This Duffey has been called “a patriarch without seed, a prophet without honor, and a high-sounding brawler.” He was a man of uncertain age (this fact about him had assumed importance lately); and he was a willful man who was held on peculiar checkrein—he did not know by whom. But he was a spacious man, and he could be forgiven many inconsistencies.
Duffey rocked on his feet and lowered at the writing and thought about it while he woke up by degrees. It was a ritual sort of thing that was nailed to his door, and it deserved a ritual answer. Duffey got a pen and a bowl and wrote an answer in his hieratic hand at the bottom of the scroll. It was not old poster cardboard that the scroll was made out of; it was now seen to be old parchment. Duffey wrote:
Royal Pop People, I am honored. And you are welcome.
But my facilities are quite limited, as is my credit.
I will be host to as many of you as I can.
No man can do more. Somehow you will all be taken care of.
Melchisedech Duffey
He paused for a while and stirred the ink in the bowl. Then he wrote a bit more:
If this is a hoax, then it’s a howling hoax.
Out of affectation Duffey wrote all official things with this squid ink that he kept in a bowl. This is the finest ink ever. It will not coagulate. Write anything at all in squid ink. Then write something else beside it in ordinary ink. Come back in three thousand years and notice the difference. The one will remain true, the other will have paled. But squid ink had gone out of fashion. The prime message on the parchment, however, was also written in squid ink, and there weren’t many people who used it these last few centuries.
Duffey examined the parchment, and later he would examine it again and again. “We will come back to you, skin of a horny goat,” he said. “Oh, how we will come back to you!” He turned his attention then to the nail that held it. It was large, and it appeared very sharp. It was not, as Duffey had at first thought, either brass or bronze. It was a copper-iron nail, and it was of old Macedonian workmanship. Odd, but not very, for there were in that city many members of the Society of Creative Anachronisms, a social, historical and dramatic society. These people were all friends of Duffey, and Duffey suspected them of a hoax. They put great effort into some of their hoaxes.
Duffey, a widow man of loose and informal establishment, now made himself ready for the day and its apparent adventure. He caught again the whiff of the new breeze blowing; and part of that whiff was made up of putridity, that emanation of changes a-working. He dressed, daubed whiting on his beard and hair (they had both been turning disquietingly black lately), and went out into the streets to find comradeship and adventure and breakfast. Yes, there was indeed a new breeze blowing. It wasn’t a great air mover of a breeze, but it brought a rumbling freshness, a bracing and reminiscent aroma, a rakish sense of rot, and an altogether vivid accord with things as they were and as they were becoming.
And it brought a sudden and happy discord with things as they had not been before. Certainly there had always been several buildings right next to Duffey’s place, on the left when one comes out. And just as certainly, those structures of whatever kind were not standing there now. Just what was there now was a little harder to say. One couldn’t get a clear view of the area, and one wouldn’t have believed his eyes if he had been able to get a clearer view. The powers shouldn’t spring these things on a man so early in the morning. Something was in the act of being born in that area. There were bales of greenery; there were bales of shadow. There were other bright things already there or arriving, but this pleasant confusion hadn’t quite put itself together yet.
The streets were trashy, although trash trucks were everywhere cleaning them up. Here and there, the sidewalks were slippery with blood, but it was blood of no great validity. There was a lot of synthetic fiber lying around, and very little of the authentic flesh.
And there were a few newly homeless cur dogs and vacant oddity people and evil spirits skulking about the site. They had been dislocated from their places and from their forms. And their new and unpleasant confusion was another thing that hadn’t been able to put itself together yet. “It’s you who have destroyed my house and my body,” one of the uncreations hissed at Duffey. Duffey could not determine whether it was a cur dog or a snake or a spirit or a person. “It’s you who have done it with that rectitude of yours.” Duffey did have his rectitude, but these uncreations did not seem to have much of anything.
