The Masters of Atlantis

by Charles Portis

  After long consultations with the Master, and by telephone with the remaining Pillars, Mapes prepared a recovery plan. There were two major recommendations.

  The first was that an effort be made to attract young men to the Society—specifically young war veterans. Along with them, perhaps, would come some federal money. That was what everyone looked to now. It would be no easy job. Today’s young men were dazzled by the claims and presumptions of science. They had been taught to jeer at other systems of thought. Yes, the scientists were riding high these days, preening themselves over their latest triumph, the A-bomb. They were boastful men of insufferable pride, these materialists in white smocks who held the preposterous belief that nothing could be known but through the five senses. But the great wheel was turning and Mapes suspected that these fellows had had their day.

  The second recommendation was that peace be made between the Gnomon Society and the Gnomon Society (Amended Order). A reconciliation would have to be worked out at the very top, between Mr. Jimmerson and Sydney Hen, and then in orderly stages the divided brotherhood could come together in Pythagorean harmony. Here again there would be difficulty—a fine touch would be needed in any approach to the prickly Hen. All the same, Popper would not be around to interfere and to antagonize Hen, and what better time than now for a truce, with the entire world turning to peaceful pursuits?

  HEN HAD also been lying fallow in recent years. Since the battle of the books there had been hardly a peep out of him. Rumors floated up from Cuernavaca but nothing in the way of direct and reliable reports.

  Some of the rumors were scandalous, such as the one that he was keeping two Mexican women on the side, in addition to his lawful wife, Babette. A diet of pine nuts and tiny yellow peppers was said to have made a new man of him, and a wild man at that. There was a story that he was dosing himself daily with enough laudanum to stupefy three strong men. Another one had him dead, stabbed by Mexican monks, or drowned in his onyx bathtub by Babette and Kinlow, who had grabbed his ankles and held them high while he glubbed in the soapy water. There were whispers that he was making pots, ashtrays, wallets and sandals, and composing discordant music in a peculiar scale and notation of his own devising.

  All lies. The truth was that Sir Sydney, except for an unwonted silence, was pretty much the same old Hen. He had closed his advanced study program—the cow-eyed acolytes got on his nerves—and what with the disruptions of war and his own negligence his Amended Order of Gnomons had collapsed. At this time he had fewer than a dozen active followers left, among them Mr. Morehead Moaler of La Coma, Texas, who also belonged to Mr. Jimmerson’s order. Mr. Moaler somehow managed to keep a foot in both camps. Hen had heard nothing from his London Temple in almost two years. But then neither had the world heard anything from Hen. He published nothing and said nothing ex officio. Even within the walls of the New Croton Institute his speech was less a matter of words than of long, plaintive sighs.

  TO HEAR MUCH AND SPEAK LITTLE

  These words of Pletho Pappus he had carved across the archway at the entrance of the Institute.

  The silence was a calculated one and came about in the following way. Hen fell sick. After a day or two in bed he had Kinlow hire some public mourners. Kinlow rounded up some old women in shawls and had them stand outside the villa and wail, their arms raised in quivering supplication. He then hired some newspaper editors to publish accounts and photographs of the demonstration, all going to show what a beloved figure the Master of Gnomons (Amended Order) had become in Mexico. A news service picked up the story and spread it about. The response was good. There came letters and telegrams expressing sympathy, a few visitors and even some applications for membership in the Society.

  Hen’s illness was not serious, no arsenical muffins this time, but it did keep him laid up for a while and he put off answering the mail and receiving visitors until he should feel a bit stronger. Kinlow noticed that the volume of mail grew. More visitors came. Some stood outside on tiptoe and tried to catch a glimpse of the Master through the barred windows. Kinlow pointed out to Hen that his retreat from view had enhanced his stature. There were benefits to be gained from preserving a grand silence. Myths grew in the dark. Hen was thus persuaded to adopt his new role of “the Sphinx of Cuernavaca.”

