“What he expected to gain from learning more about me, his dim future considered, I couldn’t imagine. But he questioned me with a flattering assiduity about many episodes of my variegated career, my friends, my political responsibilities, my petty tastes and preferences. We found that we had all sorts of traits in common—an inordinate relish for figs and raisins, for instance. I told him much more about myself than I would have told any man with a chance of living long. Why not indulge the curiosity, idle though it might be, of a man under sentence of death?
“And for my part, I ferreted out of him, slyly, bits and pieces that eventually I fitted together after a fashion. I learnt enough, for one thing, to lead me later to his unpleasant confederates in Britain, and to break them. Couldn’t he see that I was worming out of him information which might be used against others? Perhaps, or even probably, he did perceive that. Was he actually betraying his collaborators to me, deliberately enough, while pretending to be unaware of how much he gave away? Was this tacit implication of others meant to please me, and so curry favor with the magistrate who held his life in his hands—yet without anyone being able to say that he, Gerontion, had let the cat out of the bag? This subtle treachery would have accorded well with his whole life.
“What hadn’t this charlatan done, at one time or another? He had been deep in tantric magic, for one thing, and other occult studies; he knew all the conjurers’ craft of India and Africa, and had practiced it. He had high pharmaceutical learning, from which I was not prepared to profit much, though I listened to him attentively; he had invented or compounded recently a narcotic, previously unknown, to which he gave the name kalanzi; from his testing of that, the five beggars had perished —‘a mere act of God, Your Excellency,’ he said. He had hoodwinked great and obscure. And how entertainingly he could talk of it all, with seeming candor!
“On one subject alone was he reticent: his several identities, or masks and assumed names. He did not deny having played many parts; indeed, he smilingly gave me a cryptic quotation from Eliot: ‘Let me also wear/Such deliberate disguises/Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves…’ When I put it to him that police descriptions of him varied absurdly, even as to fingerprints, he merely nodded complacently. I marveled at how old he must be—even older than the broken creature looked—for his anecdotes went back a generation before my time, and I am no young man. He spoke as if his life had known no beginning and would know no end—this man, under sentence of death! He seemed to entertain some quasi-Platonic doctrine of transmigration of souls; but, intent on the track of his confederates, I did not probe deeply into his peculiar theology.
“Yes, a fascinating man, wickedly wise! Yet this rather ghoulish entertainer of my idle hours, like all remarkable things, had to end. One evening, in a genteel way, he endeavored to bribe me. I was not insulted, for I awaited precisely that from such a one—what else? In exchange for his freedom —‘After all, what were those five dead beggars to you or to me?’— he would give me a very large sum of money; he would have it brought to me before I should let him depart. This was almost touching: it showed that he trusted to my honor, he who had no stitch of honor himself. Of course he would not have made such an offer to M’Rundu, being aware that the Postmaster-General would have kept both bribe and briber.
“I told him, civilly, that I was rich already, and always had preferred glory to wealth. He accepted that without argument, having come to understand me reasonably well. But I was surprised at how calmly he seemed to take the vanishing of his last forlorn hope of escape from execution.
“For he knew well enough by now that I must confirm the death sentence of the Administrative Tribunal of Post and Customs, denying his appeal. He was guilty, damnably guilty, as charged; he had no powerful friends anywhere in the world to win him a pardon through diplomatic channels; and even had there been any doubt of his wickedness in Haggat, I was aware of his unpunished crimes in other lands. Having caught such a creature, poisonous and malign, in conscience I could not set it free to ravage the world again.
“The next evening, then, I said —with a sentimental qualm, we two having had such lively talk together, over brandy and raisins, those past several days— that I could not overturn his condemnation. Yet I would not return him to M’Rundu’s dungeon. As the best I might do for him, I would arrange a private execution, so painless as possible; in token of our mutual esteem and comparable characteristics, I would administer le coup de grâce with my own hand. This had best occur the next day; I would sit in formal judgment during the morning, and he would be dispatched in the afternoon. I expressed my regrets—which, in some degree, were sincere, for Gerontion had been one of the more amusing specimens in my collection of lost souls.