“I cannot in any way remember who lived next door to me here,” Duffey mumbled into his beard (not to the uncreations, but to himself), “or who it was who transacted business in this place so near to my own. This is a puzzle. And yet I’ve lived and worked here for several decades, and various persons have lived here beside me. I now suspect that they were nothing people all the time and that they have descended to their perdition or oblivion.” Duffey walked a block and noticed a handful of other disappearances and changes, as well as several pleasant new arrivals. Some of the broken-up puppets or dummies in the streets reminded him of persons whom he had known. Some of them opened effigy mouths and croaked at him in voices he had known. The discarded little abominations were almost in bad taste.
But not everything had changed. Duffey entered one of the old and gracious places that had remained (considerably enlarged, though, it seemed) and sat down with a happy sigh. And a friend was sitting with him instantly (it always happens in that place).
“I hear that you are playing host to some sort of historical group, Duffey,” Absalom Stein was saying as they sat together and planned a breakfast in Girardeau’s Irish Restaurant. Absalom was an Israelite in whom there was much guile, but he averaged out to a good man, and sometimes he wrote for the Investigator as well as the Bark. “How long is their convention going to last, Duffey?”
“I don’t know at all,” Duffey said. “All I remember are the words ‘Pop History.’ Then other words came out and gobbled them up and began to make demands for two hundred or more people. You seem to know something about it, so I suspect you’re in on the hoax.”
“No, I’m not, Duff, but I may get in on it. Why shouldn’t I know about it? We have all become intuitive since we began to realize that we were the pleasant people. But there’s a lot of loose stuff floating around town this morning, and I suspect that your Royal Pop History bunch may be a handle to take hold of it by. I’m afraid they’re going to make us give up a lot of our old items as not being splendid enough to keep.”
“No, this man is not in on it,” the young lady said to Duffey, “though I now invite him to join us. Oh, we never know how long these things will last. We will be in session till we get certain points settled and certain remnants rooted out. Your friend here, the Stein, is worried because a few people have gone away and he can’t remember who they were. I say that if one can’t remember them, then it’s a good thing they’re gone. If they were superb, then they would be remembered. Let them pass out of all memory and be no more.”
This young lady had “Royal Pop People” written all over her. She was the Countess, a teenage archetype among the splendids.
“But I have a peculiar passion for unmemorable persons,” Absalom Stein said carefully. “I feel that I’m responsible for some few of them whom nobody else would bestow a thought on. I suspect that it’s just that they are swallowed by oblivion if nobody remembers them at all, and it then would become the case of their never having existed at all. I can feel a dozen or so of them now, hanging on by the very nails of their fingers to the rim of oblivion, bawling against extinction, but almost certainly doomed to drop into that pit or cauldron and be extinguished. So it will be with them if somebody will not give them a thought. Of all people left in the world, I come closest to remembering them; I know that; but I cannot come close enough. I could bring them back from nothingness if I could form their faces in my mind. I can’t. But I’ll still try it.”
“You are playing with very sticky fire, the Absalom,” the young Countess said.
“It may be that you go with them where they have gone if you show such unhealthy interest.”
“What is it that you call your society, lady?” Duffey asked. Duffey couldn’t remember just when this lady had sat down with them at table. He couldn’t remember whether he knew who she really was. He seemed very slow at waking up this morning.
“Sometimes we call ourselves the Thunder Harps,” the lady said, “and sometimes we call ourselves other things. How is it that you have to ask me the name of our group? You are a man of very great age and honor, and you are an affiliate of ours.”
“What? Am I a Thunder Harp?” Duffey cried with breakfast heartiness. He was dislocated and confused by this new air of change or mutation, but he would never admit his confusion to the world.
“Oh, of course,” the young lady said. “You’ve been one of us almost forever. You’re one of the perennial bushes. I suspect you’re thousands of years old. You have those little green moss marks at the corners of your eyes, and there are many other signs. Why does it scare you, Duffey, when people spot you as one of the very old ones? Don’t you want to be old and honored? And whyever should it startle you when you feel the green seasons returning to you and you know that you’ll be appearing younger and younger for a few decades? You’ve surely been through these happenings often enough. How old are you anyhow?”