  He was not to emerge from his shell, or what Kinlow called “the Pyramid of Silence,” until the summer of 1945, when the All Clear was sounded across Europe. In July of that year Hen announced that he was returning home to England. The joys of quiescence, while real enough, were pale indeed when compared to those of center stage.

  He chose New York for his first public appearance. There in a dockside press conference he said that he felt called upon to help rebuild his country, from which he had been away far too long. The cloistered life was important, and not to be despised, but the great dreamers and thinkers must never forget that they were also citizens, or in his case a subject, but in any case, members of the larger community with certain obligations.

  He had prepared a White Paper for the government, having to do with the restructuring of English society along Gnomonic lines. He saw a special counseling role for Gnomons in the postwar world, particularly in London, “the epicenter of Gnomonism,” and could only hope that His Majesty’s ministers would prove receptive to his scheme for “a new order of reality and England happy again.” These ministers must, however, get it through their heads that under no circumstances would he, Sir Sydney Hen, be available as a candidate for public office. Likewise, whilst he could hardly disobey a direct command from his king, he believed the House of Lords to be altogether too puny an arena for a man of spirit.

  “And now, goodbye and God bless you,” he said in closing. “We’ll see you again in about three years. There is much work to be done.”

  The New York reporters took all this down and put it in their papers in strings of stiff little paragraphs of equal size and diminishing importance.

  But in Southampton, England, the ship reporters were not so kind to him. They came aboard in a pack with photographers and were turned loose on the celebrity passengers, who had been assembled in the first-class dining saloon. The journalists looked over the field, then moved in quickly on a tennis star in white, a surly poet in rags, assumed for the occasion, and a movie actress of the second or third rank. Hen was ignored, written off as a bishop in some church or other.

  He, Babette and Kinlow were in full feather too, a photographer’s delight if nothing else, but Hen could get no attention. One reporter, an older man, vaguely remembered him and paused for a moment to listen. Hen launched into his prepared remarks, then stopped to ask the man why he wasn’t taking notes.

  “Rubbish” was the reporter’s brutal reply. “You flatter yourself. This is not an interview. You’re a back number, Hen. I should have bet you were long dead, mortally beaned by a falling coconut in some brown place like Morocco. Or from squatting out in the sun too long and eating too many dates. You’ll be lucky to get a bare mention in the arrivals column.”

  It was a bitter homecoming. In London he found that his Temple had been seized in default of taxes and turned into a government home for unwed mothers. The big bronze doors had been taken away to be melted down for munitions. There was no room to be had at the Savoy, where he had once kept a suite, or at any other hotel. His club, the November Club, grudgingly agreed to put him up for a night or two on a camp bed, but refused to accept Babette or Kinlow, or even let them through the door. They were left to spend their first night in London walking the streets and resting in a Leicester Square movie theater. Hen’s old friends were not forthcoming. His few remaining Gnomon brothers were dead or widely dispersed. His female cousin at Little-Fen-on-Sea would not return his calls. People on the street looked straight through him, as though they could not see his aura, or the odic fire streaming from his fingertips.

  He appealed to the Botanical Roundtable and the Association of Distressed Gentlemen, and through these groups was at last able to get a ro
om. It was an attic bedroom across the river in a Lambeth rooming house, which seemed to be filled with Egyptians. The room was small, with scarcely enough space for the three travelers and their nine trunks. All three had to sleep in one bed, Hen, his wife and male secretary, with Babette placed in the sunken middle for balance. Lying there against her broad back, listening to the whining of Kinlow on the other side of the mound, Sir Sydney could not belive that things had come to such a pass. Could this be England, treating her distinguished men so?

  It was certain that some monstrous campaign had been mounted to humiliate him, or worse still, to efface his name. He wondered if the French Rosicrucians might not be behind it. Or Madame Blavatsky’s people. Or some of Aleister Crowley’s grisly gang. Or the Druids. Or the crafty Popper, who very likely had some of his agents here among all these Yank soldiers. Or the Freemasons, whom he had once suspected of setting up an X-ray machine in the house across from the Temple, and directing the beams into his bathroom at head level. It was never proven but how else could he explain the bathroom buzz in his ears? They had covered their tracks well, these sons of Hiram, and had squared the police with a Masonic wink. They were all in the Craft together.