“I could not let him tarry with me longer. For even an experienced snake handler ought not to toy overlong with his pet cobra, there still being venom in the fangs. This reflection I kept politely to myself. ‘Then linger not in Attalus his garden...’
“‘If you desire to draw up a will or to talk with a clergyman, I am prepared to arrange such matters for you in the morning, after endorsement of sentence, Archvicar,’ I told him.
“At this, to my astonishment, old Gerontion seemed to choke with emotion; why, a tear or two strayed from his eyes. He had difficulty getting his words out, but he managed a quotation and even a pitiful smile of sorts: ‘After such pleasures, that would be a dreadful thing to do.’ I was the Walrus or the Carpenter, and he a hapless innocent oyster!
“What could he have hoped to get from me, at that hour? He scarcely could have expected, knowing how many lies I had on my vestigial conscience already, that I would have spared him for the sake of a tear, as if he had been a young girl arrested for her first traffic violation. I raised my eyebrows and asked him what possible alternative existed.
“‘Commutation to life imprisonment, Your Excellency,’ he answered, pathetically.
“True, I had that power. But Gerontion must have known what Hamnegri’s desert camps for perpetual imprisonment were like: in those hard places, the word ‘perpetual’ was a mockery. An old man in his condition could not have lasted out a month in such a camp, and a bullet would have been more merciful far.
“I told him as much. Still he implored me for commutation of his sentence: ‘We both are old men, Your Excellency: live and let live!’ He actually sniveled like a fag at school, this old terror! True, if he had in mind that question so often put by evangelicals—Where will you spend eternity?’—why, his anxiety was readily understood.
“I remarked merely, ‘You hope to escape, if sent to a prison camp. But that is foolish, your age and your body considered, unless you mean to do it by bribery. Against that, I would give orders that any guard who might let you flee would be shot summarily. And, as the Irish say, “What’s all the world to a man when his wife’s a widdy?” No, Archvicar, we must end it tomorrow.’
“He scowled intently at me; his whining and his tears ceased. ‘Then let me thank Your Excellency for your kindnesses to me in my closing days,’ he said, in a controlled voice. ‘I thank you for the good talk, the good food, the good cognac. You have entertained me well in this demesne of yours, and when opportunity offers I hope to be privileged to entertain Your Excellency in my demesne.’
“His demesne! I suppose we all tend to think our own selves immortal. But this fatuous expectation of living, and even prospering, after the stern announcement I had made to him only moments before—why, could it be, after all, that this Archvicar was a lunatic merely? He had seemed so self-seekingly rational, at least within his own inverted deadly logic. No, this invitation must be irony, and so I replied in kind: ‘I thank you, most reverend Archvicar, for your thoughtful invitation, and will accept it whenever room may be found for me.’
“He stared at me for a long moment, as a dragon in the legends paralyzes by its baleful eye. It was discomfiting, I assure you, the Archvicar’s prolonged gaze, and I chafed under it; he seemed to be drawing the essence out of me. T
hen he asked, ‘May I trouble Your Excellency with one more importunity? These past few days, we have become friends almost; and then, if I may say so, there are ties and correspondences between us, are there not? I never met a gentleman more like myself, or whom I liked better—take that as a compliment, sir. We have learnt so much about each other; something of our acquaintance will endure long. Well’—the intensity of his stare diminished slightly—‘I mentioned cognac the other moment, your good brandy. Might we have a cheering last drink together, this evening? Perhaps that really admirable Napoleon cognac we had on this table day before yesterday?’
“‘Of course.’ I went over to the bellpull and summoned a servant, who brought the decanter of cognac and two glasses—and went away, after I had instructed him that we were not to be disturbed for two or three hours. I meant this to be the final opportunity to see whether a tipsy Archvicar might be induced to tell me still more about his confederates overseas.