Well, how old did this lady think she was? She seemed about seventeen years old. She wore a scent named “Timeless,” and who could be sure of her? She was just one of the new Royal Pop People who had taken over the directorship of everything. And how did she happen to be eating breakfast with them?
“Duffey, you’ve been using whiting on your beard and hair again,” Stein accused. “Why do you do it? Why not let them turn black again? If you’re supposed to be young for a few decades, then be young. Really, you’d look better young, and I can’t think of anyone else of whom that’s the case. You were always very boyish. But just what is behind this ‘green seasons’ affair that the lady is talking about? And just how old are you anyhow, Duffey?”
“I don’t know quite what all the young lady is talking about,” Duffey said. “But I’d wondered for a long time why you all hadn’t noticed that I’ve been growing younger.”
“What is to notice?” Stein asked. “When I was a boy in Chicago, you were an old man. Quite old, Duffey. When I met you again this last time, thirty or so years ago, you still seemed several decades older than the rest of us, but not nearly so old as you had been earlier. Now you seem several decades younger than the rest of us. That’s all there is to it. It’s sort of a silly way that you have of getting attention, Duffey, and to notice it would only be to humor you.”
“It isn’t as though it hadn’t happened to you before, Duffey,” the lady said. The young lady had an impudent and archaic grin. She was bright and fundamental, as though several of the duller outer layers had been lifted from her. Duffey had terra cotta figurines in his bijou that very much resembled this young lady and her grin, and some of them were fakes. The terra cotta process and its finish are easily faked; the archaic grin is more difficult. But who was to say that this mysterious young lady was not a fake? She seemed disquietingly genuine though. Duffey had felt a real chill at the mention of the anomaly of his own unaging. It had never been mentioned aloud before. And the new breeze a-blowing today was not really new. It was an old, old breeze with its green seasons returning.
“What has barnacle removing to do with history?” Stein suddenly asked the lady. He must have seen the prospectus of the subject, “The Holy Barnacle and the Pearl Beyond Price,” and he must have sensed the irony of calling the barnacle holy. Duffey recalled that the nonverbatim notice on his door had mentioned barnacle removing somewhere.
The young Countess did not answer. She had the air of supposing that it would be a little bit infra to answer so obvious a question as Stein had posed.
“Duffey, you’d better get back to your place,” Mary Virginia Schaeffer said as she came into Girardeau’s Irish Restaurant. “There’s quite a crowd of people over there, and they look like the lively sort who don’t appreciate being crowded. If any of us can help you out, just let us know. What was going on in town during the night, anyhow? Margaret Stone was being very noetic about something, and the streets do have a different look to them this morning. I just don’t know what to make of some of that trash. It wrings my heart the way some of it looks like old friends of forgotten names. It’s as though blinders had been put on my eyes and on my mind as regards some of these smashed things. People say that everything that isn’t really splendid has got to go. Why does it have to go? Why?”
“Do you not be asking such unsplendid questions, the Mary Virginia,” the young Countess said. “It may be that you will have to go also.”
Mary Virginia bought a sack of Girardeau’s special greaseless doughnuts and some tabouli wheat. Then she went out again. She had a scattering of gray hairs in the bewitching halo that framed her face. Duffey hadn’t noticed that about her before, and he’d known her for about thirty years. Perhaps she was acquiring the gray that he was losing. And it was natural that she should turn from a beautiful young lady to a beautiful middle-aged lady with the attrition of the years. Those things happen to everybody.
To everybody except Duffey. Duffey would need a change of blood if he kept getting those chilling thoughts. He knew now that he was very old, and that this business of his getting younger for a few decades was a very old business indeed.