  Some sinister body was at work to bring him down, of that there could be no doubt. The method employed was obvious. It was the old story—these people were deflecting his Gnomonic waves and scattering them so that they were lost into the air, adding somewhat to the reddish glow of London. But wasn’t there something wrong here too on a different scale? With the war over, he had expected to come home to a jubilee, and yet everything was so dreadful. The place was in tatters. Where was the festival? The emanations were all wrong and there was no energy release. There was no egg for his breakfast either, no butter for his toast, no melon slice, no hot water for his bath. Even clothing was rationed, though Kinlow did manage, through the black market, to lay in a supply of the peculiar green suiting material he so loved.

  Their stay was cut short, from three years to four days. Babette, fingering the golden topaz that lay on her bosom, complained that she had not yet seen any shows, heard any concerts, attended any parties or met any important people. She had so hoped to be presented at court. What about Stratford? What about their tour of Kew Gardens? What did it mean, all this marching and countermarching?

  Hen did not often cross Babette—La Mujerona, the Big Woman, as she was known to the servants in Mexico—but this time he took a firm stand, so angered and shaken was he.

  “Enough,” he said to her. “Have done, woman. We’re leaving. It is my will.”

  The timing was all wrong, he explained. It was a terrible mistake, this journey, and they were returning at once to the flowers, the sunshine and the fresh tomatoes of Cuernavaca. The Hen convoy, borne here on a wicked tide, was wheeling about.

  He ordered Babette to pack and he sent Kinlow along to the British Museum with the white marble bust, warning him to take care with it, not to dally, to stay out of the pubs and leave the soldiers alone. Hen had commissioned a Mexican artist to fashion this heroic bust of himself, a startling object, a sort of Aztec Hen, with jade eyeballs and coral teeth. He had intended to make a ceremonial presentation of it to the nation, but now, fearful of another rebuff, thought it best to handle the matter quietly.

  Kinlow grumbled about having to lug the statuary across town.

  “The thing must weigh fifty pounds, sir.”

  “Not another word. Go.”

  Kinlow could not find a taxi. He set out walking. In the middle of Lambeth Bridge he stopped to rest and watch the boats. Then, in a swelling fit of anger, he lifted the bust over the railing and dropped it into the river. On his return he was still pouting.

  “Do you mind?” he said, in his sharp way, to an old man who was blocking the doorway of the rooming house. The man had a bulging forehead. He wore thick glasses and a black bowler hat with curling brim, a size nine at the very least, and a black suit with trouser legs that were too short. At his heels there were arching holes in his socks, providing a glimpse of ankle flesh that was none too clean. His rattail mustaches were so void of color as to be barely visible. He made no apology and did not give way.

  “One minute, please, of your time, sir. Is this number 23 Grimalkin Crescent?”

  “It is.”

  “Sir Sydney Hen is putting up here?”

  “Yes, if it’s any of your business.”

  “Ah. Then there’s no mistake. I’m sure the Master must have his reasons for dossing down here with all these Gyppos. Do you have a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “And quite right too. What so many people fail to consider is the damned insidious expense of tobacco. You are not by any chance Sir Sydney yourself?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You would be a younger man?”

  “Much younger.”

  “I don’t see well at close range, no matter what you may have heard about my extraordinary spectacles, but I should have known from your step that you were a younger man. Yes, from an older man you expect a stumbling, festinating gait like mine. You do know Sir Sydney, I take it.”

  “I am his private secretary.”

  “What luck. I saw his name in the arrivals columns and they sent me along here from his club. I thought there must be some mistake with the address. Too bad about the Temple, eh? Hard lines. All those stinking nappies in the hallways. But we mustn’t weep over a pile of bricks. When can you arrange an appointment for me?”

  “What do you want? Who are you?”

  “My name is Pletho Pappus. I come to speak of clotted bulls’ blood and of a white heifer that has never known the yoke.”

  “How very interesting.”

  “My card.”