“I poured the brandy. A bowl of raisins rested on the table between us, and the Archvicar took a handful, munching them between sips of cognac; so did I.
“The strong spirit enlivened him; his deep-set eyes glowed piercingly; he spoke confidently again, almost as if he were master in the house.
“What is this phenomenon we call dying?’ he inquired. ‘You and I, when all’s said, are only collections of electrical particles, positive and negative. These particles, which cannot be destroyed but may be induced to rearrange themselves, are linked temporarily by some force or power we do not understand—though some of us may be more ignorant of that power than others are. Illusion, illusion! Our bodies are feeble things, inhabited by ghosts—ghosts in a machine that functions imperfectly. When the machine collapses, or falls under the influence of chemicals, our ghosts seek other lodging. Maya! I sought the secret of all this. What were those five dead beggars for whose sake you would have me shot? Why, things of no consequence, those rascals. I do not dread their ghosts: they are gone to my demesne. Having done with a thing, I dispose of it—even Your Excellency.’
“Were his wits wandering? Abruptly the Archvicar sagged in his wheelchair; his eyelids began to close; but for a moment he recovered, and said with strong emphasis, Welcome to my demesne.’ He gasped for breath, but contrived to whisper, ‘I shall take your body.’
“I thought he was about to slide out of the wheelchair altogether; his face had gone death-pale, and his teeth were clenched. ‘What is it, man?’ I demanded. I started up to catch him.
“Or rather, I intended to rise. I found that I was too weak. My face also must be turning livid, and my brain was sunk in torpor suddenly; my eyelids were closing against my will. ‘The ancient limb of Satan!’ I thought in that last instant. ‘He’s poisoned the raisins with that infernal kalanzi powder of his, a final act of malice, and we’re to die together!’ After that maddening reflection I ceased to be conscious.”
****
Mr. Tom Whiston drew a sighing breath: “But you’re still with us.” Melchiora had taken both of Arcane’s hands now. Wolde Mariam was crossing himself.
“By the grace of God,” said Manfred Arcane. The words were uttered slowly, and Arcane glanced at the Spanish crucifix on the wall as he spoke them. “But I’ve not finished, Mr. Whiston: the worst is to come. Melchiora, do let us have cognac.”
She took a bottle from a little carved cupboard. Except Guido, everybody else in the room accepted brandy too.
“When consciousness returned,” Arcane went on, “I was in a different place. I still do not know where or what that place was. My first speculation was that I had been kidnapped. For the moment, I was alone, cold, unarmed, in the dark.
“I found myself crouching on a rough stone pavement in a town—not an African town, I think. It was an ancient place, and desolate, and silent. It was a town that had been sacked—I have seen such towns—but sacked long ago.
“Do any of you know Stari Bar, near the Dalmatian coast, a few miles north of the Albanian frontier? No? I have visited that ruined city several times; my mother was born not far from there. Well, this cold and dark town, so thoroughly sacked, in which I found myself was somewhat like Stari Bar. It seemed a Mediterranean place, with mingled Gothic and Turkish—not Arabic—buildings, most of them unroofed. But you may be sure that I did not take time to study the architecture.
“I rose to my feet. It was a black night, with no moon or stars, but I could make out things tolerably well, somehow. There was no one about, no one at all. The doors were gone from most of the houses, and as for those which still had doors—why, I did not feel inclined to knock.
“Often I have been in tight corners. Without such previous trying experiences, I should have despaired in this strange clammy place. I did not know how I had come there, nor where to go. But I suppose the adrenalin began to rise in me—what are men and rats, those natural destroyers, without ready adrenalin?—and I took stock of my predicament.
“My immediate necessity was to explore the place. I felt giddy, and somewhat uneasy at the pit of my stomach, but I compelled myself to walk up that steep street, meaning to reach the highest point in this broken city and take a general view. I found no living soul.
