by Mark Twain
Then he “side-tracked” in his abrupt way, and looked avidly at my head and said he did wish he was back in my skull, he would sail out the first time I fell asleep and have a scandalous good time!—wasn’t that magician ever coming back?
“And oh,” he said, “what wouldn’t I see! wonders, spectacles, splendors which your fleshly eyes couldn’t endure; and what wouldn’t I hear! the music of the spheres—no mortal could live through five minutes of that ecstasy! If he would only come! If he . . . .” He stopped, with his lips parted and his eyes fixed, like one rapt. After a moment he whispered, “do you feel that?”
I recognized it; it was that life-giving, refreshing, mysterious something which invaded the air when 44 was around. But I dissembled, and said—
“What is it?”
“It’s the magician; he’s coming. He doesn’t always let that influence go out from him, and so we dream-sprites took him for an ordinary necromancer for a while; but when he burnt 44 we were all there and close by, and he let it out then, and in an instant we knew what he was! We knew he was a . . . we knew he was a . . . . a . . . a . . . how curious!—my tongue won’t say it!”
Yes, you see, 44 wouldn’t let him say it—and I so near to getting that secret at last! It was a sorrowful disappointment.
Forty-Four entered, still in the disguise of the magician, and Schwarz flung himself on his knees and began to beg passionately for release, and I put in my voice and helped. Schwarz said—
“Oh, mighty one, you imprisoned me, you can set me free, and no other can. You have the power; you possess all the powers, all the forces that defy Nature, nothing is impossible to you, for you are a . . . a . . .”
So there it was again—he couldn’t say it. I was that close to it a second time, you see; 44 wouldn’t let him say that word, and I would have given anything in the world to hear it. It’s the way we are made, you know: if we can get a thing, we don’t want it, but if we can’t get it, why—well, it changes the whole aspect of it, you see.
Forty-Four was very good about it. He said he would let this one go—Schwarz was hugging him around the knees and lifting up the hem of his robe and kissing it and kissing it before he could get any further with his remark—yes, he would let this one go, and make some fresh ones for the wedding, the family could get along very well that way. So he told Schwarz to stand up and melt. Schwarz did it, and it was very pretty. First, his clothes thinned out so you could see him through them, then they floated off like shreds of vapor, leaving him naked, then the cat looked in, but scrambled out again; next, the flesh fell to thinning, and you could see the skeleton through it, very neat and trim, a good skeleton; next the bones disappeared and nothing was left but the empty form—just a statue, perfect and beautiful, made out of the delicatest soap-bubble stuff, with rainbow-hues dreaming around over it and the furniture showing through it the same as it would through a bubble; then—poof! and it was gone!
Chapter 30
The cat walked in, waving her tail, then gathered it up in her right arm, as she might a train, and minced her way to the middle of the room, where she faced the magician and rose up and bent low and spread her hands wide apart, as if it was a gown she was spreading, then sank her body grandly rearward—certainly the neatest thing you ever saw, considering the limitedness of the materials. I think a curtsy is the very prettiest thing a woman ever does, and I think a lady’s-maid’s curtsy is prettier than any one else’s; which is because they get more practice than the others, on account of being at it all the time when there’s nobody looking. When she had finished her work of art she smiled quite Cheshirely (my dream-brother’s word, he knew it was foreign and thought it was future, he couldn’t be sure), and said, very engagingly—
“Do you think I could have a bite now, without waiting for the second table, there’ll be such goings-on this morning, and I would just give a whole basket of rats to be in it! and if I—”
At that moment the wee-wee’est little bright-eyed mousie you ever saw went scrabbling across the floor, and Baker G. gave a skip and let out a scream and landed in the highest chair in the room and gathered up her imaginary skirts and stood there trembling. Also at that moment her breakfast came floating out of the cupboard on a silver tray, and she asked that it come to the chair, which it did, and she took a hurried bite or two to stay her stomach, then rushed away to get her share of the excitements, saying she would like the rest of her breakfast to be kept for her till she got back.