“Yes, I’d better get back to my place,” he said. “I hadn’t expected guests to arrive so early in the morning. I wonder why they chose me.”
“There is no need for you to hurry, Duffey,” the young
Countess said. “We are all perfectly able to make ourselves at home everywhere. I’m sure my associates have taken possession of your things. We aren’t at all backward about affairs like that. And we chose you because we like you, because you are already one of us, and because you are the oldest person in this town.”
“Ah, just how many of you are there in town?” Duffey asked. “I forget.”
“And what did you say was the name of your society?” Stein asked. “I also forget.”
“Legion,” the Countess said. That was the answer to both their questions.
“I am going to check some courthouse records and tax rolls,” Stein said when they were out in the street. “These disappeared and unremembered buildings and properties must have left records behind them. I will worry till I find the answers.”
“Oh, ancient Stein, you’ll not find them that way,” the Countess chided him. “Those were nothing buildings and properties, and they were inhabited by nothing people. Get that into your head, or you may be reclassified as a nothing person yourself. And, no, they will not have left any traces or records.”
“I must find out,” Stein said. “What? Am I an ancient one, too?”
“Old, yes, old,” said the young Countess with the archaic grin. “But not so old as the Duffey.”
Stein went off to check courthouse records and tax rolls. He returned and went again several times. He was nervous about getting to the bottom of this business.
“Be along and get your own little piece of the neighborhood straightened out,” Zabotski called to Duffey a little later as Duffey was hurrying home. “Your place is clear out of order, Duff. Straighten it out or I’ll have the pack of you assailed for Unlawful Assembly or with Unseemly Crowding in Countervention of the Fire Laws. Man, what is it over at your place, a mob scene from Hades? First they overflowed your place, and now they’re impinging on mine. I have the feeling that these are the latter days of the world, for me maybe, not necessarily for everyone. Say, Duffey, didn’t I used to own some buildings that were just next door to you on the right as you go in? It seems like I did, but I forget.”
“So do I forget it, Zabotski,” Duffey said sadly. “But the things that are disappeared and forgotten were probably owned by some such an easily forgotten
person as yourself.”
“Will you forget me, Duffey, if I perish this night?” crude Zabotski asked.
“Aye, I’ll forget you,” Duffey said. “It would be easy to say I’ll remember you, but I’ll recall not the least lump of you.”
“Duffey, thou cladhaire, I’ll split thy head!” Zabotski sputtered in stylized fury.
“Have a care, EabhraiochDuffey bantered him. “Your tongue will turn black and fall out if you misuse the holy language so. Quiet, Zabotski, quiet!”
And Duffey hurried along home. It was just around the corner from where they talked. But the irritation drained away from him as he neared his home and got a look at the throng that had taken it over. A mob? Yes. Unseemly crowding? Perhaps. Unlawful assembly? Oh no, you can’t cite folks of such high quality for unlawful assembly. The mob—oh, the essential thing about this mob was that it was a mob with class. Even the mobbish sound of it was a vivid orchestration. It was a finely done instrumentation of happy thunder and mountain echoes, with a strong underlay of the “roaring river” timbre. Every mob has its own tone. Well, this mob had a pleasant, though challenging, tone to it, and it rang like thousands of large gold coins.
And look at the confabulating people who made up that noisy bunch! Duffey was reminded of a phrase used by the Lord Himself for an earlier mob “In the Brightness of Saints.” He was reminded of the phrase “the Splendid People” that they used for themselves. And Duffey was delighted with them, even though it was his own place they were near to bursting the walls out of.
There is much to be said for elegant shouting and brimming banter when it is used by such really elegant folks with their silver tongues and bronze lungs. These were people with a stunning style and with a rippling and dazzling color and costume. But how could there be so many of them here? The very presence of such folks had effected a growth and change in Duffey’s buildings. This was the new sort of calculation that was called the Geometry of the Shining Spaces.
In the Wake of Man Page 2