“The place was walled all about. I made my way through what must have been the gateway of the citadel, high up, and ascended with some difficulty, by a crumbling stair, a precarious tower on the battlements. I seemed to be far above a plain, but it was too dark to make out much. There was no tolerable descent out of the town from this precipice; presumably I must return all the way back through those desolate streets and find the town gates.
“But just as I was about to descend, I perceived with a start a distant glimmer of light, away down there where the town must meet the plain. It may not have been a strong light, yet it had no competitor. It seemed to be moving erratically—and moving toward me, perhaps, though we were far, far apart. I would hurry down to meet it; anything would be better than this accursed solitude.
“Having scrambled back out of the citadel, I became confused in the complex of streets and alleys, which here and there were nearly choked with fallen stones. Once this town must have pullulated people, for it was close-built with high old houses of masonry; but it seemed perfectly empty now. Would I miss that flickering faint light, somewhere in this fell maze of ashlar and rubble? I dashed on, downward, barking my shins more than once. Yes, I felt strong physical sensations in that ravaged town, where everyone must have been slaughtered by remorseless enemies. ‘The owl and bat their revel keep…’ It was only later that I became aware of the absence of either owl or bat. Just one animate thing showed itself: beside a building that seemed to have been a domed Turkish bathhouse, a thick nasty snake writhed away, as I ran past; but that may have been an illusion.
“Down I scuttled like a frightened hare, often leaping or dodging those tumbled building-stones, often slipping and stumbling, unable to fathom how I had got to this grisly place, but wildly eager to seek out some other human being.
“I trotted presently into a large piazza, one side of it occupied by a derelict vast church, perhaps Venetian Gothic, or some jumble of antique styles. It seemed to be still roofed, but I did not venture in then. Instead I scurried down a lane, steep-pitched, which ran beside the church; for that lane would lead me, I fancied, in the direction of the glimmering light.
“Behind the church, just off the lane, was a large open space, surrounded by a low wall that was broken at various points. Had I gone astray? Then, far down at the bottom of the steep lane which stretched before me, I saw the light again. It seemed to be moving up toward me. It was not a lantern of any sort, but rather a mass of glowing stuff, more phosphorescent than incandescent, and it seemed to be about the height of a man.
“We all are cowards—yes, Melchiora, your husband too. That strange light, if light it could be called, sent me quivering all over. I must not confront it directly until I should have some notion of what it was. So I dodged out of the lane, to my left, through o
ne of the gaps in the low wall which paralleled the alley.
“Now I was among tombs. This open space was the graveyard behind that enormous church. Even the cemetery of this horrid town had been sacked. Monuments had been toppled, graves dug open and pillaged. I stumbled over a crumbling skull, and fell to earth in this open charnel house.
“That fall, it turned out, was all to the good. For while I lay prone, that light came opposite a gap in the enclosing wall, and hesitated there. I had a fair view of it from where I lay.
“Yes, it was a man’s height, but an amorphous thing, an immense corpse-candle, or will-o’-the-wisp, so far as it may be described at all. It wavered and shrank and expanded again, lingering there, lambent.
“And out of this abominable corpse-candle, if I may call it that, came a voice. I suppose it may have been no more than a low murmur, but in that utter silence of the empty town it was tremendous. At first it gabbled and moaned, but then I made out words, and those words paralyzed me. They were these: ‘I must have your body.’
“Had the thing set upon me at that moment, I should have been lost: I could stir no muscle. But after wobbling near the wall-gap, the corpse-candle shifted away and went uncertainly up the lane toward the church and the square. I could see the top of it glowing above the wall until it passed out of the lane at the top.
“I lay unmoving, though conscious. Where might I have run to? The thing was not just here now; it might be anywhere else, lurking. And it sent into me a dread more unnerving than ever I have felt from the menace of living men.
“Memory flooded upon me in that instant. In my mind’s eye, I saw the great hall here in this house at Haggat, and the Archvicar and myself sitting at brandy and raisins, and his last words rang in my ears. Indeed I had been transported, or rather translated, to the Archvicar’s peculiar demesne, to which he consigned those wretches with whom he had finished.
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