  “Pletho Pappus is long dead.”

  “Presumed dead. It suited me to lie low for a season.”

  “How very interesting.”

  “It is near the time when I shall make many things clear. Would you like to know why our Gnomon Society is not prospering? Let me tell you, sir. It’s because there are too many backbiters, cankerworms and cheesehoppers in positions of authority. These people must go.”

  “I think you’re talking absolute bloody nonsense.”

  “My card.”

  Kinlow took the card and read it. There was an address in a lower corner, and in the center these words:T. Pappas

  Eastern Knick Knacks

  Honourable Dealing

  “This says T. Pappas. It’s not even spelled the same way.”

  “A ruse. Theodore.”

  “So? A printed card. Your name is Pappas. London is full of Greeks and I daresay many of them are named Pappas. If you truly are from Greece. I rather suspect Dublin. By way of Hyde Park.”

  “Will you be good enough to present my card to Sir Sydney?”

  “Sir Sydney is out. He’s engaged elsewhere. He’s not buying any rugs just now.”

  “When will he be free?”

  “I don’t know. His calendar is quite full.”

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps I should wait here.”

  “No, that won’t do.”

  “No trouble at all, I assure you.”

  “It’s not on, my friend.”

  “Quite all right, I don’t mind waiting.”

  “Very well. Look here. Sir Sydney is lunching at his club tomorrow. Be there on the pavement at one sharp and he will give you three minutes to state your business.”

  “Wonderful. One, you say? That will suit my convenience too. Now as to the etiquette. Even as a child I was a stickler for form. What’s the drill? Are there some things I should know? May one, for example, contradict Sir Sydney on small matters?”

  “No, one may not. You may not dispute his lightest remark. Remove your hat as you approach him and keep your eyes well cast down. No handshaking and no sudden movements in his presence. Speak only when spoken to and then briefly and to the point. And no need to br
ing along any of your Eastern titbits. Now off you go, chopchop, there’s a good fellow.”

  But the old man stood his ground and placed his hand over the doorknob when Kinlow reached for it. His mustaches began to undulate with what seemed to be a life of their own. Neither dark nor bushy, there was nothing of the Aegean about them. The two growths were set far apart and twisted into thin strands, so that the effect was of insect feelers or catfish barbels. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with his woolen necktie. “Here, would you care to look through my spectacles while I do out my eyes? Would you like to see how the world appears to Pletho Pappus?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not the phantasmagoria you might expect. It’s not at all what you might expect. Won’t you have a go?”

  “No.”

  “The offer is not an idle one. I think you will be pleased.”

  “Get out of my way, you brute.”

  “Well, I mustn’t keep you. Until tomorrow then, at one. Yes, the November Club, an excellent idea.” He rubbed his belly with the flat of his hand and rotated his jaw about in ponderous chewing movements. “A bite of lunch and then some talk. Nothing fancy for me, thanks, a cold bird will do, with a bit of cabbage and some green onions. I can’t remember when I last had green onions. With a drop of something along the way.” He threw his head back and raised his fist to his mouth in a drinking arc, with thumb and little finger extended. “Then some serious talk. Blazing words, in such combinations as Sydney Hen has not heard before. Until tomorrow, then. A very good day to you, sir.”

  The next day at one Sir Sydney was a long way from his club. He was at sea having his lunch on board a Mexican sugar boat called La Gitana, the only transatlantic vessel on which passage for three could be found at such short notice. It was a comfortable ship. The weather was good. Babette, like most wives, handled adversity better than her husband, and she was determined to make a pleasant voyage of it, despite the lack of such amenities as a swimming pool, deck chairs and midmorning bouillon. The Gitana had a jolly master, Captain Goma y Goma, and a jolly crew. Each night after supper the off-watch gathered in the lounge under the bridge to hear Babette perform at the upright piano. Her milk-white fingers flashed over the yellow keys, true ivory, and she sang famous arias, after which there was a less formal session, a sing-along, with free beer, courtesy of the Señora. The party went on far into the night, with the men singing the ballads and dancing the dances of their native lands.