“Now then, draw up to the table,” said 44. “We’ll have Vienna coffee of two centuries hence—it is the best in the world—buckwheat cakes from Missouri, vintage of 1845, French eggs of last century, and deviled breakfast-whale of the post-pliocene, when he was whitebait size, and just too delicious!”
By now I was used to these alien meals, raked up from countries I had never heard of and out of seasons a million years apart, and was getting indifferent about their age and nationalities, seeing that they always turned out to be fresh and good. At first I couldn’t stand eggs a hundred years old and canned manna of Moses’s time, but that effect came from habit and prejudiced imagination, and I soon got by it, and enjoyed what came, asking few or no questions. At first I would not have touched whale, the very thought of it would have turned my stomach, but now I ate a hundred and sixty of them and never turned a hair. As we chatted along during breakfast, 44 talked reminiscently of dream-sprites, and said they used to be important in the carrying of messages where secrecy and dispatch were a desideratum. He said they took a pride in doing their work well, in old times; that they conveyed messages with perfect verbal accuracy, and that in the matter of celerity they were up to the telephone and away beyond the telegraph. He instanced the Joseph-dreams, and gave it as his opinion that if they had gone per Western Union the lean kine would all have starved to death before the telegrams arrived. He said the business went to pot in Roman times, but that was the fault of the interpreters, not of the dream-sprites, and remarked—
“You can easily see that accurate interpreting was as necessary as accurate wording. For instance, suppose the Founder sends a telegram in the Christian Silence dialect, what are you going to do? Why, there’s nothing to do but guess the best you can, and take the chances, because there isn’t anybody in heaven or earth that can understand both ends of it, and so, there you are, you see! Up a stump.”
“Up a which?”
“Stump. American phrase. Not discovered yet. It means defeated. You are bound to misinterpret the end you do not understand, and so the matter which was to have been accomplished by the message miscarries, fails, and vast damage is done. Take a specific example, then you will get my meaning. Here is a telegram from the Founder to her disciples. Date, June 27, four hundred and thirteen years hence; it’s in the paper—Boston paper—I fetched it this morning.”
“What is a Boston paper?”
“It can’t be described in just a mouthful of words—pictures, scare-heads and all. You wait, I’ll tell you all about it another time; I want to read the telegram, now.”
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord God is one Lord.
“I now request that the members of my Church cease special prayer for the peace of nations, and cease in full faith that God does not hear our prayers only because of oft speaking; but that He will bless all the inhabitants of the earth, and ‘none can stay His hand nor say unto Him what doest thou.’ Out of His allness He must bless all with His own truth and love.
“MARY BAKER G. EDDY.”
“Pleasant View, Concord, N.H., June 27, 1905.”
“You see? Down to the word ‘nations’ anybody can understand it. There’s been a prodigious war going on for about seventeen months, with destruction of whole fleets and armies, and in seventeen words she indicates certain things, to-wit: I believed we could squelch the war with prayer, therefore I ordered it; it was an error of Mortal Mind, whereas I had supposed it was an inspiration; I now order you to cease from praying for peace and take hold of something near
er our size, such as strikes and insurrections. The rest seems to mean—seems to mean . . . . Let me study it a minute. It seems to mean that He does not listen to our prayers any more because we pester Him too much. This carries us to the phrase ‘oft-speaking.’ At that point the fog shuts down, black and impenetrable, it solidifies into uninterpretable irrelevancies. Now then, you add up, and get these results: the praying must be stopped—which is clear and definite; the reason for the stoppage is—well, uncertain. Don’t you know that the incomprehensible and uninterpretable remaining half of the message may be of actual importance? we may be even sure of it, I think, because the first half wasn’t; then what are we confronted with? what is the world confronted with? Why, possible disaster—isn’t it so? Possible disaster, absolutely impossible to avoid; and all because one cannot get at the meaning of the words intended to describe it and tell how to prevent it. You now understand how important is the interpreter’s share in these matters. If you put part of the message in school-girl and the rest in Choctaw, the interpreter is going to be defeated, and colossal harm can come of it.”
“I am sure it is true. What is His allness?”
“I pass.”
“You which?”
