “No figure in the resemblance of Dreadwind was visible among the spectators. As the grand impresario he had a reserved seat and was himself unseen. His dwelling place was a double bamboo house not more than two hundred yards from the tree. From two facts about it—one that it was new and the other that the natives avoided it in a curious way—I guessed it was his.