“Pass. Theological expression. It probably means that she entered the game because she thought only His halfness was in it and would need help; then perceiving that His allness was there and playing on the other side, she considered it best to cash-in and draw out. I think that that must be it; it looks reasonable, you see, because in seventeen months she hadn’t put up a single chip and got it back again, and so in the circumstances it would be natural for her to want to go out and see a friend. In Roman times the business went to pot through bad interpreting, as I told you before. Here in Suetonius is an instance. He is speaking of Atia, the mother of Augustus Caesar:
“ ‘Before her delivery she dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth.’
“Now how would you interpret that, August?”
“Who—me? I do not think I could interpret it at all, but I do wish I could have seen it, it must have been magnificent.”
“Oh, yes, like enough; but doesn’t it suggest anything to you?”
“Why, n-no, I can’t see that it does. What would you think—that there had been an accident?”
“Of course not! It wasn’t real, it was only a dream. It was sent to inform her that she was going to be delivered of something remarkable. What should you think it was?”
“I—why, I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Do you think—well, would it be a slaughter-house?”
“Sho, you’ve no talent for interpretation. But that is a striking instance of what the interpreter had to deal with, in that day. The dream-messages had become loose and rickety and indefinite, like the Founder’s telegram, and soon the natural thing happened: the interpreters became loose and careless and discouraged, and got to guessing instead of interpreting, and the business went to ruin. Rome had to give up dream-messages, and the Romans took to entrails for prophetic information.”
“Why, then, these ones must have come good, 44, don’t you think?”
“I mean bird entrails—entrails of chickens.”
“I would stake my money on the others; what does a chicken know about the future?”
“Sho, you don’t get the idea, August. It isn’t what the chicken knows; a chicken doesn’t know anything, but by examining the condition of its entrails when it was slaughtered, the augurs could find out a good deal about what was going to happen to emperors, that being the way the Roman gods had invented to communicate with them when dream-transportation went out and Western Union hadn’t come in yet. It was a good idea, too, because often a chicken’s entrails knew more than a Roman god did, if he was drunk, and he generally was.”
“Forty-Four, aren’t you afraid to speak like that about a god?”
“No. Why?”
“Because it’s irreverent.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Why isn’t it? What do you call irreverence?”
“Irreverence is another person’s disrespect to your god; there isn’t any word that tells what your disrespect to his god is.”
I studied it over and saw that it was the truth, but I hadn’t ever happened to look at it in that way before.
“Now then, August, to come back to Atia’s dream. It beat every soothsayer. None of them got it right. The real meaning of it was—”
The cat dashed in, excited, and said, “I heard Katzenyammer say there’s hell to pay down below!” and out she dashed again. I jumped up, but 44 said—
“Sit down. Keep your head. There’s no hurry. Things are working; I think we can have a good time. I have shut down the prophecy-works and prepared for it.”
“The prophecy-works?”
“Yes. Where I come from, we—”
“Where do you co—”
It was as far as I could get. My jaw caught, there, and he gave me a look and went on as if nothing had happened:
“Where I come from we have a gift which we get tired of, now and then. We foresee everything that is going to happen, and so when it happens there’s nothing to it, don’t you see? we don’t get any surprises. We can’t shut down the prophecy-works there, but we can here. That is one of the main reasons that I come here so much. I do love surprises! I’m only a youth, and it’s natural. I love shows and spectacles, and stunning dramatics, and I love to astonish people, and show off, and be and do all the gaudy things a boy loves to be and do; and whenever I’m here and have got matters worked up to where there is a good prospect to the fore, I shut down the works and have a time! I’ve shut them down now, two hours ago, and I don’t know a thing that’s ahead, any more than you do. That’s all—now we’ll go. I wanted to tell you that. I had plans, but I’ve thrown them aside. I haven’t any now. I will let things go their own way, and act as circumstances suggest. Then there will be surprises. They may be small ones, and nothing to you, because you are used to them; but even the littlest ones are grand to me!”
The cat came racing in, greatly excited, and said—
“Oh, I’m so glad I’m in time! Shut the door—there’s people everywhere—don’t let them see in. Dear magician, get a disguise, you are in greater danger now than ever before. You have been seen, and everybody knows it, everybody is watching for you, it was most imprudent in you to show yourself. Do put on a disguise and come with me, I know a place in the castle where they’ll never find you. Oh, please, please hurry! don’t you hear the distant noises? they’re hunting for you—do please hurry!”
Forty-Four was that gratified, you can’t think! He said—
“There it is, you see! I hadn’t any idea of it, any more than you! And there’ll be more—I just feel it.”
“Oh, please don’t stop to talk, but get the disguise! you don’t know what may happen any moment. Everybody is searching for me, and for you, too, Duplicate, and for your Original; they’ve been at it some time, and are coming to think all three of us is murdered—”
“Now I know what I’ll do!” cried 44; “oh but we’ll have the gayest time! go on with your news!”
“—and Katrina is wild to get a chance at you because you burnt up 44, which was the idol of her heart, and she’s got a carving knife three times as long as my tail, and is ambushed behind a marble column in the great hall, and it’s awful to see how savagely she rakes it and whets it up and down that column and makes the sparks fly, and darts her head out, with her eyes glaring, to see if she can see you—oh, do get the disguise and come with me, quick! and laws bless me, there’s a conspiracy, and—”
“Oh, it’s grand, August, it’s just grand! and I didn’t know a thing about it, any more than you. What conspiracy are you talking about, pussy?”
“It’s the strikers, going to kill the Duplicates—I sat in Fischer’s lap and heard them talk the whole thing in whispers; and they’ve g
ot signs and grips and passwords and all that, so’t they can tell which is themselves and which is other people, though I hope to goodness if I can, not if I had a thousand such; do get the disguise and come, I’m just ready to cry!”
“Oh, bother the disguise, I’m going just so, and if they offer to do anything to me I will give them a piece of my mind.”
And so he opened the door and started away, Mary following him, with the tears running down, and saying—
“Oh, they won’t care for your piece of mind—why will you be so imprudent and throw your life away, and you know they’ll abuse me and bang me when you are gone!”
I became invisible and joined them.
Chapter 31
It was a dark, sour, gloomy morning, and bleak and cold, with a slanting veil of powdery snow driving along, and a clamorous hollow wind bellowing down the chimneys and rumbling around the battlements and towers—just the right weather for the occasion, 44 said, nothing could improve it but an eclipse. That gave him an idea, and he said he would do an eclipse; not a real one, but an artificial one that nobody but Simon Newcomb could tell from the original Jacobs—so he started it at once, and it certainly did make those yawning old stone tunnels pretty dim and sepulchral, and also of course it furnished an additional uncanniness and muffledness to way-off footfalls, taking the harshness out of them and the edge off their echoes, because when you walk on that kind of eclipsy gloominess on a stone floor it squshes under the foot and makes that dull effect which is so shuddery and uncomfortable in these crumbly old castles where there has been such ages of cruelty and captivity and murder and mystery. And to-night would be Ghost-Night besides, and 44 did not forget to remember that, and said he wished eclipses weren’t so much trouble after sundown, hanged if he wouldn’t run this one all night, because it could be a great help, and a lot of ghastly effects could be gotten out of it, because all the castle ghosts turn out then, on account of its coming only every ten years, which makes it kind of select and distinguished, and still more so every Hundredth Year—which this one was—because the best ghosts from many other castles come by invitation, then, and take a hand at the great ball and banquet at midnight, a good spectacle and full of interest, insomuch that 44 had come more than once on the Hundredth Night to see it, he said, and it was very pathetic and interesting to meet up with shadowy friends that way that you haven’t seen for one or two centuries and hear them tell the same mouldy things over again that they’ve told you several times before; because they don’t have anything fresh, the way they are situated, poor things. And besides, he was going to make this the swellest Hundredth Night that had been celebrated in this castle in twelve centuries, and said he was inviting A 1 ghosts from everywhere in the world and from all the ages, past and future, and each could bring a friend if he liked—any friend, character no object, just so he is dead—and if I wanted to invite some I could, he hoped to accumulate a thousand or two, and make this the Hundredth Night of Hundredth Nights, and discourage competition for a thousand years.